Monody (n) - a song mourning one's death
They were playing his game.
It was funny really, how the pieces of the puzzle always clicked into place. No matter how many times his puppets would struggle, no matter how many times they fought against him and pulled at their strings, wanting to run, wanting to hide and change their fate, it was impossible. Futile.
Fate and destiny did not exist in his game, not this world anyway. Every path was laid out, every road was set and every brick was paved so that the story would play out as he had written it. Nothing could alter the course of events, nothing could alter the fiery inferno that awaited the multiverse, the future of chaos and suffering that none could avoid. But he found it amusing, watching from afar as the few scraps of resistance slowly marched across the chess board, hoping to checkmate the king.
Fools, Gaster reflected, staring down upon the band of skeletons led by the human that called themselves their leader. You know nothing of power for how can you claim to know such a thing when you have never grasped it? Power does not come in strength or prowess. Power is given to the cunning, those who know where to look behind locked doors, those that know how to pull the right strings.
But Gaster did not dare stop them, even though with a single thought, the blink or bat of an eye could he wipe them from the fade of existence. He could make it so that there was no living memory of these blood traitors, the band of rebels. But this was not the story that he wanted. Gaster knew every event that was and would be, controlled the past and the future. He was the true god of this universe and like all gods, he sought pleasure in entertainment.
So let the army march into the clutches of his servant, the skeleton that called himself Nightmare and had proven to become a valuable asset to Gaster's cause. It was downright hilarious wasn't it? Let the rebels have their hope, let them have their momentary spark of belief that they had the power to rise up and alter the story Gaster had put into place. But then he would tear it away from them and the look on their faces! That was a story worth telling.
So they would play his game, each and every one of them would march in a line towards their deaths. And then worlds would burn as Nightmare laid waste upon the multiverse and then raised a new kingdom of his own, one of suffering and fear, one where none dared to rebel and hope was something long forgotten. Because with hope, hope that was allowed to manifest and catch like wildfire, hope was the only thing stronger than fear. And Gaster did not like hope, the type of hope that he couldn't control. Everything had to be perfect, everything had to be within the extent of his power.
And that it was! Gaster had gained true control over this dying existence and he was the true god, the true ruler. And below him were the mortals, the pieces of his chessboard that played in his game, provided his entertainment.
What a wonderful thing that was.
~ The Chess Pieces~
There were whispers in the Void.
Songs of the old and dead filled the empty air, brief glimpses into forgotten lives and forgotten worlds that were long past their time. For a moment you thought that you heard the brief village song you had grown up with and your head whipped around frantically, searching for the brief glimpse of home that you had felt. "Keep going my broskis!" Fresh shouted over the whispering. Several of the other skeletons looked on edge, the whispers calling out to them, voices from their own dead worlds.
Error said nothing and only marched forward, not offering any indication on what he was hearing himself. You continued walking, concentrating on the single task at hand, the firm resolve that built inside you, the want to defeat Nightmare and battle and make him kneel before you, liberating the Void from his wrath.
"[Y/N]!"
A child's voice rang out clear through the whispers, calling you, beckoning you. "[Y/N] why did you have to leave us? We never got to finish our game!" A small hand wrapped around your wrist with the feeble grasp of a child. It wasn't real, what was happening was simply impossible and devoid of all reason. But yet here Frisk stood, your Frisk, the Frisk you had befriended in your village, sat next to every dusk and sang the village songs of old.
"You're dead," you whispered, staring into their questioning eyes. Were you going insane? Was this what Ink meant when he said that the Void changed someone? Tears welled in the corners of your eyes, not wanting to look at Frisk for a moment longer. "You never existed, not a trace of you is left. I'm sorry."
"I-I don't understand." It was Frisk's turn to cry now. "[Y/N], I'm right here talking with you! Please, let's just go back home. They're about to light the campfire right now but no one can find you, everyone's been looking for days! I thought that you had run away, but you're right here, with me! I can take you home!"
