(05)
With a final adjustment of his hood, the Undead now donned a set of armor he had long envied, yet allowed to become forgotten in the depths of his bottomless box.
The armor of the Altered King's royal guard, the Silver Knights.
The armor's flowing designs, shining silver-plated steel, and matching gray hooded cloak created an overall heroic appearance. The Undead's mind raced with far-off memories while he looked at himself in the mirror. He remembered seeing these knights for the first time in the Ruined Kingdom. They were solely stationed at the now-derelict castle of his homeland, and even though they have long since hollowed and forgotten why they remain there, their untarnished armor and weapons shine just as bright as ever.
The main reason he didn't wear this armor was the fact that at the time he picked it up, he found that its metal was far thinner than that of his favored steel armor he was wearing at the time. That armor was used by the Vanguards, elite front-line soldiers who wielded heavy greatswords and clashed head-on in physical skirmishes before anyone else did, and its protections reflected that: nigh impervious to normal weapons, incredibly heavy, but terrible at stopping magic.
The Silver Knight armor was far lighter, less physically protective, and far more magically negating. Despite the thinner steel, it was still a formidable set, no normal knight's gear could stack up to a Silver Knight's. To complement this new armor, he also pulled the matching shield out of his box. The shield held the armor's design ideals just as steadfast. He had to forgo using one of their swords to complete the appearance, he was just too fond of his claymore.
Why did he have all these armors and not wear them? He knew undead like him generally become kleptomaniacs to hold on to as much of the past as possible, but that was seeming like the wrong idea if the soul is what dictates the mind's integrity, not memories, if Toriel's healing was anything to go by. He felt like he was remembering more with every passing minute, but his name still eluded him. He was sure he could recall an "L" in there, somewhere…
He made sure to keep trying at it, he needed his name back.
After one last check in the mirror and a reattachment of his belt, claymore sheath, and other supplies, he left Toriel's room. He had to duck a little to get out, and the cloak swept against the door frame. The ornate boots lightly clicked and clacked on the wooden floorboards as he searched the cozy house for Toriel. He found her in the kitchen, finishing up with the few dishes they had used.
Her back was turned and she didn't seem to notice him walk in, so he decided to announce himself.
"Ah… excuse me, Toriel-"
"Hmm…?" She looked over her shoulder at him and noticed his new armor. She put the dish occupying her hand away before turning to face him fully to inspect his new attire.
"That is… different. I like how it looks, but where did you get it from? And where did you put the other armor?" She certainly liked this armor more than what he had before, it had a much more aesthetically pleasing appearance and an all-around different presence. The cloak was a nice touch too, not to mention the absence of that strange mask.
In response, the Undead moved his cloak and pointed to the box attached to his belt. "My bottomless box. It is a magical container that holds a limitless number of items, small enough to transport but capable of swallowing up whole sets of armor, one of my long-time tools."
Toriel looked almost disbelieving at that, monsters had something similar to this, except its space was far more limited. She had never thought the humans would be the ones to master magic that allowed them to carry infinite amounts of objects.
"How is it that humans have such powerful magic now? When our kind last met, it took all of your best magicians to seal us away, and even then it nearly killed all seven of them, so to be able to carry anything, without limit…"
Something Toriel said confused the Undead. "Our kind? I am still not quite certain just what you are, yet you seem to know quite a lot about humans, but with rather dated information."
Toriel gave him a distraught look. "That means humans must have forgotten about the war, and some time after the seventh…"
The mention of war made his brow furrow as he tried to dredge up any memory on the subject, but drew a blank. "War? We warred with your kind?"
Toriel nodded in affirmation. "Yes, long ago, when both our civilizations were much younger. Come, sit with me. As much as I dislike the idea, I believe there is much we should explain to one another." She left the kitchen for her living room table, taking her seat closest to the door, and the Undead, having followed her, sat across from her.
The Undead drummed his fingers after a few moments of contemplative silence, so he decided to give her the go ahead. "My mind and memory are very unreliable when it comes to history, so perhaps you should begin."
