Freeze In Place

You and your light-blue-colored soul are not the first to pass through the barrier at Mount Ebott after me, but you are the first to survive the fall.

You’re very young and not very bright. You think your plastic knife will be enough to fend off any monsters out for blood. You’re in luck; Asriel and I haven’t been dead long enough for news to have spread to the Froggits and Vegetoids living in the Ruins. They regard you as a mere curiosity rather than a member of a race of tyrants and murderers.

You’re more than a curiosity to me. You can hear me.

Maybe not directly. But I whisper things to you and you seem to react. That’s how you make it past the puzzles, because I don’t think you’re old enough to read. You’re lucky you have me.

You make your way to the streets of Old Home. That’s where you meet her.

Mom is so shocked to see you that she drops her bag of groceries.

You stumble back and drop your toy knife. She’s so much larger, more imposing, than any of the monsters you’ve encountered yet. But something keeps you from panicking. I think it’s because you can feel me smiling.

Mom!

She seems to fumble for words, but is unable to find any. Eventually she bows her head. Her shoulders are shaking. “A human…” she says finally. “Another child, at that…”

You tilt your head.

Mom?

She breathes in sharply. “I am sorry,” she says. “This is the only way. Because he… Asgore… is too much of a weak and selfish man to do it himself…”

Toriel looks through you.

Ice fills your veins and your legs freeze in place.

“I must take your soul myself. Then I will cross the barrier and end this all.” A fireball coalesces in her hand.

I know she can’t see me. I know this is what I wanted all along.

And this is far less gruesome than buttercup poisoning.

But I have nothing to say as the fire magic pierces your body.

She takes your soul, cradles it gently in her hands, and I know no more.

The barrier is still there when my consciousness awakens again—so many years later, when another human falls.

Twice now I’ve died in vain at the hands of cowards.

My dear Orange Soul, let’s keep it from happening again.