i have not done less than duty requires.

[lyseandpurge]

There is a song in the flagstones.



It resonates, high-pitched, nonverbal, and arrhythmic, between the walls of the corridors and along the lengths of the old pillars and in the hollows of the alcoves.

It comes from a windowless hallway, from a door no one has seen before whose cobweb drapery is so old it has begun to peel away.

And even then it comes: from a little outside the world, from no room, from no mouth.

From the gap in the door a light has begun to bleed, vivid and violet and pulsing like a heartbeat. The song rises with it, falls with it, and harmonises with the whistling of the wind—the smell of hot metal mingling with something sweet.

If you open the door, it is because you have heard the sound, seen the light, felt the pulse—you have traced it to its source. It hangs before you, an immortal crystal of pure light, suspended in a shining, sickly abyss with no visible beginning or end. It is wounded. It is bleeding. A steady torrent of syrupy liquid pours from roots and pipes that have been forced through the wounds in its surface, and then been severed; the ichor streams down its lower facets and falls endlessly into the emptiness.

Its voice pierces your ears, louder and more melodic than ever.

And something dark and gaseous shifts warily under the glassy skin of the cell, watching you with its single eye.

= <o> =

a change. The ancient door has been altered recently: some wary soul has carved a message deep into the ageless wood, blackening it with heat. It reads: "DANGER, POSSESSION MAY OCCUR BEYOND THIS DOOR".

ooc. || hey everyone! this is Judgement or Ammit, the all-consuming vengeance of the immortal cell! she just got here, she's just a little lost, and she would appreciate something horrible happening so she can get back into the swing of things. anything's fine, though!!

nota bene—you can only get to the cell through this door, and Judgement can't see, hear, or perceive anything that isn't close to the cell. there's a little more information on these limitations in its bio​. sorry for the restrictions!

Comments

[dustless]

Something's here. Something big. They can feel it even before they start down the hallway, footsteps echoing too-loud.

Frisk doesn't know what it is, and they don't consider fleeing for even an instant. They hear the voice--the voice? Maybe the voice? The music. It's music, it's a song, and it's entrancing in a siren (not shyren)-like way.

They open the door, slow, careful. The color's the same as a dog's eyes, and they expect to find her there, and for reality wrenching apart.

...Maybe they find that last part. They stare up at the cell, lips parted in something like awe. (If anyone asked, Frisk would answer that they've never been in the presence of a real god before.)

"Oh," they breathe.

[lyseandpurge]

ooc. || i hope this isn't too invasive a 'vision' but tell me if it is, and i'll rewrite!!

From the vast cell comes a greeting: a rich chord, a harmony that reaches to the bone. In front of Frisk's feet there is the sense of an echo. The empty air welcomes their footsteps, rippling softly with light.

The cell extends its welcome, and is asking for help.

But the cell is not alone. Judgement spews out of the cracks in its surface like an expletive, sudden and deafening. A black fog spreads out out out over the abyss, and with impossible speed completely engulfing the world.

Sensations. A flicker of eyesight, a bass tone like teeth crashing together. The cell appears directly in front of Frisk, close enough to touch, tall as a building and still as stone. Even if they haven't moved, they have the impression that their fingers are touching its white-hot surface. Then there is a feeling of muscles contracting, digits curling, claws digging in as they pry the crystal open with a strength and fury they don't possess.

Just as the cell has split wide enough that it could fit their head, the ground trembles. Out of the darkness below comes something with a bright diamond-shaped eye, whale-sized, tail thrashing, jaw unhinged, rushing, rushing, screaming like a freight train, to swallow them up.

Then the vision is gone.

The cell, in its old place, pulses rapidly, but then a little more slowly, and a little more slowly, calming down. A single black bird, shaped like a magpie but four times as large, watches Frisk intently from its perch at the crystal's apex, its single eye unblinking.

nah it's fine~

[dustless]

Darkness strangles, fingers dig in, it hurts, it hurts, but they've had worse, they were more prepared this time. Doesn't matter that trying to rip open something that burns them rather than weird rain and reddish ocean.

Except in the end, it does.

They hold it together until the last one. There's a massive void-mouth and maybe teeth, or maybe they put those teeth there themselves--they definitely put in the scent of lemons.

