UNderdoom - Chapter 21

Swirling around him were the fires of war. He couldn’t recall the name of the city. It was crumbling and in flames, and the darkened, smoky skies glowed with the amber light of the inferno that consumed the city after three days of bombing and shelling. Every street reeked with the iron scent of blood and death, the smell of coagulating viscera and the lingering stench of cordite. The dust of each crumbling edifice mingled with and dried up the blood that flowed from the scattered remains of their tenants. In the distance, one could hear the rhythmic cadence of machine gun fire, softly drowned out by the flames that licked out of the window of every ruined building. He could hear footsteps all around him, the sound of other boots carefully treading stony, upturned ground where busy roads filled with commuters and pedestrians used to be. Their march was quiet, and unlike the busy, hollering escapades of basic training, it did not ring with the uniform step of a hundred men in rank and file. They were close, but scattered, each of them with their heads on a swivel, looking for any resistance, any danger that may lie within the many new crags and crevices in the smoky rubble.

Not everyone who had been deployed there remained. Some turned around to talk to comrades who were no longer there, only to catch the words before they left their throats and turn back around with hollow eyes.  Many had been lost on the battlefield, taken out by shelling during the siege of the city. Others yet had perished to enemy fire upon their entrance, and more yet to civilians who, in their minds, had brought upon themselves their own doom.

The city had already fallen: its government had conceded defeat, and the United Aerospace Corporation’s quest for unity through dominance was nearing its end. All that was left was to clean up the rubble, and anyone or anything that dared stand in the way.

The memory faded out for a few moments. All was black and silent.

Then, without any warning or buildup, it snapped back into view. Now, he was somewhere in the rubble himself, watching as the marines corralled a group of people wearing raggedy scraps of tattered cloth with hands over their head into a single file line and put them against the wall. There were five of them; two parents and three young children.

Suddenly, he recognized the long-buried memory, and he desperately tried to wake up.
Especially when he saw someone standing in front of the quivering family with a rifle in hand.

He already knew the outcome. No matter what he did, his “comrades” would take out their “justice” upon these people. He would be bludgeoned with the butt of a rifle and dragged away from his commanding officer’s broken, bleeding body, his fists coated scarlet out of indignant justice and rage, and as the world would go black, he would see another soldier carry out the orders he refused before waking up and finding himself in cuffs before the unforgiving eyes of the military police.

But to his horror, that wasn’t what he saw now

The soldiers had their rifles aimed at a crowd while the Commanding Officer gave a word of warning, pointing to the quailing family who now stared into the barrel of another faceless marine’s rifle.

“Let this be a message to all of you! Some of you may be tempted to try and ‘fight back,’ or fight for some lost cause you know you’ll never realize, like some of the little snipers and pot shot takers who have harassed and killed several of my men… “

The faceless man loaded his carbine. The father huddled around his wife and children as the crowd looked on in despair. Some tried calling out for them, only for the soldiers to encroach upon them further, shouldering a rifle at anyone who opened their mouth.

“The UAC warns you, I warn you, all my remaining men warn you… we do not take pity on rats. For every man I lose from this time forth… you will all suffer. Think about that when you’re tempted to fight back. Think about that when you feel like you’re going to ‘make a difference.’ Think about that when you look at your fallen nation’s flag and you’re tempted to fight for it…”

He pulled out a cigar, and handed it to the soldier in some display of nonchalant dominance.
The soldier took his helmet off.

All breath escaped the Doom Slayer’s lungs as he saw his face

It was him. It was him in an earlier life… but it was obvious that this would not play out as it had before. He tried to pry himself out of the rubble, but all strength had been stolen from him. His arms couldn’t move even the slightest debris. He felt helpless. Paralyzed. Powerless.

His other self took the cigar, lit it, and glared pitilessly at the cowering family as he took in a drought.

“Think about that after what you see today… when you learn that the weakest link breaks the chain. Marine… show them.”

