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

[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."

[lyseandpurge]

A silence, strained, like a knife trapped between ribs: pulling, pulling, and trying to come free.

Slowly:

F r i s k
i am fire spilled on you
i am your burning until consumed and ashes
i am irreversible

The fragment inside their chest shifts, ever so slightly, ever so gingerly: a twang of sudden and unnatural motion. It stops.

should not have
everything scared and eaten everything hot and ashes except—
frisk
i should not have and i'm sorry

Judgement's eye approaches, and the heat of its gaze blossoms in the fragment.

DRIFTER;
GUARDIAN;
coming.
substrate; extinguisher
hide from me
and do not fight, and show not mercy
do nothing to them so that nothing will kill me.

[dustless]

They jolt, whipping their hands from their face to their chest, waiting, tensing. Relaxing again, once nothing ejects itself. The piece of her is still inside, but so's their SOUL.

Her more-than-mere-sound words are terrifying, big and layering meaning after meaning, and Frisk can't tell what's going to happen, what might happen, what happened once and what might not happen at all.

The finger of one hand dig into their chest, hard enough to sting, never hard enough to crack. The other hovers in the air, wondering if they should touch again, if they can dare, if they can. "It's...it's gonna be okay. We're...gonna make stuff work," they breathe again, watching her with a gaze that can never truly be as strong--but they can meet it still, despite the heat. The sensation of something burning inside is something a little more familiar.

As is the subject of death.

They remember Guardian. They don't know exactly what she can see...everything, they guess, if she could reach inside even before she was there and show them Toriel. She can probably see the memory inside their head right now, Guardian in their full armor, Frisk lying on the grass beside them, both of them watching the clouds tear by on the calling winds. So, against their first instincts, Frisk doesn't try to hide that they're already here. "Dunno if I can do that," they say, voice a little louder, a little less shaky. "The castle doesn't...it's hard to hide from somebody forever. I don't really want to. And. They can't kill you, even if they want to."

Drifter's an unknown for now, so they don't bother mentioning him. That person might never show up.

"And if you're gonna...kill me...if...this," they pat the skin and shirt over the fragment, not digging in anymore, "is going to kill me, um, it's not gonna forever. I died. People died. Here. And they come back. So...I'm gonna again. And you will, if something happens. Death's not here."

Technically, this is wrong. Death, the act of effectively ceasing to exist, that's still here, just not forever; DEATH, the Reaper himself, walks the castle halls sometimes, only he isn't on the job. Frisk doesn't count either.

They can't imagine something happening to her, either. She's...she's just so much. Too much for anybody to end.

[lyseandpurge]

Judgement wavers on the other end of the fragment's connection before that certain gaze. A wave of confusion rushes out from the heart like a cold shiver.

Frisk
death
ends.
it must: because nothing else has

Something is wrong.

where are no ends and no atonements
where are broken castles; barren battlements; dying and no relief
where am i?

Her voice, harmonious, calls out through the fragment, a single screeching chord that stirs hot winds and makes shadows flicker and dance.

Faintly she echoes herself—

where am i where are you where am i

—with each repetition fading further into the glowing darkness behind Frisk's eyes.

please
must see

[dustless]

Death's not supposed to be relief. Death shouldn't be atonement. That's not what they want to start talking about now. They're sure she heard the thought, but they push it back, more immediate and simpler concerns zeroed in on instead.

"You're in the castle. It's...really different, and far from where you used to be. Wherever that was. Um. Whenever, too."

Gingerly, Frisk unfolds. Shadows on the edge of their eyes move for her. They stop to breathe, wondering if they're going to pass out, what might happen if they do. Will she take their body, move it like the Frisk within Chara does? They hope not. They don't want to make anyone worry.

They're staying awake, but their hands are aching, scrapes making themselves known again.

(Still a peppering of the usual red. Judgement is there, but her roots haven't dug in deep enough, the disease still getting accustomed to its new home.)

They ball their hands into fists, pressing the bottom of their hands and the edge of their wrists against the stone, crawling up backwards until they're standing, swaying. Too much time spent tense, their legs and feet are tingling and need to be shaken out.

