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Your name was Brook.Your name hadn’t always been Brook. You used to have your own before. But then again it did translate from your native language into brook so it would ultimately have the same meaning. You used to have a family you loved instead of strangers that tried to control every single aspect of your life.You remember your family. Your brothers, who pretended to be too cool to hang out with a little girl but once in the privacy of your home would play with you and promise to protect you forever. Your mother, who instructed you in the ways of your people. Your father, who taught you how to use a knife to defend yourself from the white skins and to hunt, even if your role on a family wasn’t supposed to be that one. ‘You never know when you’ll end up separated from us and have to do everything on your own’ he would say. ‘With this war that the white skins brought onto our land has separated a lot of families, little one.’ he would say.So, he taught you how to hunt and make fires.
‘Don’t get frustrated if the fire won’t start right away. Sometimes good things need time.’
‘Blend into your surroundings and mask your scent. Your prey won’t even realize you’re there.’
‘Wait for the right moment to strike. Remember, the prey is small. You await still for the opportunity… and then overpower the prey with a sharp attack!’
All you knew about survival you had learned from your father.And then they came.They slaughtered everyone in the village. Your mother begging you to remain hidden as your father braved the white skins. He was first to fall. Your brothers, who had promised to protect you so many times before, had followed. Then your mother. But they hadn’t simply killed her, just like they hadn’t simply killed all the other women. Your young mind couldn’t really understand what they were doing. You had never learned about that. But one thing was for sure, that place they were touching a lot should only be offered to husbands and, in not being her husband, they had hurt your mother.You stayed still where she’d left you. Not out of respect for what she’d ordered of you, but because your shock kept you from moving at all. You could barely comprehend what was going on…So, you sat still and quiet.…They found you. Of course, they would. But upon seeing how young you were they hesitated on doing what they had done to all the others. After a brief discussion among themselves they decided to take you. You offered no resistance. You were still frozen and in denial of all the reality around you.They forcefully pried your doll from your hands. You wouldn’t own such a ‘dreadful thing’ in your new home. That ‘dreadful thing’ was a gift handed down from your family on your mother’s side for a long time. Thankfully you had your toy knife strapped on your thigh, under your clothes, so at the very least you got to keep that one thing. Your father had given it to you. You still couldn’t own a real knife. You were too young. So, he’d asked the shaman to give you a knife with a blade made of translucent opal. Instead of looking like a precious stone was serving as a blade, it looked like some futuristic material from the gods. The edges were dull, but you were supposed to be protected by the influences of the stone.You just hoped that opals still worked well in the midst of the white skins.You managed to snap out of the shock but you were still terrified. You forced yourself to sit still as the men carried you like a parcel. Freaking out right away wouldn’t help you at all. So, even though your skin felt like it was crawling with a whole ant hill just by being handled by them, you remained as still as your old doll.You aren’t still quite sure how you are managing to keep so calm and collected. It was more of an instinct. It had to be instinct since your thoughts felt like a mist had fallen on they. You were thankful for those instincts, though. You held your ground. Somehow you managed to hold your ground against all of your emotions and thoughts. It was a fierce fight but you remembered your father’s words.
‘Blend into your surroundings and mask your scent. Your prey won’t even realize you’re there.’
Except you were the prey now, not the hunter. But so long as you blended into your surroundings they hunters might not notice you. So, you quietly observed all those white skins going about their lives, ignorant of your pain, as the man that took it all away from you were cheered on their return. The one who had wanted to keep you grabbed you and you fought off the instinctual reaction of trying to squirm away. He’d seemed unpredictable enough that you feared how he would react to you squirming.You were taken to a huge building, far bigger than your old home. The man called it his home. All the rooms were big and filled with things. Things you couldn’t even comprehend the use for. Why waste so much space for useless junk?The man’s wife appeared and you briefly wondered if she knew what her husband had been doing, touching other men’s wives on the gift that should only be given to the one they were mated with. You decided that either she must not know or that she was very good at pretending not to know. You wondered if the both of them even liked each other. You weren’t a stranger to arranged marriages, though your tribe didn’t practice them. Your tribe had been a small insignificant one that only wanted to cultivate their fields in peace…They mustn’t really like each other that much, you decide. Why else would need need so much distance between each other? Why all that empty and cold space that should have been filled with their life together was instead filled with meaningless objects? The man introduced you to his wife and acted as if you should be impressed by this house, but you weren’t feeling much for pretending. He must have decided that your wide eyes at the absolute waste of space must have meant you were admiring it instead of being disgusted by it so he went on to explain something about the meaningless images littering the walls -paintings, he called them-. You didn’t really listen to any of his useless blabbering.The year that followed was absolute hell for you. The wife started to teach you in the ways of the ‘civilized people’, as she called it. If civilized people would just randomly murder a peaceful village then you wanted nothing to do with it. You were forced to wear constricting clothes with a massive excess of fabric that would have made two or three more outfits that would have been far easier to move in. You considered that maybe this was a way to ensure you couldn’t run away, except that the wife wore them too. Maybe they were afraid the wife would run away, just the same as you were set on doing? You didn’t really care if the wife would run away, to be honest. In fact, it might help you if she did. They would all be too distracted looking for her to notice you had escaped too until it was too late.As the year progresses you came to realize that the man and the wife wanted you as their child. Somehow the wife couldn’t make babies? Your mother always told you that babies were made with love, hence why you were more and more sure that there was no love between the two. You were forced to call them father and mother at some point. They didn’t actually threaten you, but the look the man gave you the first few time your refused made up for it. You felt like throwing up every time you called them that but you did it anyway. All the while you were planning your escape. The wife had taken you on enough walks through town for you to know your way around it. You had learned how to read some and stole some maps from the man’s office. You had to be really careful while doing those things. If anyone found out too soon you were done for.Acting hastily would only end badly for you. You were sure of it.
‘You await still for the opportunity… and then overpower the prey with a sharp attack!’
You were already 8 years old when such opportunity presented itself. The man had been summoned for a meeting several towns away and would take too long to return. It seemed he had long forgotten where he had gotten you from, if he was foolish enough to believe you wouldn’t bolt. Then again, he could have just underestimated you due to your age.Either way it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that it was time!Sunnyday was the day for the adoration of some invisible white skin with mystical powers, as far as you had bothered to learn, and the wife always had to confess herself afterwards. Though you still wondered what ‘having wandering eyes’ and ‘touching herself sinfully’ meant, and wanted to learn what it was at some point, you figured it might be better to do so far away from there.You had always behaved yourself very obediently when she’d went to the little wooden cubicle. She had no reason to doubt you would still be waiting there for her when she left. This time you wouldn’t, though.Your choice of dress for the day was still very rich looking -they had to show off their family’s wealth, after all-, but it’s muted colors would ensure that she wouldn’t be noticed much if she sneaked away.Sneaking away with such heavy clothing wasn’t easy but you’d taken hold of one of the dresses the wife had told the servants to discard and practiced a lot of movement with it late at night. You now knew how to best move around in it. You managed to get all the way to the edges of the town before the alarm bell began to ring. You ran to the forest and, once there, you tore off the restraining clothing to pieces. Using the toy knife you still kept hidden, strapped to your thigh, and that you’d sharpen the tip just in case, you cut your arm a bit, letting blood fall on it. You also left some food. That would attract wild animals and the villagers might think you’d been the victim of one such beast and not look for you.Feeling far freer in your undergarments, you ran off further into the woods. You knew of the closest Indian village. In the year you had spent stuck in that dreadful mansion, the man had constantly cursed at a tribe living near Mount Ebbot. There were talks of witchcraft that pushed all of the white skins away. The tribe must have very powerful shamans to protect it. Just perfect for you.You headed that way. The only mementos you had with you was your trusty toy knife made out of opal that your father had given you and a red ribbon. A servant had given you the red ribbon. She’d been the only one to know you wanted to run away. She would have joined you if she could, but the fact that you had been adopted as some messed up child replacement gave you far more liberties than she had access too. She was constantly shackled because of several prior attempts at running. She’d tried to come up with smart plans like you but the injustice of being forced into working until her hands bled wrecked any vestige of patience in her, something you had by the dozen.No, she had resigned herself to her fate. But that didn’t mean she didn’t wish you the best of lucks. The ribbon had been crafted from the remains of one of her African traditional outfits. She hoped that, this way, you would always hold a piece of her. This way, at least one tiny bit of her would be free.You finally reached Mount Ebbot. It had taken you a month to do it. There is only so much walking an 8-year-old could do, especially in paths they hadn’t threaded before.
But you hadn’t known where to look…You heard footsteps and tried to hide yourself in a bush, but… the foliage had been hiding a pitfall. You fell into a room filled with red maple tree leaves. And you’d been found by a creature of old.The gigantic lady of goat-kin welcomed you into her home. Toriel hadn’t forced you to wear uncomfortable clothes and spent a lot of time sharing her interests with you, much unlike the wife that merely left your rearing to the servants and chamber lady.For a while you’d been happy there. You could be yourself and not be afraid that someone was just standing there, waiting to pounce the moment you let your guard down. The moment you failed to keep up with their expectations. You’d loved Toriel in a way you hadn’t thought you could ever since the day your mother died…She would never replace your mother and she seemed fine with that. She told you she didn’t want to replace her either. She was also ok with you not calling her mom, even if she filled that role spectacularly.You had a lot of fun and freedom in the ruins but soon you grew bored of them. You knew by the mentions some of the other monsters made that there was more to the underground than just the ruins. That immediately meant you would want to go there.But Toriel forbid you.…She didn’t even bother explaining why, much unlike she did in any other subject. She just shut you down harshly in a way that reminded you too much of the wife. Any time you tried to bring up the issue again she would make up excuses so as not to finish the conversation or harshly shut you up again.…Your patience began to run thin.One day you snapped at Toriel and she snapped right back. That was the first and only fight you two got to have. You did make sure to apologize to her in writing before leaving. You decided to gift Toriel with the gifts you had held most dear. You placed them in her night stand and finally left, as she still slumbered away.You hadn’t been ready for Snowdin’s harsh weather or for the monsters’ hostility towards humans over there. You’d known from Toriel what had happened and understood where the hostility was coming from but you hadn’t been expecting that much of it.You learned to mask yourself, still intent on exploring more, perhaps finding a way to get out with Toriel. Once you found it you would go back for her. Maybe make peace with the other monsters? Wouldn’t it be grand if you and the monster united with the other Indian tribes against the horrifying white skins? No one would have to live in fear anymore. No more little kids watching their families be thorn apart…You should have known you were dreaming too big…You tried to keep the monsters from attacking you by setting out traps for anyone that was following you and then threaten them. That was probably one of your biggest mistakes. While it worked, it also drew notice towards you. And while you’d never hurt a monster, the fact that they were still both hostile and fearful managed to reach their king’s ears.He left his palace in search of you. He found you in waterfall in a room whose only illumination was mushroom you needed to tap for light.You fought and you tried to use mercy on him, just like you had done for so many before. But he refused your mercy every step of the way. He heard you loud and clear and looked conflicted over your pleas. Then he would look at some of the monsters watching you both fight on the sides and his resolve would strengthen.You fought hard and valiantly. You waited for the right moment to end the fight. But this prey wasn’t small. This prey wouldn’t be overpowered by you. This prey couldn’t afford to return your mercy. …You tried so hard…But one throw of his trident, when you were too exhausted to dodge, and you were impaled in your stomach. You stumbled to the floor and looked up at the king, feeling as terrified as when you’d seen your family be slain. Only this time you were the one doing the dying. You looked up at him, eyes blurry from the pain and tears and asked why. He looked haunted…Good! He should be!The last thing you saw was your sky-blue soul being engulfed in a glassy tube. Then you were submerged in darkness. It made your thoughts slow and almost nonexistent. Time had no meaning there. So you did what you had always done best and patiently waited…
…
…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …You were awoken.A kid in a blue sweater with dark pink stripes stood before you. Bright stars were all around you.