Toriel felt somewhat silly over the blunder, she had forgotten so quickly... "Oh, yes, apologies. Long ago, certainly long before you were born, my ex-husband and I ruled over our kingdom together, that being the Kingdom of Monsters. You humans had a similar system back then, with king-like leaders and small societies. For a while, both of our peoples lived on the surface, peacefully existing apart from one another. This peace was disturbed when the humans began to fear and hate us. They learned that all monsters have the ability to absorb human souls and become far more powerful by doing so. They must have felt threatened, so they started a war to seal us away. Countless monsters died, and not one human fell. Then, as I mentioned earlier, all the greatest human magicians nearly gave their lives sealing us away down here. Nowadays, the rest of the monsters live deeper in the Underground. I isolated myself here to act as a guardian for humans who fall in, to protect them from the other monsters."
The Undead had sat and listened quietly before he had to ask a question. "You say we slaughtered countless monsters and none of us fell, how?"
Toriel had an uneasy look about herself at this question, she knew she was about to reveal to him just how powerful he was down here. "Ah… well, the thing about that is, erm… truthfully… monsters are comprised namely of magic, while humans are nearly all physical. It would not take much at all for a human to kill one of us, even the younger and inexperienced human warriors could take on many of our best fighters. On top of that, a monster's fighting prowess depends upon their will to fight, and their opponent's will to kill. Another thing plays into this, souls."
That piqued the Undead's interest.
"The soul of a human is… great, to say the least. A human soul is much more powerful than any monster's, even a small child's soul is equivalent in power to the souls of all the monsters who inhabit the Underground. This is rather frightening to me because your soul is staggering. I do not quite know how, but for your soul to be as powerful as it is, it would have to be comprised of-"
"-Countless souls of other undead, a few demons, some dragons…" The undead finished that little thought for her, and it nearly made her jaw drop. Along with the immense power, she felt something off about his soul before, but she wasn't expecting it to be on that scale.
"W-what? How? Humans are not able to absorb other human souls!"
"That mark I showed you earlier brands all of mankind. It denotes that we are cursed with undeath and a constant hunger for souls. When I kill something, or something dies near me, my mark may allow me to absorb the soul and add it to a kind of 'soul-storage' within me. I can then use those free-floating souls to do a number of things. For instance, I can increase the power of my own soul directly, or use them for trading. Furthermore, when we die our soul is not simply ripped out, it is mostly preserved for when we are reborn from bonfires, by our "Humanity." That is why the absolute bottom rung is a 'Hollow,' they have died to the point that they have even had the last of their humanity taken. These are the ones who give up and usually become insane feral mon-"
He caught himself at that, after all, he was in the presence of an actual monster. "Er… creatures."
While the Undead was speaking, he had his eyes turned down, he didn't catch Toriel's eyes welling up once more. She was horrified now. This man, and by the sounds of it, the rest of mankind, now existed only to destroy one another. To monsters, human souls are powerful, precious, rare, and sought after, but to mankind, they were nothing more than coins in their pockets to be gained, used, and traded.
She was almost becoming sick.
"How can you bring yourself to kill your fellow man in such a manner?"
"It stopped being 'fellow man' and became 'other undead' long ago. We have no choice. Many have no reason, even more have no goal, and a far greater number have no humanity, no drive or purpose that gives them a reason to go on existing. Like I said before, those who do not participate will eventually die to something and become an insane Hollow or fade away as they wait for the end. As for myself, I do not seek out the weak, nor do I attack the sane, only defending myself should they prove entirely hostile. I have traveled the remains of the kingdom and taken on beings stronger than myself, and won on quite a few of those occasions." He looked back up, and could see the sheer sadness Toriel felt as her tears ran free, he could tell the world above was unlike anything she could comprehend.
With a wipe of her sleeve, she had to keep on topic. "Well… if that is the surface as it is today, then Asgore's plans are totally moot. Of the seven humans who came before you, he has the souls of six. He planned long ago to use seven of them to break the barrier that keeps us here, but I doubt even having that many will be enough against what you described is happening above. Maybe it would be best if we stayed down here, after what you have made clear, the surface sounds totally uninhabitable for monsters…"
The Undead looked back down to the table, he found himself unable to look Toriel in the eye once more. As he thought on it, he started to feel a little guilty. He'd never looked at it in any other way, was participating really the only option? Would it just have been better to allow himself to fade away?