Frisk presses their fingers to their temples. "I'll...I'll show you now? If--are you...in? Can you see stuff I see?" They're staring down the hall, the door they'd entered from still hanging wide open, now-weak sunlight filtering onto the floor.

[lyseandpurge]

i can see says Judgement, after a while. my hole my opening and light it says, the ends of its sentences no longer bursting with guttural force.

The heart cautiously shines. The pulse is still ragged, the song of the cell soft, dissonant, unending.

not locked and not watched but stones? struck with chisel not melted: old. too large. shadows move within

Judgement's focus shifts. Frisk—broken Frisk—broken skin and something radiates from the cell, a heat in their veins, a pit in their stomach as if it had opened up and become the outlet of an internal spring. Their blood warms with strange life. It is not healing—it is only energy, only strength, revitalising and sustaining. It makes the wounds bleed faster and more freely, bright blood spilling out as if there is too much of it inside them.

shadows moving, i see light beyond Judgement tries to say. far from where i used to be but the sun whole and the wellspring open. i'll show you now?

[dustless]

She's--not quieter, now, but not so much all at once. There's some uncertainty, too, words and meanings odd, not matching what Frisk knows, but they...think they can understand.

"There's not a lot of locked places. People go wherever they want. 'Cept other peoples' rooms, I guess." They certainly don't go into Frisk's; theirs is too hidden for that. Now that she's with them, they guess they're sharing anyway. "It's old. It looks old and smells old and a lot of stuff's broken, like doors, 'cause of that old."

The blood wells into beads, and then start coalescing, and they hold their hands out to watch until they've got little puddles in the dips of their palms. They're going to have to find another sink. Or fountain. Almost any water'll be fine, they think, tilting until the rivulets spill over the floor and they can wipe the rest off under the bottom edge of their shirt. No reason to make people, if they're found any time soon, worry even more than they already might. "Broken skin. It'll get better soon, always does," they say, voice going up--staying that way for the rest.

"You'll...show me? Um, in--in a minute, okay?" they say hastily. For now, Frisk's legs feel better, and they pace down the hall at a fast walk.

They go to stand in that sunlight first, where they can see out the window and watch the clouds going by at eye-level and the thinner ones up high, hiding the sun's face. As a bonus, this one only has half of its glass, so there's a breeze. Helpful to ground their thoughts into something closer to reality if they're shown something...too much, again.

"So...what is it?"

[lyseandpurge]

Judgement withdraws for a moment, as if considering. Her eye is a sharp and angular feeling inside Frisk's eyes, staining their vision with strange afterimages, stinging only a little.

show

Little puddles in the dips of their palms—blood trickling down their hands.

show

The sun, a halo of light, obscured by clouds; and around it—

show

Blue.

sun and sea and sky, a wellspring Judgement stutters, bit by bit. The ideas come with great difficulty, distant, half-remembered. once we were—but now—

A red sea, a pink sea, filled with rotting corpses that Judgement hides from view. Skeletal towers. Decaying titans. Light.

they made me bleed

The image is wiped away, almost apologetically, by a hand of oily blackness. An afterimage, a hazy shape of red. Nothing else.

Frisk they bled me— Judgement gazes at the mist floating by; her skin prickles underneath their skin. but i remember: even i was blue once

[dustless]

We. Her, the Cell? They're the same but they're not. One wants to die and one doesn't? One wants one dead? They're not sure...and that's another thing to leave for later.

And bleeding. Like them, like now, but worse, and the weight of their dagger at their side is suddenly double what it was. "The swords?" they ask-remember, even as they remember on another layer: their own sea beneath the sun, gold and far-away down the mountain or blue and close with a can bobbing somewhere under a dock they're trespassing on, they shouldn't be there, but nobody cares anyway and they go wherever they want. Nothing bloody. Was that all hers? How much can one (or even two) being(s) bleed, staining water off to the horizon?

There's no ocean here, but Frisk can go find the sky--a clearer sky, at least, and they turn further from the doorway they came from. It's still daytime.

They hadn't wiped off the blood quite as well as they thought, leaving a palm-shape on the windowsill, but only that. No fingerprints. Not so much for someone to worry about if anybody comes by.

