Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You start one of the tapes.

A small white monster was standing in the tape nervously.

She kinda looked like a dog, but also resembled a cat. Her snout was short, with long whiskers on her muzzle as well, some also above her eyes and cheeks.

Her right ear was long and pointed that resembled a cat’s, while her left ear was folded it kinda looked poofy, pointed down like a little dog ear.

Her eyes were a deep green laced with hints of light blue.

She was wearing a white lab coat on top of what looked like a black and white striped dress.

The dress itself reached just above her knees, the black stripes in no pattern.

Her long white tail poked out the back of the dress and the coat.

Her paws shifted nervously, as she started to speak with a small stutter, “Hello who ever may be watching this, I am Telfi Pontelia, I will be making these short videos about my research.”

She shifted as she started to explain what was going on, “The barrier has been broken, and everyone has left for the surface, but I have decided to stay, I will have to travel to the surface to get supples of course,” her pointed ear shift to flatten on her head and the other shifted to the side a bit, her left paw rubbing the back of her head.

“But that is it for now, I’ll make more of these later… probably.” Her ears pricked right back up and the tape ended.

Chapter Text

Telfi has staring excitedly.

Her ears perked up, “It has been only a week since I last recorded, and I have has am idea on something,” she stated as she looked through a box.

She pulled out some paper and held it in front of the screen.

The paper had some scribbles of the underground, and places in it, as well as a chart of some sort. “I think that all the weather and environments in the underground, are made and maintained through magic.”

She set the paper aside now pulling out a whiteboard, it had a lot of words on it, though hard so see with the video, you could read the title that read ‘Magic of the Underground’.

“So as you can see,” she pointed to a scribble of the barrier, “the environments in the underground were made and maintained by magic used to create it, keeping everything sable, the barrier’s magic was the most potent of magic.”

She then stated scribbling something, “Now you may think that nothing could be doing well here in the underground without the barrier, you are sorta correct, but the lingering magic from the monsters and the barrier are still here,and the environments existed before the barrier.”

She stepped aside revealing some colored dots, most likely representing the lingering magic. “The underground should be fine… for awhile before it starts to fall apart, I want to find out how it worked before the barrier so I can keep it from being destroyed, but I’ll figure that out later.”

She came back to the camera, “That’s all for this one, I’ll give you another update soon tho.”

Chapter Text

Telfi looks a bit in a panic, going through boxes of things, before turning to notice the camera was on.

“Opps, did not mean to turn that on yet, one sec,” she said looking up at the camera embarrassed before turning around.

Then she finally pulled out a clip board. “Well, the left over magic is disappearing slowly, so it will take some time before it does any damage.”

“I have actually found some plants that are native only to the underground, it seams these plants adapted to the magic in the underground,” Telfi stated, “almost like someone grew them with magic.”

She took out the white board again drawing some diagrams for various plants in the underground “The plants have adapted to the magic in the underground and began to store their own magic. Making even more stored magic, but it still won’t be enough with the lack of monster magic.”

“The plants started using magic for photosynthesis instead of sunlight. Though it does take up most of there magic to do so.”

She grabbed some photos of various plants, “These are just some plants I have been studying,” she pointed to the first picture, it showed what looked like it was frozen, the flower resembling that of a snowdrop. It petals resembled icicles.

“This is a Icebell, it is native to Snowden. It seems to have adapted to the cold weather to look more like ice than a flower. They usually grow by the frozen lake,” she paused to take out another picture of the flower, “it seems to have adapted from the magic of the monsters that lived there, most of whom were monsters who’s magic resembles that of the ice and snow. At least I think, but most monsters avoid the frozen lake cause of some rumors.”

Then she pointed to a second picture, the picture was of a small flower on a lily pad, it resembled the bridge seeds, it’s petals a light blue with bits of darker blue patches.

“This i-is a pad lily, it seems to be related to the bridge seed, but it is too small to function like a bridge seed, instead it repeals water making it useful for secret hideaways behind waterways,” she paused, she looked a bit embarrassed then continued, “it is native to WaterFall, I actually have no idea why it changed to be like that.”

