Chapter Text
Kris Dreemurr was having a historically bad day. Even after spending hours trapped on the set of Tenna Tonight and having to contend with all manner of trials, facing both hostile Darkners and meticulously constructed obstacle courses in order to save both their own mother and the Hometown police chief from certain doom, Kris still couldn’t take their mind off what had happened in the Cyber World. The frozen Virovirokuns, all the disgusting things they said to Noelle by the ferris wheel poster, the strange man in the dumpster who gave her that awful-looking ring, Berdly frozen in a prism of ice…
The thought that they had allowed the horrible presence haunting their body to do all of that had been churning their stomach for the last day, and they knew that it would continue to until they figured out some way to regain control of their soul from whatever had taken it from them. As their third adventure through a Dark World in two days dragged on, they realized that this task was going to be a lot more difficult than they first thought. With no discernable method of making their soul theirs again and each new Fountain bringing with it only an ever-greater chance of catastrophe, whether that be from the Roaring Ralsei had warned about, the increasing number of bystanders the Dark Worlds’ existence had to be concealed from, or the looming danger that Noelle now presented if she ever fell into a Fountain again, Kris had begun to resign themselves to simply going through the motions of what their soul wanted them to do. The only thing that prevented them from giving up completely was a desperate hope that their will would be strong enough to prevent a repeat of what happened to Berdly the next time disaster came knocking.
Although thinking about all this gloom and doom in the middle of riding a motorcycle through a spinning hoop of fire would usually be extremely ill-advised, with their soul taking the reins, Kris was able to ponder their current situation extensively without fear of bodily harm. They supposed this was the one positive to all of this; the nature of their possession meant that they had ample time to think about how to escape said possession, and as far as they could tell, the force controlling their soul lacked awareness of their thoughts. Even still, it was hard to think about much at all with the blaring carnival-style music and flashing strobe lights that surrounded Kris and the rest of the Delta Warriors as they neared the end of the motor course. Being trapped in your own body while on a deadly game show that looked like a candy-coated, technicolor hell after witnessing one of your classmates get turned into an icicle wasn’t exactly Kris’ idea of a good time, especially when they knew that their torment was far from over. After the motorcycle section, the group would have to climb a transmission tower to receive the “grand prize” that their captor, the renegade TV host Tenna, had been prattling on about ever since they arrived at his studios. The sheer noise and spectacle of the whole affair did little to ease the nigh-endless panic attack they had been going through for the better part of the last day.
Maybe after we catch this Knight guy and restore balance to the world or whatever I’ll get my soul back , they mused while their body jerked to the left off their motorcycle to dodge a falling barrel full of flaming oil. After all, this whole mess started at the same time that we found the first Fountain. With few positive thoughts left in their head, Kris clung to this one as hard as they could, even harder than their soul was making them cling to the top of the ledge they had been flung towards. It was a desperate hope, but at this point, desperate was better than nothing.
An hour later, Kris found themselves sitting in the chair with their name on it in Tenna Tonight ’s backstage area, Susie and Ralsei across from them, still unable to take their mind off of their personal purgatory. As it turned out, the “grand prize” that they had won was an opportunity to fight against Tenna himself in order to close the Fountain and rescue Toriel and Undyne, because of course it was, so now Kris and their friends were resting up backstage for the fight tomorrow, grateful that they didn’t have to immediately go through yet another battle. Of course, Kris was even more grateful for their new compatriots and the steadfast bond the three had formed over the last few days. Although Kris was often preoccupied with the circumstances of Berdly’s death, the moments of genuine friendship shared between the Warriors throughout their Dark World adventures had made them feel like they fit in somewhere for the first time since… since… since when Dess went missing. Shit.
Before Kris had time to ponder the significance of all the tragedies that had befallen the supposedly peaceful community of Hometown over the last few years, Susie turned towards them and broke the lengthy silence the room had found itself in, saying “So, what kind of TV channel is this anyway?” while simultaneously moving her right hand from under her snout to the side of her chair, crushing the arm of one of Tenna’s Stagecrudes that was attempting to wipe the sweat off her brow.
“I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be based off of Hometown Public Television,” Kris replied. “Tenna looks pretty similar to their logo, at least from what I can remember.”
