If the exterior of the Fowl estate was impressive just simply because of the sheer amount of ornate decorations it had, its interior was equally impressive in a different way – the inside of the manor seemed to Frisk to be one massive, labyrinthine tangle of painting-lined corridors, stairs, and a wide array of doors. If they had been directionally challenged in any way, they would've gotten lost barely a minute into the building.

And yet, admittedly unsurprisingly but also admirably, Beckett was able to navigate the building with the ease of over a decade's worth of practice, not hesitating even once, even as he gave them short designations for each room they passed.

"That's the East Wing library," he told them as they passed by a set of doors hanging open a crack, revealing scores of books in the room beyond. "Myles spends a lot of time in there!"

Then there was "our father's study," several guest bedrooms, an observatory of sorts, which apparently had wide skylights installed so that people could not only have a wide panoramic view of the grounds and the distant lights of Dublin beyond, but also a good view of the stars and moon on clear nights, several bathrooms, one of which they caught a glimpse of through the door – it was, predictably enough, massive and very fancy-looking, much to Chara's exaggerated disapproval (*Who needs a bathtub huge enough to fit more than one person in it? Come on!), and many other rooms besides, before they finally turned a corner to find a hall more sparsely furnished with doors, and one marked with a small, metallic, and very professional-looking plaque.

Laboratory, it read, simple and to the point.

*Wow, they can afford all this and yet there's only a dinky little sign? What a waste.

"Here we are!" Beckett finally let go of their hand, and Frisk took advantage of his distraction to discretely check for bruises – for a twelve-year-old, he had a very strong grip. "See that little sign on the door?"

He was pointing, not at the plague, but at a little violet tag hanging from the doorknob, decorated with cartoonish pictures of various atoms and scientific-looking vials, and a line of text reading science in progress – something indefinitely more cutesy than Frisk had expected of a room that only Myles seemed to use.

"He's still in here – he always flips that sign around when he leaves." Beckett marched up to the door and knocked.

"Hey Myles, are you done yet?"

There was the sound of a muffled and distinctly annoyed response from inside.

"Myles, come out already! Frisk's here!"

That earned a pause. After it had lasted for several moments, the door was unlocked from the other side with several clicks, and swung open to reveal a familiar head of curly black hair and narrowed blue eyes which looked distinctly more weary than the last time they'd seen them.

Myles blinked at them, then sighed.

"If you would allow me a few minutes to put away my equipment?" He asked, looking more at Frisk than his brother.

Unable to really voice anything past their astonishment, Frisk nodded, and watched the door swing back shut.

Seeing their expression, Beckett grinned cheerfully. "What, did you think I was joking about him leaving his lab for you?"

Actually, Frisk had. Myles didn't seem like the sort that would put aside his precious time for something so trivial as someone he'd met once

Except I'm not just someone to him, am I? I'm the monster Ambassador.

Stars, they still weren't used to the privileges that gave them, even after all these timelines.

A couple minutes passed in relative silence – despite his talkativeness, Beckett apparently understood that they weren't certain about conversation right now – and before they knew it, the door had swung open, and Myles stepped through, locking the door behind him and, just like Beckett had said, flipping the silly little tab on the doorknob to reveal a cheerfully bright yellow hand making an a-okay sign.

"I apologize for the delay, Frisk." Despite his crisp tone, Myles looked embarrassed, with a visible red tint to his cheeks. "I tend to lose track of time when I concentrate on my work."

"It's fine," Frisk managed, still staring at the goofy sign, because seriously, that was not something they'd expected of Myles at all.

Noticing their stare, the darker-haired twin sighed again, and gestured pointedly at Beckett. "The sign on the doorknob was Beckett's idea, not mine."

"You don't have to keep using it," the blonde countered cheekily. "Anyway, now that you're actually out of the lab, you should help me show Frisk the inside of the building! I was in a hurry on the way here, so I didn't have the chance to."

Myles turned towards Frisk and raised one eyebrow. "Presuming you want that? You didn't wish to leave the monsters alone for long periods of time during the gala."

That was actually a good question – should they leave their monster friends alone for a little while? During the gala, there had been enormous crowds of people, all wearing fancy clothes that weapons could be easily hidden beneath, and coldly formal language to hide ill intent behind. Here and now though…

The Fowls themselves don't seem to mean the monsters harm.

"Is the estate still… guarded?" They asked hesitantly. "Is there a security team to keep out attackers?"

