9 WHAT IS FORGOTTEN IS ABANDONED
Toriel's back was turned to Frisk, her tall body flickering in the firelight from the torches. A wall rose up before her so high it vanished into the darkness hanging like a cloud above the light.
"Within these ruins holds no way to return to the surface…" Toriel said, with her back turned from Frisk. "The only other way… lies beyond these doors."
Frisk was silent, fingers numb and freezing. It felt as though someone were leering over her shoulder. "Ms. Toriel…?"
"I understand… if you want to go home. If you must… then I will let you pass through these doors. But please…" The lion woman shifted slowly and faced Frisk with a sharp look to her eyes, the fires from the torches almost burning within them. "The world of monsters is a dangerous place for a human."
It took a moment for Frisk to summon her voice. Sound was so much louder in these halls, though, and speaking normally was almost shouting. "Not all of them… are as nice as you are?"
Toriel shook her head side to side, "That isn't the case… you see, there is a barrier, a wall between our worlds that is far stronger than the stone that surrounds us." She waved a hand at the dark, cold walls. "It is a powerful magic set here to seal us away, and keep us divided from humanity."
"Magic?" Frisk found disbelief stirring within her, but at this point it seemed stupid to have such doubts. Of course magic existed. She'd been tossed around by an invisible monster, scraped and cut by nothing, and now she was talking to a lion woman wearing a purple dress walking on her hind legs. So Frisk had nothing to argue. "I take it there isn't a staircase that will take me back to the surface?" she said gloomily.
Toriel's shoulders hunched. "I'm afraid there isn't… you see, this world… is very much cut away from your own. However, there is a part of the barrier that serves as a sort of door… but you need to have the right keys to "unlock" it. Human and monster souls. But that door, that gateway dwells beyond the castle. And to get there, you will need to pass through the homes of many monsters. Unless you can defend yourself, or be a monster yourself, you will surely be attacked. Considering the idea that any of them are well learned and actually know what a human looks like…"
"So why will they attack me again? Is it because humans sealed them away?"
Toriel closed her eyes and hung her head. "While many monsters are happy with their homes here… many more wish to leave this… this underworld. They wish to break the barrier, for everyone to be able to pass through it should they wish." Clasping her hands together, she raised her head, and there was a sadness just barely visible through the almost absent look on her face. "For monsters to break the barrier, however… they must have 7 human souls. They possess all but the 7th at this time. And if they know the 7th human is amongst them… Frisk, they will kill to get their hands on your soul. For it will mean their time in the Underground is over."
A tap echoed through the hall as Frisk took a step back. "I'm the 7th human that's fallen down here?" her voice trembled. "Uhm… but… so it doesn't matter… if I don't try to fight back? Even if I wouldn't hurt them?"
Toriel grimly replied, "Even if you are a child… you will be spared no mercy."
"You- you acted like- like there was a chance I could actually make it to the castle though? If I did fight? H-how do I do that?" Frisk's voice shouted desperately.
Toriel looked away. "It is either you or them. They take your soul, or you take theirs. You only need a monsters soul to pass through by yourself, if you are to cross the barrier without breaking it and letting monsters flood into your world."
"I… need to kill someone?" she said breathlessly, tearing at her hair. "Why… why was I taken here?" she frowned suddenly, something clicking into place. "You said no monsters can cross the barrier without a human soul…?"
"Yes?" Toriel tilted her head to the side, frowning. "What is it?"
"The one who brought me here… they had a human soul." She said quietly, scratching at her head, twisting her hair.
"The invisible one?" Toriel's eyes and voice sharpened. "Are those your glasses?"
Frisk nodded slowly. "He threw me down the stairs to get me to come here, and they broke… He won't let me go back."
Toriel stiffened, and something dangerous flickered behind her eyes. "He brought you here to make you the 7th…" she was silent for a moment, eyes darting left and right, and then she focused on Frisk, no- perhaps a bit above her… "Frisk, run!"
Before Frisk had the chance to blink, a heavy force slammed behind her, flinging her away to stumble into the arms of yet another invisible monster. "Hey!" Frisk was held back as blindingly hot white fire engulfed the hall, and a figure shape in fire scrambled through the flames, wailing in terror.
"I will not let them take you beyond these doors! The fate of your world depends on it!" Toriel turned to see Frisk being carried by yet another monster, eyes like white hot flames. She extended a hand towards the monster holding Frisk, and the flames surrounded and shot towards them. Closing her eyes, Frisk waited for the flames to attack, but she didn't feel them. Instead, the monster behind her began to wail, and dragged her away, flaming. Yet Frisk wasn't burning.
"Leave her alone!" Toriel's voice roared, making even Frisk tremble in fear. The monster's grip was loosening, and Frisk jerked away from them, turning to see the creature only now visible in shape because of the fire. They stood a head taller than Frisk, and were thin, only a small layer of skin was stretched over their bones. Their eyes were wide, their jaw dropped in a wail of pain. Their eyes were locked on Frisk, and they were reaching for her again, even through the pain.
"What are you trying to do?" Frisk stammered, backing away.
Toriel was beside her, putting a hand on the monster and setting her claws around its throat. The fires consuming it dimmed, but it was still in pain and consumed with panic. "If you don't wish to join your friend, please, enlighten Frisk and I as to who you were taking her to." Every word Toriel spoke dripped with carefully measured malice.
