Hi everyone! Sorry tonight's chapter is so late. I was at a convention and I had a lot of homework.

DauntlessAngel11: I suppose Asgore's mother could be losing hope, but she is not going to fall down. There is one character, though, who is losing hope and is in danger of falling down if she's not careful.

Here's today's chapter:

January 26, 171 A.E.

Entry #28

Last night Toriel arrived! She seemed pretty tired, not to mention she was covered in twigs and mud, so she did not speak to me much before she went to bed.

Mother asked me to sit through some more meetings the day before the last. The chief of Shadowclan, Nightstar, wanted to close borders in all the major towns to protect them better. Lord Von Salamancer, Lady Cordiway, and Lord Heatsman pointed out that their borders are already closed save for important official visits. Mother refused to call for all the borders to be closed in the entire kingdom.

"Individual leaders have the right to close their borders if they feel it's necessary," Mother said, "But I will not do something like this in the capital, and I won't ask for the rest of the kingdom to do so either." Most of the leaders agreed.

After lunch, Mother sent me to go play with Carys and Sedna again. They were in the garden. Sedna was trying to change the color of her fins as fast as she could while Carys listed colors as suggestions.

"Asgore!" Sedna waved me over as soon as she saw me. Her fins had white, yellow, and pink stripes. "Name a color! Carys is running out!"

"Cerulean," I said. Sedna snorted and turned the fin on the left side of her head cerulean. "That's easy. Give me a harder one. Give me patterns!"

"Amaranth polka-dots on a flavescent background," Carys suggested. Sedna paused. Her fins became transparent.

"I don't know that color," she said.

"How do you do that?" I asked.

Sedna shrugged. "I just imagine what color I want my fins to be and it turns into that color. Kids in Flenin do this kind of stuff all the time." She grinned. "You know what's really cool? Watch this."

"Your mom said you weren't allowed to do that," Carys said.

"My mom's not here right now," Sedna replied. Her skin turned an ashy shade of brown. Her fins flickered and morphed into long black strands of hair. She smiled at me. Aside from her sharp teeth, Sedna looked exactly like a human. If she said she was from Paz's tribe, I would have believed her.

"That is amazing!" I said.

"That is also not allowed," Carys pointed out, "What if a servant sees you and thinks you're a human?"

"Can you turn into anything?" I asked.

"Technically I can, I guess," Sedna replied, "But not really. I can change little details like color and stuff like that, but I can't really change body shape unless I concentrate a lot." She held out her hand and tensed. Her arm grew longer. I tried to poke it but my finger just passed through it.

"It's just an illusion," Carys explained, "All glamour is."

"Yeah," Sedna relaxed and her arm turned back to normal. "Mom says I'm pretty good at glamour for someone my age, but changing shape is just hard to do in general. It's dangerous to hold a different shape for too long."

"Why?" I asked.

"Apparently if you use your glamour too much you can really strain your head," Sedna said, "And sometimes you can lose the ability to use glamour all together. Apparently fish monsters like me actually need to use glamour once in a while? Mom says that otherwise all the magic in our systems would go weird and we'd go weird along with it. I'm pretty sure some people actually died. They didn't use their glamours enough and it messed with their heads so much they got depressed and fell down."

"Ouch," I said, "I suppose it is useful and all, but why does your race have glamour if it can cause so much trouble?"

Carys raised her hand. "I know!" she said, looking mildly excited, "My Lord has been making me learn about different towns and their history!"

Fish monsters-the strong ones from Flenin and the artsy ones from Aria-both used to live in the sea with the sea monsters. Some of them evolved legs over time, though, and began to live among the humans. Humans got along with them pretty well at first. They respected all the creatures, animal or monster, that came from nature, since they came from nature themselves.

Years later new humans arrived from the other side of the ocean. They did not like the fish monsters and attacked them. Some monsters developed musical magic that lets them confuse human attackers when they sang so it would buy them more time to escape. They eventually settled near a small cave and founded Aria.

