Her Majesty

Chapter 4 - Madness

Undyne awoke to a strange sensation upon her face. She didn't really understand what it was, but it was enough to bring her to.

Her eye opened, and she looked up above her, for a moment unsure of where she was or why she was on the ground. Her fingers dug into cold, slightly-damp earth, and she blinked, suddenly.

Then, a jolt of understanding hit her, and she sat up quickly.

Before her was a long tunnel made of dirt, packed hard and smooth. It rose uphill, and she could see, very faintly, a slight glimmer of reddish-gold light.

She stared, her heart racing.

This wasn't the barrier at all.

The barrier was gone.

She'd done it.

She sat there for a moment, allowing the faint feel of fresh air touch her face, her eye closing. It was almost intimate, how the air slid over her face. She'd never felt anything like it, never knew anything like it. Yet when it touched her, she recognised it for what it was.

After a moment, she pushed herself to her feet, taking a mental assessment of herself. Other than the slight jarring the fall had caused her, she felt perfectly fine. In fact, she felt...

She gasped, placing a hand to her chest.

They're still here, she realized with a jolt. They're still within my body.

Undyne had assumed that once the barrier broke, the souls would vanish. But they were still within her, still attached to her own soul like a patchwork quilt.

How was that possible? In all of the rumours, it was said the souls would vanish. Why did she still have them?

That was when her phone suddenly rang, scaring her so badly that she jumped and summoned a spear before she recognised it for what it was. She grabbed it from her pocket - pausing for a moment when she realised her pockets were different - and then answered it.

"Hello?" she murmured.

"Undyne! You're okay? Where the hell are you, I was worried sick! What's going on? You said you'd call me once Asgore had a plan!"

Undyne felt her whole body suddenly react to that voice. She felt so warm, so comforted, that she closed her eye and smiled, holding the phone tighter. The spear vanished from her hand, and she just listened as her dear friend chastised her, hearing the worry and the relief beneath the stern words.

"Hi," she whispered, wishing she could say so much more, but found the words weren't coming to her.

"Where are you, Undyne?! Are you safe? Oh god, your voice, it sounds so soft, are you okay, please be okay, say you're okay?!"

"I'm okay," she relented, still smiling, her hand going back over her chest, but for a completely different reason, now. "I'm... I'm in New Home. I'm at the barrier."

There was a pause.

"Is Asgore with you?" Alices asked, her voice still tense but a little softer, now. "He has the souls?"

"No," Undyne admitted. "It's... a really long story. But, please, Alices..."

She didn't know why she said what she said, next, but she did. "I need you here with me, okay? Can you come to the barrier?"

"Yes," Alices answered immediately. "Of course I will. When I do, you need to tell me everything, Undyne."

"I promise," Undyne agreed softly, her heart speeding up with the anticipation of seeing her.

When she hung up, she held the phone to her chest, and closed her eye, still smiling.

Alices was scared. There were no other words for it. As she took the familiar route from the Lab to New Home, her hands shook.

So much had already happened in the last few hours - hours? Was it hours? It only feels like minutes... - and she'd heard something strange in Undyne's voice. Not weak, not hurt, but strange. She couldn't figure it out.

Her whole body was tired. She had stood at those monitors for hours, fear making her stand stiff and unmoving, her eyes glued to the screen in front of her as the woman she loved fought for her life - and had almost lost it. Her eyes stung just remembering how badly Undyne had looked when she had last seen her; she hadn't seen the change brought on her once she'd absorbed the human's soul.

Alices wasn't a religious monster, but she fiercely hoped that the weakness she'd heard in Undyne's voice wasn't from her dying.

Because if Undyne died... if Undyne died...

Alices shook her head, not stopping in her fast-paced walk, reaching up and brushing the tears away from behind her glasses.

Undyne wasn't going to die. She patted the breast pocket of her coat for probably the sixteenth time, feeling the comforting bump there. Alices would make sure of that, no matter the method.

She walked over the yellow flowers, a chill crawling up her spine like cold fingers for a moment, like it did every time she saw them. That was one thing she'd be glad to never see again, if it all worked out.

If...

Finally, when she turned the corner towards the hallway she knew led to the barrier, she paused, sniffing.

Something was... weird. Something was very weird.

It felt strange, smelled strange, and yet she had no idea what to name it.

Or rather, she knew its name, but wasn't sure if that name applied.

"U-Undyne?" she called, suddenly afraid, her hands tangling before her and her posture lowering. She felt uneasy. Scared. Unprepared for whatever change she was about to face.

Then her eyes fell on Undyne, and her heart skipped.

