springing [age event: end]

[dustless]

All across the castle grounds, anyone awake to observe the midnight hour is witness to snowdrop flowers bursting from the snow.

The air settles to something softer, warmer. The layers of ice and snow start to melt away, enveloping the world in a gentle fog, though it will still be a few days yet before the slush outside dries away.

Almost tentatively, more flowers push their way from the ground; leaves on trees bud and start unfurling by sunrise. 

Inside, the distant caroling and laughter gives one final burst of cheery sound before fading into nothing. Between one blink and the next, the castle is back to how it was; faded, old, quiet.

And, of course, the changed beings of the castle will find themselves back to how they once were, with added remembrance of everything that happened while the world was encased in winter.


Frisk's change back is...uncomfortable.

Judgement's sickness takes hold of them again, but at least it's a jerking shift all at once, instead of making all their teeth fall out and changing everything back over the whole day. They've even got some energy.

Their body not feeling completely awful is absolutely made up with their head. They weren't too mean, but they weren't nice, either, and they couldn't help their friends. But their mama's still gone. They didn't think they'd ever see her again, but at least they accepted that. They missed their friends before, but they never missed home. Homesickness really is a sickness.

And...and they don't have their truck anymore. Which is tiny and stupid but it's the thing that tips Frisk over the edge again, trying to hold something big and solid in their arms and not finding anything.

Inside the castle, Frisk hides behind some ratty curtains and sobs into their scarf.




 //don't forget, even if this is making it 'official', backdating for more age-related shenanigans is absolutely allowed!

Comments

=w=b

[dustless]

Not getting nervous.

That's...okay, they begrudgingly admit to themselves.

Habit has them playing with the edge of their scarf, and they think their stare is only a little weakened by the fact they keep having to sniff grossly. Probably. Least he's not laughing at them.

"'Course you don't. Nobody wakes up here on purpose. You're in a castle. It's a time-and-space-hub and it's in the sky. You're stuck," Frisk says bluntly. "Everybody is."

[grimakin]

"It's not the first time I've woken up somewhere without knowing how I got there," he quips, good-naturedly. "At least this time it doesn't come with amnesia." Or foreboding premonitions and dreams about killing the person who woke you up. Blase and near-irreverent good humour has always been his default response to anything he doesn't immediately know how to handle, probably. Probably. Though, it's been tempered only somewhat by service to the crown.

But he does have to take a bit of time to catalogue that. All right. In the sky- fair enough, maybe. If removed and isolationist enough it... could explain some things (though not how it's up there in the first place- Miriel might have loved to examine this). Time-and-space hub- something like the Outrealms, then? Or rather, perhaps more specifically like the Gate, connecting and linking... or is this somewhere in between?

Briefly he revisits the 'realm of the dead' idea. If there is an afterlife, then he supposes no one ever said it had to be for only one world or timeline. No one who could know for sure, anyway. And no one waking up here on purpose... well.

'Are you dead' is a terrible question to ask, bluntness, irreverent humour, or no. And he- has to be dead, or else what was it all for.

Instead he goes with, "Ah, well. That's good. It means I haven't been slacking. It would be pretty silly to not recognize the castle of another country when your job was to advise royalty."

[dustless]

Frisk's teeth audibly click together. They don't like that amnesia part, but that's just about worrying for whatever happened this stranger. Worrying for isn't what they want to be doing, it's worrying about and their own nature is betraying them.

They never thought they'd be jealous about people who could just be mean whenever they feel like it. It's not that they never can, but this isn't important enough to keep their anger doing more than smolder low.

Advising royalty? They didn't think of that from his clothes--no, he feels more like a wizard. Maybe he is. Still, that's not what comes out of their mouth next:

"...You're a...royal guard?"