He shouldered his weapon.
The Family huddled together, sobbing

He fired.

And as he fired, all the world’s noise was reduced to a horrible, ear-splitting whine. The screams of the crowd were silent. The successive shots from the weapon were silent. The family’s bodies hitting the ground were silent. Everything had been drowned out by that terrible droning noise, that screaming in the Slayer’s conscience that started as a low ringing, increasing in amplitude until it was enough to make one’s ears bleed. The Praetor tried to close his eyes, tried to look away, but he couldn’t. Frozen were his eyelids as was his blood. The ringing began not only to get louder, but to change into a scream. Many screams, all crying out at once. The vision became red as the Hunter tried to close his eyes. Slowly, it all went redder and redder until it was completely and utterly black.


And then his eyes opened.

His struggling lungs gasped for air, and his whole body lunged forward, as if to break out of the rubble of that ruined city. His arms thrust forward, and groped at nothing as he tumbled forward and landed face first onto the unforgiving, dusty ground. He lay there for a few moments, panting, gasping for breath before slowly righting himself, standing with a hand to his head. He took off his helmet for a moment, rubbing his aching temples as the blood that had rushed to his skull brought throbbing pain with it.

He stared blankly at the world around him, ruminating on his dream. He hadn’t many occasions to sleep, let alone to dream in all the many years he had spent in his crusade. That singular event shook him, rocked him to his core.

He hadn’t noticed the others coming out of the cavity as he stood there.

Toriel’s voice got his sudden attention. “Sir, are you well? You seem a little… dazed.”

The Doom Slayer meekly turned her way, still rubbing his temples, his eyes seeming to stare out into the horizon beyond the queen. His brow was not stuck in its eternal furrow, neither was his gaze as piercing or intense. He looked empty. Dead inside. Without another gesture or word, he turned back around and trudged back to the other side of the cavity to think by himself for a moment.

VEGA’s head tilted a bit too one side. “Never would I have predicted this kind of behavior from him. I’ve never seen him this way before.”

Asgore scratched the back of his head as the Marine walked away. “Will he be well, Doctor?

Gaster deliberated for a moment. “I’m not sure how to answer that, O King. He... he has a lot to take in and think about right now.”

That was enough to pique Toriel’s worried curiosity. “Like what?”

Gaster went outright silent for a few moments. The Dreemurrs each tried to drum up the wherewithal to say “Doctor?” but neither spoke.

The Doom Slayer listened intently from his side of the rock. His fingers groped around the hilt of the crucible. He still did not want Toriel and Asgore to know, and to him, the end objective was still clear, though after that dream, perhaps it was not so clear anymore, and though he gripped the weapon tightly, his thumb just barely scratched the gem in the center that would activate the blade.

“…I suppose we’ll all see soon enough.”Gaster turned back towards the eventual destination, took a few steps, then turned back around towards where the Doom Slayer sat. “Old friend… we ought to get going. Come, your majesties.”

The old Doctor knew that sooner or later, he would follow. There was no telling however, how long he would need to be by himself.

The sound of the others’ footsteps did not move the Doom Slayer from his place on the cold, dusty side of that rock. His eyes were blank, and his mouth silently muttered along with the countless barrage of thoughts vying for control over his head. Why did he dream that? That’s not how it went… was it? It couldn’t be. He was assigned to that penal battalion on Mars for a reason. But why? Why was he thinking this? What changed that memory? Had it been repressed all that time?

With every maddening second, the Praetor fell deeper and deeper into catatonia, and his aching mind and quickly searing conscience screamed within him as he slumped onto the ground.

How was a dream having this much sway on him?
What was real anymore?

And so he sat there, thinking. Thinking ceaselessly to no real end. There were no answers to the questions in his head that weren’t really there. He wrestled with his mind, trying to find out what he was feeling, and why he was feeling it. Why did he see that? Why did he see it that way? Why did it fill him with such soul-drowning dread? It couldn’t have been him who did that… it would never be him.

