Book One: Nadir
Chapter One: Vertigo
A blustery fall wind swept through the maples and oaks of the Appalachian mountains as a lone man meandered his way through the forests. Johan had never been a terribly outdoorsy type, but after nearly two years of quarantine, even a shut-in like him could appreciate the chance to take in nature again.
'Of course,' he mused as the winds tugged at his coat's hood, 'it does help that it's nice and cold.'
After pausing briefly to admire a particularly gnarled and towering oak, he continued on his way, the slight incline of Mt. Ebbot's slopes quickly reminding him of just how out of shape he'd let himself get. Nonetheless, he pushed forward, leaning more and more on the sturdy stick he'd found near the trail's beginning as he hiked.
About half an hour later, Johan finally had to stop to catch his breath, planting his walking stick in the dirt and turning his bespectacled gaze to the horizon as he filled his lungs with life-giving oxygen (and presumably other assorted gasses, but he wasn't an atmospheric scientist). The sun was making its slow journey downwards, though by its position he'd surely have ample time to return before night fell.
As he stretched out the kinks in his neck and back, the wind picked up sharply, blowing off his hood and pushing him off balance. One hand wrapped around his walking stick as he braced himself against the wind while the other came up to shield his face from the sudden gust. After a handful of seconds, perhaps a dozen or so, the wind died down. Johan let out a sigh, heart still halfway up his esophagus and beating like a snare drum.
"Damn," he muttered under his breath, "scared the shit—"
And that, of course, was when the second gust hit, taking him cleanly off his feet and sending him tumbling backwards. If before Johan's heart had been in his throat, now it was firmly pressed against the bottom of his skullcap, while his stomach had decided to relocate to its summer home in the soles of his feet.
Before he could do more than let out a strangled shriek, he felt his back slam into something solid and prickly, before it gave way beneath him and he plummeted.
As he fell, time seemed to slow. Scattered faces and half-recalled places swam in front of watery blue eyes, a cerebral scrapbook filled with two and a half decades of memories. Abruptly, though, his back slammed into the ground. For a single, fleeting instant, as pain became his entire world, he thought he saw a spot of light. It was little more than a mote of golden dust, twinkling in his mind's eye, but…
But something deep inside him knew: he needed it. With shattered arms that couldn't have possibly moved, he reached out and grasped it, pulled it close, devoured it whole.
As all went black, a red light flashed atop a bed of golden flowers.
How long he drifted in the darkness, Johan couldn't have said. He struggled to even form a coherent thought, much less track the passage of time. All at once, though, as if a switch was flipped, his eyes flew wide open.
He gasped for breath as he stared at the distant sky – what little of it he could make out through the hole in the roof of the cavern he'd apparently found himself in, anyway. The brunet scrabbled at the ground beneath him, hands coming up with golden flower petals on them as he managed to lever himself into a sitting position.
As one hand wrapped around the walking stick that had followed him down, Johan patted himself down with his other hand. Impossibly, all of the pain he had been in was totally gone, and he seemed to be uninjured, despite falling what had to have been at least five stories. Forget injury, by all rights he should be—
All at once it hit him, and ice filled his veins. Johan crumpled forward onto his hands and knees, walking stick clattering to one side as vomit painted the flower patch. For a time, he just huddled there, eyes wide and unseeing as he hyperventilated. Visions of shattered limbs and splattered viscera sprouted from his overactive imagination like virulent weeds even as choking vines of panic wrapped themselves around his limbs and torso.
Johan didn't know how much time he lost to the throes of hysteria, but by the time he managed to wrench his sanity out of that black garden of terror, what little sunlight that trickled in through the hole in the roof was fading fast. He rolled over, back onto his back, and let out a noise somewhere between a hiccough and a sob before forcing himself to sit up again.
"Damn, damn, damn," he muttered softly, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides before one snaked out and grabbed his walking stick. Using the sturdy length of white oak to stagger upright, Johan finally had the wherewithal to take a look at his surroundings.
…Other than the now unpleasantly discolored golden flowers, there was absolutely nothing of note that he could see in the cavern. Although…
He squinted at the walls. Upon closer inspection, they seemed far too...uniform, too deliberate in shape to be natural. And there, off to one side! A pathway—no, a hallway deeper into the cavern.