"We have the best guards in the world!" Beckett assured them. "Juliet lives here full time, and she's a Butler. She could take out anybody with her hands tied behind her back and blindfolded!"

"Not to mention Butler himself," Myles added with a very pointed look at his brother. "He may not be in his prime now, but he was once known as the third most dangerous man in the world. He'll keep them safe."

That wasn't exactly as reassuring as he seemed to think it was – after all, one of the most dangerous in the world could mean really high levels of LV. And this was only talking about two people.

"Anybody else…?"

"We have several security teams hidden around the grounds to keep an eye out for intruders, but two Butlers are more than enough to deal with them." Myles voice was impossibly confident – it was without a doubt that he believed what he said.

Then again, if those fairies came by…

*I think we can risk it this time.

Frisk almost started, and it took every ounce of self-control they had not to.

Really? But -

Chara never took any risks with the monsters' safety, never took anybody's word for granted – not even Frisk's, in those timelines far in their relative past when they'd still been naive enough to believe that just reaching the surface was the solution to all their problems. For them to suddenly decide it was safe…

*Hey, I didn't say anything about safe . Think about it – these fairies mess with people's memories, right? But so far as we know, they only mess with people that already know about them.

And oddly-named roses or no, the Fowls probably aren't involved with them directly.

Which meant, surprisingly, that the Fowl estate was still probably one of the safest places on the planet. Even if there were invisible fairies here, they wouldn't do anything in view of the Fowls.

Probably. Hopefully .

*Besides, Flowey's here, and if they're anything like you were when you first fell, they're probably scared shitless of him right now.

Stifling a helpless snicker at the comment, they turned an uneasy smile on the Fowl twins.

"Then… I guess I'm okay with leaving them alone for a little while."

Butler hadn't expected anyone to need his help anytime soon, not after the last major fiasco that they'd dealt with for the fairies. His near-death at the hands of Opal Koboi's dark magic had left his heart a stuttering mess, and he was hardly fit for active duty anymore.

That, he knew, had crossed his old friend's mind, likely several times (Artemis was nothing if not thorough) and yet he had been called for assistance anyway.

"I've already requested for Myles to keep a close eye on Frisk whilst they're at the estate," Artemis had said. "But I'd feel far more… at ease, if you were there to offer backup, in case, for whatever reason, he might need it, and I have no doubt that the fairies will feel the same. Monster or no, I doubt that flower could stand up to you in a fair fight."

His old charge still trusted him, an old man out of his prime (if only barely), to keep his little brother, his family , safe. It was, he had to admit, a heartwarming thought.

Still, despite that, he couldn't help but wonder if there was really any reason for him to be here at all. The flower monster (he refused to think of it as Flowey unless directly addressing him, because that was indeed a truly horrible name) hadn't made a single suspicious move, save for the mentioning of the fairy roses, the entire time they'd been walking around the grounds, and nothing particularly hostile had left his mouth, either – well, nothing more hostile than childishly rude, and he was reprimanded for it every time. So far, Butler's presence here was useless –

"WOWIE, YOU MEAN THIS HUGE HOUSE WAS BUILT WITHOUT MAGIC?! HOW DO HUMANS DO THAT?"

- save for answering the questions of the taller of the two skeleton monsters. And there were a great deal of questions.

"With lots of stones, ropes, pulleys, and horses and carts, I'd imagine." He said curtly. "I wasn't actually there."

"BUT STILL! WITHOUT MAGIC? THAT'S AMAZING, HUMAN!"

Despite his frequent use of the word "human," the skeleton named Papyrus didn't seem to mean it in the same insulting manner that the rare racist fairy used "Mud Man" when they thought he wasn't listening. In fact, he seemed overly enthusiastic about everything that Butler had to say. It reminded him heavily of years several decades past, when Juliet was just a little girl and before her training as a Butler had really begun in earnest, when she'd had boundless enthusiasm for everything, not just wrestling or, more recently, teasing the twins.

"Sounds like a lot of work to me. You humans really like working yourselves down to the bone, huh?"

"SAAANSSS!"

Butler kept his face carefully blank as he turned the last corner of the mansion before the fairy roses. Unlike the taller (and, he was fairly certain, younger) skeleton, the smaller one, Sans, justgot on his nerves .

And not because of the puns, though those were contributing somewhat. He had been watching Butler like a hawk for several long minutes now, and possibly for the entire time they'd been walking.

He hadn't noticed it at first, focused more on Papyrus and his dangerous floral passenger than on the hoodie-wearing skeleton, but somewhere around the pond near the barn, he'd turned his head just far enough to look at the monster, and found those odd white pupils fixed unerringly on him.