He could never let that happen to someone who…

It was almost as if an emergency switch had been hit in his brain, but the Praetor suddenly stood up and brushed himself off, and like the dust on his greaves, the whirlwind of paralyzing thought was swept away from him. He had gotten good at shutting things out. Still, this was as long as anything had ever distracted him, and as he righted himself and saw Gaster, VEGA, and the Dreemurrs fading farther and farther into the distance, he still hesitated somewhat to run after them.

With a deep breath and a crack of his knuckles, the Hunter, without thinking, ran after them. If he thought any more on it, it would consume him again.

He knew what he was here to do, at least for the moment. That was all that mattered.


“You’d actually be very interested to know, VEGA.” Gaster kept his eyes on the many crags ahead in which a demon could hide. “The nature of timelines has much to do with what we’re up against…”

“I suppose. We never sensed any convolutions or distortions in our timeline – the only real anomalies consisted of interplanar activity and intrusions.”

“That may be the case for you, but for us, time is wounded. The crux has taken its toll on it, and in many planes, including ours, O King, the side effects make themselves manifest. What we have discerned as DT has much to do with the lifeblood of the universe…”

Gaster’s rhetoric was quickly becoming far more esoteric and mystical than what anyone else was comfortable around or capable of understanding especially the clinical VEGA. “I’m not sure I’m catching on when you say, ‘lifeblood of the universe.’ perhaps, if you could explain it in more… empirical terms?”

“Ah forgive me. I lose myself at times. I think the best way to-“

Thundering footsteps interrupted him, and all turned around to see a somewhat exasperated Praetorian, his face no longer pallid, but still staring forward with harrowed eyes.

“You’re back…” Gaster’s mouth hung slightly open as he thought of what he would say. “I assume you’ve made your decision?”

The Doom Slayer was still for a moment. Then he winced a little and nodded to the affirmative, unable to look Gaster in the eye.

“I see… I’ll leave it to you then.”

Everyone wanted to ask what he was talking about, but none summoned up the proper courage before proceeding, venturing toward a foreboding range of jagged mountains ahead of them. The sun had set further still, and the peaks of each mountain cast their blackened shadow across the barren plain. It set north-northeast while another source of light peeked out from behind the clouds, glimmering in bloody scarlet. Gaster knew it firsthand, and could only imagine what the Doom Slayer felt as he saw it. Both knew what it was and what it meant.

“As I was saying, The Time crux does not build bridges or open doors into other worlds, as I designed the crucible to do. The Crimson Blade makes a careful, precise incision, as it was based on purer Argent energy: The Time Crux, with its raw hellish power, blasts great holes in time and in space. The worlds run parallel, and the force it exudes as it makes its breach is violent enough to set the others out of alignment.”

The implications dawned on Asgore, unstopping his mouth. “So, when you surmised that our timeline was unstable- “

“It is because of the time crux, yes.”

 “I don’t believe I was present for this report Doctor.” Toriel’s curiosity had mingled with her confusion.

“Time has been fluctuating in our world. We’ve seen it be disrupted, restarted, reset altogether. That’s why my soul research… brought me to where I am now. ‘The Darkness keeps growing. The Shadows cutting deeper….’”


Sans and Alphys stood still, as did everyone else in the compound.
Frisk listened intently, her hands folded in front of her face. It looked less like she was taking it in so much as she was bracing herself for something. She looked at the others, all wearing shocked faces and breathing silently, as the soft, quiet noise made by the air conditioning was the only sound in the room.

Undyne could barely eke out any of the words that remained stuck in her throat. “Wh-what….”


The craggy edges of what looked like a deep ditch or an arroyo raised around them. It led into even deeper depths that snaked towards the mountains

“’Photon readings negative... “

Asgore’s blood ran cold. “So you-“

“Yes, your majesty. My soul research let me peer into the space outside of time…that’s where I was shattered, and that’s where I learned where souls go – a realm on the very edge of all time that is near impossible to breach.”

