Blood and Ash

III

When you next wake up, you find yourself in what appears to be an old kid's room. The walls and furniture are decorated red, but some of the wallpaper appears to be scratched and torn by some kind of clawed beast. There are burn marks in some places, but somehow none of them are by the outlets. Guessing from this, you assume that whatever fires were the cause of the charred and blackened areas weren't tied to electrical mishaps. Dark spots splatter and smear across the walls and floor, and you try to imagine they're anything else than what you know they are. The opposite side of the room from you is completely dark both from the fact that the lamps are both off and the entire corner is singed black. The shadows and outlines of everything in that corner blends with the soot. The only visibility you cling to is from the small beams from under the door. The bed you lie on is soft as a cloud, but you know it's probably made that way to lure you or anyone else who lies in it into a false sense of security and comfort. The weighted blanket that covers you seems to be growing mold from the large dried bloodstains. It so obviously hasn't been washed in who knows how long, and the once comforting texture of the fabric is ruined by the crust and grime of old blood. You jerk your body up into a sitting position and throw the blanket off you as quickly as you can. The room absolutely reeks of rust and decay, and you try to cover your nose as best you can to block out the scent in vain. It's so strong that you can't hide yourself from it.

You take a few moments to gasp and adjust to breathing through your mouth- oh god, it's like you can almost taste it- so you can at least assess the situation. The last thing you remember is being smothered by Toriel until you passed out after impulsively and mistakenly agreeing to let her take care of you. Thinking about it now, you very well could've misinterpreted her meaning of "take care of." Swinging your legs over the side of the bed, you take notice of the fact that your wounded leg is supported by a proper walking cast instead of driftwood and plant matter. By the doorway of the closed door lies a pair of old wooden crutches. You still can't fathom all of this. In the past 12 hours (or what you assume to be 12), you've met a talking flower who can disappear and reappear in the soil he grows from, traversed the abandoned Ruins of some kind of monster civilization, and gotten captured by a malicious goat lady with a bloodthirsty sheen in her hostile eyes. All of that in addition to falling into this hellhole in the first place and breaking your leg on the way down. What kind of elaborate and incredibly lucid nightmare is this? And when are you meant to wake up?

Looking around the room once more, you see no sign of Flowey. You whisper his name to the dark of the unlit room, but nobody comes. You climb out of the musty bed and clumsily walk to the door. Putting your ear against the old wood, you can hear Toriel's humming in the distance. Opening the door as carefully as you can, you discover that the hinges are just as worn and damaged as the rest of the room. It creaks loudly, and you immediately pause in response.

"If you're trying to sneak away, it won't happen, child. Why don't you come here and we can have a little chat, hm?"

You grimace before opening the door until you can leave the burnt and bloody room. It takes a second for your eyes to adjust to the brightness of the house, but once you do you immediately notice the scratch marks all along the walls of the hallway you're in. There's a painting opposite your door of what appears to once have been an intricate hand-painted portrait of a family of some kind. An elegant velvet curtain serves as a backdrop while the subject stands at the forefront of the painting. All you can tell from what's left of it is the vague outlines of maybe two or three other figures with Toriel standing at the far left of all of them behind... kids, maybe? You can't tell, all the other people who might've been in the painting have been completely scratched out. Toriel seems to be happy in the picture, and her clothes are clean and intact. The bloodlust in her eyes isn't there quite yet, and all the patches where her fur nowseems to be scorched off are still attached and look silky smooth.