((I've been waiting to share this one.~ Not as much as the next chapter, but still!))

The room was dark. It was dark, full of cold, smooth stone. On the ceiling was a small hook recessed deep, presumably for a lantern that was not there. He wondered why the light was gone.
It didn't matter.

He curled up in a corner, shivering a little. He had no clothes. The cold didn't bother him, the nudity did. He couldn't feel the comforting closeness of Error's magic. The slight warmth of presence and kindness and safety buzzing around him. No. He was left in a cold, harsh void. He felt.. alone.

He thought he had been alone before when he had wandered off at times, but now he realized he had never been alone.
It scared him.

Fresh curled up even tighter, wishing for something to cover himself so that he didn't feel like a mouse caught in the open. He entertained himself by studying the faint patterns in the floor, scratching the stone.

Some time passed, and he felt hungry.
He tapped the ground, somewhat impatient. They caught him and Chaos and threw them in cages, surely they would bother to feed them if they were captives?

He glanced around the room, finding that hunger lent him bravery. It was as empty and dark as ever. Fresh slowly uncurled himself, tentatively flicking his tongues and taste-smelling nothing but an earthy, somewhat coppery smell. Like old blood and bones that had once held flesh.

Fresh began to slowly make his way along the wall, taking note of each minute change in odors, studying the unbroken stone. After a while, he'd looped back to where he started, a little unsettled to find that he couldn't see a door.
He could stare at the wall where he smelled a likely opening, a hint of dirt and ash in the floor- but no sign of a door otherwise. It was unnerving.

When he grew bored of staring at the wall where he smelled a door, Fresh huffed and circled the room, trying to cast out and feel for magic and shuddering when he felt himself blocked. Something kept him from it. Was it some form of magic? He didn't know. He wanted to test and summon an attack- but he had no idea how. In his previous existence, he was just a hapless parasite. He never learned how himself. He didn't even know if he was developmentally capable of forming attacks yet.

Either way, it was just as unsettling as the door situation.
Furthermore, he was growing ravenous. He paced faster, occasionally whining to himself as his tail whipped side to side.
He eventually plopped down with a series of clacks in the middle of the room, rolling over and staring at the ceiling, limbs tucked over his ribs.

An indeterminate amount of time later, he grew bored with that, the hunger beginning to hurt. Annoyed, Fresh started howling, righting himself and yowling, listening to his cries echoing in the darkness. He kept at it for long enough to get irritated at even that, gradually dying down as a bit of anxiety returned.
Was anyone coming?

They wouldn't go through the effort to catch him and Chaos just to starve them to death?
Did Error even know where they were?
What if they simply didn't know any other effective way to kill him?
What if this was a way to get him out of the way.

He curled up at the thought, painfully familiar with the emotion rising in the depths of his being.
Of all the emotions he lacked in his previous existence, fear was the only one he didn't.
Fresh decided that he hated it. Hated being afraid. Feeling another emotion over feeling an emotion seemed ridiculous, but it was what he felt.

Fresh felt tired, but his limbs were trembling faintly from lack of food. He was scared, he remembered being so hungry before. Sometimes he had lacked a host long enough that his whole being ached and he struggled to move.
This was similar, but how was he that hungry already? It couldn't have been that long. It had to have been only a day.. or two. He couldn't tell time here. Everything was unchanged. Just cold, blank stone.

Suddenly, a muffled scrape echoed through the room, and Fresh jolted upward, staring where he knew the entrance to be. There was a clack on the other side, then a whoosh of air as a beam of light entered.

Fresh stiffened, scurrying behind the door, jaw clenched. There was no way of knowing what was on the other side, only that it was a human, and he was hungry.
He wasn't restricted to skeletons or even monsters for their Souls anymore. He could eat meat. Humans were meat. Even if they had food with them, he couldn't be sure it was enough. Couldn't be sure he would get another meal soon enough. His blackened secondary row of teeth slid out hungrily.

In stepped a foot, then a hand tossing a loaf of bread. It landed with a bounce and a scrape, sliding and rolling. Next came a heavy thud and a slab of meat, heavy and raw. The hand swung again and he leapt from the shadows, clamping his jaws around the forearm without a sound.

The owner of said arm yelped, flinching before a laugh rang out. Fresh flicked his gaze over to an amused face, a man with sallow cheeks and a long nose reaching with his other hand.
He reacted the only way he could think of; scrambling up the arm and biting down on the jugular, yanking back without a second thought.

The human gurgled, blood spraying out like a fountain as Fresh was grabbed, his tail whipping and impaling the other's chest as he felt something split apart in it's sharpened tip. Hands grabbed him and tugged him off, but his tail held, keeping him attached. He tore off a good chunk of one forearm hungrily, finding a certain pleasure in seeing several fingers go limp as he attacked the other arm moving to his tail.

