by GR Griffin
Those particles sparkled in the sun's rays, coming alive in sparks of blue, red, green and yellow. They danced, having been freed from the shackles of their eternal torment. They span slow then fast; faster and faster until they flew out across the ocean. This was not the end, but rather, a new beginning. Their journey upon this world came to its conclusion, and so began their new tale.
Paradise. The living held them in their prayers. Guide them to the light, to the world beyond worlds, where the traveller never grew wary, the found were never lost, and the few were never alone.
The departed left their own prayers to those they were leaving behind. All they asked was that they remembered them, and respected their passing with one little wish…
Live.
* * *
Zeus, surrounded by those he alienated, those he didn't deserve, watched as the deceased took to the world beyond the sunset. His father's words span in his head, destined to remain forever as the twinkling ashes became one with the horizon. His old man was proud to call him his son.
"Zeus… are you okay?" Rickard's voice was heard.
Zeus, the emperor of a world now gone, found his former scribe beside him. The urgency written upon his pale features was unwarranted given the shoddy send-off he received – a shame Zeus will carry until his ashes joined his father's.
"I'm… unharmed. Why do you ask?" Zeus asked.
Rickard pointed directly into his former ruler's face. "Your eye. It appears to be…" he twirled his hand as he searched for the right word. "Leaking?"
"Leaking?"
Zeus swiped his cheek, and in doing so, caught a single drop of gold as it sank into the fur of his index finger.
His first tear.
Chapter 38: New Beginnings
It was over.
A thousand years of history drew to a close, and the survivors would now continue their stories in the real world.
Try as they might, the living inhabitants of the Outerworld could not stand there looking out across the ocean forever, to where the ones they called friends and family drifted away. They awakened from their trances to their sudden change in environment.
"The air," someone said. "It's so clear." Followed by deep breaths and satisfied sighs. Oh, how the Outerworld air now felt stuffy in comparison.
"This sand," another with curious fingers said. "I've never felt anything like it." More fingers, claws and appendages of every shape combed the beach. Grainy, soft sand like they had never experienced before.
"This grass. It's so green and prickly. And nice."
"Wow. This tree's super sturdy. And this one. This one too. Oh, I bet I could climb this one!"
"Eek! This water's so cold. Eww! And it tastes funny, too!"
"Look out there. It goes on forever. This place is huge! How is anyone expected to see it all in one lifetime?"
The collective gasps as these monsters born of the sky made contact with the surface world – a land thought forbidden to them – rang familiar to those chiselled by the Underground. They fondly recalled their first meeting with surface air and Mister Sun. Except now they were sharing their second return with more monsters, every soul experiencing real soil, sand and grass.
At first shocked, awed, the monsters drew in the sweet intoxication of clean, saline air; the alluring radiance of natural sunlight, washing over skin, fur, and scales; the hypnotising draw of waves washing against the shore. It invigorated them, pulling them out of their shells as it would to humble, budding flowers. It was like they were sick and just stumbled upon the remedy.
* * *
Of course, not everything was bound to be golden. A few glaring issues sprang to mind.
"My lor… Zeus," Rickard corrected. "As liberating as this is, I feel obliged to point out that with the Outerworld gone, so is everything we've built." He gestured white, spindly hands to the empty stretch of sand. "We've lost our homes, our food, our money, or tools. We've lost everything."
To this, Zeus, in the wake of no longer ruling the sky – his title dissolved, Empire forfeit – acted the surest he ever has in his whole life. He acted not as the Emperor, but as himself.
"Except our lives," he said. "I remember. When we found the Outerworld, we had already lost everything during the war. It was tough, but we worked together. We survived, and eventually relearned how to live." Off in the distance, he glimpsed the towers of human civilisation, so tall yet not enough to scrape their home. "We will do it again, even if we have to rely on others."
As expected, his minute speech was met with silence. Although there was much to argue against, like whether the humans would welcome them or where were they going to go, he had made his point to a level where it was infallible on the surface. The Outerworld was not a place, but a people. They were the spirit which would keep the land between heaven and earth alive long after they were gone.
The former emperor and former scribe shared a brief glance. Zeus thought he would never see those eyes of his again. Too soon, he thought. In it, he saw the agony he caused earlier that day, in the garden
"Rickard," Zeus began. His tone truly apologetic. "I'm sorry for how I treated you before. You were right, about everything. I let my anger get to me, and I did stupid things because of it. Can you ever forgive me?"
Rickard looked up at him. The anger behind them existed a moment before simmering down to a tepid temperature.
"I suppose forgiveness is the word of the day, isn't it?" he said. He winced as he pulled his shoulders back, feeling the worst of it in his midsection. "I'm not too sure if I can right now, it's still rather early. But I can try in the future."
Zeus nodded. "That's all I ask."
He reached down. Rickard initially flinched considering how rough those hands were the last time. When Zeus made contact, it came in the form of a pat on the back. A gesture that did not seem right coming from his ruthless Emperor. After it was over, it did not sit well with the scribe. He might need Zeus to give him another one just to appreciate how it felt.
