Underearth/Book 4/Chapter 14

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Further ahead, Frisk came to the strait of glowing cyan water at the far-end of the Quiet Village. Looking down at the water, the instincts Frisk originally had that told him to stay away from it were gone. Frisk looked back up at the far peninsula. The gap between the two appeared to be only fifteen feet.

"UNLESS YOU ENJOY PAIN, I WOULD SUGGEST USING MAGIC TO GET ACROSS THIS GAP." Frisk heard the Timepiece say.

"Why? What's wrong with the water?" Frisk asked.

"IT'S GLOWING. THAT GLOWING COMES FROM A BIOLUMINESCENT ALGAE THAT EATS THROUGH FLESH LIKE POTENT ACID. THIS WATER HAS AN EXTREME INFESTATION, SO ITS QUITE LIKELY THAT YOU'LL END UP LIKE THOSE THAT USED TO LIVE DOWN THERE IF YOU ENTER THE WATER."

"What do you mean 'those that used to live down there'?"

"THIS USED TO BE A THRIVING MONSTER CITY. THIS ALGAE WAS INTRODUCED AND BEGAN REPLICATING ITSELF RAPIDLY. BECAUSE THE SIMULACRA OF THE MONSTERS SIMULATED FLESH, THEY BEGAN TO GET DEVOURED BY THE ALGAE UNTIL NONE WERE LEFT ALIVE. THOSE THAT TRIED TO ESCAPE WERE KILLED UPON BREAKING THE SURFACE."

"Killed? By whom?" Frisk asked, stepping away from the algae-infested water, his stomach beginning to churn.

"THE ROYAL GUARD. ON ORDERS FROM ASGORE." the Timepiece finally said after a brief pause.

Frisk's eyes widened as his breathing became staggered. Asgore did this? No, not possible. And yet, the Timepiece had yet to lie about anything; at least as far as Frisk was concerned.

"Why...?" Frisk breathed out. "Why would he do this?"

"THE MONSTERS WITHIN SOUGHT INSURRECTION AGAINST ASGORE'S AUTHORITY. ASGORE MADE AN EXAMPLE OF THEM."

"Why'd these Monsters seek insurrection?"

"WHY NOT ASK ASGORE HIMSELF AFTER YOU SAVE CHARA?"

Frisk thought about it for a second before agreeing. Forming a bridge of ice, Frisk crossed the strait and began to walk the long, narrow path that led to the main area of the Quiet Village.

Upon arriving, Frisk saw a figure standing in the middle of the Village staring out at the pond that decorated a large portion of the place. As Frisk came closer, the figure looked over at him. It was Gerson, his hands cupped over the pummel-end of a rather large hammer.

"Wah ha ha... So you finally made it." the old tortoise coughed out.

Frisk charged the Monster without speaking, his hand slowly engulfing in flames.

"Not so fast there, kiddo!" Gerson said, lifting his hammer slightly before plopping it back on the ground. As he did so, a small, brown wave shot itself at Frisk. Upon reaching him, the ground itself erupted upward, carefully encasing Frisk, who just barely had enough time to form a small shield around himself.

"Erh, that took more outta me than I thought it would..." Gerson mumbled, stumbling backwards a bit. "Good thing that kid brought me this."

Gerson reached down towards a small sheet that covered something at his feet. Pulling the sheet away unveiled a capsule with a glowing purple heart-shaped object within.

*WHAT!!?!?* Frisk thought upon seeing it. *Where the hell did he get a Human SOUL from!? That looks like one of the capsules that Asgore has!*

Frisk dropped the shield from around himself and began sliding down the pillar of stone that had shot him upward.

"I'm sorry we had to do this to you, young Human. I truly am." Gerson said to the SOUL upon removing it from the container. "Even after all this time, what little hair I have left never did get as white as yours." Gerson looked up at the stone pillar that he had used to launch Frisk away. "But now, there is a Human that's here to kill us all, and so I ask for your help in defeating him!"

