Hi, everyone! Sorry that there wasn't a chapter last week. I had writer's block. To make up for it, I'm posting two chapters today. Here's the first one:

March 11, 171 A.E.

Entry # 32

My hand is still shaking as I write this. I do not know why I am so distressed now of all days. It is my birthday. I should be celebrating with Asgore and Queen Amoura and not holed up in my room sobbing hysterically. Oh, how disappointed with me the queen must be!

I had been excited for my birthday. Today I turned into a teenager with plenty of frivolous celebration, like birthdays ought to have. There was no dance party like last year and every year before that, but I was glad for a quieter celebration with just the staff and guards in the castle.

Queen Amoura said that we will just have smaller celebrations like these from now on until the end of the war. Asgore was disappointed that we were not allowed to invite Wingdin here, and so was I, but I understood the queen's wish to keep things quiet.

Everyone wished me a happy birthday, and I absentmindedly responded and moved on. Soon I realized that I was subconsciously looking for Mother in the crowd. I stopped in my tracks and swallowed a lump in my throat. Why would Mother be here? She died nearly two months ago. I knew that. I was at her funeral. Her dust is sitting on her wedding ring in a pedestal in the castle. She was gone.

The reality of the situation came crashing down. It was quite overwhelming. Mother was gone. She was never coming back. I will become the royal advisor in her place and she will not be there to guide me through it. She will not be there to guide me ever again. I did not realize how much I longed for one of her hugs or the birthday cake she would bake for me every year.

She was the perfect mother, and the perfect royal advisor. How was I supposed to measure up to her? My vision became blurry. I was going to cry, I realised. I should not cry at the party. It would be impolite to make a scene.

I hid my face under my shirt and scurried away from the crowd of servants. I was not looking carefully when I was heading up to my room, and I bumped into a hard shell.

"Hey!" Gerson said, "Be careful." He brushed himself off and saw my expression. "You're crying," he said.

"I am not," I muttered, dodging around him to reach the stairs, but he grabbed my arm.

"Yeah you are," he said, "What happened?" I shrugged his hand off, glaring at him. He blushed. "Uh, sorry, Lady Toriel. I didn't mean to be rude!"

"You were not," I said, "Do not worry. I am fine."

"Ya want me to get Prince Asgore?" he asked. I shook my head. Asgore has his own grievances to deal with. I cannot burden him with this kind of thing, especially today. Today is a day for him-for everyone to have fun. I am thirteen today. I can handle this on my own.

"It's your birthday, though," Gerson said, "Don't cry on your birthday."

Did it really matter if it was my birthday? When did it ever matter? I was just one day older than yesterday. What was the difference, really? I did not feel any more mature, even though I am supposed to be. Instead, I just feel as hopeless as ever. Maybe even more.

I let out a frustrated sob. Gerson awkwardly patted my shoulder and guided me to sit on the steps with him. It was embarrassing, really, to cry in front of someone you've only spoken to a few times during training.

"Hey. What's wrong?" Gerson asked after I have calmed down to only sniffles.

"Do you ever miss your parents?" I asked, remembering him and Gerdon telling us about their parents. They said they had gone to fight in the mountains.

Gerson shrugged. "Gerdon says I should just forget about 'em. He says that we live here now, and we don't have to go back to 'em again."

"But they are your parents," I said, "Do you not wish that your family was whole and back in your village to live happily?"

Gerson sighed. "Can you keep a secret?" When I nodded, he continued, "My parents…are kind of bad. My brother and I went to Flenin specifically to get away from 'em. They aren't actually fighting in the mountains. We just told the people at Flenin that so they wouldn't contact 'em."

"So they did not want you two to go fight?" I asked. Mother would have been furious if I had tried to join the army a town over. But monsters over fifteen had the right to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to be in the army, although it was standard protocol to inform their families. Even if Gerson and Gerdon's parents did not want them to join, it was not like they could stop them.

"Eh," Gerson said, "They don't actually care. Mom'll miss her punching bags and Dad'll need to run his own errands now, but they'll appreciate the quiet." I reminded Gerson that his parents could not legally stop him and his brother from joining the army if they were old enough. The look on his face told me all I needed to know.

"You guys aren't old enough." I had suspected it since I have met them a month ago. They did not have the same air of maturity that would surely come to them with a few more years of age. "You lied about your ages to the officials and made up that story about your parents so they would not contact them to ask about your ages." Gerson buried his face in his hands and nodded. "How old are you, really?"

"My brother and I both turned thirteen last November," he confessed, "You're not gonna tell on me, are you?" he asked. I promised him that I would not. Asgore, if you are reading this right now, then I ask you to keep Gerson and Gerdon's secret for them as well. They do not have anywhere else to go otherwise.

"Why are you trying to fight in the war, though?" I asked.

"Heh. Gerdon and I want to be war heroes," Gerson said, "like the ones out of the stories from the Civil War. I know it's going to be a great big adventure that'll give good stories to tell to kids in the future when we're old. It'll make our parents angry too! Wah ha ha."

I had never really considered that children would try to stay away from their parents. I knew that everyone argued with their parents, since I have myself. All the parents I have met, though, have been nothing but kind and loving. I did not know that a mother was allowed to hit her child. How lucky I was to have two mothers that never hit me. Maybe if Gerson and Gerdon had parents like mine, they would not have run off to join the army.

One of my parents fell down when I was eleven, though, and the other was killed in combat, so that might not be an ideal condition for any child to grow up in. I know it was not for me.

