Snowcon Forest

Icebreaker

Crack!

A startled shriek. The ground giving way. Her broken yell escaping as she fell down, down, down into the darkness below.

The wind rushing past her face, blowing her hair around and almost knocking her hat off of her head. She quickly used one hand to hold it so she would not lose it. Her cape fluttering around her, useless as she fell.

Her other arm stretched up towards the gaping hole in the ice she had fallen through, as if the gesture would somehow magically return her to the surface. The starts shone above her through the hole she had fallen through, their light almost blinding her

Questions raced through her mind as she fell. Why, why had the ice broken? Why did she have to fall through? Why-

Splash!

Hat Kid yelped as she felt her back smash onto the surface of the water, which quickly dragged her under. Water filled her mouth and lungs, making the child choke on it. Gagging the entire time, she swam back up to the surface as fast as she could.

She broke the surface with a loud gasp and then promptly began coughing out water. Slowly she swam towards the nearby shore, coughing and gasping the entire time. After what felt like an eternity, Hat Kid dragged her exhausted body up onto the cold dirt.

She was in some kind of cavern and it reminded her of the ones connected to the Subcon Well. It was extremely spacious. The walls shone brightly, providing their own light in the dim atmosphere. There was one tunnel that was right in front of her and a quick check of the cave showed that it was the only one.

The only obvious exit was the hole in the ice dozens of feet above her, something she would never be able to reach. She had no climbing gear and the walls were far too slick to hold on to. Heck, even if she shouted as loud as she could it was highly unlikely anyone, be it a Subconite, Snatcher, or some random creature, would hear her voice from this far down.

At least I landed in that big puddle!

Without the water to cushion her fall the landing certainly would have been much more painful.

And deadly.

She sighed and stood up, doing her best to get rid of all the extra water that had soaked into her clothes. With the cave surrounding her the cold wind would, hopefully, not have a chance to make her sick.

Then again, the cave itself was really cold...

Her soggy boots squished with each step she took away from the cold water she had landed it. The child sighed, the cold sapping all of her energy and making her feel exhausted. She had to stay away from the hole in the ice in case anything else fell, or if the wind got too cold.

With a yelp she tripped over a stone sticking up in the faintly glowing dirt, and she fell to the cold, dirt floor. Why, why did everything have to go wrong today? Suddenly, the child was intimately aware of another presence, the feeling of something or someone watching her.

Hat Kid looked up and met the gaze of the strangest creature she had seen in Subcon Forest.

The eyes, if she could call them that, looked almost like small voids with strange red designs in them. The creature's right eye had red diamonds while its left was a red spiral with what appeared to be a broken monocle resting in the bottom corner. Strange red lines ran from its eyes and mouth to the edge of its face. Its skin was blue and it wore an, oddly familiar, red button up suit top.

Its arms were extremely long and there were manacles attached to its wrists. Two tiny fangs poked out of its blue mouth. It also had no legs and hovered in front of her, reminding her of a familiar floating shadow she was friends with.