Where Claribel low-lieth
The breezes pause and die,
Letting the rose-leaves fall:
But the solemn oak-tree sigheth,
Thick-leaved, ambrosial,
With an ancient melody
Of an inward agony,
Where Claribel low-lieth.
At eve the beetle boometh
Athwart the thicket lone:
At noon the wild bee hummeth
About the moss'd headstone:
At midnight the moon cometh,
And looketh down alone.
Her song the lintwhite swelleth,
The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth,
The callow throstle lispeth,
The slumbrous wave outwelleth,
The babbling runnel crispeth,
The hollow grot replieth
Where Claribel low-lieth.
- "Claribel," Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Chapter 9 – Sovereign Three-Sixteen
The first thing she noticed was an overpowering, sickeningly sweet scent, filling her nostrils and watering her eyes.
The second was that she was alive. And apparently in one piece, by the feel of it.
Chara-STF16 was on her stomach, sprawled out, face buried in a field of yellow flowers of some kind, the petals speckled with red. It took a second for Chara to come to enough to realize that the red flecks were her blood, spattered across the flowerbed. Wonderful.
Chara flexed her muscles first, making sure nothing hurt too bad – all clear. Next, she pushed herself off of her stomach and onto a knee, head spinning as she rose. Annoying, but manageable. Nothing felt too bad, and she didn't feel damp, so that was good. She rose fully to her feet, crushing the flowers below her.
Oh, no. What a shame.
She glanced up, taking note of the hole above and the ray of light illuminating her; that must have been where she landed after the Kestrel had been splashed. She traced her descent path with her eyes, nothing the smashed branches and tracks of rockfall. Her helmet had been lost in the fall as well, she noted with annoyance as she reached up to her naked head. Without it, she'd have to make do with no comms package, no command suite, and no integrated sensors or SMART link. Not to mention her eyes, sensitive from the screwups at SPECWEP, were already stinging. Whatever. She'd do without.
Her bangs were caked to her forehead with blood, mostly dry, but it was still oozing out from a nasty gash above her eyes that made her wince when she touched it. There was blood clogging her nose, too, running down her lips, but that had already stopped. Without her helmet, she didn't have a total diagnosis, but she knew her own body well enough to know she was fine and more than combat-ready. She wiped the blood out of her eyes and off her face, blew her nose clear, smeared some procoagulant on the wound, and slapped a disinfectant bandage on it. First order of business complete.
Next was her weapon; it had slipped from her hands after she'd first hit the treeline. She looked around, eyes bouncing between every crevice, before her gaze finally settled on a glint of gunmetal in the light. That was something, at least. She walked over, grabbing hold of it and hefting it up, giving it a quick once-over. A little dinged and dirty – checked the slide, cleared the rack. She'd give it a good cleaning when she was in the clear, but for now, it was ready to go.
Chara gave another glance back up and frowned. Frisk wasn't here. More importantly, Frisk hadn't landed anywhere near here; Chara could tell from the flowers that she was alone, and from the dried blood, had been for some time. Frisk would never have gone on without her either, the big softie.
Of course, Chara would have done the same for Frisk.
That meant Chara would have to find Frisk by foot, then make her way out to regroup with the Task Force and get back to killing some xenos.
Of course, there could be some down here. She couldn't deny the lightning that raced up her spine at the thought; in the air, she was at their whim, but down here, boots on ground? She was the hunter.
Time to get going. Silently, she lifted her long rifle to her shoulder, bayonet leading the way and pushed forward.
The underground passage was dark, the only light being the occasional beam of light that wreaked havoc with her night vision. Chara knelt in the shadows for a minute, allowing her eyes time to adapt; she could turn on her floodlights, but that would broadcast her position to anyone in the area. Better to stay melded in the darkness. She held a moment longer, listening, memorizing what the normal sounds were around her. Slight hums of wind, drips of water. Muted thumps from the battle above.
Satisfied, Chara rose to her feet and pressed on. She hadn't gotten far when she'd hit another beam of light revealing more flowers. She wouldn't have paid them much mind . . . except one of them had popped up from the dirt and started talking.
"Howdy! I'm Flowey the Flower!" It greeted her in a sickeningly cheerful tone, a dumb grin on its face. Chara just stared at it, unblinking, not quite sure how to react to this new development.
Maybe she had hit her head harder than she thought.
"Golly! You must be so confused! Good thing I'm here to help!" The flower winked at her with its tongue out a little, stars shooting out from its eye. Yeah, she'd definitely hit her head, no maybes about that. She continued to watch the flower with wary and disbelieving eyes, tracking it with her rifle as the figment of her imagination kept talking. Lord, but would it shut the hell up?
" . . . friendliness . . . pellets," the weed bounced its eyebrows up and down, a shifty smile on its face. The strange white pellets hovered around it, twirling in place. "Go on! Collect as many as you can!" He called out, the projectiles floating towards her.
Chara replied with six muffled whumps from her Automag, sidearm raised in her right hand as she held her rifle with her left. The caseless high-explosive rounds left only smoke as they punched through the "friendliness pellets," swatting them aside. Chara wore a wicked grin, teeth bared. She was a crack shot without the SMART link, no matter the weapon. Always felt good.
"What? You thought I was an idiot? Fucking flower," Chara sneered at the surprised expression on the yellow flower's face as she aimed the suppressed pistol right between those beady little eyes. "Concussive hallucination or not, I'll still put you down."
"Whoaaaa, whoa-whoa-whoa, hey there!" The flower stammered, leaves held up. "Hold up there, buddy! I think we got off on the wrong leaf!"
"Yeah?" Chara asked, not entirely sure why she was speaking with a visualization of a traumatic brain injury. "You got thirty. Impress me."
"Ooooh, you," Flowey narrowed its eyes at her with a smirk that looked much more natural than that smarmy smile from earlier. "You're new to the Underground, but you already know how things work down here, don't you? You're like me."
"The Underground, huh?" Chara kept her sights trained on the flower as she spoke. Maybe this was really happening. Were there more talking flowers in the Underground? She hoped not. She already hated this one. "So, how do things work? Assuming I don't know."
"There's only one rule. Kill or be killed," Flower's face shifted to something more aking to a skull as he continued. "But we're both already well-acquainted with that, aren't we? Oooh, we're gonna have a nice, loooong relationship together down here!"
"Hmm. Fascinating. Thirty." Chara fired, the round dead-on, but the flower popped into the dirt faster than expected, leaving only a plume of dirt and its echoing laughter. Chara frowned after it, ejecting the half-spent magazine and pocketing it before sliding in a new one and holstering her sidearm. It shouldn't have been able to move so fast; there was something strange about this place. Well, besides the obvious. And missing and leaving that thing alive . . . left a bad taste in her mouth. From the sound of it, though, she'd get the chance to scratch that itch.
She heard footsteps approaching and leveled her rifle, ready for whatever came from the shadows of the passage head.
"Oh my! I thought I heard a commotion!"
Chara found herself staring, lowering her weapon despite herself as a huge, humanoid goat woman with white fur and purple robes came walking up, both excited and concerned. "Greetings, my child! I am Toriel, caretaker of these Ruins." She began doting over her, fussing over her hair and her bruises and talking and talking and talking.
That was when Chara decided she was going to kill every last hallucination in this damned mountain.