"Why did you replace the paintings."
"I couldn't look at them anymore."
"What were they."
"They were portraits of my family years ago...and Gaster took them from me."
Chapter 30
Much Needed Answers
Wicca stifled a sigh. It wasn't that she didn't care about this man—goat—monster's obviously tragic and painful backstory to his family, most likely due to Gaster's insanity, it's just that...well, she thought it was boring. Yes, it is most likely sad and clearly hurts him to this day (however long ago it happened), but a terrible story like this one was ought to be just wasn't interesting. Where's the spice? The panache? The spectacle? If something bad was going to happen to your family, at least make it horrendously dire. But, no, just 'Gaster fucked up my family somehow'. Who cares about family? Certainly not Wicca, she can't even remember them, but she has a feeling that they don't care much for her either (in consideration to all her strange flashbacks to a weird shadow-y man).
The witch mentally slapped herself, the Imposter World she had gone to wasn't only affecting her temperament, but also her mentality. Good thing no one could read her thoughts or else they might find out how horrible she had become.
The girl rubbed her eyes and tried to swallow the guilt that was rising from her gut.
"What did you see in that house?" Asgore asked, completely unaware of Wicca's thoughts.
Wicca breathed in deep. Despite experiencing worse after her tumble in the closet with Sans, the house she had stepped into still served as its own unique nightmare fuel. She would wake up, after dazing into a state barely recognizable as sleep, and dream that she was back at that house, back in its halls, back in the dried blood and gore, hiding from buzzing static and footsteps.
"A different kind of hell," She answered, "The house was torn up from the inside, there were claw marks and dried blood, broken furniture and insects. Whoever owned it before was long gone, or had fallen to Gaster's weird fixation with body parts and fluids. That's where I met him first, he let me leave that house and chased me through the woods."
Wicca watched Asgore as he sat back, she could see the wheels turning in his head. But she also saw a slight sheen to his eyes. That seemed to answer some part of the tale to his missing family, Wicca just wasn't sure where all the missing pieces went in this mundane puzzle, although, it was starting to become a little more interesting.
"Why are your fingers blackened?" Asgore asked, choosing his words carefully.
Wicca smiled with tight lips, again, if he had phrased it just slightly different she could have twisted her answer to something meaningless.
The witch examined her fingertips, now burnt to her first digit.
"You call me a human but that isn't true," Wicca didn't bother to look up at Asgore's quizzical expression, "I'm a witch, through and through and this just happens to be a side effect." The girl smiled to herself, she had managed to field that question easily.
"Now, I take it your family has some sort of connection to this house that I've explored-" Wicca waved off the King, who had opened his mouth to reply, "That isn't a question, just a statement, I don't particularly care about all the gory details to your missing family and Gaster, but you obviously know him, you obviously remember him. Why do the rest of your people not?"
The King crossed his arms and took a minute to gather his thoughts.
"To answer that would require a lot of detail."
"Fine, answer that and I'll return your next question in kind."
Asgore let out a breath and began.
"Gaster was not always like he is now. He worked at the Royal Labs, he was well known and well thought of by all monster kind. I never fully understood his work, only that he was attempting to better the Underground and help the rest of my subjects cope with their imprisonment."
Wicca already knew from her time in the Imposter World that somehow the monsters were trapped in the Underground. Most likely by humans, due to everyone's animosity towards them, but she still wasn't sure on the particulars.
"He was a scientist, he experimented as a scientist is required to do, but I wasn't aware to what extent he went. A monster disappeared three years ago and no one knew what had happened. A party was rallied, a search conducted, but nothing was found. We assumed that he had decided to jump into the Core, its not something that many speak about but some monsters do end their lives from the agony of remembering the beauty of the Surface and subsequently, the inability to ever return.
"But, as time went on, slowly, more monsters began to disappear. The kingdom was in a panic, everyone was afraid. It was pure chaos. Nobody trusted their neighbors, their friends, their colleagues, their mothers, children, parents, everyone was terrified that the other would whisk them away in an unending void worse than the Underground. A cult surfaced from this chaos, they believed that the monsters who disappeared weren't dusted or sent to some horrible hellscape, instead they thought that those lost monsters were granted the gift to a better Surface than the one that we remembered. They decided that the monsters who disappeared were chosen by something higher than us all, and they begged for the same to happen to them. My wife and child were among them."
Asgore rubbed his temples, taking a moment to pause before looking up at Wicca.
"I gave the executive order for a serum to contaminate the water supply. It would slowly erase everyone's memory of Gaster, of these disappearances, and of any that would happen in the future."
Wicca stood up, her brain felt befuddled. After a day fighting for her freedom, gaining that freedom, and being marched to a King to explain her existence, this new information felt like too much, "If all of this was Gaster's fault, why wouldn't you imprison him, or execute him? That seems far easier than wiping everyone's memory."
The King watched Wicca pace slowly, "That is easier said than done, witch. Gaster is not an easy monster to do away with. You have seen him first hand, you know this. I did what had to be done, my family and my subjects were losing their minds from the absolute terror he inflicted."
Wicca's hands flew out in front of her in exasperation, "So that's it, there's no one in all of the Underground who can touch him? He's your loyal subject, it sounds like he wasn't evil before, what changed?"
