Chapter 3
The majesty of a toppled kingdom has little compare.
The ruinous vestiges of what was once great can be brought no
lower than its empty halls, the dull and broken panes of windows, the
abandoned throne. Echoing rooms, grand but bare, cracked marble and
ashen, once fine silver.
It bears witness yet to a proud and mighty heritage, forgotten
by its people but preserved in stone and carapace, tapestry and carving.
The castle upon the hill was just the same, looking down on the
wartorn, blood stained city below with the empty, staring eyes of a lost
civilization, yet with the same majesty as the day it had been built;
the stone was unmoved even by the clinging vines and the unholy denizen
it housed, resisting the change in the air that moved the souls of every
monster it touched without flinching.
It was mere rock, many would claim. Uninhabitable, through the
fetidity of the fell winds that haunted its halls… empty of all but the
most twisted of corpses and the unblinking, ever watching eyes of the
creature the palace had created. Ignored, by those that could see it
through the clouds of poison mist… forgotten, by the rest.
By all but one, the last remaining of a long line of rulers…
awakened by the same diseased mists that had put to sleep the morality
of his kin and kind. Felled many years ago by fate unkind, remembered
only in stony effigy and fond legend, in the memories of those slain and
tortured by that same cruel destiny.
Preserved as a statue, to honor his legacy, and spread with the
remaining dust that hadn’t littered his beloved garden… the king of
monsters.
Toppled years before by the rampaging of the unholy creature,
shattered and untended, Asgore lay among the dry and withered blooms of
his garden, watching over the home he had built with his own two hands
from his prison of granite, incapable of anything but weeping silent,
black tears and willing the world to turn, for the suffering of his
people to end.
He could hear their screams and howls echoing through the empty
halls of the palace, the all too familiar sound of warfare and pain
resounding in the caverns that should have been respite and
home
.
The agony of his failure, of his inability to save his people
from their unjust end, would have broken any monster’s soul into shards.
Beyond life, beyond death, he could only watch, and wait, and beg the
stars, the absent, silent universe, for peace and hope for the monster
race.
The stars did not respond though… not now, and not once over
the fifteen years he had been forced to bear witness to the end of his
kind.
Another tear streaked the unmoving, stained stone, dripping from
the end of a carved snout and onto the saturated petals below. Leaves
rustled in an unholy breeze, carrying the toxic fumes of disease and
malice from deeper within the palace, and far above, the innumerable,
staring eyes followed the path of a single, withered bloom, swept along
in the path of the ill wind.
It came to a halt in a pile of broken glass just within the
doorway, settling with a quiet tinkling… before a spiked vine the
thickness of a tree trunk swept from the shadows, crushing it, the
glass, and the stone tile below it into dust.
Maniacal laughter shook the palace like an earthquake, mouths
lined with razors and shattered glass opening along the walls and
ceiling to shriek with unholy laughter in accord, and far below, gripped
tight in a viney embrace of his own, Asgore shed yet another tear, the
last, faint trace of hope left in his shattered soul dissipating into
nothing.
There was no salvation from their fate.
There was only death, and the hunger that ate at the stomach he no longer had.
Chapter 4
Something Pretending to be Human
https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857010/chapters/49684634
Memories.
The lingering traces of life once lived, words once spoken, places and things once known.
For a monster, memory was as vital as magic, as much part of
them as the sorcery of the universe. It echoed in the beat of their
souls, stimulated their magicks… and lingered on long after their lives
had faded, in the minds of those they had loved, as well as the world
around them, the whisper of bygone days and the fondness of their hearts
empowering where their dust settled in their final rest.
Memories… reliving the good and the bad, years old and young. A magic unlike any other.
For humans, memory faded with time, rather than growing
stronger. As their body’s faculties failed, their recollections of
bygone days left them too, leaving behind a cloud of empty, numb bliss.