The ditch became a chasm, and the chasm became a tunnel.

“Both monsters and humans and all manner of life dwell there. I could not ever hope to describe it to you… but I do know this. There’s a reason human souls remain in time’s grasp for so much longer. The power in their souls, ‘determination’, as we have come to call it, is what keeps time moving forward. It is what time seeks to right itself from its skewing. Human souls have it, and they can use it to produce a “hiccup” in time that attempts to set it back into its normal flow. That is why there are resets; Because of the time crux.”

A faint green light illuminated the rock and bone that upheld the musty cavern.

“Wait…” A certain realization nearly struck VEGA dumb. “Our tethering technology is based around use of hell artifacts. Hell has been using Argent energy since before the beginning of the program, yet even after the Doom Marine sapped all of it out-“

“You were still able to use it.” Gaster needed no explanation. Interlopers trying to use hell’s energy had met their ruin long before the UAC tried their hand at it. “You know what this means, right?”

“The tether relies on relics that sapped into the hub where the Well’s power was dispersed through all hell… that must include the Crux… If we destroy it, our ability to tether will be undone. The relics, our portal stones will have nothing to power themselves on!”

“Then we had better be smart about how we go about this. There’s only one way back home” Toriel wrung her hands as she walked.

The green light elucidated more and more of the bloody tunnel as they got closer.

“Just how long until we arrive, though?” It was unlike Asgore to be impatient or overly anxious, but they had marched an awfully long way.

Toriel too felt her nerves fraying. “And what of Asriel? We’ve still seen no sign of-“

They all stopped before a glowing pentagram before them. The murky world around them was now only rendered in various shades of green set against the blackness of the passageway. A graceful, undulating serpentine of light swirled over the stone.

“That is the way.” Gaster paused for a moment. He heard some rocks tumbling from the fleshy walls behind him “As for little Asriel… I think he knows we’re here. He cannot be afar off. There’s too much for him to let alone. If he were to lose us now, he’d never know about the power of the time crux, Baphomet or the Doom Slayer…”

The flower cursed under his breath at the loose rubble underneath him. The others just around the bend and hidden from view, but they were close enough for him to hear Gaster’s little psychoanalytic gambit clearly. He wasn’t wrong either. He needed answers.

“I believe Asriel will be with us soon enough…”

Flowey gritted his teeth and his eyes went black. “That isn’t my name… stop using that name…”

Toriel and Asgore turned back and saw nothing, but neither knew Gaster as a liar or a trickster, and when they turned back around to see him smiling a little, both exchanged in their looks a slight tinge of hope.

As they readied to walk through the warp stone, the Doom Slayer too made eye contact with Gaster. Gone was his smile and returned was his sobriety. Their eyes only met for a second before Gaster turned back to the green light, stepped onto the portal and disappeared, Toriel, Asgore, and VEGA following suit. For just another moment, the Doom Slayer was left alone, processing what Gaster had said and what that look meant. He was no fool. Once again, he began to doubt himself, but sheer willpower burned through his re-emerging guilt, shaking his head, and narrowing his eyes as he stepped into the warp. Green light enveloped him, and he was gone in a flash.

Gone before the Flower’s very eyes.

“Woah….”

Coming out of s second hiding place, Flowey hesitated for a moment, hoping the group would have proceeded a bit before he made his entrance. The Ghoul was right about him: his curiosity could not stand unsated, and as much as he loathed it, he needed answers. The low hum of the portal invited him to come, and he slowly inched toward it, his eyes wide open with wonder.

“Guess you’re right, old fool. I do want answers.”

He brought a tendril over the stone.

“But not from you…. I want them from him.”

No sooner did his vine touch the pentagram than did he disappear in a blinding flash of light.



Sans paced around the room. No hand stood under his chin to signify his intense contemplation. He had grown utterly unaware of himself as he briskly went back and forth across the room. Alphys did not say a word and stared blankly at the floor.

