Chapter 9: The First Dead End
The young prince has company.
The ancient door released a low, miserable groan as it slid shut. Stone crumbled from the frame and trickled around Macie's shoes. This was the last corridor before leaving The Ruins. After that, there was no coming back. Toriel had warned her of that. More than once.
Would she forgive Macie's small betrayal? Her silent departure. A haphazardly scratched, unrefined note: "Thank you. For your kindness."
Waking the woman who all but begged her to stay… simply to say goodbye? It seemed cruel. Or maybe cruel was polluting the monster's journal of comedic musings with that cowardly scrawled farewell.
No laughter would come when Toriel read those words.
She should have said goodbye in person. She should have braved the pained expression that Toriel was sure to make when she bid her final farewell. She should have faced her own fears reflected in the eyes of that kindly monster - the fears that this journey would end with a death. Likely hers.
Macie decided that was a reality she could face later. After finding Frisk.
A soft warmth bloomed beneath her thumping heart urging her forward.
That warmth bled away as Macie moved through the short hall. Soft, purple hues darkened into an empty black. The encroaching, crisp air leaked through Macie's clothes, looped around her limbs, and licked icy trails across her exposed skin. Whatever heat Toriel's home leaked into the basement did not reach this far.
Macie shivered in the cold cavern.
A final threshold loomed at the end of the short, frigid corridor. Its sheer size dwarfed the passageways behind her. Such a grandiose door seemed to pay tribute to the idea that everything she'd learned in The Ruins was small, irrelevant, and-
A single pillar of light pierced into the cavern from some unseen fissure leading to the surface.
A solitary, yellow flower stood like a sentinel in the shine. It grinned at her, twisting, writhing, stretching its stem closer to where she stood.
She tried not to gape at the new monster. It was so small. Much smaller than any of the inhabitants that Macie had seen in The Ruins. Though, most of those monsters had fled immediately upon seeing Toriel.
But Toriel wasn't here. And the monster did not flee. Instead it wavered- to… and fro… a serpentine little thing coming closer. It grinned at her with a smile far too wide for its face. The inky black dots of its eyes glittered with some unreadable emotion. She felt vulnerable.
Macie failed to notice vines coiling quietly around the sentient plant's stem. She failed to notice the unearthed, vegetal roots that curled softly outward towards her.
The flower stretched upward, towards her face. It was close enough that the petals could flutter against her skin if a breeze blew against them. But the air here was still, inert, dead. Even the flower's tittering laughter fell flat, succumbing to the surrounding silence.
"Hee hee hee… Well, golly! You're new!" It spoke in a high-pitched voice, chipper, nearly shrieking. It shifted curiously around her, inspecting. "My name is-"
Macie felt her throat seize, a powerful tightness within her chest snapping away, as she choked out the unfamiliar syllables:
"Asr...iel?"
The small child felt their throat strain to release the name. It came out in a fractured, desperate whisper.
Asriel.
The flower recoiled as though burned by the very sound. That too-wide grin cracking across its face vanished. Replaced by a scowl. Glittering drops of ink narrowed into vehement slivers. It's voice dropped into low hiss:
"That's. Not. My. Name!"
Frisk shivered at the malicious lacing around the once-a-prince's tone. Additional words failed the small child.
Vines lept from the dark ground and coiled around their arms. A violent tug sent Frisk tumbling into the earth, splayed on all fours. Thorns dug into soft fleece and into the tender skin beneath. The green tendrils writhed angrily, trying and failing to drag their prize below the loamy floor.
Frisk tugged against the pull determinedly, ignoring the blooming spots of red growing beneath every thorn that managed to puncture skin. The wounds wept scarlet beneath their sleeves, further staining the pearlescent fabric-
My sweater is blue.
It was an odd thought. The knowledge of pain skittering around their mind leaked away into black until all they could think about was their dumb, hand-knit sweater. It was blue. Blue. Not white.
