As the ice had cracked and a gaze most distinctly inhuman and foul appeared before Erimentha, Abel and Solomon, Elisud had made his move. Night had been falling more and more quickly and an even worse bout of windy, gusty snow had poured itself down upon the land in thick waves. It was nigh impossible to see more than a few feet in front of you, most of the monster guards were stuck chattering and muttering balefully as they remained on guard. They were also saying very, very unpleasant, foul things about Irish weather and making promises that, if they survived this, they were going to make a giant bonfire and feed, quote, "every fuckin' Irish fatass who peed on us from the ramparts to the flames".
It was a long list. The Dubliners did not care for the monster guards one iota, and any sense of civil combat had long since gone out the window when the two sides had taken to flinging their own garbage at one another, and acting shocked the other side would dare to do it.
Still, Elisud had a way to get around the problematic issue of the weather. He'd been practicing harder and harder, and now his green shielding had reached it's logical, most helpful endpoint…a faint, greenish shimmer just barely visible that sometimes flashed in the light, a cascading, almost skintight shield around his frame. It was, however, difficult to concentrate on. Immensely so, and it took a heavy strain on him as he inched his way through the cascading, thick white flurries of snow and ice barreling down from the heavens.
But he didn't need to worry long before he found the camps where the monsters were, and noticed something that the guards on the ramparts of Dublin hadn't. The tents at the far back were much more…larger than before. It was slightly hard to tell from atop the walls of the town, that was understandable given all the snow that obscured your vision, but now that he was seeing them, they were much larger than the ones closer to the town, and as he caaarefuly peeked under, avoiding the gaze of a guard who was more concerned about huddling around a nearby fire…
Oh dear. It was just as he thought.
Grillby, the fire elemental extraordinaire, was trying to cheer people up by passing out soup he was personally heating up with his hands, and trying to cheer them up with singing. It wasn't doing much good, the monsters were as bad off as people inside the town had been, they were clearly suffering from the plague as well.
Yes, without a doubt, half of them had sores. And then there was the vomiting and the diarrhea and the constant coughing and sneezing-
"BLAUUUUGGGGHKKKK!"
"Come on, men, let's try and remember, we're all in this together. Brothers, sisters, since we were girls and boys! Sharing each other's sorrows, sharing each other's joys!"
"My liiiiife!" Another monster sang out, an unfortunate female merperson who was puking into a bucket. "Is HEEEEEELL!"
"…Asgore and Maecoal…I've got to talk to them." Elisud murmured to himself. He pulled the tent flap he'd lifted up a bit back down, and made his way towards the obvious tent that was theirs…because he could hear them talking. Very loudly indeed.
"Okay then, so tell me, what is law, father?"
"What is a law?"
"Yes, what is a law?"
"A law is a rule approved by the majority."
"But in a tyranny, if a tyrant enacts a rule, that also a law?"
"By whatever sovereign power of the state orders, that is a law, yes."
"But isn't force the opposite of law?"
The guards outside the tent they were in sighed, shaking their heads. Clearly they'd heard this before. Using their weariness of the conversation to his advantage, Elisud snuck around them in the white haze of the snow and slid into the tent, and hid behind some crates of supplies, Prince Asgore speaking with his father as they sat around a small fire, a table with plans laid in back along with a weapon's rack, and a few books that appeared to be strategies for siege battle scattered around the floor.
"…I…yes, I suppose it is." King Maecoal sighed again. "Ugh, son, these deep sighs are murder on my back."
"So when a tyrant orders his citizens without persuasion, isn't that force?"
"Okay, that's a good point, anything done without persuasion is force, not law."
"So then when the majority takes the property of others, is that also force, not law? Isn't what we're doing force, not law? And we're not even a minority compared to humans."
"When I was your age, son…I used to be clever at these puzzles too." King Maecoal grumbled. "But we could be debating the ethics of war for years and years and never, ever reach an answer that satisfies us both. What we do need is an answer to the current plague that's ravaging us."
"I may have a solution."
Elisud now rose up, arms held behind his back as King Maecoal stared at him along with Prince Asgore. Prince Asgore blinked. "…OH." He remarked, King Maecoal's mouth hanging open in stunned shock.
"I am going to need to have words with my guards." He muttered before he held up a fist and clenched it as burning fire magic wrapped around it like a snake.
"Please do try to relax, sir, I'm only here to talk about our mutual plague problem."
King Maecoal unclenched his fist at this as his eyes flashed. "…mutual?"
"We're suffering from it just as much as you. I think it best we put off our fighting at the moment, and call a truce to help cure the plague that's assaulting our people." Elisud offered. "I'm having some luck with the symptoms, but it's not enough."
"We're experiencing the same with our own healing magic." Prince Asgore confessed…as he began to cough, and King Maecoal's eyes went wide. "Sorry, I've been laying on hands to try and heal the afflicted again and again, I do believe I may have…caught it. It's very unfortunate. I would ask if you perhaps want to have some tea with us to discuss all this but, well…you know how it is."
