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Noelle could claim to be a lot of things. She was the ‘Girl next door’ of Hometown, always open to lending a helping hand since she was little. She was the class ‘A+ student,’ dedicated and studious in everything she did. She was a ‘meek coward’, outspoken by everyone she knew, from family, to Berdly, to… well, Kris of all people.
Or, better said, the demon possessing her childhood friend.
Long were the days when ice statues and commanding voices were just nightmares. Now Noelle is well-acquainted with a variety of Dark Worlds, from Cyber World to the Ice Palace and the now present Dark Woods, and their landscapes. How easy they are to break, with the cold touch of magic, or the sharp side of a sword. With the Prophecy, and the Fountains, how much the role of ‘Hero’ meant to Susie…
Oh, Susie.
She would have died before listening to the demon’s words, rebellious to the utter end. Too strong-willed to be persuaded, so instead she had to be taken out. And now… It was just the demon, Ralsei, and Noelle herself in the middle of trees and jungle. Various wooden platforms formed paths around the trees, forming a complicated maze to proceed. It’d just be a dull trek through the trees normally, were it not for the scattering of puzzles throughout.
Speaking of…
“Why, I think You can solve this puzzle!” Ralsei’s voice chirped several paces in front of her. He was literally giggling in front of It. In encouragement, maybe? It didn’t seem impressed.
“Proceed.” It lifted one of Kris’s arms in motion to the wooden buttons in the platform, in vague but clear intent that they should clear the puzzle. It wasn’t too complicated, Noelle knew from the distant visage of the Ferried Lights playing around here that it was just a matter of connecting bridges to get the acorns in the right basket to lower the walkway, and she was sure if she used her Ice powers it would be a breeze.
But.
Ralsei wasn’t moving.
“I-it’s probably a lot q-quicker if we just use our powers to solve this. Then we can just get back to the Light World…” Now she was talking. No reason to keep this confrontation going longer than it had to.
“Hmm…,” Ralsei seemed to consider the question, “But our Leader likes solving puzzles? There’s no rush, right? You can take all the time You need. We’re right here if you need advice.” Now Ralsei was reaching out to support her, without really backing down from their spot. His eyes were still on Kris.
This only seemed to piss it off even further. “Proceed.” It was getting too close.
Ralsei seemed to agree. “W-wow, you’re really getting close, huh. I don’t know if this is an appropriate time for this, it’s so sudden for our relationship. And it’d probably be wrong to let Noelle feel left out…” Is. Is he. Serious? He’s… flirting with the Demon possessing Kris? He’s blushing and has dopey grin on his face. He looks embarrassed, if definitely not ashamed at what he just said. WHY? That’s a demon pretending to be Kris! Ralsei looks like Kris’s brother! Every one in this team is capable of cold-blooded murder, and THAT’S what he’s suggesting they do now?
Noelle thinks maybe she got the wrong impression of Ralsei from the day before, when they all tried to exorcise the demon off Kris. Calm, wise wizard of the Dark Realm, this guy is not.
The demon seemed to share Noelle’s sentiments, at least. With a glare that could kill, it immediately turned around and stomped off to the opposite side of the ledge.
...And it just jumped off the wooden platform, past the treetops and into the ground thousands of feet below.
Noele’s breath caught.
“Kris!” Noelle ran to where they stood just a moment ago. Oh, god, this was it for Kris. The demon finally snapped and ended their life in a murder-suicide. She couldn’t see anything past the foliage of the trees, and if their body was a crumpled mess on the ground…
“...thank god, that’s over… ” Ralsei walked over calmly, cleaning off his glasses, as if nothing was wrong and Kris didn’t just fall to their death and would never come back. He peeked over the edge next to her, contemplating, hands behind his back. “If it wants to be a brat and break the game, it’s not going to use us to do so.” He turned towards her. “Well, we should actually solve the puzzle now, then.” Like a slap in the face, he was just smiling at her.
“...I don’t think Kris survived the fall…” She whispered.
At least that made Ralsei flinch. “Oh! You don’t know. I mean, of course you don’t, it probably didn’t pop up into your mind, if all you knew was the light world and its logic, it's not a conclusion you’d make-”
Her tongue was sharp. “Get to the point. You think Kris survived?” The Ice Shock spell would be enough to stop his blathering.
“Yes! I mean, we’d know if they didn’t survive. Or not know, it’s better said that we wouldn’t be here talking if they didn’t live.” He was apologetic. “Er, you look confused.” Better said, Noelle was furious. “Well, the demon has the power to reset time in case of emergencies. Like dying. If anything serious actually happened to it or Kris’s SOUL, they would just turn back time to before the SOUL was destroyed, in which case we wouldn’t be standing here, talking.”
