Chapter Text
Spamton likes being alone.
Really, he does. Whether he’s out on the open road, or holed up in whatever studio he can afford to rent, or even enjoying the few moments of peace he can eke out in the busy pubs and taverns he frequents on his travels. They’re all so much better than the cramped little shack he grew up in, rowdy younger brothers always getting under his feet. Better still than his family’s tiny workshop, with his father’s anxious hovering and uncle’s nagging.
But angel, if it isn’t creepy sometimes.
The setting sun casts the tall trees in orange light, thin bands of fire slicing through the dark. It stretches out their already looming shadows into something far more sinister, inky, grasping hands menacing him and his rickety cart as they make their way along the mountain path.
Spamton shivers. It was warm all day, so warm he had to take his jacket and bindings off when they stopped for lunch, but now his linen shirt feels far too thin, doing nothing to protect him from a sudden and unseasonably cold wind coming down from the east. He leans forward to pat Cungadero’s chestnut flank, just as much to comfort himself as her, but his horse barely acknowledges the contact.
Just him, then.
He glances around at his surroundings, trying to pick out any sort of nearby landmark, and settles on a particularly craggy outcrop a few dozen feet up the road. He looks down at his map, only to find what he hoped he wouldn’t yet knew he would; there’s nothing on the paper even remotely resembling it.
He’s never travelled this far east before, but at this point he’s certain there must be something wrong with the route the merchants in the last settlement plotted out for him. None of the places he’s passed match what’s scribbled on the paper, and he hasn’t encountered so much as a house for hours, let alone the village he was promised.
Maybe it’s a trap? Lure him out to some remote spot, then jump out from the bushes with a bunch of guys and take him for everything he's got? It wouldn’t be the first time.
Weird to wait this long to do it, though.
Spamton keeps a hand on the knife at his belt as they ride on, but no one materalises. Half an hour passes with no incident other than the sun sinking further into the horizon.
No one’s coming to get him, sure. But that also means no one’s coming to help.
The entire cart jumps.
Cungadero neighs, bolting forward a few steps, and the entire cart rumbles beneath him, its extremely fragile contents crashing together far too loudly for his liking. For a moment Spamton expects the worst, brandishing his knife at whatever foe has waylaid them, but Cungadero doesn’t spook, and no shapes emerge from behind the trees. After a moment or two of screaming and swinging his pocket knife around like an idiot, he stops. Cungadero whinnies, pawing at the ground, and then he realises the problem; the path here has gone from packed earth to loose stones.
Oh. She just tripped.
Spamton exhales slowly and leans back in his seat, biting his tongue.
He can’t shout at her, not when it’s his own fault. He should’ve realised she was exhausted.
As if in agreement, Cungadero snorts and plants her hooves firmly into the dirt. Spamton tugs on the reins a few times, but they both know who’s more stubborn here. No way she’s giving in.
Blinking his own bleary eyes, he slides out of his seat up on the front of the cart and heads around to where she’s sulking. She looks away, clearly not impressed, but then he runs a hand through her mane a few times, and she relents. Cungadero huffs softly, rubbing her nose against his outstretched palm, gazing at him with eyes of pure liquid brown.
How can he say no to that?
“Been a long day for us both, huh?” he murmurs. She whinnies in agreement. “You sit tight, I’ll find us somewhere to camp.”
Turns out that’s easier said than done. It hasn’t rained for a while, so at least it’s not muddy, but the ground is hard, and whatever real estate that isn’t just sharp rocks is taken up by knotted tree roots and prickly underbrush instead. Not exactly ideal for bedding down.
He’s beginning to panic when suddenly, in the corner of his eye, he catches a glimmer of light. It vanishes when he turns his head, and he experiments with bobbing his head in and out of the treeline for a moment or two before he catches it a second time and realises what it is.
A roof tile.