[grimakin]

His mouth flattens a little at the sound of teeth on teeth, concern flickering back to the forefront of his mind over cheerful irregard. They were clearly distressed before he arrived; seems he's just helped to trade one form of it for another. He's supposed to be able to handle people relatively well, but that was generally on a wider scale and took time otherwise to learn about and invest himself in everyone's lives. Cold reads of emotional states are a different thing entirely.

Still, their general demeanour rings of tension whether repressed or not, at odds with themself (understandably so, maybe, if they're caught between fight and flight...) and he's having trouble tracking exactly which things he's doing in specific that are exacerbating it. Whatever it is, it doesn't seem... helpful, really, to them. That's... no good.

He does draw himself up a bit, hand on chin in thought, the other crossed to support it, expression somewhat more sober. "Whatever it is you're thinking about, don't," he says, slightly more firmly than his tone has been thus far. "I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. I sure don't, and it's my amnesia to begin with." Given the state of his familial relations, and the circumstances of his birth, he doubts that it was worth remembering anyway. "But, ah, no. Not exactly."

He grins, sheepishly, close eyed and open palmed, shoulders raised in a half shrug. "I'll leave that to the knights proper. I have a friend who already has the... babysitting part covered pretty well. Me, I just get paid to tell people to do things. Or not to do things." His hands lower again with a mildly thoughtful hum. "I guess I might count as a guard, though, if the things I told people to do generally helped to keep the crown alive and the kingdom functional? Only if you define guard pretty loosely, though- the place I came from doesn't have 'royal guard' as a specific rank or division of the knights."

god they are so grumpy. sry robin.

[dustless]

"Wh--can't tell me what I should worry about," they growl back. It's important. He doesn't look like anyone from Barnaby-bunny's world, but their friend's been messed up with memory modification stuff enough, and the castle just made them and all kinds of other friends and people lose who they were for a while. On top of worry-for-a-person, they don't know if it's something that might come following him one day.

They might be a little paranoid; only it's not paranoia if an erased memory came back and chained you to a wall and killed a few of your friends in the meantime.

Right?

But they're not going to explain this to a new person. Too much for either of them.

They force their one fist to unclench, wiping their palm on the side of their pants and pointing to the hilt of his blade. "'S guards and..." the word mercenary slips their mind-- "...and people--monsters--hired for FIGHTing that had those. Where I'm from." Accusation is slick over their words. Why does someone who advises have that thing, huh?

this is fair tbh

[grimakin]

Another mental eyebrow raise. Well, guess he got the cause right. Now is it the amnesia part or the worrying part that gets them more... "All right. I'm sorry I mentioned it; that was insensitive of me, and I apologise."

As for their actions next, that's more understandable. Distrust of those who were armed, without explicitly being tied to protection of some sort... Doubtless they've had experiences, secondhand or otherwise, with unsavoury sorts. Looters, or bandits, or perhaps simply those drunk on their own power...

A wry, languid shrug. "If I'm going to do my job, it's better if I can defend myself rather than need a guard myself. I'm a battlefield tactician, so I work best if I actually can see what the actual knights and guards are doing instead of telling them what to do from half a continent away. I think it's better this way." Seeing the people you're ordering around, rather, knowing each of them is a life and individual not to be thrown about carelessly as opposed to some of the others he's faced. "I don't like the idea of hiding away while talking about other people's lives.

"If you're worried about me using it here..." He tilts his head, just a little, and crosses his arms. It's a position hard to draw a sword from, in any case, whether deliberately so or not. 'Monsters' hired for fighting? Literal or metaphorical? If they had bad experience with armed sorts, he supposes those who actively sought out opportunities to fight could very well seem like monsters... Or is it a derogatory term for all those not fully human, given their few odd features?

Hmm. "I doubt I'll be given much reason to have to use it, and I know my word doesn't mean much when I'm a stranger to you- but would you be more satisfied if I promised I would only fight in self-defense, or if someone wanted to spar? As long as someone isn't actively attempting to take my head off or something, I'd much rather a nice chat myself."

[dustless]

And he keeps being so nice. Their scowl deepens, but they force themselves to move on.

