[https://i.imgur.com/R1u31Gl.png]
If Momo knew she was going to die today, she would have planned ahead.
She would have spent her entire ten dollar bill at the dining hall and splurged on the double deluxe burger. She would have faced one of her greatest fears—ordering upfront with the cashier, instead of with her beloved no-contact ordering screen.
She would have gone out like a shining light, forever remembered as someone who was completely capable of talking to people. An extrovert. A bewitching, sociable individual. A woman with real generational wealth (read: whatever was left after she spent her ten dollars.)
She supposed she would have texted her parents that she loved them, too, if she had any extra time remaining after the inevitable social come-down from speaking to the cashier.
She would have even texted her good-for-nothing brother. She would have given him a final piece of sage, sisterly advice: to stop trying to make it as a Soundcloud musician. If only one of them was going to survive college, that remaining soul should at least attempt to be the non-embarrassing child.
But alas, she had no forewarning. No blinking screen saying DEADLINE FOR EVERYTHING YOU’VE EVER WANTED TO DO IN LIFE: TODAY.
There was simply a regular, unremarkable day, and then there was darkness.
----------------------------------------
Momo awoke to the sound of her alarm clock, except she didn’t.
She assumed that whatever that loud, beating gong was had to be her alarm. But upon waking, she realized that it was just, in fact, that—a loud, beating gong.
Her surroundings were pitch black, and smelled of dirt and mold. The surface underneath her was no longer an uncomfortable college-issued mattress, but an arguably more comfortable pile of hay.
She momentarily wondered if life would have been better if she had been born as a cow. This living situation seemed quite nice and reasonable.
Except she hadn’t been born a cow, so that sucked. She had been born a truly incompetent, demure, entirely average girl. Who apparently was so incompetent, even in her favorite aspect of life—sleeping—that she had landed herself in a pitch-black cave. By accident.
Her first thought was that she must have partied too hard the previous night and blacked out in some alleyway. But then she felt extremely stupid, seeing as the last time she had ‘partied too hard’ was her seventh birthday.
She had ran headfirst into a brick wall while trying out her new scooter. It was a whole thing.
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So, the next plausible situations were:
1. Sleepwalking
2. Kidnapping
“Ah, she stirs,” came a voice a few meters away.
Well, shit. Kidnapping it was.
She immediately scrambled out of her beautiful bed of hay. It was impossible to see in the dark, but she could feel that she was still wearing her pajamas from last night. She was in no noticeable amount of pain, either—so she hadn’t been hit over the head or anything of the sort.
Now she was feeling a bit of humiliation, to be kidnapped so easily. She could already see the headlines.
Local college girl kidnapped - didn’t even put up a fight or anything. Just walked to dark cave and sat there.
Embarrassing.
Before she could dwell further, she heard the snap of fingers. Within a moment, the cavern had come alight. And oh, shit—there were skeletons. Everywhere. The formerly human kind of skeletons. Not the frog ones you dissect in biology class.
“How did you sleep?”
Momo’s eyes snapped in front of her, where a man had seemingly materialized. He looked like he had gotten lost at a fantasy cosplay convention; he wore long, wizardly robes, a cowl, and had eyes like emeralds. He smiled at her calmly.
Regardless of how nerdy the man appeared to be, her social anxiety still got the better of her. She tried willing her lips to open, but they remained zipped shut.
“Hm, yes, I know, it must be overwhelming,” he nodded sympathetically, and turned to one of the skeletons that was strewn across the floor.
“[Raise Undead],” he commanded.
Just like that, the skeleton hovered lazily upwards. Its bones clicked back into place, forming arms, legs, and a proper head. After a few moments of sewing itself back together, it stood, unmoving. Momo felt a shriek building in the back of her throat.
That had to be the best Halloween decoration she’d ever seen.
Either that, or this man just reanimated a skeleton.
The stranger regarded her terrified expression, patting her awkwardly on the arm.
“Now come on, I know transitioning between the planes is never fun, but it’s just a skeleton.”
The… planes? This was some insane dedication to a roleplay. Or whatever it was. Momo was becoming less and less eager to find out.
“Minion, please take the new recruit’s belongings,” he spoke to the skeleton, which nodded obediently. What belongings? She looked down into the hay and spotted her art notebook. Naturally, she must have fallen asleep drawing. The journal was splayed open, a (bad) watercolor painting of her favorite TV actress drawn across the page.
So, two things were now true: 1) someone just witnessed her art (horrifying), and 2) that skeleton was indeed alive, and moving, and…
Much to her displeasurement, the skeleton grabbed the journal and began to walk out to the cavern’s entrance.
“He will show you out,” the cosplaying man said with a slight bow, “I have some matters to attend to—corpses gaining sentience, rising against us, yada yada—but I’m sure our paths will cross again soon.”
He smiled at her again, broadly now, displaying a variety of rotting teeth.
“It is a pleasure to meet our newest necromage.”