Chapter Text
Asriel dreamt of a timeless day. He dreamt of one of those moments in life which were detached from the order of events, which rose above countless other memories. He dreamt of a day which wasn’t simply a part of his life, but an entire facet of it, an effigy to an aspect of his being.
The twilight sun’s rays shone through the classroom’s windows like divine light through stained glass, casting an angelic warmth on everyone’s face. Gerson’s steady words carried much more weight when contrasted with the fluttering dance of countless specs of dust.
“Now, youngins, today we’re supposed to be workin’ on philosophy,” the old prophet said, scratching his beard. “And, well, philosophy’s about thinking. So I want you all to close your textbooks, and think.”
A dozen textbooks slammed shut, a dozen pairs of eyes turned towards the shining blackboard. White chalk had written a nearly blinding sentence onto it, which Asriel struggled to read. It said, in large capital letters, “Harvest while it’s ripe.”
“Now, what does this evoke for you all?” Gerson asked, sitting down on his desk.
“It’s a call to action!” Dess yelled out, light shining on her face in a way only Asriel could see. The doe leaned forwards and the floating dust parted to make way, as dying sunbeams converged onto her confident smile.
“Very good, December, but not quite it,” the author encouraged, his eyes glowing with tired passion.
Asriel raised his hand shyly, and it cast a looming shadow across his table. Gerson nodded, inviting him to speak.
“It’s telling us to seize our opportunities, while we still can,” the quiet boy explained.
Gerson laughed wonderfully, like an exalted priest. “Exactly. Now, when’s the last time you youngins have let an opportunity slip past?” He inquired, hypnotically waving a piece of chalk, leaving behind him a floating trail of dancing dust.
“Uhm, I didn’t reply to a girl named Pizzarina,” a small cat monster whispered, causing a surge of hilarity in the sunlit classroom.
“No, no, youngins, that’s a great answer!” The teacher insisted, rising to his feet. All eyes were drawn to the old priest as he stood beside his true pulpit, the blackboard.
“There are few things in life, especially in your youth, where you’ll have more opportunities than love. You’ll all have to make difficult choices,” Gerson predicted, taking on an air of solemnity. He intently stared at each of his students, with a warmth far greater than that of the dying sun. Yet, he was about to deliver a warning far more scorching than the heat of summer.
“Which brings us to another question… Just how far would you go for love?”
Asriel forced his eyes to open. A few beams of sunlight crept into his room through the shut and dusted blinds. Dawn barely illuminated the paper calendar in his room, still stuck upon a month from last year. He stood up, groaning. Asriel got dressed, and he picked up his bag from where it had been thrown onto the floor. His phone told him that it was 8:32 AM, on October 25th.
A long time ago, someone he knew might have considered the day as a two-months-early-birthday. Asriel would have woken up at 7 AM sharp, and headed over to the Holiday’s mansion, or to a secret forest clearing. He hadn’t done that in a long time, but he still thought about it.
Slowly, the goat checked that his bag contained everything he needed. Bus ticket, sandwich, a hundred dollars, annotated copy of the Prophecy, notebook, other notebook…
Asriel winced as his hands fell onto a poster. A poster whose texture he knew all too well. A poster he’d stared at, a poster he’d cried to, a poster he’d begged to, a poster he’d ripped apart in a fit of rage and taped back together through the tears. A poster which had sat on his wall for the past five years, and that only now had been taken off.
Asriel needed Dess’ missing person poster, alongside her obituary. It was small, in comparison. A shoddy piece of white paper, creased by a trembling hand as it was folded. The obituary expressed condolences, but for Asriel, it expressed defeat. It expressed a defeat he’d never accept, a loss that couldn’t be permanent, and a deeply ingrained cowardice. How dare they? Asriel trembled. How did anyone accept to reduce the passionate December Holiday to a sheet of paper and a neatly marked tombstone? How could those stagnant items begin to capture her burning heart, her inferno of talent?
They couldn’t, and Asriel knew it perfectly. He could set aflame every single obituary, every single letter of condolences, every single transcript of the funeral, and in a million years they wouldn’t burn a tenth as brightly as Dess did in a single second. Asriel shut his curtains, as the only light he needed was already gone.