And for a moment, for a brief, brief moment in all of time and space, you simply forgot. It was a fog that diluted your senses, blocked out any memory, any thought or will but the simple and raw emotion to follow Frisk, to return to your dead world and live as a forgotten memory alongside all of those that had perished. And you could forget it all, forget about the war and the conflict that was tearing the multiverse in two. For what were the wars of the living to the dead, the forgotten?
Frisk seemed to pick on your gathering sense of resolve, the want to follow them. "We can go home [Y/N]," they promised, giving your hand a gentle squeeze. But there was something about Frisk's touch, the cold, dead feel to their skin. There was not one trace of life within their body, not one drop of blood still flowed through their veins. The Frisk that you were looking at, the Frisk that was speaking to you now was nothing more than an echo, some hallucination feeding off your memories.
"You're not real," you shuddered, taking a step back from them. "We can't ever go home, no matter how much I want. There's no where to go, no where to run or hide because our world is gone, our world is dead. It never existed and it never will exist again."
"I can take you home," Frisk growled, their voice much more demonic. Their mouth became a jagged red smile, eyes glowing a deep crimson. You looked over your shoulder in order to divert the attention of one of the other skeletons but they too seemed to be trapped in some hellish fantasy as the one you were in now. What the hell was going on?
Frisk's face was melting now, drops of black liquid that streamed down their face and onto the floor beneath. "Going to take you home," the demon gurgled and dissolved into a black puddle. You stared at the liquid for a moment, not fully understanding what was happening. And then a black hand shot up from the puddle, jagged fingernails filed into claws that reached for your heart. "Home..." The puddle snarled and the claw struck the ground with a brute force into the area you had been standing only seconds ago.
"They're not real!" you shouted at the top of your lungs, attempting to pry the other skeletons from their fantasies. "It's a trick!" You flung yourself onto Error's shoulders and began to shake him rapidly, hoping to detect a sign of recognition in the skeleton. "Wake up!" you screamed, looking behind you to see the black demon lumbering towards you. Its shape flickered, sometimes taking on the appearance of Frisk and your siblings to the mutilated corpse of the painter.
All your fault.
When Error showed no signs of leaving his mental prison, you turned to Fresh and Geno, both whom stood side by side. They stood rigid, interlocked as whatever invisible demons worked their way through their mental defences. "Home." The words left Fresh's mouth.
"You can't listen to them!" you shouted and rolled to the side as a black tendril shot towards your head. The demon materialised back into Frisk, a demented thing with a head that rolled in angles it was not meant to.
"We don't want to wake them up, now do we [Y/N]?" The demon asked, extending its hand towards you. "I must admit, we were surprised when you woke up, most haven't been able to resist us in centuries. But that doesn't matter now. Because once your friends surrender their souls to us, they too will become us and turn on you. And you will die, whether you join us or not."
Whatever these things were, they were not servants of Error or any other force in the Void. But what they were, what purpose they served and what cause they claimed to allege for, that remained a mystery. The anger, the hatred, it became a part of your being, ran through your veins just as easily as your blood. A pulse of energy rang through you and your right hand ignited into [F/C} flame. The wave of fatigue that followed showed that you had only minutes before the magic would deplete your reserves of energy and knock you into unconsciousness.
"You cannot defeat us!" The demon seemed to find your rebuke amusing. "My kin and I are eternal, it is impossible to eradicate us. We will always live, no matter how hard you try to destroy us or break us. We are not the living and those that are not alive cannot die."
Without a reply, you aimed the base of your palm towards the demon, a translucent [F/C] spear materializing in your left hand. The depletion on your strength was enormous but you pushed onwards, determination fueling your very essence. The demon held its ground and gave you a smile, dissolving once more into a puddle that snaked its way on the ground towards you.
"This is all just a bad dream," it cooed. "And you're never waking up."