By now the human stumbled, leaning heavily on the doorframe as the blood just kept gushing, like some kind of red waterfall. The sound of it spattering onto the stone was satisfying, almost as much as the heavy, slightly bitter copper on his tongues. He was so hungry.

The man's eyelids fluttered, and then he tilted forward. Fresh immediately pulled himself off, scrabbling around until he was on his back, digging his claws in as the body heavily thudded on the floor with a slight crunch.

Fresh wasted no time thinking about what had broken or escaping, he was just too hungry. He instead started tearing at the corpse, digging through the padded jerkin and gnawing on the meat beneath, unable to resist growling faintly. He understood that the large, skinned rabbit the man had dropped was the last of what was planned to be given him, and he still didn't know when they next planned to feed him after that.

Not long during his particularly gory meal, Fresh heard footsteps. They echoed, moving at a rapid pace as they came closer. He ignored them in favor of eating, sticking his skull in the hole he'd made, before tugging it back out again as the footsteps abruptly stopped.

He glared at the newcomer in the hallway, staring at him in shock.
"...He couldn't feel pain..?"
Fresh hissed, a hand raised threateningly.
"Oh shut it, you're no animal." The man scowled, kicking the shoe of his fallen comrade without empathy. Fresh growled, crouching lower.
"Mahnne." He snarled.

"What was that?" The man asked, hand on his sword hilt.
"MAHNE." Fresh repeated, spitting.
"You think his body belongs to you, demon?"
He spat at that. "Gahd. Geht et aight."
Then tore off another chunk, too hungry to wait. The man grimaced in disgust. "You have no right calling yourself a god, death spawn." He kicked the legs into the room.
"I hope he rots your teeth, you disgusting wretch." He spat as he reached for the door.

"Deafwevver." Fresh called out, giving the captor pause. "What was that?"
Lifting himself higher, he gave a sharp-toothed smile.
"Mah pa is da Deafwehver."
Now the human half drew his sword.
"You dare utter that name here?"
"He mah fa-her." Fresh pointed out somewhat drily, enjoying the taste-smell of fear.
Instead of trying to speak with his terrible pronunciation, he threw his mind, grateful to find whatever prevented him before was no longer in effect.

The one you call Deathweaver is my father. He spoke without his trademark lingo.
And he knows where we are. He is coming, Brah. Do you really think you can stop the God of Destruction? You think your king will save you against the one who ended a thousand worlds a day in his weakest state?

He laughed out loud.
I would feel bad for you if you didn't leave me starving in this room like you did. So tell me, broski, if I have a right to call myself a god.

The man was a little pale, but he hid with a scowl, shielding his mind from Fresh and finally grabbing the door handle as Fresh started shrieking with laughter.
"Ah schmehll yah feeeaaarrr!" He squealed as the door slammed shut, leaving him in darkness. He just kept laughing, positively tickled by the reaction.

Fresh decided he was going to kill that one in a special way. He glanced down at himself, at the glowing pinkish lines on his arms, swiping his phalanges experimentally along them.
Away came damp threads, sticky and rapidly hardening.
…Yes, he would kill the man with Error's trademark.

Be as it may, he gorged himself on the corpse of his own making, then fell asleep in the warm hollow he'd carved out, satisfied with himself.

When he woke, he blinked a few times before trilling to himself and clambering out of the corpse, wiggling as he regarded the room. Distantly, he wondered if Chaos was okay.
No matter. Error would save them.

In the meantime, he might as well improve his cell. He decided to go his father's route and yanked threads free from his arms leaping as high as he could and surprisingly enough, managing to grab the hook he was aiming for, turning and wrapping his tail around it before hanging down. He was now upside-down, reaching out and slathering the gooey threads along the ceiling, getting as wide a circle as possible.

When he had a noticeable ridge going all around, he spun out a length of thread almost without thinking about it, just acting on some instinct as he started weaving a cocoon onto the ceiling.

Fresh eventually had a sort of basket with a hole in the base, attaching a self-made rope to the hook and cautiously stepping down, the pink fabric swaying beneath him. He sighed as it held, weaving strands together to extend the rope until it almost touched the ground, then snipping it with his teeth and landing on the stone, admiring his handiwork.

It was far better to make something than to wait around for rescue in anxiety. He had food, which he took a break to consume the heavy slab of raw beef on the floor, then ascended the rope to fortify his cocoon.

When he was sure it wasn't going to weaken and detach, he regarded the rest of the room critically. He had his own silk and an empty space, why not copy Error? They glowed faintly anyway, so he'd finally have a light other than his own eyelights.

He leapt at a wall, managing to slap a glob an inch from the ceiling. Fresh bounded to the other side of the space, jumping up and attaching it a little lower this time, but still close to the top. The resulting string spanned the length, drooping slightly. It was familiar.