* * *
Barb the bounty hunter saw the sky. Those clouds she looked down upon now did the same to her. Her massive influence on the previous world faded and, all of a sudden, she felt small – a speck on a large, porous wall. Her wings twitched with a desire to explore the sky for herself; it was an urge she could not ignore.
Her half-brother, Zeus, sensed her agitation. "Go." That was his seal of approval.
She lunged forward and took flight.
How fortunate that her injured wing had been healed prior, otherwise such a liberating experience would have ended on an abrupt note. She rocketed upwards by fifty feet before realising she could climb higher, so she did.
She guessed her altitude to be at a hundred feet, and was no closer to those orange clouds, so she kept climbing. Her wings slowed automatically as a defence mechanism to stop herself from crashing into the barrier – a lesson she learned the hard way and cost her three days of her life. Here, she pushed herself higher.
She gained distance on her batwings until she looked out and saw miles of land and water in every direction, with no broken borders to separate them, and no bridges to connect them. The civilians on the beach stretched half a mile long, crammed in every square metre. No longer shackled by the confines of her home, she danced and weaved in gracious circles, rolls and loops, free to fly the world.
On the ground, Zeus watched as she took her first flight on planet Earth. She moved so fast she was like a blur, and he struggled to keep track of her. On occasion, he would lose sight, then find her after a moment of scouring.
Her aerial acrobatics tugged another memory he thought lost. In the coming months after Barb's birth, her parents sent word to Zeus to make haste to their quarters. He rushed around corner after corner, knowing the fortress like the back of his paw, and pushed his way through their door to see what the commotion was about. He found baby Barb two inches off the ground, puffy cheeks scrunched and red with exertion as she held herself up on tiny wings.
Mommy and Daddy bat showered their daughter with joy and praise as she took her first flight. It had only been a month since she had taken her first steps.
She spluttered down an inch before tiring out and landing on the padding of her diaper. Her innocent face lay blank for a second before she giggled and clapped her hands. Not only did her parents pick her up and tell her how good she was, but so did he.
The sounds of Barb's parents snapped Zeus out of his reminiscences. Among the crowd, they were there, staring to the heavens to watch her dance. Their baby was dancing. Their baby was free, because Zeus made it happen.
* * *
Too long had Professor Haze spent cooped up in his dingy dungeon of a laboratory, working day and night, harder than the entire population combined. Surprisingly, the realisation that all his years of hard work had been lost in the blink of an eye was not as shattering as he had imagined. If anything, it was a sign.
Time to put the past behind him and look to the horizon. He flexed his eyebrows until every lens was folded behind his ear and he saw the world through his own eyes. He wanted to see what lay beyond the ocean, across fields of green, mountains of grey and glaciers of white.
He wanted to spend what little time he had left basking in his victory. Their victory.
And when his time came, he was bound to have some stories to tell.
Count on it, Juhi.
* * *
Colonel Fischer pushed her way through the crowds, scanning civilian and soldiers alike. The presence and rank which offered her unimpeded passage through most roads and hallways ceased in the wake of their freedom. She, herself, did not feel important either as she mingled with the common folk, her being just as common as they were.
Her helmet felt hot, her armour stifling. She unclasped it all, down to her thin gambeson and the white skin on her forearms.
Sticking out like a sore thumb, she spotted Private Perro. Fischer was just in time to see him run forward – tongue out and tail wagging – as he pulled another husky – laughing and wearing a black dress vest – off the ground and into a manly hug. Colonel Fischer pushed her way forward until she almost witnessed in full clarity the brotherly reunion between Private Perro of the Monster Military, and Chien of the Sky Heights Hotel.
On the last step, her boot knocked against something, almost tripping her up. She glanced down and found a balding komodo dragon with his fingers and toes dug into the sand, shaking all over, refusing to look up or let go.
Fischer recognised him straight away. "Geoff?"
He turned his head, but not by much. Enough to see in the overall direction of his name being called. Not enough in the direction of the sky.
"Do… Do I know you?" he asked in a trembling voice.
"Geoff, it's me," the colonel said, standing over him. "Katherine."
Geoffrey stopped trembling. Now there was a name he hadn't heard in a lifetime. Gentle hands pulled his willing frame upright, yet he sank his heels deep all the way to the ankles. His first look at Colonel Katherine Fischer also glimpsed some of what lay above the horizon. He turned his chin down and dug himself deeper.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked, leaning down to meet him with her violet eyes.
"All that sky… and those clouds… above us…" Geoff said in a hushed tone, afraid that the very forces of physics themselves would overhear his scrutiny. He gripped her forearms. "Don't let me go. I swear I'm gonna fall into it."
Fischer smiled and shook her head. "And they said you were sheltered during school." With both hands, she took hold under his jaw, feeling the roughness of his unkempt facial hair. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Come on."
She lifted his head. His red and yellow eyes remained fixated downward and scrunched up upon levelling. Peep after reluctant peep, he opened them a shade them shut them. The next time lasted a full second. Then two. Three. Five seconds.
He saw Katherine Fischer. Those braces were gone; they made her look cute as a teen, but her teeth looked better with them off. That persistent, flaky rash between her eyebrows had cleared up. Hair still as frizzy as before. No more glasses; does she wear contacts?
