Undertale: Fragments

Chapter 3: Stranger

A bridge of silver wings 

stretches from the dead ashes 

of an unforgiving nightmare

 to the jeweled vision 

of a life started anew.

♡Aberjihani

☼Frisk

My head aches, and not just from the inside. The pain specifically coming from my left temple. My body hurts, a general soreness aching through me. My back is propped up against something, but I just can't tell what. I move my hand up to the pain in my temple, about to examine it when a boney hand grabs mine.

"I wouldn't touch that, doll face. I just bandaged it up." A deep, smoky voice says.

My eyes flutter open, and I look over a meadow of flowers. Then, focusing on the skeleton hand covering mine, I find a hole in the palm.

I launch forward, twisting onto my back to face the stranger. Crawling a few feet away, I finally focus on the person who was propping me against their chest.

A skeleton, with two cracks in his skull. One crack coming up from his right eye, then the other crack dragging down his left. A black coat covers his upper body, the hood lined with white fur. A light gray sweater is worn underneath, with dark, nearly black, jeans. Black boots are laced up on his feet. He shifts his position, his left arm draping over his bent knee. His shoulders shrugged back casually.

Then I take in his eyes. Gold irises with black pupils within the dark eye socket. He watches me with a... bored expression. The very front of his teeth are barely shown, the skull sheltering the rest from view.

My mouth opens, but for a moment, I can only stare at him. His eye lights shift, going over me.

"I thought you only hit your head, not your vocal cords." He speaks, his voice still smoky, the tone light.

"Where's Sans? Who are you?" I demand, reaching up and feeling my forehead. I find a piece of cloth tied around my head. The area of most pain is liquidity, and when I pull my fingers back, they're covered in redness.

Chara. Chara took over, he... lead Sans to Mt. Ebott. No, to the hole. Then he...

I bolt upright, turning around, looking for any signs of dust. My heart leaps up to my throat, as I remember the blurry image of Chara using my hand to thrust the knife into Sans.

"Hey, Hey, calm down." The stranger says, standing up.

I turn, stomping my way over to stand right in front of him. He's a good four inches taller than me, so I have to tilt my head slightly upwards to look him in his gold irises. He doesn't move, simply looks down at me, like a bug that suddenly got in his path.

"Where is Sans?" I demand, my fists bunching up tightly at my side.

He's silent for a moment, hooking his left hand on his belt before saying, "You're looking at him, Frisk."

For a moment, I'm ready to yell at him to stop screwing around with me, but another blurry image comes to mind.

Falling down the hole. Sans fingers turning to dust. Chara laughing. Then, the darkness seems to take shape, swallowing up Sans. The black ink seems to form Sans anew, a skeleton body reappearing before we hit the ground.

I take a step back, never blinking. "What... what do you mean?"

He shrugs his shoulders, looking away for a beat, as if all of this doesn't mean a thing to him. "Gaster decided to stop playing in the void when he noticed the glitch. Something about breaking one rule allows more rules to be broken. I'm not sure what the guy was thinking. Anyways, somehow Gaster saved Sans by essentially hacking the code. Sans was dying, but Gaster gave his soul a form to take in. When the form was created, the two souls mixed."