Chapter Text
The light that flooded the cavern was golden. It was late afternoon, pre-dusk. Small dust particles lazily glided through the air, and shadows hung low, dark, and drawn-out. Underneath them was a bed of flowers.
Frisk looked to the far side of the cavern, where the walls sharply turned inwards and formed a narrow tunnel. Liquid gold light pooled at its entrance, but beyond that, Frisk saw nothing but thick, impenetrable pitch.
Frisk could not remember how they fell down.
There was only so much time they could spend gazing at the tunnel, vainly willing to recall memories where there were none. Slowly, they pushed themselves up off of the ground, careful not to step on the flowers. The sunlight was warm on their back.
Frisk felt uneasy.
The tunnel was long and soundless, made longer still by the fact that Frisk had to make their way through by shuffling forward less than an inch at a time. The air that had felt so fresh and sweet in the golden room turned sticky and heavy, rolling off their shoulders and the back of their neck like tar.
Frisk rounded a corner carefully and spied a beam of light. It took all they had not to run straight to it.
At the end of the tunnel was a small chamber. At the end opposite Frisk was a large, decorated arch. In the middle of the room was a patch of grass, illuminated by a stark, white light that Frisk could not find the source of. The ceiling was stone and solid. There shouldn’t be any light so bright in this room. The knots in Frisk’s stomach tied tighter.
The patch of grass quivered. Frisk’s heart pounded in their ears.
The shadows shifted under the arch. Frisk’s legs itched.
“Oh, poor child, all alone,” a soft voice cooed. A figure walked into the light in front of Frisk, smiling sweetly. “I’m Toriel. I guard these ruins. I can help you.”
The tension in Frisk’s stomach faded, but their heart was still hammering away, nearly drowning Toriel out. She stood a few feet away but still towered over Frisk, who had to crane their neck just to look her in the eye. Still, her eyes held a steady gentleness to them, unwavering, hypnotizing.
Toriel held her hand out, keeping eye contact with Frisk all the while. There was something hopeful in her expression. Frisk paused for half a second, before tentatively brushing their fingers against her palm. Their small hands were dwarfed by hers. Toriel folded her fingers across their hand, and her face broke into an open-mouthed smile.
“Come with me,” she said. Her voice wavered from the joy brimming beneath her coolly pleasant demeanor. Frisk did not smile back.
There was nothing wrong with her, exactly. But Frisk never really asked for her to grab them by the hand and guide them through the ruins. Frisk felt confident enough about navigating their way through on their own. Her presence was overwhelming, a feeling that only amplified as she became more insistent on helping Frisk through the simplest of puzzles, as though they would be unable to solve them on their own; as she frequently glanced back at Frisk with a pitying smile, as though they were an infant who couldn’t be depended on to walk behind her; as she tightened her grip on their hand, as though they would be hopelessly lost without her. She was only trying to help, and Frisk knew this, but something about her syrupy, saccharine act set them on edge nonetheless.
Toriel led Frisk around a corner, and Frisk found their introspection interrupted. Frisk tried to hide their surprise at seeing such a tidy house this deep in the ruins. Toriel looked back again.
“It’s a mess inside, I’m sure, but… it’s not a bad place to spend the night, don’t you think?” She said, again with the sugary-sweet smile on her face. Frisk did not answer, and she turned forward again. “Um… I think I have a room for you, just inside, just a little more ways away.”
She released their hand for a moment to open the front door. Frisk tried to hide their relief, clasping their hands together behind their back.
Frisk was surprised by how bright the house was in comparison to the rest of the ruins, pausing for a moment to appreciate the soft, butter-yellow light that spilled down the walls. Bookshelves were lined with scrapbooks and photo albums, so stuffed with pages it seemed as though the frayed bindings could fall apart at any moment. Picture frames and knick-knacks were strewn across end tables and any other surface with even the slightest empty space. The sentimentality that radiated off of them was almost palpable. It was beautiful, in the way a room that looks so obviously lived-in can look beautiful and comfortable and inviting.
It feels like a home.
Their face scrunched up at the thought and they felt something clench their stomach with a vice-like grip. Frisk turned on their heel to ask Toriel where their room was, but she had already began to walk down the hall. Frisk had to quicken their pace to a jog to catch up to her. They briefly wondered how long they had been staring.
Toriel looked over her shoulder for Frisk and paused in front of the first door on the left with a wavering smile. “This is your room.” She looked down at them expectantly. “If you need anything you can always come to me, okay?”
