Chapter Text
Ralsei’s fervent prayer just skates over the scattered petals and fragrant stem-fluid at the point where Flowery’s body has broken. Kris is somewhere behind him; Susie is somewhere behind him, too quiet; the Roaring Knight soars overhead, a swift shadow spiriting Kris’s father away to a darkness unknown to him, for all the good his painful depths of knowledge have been doing.
He kneels in the grass stiffly, caught between despair and some shred of resolve, primed to cast another healing prayer over Flowery when the dying Darkner raises his head to look at Ralsei. Pins him with a smile that’s as bright as ever, just weaker.
“Comon, Raly. You know that’s not going to work.”
He just hisses through his teeth, overwhelmed, and focuses harder. He can barely take seeing Flowery like this, and- it’s complicated, but Flowery’s barely even his friend. But the cursed knowledge that this is going to be Kris and Susie next time, the present sharpening the mental image of the future to the point of-
The sorrow and tension in his frame burst forth in another wave of healing, stronger, scraps of holy song in the green visual noise, but there’s just a shuddering at the edge of the wound. Still no good.
“I have to try,” he says. It’s what Susie would say. He really wants to be like her right now, capable of going at the brick wall again and again.
He tries again, and it’s no good. Then again, and it’s still hopeless.
“I can’t just…” He wipes his wet eyes; he feels that his resolve is already gone, and he’s out of ideas, and the feeling is so bitter. “I can’t just give up.”
“You shouldn’t,” Flowery agrees. “But there’re better things for you to focus on than little ol me.”
Ralsei screws his eyes shut in anguish. He doesn’t know what else he could possibly do.
…
…The grasses rustle in some faint, mysterious wind. He hears his own heavy breathing, even more ragged than Flowery’s somehow. The Knight’s rippling body billows softly somewhere above, like cloth.
His eyes fly open.
With a spark of desperation and defiance he flies to his feet, whipping past Flowery- not toward the Knight, who’s little more than a speck when he glances up, but behind the tree he’s resting against.
It’s a seam in the fabric of the Dark World, and if Flowery can so blatantly abuse its weave then so can he.
He hears Susie for a second, asking what the hell he’s doing, but with a moment of intense focus-
Ralsei flashes past the tree’s trunk and wheels about midair to face the Roaring Knight itself, meeting its swift advance with a great burst of fire it crashes right into.
It’s a desperate move and it works perfectly. The Knight’s body flicker-screeches at the heat, and the black-white capsule it’s entrapped Asgore in wavers like it’s threatening to shatter before it throws its thin arms over it and takes him in a dive.
Ralsei follows.
He finds another seam in space, rips open another passage to get practically on top of the Knight, pummels it with another wave of fire. He’s never done this so quickly or precisely, just to find his way between Dark Worlds, but it’s strikingly easy.
The Knight pauses for a second to size him up as he floats there; it might just be false hope but it almost seems reluctant. Tired? Then it shifts its grip on Asgore’s prison, throws its free arm out to pelt him with razorbladed snowflakes, and time speeds back up.
They begin fighting in earnest, Ralsei sweating with the fresh memory of Flowery doing the same.
It’s a good thing Ralsei’s pretty nimble in the air; he keeps his distance with great bursts of flame interposed as barriers, but even then he has to make swooping, uncanny dodges around tooth-like crystals and the swipe of the knight’s very long, very sharp sword. It at least gives him the tension to keep attacking.
He holds his own for a while. They drift lower to the ground as they each swoop and dive to avoid the other’s assault. If he can just wear it down, the Knight will at least have to let Asgore go if it wants to retreat.
He knows he can’t win, no matter how much he wants to. Can’t end it now no matter how much pain it would spare. But his knowledge is distant in the rush of air and fire and steel.
The Knight, handicapped by needing to hold a struggling Asgore, flashes forward suddenly. Ralsei doesn’t have time to dodge the sword cutting across his middle, but he does something better- with the Knight so close, it can’t avoid the starburst of flame he pours all his will (and his spite, and his hope) into, and the recoil sends them both flying, downward.
They’re too close to the ground to avoid crashing outright, so that’s what they do.
They tumble to the pink grass. The fields are heavy with dew and fragrant with the scent of fresh water and honeysuckle, and their pleasantness does little to cushion the impact.
The shield around Asgore fails, but he takes the fall hard, being heavy and not exactly able to fly.
The Knight ignores him. Ralsei feels its attention on him as he struggles to get breath back in his lungs. His arms and legs move, but too slowly.
The knight rises first, languidly-
And falters as a Rude Buster hits it with a deafening crash. Susie comes running after it- battered, Ralsei figures dimly that she probably just sprinted to the nearest doortal and managed to predict their path. He’s too relieved and also too afraid that she’s in harm’s way again to think about it any further.
It just buys him a second to stand. The Knight corrects its balance, glances between them both with the tiniest turn of the head, and lunges for Susie as her mouth is just barely opening to say something defiant.
Susie’s clash with it is scrappy and desperate- she swipes up her axe to very narrowly deflect the Knight’s blade, dismisses it to grab the knight’s arm before it can swing again. Clearly sick of its superior agility, bloody-minded and emboldened by the Shadow Mantle’s protection, she manages to grapple it briefly.
Her other arm loops around the back of the figure’s neck, claws digging in. But her limbs shake with the effort of holding it and her eyes are wild.
“Ralsei-”
Fire.
Ralsei’s always felt- a little stiff, a little slow. Careful. Careful to carry out the wills of the fate and his friends, a care carved into his bones. He does not run on instinct and quick reaction and grit.