They still tap their fingers over every stone when they start walking away. Need to stay sure it's still there, after all, and that Frisk is.

"I can show you somewhere nice like that," they say, and then add disjointedly "I don't want anyone to make you bleed...more. Worse."

aaaaaa sorry this is short x-x

[lyseandpurge]

swords, Judgement echoes—Frisk's own voice plain in its speech; and then, doors? locks? manacles?

But she is contemplating the image that has surfaced in Frisk's mind: the golden sun, the glittering free sea. A static fuzz of almost-emotion emanates from her place inside Frisk's chest, and the pulse of the cell travels down through their spine, through their bones, into the ground, touching the flagstones and becoming a song.

dock, she mutters. i want to see a dock and a sea and the walk into nowhere, and i want i want to see the one who was killed to set you free

no worries~

[dustless]

Concepts, pushed forward tentatively. "Swords," the ones in her head, face, a few decorating the walls in rooms with metal blades eaten away by time, "doors," halls and halls and halls and halls, hundreds, thousands, doors where there can be anything, but sometimes they're just bedrooms full of soft things to jump on, "locks," doors have locks, but it's usually just blocking the way in and out with chairs and stuff, or at least that's what they do--and a tower with a door locked shut, their face leaning down and pressing against the keyhole Chara? Hello, it's me.

No manacles, not that Frisk knows of. There's no need for those, after all.

"There's not--" they shiver, rhythm of their feet changing over the stones and dislodging thoughts. Pink sound slipping down bones. That's nonsense, isn't it?

"...the ocean. Isn't here. That was home. This is somewhere else." They don't know how to communicate that as well, off-kilter again, and they try to move a little faster. The gardens are where they want to be now, but there's stairs and they hope they're not going to fall down them. "But there's blue in the sky, and it's nice too."

Who was killed? They were killed, but that's not what she means, is it?

Chara, again, pinning them down, face contorted with pain like they're the one being stabbed instead, silver dripping red in one and gold in the other--but there's nothing from Frisk there, almost nothing; an echo of frustration of a ruined voice and pity and complicated worry, snapped closed like a locket. That's not a memory they need to spill out in front of her.

"Nobody got killed for me. Here." A fuzzy fanged goatface, smiling and crying--does Asriel count? He's already dead but and alive in a different sort of way. No, he didn't die for them. "It's just a place to live. Some people think it's just a big prison." Locks, again, and bars flashing across the sky. But they only imagined that.

The castle's not really being free. Except from death. That's important for some people.

[lyseandpurge]

Judgement pages through image after image, studious. She understands, almost—she understands something. Locks too rusted to function, swords without hands to lift them, the absence of chains: she lingers on these figments, searing them with the heat of her eye.

Home, and here; different places. She understands that. She has hunted through many homes—through dens and burrows, through treetops and cliff roosts, through private dreams and sacred reveries. She once spread over a death-bed like a thick liquid shroud, crushing and drowning some one's last breaths.

And this place is—

a prison, she whispers, in her voice the thought of red skies and a cell's unbroken walls. No need for chains or locks, no need for war or terror.

so that is why i am here.

[dustless]

The Cell is a prison--the impression they're getting of it, if not the red skies.

"It's...like that. It's...bigger." Than the Cell, that Frisk could see--and if she's with them, then even that's less of one, right?

Stairs. Frisk clamps their hand over the railing. They don't want to fall now, and it would be easy to, listening to her. They're graceful when they need to dodge and they've been good about not tripping since midway through the underground, but that's still not a risk they want to deal with. No falling down, metaphorically or literally.

"The Castle takes a lot of people." Shapes, silhouettes: mostly a crowd of children creeping through the halls. "Don't know why." None of the rest are like...her. Whatever she is. Shifter, giant, monstrous but not a monster.

[lyseandpurge]

Double shadows flicker subtly on the steps as Frisk descends, as if cast by a second sun that cannot quite be seen. the Castle takes, Judgement echoes, coming nearer. why? how? where does it take from?

A soft breeze of staticky air signals her slowly passing in front of them, invisible and intangible. break the walls—end the prison. break the walls—kill the Castle. break the walls—set it free.