Fresh then darted around, repeating this until he had a sort of web nearly hiding the ceiling, panting a little from all the high jumps. He grinned at his handiwork, climbing up his rope and clambering over the outside of his nest to doubly secure it to the ceiling.

Now doubly sure that it was firmly connected, Fresh moved to adding more threads to the ceiling, now operating much closer to his target, wobbling as he made a simple mat hanging from the ceiling, adding multiple supports so that it wouldn't fall.

Halfway through he grew tired and returned to his nest to fall asleep, finding himself cozy in it's enclosed warmth. It wasn't Error's, but it was his own string and whilst not the same, it was at least pretty cool.

When he woke back up, he stretched and remained in his nest for a little while before finally deciding to descend and eat, eating nearly the entire rabbit and stopping to consider where the heck that food went. The thing was bigger than he was.

After he was done staring, he returned to his personal project and continued building, appreciating the scent of his own threads as he weaved them, chirping and humming to himself.
At one point he accidentally cut the wrong string, stiffening as a part of his mat sagged as the load-bearing thread fell. He rushed to pull it back up, sort of gluing it to it's other half, weaving thread around the two parts and watching it harden until he was sure it was fine. It didn't support a lot of weight alone, so he was sure it was fine. In the end, he wasn't staying here forever.

Fresh moved on to finish the loose mat, celebrating by prancing around on it, racing through the hanging structure and giggling, often throwing his weight around and rolling to a stop.
It was fun, and he was giddy with the not-quite satisfaction inside.

Laying on his backside in his hanging mats, Fresh pondered on the feeling, grinning at the ceiling.
Eventually he figured it out: it was pride.
He was proud of himself.
He squawked at that, righting himself again and zooming around in glee.

Soon enough, he tired himself out, sitting and finally deigning to clean the blood off, finding that it had crusted and just stank. He groomed meticulously, somewhat amused at how cat-like he was.

It made him wonder how much of a cat he really was. He knew Error was part cat. He wasn't a natural skeleton anymore, hadn't been ever since he gained a full Soul around his shard. Those extra pieces came from somewhere, after all.

When he was finished cleaning off the reddish brown flakes and stains, Fresh sat still, wondering what to do next.
Out of more boredom than hunger, he dropped down to the ground, finishing the rabbit carcass and collecting the bones. He decided to hang them from the ceiling like some morbid decoration, several bones to a thread. They clattered as he moved through the structure, adding noise to the otherwise empty, echoey room. It was becoming cozy.

It made Fresh wonder again if Chaos was alright.
Then he forced it away. She was from a harsher horror AU, and still a Temmie. She was strong. She was fine.
The lingering unknown still ate at him, though.

Fresh eventually came to a stop in his little structure, staring at himself.
He wasn't sure what to do next to pass the time, and he was still completely naked. He didn't entirely mind, he was usually naked before as a parasite- save for the times Error would occasionally knit him a sweater- but he wasn't a parasite anymore.

He no longer had a semblance to a pet or an animal. Did he really feel like a civilized being, though?
He rather felt he was more like the werecats.
Free to do what he wanted, as he wanted, without regard to most of the boring trappings of civilization.

Fresh eventually fell back with a groan.
As much as being a nudist was kind of fun, he didn't want his ribs on display. It was weird. Really weird. He debated how he could go about making one. Thinking back, he realized he had no idea how. Sure, he'd seen Error knitting millions of times, but he really never bothered to study the process. That lack of knowledge seemed to be kicking him in the coccyx now.
He rolled around with a groan.

Fine, then. If he couldn't make clothes the traditional way, he would find his own way. He could weave a cocoon. A solid mat. He knew how to make a sort of cloth. He could take that idea and run with it.
…How was he going to make a mat not attached to anything..?

Fresh glanced at the wall. He would make something to temporarily hold a mat, then.
There. That was what he would do.
He leapt from his hanging setup and got to work, ignoring the corpse he was going to keep eating near the door. If anything, the body served as a visual reminder as to where the door was.

Unfortunately, it was really pale and at the moment, stiff. He had no idea why, something dead humans did after a little while. It reminded him of a cat he had once.
He paused what he was doing when he remembered the feline. A strange ache filled him.
Why did the cat have to die..?

He stared at the corpse for a while, forgetting his plan as he remembered the animal he'd hung out with for such a brief span of time. He found that he wished the cat had stayed longer. Wanted the cat now.

Rubbing at his face, Fresh realized he was crying. Why? He wasn't hurt.. but he was hurting. Inside. Again. His tears were thick and pooled off his face, swaying before they made contact with the floor. It was like putty.

He curled up on the cold stone floor, occupied with the confusing, painful feeling in his Soul.
He.. missed the cat. He couldn't even remember the name he had given the feline, but he missed them.
Fresh was.. sad. He was sad. That's what this was.
Loss.