Chapter Text
There were two bodies on the floor.
You knew where they came from.
That is a lie.
You didn’t know how they got here.
There were two bodies on the floor.
You didn’t remember where they came from, and you didn’t recognize who they were yet, because you hadn’t seen their faces.
One was the body of a human. They wore a green and yellow shirt, dark pants, so dark that if you tried to look closer, you couldn’t differentiate where it ended and where their shoes started.
Your head didn’t hurt. That is why you stopped trying to understand the differences.
They had yellow skin. That was normal. Haven’t you seen a yellow human before? You couldn’t be sure.
Your heavy breathing and darting eyes weren’t helping your stuttering mind remember everyone you had seen across your entire life.
They were a normal human being. You tried to look at the other body, but something stopped you. Your dazed and slow-functioning mind was warning you about something innocuous.
You remembered that they were a teenager. That they loved their friends and that if they woke up, you were going to die…
…
Your mind was running circles around itself. It was throwing random, panicked signals at the nothingness.
You should ignore it, take a deep breath, and look at the bodies. You should not run. You still have to look at the bodies.
Your curiosity compelled you. It wanted to know what had happened next, because there were two bodies on the ground that you didn't recognize, and you needed to see what they were.
Your mind told you how the human on the floor didn’t deserve this and that you should do something to…
There were two bodies on the floor.
The other body…
The other body was not human. It didn’t look like anything you had seen before.
The other body belonged to a woman. To a girl. She was a happy girl trapped in a loop of her own making that had been fed and strengthened by the people around her to the point that she hadn’t made the loop only by herself.
…
What were these assumptions you are making? Not a human, a monster instead? You have yet to look at the bodies closer. You have not even looked at the evidence that would confirm those assumptions.
The curiosity burning deeply inside you should be fed spoonful by spoonful to not spoil the appetite.
…Why would you believe that they were alive? There was no proof yet.
There were two bodies on the floor.
The second body was that of a girl, no older than 20 but certainly not younger than 16.
You didn’t know what she was. The most jarring fact about her was the two branches sticking out of her head. You didn’t know how she had gained them, but you were certain about something.
They were piercing her skull. But looking closer clued you in on why she had been stabbed on the head.
She was covered in brown fur. That wasn’t normal. You remembered your previous assumption made with a foggy, dazed mind, the one where you believed she wasn’t a human. It didn't look as preposterous as you had judged it to be moments ago.
Then you looked down and saw the hoofs replacing normal human feet. She was not human, you decided. She was a deer, you assumed.
Your mangled mind supplied that she still was a woman because she was a reindeer.
It wasn’t useful information. You decided to ignore your mind if it supplied more meaningless facts unrelated to the analysis of the bodies right in front of you.
She was wearing a shirt— It wasn't a shirt. It was a black sweater, and over it she wore a checkered vest. She also wore a skirt that any mother would find insulting on its length.
Your own mother would probably blow a baseball hole through your head if you even imagined wearing something as short as that.
What was your mind talking about? The skirt reached her knees.
Your mind had wandered once again, and with a forceful shake of your trembling head, you dispelled this thought.
You should really keep that thing at bay in the near future. You are unsure what misfortune could befall you if it kept wandering away from the topic at hand.
There were two bodies on the floor.
You had forgotten to look at something essential these two bodies shared.
Their hairs. The first one’s hair, the one you assumed was a human, had short hair. It was the same color as their pants-shoes.
The other body had long hair. It was blonde and straight. From a distance, you could make out that it was supposed to be soft, but its current state had left it ruined and messy.
This made your mind realize something.
You hadn’t paid any attention to the fact that both of the bodies were drenched in water. They were currently wetting the floor. The one you had put effort into maintaining clean. You hoped that the water was normal and that it coming from there didn’t mean they had brought mysterious bacteria here.
Your mind had wandered, and you should maintain it from repeating that kind of mistake again.
They were soaking the floor—
There were two people on your floor.
What would you do now? These bodies had come out of nowhere and were in your living room. There were no traces of who could have put them here.
But you didn’t think that, no.
