Into The Underground (Starlo X OC)

Chapter 2

Waking up with a groan, Blaze found himself in a completely different room. The room he was in was significantly darker, with a broken bridge to the right of him and vines growing over the walls. Slowly standing up, he realised he had fallen on yet another patch of flowers. Stumbling forwards, Blaze quickly saw an exit to the room.

"T...Toriel?" Blaze asked, hoping the kind goat lady was still around. He heard no response. Frowning in concern, he leant against the doorway to the next room. It felt like everything was spinning and he was certainly in no condition to go exploring wherever he was. The flowers hadn't done a very good job at cushioning his fall this time, and he was worried he could've had a concussion.

Unsure of how much time had passed, Blaze frowned to himself.

"We need to... keep moving." Blaze muttered, hesitating before he went through the door, finding himself in a long hallway. It seemed to be above a pretty big drop with no railing or anything.

Despite his concerns, Blaze slowly but surely made his way across the hallway, careful to not slip and fall even further down into the underground. He wasn't sure he wanted to find out what was down there. The next room was nothing special, it seemed to be a longer hallway with just a few cobwebs.

"Wow, this place is abandoned." Blaze groaned, "Just our luck. Hopefully there's someone down here..."

"Hopefully that someone is friendly." Phantom added with a scoff, "Besides, I think my brother delivered corn to someone down here."

"Right..." Blaze sighed, continuing down the hallway. There weren't many cobwebs here, but there were definitely broken pillars. He frowned, somewhat worried the pillars were just gonna collapse on him so he quickly continued forwards, up another staircase.

Finally, he was out of the hallway and into another room. Like the room he had fallen from, this one had various switches on the walls, and the exit was blocked with spikes. The switches weren't labelled though.

"Wow, even this place has puzzles. What's the chance they still work?" Blaze asked.

"Pretty high. They probably use magic." Phantom answered with a shrug. Nodding, Phantom approached the switches, only for another monster to appear out of nowhere.

Unlike Froggit, this monster was flying. It was white in colour, with a big head and brown eyes. It had fly-like orange wings and orange and brown spots running down its abdomen. Frankly, it looked pretty weird to Blaze.

"Any idea what that is...?" Blaze muttered.

"Nope." Phantom answered, shrugging, "See what options you've got in the Act menu. That might help you."

Blaze sighed, nodding his head and opening the act menu. None of the options seemed particularly helpful, but Blaze decided that comforting the monster was probably the best option. Criticising it seemed mean, he couldn't think of a compliment for it and he didn't know what check would even mean in this scenario.

"Um... Don't worry, little guy, your life is only half over! You've still got half of your life left to do whatever!" Blaze grinned.

"Was... that supposed to be comforting?" Phantom asked.

"I... This isn't really me..." the flying monster whimpered. Despite seemingly having been pacified, the monster still sent some flies in his direction, but they weren't particularly hard to dodge, given they moved in a straight line, barely even aiming at him. The attack didn't last long anyways.

Sighing in relief, Blaze hit the spare button and the monster, Flier, according to the menu, flew away.

Phantom was oddly silent, but Blaze didn't care too much, just finally going over to the switch and pulling it down. Nothing happened. Blinking, Blaze reached over to the right one and pulled it down, releasing the furthest row of spikes.

"They must be in some kind of order then." Blaze told himself, trying the middle one now. It didn't work so he pulled the right switch again, then the left switch and finally the middle switch.

That opened up the exit.

Similarly to the previous room, the next room clearly had some kind of puzzle. Between two mini streams of water were large card-like buttons. Two of them were dark, while the rest of them were seemingly active.

Blinking in confusion, Blaze hesitantly crossed both the bridges, over to the furthest sign, which seemed to have instructions on them.

"Make what is dim bright, make what is dark light..." Blaze read aloud, frowning slightly. "I guess... It wants us to make all of those buttons light them."

Without another word, Blaze went back over to the buttons, pressing the furthest one to the left, turning it on, but deactivating the one next to it.

"Of course, it's one of these." Blaze groaned.

Pressing the button again to turn it back off, Blaze pressed the one in the middle instead, then pressed the one furthest to the left, turning all of them light.

Grinning slightly at his success, Blaze moved onto the next room. It was another hallway, with small streams of water running along the sides of the room. There was a sign that Blaze didn't bother to read, but at the end of the room there were a few small beds of flowers. Past those beds of flowers was a cloaked figure, with their back turned to him.

As Blaze came closer, he could hear the cloaked figure muttering to themself.

"Hello... I'm happy to finally meet you face to face... How long has it been? I was wondering if you'd ever come back..." they muttered, before shaking their head, "...No... Too forward... Who am I kidding? I'll never be able to meet you in this state. I just hope you know, I had no choice. It must be this way."

"Are you okay...?" Blaze asked, watching as the figure began to walk away. They turned around with a small yelp of surprise.

"Who...?" they muttered to themselves, frowning when they realised what Blaze was, "A human? But they're not... No, they're just a hallucination... I-I must be seeing things..."

They left the room without another word. Blaze chased after them into the next room, but somehow, they had already disappeared. This next room was another hallway, but it split off in two directions.

Walking towards the room directly in front of him, Blaze was stopped by yet another monster. This one seemed to be like a dinosaur monster, but their head resembled a pencil and their tail a rubber. According to the menu, her name was Penilla.

"Woah, Toriel wasn't joking. The monsters here really are unfriendly to humans." Blaze sighed, shaking his head.

"Yeah, of course they are." Phantom scoffed, "At least you're not attacking them. That'd just make matters worse."

"I'm not gonna attack them." Blaze huffed, glancing over at Penilla, "Woah, you're a good artist!"

"You're just saying that cause you feel obligated." Penilla snapped, making Blaze flinch slightly in surprise. She lifted her pen up into the air and started drawing lines, which shot towards Blaze. Not expecting the first attack, it hit him and he fell to the ground with a yelp of surprise. He barely scrambled out of the way of the second attack, then the attacks ended.

"Ow, ow, ow..." Blaze hissed, glancing at his arm. There was a pretty nasty cut on it now. Seeing it, he winced. Still, he knew he couldn't get distracted, so focused back on Penilla, who seemed to be getting frustrated with whatever she was drawing.

Pressing the act button, he saw the option to distract Penilla. That seemed like a good idea, given complimenting her art clearly went terribly. With a grunt of annoyance, he stepped in between Penilla and her drawing. The lizard monster's eyes widened.

"I suppose I could use a break..." she sighed.

This time, Blaze expected the next attack, with Penilla drawing two lines that he quickly avoided. While he didn't expect the lines to start spinning, he still managed to dodge them since the attack wasn't that fast.

With that finally over, Blaze hit the spare button and Penilla packed her supplies away and left.

Now that Penilla was gone, Blaze stumbled to the nearby wall, slumping down against and looking at the cut on his arm. He brought his knees up to his chest, biting back tears.