Chapter Text
It’s bright.
Colorful, like an explosion of sensation in front of Blue’s eye sockets.
Blue has on this light sort of tunic and baggy pants, the sort of clothes someone might be baptized in. His feet are still bare, however. The light reflects off of the outfit in a dizzying array, so he looks away and around him.
He’s in a cathedral - a large one, with at least a hundred rows of pews and a large altar in front of him, tapestries hanging down from the rafters. They’re rich in color, a deep, plum purple with the Delta Rune embroidered on.
Along the walls running parallel to the direction the pews are facing are tall stained glass windows, the source of the color. Depicted in them are images of the sun, of the night, of harvest and of winter and of the Good Goddess herself, smiling down at him in all of her fluffy glory. Beneath her feet are flames, which Blue instantly recognizes as the hallmark of Fell.
When he blinks, he swears the room around him is bathed in red, all the windows transformed into depictions of flames and blood and eyes that burn into his soul.
Blue clutches at his head and groans, the images too painful to look at for long.
But it’s only for a fraction of a second, before again it’s golden and purple and pink light that bathe him. As soon as Blue blinks, the pictures are as they should, the Good Goddess staring down at him benevolently.
Blue knows he should be alarmed, but there’s only this distant stirring in his chest that belays discomfort. At the forefront of his mind is rising curiosity, tinged with the type of dread one gets from ignoring deadlines. Urgency.
He looks away from Her gaze, and feels slightly ashamed.
The light seems to be brighter now, burning his sockets. Blue almost wants to cover them, but that strikes him as disrespectful and he lowers his arm.
Instead, Blue inspects the room around him some more.
It’s probably one of the most grand cathedrals he’s ever been in, plush carpets that are a rich and royal purple, stone columns with small pictures engraved on them. The pews are a deep, cherry tinted mahogany. The benches to kneel at are shiny, as though they’ve never been scuffed by the knees of praying monsters.
Blue seems to be alone, he notes, as his gaze sweeps above the pews around him. But distantly, he can hear rising choir music, backed by an orchestra. Perhaps it had been going on for long, but Blue hadn’t noticed, perhaps the sound had slowly risen until he could hear it.
He drifts towards the altar, thinking perhaps there’s a practice going on in another room.
The altar itself is an impressive display, with many statues of monsters standing on pedestals built into the wall, backed by expensive golden sconces that paint a warm light on them. Paintings of harvest and more monsters sprawl across the ceiling.
And at the very center is the stone bench, looking a little plain against all the glory of the cathedral around it.
What Blue doesn’t expect to see is a figure hunched at the altar, shaking hands lighting the candles that cover the stone offering bench.
The action strikes him as strange; typically candles on the altar are a tradition saved for the beginning of winter, mourning the loss of something, filing in the darkness with warmth and light. He almost expects to see an urn at the person’s side, dust ready to be sprinkled on a coveted object of the deceased.
“Excuse me,” He starts, only to find that his voice is completely swallowed up by the air surrounding his skull. The discomfort becomes a little more prominent, and Blue weaves through pews to the center aisle so he can walk more easily towards the figure.
Hunched as they are, completely covered by a deep cloak, he cannot make out a single thing about them.
“Hello!” He tries again, only to suffer from the same phenomenon.
His legs try to move faster, but Blue is reduced to a snail’s pace as he attempts to race towards the altar. The faster Blue moves, the louder the singing of the choir gets, rising and dipping and tone. Indecipherable words, nothing that Blue can make out.
At last, Blue reaches the stairs to the altar. He climbs them one at a time, until he’s directly behind the person, and grabs them by the shoulder, perhaps too roughly.
They turn, and he catches sight of a pale skull. Round, large sockets, sharp teeth.
It’s Red.
What is Red doing in a cathedral?
The monster’s face turns from shock into a hesitant smile. Those pale bones shine in the light of the stained glass, looking soft and smooth.
“yer here.” He says, soft and relieved. The familiar slur and cadence of his words slightly calms Blue. “heh, took ya long enough.”
“Where are we?” Blue wants to grin back, but something about the situation is off. He asks, just as quiet, “Why are we here - ?”
Red shushes Blue, smiling ever widely. That bright, sunshine-y smile that Red gives him every once in a while is gone, replaced by something too-wide, too-happy. It cements the idea in Blue’s head that this isn’t as things should be.
But - there’s genuine happiness there, beads of red tears welling up in Red’s sockets. Blue can only gape as the cloaked monster’s hand comes up to graze his cheekbone. When it falls away, Blue touches the spot with his own hand and looks down.
It comes away with blood.
Red, thick, warm. It runs down to stain at his white sleeve, clinging to the fabric and to his bones.
Feeling a stab of panic cut through the distorted haze of his emotions, Blue looks up to see that the same substance is running down Red’s own face, from his sockets, from his nasal cavity, from those sharp teeth.
“...... ya did it.” Red tells him.
Blue can feel himself choking up, at a complete loss. He takes Red’s face in his hands, which only further coats them in the red stuff, and looks for injuries.
“What?” He asks, on the verge of hysteria, “What did I do?!”
