Blood and Ash

I

You start to regain consciousness, a sharp and shooting pain in your left leg. you groan, but some kind of vine slithers from behind your neck and over your mouth. Through the shadows of wherever you now realize you're being contained by an anaconda coil of thick vines with serrated leaves, you see a single flower with its petals and head facing you at eye level. An unnaturally large yellow coreopsis with a white center, but as your eyes adjust to the darkness you see there are little dark brown clusters of pollen that form the shapes of eyes and a mouth. Before you can really process anything, the flower moves one of its leaves like an arm and puts the end of it to its mouth in a gesture that very clearly means 'be quiet.' Your eyes widen and you follow its advice without thinking, too stunned to speak.

As you go quiet, you hear the sounds of footsteps, water, and feminine humming from somewhere behind you. Unfortunately, the flower is propping you up against some kind of wall, and its vine is still wrapped around your face, keeping you from trying to look back. Your leg throbs, sending waves of pain all the way up to your groin. The water sounds stop, and the humming and footsteps start to grow softer as the person they belong to presumably starts to get further away. The flower looks attentively observant, waiting for the footsteps to go completely silent and then a few more minutes just to be safe. It uncovers your face and unravels itself from your body gently, dropping you on the floor with your back propped up against whatever you're leaning on. It seems to be some kind of pillar. The flower sinks back to the ground from the vines it was using to make itself bigger. Some of its petals look trampled and torn, and its 'face' (if you could call it that) bears an anxious and worried expression. 

When it speaks, its voice is timid and shaky and seems to echo in on itself. It whispers, "I'm really sorry about that. If I hadn't hidden you here, she would've found you. And I don't think you would've appreciated that." You blink slowly in shock. "You're a talking flower." "Shush!" You whisper back instead of talking at normal volume as you had before. "You're a talking flower!" It nods. "I know this is new for you, but let me explain."

"You're not in the human world anymore. I don't know why you came here, but you've made a grave mistake. This world is full of vicious and bloodthirsty monsters that would love nothing more than to see you dead and kill you themselves so they can take your soul and get out of here." You whisper frantically and quietly, "WHAT?!" "I know that's a lot to take in, but it's best not to sugarcoat it." You avert your eyes and look nowhere in particular, taking some time to calm down and process. "Okay, well if there are all these horrifying monsters here, then what are you?" "Oh! Well, I'm a flower." You nod. "Well, obviously, but I mean... Are you a monster? Are there good monsters?" It sighs. "Maybe I should properly introduce myself. My name is Flowey. I'm a flower. Humans are identified because they have Human souls, and Monsters are identified because they have Monster souls." You're not sure what the whole deal with souls is, but you press on. "Okay, so what kind of soul do you have?" Flowey seems to wince at your question. "I..." It seems to think it over. "I'm... a plant elemental. The magic that keeps me alive isn't bound to a soul. My name is Flowey." You take in the situation with disbelief and awe. This can't be happening, right? I mean, bloodthirsty monsters? Talking flowers?

"Look, I know this all is a lot to take in and I know it's not easy to process, but we need to hurry before she comes back. If she finds out another human is here, I can't even imagine what she'll do to you." You try to stand up, but the moment you move even a little bit the pain in your leg intensifies tenfold and sends a shooting feeling of pins and needles through your entire leg and up your spine. You exclaim in pain, immediately trying to quiet yourself and hoping whoever Flowey's been talking about is far enough away that she doesn't hear. Flowey inspects your leg carefully. "Oh no..." He looks back up at you worriedly. "It's... It's broken..." You look down at the abnormal lump where your dislocated bone is popped out of place and causing your bruised skin to bulge at the fracture area just above your ankle. It's swollen and your entire ankle and shin feels hot and feverish.

"Um, oh dear. This isn't good at all. I... Um... Oh! Stay right here!" He dips under the ground from the base of his stem and pops back up briefly. "I guess you don't really have a choice... Um, sorry." He disappears for about 5 minutes before unearthing from the ground in front of you. Vines shoot up from the ground, holding two broken tree branches that are relatively straight. "Here, let me help you stand." More vines unearth and form a fairly sturdy support for you to hold and lean on while you slowly stand up, relying on your one good leg. You bite your tongue and dig your nails into your palm to try and curb the pain and distract yourself from the nerves in your leg screaming at you to get back on the ground. Flowey makes quick work to make the branches into a makeshift splint and secure them to your leg with his vines. When he's done, he shakes a rather thick and large vine in the air once firmly, and sharp thorns emerge from the stems. He uses the thorns to cut the vines off of himself so that he's not just attached to your leg by the splint. He winces and gasps as he does so, cutting off literal pieces of himself to aid you. "I'm sorry I can't do more. I used to know healing magic, but those abilities have long since faded from me."

You test the splint by trying to take a step forward. It's a bit tricky since you can't really articulate from the knee down, but it's doable. Flowey disappears again and comes back with more branches and pieces of wood, some of them inexplicably wet with little pieces of garbage stuck to it. After picking off the candy wrappers and plastic trash from them, he once again uses his vines to fashion some crutches for you. "Doesn't that hurt?" He doesn't even look at you, he's too busy trying to make his plan work. "Well... A little, but I'll be okay. I can just grow new ones. Besides, You're the one more in danger here. A human in the Underground is only bad news." He gives you the crutches. You hesitantly lean on one of them and it's surprisingly solid. Flowey's plant appendages make a damn good building material. "Okay... Where to now?" Flowey dips back underground and pops back up in the flower bed behind the pillar you've been leaning on for support until now. He nearly blends in with all the yellow petals.

You bumble over to him and take notice of the very you-shaped imprint in the flowers. That must have been where you originally fell before Flowey hid you. Looking a bit closer, you realize that there's a rather large rock in the midst of the flowers coincidentally right where your leg had landed exactly where it broke. Flowey continues to disappear and reappear from the dirt to lead you into a room with red leaves scattered about the floor in front of a grand staircase to an upper floor. A glowing golden light emanates from a small object floating above the leaf pile. "What is that?" Flowey looks down at the lower floor from his place atop the stairs where he was guiding you. "Oh, that? That's a save point. You can use it to save your progress." You look at him with the most bewildered expression you can muster. What the fuck does he mean by that? Why is he using video game terms? "Oh..."

"You're not a player, are you?"