The uncertainty hit Undyne the hardest. “Guys? Guys, what were they talking about? Sans?” he didn’t answer. He just kept on walking. In desperation, she turned to Alphys, lowering her voice a little. “Al! Alphys, come on, you gotta answer me here, what was Gaster talking about? Was he really-?”

The Scientist turned to meet her eyes, and Undyne felt every word in her throat stolen from her. She saw uncertainty in those eyes. They were afraid. She knew, with that look, that Alpys had nothing to say, at least nothing that could give her any other answers than “I know no more than you.” Alphys’ eyes fleeted a little before she returned her gaze to the floor.

She turned to Mettaton, pointing to the two scientists, hoping he’d know something.

He shrugged. “I-I don’t know, Undyne.”

She looked at Sans, still pacing, still staring, His eyes seemed so much more intense. He had to know more. “Sans!” he didn’t answer to her beckoning, nor did he answer to Frisk running up to him and shaking him by the shoulder.

Suddenly, the world had become so much more frightening and dreadful. More so than war with humanity or the invaders whose impatient roars could be heard from Mettaton’s station. Time could be reset? Humans could reset it? Had Frisk done this before?

Did anything actually matter?

Every question terrified Undyne, and with every minute they went unanswered, she felt herself getting more and more frantic. She kept trying to get Alphys to talk, tried getting to Frisk and Sans, who were now whispering together, standing by the far wall. Mettaton had trouble focusing on his station.

Undyne embraced her friend, tears filling her eyes. “Alphys… Alphys, I’m scared… please, you have to tell me something! What’s going on? Did you know about this?” Alphys slumped over her desk and covered her face. “Alphys, please!”

“please…”

Both perked their heads up when they heard Frisk’s voice

“I think we’ve got a few things to talk about, guys.”

Sans stood quietly behind her, nodding a little with his eyes still on the floor. ‘Look… Gaster just spilled the beans big time, and I think it’s about time everyone knew what was up, especially now that… well… we’re getting close to ending it.”

Undyne regained her composure. Alphys turned back around in her seat. Mettaton double checked his monitors and made calibrations to make sure the Overlord System could handle things on its own.

Everyone’s eyes were on the child and the skeleton. The latter spoke first.

“It’s time you all got caught up.”



The light behind them had faded into nothing, and the air ran afoul with the smell of sulfur and age-old rot. Every now and then, the ground would shake and a low, rumbling toll of thunder could be heard. Whether it was the sky above or tremors in the ground surrounding them, no one knew. Only a little bit of amber light trickled in from the end of the tunnel, reflecting off bloody bone and rock from around a bend. It seemed to take forever to reach it in the dark. Everyone’s breathing was hushed, lowered to a point where they could hear what faint noises came from the entrances: sounds of rumbling stone, ethereal shrieks, and the faint, distant howling of the heated winds of hell.

The wailing, howling, and thunderclaps got louder and louder as they came upon the fissure at the end of the tunnel. It was barely wide enough to admit a single person or demon, but through it, the searing hot air of the bottomless pit flew in their faces, blowing dust into fur, optics and onto the Doom Slayer’s visor. He stepped forward and put his hands on either side of the opening, planting his feet firmly into the ground as he prepared to push the gap asunder.

The Flower watched in awe at the Hell Walker’s might, doing his best not to gasp or exclaim, just barely whispering under his breath as he watched the Marine part the stony, fleshy divide. It was only now however, that he could sense it – his determination. Flowey had been so caught up in the intrigue surrounding the Slayer that he had never paused to take in that raw determination that seemed to emanate from his very being. It was incredible, unlike anything he had ever felt, surpassing even Frisk.

He was tempted to confront him then and there until he noticed something was wrong.

It was waning.

