Chapter 5

Sans couldn't believe what had just happened. The reaping hadn't gone according to plan, but he never expected that the girl would just up and disappear. Besides, what was with those shadows? If she had that power the whole time, why didn't she use it right away? He frowned, gathering his thoughts. "No, whatever she just did, it wasn't something she had hidden away. There was too much fear in the beginning, too much uncertainty. Something happened just now that gave her that power. The question is what it was."

He paced around the room, thinking furiously. She had changed right before she disappeared. Those pitch black eyes and that scream were proof of that. Was this what happened when a soul wasn't reaped in time? As Death, he was supposed to bring souls to the Underworld so they could rest in peace, assuming they were decent people in life, of course. Did a soul become like that when they aren't guided to the afterlife?

He stopped for a moment. "Come to think of it, Chara wasn't a normal human either. She had an energy around her, no doubt that spell keeping her young. I doubt I'll find any other humans whose deaths will need my personal intervention. But what was so special about her in the first place? What did she say she was? An acolyte or something?"

He let a long sigh. This was something he needed to ask Gaster or the king about. Although, they probably couldn't answer all of his questions. But first, he needed to find Chara and fix this mess. He was certain that what ever had happened to her was a result of his hesitation, his failure. If he had just reaped her when he had the chance none of this would have happened. He closed his eyes and thought of her name and image, searching for her.

But nothing happened. He could only see a dark void in front of him. What was going on? She was still clearly alive, how come he couldn't track her? He focused harder and an image came forth, but it was just the room he was standing in. His vision focused on the pool of blood she had left behind. "This isn't right," he thought. "They only thing I can find is what remained of her body. But if she's not dead, then that means she's gone somewhere outside of my perception. Either that or she's figured out a way to block me." Neither explanation meant anything good. No human, even one blessed with eternal youth, should be capable of such feats.

"Something's not right here. I need to find out what's going on." He pulled his hood over his head and disappeared.

He arrived back in the Underworld to discover that Papyrus had been quite busy while he was gone. There was a decent sized house backed up against the wall, complete with a garden and a storage shed. There was also the start of looked like a huge gate that would lead into the deeper part of the Underworld. Papyrus himself was standing before the gate and as Sans watched, materials seemed to appear out of nowhere and settled into their place. Sensing his presence, Papyrus turned and teleported over to his brother.

"Sans! Welcome back!" he half shouted.

"Thanks, bro. Did you do all this?" he replied.

"Yes! All I have to do is imagine what I want, and it just happens! It's a power worthy of the great Papyrus!"

"Gaster wasn't kidding when he said we could shape this place as we please," Sans thought. Out loud he said, "You did a great job bro, I'm impressed."

"Of course I did a great job! What about you? Did the reaping go well?"

"Yeah, it went fine. Think I'll wait till tomorrow to do the judging though."

Papyrus nodded. "Good! I have good news, Sans! I have seen and written down the list of humans that will die tomorrow. I put list in your room. Tomorrow, we can go out and reap them together!"

"Right. Uh, do you mind if I take the list myself tomorrow? I'd like to get a little more practice. Besides, you could use the time to finish your project over there."

Papyrus thought about it for a moment. "Very well, I shall stay down here tomorrow. I think you'll like what I'm building Sans! I can't wait to get your reaction."

"I'm sure I'll be amazed bro. Listen, I'm gonna head upstairs to chat with Gaster. I'll see you in a little bit."

"Ok! Enjoy your talk!" his brother replied.

"Heh. I don't think that's going to happen," he thought, and he teleported out of the room.

Gaster's house looked almost identical to the one Papyrus had built in the Underworld. "Guess we have more of him in us than I thought," Sans thought as he climbed the steps. He was about to knock, but the door opened before he even touched it. Gaster stood there with a smile. "You know, I'm capable of sensing another's presence for miles. You don't have to bother with all the formal practices of paying me a visit. I find them rather tiring actually," he said.

Sans returned the smile. "I'll keep that in mind," he replied. His smile faded. "We need to talk."

Gaster nodded. "Come in."

The interior of the home was about as normal as it got. It was well furnished, but nothing was too showy or dramatic. Gaster walked over to a recliner and settled down. "Please," he said. "Have a seat."

Sans made his way over to a large couch occupying the side of the room and slouched on it. After a few moments he said, "Something's gone wrong."

Gaster frowned. "Wrong? With what?"

"A lot of stuff really," Sans answered him. "Soon after you left, Pap got the name of our first reaping. It was a girl named Chara. Chara Dreemurr. And she was to die from old age."

He paused, waiting for a response. Gaster's face had gone still when he mentioned Chara's name. "I see," he said slowly.

"So there is something special about her. Interesting." Clearing his throat, he continued, "So I did what you told me and found her in a village. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that she was just a child. I thought that maybe Pap had screwed up or something, so I took a look at her age. She was older than anybody else in the whole town. Seems somebody had put some sort of eternal youth spell on her. So, there I was with a human who was supposed to die, but wasn't going to. The only way to deal with this situation was to directly intervene."

Now, Gaster perked up. "I hadn't thought about that," he said.

"Obviously not," Sans replied. "So here's the first thing I want to know. You know about this girl, Gaster, and I can only think of one god that would be casting eternal youth spells on people. So what was so special about this girl that she was granted such a gift. And why did no one bother to tell me about her?"

