UnderAsriel

31 - Azzy

"DADDY!!" Chara screamed, but the scream was lost to Kel's ears. 

She sensed nothing else. Her whole mind, every particle of her being, was wrapped around the sight of Sans's grandpa slumped dead on the ground. The thud of his falling echoed through her veins.

Asgore....

It had been so sudden. There had been no warning, no slow-motion collapse. He had just slumped quietly over, like an old rag doll. Like his life meant nothing, like he was of no more importance than a sack of potatoes.

She felt light-headed. She stared at the motionless body, and the world around it seemed to turn slightly, as if dizzy in grief for the death of its kindest royal.

And then, before her eyes, Asgore evaporated.

It was over quickly. One moment he was there, and the next moment he had dissolved. Everything he was, everything he was wearing, splintered apart into fine particles of white dust, like he had been nothing more than a sand sculpture and someone had taken a leaf blower to him. For a second, Kel thought she glimpsed the glow of a white, upside-down heart - but then it, too, disintegrated, and all that was left of Asgore was a pile of silty chalk.

'the problem with monster souls, though, is that they tend to evaporate when the body dies...'

Sans hadn't been kidding.

The knife flashed in its owner's hand, and Kel's horrified gaze flicked up to land on the dark shape of a person who could only have emerged from the depths of her best nightmare.

At first glance, he was a demon, silhouetted in flickering violet light that now seemed to flare straight from the fires of Hell. At second glance, he was another goat monster - but not the fluffy, friendly kind of goat monster, like Asgore. Not in the slightest. This monster could easily pass as Satan, and not just on Halloween.

He was as tall as Asgore, but much thinner, though just as powerfully built. Two dark stripes trailed up the sides of his narrow head. His horns were long: they were obsidian black, and they rose straight up from his skull, curling slightly at the tips. He was wearing a uniform similar to that of the Royal Guard, except somehow more distinctive, regal. His cloak was thrown back; it poured out behind him, its edges scalloped in white.

And his eyes. His eyes were terrifying. They were pale, pale violet, and they glowed like cat eyes in the dark. They were hard, and they were cold, and they were brimming with incalculable hatred. Just one look at them cut Kel to the soul.

He radiated menace. Menace and power, stronger than Sans ever had. Fitting, for someone who had the depravity to murder Asgore.

There was no doubting who this was.

With not even a glance at what remained of his father's body, the knife still clutched firmly in his hand, Asriel stepped into the light.

"I," he growled, and his voice was higher than Asgore's, yet infinitely scarier, "hate. You."

He lunged forward, and Kel stumbled back, but he wasn't looking at her, he was looking beyond her, and he shoved her roughly aside, and she tumbled to the ground as he strode past, his cape whipping her in the face...

Chara.

She pushed herself to her hands and knees just in time to see Asriel seize the child painfully by the shoulder, his face a terrible contortion of rage.

"Azzy, stop," the kid gasped, struggling to pull away.

"No, you stop!!" Asriel shouted, and he lifted Chara into the air as if they were nothing more than a mewing kitten. They let out a cry of pain, dangling by their shoulder. "You STOP!! FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE, JUST STOP!! WHY DO YOU ALWAYS. HAVE TO. SEE ME. SUFFER?!?!"