"We clearly have a serious issue, King Maecoal." Elisud offered. "Why don't I work alongside your healers and we can make a cure for both sides?"
"…I am ONLY going to agree because my son's life is now very clearly in danger. Because my people are out there, begging for answers, and half of them are vomiting up the meals they had only an hour before." King Maecoal quietly murmured at Elisud as he glanced at his son, then stared at the ground. "I don't trust you humans one iota, but I DO trust in your self-preservation instinct. You don't all want to die of plague, and if we keep waiting, you'll simply outlast us. I know there's more of you in there than out here." He grumbled. "…so very well. I'll take you to the tent we've set up…and I'll have Grillby speak to your town, and let them know we have a…temporary truce while we contend with this…most unfortunate issue."
"Shake on it?" Elisud offered warmly, holding out a hand. Maecoal sighed, shaking his head back and forth as Prince Asgore took the hand instead before reeling back.
"ACK! Wait, I don't want to infect you!"
"It's alright, I've crafted a shielding layer of protection around my skin, good sir." Elisud said, holding his hand up, pointing at it as they gazed upon it.
"Impressive." King Maecoal was rather stunned by the level of skill this had clearly taken, his eyes were wide with a kind of childlike amazement as Elisud sheepishly blushed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Most impressive."
"Well, surprisingly, and most regrettably, hardship and war has proven to be an excellent teacher." Eli sighed.
Meanwhile, on the island of Lambay, everyone was enjoying a nice sermon in the church after the local priests had taken them in. The people were packed into the church but were, rather understandably given how strange it was, casting odd looks at Sakamoto, Toriel, Tobias, Seiichi, Leopold, and most especially Gaster.
"And…and um…" the Father giving the sermon was struggling to not lose the plot of his sermon, but evidently he was just as distracted. The people there weren't that weirded out by Toriel, Pucas were fairly common sights in this part of the world. Sakamoto, an outright dragon, was a bit odder, but they had seen Western dragons once in a while. But no matter who you were across the globe, it seemed as though a skeleton monster was just plain unsettling.
"Er, as I was saying, we come to one of the most amazing miracles of all, when our Lord Jesus resurrected the dead!"
"Did he choose this topic just to take a shot at me?" Gaster quietly whispered to Leopold, who gently patted his shoulder, giving him a soft smile.
"He came to the cave, where a stone did lie across the front, laid there to mark the grave of Lazarus. Jesus said "Take ye away the stone!"
"Oh, I know THIS bit." Sakamoto grinned broadly as he looked over at Seiichi. "My personal favorite part of the New Testament."
"Because of the resurrection of the dead?" Seiichi inquired. "I imagine such type of magical spell or miraculous act would indeed be seen as a wonderously holy thing. Being able to bring back the dead sounds amazing."
"Oh, it's nothing to sneeze at, but…no, THIS next part's the best." Sakamoto said as the priest tried to move on in the sermon, folks whispering amongst themselves.
"And Martha did protest. "Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days!"
Tobias sniggered. "St-stinketh." He giggled. "Stinketh!"
"Lord, he stinketh!" Toriel giggled too.
The giggling became contagious. Folks were sniggering and giggling in their own seats now, the pews now having loads of smiles as folks began to guffaw openly, laughing.
"Did the Bible always have such dirtiness in it?" Seiichi inquired with a snigger.
"W-Wait until you get to "1 Kings 12" when the Israelites complain to Rehoboam and ask if he's going to be an improvement on his overly harsh father-pffft!" Sakamoto laughed. "He-he makes a joke…he says his little finger's bigger than his dad's loins! Ha ha!"
"First di-dick joke in all history!" Toriel laughed, and with that, all of the tension that had been in the room at having so many monsters packed in seemed to dissolve, the folks in the pews laughed and howled and roared with joyous merriment as the priest through his arms up in the air.
"Ugh! The Lord be with you indeed! Because I most certainly can't be right now!" He grumbled as he stepped down from the pew, hair flopping about like a saggy halo as he headed out the back door, and Gaster found himself grinning.
"It's good to see laughter is something everyone can share." He said as Leopold grinned eagerly.
"Oh, absolutely." He remarked. "Now why don't we leave and go play out in the snow a bit? You ever made a snowman?"
Unfortunately for Erimentha, for Abel and Solomon, things were not going so well for them. One moment, they'd been staring into a most horrifyingly inhuman eye, foul, unnatural and freakish that filled them with a kind of unending dread made manifest. Then, an instant later, each one found themselves separate from the other, and…somewhere wrong.
Eri was now stuck inside of the one place she absolutely did not want to return to. She was trapped on the ship, Captain Abel Roger's ship, as a storm tossed it to and fro. Worse still, there was blood drizzled all over the ground, someone had barely managed to drag themselves away, and they were, evidently, the lucky ones. Skinned-open people laid around Eri as she closed her eyes, biting her lip so much she almost drew blood as she covered her face and made her way forward.