As the puddle wrapped around your feet, black tendrils that bound and held your foot in place, you slammed your palm into the demon, flame engulfing the beast. A resounding screech filled the air as the demon loosened its hold on you, once more taking the form of Frisk, the Frisk in your timeline. "[Y/N]!" the demon wailed, its wretched tone becoming lighter, matching exactly Frisk's voice. For a moment you were no longer combating an evil in the Void, but you were fighting your friend, willingly set them on fire out of hatred and spite. Why had you done that?
Before you could form a reply, the demon took advantage of your hesitation and sped towards you, human hand morphing into a black claw that clutched your throat, holding you high above the ground. "You idiot!" the demon spat, cocking its head to one side. "You think you can defeat Nightmare, are you truly the last thing the multiverses can conjure to combat their adversary? Perhaps it really is the beginning of the end."
"I - "
"Hush now," the demon gave you a suppressed smile. "You think me and my kin to be monsters, but we are the opposite. We are the guardians of this Void, the protectors that seek out the anomalies like you and eradicate them. We care not for the other universes, those can exist. But you, the glitches that survive the collapse of their universe and wander the Void like vermin, you must be extinguished. All of you."
"What about Nightmare?" You choked the words out. "Would you kill him?"
"His time will come," the demon agreed. "But your hour is at hand. It is a swift death [Y/N}, there is no pain or suffering where your soul will ascend. You can go home, relive your memories with those you lost in your timeline. And all of these trivialities? This supposed war that is tearing your very existence at the seams? That will be gone, that burden lifted. Wouldn't that be nice?"
There was still a chance that you could see your friends and family again. The demon had the power to send your soul to a place where you could relive out your memories for the rest of your days. But then, what kind of life was that? To spend the rest of time walking amongst mere memories, hollow replays of the people they had once been? They are dead, you thought and accepted that with a finality. I cannot bring them back, but I am not ready to join them whether they exist in some afterlife or are simply gone. I have work to do here.
"Sleep now." The demon drew back its hand, preparing to place three fingers to the base of your skull. You struggled underneath its grasp but to no avail.
The demon flew back several feet, skidding against the ground. A black Gaster Blaster flew into view, opening its mouth once more to fire off a black laser. Error drew back his hand and a snake of blue strings worked their way across the floor, slowly inching towards the demon. The blue strings wrapped around its torso and limbs, binding it in place. "That's not your job," Error snarled, looking oddly grim. "I clean up the anomalies, you are nothing more than a glitch yourself." The strings tightened around the demon. It let out a screech and exploded as the strings suffocated the life from its veins. "Good riddance," Error muttered and waved his hand, the strings disappearing.
Geno and Fresh let out involuntary shudders as the demons that were locked inside their minds left their bodies, turning their focus to you and Error. They seemed poised, ready to attack. Fear coursed through you, it had been one thing trying to kill only one of them, but could the two of you take on two more? Not to mention the other creatures that were still inside the minds of G, Abyss and Omega.
Abyss let out a screech and collapsed to the floor. "I'm going home!" he gurgled and shriveled into dust. The demon that had latched itself onto him exited from the pile of ash, looking quite pleased with itself. Its black claws wrapped around Abyss' fading soul, dark tendrils diluting the white heart until his soul was black as well. "Error," you hissed, pointing towards Abyss' corrupted soul. "What are they doing to him?"
Your question was answered however as the monster flung Abyss' corrupted soul onto the ground. On cue, a demented version of the former skeleton appeared. Like the demons, he too seemed to be constructed of the same black liquid, swaying slightly to some unknown tune. "Come and join the fun," Abyss gurgled and stuck out his hand, morphing it into a black tentacle that reached for your heart.
Fresh flung himself in front of you and deflected the attack with a Gaster Blaster. You swiveled and flung your spear at him. The shaft buried into Abyss' chest and remained there. For a moment, it seemed that your attack was in vain. But then the skeleton sank to his knees, [F/C] light shining from within him. "I knew you had it in you!" Abyss shrieked and exploded, dying with a finality for this time.