Yellow…
Purple…
Dark Blue…
Green…
Orange…
And a lot of white ones dotting the darkness like a night sky. The kid’s star was bright red. But the kid’s star was outside of the night sky you were in. You watched them save their friends from your night sky.As your spirit essence was used to break a large magic wall that gave you an ominous feeling you felt in peace at last… …finally free…
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Your name was Taylor.You’ve always been named that for as long as you remember. But when it came to your master, the man you belonged to, you were just ‘lad’ or ‘boy’ or ‘scum’ or ‘nigger’ or the traditional ‘slave’.Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly mean, just calling names wasn’t enough for him. No, when he was feeling particularly mean he never used his words. He used his fists. And somehow your mom was always the target.Your mom was a slave and so was your grandmother and great grandmother and several generations of ladies above you. And when you were born you were born a slave too. But the part that frustrated you more than anything was that you weren’t even a full nigger. Your skin was too light for that. And you were pretty sure of who your father was. It wasn’t difficult to guess, since he took his time to sexually torture your Mah everytime the wife snuffed his attempts.He had no business touching your Mah but he still did. He took her innocence and then blamed her for giving birth to a child she had never asked for. All because you were the evidence his wife needed to nag his head with about him straying. Your Mah never asked to be pregnant with you. But even now she was still the best Mah you could ever have had. Even with all the pain she had to endure, she raised you to be better than those disgusting slave owners, she raised you as your own person and not as the evidence of that man’s sin.That man was different. He had wanted to kill you at first and your Mah had stopped him so now he used her as a scape goat for his violence and even forced her to beg for it in exchange for your life. She had to pretend she loved to get beaten with all of her might to look as honest about it as possible. You wouldn’t have blamed her if she had turned on you at some point, but she was the most wonderful Mah in the world. Then there was the woman. The beast of a woman who married the scumbag you had for a father and an owner. She couldn’t deal with the fact that she couldn’t keep that man’s attention on her so she blamed it all on your Mah like she had asked to be forced upon in the first place. And she would slap her every time she saw her, no exception. Those two were complete bonkers in the head. Two literal mental cases.You wanted to grow up fast. You wanted to help her escape. Your situation was just far too unfair… It was unfair that they could just hurt you and your Mah whenever they felt like it. But you were too small to keep her safe if you ran, so you had no choice but to wait. And waiting was the hardest part. You didn’t want to wait. You had no patience. But going riot on them would only hurt your Mah in the end.You were ten when your world came crashing down.That day he hit your Mah so hard it made her collapse. Something must have ruptured inside her. But even after he had beaten her up, even after seeing her dying he still fucked her. The last memories she had of her life was being raped by a savage in civilized clothing. You know all of that because you got it out of him in the end.But as it was happening you hadn’t known.You went in search of her when she hadn’t returned to your cot. You had managed to dig a hole out of the place you were kept in and managed to pick the lock on your shackles. You had done this so that you could sometimes steal food from your masters. You were too skinny for them to ever find you out and you always took so little that they hadn’t even realized something was missing. A lifetime of always being careful had sharpened your senses when it came to pretending and stealing.You found her in a ditch, a body tossed aside like garbage among the other wastes from the house. Her skin, usually so dark as so pale all of a sudden. You knew she must have bled out. Probably internal.Your rage was so big I couldn’t possibly be contained. The injustice of what had been done. You returned to the cot. The masters lived alone as a couple. They hadn’t even been blessed with more children and the ones they did have died. God must have known the sort of people they were to punish them so. You were their only heir by all accounts.And they were cocky enough to believe no slave would ever stand up to them. They had some guard dogs but you had tamed them with all your excursions out. That… was a problem. You would find a way to solve it. Nothing would stand in the way of justice this time!You returned to the slave’s quarters and quietly rallied up a mutiny against them. It was easy escaping your masters. They were so careless that they didn’t even have human guards. And the dogs… You hated it, but there was no choice. They would have reacted to the other slaves, unlike with you.You tried to be as merciful as possible with their deaths.The slaves quietly flooded the house. If the master knew you were coming, he would whip out his revolver and shoot y’all dead. You found the gun first, so the slaves decided you earned it. The found other fire arms too. Ones for hunting. Rifles. Women armed themselves with kitchen knifes.You stormed into the main room where both of them had been sleeping. Their screams as they were woken up to find themselves at your mercy were almost good enough for all the torment they had put you and your Mah through. …Almost.But justice still wasn’t served. Justice demanded that both slates be balanced and forgiveness alone wouldn’t be enough to do it.You made him beg to be beaten, just like he had forced you Mah to do it for him. You threatened to cut off his dick if he didn’t. Threatening his wife’s live wouldn’t have swayed him, like you told her to her face.When she didn’t believe you, you demonstrated. You told him to lick your feet clean and she would be free to go. He refused. Even with her begging he still refused. And then he told you all about how your Mah had died. You told all the women he had raped to do as they pleased with him but to let him live. You wanted to give him his final blow. As for the wife? You told her that her behavior towards his Mah was deplorable. If she apologized she would be free to go since she now knew how little her husband cared for her. But, as scared as she was, she still told you your Mah had deserved it. That she was a slut who seduced her husband.…You didn’t give her a second chance.You told the men that weren’t holding her down to show her exactly how ‘seductive’ she, herself, could be. That she could be just as seductive as your Mah. They delivered and took turns with the men holding the master down for the women to beat him raw. One thing was for sure. You'd never known before how many holes could be filled at the same time in a female body.Not wanting to witness any more of it, you decided to watch something far more fulfilling instead. You watched the women battering your master. He had things being shoved up places they weren’t meant to be shoved in and you liked that. When they were all finally done torturing him you came forward, revolver in hand.You asked him for any final words. He had none. After so much time of torture he had long stopped saying anything. He didn’t even have enough energy to spit at you.So, you told him ‘With this I absolve you of your sins against all colored people. Be better in your next life in the beyond or I shall not be as kind.’ and shot him between the eyes. You could have let him slowly bleed out until he was dead like he had done to you mother, but this wasn’t revenge. This was justice. You let the other’s exact their justice over all that he had done to them and you took his life after he took the brunt of the consequences brought by his prior actions.The women started gathering all that they would need in their escape to a better place There were still large parts of America that hadn’t been taken over by the Europeans. The sun still hadn’t risen when the men were finally done with the master’s wife. You told them to go ahead. You would lead the slavers away from the path they would chose and that, after that, they were on their own.
They all left, taking the chance to get as far away as possible during the dark as they could.You watched them go and, when they were finally gone you packed some food and all the ammunition for your revolver that you could find. You bid goodbye to the former mistress, who now lay in a pool of bodily fluids that didn’t belong to her, looking like a broken doll.You would let her live with the warning to be a better person in the future and to remember that she would never be as good as your Mah because you were sure that, if she did conceive from that night, she would be as quick to kill that child as her former husband had been to discard her safety for his pride. Only a woman who suffered the fate your mother had been forced to suffer and still manage to love the child she hadn’t asked for would be as grand as your Mah.You made sure to clean the trails your former companions had left behind before taking the horses. You mounted one of them. You had seen the master do it several times and knew exactly what to do to control it. You tied the others to yours and left in the opposite direction. You sold your horses for money, telling the people who questioned you that you were doing it for your master. You had faked the documents that showed you were qualified for that and having seen your former master raising and bartering horses for all your life you knew what price they were worth.You hadn’t used your former master’s name in the documents, though. That’s probably why it took them slavers so long to find you. By the time they did you had already sold all of the horses aside from the one you claimed as your own and you didn’t have to worry about losing your stock in the chase. You then met an Irish bandit and his small son and they let you join their business. The Irishman recognized your skills very easily and together you managed to steal a lot of money and valuables.The Irishman had lost his wife to disease and no one had wanted to employ him so he had no other way to take care of his son. He recognized in you someone who also had their life stacked against them just like him. For once you were seen as a person and not an object. If you had to appoint a father, he would have been the one, not the scumbag who sired you.He taught you how to properly shoot your revolver.
‘A sure-fire accuracy will put an end to all the mayhem heading your way’ He told you as he taught you.
