AfterTale - Another Lifetime

RUINS

With a small squeak the door crept open, before me loomed a long narrow hall which was extremely dark, sans summoned some kind of magic which enabled light and we continued forward. Within about five minutes we came to another door, the door Toriel stood in front of as we battled when I was younger, where she was scared to hurt me and let me pass, leaving me with a single hug. I stepped forward to push the second for open but pulled my hand back,
"what's wrong kiddo? i thought that you wanted to come here," he rested his hand on my shoulder, I sighed and looked back at him,
"I do, I do... It's just this is where I last saw Toriel, and if what I think is correct, the sight through this door might not be so pleasant..." With that I gulped and I closed one eye as I gentle nudged the door open. My hands clasped my mouth. Just as I suspected on the centre of the floor was a white pile of dust, sans slowly looked away, his head tilted down.
"they did that huh?" I nodded in reply, and respectfully I knelt bedside my mothers ashes. I grabbed sans' hand and pulled his around the ashes as he mindlessly stared into the distance,
"Are you okay there buddy?" I asked him, he gulped and nodded, he looked some what hurt and mournful, like this was a total surprise. I guess I always saw something between him and my mum back home, but I feared to mention it.
I pushed though, continuing on and even just standing at the base of the stairs I could smell the pie in the kitchen. We creaked up the old steps and I passed straight through the front door, knowing that she is not in the house, though it was still colourful and the flowers had not yet wilted it still seemed to mundane and melancholy.
Silently sans held my hand and wandered through the endless halls, which once held many a froggit, but now are still and empty. The scariest part was that it was all so clean because there was nothing to leave behind dust or cobwebs.
"hey, you still haven't really told me why you wanna come here, care to explain?"
"Oh yeah, sorry," I rubbed the back of my head, "so basically when I fell into the underground I awoke in the furthest reach of the ruins. The first thing I came upon was a, *sigh* this is gonna sound weird, but it was a flower who tried to kill me." Sans seemed strangely unsurprised.
"so what does this flower have to do with your 'task'?"
"Well I think that I have to SAVE Asriel. And the flower is just the vessel that Asriel's soul attached to after he died and after Alphus experimented on him he came to life. This is also where I left Asriel, the last place I saw him before I left the underground for the world above, so this must be where his soul is strongest. If I met him here, I am hoping I can find him here again..." we continued to talk over the matter as we travelled, he shared once of his cinnamon bunnies with me and we discussed a matter of things that came to mind. As we approached the first spiked puzzle I had encountered sans turned to me and asked,
"how old were you when you fell down here?"
"You do ask a lot of questions don't you sans!" I laughed, he stare at his feet,
"It's been a while since I could talk to anyone properly, even though the last resets it became almost too painful to even talk to Papyrus..." I smiled comfortingly and answered his question,
"I was seven,"
"And now?"
"Seventeen," I looked at him, "Today should technically be my eighteenth birthday, but I suppose I am a few days behind here as it was my eighth birthday when I set everybody free," I stared at my toes for a minute,
"I'm guessing from the way you talk you stayed with us when you left, yet if you were so rushed to leave, do you not have a family of your own?" The question pulled up things from my past I hadn't shared with anyone I know, Asriel once inquired why I came but never stopped to listen to my answer. I took a few deep breaths in before I could manage to answer but sans stepped back, I'm assuming because he realised maybe he stepped to far.
"I, I um... I don't have a family. I was an orphan. And the other children teased me about it." I rubbed a tear from my face, "so I ran away and accidentally fell here, I was leaving in a rush because I was scared, even though Toriel was so nice to me. And that's why I called her mum not long after I found her. Because I never had one before, and she treated me like her child," the sad thoughts were replaced with happier ones and the tears became ones of nostalgia.
I saw another small pathway and immediately cheered up. "Oh sans I recognise this, it's not far now."
I skipped down around a corner to find a small room lined with purple rocks and blue gems, the walls narrowed at the top and small beams of the noon sun fell on a patch of small yellow flowers allowing them to glow gold, it was too beautiful for words. I ran and stood on them carefully.
"FLOWEY! FLOWEY! OH FLOWEY!" I cried hopefully, but no reply, I turned to sans, "he'll be here soon," I stood and waited. Maybe five minutes later I sat down, at least twenty minutes had passed before I spoke again. "Why isn't he here yet?" I was so frustrated, how was I going to get anywhere without Asriel himself?
"it's okay kiddo, you where following a whim not everything can go perfectly each to time." I jutted out my bottom lip like a child and clumsily pulled myself of the floor and wondered around the walls. I ran my fingers along every single line where the rocks had weathered away from landslides further up the mountain until I found a small engraving of a circle with wings and there triangles underneath.
"The prophecy?" I questioned peering at sans.
"yup, this underground was originally discovered by both humans and monsters as an underground civilisation before the war. Which is why they chose this place to seal us in, because they new it was here. However the prophecy was found much later after the monsters had arrived. Gerson managed to translate the old writing 'the angel who has seen the surface will set you free'" I rubbed my fingers along the righting of the ancient time, 'Hals ei can angelli sur a kani hack em' i smiled thinking of all the places this mark had been left as a symbol of hope. I continued forward and found another engraving that I had never encountered before. It was one of a circular object between two hearts connected by various wigglely lines.
"I've never seen this one before."
"yeah we didn't quite know what it meant," the words underneath this read 'un salo sha ni streng kal san zwei lees' sans continued "Gerson said it translated to "Only on str..."
"'Only one strong, can hold two hearts'" I interrupted, sans again looked stunned,
"how could you possible have translated that?" To be honest I don't even know, it just came to me, like it had been whispered in my ear. I forgot to answer sans because for some reason the cave drawing was extremely intriguing. The longer I stared I soon realised that some of the squiggly lines under the circle formed some form of pedestal, making the drawing much more familiar.
"I recognise this. I don't know why. This circle on a pedestal." I said,
"try to find different ways of saying that and see what comes to mind," I looked at him impatiently but he looked deadly serious,
"Okay, um... A sphere on a, um... Column?" I shrugged,
"a ball on a post," he decided to join in,
"A ring on a totem," that one made sans chuckle for some reason,
"A disk on a pillar?" He suggested, I pretended to think and over enthusiastically shook my head.
"How about an orb on a...." My face went cold and I had a sudden thought.
"frisk you okay buddy?" I looked at him and nodded,
"I think I know where I recognise it from, sans how quickly can you take me to the waterfall?"