"A-aren't you guys coming in?" Finn asks nervously.
They're standing in a big, wide room in front of the entrance to Toriel's home. The windows are dark glass, and the door is shut, so Finn has no idea what's inside. The monsters they encountered in the previous chapter are clumped around a twisted black tree several paces away, refusing to come any closer to the house.
The monsters shake their heads in unison - all except for the jellos, which shake their entire body. Apparently they're a kind of monster called a "Moldsmal", but Finn prefers their own name for them.
"Cowards," the dummy scoffs, still floating in the air above. "Scared of a little kid."
"A little kid who killed all of us," Loox growls.
Finn blinks. A little kid?!
The dummy shakes its head and floats over to hover directly next to Finn. "Don't worry. I'm coming. You don't need those guys, anyway."
"Hop, hop," the frog - Froggit, is its name - agrees, hopping over as well.
"Well. Um. Thanks, guys," Finn says awkwardly. "Let's do this, then." They don't know who Toriel is, but if she's been murdered just like the other monsters, then of course Finn is going to bring her back, too.
Because yes. They apparently have resurrection abilities now. Why not.
Finn turns and knocks softly on the door - they don't want to be rude - before trying the doorknob. It's open, so they hesitantly push the door open and step inside. Froggit and the dummy follow, and the door swings quietly shut behind them.
"Toriel?" Finn calls hesitantly, looking around.
It's not nearly as scary as they'd been expecting. In fact, it looks almost normal - like the inside of a normal house. There's a big staircase leading downstairs directly in front of them; to their right is a long hallway lined with doors, and to their left is what appears to be the entrance to some giant living or dining room: they can just barely make out a table and three chairs, the table decorated with a gigantic vase filled with flowers. The walls are white and the floors are paneled wood, and the whole place just seems very bright and cozy. Somebody obviously enjoys living here.
"Toriel, I'm sorry for barging in, but I wanted to make sure you're okay," Finn explains, walking into the living room - that seems like the most obvious place for her to be, but there's nobody there, just a lonely old rocking chair, a couple bookshelves, and a fireplace, complete with a beautiful crackling fire. Finn moves closer to study the flames; they've never seen a real lit fireplace before, only in movies.
And then they smell it.
"Is that... pie?"
"Probably," the dummy replies, floating in behind Froggit. "Toriel loves making pie."
Hardly daring to believe it, Finn walks into the room adjacent - it's a kitchen, and there on the countertop is a big, beautiful pie with two slices already cut out of it.
"No way." Finn stares. "Where'd all the stuff for it come from?"
"Snails, probably," the dummy replies idly.
Finn decides not to question that. Everything is already weird enough already.
They wander back through the living room into the hallway beyond and knock quietly on each of them, but nobody replies. There's three doors in total, and the last has a strange under-construction sign on it, but Finn knocks on that one too, just in case.
No answer.
"Guess she's in the basement, then," Finn resolves.
They become a lot more nervous as they walk down the steps, their two friends following them as usual. It's a great deal scarier in the basement than in the upstairs of Toriel's home. The lighting is extremely dim and both the walls and floors are dark violet, and when Finn reaches the bottom of the staircase, they're greeted with a long, dark hallway that appears to stretch on in one direction forever.
"Ribbit," Froggit says comfortingly, hopping up alongside them. It takes the lead, and Finn feels a lot better about the whole ordeal as they carefully make their way down the long, long corridor. It's not actually endless, and the trio soon come to a bend. They turn the corner, and...
"Ribbit," Froggit says sadly.
The corridor stretches out in front of them for a couple paces before stretching out into a small room and meeting with a solid brick wall containing one scary door splat in the center. The door is open, and appears to be a gateway into some dark abyss; that's not scares Finn, though. What scares Finn is the white dust splattered all over it, and the big clumps scattered all across the floor, as if someone had spilled a big sack of flour and kicked it around for good measure.
The dummy, fortunately, notices Finn's terror and gently floats down into their arms so that they can hold it and feel better.
"Thanks," Finn mumbles. It's just... it wouldn't have such an effect on them, except for the fact that they know that all this white stuff - this dust - is a person. Somebody - the demonic little kid the monsters keep talking about - murdered this person, and spread their dust around everywhere. This room - that door - might as well be splattered with bloodstains. It's horrifying.
"I don't have my mask on," Finn realizes.
"You don't need it," the dummy says immediately. "Toriel needs to know you're human. She'll take care of you."
Finn nods, then, as an afterthought, takes off their gloves and cloak as well and sets it all against the wall on the floor, keeping one arm wrapped tightly around the dummy. That finished, they slowly approach the dust. They wonder if they have to touch all of it - all the clumps - but they realize that would be practically impossible, so they crouch down and brush the closest pile with their fingertips. It immediately starts to move, and dust from all the other clumps join in as well, so Finn takes a few steps back and watches it all happen.
They notice that the dust is not taking its usual form and becoming something around Frisk's size or smaller. In fact, there's quite a lot of it, and it's swirling up and around to form something quite a big deal taller than Finn, very tall and big indeed, with long ears and sharp horns on the top of its head... Finn backs away slightly as the dust continues its dance. It's actually rather frightening, this figure. They squeeze the dummy.
"Meow," Froggit assures them, which is somewhat disturbing.
The dust condenses to form a very tall fluffy white person with long fluffy ears and short curled goat horns, wearing a floor-length purple habit with white sleeves and strange symbols embroidered on the front. Finn is too distracted by the goat person herself to look too closely at them, but they notice that some of them look remarkably similar to the symbols on Froggit's chest.
Toriel's eyes flash open.
And then there's pain.
Finn reels back in shock as bright light flares out around them; searing pain blisters up their arms, which they use instinctively to shield the dummy, and a wave of heat crashes against their face. Blinking rapidly, they look down at their sweater sleeves to find that they have caught on fire and are slowly burning away. Too shocked to even scream, they throw the dummy as far away from them as possible.
Stop, drop, roll, a voice commands in their head. It's not the voice of the dummy this time, it's the voice of their old kindergarten instructor whom they suddenly remember out of nowhere, but they can't listen, they can only stare at the flames flickering on their sleeves. It's all so unreal, they can't believe it's happening. Luckily for them, their body knows better than they do, and it throws itself on the ground and starts flailing frantically around before Finn even registers what's happening.
This carries on for a few adrenaline-charged seconds that seem to last much longer than they should. Finn finally stops and rolls over onto their back, gasping. Their arms feel numb, but that numbness soon fades into a sharp sting, and that sting translates into a ferocious burn, and Finn wants to scream but they can't, and they lift an arm up to their face and it's all red and blistered and the sleeve is all black and shriveled up around giant holes, and for a moment they can't do anything but stare at it, and then the pain overwhelms them and they watch their arm fall slowly back down and the world's closing in and getting darker, so dark, and they can barely see...
And then the darkness closes in completely, and Finn fades into oblivion.
YOU ARE READING
UnderHappened
FanfictionThe Undertale Genocide Route is happening, but a new card has joined the deck: Finn, a quiet kid with a love for stuffed animals who falls into the Underground soon after Frisk. At first, it doesn't seem like there's much Finn can do, until they dis...
