VOXISTALE: Novel Edition

Chapter 113

"Wait, dad," Frisk climbed to her feet. "What about that creature down there?" she gestured to the hole.

Asgore grimaced. "I'll deal with them. You've lost a lot of blood, my child. You need to regain your strength if we are to be prepared for the Messiah's arrival."

Wordlessly, Frisk allowed Papyrus to lead her from the armory, leaving Asgore to stand alone inside the room, watching after them through the entryway. The creature down there was very likely to be a feral . . . but he had his own suspicions on it. He'd told Frisk that the Empty were nothing more than a fairy tale, but that was only because he didn't have the time nor heart to detail the exact lore concerning such beasts.

The Empty . . . What could they be doing here? And if it wasn't one, then it was just a poor monster that had gone feral, and was now his duty to put out of misery.

He turned his gaze upon a scythe-like arm that was lying near the hole, having been severed cleanly by Determination magic. Wisps of smoke were drifting off of it as it began to deform into a puddle of black ooze, which would soon be completely gone, turned into the heavy smoke it was transfiguring into. This made the ex-king grimace again.

"Sans," Asgore finally spoke as he lost sight of his adoptive daughter, turning his head to look at the short skeleton that had somehow appeared in the room, going unnoticed.

"way ahead of ya," Sans replied, hands shoved into the pockets of his red hoodie. "think i've found where they're coming from. frisk and paps were lucky to get out."

"Lucky" was an understatement. It was a miracle Frisk and Papyrus hadn't been torn apart. Asgore took a deep breath, glaring down the dark hole from whence the horror lies. "We eliminate any outside of their hive, then seal their exit. That should keep them at bay long enough."

Without another word, the two monsters descended into the pit, the ex-king casting about his flames to fill the emptiness and contextualize their surroundings. A circular room filled with metallic webbing, a single archway opening into a short hall that led into the puzzle room. With the swipe of his paw, the produced flames began to swirl about the room, tearing apart and melting the collection of webbing until nothing remained of it, exposing the room's details in full. Old suits of armor lay about, some of which Asgore was sure had belonged to some monsters that had tried to escape the monster purge by hiding down here during the Great War. It was an unfortunate fate they met.

"here," Sans spoke, drawing Asgore's attention behind, toward a hole in the floor, easily dwarfing the gavalitch in size. The ex-king glared at it, stepping nearer.

"Do you hear that?" he asked.

Sans paused to listen. "yeah . . . like a heartbeat. what does that mean?"

"I'm not sure," Asgore admitted. He'd never had to deal with a hive in his life. Sure, he'd killed his fair share of Empty in his youth, as had Toriel, but the hives? That was his father's accomplishments. Asgard Dreemurr had been known for his ruthless and oftentimes indiscriminate purging of Empty Hives. Asgore had heard a story or two, but he and his father had never been extraordinarily close. Asgore was more of a mother's boy growing up, much like Asriel had been before his untimely death.

"My father once told me that a hive was like a living being by itself," Asgore began, staring down into the dark pit, Sans at his side. "It feeds and nurtures its drones, incubating them for Grimm-hælurkën."

"grimm-hælurkën . . . sounds like an old farudden word," the skeleton commented. Old Farudden was the ancient monster language used primarily in the mediterranean, and during northward expansion, thousands of years ago. The language wasn't officially named until a monster philosopher named Farudden modernized it, and the monster high king at the time, Jaalavor Dreemurr, Asgore's great grandfather, had expanded its use, effectively replacing the prior language in the course of a couple centuries, some time around 600 BCE, according to the modern human calendars Asgore had grown accustomed to.