Last chapter to suggest names for the series! (And since people are getting confused, just to clarify, I'm NOT renaming Magicae est Potestas – I'm looking for a name for the SERIES of stories it'll be a part of!) So far the roster of titles we've got includes:
The Magic of Souls (1)
Tales of Monsters, Humans, and Fairies
Fairies and Monsters Gone Fowl (3)
Stories About Fairies, Monsters, and Two Bizarre Humans
Fairytales (7)
Temporal Dynamics for the Magically Inclined (5)
Okay Flowey, Stop Traumatizing the Fairies (3)
Underground Fairies
A Fairy Strange Crossover
So far, judging by the number of people on both Ao3 and that have voted for them, Fairytales and Temporal Dynamics are the top title choices for the series! Also, feel free to vote on one of the titles you like the best if you haven't already! (Thank you to the peeps who have already voted!)
There was no clock in their cell.
It was a little detail that Frisk had noticed off-hand, maybe a few minutes after their head had properly cleared of the remaining symptoms of whatever knockout drug had been used on them. The room they were tied up in was completely bare, including the walls, and so it was no surprise to them that there wasn't a clock, or anything else, on the walls.
However, after several hours they found themselves wishing there was a clock in the room somewhere. It had nothing to do with time-keeping – according to Chara, at least one of the guards outside their door had a watch, and so the ghost would sometimes invisibly pop their head out of the cell through the wall to check the watch and see what time it was. No, their irrational wish for a clock was less a matter of knowing what hour it was, and more a matter of having something to distract them from the silence.
The guards outside did talk to each other, every now and then – soft murmurs of conversation that Frisk couldn't quite make out, most of the time, but even though they couldn't understand the words being spoken, the voices at least filled up the piercing silence, gave them something to listen to. Whenever the guards fell silent, however, they were left in silence again, with nothing to distract them from their thoughts save for Chara's occasional attempt to break the silence or their updates on the time. A ticking clock would have been a great distraction for the worried jumble of neurons that was their brain right now.
Frisk had taken to making their own noises to fill the quiet whenever the guards weren't doing it for them. Tapping their foot against the floor, keeping track of the seconds with mutters of "one Mississippi, two Mississippi," humming. They'd been humming for several minutes now, a jaunty little tune they'd sometimes hear Papyrus humming while he was cooking.
But there was only so much one person could do to keep their mind off things, and the music wasn't helping matters any, not anymore – as their thoughts had once more turned towards their wizard captor, the tune had turned into something darker and less cheerful.
Why does he hate the monsters so much?
They'd been rolling that question over and over again in their head for a while now. They didn't want to think about it, not really, but it had been pestering them from their subconscious almost since the man had left, visibly enraged to the point that Frisk wouldn't be halfway surprised if he spat acid the next time he spoke.
There were a number of reasons they could think of that would explain it. The first was simply that he hated the monsters because they weren't human. Humans didn't always need any more of a reason than "they're different" to hate someone – there was more than enough proof of that already. However, something told them that this wasn't the reason for the wizard's ire.
The second option was that he was scared of the monsters. Humans were often frightened of what they didn't understand, and many of the monsters were downright intimidating if you didn't know them personally. Gyftrot came to mind, for instance. Somehow, though, they didn't think fear was the answer, either. They knew how to read people pretty well by now, and there hadn't been even so much a flicker of nervousness showing in the man's face. Just hate.
The third option was that he hated the monsters because they'd killed children. They'd run across humans like that before – killing a child, in some people's eyes, was the worst possible crime you could commit. Killing six? It practically made you a demon.
Considering the sheer hatred in the man's eyes when he'd mentioned the fallen children, Frisk had a feeling that he was one of those sorts of people – but they weren't sure. It was entirely possible that they could be wrong, or they were missing some crucial bit of information that would paint a clearer picture of the whole. Thus, their thoughts were going in circles, going over every one of the reasons that humans in previous timelines had found to hate their new non-human neighbors.
It only made the suspense of waiting for the wizard to return that much more unbearable.
*One of the guards from earlier is coming back. The one that brought food.
Frisk stopped humming, and sat up straight, watching the door. Sure enough, after a few more moments, the door swung open, revealing the same man from earlier – this time, though, instead of bringing in granola bars, he had a bottle of water tucked under one arm.
*Well, would you look at that. He actually kept his promise.
They didn't comment on the ghost's surprise, instead simply smiling at the man thankfully as he silently uncapped the water and held it out for them to drink from.
He didn't say a word, very carefully keeping his eyes averted until the bottle was empty, at which point he capped it again and stood up to leave.
Well, Frisk wasn't about to let him go just like that. "Thank you."
He stiffened, coming to a halt in the doorway. Then, after a moment, he nodded uncertainly, let out a raspy you're welcome kid, and then left twice as fast as he'd come in, closing the door behind him hastily.