He then got you a cowboy hat to keep the sunlight from messing up your accuracy. His son Duncan absolutely idolized you.For a while things were great. You managed to keep away from the slavers who vowed to bring you to justice over your former master’s death and you kept stealing from snobbish people, moving from city to city. You also used your revolver to hunt down food whenever necessary. The Irishman would take care of you and you both would take care of two-year-old Duncan.Three years after your escape your pasts finally caught up with you.You were thirteen and flirting with a young slave girl as you babysat Duncan, who was then five, when a commotion was heard. The slavers had found the Irishman, tried to get him to confess your whereabouts and, when he refused, had hung him in the town square.The rage was back but this time you were outnumbered and your number one concern was keeping Duncan safe. You left town hastily with just the clothes in your back and a stolen horse and supplies. You rode until you were several towns away but you knew that you probably wouldn’t be able to keep it up and that they would hurt Duncan too if they found you. You gave the boy the last memento you had of your mother, a handwoven colorful bracelet, and left him with a childless family that you deemed was good. He was now their son. The fact that the woman had a reddish blond hair was a perfect cover for the kid.You left and rode for miles and miles, always with the slavers on your tail. Sure, far enough behind that you didn’t need to rush, but still close enough to be concerning.He ended up entering an Indian Reservation and started climbing the mountain in it without meaning to. The natives led you away from the mountain, saying it was cursed, and sat you down to listen to your tale. You didn’t really believe in curses but you indulged them in their belief.As soon as they found out you were running away from the slavers, though… Their kind attitude changed. They tried to capture you. There were only two reasons for that. They wanted you out of their reservation or they wanted to hand you over to the slavers themselves, hoping to gather some favors from them to help out with their precarious situation as a reservation.You managed to escape them but had to leave behind your horse. Fortunately, you did bring your supplies with you. You ran up the mountain, hoping that the natives wouldn’t follow you due to the curse.You stepped on a part where the ground wasn’t stable and it opened up into a hole below you. You landed hard on your right shoulder and probably broke it or dislocated it. Most likely the later. Fortunately, you were left handed.Having your health assessed, you then took a moment to check your surroundings. The walls were furnished with purple colored stone and there were greed vines coming down from them. You were confused by it all. Surely the natives would have known that those were there… right? Should you run?And then you encountered monsters, all trying to kill you, and you finally knew what they meant by curse. You shot all the ones that tried to attack you down. There were a few that didn’t seem to mind much your presence, namely the spiders that were selling some sort of sugary treat.And then there was the Goat Lady, always trying to get you to go with her. You didn’t trust her, though, but you did learn from the spiders -who could somehow write- that the exit from the underground was on the other end of the whole structure and that he had to exit the ruins to go there. They told you that the Exit from the Ruins was somewhere in Toriel’s house. Toriel being the Goat Lady that kept pestering you.As thank you, because they told you that they couldn’t go because of the door being too heavy and it was too cold after that for them to survive, you offered to take some of them with you. You couldn’t get all of them since they were so many, though. They agreed that you would take the younger members as close to your body as you could to share the warmth.You let Toriel think she was finally convincing you to move in with her. It didn’t take a genius to realize that the door must have been in the basement since she always kept you from going there whenever you visited. You decided to have her lower her guard by talking to her about your past. She nodded sagely and informed you of why so many monsters were attacking you.Apparently, they had been cursed by the Indians that lived above to stay in the underground by a magical barrier. Seven souls would be needed to break the barrier and that was why she wanted you there with her. She claimed to want to keep you safe with her, away from monsters that would take your life. You were too distracted to know for sure if she was being honest with you then and there. Perhaps she was being sincere with you, but you couldn’t afford to trust her just like that. Besides, you had already promised the spiders you would take the younglings across the cold section of the underground.You brewed her some coffee and in turn she started baking you a pie but had to leave because she didn’t have all the ingredients.You took the chance and climbed down into the basement. It was pitch black so you lit up your lamp and ran to the end of the tunnel, just in case she returned for some reason or another. You found the door.It was made of heavy stone but you pushed and pushed and finally managed to get it a crack open, just enough to fit through, so that you could leave.When the spiders told you it would be cold, you hadn’t expected for there to be snow. You were wholly unprepared for it. Some monsters attacked you but you didn’t give up and shot down all those who dared to attack you. The spiders disliked every time you killed someone but could understand why. Still, just for them, you kept the killing to a minimum by being sneaky and avoiding detection.Once you crossed the icy area, aptly called Snowdin, you reached a place that was wet but warm. It had glowing flowers and stones in shades of light blue. At some point, even the water glowed.
The spider could already walk on their own but some decided to stick around to help you on your journey. The more they realized that you would kill anyone who attacked you, the less monsters came at you so you didn’t need to hide as much.You reached a place that was dirty. Water was falling from above and pooling there. You could see what seemed to be broken objects from the Indian village, mostly made of wood. There was practically nothing from the Europeans, but wasn’t nonexistent.You were attacked from behind.…You really couldn’t tell, for the life of you, who attacked you. It was too quick. You died instantly.The only thing you could remember was seeing your yellow soul and a hand grabbing it. Then you were submerged in darkness. Your thoughts slowed down. Somehow you knew that time had no meaning there. Well… at least you knew the cause was just, even if the means weren’t. In the end, Justice would still prevail…
…
…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …You were woken up.A kid in a blue sweater with dark pink stripes stood before you. Bright hearts were all around you.
Light Blue…
Purple…
Dark Blue…
Green…
Orange…
And a lot of white ones dotting the darkness like a night sky. The kid’s heart was bright red. But the kid’s heart was outside of the darkness you were in. You watched them save their friends from your position.As your spirit essence was used to break a large magic wall that gave you an ominous feeling you felt in peace at last… …finally, justice was met…
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Your name was Ash.You had used to be the light of your parents’ life… before they found out about your condition. The illness you were born with…When you were diagnosed with having a condition no one knew yet what it was exactly. But then, a few years later, some scientists found the HIV virus. For a while less educated people still referred to it by its demeaning name of GRID. The fact that you had it since you were born? To everyone else just meant you were born gay. It was only later that people found out it didn’t matter who transmitted it and that you could even get it from your parents but the damage was already done. You were already labelled as a fag lover.Your parents didn’t care. They just wanted to avoid being labelled as the ones who originally had the disease in the first place. It didn’t help that, no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t concentrate on the school subjects. The only thing you could still somewhat concentrate in was music.You had always had a knack for melodies and discerning the musical notes. After some piano lessons your teacher found out you had an almost absolute earring. It wasn’t perfect but you could discern slightly different tones fairly easily. But as soon as your parents had realized how sick you were… once they realized what you were sick with… All those piano classes stopped.They did want you to still do well in school, however. A mere show of how ‘good’ they were with their kid. But that was ok. Even if they had been the ones who infected you with HIV, it didn’t change that you were one of the most defective kids you knew. You couldn’t possibly blame them for not being able to deal with you. And they got you glasses so that you could read so that was ok. They did their duty as parents.But even with the glasses you still had trouble learning. It didn’t help that the pain caused by the thrush kept distracting you either. It also didn’t help that you kept humming all of the time. All the melodies in your head wanting to burst out. If the other kids already hated you before, they despised your very existence now. You had to run away during recess or they would beat you up with sticks. There was no way they would actually touch you, lest you transmit them the gay disease. You took to climbing the fence during lunch break and run into the woods behind the school. It had been complicated to learn how do it since your legs didn’t work right, but you couldn’t give up on it so soon.And then you met Fabien.You were 9 years old but you were still in second grade. You had started at the same time as the others that were your age, so the fact that you were two, going on three years behind was downright shameful and even your new classmates agreed. You did as usual, hiding on top of trees during recess, only coming out when the bell rang. Then you climbed the fence so that you could eat lunch by yourself in the woods like always. But someone had taken your secret spot. A kid you didn’t know. Not wanting to be beat up by yet another kid you had started to step back but he noticed you.And then he called you up. You were… surprised.Turned out Fabien was the son of a group of French-Canadians that had moved there recently. They apparently were also concerned with Fabien’s odd condition. His condition was also something he had since birth, but nothing anywhere near as concerning as yours. He could stretch his skin and flesh in unbelievable ways. It was something called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Thought it had been found some time ago, his parent’ hadn’t been exactly up to date with the oddities of medicine, let alone dermatology in specific, so they wasted a whole lot of money just to get him to a decent doctor to get him diagnosed. Now they really didn’t have any more money to go back to their country so they were currently planning for something. Something Fabien wasn’t private to.So, he would stick around for a while.You were honest with him about your condition and he didn’t seem to judge you for it, unlike your classmates. You bonded over your conditions and the way others treated you as outcasts for something you had no control over.Fabian had been addicted to a specific song he’d heard on the radio one time and he taught you it. That was how you learned about Leonard Cohen’s song ‘Hallelujah’ and it was the first song you ever managed to memorize in it’s fullest. It helped that Fabien sang along with you. You hummed some of the melodies you had come up with but when you told Fabien you were struggling up with creating lyrics to it since you kept forgetting them he returned the following day with an old lavender colored notebook. It had some water marks but was otherwise pristine, if a bit dusty. You spent hours upon hours coming up with lyrics together. Sometimes you even arrived late to the next class after lunch and got yelled at by your parents. In the end, it was worth it. Spending time with you very first friend in the world was worth everything to you.But good things never lasted…Fabien’s parents had been secretly gathering ‘freaks’. Because they had no more money left they had to earn it somehow and weren’t above using their son’s peculiar genetic disorder to get it. That meant that he would have to go on tours through the state and that You wouldn’t be seeing him for a long time.You waited in vain for his return. Your birthday, in which you two had planned to celebrate together, came and went with no news from him. Your condition worsened as days went by but you still held on to your hope. So, instead of mopping you continued on writing your lyrics, ever unsure if they were any good or not. You needed Fabien there to tell you, like he said he would. And you knew he would keep his promise. He would return!But you wouldn’t be there anymore…Your parents got tired of all the money they had to spend on you to try every single treatment they could afford. All of them were duds, meant only to prey on desperate people like your parents. Mostly they had jusr been using you as a lab rat of sorts, you knew that much, so that they could then have a working procedure for themselves. They got angrier with you as days went by without a cure found and it really had only been a matter of time for them to blow up at you.They told you to pack a bag and you dutifully did it. They drove for miles and miles. You weren’t sure by then what they were going to do yet. It was odd for them to just suddenly want to go for a ride. It either meant something really good had happened… or that something really bad was about to happen. And you knew for sure that nothing good had happened recently.They stopped the car near a chain-link fence on the side of the road. Your father got out of the car and took a pair of wire cutters from the baggage compartment and started hacking away until he had widened the hole enough for a kid to fit through.“Mom, Dad, where are we?... You asked hesitatingly.“This used to be an indian reservation. Well… technically it still is but in name only. It still has some natives living there, but not many. Soon they will die out. But that doesn’t matter, darling.”“Grab you bag and get out here!” Your father called out.You complied.Your father squatted in front of you so that his eyes were at the same level as yours, meaning he was about to have a ‘serious talk’ with you. You adjusted your backpack a bit on your shoulder and focused on what he had to say.“Ash, we don’t have any more money for your treatments.” Were his first words. “We are moving away and starting anew. But we can’t keep you anymore, kiddo. We tried. We really tried to be the parents you deserved. But we can’t do it anymore. You understand, right kiddo?”You nodded. You had run out of your use. You were costing them more than what you were worth and you couldn’t even be a good student to compensate for all your other problems. It made sense that they would feel the need to discard you. You were tarnished goods, after all.There was also the fact that you wouldn’t live for much longer either. As a kid with AIDS and no working cure, you had outlived several other kids, but you knew it had been only a matter of time. That was something neither of your parent’s ever hid from you.“Good! We need you to stay there, in the woods. Try to keep away from other people, but if someone does find you, tell them that you were kidnapped and brought here, ok? You don’t want mommy and daddy in jail over a misunderstanding, right?”You shook your head in denial.“Good kid. I knew you were smart underneath all of your laziness.” That was what your parents always called you when you didn’t do great in school. To them you were simply not giving it your best shot. You felt, as usual, the need to correct him, but you knew it wouldn’t lead anywhere so you let it be.“Farewell, Ashy! Be safe!” Your mother said from the car. She wouldn’t even step out of the car to say goodbye to you. That was how much of a burden you were being to them.“Take care, kid.” Your father said to you, patting your head in a detached manner.And with that they left, a cloud of dust whirling on their wake. You knew they weren’t coming back so you started climbing what seemed to be a mountain, considering the inclination of it, walking between the elder trees. It was only half way up the mountain that the foggy cloud of numbness you had covered yourself with for protection finally dissipated and you couldn’t help but cry your heart out at it.The people that were supposed to take care of you had discarded you. All because you were such a big burden to them. If only you had been a normal kid… If only…Distracted as you were with your tears, you failed to notice the gaping hole in your way and plummeted down harshly, screaming in terror.You landed on a patch of yellow flowers. You did get a bit bruised, from what you could see, but you were otherwise fine. So, you stuck around the flower patch to finish grieving your life before trying to move on.Once the tears stopped flowing, you finally stood up again. You brushed off your clothes and wrote some more lyrics to help you calm down even further. You were stuck in a cave of sorts and slowly starving to death wasn’t very appealing, even if you were already slowly dying. First thing first trying to find water and food. You had an orange to eat but that wouldn’t last long. Then you had to carefully plant how to get out of here. If there was water you could always follow its course to an exit, after all. Hopefully it wouldn’t lead to a well.You kept on writing in your notebook. It was something Fabien had taught you to do when you felt lost and trapped.
