Monster Age

by GR Griffin

  Scribe Rickard took down further notes on his clipboard. “A wise choice, my lord,” he said before bowing himself out of sight, almost tripping on his own tail.

  The Advisor watched Rickard’s less-than-graceful exit. “These next few days are going to be the longest of our lives,” they said with a sigh.

  Zeus sighed along. “Yep. They probably will be.”

  * * *

  Precisely one hour after the rain started, it stopped just as quickly. Fleck stepped out onto the deck, back in their attire. The boots were still a little soggy, but a few thousand steps would solve that problem.

  They took their first step onto the grass and heard the blades crack faintly. The list of oddities in the Outerworld got longer and longer. First the light, then the stone tiles, then the food and drink, and now the grass that felt like the stuff they use for tennis courts.

  Fleck looked around and quickly spotted Black Ice Mountain on the horizon, so far away, it’s grey and black colouring behind a haze of blue. Between them and it, miles of fake greenery. It seemed like it would take Fleck a lifetime to reach it on foot.

  Rita remained by Fleck’s side as the evening sun shone of them, giving them some much needed, last-minute advice. “Remember, if you find water, it’s always safe to drink, even if it looks dirty.”

  Sam exited the house, approached Fleck, and handed them a small cloth bag, quickly wiping off a thick layer of white dust first. “Here, take these,” he said.

  Fleck took the bag, opened the top and looked inside. A few dozen white stones jangled around. Fleck picked one out and peered at it in the light. The smooth coin was perfectly white and perfectly round. They could not tell whether it was made of stone or metal.

  “Cloud coins,” Sam explained. “They started finding these things lying around, and before we knew it, they became money in these parts.” He pointed toward the mountain. “Just keep headin’ north, avoid the river, and you should reach a town called Parfocorse before nightfall – you can’t miss it. There should be more than enough there to buy a meal and rent a room for the night, other than that, you’re on your own.”

  Fleck gazed back at what awaited them, the journey that lay ahead. So many obstacles lay before them, lying in wait, and Fleck only had one shot to best them. At the end of their long journey, their home awaited, and Toriel and Asgore were waiting for them, and Papyrus and Sans, and Alphys and Undyne.

  The thought of getting home filled them with determination... for all that’s worth.

  “We’ve done all we can,” Rita said. “The rest is up to you, hon. Knock ‘em dead.”

  Sam gave Fleck a gentle pat on the back. “Good luck out there, Kiddo.”

  Chapter 10: People are Strange

  Alphys stopped herself inches before she could tumble down the side of a cliff.

  Deep in desperate concern, she had blindly followed Papyrus into the teleporter, against her better judgement. It was a good thing she had punched in the co-ordinates of where she guessed the anomaly in the sky was, otherwise who knows where she could have ended up. The claustrophobic seclusion of the basement’s cement floor and white walls were swept away in a brilliant flash of light, paving the way to a vast world that stretched out for miles around. Alphys, still moving forward, had lost Papyrus, but spotted a rocky ledge steps before herself.

  Alphys slammed on the brakes, digging her heels into the brittle earth, leaving a trail of dust in her wake. She skidded to a halt on the very ledge, her body, still under the influence of her momentum, jerked forward. Over the edge, Alphys looked down and felt her heart drop as far as the fall before her. She sank her toes into the ground, rooting herself to the spot, then swung her arms back wildly. Somehow, she defied all the laws of gravity and snapped her body upright, her glasses slipping straight off her eyes. She made out the blur that could only be her spectacles spinning in mid-air and snatched them before they could fall.

  She backed away a few steps, drawing herself closer to where she first appeared. Alphys needed a moment to compose herself now that the little near-death experience was behind her. She was shaking and breathing rapidly. “That… that could’ve gone so much worse…” She caressed her spectacles with her trembling claws, only barely making them out from arm’s length, and placed them back on their rightful position before her eyes. “Where am I?”

