UntilTale (An Undertale AU story)

10. The Grey Door.

Prota's POV

You unwrapped the bisicle. It didn't taste great, but you were never going to turn down popsicles. You continued through Waterfall. This place was really peaceful. You poke one of the blue flowers, having figured out what they do.

"Honestly, why did we need to leave the underground? We have space, food, water... why did we want the surface?"

You nod. That was a valid point.

A sound behind you makes you jump. You look over at it, and nearly scream. It's some... thing. Pale white, it's floating past, seemingly carelessly, but you can't shake the feeling it's looking at you with those eyes. You take a step back as it's eyes grin. It's many mouths blink and glance at you. Little writhing tendrils spaced out on it wave at you, beckoning, before it turns on it's spine-like tail. Then, two identical transparent images of it shoot out from it, before it appears fully at one of them. Blocky chunks lag behind in air as it drifts, before being pulled back to their correct positions.

What is this thing? Without realizing it, you start following after it. You end up in a small hallway. You'd passed through here only a while ago. Was that door always there?

The thing bleeds through the cracks in the door frame.

You place a hand on the doorknob. Suddenly, it's like you're seeing yourself from outside your body. You don't want to, but your hand opens the door.

<Time skip>

you lurch out from the door, dizzy and sick. You glance back at it, before it dissolves into square chunks and fades. You stumble forward. You need to find someone, anyone.

You hear a chuckle up ahead and see Caveat laughing at something a flower had repeated.

Your throat dry, you call out. He looks over at you. "Hey there! Good to see you agai- are you okay, you're looking a little green." he walks over to you.

"The man behind the door, I've seen him!" Caveat freezes. The pinpricks of light in his eye sockets disappear. "What? You saw him?" caveat looks around frantically. "We can't talk here. The flowers have ears. Come with me, I've got a shortcut." 

he puts his hand on your shoulder, and suddenly you're in a well lit building, your stomach lurches again. "Sorry about that, first time warping can do that to you." Caveat says drily.

You look around and realize you're in a restaurant. Really? This is more private than Waterfall? Caveat goes up to the counter. "Grillby, the usual please, and some fries for our friend here." he puts some gold on the counter, then steers you over to a booth, away from the slightly inebriated patrons. He puts his phone on the table and presses an app.

"Tell me exactly what happened. I know about your duel with Neo, but what happened after that?"

You sigh. This would be tough to explain.

"Well, after that, I met Princess Melody. She took me through a bit of Waterfall, when we were attacked by one of those greyed out monsters. It talked about how my soul would bring their master back from non-existence. We ran. Luckily it tripped and couldn't get up without arms. From there, we found the royal guard. We watched a bit of their training, Melody fangirled a little bit over them-"

Caveat chuckled. "Probably cause the way they fight is like an anime, and Melody, well, really likes anime..."

You continue. "I know she does. After their training we went to Undyne's house and Melody watched some anime about superpowers with her friends."

"It's great, did you watch it? Melody got me interested in it, and I just introduced Neo to it."

You scoff. "Can we get back to the discussion of how I almost died?" Caveat nods sheepishly.

"After I did some reading, I set back out. I saw this weird white monster that looked like a bunch of monsters thrown together. I guess it was controlling me in some way, because I followed it. It took me to a grey door."

Caveat was focused now. "And what happened next?"

You barely knew what had happened yourself. You take a deep breath.

<flashback>

You entered the room. The walls were so black you thought it might have been that vantablack stuff. The freaky little thing you had followed glided to a man.

His figure seemed to be made of smoke. It seeped and blended into the faint shadows he cast.

The creature nudged him. And he spoke. "Ah, C. welcome back. More memories of me, I'm sure."

His voice cut through your head. Garbled symbols flickered through again, but much stronger than ever before.

He held out his hand. Grey energy seeped from the creature into a large hole in his skeletal hand. His body seemed to take on a more humanoid form as he absorbed it. His form solidified, albeit only a little.

The creature let out a sound that made your ears ring. It sounded like static and feedback. He turned to face you.

His face was a skull, two harsh cracks leading to his eyes. "Oh, well done, C. I was worried I'd have to hunt them down. Don't worry child, this should be quite painless."

He held out his hand again. Your soul, blazing red orange, was pulled out of your chest.

The edges started to spark and disintegrate, getting pulled to your attacker. His body was rapidly solidifying. Desperate, you did all that you could to fight back. You reared back and threw the trowel from the ruins as hard as you could at him.

Not that it had any noticeable effect. It phased right through his skull. However, maybe from surprise or broken concentration, he let you go.

You felt sick. No, worse than that. You burst from the door, confident you were dying.

<flash back ends>

Caveat trembled.

The waitress, a flaming spider monster brought you your food. "Thanks, Orchid." Caveat said politely, tapping his phone. "Eat. You should regain your strength." you felt like eating was the last thing you could do, but you nibbled at your fries. Caveat looked deep in thought. He quickly ate his food, a burger with two halves of a purplish donut as the bun, before standing up.

He put his hand on your shoulder as you wiped your hands from the grease. You tried to focus on keeping your fries down, knowing he was going to take another shortcut.

"Come on. We need to talk to my dad."