He jogs up a few feet, hopping onto a rocky outcrop to get a better look, and yes, there it is! The pointed tip of a roof peeks out from the treeline, its dark, shiny tiles reflecting the golden light of the setting sun.
Oh, thank the angel.
Spamton dashes back to Cungadero, who is thankfully still where he left her, shuffling her hooves around in the dirt. He takes hold of her reins and gently tugs, a big smile on his face.
“Hey girl, I got us a place to go for the night. I just need you to go on a little longer, yeah?”
She snorts quietly, clearly still a little stroppy, but with a few more light pulls and a bit of petting, she finally brings up her hooves. Soon enough she’s trotting along, albeit at a far slower pace than before. Spamton keeps patiently leading her up, though, whispering to her all the while.
“Good girl, good girl, just a bit further now.”
The sky darkens as they climb, shrouding everything in shadow, but at the same time the trees begin to thin out, revealing the house in all its glory.
And lord, is it glorious.
For starters, it’s a hell of a lot bigger than Spamton imagined. A huge Gothic manor, all dark brick and black metal, surrounded on all sides by grand gardens and an estate that goes on for miles. It turns out that the road he’s been following for the last few hours leads up to its grand gates, and beyond that, the enormous drive. It’s difficult to make out much detail in the gloom, but Spamton can easily imagine elaborate stonework, ornamental parapets, maybe even some stained glass set into the arched windows.
As they pull up to the gate, he can’t help letting out a low whistle. Even this is a work of art; it’s all wrought iron and spiralled metal, beautiful flowers wound into the metalwork that speak to a level of craftsmanship he’s only ever seen on palaces. And that’s the royal palaces in the capital, mind.
What on earth is something so fancy doing all the way out here? He’s certainly never heard of a grand lord or lady this far out in the mountains.
Whatever. He and Cungadero can barely keep their eyes open, he’s not about to look a gift-mansion in the mouth.
He pulls at the gate. Locked, obviously, the culprit being a big iron keyhole in the very centre, wreathed with metal flowers and leaves. It’s pretty, so pretty he almost doesn’t want to pick it, but his feet and his horse are both protesting, so he pulls out his tools and gets to work.
Lockpicking isn’t exactly the classiest skill, but with his clockmaking expertise it wasn’t hard to pick up, and it’s gotten him out of more scrapes than he’d like to admit.
This one is laughably easy. Spamton scoffs when it gives up after less than a minute of poking with a feeble little click.
Of course these rich losers don’t even have a proper lock. They’re so far out from civilisation, they probably think looters wouldn't bother.
Not that he’s looting. But man, would it be easy.
He clucks his tongue and takes Cungadero’s reins once again, quietly leading her in. She steps slowly, nervously, as if she knows they’re trespassing, but it only takes a few soft words and waving his last apple in front of her nose to get her going.
They make their way down the drive, which is flanked on both sides by well-groomed topiary hedges and bushes dotted with pretty flowers that smell fragrant even at this late hour, and pull up beside a large tree that looms over the entranceway.
The place is well kept enough that it’s clear it’s occupied. Spamton’s half tempted to knock at the door just to make himself known, but the lights are all off and the watch on his wrist tells him it’s gone eleven (already?), so he just parks up his cart in the driveway and unhitches Cungadero.
Whoever lives here, he can deal with them in the morning. He doubts they’d be too happy to see him tonight.
Cungadero whinnies appreciatively, even more so when he slips off her reins, and starts munching at the grass under the tree, apparently content with the place he’s chosen.
It’s a bit chilly, so he takes a moment to go around the back of his cart and fetch a blanket, taking a peek at his wares while he does. The damage from earlier isn’t as bad as he feared; the glass has cracked on a couple of the more fragile clocks, and one of the mechanisms in the automaton he’s working on has come loose, but nothing he can’t fix or replace.
Satisfied, he settles down at the base of the big old tree, pulling the blanket over himself. Cungadero plants herself beside him, clearly exhausted from the long journey, and he snuggles into her side, grateful for the warmth (even if she’s sure to wake him when she inevitably gets up again).