Frisk swallowed and nodded. The vice holding their stomach twisted again.
Frisk cleared their throat and turned to meet her eyes, and took a deep breath. “Can I go outside, please?”
“Of course,” Toriel said, “just stay close.” She placed a hand on their head, pushing some hair off of their face. “And don't stay out too long, okay?”
They nodded. Her touch was gentle against their face, almost loving. Frisk didn't know how to feel.
Toriel’s hand paused on their forehead and for half of a second, Frisk feared they had insulted her somehow.
“Is something… burning?” She mused to herself. She immediately withdrew her hand and let out a soft gasp. “Oh, I have to check something, but please be careful out there!”
She rushed off before Frisk could say another word. They watched after her in a moment of confusion before leaving the hallway as well.
The air in the ruins was cooler than in Toriel’s house, but it felt different. It smelled stale and musty, and Frisk couldn’t tell whether or not it tasted a little bit different, too, almost drier. Maybe it was the taste of fresh air they were missing.
Frisk turned down a path that they hadn’t been down. From the looks of it, no one had in a very long time.
It was a short path barely worth noting, save for a few small monsters Frisk saw. Yet the short, humble path led down a tunnel, through an archway, and onto a balcony that Frisk could never have even imagined. The balcony overlooked a decaying cityscape, poetically beautiful with its crumbling buildings and empty roads, a vast grid of intersecting streets and alleys. As far as Frisk could see, not a single monster inhabited any of the hundreds of brownstones or skyscrapers. Instead, the city housed only the most enormous silence Frisk had ever experienced, a complete lack of sound that seemed to gently press against their temples. Frisk could hear their own heartbeat thrumming softly in their ears, an ironic score to accompany a view of a city devoid of life.
They walked forward, transfixed. The toe of their shoe hit a pebble mid-stride. It rocketed forward and over the edge. Frisk watched it plummet down, fading out of their sight. They strained to hear it hit against the ground. They heard nothing. Goosebumps ran up their arms.
They craned their neck upwards. The ceiling of the cavern extended farther than Frisk could imagine. Light filtered in through fissures in the rock, but a crack of sunlight could not possibly fully illuminate something so massive. The buildings were painted in different degrees of purple, shadows overlapping and interacting with each other, violet fading into indigo fading into jet. The intensity brightened and dimmed with the light that leaked through the rock above. The fissures in the stone shifted with the light, not entirely unlike the waves of an ocean, undulating, wavering. Frisk wondered how many thousands of monsters looked at the light through the walls and thought the same. They exhaled sharply. The goosebumps on their arms persisted.
Something glimmered in their peripheral. Hands running up and down their forearms, they turned to look.
A knife, even if it was only plastic, felt so out of place in the rest of the ruins. It was so empty and tranquil, the few monsters that remained were so peaceful, Frisk couldn’t imagine needing a knife.
Yet.
It felt so smooth against against their palm, their fingers fell so perfectly into the reliefs in its molded plastic grip, and the hilt that pressed into the small of their back when they slid it under the waistband of their pants felt like something close to safety. They tugged gently at their shirt, untucking it, pulling and plucking at it until it completely concealed the blade underneath. Something about having a secret right against their skin gave them an illusion of independence. They noticed that the goosebumps on their arms had dissipated.
They glanced back at the dying capital under the balcony. They turned their back on it and searched for the path that led back to Toriel’s. Armed or not, something about it unsettled them to their core.
(Where had everyone gone? What was wrong with this place? If these walls could talk… Frisk still would not ask.)
Frisk slid past Toriel’s front door quickly, struggling to prop the massively heavy door open for long. As soon as their hands loosened their grip on the handle it seemed to slip right through them and it slammed into the frame with a thud that reverberated in their chest. They tensed as they waited for Toriel to notice the noise, but heard nothing. Relief spread from their toes to their shoulders, which they hadn't noticed until now were hiked up to their ears, anticipating a stern lecture for slamming the door. A quick look into the living room made it clear why; Toriel had fallen asleep by the fire, reading. A warm feeling settled in Frisk’s chest. They acknowledged it only as familiarity.
A yawn bubbled up from their throat and Frisk hardly managed to keep it contained. The room Toriel had shown them before called to them. Did she mention there being a bed for them in there? She must have.