So, time travel was real and the demon could do it? Noelle didn’t think she quite understood what it all meant, but that was par for the course in the dark world. “So their SOUL is still fine?”
“Yes. Which means Kris is physically fine.”
Relief. “Which is the most fine Kris is going to be until the Demon decides to leave them alone.”
“Correct. It’ll probably find its way to the fountain, ravaging the path. But it’s out of our hands for now. We, on the other hand, should get a move on, if we want to get to the good stuff.”
Ralsei was… right, probably. Any more time in the Dark World was more time the Demon spent terrorizing it. Terrorizing them. Terrorizing Kris in ways it didn’t seem to in the Light World. The two needed to keep moving, even if there was a bridge that refused to budge until they solved its stupid puzzle.
Noelle studied the prince. Would Ralsei be just as obstinate if it was just the two of them? He was… something of a rule follower. He knew enough dark magic to help plan out the bindings for an exorcism, but preferred to refer to the LEADER, ‘Kris’, anyways. Just from what Susie told her, Noelle knew Ralsei often had secret conversations with Kris. He wasn’t exactly say loyal to the demon, Ralsei still helped with the exorcism, and he couldn’t exactly predict the catastrophe that ensued. And for all his mystery he was just as rattled about Susie’s disappearance. But he… knew things, that Noelle didn’t, and seemed to be aware of laws and rules that the Demon knew too. If he was going to be just as stubborn with her as he was with it, then Noelle would have to…
“What’s the holdup? You don’t want to use ice magic?” He was looking at her. Fidgeting. “I guess it might be easier for me…” He started preparing a fire spell.
That was wrong. “W-wait, you don’t have to- I can-” Why was he helping her?
“Er, it’s no biggie, it’s just a favor-” He held the warmth in his paws, a miniature star.
“I’m strong enough to do this just fine-” She was supposed to be, as a level 3 Ice Mage, strong enough without him.
“But if I can help smooth the ride along, I’m already on it.” And he was, as flashes of fire sparked upon the vines holding the drawbridge, sputtering before anything else could catch.
“Oh…” There was no reason for Noelle to get so defensive, if he just wanted to help. He just wanted to smooth the ride along, at least for her. Sure, Noelle could buy that. “Thank you, then, Ralsei. Now we can continue.” She started past the bridge, into the Dark beyond. It seemed to be a tunnel of dirt and stone, paved with the same wood as the platform they were on just now. It gradually went downwards.
And Ralsei hurried to catch her, magic held to light. “No problem!” He was… blushing. Cute, maybe, but it seemed Ralsei was just like that with everyone. Easily flustered, he was.
He wasn’t anything like that yesterday, though. Learning a demon was possessing your friend tended to do that, it was kind of a mood killer. Noelle knew how scared she was for Kris, and for the rest of Hometown, and every time she dwelled too long on the thought she could feel her heart drum out of her chest. How was she supposed to fight a demon, when its only tie to the world was the body of her best friend? At least she had the Light World to escape to, where it didn’t hold as much power. Noelle didn’t know what happened between Cyber World and yesterday that alerted Ralsei and Susie to its existence, but Officer Undyne never returned from her investigations of the Dreemurr household, and Noelle was well acquainted with the destruction it wrought against Darkners. As a Darkner himself, Ralsei must be horrified of what was happening towards his kind, only able to annoy and obstruct the person he once called LEADER.
The two continued down the wooden staircase, lit only by the magical light that seemed to exude from the Dark World itself. It’s… surprisingly hard to see too far ahead, as the light blends with the shadows in disorientating patterns. It left her confused when Ralsei lifted his hands in a ‘stop’ motion.
“What’s happened?” She said.
He seemed to be listening intently. “There’s… enemies up ahead. Ferried Lights, is what they’re called. Simple enough to Fight.” He seemed contemplative.
“Right…” That was… direct of him. Wasn’t he supposed to insist they Spare the enemies? “Isn’t there some other… way you want to finish them off?”
Ralsei seemed to beam at her, if only through the light reflecting of his lens. “Oh! I mean… If you would agree to…" He was playing with his scarf. “I want to know what happens when we mix your Ice Shock with my Fire Blast!”
What?
Ralsei went on, elaborating with his hands. “Of course, each spell separately can ‘kill’ a Darkner, but they have quite different methods to do so. My Fire Blast sets a ‘Burning’ status effect even after the battle ends, which immobilizes the enemy from the pain even as they run away. But they can still run away, and that’s what they do. Your Ice Shock prevents running away period, even after a battle ends. I don’t know if inside the ice the enemy can still think though…” He let the silence rest for a moment, before smiling. “Of course, if my Fire Blast can melt your ice, then we can figure it out, together! What effect will they have?”
What? Noelle had to interject. “What. Are. You. Talking about?”
