With a halfhearted judgment still fresh in their mind, the human leaves the last corridor and enters the throne room of the monster queen.
There's no hope, the skeleton in the grubby hoodie had said, not in the same mumble he'd used when he pestered them in that abandoned snowy town, but in a low, distinct voice that made their skin prickle. Even if you fought and killed her, she isn't a boss monster. You won't be able to take her SOUL or pass through the barrier. You have no way out. Turn back.
Their boots leave shallow prints in the cool, hard-packed dirt at the threshold of the throne room, and they pause. It doesn't look like a room at all, but a miniature marsh, with half the floor covered by pools of water edged with sea grass and the luminescent blue flowers that grow in the place called Waterfall. In the center is a round island carpeted by a damp white mound of an unidentifiable fluffy substance—could it be snow?—encircling a great golden throne, upon which perches a short, fat lizard monster dressed in a tiara and diaphanous white gown like something an elf from a fantasy movie would wear. Her hand is awkwardly propped up on the arm of the throne, which is so tall she could've used it as a headrest instead. The human might have thought she made a funny sight, if not for the crossbow lying across her lap. And the warning from the queen's friend, or servant, or whatever he was. No way out.
The white mound raises its head, which only partially clarifies what the human is looking at. They see fur with a texture that brings to mind a giant slime mold and a face without mouth or eyes, only a round black orifice with triangular ears above it. They stare, frozen, their hands clenched white-knuckled around their baseball bat. It's served well enough for intimidating the occasional Froggit or those giggling magicians in the Core, but the melted thing just makes a rumbling gurgle and wags its tail. The human blinks.
"Hi there!" says Alphys, queen of the monsters, which serves to remind the human that she's still here. "Or, um, greetings. I guess? Ugh, I still never know what to say when you guys reach this point. Um. Humans, I mean. Maybe I should... write some kind of speech in advance and... practice? In front of a mirror, or something?"
She giggles. It's a high, squeaky sound which only lasts until she sees that they haven't so much as cracked a smile. She folds her hands on on top of the crossbow and swings her feet. Her skirt swishes.
"S-so. You've made it this far. Which is... what I'd expected. I told everyone that they should run away and hide at the first sign of a human in the Underground... no matter how small and cute it might look, even if it seemed friendly... just to be careful. So it isn't like you had anyone standing in your way."
The human—who isn't small and doesn't see themself as particularly cute, and who has no intention of being friendly toward a literal monster—wades out into the knee-deep water. By now, they have a general idea of how these things go, so they adjust their footing and give the bat an idle swing as they wait for Alphys to finish speaking so the fight can commence. The giant gooey dog(?) cocks its head hopefully, as if expecting them to throw their weapon like a stick. They don't.
"Before I became the queen, I was the royal scientist. King Asgore... our old ruler... planned to destroy humanity once he had gathered seven human SOULs. He already had six, but... I thought if I could find a way to free everyone with what we already had, then... he wouldn't need to kill another human. Or become a god. We could just leave, and... there would be no need for war. I used to watch a lot of, um... human c-cartoons... I thought I understood humans better than most people."
Alphys flutters her hands. "N-not that I thought anime was REAL or anything! B-but if fiction reflects the culture and values of those who made it, then... well, I was really confident that humans cared about things like friendship and forgiveness, and that they knew it was wrong to hurt people. So I thought that if we just explained everything really nicely, then the humans would understand our situation, and... we could live together peacefully. It was naive, I guess. I was a really naive person."
Alphys lowers her eyes and mumbles something that sounds like incaseyouhadn'tfiguredthatoutbecauseIwastakinganimeseriouslybutitwasreallygoodanimeokay.
"...Maybe I haven't changed so much. I almost decided to spare you."
There's no hope. Turn back.
The human maintains a stoic exterior, or they think they do, but Alphys must see the suspicion in their eyes. She gives them a weary smile.