"He was my loyal subject, it is clear from his actions that he no longer obeys my dominion over him. I am not sure what happened, an experiment, perhaps, that went wrong and warped his mind. It does not matter, he is who he has become."
"Fine, but you poisoned the water supply, how do you still remember, how does Sans?"
From the King's surprised expression at Wicca's words she took it that he didn't know that Sans was unaffected. She felt like smacking herself. Way to go, giving out information that could have been useful.
"I have an antidote that I take each morning, but in all honesty, the serum is not that potetant anymore, my people themselves do not want to be in fear and so choose to ignore or forget. I could stop taking my antidote and not be as affected, as for Sans, I do not know."
Wicca rolled her eyes. Could it be that simple, having such an easy cure like that? How does Sans still remember? How is any of this possible? How could any of it have happened?
"Now witch, tell me, why are you here?"
Wicca couldn't stop herself from laughing. Now that was a simple question with a simple answer.
"Your most undying Loyal Servant so charmingly summoned me."
Asgore gave the witch a hard look.
Wicca rolled her eyes, "I don't know. Like I said, I was minding my own business in my cottage when I woke up with flowers stuck up my nose in some ruins. That's all I know."
"I won't ask you how you escaped my notice for so long, or why I had never seen you on the Surface, especially during the Great War. Instead, I will ask a different question and I expect you to pay me back in the same detail I gave you."
Wicca let out a yawn as the King spoke, "The injury on your thigh and the blood splattered all over your clothes, how did you get them and why?"
The witch stiffened, still in mid yawn. She looked down at her wound, now stapled but throbbing slightly.
"I'm not sure you would be comfortable with my answer."
The King only stared.
Wicca sighed, "If you insist, but I did warn you."
The girl got back on the King's bed and propped herself up on a pillow, making Asgore, who was sitting on the bed at this point, shift his body to look at her.
"I'm a witch, as you know, and I got into a heated discussion with...another monster. My magic got the best of me and transported me somewhere else, an Undergound filled with everyone in it, including you, but different. You certainly weren't as buff, and your horns were straight," Wicca absentmindedly reached out and trailed her fingers along one of the King's horns, reassuring herself with their curl, "Although I must say the fangs were pretty hot."
Wicca chuckled inwardly as she saw Asgore try to maintain his royal air of regalness, but she could see a slight red tinge to his cheeks that he was attempting to hide with a stern look.
The girl sat back, "But, you were cruel and horrible. You especially hated me, thinking I was human and all. But, you weren't exactly friendly with monster-kind, either. In fact, no one was. You ruled a kingdom that was out for themselves. You made them that way, instituting a "Kill or be Killed" law that drove monsters to murder each other."
Asgore's expression darkened, but he did not say a word.
Wicca sucked in a breath, "That was the world I stepped into. Who I like to call the 'Imposter Sans' found me and did this," Here, Wicca turned on her side and untied her robe (pressing a hand to her breast) and exposed the left side of her body. Although dotted and marked with many white scars, the largest glared along her abdomen. It was the first of several, but not nearly as deadly injuries the Sans who wasn't Sans inflicted on her. The King took in the sight, trying not to pay attention to her slender body. He managed, for the most part.
Wicca retied her robe and spent a little longer than was necessary doing so, her eyes were watering and she didn't want Asgore to see. She tried to school her voice into a nonchalant air, "I was tortured not just by him, but by many others, you included. By the time I left your palace, it was like I was wearing a beautiful, scarlet gown. Gaster was also there, and he also worked at the Royal Labs. There, he could experiment, but you didn't like it. He would take monsters and torture them, expirment on them, murder them, but he was rapidly becoming the most feared monster and you couldn't handle it. There was a lot of politics involved, a lot of backstabbing and assassination. I got the lovely beauty you asked about from the Imposter Sans when I attempted to leave. He liked to use a chain, but my cut is from a saw blade."
Wicca's eyes flashed with an image of Imposter Sans' slumped over, bones protruding; blood falling from the ceiling and walls. A scarlet murder scene. "It was hard to escape. The static-the magic, it worked differently over there. It was volatile. I couldn't work it at first, each time I came into contact with it the bones in my fingers would break, fragment, splinter, explode. Painful, yes, but easier to bear than them stitching themselves up and reforming again. When I finally managed to control it enough, I came back here."
The witch hadn't told the full story, a lot had happened in that month she was gone, but she also did not want to give up the fact that she had also trapped Sans in another, different world that she had eventually retrieved him from. She wasn't concerned with the omissions, she was sure the King hadn't told her everything either.
Asgore didn't say anything. Perhaps he was grappling with the fact that he wasn't the only Asgore out there, or that this other version of him essentially damned his people to a life of vicious murder.
The King looked into Wicca's eyes, "You have my severe condolences, I can not imagine what you went through and I am truly sorry that I was part of your agony."
Wicca stared at him, mouth slightly agape. This wasn't the response she had thought that he would give her, and she wasn't sure how to accept what she knew to be sincere. So, she just sat there. And then got up, and walked back to her room where she closed the door, sat on her bed, and sobbed.