Chapter Ten
The ethereal force twisted and churned with an energy he found familiar, foreign, and intoxicating all at once. He leapt over a couple of bloodied bodies and felt that energy reach his fingers. A bright, harsh yellow flashed in the corners of his vision, and he knew-remembered- how to bend it to his will. Sans tossed up a numb, tingling hand and above it spawned a blaster, one of wicked appearance. With a manic grin, he commanded it to fire.
Well, well, what could that mean?
Sans blinked, unable to form an answer right away. Fractions of memory flicked in and out of his mind. Had his magic ever turned yellow? He looked downward, watching the cracks in the sidewalk go by.
Monsters, like humans, were born with a color trait which decided their base magic. Some were born with elemental powers instead. It wasn't impossible for one to use magic outside their natural color. It wasn't impossible for one's color to change. His soul was blue, entirely blue, and he certainly hadn't been doing any training. By all forms of logic he knew, his magic shouldn't have turned yellow. Annoying as it was however, logic wasn't exactly in operation right now.
"Ya know, 'm not sure."
"Eh, that's okay. We'll try to get your memories back at some point."
Daezl said, "we'll try. No promises on getting it done."
A few minutes went by. The snowfall grew heavier, a bright blanket draping itself over the world. Traffic had lessened to near nonexistence, and winter seemed to consume any instance of sound. The air was still and brimming with a sharpness that kept him alert. Daezl was leading them a little ways away from the main part of the city. Sans kept an eye socket out for familiar landmarks, finding none.
Juni piped up behind him, perhaps trying to break the tension. "So what have you been up to all this time?"
"Not a skele-ton. Drinking ketchup. Pranking people. Papyrus somehow roped me into this whole sentry thing while we were underground. I was supposed to be on watch for humans. But, y'know. I don't really care about capturing anybody." He shrugged. "One day, Frisk showed up, and you know the rest."
"Actually, we don't."
Mizera began chanting, "story time! Story time!"
He glanced back at them. "Well uh, y'see, I sorta knew the queen."
"You knew the queen of the Underground? Tell us the story!"
"I'm trying," he said with a chuckle.
"From the very beginning!"
He rolled his "eyes" and said, "okay, well like I said, Papyrus wanted us to be sentries. He wanted to be a member of the Royal Guard and he wanted me to stop being lazy. So I wound up with a bunch of sentry posts to sit at and do nothing. Pap's plan sorta backfired, because I love doing absolutely nothing."
"In the middle of the woods, there was this huge door that led to the Ruins. It was great for practicing knock knock jokes, especially when somebody started answering. It was the queen, or former queen I guess. One day, she asked me to promise her something. I hate making promises, and I didn't even know her name at the time. But anybody who likes puns and knock knock jokes can't be bad, right? So sure. She wanted me to promise that if a human ever came through the door, that I'd watch out for 'em."
"A human showed up pretty soon after that: Frisk. There was something kinda off about her. I wasn't kidding when I said life gets really weird sometimes, and something about this human told me she didn't need protecting. Works great for me; no effort needed. So I hung back and watched. She went through the Underground making friends with everybody, to the point that no one wanted her to fight Asgore. A bunch o' people came to the palace to stop 'em from fighting. Not sure what happened after that, but the barrier was down, so we all moved up here."
"That's… Interesting," said Daezl.
"Yep. So, why don't you guys know what happened? Where have you been all this time?"
"Later. We've got work to do right now."
Oro said, "we need to stop Siphas from breaking the universe."
He asked, "how?"
Juni and Mizera had somehow caught up with him. Juni gently tapped his shoulder with a wing, inviting him closer. Miz was still snuggled up in the feathers. The force in his soul pulled him towards them, a feeling he fought an internal battle with. No. He didn't know them; they weren't his friends. They were weird kidnappers who happened to know a thing or two about his memory problems.
"There are certain… weak points in the fabric of reality," Daezl explained. "What the cult's trying to do is catch us so they can take us to one of those weak points. If they can get Siphas through, that's when she's gonna go for our souls."
"And we gotta stop her," said Miz.
Juni seemed unbothered by the rejection. "We do that by collecting some of these ancient artifacts. They are-"
Mizera took over with renewed excitement. "They're some of the last remnants of a time before recorded history. Hardly anybody knows anything about what life was like 'cause of the whole "not recorded" thing. But we know enough to know that magic was different. Magic was all crazy and stuff. It was this new and mysterious element and nobody knew how it worked."
She clasped her hands together, a light in her eyes. "So how they used it was really different. The Old Magic- ah! I wanna time travel and see it all for myself! Daezl, can we time travel after this?"
"We couldn't pick up much, but we managed to learn about five, which is all we need," said Juni.
Oro named them off one by one, holding up a finger for each addition. "There's a staff some wizard guy used, a ring that belonged to a queen or something, a book no one can read, a shield, and a disc made of some weird crystal."
Sans blinked. "Okay so if you know all that, how do not know-"
"I said we'll explain later. The ring's closest to here; let's get that first."
He sighed in quiet surrender. "Where's the ring?"
"Not sure exactly, but it's in this general area. From what we read, I think there was a statue?" He looked to Mizera.
"Yep! The book said there's this big lion statue in the middle of the woods. No one's sure where it came from, but legends say the queen's descendants carved it, and hid the ring somewhere close! And only those with worthy hearts can find and wield it."
Sans thought to ask what book they'd read, but figured the answer would be "Later!" so he kept silent. Ridiculous as this was, he found it interesting. The notion of escaping them was far from his mind as he tried to piece together just what they were on about. How did the Old Magic help them beat the leader of the Illuminati? How did they know what they knew? By the stars, how in the world did this concern him?
All righty then, he thought. Let's see where this goes.