Under a clear night’s sky, illuminated by the waxing moon and a thousand shining stars, Spamton sleeps, and dreams of his automata.
-
Spamton has been fascinated by machines for as long as he can remember. Being born to a clockmaking family, he had a head start on understanding their mechanics, on figuring out how they ticked (hah). But ordinary clockwork soon lost its luster once he’d been taught the trade, and, seeking new challenges, he began working on ideas of his own.
At first they were only simple things; mechanical birds that twitched and twittered, toy lions that snarled and roared, tiny metal musicians that sounded a horn or beat a drum to mark the hour. But then he dug a little deeper, learned to combine his knowledge of machines with magic, pouring the scant latent power he held into batteries that could keep his inventions going long after any ordinary clock would’ve wound down.
That was Spamton’s greatest achievement.
With this newfound power he made dolls that could sing, flutes that could play themselves, puppets that danced even without strings, all manner of little mechanical marvels. He never saw much success; with his limited magic they soon ran out of power, so their usual customers treated them as mere trifles, and his family openly mocked them as silly toys and timewasters, but Spamton didn’t care. They were beautiful, and they were his, and that was all that mattered.
-
Even in the depths of sleep, among his dreams of glittering metal and turning cogs, faint whispers still find their way to him.
“I’m tellin’ ya, boss, that’s a human all right.”
“I’m not an idiot, I know it’s a human! What the hell are we supposed to do with it?”
“I dunno.”
A soft trill echoes through the night, too brassy to be a bird.
“I know that! But he could still be a spy!”
“He don’t look like the type.”
“We can’t be too careful. If they sent him to…”
“...To what?”
“Never mind. Just grab his arms, ok? I’ll deal with the rest.”
A big hand suddenly wraps itself around his wrist, jolting him awake, but it’s not for long. Spamton just about glimpses of three shadowy figures looming over him before a sickeningly sweet-smelling cloth is pressed over his mouth and he’s dragged back into the inky depths.
-
Spamton wakes up with a pounding head, an aching back, and the feeling that something is very, very wrong.
The light, for one. Even with his eyes closed he can tell it’s not the warm light of the sun, dappled by the leaves of the tree he knows he fell asleep under. It’s the dim glow of a torch or candle, flickering weakly in the dark.
Then there’s the ground. He went to sleep on the softest patch of grass he could find, and yet now he’s laid out on unyielding stone so cold it seeps in through his thin clothes, numbing the flesh of his back.
And the smell. There is no gentle fragrance of blooming flowers and fresh cut grass, not even the wet scent of dirt, just stale, musty air, like he’s somewhere deep underground.
Opening his eyes only confirms it, and the memories of last night come flooding back.
Right. He's been kidnapped.
He’s lying on the floor of a fairly roomy cell that’s so stereotypically prison he’d laugh if he wasn’t scared stiff. It’s stone on three sides and iron bars on the fourth, allowing him to see out into an equally austere corridor just barely lit with bracketed torches.
Spamton bolts upright, whipping his head back and forth for any sign of his stuff, his cart, his horse, but of course they’re nowhere to be seen. It’s just him, the clothes on his back, and a pit in his stomach.
Is he inside the mansion? Is this their dungeon? When he dozed off last night he figured he’d wake to the sound of the morning chorus, or maybe the complaints of a particularly grumpy groundskeeper, not whatever the hell this is. Does he really look like that much of a criminal? He checks over his clothes, trying to determine whether his loose shirt and patched breeches mark him out as a bandit rather than a clock salesman, but he’s too on edge to decide.
It doesn’t matter. There must be a guard somewhere nearby.
“Hello?” he calls out, wincing at how feeble his voice sound, echoing through this cavernous place.
No reply.
“Is anyone there? Hello? I need to talk to someone!”
Still nothing, though he could swear he hears a slight stirring somewhere nearby. He perseveres.