The fish monsters that founded Flenin learned to fight and developed glamour to blend in with the humans when they attacked. Eventually they also grew to look more like humans in shape so they did not have to work as hard on their glamours.

I thought being able to use glamour would be very cool. I could use it to flatten those tufts of fur on my ears that never flatten properly. Or I can get rid of my yellow hair. I do not like my yellow hair. Neither of my parents have it, although Mother says that her grandmother did.

That evening when I headed to my room, I passed by a tapestry of a blonde human woman with large purple eyes. Those eyes seemed to follow me as I walked through the hallway. It was very creepy. The next morning I asked Carys about the woman.

"That's Lady Grimme," she replied, "My Lord was her vassal when he was my age. He learned a lot of magic from her."

"Magic?" I asked, "I thought humans could not do magic."

"If they train hard enough, they can learn," Carys said, "Humans who already have a connection to monsters can learn magic more easily, but even if they don't, they can still learn. She knew my lord through his father, and I think she took him as a vassal so she could learn magic more easily."

"Who was Lord Von Salamancer's father?" I asked. I have never seen a human with purple eyes before, but humans with blond hair did not usually interact with monsters.

"My Lord was orphaned at a young age, so he was taken in by a human heir of a trading company. Lady Grimme's brother, the Red Knight, was his bodyguard and that's how she knew him. When he died, he gave My Lord a lot of money, which was how he bought the whole fuel company in Dalelry."

"Is Lady Grimme still alive?" I asked.

"No," Carys said, "She and her brother died in a duel with some monsters decades ago. I think her daughter and the Red Knight's son are still alive, though. They must be about seventy by now, which is really old for a human. Did you know humans can only live for about eighty years at most, Asgore? They age at a steady pace-even after they reach twenty-and grow old and die very fast."

I have always found human aging strange. They cannot control their aging with their emotions? How would they fall down, then? The only human I have had much contact with was Paz, and she never stopped to talk to me much. She had never explained human aging to me and Mother and Father never felt the need to. (Not that I asked.)

Mother took me to Toriel's room this afternoon so I could talk to her. She was still bleary-eyed, but she seemed glad to see me.

"Where were you the past few days?" I asked.

"Some guides showed me how to walk from the Capital to Dalelry," she replied, "They also taught me how to build a shelter and get food from the wild."

I frowned. "Why would they need to do that?" I asked, "You just need to call a Riverperson to get to Dalelry. This is unecessary."

Toriel stared at the ground. "Maybe there will come a time when you cannot call a Riverperson but still need to get to Dalelry, Asgore. What then?"

"Why would we need to come here?" I asked, "If there is a problem, we can always turn to Mother."

Toriel looked like she was going to say something, but decided against it. "I will be the royal advisor soon, Gorey," she said, "I need to learn how to protect you."

"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked.

"If..." Toriel took a deep breath. "If the Capital is under attack someday and something happens to the queen, we can find protection here in Dalelry. That is what your mother told me. The Riverpeople do not have a stable social structure. They come and go of their own free will, and their prices change. If we have no money, then perhaps we can find a Riverperson kind enough to take us here free of charge. Otherwise, we will have to travel on foot, and I need to be ready for that."

"I want to know what to do if that happens, too," I said.

Toriel shook her head. "You do not have to worry about that, Asgore," she said, "I am the royal advisor. It is my job."

"But-"

"You are a prince," Toriel said firmly, "You have other things to worry about."

Everyone says I have other things to worry about, but what are those things? It seems that everyone thinks I still cannot handle important things, but I am sure I can! Toriel is only two months older than me, but Mother already trusts her to walk to Dalelry by herself. Why does Mother not trust me to do the same? Why does Toriel not trust me to do the same?

I understand I am still a child, but I can be responsible, too. I just wish that everyone else knew that.

~Asgore

Remember that Mabel Juice is an abomination of sugar, edible glitter, and gummy worms and you should only take about two sips at most if you don't want to die of a heart attack.

Review!

~Pandora