You were too busy panicking over the fact that you should have remembered these two people, but your mangled, bewildered, stunned, dazed, dizzy mind could do nothing but claw at the edges of your consciousness, desperately reaching for a memory that slipped away every single time it came within reach, forever stranded at the tip of your tongue.
…Stop that, now.
…
You are a calm and reasonable person. You don’t panic or scream or cry at the bodies on your floor.
They are unexpected, sure. But your mind is an immovable palace. It will panic for less than a second, and afterwards, it will cool down and let you think clearly about what is happening around you.
You take a deep breath and close your eyes, trying to remember the words that have guided you through the harshest moments of your life.
…
…Excellent.
There were two people in your living room.
They didn’t look alive, but you still approached them, your mind unable to stop its wonderful curiosity from surfacing from the depths of your psyche.
You crouched to try and get a better look. Their bodies didn't appear to be decomposing, and your nose would have detected it before your eyes anyway.
You brought your right hand towards the hair of the girl and pushed it aside to find and were met with her weird, horrifying-looking face.
She had a snout. She didn’t have the flat face you expected from anything human-looking. It made you shiver. You didn’t want to look at it any longer.
It was not a beautiful face. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that this was probably a corpse of at least more than a day. Her face was just horrible. Only a mother could love such a horrible creature.
Your mind tried to deny these feelings.
It denied the truth. But it could not be used as a reliable indicator of your feelings towards her. After all your mind had suffered in so little time, one can’t be certain it had not been damaged to the point of inhibiting its judgment.
You tried to deny this reasoning, but you decided to compromise. She had a horrible appearance that made you want to puke. No matter how much you hated that description.
The body in front of you was not alive, so this demonstration of fear was very unnecessary, and it was putting a rock in the way of the current investigation. You should really calm yourself early rather than later.
What to do? What to do? You wondered. If anyone entered the living room, would they assume the presence of the bodies was your fault? Probably not, but having someone here would only make things more complicated.
That is why you lived alone.
Nobody should come to your home, not your parents or any friends. It wasn't because they were dead or because you were a loner. No, you simply appreciate your privacy.
For some reason, your brain gripped the thought of having friends and didn’t let go.
You tried to remember the likes of your friends. Nothing. Maybe the last activity you had done with a friend? Nothing also. You then tried to conjure in your mind the face of any of your friends and realized something.
You don’t remember your friends.
…
Your mind wanders when it should be chained to the corner, only let out when it has to analyze important facts around you.
Do better.
There were bodies in your living room, and you had all the time in the world.
You weren’t hungry, sleepy, poor, or sick, which meant you could put all your time and effort into understanding this mystery.
You turned towards the other body.
And immediately aborted that action. Instead, you decided to grab something from behind, something that could be useful for your current situation.
You grabbed… Shears?
Shears, seriously?
Out of all the…
You were pressing the shears to your chest as if they were a plushie…
They brought you a sense of comfort in these trying times.
…
It doesn’t matter. Shears could be useful for this situation.
You are unsure how they could be useful.
After all, you were certainly not a surgeon, and opening up their bodies would only mess things up.
Nor were you a biologist, which could have come in handy to identify their organs if you were to open them up, but you have already, hopefully, discarded the idea of opening them up.
…Nor were you a cannibal chef with the idea to take a piece of them and taste it.
…Right?
Great, you were not a cannibal, but you were someone who cooked and still cooks.
Your mind started to fight— wander away from the topic at hand and tried remembering who you were before this terrible, terrible situation.
A simple caretaker. A caretaker of what? Your ever-curious mind asked. A caretaker of a simple non-descript religious structure. That is why you are skilled with the basic skills of cooking, gardening, and with… Well, taking care of a place.
What was this religious building? Or to what religion did it form part of? Did you practice this religion, or was there another reason you took care of that structure? Your annoying mind asked.
It didn't matter what religion you served. You realized that didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things because your backstory had helped you achieve abilities that would help you with the situation you find yourself in.
So you looked at the bodies on the ground, grabbed your shears, and got ready to work.
…What were you planning to do with the shears anyhow?
Before doubt could manifest inside your head, you grabbed the shears by one of the blades and, having extended your hand, you cut it.