"No, really, it's true. I have a policy, it's... if you never hurt anyone, and you never tried to hurt anyone, then... I would consider... finding an alternative. B-but I saw you on my cameras. You almost hurt some of my subjects, monsters who were just trying to run away. You would have hurt Gerson if you could. And you tried to hit Sans TWICE, when he only wanted to give you a warning for your own safety. It's... it's a borderline case... you might only be attacking because you're scared... but I just don't think I can trust you. And keeping you captive down here would be cruel in its own way. Sorry. I know you want to go home."
Her smile frays around the edges and dies, and she glances away, fingers tangling together. She's wearing glasses with oval frames and thick lenses. For some reason, the human hadn't noticed until now.
"So did the—w-well, they weren't the first, but the first one to come here within my lifetime... the other human. Do you know about them?" Alphys looks back at the human. "Do people talk about them on the surface world? Or... did anyone down here ever tell you? Do you know?"
The Underground they traversed was a desolate place with nearly all the monsters hiding away, watching from windows or below the water where the human couldn't have reached them if they'd tried. But they've heard whispers about a certain other human. One with a striped sweater and a knife, or an empty gun, or pink ballet slippers stained with gray dust.
The human shrugs. They won't give this monster queen anything.
The giant gooey dog-thing sprawled around the throne makes a whine somewhere between a nervous puppy and a broken theremin. Alphys scratches it behind an ear until its tail thumps.
"There are others like this one," she says. "Monsters who used to be... d-different... before I made a terrible mistake. I tried to keep them all hidden, because I was so afraid of what might happen once the truth came out. And by the time I changed my mind, it was too late. These guys need to be looked after, but the human had killed most of their families. There was nowhere for them to go, the ones with nobody left. After all this time, they're still stuck with me."
The dog(?) lets out a huge bubbly sigh, stretching its rows of legs like a sleepy centipede, and rests its head on its front paws. Alphys leaves her hand hovering in the air where the dog's(?) head had been, then sighs more quietly and lowers it.
"Hheheheheh. Guess I'm rambling again. Sorry. I should... just get this over with."
Alphys slides down from the throne, clutching her crossbow as if she's still not entirely comfortable with wielding such a big ungainly weapon. Its shape is reminiscent of something one might find in a hunting store, but it's made of no material known to humans, glowing bright and yellow as plasma in the monster queen's stubby-fingered hands, with a bowstring like the filament of a lightbulb.
"Human. It was nice to... talk to you. Even if I was kind of just rambling. S-sorry. ...B-bye."
In each of the human's scuffles with the few monsters foolish enough not to flee on sight, they were always the one to attack first, but Alphys moves before they can even raise their bat, angling her crossbow up and firing a single bolt into the center of the pool directly in front the throne. There's a bang! like a miniature clap of thunder, and before the human can make sense of what she just did or why she didn't aim her attack anywhere near them, all the muscles in their body spasm and lock up, their hands in a painful vice grip around the bat as they fall, twitching, electricity magic coursing through them. They smell burnt hair and something like burnt meat, and then their face splashes into the water. It's no more than knee-deep, but without being able to move, they have no way to keep themself from sinking, drowning.
It doesn't matter, in the end.
From what seems like far away, there comes the sound of splashing footsteps and the buzzing hum of Alphys reloading her weapon, and then a second bolt rips through the human's neck.
No way out.
There's a metallic scent in the air, warm and cloying. Endogeny whimpers and presses its ears flat.
"Shhh," Alphys murmurs. "Shh. It's okay."
She allows her weapon to dissipate as blood trickles from the hole in the human's throat and clouds the water. She averted her eyes after killing the first one, though she barely remembers why. It had been easier than she expected, while the second was harder; their SOULs were orange and purple, respectively, and she remembers little else about those first two humans. They're dead. This third human is dead. Looking away won't bring them back, and if it did, she would just kill them again. She's already killed two.
Three. Now it's three. There aren't many monsters who can say they've killed three humans. Asgore killed more, and there's Gerson as well. But three is a lot. One would be a lot. She's killed three.
The SOUL hovering above the body is cyan, the color of an echo flower. Alphys cups it in her hands like a baby bird, feeling the magic pulsing through the thin scales of her palms, tinting them a faint green, and she wonders if the next SOUL will be green, too. The thought makes her feel unaccountably, pointlessly sad.
