It's so cold.
Chapter 33: Edge of the World
It's so cold.
Everything was dark. I was curled up on the floor of the cavern.
"Chara?" I asked. But no glow, no voice.
"Chara? Bro? Sis?" I asked again. No light.
"Asgore? Toriel? Sans, Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, Mettaton?" I asked once more. Nothingness.
"Gaster?"
Dark, darker, yet darker. The darkness felt alive, growing. The shadows cut like an icy knife. I held my hand out and remembered an old Chinese saying that described darkness.
"Hold your hand out and you can't even see your fingers."
I cried into the darkness. I sobbed. I screamed for what must have been minutes. There was no hope. There was no light. They were gone, gone, absorbed by Flowey. My emotions fluctuated between anger, hysteria, and crushing depression.
"Frisk."
I turned around. "Hello?"
"Hello." A tall, middle-aged Asian man carrying a briefcase walked out of the shadows. My dad.
"Dad…" I collapsed into him as he supported me. "How are you even here?"
"I made a promise, my little luck charm." The name my dad always called me. "Our family. We all did. We knew we would die, all of us. Sometimes the old oracles speak the truth."
"How?" I asked. "How did you know?"
"When your mother was pregnant with you, we went to an old oracle. One who was known for never being wrong. She told us...she told us, down to the day, that we as your family would have to make an important decision, each one of us. Should we choose for you to live, you would achieve greatness. Should we choose ourselves to live, we would live on. But you would die."
"The ultrasound very clearly showed that you had your umbilical cord wrapped around your neck. There was no way for you to be born without being strangled the moment you came out. Your mother chose the C-section. She...she couldn't take it."
He sighed, and sat down on his briefcase. "Me...my choice came when a drunk driver was speeding towards us. You would have for sure died, had I not rotated the car just well enough so that the crash was furthest from you. You were asleep at the time, and the impact knocked you out. And, of course, I asked your brother, and he said yes. You know what happened afterwards with Chara and Gaster. Two very fine people, to be frank."
He looked up, up to the nothingness. The nothingness cracked, and shattered. When I looked back down, I saw him pointing a pen, his favorite pen, at the hole in the nothing. "But, as the popular saying goes," he spoke, "there is a time and place for everything. It may be today. It may be tomorrow. It may be out of your reach. And our meeting must end, however abrupt it was. Go, YunQi." My Chinese name. "Go. Save your family is out there, with them now. We will be fine, family surname means dragon, and you have grown to bear it proudly, luck dragon. Go."
He saluted. In black feathers, his form blew away, leaving a trace of a purple heart, which faded. A pen clattered on the ground. His favorite pen, even with the little notch in it when I banged it against the wall as a baby. I picked it up. His words echoed.
"Go…"
And so I went, carrying my father's sacred memento. Black feathers lined out a path for me to follow.
To say the road was narrow and steep would be an understatement, as I gasped and panted, but I eventually made it...to the peak of Mount Ebott?
What?
It was Ebott, alright. Beautiful stars that no one dared appreciate. Soft, green grass that was untread by mankind. Trees full of birds.
Wait. Something was off.
There were no birds.
There we no city lights.
Just Ebott. And me. And someone else. It looked like a monster child.
The monster child got up. "Ah," he spoke. "It's so nice to have a body again."
He turned around. "Howdy, Frisk. And you too, Chara. Pity it's just an illusion, isn't it? All fake. It's like that day. I tried to copy what we came home to. Great job breaking out, by the way."
The necklace remained dormant. There was no Chara to be seen. "Oh, sorry. Manners maketh man, as humans say, right, Chara? Sorry for not introducing myself, Frisk. It must all seem so...strange to you."
Wait, hold on. If he's the last thing in the Underground, and he looked like this, then...I added two and two together, and was getting seven.
"Howdy! My name is Flowey! Otherwise known as..."
The monster child rippled with light. The world followed suit, as it pulled at the seams. His form burst into a large, adult monster, seven feet tall, impressive horns. Very bright. Too bright.
"Asriel Dreemurr."
Two and two WAS seven. The world pulled apart.
And the stars fell.
Dodge, left right. It's all yourself now, Frisk. No assistance from Chara. All you, all me.
Those thoughts ran in my mind as Asriel hurled stars, rainbows, and lightning at me, all while trying not to get distracted by the rainbows and Asriel.
"You know, I really don't care about anything anymore. I just want to erase everything."
God, he was distracting. I swear I'm not a furry. He was just loud...and literally glowing. My eyes hurt looking at him. I was covered in sweat.
"Everything, you hear me. I'll bring it all back to zero!"
Don't listen to him. Keep dodging, don't stop. Hold onto the pen. Hold onto your necklace, the two sacred mementos. Hold on to your hopes. Hold onto their hopes. Dream of a future, together with the monsters. I was gasping for breath. Curse my collapsed lung.
My wounds healed, and Asriel's constant onslaught of stars hurt less.
"Oh?" He questioned. "If you're going to be such a tough nut…"
He dashed forward, too quick for me to trace. In an instant, he was at my throat, slashing away with two longswords. "I guess I'll just have to try harder, won't I?"
Too close.
He hit me once, twice, three times, then threw his sword away, grabbing me by the shirt collar and throwing me into the air, blasting me with a rainbow cannon. My flesh peeled away at the light. I burned. I screamed.
I died.
I died...?
…
No.
I simply refused to die.
"For Asgore." I whispered. I felt myself come back from the brink of death, my body piecing itself back together again. I dropped back on the dew-drenched ground, ready to continue.
He looked at me with mild surprise. "You still stand?" He went at me again, a storm of galactic wonders and Technicolor lights. But this time I was more prepared.
"For Asgore," I said, a little louder than the last. "For Toriel, Sans, Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, and Chara!"
This refusal to submit to the end...Asriel started trying a new tactic, which mostly comprised of getting me into the air, where I would be vulnerable.
Crack. Despite what good efforts I tried, Asriel still managed to catch me with a sequence of good hits. I died.
And then I refused. Again, I refused to die. The refusal to submit to the end...I was overflowing with determination. The power to keep going even when nothing is left.
I will live. I had to live. Too many, too many have given up their own lives on my behalf. And I felt like more would, too. But I would kept that number at a minimum. And suddenly, the odds turned in my favor.
Asriel knew it, too. His attacks got more complex, weaving in a sneaky blast as he kept forcing me to dodge unfavorably. But right now, as Undyne would have said, "I can feel all the hopes and dreams of monsters beating as one."
I was, simply put, undefeatable. No matter what Asriel threw, no matter how great the attack, I simply could not die. I would not die.
"Even after all of that, you're still not dead…?" Asriel asked. "No matter. I haven't even used the full extent of my power!"
Asriel created a black hole, where he began sucking in the universe. Once again, my necklace began glowing, not from Chara, but from me. My own sheer power I had just unlocked. My power that could rival Asriel's. This newfound power helped me stand my ground against Asriel's black hole. My body screamed in pain. But I refused to give in.
The illusion of the surface ripped away, to shreds, into darkness. I was trapped in a box of sorts. Asriel was there as well, assuming the form of a huge winged demon-looking creature.
"This is the full extent of my power. Burn in despair."
I couldn't move. I was stuck. And try as I might, my power didn't help.