Johan's knuckles turned white as he gripped his walking stick like a drowning man would a rope. "Nowhere to go but forward," he muttered. "Just...just keep moving forward."
The phrase echoed in his head like a koan as he gave the desecrated flower bed one last, mournful look and then shambled down the hallway. Quickly enough, he came to the end.
If Johan had harbored any doubts of the cavern being artificial before, they were decisively dispelled, as at the hall's end stood an open stone archway. It was flanked by two carved pillars, not dissimilar to those seen in images of the Parthenon, albeit far smaller in scale. Above the archway, an unfamiliar crest was hewn into the stone: three triangles arranged in a particular pattern, with two pointing up on either side and a third between them, pointing down. Above the trinity of triangles was a circle, flanked on either side by what appeared to be wings.
Johan was by no means educated about heraldry; the most he could say is that he knew what Y Ddraig Goch was, but even that was from his questionable tastes in anime rather than any real study. The point was, he could make neither heads nor tails of the crest, and so gave a shrug and walked through the archway.
Immediately, he began to doubt his choice. The room he'd entered into was dark, much darker than the one prior, in a way that almost seemed to devour light. Johan swallowed thickly, and took a shaky step forward.
'Keep moving forward.'
Another step, still shaky.
'Keep moving forward.'
Another one, this time slightly more confident.
"Keep moving forward, dammit!" Johan growled at himself, and broke into a jog. After a dozen paces or so, the dirt beneath his feet shifted to grass abruptly. He skidded to a halt just in time to see a meter-tall golden flower with a goddamn smiley-face pop out of the ground and chirp, "Howdy!"
Johan let out a shriek and stumbled backwards, landing painfully on his rear.
Seemingly unperturbed by his reaction, the talking flower continued cheerfully, "Golly, mister! I guess I startled you, didn't I? Gee, I sure am sorry about that! Ol' Flowey didn't mean anything by it!" The flower followed up its squeaky apology by poking its tongue out and winking playfully as it canted its...head? Blossom? Its whatever to one side.
"What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck—"
'Flowey' frowned lightly. "Gosh, there's no call for harsh language! You're obviously new to the Underground, and I know unfamiliar places can be scary. But with your pal Flowey the Flower, I'm sure you'll get accustomed to the way things work down here!" A root poked out of the ground in front of the flower and beckoned to Johan. "Now, come on over here so I can be your guide, yeah?"
Johan swallowed thickly and once more levered himself to his feet using his walking stick. His gait was slow and cautious as he approached Flowey, and when he reached him, he asked, "W-what do you mean by 'the way things work'?"
"I meant this!" Flowey chirped, poking his root towards Johan's torso. To the brunet's shock, a brightly glowing crimson heart manifested itself in the center of his chest. As he gaped at the development, the flower continued, "This here's your SOUL, the very culmination of your being! It's pretty weak right now, but it'll get stronger if you gain a lot of LOVE!"
"What."
Ignoring Johan's incredulity, Flowey flicked his petals, causing spores of...something to rise into the air and coalesce into small white pellets, which danced playfully in the air above him. "Down in the Underground, LOVE is shared through...little white…'friendliness pellets'. Here, I'll give you some now!"
Johan had just enough of his senses about him to notice how Flowey had hesitated, and jerked out of the way as the alleged "friendliness pellets" zoomed towards the glowing heart in his chest. One of the pellets clipped his arm, though, ripping a hole in his coat and tracing a line of fire along his upper arm.
Flowey made a perturbed face and opened his mouth to speak, but Johan cut him off, growling through clenched teeth, "That fucking hurt, you little shit! Are you trying to help me, or kill me?!"
The flower's face went blank for all of a second, then morphed into something altogether different. Where before, Flowey's face had seemed friendly enough, albeit a bit uncanny, now it was entirely inhuman. His eyes split open into twin voids, each bearing a single point of dim crimson light, while his mouth stretched into a fanged maw.
"I guess you got me, you shitty human." His voice was still high-pitched, but lacked any hint of the saccharine friendliness that had clearly just been a ruse. "After all, how could I ever pass up a chance like this?" A rustling echoed in the darkness all around Johan, and he stiffened.
"There's only one rule in this world, and that's KILL OR BE KILLED!" Flowey roared viciously, triumphantly.
