Chapter Text
There were worse places to land than in a field of yellow flowers you decided after your third sneeze. The agitated pollen settled from your abrupt landing, barely stirring when you finally stumbled forward from your three-point crouch. Your face scrunched, the tightness building in your sinuses led to a fourth sneeze in your elbow. A dull throb built between your temples while you wiped your nose with your forearm, absorbing your new environment over the back of your hand.
It was dark—moreso dimmed than actual darkness the likes of the Corridors—which made sense when you looked at the looming stalactites overhead warily. The walls reflected and the hole you floated down from sported a pinprick of light at the top that could have been maaaybe the surface. You took a half step back to align yourself under the yawning hole and pondered.
The urge to try and climb up the shaft was great and your fingers flexed and cracked with the idea. You mentally planned how you could reach that opening first. Jumping seemed to be the best, you were confident that you could reach the lip of the hole, to claw through the mouth, and scurry up length of it like a gecko.
“...that’s assuming there’s something to grab onto…”
And that your stamina would last until the top.
Your contemplative hum filled the quiet cavern while trying (a failing) to measure an idea of how far the light was from you. You clicked your tongue, annoyed.
“Don’t do it, Salt…” you scolded, scowling at the sudden vivid thought of making it halfway, arms trembling, hands burning, sweat beading into your eyes—it had been near a day since you started this climb, your throat parched and body weak, but there was no place to rest—air whistled passed your ears as you passed out from exhaustion.
“...your White Mage is, like, a Baker’s Dozen Worlds back.”
Ain’t nobody got time to put your happy ass back together...slash it’s a bit hard to do so when they’re not…here…
Wherever that was.
You look towards the only exit to the cavern, alternating your weight from one foot to the other while propping a hand on your hip, debating, weighing, pondering. The cave seemed empty, nothing in the shadows crawled their way out. Nothing seemed to be an immediate threat—except for maybe the immediate expulsion of your brain through your nasal cavity—so you took a step forward out of the flower patch—
“Well, howdy!”
And threw yourself back with a shriek, arms flailing to catch your balance.
What. Was. That.
Your head whipped to the left and then to the right. The cavern was empty. Just you and yellow flowers and allergies as you fought back another sneeze from the displaced pollen.
“You’re a bit old for falling down a hole! What’s your name, Anomaly?”
You jerked back another step, trying to narrow down the direction of the voice by tilting your head and listening. Nothing jumped out at you. You huff, dragging your fingers against your temple to the back in a confused scratch. A keening hiss passed your lips you when you tried to pull away your hand, some strays tangled in the small chain link bracelet on your wrist and relieved you of some hair smartly.
A tinny voice scoffed. (“I’ve never seen you before.”)
“Down here, you big—est friend!” You froze at the sour and nasty voice turning sweet, your eyes darting down. One of the yellow flowers bloomed between feet, wiggling and flexing their leaves. They had a face and was...smiling...
...a’ight.
You could work with this.
You dropped to their height, arms crossed atop your knees while staring this World’s inhabitant in the eye critically. Talking flowers were...something new. But that had to be in the same vein of sentient animals trying to force you into a mortgage, right? Right! So, you plastered a dumb smile to your face and reached over your knee to shake their hand—er...leaf?
It was only polite...
“Well, hello there, lil—“
“I’m Flowey! Flowey the Flower! Nice to meet you!” Your smile twitched, your greeting ignored. “Wow! You must be new to the area!” They wriggled their stem.
“Um...yeah! Just dropped in—“
“You must be really confused!” You purse your lips, opening your mouth to correct the flower. They winked. And...a manifestation of a star? Appeared before shattering with their cutesy, disarming smile. Your finger curled down, unsure how to approach this native. “Don’t worry!” they cheered. “Ol’ Flowey will show you how it’s done!”
Your chest contracted, stealing your breath as something wrenched deep from within, and a frame flashed of a nasty smile crossing the flower’s face. A half a breath later, you kicked back, letting gravity role you up your spine and over your shoulder, pollen and petals bursting with the force as you land on the balls of your feet. The pressure was gone and you could breathe, but you skipped back a good distance just as a precaution.
Three consecutive sneezes had your eyes watering. Through blurry eyes as you wiped them with the corner of your sleeve, the yellow blob known as Flowey stared blankly, as if slowly processing what happened.
“Now, why’d you’d go and do that?” it asked, hurt coloring its reedy voice.
You blinked and it was gone. You blinked again, watching the field before locking on to the yellow flower just as its green stem sprouted between your feet again. You stared, scanning the creature rapidly when your eyes widened at what struck you odd about it.
“Golly! I just want to help! Here! Let me try it again—“
You leapt to the other side of the field, close to the mouth of the chamber (when did that door get there?) and out of the flowers. Your hand clutched protectively over your heart, bunching the fabric of your shirt, eyes narrow and suspicious at the plant as its cute face melted away to something nasty and mean.