‘Even when you feel trapped, you should take notes and you’ll achieve the end of your anxiety.”
And then she found you. Toriel, the monster you came to call mom eventually.You had been scared of the gigantic Goat Lady at first but she was so nice… She took you to her home and made you a delicious pie. You spent days together. She tried to tutor you but soon realized that the task was downright impossible. And you were constantly getting sick, even after she healed you. It was nice to feel ok with your body for once. No thrush to make your mouth hurt. No sicknesses and infection. Of course, your body just went right back to its original state in just a few days. You kept expecting her to get tired of you, but she never did.And then you realized she actually wanted to keep you… she… confirmed it… she wanted you…You never knew someone could cry from relief and happiness yet there you were.You sang to her. She loved to hear you sing. She started trying to learn music so that she could keep up with you. She said you would make a great singer.…If only she knew…You told her about AIDS and how you couldn’t hope to be a singer when you grew up. Considering how confused she was about the whole thing you realized she had no idea of what you were talking about. It made sense. She’d been stuck there for god knows how long. You felt it was kinder not to explain to her of your fate. It was selfish of you, though. You only did it because you wanted, for just a moment, to pretend you would grow up and grow old with your new mom.Eventually you came to terms with your mortality. It was no use denying it, you would still die anyway. So, you accepted it. And you accepted that your last days in this Earth would be your happiest. How could you regret them when never in your life had you felt this happy?Toriel eventually told you of the monster-human war, of how the monsters were trapped underground by a spell and couldn’t leave. How… they needed seven human souls to break the barrier. That last one she hadn’t told you. Another monster in the ruins had. …Your life was already ending, wasn’t it? It would be a waste if your soul just vanished like that… wouldn’t it?You left during the night. There was just one place Toriel never let you go to, telling you it was dangerous. The basement. So, the exit of the ruins should be there too, shouldn’t it? It had been there like you had theorized. You left. You endured the cold of Snowdin. You kept hidden, even in the harshest conditions. If you had to die, you would do it the right way, at the hands of the king. You made your way to the capital. The hardest place to avoid monsters had been new home. There were monsters everywhere but eventually you made your way to the entrance of the palace. It reminded you of Toriel’s home. You walked in but no one seemed to be home. There were some servant monsters cleaning the place. You climbed down the stairs and found yourself in a golden hallway. In there you saw a turtle monster walking. Gerson, he said his name was. He was going to visit the kind too, so you walked with him. He seemed to know you were human but he made no attempt to kill you. Well… not yet anyway.You met the king. He was the same sort of monster as Toriel. He seemed kind but by now you knew appearances were deceiving. After Toriel commented with you how much the king wanted to start a war you didn’t have any doubts that his kindness was fake.You told him your life was almost over. You told him you had no regrets. You told him that you didn’t want your soul, a soul they so dearly needed, to go to waste. You told him to take your soul and use it. So, he took it.The last thing you saw before your world plunged into darkness was purple.Your thoughts crawled to a stop or close to it. There was no sense of time in this place. It felt so dark and hopeless in this place… But you wouldn’t give up. You had done the right thing so you would endure this darkness with all your might! You would persevere!……. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …You stopped humming as something changed around you.You saw kid in a blue sweater with dark pink stripes standing in front of you.
Light Blue…
Yellow…
Dark Blue…
Green…
Orange…
And a lot of white ones dotting the darkness like musical notes on a partiture. The kid had a heart of bright red in front of them. But the kid’s music not was outside of the partiture you were in as if in two different songs. You watched them save their friends from where you were standing. Your mom, Toriel, was still alive.As your purple music note was used a large magic wall that gave you an ominous broke, flooding you with feelings of peace… …proving you that you had presevered…
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Your name was Jules.Well… at least you thought it was? Sometimes you were Dana, the long-lost bastard daughter of Princess Diana of Wales, named Dana because ‘all that mother is missing is I’ as you said to many people before. In this life you were fleeing from people who wanted to kill you like they had killed your mother but you were living disguised as a pauper in a circus, dancing for a living so as not to let them find you out.Then there were the times you were named Odette. A queen fleeing from a curse that would turn her into a swan, and whose death was announced by a black swan named Odile. You hopped and twirled away from such damning fates in a style of dance that was both the same as the ballet you has seen when you were younger with uncle Fabien but at the same time was very much your own. Odile never caught you when you were younger. You wouldn’t let her. You would twirl away and everything would be fine.In your moments of clarity, though, you were quick to realize that you were neither rich, nor royal, nor a lady. Those times you were just Jules, the kid whose uncle Fabien had been of a father then the real one until he died when you were six, whose real father raped every night until you wished you had the same body as your little sister since she didn’t have to deal with the same things as you, whose real mother turned a blind eye so as not to see what your real father did to you. The kid who was a freak like your uncle Fabien had been while alive. Perhaps not to the same extent as your uncle had been. There were things your uncle did with his body that not even you could manage. But you could still contort into various shapes and into various boxes by purposefully popping your joints out of their sockets. Your real father loved several aspects of your body. It’s ability to contort into other shapes and fix into small boxes just in the right way for him to fuck was one of them. But it was mostly the fact that you were his kid, and thus naturally vulnerable for him to prey on, as well as the fact that you lacked female curves and also because you were young. Very, very young…You’d seen you father sometimes eyes some of the little boys that came to watch the freak show while your uncle was alive. You realized that even then you father had sick tastes. You weren’t quite what he really desired for. He preferred blonds and you had brown hair, after all……You preferred to forget those moments of clarity.But when you couldn’t forget them you preferred to imagine that your real parents weren’t really your parents. That they were just fake parents and your real ones were in fact a rich couple who had lost their real child, who was also named Jules, and had requested that you be created in a lab as an exact copy of the kid they had lost. You liked to imagine that the people you thought were your parents had instead kidnapped you after your creation was complete in hopes that the make-belief real ones would pay them for you. That last one was one version you didn’t much and you only became that Jules when you couldn’t escape to Dana or Odette. You preferred to be Dana whenever you had to preform for the public and to be Odette when your performance was for your father alone, as you imagined your father was Rothschild, the evil wizard. That didn’t mean there weren’t time you preformed as Odette for the public and preformed as Dana in private even when you knew that Dana wasn’t fitted for Odette’s trials. But you couldn’t choose who to be aside from that other Jules.You lost track of the years you’d lived in this purgatory. You hated it all. It was unfair that your sister got to have everything she wanted. Your mother even bought her a tutu. It was big enough to fit you, but you had always been on the skinny side and your sister was a bit fat. Whenever no one was watching you at night you liked to get dressed in it and dance in the moonlight. It was the only time that Odette could truly feel free, after all.Those moonlight dances and your Uncle Fabien were the only memories you refused to forget, no matter was person you were being. Uncle Fabien always took on the role of your guardian angel, or personal body guard or fairy godfather. Always getting killed or destroyed by the bad guys, his blessings being the only thing that kept the evil guy from killing you too.When had it been…? When had you met the lady with the spun gold for hair and the man with tan skin and Spanish accent? Sometimes you liked to think they had been your make-belief real parents. They had seen you dance after the freak show performances. They had a flat tire, that being the only reason they had still been there at the camp site. They were waiting for a tow truck that hadn’t arrived until morning. And they had seen you dance. They had actually thought that you were a girl. How old had you been. It had to have been somewhere between your 13th and 15th birthday.They had seen you dance and had clapped when it was over. You bowed politely, as you were being Dana at the moment and it was only proper for a princess to bow when clapped, after all.The woman had a rounded belly and you had touched it. The baby still wasn’t kicking. It had been too soon for that, after all. The woman had been a ballerina before getting married. She returned a few days after that night and handed you a pair of ballet shoes. The pointe-shoes variety.The tip felt so solid despite the wear and tear and, despite her saying that it wasn’t so, you were pretty sure the shoes had actual wood inside the tips to make it so hard. One you put them on you couldn’t help but feel that those shoes were dangerous. ‘Watch out, Rothschild! I have a new secret weapon!!!’ You had thought.You thanked the lady, whose kindness glowed in her eyes, and rushed to hide your new shoes before your sister found them and claimed them for herself.How long after that had your father found out about you dancing in the moonlight? Sometimes it felt like centuries, with how horrendous everyday was that seemed to slow down time. At time you felt like it hadn’t been no time at all.He had seen you and her immediately started to strangle you, saying how you liked the attention you were getting, that you were no better than a whore and that probably everyone in the camp had fucked you raw without him knowing. Then he ripped out your underwear and wanted to rape you right there and then. That was the only bad moment you couldn’t erase from your mind no matter who you were being. It was engraved in there like it had been seared by a cattle brand.The commotion had woken up everyone, who had been horrified when they had seen what your father was about to do to you. A moment of clarity hit you like a half a ton truck at full speed. You felt so ashamed. Now everyone knew…You ran.You ran to the woods blindly, your brown hair getting tangled with twigs as leaves.You weren’t looking to where you were running to.Then you fell…And fell…And fell…And then poff went your body against the purple floor.You don’t know how long you stayed there.Then a huge lady with a massive fur coat picked you up like you were a baby.She was wearing a furry mask too?