Hello, anyone who actually takes the time to read this! I'm Lycan, and welcome to my personal hell of plot bunnies and poor writing skills! I'm hoping you'll give it a chance at least though, and we'll see where it goes from there. Any advice you can give to me on how to make it feel less butchered or rushed would be great, as well.

Now, obviously this is an AU. I had to divert a lot of the canon aspects of Criminal Minds to make this work, so forgive me if you don't like that. The idea struck me mostly when I realized that Reid had scruffy longish brown hair and was smart and kind and sensitive. It reminded me of Frisk, so... you'll see XD

Genre: Hurt/comfort/adventure

Summary: After a string of odd murders start cropping up, the BAU team is called in to investigate the mysterious deaths of several youth who've been the victims of a recreated legend. The Legend of Mount Ebott... Inexplicably, Reid is drawn to the mountain by a force that seems to echo in his very soul. Can the others save him before it's too late, or will it take the help of one of Reid's old friends to stop him?

Your eyes are wide, filled with fear as you look upon the form of what many would call Death, the Grim Reaper. You know him as a lifelong friend, though you've done nothing to deserve to call him as such. This was a dance you'd done many times before, and would certainly do countless times again and again. It was pure adrenaline, the desire for carnage and death that drove you to continue. Though as you looked upon the messenger of death, you realize that maybe in the end it is all for naught. Why have you been pushed to such a point? As wise words were once said by the soul in front of you, is it not your responsibility to use such a power as yours for good?

You watch as the draconic head raises high above you, and then there is pain and darkness…

Reid snapped awake, struggling to catch his breath as he kicked at the blankets covering his form. Sweat dripped down his face, and he reached a hand up to run his fingers through his shaggy hair. Looking around, it took him a minute to realize that he was in a hotel room.

"Okay, okay, calm down… you're not trapped in a cave, you're not underground, you're safe here…" he spoke quietly to himself, shaking his head as he went about his daily routine before heading out to meet up with everyone else. He hadn't had a nightmare like that since he was a kid, and he had to wonder briefly why he had even had such vivid nightmares to begin with. They were so real, it almost felt like… like memories more than figments of his imagination.

Nodding his head to the others in greeting after he'd arrived, he listened intently to the case they were discussing. It was rather surreal, actually, just how brutal the case was, and yet… it also seemed somewhat nostalgic. He found himself hanging onto every word, far more than he would have normally.

"We've been called in because there's been a series of murders that almost seem to be centered on the local legend of Mount Ebott, seeing as that's where all of the bodies have been found thus far. Our unsub has been killing all of their victims so far in various ways, of which would seem nearly unconnected if not for the fact they're almost always found in the exact same place. So far, we've identified five victims. The first victim, Lisa Thompson, was burned to death. The second victim, Jackson Brinkley, was impaled on what the EM discovered was a knife carved out of a human femur bone. The third victim, Barbara Dahl, was stabbed to death with a spear, the fourth, Daniel Byrd, was strangled to death, and the fifth was executed via electrical shock. The MO is all over the place, with the only thing connecting them being the victims' ages and the dump site. All of the victims were between the ages of seven and seventeen, and were all located just south of a rather large cave mouth leading into the mountain. The bodies were posed to make it seem as if they'd tripped and fallen," Hotch explained, and Reid felt a wave of sympathy for the victims overwhelm him.

"Given that the ages are between 7 and 17, not over or under, there could possibly be some religious significance to the attacks. As well as that, there's a possibility that the unsub will only be attacking twice more, though it's just speculation," he spoke up, voice soft spoken.

Morgan nodded, giving his own thoughts. "If the victims have all been in their youth so far, and if there are religious undertones, it could be an elderly person taking out frustrations on the disrespect they feel they're getting."

They all nodded, but Reid felt strange. His heart was beating faster than it should have been, and he couldn't help but feel as if it was all wrong. There was something pulling him to that mountain, pulling him there with a grip of steel that refused to relent.

It smelled like adrenaline and dust in the room, and he suddenly felt claustrophobic.

Taking deep breaths to slow his heartrate down a bit, he glanced at his teammates faces to make sure they hadn't noticed his brief moment of panic.

What was that? I don't usually have a freakout session like that! He thought to himself idly, and then rerouted his focus onto the others as they were dismissed to their part of the case. He and Morgan were to head to the dump site, and so he was pulled along to the mountain.

As they were heading there, Morgan snapped his fingers in front of Reid's face.