Frisk couldn't stop staring at the mad snarl of very massive incisors between Toriel's jaws, and the muscles that quivered beneath her quilling fur. While the lioness was doing this to protect Frisk, it was none the less frightening. Frisk found herself backing away from Toriel and the monster.
The monster only hissed, clawing at Toriel's arm. "
Toriel glowered. "You can't talk, can you?"
The monster hissed again, and this time suddenly jerked and lashed out with claws at Toriels' face. She took the blow, but kept her hold on the creature and caught its arm. But then its legs began thrashing and it snapped and flailed violently.
If there was a moment that all the air, time, and the flames froze, it was then when a calm, yet malevolent voice called from the depths of the tunnel: "You are so cruel to your own kind, dear Queen… we are only desperate to be free from the humans curse…"
Toriel looked into the tunnel, and Frisk followed her gaze, stifling a gasp. The man from the mirror strode out of the darkness, the flames of the torches flickering out two by two upon his passing. Narrow stars from the hollows of his eyes glared down at Toriel. "Why do you resist? Is freedom not what we all want?"
The new energy that had overcome Toriel was calm, but a strange tense focus in her movement prowled as she stood and regarded the approaching pale figure wrapped in darkness. "We can survive in this place without the oppression of humans, and without senseless war to bring upon the earth! Without their prejudice! And you... you would sacrifice another child?" her words were like sparks in the fiery maw of a dragon.
"Do you presume I cannot? The oppression still exists! We live without the benefits of the surface, and it is killing monsters! Do you understand how many monsters lives could be saved if we only had access to certain plants? Would you sacrifice hundreds of monsters, for the sake of this single human?" The inky darkness of the man's robes seemed to infect the air… The white fires moved back to surround Toriel and Frisk behind her like a shield.
"You should have surrendered to the core's flames long ago! I will finish what it could not!" the fire consumed the man in black.
Through the crackling of the angry fumes, there was a chuckling, and the man parted the flames as he walked through, and he was smiling, his eyes dangerously narrow, like the single shaft of light in a black hole. "Oh, dear Queen... you did succeed. Nothing remains of me in this world to be burned."
Jerking in alarm, Toriel stepped back, and held out a protective arm to Frisk. Before she could, the monster she had been holding down leapt up and hooked its arms around Frisk and dragged her away, hissing. "Frisk!" the despair in her eyes made Frisk cry out in fear.
"Toriel…" the skeletal monster towered nearer to the lion woman, and she met his gaze, desperate flames burning in the palms of her hands. "Calm your fires… and step aside." He looked amused, but there was a snarling to the way his eyes flashed. Go back to your little home… Let me save all the monsters you left behind."
A growl rumbled warningly from Toriel's chest. "Gaster… What has become of you?"
The man shrugged, the smile still twisting cruelly over his skull. "Nothing anyone will remember." The dark overwhelmed the fires, and suddenly they were gone. A blinding flash of white light revealed Toriel withering forward, engulfed in black flames. She gave a woeful cry before collapsing, disappearing into a deadly embrace of darkness.
"Toriel!" Frisk fought and squirmed, but now the world had faded and gone black, and she couldn't see where to go or what to do. Every few seconds there was a dim flash of white, and she would see the vague silhouette of the skeleton man standing over the fallen monster. The room was suddenly so impossibly dark, and the only lights that remained were the two stars of the shadow man's eyes turning to look upon the quivering human in her frail captors arms.
"Frisk…" the name was spoken like it were a drop in still water that began to ripple, echoing through the dark almost deafeningly.
Her vision was blurry, blinded by darkness, but now crept a similar feeling upon her own thoughts. A blinding of fear and confusion, and she couldn't be sure whether she might be dreaming or truly awake. Here there was only true darkness, the rapid pulsing of fear in her chest, the hastiness of her breath gasping for air. Was there something covering her nose and mouth? Why was it so hard to breathe? It was like she was drifting across violent waves on water… swaying up and sliding down, sinking, and resurfacing…
"You are so alone… in a world far different from your own. Without a means to understanding what it truly means to be amongst the monsters who were locked away here… and the hatred they possess for your kind. How will you ever defend yourself… when Toriel was unable to keep her promise of training you?"
Unable to find the strength to form words, Frisk just looked left and right in the darkness. But only with her eyes. She couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. Her nerves racked with fear so much she could barely think straight!
"But hers would be a fruitless effort anyways… even if you became strong, without magic all your efforts would amount to nothing." The voice held its breath for a moment, and then said with a sigh, "You poor creature… your eyes are so dull, but they have such a beautiful color. Hmm… well… it doesn't matter; the eyes are only a gateway, and while yours are quite foggy, they do not hinder my plans."
Cold hands and something sharp pried at Frisks' eyes, something catching her upper and lower eyelid, and still she could see nothing. The sharp thing suddenly cut to the side of her right eye, and she cried out, but her voice was muffled.
"You are in pain. I apologize… I have no pain killers. And for things like these, the patient must be awake." A red light emerged from the left of her vision in the pliers of a hand holding them, and Frisk was able to dimly see a hazy blur of the monsters skull like face. The red moved closer to her right eye, until it consumed her vision, and was suddenly unmistakably under the surface of her eye! A searing heat came from the red, and her head began to pound dizzyingly. "There, there… almost done. You will have your magic yet…"