Gerson wrapped his hand around the SOUL. As he did so, the SOUL shattered into a thousand threads, all of which then shot themselves into the old Monster's body. All the power that coursed through the Monster now caused him to collapse to his knees. Frisk, seeing this happen, pressed his attack, hoping to strike him down in one swift strike. As soon as Gerson came within striking distance, Frisk brought his fired hand across, though before it made contact, Gerson lifted his hammer and swung it at Frisk, launching him away into a wall this time, cracking some of the stone where he hit.

Falling to the ground, Frisk grasped his chest, which seemed to scream in pain and agony.

"Wah ha ha... whoa, this *power*!" Gerson said.

Frisk, with great difficulty, looked up at the tortoise. The Monster's many marks of age were vanishing. The bald head he featured began sprouting fresh threads of black hair, and the hair that remained began turning black too. Now looking right at Frisk, Gerson's eyes began glowing red. When this happened, armor began appearing all around him, cladding every inch of the Monster in a protective suit of plate mail.

"Now, you murderous welp," Gerson said, grabbing his hammer with great vigor. "it's time for you to die."

As he charged, Gerson brought the hammer up high over his head, bringing it back down as soon as Frisk came within range. When the hammer slammed against the ground, fracturing the stone beneath, no flesh or blood could be found as a cushion between the hammer and stone. Looking over, he found Frisk off to one side, regaining his own composure as he pulled the spinal sword from his wrist, igniting its cruelly barbed blade as it emerged.

Without giving the Human time to use his new-found weapon, Gerson's eyes began to glow brown, a similar such energy emanating from his armored boot into the ground beneath. As soon as Frisk swung the blade, the floor of the cave shot upwards, trapping the blade in a tomb of rock. Similar such energy shot its way to where Frisk was standing, erupting more rock from the ground to encase the murderous child before he could do any more harm.

Grunting as the slabs of stone emerged around him, Frisk tried to pull the sword free again before deciding to simply dispel it. With the walls of his tomb now closing in, Frisk summoned a shield around himself, blocking the advance of the stone.

"You think you're so clever, don't you." Gerson sneered. "Shields can only hold *so* much pressure before collapsing. Oh, how I wonder how much yours can withstand!"

The crushing pressure of the stone surrounding Frisk increased, straining Frisk's very being just to continue to have the shield persist. As the crushing started to near the point at which Frisk could bear it no more, a thought shot through his head. *The magic I learned when I absorbed Grillby's SOUL,* he thought, *maybe that's the key!*

Frisk looked up through the narrow crack between the encroaching slabs straight at Gerson, who was simply standing there, staring at Frisk, his mind sharp in focus to crush the pest. Focusing long and hard, Frisk's eyes flashed from ivory to blue.

Immediately, the crushing stopped as Gerson was shot upward. Up in the air, Gerson then shot straight down at extreme speeds, slamming hard into the stone below, shattering the hard surface sediment upon crashing into it.

In the meantime, as Gerson shot downward, Frisk shattered the orb of stone that surrounded him and approached the coughing mess that was Gerson.

"you knowâ€”*cough*â€”gravity magic?" the Monster asked, barely able to hold a breath.

Frisk didn't answer. Using the same magic he'd used to cause Gerson to take flying lessons, he summoned the Monster's hammer to his hand. As it entered his grasp, Frisk brought it over Gerson's head and dropped it. The unfortunate Monster's head turned to dust as the gap between the hammer and the ground closed to be smaller than his head would allow.

Watching the body, Frisk wanted to make sure it turned to dust. Roughly half a minute after the Monster's head turned to dust, Frisk noticed something rather bizarre happen. Instead of turning to dust, Gerson's body instead began to solidify into a rock-like material. Stepping away, Frisk watched the rock slowly overtake the metal of the armor; its brilliant shine being muddied and dulled by the advance of the lusterless material. Once his entire body had been taken over, Frisk stepped over the corpse, satisfied that, while unusual for what he had seen, the Monster was dead.

Watchful for more unexpected guests, Frisk advanced passed the rest of the Quiet Village, down the path that led to the Hotlands.