He gave an annoyed kick to his deflated punching bag. It oscillated back and forth, spraying a thin layer of dust all around it. Today’s the big day, Asriel thought as he flipped through his notebook. It was filled to the brim with notes.
Today, as Carol’s intercepted emails had taught him, was the day of the Roaring. Today was the day he’d shatter the horrible Prophecy he had been taught to admire, simply because no one thought it’d happen to them. Today was the day he’d save Dess.
His plan was straightforward. He’d head over to Hometown, enter the Dark World, join up with his sibling, destroy the Knight, harbinger of the Prophecy, and then search for Dess throughout the deepest depths of illusion. And if he couldn’t find her, perhaps he’d allow himself to fade into the shadows.
Today, he’d rekindle his flame with Dess’ fire. Even if it required burning down the whole world. Even if it required the fire of love consuming him.
Asriel stepped out of Hometown’s bus, and he felt the icy air of familiarity pierce into his shivering heart. Hometown was cold, this time of year. The little town had always felt exactly this cold, every single year of his life. Today, that freezing southern wind rustled his fur, just the same way as five years ago.
He let that bitter yet gentle breeze wash over him. That breeze he had felt as he made his first friend, as the fire of passion first descended onto him, as his lips met hers a million times over, and as he cried over her disappearance until every tear he had was taken by the wind. That slight breeze had always accompanied him, and now that she was gone, it haunted him.
Asriel winced, his head spinning. He couldn’t let himself be distracted this easily. He had very little time, and every second mattered. The goat put his hood on, masking his face as best as he could. Any passerby who recognised him would surely spread the news, which would inevitably result in his mother learning of his return. Asriel loved the folks of Hometown, Asriel loved Toriel, but he did not have the time to chat with them.
He would reunite with them, Dess by his side. All he needed was a few more hours.
Walking as quickly as he could, eyes darting to the side, Asriel made his way through Hometown. He kept his eyes closed — he had treaded these roads since he had learned to crawl, and knew them perfectly. There was no need to remind oneself of the painful past.
The goat felt a few branches crack under his feet, as the chittering of the birds grew eerily quiet. A low rumble filled his ears, reverberating through his very SOUL, his heart jumping along. His breathing grew heavy as darkness began looming all around him. The rumbling had turned into a roar, and although he was surrounded by nature, Asriel felt the awful presence of malignant, abandoned technology.
Like a gravestone, the concrete shelter cast an impenetrable shadow onto Asriel’s body, its silhouette blotting out the sun. The boy checked his watch. It was 10:55. According to Carol’s plan, she would enter the Dark World an hour from now, find the Heroes, and help the Knight start the Roaring. Thirty minutes later, the Prophecy would have been fulfilled.
That is, if Asriel allowed it. He extracted a soldering kit from his backpack, until then carefully kept in perfect condition. He set it down onto the grass, ready for use. The college student began to fill out the codes he had memorised. His hands ran on their own across the electronic panel, filling in the fields with robotic precision.
Asriel’s finger stopped, trembling, a mere inch from the five button, the last he needed to push. The cold breeze sung of bitter memories, and a sour taste spread through his mouth. His knees trembled. Perhaps, before pressing it, Asriel should check his backpack, one last time.
He had brought the notebooks, filled to the brim with planning. He was fairly confident his engineering teacher would have fainted, seeing so many contingencies for contingencies. His annotated version of the Prophecy was present — Asriel knew the book of scripture’s weight like that of his own horns, having carried it his entire life. Last but not least, the obituary and missing person poster were there, stuffed at the bottom of his bag. He resisted the urge to spit on them. They needed to be in perfect condition, so that it’d feel even more cathartic to rip them to utter shreds, to insignificant dust, to less than nothing, to destroy them with the fiery fury that only Dess possessed. Once they were ready to face the world again, that was the first thing the reunited couple would do.
Asriel gasped for air through his gritted teeth, as he instinctively reached for the ring on his annulary. It was small and shoddily crafted, made from wood of the poorest quality. Time had hardened the bark into a hardly recognisable block of black matter. It didn’t matter to Asriel, however, as its texture was comfortably familiar. He ran his thumb over the small, crumbling engravings.
