UnderAsriel

32 - A Challenge

(hey!! sorry this chapter is late - school started yesterday for me and dear asgore if AP English isn't insane, i don't know what is)

It was like no light Kel had ever seen, a spinning galaxy of burning color, a universe of bright reflection, prisms of spiraling aura, a rainbow transformed into flame. Bursts of blue and green and orange and red and purple and yellow and butterfly pink, dancing around her in a torrent of white. It completely enveloped her: it was everywhere, all that could be felt or smelt or heard, like she'd been plunged into an ocean of liquid chroma. It dug claws into her senses; it took her eyelids and stretched them open, she couldn't blink, couldn't look away from the swirling hues. It was in her hands, on her face, in her hair. It was everything.

And it was death.

Kel didn't have to think twice to know that this, this torrent of blinding iridescence, was magic. Asriel's magic, to be precise. It vibrated in waves around her, throbbing through her veins, pounding through her head. It could be nothing else. Somehow, Asriel's inky demonizing had conjured this, this display of wonder, of magic.

And if she knew anything about magic, it was dangerous. Incredibly so. She'd used two tiny beams of it on Papyrus, and he'd almost died.

This was far more than two beams. It was certain to kill her. 

But it didn't hurt. It was violent, and it was powerful, but it didn't hurt. There was no wound, no blood, no scorching heat. No pain.

Or, at least... no pain in her body. Kel could only imagine what was happening to her soul. The magic raged around her, beating its brutal rhythm through her flesh, and she could just feel her spirit starting to splinter apart, flaking away like Asgore's body on the cold stone floor, lying dead, broken, just beyond the glittering knife raised in the hand of his only son...

And then, all of a sudden, the light dispersed.

Kel blinked, the colors still imprinted on her vision. The magic had vanished, just as quickly as it had appeared. There was no trace left of it, no smear of brightness, no smattering of hue. In its place was simply... darkness.

Cold, empty, absolute darkness. The black of an abyss.

I'm dead, she thought dizzily.

So this was what it was like to die. To be completely and utterly dead. To be in pure silence, pure darkness, pure death.

Had Asgore seen this blackness, too? Had her parents seen it?

I'm... dead.

That had been a nice way to die. That had been a really nice way to die. No ruptured arteries, no hours spent in a sweat-soaked hospital bed. It had been quick. Painless. Even beautiful.

In fact, now she thought about it... she found herself wondering why Asriel had chosen such a nice death for two people he supposedly hated so much. He'd had knives, after all. He could have made it long, gruesome, agonizing...

She shuddered, imagining the blade tearing into her flesh. Blood, spurting out of her pores. The darkness falling over her eyes, but slowly, inch by inch, shadow by shadow...

But wait. Hold on.

She couldn't be dead.

She'd just blinked. And shuddered.

And now that she thought about it, she could feel sand underneath her, pressing into her skin. It was welled up around her legs, around her arms, around her head. It was sharp, and it was grainy, and it was real.

The arena sand. She was on her back in the arena sand.

This wasn't the darkness of death. It wasn't even the darkness of unconsciousness. She was staring up at the cavernous sky of the Underground, and she was very much alive.