Your gaze turned to Omega who too withered into dust, giving into the songs of the demons, the temptation of returning to his dead world seeming all too great. We have to kill the soul before the demons corrupt it, you realized and flashed a frantic look at Error. He nodded and waved his hand, blue strings wrapping around the soul and pulling it away before the demon that had killed him had a chance to corrupt Omega's soul. You stared at the ground as Error tightened the strings, shattering the soul.
The demon that killed Omega let out a soft hiss and dove into the ground, vanishing from view. G gave a shudder and the demon that had buried itself inside his mind retreated, disappearing from view. "I'm alright," he grunted as you helped the skeleton to his feet. You surveyed the survivors in dismay. You had already been so few before, how could you expect to defeat Nightmare now?
"I never thought we'd see those things again," Geno whimpered, rubbing his skull.
"What the hell were they?" you asked, looking from Fresh to Error in hopes of getting an answer.
Error closed his eyes. "When timelines such as yours and all of ours simply delete and vanish without a trace, there are certain things within each timeline that do not fade from existence. In each timeline, in every universe and every world there is a human that goes by the name Frisk. This human ventures through an underground world where monsters are trapped, stuck in a never-ending cycle. They have the power to reset entire worlds and timelines for the purpose of their own enjoyment. But it gets boring to them, no matter what alternate universe. No matter what actions you do, the outcome is always the same.
"Frisk has been known to experiment out of their boredom, often doing genocide runs where they navigate through the Underground and slaughter everyone. Over time, their hate manifests and corrupts their code as each reset and genocide runs passes." Error looked at you. "And hate is not something that can be thrown away. Even when I have deleted universes, hate always remains. It is the one thing that never leaves the universe, no matter what you do to try to eradicate it, it always stays. I personally find it an irritating anomaly."
"So where does the hate go then?" you asked, the answer already dawning.
"The hate that remains from every deleted timeline transverses to the Void. It develops a sort of consciousness and roams the Void neither alive or dead. What we just witnessed now were embodiments of this, left over hate from deleted timelines. Their main goal is to locate any survivors from destroyed timelines and convert them into beings of hate just like they are. Because that is what hate does, it spreads like the disease that it is."
"So Abyss - " The words caught in your throat, wounds still fresh. "When the hate corrupted his soul, he became just like them?"
"Pretty much," Error said, frankly not caring that Abyss had faced such a brutal end. "Ink used to be the only one that could defeat them. He knew some way to store the hate into those vials on his sash and turn them into different traits. But that is lost now."
Geno piped in. "That was Nightmare's fate, the one we wage war against. Like all of us, he and his brother Dream were survivors from a collapsed timeline. The left over hate in their world turned on him and corrupted his soul. You've never seen Nightmare before, but what Abyss looked like after his soul was corrupted is an exact replication of how Nightmare looks. His brother managed to avoid being converted and is actually fighting for us, but no one has heard from him in weeks."
"But why is Nightmare on his own?" That part didn't make sense to you. "The things that attacked us, they were in a group together. The hate that even tried to attack me said that it was planning on killing him later on, so why would hate want to hurt itself?"
"Nightmare isn't exactly the true embodiment of hate," Geno explained. "We don't know why, but even when his soul was corrupted, a part of him never fully turned. We think it may have been because his brother was with him at the time, so perhaps that allowed a spark of his former self to remain. After his conversion, Nightmare took off and followed the laws of no one."
Your mind wandered back to your own universe. If it had been destroyed, did that mean that there was some hate from your own world? And had Frisk really been like Error said, some miniature god with the ability to reset time? If there were monsters in your world, they had never made it to the ground above. Or maybe they had and that timeline had just been reset, which would explain why you had no recollection of it.
Your gaze wandered to Error, wondering what the hate had shown him in its attempts to convert his soul. You knew better than to ask, not wanting to provoke the glitched comedian.
"How are we going to win?" you asked him instead as the few survivors of your group banded together.
"We are no more than pigs marching willingly to the slaughterhouse," Error replied coldly, looking oddly grim even for himself.
"That's reassuring," you remarked.
And all the while you marched, the chess pieces on the chess board, pulled by strings invisible to all but the one who bound them.