They would disappear entirely, after only a few generations of humanity
had sped by, only the luckiest and most renowned of humans lasting to
become legend.
They certainly didn’t linger on after they had left their
bodies, any magic their hidden, withered souls held dissipating the
moment of their deaths, left to rot in their pine boxes and soil
prisons.
Most, at the very least.
There were some humans, throughout their kind’s violent and
calamitous history, that did not pass on. Whether through force of will,
or perhaps even soul deep passion of various kind, the magic of their
souls carried on and became spectres, often tortured and twisted beyond
recognition of what they once had been, within the mortal coil.
Memories; rotted memories, destitute of reason, meaning, or
consequence. Consigned to an eternal fate without relief, without the
opportunity to be reborn into a new form… in agony, for lack of that
final sleep.
In time, many of the lingering spirits of those destined for
such a future faded too, their magicks failing them and dissipating into
nothingness. There was no existence beyond that last fate, but by the
end, the wisps that once were people did not care, wishing only for
oblivion.
There has only ever been one, a single being, that never faded.
An isolated, determined soul that lingered on year after year, decade after decade…
century after century, only gathering strength and the will to live
again.
Some speculation can be made as to why. Perhaps it was the
presence of the barrier about the mountain… preventing the spirit of the
long dessicated, moldered human from escaping, just as the magic of
departed monsters could not leave to rejoin the stars they so loved.
Perhaps it was the strength of their soul, pervasive and willful in life
and, maybe, just as unmoving in death.
Or perhaps it was the anger they had harbored in their
tragically short life, the hatred and bitterness that had filled their
heart with malice and, ultimately, lead to their passing from this
world.
Whatever the case, for whatever reasoning that they remained
behind when so many of their kind had moved on, they lingered on in
lonesome isolation in the place where they had fallen many hundreds of
years ago, a shadow on the carved wall of the cavern filled with
buttercups, a trick of the light on the head of their weathered
gravestone.
A tinkle of a child’s laughter, whispered on the wind, rustling
dead flower petals and carrying down the empty, dust littered hallways
of its ruinous home.
Memories… sordid, hated memories. Twisted by their own toxic
anger, by the perceived betrayal of their only friend, by the mists of
poisonous, rancid fume on the air, they stewed and mutated, shifting
into a creature so far removed from what they once had been that the
last thing they could be called was human, as decayed and rotten as
their worm eaten corpse.
Unable to move from their tomb without a weaker soul, they
plotted, pacing the room and clawing the walls and cursing the names of
those that had halted their plans not so long ago… they had been so
close, so very close to being free.
The naive girl had surprised her, though. Her heart had not bent
so easily to their pressure… had recoiled from the justice they had
delivered with her hand. The skeleton had been the last straw. They had
thought to take all control after crushing his skull with her foot, sure
that the foolish girl would succumb…
But it had been a mistake to force her to kill him. It had
pushed her to rebellion, so far as to reset the timeline to before they
had possessed her at all, and escaping their clutches entirely.
And gods above, had she been so sickeningly sweet to the traitors. She had felt actual guilt for their
eradication, and never raised a hand against them again. Sparing them
all even though they hurt her, making friends, saving them …
She had become the angel they had been waiting for for a
millenia, the legend carved into every wall in this cursed mountain, and
they had never gotten a chance again after that… even when the world
had turned upside down and their stupid, idiotic bro- …when the flower had broken the universe, turning the monsters into mindless beasts and suffusing their world with madness.
They had grown only stronger, with what the few monsters they
had seen had taken to calling the Hunger… they had grown nearly
corporeal, and only more determined to be free of this place.
All they had needed then was another vessel, strong enough to
bear their presence and to end the existence of the rest of the monsters
under the mountain…
And when another human had fallen, at last, they knew their time had come.
Sweet irony, sweet, cloying memory, the face on the girl-child, her insufferable clinging to her
mother’s ideals… and yet something new, something stronger than Frisk
ever had been…
Real magic, running rampant in the little one’s veins.