…Was she your actual real mother? You hoped she was. She was so nice.Her name was Toriel. Such a beautiful name.You danced for her. You told her your story. You told her all of your stories. She also told you stories. She healed you to full health. She made you food. She didn’t care that you were the tutu all of the time, she didn’t care that your body was special. She never forced you to do anything you didn’t want to. She didn’t force you to stop pretending to be so many people. You loved her. You were happy with her.And then…And then…!!!And then……You had been able to remain lucid for longer periods of time, now that you were with Toriel. You had been secretly practicing dancing all alone in what you had thought was an empty room. You combined ballet, your special moves and your contortionism in a dance. You had been so excited to show it to Toriel.You hadn’t been paying attention…You had harshly lifted you leg upwards behind you and you felt it hit something…Someone…It had been one of those fairy monsters. The ones who were shy and cute and were afraid of their own shadow. You saw it turn into a pile of dust…You hadn’t meant to hurt them.…And now they were dead…You… were… a… murderer……You had to go away before you hurt Toriel too.You ran home and to the basement. Toriel had told you by then that you shouldn’t go there. That mean monsters were there. You hadn’t cared. You pushed all your weight against the door. In gave it and you found yourself in snow.Snow…White…Like the swan…You became Odette.And Odette was afraid. Odette had seen death behind her. It had to be Odile, the black swan. She was coming for her for sure.Odette stood up from where she had flopped down. She would not be intimidated. She would fight with honor. She would dance away from trouble! But she was also tired of running away from the black swan. No more running! She would fight!Sometimes she met monsters that were nice to her. But then she would see the black swan’s shadow all over them and knew that was just a trap intended to lure her into a sense of security. She couldn’t have that, now could she?She killed them. But the black swan had fled the scene, probably having sensed that her cover was blown. Odette knew that because she saw the black swan entering other bodies. Several other bodies. Odette knew she was trying to find a safe place to regroup and find a new strategy. She couldn’t allow that, now could she?She followed the black swan’s traces across the snowy landscape until reaching a watery place. It seemed like the perfect hiding for the black swan. What better place than water for a swan?Sometimes you had moments of clarity but they were short lived.You saw the black swan possessing a skeleton woman so you killed her. They you saw her trying to jump into someone else’s body. You turned, feeling combat ready to annihilate whatever was next.And then she saw the child. ‘He can’t be any older than ten…’ You thought. Where you really about to murder a child because you thought the black swan had gotten him?NO! You couldn’t do that! It was wrong! Children are innocent! No!“You aren’t the black swan.” You told the kid, hoping to comfort him by letting him know you weren’t about to kill him.He was sobbing uncontrollably but you payed him no mind and continued on your way, Odette returning to take the reins.You were eventually faced with a large monster. He looked so much like Toriel… Had the black swan possessed her to the point of changing her looks this much? Or was this another monster altogether?As much as it pained you to potentially kill Toriel you still fought with all of your might. The battle was fierce… but the monster won. And as you were stuck by the pain of the killing blow, all your sanity rushed back to you for a moment. It was enough for you to realize… If there was a black swan there… that was you. You father was the one you had called Rothschild. Odile was Rothschild’s daughter… That was you… And you had killed a lot of people…You looked up at the goat monster, still unsure if that was indeed Toriel and you illusions where deceiving you into thinking it wasn’t or if they really were someone else. Either way you had failed yourself to the deepest level.“I’m… sorry,… Toriel…” Were your last words.The last thing you saw before you were gone was the shocked expression in the goat monster’s face and a deep indigo color.Your thoughts calmed down after that. For once you were alone without other Jules, Dana and Odette/Odile. And it felt so calming. But also so awful because now you couldn’t escape what you had done. It felt so much guilt over what you had done… So you wouldn’t give into the madness anymore. You were going to do the honorable thing and pay for your mistakes! You would prove your self you still had some integrity in you!
…
…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …You opened your eyes as Odette returned to you. This time you knew it was the real Odette and not Odile. She took you had and brought you out into and odd place, promising you redemption for your mistakes.You saw kid in a blue sweater with dark pink stripes standing in front of you.You saw swans curled up into their wings, looking like hearts.
Light Blue…
Yellow…
Purple…
Green…
Orange…
And a lot of white ones dotting the darkness like they were in a large lake. The kid had swan of bright red in front of them. But the kid was outside of the lake. You watched them save their friends from where you were standing. You saw Toriel You also saw the other goat monster. They hadn’t been the same after all. And then you saw the skeleton monster, the short one and he seemed so very familiar to you…
Oh, right! You had murdered his mother.
As your indigo swan took flight a large magic wall that gave you the heebie-jeebies broke, flooding you with feelings of righteousness…
…you restored your honor by paying for your mistakes with your swan…
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Your name was Casey.There wasn’t much of your life that you remembered before this very critical moment. You were a five-year-old, after all.You remembered your mommy: Beautiful golden hair, the voice of an angel as she lulled you to sleep, how she danced gracefully for you. You never did get her beautiful golden locks of hair. Your hair was a dirtier blond than hers. And you never managed to find that much interest in dancing like she did. Instead you loved to help her and daddy in the kitchen.Whenever you weren’t helping them actually cook you were instead pretending to cook in your mini toy kitchen.As for your father, you did inherit his tan skin. It kind of made your hair look faded when contrasting with it but you didn’t mind much. Besides, it’s not as if you cared much about looks anyway.You knew your parents loved you very much, and you loved them right back. You knew you weren’t supposed to talk to strangers. And you knew your best friend was Rowan from the house next door.You didn’t really attend kindergarten, unlike Rowan. Mommy preferred to teach you herself. She was afraid of the man that was taking kids. You didn’t know at the time there were kids going missing. They disappeared for a whole month and then were found dead. But you were a five-year-old so you didn’t know anything about it. All you knew was that mommy was worried about a stranger coming up to you and taking you away. So, whenever you wanted to play with Rowan, you had to wait for her to get home and then either you went there or she came over.You liked Rowan a lot. She was always so nice to you. You didn’t like Rowan’s mommy, though. She always looked at you funny. It made you uncomfortable at first. But then she started to be so nice to you. She always gave you gifts and bought you ice cream. You didn’t even have to tag along for ice cream. She would come back from kindergarten with Rowan, get ice cream for them both and then buy one to give you when they returned. In no time you loved Rowan’s mommy like an aunt.When mommy and daddy started discussing giving you a younger sibling, you asked them how babies were made. They didn’t want to tell you, for some reason. It was Rowan’s mommy who told you. She told you a lot of things about sex! She even showed you movies filled with groaning and other weird stuff that you didn’t like. You felt so smart, smarter than all the other kids… even though you thought it was super gross. Rowan thought it was very gross too. Rowan’s daddy didn’t like that Rowan’s mommy had taught you both so many naughty things because you were too young.You started having sleep overs at Rowan’s house. Her mommy had been the one to suggest it. She said she liked to have the house full of children’s laughter. Your mommy thought it was a good idea and sometimes you even had the sleep over at your own house. Most of them were still at Rowan’s house but you didn’t mind. You weren’t competing over it or anything.Rowan’s mommy liked hugging you a lot… it started making Rowan jealous… You had your big first fight with Rowan because of it. …She didn’t speak to you for a week.Eventually Rowan’s mommy said she was being silly and she became friends with you again but… you started making sure to avoid hugs from her mommy all the same. She didn’t seem to like that.And then… that day came…Your mommy had left to go shopping and daddy was at work. She usually took you with her but since Rowan’s mommy said you were grown enough to be on your own you had insisted to stay at home so that you could finish watching your morning cartoons. After a lot of convincing she agreed but locked all of the doors aside from the living room into the hall one. Now it was common for her to leave you alone when she went shopping like this day.Someone rang a bell.At first you didn’t pay any attention to it since you weren’t supposed to open the door to strangers. It wasn’t until you heard Rowan’s mommy calling to you sounding like she was crying that you finally went to see what was going on.She told you your mom had crashed her car and was taken to the hospital and that she had come to take you there so that you could stay near your mommy. You followed her to her car and she sped through the streets and you cried in the back seat. Eventually you started to calm down.But…The ride was taking too long. And you were leaving the city.When you asked her where she was taking you she said that mommy was taken to another hospital in the next town over. You asked why and she told you she didn’t know but when you got there she would ask. You trusted her word.And then she stopped in front of an old decaying barn.