Chapter 11

Gerson yawned, eyes opening when the group climbed up into the part of the cavern his head poked out of. "Well! Back again? You haven't done anything about the machine leaning against my shell."

Frederick smiled. "That's why we're here. We need to know where it is so we can get rid of it."

"Hmm…" Gerson's deep throated hum filled the cavern. His large, black eye rolled. "Hey there, Papyrus! Long time, no see. Is this your little sister?"

Papyrus nodded. "It is."

Charlotte went up to the turtle's head, gently touching the scaly jaw before smiling brightly. "Oh wow. You are gigantic!"

"Wah ha ha ha! So I am!" His head settled on the floor of the cavern. "So what was all that ruckus about earlier?"

"Madam Glass stole an airship and made it go through several places it didn't actually fit."

Gerson frowned. "Is your dad all right?"

Charlotte shook her head. "We don't know yet. Loren's working on it."

"Welp. If there's anyone who can make it work, she certainly can. Your mum gives her too little credit." He breathed in deeply, eyes closing.

Frederick frowned. "Don't go to sleep on us yet. We need to know how to get to the part of your shell Glass' device is leaning against."

Gerson opened one eye. "I'm not sleeping, whippersnapper. I'm feeling around. It's hard to do that without moving and you don't exactly want me to move."

Frederick put up both hands. "I apologize."

"Ah, you don't have too. For all you knew, I was falling asleep!" His eyes closed again. "The best way up is by the Blook Family Farm. Do you remember how to get there, Papyrus?"

The skeleton nodded once. "I do."

"Good. Go into the glowing marsh. It's raining in there, so grab an umbrella. It also gets pretty dark, so remember to touch the mushrooms. They'll light up. At the end of the way, you'll find a stone bridge over magma. When you see the bridge, look around for a set of stairs. That will take you into the part of the Temple of Charn from which surface dwellers descended into Agartha. My shell abuts the side so just keep looking for my scaly behind and you'll find Glass' machine."

"So more puzzles then?" Frederick huffed. "Great. That's my favorite," he grumbled.

Asriel put an arm around his shoulders. "Oh please. I know it's your favorite. You see a puzzle and you get this little gleam in your eye. Your journal comes out and your notes start flying on the paper!" He gestured to Charlotte. "And this time, we have an engineer with us. It'll go just fine."

"And you have Papyrus," Gerson noted. "He's been climbing around in these caves since he was a youngin."

Papyrus shrugged. "Anything else we should know?"

"Not really." He smiled. "I mean, I assume you are prepared to fight your way through Madam Glass' cadre of werebats. Wah ha ha ha!"

Frederick looked to Charlotte. "We see danger, you stay behind me. Got it?"

Rather than be petulant about it, she simply smiled. "Yes, Frisk."

"Good." He took her hand. "Lead the way, Papyrus."

Papyrus turned, taking them into the cavern. Instead of going by the glowing lake, he led them down to a large waterway filled with slow moving rivers of blue, glowing water. A group of boulders floated in the air, climbing the face of a luminous waterfall as if they were a stairway. Papyrus jumped onto the first one and the second as if the hovering rocks were not unusual in the least.

Charlotte went next, jumping after him. "How are these boulders just floating in the air?"

Papyrus turned to help her jump to the next rock. "They remember the bridge they used to be part of hard enough that they have stayed in place even as the rest of the bridge has faded away."

She looked back at Frederick. "Have you seen this kind of thing before?"

Frederick jumped to the next rock. "The old Lemurians, specifically the giant blond haired, blue eyed, elvish looking ones from thousands of years ago, imbued their construction with memory. It was meant to keep buildings, roads, and other structures intact and in good repair without needing to maintain it often. It's why the old parts of Telos are still in use. The buildings last as long as the memory does." He jumped for the landing at the top of the waterfall and turned to take Charlotte's hand. "I suppose what remains of this bridge will be here so long as someone remembers it."

He gave her a smile. "Would you like to see more things like this?"

Charlotte smiled brightly. "Yes!"

Asriel jumped up to the landing. "Move along, Love Birds."

Charlotte blushed, cheeks turning a bright red, and she turned to follow after Papyrus. In the next gallery, rain dripped from the heavy clouds that drifted overhead and Charlotte grabbed an umbrella from a helpful basket full.

