Underearth/Book 4/Chapter 15

A</span

**Want to read this elsewhere?**

As Frisk advanced through the remainder of the Waterfall Caves unscathed, his mind began to slowly set itself at ease. With very little left to go—Frisk thought—he'll have drawn out whoever this guy he was told to seek is in no time!

Frisk stepped out onto the bridge that marked one of the final obstacles between him and the Hotlands, with the crag marking the last of the Caves he would have to see for a time.

As Frisk reached the half-way point of the bridge, a sudden streak of blue appeared in front of him before vanishing a split second later. A few seconds after, an even more sudden blast of wind erupted all around him. The turbulence from this event caused the bridge to detach from its uplinks on both sides of the chasm Frisk stood over and explode into multiple detached wooden fragments. With nothing to stand on anymore, Frisk began falling downwards; the abruptness of everything that had just happened still taking time to register in his mind.

When Frisk's head had finally caught on to the fact that he was now falling into a chasm, Frisk brought his arms up to start shooting fire from them, like he had done before. Before he started however, a pain shot through his chest followed by a swift stop in his descent. Pained at his chest and the rapid halt he'd come to, Frisk slowly lifted his head only to find a neat rock sticking up out of his chest. Bending his head backwards ever-so-carefully, he saw that the ground was rather close by, and that some parts of the ground rose up into sharp-looking stalagmites, one of which just so happening to be where Frisk had the gall to land. Feeling his eyelids begin to grow heavy from the pain that emanated from all across his body, Frisk closed his eyes and, quickly thereafter, went limp.

The sound of metal boots hitting the ground rang out as Undyne hit the ground of the chasm.

"Heh, too easy!" she said, staring up at the Human's corpse.

"For somebody who'd managed to slay so many Monsters," Undyne said, "he went down rather easily. Are you sure that was him?"

Undyne's smile faded for the most part. "What do you mean am I sure that was him? Of course I am!! I don't see any other *living* Humans down here!"

Undyne's jaw then tightened, her teeth clenching hard. "You don't have to be this way." she said. "If it wasn't for me, you'd be dead now, and that Human would still be wandering free."

Undyne's teeth clenched harder. "As if I needed help from a *Human*! And what do you mean 'if it wasn't for me'? It was that river guy that brought me your SOUL. I didn't see you climb out of the jar and hover your way over to me!"

She then struck herself in the face with a clenched fist. "In case you haven't noticed, Undyne, we *both* have control over this body. At any moment, I could have let this Human continue his slaughter of every Monster that had claimed my own life all those years ago, like that abominable king and that skeleton with the broken face. But I didn't, because even though justice would demand their lives, too many others would have died on the way!"

Undyne sucked in air to rebuttal the Human SOUL she was arguing with, though before she could speak, the Pocketwatch rose over Frisk's body, along with his red SOUL and the dagger. As both active witnesses witnessed the affair though Undyne's singular working eye, Frisk's SOUL turned gold before it, the dagger, and the Pocketwatch vanished.

"What the hell was that!?" Undyne questioned.

"I dunno..." John (the Human whose SOUL Undyne had absorbed) replied. "I've never seen anything like that happen before."

"So you mean it's *not* normal for a Human SOUL to just vanish with a pocket watch?"

"No, not that I know of, nor any of the others."

Just then, a thunderous sound echoed from behind her. Turning around, both Undyne and John bore witness to a massive spinning globe of golden energy. After a few seconds of the orb sitting there, it collapsed into nothing, revealing a relatively small Human within.

Frisk opened his eyes, his skin felt like ice, his breath clearly visible, but he was alive. Looking across at Undyne, he noticed that she bore striking resemblance to the form she took during his first murderous conquest, though instead of a golden heart at the top of the breastplate, it was straight yellow; and instead of a fountain of golden light emitting from her left eye, it was simply dormant under the eye-patch.

"The kid's alive?!" John blurted out.

"Not for long!" Undyne shouted, summoning a spear and launching it straight at Frisk.

Seeing the spear fly towards him this time, Frisk simply summoned a shield, blocking its advance.

"You're gonna have to try a little harder than *that*." Frisk mocked, his eyes switching to glowing blue as Undyne shot off to one side, colliding hard with the wall.

