Anxious Torture [Sanders Sides FANFIC]

Chapter 5

The two sides crossed over the barrier and entered the Dark Palace, which was composed of a large gothic house-ish structure. So large in fact that some areas inside resembled diagon or nocturn alley from Harry Potter. Some even stretched to look like elongated parks and streets, despite it all being one building.

The inside and outside appearance wise though, resembled one really interesting yet strange building in Vienna: Hundertwasserhaus.

(A/N: It's a real building I visited while touring Vienna and I thought it would fit the setting really well.

The Dark Palace is essentially a mix between this building and Dr Seuss a bit, but darker.

I couldn't pull up any pictures but you should be able to look it up to get an idea of what the dark palace looks like, it's a really cool building!)

The gate led to a path that was a five minute walk to the actual Dark Palace just as it did to the Light. It somehow rained a bit even though it was indoors, though mainly inside the main halls and rooms, and it often had lightning that would randomly strike a window or a Side, but was actually really harmless.

Virgil himself had gotten struck by the lightning once when he was a kid and all it seemed to do was make him dizzy for an hour, the impact didn't even hurt that bad.

Most of the imbedded rooms were made of darker concrete and the interior of the buildings were actually rather well lit, depending on who lived in it.

The actual layout of the imbedded homes, however, were where the real variation started. There were some buildings in the city that were built adjacent to another one and suspended in the air, and took a ladder to get in. Others were outright built upside down, however when you went inside, it felt like any other building with the occasional wavy floors or walls. Or the plants that grew inside the house out of the concrete. That wasn't even accounting for them being the rooms of different Sides with the usual personalization present.

All in all, it looked scary from the outside—intentionally, of course—but the inside was much more fever-dream-ish.

Janus looked over and smiled at Virgil. "Welcome back."

Virgil looked back at Janus and smiled as the two started walking down to the actual door to enter the palace.

It was pretty short, all things considered. And just like most of the rest of the "outside" of the palace, the pathway was a little odd too, it functioned like a street, even when there were no cars, and it was made out of an odd looking substance, like someone made a pavement out of obsidian and petrified wood. And the clouds producing the lightning and rain changed colors frequently and looked more like metallic paint.

Virgil's eyes lit up suddenly. "Wait! I think it was that time we did that mind connection thing!"

Janus jumped a bit and looked at Virgil. A little distracted by the fact that he was going to have to ask about what happened with the Light Sides earlier. "Uh—What?"

Virgil sent a small grin. "I think I know why you can stay in my room so much longer before the eyeshadow starts to show up." He put his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. It was because his hands were freezing, so he tried to be discreet despite knowing it was futile.

"Remember that time when we were kids and we kinda swapped powers for two seconds?"

Janus thought about it for a moment, and did remember it, he remembered laughing at Virgil's reaction to his inner workings as Thomas' deceitful side. Virgil wondering out loud how Janus didn't go crazy being compelled to say the opposite of what he meant constantly. Virgil yelling loud enough to get the attention of Remus out of pure frustration.