“Don’t forget, I’m with you in the dark,” she had smiled, sliding the brand new ring onto her lover’s finger. It shined brightly, like polished mahogany, but its tender glow paled in comparison to the girl’s. Her eyes were full of a hypnotic fire, its sparks dancing wildly in her every movement, in her every thought.
“I’d have liked it on my pinkie,” a quiet boy blushed as his lover’s touch burnt an undying passion into him, like a branding iron. A reassuring and familiar breeze washed over him, its coldness soothing the fire burning through his fur.
“You idiot!” she giggled, her voice suddenly transformed into the most admirable sound, into a melody which the greatest musicians wasted their lives attempting to capture. “A wedding ring doesn’t go on the pinkie!”
The boy simply stared in shock, his heart reaching impossible heights. For the first time in his life, he understood the appeal of heaven, of eternity.
“Stop making that face, and stop touching that ring! Take care of it, alright!?” She yelled with more authority than any emperor, as the queen of his heart, and with more passion than any poet, as the source of his art. “Because you won’t take it off until you can replace it with a golden one!”
Asriel smiled weakly, holding back a wave of vomit. The illusion of a gentle breeze had disappeared, the icy gale piercing straight through his heart once more. He clicked on the final digit, the door to the shelter swinging open.
Darkness slowly flowed out of the shelter. Tendrils of shadows advanced towards Asriel, encircling his limbs, caressing his face. As he stared into the pure abyss of a Dark World, he couldn’t help but feel like he was walking straight into some unknown predator’s mouth, the bubbles of shadow like rabid saliva.
Asriel shook, but he had no time to lose. He picked up the soldering iron from the ground and turned it on. The light it emitted was quickly muffled by the endless shadows, but its heat was real all the same. He shoved the tool against the shelter’s electronic panel, melting it into an unusable mess of goopy metal.
Good luck getting in, Carol, the student thought as he leaped into the gaping maw of darkness, shutting the door behind him.
Asriel felt the ground grow unstable. It fractured unnaturally, gaining the consistency of quicksand, then of water, then of air. Before he realised it, he had begun falling. His heart rate grew frantic, in tandem with his ever accelerating speed. A part of his mind wondered if he’d reach terminal velocity before he’d crash into whatever laid at the end of the pit.
If there is anything at all… Asriel frowned, the wind screeching into his ears. The current had grown far too strong for him to open his eyes, but he could feel it cutting away at his clothes, lacerating his skin. Deep cuts were violently tracing themselves into his face, drawing strange patterns. He felt rings of metal form on his arms, and he wondered if they were handcuffs.
The air flew past him like a raging river. It was hard to breathe, and almost impossible to move. Asriel had no outside stimuli, other than the howl of the wind and the pain of its punches. How long had his fall lasted? If someone told him it had been hours, he might have believed them.
With a loud and sudden crack, his legs hit solid ground. A strange landscape displayed itself, a black sky rising above purple cliffs. A dull darkness was cast over the world, which somehow allowed Asriel to see. The sharp peaks seemed to go on forever. No horizon was in sight.
Asriel was surprised to find himself still able to walk. His bones should have been fractured into pudding, and pieces of his fur should be scattered around in a five kilometre radius. In no world where physics exists should he have survived such a fall. Perhaps the Dark World’s illusions distort the rules of reality? He reasoned, dusting himself off.
That’s when Asriel realised he wasn’t wearing his clothes anymore. They hadn’t been destroyed by the wind— instead, he was covered from head to toe in a purple church robe, decorated by a large Delta Rune. The weight he had felt on his arms were two golden rings, certainly worth more than his entire net worth, internal organs included. If he squinted, he could almost make out the tiniest letters, printed onto them.
Are those… my notes…? He wondered, attempting to make out certain sentences. No matter how small they may be, however, the engravings were undeniably in his handwriting. As he concentrated on them, the college student found his mind to be strangely clear — like the opposite effect of being drunk. His thought process was not only more precise, but also slightly faster. The feeling wasn’t exactly unpleasant, but it was undeniably strange.