Ha… haha…
hahahahahahahaha…
The angel had bred with one of the monsters. How delicious. How utterly perfect.
This child, mind already broken with guilt and suffering and
desperation for guidance in a world she didn’t understand, would be
their salvation. She bore the raw strength she had always needed, and
the weak will to be moved to their whim. The monsters would finally meet
their rightful end… they themselves could, at last, gain the escape
they had sought for centuries… and the world would meet its own
destruction at their joined hands.
It mattered not that the girl had resisted at first. She would bend in time.
Of that, Chara had no doubt.
Chapter 5
Parasite and Host
https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857010/chapters/49762205
(This one is kinda gross, guys. Beware)
The dripping of water was a constant cadence in the mires of
lower Waterfall. The stoppage of the fetid waters, forming in slimey
pools and choked puddles, reflected ever more water in their murky
surfaces, rushing in falls from the surface but bringing no modicum of
relief to their pollution.
The never sleeping falls from Above only filled them with more
refuse, towering piles of garbage, litter, waste, and trash heaped as
far as the eye could see, only becoming more inundated with foul smells
and disease the longer they lingered in the swamp of dust, mud, and
death clogged waters.
It had always been an inhabitable place, what had once been
affectionately known as the Dump to the monsters… then, it had held
potential treasures, though, technology that could be learned from and
books that could be salvaged and unknown things that could be wondered
at. Now, it was a toxic, noxious wasteland, avoided by all surviving
beasts but for the bravest of their kind…
The bravest, and the most sure of their own intimidation.
They that ventured into the Waste knew what dwelt within, what
now stirred beneath a great pile of old tin cans, sending the topmost of
the tower careening into a pit beside the heap… what let out a
tittering, gurgling shriek of laughter, a horrifying, jagged mouth
opening within the pile, lined with rusty, sharpened bits of metal and
bone.
They had been there long before the Hunger tore the Underground
apart, had turned its inhabitants into fiends with a never ending desire
for violence and flesh. What had once been a merely grumpy, violent
guardian, though, had become something far worse, and only those that
knew the being could not defeat them dared set foot in their hunting
grounds.
Mad Dummy was more than a training dummy, now. No longer did
they idly take the punches swung at them, and only toss insults, mildy
damaging drones, or knives at their enemies… now, they had no need for
knives.
Now, they were the mightiest hunter in lower Waterfall (barring
Undyne, and Sans, when he decided to visit… and the Temmies… and Shyren…
and the creature- shut up, shut up, SHUT UP).
They were a king, over their little kingdom… far cry from the
powerless being they had been when they had first possessed their host.
They had sought another, at one point… searched far and wide
across the Underground for a form suiting their design. They could have
done as Ha-… as their cousin had done, and requested they be MADE a
new body, made for war and conquest, befitting the rage within… but in
the end, had settled with the first form they had found.
It had served them well, too. Inconspicuous. Easily looked over,
canvas and long missing button eyes and twine stitches… their
camouflage was undetectable, flawless in its accumulation of trash to
hide them with the other refuse piles… their attacks were incomparable,
vicious and cruel as the fanged jaw that had opened along their middle.
Nothing had been able to touch them yet! Nothing, nothing, nothing!
The ragged, living maw of the hidden, cackling being widened
beneath the pile of cans, some falling into their mouth unheeded as its
laughter only grew in volume and insanity. Tufts of stuffing flew
wildly, decorating the slime covered, oily water, and from within that
gaping, mad grin vomited forth a deluge of insects so foul and numerous
that the fetid waters and steaming air boiled, maggots and fully grown
flies swarming about as though on more important business than leaving
their host.
The pile of cans heaved with the leaving of insects, retching
and gagging nearly drowning out the riotous chortling, but the being
within seemed uninterested in anything but wrenching their mutated jaw
shut, smashing several of the insects in its closing and, at last,
cutting off the pouring forth of vermin.
