A bright light. It's all you see as your eyes open just barely, blinding your vision completely. You groan and weakly toss your arm up, only for it to dangle right down again. Another groan escapes you, body unwilling to move. What had happened?
You had climbed the mountain which countless warnings and stories of disappearing children had urged anyone to not even near it… yet you had, though you no longer remember why, when or how… the warnings mere passing glimpses of something you can't remember, than a memory of itself.
You manage to drag your arm up a little, preparing to lift yourself up. It was futile, of course… you were too weak, too hurt to manage. You turn your head to its side, the bright light hurting your eyes. You feel the soft flowers beneath you… You open your eyes once more, the yellow flowers illuminated by the light above, their bright reflection almost blinding you, but not quite. You groan once more; you couldn't just lie here forever, pitying yourself.
The flowers fill you with unease. Not from the flowers themselves, they are beautiful, but the fact that they are there, in a small square, neatly in place… someone must have planted these here, or there would have been more of them further out, scattered.
Forcing yourself to a sitting position, you grab your temple instantly, letting out what can only be amounted to a pitiful whimper. You stroke your head gently, eyes closed as your head feel as if a rock is being pounded against it with each beat of pain. Your body fares no better, but being unable to even think without hurting impedes you.
But you cannot stay. You do not feel safe, you do not feel well… You don't know if anything is really injured, or if you've just taken a heavy beating while falling, that is only temporary.
Falling. You remember it, you fell. You look up again, the light not quite as blinding as before as your eyes acclimatize. The light is shining through an entrance above, hidden by the walls of the hole you fell down. What had caused you to fall? What had caused you to go up here at all, let alone into this cave?
You slowly shake your head, forcing yourself to fully stand up on shaky legs, almost falling right over. You spread your legs to keep balance, using your upper body to keep yourself upright… you manage, barely. You let out a sigh, you could have stayed down for hours… the soft flowers were comfortable, though not exactly a good cushion for falling down as far as you had.
You take another look around the room you appear to be in… darkness, rocks and moss. You were inside the mountain. You slowly bring your legs closer, feeling more confident in your ability to stand. Nothing feels broken… only brimming with numbing pain. A broken bone would certainly be more sharp and agonizing in its pain, not that your current state wasn't painful.
The light from the hole illuminates the room well enough to see it; it's not a large room, with only one way out of it that leads further into the mountain. You close your eyes and take a deep breath, almost reeling over in pain and grabbing your side. You look down at the source of the pain, your reflexive hand having thankfully missed the stick poking out of your side. You fear you may have punctured a lung, but taking a few more slow, deep breaths, though painful, says otherwise. You'd be coughing up blood if that were the case.
You frown and look to the entrance leading out of the room. Well, you had to find help. You wonder if there was even a way out of the mountain… you shake your head, stowing the thought away for later, saving it for when you do find out there's no way out.
As you make your way down the tunnel, and into the next room, barely able to see a thing, except for another patch of light, near dead center in the new room, with some grass where it hits. You look up, finding no source for the light, no hole from which the sun could pierce through anyhow. It puts you at unease, but you push on, scouring the ceiling for anything you might have missed that might explain this.
You jump in surprise as you hear a small, cheery voice suddenly speak, a flower in the previously empty patch of grass… with a face, bouncing as it spoke.
"Howdy! I'm Flowey, Flowey the flower!"
You blink, taking a couple of steps back. A talking flower. Bouncing. You rub your temple with your hand and shake your head… just how hard did you hit it when you fell?
The flower giggles innocently, "Hmm… You're new to the underground, aren'tcha? Golly, you must be so confused."
You just nod, at a loss for words.
"Someone ought to teach you how things work around here!" it says. Its eyes dart to your wound, and you could swear a menacing grin had washed over its face… but considering your state, you must be hallucinating. Wait, why are you trying to reason the facial expression of a sentient, talking, happy flower? This can't be real. You must be dreaming. It can't be real. Were you dead? Was this the afterlife?
As you grab your side to take a deep breath, you accidentally dislodge the stick dangling in your side, reeling back in pain and letting out a cry of pain, falling to your knees. The pain was very much real and alive. Tears well in the corners of your eyes. You curse under your breath, hand holding the wound… A piece of the stick was still inside, making you wonder just how deep it had went.
You look back to the flower, if only to be certain it was actually there… You're absolutely certain it is, and it's sporting a devious grin, as if the pain you were in was pleasing it somehow. You feel nervous and afraid, you didn't trust this… thing.