Asriel scratched his back, and came into contact with a large blade. Dumbfounded, he pulled it out of its harness, finding himself unnaturally at ease carrying a weapon which certainly weighed several tons.
It was a large white sword, and its pommel furiously alternated colours, taking on a wholly different hue every time Asriel blinked. A large amount of heat emanated from it, certainly enough to start a furious fire. An inscription on its pommel was barely readable. The monster focused hard as he attempted to decipher it.
What the…? How did that pop into my mind…? He wondered, baffled. Wait… Ebott Electric made my soldering kit… Is that…?
Asriel concentrated in the same manner onto his golden rings.
Huh… Does the Dark World turn everything into an illusion, into an alternate version of itself? Would explain my new clothes, he reasoned as he plucked a black hair from his cheek, covered in two large streaks of inky fur. And my emo hairstyle…
Asriel groaned in annoyance. This would have been much easier to figure out if the Prophecy was a little clearer! He sighed, rolling his eyes. His interest was now piqued by these magical transformations. What had all the objects he had brought into the Dark World turned into?
The goat noticed a little golden jewel, set on a chain which rested on his neck. The heart shaped locket was warm to the touch and oddly calming to squeeze. Asriel tried to open it, but no matter how much force he used, it refused to budge. He wondered what was inside.
He frowned. This is the missing poster and obituary, isn’t it?
Asriel shook those thoughts away. It was better to focus on other things. The boy’s gaze fell onto his annular. Strangely, his little wooden ring had remained the same, unaffected by the Dark World’s influence. Perhaps some truths are too harsh to be concealed by illusion.
He gulped, closing his eyes. Asriel took a deep breath, then another, then another. He couldn’t get sidetracked —he had to stick to the plan. He was supposed to be searching for his sibling. Well, the Dark World made me into a swordsman, and physics isn’t real here, so maybe…
The monster decided to focus on himself. He diverted all of his attention towards his palms. He stared at them until he could see through them, until he could see the blood which nourished his body and the desire which kept it going. A few sparks flew out of Asriel’s hands. Those sparks rose higher, growing hotter, growing larger. They fluttered faster and faster, as if in a tornado, until gigantic flames surged from his hands, illuminating the darkened sky like a beacon.
Asriel giggled, seeing his own distorted reflection in the flames.
“They’ll definitely see this!” He laughed as the twin fires emerging from his palms danced around each other, forming a deep red staircase which rose to infinite heights. The monster didn’t have to wait long. After a few short minutes of his show, he spotted a group of four teenagers running towards him.
Asriel let the flames burn themselves out, the few remaining sparks falling onto himself as he turned around to face them. He eyed them rapidly, and he couldn’t help but note how much they had grown.
Noelle’s antlers were no longer small buds, but beautiful woods which nicely decorated her face. The white dress she wore brought out the grace in her every movement. The young doe was holding hands with a larger, more intimidating monster, which Asriel recognised as Susie. He had heard many things about the lizard — she definitely fit the description, with her large axe and ferocious smile.
A small goat-like monster accompanied the teenagers. Asriel raised an eyebrow as he came face to face with the darkner. He oddly resembled himself, or perhaps a drawing he had seen a long time ago… Well, if anyone’s the Prince from the Dark, it’s gotta be him, he reasoned, shrugging.
The Prince was eyeing him, seemingly terrified. He could make out a few pearls of sweat running down the darkner’s face. Asriel knew the words forming on his lips, although the little goat never said them. You know I’m not supposed to be here, don’t you? He sighed. It’s alright, I’ll just have to include you in my plan.
Then, of course, there was one last person at the group’s head. It walked robotically, like a mere puppet. Its face lacked any expression, any reason, any emotion. The Angel was disgusting, and what it had done to its vessel was even more inhumane. Yet, its task wasn’t anywhere close to done. Asriel shuddered, remembering the Prophecy. How could he have ever worshipped that demon?
Asriel bit down on his tongue, hiding his contempt. He put on a large, cheerful smile.