Frisk flings their body away, tripping and slamming onto their back with a muffled half-curse, and their head's outside of the room again. Their hands are clawing into their green scarf. "Why!" they shriek. Why that instead of words, it was bad enough with the dog. Frisk's starting to hate it.

They breathe, staring up at the shadows of the hallway's ceiling, petting their scarf's threads and moving to their shirt stripes. They're in the castle. It's weird, but it's real, and so's their heartbeat, and so are they. It's real, and they're being watched, they've got to do...something. The music asked. They think?

Slow and careful again, they shift, sitting up on the floor in front of the doorway.

"Sorry," they say. "Didn't mean to yell." They don't know if the bird they crane their neck back to see cares, and...admittedly, they're not super sorry, but it feels better than not saying anything. They don't like that their own noise overpowered the harmony, at least in their own ears.

<3333

[lyseandpurge]

The bird stares blankly at Frisk for a moment, as if expecting something more from them, a movement, a threat, an attack. Then it spreads its wings,

with impossible speed completely engulfing the world

(everything except the door frame wiped away)

sensations. a bass tone like

their muscles contracting, their digits curling, their claws digging into the crack

and this time, a pang of impossible and undeniable hunger inside them.

Instead of simply ripping the cell open, Frisk feels a contortion of their neck, as if crane-like they had struck at the cell, and cracked it with a beak they do not have.

And they are dipping their long long something inside, greedily gulping down the purple light, the liquid, the heat, and it is sliding down their long throat and it is pooling in their belly and they are swelling up, so hungry—and the tone, they can barely hear the tone, the cell, its song shrill: it is screaming like torn metal, screaming like an animal in pain, and they are gulping it down, all of it, inside them.

(they do they would they will.)

Then the ground trembles,

the darkness below, anguished, enraged, whale-sized, rushes up

to catch them, to tear them away, to swallow them.

The vision, fully repeated, evaporates in an instant.

Now two birds are perched on top of the cell, watching Frisk, but only one of them has an eye.

in return, feel free to message me if their responses aren't enough to go off of~

[dustless]

Frisk folds up, teeth gritting hard enough that their jaw aches.

They just had...a meal. Before. Lunch? Maybe. The problem is time. Time, just like when they were sick, is suddenly questionable. And they're not really hungry.

And. Doesn't matter if they were, their stomach's churning hard, lemons are mingling with the hideous bitterness of buttercups from memories they shouldn't have.

But there's more meaning this time, something they can put together, puzzle pieces--the door's right behind them, they can leave if they want, if they have to. They might have to soon, in fact. It's only been a couple minutes and they're already losing their grip on everything. Were there always two birds there, did they just not notice the one without an eye?

"...Can't break that. 'M a tough kid, but I'm not that tough. Or..." They let one hand flop towards the nothingness beneath the diamond...thing. "...fly. I don't have wings."

aaaaaaa it's fine!! i'm just hoping to get the hang of this muse... also noooo frisk D=

[lyseandpurge]

The one-eyed bird cocks its head, perturbed, at the child huddling on the ground. It caws silently, its beak opening and then closing, as if asking a question. Then—

Sensations. The texture of glass-smooth ground. Motion, winding motion, weight pressing on countless rows of ribs. Frisk pushes forwards onwards towards the light of the cell, inexorable, a monster; coils upon coils, the excitement of hunger, they could swallow the cell whole.

Darkness. Something from below. Rushing, jaws opening, it rips them away from the cell and drags them into the air, gashing them with its teeth. And it wrestles with them and struggles and jerks until it tears them into pieces.

The vision ends.

Sensations. Their heart beating beating beating as they scramble across the ground, legs like motors, away from the cell and its heat and its churning blood.

Feelers waving waving touch cold stone, and there is a torrential rush of air behind them, and the door is gone, and they are gone, and the cell is safe

The vision ends.

The bird on top of the cell is alone again. It stares at Frisk, as if hunting for something hidden there.

Finally, it opens its beak, and this time a strangled noise comes out.

wh a a

It tries again, gaping, its beak growing larger and changing shape.

whaaaa t t

Its head collapses in on itself like a crushed egg, and then reforms into something else.

"What are you doing?" demands the voice of Toriel, crystal-clear. "What are you proving this way?"

Then the goat-faced bird suddenly dissolves.

