(03)

Toriel had a set schedule in her little slice of the Underground. Much of it involved eating snail pie, reading books on the uses of snails, and walking the same path every day, but it's a schedule and a life nonetheless.

Long ago, she took it upon herself to act as a guardian to the Ruins and the entryway of the Underground. Her vow was to consistently check the entry for any human who might have fallen down so that she could save them from those who inhabit her world. She knew He was one soul short of achieving His goal, and she knew she had to make sure no human would be killed by Him ever again.

And even though she didn't know or expect it to happen any time soon, her schedule was about to get a jarringly abrupt interruption.

Her day was reaching the point she always felt like she could look forward to in her little area of the Monster realm. As usual, she was spending time reading by her fireplace, the magic flame's warmth pleasing in the somewhat nippier area she lived in. She was just about to finish a particular chapter she nearly had memorized by heart when her cell phone gave an alarm chime.

It was time to go check the entry.

She slid a bookmark into her spot in the book, stood up, and set it on the table across the room before using her magic to snuff out the fire and turn off the lights across the house.

'Have to conserve magical energy, of course!' She gave a little laugh at the thought, then made for the door of her cozy little home, and set out into the Ruins. Froggits were hopping about in her leafy "lawn," but they lept out and dashed off into the Ruins once she noticed them. She huffed, glaring after them. She knew they could feel her gaze as they fled, no one could resist being cowed by it. It was a rather effective means of getting people to listen to her, she wouldn't deny it.

After that little incident, she walked a path she had walked countless times, reset puzzles behind her as she went, navigated trapped paths by muscle memory, and even saw the Napstablook being purposefully lonely, as usual. She could sympathize with him, in a way. She was never assigned to be the guardian, she took it upon herself, and in doing so she lived out here, far away from any other monster who would willingly or capably hold a conversation or relationship with her.

She was well and truly just like the Napstablook, all alone, of her own volition. Except she was doing some good with herself, or at least she liked to think she would be if another human ever ended up down here. She dismissed it and refocused on her walk. She had subconsciously navigated most of it even though she was distracted, and she was already at the Ruins entry. She could hear something up ahead…

As she stepped through, she could hear a voice angrily yelling, and she saw a flower monster attacking something in the darkness of the archway that led to the entry… that was an incredible amount of magic!

'No! If that is a human-' She held her hands at the ready, and charged up a fireball strong enough to knock anything off its feet, or stem as it were. As the flower got ready to attack again, she interrupted it by flinging the magical flame in a curving arc at it, uprooting and sending it far off into the darkness.

She briskly made her way to the arch, before freezing in place as a massive sword sprung from the dark and jammed into the ground, followed by a fallen shield and a weighty pair of "THUMP" sounds, eliciting a gasp from her as she stood before the sword. A gauntleted hand shakily held onto the blade's handle, before it slipped off and the being in the dark slumped forward. She backed up, and a massive armored upper body fell to the ground before her and knocked the sword loose with it.

She held a look of disbelief as she looked at the thing. Was it a human? Larger royal guards were known to wear such massive armor, but they wouldn't be this close to the entry without her knowing.

'It must be a human!'

She knelt down and attempted to move the human, but their sheer weight was too much for her meager physical strength alone. Calling on her magic, she pulled the being closer to the light the flower had been sitting in, then turned them over onto their back. A creepy steel mask stared back, and it gave no indication as to whether or not the human was alive or even conscious.

She was nervous. This human was enormous, being at least large enough to completely fill the arches in these rooms. The humans she had met in the past had been children or younger teens, this was a totally different scenario… speaking of children, the being's mask looked eerily similar to the face of a happy child, with a permanent carefree smile that did not match the armor or size of the individual in any way.

The person's masked and hooded head was cradled by the armor's large metal collar, so she reached down and tried to remove the mask. She lifted it up and away from the cloth hood, revealing a horribly pale, male face. It looked still and totally at peace. Dark brown eyebrows framed his closed eyes. His face seemed alarmingly emaciated… She gently put the back of her hand to his face, feeling it was ice cold.

She quickly stood and backed away, hands over her mouth, a horrified expression etched into her features.

'Did I fail again? If only I had acted quicker… no… I should have walked here faster… why did I have to take so long?! I could have prevented this!'

Toriel hastily knelt back down and replaced his mask. Panicking, she decided to take him back to her home. She would come back for the sword and shield later, he was heavy enough as is, and she didn't know if he was dangerous or not, but her role as guardian to humans dictated that she must give him a chance and try to save him. With her magic assisting her, she carried him through the Ruins as fast as she could. The small monsters made extra sure to part for her as she jogged, having to solve the puzzles and carry the human all along the way.

By the time she got home, she was physically exhausted and was starting to feel the strain on her magic as well. Getting the armored man through the Toriel-sized door was a bit of a struggle, and she ended up having to drag him in, scuffing and scratching her hardwood floor, but that was the least of her concerns. Once he finally was in, she fell backward and against the stairwell banister in the darkness.

With a groan at the pain, she snapped her fingers and magically turned her home's lights back on. Once she could see, she repeated the drag process to get him into her room since the children's room wouldn't have any way of housing him.