There was no conversation between him and the guards outside this time, but Frisk didn't need to hear it said out loud to know the man felt guilty.
The wizard came back three hours later.
By this point, Frisk was sick and tired of their roundabout conclusions and, after another hour of careful thought, had come up with a risky plan of action. They needed to know why the man hated the monsters, or at least get a definite clue. So they'd wait until the man inevitably returned to try and pry answers out of them again, and instead try to pry answers out of him.
It was a dangerous idea. So many things could go wrong – all it would take was one wrong word, one wrong sentence, and the man might order them killed, or order the monsters killed. And the guards outside wouldn't be able to disobey him. And although the guards might have technically been accomplices, might have yet to let them go like moral people should have, they didn't deserve that kind of guilt. Taking a kid hostage was one thing. Taking a life was something else entirely.
So Frisk was a bundle of nerves when Chara warned them of the wizard's approach – a bundle of highly determined nerves that steeled themselves for the door to open the moment the warning came. This time, when the door opened to reveal the man, they did not flinch. They did not avert their eyes. Instead, they locked their eyes with his and stared.
His eyes narrowed, but he didn't comment on the change of behavior. Instead, he once more took up the same position as the previous two times, crouched in front of them just out of reach.
"Are you ready to answer my questions?" He said coldly. Once again, he'd calmed down sometime between his last attempted interrogation and now – this time, however, he wasn't bothering to sound friendly.
This might be a mistake. It probably is a mistake. I'm going to end up dead, or a monster will.
But I'm not backing down.
Frisk didn't let their eyes drift away like they wanted to. Instead, they kept eye contact and asked a question of their own.
"Why do you hate the monsters so much?"
He blinked. Apparently, he hadn't actually expected them to talk right off the bat – not that they were surprised at this. They'd been giving him the silent treatment for the vast majority of the time they'd spent in the same room, after all.
"I'm the one asking the questions here, Ambassador." His syllables were carefully measured, short and clipped and as indifferent as possible.
"No," Frisk said, watching him carefully. "We're both asking questions. Why do you hate the monsters?"
He was visibly irritated by this – his jaw clenched, his brow furrowed.
"Don't get smart with me. This has nothing to do with your current situation, Dreemurr."
"Actually, it does." They drew on as much of their determination as they could – and borrowed a little from Chara, too, because they needed as much as they could get right now. "So why do you hate the monsters?"
He scoffed and rocked backward on his heels.
"I fail to see how this has anything to do with," he gestured at the cell around them, "this."
"I won't give answers about the monsters to someone who hates them unless they have a good reason to."
That gave him pause. His eyes narrowed to slits, focusing on them with an eerie intensity. He actually seemed to be considering this. Good.
"And if I were to answer your question, would you answer mine?"
Frisk pursed their lips.
*Say yes!
That would probably be the safest answer, but Frisk tried their best not to lie when not concealing the Resets… or important monster secrets. Lying, in this case, would likely only make the man angry, anyway.
"That'd depend on your answer." They said, honestly.
He sniffed. "Then consider my answer to be I'm not telling you."
Well, the more indirect approach hadn't worked. Time for the considerably more risky, blunt approach.
"Is it because of what happened to the other fallen children?"
The wizard went very, very still.
"It is, isn't it?" They said, quietly, with less confidence than before. "You hate them because those six kids died down there."
They would have said more – something along the lines of you know that not all the monsters were involved in their deaths, right – but that was when the wizard's face, which had been so carefully subdued up until now, twisted into an ugly, coldly furious expression that sent chills running down their spine, and seemed to suck the warmth out of the entire room.
"'Died?'" He sneered. A spark of light lit at the tip of one of his fingers – a roiling spark of brilliant yellow, rather than the blue that they'd expected – and then went out almost as quickly as it had appeared. "Don't you dare sugarcoat it, Ambassador, those kids were murdered, in cold blood."
Frisk shivered, eyes widening. "I'm not saying they weren't…" They shut up quickly as the wizard's glare intensified – if looks could kill, then they would've been LOADing, back on the Fowl estate by now.
"And yet you're still helping them." Sheer, undiluted rage flared in his eyes. "The monsters killed six kids before you, but they didn't kill you and now you're helping them." His teeth bared in a near-feral snarl. "What's so special about you, Ambassador, that they weren't willing to kill you? Why are you helping them?"
That wasn't just fury there. That was resentment.
He resents me for not being killed like the other kids.
They sucked in a shaky lungful of air.
"Because," they whispered, unable to bring themselves to speak any louder, "everyone deserves a second chance."
"They don't!"
"They do!" They snapped. "Everyone deserves a second chance, including the monsters!"