  Her vision returned, focused by the lenses, and the sight on the horizon was one that she needed to see. She saw what Fleck had seen hours ago, and what Undyne had witnessed the hour previous, and it had her mesmerised, just as it had mesmerised them. The ridiculously large fortress looming above. The unnaturally tall trees beyond. Alphys began to shake once more, finding it hard to believe that these islands were real and that she was standing on them right there and then. That she was gazing upon the land between Heaven and Earth.

  “It’s like one of my Japanese animes…” she barely managed to get out.

  She glanced down at the land below. When the word ‘paradise’ comes to mind, one expected such things like fields of green, flowers under every colour of the rainbow, and also actual rainbows, not a scene that was akin to that of the Grand Canyon. Mountains of crude rock the colour of mud left and right with valleys of dirt streaming through like veins, all pockmarked with capillaries of caves, black holes upon brown and grey. A thin haze of dust stifled the air, everything smelled of iron and copper, sweat and toil.

  So many questions and so many theories churned in the doctor’s brain. There was so much to learn about this place and she wanted every little detail. Were these really the islands as told within the boundaries of the book? How did these islands stay afloat? Did anyone live here? If so, what was their government, their society, their laws, their history? How did they sustain themselves? How could something so large have remained hidden from the humans for all this time? The amount of questions made her head spin – her brain wanted to pop out of her skull and run away.

  Alphys risked a look down the cliff side, keeping a tight hold on her spectacles. The fall would not have been merciful, plenty of jutting rocks to bounce off of on the way down. You would be lucky to have at least one bone intact by the time you reached the bottom. Had she fallen, that would have been the ultimate irony of the century – to teleport into the sky where the chances of falling were one in a trillion, only to land on solid ground and yet nearly fall to one’s demise anyway.

  Looking down, the doctor could not help but remember another part of her life – the time where she was at her lowest –, a more depressing, less joyful period of time to be the royal (now ex-royal) scientist, Doctor Alphys. She closed her eyes.

  * * *

  She reopened them. Darkness. Deep darkness down below, waiting to swallow her whole. The water tugged at her ankles, beckoning the troubled monster researcher to join them. An empty french-fry bag drifted silently past and over the falls, never to be seen again, followed shortly later by a videotape with the film spilled out and a leather shoe with a hole chewed through the sole. Perhaps this was for the best. There was no way of coming back from this, her actions were inexcusable, her life was already over.

  She recalled reaching out in the dying luminescence and stroking white, sickly fur, hearing the collective whine of several dogs, all fused into one being. Alphys remembered whispering softly into their ear and assuring them – whatever they were, whatever they had become – that everything was going to be alright, that she was going to do everything in her power to fix this, no matter what. She looked at the same claw and thought, for one instant, that she saw white residue.

  She could still hear them, calling out to her from across tons of metal and earth.

  “Stay here with me…” Angry. Heavy. Rough.

  “Come and join the fun.” Loud. Abrasive. Tinny.

  “Sn… o… wy…” Slow. Sad. Pitiful.

  She had lied, of course. The young scientist had no idea how to fix them, or if they could even be fixed. They should be dead. She should have allowed nat
ure to run its course and let those monsters crumble to dust… now death was surely a more suitable alternate as opposed to whatever they had become.

  What was waiting for her back at the lab? Nothing but a few dozen angry letters, a collection of nerdy junk, and all the mistakes she had made in her short time. Who was she in the Underground? She was a failure, a fraud, a loser, and when they discover the terrible truth, an outcast. She does not deserve the title of ‘Royal Scientist’, she never did. She didn’t deserve to reach the surface, she would never be welcomed there anyway. Eventually, they would find out what she did, and then she would not be welcome in the Underground either. She didn’t belong on the surface. She didn’t belong in the Underground. She didn’t belong anywhere.

  Alphys stared down into the abyss, the abyss stared back. The drop, however, was a mystery, an adventure just waiting to be explored. The abyss was accepting, never judging, taking in everything and everyone equally, regardless of good deeds or heinous crimes. From the highest saint to the lowest sinner, from the most flawless jewel to the most worthless piece of garbage, gravity took all the same way, and the darkness consumed all into its never-ending, grumbling belly. All she had to do was take that one step and the abyss would welcome her with open arms. Honestly, Alphys did not think she even deserved their embrace; she wouldn’t be surprised if, after she jumped, the abyss just spits her back out.

