2020-08-08 21:16:44 ¶ ●

## Chapter 16: Too Many Eyes

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857010/chapters/62634868

There exist in this world things beyond comprehension.

This is a statement of fact, for objects and creatures and concepts that can have no definition, purely by their own design. Things too dark to see, even in brightest day. Too complex to know, even with the greatest of minds. Too rotten to ever cure, with all the medicines in science.

They obey only their own basest nature, as a starving animal attacking without provocation, an insect invading another’s body to raise its young… darkness falling in lieu of day. They cannot be called evil, though the mind is given to attempt to name them, to put at ease the fear it cannot understand but knows to be true.

It could be argued that the creation of what now dwelled in the darkness of its own mind had been evil, that what brought rise to the desecration and destruction of the world of monsters had been hardness of heart and cruelty unbound. Loneliness and fear can turn a heart to stone, after all… bring about acts both unthinking and malicious.

Perhaps it would even be right, to say Flowey had been evil, to desire the conquest and power that he did, to whatever end.

But the creature that remains, all that is left of his foolish lust for control, is not evil. The fiend with a thousand eyes is naught more than another beast clawing for existence in the muck and grime of a world once good and loving and whole. He is a wreckage, devoid of much of the power he once coveted so dearly, and a horror to look upon, all majesty he might have born molded and decayed.

He had hoped to become a god. And with the power of the souls he had stolen, he had ascended… but into an amalgamation of what his twisted desires had made him into, a mind of metal, unfeeling and cold, a pile of vegetation both prickly and vile, an abomination that saw all but learned nothing from it.

As he slowly rotted in the prison of his own making, his form only twisted further. His hunger was unending, and his savagery a monstrosity to behold. Yet the more victims he took, the hungrier he became, and the more he was polluted, the stench of bloated corpses and fetid meat enshrouding his gargantuan, wilting, rusted facade. His mind was just as spoiled as his body, both a temple to his own vile glory and a black hole of self-hatred, perpetuated by both of the people he had once been.

The flower within him screamed unending for vengeance, for the death of the human that took his power in the first place but had escaped him… for the pain of his existence to end at last. The prince cowered and wailed for his mother, for his best friend and for someone, anyone to save him.

All he had wanted was to feel. And now, all he wanted was to never feel again.

His very existence was a crime, an unholy being that persisted despite all reason. His hunger was unfathomable, and defied every attempt to assuage it. His mind was a trap of the worst kind, all knowledge but pain and hatred and starvation and fear escaping it.

He craved the end as fiercely as he clung to life. He hated his existence as ardently as he loved it.

He called for help, in the desperate misery that he had created himself…

And no one came.

## hE rEAllY WaS An iDIot.

2020-08-10 18:51:01 ¶ ●

## Chapter 17: Too Many Teeth

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857010/chapters/62735791

(A reminder: this is the last Axetober I will be writing. Anything else I add to the fic on Ao3 will be free formatted shorts of my own choosing)

There’s nothing like staring into a mouth bristling with teeth to ruin your day.

It’d been a miscalculation on her part. An error in judgment, too much curiosity. Sans had always warned her, don’t follow any sort of trail back into the woods, food, gold, or otherwise. Papyrus had told her not to follow the whimpering cries or the path of blood droplets, as well, oddly sober and hesitant, at the edge of the treeline.

Dad wasn’t going to forgive her for leaving him alone there, or for getting herself into this mess. She knew, if she survived this (looking less likely by the moment), she’d get the talking to of a lifetime. She could only be grateful he wasn’t the same kind of guardian as gramma had been…

Though a belt whealed backside was the least of her worries now.

The dog monster before her towered over where she had fallen into the snow, easily the size of a bear. His once white coat was matted with twigs, leaves, clumps of ice, and gore, the rusted remnants of armor clamped tight around bulging limbs and a torso as thick as the ancient tree trunks surrounding them. His eyes were glowing with madness and hunger, blood red and pinned to where she lay, foot caught in the bear trap… but his maw was what truly held her attention.

She had never seen so many teeth in one mouth. It wasn’t able to contain them all, spilling over to litter his drooling, blood saturated jaw; some had broken off, and were entwined in the thick fur on his neck. It was a horrifying sight, made no less terrible by the haggard, panting growls the beast was rumbling with, and it was all Aliza could do not to let out a bloodcurdling scream when he took a step closer, struggling at the end of the trap’s chain.

The pain of the steel biting into her leg was nothing to what the animal would inflict on her. She had to get away, she had to do something, but she couldn’t call out for help and make this worse.

Another monster could hear her, and come to see what the commotion was.

Aliza jerked again at the chain holding her in place, the stake frozen into the ground and the jaws of the trap too rusted to part with her own paltry strength; she tried again to call to her unstable, untrained magic, to teleport away, to start a fire, anything. Nothing came.

She begged, as the beast fell to all fours and charged, for some sort of miracle.

And when the axe sliced through the chain as though it were butter, sending her sprawling into the slush, she knew it had been answered.

Sans didn’t so much as glance at her, though his skeletal hand was tight in the hood of her sweatshirt, dragging her up from the ground and behind where he stood, stance wide and magic flared. His attention was fixed on the now halted monster, his own teeth bared and chest rumbling with a territorial growl.

His hand was more gentle, in pushing her back, away from what was now to be a battleground, but still he had no attention to spare her.

This would be no quick, easy fight against a Snowdrake, an ambush on a monster trapped in one of his “puzzles”. This was Greater Dog, trained in combat and as fast as he was ferocious. The beast had been encroaching on his territory for months, leaving warnings and challenges in the trees to show his intent, and now he had finally gone too far.

No one would take Aliza from him. Not even an old friend.

“mine,” he snarled savagely, and rushed forward to meet the beast in combat.