He'd glanced surreptitiously back several times since then, and if the skeleton had noticed, he'd never commented on it, nor averted his gaze.

It was silly, honestly, to be on edge because of a small, pun-loving skeleton who had yet to even take his hands out of his pockets, but the stares didn't feel… normal. Butler's first impression of Sans had been that he was lazy, uncaring, with an easy-going personality to match Juliet on one of her off days, but those stares made him feel uncomfortably like he was being viewed underneath a microscope, like they were somehow seeing things they shouldn't, and it was making Butler review his first impressions of him very, very carefully.

He's analyzing me, sizing me up.

For what, he didn't know. It was a bodyguard's job to stay informed about this sort of thing, to read others for their intentions, and yet he couldn't read Sans at all.

"WOWIE, FRISK WASN'T JOKING AROUND WHEN THEY SAID THESE FLOWERS WERE COOL!" Papyrus seemed almost to be vibrating in excitement, eye sockets wide. "NO WONDER YOU WANTED TO SEE THEM, FLOWEY!"

"Yeah, I know right?"

Despite the cheerful words, Butler couldn't help but size up the flower again. Small, looked harmless, but most definitely was not . He had to be up to something. He had spoken to the Ambassador at length since arriving, and visited the library with them, the same day the LEP officers watching them had seen the human child working their way diligently through several books on fairies, and Butler knew for a fact there was at least one book in the non-fiction section that had listed these roses as a fairy sighting. That, combined with what the flower had expressed interest in specifically, mounted up to an enormous amount of suspicion, even for one used to Artemis Fowl.

Unfortunately, he'd stared just long enough for the flower to notice, and glare back at him.

"What're you looking at?" It snapped.

"FLOWEY! BE NICE!"

"But –"

"APOLOGIZE, FLOWEY!"

"Ugh." The flower looked like it wanted to hurl. " Fine, I'm sorry."

"You gotta really mean it, bud."

The flower's eye twitched. "Shut up, tras – Sans."

" AS RUDE AS THAT WAS, I MUST AGREE WITH MY GOOD FRIEND, BROTHER! PLEASE CEASE YOUR PUNS IMMEDIATELY!"

"But bro, it's not my fault they get under your skin."

With an angry NYEH, the other monster stomped away to get a closer look at the roses, and out of range of the word play.

"Not even a twitch, huh?"

Butler didn't look at the skeleton, instead keeping his eye on the scene directly in front of him. "I've heard worse."

"As in puns?" That was definitely disbelief, and if it weren't for his incredible self-control, Butler might have told Sans about the various aliases that Artemis still used at times when writing new papers for professional purposes, if only to prove his point.

"Hey Papyrus, can I get out of the pot please? I want to get a closer look, and I'll just fall out of the pot if you keep holding me!"

Butler tensed as Papyrus cheerfully said it was fine, and the flower unrooted itself, pulling itself out of the pot using it's roots and re-planting itself in the ground near the roses, presumably to get a closer look.

The fairies better be up in the air, otherwise they're in serious trouble.

"Hey buddy, ease up a bit. He's not gonna hurt anybody, and 'm pretty sure you could kick his Butler."

He glanced back at the monster, one eyebrow raising. "Did you just make my name into a pun?"

Sans shrugged. "Yup. Relax, pal, e's not gonna hurt anybody here."

Then his sockets darkened, the pupils completely disappearing and turning his sockets into unsettling black voids. "Though that doesn't mean that you won't."

The bodyguard was too well-trained to startle, but, still, the comment (and the look that came with it) took him off-guard – and was, quite frankly, a bit insulting.

"I don't hurt innocent people," he said, firmly.

"Really? So those couple dozen people you've killed were all criminals?"

Even Butler was hardpressed to avoid looking surprised at a comment like that . So far as he knew, the monster had no way of knowing he'd killed anybody – his former career as a mercenary wasn't exactly something that was brought up in everyday conversation. And yet the skeleton knew, somehow.

How did he know?

"I don't kill innocent people," he repeated, deciding that, at least for now, that particular answer was best – it was true, if a bit misleading.

Sans shrugged. "If you say so."

His pupils flickered back into existence, remaining locked on Butler's for a moment before turning to glance back at the other monsters. Butler kept his eyes on him for a moment longer, before glancing back at the flower in time to see it disappear into the ground at the center of the spiral, and reappear several meters farther out.

