Oh, Sinner (A Vox Hazbin Hotel AU)

Line my casket with velvet

"What the fuck is going on?" Velvette half-whispered, half-hissed.

"We've got company," Vox stated as he scrambled to his feet, "and I think he wants us dead."

"What?"

"Shh!" Intel ordered without words. He sprang for the rug their succubus host described, ripping up the yellow shag corner and unearthing a wooden trapped door with an iron handle. Velvette looked as though every single capillary in her eyes was about to burst. This truly was a shitty reality to suddenly wake up to, but they'd have to lay out the details later. Intel pried open the door and peered into the darkness below. It appeared to be an abandoned cellar, and the bitter stench of beer permeated Vox's senses.

"I see a ladder," Intel said, latching to it and climbing into the abyss. "Come on!"

Vox kicked off the covers binding him to the mattress, pulling Velvette up beside him as he tripped over the sheets and onto the floor. He was trying to be as quiet as he could, but he hit the wooden boards with a thick THUD. Clementine screamed from the other room.

"I'M NOT ABOVE STRIKING YOU WHERE YOU STAND," Asmodus promised.

Velvette squirmed in Vox's grip. "We have to help her!" she insisted hurriedly.

"Absolutely not," Vox barked through gritted teeth, holding on tighter.

"But Clementine, she–" Velvette hesitated before another scream filled the air. Every muscle within her tensed, and then she nodded. She was seeing them too, he realized. The flashbacks. The memories. The bitter outlines of screens lining the walls of a tiny room. He wasn't helping, he realized. His own damn face wasn't helping.

They needed to get out of there.

"We have to go. Now." He hopped down the ladder, pulling her with him, and watched the walls fade into something far more sinister.

Once they were all in the crawlspace, surrounded by old beer kegs long untouched by hellborn hands but teaming with spiderwebs and the silhouettes of their shadowed homemakers, Vox closed the hatch and bolted it shut. He then fetched a fallen board from a busted keg and jammed it into the lock, not trusting the integrity of the thin wooden barrier against a literal Deadly Sin. Still, something was better than no barrier at all, and if Vox could slow their pursuer down, then he'd try his luck. He could hear stomping footsteps from above, as well as the sound of shattering glass.

"Cl-Clementine says this leads outside," Intel stammered, his hitching chest just barely visible, "but I don't see an opening. It's too dark down here!"

"Can't you turn up the brightness on that big head of yours?" Velvette urged Vox as she begged.

As if her voice was the command, Vox glowed a tad brighter. There was only so much he could do on zero sleep though.

"Thanks," said Intel, feeling the molding walls with his hands. "I bet there's a door or something there's gotta be a– oh, I think I found something!" Intel's hands enclosed around a notch in the stone brick wall and he tugged on it with the full weight of his body, forcing it to give way and revealing a separate tunnel with a faint light at the end. Intel started down it, waving Vox and Velvette along, and Vox had to crouch to clear the ceiling with his towering stature.

As they moved, the crashing from above grew fainter before disappearing altogether. Soon the only sounds were their pounding steps and strained respires as the cellar walls and concrete floors morphed into loose cobble and a rutted, uneven dirt path. Vox allowed himself to relax, at least partially, but they weren't out of the woods yet. First, they needed to figure out where this tunnel was leading them. After they reentered the light, they needed to decide where the hell they were running next.