“What kind of public access channel has shows about navigating murderous obstacle courses???” Susie spat back incredulously.
“One with a host that’s been corrupted by the Knight,” Ralsei responded, with a solemn look on his face. The sudden appearance of a third Fountain on the same day as the second had put the Prince from the Dark in a sour mood, at odds with the chipper demeanor that Kris and Susie had grown accustomed to over the course of their last two adventures.
This statement confused Kris greatly. Tenna couldn’t have been corrupted by the Knight because the Knight hadn’t been around to do any corrupting. Kris had made this Fountain, not the Knight. If the violent behavior of the leaders of the Dark Worlds stemmed from the Knight’s corrupting influence, as Ralsei said, then Tenna should be completely benign, and yet he had tried to kill the three of them on nearly five separate occasions by now. Ralsei’s story didn’t add up, and even though the conversation they had while Susie was confronting Lancer yesterday made it clear that he was aware of what was happening to Kris, things like his inability to explain the exact nature of their possession, his seeming lack of awareness about Berdly’s death, and his confusion about the Knight made Kris pretty sure that he either didn’t know as much as he claimed to, or that he was still withholding some level of information from his Lightner companions.
Kris decided that with nothing better to do, they might as well try to test the limits of Ralsei’s knowledge about what was going on. Thankfully, although the presence in their soul seemed to prevent them from saying anything about its existence to those who weren’t already aware, it didn’t seem to mind letting them speak on their own about most other matters.
“Hey, Ralsei, how does the Knight manage to corrupt all of these Dark World leaders, anyhow? I thought they just created the Fountains and left them be,” Kris inquired, casting a furtive glance behind their hair towards the prince.
Ralsei paused for a moment, looking down at the symbol on the center of his robe. The shape of an inverted spade stood in stark contrast to the heart that had been there initially, before the veil of shadow around his face had dissipated. He took a deep breath in, exhaled, cleared his throat, paused again, and then opened his mouth to speak.
“Aspects of the Fountains’ forms are defined by the characteristics of the Lightners present at its creation. Because the Knight seeks to bring about the Roaring, the Darkners in the worlds they create will be led by one who protects the existence of their Fountain. Likewise, when the Knight made the Cyber World, Noelle and Berdly were already in the computer lab, so Queen enlisted them in her plan to keep the Fountain open, and the Dark World helped them with their ch- personal development.”
Kris didn’t think that getting kidnapped and brainwashed sounded like a good way to cause “personal development,” but they knew for sure that Ralsei had been lying to them now. They couldn’t care less about the Roaring, they just wanted the police to know that they were telling the truth about the Dark Worlds. Thankfully, Ralsei seemed to be more willing to open up about what was really going on when Susie wasn’t around, so all Kris had to do to get to the bottom of this mess was to figure out some way to split the group up, and then get the fluffy boy to spill his guts.
It just so happened that the perfect opportunity to get time alone with Ralsei was directly in Kris’ line of vision.
“That’s very interesting. I’m going to go to that bathroom over there and wash up real quick,” Kris said without intonation, getting up from their chair and walking in between Susie and Ralsei on the way to a bathroom door that none of the three remembered being there when they first returned backstage.
Kris opened the door and turned around a corner to see another Stagecrude washing their hands at a sink. The appearance of Tenna’s underlings had unnerved them for quite some time, not only due to the inherent strangeness of the way that their slimy frog-like bodies refused to fit comfortably inside of their all-black stage-tech uniform and their constant murmuring into the headsets that seemed to be organic parts of their bodies, but also because the way they smiled bore a strange resemblance to the Addisons that populated the Cyber World. Even though none of these Dark Worlds had actually existed at the same time as each other, the connections between them had grown more and more obvious ever since Jevil had mentioned the Queen all the way back in the Card Castle, and although Kris couldn’t quite tell what they exactly meant, they were sure that it did not bode well.
Their pondering soon drifted to how despite the strange parallelism at play in the Dark Worlds, Ralsei didn’t seem to be lying about Darkners being incompatible with Fountains other than their own, but before they could spend much time pondering this they were interrupted by the sound of the Stagecrude gasping in shock as they caught sight of them.
