CreaseTale 0.3 (ErrorInk ~ Undertale AU)

Strings

Error leapt out of the portal he created and charged into a tall, ominous, shifty-eyed skeleton. Bearing all his weight, the skeleton yelled out in shock - it was a strange gargling yell, loud and irritated - and collided with cold hard steel. The floors and walls of this oddly tiny room were made out of the stuff, thick and probably undamaged. They were cold to the touch, even though the air inside was heavy and stuff, humid and thick, like the air in a rainforest.

The skeleton's hands curled into fists. Error was on top of him, pinning him down with his powerful blue strings. He summoned one of his blood-red bones, and holding it in his right hand, he prepared to stick it through the skeleton's soul. Using his blue strings again, he started to wrap them around the skeleton's soul. Instead of crushing it with strings, Error wanted to actually shove the needle-tipped bone through the skeleton's life source.

All of a sudden, a bullet of violent purple and amber came barrelling into him, knocking him off the other skeleton. Error lost his grip on both the crimson bone and the soul as he flew across the room, knocked back by the strange blur of colour.

A third skeleton rose.

He wore a jumper with two leather straps down the front, forming an X. Behind him, the straps had pockets and sheaths for weapons, although they were empty at the moment. His bones were a cold, harsh shade of grey-blue, like stormy clouds. In the corners of his eyes were rings of colour, and his ripped dark jeans were stained with dust.

As you might've already guessed, it was Fizz.

...

Everything was silent.

How could it be so quiet? There wasn't a single noise. Not even Swap's heavy breathing, or the rustling of Cure's hoodie. The entire place was blank and soundless, without any wind to stir Ink's scarf, or any dead leaves to crunch under their feet.

It was just...

Boring.

After teleporting to where Swap and Error's old cells were, Cure hadn't managed to use his portal power again. Every escape route they tried resulted in failure, and even worse, Error and Fizz were nowhere to be found. Horrifying scenarios played through Ink's skull, as if he had his own personal movie theatre. Everything was spiralling out of control.

The skeleton trio had almost sat down hopelessly. Cure had buried his head in his hands, saying that he knew this rescue mission would be a disaster, while Swap tried to comfort them both and convince them that everyone would be okay, that Fizz would come back for them, that Error must've found his own way of escape.

Ink didn't really feel anything anymore. To be honest, he was secretly rather glad that he couldn't experience the hopelessness of the others, or the sadness that he expected to come along with losing Error.

No. He wasn't lost yet.

"I'll come for you," he whispered, his tone so low that it was impossible for the others to hear. "I promise."

...

Error rolled to the side, just as Fizz came down on top of the spot he'd been only moments earlier. The skeleton lashed out ferociously, his snide smile the creepiest grin of all. Eyes devoid of pupils, completely black, revealed no proper expression or feeling. Error knew that Fizz was a traitor. He hadn't trusted him from the beginning.

Error felt another glitch coming on. Carefully, he pressed it down, then created a large ErrorBlaster. It hovered, black and glorious, in front of Error like a shield, then powered up. A beam of pure white light was blasted at Fizz, who managed to dodge at the last minute.

Fizz held out his hands on either side of him, and shimmering black swords appeared in them. They were long and razor-sharp, tinted purple, with an iron handle that glowed in the half-light.

Error pulled himself out of the way, and into the air, using his strings. Fizz tried to leap and cut them, but Error was far out of his reach. He glared down, then created a circle of ErrorBlasters around Fizz.

The insolent skeleton stared all around him at the ErrorBlasters, powering up with a strange whirring noise. His face showed no trace of fear, derisive and eerie. Fizz leapt into the air towards Error, who managed to swing out of the way as his ErrorBlasters reached their full strength and a flare of white light exploded from within their skeletal mouths.

Beams of light and energy engulfed Fizz. Error watched nervously from the side, his form flickering with his glitching.

When the ErrorBlasters closed their mouths and dispersed, all that was left of Fizz was a small, haggard, heap of a skeleton, crouched on the ground. He had his hands against the floor to steady himself, shivering as violently as an earthquake.

Error used his strings to pull the skeleton's soul from beneath his ribcage, and wrapped it in blue. Slowly, his strings tightened, the pressure threatening to crack Fizz's soul. In fact, there was already a couple of cracks, and bizarrely enough a chunk of his soul was made out of computer binary codes, flashing and beeping.

Fizz looked up at Error, his dark, distraught eyes wide in fear. Error wanted him to plead for mercy, for his life, however he did nothing. Nothing but latch his gaze onto Error's, almost miserably.

Error yanked on the cornflower-blue string.

...

An agonised scream exploded from Cure.

Ink was by his side in a flash, expressionless but knowing that something fatal was happening. Swap watched from a distance, sparks of terror dancing in his light blue eyes.

Cure's entire socket had turned a deep forest green, and he made a strange flicking open gesture with his skeletal hand. Three quarters of a soul appeared, hovering above his palm, glowing faintly. But the soul was irregular and misshapen, and damaged. The left half of it was a pretty pale rainbow, slowly becoming dimmer and dimmer as more cracks appeared in it's half. The right part was a single quarter of it, neon orange, also low and splintering.

"What is that?" Swap cried, staring at the soul.

There were a few chaotic moments, full of Swap's ranting and Ink's pacing, while Cure yelled a little more. Cracks started to lance through his bones, like tiny streams of black oil, before Ink finally couldn't take any more of it.

He exploded with a ferocious growl. "Shut up!"

Silence. The minute of pandemonium was over.

"Cure, explain," Ink demanded, taking the role of leader, yet he still had no feelings. Seeing Cure's ruined soul made him imagine having his own soul, and always being able to have feelings. He knew he would never let anything this disastrous happen to his soul, if he had one. Stupid Cure.

The skeleton wearing the strawberry-red hoodie looked up in surprise, with the air of someone meeting a stranger. He frowned, then glanced back at his soul, which was rapidly breaking into tiny fragments. Surely, he would die. Once it was gone, there was no way to repair a soul. Not even Error's strings could stitch it back together.

"When I found Fizz he didn't have a soul... so I tried giving him half of mine. As soon as my soul was split and Fizz had half, another half formed on both of ours, as if Fizz's own half-soul had formed. It's complicated, I know... but I think this coded bit is the codes from Fizz's creator, trying to regain control of him," he murmured. "We now share the same soul. Everything that happens to my soul happens to Fizz's, and vice versa,"

Swap looked extremely confused, struggling to take in what Cure had just said, but Ink understood. After spending so much time studying souls, trying to see if he could create one, he knew all about this sort of thing.

He tried to simplify it for Swap. "Basically, Cure and Fizz share a soul. Something bad is happening to Fizz's soul because of–"

Realisation slammed into Ink, slapping him in the face.

As he broke off, Cure yelped again, and Swap tensed up.

"Error," Ink spat.