For a moment, only silence reigned, and despite the rising dread in their gut, Frisk forced themselves to keep eye contact with the angry man before them. Looking away would only make them seem ashamed of what they'd just said, and they weren't. They meant what they said. Everyone deserved a second chance, and they weren't going to change their mind on that, not ever.
"… No."
Uh oh. That wasn't a good tone of voice. The fury was still there, but now it was colder, sharper, like every sound that came out of the man's mouth had been sharpened into a tiny blade of ice.
"No," he repeated icily. "You're too naive, Ambassador. Nobody like them deserves a second chance." Another angry spark of yellow flickered along his fingers. "The world doesn't work like that. Murderers don't get a second chance – they get prison cells." He stood up and turned sharply on his heels to leave the room. But before he did, he stopped at the door and turned once more to glare at them, and his expression…
His expression. Oh, stars, just the sight of it sent their heart plummeting into their stomach and made little droplets of sweat start dripping down their forehead.
"If you really want to think that way about those monsters," he hissed, and Frisk was positive that he didn't mean monsters as in the ethnic group this time, "then I'm not going to stop you. But if you keep quiet about their secrets for much longer… well, a few less murderers in the world isn't going to hurt anybody, now is it?"
The door slammed shut behind him, leaving Frisk staring in wide-eyed horror at the wooden surface.
"A few less murderers in the world isn't going to hurt anybody, now is it?"
Oh stars. Stars, no! He's planning on killing monsters. He's going to kill monsters, innocent monsters that never did anything to him -!
*That does it! Frisk, we've gotta get out of here! We can't just keep waiting around, we've got to warn them!
But how?! They were almost hyperventilating at this point, horror making it near impossible to breathe. We have no idea where we actually are, the monsters don't know where we are -!
*We'll figure something out! We have to.
The before it's too late that almost made it onto the end of the ghost's sentence didn't need to be said. It was all too obvious.
Long, agonizing hours of waiting were something Holly hated with a burning, fiery passion. She was a fairy of action, not one to just sit and wait, and yet there was literally nothing she could do but wait, for hours on end, as Foaly sifted through "nonsensical disorganized human databases" looking for a clue, any clue, to the monster Ambassador's whereabouts, while time slowed to a crawl.
Fortunately, it seemed that for once the universe was somewhat on their side, because several hours after the sun had risen, and the elf was just about to throw up her hands in defeat, set an alarm in her helmet, and doze off, Foaly suddenly let out a triumphant noise.
"I got something!"
Holly sat bolt upright. "Thank Frond. What did you find?!"
"Hold on a damn second, Holly – there! I sent the footage I just found to your helmet!"
A small video icon appeared on the inside of her visor, and Holly blinked once at it to open it. The image that appeared in the small video window was in one of the smaller intersections in town, by the looks of it – there was only a single lane on each side of the street, and no carts whatsoever, save for a public transit cart turning to the right and around the corner of one of the abandoned warehouses partway between the business district and the docks.
"This was filmed an hour after the kidnapping!" Foaly said ecstatically. "Look, there's the mesmerized perp, right there, and then, several minutes later," the film fast-forwarded itself until another cart came into view – the man in the driver's seat definitely wasn't the public cart driver, and the cart was considerably smaller and un-numbered, as well. "Look! That's definitely a Mud Kid-sized bundle in the back of that cart, wouldn't you say?"
It was. The bundle was wrapped up completely in dark fabric, and impossible to make out any details on, but it was definitely the right size to be an unconscious monster Ambassador.
"So the mesmerized perp passed off the Ambassador to someone else, probably another goon, to transfer them to a safer location," Holly mused.
"And here's the real kicker!" Foaly crowed. "We actually got this cart on fairy cameras! The officers dismissed it at the time because they were busy searching the immediate area around where the kidnapping happened and keeping an eye on the monsters, but we got this one on camera, and we know where it went!" A photograph of an old warehouse popped up in her visor. "It parked just outside this warehouse about halfway between the docks and the business district. The place hasn't been in use for years, but it's not abandoned, either, so it's in reasonably good shape. Out of the way and secure – "
"And therefore a good place to store a human prisoner," Holly finished. "Are you sure that's where they are?"
"When have I ever been wrong?"
"Well, let's see… Fowl Manor Siege, Opal's escape from Argon's clinic – "
"Alright, alright, it was a rhetorical question, Holly!" The centaur huffed in irritation. "I'm not a hundred percent sure, but it's very likely!"
"We'll have to send a couple of Recon officers to check it out, then," she sighed. "But at least it's a lead. And if the Ambassador's really in there, we might be able to break them out – "
There was a slight crackling as a new line opened to her helmet speakers. "You won't be breaking anybody out, Captain Short." It was Commander Kelp, and he sounded extremely put out and more than a little exhausted. "Council's orders."
