"Listen," said the human; "I'm really not trying to turn this into a knife-measuring contest..."
The other human bumped shoulderblades with the wall. They froze for a second, then began edging sideways in the direction that angled marginally further away from the first human.
"Listen..." The first human shook their head as though self-reproving. "Or at least use your eyes. I clearly can't hurt you without you repaying the favour. I don't have my exhibition steels; this is a gardening knife, for the love of fluff. You're significantly taller and have longer reach. I don't like you, particularly, but unless you brought five friends I have no intention of starting anything at this time. Steady your breathing, you ridiculous primate."
The second human reached the pillar in the corner. They were holding their knife in a double, trembling grip now.
"Fine. Fine." The first human threw up their hands. "Serves me right for trying to do the reassurance thing. Not my specialism. Did you fall down here from much higher ground, by any chance? A region supposed to be cursed?"
This was the first thing to get the second human looking baffled, instead of merely terrified.
"No? How are you here if you didn't climb the... hang on." The first human sat down on the lawn, cross-legged in their neat brown shorts, just outside the largest patch of sunlight. "Where you come from, then, are there perchance multiple realms between which one can travel given a great expenditure of magic?"
The second slowly nodded.
"Damn. So the doctor was right about his fundamental constant business. He'll gloat for days." The first human was absently spinning their knife, point downward, on one fingertip. "Honestly. An actual visitor from an AU and you had to be human?"
The second human asked them what an AU was.
"I just said. Parallel realities defined by their fundamental universal numeral. It's all the undead in the lab talk about these days. You're in 6,659 now, incidentally."
The second human asked shakily whether this wasn't a Dark World.
"I don't know what that is. At least not with the conceptual capital letters you dropped into the sentence. Darkness in general we can provide."
The second human pulled themself somewhat more together and lowered their knife. They introduced themself.
"Hmm. Oh, right. Chara Dreemurr, nice to mee-- what? Something amiss with my surname?"
Kris replied that they could say that, yes.
"Because people are usually more put off by the royal title, which is why I didn't mention it."
Kris shrugged. Perhaps their father was a king too. Who knew? You never could tell with this stupid parallel universe theory.
"Well, almost everyone's out for the day. We'd better go and introduce you to my brother. You aren't weird about monsters, are you?"
Kris said they were usually more weird around monsters.
Ten minutes later, they proved their point by laying eyes on Chara's brother and immediately starting to yell.
"Deepdark and marvellous," growled Chara with feeling, but it wasn't too audible what with all the panicked crashes and bleating.
baratheonpilled
2087
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
titsay
