*The VHS tape calls to you.
*You put it in the player, and hit play.
Chapter Two
*Made of the Void*
(If you prefer AO3, it is also posted here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857010/chapters/49612964#workskin )
In the place beyond all, older than time and the heavens and the earth, where darkness dwelled and minds unraveled, a figure stirred.
The figure was not the only being in the shadowy realm unknown to all but the most knowing, and the most cursed… many things dwelt in the mire of mists, howling and clawing and writhing in their desperate, clinging existence. Some were monstrous, great, hulking monoliths of stone and shade… some were so small they were invisible to the eye, mere wisps in the greater dark. Some hunted the vales of the shadow, and some hid in dank, lightless holes.
Lost souls called out for those that could never save them, the damned screamed for relief… but the figure, above it all and almost apart, seemed either unbothered by, or uncaring of, the tumult about him, striding to the top of a dark and featureless hill on the edge of the ruins of an empty city.
The figure was, of all the beings beyond the world of the
living, the most mundane. He was clad in what appeared to be a simple
black cloak, sweeping around hidden feet and long, thin legs; large,
skeletal hands were folded behind him, punctured through their palms
with holes holding a darkness yet darker than any about him in the world
of shadows and eternal night. A likewise skeletal visage was perched
above the neatly pressed neckline of an almost blindingly white sweater,
serene but for the cracks that marred it.
He seemed lost in thought, as he walked to the crown of the hill above him, thin sockets filled with violet light locked on the ground at his feet. A thin mouth narrowed further, twisting downwards into a frown, before his gaze rose, meeting the middle distance with purpose and resolve.
A wave of his hand brought to life a stool, settled in the blackest of grasses, and another a great, gilded mirror, hanging motionless in the still air. He seated himself on the stool with poise, filled with a grace that belied his gangling limbs, and turned to face the murky surface of the mirror, as though expecting to make something out in its clouded metal surface.
A flash of bright purple, sending a gathering of curious creatures screeching into the clinging boughs of the wood gathered about the foot of the hill. A crackle of magic, potent and electrifying, and with its advent, the surface of the mirror shifted, the darkness fleeing to gather around the intricate frame and revealing a flurry of images, flitting by much too fast for an unpracticed eye to follow or comprehend.
Caverns both deep and old, suffused with mists not unlike the ones in the world of darkness. Bitterness and dust, stone paths bathed in tears and blood. A winterlocked forest, a fenced, derelict village of log cabins, shadows in the trees, bloodstained snow. The scurrying of many legs. A rushing river, rowed by a hooded figure… shattered bone, and a cruel, unhinged gaze, filled with murder and madness. Twisted trap, and tortured figure, mangled by hard, rusted iron… the rise of an axe, glittering with the same malice and hunger that filled its master’s destroyed socket.
Deranged laughter, silent through the veneer of polished glass but chilling to the core.
The skeletal being turned his face away from the scene the mirror paused upon, a depth of sadness overtaking his visage that couldn’t be described with mere words. He heaved a shuddering sigh, raising a large hand to rub over his face, as though to remove what he had just witnessed from his memory, before flicking two fingers at the mirror, shifting its image away from the massacre it reflected and to something far less dark.
The light of the sun, shadowed only by the wisps of clouds and the peaks of mountains. A city, bustling in late day. Dusty, dry streets, filled with twilight and tire tracks and the laughter of children. An alley, paved with loose dirt and gravel, littered with trash and broken glass. A line of dumpsters, rusted and once painted green… and a little girl, pulling a loaf of bread from one of the trash bins. She seemed to inspect it, turning it this way and that under the light of a nearby lamppost, then nodded and set it beside her on the ground, beside a small pile of likewise reclaimed treasures (another loaf, a few cans of what looked like beans, several packages of noodles) before diving back into the bin, clearly searching for more.
The child looked no different than the others that roamed the streets, in the height of her youth (though, perhaps too thin and small for the lines that pulled at the corners of her lips and eyes)… but for the glow of her too large eyes, lamplike and a blue so bright and sparkling it could only be compared to magic.
The figure upon the stool, for the first time, smiled and chuckled as, in the mirror, the girl let out a silent exclamation of excitement, holding aloft an unopened box of pastries triumphantly; he shook his head, obviously fond and understanding, before again flicking his fingers at the mirror, the image shifting away from the girl… to a mere few feet away.
Atop the dumpster just beyond the one the girl was digging through, swaying slightly in a breeze and seeming to observe the scene, was a large, glittering, scarlet butterfly, jewel-like and casting fractals of crimson light across the painted bricks of the wall beside it with each steadying flap of its wings.
It’s antennae twitched, as the mirror focused on it, its small body rising as its legs straightened, and for the first time in the figure’s observance, it seemed as though the butterfly was actually aware of the being looking on it, its many faceted eyes turning to meet the skeletal figure’s through the reflection.
A whisper, on a chill wind, swept around the being. Soft as the fading sunlight in the mirror, an echo, like the rustle of reeds in a gentle river.
Gaster…
The figure straightened, on his stool, a hand rising to touch the edge of the mirror, as though to steady himself.
It wasn’t often he heard his name, anymore. Sometimes, in the gathering, endless dark, he began to forget it… he couldn’t afford to forget it, to let himself fade into the shadow.
Not yet. There was work to be done.
“Frisk,” he whispered back, in both recognition and affirmation, and the butterfly shook its wings, shifting its gaze to the girl just out of sight. Gaster, understanding the wordless motion, nodded and gripped the edge of the mirror a little tighter.
“It has to be soon. He’s losing himself, and Papyrus is no better. Does she have them all?” he queried, voice carrying the rasp of long disuse, and the butterfly flapped its wings twice (once for ‘yes’, twice for ‘no’), antennae drooping at the news. Gaster nodded, expression tightening.
“Hurry. I will help all I can,” he replied, then, again, flicked his fingers at the surface of the mirror, though the energy he had carried before was muted, his motion jerky and slow. He was visibly weary, the violet light in his sockets dim and the shadows that formed his cloak breaking away from his form in misty flakes, but he made no move to stop or rest.
He was looking intently through the inside of what looked like a hospital, through the veneer of the mirror, pausing on faces in a blur of unknown reasoning. He seemed to be looking for something specific, rejecting most with motions of his hand, only pausing on the most pallid and gaunt of visages that he passed over before moving on.
Not just any soul would do, after all. It had to be strong, willful…
And determined.