…And that’s when you found out you were nothing but a toy for others to play with.At first you had been confused. Why had she taken you there? Why weren’t you at a hospital. Then she grabbed you oh so roughly and dragged you inside where a man was standing. They tied you up and used one of you sock in your mouth. She then left because she had to get her kid from kindergarten but that she would be back. And then the man did the sex thing with you.…Sex wasn’t just gross. It also hurt a lot. You hated sex.You lost count of the days you were there. The man didn’t mind doing the sex thing with you whenever, but when Rowan’s mommy was there she insisted that you wear clothes and play a role. She liked videotaping you. She constantly told you that you were nothing but a doll and that mommy and daddy had gotten tired of playing with you so they had given you to her. You denied it with every strength in your tiny little body but she always twisted the words around and around until you started doubting yourself more and more.At some point her words became your new truth. You came to terms that you were a doll. Her doll. And that she and the man played with you as they pleased.Then came the day she started saying that she had liked playing with you but was getting tired and wanted a new doll. The man agreed. They still kept you but started discussing what to do with you. …You didn’t want to go into the trash.You finally decided that if they were tired of playing with you then perhaps you should find new people to own you. Perhaps they would be kinder. But they kept you all locked up. Then the day came. This time Rowan’s mommy wanted to tape a family setting in which you were going to be the mommy and that you and ‘daddy’, who was the man, had decided you wanted to have children and you were going to do the sex thing in the kitchen because Rowan’s mommy knew you had liked cooking.They had changed the roleplaying corner to copy a kitchen and the man had even hung several frying pans and spoons to pretend it was real. No knifes, though. Rowan’s mommy decided that, since you were going to be a mommy you needed to wear a dress and an apron. Both were really, really stained. It even looked like the apron had some dried blood on one of the corners.…By now you were aware of what happened to the dolls they no longer wanted to play with.They didn’t like sharing. So… they made sure no one couldn’t play with their old dolls ever again. This is why you realized you had to search for new people to own you on your own.You had gotten used to their routine whenever they wanted to roleplay with you. She would dress you up while he was outside smoking a cigarette and getting ‘into character’. You had managed to loosen some or the boards in the opposite side fot he barn, even though you had been tied up. You could have escaped then, but you wouldn’t go far all tied up and the only time they ever untied you was when they wanted to play with you. And that was why you had made sure to know their routine.Once you were dressed up, she put you in the set and started setting the camera. You had been obedient for some time now so she thought you wouldn’t try to bolt anymore. She bent down to retrieve something from the camera bag and you took the chance to clasp your hand around a dirty prying pan.You hesitated a second but forced yourself to go to her. She must have sensed you coming because she lifter her head and looked at you. Your arm was trembling, but you knew it was either her or you. So you swung with all the strength you could muster. She fell backwards but she wasn’t knocked out.Everything else you did, you had felt like you were merely watching it happen, instead of being in control of your own body. You felt disconnected. You watched yourself swing and swing and swing... She never got the chance to cry out. It wasn’t until you were feeling her skull give in under the frying pan with each swing that you finally stopped. You were crying silent, fat tears.You heard the man call out from outside so you rushed to the loose boards. He wouldn’t be calling for much longer and it wouldn’t take much time before he decided to unlock the heavy padlock out front.The boards came loose and you crawled out as quietly as you could and ran into the woods. At some point, you started hearing him running after you. You were tired and hungry but you knew you couldn’t let him catch up with you.And then instead of running you were falling.You landed on a bed of flowers and it seemed one of the flowers started cursing at you.You apologized for having crushed them the flower got a strange expression in his face as he looked at you.Something happened. You weren’t sure what, but something did and the flower started to seem a lot more familiar, like you had seen them before. So, when he introduced himself as Flowey, you weren’t surprised. You had sort of been expecting it.The feeling of familiarity plagued where ever you went and Flowey took to helping you cross the underground. He told you the cave was full of monsters and you did meet some of them too. He tried to get you to kill them but you didn’t want to. He seemed a whole lot more frustrated than you had been expecting.And then Toriel took you in. At first you had thought that Flower was going to be the next one owning you, but you had wound up deciding that Toriel was the one after all. You did everything she asked for and told her all that she wanted to know about you. You started to have glimpses of your life before Rowan’s mommy got her hands on you. Small things. A sentence here, a gesture there. Not that you hadn’t know any of them before, but you were finally remembering what they meant.And then you told her what the man and Rowan’s mommy had done to you in the barn.…Toriel hadn’t been pleased.You couldn’t understand why. You had done what she wanted. You had told her what she had asked about. And you started to feel afraid that she was going to give you away or break you so others couldn’t play with you. Flowey started appearing more and more often at Toriel’s house. They used to avoid it like the plague in the beginning. You hadn’t really payed him any mind when he said bad things about Toriel. Not until… he said he overheard her talking to a shady looking monster about wanting to give a doll away and you knew your time was up.You waited for night time and Flowey helped you open the door of the ruins because it had been too heavy for you.The next area was full of snow. It was pretty but too cold for you. The people seemed nice enough, aside from the ones who tried to attack you, but you weren’t sure if you wanted to be owned by any of them just yet.Flowey kept trying to convince you to hurt anyone but you always said no. He did tell you about a skeleton that was going to hurt you if you ever met him so you tried to avoid both of the skeletons you were sure that lived in the house full of lights. You didn’t stay long in Snowdin, as that place was called, and moved onto Waterfall. It was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen… yet… why was all of it still so familiar, like you had seen it a lot of times.You rushed ahead because of how annoying Flowey was starting to get with the hurting of killing people. This was why you didn’t want to be owned by Flowey. He was too mean. You also ended up learning why the monsters were so desperate to capture a human. They apparently needed a human to get out from the underground. Upon learning that, you decided that all of the underground would own you. Most of the monsters had been so kind and nice to you. And you were nothing but an unwanted doll, so… at least… you would be useful some way or another… right?As soon as you came to that conclusion, Flowey just magically stopped pestering you as if he somehow knew of your resolution and how you weren’t going to be swayed. Odd…It was in Hotland that you finally met one of the skeletons. There had been a lab there. And in that lab was a Yellow dinosaur woman and the skeleton with the blue jacket, who was now wearing a lab coat.Unlike Flowey’s grim predictions, the skeleton didn’t attack you. He did, however, look at you with the most haunted expression you had ever seen in anyone’s face. For a moment, you seemed to recall it twisting in hatred do deep that you feared he might actually kill you, but something was wrong in that memory. It was in a snowy background, not the fire-filled one. Then everything was back to normal once more and you were back to facing the distant look in the skeleton’s face.You had just decided to bypass him since he wasn’t saying anything when he finally spoke.“you may have not killed anyone in the underground yet” He said. “but you can’t deceive me. i know you have killed someone. and by the blood stains you still carry around the murder weapon.”He pointed to the frying pan.You felt chilled to the bone. You remembered the way her skull had given under the burnt metal of the pan. You barely remembered what happened afterwards. You had started panting so hard as if you couldn’t get enough air to breathe. You really didn’t know what was happening outside of your focus in breathing. When you finally could focus on your surroundings the skeleton was somehow cradling you and shushing you. He seemed sorry about the way his words had affected you, even if he didn’t apologize for what he said himself. He probably truly believed you weren’t a good human. Well according to Flowey he didn’t like humans to start with.He teleported you out of the lab you had, unknowingly, broken into to a deserted place somewhere else in Hotland. He teleported out before you could say anything else. You took a moment to sit there and glare at the burnt pan. You felt the breathlessness wanting to take you again but this time you didn’t let it. You wanted nothing more to do with this thing. You dropped it and tried to find the right way to go.Eventually you found a monster that told you the way and you reached an elevator that you took to the second level. Of Hotland.That’s where you met the captain of the royal guard. Just outside of the second level of Hotland. He told you that what the monsters needed was your soul. That they needed to collect seven to break the barrier and you were the fifth one. They were so close, only two more. But to take your soul, you would have to die.You nodded in understanding. You took off your apron. It reminded you of your escape and you weren’t going to escape from this. There was no other way to help other than give up your life. Then again, you were just five. There was not much else that you, a useless toy, could do for anyone. You surrendered your soul. It glowed bright green even against the glow that came from down below.The last thing you saw, however, was not your soul. The last thing you saw was Flowey, who was watching you from behind the captain. He was looking at you as if he couldn’t understand you.You closed your eyes with that in mind as the darkness swallowed you, immense and never ending. You lost track of time.You weren’t pure. You were nothing but a broken doll. But if there was one last thing you could try to do for these people, it would be paying them back with their own kindness!……. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …You opened your eyes. You saw and older kid in a blue sweater with dark pink stripes standing in front of you.You saw hearts all around you.