  I’m gonna do it… Alphys thought, saying in her head the same thing she had been saying for the past hour. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it! There’s nothing left for me here. She stood up as straight as she could, her mind made up. This is it. Goodbye, cruel—

  “Looks pretty deep, doesn’t it.”

  Alphys jumped and yelped at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. She span around, and the sight of huge teeth and dissimilar, snakelike eyes made her jump again. That’s how Alphys met… a fear-provoking fish lady. The scaly stranger stood tall, over six-feet in height, her skin blue, and a red ponytail flowing in the gentle breeze.

  “You okay?” the stranger asked.

  Alphys babbled, unsure of what to say. “I’m s-sorry, I-I-I didn’t s-see you there. You-you scared me.”

  The stranger chuckled. “Relax, I get that a lot. I guess I just have that way with people.”

  “I-I didn’t… It-it’s just that I didn’t notice you there, I wasn’t saying that y-you’re scary… o-or… any… thing…” Those last words slipped out from Alphys’s loose lips before she could stop them; if only she could say the right things when it truly mattered. Now this person must already think she was a freak.

  Alphys was obliviously fixated by the lady’s dead eye; the one on the left, white and dull with a small cut – years old – running down it. Alphys could not pull her eyes, all four of them, away.

  The fish-lady knew where the girl in the lab coat was staring. “Yeah…” she remarked as she brought her hand up to her face and tapped the ridge beside her non-functioning eye. “I guess this doesn’t exactly help in the looks department. I should probably cover it up or something.” She turned to the darkness below, where all the water was going. “I wonder where that goes.”

  Alphys’s head switched back and forth from the stranger to the abyss, unsure as to where to divert her attention. “Oh, um, well… I… I’ve been thinking about that for a while a-and I’ve come up with some ideas – some t-theories, I mean.” She struggled to form coherent sentences. She stared down at her feet, fully submerged in running water. Her fingers fidgeted. “You see, the water is travelling down here, so it must be doing that for a reason. It could be part of a vast river, one that could travel for miles underground, eventually reaching the sea o-or the ocean. On the other hand, it all could be accumulating at the bottom there. Or it could even be falling forever. It might even lead to a different dimension, another world far, far away from here.” Her fingers locked together and her thumbs began to twiddle. “…Far… far away… where nobody knows who you are…”

  The stranger looked into the depths as if expecting it to answer to one of the theories spoken, upon which the abyss responded blankly and devoured a broken action figure. “That’s pretty neat,” she said. Her voice reverberated off the encrusted ceiling hundreds of yards above.

  Alphys snapped her gaze up, genuinely surprised by the sudden interest. “Really? You think that’s interesting?”

  “Totally! I was just in the neighbourhood looking for some sweet swords, and I didn’t expect to find anyone around, especially someone who talks so… analytically. You new around here?”

  “Kind… Kind of. I’ve got my lab in – I, er, live in Hotland. I… wanted t-to be here because, err…” Alphys’s words trailed off. What was she going to say, that she had travelled all this way purely to end her misery? Some introduction that would be. “I… like the peace… and the quiet, I suppose.”

  The stranger smiled, showcasing her upper and lower rows of huge teeth. “Why don’t you tell me more about those theories of yours?”

  “You… you really want to hear them…?”

  “Sure,” the stranger answered. She took Alphys by the hand and led her to some stacks of pallets. “Don’t hold anything back!”

  And so, after a shaky start, Alphys did as she was asked. So many theories passed Alphys’s lips, she had no idea where they began and where they ended. She talked and she talked and she talked and she talked; she didn’t just talk, she sang. She didn’t just sing, she harmonised. The time ran by, yet the stranger remained, taking in every word. It felt so nice to have someone to talk to, someone who would listen. Despite the stranger’s scary appearance, there was an air to her that Alphys started to like.