They trudged through the hallways (were they so long before?) to the door Toriel showed them. The room inside was painted a soft pink but they were too preoccupied to register anything else. There was a bed inside, and what a bed it was, a luxurious feather mattress with a fluffy duvet, a thin quilt folded across the bottom. They pushed the enormous duvet up and crawled underneath. Warmth flooded over them as their head sank into the pillow, a bit old but still firm. They had little time to reflect on anything else before their eyelids were too heavy to keep apart they fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
--
Frisk woke to a soft click and the cloying smell of butterscotch.
They stumbled across the room to the lamp in the corner, their sleep-swollen hands fumbling with the dial (should they turn it clockwise? Counter-clockwise? They must have turned it back and forth a thousand times) until they heard the soft hum of electricity flowing into the light bulb.
The smell of butterscotch coated the inside of their mouth, sickeningly sweet against their sleep-soured tongue.
Hard plastic pressed into the vertebrae above their tailbone. Frisk pressed a hand to their back. They could feel the texture indented into their skin. They could feel the transferred dimples throb with the rhythm of their breaths when their fingertips pressed against them.
Frisk couldn’t stop themself from noticing the plate on the table, set beside the lamp. A slice of butterscotch-cinnamon pie, the caramel-colored filling spilling over the sides of the thick, flaky dough, topped with a dollop of whipped cream, melting into the creamy filling below it. It was still warm.
They struggled to swallow, their breaths not quite reaching their stomach as they should, catching in the cavity of their chest, where they sat and accumulated, stale air pushing against the confines of their skin. They turned away and reached for the door handle.
The hallway was lit as brightly as it was the day before (or perhaps just hours before? How did the days pass underground? How did anyone ever know when they had?), and Toriel was still seated in the overstuffed reading chair beside the fireplace.
Toriel looked alarmed when Frisk tapped her shoulder. “Oh, good morning!” She said brightly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were awake! Did you sleep well?”
Frisk’s tongue felt dry and heavy against the roof of their mouth.
She continued even in absence of a response. “I left you some of the pie I made yesterday, I hope you liked it- I wasn’t sure if you would prefer cinnamon or butterscotch, so I added both, if that’s alright.”
Frisk wrung their hands behind their back. Their windpipe was overflowing with the half-breaths they couldn’t bring themself to fully swallow.
“I want to leave,” they blurted. They winced at their own tactlessness.
For a moment, Toriel’s pleasant smile looked strained. “If you prefer, I could make a new pie, but it would take a little while.”
Frisk’s chest tightened again. “I want to go home,” they said, louder this time.
Toriel’s smile shook visibly this time. “We could make a home for you here, the two of us.”
“I have to leave.”
Her smile was obviously forced by now. “Is there something wrong with your room? We could redecorate if you’d like.”
Frisk wrung their hands so hard, they wondered if it were possible to break their own fingers. They half-wished they could. “Please.”
The smile fell. “I have to take care of something.”
She was out of the room and halfway down the staircase before Frisk could even blink. They scrambled after her, shoes slipping on the hardwood floors, gripping the banister with white knuckles as they ran down the stairs, only barely managing to stay upright. Irritation bubbled in their throat as they nearly stumbled over the final step. Why did Toriel have to run so fast, and so far ahead?
The air down here was old and hard to breathe. Frisk coughed and Toriel threw a glance over her shoulder at the sound, her expression a mix of concern and annoyance. “Go back upstairs, child,” she said, almost too soft for them to hear.
Keeping pace behind her was difficult, a single stride of hers easily equal to three of Frisk’s. They had to focus on keeping pace, lest they lose her down here and become trapped in these ruins forever.
Finally they heard her footsteps stop and they caught up to her. Frisk could see the hallway end beyond her, but she blocked whatever lay at its end. She was turned to face them.
“Child…” she sighed, “beyond these ruins, it’s very dangerous.”
She patronized them. They could feel their face getting hot, whether from breathlessness or anger they couldn’t say.
“I’m going to destroy this exit from the ruins.”
Something roiled in their stomach, something that they wanted to liken to betrayal but it couldn’t be, they couldn’t be betrayed by a monster who they couldn’t bear to look in the eyes in the first place, they never trusted her enough to be betrayed. They swallowed the faint taste of butterscotch that still lingered on their tongue.
“This is your last chance to turn back.”
They set their shoulders and straightened their back, looking just to the left of her face. Looking her in the face felt dangerous now, as their stomach cooled from bubbling iron to a cool steel.
“Prove to me that you are strong enough to survive.”
Embers fluttered from her hands. Her voice was level, level as the waters of a lake in the middle of November, and sent a chill down their back all the same.
It was smoke that stung in the corners of their eyes when the first barrage of fireballs came raining down.