Next she pointed to the last picture, a big flower, it has 5 petals, each petals looked like it was a flame of fire, “This is a Fire Petal flower… It’s petals are actually real flames, however their flames don’t spread fire, and they don’t get put out easily. Most fire monsters like growing them, mostly cause they won’t burn it up, and it is a very pretty flower.”

She shifted taking out a bouquet of fire petals. It’s flames cracking, waving through the air of her little office. “It is actually quite harmless, it’s petals aren’t real flames, but they are magic flames, the flower can control how much it hurts if touched, if it feels threatened that is. It is also a nice way to keep warm without having to worry.”

She put the photos away then shifted her attention back to the whiteboard from earlier, “Now back to what I was saying earlier, this is the chart of magic the underground has every week since the monster left the underground, as you can see,” she said pointing to a bar graph that showed how magic has changed since monsters left the underground. Though there was only three bars, the magic levels are getting very low.

In just a week, it halved the magic in the underground since the monsters left, and halved again for this week, “I hope this pattern doesn’t continue, if it slows down we should be fine, if it doesn’t… we might have less time then I thought.” Her face was filled with some worry.

Chapter Text

“Hello again, welcome back, I think I will be making these tapes once a week, so ya.”

Telfi moved out of view and brought back some golden buttercups, “These buttercups are actually pretty peculiar, though they don’t have many magical traits to them like most plants of the Underground,” she explained well putting the flowers in a vase.

“These actually store a lot of magic, like other types of buttercups they like growing in sunny spots, but these ones also like growing in places with a lot of magic build up.” She said and pulled out a chart, “I think I can find a way to get them to make and release more magic into the Underground, to add back the magic that was lost from the barrier and the other monsters.”

She showed the magic chart she had been making, the fourth bar only a bit lower then the last one, “The magic is steady right now, so there should be plenty of time. Also I have actually noticed a living buttercup, I haven’t talked to them yet, but the human, Frisk, if I remember correctly, comes to visit them every two weeks. I keep hidden though, don’t really want to be social in the Underground. Well that is all for now.”

Chapter Text

The tape starts with Telfi sitting in a chair, her tail over her legs, looking a bit nervous.

“Well I got no update for you this week, but I can tell you what is happening in my life right now,” she starts, she looks very excited to talk about this for some reason, “me and my friend Liqua have lunch at Grillby’s every week.”

“He actually has a pretty boring job right now, I tell him what I’m doing in the Underground.” She keeps talking forgetting the camera was even there, like she is talking to herself.

“We used to work together in the lab,” she says as if someone was there, or she was pretending there was, cause she still wasn’t looking back at the camera, “he still helps me figure somethings out, like the buttercups.” She says this, looking a bit embarrassed.

Then she keeps going on, “He was the one who actually made the scanner to scan magic, it is pretty cool.” You finally know how she was measuring the magic, but looks like she is going to explain further.

She stands up tail wiping excitedly like a dogs as she keeps talking, “You can use it to scan how much a place, or object, human, monster, room, almost anything to see how much magic it has, however it can only state what magic it holds at the moment, not how strong or weak it is, or the max capacity it has, or even what type of magic it has, so it is only useful for measuring the changes in m-magic over time. It is actually helpful for finding the max capacity for things that you have no other way of checking for that. We don’t got a n-name for it yet, we are working on it.”

She stops, looking at the camera a bit surprised, then her ears flattened and she rubbed the back of her head embarrassingly, “Well I think that is enough of my rambling, this was supposed to be a short update.”

Chapter Text

The white monster was in front of the camera.
“Well nothing has changed in the last week, but I studied the buttercups a bit more. They are very fascinating, but other then that nothin to report, but I promised a tape a week and I am holding this promise,” she paused, she realized no one but herself would know for no one would ever watch these tapes besides her.

Chapter Text

“Another week and not much progress.”

Telfi turns around and picks up a fire petal, then one of the icebells, that were sitting on her desk, “But also turns out these are edible, and they can make a great dish when combined right.”
She blushed a bit embarrassed, "I did try to make them into some dishes after I found out they were not harmful and actually pretty healthy, great healing, and restores more magic than most other monster foods,” she scratched the back of her head.

