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DAY TO DAY
Chapter 3: Integrity
The dripping blue-veined caverns of Waterfall were widely believed to hold some of the most beautiful sights in the Underground, but there was a reason most of its long-term residents were either aquatic, thick-skinned, or incorporeal. The ceaseless wet took what remained of Snowdin's bitter air and turned it into a gnawing, unpleasant chill that clung to the skin like a sheathe and wormed down to the bones; the ground underfoot was either full of puddles or dark sucking mud that could swallow a full-sized monster halfway up to the knee, if they had knees; many of the caves and corridors were cramped and low-ceilinged, so that, with that blue tinge in the air, one eventually began to feel as though they were trapped under glass. That last issue didn't apply to the marshlands, though, where the reeds grew tall and the water glowed cobalt from the magic that had seeped into Mt. Ebott. Here, the only sound came from the shivering grass, and the dripping rocks, and Asgore's own footsteps, which splashed and clanked no matter how hard he tried to disguise them. He brandished his trident in both hands, and its thin red outline burned in this cave like a wound. The gleam of another soul canister could be seen under the folds of his mantle.
His pace was slow, his posture hunched. The trident shook in his grip. His eyes darted in every direction, but there was only the grass and the glow and the tall amorphous shadows printed on every wall.
Then, a voice, so close it seemed to be resting on his shoulder. It was a girl's, breathy and lilted, like a modulated yawn:
"You've killed me three times."
Asgore spun on his heel and the trident lashed out, cutting a thatch of marsh-grass cleanly in half. The pale green leaves leapt in the air as if startled, and then floated down along with a miasma of dust. No one was there. But again the voice sounded, now on the other side of the cave:
"This dance is so beautiful that I don't want it to end."
This one was different.
It had been a nice day; he'd made a note in his journal. The phone had rung when he was gathering up his gardening tools for the day's usual excursion downstairs. He shuddered to think what might have happened if he'd left any sooner.
The girl that came from the direction of the Ruins had been quiet, smiling; she'd walked as if half-asleep, steps that were strange and slow and delicate. By now the woods around Snowdin had been cautiously judged to be safe again, and once again, the monsters in that region hadn't realized that she was human – there were so many kinds, with so many behaviors, and they were so rare that only the Royal Guard bothered to keep a lookout for them. The first few monsters to greet her had been killed on the spot. So had anyone nearby. And then the ones who'd tried to run. She had continued toward Snowdin Town at that same easy pace, dust sticking to her soles.
A few lucky refugees came screaming the news – this human wasn't like the last one, her attacks didn't even injure, she simply tore them apart as if they had never been anything more than a thin skin of dust in the first place. The townspeople, already on edge from the memory of their last visitor, had bolted their doors and fled down to Waterfall. The last few stragglers saw her enter the village perimeter. 05 and 06 had been there, and prepared to fight her, and hesitated. The human had struck them down in a single blow apiece, so quickly it was impossible to tell who'd died first.
Asgore heard all this from Gerson, who'd heard it from the refugees and then made the call in between hasty, desperate attempts to keep some sort of order and evacuate to the Capital. He'd delivered the news, and then told him, with significantly harsher language and quite a lot of shouting, to get out of that castle and come save his people while he had people to save. And so Asgore had run out and towards Waterfall, the canister knocking against his side, and felt that sensation once again – that dreadful, inexorable movement in the pit of his stomach, the future pulling him towards some grim conclusion.
He couldn't remember how he'd gotten here. He didn't recall when he'd manifested his trident. He was certain he'd know if he just took a moment to concentrate, but a moment's distraction here could prove fatal. The air was thick with dust and déjà-vu, and silent except for when the girl chose to speak.
"It's so cold."
She seemed to be everywhere at once.
"There's a terrible chill on my shoulders. If I had known, I would have dressed more warmly. Instead, I must keep moving. Flowing blood warms the limbs. And I can distract myself. With a sound."
Asgore flung out a hand and a sheet of flame erupted from the nearby marsh. No one there, but the burning orange light printed a new shadow on the cave walls, its head reared back and its limbs bent like a spider's.
"Such a beautiful sound. Like pouring out a cupful of sand." A giggle. "I wonder. How many more times can I hear it?"
He didn't speak. No use in giving away his position further. And something told him that talking would do no good, anyway. The girl talked as if she wasn't even aware that he was here.
"It's just us, isn't it."