Ralsei seemed to have noticed her shock, because the energy seemed to wilt off him. “Ah, er, um,” and various other interjections escaped him as he caught up with her train of thought. When he finally found the words they were squeaky and strung out. “...Didn’t you want to explore new methods to defeat enemies…?”
There seemed to be some type of grave miscommunication here. “...because I thought you were the ‘Fluffy-innocent-spare-all-enemies’ type of guy? I’d think you would be uncomfortable with violence if what Susie told me about you was true.”
Ralsei was burrowing into his scarf. “M-my relationship with violence is c-complicated. That was then, this is now.”
Something was clicking into place for Noelle. “Please explain? What happened then that made you discourage Fighting?”
Ralsei was the same color as his scarf. “I-It doesn’t really matter. Just a hopeful wish that evil things were impossible, and that some funny thoughts would pass without event. Like I said it doesn’t really matter what I believed back then.” And then he giggles like he just made a funny joke. It’s not.
“Oh,” A horrible thought in the moment, to let the electric field electrocute Kris. Now it’s just funny that Noelle had the right impulse, back then. “It’s natural I guess.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Noelle can see that Ralsei doesn’t want to meet her gaze. “But if it would make you feel better, I can teach you how Acting works.”
That, however, is a joke. “So I’d have to learn how to make friends with things I’ve spent the whole time killing, starting from zero?
Ralsei sighs. “Only because it’d make you feel better. To serve you properly and all that.” He seems more relaxed, talking like normal. “Though, if you don’t have any other objections, I’d really prefer going back to the proposed plan. There’s more than three of them, so we should approach this carefully. A straight-on fight will run the risk of overwhelming us. Or the risk of the Ferried Lights running away, and then they’lll be lost forever…” Ralsei kept on talking, not unlike another ‘friend’ Noelle knew, oblivious that she’d stopped listening.
Was this normal for Ralsei? Noelle barely knew the guy, yet here he was chattering on like everything was fine. Did Susie meet him like this? Noelle doesn’t think so.
She can’t breathe, and she can’t listen. The room is supposed to be humid and hot, but Noelle can’t feel anything beyond the cold of her arms.
Angel Above, nothing makes sense. It’s all just shapes and colors, light green and rectangles and squiggly lines and dots. There’s a big fuzzy crayon lecturing her. Or was it Asriel laughing? He made no sense. Someone should know what happened, someone should tell her it’s wrong. Asriel was older than her, he knew when Dess stepped too far. Asriel could tell her to apologize to Berdly. Maybe her dad would too. But it’s not Asriel that’s here, Asriel was off in college. The pink fur belonged to the Prince, and all the Prince did was serve the Lightners. Serve her, even when she was obviously doing something wrong. What was Noelle doing, so far from school? She had a club to participate in, classwork to perfect, neighbors to talk to and pretend she wasn’t an anxious wreck, that her dad might not come back from the hospital, that even gone Noelle couldn’t let her mother’s spirit fail, that her friends were dead or missing, that she was walking through fantasy worlds made from household items ready to kill her. Noelle wanted to scream, or cry, or- she doesn’t know.
“...So to handle the situation, I think you should attack with Ice Shock first. Okay, Noelle?” Was that Ralsei talking to her? “Um, Noelle?” He seemed to notice something was wrong.
Noelle shook herself back to awareness. She wasn’t going to be weak in front of this farce. “Y-Yeah! I’m fine. I agree. I’ll just… uh, use… Ice Shock.” It was always the same thing they wanted.
Ralsei’s gaze didn’t let up. “You don’t look fine. In fact you look rather spaced out. What is…” The question trailed off as he looked for an answer to her unhappiness.
It wasn’t anything he could fix. “You just need me to cast Ice Shock, right? How I feel isn’t any of your business.” Ralsei looked taken back by that. Noelle didn’t mean to snap. “...Sorry. I’m just… surprised you’re taking everything so well. Like, everything, from Kris getting possessed to the slaughter of Darkners to Susie being-” Noelle couldn’t continue the thought.
Ralsei didn’t hesitate to fill the silence. “Susie’s still out there; she’s just gone for now. She’ll come back, we just have to find her.”
“Yeah.” She gulped. “But especially the Darkners. Since… you’re the Prince of Darkners and all that. I’d have thought that massacring your people would bother you more. That their fates would matter in the end…”
In the following silence, you could hear the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. Or of a Fairy Lights’, if that was their name. It was up to Ralsei to break it.
He did so tentatively. “I think… massacring ‘my people’ is a strong way to put it. Darkners are not ‘people’ in the way you Lightners are. You are like gods to us. We exist solely for your benefit. If you used combat magic on a Lightner, I’m sure it would end catastrophically. If you used magic on a Darkner, and succeeded in a permanent knock out, then nothing ends up really mattering. Once you close the fountain they’ll end up as items either way, and can be reused as such.” He knocked his head sideways. “If there’s any joy to get from terrorizing toys imaginary lives, why shouldn’t I encourage it? We, Darkners, live to serve you.” Bows to her.