"No battles here. FIGHTS, sometimes, but those're usually 'cause someone's scared, not just bad. Not a lot of people, either, even though it's a really big castle."

Belatedly, Frisk hopes this isn't someone from the war on monsters. Those are old-fashioned clothes, though a lot fancier than that one with the poncho wore.

"...'s fine." Perfect, actually. "'Cause there's a bunch of monsters here. Like skeletons. They're my family," they add with a cold stare of warning.

Maybe they're a little overprotective. Maybe they don't care about that.

[grimakin]

Maybe it's his own method of self-distraction, but...

He huffs out a breath that otherwise would have been longer, slower than it needed to be, shoulders sagging in a way that seems at odds with his overall unperturbed demeanour. "Gods, I would hope there's no battles." Two wars across the span of three years, nevermind what that last resistance against Grima qualified as. There's emphasis on the way they say fights, versus the way they do battles, but whatever meaning they attach to it likely stems from contexts he's not privy to. He thinks he understands that any would be conflicts are probably more along the lines of personal squabbles than anything world shattering.

That's fine. That's fine, even if his mental eyebrow raise turns physical. That is quite the glare.

"...Not Risen?" Or- Deadlords, or anything of the sort, as a sympathy ploy or some other form of psychological warfare. But from the way they speak of them, it implies they could think, could act of their own accord. Were autonomous entities in their own right, unless there were in fact some necromancer around for the entirety of this child's relationship with their skeleton family who hadn't bothered to make their presence known, for some unlikely reason. Doubtful, in other words.

Well, if this is where the dead go, why wouldn't there be skeletons. Maybe their appearances here depends partially on the manner of death. Slightly belatedly it occurs to him he might want to define the term, but he leaves it be- he's mildly curious what the child makes of it otherwise.

[dustless]

...So, peaceful human. One that's definitely seen a lot of bad things and probably isn't actually faking it.

Fuzzy guilt grows, and they try to make themselves relax further--only that's blown out of the water almost immediately.

Risen, he says. That word's unfamiliar, but Frisk thinks the meaning behind it certainly isn't. "My brothers aren't zombies," they say, puffing up. "They're monsters. Monsters're made of magic, not dead humans."

...Probably. At least mostly not. Maybe their brothers have some SOUL-stuff from the lab weaponizing them, willingly or not, but they don't want to talk about that to anybody, let alone a human stranger.

[grimakin]

"Well, that's good," he says, blankly, with a few surprised blinks before shaking his head as if to clear it. "Sorry- it's just-"

"There were mages, back where I came from. With loose morals and even looser concepts of respect." And an ancient dragon god of destruction unimpressed with humanity hell bent on destroying everything, and lording it over those left in their wake using the faces of those who would hurt the most, but he doesn't say that aloud.

(He's grateful to Naga, for her counsel, and general apparent benevolence, but can't quite entirely stamp out the barest flicker of resentment that what feels like it should have been an affair for those designated as gods was left for those below them to deal with. But then again, maybe that's only his forgotten upbringing as Grimleal speaking. Not worth thinking about.)

Instead, he unfolds his arms and raises a hand to allow a few tendrils of aimless dark magic to curl out from it, slow and soft flickers of violet-black.

They bounce, a little, when he waggles his fingers, miming puppetry. Then it all vanishes as he releases the nosferatu spell again.

"I'm glad, though!" he follows up. "That you have family here." Skeletons made of magic, and not of someone's remains. Certainly a form to be given them, and rife for misunderstanding... he'd suspect a joke were it not for how fervent they are. No, the child cares, and he can't fault them for anger when they're only defending the ones they're close to. Something about the thought strikes true, somewhere, and- he almost smiles.

"Are you the oldest, then?"

[dustless]

Mages. That's...a word they don't like.

Frisk's eyes snap to the stuff. Magic. He's a mage? Something like that, but he probably doesn't want to be called that. Even Frisk started disliking being called 'human' before their SOUL got messed up into...whatever it is now, whatever they are now.