With a final relieved sigh, she set him down on her floor and went to work on his armor, once again removing his mask first. While large like some monster armor, the armor's design was unlike any she had seen, with steel plates as thick as her hand in some places. More than once she had to magically stand him up and undo large sections of it, and even these individual pieces were a bit too heavy for her, so she let loose pieces fall to the floor, and pulled heavier pieces off with her magic.

He was out of the incredibly thick armor before long, but he had yet another layer of steel underneath, that being a suit of chainmail. This was much easier to undo and remove, and once that and his cloth hood were off, she set him on her bed and saw the man underneath the steel.

He was large, even when lacking his armor. He wore tattered old-era commoner clothing underneath all that armor, and his dark brown hair looked like an untouched mess. Two rings adorned his respective ring-fingers on either hand, one was a stone-like piece, the other looked like a ring made of ebony wood.

From what she could see, his body seemed to have healthy, exercised musculature, but even through his clothing, she could tell he was the most emaciated and thin human she had ever seen. While there was plenty of muscle, he had no body fat to hide his bones beneath, his belly area was a thin wasteland of nothing but skin-tight muscle and no gut.

She had to stop examining him and get to healing him if he was still alive. She gently laid her hands over his chest, where his heart was.

Once more, terror overtook her. His heart wasn't beating. She reached out magically to see if his soul was dying, and she was met by an unexpected find.

'This man's soul is immense!' It was unlike any soul she had ever seen before.

Setting aside her shock, she searched for the damage the flower had done and found it. That kind of damage would have easily destroyed most souls, yet it seemed puny when compared to just how powerful his soul was, but it had done him in. The man's soul appeared to her mind as a massive black heart outlined in white. It steadily gave off waves of strength, meaning it was not dissipating in any way. That meant…

'He is not dying… but his heart is not beating and he feels as cold as ice…' Needless to say, she had never imagined she would encounter such circumstances, nor had she prepared for them. She believed the only ones to fall into this world were the young and curious, not dead-but-alive men like this.

She refocused, she had to try and heal him. She firmly placed her hands on his chest, and let her healing magic flow onto his overwhelmingly large and dark soul. The "minuscule" damage it sustained healed nicely, and his soul began to steadily increase in activity. In her mind, she saw a "flaming" pulsation in the outline, giving his soul the appearance of a beating, white-flamed black heart.

In a way, it was intimidating and intriguing to see a soul break so many barriers of normality, however, she got the feeling that there was something more that was amiss with his soul. She searched its breadth, and at its very center, she saw a missing section.

The missing section looked like it was about the size of an average human's soul. Almost like a puzzle piece, a part of him seemed to have been ripped free, and raw edges of his large outer soul seemed to scab around the missing section like it had been this way for quite some time. She was lost as to what this piece of him was, his soul was like a vast ocean of power anyways, and finding anything specific in it besides the missing piece's place was nigh impossible.

Seeing that she stabilized his soul as much as she could, she removed her hands from him and leaned off of him and the bed. She stood above him and just looked at the strange man for a few moments.

'No breathing, no heartbeat, nothing. He seems physically dead, but… I should keep an eye on him.'

With that, she left her room with him in her bed, and finally returned to the living room. She paced and thought for a moment, before deciding to bring her chair and book into her room so she could read while watching over him. After using her magic to help her exhausted body lift the chair, she set it down across from him, and with a tired exhale, she let herself sink into it with her book at the ready.

Before she reopened her book to her previous spot, she looked over at the human. Still not breathing, still not moving. Yet at a glance, she could faintly feel his powerful soul's pulse, now that she healed it. She was glad she was as well attuned to healing magic as she was, a lesser healer may have lost themselves in that vast soul.

With a few adjustments of her position, she began her cycle of reading and checking the human's condition every now and then.

vvv

The undead felt his mind race, trapped and unconscious.

'Am I… did I die again? Why have I not resurrected? I can still feel that pain the flower inflicted. This feels… almost like death. This is new. Is this some kind of "lesser death?" Is this a precursor to death? Maybe I am not "dead," maybe I am finally fading, or-'

A feeling of soft, glowing warmth...

'What is this? It feels… warm? I can feel it moving. What is it? And why is the pain going away… this is… pleasant. When was the last time I ever thought of that word? When was the last time I felt this kind of warmth, have I ever felt this at all? I cannot remember, but I like it.'

The warmth fades...

'It is leaving me... will it come back? I want it to come back. I feel cold now. Have I always been this cold? I never noticed. When did this happen? How did I not notice? I feel like I always have before, but I am bitingly cold now, in comparison to the warmth. It is not like a bonfire's "warmth" or a fireball's heat, I cannot describe it.'

'...Fireball. I saw the flower get hit with a fireball. Did someone… save me? It could not have been an undead, they are more likely to finish me off than assist me. A pyromancer Firekeeper? Not likely down here. Was it the warmth? Who are they…?'

'...I wonder when, or, if I will wake up.'

vvv

Toriel ceased her cycle of regularly checking the human and reading to look at her cellphone's clock and found it was nearly dinner time. She replaced her bookmark, placed the book on her chair, and made to leave the room before she stopped and looked over her shoulder at the human.

'I hope he will be okay. If he is not, I will not be able to stand failing my one job, not again.' With that, she left the cold, unconscious human to make some dinner.

She even decided to make him a portion, in case he woke up.

'I wonder what he thinks of snail pies…'

(03)