"Hey, kid, what's going on in that head of yours? You've been out of it all day; are you okay?" he asked in concern, and Reid nodded.

On days like these…

"I'm not a kid," was all he said though, and Derek frowned at his younger friend.

"Sure you're not… but still, are you sure you're okay? You don't seem like it," he said, and Reid frowned back.

"I'm fine, okay? I just didn't get a lot of sleep last night; I had a bad dream, that's all," he said, and Morgan nodded.

"Oh… want to talk about it? What was it about?" he asked, and Reid sighed.

"I don't really know, it was all so confusing and it's blurry now. I know it felt real though, while I was dreaming… almost as if it was some sort of repressed memory but that wouldn't make sense because I was fighting a skeleton," he said, and the dark skinned agent snorted.

"Yeah, I'd say that's a bit strange. You must have quite a few skeletons in your closet to dream of something like that though," he joked, and to his surprise Reid let out a barking string of laughter.

"Oh my God, did you seriously just say that? You've got tibia kidding me!" he grinned, and Morgan's eyes widened.

"Whoa, calm down there kid! A guy like me needs his dignity to stay intact," he said, smiling. Reid nodded, smirking smugly.

Morgan, however amused he was, had been caught off guard. Typically, he only said puns on a rare occasion and when he did Reid would simply give him the blankest stare he could possibly muster. For once though, he'd actually laughed…

There was something seriously wrong with this picture, and he was going to get to the bottom of it. A pun loving, nightmare-plagued Reid was not the same Reid he knew, and thus he knew he would have to do some investigating of his own for his younger friend.

They pulled up to the site where the bodies had been dropped, and they climbed out of the SUV they'd ridden over in. The area was taped of with yellow police tape, and Reid frowned deeply at it.

It wasn't right, it didn't fit. It wasn't supposed to be there, it was all wrong…

"Why not just dump the bodies into the cave mouth?" Morgan asked, standing next to the gaping hole in the mouth of the cave. Reid's eyes widened, and he walked over to the edge, looking in. It was incredibly deep, and there was a patch of gold at the very bottom of the fall.

You wake up in a bed of golden flowers…

"I wonder what it'd be like to fall down that…" he mumbled, but Derek heard it and looked at him startled.

"It'd be a terrifying experience and you'd die upon impact. You already know that," he said, and Reid frowned.

"I know that, but if you would theoretically live I wonder what it would be like is what I mean," Reid explained, and he nodded briskly.

"Well, let's not stand here by the edge and find out, right?" he said, and Spencer nodded as he stepped away from the hole's edge.

"Also, to answer your question earlier, the bodies weren't dumped in the cave mouth because whoever did this wanted the bodies to be found. They wanted to be known for what they did, for some sick reason. No one would ever know where they were if they'd dumped the bodies into the cave. Not to mention, many people are scared of the legend on this mountain. They wouldn't want to make it angry somehow," he said, and Derek paused for a moment.

"Reid, what exactly is the legend around this mountain?" he asked, and the genius smiled wryly.

"Anyone who climbs the mountain will never return. The mountain is a soul stealer, and it kills those who would interrupt its sacred whatever it has. Of course, that's impossible but the fear still exists. And to be honest, people who have come up here haven't been seen again, and most of the people who wandered this way were younger… thus the reason we believe the unsub is trying to recreate the legend in their own sick way," his eyes were distant, as if remembering something. Something that didn't add up or was wrong, and Derek nodded to the explanation even as he frowned.

"That would make sense, I guess. It's just kind of sad that it had to happen like this. I wish for once, we could get a break from all the super psycho killers and maybe just deal with a semi normal case."

"Morgan, we wouldn't be here if it was a normal case"

"Exactly," Morgan smiled wryly, and Reid just shook his head in amusement. Looking around for any sign of evidence or something specific that the police might have missed, or perhaps maybe get into the killer's head, they walked around the crime scene with dazed looks in their eyes.

You know who's doing this... Reid's thoughts were feeding him from a source he had no idea where it came from, and he shivered. Looking back over at the mouth of the cave, he could swear that there were vines around it that hadn't been there before. He was unsettled, to say the least, and after a while Derek called for him.

"We don't know anything about this guy except for the legend. There's no sign of anything to indicate who might have been here, or where and when. Let's head back and see if the others had any luck finding anything.

As they were walking away, Reid swore he could nearly hear manic laughter, and the sound of a child crying… Stopping for a moment, he listened but heard it no more beyond that. The mountain was silent, and he wasn't quite sure why that made him as unsettled as it did.