The rustling was abruptly replaced by a cacophony of loud, sharp snaps, and the air was filled with decidedly unfriendly pellets. Borne by malevolent will, the rain of terror converged on Johan from all directions, barring every avenue of escape he could spot before he could so much as step towards them.
Shaking with fear, Johan crumpled down into a crouching position and used his arms and legs to cover what vitals he could, hoping desperately that he could somehow miraculously survive the demonic flower's onslaught. He clenched his eyes shut in preparation for the pain...and yet, none came.
Mere moments before the bullets could strike Johan, a wave of heat passed over him. When he opened his eyes, he saw why: a wall of pinkish flame had perfectly encircled him, incinerating the flower's attack. Even as he looked on, though, the unnatural fire winked out of existence.
"WHAT?!" Flowey screeched, eyes bugging out as he stared at Johan's (mostly) unscathed form. Before he could utter another word, a vaguely paw-shaped flame flickered into existence and slammed right into the side of his face, uprooting him completely and sending him tumbling into the darkness with an almost comical squawk.
Johan cast wildly about, squinting into the blackness surrounding him even as the bright red heart on his chest slowly faded until it was barely there. Quickly enough, his savior appeared from the darkness in front of him. The robed woman was tall, towering nearly a meter above him, but that was the last thing on Johan's mind. No, he was more focused on how she appeared to be an anthropomorphic goat demon.
However, as she came closer to Johan, and he got a better chance to examine her face, he tentatively withdrew the pejorative; after all, how could a demon have such a genuinely worried expression on her face?
The goat woman cleared her throat, and Johan realized he'd been staring. He flushed and looked to one side, muttering an apology under his breath. She made a shooing motion with her oven mit-sized paws, as though brushing aside his faux pas, and then spoke. "Greetings, human. My name is Toriel, and I am the caretaker of these ruins. What brings you down here, to the Underground?" Toriel's expression was stern but not harsh, though Johan had a suspicion that if she wasn't satisfied with his answer, that would change.
Not wanting to become barbeque, the man stammered, "A-ah, well, I went hiking, and the wind picked up and I fell in a hole and now...I'm...here..." he trailed off lamely, giving a helpless shrug and a wince.
Toriel studied his face for a few moments, then replied, "You are not the first human to have done so...but you are the eldest by far. I have not seen an adult human since we were all sealed beneath the earth after we lost the war."
Johan blinked slowly and leaned forward on his walking stick, more than a little bit curious. "War? What war? No, more important than that, who do you mean by 'we'? You and that little flower bastard, or…?"
Toriel scowled as she shook her head. "No, I have no kinship with that miserable little creature. Human or not, I heard enough of what he said to know that he was gleefully attempting to murder you, not merely defending himself." She let out a sigh, then deliberately wiped the scorn from her face and gave a gentle smile. "As to your other questions, perhaps you would prefer to retire somewhere more comfortable than this rocky antechamber before I regale you with the tale of the war between humans and monsters?"
Johan's eyes widened, then he looked around the room and shivered. "Uh...yeah, that'd be great, actually. I—" Before he could continue, his stomach rumbled, and he flushed again. "I, uh, don't suppose I could trouble you for something to eat, Miss Toriel? I...may have lost my lunch after I fell."
The matronly goat woman looked positively delighted as she replied, "Oh, it would be no trouble at all, my child. I can surely bake you something filling."
'My child...' Johan mouthed the words, looking down at the ground for a long moment, not quite sure what the twisting in his gut was, but knowing that it wasn't from his earlier tossing of his cookies.
Prompted by Toriel's form of address, Johan looked back up and spoke again. "Oh! Man, rude of me: I forgot to tell you my name." He shifted his walking stick to his left hand and stuck his right out towards Toriel. "I'm Johan. It's...nice to meet someone who isn't trying to kill me, Miss Toriel."
Toriel took his hand gingerly in her own, much larger paw and squeezed it lightly. "It is good to make your acquaintance as well, young Johan. Now, come along; that pie is scarcely going to bake itself, now is it?"
She let his hand slip from hers, turned, and began walking, Johan falling into step about a meter behind her. As the two of them walked from the dark room, neither of them thought to look back.
Neither of them spotted the barely-visible transparent figure floating along behind Johan, yawning into an incorporeal green sleeve. Red eyes peered sleepily yet suspiciously past brown bangs as the unquiet wraith of Chara Dreemur regarded the unfamiliar human walking behind their mother.