The black liquid it was composed of splatters against the surface of the cell and slowly rolls down its sides.

=w=b

[dustless]

No. No, no, no, they're done with this, the rending is nothing compared to suddenly being gone even though they're still there, still watching, still feeling--

--and Toriel, Toriel melting, the Amalgamates were one of the only Underground things that still scared them and she should never, ever, ever remind Frisk of them.

They choke on nothing, and they've got better to do.

They're gone before they even remember getting up.



Later, long after they left the hall and collapsed in a patch of sunlight streaming through windows, they notice their hands are stinging. Their palms and fingers are scraped raw, like they'd dragged themselves out rather than just stood and ran. A kitchen's raided for its sink, not its food, leaving them to soak their hands and arms in a full basin until it gets cool and their hands' flexing assure them that they're not pretend.

What was that?

Guardian said something about a dog, a white-and-pink diamond too. Those things. They hadn't really told Frisk much about them. Now that both (all?) of those things are here, they're regretting not pursuing the subject.

They leave the kitchen.

...Not unexpectedly, their feet lead them back to the dark hallway, peering at the color pouring light and casting shadows. Curiosity killed the cat pops into their head, but there's something a lot worse about losing their own self than just being killed.

It's been a few hours.

Frisk creeps their way back. The Worn Dagger is held tight in their left hand--not for attacking reasons, for reassurance; it's very strange for a comfort object, but that doesn't make it less of one. The solidness of its form is better than just touching fabric.

They stand in the doorway, breathing heavy.

They call out in a whisper. "...Hello?"

<3

[lyseandpurge]

The cell is there, just where they left it. It is beating. It is bleeding. Its feverish breath washes over them.

For a split second, something obscures its light: a massive thing, whale-sized, swims in front of it, cast in silhouette.

It passes overhead with a sudden rush of air, and then a brief flash of pink is visible as it darts by in the void beneath Frisk's feet.

The cell beats with light.

Frisk's Judgement rises slowly from the depths. It is something aquatic, with skin like segmented plates of metal and a cavernous mouth, lined with intricate, interlocking teeth, behind which a single diamond-shaped eye glowers without expression. Its four enormous fins twist like propellor vanes as it spirals gradually to a halt, just beneath where Frisk is standing, and its four-fluked tail sweeps forward. The light of the cell glistens on the rivets and joints of its enormous head, dented and riddled with the blades of rusted swords.

It watches Frisk in perfect silence, and makes no response at all.

[dustless]

Something so huge, moving so fast--Frisk probably won't be able to dodge that, and they're tense enough to ache already.

...That doesn't mean they can't see. The creature is terrifying, but as soon as it stills, Frisk sees that it--they? she?--is actually sort of pretty. To them, at the very least.

Except...

There's a chapel somewhere in the castle. They've only found it once. There's an image in the stained-glass windows of a dragon being impaled with a sword. They felt uncomfortable just seeing that, and seeing it real and up close is quite a bit worse.

In spite of blood roaring in their ears, they make a decision.

With slow, jerky movements, Frisk draws their dagger back and slips it into a belt loop, like a certain Chara does with their stick.

(It's not a big thing--they're not a big thing, they probably couldn't do much damage if they tried wholeheartedly, but they're used to seeing themselves as the most powerful thing around in most ways.)

"Please don't...eat me again?"

[judgement voice] did you say something about not eating you because i'm gonna quickly open my mouth

[lyseandpurge]

vmmmm

vmmm

vmm goes the cell, three heartbeats passing, each a little slower and gentler.

Judgement's eye stares at Frisk, fixed. Then its mouth opens, the teeth parting and retracting like a complex portcullis, slowly, slowly.

And the rhombus eye widens, slowly, slowly, growing in all four directions until it is no longer an eye any more—until the inner light of the immortal cell is clearly visible, shimmering and roiling within it.

This pink light flows out from the portal of the eye in liquid form, filling the mouth of the beast up, and up, and up, as it rises, rises, rises until its teeth just barely break the invisible floor of the room within. And the fountain of pink fills it all the way up until it dribbles down Judgement's sides, and then stops. It levels out just below Judgement's teeth, bubbling, then rippling, then stilling, a pool of sickness and strange energy.