Sans hadn't even raised his voice, but the tension in the room had risen significantly. Gaster took a deep breath and said, "Yes, I know of her. And while I wasn't the one who cast that spell, I did help the person who did. It seems we have more unforeseen consequences on our hands."

"Well, I'm afraid I still don't see what you're seeing. So why don't you fill me in?" Sans replied.

"Of course," Gaster said. "You have a right to know, and I'm sorry it didn't occur to me to inform you earlier. Basically, the girl you saw was the first human that was ever created. Chara and her six siblings are the only humans that have walked in our realm. They were made the chosen acolytes of gods to carry our messages to the people. They were charged with teaching the rest of the human race about the gods, virtues, and what was right and wrong. Chara herself was made the Acolyte of Faith, effectively the leader of the acolytes. In time, Asgore had planned to establish an entire church hierarchy with those seven at the center. It looks like that won't happen now."

He paused, letting Sans consider what he'd told him. "Alright," he said. "That all makes sense, but why the eternal youth?"

"At the time they were created, the concept of death hadn't yet been proposed to balance out life. Up until you were created, humans were immortal. They would mature, but they would never die of old age. Asgore wanted the acolytes to have something that would make them stand out. Retaining their youthful bodies seemed to be the best way to do that."

"So that's when you put that spell on them?" Sans asked.

"Not exactly. While I am the God of Magic, the use of magic is something that any god is capable of, as I'm sure you've already figured out. I helped her work the spell out, but it was the Goddess of Life who gave the acolytes eternal youth."

"Goddess of Life?" Sans asked.

"Of course," replied Gaster. "It doesn't make much sense for there to be a God of Death without a God, or in this case, Goddess, of Life to also exist."

"Guess I haven't thought about it much," Sans muttered. He shook himself, then said, "Whatever, the point is that the spell has royally messed things up. I had to take a direct hand in her death, and that's when everything went wrong."

"Excuse me?" Gaster asked. "I'm afraid I don't see where you're going with this. Surely reaping the girl, even if you did have to kill her with your own hand, shouldn't have been a problem."

"Heh, that's what you'd think. It didn't go quite as planned. I'm not entirely sure what happened at the end myself."

Gaster sighed. "Very well, tell me exactly what happened."

A few minutes later, after Sans had recounted the confrontation between himself, Chara, and Asriel, Gaster's face had gone completely pale.

"Are you absolutely sure she had black eyes?" he asked.

"Yep. Dark as night," Sans replied.

Gaster sat in silence for a few moments, then said, "I'm afraid the situation is more dire than I had originally thought. To think that Chara of all people could be corrupted."

"Excuse me?" replied Sans. "What do you mean by corrupted?"

Gaster sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Do you remember when Asgore, Gerson, and I explained the reasons for your creation to you?"

"Yeah, I mean it literally just happened a few hours ago. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but you needed me and Pap to balance out life in order to keep this Chaos dude from messing everything up. Something like that, right?"

"More or less. Chaos doesn't exist in the same realm as we do and requires a gateway of sorts to enter ours. We came to the decision to create death when I encountered a human who had been corrupted, possessed really, by Chaos. He spoke through the human's mouth and was able to wield his power through him."

"Sounds dangerous," Sans replied.

"Yes and no. Alone, one corrupted human doesn't pose much of a threat, to the gods at least. However, we soon realized that any human could be corrupted under the right circumstances. With enough enslaved humans, Chaos would be able to break through completely. You see, when a human is consumed with extreme negative emotion and defiance towards the gods' established order, Chaos can slip through and corrupt them. I'm not sure if he can force himself on them, or if they have to choose to let him in, but the point is that its possible."

"Okay, what does death have to do with all of this?"

"The humans had started to become apathetic and even depressed due to their immortality. The human I found had simply decided there wasn't any point to his life, which led to depression and eventually corruption. We brought you and your brother into this world to give greater meaning to mortal life as well as provide cosmic balance. None of us foresaw this particular situation though. It should have occurred to me that some humans would definitely try to defy the death we had imposed on them. For that matter, we should have informed Chara and her siblings. It seems we've messed up in a colossal manner."

"Yeah, I'd say so. So you think that Chara was corrupted because she wanted to cheat death?" Sans said.

"More or less. Try to see it from her perspective. She had served us faithfully her entire life, became accustomed to immortality, and all of a sudden a stranger god shows up and tries to kill her. She likely viewed it as a betrayal. The part with Asriel probably didn't help either."
"Yeah, maybe I should have tried to be a little more diplomatic with him. I was caught in the moment though."

"Don't worry about it. He was away when we created you, so he didn't know anything about the situation. The king and I will explain everything to him when he reforms and returns. In the meantime, I think you should return to your duties and keep attempting to track Chara. I'm not sure if you'll be able to though. It's likely that Chaos has given her enough power to prevent you from finding her, but its worth a try. In the meantime, I will consult with Gerson and see if I can't find her with my own magic. You need to reap her soul as soon as possible, we can take steps to cleanse her after that. What matters now is that we keep Chaos from gaining any more ground in our reality."

"Alright, sounds like a plan," Sans replied. "I'll head back to the Underworld then. I'll let you know if I discover anything else."

"I wish you luck in your endeavors," Gaster said.

"Heh, you too. See you around old man," Sans said. Then he was gone.

Gaster sighed again. "I sense a storm coming. I just hope we can survive this time."