It had been in exactly the same spot Frisk had been when they'd suffered their mysterious sickness – and exactly the same spot that the fairies had found the unusual magical hotspot.

I didn't see what he did there. I should've been paying more attention, instead of letting Sans distract me –

Sans. Sans had distracted him while the flower had been poking around there.

Was that on purpose? Are they working together?

It seemed unlikely. The two of them seemed to be metaphorically at each other's throats the entire time…

Then again, that wouldn't stop cooperation, just make it difficult. And if that were the case…

If the two of them are working together, then there might be more than one monster that knows about the fairies.

He'd need to talk to Artemis about this. And soon.


Daniel pointed out to me a while back that in-game, Chara's narration is a lot more snarky and makes more puns than they've done so far in this story. The reason for that is that, right now, Chara and Frisk are extremely, ridiculously focused on making sure that things in this timeline go right, and as a result are always a bit stressed. Now that they're in a slightly safer place than usual, though, and think they can afford to relax a little, expect some snark and maybe some puns from Chara in later chapters!

Speaking of which, does anybody have some really good puns you think they could use? This particular Chara tends to go for more complicated puns, compared to the simpler ones that Sans prefers – for example, "pomer-granite," which is a pun they use if someone CHECKs during the fight with Greater Dog. "Pomer" is incorporating dogs, "granite" is obviously stone, and both combined are also a pun of a sort of fruit/veggie, pomegranate. (Definitely more effort there than what Sans puts into his puns, right? They had to have taken a little while to think of that one.)

(Blame - er, I mean credit - daniel for the "kicking Butler" pun.)

Now, continuing in the theme from the notes in the last chapter, here's lore on the differences between fairy, human, and monster magic, brought to you by me and daniel!

Human magic is generally very specialized to the individual – each human with magic has a single unique power, or a couple of very closely related powers, such as, say, controlling water and growing and creating ice (so, basically, they have superpowers). Humans also have massive magical reserves, and as a result generally have greater endurance than both fairies and monsters. (Luckily for both fairies and monsters, however, human magic is very, very rare, especially nowadays – even with billions of humans on the planet, it's unlikely for more than a few dozen humans per each generation to be born with it.) Humans are capable of learning colored magic the same color as their own dominant soul traits (so, for example, a human with a green soul could learn green magic, which can be used for shields and healing). Also, human magic, unless specialized for use with technology, doesn't effect technology at all, negatively or positively – to most tech, it simply doesn't exist.

Fairy magic is generally less specialized to the individual, and considerably less rare. Every fairy that can use magic usually has the same basic set of magical skills – healing, gift of tongues, mesmer, and shielding. Fairy warlocks have a wider variance of skills, including possession, shapeshifting, illusions, etc, but are still fairly specialized, usually undergoing training for one or more skills over others. Fairies are also capable of learning colored magic that are the same color as their own dominant soul traits, the same as humans. As far as technology compatibility, it's pretty much the same as human magic, except some types of magic can be stored in specially prepared and rune-decorated technological containers – think time-stops and maybe bio-bombs. However, the technology has to be specifically designed to do so and have the right runes added onto it – it can't just randomly be shoved into a container, otherwise the tech won't work.

Monster magic is also somewhat specific to the individual, like with humans, though not as much as you might expect. All monsters are born with the exact same kind of magical energy, and are capable of manifesting it. However, because of its direct link to their souls, as they grow older, their magic changes depending on the monster's personality and how they use it, adapting and growing with them, until, when they're adults, their personal magicks look and act completely different from each other's. For instance: a monster who usually attacks with their magic will have magic that manifests as a weapon, a monster who uses their magic to cook (or has a generally angry or fiery personality) will develop fire magic, or a monster who often helps other monsters will develop healing magic. Unlike fairies and humans, though, monsters can learn almost any kind of colored magic regardless of soul colors and traits (monster souls are white, and white light is actually made up of several different colors! Light splits when passing through a prism), and use it to augment their natural magic. As far as technology is concerned, monster magic is the most compatible. All you really need to use it in conjunction with technology are runes to channel and direct it, and you can imbue any tech with it without having to specially design it, save for those runes. However, if you get the runes wrong, and there's enough magic involved, the results are far less usable and far more explosive, like what happened in chapter 10 with Alphys's magic battery.

On top of each of these, colored magics can also be used to enhance any of the three races' natural magical abilities. For example, a fairy's healing magics would be strengthened considerably by green colored magic, projectile magics like fire or lightning would be enhanced by yellow magic, etc.