“My name’s Spamton! Please, I don’t mean no trouble! I just wanna know where I am!”
Finally, there’s movement. Some shuffling, the click of a key turning in a lock, and then the sound of steps echoing down the corridor. Spamton stands up straight, dusting off his clothes as best he can and stepping up to the bars.
Surely he can get this all straightened out.
“Hello, yeah, I think there’s been some kinda misunderstanding? I know I fell asleep outside last night, but I swear, the gate was open, and I just wanted a place to… stay…”
His mouth falls open.
Three of the strangest creatures he’s ever laid eyes upon are walking down the corridor.
The first and smallest is some kind of strange rock-like creature with beady eyes and greyish-green skin the texture of granite. Even stranger, it’s dressed in a black tailcoat and pristine white shirt, starched collar pulled up so high it’s brushing against its little stone chin. Barely taller than his thigh, it nevertheless regards Spamton with such expression of contempt that he’s immediately cowed, the jagged gash that must be its mouth set in a firm line.
The second creature is completely different to the first, though it isn’t any less offputting. Roughly human in shape and size, its skin is pitch black and an odd mixture of amorphous and fluffy, as if someone rolled a jelly in cat fur. It too is nicely dressed, wearing a smart black suit, a trilby hat perched atop its head.
The third is probably the most familiar, but it’s easily the most frightening. An enormous snake-like creature slithers forth, its deep blue and maroon scales catching the dim light, laid over a thick, muscular form strong enough to strangle a grown man with ease. It has no legs, but it does sport a pair of powerful arms, and is clad in what appears to be some kind of military-style uniform. A sightless face stares back at him, eyes either too small to be seen or simply not there at all, but its lips are parted to reveal needlepoint fangs the length of his forearm.
Monsters.
He’s in the monster kingdom.
He’s an idiot not to have realised it sooner. The strange mansion, the unreadable map, the fact that he’d never even heard of a house so far out east until today. Somehow in his incredible wisdom he managed to get so lost that he stumbled across the eastern border, to the land that up until ten years ago was his home nation’s sworn enemy.
There’s a sharp scraping sound, like the clearing of a particularly gravelly throat, and Spamton is immediately brought back to himself. The little rock creature has opened its mouth, revealing a glittering cavern of green gems that presumably serves as its insides.
“What were you doing on Lord Tenna’s estate?”
Spamton just stares, slack-jawed, at the three creatures before him. He knows he’s in trouble (frankly, this is the deepest shit he’s ever found himself in, and that’s saying a lot), but despite the obvious stakes his mouth can’t form words at all.
The rock thing bristles.
“I know you can hear me,” it insists, folding little protrusions that presumably constitute its arms. “We found you ourselves, hiding underneath your tree with a horse and a cart full of all those strange… things. What do you have to say for yourself?”
Spamton swallows, but he still can’t muster a response. The small monster huffs.
“We already know you’re a spy. You’re only making this worse for yourself.”
“I-I’m not a spy!” he finally croaks, wincing at how pathetic he sounds. The rock thing clearly agrees, if its displeased expression is anything to go by.
“Right, because you just wandered right through a locked gate and straight into the largest estate along the border. Do you think we’re stupid?”
“No! I just needed a place to sleep for the night, I didn’t know you were monsters!” he cries out.
“You didn’t know monsters would be in the monster kingdom?” Somehow, the thing’s geode-like face contorts to arch a brow. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m not lying! I was lost, I didn’t even know I’d crossed the border!” Spamton grabs the bars of his cage, as if he might somehow be able to pry them open, but of course they don’t budge. “You can’t keep me here! This is kidnap!”
“You are a tresspasser! We may deal with you however we see fit!”
“Uh… boss?” The big snake creature leans down to whisper in the rock thing’s ear, though it’s so loud it needn’t have bothered. “Ain’t that Lord Tenna’s decision to make?”