Katherine Fischer. In all honesty, he preferred her nickname. "Hi… Kat."
Just as Kat went to open her mouth, she was interrupted by the gruff, doggie voice under her command.
"Hey, look. Is that…?"
Geoff and Kat found the two huskies, Perro and Chien, looking their way. Recognition flashed in their beady canine eyes.
"It is," Chien announced. "It's Geoffrey." They still knew him despite having most of the hair on his head gone, and with that sorry excuse of a beard, and without that 'This is what winning looks like' t-shirt which he wore every Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, but not Sunday for some reason.
The two eagerly approached. Perro's steps large and heavy, his brother the opposite. The komodo dragon turn away in a shy manner, wishing to avoid his past, that he could go back to his sheltered life from before.
"Geoffrey, my man," Perro said. "I haven't seen him since… graduation."
"Where you been all this time?" Chien asked.
"U-u-under the radar, I guess," Geoffrey answered uneasy. He wished he could be standing there as tall, dark and handsome Vail instead of his imperfect, ugly self.
He knew these two, back when Perro was as skinny and tall as a lamppost and Chien wasted his afternoons beneath the yard benches around the time wafts of smoke were spotted rising between the rows. Chien's minimalist change in appearance was a far cry from the jackets, sunglasses, and abundance of studs he wore. The guy even had an afro. An afro!
Geoff tapped Perro's chest plate, nearly breaking his knuckles in the process. "So, uh, been working out? I mean, obviously you have."
"Oh, yeah. You better believe it." Perro flexed his bicep. It burst like a balloon and comically deflated until only a skinny arm remained. He quickly changed the subject. "Still can't beat your grounded hogs sandwich munching record, though."
Geoff hid his eyes. There was not a single thing he had done as Geoffrey which he could place his own stamp of approval on. How he wished he could go back to his life under Black Ice Mountain, strap on a virtual reality set and be somebody who was not him.
He could chomp down fifteen of them in a minute. The best anyone else ever achieved was seven.
"I still remember the victory call you made every time you won," Fischer chipped in with a snap of her fingers. "You remember, don't you?" She gave him a friendly tap on the elbow. "Of course you do."
Those three pairs of eyes waited with eager anticipation for their old colleague to perform his signature taunt. Oh, Geoff was getting caught up in his make-believe persona again. Vail had been his security blanket for too long, but not long enough in his mind. He had performed his call a good few thousand times after school, just not in the frame of himself. He went to raise his hand but some divine force held it down. It felt embarrassing, raising his own hand and not that of the illustrator of illusions.
Perro's gauntlet eclipsed his own and yanked it over his shiny head, accompanied with more words of encouragement. Say those three words. Say it like old times.
Through quivering lips, out came one syllable: "…Ding…"
"You can do better than that," said Private Perro, tugging the arm higher. His socks and sandals erupted from the beach, coated in yellow grains.
Geoff said it louder. "Ding… ding…?"
Chien held his fists up. "Let's do it together."
The three surrounding him reeled their fists and voices for grand display. Geoff threw his hands up as they bellowed in unison.
"Ding, ding, ding!"
They laughed and cheered, and soon Geoffrey joined them as well. Alone, he sulked by himself. With them, he laughed alone with the crowd, and along with the world.
Geoff of Black Ice Mountain realised he wasn't alone.
* * *
So many people. Such a large crowd – dealing with them was not amon
g Alphys's faculties. So long as Undyne had her hands around her, she was protected from any and all threats.
Except the one Undyne had in store.
"Alphys." The sound of Undyne's voice under the collective din brought her up to meet his single eye. "About what you said back there… About jumping…"
Just as Alphys felt so high one minute, she suddenly felt low the next. Those same outward sounds shut off and only hers remained. Two voices in a sea of noise.
"I heard what happened in your lab was pretty bad. But was it really that bad?"
That bad? Alphys could still hear their cries for help both when she was conscious and when she slept. She got chills whenever so much as mayonnaise leaked onto her claws.
Alphys spoke in a very quiet voice. "Y-yes. I thought what I did was unforgivable." She saw her toes crossed. One foot tapped in a nervous tick. "I thought my life was over. I thought there was nothing left for me anymore."
Undyne appeared quizzical. "What made you change your mind then? You found a reason to live?"
The sloshing water and the darkening sand placed the doctor on the spot, one foot away from oblivion. She wondered what the weightlessness of falling would have felt like; it made her more scared of what could have happened on that day.
"No. I didn't find a reason." Without looking up, shaking, her words came out meek. "…She found me."
Quiet in a world of a thousand voices. Undyne looked down at Alphys and Alphys looked down at her feet. She could feel her girlfriend judging her, contemplating how weak she was, how she fell for someone so insecure.
Undyne knelt down to make their eyes level. Her hands soft on her shoulders. For someone of short temperament and an aptitude to kick major hinny, she spoke with an unfound softness. "Look, let's never allow this to get between us ever again." She pressed a fingertip to her chest. "No more feeling sorry for yourself, and no more secrets between us. Okay?"