  Before she knew it, Alphys glanced at the display screen on her phone and realised that she had been talking for a few too many hours longer than necessary. “Whoa, would you look at the time,” she said. “I gotta get home and… whip up some d-dinner.” What Alphys did not say was that the dinner was not intended for herself.

  “Sure,” the other replied. She jumped off her seat – her boots splashing the water – and pointed her thumb over her shoulder. “I better get back too, gotta be ready for my final test with the King tomorrow.”

  A bead of sweat broke on the royal scientist’s brow as a charming, handsome, fuzzy monster came to mind. “Th-the King? King Asgore?”

  The fish monster nodded. “Yeah. He’s been working on setting up a military, you know, to catch any humans who fall down here. They’re finally setting up a plan to break the barrier. I’ve been training super hard for this, he’ll put me in charge for sure!” She turned a dismissing glance to the side. “Although, my opposition comprises of a few dogs, and, well, anyone can best them with some strategically-placed petting. So, I reckon I’ve got this one in the bag.”

  Alphys knew about the dogs mentioned – Doggo, needs glasses; Lesser Dog, staring at snow, expecting art; Dogamy, proposed to Dogaressa two months back – having received at least one angry letter from each of them, signed with paw prints. “Oh, well, uh, best of luck to you.” Alphys sprang upright, her legs stiff. “I guess I’ll… I don’t know… see you around?”

  “Sure, I’d like that.” The stranger turned to leave, but stopped and turned back. “By the way, the name’s Undyne.”

  “Alphys,” she responded quietly. “My name’s Alphys.”

  Undyne gave Alphys a thumbs up. “I’ll see you around, Alphys.”

  Alphys turned to leave, but stopped as she spotted something poking out from one of the many heaps of rubbish. She approached and realised that it was the plastic package of a fancy-dress pirate costume. From the looks of it, the costume – consisting of a vest, pants, bandanna, plastic hook, plastic sabre, and eyepatch – was in great condition, probably having been worn only once, maybe twice. What a waste.

  The royal scientist plucked the packet from out the heap and unclipped the flap. She rummaged through the mess of scrunched cloth, dragging out the vest, and found the eyepatch. Inspecting it in the blue sh
ade, the eyepatch appeared surprisingly sturdy, made from tough leather. This was made to last a lifetime, not just for Saturday night.

  Alphys span around. “Hey, Undyne, I—” But it was already too late. Undyne was long gone, Alphys was alone once more with only herself, the garbage, and the din of rushing water, cold around her knees. She glanced back over to the falls. Hours ago, she was convinced that her life was about to close. “I’ll…” Back to the eyepatch in hand. “I’ll hand this over the next time I see her…”

  * * *

  Alphys opened her eyes and was back in the present day, before the cliff ledge. As if the emotional scarring the failed experiment had left on her wasn’t bad enough, she felt more trauma just standing by that waterfall. Things could have gone so much more differently. Had Undyne not shown up, had she decided to stay at home that day, they would never have met, and there would have been no reason for Alphys to not take the plunge to another dimension.

  In the days that followed, Alphys did not find it in herself to hand over the eyepatch in person, as much as she wanted to. She was too afraid that Undyne would hate it, which was ridiculous looking back at it now. Instead, Alphys left it hanging from an easy to see spot in the garbage dump. The next time they met, Undyne was sporting it. They became friends, and that was when the lies began to mount up. Lies on top of lies to make herself look better. On the outside, she was smart and cool and assertive, but deep down, her woes ate away at her. The fibs and untruths did not make her insecurities go away, in fact, it created more.

  Now, the cliff stood before Alphys as a testament of sorts. She failed to jump the first time. Perhaps this was her second chance to rectify that missed opportunity?

  No. Alphys had no intentions of jumping. Had she have taken the cowardly way out of her mistakes, she would never have worked up the courage to face up to them, and in turn, become a better person because of it. Back then, Alphys felt that she had nothing to lose, but today, she had so much to live for.