She wanted more answers, even though hearing them hurt. "It just terrifies me how this happened so abruptly, in between the seventh human and you, things on the surface went wrong, horribly wrong… do you remember what life was like before?"
The Undead shook his head in response. "Not at all. The farthest back I can clearly remember is when I would have first regained my Humanity after my first death, and even that memory is mostly faded." The Undead leaned forward in his chair to rest his arms on the table before him.
After the 'catching up,' the Undead and Toriel returned to just sitting in contemplative silence. Toriel felt uncomfortable, her job was to stop Asgore from reaching the surface and to protect the humans, but she now knew that humanity and the surface were totally lost causes. Knowing that made her feel… claustrophobic, for once in quite a while. She felt as if her isolation no longer had a purpose.
The Undead speaking up broke her train of thought. "As selfish as it is, I would like to go get my sword back now… if that is permissible by you, Toriel?"
She looked up at him, the tears dry now. "You do not have to ask for my permission, you are not a child, human. But I would prefer to go with you, the Ruins are a bit confusing at first, and it is still my job to watch over you." She stood with a shaky breath and waited for the armored man to do the same before she opened her home's door for him, magically shutting off the lights and then closing the door behind her.
She took the lead, and he followed. His metallic boots clacked against the odd purple bricks of the Ruins, and every now and then he'd crunch a crimson leaf underfoot. He felt his mind being weighed down by the guilt he'd felt earlier, he needed to get it off his chest.
"... I am sorry, Toriel."
Toriel slowed down to look back at him, but she did not stop walking. "For what?"
As he walked slower, the Undead reached up to throw his cloak's hood over his head, for whatever reason he still couldn't bring himself to look Toriel in the face, he felt like he just didn't deserve to. Like she was better than him, like he was less. All in light of the difference between their worlds and lives…
"I am unsure, I feel terrible for… just being me. For being 'human,' because the way you reacted to my existence above makes me feel like being trapped down here is far better than being up there…"
She looked ahead and quietly said her next piece. "You should not feel bad for being you, as long as you are honest with yourself. Like you said earlier, you had no choice in the matters you dealt with."
Even though she had just re-assured him, he felt his previous doubts come back with a vengeance before he set them aside for later, then picked up the pace.
They came to the spiked bridge puzzle. This one was a pain for Toriel on her way back home with the human. He was right behind her, waiting to go when on some odd instinct, she reached back and grasped his gauntleted hand…
Both of them became aware of what was happening immediately. The Undead became incredibly confused and Toriel took on a shocked look then jerked her hand from his, giving a little cough and hiding her face from him. She started to briskly walk the path, and the Undead had to pick up the pace a little to keep up with her quick walk around the spiked pathway.
They were on the other side in no time. The Undead wanted to ask what that was about, but Toriel kept moving forward without a word, and he stood for a few moments, looking down at the hand she had held.
In that short moment their hands were connected, he could once again feel her warmth even through his metal gauntlet, and after the warmth faded his hand felt like it was freezing cold for a short while before he got used to it once more. Are the living just that warm? Or was he just that cold?
He saw her round a corner ahead, and he jogged to catch up to her. Ducking through yet another doorway, he saw her enter the archway ahead. He decided to skip the stairs and jump right down to the lower level to keep up, his hood falling back as he fell. This archway led him to the place he'd been in earlier with the flower, a ray of light still shining in the center of the area; the flower was nowhere to be seen.
He saw Toriel standing in the light, looking off into the dark where the flower had been launched, waiting for him to retrieve his sword and shield. She was trying to avoid any eye contact with him harder than he had been with her earlier. He made for the doorway and immediately saw his claymore lying on the dirt in the near pitch-black archway. Picking it up, he noticed the tip had quite a bit of dirt caked on it, he had jammed it down into the earth after all.
He turned around towards the light after cleaning and sheathing the blade and froze. He and Toriel had both looked at the same time, and solidly caught each other's gaze.
For a while, the two just stood and stared at one another as they stood at the border between their respective worlds; one dark, swathed in guilt, blood, and death, the other light, innocent, hopeful, and waiting for life to get better.
And that applied to the two individuals, as well as the worlds they lived in.
(05)