Light Blue…
Yellow…
Purple…
Dark Blue…
Orange…
And a lot of white ones dotting the darkness. The kid had a heart of bright red in front of them. But the kid was outside the place you were in. You watched them save their friends from where you were standing. You saw Toriel and the skeleton. You also saw another goat monster and another skeleton monster. There was also that other dino lady. As your green heart shot up against the white glowing wall that reminded you of the feeling of when you had been bound by rope and broke it, filling you with a sense of accomplishment… …you managed to finally pay the monsters back with your kindness…
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Your name is Rowan.And your whole life was filled with SHAME.If there was one thing you wanted most in your life was to go back time and change everything. If you had known what would happen you never would have befriended Casey in the first place.Casey had been your best friend. They had lived in the house next to you. Their parents didn’t believe in kindergartens. They preferred to home school them until they could go to an actual school. Casey knew a lot for a child their age. They certainly knew a lot more than you and your kindergarten records were filled to the brim with gold stars. Yet, unlike you, they didn’t brag about their accomplishments. In your opinion, they deserved to brag about them but they never seemed to want you. It didn’t really matter, though. They were your truest best friend ever!You would have liked a lot if Casey could have come to kindergarten with you too. You knew why their parents didn’t want them there, though. There was a man kidnapping children. At the time, you hadn’t really payed much attention to it. You knew what all the other kids knew. That a man, a stranger talked to kids for a bit and then took them. You always thought you were too smart to be outwitted by such man. You followed every rule that the teachers taught you: Not talking to stranger; not going anywhere alone; not accepting gifts from people you didn’t know… The list was big, but you followed every single one of them.What you didn’t know was that the kids that were kidnapped were raped over and over for up to a month, killed in very sadistic ways, and had their body dumped like trash. The ones that had lasted a whole month were rare. Most of them lasted a week or two. It was also rare but at times two kids would be taken at the same time. But, as a five-year-old, you had no idea about those things.What you did do, though, was made sure that all the kids in your age group followed the rules the teachers had told you just as well as you. You even told off men that came near kids that were alone. Your class called you their little protector.…If only you had known…It happened when you and Casey were five. You had come home after school. Your mom had been running late, which was odd since she was mostly a stay at home mom, but you hadn’t cared much about that when you found out that Casey had been kidnapped from their home. Casey’s parents were distraught. The police tried to find them everywhere and anywhere to no avail.The month was almost over and still no sign of them.And then your mom went missing with the car. But this time finding her was easy. After the description of her car and license plate was divulged it didn’t take long a for an old farmer to point out that that very same car was parked in front of an old barn in an abandoned farm next to his own. The farmer claimed that he hadn’t paid it much mind at first, since a couple tended to go there every once in a while. He had assumed they were having an extra-marital affair together and decided I wasn’t any of his business. According to him, snooping into other people’s busyness was a women’s thing.The police went in to investigate and found your mother. At the time, you only knew that she was dead. Later on, when you were older and had a better grasp on things, you learned that she had been bashed in the head so many times that she died. But, despite the violence of the bashing, it had been done by someone with very little arm strength.It took longer for the police to find the tapes. While your mother’s partner had taken as many tapes as he could, he did forget the one inside the camera. The one that had Casey in it. The one that proved that Casey had been the one to kill your mother. The death didn’t happen on frame but the sounds were proof enough. And then the partner appeared on camera. At first, he hadn’t been on frame either, but then he walked to the kitchen set to pick another frying pan and rushed of after Casey.The police found the man and the other tapes. Tapes that depicted all the abuse both the man and your mom inflicted. Even the killings had been recorded. A grim mix of rape and gore. ‘Torture porn’ was the official term for it.Every kid’s death was there. All… but Casey’s. The man swore left and right that he never caught Casey. That they had been too fast for him. That he lost them in the woods. Casey’s body was never found. Casey’s parent’s heart was broken all over again. Somehow the tapes were leaked to the internet. The tapes should have remained hidden in the evidence room. They should have never seen the light of day! You and your dad were branded permanently as the family of a sadistic pedophile. At the time, you didn’t understand why people were acting differently towards you. Your dad hadn’t told you why your mother was dead and what she had done. He had wanted to protect you as much as he could. The neighborhood in mass turned on you as if you had been the ones who had hurt them. They didn’t care that you hadn’t known. They didn’t care that you were feeling far more betrayed than them. They just saw a symbol of a sadistic pedophile that had preyed on their town.You entered school and the kids that used to view you as their protector before started avoiding you because their parents told them to. The recess bullies started coming after you. They used to beat you up almost daily. You dad tried everything to get the teachers to do something but they wouldn’t. He them tried to get you into self-defense classes. You only managed to enter on in the next town over.You tried very hard in those classes and soon you started beating the bullies back. In no time, you crushed them altogether and made them fear you. That got your dad in trouble with the other parents but he defended you. He told them that, had they done their job in keeping the others from going after you, you wouldn’t have had to resort to such means to have some peace.That made you both even more unpopular with everyone but you didn’t care. If they turned their backs on you so easily then they didn’t matter. Just like your mom. Some people might have counted Casey too, thinking they abandoned them to grief, but you knew better than that.They hadn’t left you. You mom took them away. That much you knew.Things got better when you changed schools to that town next to yours. You started to learn soccer. You had gotten so good at stopping fists with your hands that the position of goal keeper seemed perfect to you. Your father gave you a pair of goalkeeper gloves made with pink leather. They were your biggest treasure. Sometimes kids would make fun of you doing boy things. You didn’t care much. That wasn’t anything when compared with the other things that had been done to you. You still punched their faces whenever they did it, though. You were overall much happier.If only things had remained that way…You were 9 when a drunk driver ran over your father. …He didn’t make it.Social services came for you and your mother was brought up. That was when you started to learn of the deeds that you mother had done. You hadn’t known much before. You knew people told you your mom had taken Casey and other kids away with the man. You hadn’t known what they did to the kids.You had still been grieving your father when you learned the how much hatred you could feel for a person you had once loved so dearly. How could your mother have done that!? You couldn’t even comprehend why she did it to the other kids. But dammit! Casey had been yours! They were your bestest of palls and she still decided to take them away! Of all the people… That made the huge betrayal you already felt about what she had done grow stronger, as well as your hatred. If she hadn’t died you would have killed her. You would rush fists-first!You were put in foster homes. They were awful and you were quick to learn how to live in that environment. You learned several ways to get rid of terrible foster families with the older kids. Once you had been in a particularly bad foster family and one of the teenage kids told you that the government monitored some things in the internet. One of such things was kid porn. If the foster family was caught with that on their computer they would lose the right to have the kids. Usually you wouldn’t have gone and done that but these guys made it to your blacklist of hatred.The older kid, Jeff, knew all the worst places of the internet. He covered the webcam so that no one could see that kids had been the ones accessing to those sites. You were in charge of making sure the adults wouldn’t come. If they caught you messing around in their computer… they would tell the hospital that you both had gotten in a fight with each other. A very big fight.Jeff accessed the dark web but purposefully left the computer ID on, instead of hiding it. It took him some time to find the right site but he did it. He said you needed to watch various videos to be tagged, preferably all the way to the end. Thing was, he didn’t have the stomach for it so your braved yup and switched positions with him. As you were looking for a short video you came across the playlists. It was your mom’s tapes… You recognized Casey right away.You couldn’t have stopped even if you wanted to. You needed to know what they had done to them! And you’d never been more nauseous in your life before. But you powered through all of them until you reached the last one where Casey finally escaped. You had never thought you could come to hate someone so much… How can a person hate their own mother this much?After you watched all of Casey’s videos you then decided to watch the ones in which your mother and that man actually killed the kids they raped. You needed to know what would have happened to Casey had they not escaped. …If you had already been nauseous before, you were now barely containing your puke and horror. You only watched that one video. You knew there were others but you couldn’t watch anymore.Jeff seemed satisfied with the quantity of videos you had watched once he saw the list. You exchanged places again so that he could close the whole thing down and clean your prints from the keyboard and mouse just in case.It didn’t take long for the foster family to be investigated but those videos had changed you forever. Now you would make sure that no one would hurt any of your housemates the same way Casey had been hurt. If they ever did…? Well… You kids could do well without them, couldn’t you?You changed houses a few more times, all the while making sure you took care of the kids you met, making sure they could stand up for themselves. You met the hardest one to crack out of their mindset when you were 11 years old. They were small. Like really small. They were just 4. The never talked. Part of you wondered if they had really been mute or if they simply preferred not to talk. You had by then learned sign language so you tried to talk to them with it. They didn’t seem to know what you were doing so you started talking as you made the signs. Slowly they learned how to sign but they were still too permissive. They reminded you of Casey, or at least what you had seen of them by the last video. You wouldn’t allow them to remain that way. Not another one. For their fifth birthday, you made them a blue and magenta wool sweater but… you made it too big. They told you they would keep it until they were older. For your twelfth birthday, they gave you a bandana with abs drawn in them. You laughed and took it, tying it on your head right away.Another family exchange. You hoped the kid would be ok.You… You weren’t as lucky.That was the worse family you had been in.It was just you so you didn’t have others to keep you behind to take care of them. You tried to do the same trick Jeff had done. It took some time but you managed to do it. You made the movies keep rolling, the ones with the torture and killing. But you were alone this time. While you had let the movies play you could watch the surroundings but when you finally had to close the computer you got distracted. You hadn’t noticed her appearing in the door way. It wasn’t as she clasped a clawed hand on your shoulder when you were about to turn of the computer that you realized she was there. You didn’t stick around and wait for the police to save you this time.You ran.And this time you knew where you would run to. You were close to the forest Casey had run to. You were sure you could hide there. The way there was far trickier than you had expected. You had to keep hiding from people so that they wouldn’t take you back. You found the forest.At first you stuck around the borders but soon you had to run deeper and climb the mountain. They had sent a search party after you.You had been walking backwards as you watched the flashlights in the distance. That was how you missed the hole on the ground that you had been backstepping into. You fell down.…You woke up to snow. Snow all around you. And a little yellow flower. A Flower that talked.There was something off about the flower. And you didn’t mean just that fact that it was talking. That was odd enough as it was but… sometimes… the things it said… it sounded as if he had seen the future in some way or another. In others, it seemed as if he had lived through some of the situations and, considering how much déjà vu you were getting around the guy, you believed him.His name was Flowey. He told you about the underground. He told you how they killed humans to take their souls. He told you that years back a kid had also fallen underground. A kid with a soul of kindness. A kid… named Casey.H e t o l d y o u h o w t h e m o n s t e r s s t r u c k t h e m d o w n . . .You demanded revenge and Flowey seemed to like that idea very much. He told you to make friends with the monsters of Snowdin. He told you to try to blend in. If you wanted to kill them all you had to make sure that you did it sneakily. Monsters had magic and, if you went on a killing spree, things would end badly for you.Eventually you cornered him into confessing he could turn back time, but only a little. You somehow doubted that statement but didn’t argue much. With his help you steadily and gradually started killing the least noticeable members of Snowdin by ‘night’ and socialized with them by ‘day’. You usually disguised yourself as a monster whenever you went into town. Sometimes you had a hard time justifying your kills. The monsters seemed so nice… would it still be the same if they knew you were human. There only seemed to be one that knew what you were. It had been the one Flowey had warned you about. Sans was his name.He mostly seemed satisfied in leaving you alone but, as you started killing, he started to get more tense around you. Finally, he snapped and threatened to kill you if you didn’t stop. You had no idea how he knew but you were going to make him suffer for threatening you. You were going to make him feel how you felt when you learned they had struck down the most innocent person in your life! You were going to kill Papyrus!You had been pretty intent on it. You had been refusing to listen to Flowey’s pleas but you paid him no mind initially. Eventually he managed to calm you down from your rage by pointing out how uncharacteristically angry you were getting over something so small.Flowey had told you before that LOVE could sometimes change how you perceived things around you and you had gained a fair amount of it.But apparently you had still killed Papyrus enough times before that Sans, the only other monster that remembered the loads, resented you dearly. Downright hated you, in fact.He did kill you, though.No.He brought that fish woman to kill you in a secluded part of Snowdin and Flowey informed you that there was nothing he could do to stop it, that he had tried before and nothing had worked.You had no choice but to accept your fate, but you would do so with bravery!You faced off the fish woman. You tried to withstand her spears, your orange soul turned green by her special magic. Green like your friend’s used to be according to Flowey.Just as you were finally dying, impaled by a massive spear, your soul reverted back to orange.That was the last thing you saw.You closed your eyes and plunged into darkness. You were lost to time here and that scared you.But you wouldn’t give up! You would brave this darkness if it was the last thing you could do! Casey should be there somewhere! You would be brave!……. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …You looked around. You saw a kid. You recognized that kid. Well… no you didn’t. but you did recognize the sweater…. Frisk…?You saw souls all around you.