“Ya I guess I’m a bit of a gardener now, and a bit of a cook, I wrote down one of the recipes that I made. Also no I never found any way to make a dish for the icebells alone without a fire petal and vice versa,” she then showed A paper to the screen, it was hard to make out, but you could tell it was a recipe, you decide to wright it down, if you ever find those flowers maybe you could ask Grillby to make it, maybe it could be a signature dish.
The recipe read:
(Insert recipe, ya any ideas for this let me know)

You unpause the tape
The paper dashes out of the screen and Telfi says goodbye.

Chapter Text

It was just the empty office of Telfi on the screen, like it just randomly started recording.

There was a little buttercup petal right out of view of the screen, except for the little bit of a petal poking out of the bottom of the screen.

"Dang it," a voice said.

The flower popped up in front of the screen, it was Flowey, "Ok now how do I turn this off."

There were footsteps and some muttering as Flowey seemed to try to turn off the camera.

The door opened, "Ok know time for that update," a voice, Telfi's, stated offscreen.

...

"Hi," Flowey saying a bit surprised.

"Uhhh Hi... What are you doing in my office?" Telfi asked the flower still not in view.

"Um.... bye!" then Flowey disappeared.

"Well that was weird," Telfi came into view.

She looks at the camera, "Well that settles the tape for this week, maybe I should get to know that flower, I mean they are one of the buttercups, and they are alive, maybe they will help me get to the solution faster."

Chapter Text

The room was empty, actually it looked cluttered, it had plants growing in pots around the room.

A small box of buttercups was in the far corner of the room, you swear you could see a little petal moving in the patch of buttercups.

Telfi walked in front of the camera, "Well I made some progress, I started growing some plants from around the underground," she said looking a bit down, "I'm hoping by studying them more closely I could figure something out."

She sighed picking up a flower, it was bright white, it almost looked like it was made of bone.

It's petals where not oval or circular, but looked more rectangular, with two round bumps at the end resembling the end of a bone. There were many petals, small but varying shades of white. There was a small patch of black in the center of the flower, it's stem greyish.

Telfi admired the flower before she looked back at the screen like she forgot what she was doing, "This is a Bone Daisy, or you can call it a skeleton flower. It seems that some plants might have adjusted to be more like some types of monsters, I don't know why but it is cool," her eyes were sparked with amazement, you wonder what other plants are alike to other monster types.

"There petals feel like bone, but they are as thin as any other petal I've ever seen. They are very hard to grow though, you need to give it enough nutrition but not too much or it will dust, and not too little or it will dust...

It likes shade, but every few days it needs light, it varies from flower to flower I've noticed, it can range from needing it every day to once a month, and any number in between, if it gets light to early it wilts a bit so you know to change when you light it, but it's a guessing game whether it wants more or less days without light, if you don't find the right amount of days to wait to light it, it will dust, it seems to only let you try 5 times before it dusts," Telfi seemed to know a lot about the flower.

Telfi realized her rambling, "Woops my bad, but one more thing, it needs enough water, not too much but not too little, these plants love to have tiny portions of water and nutrients.

In the orphanage I grew up at I found some growing and took up a hobby in growing them, trial and error," she seemed to be a bit embarrassed.

"Oh, and the dust they turn into is almost nothing like monster dust. It's a lot smaller and less noticeable; it has a sort of silvery tint to it." Telfi looked at the flower and smiled before it turned into small specs of silver dust, "This Bone Daisy was around 5 years old, they usually only survive 5 years, and if you remember when you planted it, the last month before they dust you can keep them around for decoration... there is also a spell you can use on them if they are a year old that keeps them alive for a year outside of its growing environment.

I know the spell, though I had to have Liqua's help to do it cause my magic doesn't like working.

My best customer was a tall skeleton, he seemed to love the flowers because of their bone like appearance."

Telfi got out of her thoughts, "Well enough of that maybe with more research on monster flowers I can figure out a way to boost the magic in the underground, the most promising way is those buttercups, if I could talk to that flower maybe they can help, if I can't figure it out in time the Underground will collapse."

"WHAT"

Chapter Text

I decided to restart this work, I just want to change somethings, so insead of reading over and rewriting it in this work, I made a new one, I'm hoping to add pictures to it, it will be a bit different form this work, that's cause I'm changing some things.