The cell pulses, rich and bright with blood beneath Frisk's skin.

as with me, always

[dustless]

Displaced air, displaced space. Memories of listening for spears behind their back make themselves known, and without conscious thought, their path goes crooked.

"Everywhere. Different times. Different worlds. Ones without people I know, or you do, or ones who aren't the same." Like the other Frisk, the one who can't see at all. A robot-ghost-man who's beloved by crowds and the same reviled by a kingdom without them saying so to his face.

"But I dunno why. Guess there's just...magic." They thought it took people to help them, once--kids from bad homes, monsters from dead timelines, either and both and more, but they don't think that so much anymore.

It's getting brighter. There's unblocked sunlight streaming through the windows now.

Frisk rubs their arms. Goosebumps.

"You don't...need to kill it. People don't. It fixes itself when stuff breaks anyway."

[lyseandpurge]

Judgement doesn't understand. killing is needed: it opens the door of death. world after world goes through, jaw opening and shutting.

The wall bends, grumbles, crackles as she passes through it, her body a faint tingling in a second sense of touch. She bends her head upwards and looks at the sun. She sees the sky cherry red and smeared with ash.

how not to enter? she asks, bewildered, hanging still in the air, her massive tail still protruding into the stairway. how to put out the calling flame? how to stop wanting? how to turn away?

[dustless]

Jaw? Frisk angles their eyes to where she is, in case she's preparing to open hers again--they take a few hopping steps to the side from that upset wall and slow down. "It's...not. Living's okay." A memory of golden flowers grows in the back of their head. "...maybe not forever. But there's lots of living to do here, and maybe it's not forever, it's just...more living than we might've got back home."

They aren't sure what the Castle wants or why it does what it does, and in all honesty, they don't care a lot anymore--they get angry sometimes, but it's as useful and generally satisfying as yelling at a thunderstorm.

The gardens aren't too far.

"You...can't? Nobody can get away or die, I said." And despite knowing of their own increased apathy, they add "The castle can't stop feelings, either. Not for long." Sometimes it directly changes feelings and thoughts for a while, but that's not forever. Frisk's own feelings are sort of side-effects.

[lyseandpurge]

Judgement is quiet for a while, swimming through and through the groaning stonework of the old stairway.

nobody can get away nobody can die? She speaks slowly, ponderously, indefinitely. living is the prison; the prison is living; i am to all prisons the lock, and the key is death.

A gust stirs the fog outside the window as she repeats: nobody can die.

And the fragment in Frisk's chest warms suddenly, like a fire flaring up as wood crumbles within it, like determination in the face of the unsolvable, like fear set loose from its bonds.

i would like to see the gardens, comes Judgement's voice, subdued and fractured.

[dustless]

Living is the prison. It's maybe not a good idea to scoff at a giant death-causing SOUL-touching being, but Frisk does it in a small noise in the back of their throat. At least you can do stuff when you're alive. Alive for real.

But if it was, they suppose the castle must be the biggest, best jail there could ever be.

"Okay," they say softly.

Frisk keeps going.

It's a straight shot there. The fog shreds under the weight of the sun, or through the strength of the gardens, or maybe just magic. (It's probably just magic.)

They hurry ahead before Judgement can maybe break the door down, even if they're not sure if she can actually fit through the doorway at all--it's hard to look at her long enough to get a good idea of her size, out here.

They step outside and plant their feet on some mossy rocks, standing in the speckled shade of a gathering of pear trees.

The rest of the gardens are spread out before them, though they can't see all that far. There's lots of other flowers, including the kinds that grow on bushes, and those block out most of everything except trees from their short viewpoint.

morbid aunt judgement

[lyseandpurge]

The doorway bends and the wall around it buckles, and the stone groans with unnatural pressure until it bursts, and Judgement passes through. The debris hangs suspended in midair, and then, like time reversing, folds back into shape after she has passed.

And Judgement finds herself floating cloud-like above a field of bright and verdant life. She stares, unseeing, bound by the limits of Frisk's eyes.

the surface, she says uncertainly. the air.

A tingling on their tongue. i can taste it.

this is new.