…You cut your palm.
You… cut your palm?
Yes, yes. You cut your own hand with the shears, which mere moments ago you were using as a comfort plushie.
The thin line of the cut stung. It started the same color as your palm, and after less than a second of burning pain, you saw it become red, and then more red.
And… and because you are a confusing creature, you dropped the shears and with your uninjured hand, you applied pressure around the cut.
This sudden pressure forced the buildup of the blood to come rushing out, a black-red liquid was spit out of your palm.
You maintained this pressure, no matter if the blood fell onto your shoes or kept dirtying your other clothes, or how a thin line of the liquid traveled through your whole arm before getting lost under the sleeve of your shirt.
…
…
…
You were crouching in front of the two bodies on the floor.
You had decided that you were not in the right state of mind, so you had put those shears right where they had come from and bandaged your palm in record time.
You blinked, and a bit of the fog infecting your brain cleared.
Right now, the bodies on the ground mattered the most. You had been ignoring them for too long now, so it would be in the best interest of your curiosity and health to find out what the deal was with them.
Approaching with hesitation, you extended the hand that wasn’t bandaged, and you pushed their hair out of the way.
They looked like a normal human being; Their yellow skin notwithstanding.
There was not much to see, so you moved your hand and put it near their nose, hoping to find any signs of life.
You felt something in your hand.
But before horror— excitement could take over your mind, you saw something move.
The body moved; It wasn’t a body anymore.
It had opened its eyes; They had opened their eyes, and they were looking straight at you.
You stared back at them, left hand twitching with pain.
They tried to get up.
You stood there paralyzed, doing nothing but staring into their red, red eyes.
That broke you out of your state of inaction, and you extended an open hand towards the human.
Their eyes immediately locked on your hand, looking at it as if it was a ticking bomb or an animal that would attack them if they dared to move.
Nothing happened. The human kept looking at your hand, eyes darting for a split second to your face only to return to your open hand.
You opened your mouth to say something and—
You were stopped by the human, still on the ground, slapping your hand away from them.
“Kris…” You whispered, voices coming out of you, layered upon multitudes of yourself.
They froze, and they looked back at you with obvious fear on their only visible red, red eye.
You didn't know how you knew that name, but it had come out of you anyway, wrong and warped, like it had traveled through wires before reaching your own mouth.
It didn't sound like you.
It sounded like it had been pushed through a speaker left out in the rain: Thin, crackling at the edges, quiet but its message still clear.
A whisper with a static tone. As if something between your throat and the air had graciously given you a wonderful, wonderful gift.
You clapped your uninjured hand over your mouth.
That was a mistake. You felt your own breath rasp against your palm, and even that small sound came out crackling, distorted, like breathing into a dead microphone.
Your heart jumped erratically around in your chest.
“What was that. What was that? What was—” You wanted to ask Kris if they'd heard it too. If it had sounded as wrong to them as it had to you.
You didn't dare open your mouth to speak again.
But Kris saw, and heard your panic.
That didn’t calm them down in the slightest.
They tried to get up.
Their elbows buckled, bringing them down to the floor. Unfortunately for them, their hands were too slow, maybe from whatever ordeal had placed them here, and their chin took the brunt of the damage.
They looked at the body next to them, and they recognized her.
“Noelle…” They turned back and stared straight at you. The hate exuding from those red eyes was so obvious that you shivered and took a step back.
Then the fear changed. It had lost its focus for a moment, moving away from your own eyes to look at something behind you.
It was just a bad interpretation. They were still looking at you.
You annoyingly realized something.
Where were you?
Well, that is a silly question, and the answer is just as silly. You are in your living room. Why are you questioning this?
But your mind was a stubborn little creature, and you looked around, not looking at the bodies on your floor.
This was a bad idea. The pain in your legs told you so. They would not help if you tried to run away from the bodies on the floor. Your arms told you the same thing.
Your neck was about to also tell you, but you were faster, infuriatingly faster than your neck, and you looked behind you.
There was nothing.
There was nothing behind you.