"H-Hello?" She asked, reaching into her belt pouch, feeling the weight of her drawing chalk, getting it out and putting it on her arm, ready to quickly draw up any kind of weapon in a pinch. "Is…is someone there?" She asked, as she heard the roar of thunder outside the ship, finally stepping behind a large amount of crates, cringing at the smell…
Gasping in horror. It…it was Uttu. The spider monster's stomach was open, and…and her children were pouring out of her slowly, scuttling bit by bit towards Eri as she struggled not to vomit, failing rather miserably, a load flopped out past the small holes between her fingers. "URGHK!" She moaned out, almost keeling over as Uttu stared at her with unseeing, dead eyes, her children coming closer and closer.
"How could you two betray me? Why did you kill my babies?" She whispered in a voice that sounded like squashing bugs.
Solomon was curled up, screaming, yelling, howling. He was being assaulted on all sides, people poking him with sticks, towering figures that loomed over him, faces that were not faces leering down at him. How could they even be holding the sticks, they had no hands, nor eyes to see him, no mouths, and yet somehow they were smiling. That much he could tell. "STOP! STOOOP! PLEEEAASE!"
Every time they jabbed into him it felt like a cold, foul iron that had been left in the snow was sticking into him. He would have raced away, but they'd ripped his legs from him, all lying in a pile far away, faintly twitching, it was amazing he was still alive. "STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IIIIT!" He screamed out, their mouthless laughter ringing through his mind.
Abel was sitting alone in a single, empty room. He gripped the folds of his chair as, across from him…it stood. It calmly lit up a bit of smoking tobacco and nonchalantly smiled at him.
"Are you hoping for some sort of last minute aid? That the Lord thy God will send forth Angels from on High to save you? I'M your God, boy. I was always your God. You can't turn away from me. Try as you might."
Abel didn't dare look him in the eyes. He stared down.
"Aren't you going to say something? Go on. Spit at me. Yell at me. Say what a lie I am. But I'm here. I'm real. I'm more real than anything in those stupid books you thought clinging to would help. Your adopted God doesn't choose to answer you. You can pray all you want. It won't help."
Abel stayed quiet, the heterochromatic captain was shaking madly. He wanted to do something. SAY something. But what? It was as if he was literally pinned to the chair.
But then Erimentha, reeling back from the foul scene before her eyes, came to a realization. She had not thought about Uttu in days and days. Now, seeing her and her children coming towards her, she realized a new feeling was swelling up in her. She'd been mad by what Uttu had said on the ship before Solomon had interfered.
But now that anger turned into pure, undiluted hate. And she raised her foot up, and she STOMPED down on one of the baby spiders. A loud, wet, foul, disgusting SQUOLRCH noise rang out through the air as Uttu visibly stiffened and her eyes bulged wider than ever. Eri's face became almost bestial as she raised her foot again.
"How. Dare. You. How DARE you blame me for what YOU caused! What YOU caused with your blind prejudice and hatred! You couldn't wait, you couldn't be bothered to see them as people, and yet you claimed humans didn't see YOU as a person! The audacity! The hypocrisy! HOW! DARE! YOU!"
It was as if a small light lit up in the back of her mind that was now blazing into a towering inferno, and that small light shimmered across a thousand dimensions folding in and on themselves. Across the edge of the time knife, Abel Rogers now realized something, and he began to slowly lift his head up.
"I thought I'd be more scared of you. But I realize I'm not. I just…"
He smiled coldly. Horribly. "…I just hate you. And I think I want you dead."
His hands were around its throat. It was amazing it even had a throat, but oh, OH, it felt so satisfying to dig his fingers into it, forcing the thing down to the ground, further, further. He could hear neck and leg bones crack. He could smell the rotten fish stench of its body. It's screaming and yelling was too alien and yet too human, but hearing it, Abel knew true happiness.
Solomon rose up on legs that began to slowly emerge from his carapace. He dusted himself off, growing, growing in size. Those faceless things were now as little ants before him, scurrying around. He raised up a leg to squish them…and then stopped. "You know, you're just not worth it." He muttered, shaking his head, his thick white locks flopping around.
And with that, he that laid beneath the waves screeched. Slowly but surely he was being sunk down beneath the ice. Erimentha scowled at this foul thing, Solomon looking on with pitiless indifference as Abel stomped his foot on the thing's face. How had they ever been scared of something so…small?
CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH. It almost sounded like walking on snow. But that wasn't nearly as satisfying as what Abel was doing. Nothing, nothing like this deserved to live, deserved to exist in this world, and if he had his way, it never would again, Abel decided as he continued to bring his booted foot down. The thing's skull was a mess of yellow pulsating ooze and eyes, tentacles torn away by the force of the foot's blows.
Some things were beyond death. But the idea that this thing represented, if not killed, could be stamped out. Crushed. Broken. Perhaps, in time, put back together. Perhaps, in time, it would heal. But for now it was nothing but a disgusting bug under a rock, crawling away to die, every leg crushed as it prayed to a God it cared nothing for to let it just die already.
It's been said God answers all prayers.
…sometimes the answer is "no".