The Skeleton of the Black Mist

'Are you sure you would like to reset?'

'Yes'

The hands of depression veered forward. Chara's decision was swift. The ghost of regret and guilt haunted them. Their eyes shone with the red of vermilion. Although their gaze held no animosity. Their future now lies with darkness. Shadows of uncertainty stalked them. The shadow of the ruins lay before them. Their body besmirched by a bed of golden flowers. The melody of light mixed with the song of the ruins twirled down the cavern, bathing the flowers in a silver light. The light of dawn from the maw of the mountain sheathed Chara and the flowers with the ghost of light. Yet despite it all their eyes burned with determination.

The siren of the future sat waiting. The patience of twilight. The sins of the past slithered down their; a whispering cry. The cold chill of regret that stalked them. Chara knew of all the possible outcomes, and endings for each decision and route whether it be pacifist or neutral. The divination of intuition, without the power of foresight.

Time was their game, and they were the player. Yet who controlled their strings was unknown. What they once did was something only a true reset could erase. Their secrets were what they intended to keep hidden, at all costs. They walked a path leading to an unknown destiny. The timeline had changed somehow. The air felt... different somehow, more... ethereal. Like there was an added presence amongst the timeline.

To the monster kind Chara would either be their savior or their end. Cracked pillars of the ruins were an omen of darkness. The foreboding of shadows crept closer. A lingering thought, a wandering curiosity that haunted them. They could feel the sins of their past resets shiver down their back.

Broken promises shattered, with the emptiness of thought. There was three paths they could take, all led to a different ending, one that could be rewritten with a simple touch of a button.

Throughout all the timelines the incident with the book had never happened. This was an anomaly a defiance of logic. The bed of golden flowers felt stiff, their petals smooth and prosaic. A blanket of warmth in the uncertainty of thought. There was Temmie. A familiar face in a sea of unfamiliarity.

A fireball ignited, racing across the ruins. It was Asgore. His robes of purple embellished with the mark of the ruins. A familiar face in a web of uncertainty. Temmie was thrown across the room.

____________________________________________

Chara had progressed to the point where they made it to Asgore's home in the ruins. Asgore was off somewhere. The warmth of care, swam within the house. The star of their save twinkled; a wink of light.

That was when they saw him. It was the skeleton dressed in a faded blue. His bones and body, opaque. His body was somewhat translucent yet he was somewhat corporal. The phalanges of his bones delicately wrapped around the frame of the armrest of Asgore's chair.

He looked at Chara, blinking with a mixture of curiosity and concern. His eye sockets, elucidated with a pale baby blue light. The skeleton at Chara from the other side of Asgore's armchair. Chara's eyes of vermilion burned with a quiet intensity that argued against any reset. The apparition of Frisk appeared.

Mage could sense the animosity, smoldered with the hatred of vengeance. The fire of wrath that burned within Frisk. A gnawing hatred. Mage's shoulder bumped against Frisk. Frisk flew out of the way once the skeleton's shoulder touched hers. Frisk flew somewhere else shocked. The animosity of darkness. Mage would protect Chara ensuring that Frisk never possessed them. Another genocide would never terrorise the timeline.

~Grimoire*

The sky whispered with smokes of fog, filled with spires of imagination. The dance of starlight. The prayer of sunset. Thorns of twilight marred the sky. Tears of silver fell from the sky. Tapestries of artificial moonlight. The land of the dead filled with dreams and eternal twilight. The colors of death were opalescent, with the softness of pastel light that blessed the land. Nothing like how the living saw it as.

In a city of the stars phantoms lived. It was late at night. Where all the earth bound spirits came to retire to their slumber. Grimoire awoke, sat upright, he looked to his side, at the analog clock on his end table. 5:43 Am. The room whispered with darkness in a world where even the stars slept.

Grimoire was awake. He knew when the stars died they would retire here. The bliss of starlight, the curtains were drawn open. Frills of indigo curtain waved to him. The window had been left open.

Fairy lights the shape of stars were draped in arches festooned around the room. The lights flickered with warning. His thoughts his only guidance, yet they betrayed him. He should replace the battery for the lights later. Lights fell in vines, another veil of homemade wire lights with mason jars attached at the ends. A firefly of light winked, from the jars.

Grimoire blinked with the tiredness of sleep. Books of all genres spilled out the bookshelf. Comics, manga, novels with an endless sea of pages. He slipped a metal bracelet, a linguistic translator. His bones a pearly white. There were many different dialect settings Grimoire could change the bracelet to.

While the bracelet didn't translate languages it translated dialect. Without it he felt odd, an outsider, a pariah to his own home. The gears inside the bracelet spun with the vigor of life. Both he and his brother possessed a bracelet. Grimoire's translator was an outdated model. His brother's bracelet smiled with future, his was odd and clunky. Although Grimiore hadn't bothered to search for a replacement.

It was hard to adjust to the local parlance when he and his brother had died centuries ago before the birth of technology. There was many technology that he and his brother hadn't been exposed to in life. They lived without technology, as they had lived before its invention. Grimoire was thankful all spirits of Spirit Town had the power to understand and speak each language hearing it as they would their mother tounge. He wasn't fluent in English Wingdings, in life yet it wasn't bad enough for him to be doomed if he was left alone with a battalion of English speakers.