Through a few gaps in the cans, old, rotted canvas material,
dotted with candy wrappers, crumpled papers, and soggy bits of old
clothes was now showing, the disturbance of the dummy’s hiding spot
betrayed by the parting of insects, and yet, strangely, the being did
not seem disturbed at all by the occurrence, merely grinding their jaws
to further mush the flies caught in their teeth and letting out a long,
deep belch, leaking a few more squirming larvae as they did.
Their canvas skin roiled sickeningly, under the covering of
trash, evidencing that what the monster had spewn forth was only a
fraction of what lay within their bloated form, before Mad Dummy,
seeming to be comfortable enough to return to their wait, sunk back into
the cover of the cans, laying in wait for someone, anyone, unfortunate
enough to pass through, looking for useful tools or a way to the
capital.
Idiots, idiots, IDIOTS.
Chapter 6
It Watches From Above
https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857010/chapters/49764770
The Snowdin Wood was quiet.
Far too quiet for it to be safe, though the winterlocked forest
of the Underground often wasn’t anymore. No longer were the cabins in
the wood homey, lit and warm and filled with laughter… they stood empty
and hollow, some burned, some rigged with cruel devices to capture prey.
The powdery, pure white snow was no longer a fond plaything. It
could be a deadly disguise, hiding away a terrible beast under its
surface, just as well as it could sequester away traps from the
searching eye. The river was patrolled at all times by the boatman,
watching and waiting for any fool enough to venture close. The town was
barricaded, and guarded fiercely by a monster you would never want to
meet, day or night.
Not even the trees could be trusted, heavy with fallen snow and
boughs thick with needles and clawing branches; they camouflaged a
menace that hunted relentlessly from above, demented and fiendish and
hateful, above all else.
He hated everything, everyone and all that his eyes fell upon,
with a passion that not even murder could quell, the magic in his dark
and twisted soul bent on the destruction of his percieved enemies. He
had concocted the most foolproof of plots to catch them, too, and the
once proud cervine had claimed so many lives in this manner that he
could put the Butcher of Snowdin Wood to shame.
Gyftrot knew better than to challenge the monster himself,
naturally… he didn’t relish being disembowled quite so much as his
companion did (he swore, some days, that Guy got off on the torture he
went through), and valued the game he played more than his own ego.
The little birds and stupid, mindless beasts below suited him and his partner just fine.
Even demons needed their sleep sometimes, of course… and dawning
morning found the creature in such a state, many hoofed legs tucked
beneath him in the hollow of the tree he had made his home, multiple
eyes closed and mouths drooling a mixture of saliva, black sludge, and
what could only be pus over the matted fur of his neck.
It would be hours before he stirred, the last of night fading
from the deceptively silent forest; his time was the day, the time when
the infinitely less intelligent would come to partake of his fine trap.
It was also when those thrice damned dogs would be setting themselves to sleep for the day, full from their own catches.
The less they crossed paths, the better. He still bore the scars
on one of his forelegs from an unfortunate meeting with Greater Dog,
staying out too close to dusk and venturing too close to the village, to
see what had become of it.
He had no such curiosity now. That he been before the master
Plan, his ingenious scheme, that worked so well he had never gone hungry
in this barren wasteland.
Well… not true, per se. He was
always
hungry, even when he had eaten far more than his fill. But
there was no denying that his methods were cunning, and his execution
(heh heh…) swift.
For the moment, though, the scheming, fiendish monster slept on,
though, awaiting the dawn the mosses above brought, as well as the
regeneration of his “business” partner. They’d both eaten quite well the
night before, and Guy’s wounds would be healed before he even stirred.
Demented smiles stretched across Gyftrot’s five mouths, baring
teeth sharper than any deer should have and bloody, infected gums above
them.
As it always was, and so long as there was prey to be had, as it always would be.