Noelle laughs, because nothing here makes sense. “That’d make me some kind of perverted Ice Angel, wouldn’t it? And you’d be my twisted Prince of Darkness, leading your subjects to their sacrificial altar. If something like that happened to Hometown, I think everyone would panic and scream. Or more likely, Undyne and Asgore would destroy any threat to this town.” Not like Undyne had been seen since last night, but… there was no point in speculating.
“And I can’t see the mayor ever letting a religious symbol ruin the place she works all day to keep functional.” Mayor. M-mom. Icy glare, frost queen, cold hands. Too cold. Not too long ago they warmed up by the fireplace, together. Now the fireplace is just cold as dust. Just like the ground in front of her…
Fwoosh! It’s warm now, just enough so Noelle can breathe again. That’s… Ralsei’s magic, it should be. He’s holding a hand out to her with an apologetic smile on his face. She doesn't hesitate to grab it. It’s nice, even if just for a moment. He doesn’t smell of cinnamon-butter but it’s warm nonetheless. Noelle still doesn’t trust him and Ralsei’s stare still doesn’t meet hers. It doesn’t matter.
“Breathe,” His voice is encouraging. “This is the forest beyond the rainbow gate, on the path over the trees. We are adventurers, seeking its Black Heart, the Dark Fountain, but the branches keep twisting it out of reach. There is no snow, no knights, and the demons are busy dealing with forest fairies. We, are free to take our time; there are no Lightners aside from you and Kris, the gate only lets the worthy pass.” He knocks his head. “...Or better said, no one really visits Kris’s dad enough to run into this Dark World. Asgore himself is busy with deliveries today.”
...Right. It is just her, Kris, and supposedly Ralsei. It’s just… them. No Berdly, no police, no Alphys, no Asgore. It’s just… them. The heroes hadn’t chased after any other classmates stumbling into a world way bigger than themselves, and they had all seen the Knight create the world itself. It was nothing like the Winter Wonderland she had tricked Kris into, or the suffocating City she had a nightmare of once upon a time. “Right… It’s just us.”
Ralsei is looking at her. Trying to figure out where she stood, if she was weak or strong. Apologetic, maybe? “Well, you don’t NEED to be the Angel either, if you don’t want to. We can find another way to proceed. All that power over the world must be scary, so-”
“It’s terrifying! Knowing I have so much control over you yet still feeling so…” …weak. She continued, quieter, “...But I can imagine what it would be like, if I didn’t have to worry about anyone else being here. If I didn’t have to worry about THEIR voice demanding from me. If every time all I can see is snow I didn’t have to worry about who was frozen on the other side.” She smiled, reminiscing. “It would be scary, yeah, to be the center of the universe. The judge and jury of your lives, your only light, as well as the consuming darkness. But it’d be kind of thrilling, too, knowing I’d have that kind of power. That my will would be carried out no matter what anyone else says. To be free from good or evil, just for a moment…”
Noelle thinks she catches her wistfulness in the reflection of Ralsei’s eyes. “...Master of our own fate, if for just a second. I would love to be that. See that, I mean.” He shakes his head. “But where are you going with all this? You still haven’t decided what to do with the Ferried Lights.”
Noelle laughs. It’s hard and cold, but it’s Noelle’s cackling and no one else’s. “Well, Prince of Darkness Ralsei, not too long ago you offered a scheme to destroy these enemies. Your Ice Angel asks you show it to her.” She offers Ralsei a hand.
Ralsei looks at it in disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe that someone would just go along with what he says. But then he smiles, teeth bared like a leering dog, and grabs a hold of it. “Gladly. For every Darkner you freeze I’ll blast them wide open with my fire spells. If that is your will?”
“Correct. Obey me, and prepare to open fire. I know I can get rid of these things in one shot, but a Fluffy Guy like you? Let’s see…” She concentrates on the snow globe on her hand, on the empty feeling of Strength it gives her. It’s cold, it’s so cold but that’s she was an Ice Mage, wasn’t she? She could channel this bitter cold into enemies without thought, without memory. It didn’t have to be Kris’s, the Demon’s command she followed to attack, Noelle could just do this on her own.
Or maybe not even that. The orange of blazes blasting past her and into the Ferried Lights was a set of fireworks to behold, trails of flame scurrying like mice. It was a funny sort of warmth to counteract her ice, and even Noelle could feel it like the hearth at her back. Like wings to catch her should the ice ever run faint.
With just a word, ice trapped the lanky wires and frenzied sprites, moments before imploding from the heat.