Frisk fell into the Underground with a faded, well-worn, one-of-a-kind sweater. It was the only thing they let themselves carry over from their past life. Made by hand. Crafted with time, love, and a few choice curse-words whenever a stitch came out wrong. Macie's first, successful creation: a dumb, blue sweater with two thick, purple bands wrapping around the torso like two arms looping around them in a perpetual hug.
The memory caused a bubble of laughter to well from within them. It sounded in their ears, pitched lower than they remembered. When did they last laugh? Did it always sound like that? Low? Grating? Terrified.
Frisk scratched their nails into the dirt and stared curiously at the white fleece jacket draped over them. It was missing stripes. Where were the stripes?
The flower did not appreciate being ignored and tightened his grip on the human.
It jerked Frisk closer and leered at them, both sets of eyes at an equal height.
"Who do you think you are, trying to call me that?" The plant snarled. Confusion whirled in Frisk's mind. Asriel knew exactly who they were. Did they really hate that name so much? But… even as Flowey, he never failed to acknowledge Frisk through the resets. No matter how long the child waited to initiate another trial from any previous failure.
Flowey glowered at the silent response. Vines crawled further up their limbs, wrapped around their chest, coiled at their throat. His grip tightened. Air rushed out of their lungs in a wheezing exhalation.
"Answer me. Now."
"M- ckk!- Macie…! I'm- hnng- my name- Macie!"
The yellow flower tightened his hold. Amusement flickered through his eyes at every squeak and gasp the human made. He shifted around them, curiosity outweighing their previous anger. Frisk shuddered and tugged themselves back. Their consciousness ripped away, painful vines unable to restrain them. Seperated themselves from the pain. The figure in Flowey's grasp remained a victim to those cruel, thorned tendrils. The figure.
Macie. It was Macie. Trapped in that soulless gaze of the once-prince was Frisk's one good memory of the surface they abandoned.
She gasped as Flowey slackened his grip around her. She greedily sucked in the air that those loose green tendrils now allowed her.
Frisk shivered, tears pooling in their eyes.
Macie shivered, tears pooling in her eyes.
Horrific realization crawled across their skin as they spied the wispy, red thread spilling from their fingertips and looping sloppily around Macie's crouched form.
"P- please. I do- don't- ...Asriel." Macie choked again as the thorny vines tightened once more upon hearing that cursed name. One particularly vicious green offshoot snaked around her throat and crushed any additional pleas Macie hoped to make. Her eyes bugged, flicking across every surface in that small room. Desperately, she searched for a way to free herself. But there was none.
"You freak. Don't you get it?"
The flower was grinning again. Wider than before. Its face fully cracked in two.
"I'm ...FLOWEY. Flowey the Flower! Howdy."
He was bouncing to some chipper, internal melody. He leaned forward into Macie's face, stem writhing from side to side like a hungry snake. Those inky black dots drilled into her indigo irises. She slouched against her bindings, pain exhausting her. Flowey forced her head to return his gaze.
Only Frisk had ever seen beyond Flowey's viscious glare. The small drops of fear. The miniscule shades of loneliness. Even now, as the flower scowled deeply at the human in his clutches, Frisk could see it. Briefly, the child wondered if Macie could see it too.
After all, she had seen it when they first met.
She recognized the signs immediately and cautiously wrapped her arms around them - as if any excess force would shatter their very being. When they had suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves alone in the world, she had materialized from nowhere to whisper soothingly at them.
"You're okay."
"You'll get through it."
"You're not alone in this.""Things get better."Macie had gripped onto them so delicately and whispered such soft, comforting, beautiful, little lies. Frisk, their known world forever lost, had gripped onto her like a lifeline. Flowey deserved something like that. A lifeline. A lie he could believe in. Someone to wrap his petals around. Frisk wanted to remind Flowey that he wasn't alone anymore. Things got better. Just like Macie promised. They'd get better. They would.
Macie's arms twitched. The red strings grew taut as Frisk reached for the little flower through the woman's puppetted grasp. Despite the vines lacing over her limbs, she reached forward to wrap herself around the flower-
The vines tightened. Yanked her limbs away. Flowey jerked Macie backward and pulled her down, roping her flat against the earth. He leaned down to her face and huffed at the dirt smearing against her cheek.