Still, their head's a little less jumbled now. He's been so calm, and it's easy (and hurts less) to latch onto old bad things than new bad things. "Magic humans--mighta been called mages--locked monsters underground where I'm from, a long time ago. There was a war. 'Cause they were scared. Got trapped there for a really long time. Magic got forgot, the monsters got forgot. Then I fell in and broke the barrier and saved them. Don't want humans to hurt the ones that got here."

And then they just nod a little awkwardly. It's a weird subject for them, family. Toriel was going to be theirs, but that's not ever happening now. They certainly don't want it to.

"Second, I think. Serif and Papyrus're just babies, but they...grew fast, so they're like kids. They're taller than me," they tell him with a frown, but they loosen up at the same time and it's a really big one. Exaggerated effort, it doesn't actually bother them.

(...usually.)

[grimakin]

"My son is taller than I am," Robin says, blandly, with a wry quirk of the mouth. Oh no, that's adorable. But he 'hmm's, all the same, settling back against the wall as he gauges something, looking thoughtful. 'Monsters' again, huh... Not quite the same history, and probably not actually a pejorative like he'd thought earlier, given their continued usage of it, but...

"...A thousand years ago," he begins, "where I came from. There were different races. Humans- and other. There's, ah, a lot of others out there, but let's just call them all Taguel for now so it's easier, okay?

"Anyway. Back then, humans treated Taguel like... servants." Slaves, more like, like they were things and property instead of people, but he's amending it slightly based on his estimation of their age. "Worse than prisoners and livestock. They were treated horribly. If they ever did anything slightly wrong they were punished harshly. Because they were different, because they looked less than human. There were rabbit people, cat people, bird people, lions, wolves, and more, I'm told. Dragons, too."

A short sigh, his arms folding back over his chest, more in the shoulders than in his breath. "This is just what I'm told, though, because the thing is, none of this is in the history books."

"... I guess my point is, we do some pretty terrible things to other people when we're scared, don't we? And then we forget, and we erase it. If you wait long enough, it's like you can pretend it never happened, if no one still remembers it." His smile is a little flat. "I won't try to hurt anyone who's had to deal with that sort of thing, believe me."

[dustless]

Frisk sort of twitches. A son. He left behind family. Or--the castle stole him from his.

His son might show up, or he might not. They weigh whether or not they should say so, and maybe they're guiltily relieved they don't need to decide before he keeps talking.

'Servants'. Frisk understands the implication regardless. And with stuff like wolves and dragons, no doubt plenty of those Taguel were used to fight, too. More weapons. Dolls. Things.

Anger they had left drains out. "Yeah. Good. Thanks. And...sorry." They exhale and straighten up when it catches a little. No more crying. And to clarify: "You don't scare me. I was angry at something else first."

[grimakin]

"I kind of figured, though I'm pretty sure that I wasn't really helping either, at first." Still isn't, in some regards, even if overall they seem- better, than when he'd just showed up. To that end, he smiles slightly wider, easing his hood down as he does. It's fainter this time, but more genuine. "Don't worry about it! No harm done."

Then his head tilts, a little owl-like. "I'm guessing your brothers aren't the only monsters here?"

[dustless]

"I..." turned small, forgot who I was, forgot my friends and family, miss mama for the first time "...I'm kinda tired," they say with a ducked head and shrug. Ignore that, it's time for actually-important information now.

Tap-tap-tap, they pace around him and offer an arm. If he wants to try. He might pull them down instead, but that doesn't occur to them. "No. There's...goat-monsters kinda human shaped, or ones that look goopy, and robots. I think. Right now. Sometimes people disappear, sometimes they come back. Dunno why or when. Um, there's a giant diamond--she's not a real monster, but stay away from her."

What are they forgetting? A lot of things--

"Name's Frisk," they add. That isn't the most important thing, but it might make things confusing later.