It speaks again, sounding even more excited in a way, even if its tone is more gentle, "Oh, you've hurt yourself! You'll be no good down here in this state," it says, a menacing tone finishing its sentence. "I guess little old me will have to be careful… Ready? Here we go!" it says, its innocent smile back.
Ready? Ready for what?
Suddenly the room seems to grow even darker, the patch of light vanishing as well, the focus now on the flower itself and nothing else, and a heart, hovering in the air before you. You blink. A heart?
"See that heart? That is your SOUL, the very culmination of your being!"
You no longer feel nervous. You feel afraid. This thing… it felt wrong, and your… soul, was hovering before it. You just wanted to run away, but somehow you just can't. You wouldn't have made it very far with how you're feeling anyhow.
Your soul pulls back, moving back towards you, though not quite going back… in? Did you do that? You try moving it to the left… and it moves to the left. You move it a bit more, to the left, forward, backwards. You're in control of it, yet somehow you don't feel in control of much anything right now. Your attention diverts back to the flower, still sporting its gently, innocent smile and jovial bouncing.
"Your SOUL starts off weak, but can grow strong if you gain a lot of LV. What's LV stand for? Why, LOVE, of course!"
You raise an eyebrow. This was beyond surreal. Love, really? You're certain it's toying with you.
"You want some LOVE, don't you?"
It looks to you… expectantly? It's waiting for an answer. You hesitantly shrug, looking back to your soul. It was quite pretty…
"Don't worry, I'll share some with you!" it says, making a cute face with its tongue out. You feel like you can trust it, but you're certain you can't. You see several white dots spinning in the air around this 'Flowey'.
"Down here, LOVE is shared through… Little white… "friendliness pellets." Are you ready?" it asks, pausing briefly before they slowly start to drift towards your SOUL. You feel uneasy, nervous, afraid…
"Move around! Get as many as you can!" it tells you. You do as it says, for some reason, moving your soul to catch these 'pellets', but everything is screaming at you not to. You manage to hit one, and instantly recoil in pain, falling to your knees. Tears form at the well of your eyes once more, returning your gaze to the flower. It no longer looks innocent or nice. Its cute smile and bouncing is replaced by a dreadful, toothy grin.
"You idiot. In this world, it's kill or BE killed. Why would ANYONE pass up an opportunity like this?"
You don't even get a chance to think before an un-escapable circle of those white pellets form around your SOUL. You panick.
"DIE!" is all it says, trickling off to a sadistic laughter, the pellets closing further and further in, your pleas and cries only egging it further on. You scream out as they connect, ripping your soul to pieces… Only for you to cry out as you wake up, jolting up with hands fumbling the air before your chest, breathing quickly and heavily as you look around in confusion before realizing that it was just a dream. A nightmare.
You sigh and close your eyes, laying back down again, sweaty and shaking. The nightmares were frequent, constant. Nights with just one nightmare was a rarity… It had been just a few weeks since you had freed all the monsters, saved everyone. It hadn't taken long for you all to get a place to call your own, for starters, a slight distance outside town, near the mountain. It was New New Home. They hadn't been joking with Asgore being poor with names. Temporary establishments had been set up, for all the monsters to live in… and you.
You take a deep breath; you couldn't continue with nightmares like these, and they were always about him, Flowey… Asriel. You felt compelled to do something. You turn over to look at the clock, it's early morning, hours until you normally get up… and anyone else does, for that matter.
You get yourself out of bed, putting on your old, though now clean clothes, the ones you had worn when you had fallen into the underground. They would be perfect for today's excursion. You pack a few things into a backpack, some spare clothes just in case and make your way out of your room quietly and down the stairs to the kitchen. So far so good.
Grabbing a few pieces of butterscotch-cinnamon pie, and some spaghetti Papyrus had left the day earlier and packing it into a plastic bag, dumping it into your backpack. Putting on your shoes and making your way out your door, you're met with the cold morning breeze of autumn. You take a deep breath, smiling. You had a good feeling about today and the days to come. It fills you with Determination.
Even from the doorsteps of the house, the mountain is vast and clear, not more than a fifteen minute jog from the makeshift monster town. You take no pause on your way there, the thought of Papyrus' spaghetti lessening your hunger. You'd save that for an eventual emergency. His cooking certainly had improved since you first met, to the point of edible but… not much further than that yet.
It doesn't take long to reach the entrance to the mountain, where the barrier once was. You preferred that over your original way in. You make your way inside, with one determined intent… to save the last monster residing in the mountain.
To save Asriel.