"Who leaves these here?"

Papyrus shrugged. "There are people who live in these caves besides the Dero, their slaves, and the freed pale kind."

She popped open the umbrella and leaned into Frederick, sharing it with him. "When Gerson said the Blook Family Farm, did he mean Napstablook and Mettaton? Do they have family here?"

"He did mean them, but the family doesn't live on the farm anymore. The snails they used to raise pretty much have the run of the place."

And they did. Hundreds of thousands of snails crawled all over the farmhouse, paddocks, and walls of the cave, their shells shiny and variegated with myriad colors.

Asriel shivered a little. "That's vaguely terrifying."

Frederick threw up his hands. "You pop those things like their candy!"

"Yes, I do. They're delicious." Asriel grimaced. "But there's enough here that they could swarm me, and I don't know how I feel about that."

"It would take them a very, very, long time to do that, Az." Frederick patted his shoulder. "I'm pretty sure you could get away."

Papyrus chuckled while Charlotte politely looked away so as not to show her smile. She placed her umbrella in the next basket, which was just as full of umbrellas as the first. Going past the farm, they entered a dark part of the cavern filled with water. Little paths, gently illuminated by tiny mushrooms wandered this way and that. They followed Papyrus through the maze of paths, letting him lead them through the dark until the cavern began to glow a warm orange.

They entered a passage and the heat of the magma far below washed over them in a wave. Turning from the stone bridge across the magma flow, a large staircase ascended before them.

"He said to look around for a set of stairs." Frederick pointed. "You can't miss them!"

Charlotte shrugged. "He is big enough that I'm sure these would seem tiny to him and easily missed."

At the top of the stairs stood the back entrance of the Temple of Charn. As the temple meant for ascension consisted of four thin spires and one thick, central tower, so did this one. But instead of stone, the entire structure was a gleaming, white crystal. Here, the doors were still intact and walking inside revealed an overgrown garden among the remains of crystal fountains that once delighted the senses of those who'd made it to Agartha, a sweet reprieve after the journey.

Frederick looked around. "I'm pretty sure that in order to go up, we'll have to solve the puzzle above us to open the way." He looked at Papyrus. "Did you happen to climb around in here as a kid?"

"A bit, but that was two hundred or so years ago."

Frederick turned to the skeleton. "Then how is Dr. Gaster still alive? She looks human."

Charlotte looked to her brother, wanting the answer as well.

"She's still alive for the same reason her homunculi children are still around." He paused for a moment, looking at Charlotte. "The full story is better than a brief explanation. Our father is Agarthan, but he frequently went to the surface via a route in Staffordshire, England. He was fascinated by the alchemists of the era, meeting with them and trading knowledge with them. It was during this time that he met Lucida Featherstone. Our mother was barely sixteen, but she was desperate the learn the alchemical mysteries that the men of the era kept from her because of her sex. She became a very willing test subject for our father's experiments in exchange for the knowledge denied her."

He frowned. "As I'm sure you noticed from the lab, she loves her work to the detriment of all else, including herself. I'm not sure when it was decided that she would act as the womb for their homunculi creations, but, being a true Agarthan, our father married her first." He sighed, looking away. "I won't go into detail about the way she was physically prepared for the experiments. If you ask her, she'll talk about a terrifying experience in a very clinical manner, like it happened to someone else. I'm not sure how she survived it, but that process gave her a sort of immortality. It also left her barren. The only children she could produce after that were homunculi."

Charlotte frowned. "They tried to have children."

Papyrus nodded. "I've only ever seen her cry twice. Once when I asked her for siblings. She'd been in the midst of experimenting on me and this look of incredible horror dawned in her eyes. She stared at me like she was really seeing me for the first time before looking at her hands. She dropped her tools and ran from the lab. Father found her hiding in a wardrobe, weeping. That led to the second time I'd ever seen her cry, and that was after the fifth miscarriage in a row, when it was obvious that she couldn't have children. That the process that made her a womb for truly human homunculus meant she could produce no others. Sans was created after that. And I suppose Loren was created after Sans and I left."