Where did monsters go when their souls burst? Human souls stay where they die, and they can choose to give their soul to another newborn human. But boss monster souls burst into pieces soon after death. Are Mother and Mom's souls reunited somewhere and left to wait for me to join them? Or do they both just face oblivion, never to see each other again? What will become of them, now that they are gone? What will become of me when I am gone?

Gerson tilted his head to look at me and I saw that his expression was equal parts pity and worry. "Ya know," he said jokingly, "If this is a story, then the person writing it must be a really bad author, eh? We're supposed be having a heartfelt conversation about your problems, not mine. So what's wrong? Is it your parents?"

My face turned hot. Whether it was out of embarrassment or shame, I could not tell. "I miss my mother," I said, "It has been months now, and I do not know why I am still so upset even now. I know I should just accept it and move on, but-"

"'S only been two months, from what I heard," Gerson cut in, "I don't think it's wrong to miss someone you love, even if it's not gonna do you much good."

"I suppose," I said, "But Queen Amoura seems like she's always so stressed and I do not think sitting around grieving would help her in any way. I want to help."

"With what?" Gerson asked, "I dunno much about the law system, but don't you only become royal advisor when you turn twenty? What are you even gonna help with?"

"I-" I stopped. What could I even do? Queen Amoura has asked me to make myself useful, but what use am I? In the event that anything happens to the queen, I will be in charge of protecting Asgore, but nothing has happened to the queen, thankfully. I am not supposed to join in on planning battle strategies or running the kingdom until I become of age. I suppose I am allowed to know more information about the state of the kingdom than Asgore would, but I have nothing to do with that information. All the extra knowledge had just made me more scared.

"I dunno about parents," Gerson said, "but if anything happened to my brother, I would be devastated. Don't be so hard on yourself for not gettin' over your mom so soon. Before you help anyone else, you have to help yourself, first."

With that, he walked me upstairs to my room and offered to get me another slice of cake. It is strange, really, how I get emotional at the oddest of times and places.

Asgore just came in my room with a slice of cake that he said was from Gerson. He also noticed that I had been crying and hugged me for a long time. He did not ask why I had been crying, like Gerson did, but I think he understood why. After all, I had seen him crying in his room before for the same reason. I did not offer to talk about it with him, so he did not push.

"So," he said, "Gerson seemed pretty nice."

"He is," I agreed, smiling faintly.

"I have not talked to him much, though," Asgore said, "What is he like?"

"He is a kind monster," I said, "He and his brother lied about their ages to join the army. He is actually thirteen-we are the same age now!" I turned to look at Asgore and found him staring at his feet with an odd expression on his face. "What?"

"Nothing," Asgore said, a little too quickly for my taste. He held up a box. "I got you the book you said you wanted. There's also a bookmark in there that I made."

I opened the box. Inside was a copy of 72 Uses for Snails. I did not realize that Asgore saw me eyeing that book the last time we went to the nearby bookstore. Perhaps I could have found this book in the castle library, but now Asgore has saved me the trip. I flipped through the pages. In the middle of the book, Asgore has put in a piece of thick fabric. Its edges were cut with an intricate pattern and lovely flowers were painted on it.

"You made this yourself?" I asked, "Thank you so much, Asgore." I hugged him and headed to my bookshelf to find somewhere to put the book. A line in the wall beside the bookshelf caught my eye. I stopped.

"Tori?" Asgore said, "What is it?"

"Help me move the bookshelf," I replied.

After a lot of effort, we managed to move the bookshelf to reveal a door hidden behind it. It was painted the same color of purple as the wall, but the sound it made when I knocked on it told me that it was metal and not wood like the rest of the building. There was a small dent in the wall to use to grab the door, since it had no handle. I grabbed the sheet of metal and pulled. With a pop, the door opened and the musty smell of mildew wafted out from behind the wall.

I looked at the empty space between the outside and the inside wall. It was only a few feet of space, but it was easily big enough for Asgore and me to fit in. I lit a small flame and looked around inside the wall. Right below us there was a ladder.

"I am going to see where it goes," I said. Carefully, I stepped onto the ladder and started climbing down. It made a loud creak as I stepped on it. For a moment, I was afraid that the rungs would snap under my weight, but it held.

"Be careful!" Asgore said, "Please come up, Tori. That does not look safe." I assured him that I would be fine and climbed down some more.

After about thirty or so steps, I heard the familiar voice of Queen Amoura chatting with some of the servants. I lit a flame again and examined the wall in front of me. There was another door. This time it was wooden, like the rest of the wall. I pushed the door and it opened outward just a bit, then it stopped. It was probably the vines on the old walls that kept it from opening any further.

If I had pushed a bit harder, the vines would have broken and I would have fell out of the wall, alerting everyone in the area about the door, including Queen Amoura. Instead, I quietly climbed up the ladder again and stepped back into my room.

When I told Asgore about the secret passage, he had wanted to tell his mother about it. But I thought of that "backup plan" that Paz mentioned. The queen had not denied that there was one. Maybe it was not a good idea for Queen Amoura to know about a secret passageway out of the castle for now.

Asgore has agreed to keep quiet, but I cannot help but wonder who put the passage there. It seemed like it had not been used for decades. Perhaps Asgore's great grandparents put it there when the castle was first being built. I suppose we will never know.

Perhaps Queen Amoura knew about this passage too. Either way, I will not risk asking her to find out.

~Toriel

Oh gee I wonder if this is ever going to be relevant to the story in any way.

Next chapter's coming up!

~Pandora