Tuning out the sound of the walls cracking and the flesh betwixt the stone tearing, he attuned himself to the Doom Slayer’s determination, like a doctor listening for a heartbeat. If he listened closely enough, if he strained, if he concentrated, he could feel its volume; its intensity. Slowly, ever so slowly but surely enough, that “pulse,” the seemingly endless well of determination sounded like it was drying up. He could almost see his gushing red soul slowly beginning to fade in color, and if he observed with utmost concentration, he could see floes of it oozing therefrom, now trickling down into smaller and smaller streams by the second.

Flowey realized that perhaps there wasn’t much time left. He needed to know.
He needed to know if he could be himself again.

The barrier finally gave. Dust, gravel, and molding meat rained down from the precipice above the doorway, and the shore party walked through.

Flowey let them advance well enough ahead that he could maintain proper distance.

He felt strange. He couldn’t love. He couldn’t feel guilt. The only feeling driving him as stinging, painful self-awareness. Awareness of his own incompleteness. Awareness of his abomination, of his ruined and terrible form.

Now it no longer drove him to self-hatred.

It drove him forward.

“One last try… “

He let his roots out from the ground, and made his way into the infernal pit.



“In all the years of the Argent Program, none of us could have ever imagined this.”

“Dear Gods… this is madness…”

“So... this is it then, Doctor?”

“Yes, O king. Your eyes do not betray you. Behold, the citadel of Baphomet. The Seat of Power for the Great Ones, The Ancient Well, Vestibule for the Time Crux, and Home of the Icon of Sin… it is almost time.”

The clouds were torrid columns of toxic smoke, swirling evermore in eternal pillars from cones of cinder into the ashen sky. The color thereof was a sea of blood, and the mountains and valleys burned with rivers of molten rock. Terrible monoliths stood unyielding in the perpetual gust, held up by constant streams of raw Hell energy. Six encircled the Bloody Citadel, each bearing a rune that declared the name of each Great One, unknowable to the minds of mortals. Below them lay a Jagged Palace that had been cut into the mountain side, its thorny walls surrounded by a moat of magma. Black and terrible, its towers spewed out Hell energy into the floating obelisks. Each of them was adorned with stone skulls, not unlike the Blood Fountain at the gate of the Sanctum at Kadingir, and like it, all of them spewed forth great gouts of viscera, fueled by the perpetual evil that ran from the center: a massive tower adorned with an unmistakable visage:

Baphomet himself. The Icon of sin.

His last reaming heads stood eternal guard at the circular wall of the Citadel. All others had been destroyed. Here his essence lay dormant. Here, he dwelt in foul slumber, feasting upon the souls of the hated and unfortunate.

The Doom Slayer’s eyes narrowed. Resolve burned within him, though it was not as strong as before. He knew the fire within him had faded. There wasn’t much he could do to fuel it. He caught himself fighting with his own mind again. He had to tap into whatever will power he had left to keep an eye single to his objective, which he was beginning to doubt….

He couldn’t. He had to do this. He would not let everything go to waste.

Those thoughts urged him onward, though the others hesitated behind him.

Toriel’s fretfulness began to show in her terrified expression, and Asgore’s hand did little to push her forward. “H-How will we get there?! All I see around it is fire and brimstone!”

Gaster held a hand up in an attempt to quiet her fears. “My Queen, the way is obscured by the cliff we stand on. Come further down. You’ll see the way.”

The others joined him at the cliff’s edge, where he pointed down at yet another bone strewn bridge, sewn from chains and stone and the ribcage of a long-dead demon, down a rocky slope that led into the magma riverbank. Others of its kind floated, both intact and in pieces along other distant parts of the molten river. “The one below us is in good enough condition to cross. Come. We are well underway.”

Almost before he had finished speaking, the Doom Slayer had leaped down the mountainside, bounding in great strides toward the bridge, and without another word, his company followed him.

Flowey looked on, his determination kindling anew itself within him.

“Almost time indeed…”

He jumped down from the overhang that stood over the cavern entrance and followed them.