“The Knight is here!” the Stagecrude exclaimed, moving their headset away from their mouth and bending over in order to stare directly into Kris’ pockets. “The Knight is here… and yet, they don’t have a bottle. How strange!”
Kris shoved the Stagecrude away from them with a look of sheer panic on their face, trying to shout out “I’m not the Knight! Leave me alone!” at the top of their lungs. But of course, as always seemed to happen when they needed to scream the most, they could only let out a whisper. Even though Kris knew on a logical level that they couldn’t be the Knight, so much information had been hidden from them over the last few days that it still felt like it could be possible.
The Stagecrude turned their sickly face back towards Kris and cleared their throat a bit, releasing a disgusting ribbit-like noise.
“Not the Knight,” they said, “But a Knight! But a Knight without a bottle is like a television network without a news anchor, good heavens! You should go and find it before the Thread tears any further!”
Ralsei had been watching the bathroom door waiting for Kris to come back into the dressing room for the past five minutes now. Although he hadn’t ever seen a Lightner enter a restroom before, he was fairly certain that the process wasn’t usually supposed to take this long. The anxious tapping of Susie’s foot and the nervous expression she was wearing seemed to confirm his worries that something was amiss, but Ralsei wasn’t sure exactly how to help his friend out in this situation.
“Hey Ralsei,” Susie suddenly blurted out, loudly enough that Ralsei jumped to attention, “you seen a shop back here anywhere? It’s been hours since I’ve had something to sink my teeth into.”
“Oh, um, I think… I think I saw one in that hallway over there behind you, where that Stagecrude had a table set up?”
“Near the weird smoggy dude who kept rambling about some mantle or something?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“Ugh, is that all we got? That frog looked slimy as hell. I bet all of that fruit or whatever they had is covered in goop by now.”
“Well, if you want to go look for somewhere else, you can go right ahead.”
Susie was a bit confused with the seemingly passive-aggressive tone Ralsei had taken with his last statement, something she had not heard from him since her escapades with Lancer the previous day. So much had changed in the past 48 hours that the shift in cadence felt more surprising than it should have, but she didn’t pay it much mind. After all, things had certainly been getting a little confusing lately; she still hadn’t figured out what to make of Noelle planting a quick kiss on her cheek and then immediately having a panic attack in her room in Queen’s mansion, so in the grand scheme of things, a slightly hostile manner of speaking didn’t seem like that big of a deal.
“Alright,” she grumbled, before getting out of her chair and hastily pacing back towards the fruit stand.
With Susie out of his fur, Ralsei was free to leave his own seat and scurry towards the bathroom, and the unfortunate conversation that he knew was coming, even though he had spent the last few days trying to make sure it would never happen.
When Ralsei entered the bathroom, he narrowly avoided running directly into the Stagecrude that Kris had spent the last few minutes desperately attempting to shoo out of the entryway. When the amphibian creature saw the Prince, they ceased their hemming and hawing and finally headed towards the exit, letting out a few “goodness gracious”es on the way out. As soon as the door closed, Kris slowly paced over to the corner of the bathroom Ralsei was standing in, close enough to see the Darkner’s matted, sweaty fur.
“Ralsei.”
“Y-yes, Kris?”
“You need to tell me how to get rid of this soul possession thing, right now.”
“I told you, Kris. You can’t get rid of it until we stop the Knight.”
“ Is there even a Knight? That frog guy seemed to think the Knight was me! ”
This seemed to give Ralsei some pause.
After some contemplation, he shimmied away from Kris, and solemnly muttered “Kris… we can’t talk about this right now.”
“Then when CAN we talk about it?” Kris shouted back. A moment later, Kris’ confusion and anger returned to their usual inscrutable neutrality, as Ralsei’s eyes moved upwards towards the sky.
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
After a long, uneasy pause, Ralsei spoke up again.
“Kris… are you wondering how Noelle is doing right now?”
“Wait, what? Noelle isn’t even in this Dark World.”
Ralsei looked Kris dead in the eyes.
“Are you wondering how Noelle is doing right now?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess?”