"Would you have thought this was right?" she asks aloud, looking down at the SOUL but speaking instead to someone who isn't here. "'Monsters, humans... everyone's hopes, everyone's dreams'... but look where that got you."
There was a time when she'd had a jar of dust, several leftover vials of Determination, and a very bad idea, and the loneliness inside her was so raw that she would've done almost anything to change the fate of a certain monster and make the ache go away. But she also remembered what it had been like to cower in a supply closet with her hands pressed over her ears to drown out the screams, and she remembered the feeling of Lemon Bread's accusatory stare when she went down to the true lab each day to feed everyone. She couldn't relive those moments again. They had almost killed her the first time around, after she emerged from the storage closet and saw what she had done to her patients, and it would have killed her if a certain person hadn't shown up at the garbage dump at the last moment, smiling and casual but also eyeing the distance between Alphys and the empty air, as if gauging how quick of a reaction would be needed if she tried to jump. She doesn't know what it would do to her to see unfiltered, helpless hatred written across that face, or hear that voice screaming in agony. She still has the surveillance footage of the fight on the bridge. She doesn't rewatch it anymore, but Sans once moved the tape without telling her where he'd put it, and she'd yelled at him loudly enough to wake the dead. Almost.
Alphys, queen of the monsters, tries not to wallow in self-hatred anymore. But there are times when she hates being herself. She wishes she could peel off her whole body as easily as shedding her skin so she could be a different person for a while.
Endogeny splashes after Alphys with its dozen feet and leans all its weight against her back, forcing her to to brace herself so she won't stumble. The Amalgamate's tail is drooping and the phantom dog-shapes in its shadow are fidgeting.
"Sorry," Alphys says, giving the giant dog a pat. Froth dribbles from its face-orifice onto her shoulder.
Endogeny burbles and Alphys stands up on her toes to scratch it behind the ear until it forgets about the corpse and bounds over to skitter up a wall, its tail a helicopter blur. Then she takes out a jar from her dimensional box and tucks the SOUL away with the others. She still doesn't know why Asgore didn't listen when she said to absorb the six he'd gathered; maybe he did listen but couldn't get to the SOULs before the human got to him, or maybe he decided for some reason that it would be better to refrain. In any case, there's no one around to tell her what to do or how to do it, and in her own judgment, it seems best to always keep the SOULs close at hand.
At the sound of a faked cough, Alphys looks up and sees Sans standing on the dry bare spot at the doorway. She hadn't heard him come in, though she did hear everything he said to the human and the two others before them. They never listen. He never acknowledges that the last corridor is bugged, though she's sure he knows. And she never acknowledges that he is, technically, undermining her policies with his half-assed effort at keeping the humans away from her.
"welp," Sans says.
"You'd think they would know not to climb the mountain by now, wouldn't you?" says Alphys. "Somebody could put up a sign, at least? 'Ten out of the past eleven people who yeeted themselves into the Underground died, don't do that'. Or something."
"heh heh heh."
The human's clothes are sodden and their body is sinking under the water. Later, she'll move them, have them cleaned up and wrapped in strips of white cloth and laid to rest beneath the castle. For the moment, Sans is watching her watch the human, and it makes her squirm. Is it shame that she feels, even after everything? She's already killed two other humans and they're both intimately aware of what her SOUL now looks like, and yet she still feels the sting of shame. Well, hey. Would she still be Alphys if she couldn't feel bad about herself?
What she feels right now is tired. And a little stupid, all dressed up the way she is. She's never going to be completely accustomed to wearing a crown and pretty dress, no matter how long her reign lasts.
"Doggy? C'mon, we're going," she calls, craning her neck.
Endogeny's up on the ceiling now, its sticky feet leaving white spots all over the place. Sans is looking everywhere except toward her and the corpse. Endogeny slithers down and snuffles at him, then return to Alphys and accepts another pat on the head. Blood seeps into the dirt at the edge of the pool.
Alphys sighs.
"Come on. Let's go tell everyone that they're safe now."