“What is this? Just stay. Still. And let me teach you how things go—“
“Yeah—no,” you interrupted. The flower actually looked offended. “You’re touching some quality goods here and I’d appreciate if you cease and desist—where’d you go?”
The damn thing burrowed under ground, nothing disrupting the surface like they did in old B-rated horror films. You took a few side steps, watching the ground to lock on the decidedly not friendly native when something thick and scratchy bit into your bare ankle.
You yanked viciously at the binding, swallowing a yell at the sharp thorns slithering up your calf and locking tightly around your knees. Legs tethered securely to the ground, the purple dirt bulged at your feet before Flowey the Flower bloomed once more before you, folding up from its stem with a mean glare.
“That’s not how this is supposed to go! You’re supposed to sit there stupid as I show you how things work down here.”
You inhale sharply through your teeth. Your vision dimmed, pressure on your chest erupting at the same time.
This wasn’t a flower was your horrified thought. How could you think it was a normal flower!? You were frozen in place and you knew it wasn’t the vines holding you still anymore. It was cold and hard to breathe as a weight pulled out slowly out of your chest.
It hurt to lose your heart like this, it always did. But, as your fingers flexed, trying to break the bond that held you, and move your left arm, you vaguely discern that it wasn’t really the same...pain.
“...what are you doing, idiot? Open your eyes!”
That was when you realized the world was dark because of how hard you had clenched your eyes. It hurt to open them and—after blinking them clear—your world was no longer dark, but black and white.
With the significant exception of a brilliant colored heart-shaped object floating in a cube just before your chest.
“By the Lanes...what the fuck is that!?” You looked to the flower who no longer was smiling or winking cutesy. Its face was morphed into a cracked grin, a smile that took pleasure in fear with dark sockets that had small glowing dots for pupils.
“That is your SOUL! It’s the culmination of your being!” Its nasty grin drooped a little, thrown off of its seemingly scripted rant as its beady little eyelights darted around the...the SOUL (you felt a little sick at calling it that, this was your heart!) to you gritting your teeth and back to it, watching as it jerked and circled in its cage with every movement you made. “...it starts out weak, but yours… You’re not...you’re really not from around here, best friend?”
It wasn’t really a question.
The tiny pupils filled its eyes. “That’s a lot of LOVE you already got there.”
White petals float from behind the monochrome flower and arc around it like a bad posse.
“Don’t worry! I’ve got these…’friendliness pellets’ to share! Just...try to move around and catch them all!”
The petals spin towards your heart/SOUL, your bright and shining heart that had you gritting your teeth and forcibly dodging them, crashing into the walls in your effort. Even with Flowey’s nasty, little smile, what struck you odd about this flower was not its obviously fake words.
But its health.
“...what are you doing? Stop moving! And. Run. Into. MY BULLETS friendliness pellets!”
One of the bullets managed to scratch your heart and you felt the damage reflecting onto your physical being (high on your cheek that pebbled blood). It was a small scratch. And you saw a flash of fear in the flower’s eyes. Which struck you curious as you broke your paralysis just enough to flex your hand. From the corner of your eye, white light radiated on your left side.
The “friendliness pellets” rushed your heart/SOUL again. This next batch almost struck you, distracted and defenseless in your desire to summon the familiar weight in your hand. It would have been a direct hit if you hadn’t yelled—
“Reflect!”
Your heart/SOUL was swallowed by a dome of translucent hexagons, rainbow in their color as the petals bounced back one by one. The flower dodge the best it could, stretching its stem and ducking, but it missed one rogue petal ricocheting off another. It hit the flower hard enough that it fell away, tearing the monochrome world with it.
The encounter ended with color rushing back to your vision and you collapsing to your hands and knees. You were panting, staring at the purple ground, the weight in your hand dissipated in white spheres before you dug your fingers in the dirt. With a sharp inhale, you snapped your head up, looking for the little weed, but found yourself alone.
You pushed back to hover on your haunches and grasped the fabric above your heart. Your chest felt heavy with this newly dubbed culmination of you residing there and you gritted your teeth to surge to your feet with cracking knees.
Great, just another reason to keep it under lock and key.
Warily, you reexamined your surroundings, taking note of the big, looming pillars surrounding a large door with a symbol that had wings and triangles decorating it. You looked back over your shoulder to the flower patch that you landed in wistfully, the idea of exploring this new World no longer exciting.
But you had a job that only you could do.
Which was why you fortified your will, mustering your strength to look away and forcing your hand to loose its grip on your shirt and fall to your side. Rolling your shoulders back, you pressed forward, opening the monstrous doors resolutely and marching through them.
Faintly, you mused if you’d find someone actually friendly this time.