It was an afternoon.
A guard came into the meeting room, barely holding onto their breath while urgently trying to relay on a dead important matter: one of their guards on camera feed, found out both their children has passed the barrier. “How in heaven did they… Oh no, oh please no no no no NO!!!!” - The King didn’t even need to finish that sentence before rushing out of the meeting room to the barrier, screaming like a madman.
It all made sense in that instant: why the human child didn’t seem to get better despite best medical effort; why did Asriel seem to keeping the human away from them and insisted that he should be the one that took care of them, why were there petals of buttercups laid around the house throughout the days, and they kept coming back,…
…
There were orders about using experimental synthesized DETERMINATION infusion to cross the barrier, the experimental time-space tunneling machine,… He almost shoved the poor scientists to the wall when they all refused to go with any of the plan. It was too risky, the risks involved, the side effects that went untested on real monster subjects, the unproved and unattested time-space paradox,… They were all didn’t even matter when their children’s welfare are on the line.
The head scientist went through almost every single fact he could muster to talk the King out of suicidal plan. It was only when he said to the King that he was the sole leader left of the Kingdom, and if he went out there and could not come back, the monsterkind would be doomed to despair without a leader.
King Asgore fell onto his knees, with the Queen, choking on her tears next to him. Deafening silence filled the place that day.
…
What were actually 30 minutes, felt to them like a whole day.
The King, with the trident in his hands, conjured every spells of power, every dark magical incantation that summons up flame demon creature, flame balls, meteor showers onto the barrier. It didn’t even leave a dent. Every charge, every punch, every screams of mustered power he lash onto it only seem to echoed back onto his own body and psyche. His heart beating raised alongside his anxious level, the visible veins on his forehead, on his eyeballs, on in hands as he kept on punching. Queen Toriel rushed to him while trying to stop him. She held him in her arms with her tears running still. “Please Gori, you can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep doing this. There’s nothing we could do at the moment.” “It was my fault too, it was my fault too. I’m sorry I couldn’t just put 2 and 2 together. I failed them, it’s my fault. Please stop hurting yourself, please stop hurting yourself, please stop…” She frantically talked to him.
They broke down in front of the barrier way. And broke down they were, finally, accepting there was truly nothing they could do.
White lights emitting like an endless tunnel of illusion to the distant way. The sounds of their cries echoed to infinity and came back into their own eardrums. Ringing, ringing, ringing.
There was nothing they could do, but watch and wait.
Everything was too fast, and absolutely still at the same time.
…
Their son came back with the human child in his arms. There was a brief moment of utterly shock filled in the Throne Room. A full second stretched out into the absolute stillness of the thick atmosphere. They counted dozens of arrows stuck out of his chest from his back.
Asriel fell.
There was a moment where they could almost hear him say something. “I’m sorry.”
Both their souls danced almost interwindingly in a fleeting moment, before both scattered around to a million pieces like stardust on night sky, vanished to thin air. Dusts scattered over the floor, on the human child’s body.
They smiled.
WHY?
It was a late afternoon that day. A hot mid summer, late afternoon traffic jam. I was in the middle of the heat and the cursing. The scorching hot wasn’t what put people off. It was the fact that in the middle of this traffic, an ambulance that was carrying an emergency case, was stuck in it too.
The siren still sounded distant, right far from the back of the jam.
30 minutes later, the siren came close. Each ring sequence buzzed into my eardrums
Another 30 minutes, the ambulance was finally right next to me. The siren, of course, sang a desperate song of pleading for rooms to move forward in the already “moved aside as much as possible” late day traffic vehicles next to it.
I stood there, feeling my blood pressure rising, alongside with my anxiety level.
It took them nearly another hour to get out of the traffic. I didn’t know what happened to the person inside of it, I just hope time was on their side.
Later on, when I got the chance to just sit down in my room quietly still. It dawned to me what did it mean.
…
Like a firefighter traps in a burning house. You can’t do anything but watch it falls in front of your eyes.