Something white and crystalline leaps out of the middle of it, and lands, and bobs for a little bit before settling. It is a cube, almost too large to fit in Frisk's hand, with a tiny pink light flickering in its centre.

It feels exactly like a SOUL.

[frisk voice] why is my life this

[dustless]

Frisk rocks back immediately, a scream strangled into a moan in their throat.

Panic leaves everything a pink-black blur, and it takes a moment for them to really see what's going on--is it...

...is it crying?

It really looks like that eye is either spilling tears or bleeding all over itself. Neither which is good, though one far less horrible than the other. And they're not being swallowed, which is...nice, although they still need to spend time to regulate airflow and steel their own reserve to stay.

Frisk watches the cube bob as it appears, the feeling from it striking something deep and strange in a way the worse energy didn't, a way even the music hadn't managed.

They don't know what to do with it. They're certainly not going to attack it, and they don't think they should touch it, because who knows what that might do?

They probably need to do...something, though. That's not just turning around and leaving.

Careful, they crouch, trying to look at it closer and ignore the massive jaws in the meantime. "I don't know what that is."

frisk i am sorry

[lyseandpurge]

Judgement's radiating fins twitch just barely as Frisk approaches, their footsteps sending pale ripples across the invisible floor. The floating cube stills, motionless, in the pool of liquid, and then rings with resonance as the cell begins to sing again, doubling its amelodic voice.

Then this tiny fragment of the immortal cell lifts, vertex first, out of the liquid and into the air. The fragile little pink light inside it mimics the pulse of the cell, flaring with its beat and vibrating with the same bone-heating hum.

Then it desynchronises, just a little: it comes a little fast—and then a little faster—and the little pulse speeds up until it exactly matches Frisk's own, a synthetic echo of their heart hovering just centimetres from their face, vm-vmmm, vm-vmmm.

It sings wordlessly with the cell, and wordlessly, Judgement waits.

[dustless]

The world is made of so many, many sounds.

Their blood is roaring through their veins, the sound of it is echoing in front of them. It shouldn't be doing that. They shouldn't be hearing that.

The creature is beautiful, the cell is beautiful, the music is beautiful, the light is beautiful.

Distantly, they're still aware they can leave. They walked over the nothingness without a thought, and they can walk back with some; they don't think they're locked up, and staying is their choice. Even if it's terrifying, even if half of them is still trembling with every beat run, run, run. But they don't always do the smart thing. (There's a reason Undyne's one of the monsters that killed them the most.)

They shouldn't touch it.

Frisk lifts their hands.

They shouldn't touch it.

Their fingers curl.

They shouldn't touch it.

They press their palms against the bottom, cupping it, as if they're afraid it'll tumble back down if they don't.

i'm finally doing this!!

[lyseandpurge]

The cube,

she,

is heavy, surprisingly so—but weightless. It slides against Frisk's fingers, then settles into their grip, not as if falling, but as if drawn to their touch like a magnet.

It is smooth as glass and its edges, though sharp, have no tangible sensation against their skin.

It beats, beats, beats, every pulse a vibration radiating through the phalanges of Frisk's fingers.

Then, as if certain of its security, it pulls gently towards the centre of their torso, towards the heartbeat that it echoes; not with any real force, but as if letting go would cause it to float slowly towards them. The light within seems to shift in place, pushing against the crystalline walls of its enclosure.

With a loud gurgle, the pool of pink liquid begins to drain into Judgement's mouth, a gentle vortex disturbing its descending surface.

here we go!

[dustless]

It comes nearer and nearer, and they shouldn't have touched it.

Maybe. Maybe. It doesn't hurt, it's just...there. Its noise, its music, it's resonating, reaching.

They think of Toriel's face on the bird's head, they notice the abyss beneath their feet, and they just listen and wait for their fate.

...No. Not fate. They're doing something. They're doing something, them and--and--(her?), together.

The squirming light, their own hands, they both guide the thing against their chest. The noise gets louder and louder and louder, through their skin, through their bones, through their everything, through something

(that reaches back)

red.






Frisk falls.

A shape wraps around their SOUL.

it is yours it is you

[lyseandpurge]

It is the shape of a diamond.

The fragment embeds itself as if sinking into liquid, through cloth, through skin, through muscle and cartilage and bone. Flesh warps around it as it seeks its resting place, and it occupies Frisk's chest without breaking the skin at all, its shell melding and conforming to the surface contour of their ribs until it sits seamlessly in their centre.