Asriel shook his head. "That sounds like she actually wants to be a mother."

Papyrus sighed. "She does. And that part of her battles with the part that wants to simply be a scientist. She's never figured out how to be both."

He turned and headed for a set of stairs that led up into the next room. But instead of a room waiting for the puzzle above to be solved, the crystal floor above had caved in, creating a blue and white glowing mess like the interior of a glacier. Everything glittered or shined in some way, even in the parts that had grown dark. The ceiling two floors above appeared intact, but incredibly distant.

"Wait here a minute." Frederick picked his way through the fallen crystal, finding a passage he could slip through. On the other side of the broken flooring he found the remains of two large, stone steps. Climbing up them got him into the remains of a second room and another set of large stairs.

"Come on through!" He waited until everyone had caught up before climbing the next set of steps. Here, mineral rich water had seeped through the crystal and was beginning to lay stalactite deposits. Looking around, he found a doorway that appeared to lead into one of the adjacent spires with no way to it.

"Hey, Az. Think you could give a bridge across here?"

A mass of vines slid across the open air, creating natural bridge. "Oh sure. Make me work."

Frederick laughed. "You're so lazy, I have to make you work just so you keep in shape."

Asriel walked across his own bridge, the vines clinging to his feet as he went. "Yeah, yeah."

Charlotte hurried after him and they came into the still intact spire. The room appeared to be a way station, similar to the one they'd seen on the other side of the temple though this one was carpeted in blue. Charlotte walked around the room, carefully testing the floor as she went.

Asriel followed her. "What are you looking for?"

"This is a rest area and I'm willing to bet that back in the day, people maintained it. In order to do that, they wouldn't use the main temple to get up and down. There has to be a hidden way around." Working her way around the room, Charlotte found a seam in the wall. Digging her fingers in, she felt it move a little. "Found it! I need some help getting it open."

Papyrus reached in and pulled, opening a hidden door into a spiraling stone stairwell. Light from the cavern illuminated the stairs by thin, rectangular windows cut in the wall.

Asriel clapped Charlotte on the shoulder. "Well done!"

Frederick went in first, carefully testing the steps. "It seems to be intact."

Asriel looked up inside. "How far up do you think it goes?"

"We won't know till we climb." Charlotte blinked. "Where's Nacarat?"

The fae of flame's mask covered head popped out of Frederick's collar. "Here I am!"

Charlotte smiled. "Oh good. Up we go then."

The four climbed the stairs, Frederick in the lead. As they ascended, each way station was clearly marked with a platform and a doorway from the stairwell's interior. The stairs were in good condition the entire way up, if a little dusty. Reaching the top landing, Frederick immediately waved for everyone to stop and be still. He crept to the door, listening.

A voice carried through the hidden door. "Do you hear that? It sounds like it's coming from inside the wall."

Another voice huffed. "Are you insane? There's nothing but stone behind these walls! I've torn out enough of them looking for all sorts of things to know."

"I smell… the surface."

"Well, of course you do! This temple was how surface dwellers came down to us! The whole place reeks of the surface." There was the sound of something being dragged. "Come on. Let's get the crystal shards we came for and hurry back up. It's almost lunch time."

Frederick waited a minute or two after the noise died away before opening the hidden door. There was no sound as it slid aside. He looked around the room before stepping out, noting that the entire way station had been completely stripped. Even the carpeting had been pulled from the stone floor. Stepping carefully around discarded pieces of wood, metal, and crystal, the group carefully closed the door behind them, keeping it secret, and giving them an unknown to the enemy escape route.

Heading for the doorway into the main tower of the temple they saw an interior completely stripped of all building materials. The wall had been pulled away on one side to reveal a large section of turtle shell that rose up and away from the wall, creating a crawl space into an area above the shell. Frederick peeked out, making sure that they were alone and found the room empty.

Charlotte went to the shell, reaching out to touch it. It felt warm under her hand and she patted it gently before looking above it. She leaned back and the boys leaned forward to hear her whisper. "It looks like we can climb up the side if we're careful."

"Let me go first," Frederick murmured.