Holly stopped. "Sir?" She said incredulously. "What do you – "
Kelp sighed, and she could easily imagine the foul-tempered elf rubbing his temple in frustration. "Look, Captain, we all know how much of a wild card you are by now. It's obvious to anyone who has eyes and read even one of your case files. And the Council thinks that mind-wiping the Ambassador will work."
Holly's stomach did an uneasy flip-flop. "They're ordering me not to get involved?"
"Technically, since you're in charge of the Section Eight squad that'll theoretically be doing the rescuing, you will be – but you're only supposed to be giving orders from off-site, and Internal Affairs is going to be keeping a close eye on your communications during it." He grunted. "Sorry, Captain, but the Council's got my hands tied here."
"What about me?" Foaly demanded.
"You they're ordering to be a part of the mind-wipe team. Some troll dung about 'wanting to be absolutely certain that the mind-wipe holds.'"
"Me being there won't change anything!"
"Look, centaur," Kelp snapped, his Root-esque temper apparently having been worn too thin, "I know that, but I can't do anything about it! Which is why I'm ordering you to try to do a little damage control, just in case the mind-wipe doesn't hold!"
Foaly fell silent. Holly pursed her lips.
"You don't think the wipe will work either, do you, Commander?"
"I think," Kelp said, pointedly, "I want to cover all my bases."
Which wasn't an outright no, which probably meant he did think that the wipe wouldn't hold. After all, they already had proof that Frisk wasn't exactly a normal, baseline human being, and they were a genius. Just like Artemis was. And Artemis had regained his memories after his mind-wipe.
"Right, Sir," she said, quietly. It rankled her that she wouldn't be directly involved with the Ambassador's rescue, but, well, Foaly might be able to divert a disaster, if the Commander was giving him a chance to do "damage control." It was better than nothing.
She only hoped it would be enough.
Someone commented on previous chapters and made a very good point that Holly wouldn't let the mind-wipe happen, orders or no orders, if she thought it was stupid. So, while I would have originally liked Holly to be on the rescue team that goes in to save Frisk, I decided not to do that in the end. So yup, no Holly to get in the way of the Council's stupidity when the rescue happens! (Don't worry though, it's practically a given at this point that the mind-wipe won't be permanent. Holly, Foaly, Artemis, and every other fairy or human that's protested the mind-wipe so far will be able to go "I told you so" in the Council's faces.)
And those fairies better hurry up with their rescuing – the wizard (whose last name IS O'Reilly, by the way, but Frisk and Chara don't know that for sure right now, thus "the wizard") is getting impatient, and it's pretty damn clear now what he thinks of the monsters – and how far he's willing to go to get that information he wants.
And now for worldbuilding! Someone called Jack54311 asked me this: "Speaking of Chara, I have a world building question. If humans aren't able to absorb a human soul, then how is Chara hitching a ride with Frisk? If one of them is soulless, then how are both present? Did Frisk's soul become damaged somehow, and Chara repair it with their own? I'm confused about that." This was my answer:
I know that it's more or less implied to be canon that Chara is soulless, but personally, I've never really liked that idea? I mean, Chara doesn't act "soulless" until the Genocide Run, presuming that they are the narrator in-game, as I like to think, and their so-called soulless behavior could just be learned from the protagonist instead of something that occurred naturally. So in M est P, I decided to ignore that particular aspect of canon - Chara does, in fact, have a soul still. It's not a particularly intact soul - Chara's technically died twice, if you consider Asriel's death as their second one, and that amongst other things sort of put their soul through the wringer - but it's still a soul regardless.
As for how Chara's hitching a ride with Frisk without their soul being absorbed... well, it has to do with Determination and both fallen kids' souls. After their second death, Chara basically lost their will to keep going (their plan had failed, Asriel was dead because of them, and now they couldn't do anything to help with the aftermath), and with that their ability to produce their own Determination - and since their soul is Red, that means they were losing something pretty crucial to who they were. It was this loss of Determination that really started to damage their soul, and it basically sent their consciousness into a vegetative state as their soul degenerated. However, they lasted long enough that when Frisk, another human with a Red soul, huge reserves of Determination, and the same shaman ancestors as Chara, fell into the Underground in close proximity to what was left of them, Chara's soul "woke up" and was able to latch onto theirs and begin siphoning off their Determination to begin repairing itself. Until Chara's soul is fully repaired - a process which isn't easily completed with the Resets messing with both kids - their soul will remain directly linked to Frisk's, and thus Chara gets sort of dragged around with them where-ever they go.
That being said, it won't be too much longer before that happens, relatively speaking, assuming the two of them manage to keep avoiding another Reset. Chara's been linked to Frisk for almost three consecutive years in this timeline, and many other timelines before that, which means that their soul is almost fully repaired. Give it roughly another year or so without a Reset, and Chara's soul will be whole again, and after they no longer need that direct link to Frisk's soul, who knows what'll happen to them?