Then the little light within suddenly bursts, filling the cube with its glow, filling Frisk, coursing through blood and singing through bone and running along nerves and muscles until—

(sun colliding with sun, fingers interlacing with fingers)

—it makes contact.

A sudden warmth (breaks through no reaches through the impenetrable surface of the cube and makes its home inside, and makes it home.

Red.

The fragment, fading into the whole, thinks its last thought: Life. Life. Life. We are alive.



The last of the pink fluid sinks into Judgement's eye. She sinks down into the floor and turns just a few degrees, to look at Frisk's prone form.

Then she dissipates, black metal turning into thick fog and then into a cloud of slightly acrid air. Her eye winks out of view.

Her intangible presence wanders back into the heart of the immortal cell and seems to gather there, like a forgotten worry hovering beneath the surface of a troubled mind.

A thought that is not Frisk's builds itself within their new heart, slowly, hesitantly.

Falling down, it says, and then vanishes.

it is me, it is mine.

[dustless]

We are alive.

Frisk breathes.

That's a choice, a thought, once they feel their chest is too still for too long. They're alone in that the creature is gone, no mouth or eye hovering close.

Falling down, it says, and Frisk is all too aware of the abyss again, more, still, like they just dragged their way out of it. They scramble to their feet and slip to the shelter of the hallway, fingers clutching at their chest. There's new warmth there--not of their SOUL, not even of anger, but something...feverish. Something there like when they were sick. But they're not sick.

...What did they just do?

That felt like a SOUL. That looked like--no, that reminded them of Flowey, those vivid memories of Asgore's death and the absorption of the other dead kids into his face. But that wasn't a SOUL, it wasn't the right shape. It wasn't...

Falling down, something said.

Frisk's back presses against the wall, and their voice presses inside their skull. I don't want to fall again.

[lyseandpurge]

Something flickers, like static.

The doors slowly swing shut, as if pushed by a wind. They close against the frame without so much as a sound. Behind them, somehow, the cell is still visible, a neon pink afterimage on Frisk's retinas.

Her thought comes to Frisk like sudden memories, like reading without words.

In the past: falling down; meaning stillness, the swift approach of death. A tower. A tower crumbling into a great depthless sea. A tower, inverted. Falling down—like a tower crumbling into a great depthless sea—horrible pain, half-remembered—the cell, the tower.

The tower, and therefore, the cell. Defend the cell. Free the cell. Destroy the cell. The cell, the cell, the cell, an urge that built and built until it burst.

Then, more clearly: Frisk. You. Frisk coming to the cell. Frisk looking at the cell. Frisk leaving the cell. Frisk returning to the cell.

I don't want to fall again.

Frisk's thought echoes back at them, with these last images, almost like a question. Desperate, fearful, a question.

[dustless]

She's following them. No, she's with them. Look at what you've done.

Destroy the cell, an already-familiar thought--they tore it apart, were supposed to, to drink up what's inside, that's what she wanted.

Falling down. What monsters do. Falling down, death, and now Frisk's here too.

"You're not--you're not gonna die," they say. They could just think it, they know it would work, but that's only for Chara and they're long gone. So's that tower. Despite wanting to speak with and not project to, the hall around them rises into thoughts. Look, it's something completely different.

She's afraid? They're afraid. Maybe they're both afraid. Frisk sinks until they're sitting on the floor, little plumes of dust rising around their legs.

[lyseandpurge]

A sense of attention—the fragment brightens as something comes close to it, as Judgement rushes to their side.

An eye scans the hall, the image of the hall, the idea of the hall. It searches for the barrel of a rifle glinting in the sunlight, listens for the whisper of stealthy motion, waits for the cool air to be stirred by the rush of violence.

Its anticipation is as intense as a headache, as the roar of blood, as the tightening of muscles.

There is nothing in the hallway.

But there must be. There will be. Judgement says this almost out loud, in its non-words, its wild constructs of splintered images: the flash of a railgun discharging from behind that pillar, the indescribable crack of a flashbang detonating as it slides past those tiles, the scream of a giant's hands crashing through that window and pulverising the stone as it tears the building down.

There must be death here, Judgement insists to Frisk, and her fear intensifies until it is almost like pain.