She nodded and stepped aside. Reaching up, Frederick pulled himself up along the shell, finding it easy to get his feet in on the ridges. A length of green vines creeped up along next to him, and he looked back to see Charlotte using them to help herself climb up after him and Papyrus behind her. The vines coalesced into his brother, sitting up above him. Asriel waved from them to stop and wait while he looked around. The sound of a door banging shut carried down to them and Asriel waved them up.

The goat pooka sat underneath a set of wood planks that made up a floor. His vines cut up through them, making a perfect circle and pushing it open like a hatch. Inside was a vast, warehouse of a room cut from cavern rock and abutting Gerson's shell. A wide, red, cylindrical machine took up half of the room's length, its 'nose' pointed up toward the ceiling. Various, brass dials lined the side, several next to the place where the power line would be connected. On the floor underneath where the nose pointed was a large opening surrounded by a railing to keep anyone from falling down the long shaft below.

Charlotte stared at the machine, mouth hanging open, face ashen.

Frederick put a hand on her shoulder. "Chara…?"

She reached out, hand touching the side. "This is not the device I saw the plans for," she breathed, hand trembling.

All three of the boys turned to her. "What?"

Charlotte's hands moved along the side, finding the release lever and lifting the side panel. "This is a completely different machine!"

Papyrus reached up to hold the side panel open. "What does it do?"

Charlotte ran her hands along the wiring, pushing parts of it aside to look in and through the mechanism. "The same thing as the plans I saw. This will shoot an energy beam meant to burrow through the ground." She turned, pointing to the ceiling. "The beam will hit there." She pointed to the hole. "And the excess dirt will fall down the shaft there." She turned back to the device. "The difference is that this is not a flawed mechanism and it is made to work with any aether engine type, including any of mine."

She pounded her fist on the haul. "God dammit! They played me like a fiddle! It didn't matter how flawed the engine designs I produced in draft were! Flamesman is more than capable of adapting it to this machine! The only reason they hijacked the Dalion was to speed up the process!" She started digging through the wiring again. "This is bad. This is very, very bad. This machine is super efficient. It won't take much to have it run full strength. We have to shut down the Dalion's engines before the hook up is completed. If we can't, this thing will fire, and it is strong enough to open a huge hole in the crust very quickly."

Papyrus frowned. "Is there anything you can do to lower the power output on the beam?"

Charlotte paused. "Yes." She looked over her shoulders. "I can reroute the wiring through the overload inhibitor twice, that should cut the output by half." She pointed to a tool box. "Get that for me please."

Frederick grabbed the box and held it open for her. "Why can't you just pull the machine apart?"

Charlotte pointed to a large, metal box. "Because this is a pressure bomb and if we start pulling this thing apart, the pressure inside the box will dissipate, causing an explosion. And I don't think that today is a good day to die."

Her hands pulled on the wires, happy they were so long inside the machine itself and twisted them back around to the small crystal that acted as the inhibitor. She took a deep breath. "Papyrus? I need you to press on the pressure bomb on this side. That should keep it stable while I rewire."

Papyrus grabbed her hand instead. "The three of you leave. I'll dismantle it."

Charlotte shook her head. "If this explodes, it will hurt Gerson and there's no way we could get far enough away." She glared at him. "I always trust you to look out for me. Trust me to do the same for you."

Papyrus smiled a little and reached a boney hand around the pressure bomb.

Asriel leaned back a little. "Why are you having Papyrus do that?"

Charlotte grabbed a pair of pliers from the tool box. "Because my brother is insanely strong and you need to be to hold the pressure without a machine." She carefully cut the section, quickly drew it through the inhibitor, and reconnected it on the other side.

Stepping back, she pulled Papyrus away, letting the panel slide shut. Nothing happened and she breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh thank goodness."

The cold steel of a knife was pressed to her neck and she gasped. The boys turned to see Madam Glass holding Charlotte hostage. When Frederick took a step toward them, Glass pushed the knife against Charlotte's flesh and a drop of the black ichor welled up on the blade.

"Now, now. You wouldn't want your lover to have her throat slit, hmm? And how about you, Papyrus? You call her your sister, so I suppose you don't want to see her dead. Then again, it wouldn't be much of a loss either way since she isn't really related to you."

Papyrus' eyes suddenly glowed a bright and angry orange.

