When Frisk found the alleyway for the first time, it was an accident. The thunder of the falls was deafening out here on the edge of the city. If you were to climb out on the ledge and look down you would see the waterfalls plunging from the city’s canals and down into the dark depths below.
Of course, you couldn’t see what lay at the bottom of the colossal towers, nor much further than the cliffs in the distance. What little you could see were rows of blackened dead trees and plants. The corruption.
Leaving the city wasn’t an option. It just wasn’t safe. The City’s Ministers and officials did their best to keep the stuff at bay, to keep everyone in the towering cities safe. But if you left, you wouldn’t be allowed to come back even if you survived. Everyone’s safety was at stake, after all.
But, as they found, if you sidled out along the narrow edge, away from the last official street on the map, you might find yourself along another opening, a dark street that seemed to be totally blocked off from the main roads. Dark doorways promised sinister watchers from the shadows, and even one or two small shops that looked like they’d never even heard of the guilds had their wares spread out on cloths or in windows.
Frisk, wearing a jacket to keep off the constant dampness of the falls and the chill air, looked around before turning to go back the way they’d come. Madame Toriel was waiting for them and there wasn’t time to explore.
Yet there was someone there. Frisk jumped back, alarmed, but the figure didn’t seem to be moving in a threatening way, they were just standing there, looking just as surprised to see Frisk as Frisk was to see them.
It was a little difficult to tell what the person looked like, as they had a long brown overcoat on and a hood that hid nearly their entire face in shadow. Only the eyes stood out, peering at them from beneath the hood. Terrible, grey, blank eyes that seemed to want to pull them inward.
But when the figure spoke, it was in a quiet voice, one that was… relaxing and smooth, even friendly. “Heya, didn’t mean to frighten you or anything. I was just wondering what you were doing back here, the Warrens aren’t the safest place to go exploring. Don’t want you getting hurt or lost. What’s your name?”
“Frisk,” they said, their expression turning ever so slightly towards a frown. What was “The Warrens”? What did he mean not the safest place? The City of Vandfald and its three sister cities of the Claustra Alliance were among the last safe places left in the world! Surely someone would have noticed if there was any real danger.
Quiet laughter escaped the figure. “Ah. Frisk. What a cool name. Heh. Alright, I figure you’re not the type to be put off by warnings. Tell you what, I’m staying around here for a little while. If you need my help, look for me here.” And he handed them a small card with an address printed on it. “I might not be able to solve your problems, but I might be able to give you advice, or at least lend an ear.”
With that, the figure turned to walk away down the alley street.
“Wait!” called Frisk. The figure paused, listening. “You didn’t tell me your name!”
There was a little pause. For one moment, Frisk wondered if the person would refuse to tell them. But those brief fears dissipated when the figure spoke again.
“Mistral. My name is Mistral. See you round, Frisk.”
And as he walked away, it occurred to Frisk that though Mistral was taller than them, he was still quite short.
* * *
The next time they came to the alley, they were dragging Azriel with them.
“How did you even know this was here? Frisk? Frisk. This place could be dangerous. Are you listening to me?”
Frisk waved him into silence, “Shush, Azzy. This isn’t the time to chicken out.”
“I’m not chickening out,” muttered the goat-monster. But he followed them into the alley nonetheless.
They crossed paths with a few people, but most simply hurried onward,not quite meeting their eyes. One of the shady vendors beckoned them to his little display with a friendly smile and a wink. He appeared to be selling a variety of items that had clearly been repaired. Frisk picked one of the objects up to get a closer look at it. It had some kind of flat glass on the front, like a window, and a strange knob or two on either side of the little window that might have been buttons. Frisk pressed a button, but nothing happened. They looked at Azzy, who shrugged, looking just as confused. The shopkeeper’s wife, who was watching from the doorway, removed her sandal and gave her husband a thwop on the head with it. Her heavily accented voice was quite loud as she continued to thump him with the sandal.
“Children, Aaron! They are little children! You cannot sell scavenged junk to children! What would they do with it? How would they even know what it is? You are stupid! Stupid!”
“Ouch! Ow! Wait!” yelped the shopkeeper as he pleaded with his wife, holding his muscled arms over his head to protect it from her onslaught. “Please! Catty, my love!”
This did not save him from the shoe. “Don’t you ‘My Love' me! You could have been a Rail Cleaner like my cousin! We could be living a decent life on Villias Tower!. But no! You wanted to get a license from the Guilds to sell your trash, as if anyone wants this junk! Now we’re stuck here in the Warrens because you won’t listen to me!”
Other faces had started to poke from doors and windows, monsters and humans watching the scene with amusement. Frisk and Azzy quietly slipped away, not really wanting to be caught up in all the attention. Without realizing it, Frisk had held onto the device they’d picked up from among Aaron’s wares, and had stuck it in their pocket without thinking.
It took them a while to find their destination.The streets were winding and branched off or connected all over the place, like a series of cracks spreading out. All of it seemed to somehow be inside the city, but how and where was a mystery, since neither Frisk nor Azzy had ever seen any glimpse of the place in all their time living here.