Undyne sat on the ground with her legs crossed, slouching a little with her head tilted back to look up the slope before her. But it was an Undyne that looked nothing like the Undyne Alices had last seen. Though she only saw her back, even that was changed. Her hair was no longer shorn and ragged, but smooth and its normal length, in its usual ponytail, the colour practically glittering red. She wore not armour, but robes, simple but elegant and flowing, yet cinched to her wrists.

That was all Alices could see at that moment, but it was enough to know that her friend was different.

It was made even clearer when Alices realised she could feel the power Undyne now held in the air around her. It was like a looming storm cloud, heavy with hail, but kept in check, ready to be loosed at a moment's notice. She realised, belatedly, that she was shaking from that feeling, her hands clenched in front of her holding onto themselves so hard her claws dug into her skin and hurt.

But it was still Undyne. And she was alive. That was the most important part to her.

"Undyne!" she called again, her voice sounding small.

Undyne started, getting to her feet and turning around, and Alices stared at her, instantly spellbound. Undyne's eye... it was bright green, and it sparkled with both power and happiness. She could see that, from her narrow hips, she wore a belt that held a long, vest-like tunic to her waist, the hems so long they reached her ankles, her feet covered in sturdy but still lovely boots. Upon her chest was the Delta Rune, and stretching down from it were two spears pointing down, only to slowly merge into a single spearhead at the hem.

She was beautiful, still. Her face bore strange markings, almost like slashed scars, but of pure black, two on each cheek, one on each temple reaching down towards one on each side of her bottom jaw, all four ending in arches around her gleaming eye and empty eye-socket, partially obscured by some of her hair brushed over it. Yet these did nothing to tarnish her beauty. If anything, they added to it, emphasising her new strength.

To Alices's surprise, that eye lit up when it fell on her. And then, to her absolute shock, she found herself embraced, so hard she lost her breath.

But suddenly, everything that happened slammed into her, harder than this embrace, and she found herself returning it, hard, her claws digging into Undyne's back and her face burying itself into her shoulder, her eyes shut, feeling tears come to her eyes without any chance of control.

"Undyne," she whispered again. "You're okay. You're okay!'

Undyne nodded, her eye closed, holding Alices to her and just keeping her there, loving the feel of her against her chest. She never thought she'd even see Alices again, let alone embrace her, and her heart suddenly felt too full, fuller than her soul felt, even.

There were words suddenly bubbling up into her throat from her heart, words that had her eye opening and her fingers digging into Alices's back. She opened her mouth, about to say them, when--

"You broke the barrier yourself?"

Undyne jolted, thrown for a moment by these words, speechless.

Alices was staring over her shoulder, suddenly connecting what was odd about what she was looking at.

The slope. That slope that Undyne was sitting at. That was where the barrier had been. And now it was just a plain slope.

The barrier was gone.

"Undyne!" Alices pulled away and held her at arms-length, her whole face lighting up. "Did you and Asgore break the barrier?! Is he already on the surface?! We need to tell everyone, this is huge, we need to--,"

Undyne placed a finger over her mouth, silencing her and making her blush. "It was me. Asgore went to the Ruins."

Alices's eyes widened, blinking hard. Undyne smiled weakly, then told her everything. All of it, from their last call to their most recent.

By the end, Undyne's hand had dropped back to her side, and Alices's hands were covering her mouth, her face pale and her eyes huge and full.

It hurt something deep in Undyne to see Alices look so pained, so she leaned close and hugged her again. Alices, to her surprise and delight, buried her face into her shoulder and put her arms back around her waist, sniffling.

Undyne closed her eye, rubbing Alices's back slowly, feeling a kind of hazy delirium brought on by this. She was holding Alices, comforting her, and Alices wasn't embarrassed or running away or apologising...

Again, those words came to her throat. "Alice-Alices," she stammered, blushing.

Alices looked up at her, looking bemused and sad.

Suddenly, the words died right there. It wasn't the time. This wasn't the place.

"Wh-what do we do now?" she wondered.

"Well," Alices said softly. "You... Undyne, I don't think you really understand what you've done."

"I broke the barrier," she answered.

"Not that," Alices corrected, surprising her. "When you absorbed the souls... and then somehow kept them, despite using them to break the barrier..." She bit her lip, her eyes wavering a little.

Suddenly, with her thoughts as they were, Undyne felt so far beyond her, so out of her reach...

But Undyne didn't feel that distance. If anything, she wanted that distance to vanish. "Go on," she insisted.

Alices hesitated, then pulled away, her hands tangling in front of her again. To Undyne's dismay, she saw that Alices was shaking.

"Undyne," she murmured. "You're... practically a god, now."