[dustless]

Something in their chest is weird, and their throat convulses in a rumbling cough before they can clamp down on it.

"No! There's not, isn't!" Frisk insists, even while the vivid images leave them pressing back into the wall. "There's nothing like that!"

Instead, there are knives. Single simple blades that sink in deep deep deeper into their chest and back and throat, everything turning to fuzzy colors, Frisk sinking and fading and dying--and waking up again.

"Nothing'll kill you, nothing'll get you."

(Of course, they don't know Drifter's here, or what Anubis is, or if Guardian might...try something.)

Frisk keeps staring at the hall. Nothing, still. Nothing but them and grime. They could go, try to show her the rest, but they don't know if they can move, or who might find them even if they do. Their friends might be scared if they see her...

"Please. Don't be scared," they whisper to Judgement.

[lyseandpurge]

Knives. The flash of sun on metal, the smell of blood, and in between, the pain.

The monster jerks in shock behind Frisk's eyes and the edges of the world go fuzzy; from the edges she reaches out, hundreds of shapeless arms—

She stops.

It is as if she has recognised something.

Slowly, more hesitantly, a new message fades in, not images, not visions, but words, like bits of sound and meaning spliced together. Thousands of conflicting contexts and meanings convulse and rattle behind them, but she clamps down on them like a bear trap (fierce, painful, clumsy, all at once) and the tension is trapped, like a length of wire in a tangled knot.

The words, clashing and dissonant, say:

F r i s k
i am A— i eat nothing into heaps of fire and am judgement but hide from me

And again, even more muted yet too loud and splintered to be words:

F r i s k
i am everything scared and eaten but hide from me nothing for nothing will kill me

[dustless]

They reach out to block her, they reach out to touch her; both, trying to keep from being crushed, trying to keep their own boundaries while allowing her to be there at the same time.

She says their name. It makes something pulse in their chest, something that's not the thing she put there. Names are important.

"Nothing'll kill you," they repeat, affirm? Words are hard. Frisk knows words are hard, just like feelings, and words for feelings are some of the hardest in the world. That's what they think she's talking about, anyway. They're not in the best state to solve puzzles.

"Can't hide from you, you're with me now. You...don't...need to eat everything? I can eat food, if...you can...taste it through me, if you want," they offer uncertainly. They don't know if that would do anything, but it might be some kind of distraction. They have hiding places all through the castle, so Frisk's sure they can get food without being found.

[lyseandpurge]

There is a silence, strained, like a knife trapped between ribs. Judgement withdraws into itself, writhing in a fit of something like indecision, but more vicious. The fragment's pulse wavers, sometimes more frantic, sometimes less.

Eventually, new words wrench out of the fog of consciousness and present themselves clumsily to Frisk's mind.

Frisk—i'm an infection of you
everything scared and eaten inside you
hide from me "nothing" for "nothing" will kill me
nothing—
nothing—

And the words shatter like breaking glass, revealing for a moment the flurry of images behind them. The Drifter, red-caped, rushing, a sword of light, agony. The Guardian, rose-helmed, on guard, terrified. Emotion like a mouthful of pain, hot, prickly, and acidic.

The impressions are swept up and crushed back into shape. And with that fear again, building in Frisk's chest:

Frisk—
you should not have

[dustless]

Fear and pain and horror and they curl inward.

Oh.

Everything's scared but nothing, nothing's eaten, they're still all Frisk. Still just you. They're not going to lose themselves so easy, not again, not again. They refuse in the face of a scared friend (of course that's what Guardian is now) and a someone who thinks they need to FIGHT, and them. Frisk's here too. Frisk's here too. It's a pulse in their head, their own. I'm here too.

"I can't hide from you," they repeat, a bubble of indignant determination rising. They can be strong, they need to be now, and their body trembling is irrelevant. "You're in me, so, so you're with me, right? You gave me this, you gave me yourself."

They accepted her, but she offered in the first place. "I 'shouldn't have'. But you--if you knew it was gonna be bad--!" she shouldn't have done it in the first place. But she did, it's too late.

Isn't it?

Frisk puts their palms over their face, skin heating and grounding with every rapid breath. "...we've...we're...we can make this work anyway." They have to."...'Less you're gonna just...leave, an' take it out."