He jumped at that; it was like she'd stolen the thought from him. He sidled over a patch of mud and peered into the dark. Nothing there. But beside his footprints, another pair, impossibly faint even in the gasping muck, faded away.
"Everyone else is gone." She didn't sound particularly saddened. "It's only the three of us now. You. And me. And my little voice."
Invisible. Invisible. He set more fires, slashed at the grasses, and only found more crazed shadows and faint, amused laughter. The girl stepped so lightly she couldn't be heard, she seemed to float on air, he wouldn't even know if she was here at all if not for her relentless chatter and the dust that trailed in her wake like a freight of ghosts.
"A friend, perched on my shoulder. Every time I hear that beautiful sound, it speaks to me. Keep going. You're doing so well. Don't let any of them get away. Like I'm carrying my own audience with me, always clapping. But who would speak so much and never show their face? It must be someone very sad and strange."
A footstep splashed behind him.
"Show me your face, sad stranger."
He turned just in time to see a blur of shadow and movement, and something cracked against his chest and shattered his breastplate like glass; he expelled a violent susurrus of air, the blow having knocked even the voice out of him, and collapsed to his knees, hands clutched over the wound. His trident clattered to the stones beside him. A shimmering pink shoe stomped it in half, and it burst into sparks.
He drew in what little breath he could and slammed both palms down on the stones. The earth around him exploded in pyrotechnic light. He staggered out of those gouts of flame, barely able to stand, the girl's delighted peals of laughter clinging to his heels.
"Like stepping on a frozen puddle! Beautiful sounds. Beautiful feelings. I've gone looking for them everywhere."
The clutching shadows surrounded him as he tried to find shelter, both hands pressed over his chest. Dust streamed through his fingers. His every labored breath felt like it would shake his body apart.
He remembered the war.
It had been a farcical affair from the beginning. A tragic, brutal joke. It barely deserved to be called a war at all – there were certainly no soldiers on either side, not when the entirety of monsterkind was a target, not when the very strongest monster could be easily struck down by the very weakest human. But there was the question of souls. The same paranoia that had sparked the conflict in the first place. A single human casualty could have turned the tides completely. So humanity had continued their assault, first with fear and then with hate and then with neither, just a grim and passionless determination, cutting down his people in swathes and leaving the air clouded and choking on their remains. It wasn't even a matter of strength. There was something in the nature of humanity that was anathema to monsterkind, a potency, a twist in those souls that no monster could explain or understand. If they were sufficiently motivated, humans seemed to alter the world through their presence alone, the future cracking apart and giving way under their unrelenting will. And on some battlefields Asgore had felt the same thing he did now – that distortion in time and memory, déjà-vu that ate at him like a toothache.
It was absurd. Monsters had kindness etched into their being, they needed considerable time and effort to justify the act of hurting anyone at all. Whereas the humans couldn't afford to be kind, because kindness would have softened their blows; they were empowered by the need to hurt, and the empowerment became motivation, and so they had marched on and on, their violence feeding into itself, until what remained of Asgore and his people had been driven into the dark. And now here was one more echo of that dismal time. This laughing phantom that killed so easily that she barely seemed to understand her victims even existed.
That laughter drew closer as he slogged through the marshes and into a small grotto, where the reeds grew no more than ankle-height and the ceiling was studded with those false, gemlike stars. No other way out. He looked over his shoulder and thought he saw a silhouette, closing in.
The two souls he had collected slept now in the Underground's very first cavern, whose mouth was covered by the pulsing opaque sheet of the barrier. Sealed into the very stones, with the most potent spell he could muster; he'd taken great pains to make sure that he was the only one who could ever, ever retrieve them. If he'd taken just one of them in preparation for this battle, he could have destroyed the human effortlessly. But he couldn't. Even now, the thought of unsealing one of those jars and absorbing the light inside nearly made him retch.
He hobbled to the far end of the cave, and turned, and collapsed, sliding down the stone wall. The purple of his mantle darkened to black as it drank up the puddles underneath. He looked down at his wound; his entire gut seemed slightly concave, and when he pulled away his hands dust ran out in trickles.
He had to laugh. After all he'd seen and done, dying like this was almost too appropriate.
"Asriel," he said, and tried to remember his son's face. He failed; that glare still blinded him. But, he thought, that shouldn't be a problem for long.
"Asriel," he said again. "Forgive your idiot father. It looks like I'm following in your footsteps after all." He grimaced at the pain. "I just hope you and Chara waited for me."