He wasn't fluent in English itself with Grimoire only having learned a few letters of the English alphabet. He was armed against the world with a small menagerie of words in English that would never help him make a sentence anyone (or human) could understand. There weren't many sentences he could make with 'Apple', 'Cake', 'Hello' and 'Cat.' Grimoire felt the brush of a tail sweep across his face. A sonnet of greeting.

It was Grimoire's cat Ms. Kitty.

The brush of her tail swept across his face. Her tail: a mop of broom. A cloud of deep brown fur. She brushed her face against his cheek with a purr. The curl of her whiskers tickled the bone of his face.

He was awake, his room; a library of books. A labyrinth of mystery. The memory of life; a fading daydream. An echo of thought. He could hear his thoughts? Grimoire was confused. There was a maelstrom of thought, a hurricane of ideas that fought for his attention. The reverie of dream, surrounded by an ocean of darkness.

Books of all genres lined the shelves built within the walls. Blueprints of abandoned projects he planned with his brother were splayed printed over parchment of disarray that fell over the desk. Paraphernalia, the cluttered shelves that sang with tales of memorabilia. Mementos his brother collected for him from his adventures, from his brother's days as a wandering Spirit. Once separated by death, the brothers reunited in Spirit Town. Grimoire wandered out the bed.

He slid his slipper into his foot. He was sloven, the tilt of his gait odd. In his tiredness he forgot the other slipper. He shuffled languidly down the stairs. His body swayed, his gait awkward, caught within the reverie of daydream. It was quiet without his brother's weirdness, that beguiled strangers.

It was already frustrating enough to share a name with their neighbor Cheese Wizard who lived off in the dark woods. Grimoire lived with a shattered sense of identity. A mirror with no reflection. All these years spent in death, and he still couldn't understand who was he truly? What deemed him important. To himself he was an artifact of question that held no answer.

Their names were shared yet the pronunciation differed. It made Grimoire feel awkward to share a name with another Grimoire. He was Grim-Moi (The French pronunciation) while the cheese maker was Grim-myre. Both their names weren't pronounced the way a talking spellbook named Grimoire was. Who was actually although Grimiore hadn't liked to admit it was a true Grimoire. The one most worthy of the name.

And it was difficult enough that Cheese Wizard, the local cheese dealer, whom was also named Grimoire. It was the other Grimoire whom every spirit flocked too during a cheese shortage. Ever since the cheese tax was imposed, to prevent the spread of fraudulent cheeses. Other Grimoire even sold stinky cheese that wasn't stinky. (Even though the name was the reason everyone bought it.)

Spirits would often meet other Grimoire on shady business deals behind alleyways, or behind buildings during odd hours of the night. Often Cheese Wizard would always give away large quantities of cheese, wheels of cheese for free, often refusing payment.

Kindness was his soul trait in life, and his actions proved it. There was a rainbow of nationalities in spirit town, the population evenly divided by humans and monsters.

The world was a canvas with anything possible. A land of dreams.

Grimoire's eyes sparkled with the youth of imagination. A knock at the door disrupted the reverie. Grimoire rubbed his eye, his posture lurched forward. When he opened the door, he continued to rub the tiredness from eye. His mouth agape in a yawn that never came.

A monster was at the door. They stood cloaked in darkness, their face and eyes shrouded, by a fedora that was tipped over their face. The fedora cast a shadow over their eyes. "Grimoire right. You've got the goods?" Grimoire gave no answer. "The Gouda?" The stranger in a trench coat and hat, asked with a hushed whisper covering the side of his face with his hand.

"I've heard you're the big cheese in town for these kinds of transactions Grimoire. You've got Gouda. Romano cheese, Fondue! Wheels of parmesan, Cheddar, provolone. You name it! You're the pepper jack- the jack of all trades! The pepper jack of all trades! You even have cheese that's blue in color! Blue cheese! Even though you took Bleu cheese off the menu-You've even got home churned butter." He stated factually. "You've got all these wheels yet none for my hamster." He added muttering bitterly. His voice; a venom that stung.

Grimoire politely slammed the door in the strange monster's face, and turned to walk back up all the stairs. The only sound he heard was the faint buzzing of tinnitus. Yet it didn't disturb him. "I just wanted some Gouda!" The monster cried sadly. Remnants of rain fell, drops of liguified dreams, pearlescent bright.

An aurora betide the town. Patterning against the windows, drumming on the roof. Grimoire walked to his brother's door which was open. His touch a feather of delicateness. Grimoire stood in the room. Mage was absent from his room. Baskets of sea glass Mage collected, fell upturned.

"Brother, you wouldn't believe who I saw at our doorstep-" The bed was barren of any monster. The sheets of the duvet askew. The pillow slumped on the floor. "Brother..?" "Brother- T-This simply is not funny If this is another one of your japes or riddles-!"

It was then Grimoire realized that he was alone, and truly so. The silk of twilight spilled from the windows. A bed of fallen stars. The shattered bottles of broken promises. His brother's promise wilted, broken. He'd promised he'd never leave him. Grimoire remembered the grief of his brother's death in life.

When one died and ended up in Spirit Town. They forgot their name and identity. How was it Grimoire could remember his own. Who was he? When did he become a jester to his own thoughts? A thief of wind swept, stealing the blueprints. The silence echoed. His brother was gone. The sent of sea water rippled.

The room of his brother was quiet without his absence. The duvet of his brother's bed was crinkled. His brother's shirt lay half falling off the bed, drenched with tears of the sea. The shirt hung over the bed frame to dry. From far away Grimoire could smell the scent of seawater coming from the shirt. The thought was a fading thought lost at sea.