Light Blue…
Yellow…
Purple…
Dark Blue…
Green…
And a lot of white ones dotting the darkness. Frisk had a bright red soul in front of them. Flowey told you that red was for Determination… wasn’t it? You were stuck inside a sort of transpearand dome of sorts. Not quite a glass dome but similar, if a bit more immaterial than that.You watched Frisk save their friends from where you were standing. You even saw Sans, Papyrus and the Fish Lady. You also recognized the green soul and being Casey’s, or so Flowey had claimed.As your orange soul shot up fiercely against the white glowing wall that loomed over you all, you stood your ground, refusing to fear it.…It broke… …you braved your fears fists first and demolished through your obstacles…
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Once upon a time there had been a powerful native American tribe. Its name has long been lost to time but at that time they were the strongest tribe made up of humans.They had very powerful shamans and they had been plentiful. They had also kept an alliance with another tribe. The other tribe was quite unique. Instead of humans, it was made up of monsters and it was far bigger than any tribe had ever seen. Together the two tribes had been strong.And then monster discovered the souls.At first shamans, later known as mages, helped monsters in studying this strange new thing. Neither of them had known about souls before and it hadn’t taken them long to understand that souls were intimately linked to them. It was also easy to see how magic came from the souls.Things had been fine at first.They kept studying the souls. They found out that each color represented a specific personality trait and that souls varied by state as well. Corrupted souls in particular were pretty useful in showing who not to trust. Clear Cored souls were a mere curiosity never fully explored. They had been studying Faded souls when it happened.A human died and his monster partner absorbed his soul in grief. That monster gained so much power that it was easily sensed by all the human mages and they got scared. They hastily tried to kill the soul fused monster. They failed and the monster ran to her king, asking for help.The humans grew scared of what the monsters would do once the monster told them of her discovered knowledge. They killed the other monsters that had been in the human village researching the souls and got ready for war.The monsters hadn’t wanted to fight but the humans had been relentless. Both sides lost several people by the time the mages cornered the monsters on a cave. By then the monsters had been scared of what the humans were capable of and didn’t dare step outside on the cave. The mages, on the other hand, had been reduced to very few of them, the mages knew that they alone couldn’t face off the monsters so they decided to trap them instead. They picked the seven strongest to cast the spell and, even thought they were the strongest, they went knowing that the spell would demand their lives in return.As the mages started casting their magic, both humans and a few brave monsters, that had been guarding the entrance to keep them from coming in, witnessed a mage with prophesizing powers as they decreed the conditions for the barrier to ever break again.The prophet mage dictated that a spirit -later translated as angel-, who had seen the surface would return to the underground and empty it.Both humans and monster listened and kept the words, the monsters as a symbol of hope, the humans as a symbol of danger.Once the seven mages were drained from their life essence and the barrier fully established, the humans’ tribe council gathered. They began discussing what to do about the barrier’s weakness.The wording had been very clear. The underground needed for a spirit, probably a human, from the surface to descend into it.But it also needed for that person to be ‘returning’ to the underground, not going down for the first time and that narrowed down the list of potential people to worry about. They appointed guards around the entrance to the cave, people that had never even known there was a cave there, to keep others from venturing in.They also made extra sure to keep every single member of their tribe away of why they should avoid the mountain. That didn’t account for people outside the tribe to come back initially and, by the time they realized it, they took notice that the barrier was still up so they had avoided that disaster. Eventually all the people that had been alive at that time gave way to generations that couldn’t have seen the cave before as time reaped their lives. They all thought they had somehow managed to thwart the curse, though they still kept vigil over the mountain and drove people away from it.That had been foolish of themFate was not one to be thwarted, especially when it came to injustices. Fate had been counting on them to try and thwart her all along. Had they accepted her decree, the conditions would never have been fully met. Fate knew the monsters would also need the equivalent power of seven souls to counter the mages’ ones forming the barrier.By purposefully trying to thwart fate, they guaranteed that the needed souls would be gathered by the time the spirit returned. But fate also had to make sure to connect everything in a circle too. Nature was ruled by cycles and for karma to be effective it needed to be moved in a cycle as well.When Chara fell into the underground, all the generations of the tribe that had been alive on the moment of sealing the monsters had already died but mages still prospered. It had been pure luck that Chara had even managed to bypass the natives in the first place…Except that it hadn’t been luck. Fate herself had nudged them along the path she created.Chara’s soul was perfect for breaking the barrier. A soul of Determination. The only problem was that Chara was in no way connected to the tribe.Chara had been doomed to fail from the start. As perfect as they had been, they could not fulfill the prophecy on their lonesome.Fate then searched for the first link and found it in Brook, the soul of Patience. Brooks great grandmother had come from the tribe of mages, though she had been no mage herself. Tribe blood ran in Brooks veins. And, unknowingly, she had been searching for that very same tribe when she ran from the colonies. Brook had almost reached the tribe but, like it was said before, Fate was not one to be thwarted. Once again Brook had been destined to fail. Fate gathered the karma from the child, all the bad luck that had befallen her. Fate gathered it to use it on the barrier in the future.Fate had a harder time pinning the next kid down. Brook had escaped because of the help and compassion of a slave woman. A slave woman who bonded with Brook on several deep ways. Unlike Brook’s connection with the tribe, which was blood bound, this one was emotional.The slave woman gave birth and prolonged her line until, way down the line, the next link Fate needed was born as well. His name was Taylor, the carrier of the soul of Justice.Fate had to be far more patient with him than with Brook. Fate would not be rushed. Not if she wanted to perfect her justice. Taylor wondered for far too long but at last Fate managed to pin him down. She made him run to the mountain but she miscalculated a bit. Taylor found the tribe and they tried to apprehend him. Many, many years had passed since Brook but the tribe kept the legends awake. Mages were starting to dwindle, though. Enough that they could no longer stand as independent and unafraid. Now they feared the Europeans. Now they formed an Indian Reservation just for the sake of keeping the mountain inaccessible.As if that ever stopped anyone before, let alone Fate.The next link was through Duncan, Taylor’s adoptive brother. It was also and emotional bond, just like Brook’s. Bur whereas Brook’s bond was one of mutual understanding, Taylor’s was one of brotherhood.Duncan’s blood line eventually brought forth the birth of Ash, the soul of Perseverance. Fate had to proceed with caution with that one. Ash had been born with HIV so his life span was slowly bleeding away.By then the tribe was small in size and gave less and less credibility to the stories of old, so Ash faced no obstacles aside of the fence. Once their purpose was fulfilled, Fate went on to search for the next one. It was another emotional bond, this time a friendship one. Ash had been friends with a kid named Fabien. They forged their friendship on the fact they both had an everlasting condition. Fabien never got married and never sired children, but his younger brother did.Unlike his older brother his younger brother wasn’t a good person and damaged his own son, the next chosen one to fall. That was Jules, of the soul of Integrity.Fate had tried to keep the damage from happening but failed. Even fate had limitation and keeping Fabien, the only one to keep his brother in check, from dying was beyond her power. The only one who could rule over that outcome was death himself. So, it was with a held breath and crossed fingers that Fate watched the tale unfold.Fortunately, none of the most important pawns that Fate would need got killed. It did end up with the royal scientist getting addicted to his work and not being aware of his surroundings when another person tried to murder him, but Fate could replace him eventually.With Jules’ role over and done with, Fate had to target another.This time Fate had little to choose from. Jules never really connected with anyone due to their madness. In the end Fate picked the people that had gifted him with the pointe ballet shoes. An object that was held do dear meant a whole lot as far as fate was concerned, especially when used as a weapon. This bond was through kindness and mercy.Casey was already there and indirectly met Jules. Casey, the soul of Kindness had been inside the pregnant woman’s belly. Regretfully, Casey’s life was cut short. Too short. They had been tagged for death from the moment that those despicable people kidnapped them from their parents. But Fate needed them more than anyone else. Jules had no strong enough connection with anyone else. So Fate made a deal with Death and, instead of dying at the hands of their captors, Casey would instead die on the underground. Death took the woman’s life as payment. It was one payment that Fate, and the Karma she had gathered until then, were more than willing to accept. So they made Casey kill the woman and the kid got to live just a little bit longer. This time Fate had to have a lot of patience…By now Alphys had already gotten the job as the Royal Scientist and had tried to give life to a plant. That plant was Flowey. Alive again, and with the power to control time to a point, Flowey tried everything he could. He’d been good at first, but then he kept trying to goad Casey into killing. Never in any of the timelines did he succeed. Fate had to wait until he grew tired of that silly game, which he eventually did. With that, Casey was finally sacrificed to Fate.Fate then turned to her next target. This time Fate picked Casey’s best friend and the daughter of the woman who tortured them. Rowan, the soul of Bravery.Rowan was a complicated case in the sense that Fate was now hard-pressed to close the cycle. She knew who she needed her to have a connection with to do it. The problem was getting them both in the same place so that they could bond.For that, Fate had to sacrifice Rowan’s father and risk Rowan's rage by making her find out the truth about her mother. It took some time to set Rowan in the right place and right time. and then She had to set the final link to the chain there. Having Rowan see the videos made it so that she was more willing to go out of her own way to bond with the last link. Once the bonding was complete it was only a matter of moving Rowan to a family in which she would be alone that was so terrible she had to run away.Rowan fell into the underground, as predicted. Flowey decided to let them have a good time at first, bonding with her until he knew all there was to know about her. Then he turned back time and started to manipulate her into trusting him almost immediately. A few mentions of Casey’s fate were enough to get her to start killing. That had been almost disastrous. Fate had had to hastily relocate her pawns in a way that would make it impossible for Flowey to want to proceed. Since Rowan couldn’t remember the loads, she couldn’t learn from Sans’ patterns and try again, so she would always end up dead.In the end Flowey had to give up on killing Papyrus that way and Fate had made it so that Undyne would go to Snowdin and deal with the kid in a way that left nothing to be said.Frisk was the last piece of the cycle. Not only were they linked to Rowan by the oversized sweater, they were also descendants from one of Chara’s siblings and had a soul of Determination, completing the cycle by a bond of nurture and a bond of blood.Once underground, Chara’s spirit entered their, thus returning the one who had seen the surface. The fact that Chara’s soul laid spread all over the underground helped fortify the link. Fate wasn’t a fan of how many times Frisk reset time over and over again but in the end they finally freed the monsters for good.But Karma still wasn’t satisfied. By now all the descendants of the tribe were gone.All… but for one. A mage.A mage of immense power.A mage so powerful he could turn everything… into n o t h i n g . . .So Fate saved up the left over Karma from breaking the barrier to defeat this last threat……and imbedded it on one last Pawn.