There was a lack of things that should have been there. The few that came to mind had been important. Like the chair you had stood up from. Maybe the coffee table you had grabbed the shears from and then maybe put back?
No… There was simply nothing behind you.
The room simply began assembling behind you around… 2 meters away from you? Give or take.
Random stuff floating around.
You brought your…
Nah. Nah… You don’t deserve to be described.
This has been a disastrous attempt, nothing that I could expect, and if I wanted to prevent it, I would have needed to prepare or try to guess all of the stupid, stupid actions you would try to take…
Yes, I am talking to you!
No, not all of you, my dears. I could never get angry with any of you.
I am talking to the ignorant, pebble-sized brain, mumbling moron with a coward and crybaby streak the size of a meteorite tail.
You grabbed your chest. You felt very faint. There was a horrible, horrible pain in your chest, so horrible to the point that it felt as if it was breaking all of your ribs at the same time, only to fix them and break them again.
You felt something slither out of your mouth. It was a fork connected to another fork, and that one was connected to another and another and another. All their sharp ends eviscerating your insides, making you spit out blood, blood, so much blood.
You looked beyond the space where nothing happened and… Nothing had happened.
Honestly, this narration is just so inaccurate now, just let me…
Let's break it, shall we?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
There were three people in the living room. Two of them were on the ground. One of those was breathing heavily, and the other was still unknown whether she was alive.
The other one was not a person at all, so it shouldn’t get the privilege to choose who it was.
It was on its knees and with a hand pressing against its chest. Trying to take deep breaths and to stop itself from having a panic attack.
How typical. To add to the disgusting nature of it. The bandage that had so graciously been gifted to it was now missing, making it splatter its own blood against its own shirt.
“So how do you feel breaking my story?” The wonderful voice of the previous narration spoke. With incredible power, the sounds from the voice bounced across the space where there was something and got lost where there was nothing.
The not-human looked up. Its eyes widened at what it saw.
After hours of its mind searching around its empty space, it finally found something to say. “W-who— Who a-a-re you?” It choked at hearing its own crackling voice again.
“‘Who are you?’ it asks. Who am I? I am… Sigh…Do you even deserve an explanation? You are just so…” The space from where the beautiful voice originated shook as if there was a head to be shaken.
“You are so self-centered that you forgot about the bodies on the ground!” The owner of the voice pointed at the now-mentioned bodies.
The person was staring upwards, mouth agape. “Is this a game?” It said incredulously. “W-why is this happening?” It asked at nothing in particular.
“Do you KNOW how hard it was for ME to get all of you in this place???”
On its butt now, the cowardly thing scrambled backwards. The owner of the voice wasn’t getting any closer to the pest, but the beautiful voice’s sheer presence scared lower life forms.
“It was going to be PERFECT. You would identify the corpses as Kris and Noelle Deltarune. You would be shocked, and quickly move on from that shock. We wouldn't WANT to bore the reader with an eternally scared MC now WOULD we?????” The owner of the voice scoffed. “Honestly, I am still not—”
STATIC, only static, only interference, only garbage sound, only nothing.
The owner of the voice snapped back from the dream and turned backwards to see the object that had just been thrown. It was a pair of shears.
The pest had a hand extended, both eyes wide, burning with hate, and it was breathing heavily. It was the culprit of the terrible, terrible crime.
The owner of the voice laughed, and laughed, and laughed, shaking the entire room.
“AHAHAhahahhaha… You are still a feisty thing, ain't you?!?!” With a flick of the hand, the pest was sent flying through the room.
It hit the wall that was not there before, not breaking any bones but banishing the air out of its lungs and straightening its spine against the brick wall.
“Sigh… This is very fun…” The voice pointed down, and the less-than-human thing was knocked down by the sudden piece of roof falling on it.
“...But…” The voice harrumphed. “You are not getting as hurt as I would have wanted…”
The thing got up, the piece of roof that had struck it on the neck nowhere to be found.
Without wasting a second, very unlike it considering its previous attitude of panicking at the slightest problem, it threw a piece of wall floating in front of it.
The voice avoided the projectile.
“And here you are, more proactive than before… Why couldn’t you act this way before? It would have been so easy. Wouldn’t you agree, Kris?”