He hopes Red will answer, if only to give another sign of cognizance, of life. By now, his sleeves are both hopelessly ruined, droplets of blood now raining down to stain his lap.
The music is playing too loudly for Blue to hear his own thoughts as he scrabbles for memories, for how Red and he could have possibly gotten here, how Red could have gotten injured in the few seconds it took to look away.
Red maneuvers Blue’s hands from his face to his chest, slowly, where the fabric of the thick cloak is wet and gritty with dust and blood. Blue thinks he might vomit.
“ya saved ‘em.” Red says, as if that explains everything. “ya got the demon. yer a hero.”
Blue’s gaze is fixed on the leaking wound of Red’s chest.
Singing blares louder, louder until Blue’s not sure if he’s even talking when he asks Red, “How?”, “When?”
Rough phalanges stroke over Blue’s own, slick and warm.
“come on.” Red snickers, voice quiet and yet deafening against the music. Blue looks up to see his sharp grin turn wry, “can’t tell me ya didn’t see this comin’?”
The scarred skeleton opens up the cloak to reveal bare bones underneath, chipped and discolored just how Blue remembers from the hot springs only a week ago, it seems. Behind his ribs lay a soul, floating just to the left. It’s a blinding red, dripping liquid too dark to be determination.
Blue stares for a long moment until he flits his eye lights back up to Red’s face. He’s got this pitying look, grin still curved upward.
“ya knew it, right?” Red murmurs, hands still trembling. He laughs a little and shakes his skull, droplets of blood flying from between his teeth, “‘course you did. but i don’t mind,” Red’s grin is fond now as he speaks, “i’d still do it a hundred times over.”
“What did you do?” Blue’s words are sharper than he means them, demanding and rueful all at once. The underlying accusation is louder than the music, his voice ringing over the altar and pews clearly.
“gave you my soul.” Red replies, easy as sweet wine goes down.
Blue’s sockets widen as he looks down at the dripping, wounded thing in Red’s chest. A human’s soul, dripping blood from a large bite mark. Images of a body flit through his mind, with beastly marks scattered all over.
“You…”
The flames of the candles behind Red burst upwards, bathing a skeleton in a bright red light that hides the blood well. Behind him, blue can hear large doors open up, and the red light is cancelled out by an all encompassing brightness from behind. He’s scared to look.
Red struggles to a stand, quickly followed by Blue as the exorcist attempts to help him.
“welp.” Red says, “guess that’s my cue.”
He turns to climb onto the altar, into the flames, where a doorway arches above.
Blue tries to grab him, to pull him away, but finds himself sliding on the carpet, stumbling down the stairs as some unknown force pulls him backwards. His bare feet slip without any friction as he tries to run, to break free.
Whatever lies behind him, be it his home, the town, or even the sanctity of the Ruins themselves, Blue refuses to leave Red behind as he travels into a doorway to what can only be doom.
“Red!” Blue calls out, “Red! Stop!”
His voice goes ignored. Red straightens himself up on the altar, and grasps at the dark knob of the flaming doorway.
Be it by miracle or the will of the Good Goddess herself, Blue is suddenly free from the clutches of the light. Free, to race down the aisle and back up the stairs, up to where Red is passing through the doorway.
He can’t catch himself, though, and the two of them tumble down, down, down, into a pit so dark and so deep Blue wonders if this is all Fell really is.
And then,
Blue
Wakes
Up.
“bro? bro?”
Blue jolts up out of bed, SOUL pounding in his rib cage. He looks around wildly to see Stretch at his side, hands poised over him, skull sweating and contorted in worry.
For a second, Blue has to take in the world around him, the clean colors of the inn room he’s been staying in for the past few weeks, the gentle sunlight drifting in past curtains, nothing like the all encompassing bright of the cathedral.
His brother.
Blue slumps into himself, skull hitting the pillow behind him. Cool relief covers him like a second blanket, allowing him to finally relax.
“blue?” Stretch tries again, quieter and more gently.
“... I think I saw Fell.” Blue says after a moment by way of response, draping an arm over his face. “And maybe the Ruins, too. And Red was there, but you weren’t.”
“...... hooookay, bro.” Stretch responds, looking a mix of confused and amused, “no more coffee before bed, huh?”
Blue groans and tucks himself further into his bed. He’s still reeling from the dream, if that’s what it was.
Perhaps it’s that he’d just talked to Red last night, and that’s why he’d featured so heavily in Blue’s dream, but….
Blue squeezes his sockets shut and tries to forget the feeling of blood on his hands, the mixture of dust that had made it slippery and gritty all at once. The scent of iron and fire. The way Red had bared his SOUL to Blue, dripping and wounded.
It couldn’t have been his SOUL, though. Monsters don’t have determination, everybody knows that.
Only humans do, and the marks on the SOUL, the way it was flipped upside down….
It had all felt so real, even though it’s fading fast. Blue doesn’t know if he should be thankful or try to cling to what little he remembers now.
Something about it doesn’t sit right with him. Not right at all.
And somehow, the distant ringing of a choir of voices just won’t shut up in his mind, as if they’re trying to herald something.