“You think he won’t agree with me?” The little monster snaps. The snake just shrugs.
“Prob’ly, but we oughta ask him first, doncha think?”
The rock thing gives Spamton a long, hard look, and then sighs, shaking its head.
“Fine. Pluey, fetch Lord Tenna.”
The shadow thing, which up until this point has been completely silent, trills out what sounds like a jazz riff (utterly bizarre) and disappears down the corridor. No, it literally disappears; its amorphous form almost seems to melt into the shadows, instantly vanishing from sight.
Spamton blinks.
What the hell?
“You may think you can run circles around us,” the rock monster sneers, “but I think you’ll find Lord Tenna is quite a different story.”
“Man, I don’t even know who your Lord Tenna is!” Spamton cries, throwing his hands up in the air. “What the hell do you think I was trying to do?”
“Spying, reconnaissance, who knows?” The monster shakes its head. “I know what your kind are like.”
Spamton is about to butt in to defend himself when, from somewhere that sounds closer than he’d like, there’s a rumble.
A smug smile spreads across the rock creature’s face.
“Here he comes!” it cries triumphantly.
Spamton doesn’t even have time to ask the rock what the fuck it’s talking about when the ground begins to tremble. He freezes, eyes darting about, assuming it’s some kind of earthquake, but then the door bursts open and he is proven very, very wrong.
Spamton has read about monsters. He’s seen pictures in books. Long ago, when he was just a kid, he caught a glimpse of a procession with a group of monster diplomats who came to the capital to negotiate a peace treaty after the war.
He’s never seen a monster as big as this.
It’s enormous, easily as tall as the little shack he grew up in, and nearly as wide. It’s big and broad, built like a bear, covered in dense white fur. The thick trunk of its middle is clad in a waistcoat of crimson silk and a flouncy shirt Spamton could’ve used as a tent. Puffy sleeves cover muscular arms as wide as young trees, ending in huge hands with claws like paring knives. A massive mane pokes out of its collar, its big head topped with long antennae, face flat and blank where eyes would be. It turns slightly, and Spamton can see a huge round protrusion sticking out from its lower back, clad in black fabric that matches its breeches.
It’s a giant insect.
A giant, terrifying insect.
The beast sniffs the air, antennae twitching in all directions as if searching for something. Spamton’s body stiffens up, unable to move as this behemoth draws ever closer.
The others, far from being terrified, bow to the monstrous newcomer.
“Lord Tenna,” the rock thing begins, as if addressing this horror like a person is somehow usual, “we have captured a human. He was sneaking around the estate last night, and he brought with him all manner of strange tools.”
“Yeah, all shiny metal stuff,” the big snake chimes in. It rummages around in its pocket, producing something that Spamton recognises as a part for one of his automatons. “Dunno if it’s weapons or what, but it was pretty suspicious."
“Yes, and with us being so close to the border, we thought it wise to subdue him and bring him here. No doubt you’ll be wanting to deal with him personally.”
Spamton desperately wants to say something, anything to clear his name, to tell them that he’s no spy or soldier or agent, he’s just a clockmaker, a travelling salesman, a snivelling little coward who wants nothing more than to turn tail and run as far away from this madhouse as he can.
But he can’t even move.
He can only tremble as the giant turns its attention his way, eyeless gaze trained on him, antennae twitching in an awful kind of anticipation. It takes a single step towards him, the solid stone floor shaking with its sheer weight, and in that moment Spamton wants nothing more than for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.
Before this creature does, anyway.
It leans down to better meet his eye, sniffing the air, and then, to his utter horror, it opens its mouth. Its huge jaws part to reveal a gigantic maw, a long black tongue and rows upon rows of sharp, jagged teeth. Mandibles click somewhere in the back of that nightmare, chittering with what can only be delight.
It’s going to eat him. This monster is going to eat him.
That is the last thought Spamton has before his fragile, pathetic little body crumples to the floor and his vision goes black.