“Well then… why don’t we close our eyes…”
To say that Noelle Holiday was having a bad day would have been the understatement of the century. Any day with a “nightmare” as severe as the one she suffered through in the computer lab over the afternoon would have been bad enough on its own, but finding out that nightmare wasn’t a nightmare at all was a different story, especially when it meant that Noelle had inadvertently killed one of her classmates.
Berdly’s death was what Noelle was most concerned with, of course, but it was far from the only thing on her mind this sleepless night. Kris’ strange behavior and voice combined with their bizarre and uncharacteristic actions seemed to indicate that something was very wrong with them, but she couldn’t figure out any logical explanation for what was going on. Of course, since her fantastical dream had somehow been a reality, it was safe to say that logic had been thrown out the window a few hours ago. With that in mind, the most obvious conclusion she could come to was that Kris was being possessed by a ghost or spirit of some kind, but Noelle wasn’t sure whether she’d rather believe that her childhood friend was capable of such horrible deeds, or that they were a prisoner to the same voice that had issued commands to her. And, although it now seemed completely trivial in comparison to everything else that had happened, Noelle was also worried about the way she acted when Susie had come into her room in Queen’s mansion. In a dream, giving her crush a quick kiss in order to take her mind off of everything that had just happened would be completely innocuous, but knowing now that all of that was real… well, it would certainly make for an awkward conversation the next time she saw Susie.
Noelle didn’t have the nerve to text Susie another apology, or to check in on her, or to even try to inform her that one of their classmates was dead, but she did feel the urge to check in with Kris, in case her theory about the spirit possession happened to be correct by some miracle. Maybe it’s like that movie I saw the other week about the girl who was only demonic when people were looking at her , she thought to herself. Angel above, I hope that’s what it is.
But what could she even say? It’s not like she could get a meaningful response from them if they actually were possessed. The only way Noelle could think of freeing Kris for sure was to follow them around and try to figure out how to exorcize them through trial and error based on their behavior, and she would rather stay as far away from them as possible based on what had happened to Berdly. And of course, while being able to save her friend would be lovely, Noelle had to make sure that Kris didn’t order her to freeze Berdly of their own volition before trying anything, as horrible as that possibility was to even think about.
And so, with no clear path forward and no way to be consoled, Noelle sat in her bed, listening to the sound of a single car passing by and staring at her texts with Kris, debating with herself whether to send a message or just go to bed. It was 3 a.m., and she was too exhausted to even cry anymore. At least the weekend would give her some time to recover and an excuse to avoid Kris for a few more days, and her mother would both be more busy and more understanding once Berdly’s body was found.
With nothing else to think about or do, Noelle’s eyes slowly fell shut for longer and longer in between glances at her phone, before she finally drifted off to sleep. It was a shame that she was so tired, because if she were more awake, she might have noticed that the glow of her phone was melding together with the glow of a faceless white figure at the end of her bed, its four wings flickering in the darkness.
“So that’s why, OK, Kris?”
As Ralsei finished telling Kris the whole truth, a stillness hung in the air of the bathroom like some sort of miasma. With neither the human nor the Prince willing to continue a conversation of any sort, the two Warriors slowly walked out of the bathroom and back to their seats, where Susie had returned from her quest with a cantaloupe that looked like it had been submerged in a vat of grease. As she tentatively gnawed on the melon, she watched them both sit down and stare into space, each bearing expressions that seemed even more glum than they were before she went to get food. She thought about asking them whether there was anything she could help them with, but eventually came to the conclusion that they were probably just exhausted from their last two adventures. She was certainly looking forward to getting some shut-eye as soon as this was over. Maybe tomorrow when I don’t feel like passing out I’ll try to ask Kris how they’re doing, she thought. This Dark World stuff’s probably a lot less fun when you gotta stop your mom from dying.
This Dark World stuff was the last thing on Kris’ mind at the moment. Although Ralsei had gotten quite the shock in learning that the entity possessing Kris had managed to kill a Lightner in the brief period of time that he was separated from it, the knowledge that he had imparted to Kris came as even more of a surprise.
It was hard to blame Kris for being so out of sorts. You’d be pretty upset if you had just learned that your body was being puppetered by a mysterious group of outsiders for the purpose of bringing about the apocalypse, too.