"What the hell!? What's *with* this kid?" she mumbled, struggling to clamber out of the sizable crater she'd left behind.

Once outside the cliff wall, she was suddenly hit by a massive wall of flame as Frisk shot a column of fire from his arms. He sustained the flame for about ten seconds before stopping its flow. Seeing behind, he saw Undyne kneeling, her arms all but cinders.

"Undyne, you alright?" John asked.

"Wha... yeah... Yeah! This is *nothing*!" she said, though her heavy breathing seemed to speak otherwise.

"Oh? Then I guess I'll just have to try harder." Frisk said, his eyes once again glowing blue.

Undyne suddenly felt ten times heavier. Struggling to keep herself up-right, she brought her arms down to keep herself steady, though as soon as weight was put on the arms, they crumbled away for the most part. Nearly satisfied, Frisk looked around the chasm floor, looking for a nice, sharp stalagmite. After a few seconds of searching, he found one that was *perfect* for what he had in mind. Using his magic, Frisk cracked the stalagmite from its base and shot it straight into Undyne's chest.

Undyne, coughing substantially, tried to stand again, only to be put down further by the greater enforcement of gravity.

For about a minute, Frisk watched the fish Monster occasionally struggle against the gravity of her situation before she finally ran out of energy to continue fighting and simply... stopped.

"D–damn it..." she said slowly.

"We gave it our best, Undyne." John tried to cheer her up.

"Yeah... though I'd hate to be in your place, Human... having given his best twice, and still dying in the end anyway."

John remained silent.

Not long after, Undyne finally hunched forward, the stalagmite impaling her propping her up from collapsing entirely to the ground. Cautiously, Frisk lifted his spell.

Watching Undyne's body very carefully, he noticed that the same crystallization began to appear on her body as it did on Gerson's.

*So, she really is dead.* Frisk thought. *And, unlike before, she too had a Human SOUL, just like Gerson. Is this mysterious entity distributing the Human SOULs that Asgore had gathered?* Thinking further on the subject, Frisk remembered something Sans had said.

"You just focus on distributing the SOULs." That was it.

*If Undyne got this SOUL from whoever Sans was talking to, who is he?*

With Undyne crystallized into the same stone that Gerson hardened into, Frisk, catching sight of his corpse again, pulled the pocketwatch from his pocket.

"How did you do that?" he asked, referring to the Timepiece's ability to just bring him back to life.

"I CUT YOUR SOUL OUT OF THAT CORPSE—PERFECTLY, MIND YOU, YOU NEED NOT WORRY ABOUT DISCARDED FRAGMENTS—AND COPIED THE STATUS OF YOUR BODY THE VERY LAST OSCILLATION BEFORE YOU WERE STRUCK BY THE SHOCKWAVE ABOVE. I THEN SIMPLY RECOMBINED YOUR BODY WITH YOUR SOUL AND THUS, YOU WERE REVIVED. I DID THE VERY SAME THING WHEN BRINGING YOU BACK FROM THE DEAD WHEN YOU FIRST FELL INTO THE UNDERGROUND."

Looking back up at his corpse, Frisk had a thought. "So, if I were to, say, touch my corpse, would the entire space-time continuum implode or something?"

"NO." the Timepiece said bluntly. "THAT'S STUPID. TIME ISN'T GOING TO BREAK UNDER STUPID CRAP SUCH AS THIS. TIME AND SPACE ARE ALSO TWO DISTINCTLY SEPARATE ENTITIES; NEVER MIX THE TWO."

"So what could break time?" Frisk cooed.

"NOTHING. TIME ISN'T SOME FRAGILE VASE YOU ADMIRE FROM AFAR IN FEAR OF ACCIDENTALLY BREAKING EVERYTHING. NOW, DON'T YOU HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO INSTEAD OF ASKING QUESTIONS YOU'LL NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT?"

Chuckling to himself, Frisk placed the pocketwatch back into his pocket and began climbing out of the chasm. Upon reaching the top, he was relieved to find that he had chosen the correct wall to scale. With Undyne once again no longer a threat (he hoped), Frisk continued into the Hotlands.