That sleepy, toneless voice strained through the grotto's mouth.
"You must be tired." Approaching footsteps. "It's okay to rest."
She emerged. Dark of hair and skin and eye, so for a moment only the frosted pink and white of her clothes were visible, floating disembodied in the murk. Then the rest of her form bled into view, the half-lidded eyes and lazy sideways smile and dainty, outstretched fingers. Her sparkling pink shoes, smeared with dust like sugar, stepped among the stones in a jerky, uneven rhythm like a failing windup toy, always picking where the puddles were shallowest, and dust shook off the stiff hoop of her skirt with every footfall. He saw no compassion in her stare. He saw nothing that he could even recognize.
She said, "I think this dance is over."
With that same languorous grace, she stepped out of her shoes, pulled away her skirt. She stood before him in only her leotard and tights, thin as a matchstick.
"The last one your size made a terrible mess," she said, and started to advance again. "I must do my best to stay clean."
Those were the last words he would ever hear. More absurdity.
Still, he couldn't entirely let go of hope. By now Gerson would have evacuated everyone and prepared to take a stand himself, and maybe, though Asgore thought this a touch optimistic, news of the king's death would galvanize the monsters enough to strike this human down. From there, his people would need to take the future into their own hands. Try as he might, he'd never been able to keep ahold of it himself. Here it was now, approaching step by step.
And at this final extremity, he couldn't lie to himself. More than anything else, he wanted to see his family again.
Asgore's eyes flew open wide.
Toriel. In the Ruins, in their old home, which had become a checkpoint for each of the humans to fall thus far. Who would have stood in the way of this child smeared with his people's dead.
"Her too?" His voice was a horse creak.
"Oh? It spoke." She kept walking. "What did it say?"
"Toriel. The woman in the ruins. Her too?" He rose inch by painful inch, propped against the back wall for support; his lips peeled back, fangs bared. "Did you kill her, too!?"
She stopped.
The girl's smile was gone. Her eyes now wide with shock. Asgore watched her placid expression crumple like a paper bag.
"How dare you," she said. And then: "How could you?"
To his astonishment, tears started running down her cheeks. She knuckled them away, sniffling.
"She brought me pie and tucked me in. Her house was the warmest place I'd ever been. She even tried to find me new shoes. She tried so hard." The girl's lip quivered. "She smiled when I danced for her. The most beautiful thing I'd seen. You think I would spoil that? Do something to take it away? What kind of person do you think I am?"
He didn't answer; his traitorous throat had closed up again. But seeing her there, bent double and still coated with the dead, his only answer would have been, I don't know.
Little by little, she straightened again. She tilted her head, still frowning. She was no longer watching him; her gaze was fixed on something unseen.
"Little voice, you've gone so quiet. What's the matter?" Then that lazy smile crept back onto her face. "Oh. Oh, I think I know."
This was his only chance. He grit his teeth and flung both arms out.
Three trails of licking fire raced in from the grotto's periphery, thin red lines cutting through the blue. As the girl's eyes flicked back over to him, they snaked between her feet, and the ground glowed hot.
She said, "You must be-"
She gasped as the flames underfoot erupted, a great burst of fire that sprang up to the ceiling and turned the world into a negative of itself, the quiet blue light now blazing hot. The center of the chamber had become a torch, and consumed the girl entirely. Asgore slumped, and clutched at his wound again.
"You should be smiling, too."
His head snapped back up, mouth agape. She was still there, upright in the fire's embrace, a macabre wick in a great candle.
"Smile," she said. "Because everything ends. Even terrible things."
He watched her stand en pointe, one arm crossed over her chest, the other raised up high, fingers curled, as if she meant to seize the false stars overhead. A figurine in flame. Her grin widened until her teeth shone even through the firelight, and fire licked between those teeth like breath.
"Ah...it's so warm."
Then she extinguished, and collapsed, and did not rise again. All that remained of her was a single point of light, beating deeper blue in the grotto's wet and silent air.
There wasn't any celebration waiting for him this time. The monsters had huddled in whatever cellars or dark corners they could find, waiting for news of victory or defeat. He returned home alone, in silence, taking slow and hobbled steps. In the crook of one arm he held the girl's body, weightless as air and barely charred, the dust from her clothes mixing with the dust from his wounds. And in the other was the soul, trapped under glass, strangely lively. It swayed from side to side in its prison, as if dancing to music that only it could hear.