Asking directions was difficult because most people would simply brush past them, refusing to answer, or look around warily before telling them to go home. Finally they managed to get a grudging response from the eighth person they asked, a canine monster who was smoking a dog biscuit and wearing an old, rumpled, tweed suit. He squinted at them, as if trying to see them better, and Frisk wondered if he was partially blind. But he pointed them down the right way before walking off, muttering about children being where they shouldn’t be the entire time.
Surprisingly they had actually been quite near the address they’d been searching for, the one on the card Mistral had given Frisk the first time they’d met him.
It was a townhouse, squashed between a number of others that were all fairly similar despite different coloring and decor styles, and when they knocked on the door it sprang open right away.
There was nobody there who could have opened it, but a voice from somewhere inside greeted them.
“Come in! I’m just in the kitchen. First door on the right.”
Following the voice they stepped into the kitchen, where a familiar short figure was bending over a pot on the coal burning stove. When he turned to greet them, both Azzy and Frisk gasped.”
He was a skeleton, but that wasn’t what was unusual about him, what shocked them was that he could have been an almost exact copy of Minister Sans. Seeing their expressions, Mistral laughed.
“No, no.” he said with his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not the Minister. Don’t worry. I just happen to look a lot like him, lots of us skeletons look alike you know.”
Frisk felt doubtful of this as their eyes took in the finer details of the skeleton’s appearance. All across his bones were crystals. Not fine jewels on broaches, rings, and necklaces… but raw crystal actually growing on, or maybe from the bones themselves. Mostly they were small, merely encrusting his arms and neck with tiny beds of silvery-white crystal. But here and there a larger shard grew, jutting out and impossibly sharp. Since he’d removed the long overcoat he’d been wearing, they could see the stuff growing up around his neck and all along his arms. A few crystals were even growing around his face and upper skull.
Frisk and Azzy turned to share a look, was this the corruption at work? Or something else?
Mistral gave the pair an amused glance, noting their wide-eyed expressions. “I suppose it’s not everyday you meet someone as handsome as me. But didn’t you two come here for a reason?”
Frisk shook their head to clear it. Yes, it was true the skeleton did appear similar to the city’s less than approachable Minister of Commerce who oversaw the guilds. But the differences were more than enough to prove his claim that he was not the same person. Besides, they’d come to ask for help. “People have been disappearing. All over the city. Monsters and humans alike, but always someone nobody would notice. Or pay much attention to. We’ve tried to report it to the guards, but they don’t care. And mothe-” They stopped mid word, looking uncomfortable for a moment before correcting themself. “Madame Toriel won’t listen to us.”
As Frisk had been talking, Azzy had been rocking back and forth, looking nervous and distressed. Finally he spoke up. “They took Chilldrake! And Suzy! And even that mouse whose dad worked for the Drake family and he came to play with Chilldrake sometimes, what was his name? He had a huge scarf.” When Frisk only shrugged, Azzy continued on anyway. “We don’t know why people are going, but nobody listens to us, or cares. Frisk said they might know someone who could help, or tell us what to do.”
Still stirring the bubbling pot on the stove, Mistral had listened calmly and attentively to everything they’d said. Now he moved the pot to a different burner and retrieved three bowls from a cupboard and filled them with stew from his pot. It smelled delicious; like onions, beef, and cooked carrots. Various spices like cumin and rosemary tickled their noses in a tantalizing way that caused their mouths to water. There was also, very faint beneath all the other smells, the scent of something else… something like lightning and rain… like ozone.
“Now,” said the skeleton. “From what I’ve learned, the best thing to do in a situation where you’re not sure what to do, is to learn about your surroundings. You live in the city, sure. But how much do you really know about it? And the Warrens? Know anything about them?”
Frisk frowned. “I know the City is one of the four great cities of the Claustra Alliance, and that there are bridges and rails that keep us connected with them. The cities protect us from the outside, where it's not safe to live because of the corruption.”
Everyone knew about the corruption. Said to have been released from containment centuries ago it had overtaken much of the world. Humans and Monsters had banded together in order to build the cities and protect as many people as they could.
“Are you sure?”
They stared at him, Azzy’s face scrunched up in bewilderment, and Frisk feeling slightly angry as they asked, “What do you mean?”
Mistral grinned. “Are you sure it's not safe to live outside the cities?”
“Of course we’re sure!” said Azzy. “Everyone knows that!”
The skeleton, looking like he was on the verge of laughing, nodded. “Alright. So how do you explain how I'm living in relative safety here in the Warrens?”
They gaped at him. “But,” started Frisk. “I thought…”
Mistral actually did laugh now. “You thought they were part of the city. Parts of them are. Back entrances, certain doors, side alleys. There are a ton of ways back and forth. Sort of like… gates that take you to far away places with a single step. So think on this. If it’s safe enough to live in the Warrens without worrying about the corruption, what other things do you think you were lied to about?”
Neither could answer, and Mistral took that as a sign the conversation was over. He urged them to eat their stew, which they did, and then he herded them from the house, saying that he had appointments to keep.
His final words, before he shut the door, were a strange warning. “Don’t mention me to anyone. As far as this and every other one of your great cities is concerned, I don’t exist, and I’d like to keep it that way. If you need my advice again, slip a letter under the door here and I’ll get back to you within a day or two if I can.”
Then he’d closed the door and there was a final click, like a lock being turned. Azzy turned to look at Frisk.
“You have weird friends.”