"Golly."
Flowey stretched himself tall so he could loom over the prostrate human. She wormed against the bindings. Bleak eyes narrowed into angry creases.
"You really don't know how things work down here, huh?"
An errant vine yanked one of Macie's open hands and tugged her whole body forward. Thorns dug into the flesh of her palm before curling down her wrist to meet another vine that curled lazily around her shoulder. Flowey bobbled her captured wrist up and down in some facsimile of a handshake.
"I could say it was nice to meet you." Flowey jeered.
Adrenaline spiked through Macie as the vines' coiling pressure increased. Her bones began to ache.
"Pl-ease. D-don't..."
Flowey cackled.
A crackling, crunching sound echoed in the small room as her hand was slowly crushed. Frisk jerked their arm away, the red bindings running from their limb to Macie's suddenly went limp. The connection was gone.
Searing pain screamed up her arm in time with the blood curdling cry that ripped out of Macie's throat. Flowey shivered with delight before applying the same pressure to her wrist and feeling the small bones pop under pressure. Another shiver of glee rippled through him when she produced a terrified screech. He snapped the flimsy pair of bones in her forearm and cracked the sturdier bone in her upper arm. He crushed her arm swiftly, shattering it into nothing. He bobbed in time to the music of her screams.
Frisk shivered again, pulling their own arms around themselves protectively. The remaining red wires snapped away from them. The ties to Macie severed into nothing. They were no longer privy to the pain she experienced. Instead, they could only watch in horror as the small flower continued with its torturous experiment.
The young woman thrashed pathetically against Flowey's grasp. She tried to beg for mercy as Flowey methodically cracked each and every bone in her legs. A vine around her throat crushed her ability to exhale anything outside of a rasping, gasping, choked cry. Flowey grinned as her organs compressed within an ever-tightening noose.
"Someone ought to teach you how things work around here, huh?"
The words Flowey spoke came in garbled and meaningless. Macie gaped, struggling for he air her body could no longer pull in. She felt a painful swell in her chest. It was accompanied by an unwelcome twist.
"Guess little 'ol me will have to-"
Flowey huffed.
He stretched a leaf toward Macie's head and curled the end around the bill of her cap. With a swift yank, he pulled the hat from her head and paused to give it a thoughtful stare. He gave a careless shrug before settling the orange headpiece atop his upper-petals.
He flaunted the new item with glee.
"Someone important wore this." He parroted, motioning "air-quotes" with the ends of his leaves.
"I am SUPER important. Heh. Hehe."
Macie let out a pathetic, miserable whine that devolved into a sputtering choke as her throat leaked red. The vines released her, receding into earth. Flowey ruffled his petals under the hat with delight.
"Oh!"
Macie groaned limply into the earth.
"Why am I so important?"
Her eyelids drooped. Her vision of the plant was growing hazy. That strange sensation was back, blooming in her chest. She felt another violent, unwelcome tug. With it came a small, iridescent purple heart. It hovered unsteadily before her. Soft, violet particles began to flake away from the little hovering soul.
"Hmmm…" Flowey pressed a leaf to his chin in thought.
Frisk leapt at the crumbling heart. Clumsy red strings roped around it, creating a makeshift net to cradle the soul. The purple shifted miserably within its enclosure like living sand, spilling out from gaps between the red.
No, No…!
Flowey exhaled a puff of air, inspiration finally striking. He released an unhinged laugh. His face contorted into a nightmarish mask beneath that orange ball-cap.
"Well, golly. I'll always be the last person you see!"
The purple soul deteriorated within its red netting.
"Every single time."
Macie's body grew still.
"That's why I'm important."
The world stuttered.
Don't give up.
Frisk felt that familiar Determination whirling around them as they forced the red netting to tighten around the collapsed mass of purple.
Won't let you.
Author's Note:
Wow. Been a while since my last post. I've been struggling with this chapter a lot. Finally, I've decided to hurl this garbage into the world and move onto the next bit. Thank you for your patience.
-T.T