Madam Glass tsked at him. "So hot headed." She frowned. "Back away from the machine." She jerked her head toward the wall. "Go stand over there."

Flamesman came in the room with four of the tawny skinned, werebats, dragging a large, black cable. He smiled brightly when he saw Charlotte.

"Oh! I was hoping you'd come back! What do you think? Isn't it brilliant?" He hooked the cable up to the port for it in the side of the machine. "The flaws in your drafts were spectacular! If I'd had the time, it would have been a lot of fun solving for them. It's rare that I'm presented with such an unimaginably, wonderful, learning opportunity. You are absolutely brilliant, Miss Featherstone. A credit to all of humankind!" Flipping a few switches, the machine filled with aether energy, lighting up. "In only a few moments, we shall see the sky. The true sky!"

An energy beam burst from the machine, hitting the rock above them. The ceiling crumbled, falling into the hole in the floor.

Flamesman frowned. "No. The beam isn't at full power. Why isn't the beam at full power?" He opened the side panel, staring as the violet glow of the aether doubled around the inhibitor crystal, dissipating into the air. He turned. "How? How did you do this?"

Glass growled, her grip on Charlotte loosening. "It doesn't matter how. Can you fix it?"

Flamesman shook his head. "Not with the pressure bomb in place. The device is still working, it will simply take longer."

Charlotte grabbed the arm with the knife and yanked it up to her mouth, biting into Glass' wrist. Glass screamed, dropping the knife. Charlotte drove her elbow back into Glass' sternum, knocking the wind out of the woman and silencing the scream. Spinning, Charlotte kicked Glass in the chest, sending the woman to the floor.

Flamesman ran toward them. "Victoria!"

Frederick clotheslined him. Flamesman hit the floor and the werebats attacked, jumping at the boys. Asriel punched the first werebat to reach them, sending it skidding backward. Papyrus grabbed the arm of the next one, throwing it backwards. It hit the machine, knocking the burrowing ray off kilter. The ceiling cracked and the ground above them fell, filling the chamber.

Charlotte turned to run for the boys only to be cut off by the cave in. She turned back to the machine and ran for it, grabbing the cable release. The power cable hit the floor and the machine shut down. But it done enough damage. The cave above them was falling in.

Madam Glass screeched as she scrambled to her feet, diving at Charlotte. Charlotte dodged to the side, landing against Gerson's shell. As the room continued to fill with dirt and rubble, she climbed Gerson's shell, looking to get past the edge of the ceiling and hopefully to safety.

Glass grabbed her ankle and Charlotte kicked the woman in the face, still climbing. The ceiling above opened and Charlotte pressed herself flat against the shell to keep from being struck by falling debris. She managed to find a spot the dirt rushed past and climbed on top of it.

Glass climbed up after her, face a mask of rage. "Come back here, you loathsome tramp!"

"How dare you?!" Charlotte grasped the front of Glass' blouse and hauled her up. Grabbing the cameo, she ripped it from the lace at Glass' neck leaving wisps of thread behind. The woman screamed reaching for the cameo even as Charlotte drew back and punched her hard, breaking Glass' nose. The woman howled, clutching at her face and falling back as the ground beneath them lurched. Charlotte fell to her knees, watching as the woman rolled away from her toward the ledge, slowly turning back into the sightless slave girl.

Charlotte scrambled to keep the girl from falling, grabbing a hold of her with one hand and hauling her back up. The pale girl fell against her, the white hair marred with a single red streak. The pale girl shook her head, turning it in an attempt to hear something that wasn't the rushing of the ground around them.

Charlotte tried to find her feet and lift the girl, only to hear a voice in her head, long and slow. Everything around her seemed to slow down and her head felt light. The voice was unintelligible, but getting louder every second. She screamed, fighting against the growing cacophony in her head. She glimpsed the cameo in her hand threw it down, eyes squeezed shut.

The voice instantly went away, her mind quiet. She lay there, gasping for a moment, before she felt the ground lurch. The pale kind slipped from her arms, sliding from view as the earth above them began to pour down, caving in. She scrambled to her feet, desperately looking for an escape. Seeing none, she looked up and saw daylight. Hoping against hope, she jumped, crawling over the slowing mound for the opening.