“Woah, I must be dreaming!” He yelled, voice full of a faked wonder.
“Howdy Kris!” Asriel smiled, mere inches from the human. He could see how scared they were, as he stared into their miserable eyes. The Angel was there, hiding like a coward inside of his little sibling’s body.
The monster’s smile grew even larger, even more inviting. The Angel couldn’t know the truth, of course. Asriel would have to trick God, and he was going to put on his best show for it.
“It’s me, your best friend. Asriel Dreemurr!”
The Fun Gang — Asriel wasn’t sure whether to consider the name jarringly stupid or surprisingly hilarious — slowly made its way through the Dark World. Howling cliffs of purple were climbed, seas of tar were swam through. After many hours of tireless journeying through an eternal night, the group had decided to rest near a village of darkners. A tent had quickly been set up.
Although he was surrounded by utter darkness, a gentle light seemed to shine the way forwards, for Asriel’s heart locket emitted a strange warmth. The heat grew stronger as they headed for the Fountain — it was seemingly infinitely far away, yet it loomed large on the horizon — and Asriel presumed that meant they were going in the right direction.
I’m coming, I promise, he thought, caressing his little wooden ring. Asriel turned to face Ralsei and Kris, who were sitting down in a corner of the tent. I just need to get those two up to speed… and the other three out of here, he frowned. He already had a solid but risky plan for the Angel, but he had to come up with something to get the two girls out of hearing range.
Asriel turned his gaze towards Susie and Noelle. The two teens were sitting together, their lips dangerously close to touching. He wasn’t an expert in psychology, but he was fairly certain those two were raging lesbians. Heh, Noelle really is into girls, Asriel noted, a long held belief finally confirmed. A perfect opportunity had been provided to him.
“Hey, ‘Elly!” The goat cheered, walking up to the two girls which had snapped apart like same-poled magnets upon realising they were being watched.
“H-HUH???” The doe blushed, her eyes frantically alternating from staring at Susie and staring at Asriel.
“Don’t you wanna go buy something at the village for us?”—Asriel then leaned in, whispering—“...You could go alone… with Susie…”
“OH! Great idea! Let’s go get some provisions, S-Susie!” Noelle yelled, grabbing her lover’s hand, instantly heating the lizard’s face to two hundred degrees.
The boy sighed as he eyed the two bumbling idiots. He looked at the golden rings on his arms, and figured that Susie and Noelle needed the intelligence boost more than him.
Asriel took off his amulets and felt slightly more trusting of politicians.
“Here, Susie, take these,” He said, sliding the rings onto the second hero’s hand. “Hand one over to Noelle later.”
Susie roused, as if awakened from a deep sleep.
“Dude, I think I finally get algebra?” she asked, bewildered.
Asriel rolled his eyes. “Good! Use your math skills on Noelle, I’m sure that’ll impress her!”
Asriel impatiently shooed the lovers away from the Fun Gang’s little encampment as one would swat a newspaper around an annoying fly. Once he was sure that they were out of hearing range, he walked over to the Angel and Ralsei.
The Angel comes from Heaven. If we allow it to enter our lives, it will descend upon us and become our guide. It shall give us its whole, undivided attention, Asriel repeated the church’s old lessons, still deeply ingrained within him. He took a deep breath, hoping that his theory was correct, and stared right into its divine eyes.
“Howdy friend! Why dont’cha think about Susie and Noelle?” Asriel chirped invitingly as Ralsei stared at him in shock.
The Angel stayed silent, yet Kris blinked excruciatingly slowly. Asriel furrowed his eyebrows.
“...Maybe close your eyes, if that helps?” He added awkwardly. Immediately, the vessel closed their eyes. The Angel was perfectly immobile. Ralsei stared at the siblings, mortified yet hypnotized.
A second later, Kris fell to the ground, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. They panted and gasped for air, frantically clawing at the ground. Ralsei stood up, but Asriel had already taken his sibling in for a gigantic hug.
Kris’ breathing slowly grew steadier as their tears were absorbed by their brother’s church robes. Asriel gently shushed them as he rocked back and forth.
“Hey Kris,” he whispered softly. “It’s good to see you again."