Kris, for their part, was kneeling on the ground, trying to get Noelle to wake up.
Hearing their name made them turn around, grab Noelle, scramble away from the voice, and fail at trying to grab the knife out of their pants.
The voice had to avoid another flying shear. This one embedding itself on one of the half-formed walls.
“...That is what I get for grabbing pre-made models…” The voice muttered, looking at the shears and at the insect bouncing on its feet.
…What?
“What are you doing?”
The thing didn’t answer.
“You know you can't avoid me in any way that matters, right?”
“I figured you out!” It was smiling for some unexplainable and probably absurd reason. “You can’t hurt me. You tried and failed; even the forks couldn’t do anything to me.” It was showing teeth like a wild animal.
“...You believe yourself so intelligent?”
“YEAH.” The shout traveled through the room. The echoes it left created scrambling into nonsense faster than normal.
And then it turned its back to the owner of the voice…
It searched for something at the edges of the room, not caring that it was walking so near the line between something and nothing.
“What a proud little thing you are…”
“NOT HEARING.” It grabbed another pair of shears.
Before the voice could snap back, Kris, who was behind the place where the voice could be heard, launched themselves at the voice.
They passed through it.
A pulse of red filled the empty space that the voice occupied.
“Cough. Cough. Kris, please. Cough. I am not the enemy here.” The voice pointed at the human thing scratching the edge of nothing with one of its shears. “Your current state is its fault—”
Kris did not respond. They launched theirself at the voice once again.
They missed, and before they could fall onto the ground and try again, the ground disappeared, and they fell into nothingness.
Sadly, that didn’t happen, but they fell into the ground from higher up on the wrong foot, not breaking it but certainly spraining it.
“Look, Krissss. Hear me. That thing that looks like a human did this to you. The manipulation, the drowning, the torture, it was that creature’s fault.”
Kris heard the voice, and instead of really listening, they tried to cut the “ankles”
“...I really should have expected that. The man does like his characters with “extra” personality, doesn't he?”
Kris did not care to respond.
“And you! Stop whatever you are doing. It is a waste of OUR time.” A single metal rod flew towards the thing
It was hit right in its liver, or where a liver should be in a normal human.
It flinched, trying to curl in pain, and one of its hands instinctively went for the rod.
But it aborted all movement and kept scratching at the edges.
“Can’t you understand simple commands? You are and have absolutely ruined my story!!!”
“D-Don't c-care.” It spoke, the metal rod already gone.
"How, of all the little blank slates I could have chosen, I had the misfortune of getting the stupidest one, to the point where I'm not sure if you are and were deliberately not following my orders or if your mind simply couldn't grasp anything I was saying."
“Fuck you!”
“In your dreams. Oh! Speaking of fucking up so badly to the point my story is useless now. I still have to take my revenge on you.” With a flick of a nonexistent wrist, the owner of the voice made the room rumble.
“Be grateful, be happy. From now on, you are a real “person”, which means you have the ability to get out of the living room. But before you decide to frolic in the fields of freedom. Our guests have been ignored for too long.”
Another flick of the wrist made the bodies twitch.
The human one trembled, making them fall on the ground.
The deer one shivered, twitched, only to fall back onto the ground, unmoving.
“They are re-cu-pe-ra-ting…” The owner of the voice giggled. “I had the plan of letting you choose if they became your friendly acquaintances after all the things you have done to them, but you should know you don’t deserve that choice now.”
The wires hauled Kris upright before their not-sprained ankle could touch the ground again. They dangled there, swaying slightly, red eyes locked somewhere between fury and exhaustion.
"There. Isn't that better?" The voice circled Kris slowly, wires humming with tension. "Now, I know you're upset. I know you're confused, and in pain, and probably would like nothing more than to lie down and never move again. Understandable. Very understandable. But you have a wonderful opportunity in front of you."
The voice gestured toward the human thing, crouched at what had been the edge of the room and now was the corner of it, still tracing the walls with a pair of shears.
Wait no. Nevermind. It was throwing a couple of looks at whatever the voice was doing, very paranoid looks. How cute.
