Death at the Hazbin Hotel

Chapter One

A/N: Art used for the cover is not mine, it is just from a google image search, I am zero percent talented at art.

(7 years before the beginning of episode 1)

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Alastor appeared on the outskirts of Pentagram city, tumbling out of a web of shadows, clinging to a deep wound across his ribs. He stumbled away from the city with a wince needing time to lick his wounds. He'd return one day, and he'd show Vox just how powerful an outdated radio demon could be. He'd gotten too confident, which led to carelessness and Vox managed a cheap shot. If he'd stayed cool, it wouldn’t have been a problem.

Shaking his head to quiet his incessant thoughts, Alastor paused as he realized he no longer recognized his surroundings. How far had he walked? Had he accidentally teleported through the shadows? He'd appeared in a peculiar forest, the trees all had pure white bark, their leaves varied in differing hues of red and black each with pale sickly white veins. Despite how sickly everything appeared, the forest was lush and thriving in its own way.  The ground was covered with a strange moss the color of blood with more sickly white veins looking almost like spiderwebs overlaying the moss. With each step the trees seemed to knit closer and closer together feeling almost as if they were moving closer, surrounding him, trying to snuff him out.

Just as he was starting to feel a sense of claustrophobic panic bubble up within him, the trees began to open back up. He found himself in a clearing.  A large structure stood before him, it looked like something he'd seen in a history book, a castle from the olden times, built to withstand the ages. A black stone fence surrounded the palace and was crawling with what at first glance looked like blood splatters but upon closer inspection were just clingy blood red vines. 

The iron gate looked as if it had been ripped open and was being restrained by brittle looking black vines.  They slithered across the stone walkway snaking closer and closer to the ancient palace as if they wanted to reach inside and entangle whatever or whoever lay within. He hadn't noticed it before as he'd been too worried about the forest potentially suffocating him, but he paused and glanced around as he realized it was eerily silent. There was no breeze. There was no wildlife. He couldn’t even hear his own breath.

His curiosity got the better of him, he wanted to know who or what lay inside the palace. He stepped carefully around the vines that ,upon closer inspection, resembled roots, roots he recognized. Did Roo have an interest in whoever resided within the palace? They came to a stop just outside the heavy double doors and had begun to stretch upward as if they'd been stopped and they tried to move up to find access, but they didn't quite reach the door. It appeared like they'd met some kind of barrier or forcefield, though he saw none and managed to walk past and reach the door. 

Keeping his right hand firmly pressed to the wound across his ribs, he reached for one of the large silver hoops and yanked hard. The door didn't budge for a moment, he expended a little more effort and it slowly creaked open with a loud whine.  The door opened into a nicely sized courtyard filled with tasteful marble statues of horses, a single marble gazebo and a large marble fountain. The water in the fountain was frozen, not in ice, in time. Holding still as it shot into the air in intersecting arcs. Was this whole place frozen in time?

His gaze was drawn to the gazebo. There was furniture arranged as if for a tea party. There was a chaise lounge and a few comfortable poufs around a marble table littered with decadent looking pastries and treats and a cute hand painted tea kettle with steam frozen in time escaping the spout. His eyes grew wide as he surveyed the chaise lounge, frozen in time was a girl. She looked childlike, small and waifish wearing a frilly yet elegant black gown that looked very outdated, similar in style to something he'd seen in a history book but with a little extra flair and elegance. Her frozen face looked a little downcast, her pale gray eyes filled with a morose look. Her dark as night hair looked soft with subtle waves as if it were stubbornly straight and she'd tried her best to curl it before she'd been frozen in time. Her posture very much resembled a girl being stood up by a date. He'd seen it many times in his life at various cabarets and speakeasies.