Never Die Again

4. The Weight of Failure

In a pristine white room, Frisk sat at a long conference table. Others present included Gaster, Sans, Chara, Asriel, Asgore, Undyne, Alphys, Mettaton, Napstablook, Mad Mew Mew, Atami, Tevis, Felicia, Elodie, and - most importantly - Dacuel. There were dark shadows underneath Dacuel's red eyes, and he rocked restlessly in his chair. He looked as bad as Frisk felt, and it was no secret why.

Dacuel had revealed the origin of Cathleen and her followers, the 'Demons of Garnet.' Every one of them had died over two-thousand-years ago in a massacre perpetrated by the Human Alliance - a precursor to the World Government - in the name of defending humanity. They had been among the first victims of the Human-Monster War. Chara's breaths were erratic as Dacuel told the gruesome story; Frisk could see her repressed hatred of humanity boil beneath her skin. He couldn't blame her. It was not a tale anyone was happy with.

"So, yeah," Dacuel said. "We should all be in the ground now, but then Teach came along."

Chara blinked. "Teach?"

Dacuel nodded. "Yeah, Professor Alpin. He's the one who resurrected us, gave us shiny new souls and everything. Pretty crazy, huh?"

Well, that's what Gaster had said would happen. They knew that Cade had seduced Alpin with the promise of power, so when he died, it was only natural that Alpin would raise more demons to succeed where Cade had failed. It had only been a matter of time, and here it was.

"We all freaked out when it happened," Dacuel said. "Even Ev who had totally called it. After all, it's not every day that you turn into Michael the Tormentor."

"Wait, he was a demon?" Chara asked.

"Well, according to Ev, he was," Dacuel said. "Don't worry about it. Point is, we all lost our minds, especially Cath. Most of us never dreamed that coming back from the dead was possible. It took a long time to convince Cath that she wasn't locked in some fever dream ticking away the milliseconds before her dying brain passed on. That was a more rational explanation than the truth, honestly. How could we be expected to believe what happened to us was real? It went against all common sense we had known our whole lives. It certainly wasn't easy to accept." His tone grew dark. "However, once Teach got through to her, everything changed."

Dacuel was quiet for a while. Frisk gave him a gentle look. "If you need to stop..."

He shook his head. "No, I'm fine. Cath... Cathleen had always said that no matter what happens, we need to face reality. Before the war, there was another attack, one that had cost Cathleen her mother. Although grief weighed heavily on her heart, Cathleen knew that all the magic in the world wouldn't bring her back. Not even the Great Seven had the power to return a departed spirit to the living.

"Or so we thought. Once Cathleen accepted that she had been resurrected, death lost all meaning to her. Death is terrifying because it's final. Take that away, and can you blame her for treating it lightly? In her mind -"

"Death has no consequences," Chara finished.

Dacuel nodded. "That's why she's able to kill without remorse. She's not a bad person. She's just... she thinks she has to do this for the greater good, but her methods require too much bloodshed. That's not something the world can get behind. The power she wants will come at a cost. I'm afraid that by the time she reaches her goal, there'll be nothing left of her true self."

Frisk wondered about that. He was only LV 2, but were the effects of LOVE really so hard to resist? Even when he was soulless, he didn't think he would have gone around making people suffer for fun. How would he have acted if he were soulless and had infinite power? "You don't think she can control it?" Frisk asked.