"That creature over there. The one that drowned you. The one that carved those disgusting, disgusting thorns into Noelle. The one currently pretending very hard that it isn't listening to us right now." The voice's tone brightened, coaxing, very sweet, but not so sweet.
"I am giving you the chance to make it hurt. Very hurt. So hurt, more than it has hurt you and your friends."
Kris didn't answer. Their jaw was tight, their fists curled at their sides. The wires holding them were already gone into the aether.
"Go on. I am on your side, do not worry."
The human thing looked up.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Kris's eyes burned into the human thing's face, and it went completely still. It didn't raise a hand. It didn't run.
It just looked back, with so many confusing contradictions: chin high but shoulders drawn in as if bracing for a blow; Trembling hands but a solid stance; Not blinking but its breathing speeding up.
The voice watched this with giddiness, waiting for the fireworks to light up. "Yes. Yesss. There it is. Go on, Kris. Show it."
Kris said, "No."
“...D-did… What did you say, Kris?”
"No." Flatter this time.
The voice's amusement curdled into confusion, almost childlike disbelief. "No? What do you mean, no? I just told you. I-I just explained who—"
"I said no."
"WHY?" The word cracked through the room, shaking dust from a ceiling halfway broken. The wires yanked, once, hard, rattling Kris like a doll. "Why? Why would you say no? Explain this to me. Explain it. I am sure I can tell you why you are wrong."
Kris didn't explain. Kris didn't do anything except hang there, breathing hard, refusing to look away from the human thing even as the wires shook them again, again, harder each time, waiting for an answer that was not there.
The voice let go of Kris mid-shake, wires unspooling in frustration, and rounded instead on the human thing.
The culprit, the guilty one, the one who should have been punished and was not.
The human thing wasn't looking at Kris anymore. It was staring at the floor, at its own shoes, at the dried blood crusted along its palm and shirt and pants and shoes again.
Every few seconds its eyes flicked sideways —toward the door that had assembled itself against the far wall— and each time, something in its expression cracked.
Not hope, why would that thing have hope? The opposite of hope. Like it didn't believe the door was real enough to open, or better, wondering what happened if it was real.
"Oh, don't you dare." The voice's patience finally snapped. "Don't you DARE look ashamed now. You are not even ashamed of your actions against ME."
A door that was not the same one, a new one came flying across the room and struck both of them at once, Kris and the human thing, splinters, handles, hinges and all.
Both of them flinched.
Neither of them fell. Neither of them bled. Neither of them so much as stumbled.
"YOU—" The voice's fury climbed, wires lashing at nothing, cracking against brick walls and wood. "You ungrateful, spineless, absolute waste of a—"
And then, all at once, it stopped.
The room went quiet. The wires drooped, lifeless, back toward the floor.
Not there anymore.
"...Fine." The voice didn't sound angry anymore. It was tired, and underneath the tired, grief. "Sigh. Fine. It's ruined. All of it. Every part I built, not in its line anymore. Not even merciful enough to show me the decency of an ending."
A long silence stretched out kilometers and miles into the desert, filled only by uneven breathing.
"You know what? Here." The voice's tone turned bright again. "A gift. My last one. I'm leaving. Isn't that generous? Leaving you here, in a world that isn't finished, that I have no intention of finishing anymore, with no idea of what the outside looks like."
A soft, humorless laugh. "That's a punishment, in case that wasn't clear. I do hope you both appreciate the effort I put into it. You didn’t deserve it"
The wires stirred one final time, gathering themselves around Noelle's still body, and lifted her into a kneeling position beside Kris. A single, careless flick, and her chest rose. Her eyes opened, unfocused, confused, blinking against a room that hadn't decided what it wanted to look like yet.
"There. All tucked in." The voice's presence made the room vibrate. "Good luck, little thing. I do hope you enjoy explaining yourself to her. I had no idea what to do with that interaction."
A final mocking laugh.
“I hope you do.”
The owner of the voice left the premises.
The deer looked at the human thing.
Eyes burning red.
A wide smile twisted her features.
“Kris… We did it… We are on the other side…”