In these moments he does. The snapping of a great surge of flame drowns out whatever Susie was going to say to him. There wasn’t time for it.
Just time for him to feel, to know, that if he couldn’t summon up the will to burn the darkness away here and now, he wouldn’t get another chance.
—
Ralsei delivers.
The fire spell he’d used to save Susie from that runaway shuriken had been badass because he’d thrown a big fireball.
It’d be dinky next to the wall of red she’s looking at now, which she can already tell is hot as shit, and a hell of a way to come through on his promise to save her.
Susie raises both her legs up with her arms still around the Knight, kicks it with everything she’s got, and flings herself backwards and it into the flames as she lets go.
She has a split second to turn over on the ground, shielding her face from the fire by pressing it into the wet dirt- and then the flames wash over her. The Knight’s scream is so piercing she can even hear it over the fire, if only barely.
…
…
“Is
is it
is it… truly over…?”
Ralsei’s voice is soft but it reaches Susie anyway. She tries to move to get to her knees, but for a moment she just- can’t. Her thoughts are sluggish from the intense heat, and her hair and scales feel uncomfortably singed, and her back hurts. The Shadow Mantle and her jacket had only protected her so much from the wall of fire. With how hastily she’d turned over she hadn’t been fully covered, and a thin stripe of flesh up the left side of her back feels especially sticky and burning, like she’s a living s’more- a bad burn, definitely.
If the Knight’s really been beaten she could not give less of a shit. She’s gotta get up and see.
With a low groan she shifts her weight onto a knee and an arm, and barely avoids falling over as she turns her body to look behind her.
The Knight is a smoldering pile of dust.
(Not loose dust yet- it still has some of its color and shape. Humanoid, vaguely, and she thinks she sees a mop of dark hair. Susie doesn’t recognize them, obviously.
Their black armor is still there, kind of. It’s a big pile of some kind of… well she doesn’t know what it is but it’s black, ringing the dust pile like it sort of slid off of them. It throws a little smoke.)
Kris's dad, staggered just by witnessing the short but brutal fight and still winded from the long fall, is finding his own feet. Ralsei, standing over the remains of the Knight, is closer.
He looks shocked. And like he’s two-percent relieved, but not willing or able to let it sink in. Not right away.
Susie’s ‘oh shit’ threshold is an awful lot shorter than his.
“…Dude.” It’s maybe a screwed-up thing to have such a big smile about, but- “I think it IS, dude, we DID IT!” She laughs, dry and wild. “YOU did it!” Man, how come he wasn’t fighting like that the whole time?!
Ralsei looks up at her, pensive like he’s still waiting for permission to believe it. A little bit of Susie’s manic triumph bleeds away. She gestures at the dust and says, “Look at ‘em- they’re not walking that off and going to kidnap more guys.”
The corner of Ralsei’s mouth twitches a little- success. “I guess not,” he mumbles. He adjusts his glasses, fixating on the figure of the Knight again.
Susie spares a glance at Kris's dad, she’ll make sure he’s okay and explain some stuff in a minute probably. She takes a much longer look at the passage towards the doortal (door portal) near the shrine where she’d come from. She’d hauled ass to the nearest one and taken Kris with her; how the hell had they fallen SO far behind? Mostly Susie plans to just make fun of them for missing the big hero moment, but it’s still pretty-
Weird?
Ralsei, kneeling before the knight’s remains, jumps back suddenly in the corner of Susie’s vision- and the black gunge that had sloughed off of its dust follows him, snapping at his heels suddenly, then meeting him and crawling up his body.
His and Susie’s jaws both drop in confusion and fright.
“Wh- the hell?!” Susie rushes toward him as the ring of darkness withdraws toward where Ralsei had touched it. Something about it’s giving her the worst possible feeling, and it’s moving FAST, climbing her friend like rising water. She kicks up a massive plume of Knight dust in her dash straight toward him, but it’s already reached his fingertips when she’s in arm’s reach.
“R-Ralsei, what-” He scrambles back when she reaches out.
“DON’T TOUCH IT,” he says. “I, I don’t…” His eyes are still red from crying over Flowery, and he’s crying again now as the black laps at his shoulders, starts eating his scarf. “I don’t know what this is.”
It strikes her that he has seconds until… until whatever this crap is takes all of him, and whatever the hell happens then happens.
Susie takes a knee, leg thumping heavy against the ground in her haste to get down to her best friend’s level.
“Hey. Ralsei.” Her voice and eyes are intense, but she gives him the calmest, warmest smile she can. “You’re gonna be fine.”
The blackness jumps more erratically, like licking flame, to get the last scraps of him. Half a horn and the corner of a trembling mouth are all that’s left when he says, “You don’t know that.”
His darkened figure flashes and shudders suddenly- black and white like radio static, a bit like the Knight had done when the Fun Gang had weakened it after their first battle, faltering in its shape and presence- and he goes limp, slumping sideways into the grass.
She calls out to him. Blows on his face, when she can’t think of another way to wake him up without touching him. Decides to hell with it and shakes him a little, trying to be gentle even as her panic builds. Ralsei doesn’t respond to any of it, just exudes a little black, opaque smoke like the gunge that’s covered him.
Susie forgets everything. Forgets Kris's dad standing there, forgets the Knight’s dust that covers her knees, forgets Flowery dying beneath a tree.
She takes Ralsei into her arms and hauls ass back towards the doortal. She has to find Kris. They all help each other; if Ralsei can’t help Susie help Ralsei, then maybe Kris will know what to do. Susie sure as hell doesn’t.