#amalgaknight

part 1: “when did you start being yourself?”

we now know thanks to chapter 5 that the knight's first (definite) appearance was at the scene of The Incident that made asgore lose his job: a dark world that susie assumes was made by the knight thanks to the presence of a black shard at the scene. i'm not sure i personally believe that's true — i think the fountain in question is the one in the bunker, which probably predates the knight entirely — but we have no evidence for that right now, only what the characters themselves have said.

this is probably (but not definitely) the night dess disappeared, which coincides with whatever happened to kris that required them to need therapy. asgore seems to be the only person who actually went inside whatever dark world was within, though kris may have been inside as well (and obviously in this scenario dess was taken within). carol knows of the dark worlds and the fountain in the bunker because she’s obsessed with getting dess back: asgore found the black shard that’s now in her possession, meaning she’s probably the only person he genuinely managed to convince what happened was real (hence which is why she’s been so supportive of him). just as an aside to the above, he does seem to be talking to rudy specifically in that ch4 scene in noelle’s house, which makes me think rudy knows more about the dark worlds than we're giving him credit for. who else would believe asgore no questions asked? carol’s obsessive but she and asgore don’t exactly seem close enough for him to be calling her “old friend”. point to you, rudyknight truthers…

based on this info, it's very possible that the knight already existed prior to dess’ disappearance. “the pointed tail”, which may or may not be image_friend, is very likely the reason why dess and kris were out there to begin with, and which lured dess into the dark. it might have done this to turn her into the knight, but why? possibly 1) because the prophecy says so, or 2) because it was the cruellest option, but either way we know now that the knight was there. maybe dess was immediately turned into the knight the moment she stepped into the bunker, but we don't have enough evidence to say that for sure, which means the knight very well could have been someone else. but how could kriselleknight have been there if it didn't exist yet? well...

part 2: “left home due to happiness”

deltarune is a meta-textual narrative. the mechanics of deltarune as "a video game" are deeply embedded in the fabric of DR’s universe, especially the dark world, but given that kris still uses the same menu UI as undertale there’s probably still an aspect of it in the light world too. like flowey in UT, WR noelle has begun to see beyond the scope of her own existence: her life is a predetermined story, and she is a “character” just like everyone else around her (this is what i think the red dot is, by the way: not noelle developing a human soul, but her developing determination equal to flowey’s). she wants to break free of the path she’s been coded to walk, and takes our messing around with deltarune’s narrative through the use of the WR as explicit confirmation that this is in fact possible. she wants to see what exists in the beyond, so she uses kris (who she knows is a conduit for this sort of thing) to break the bonds of her own existence.

by taking kris into the lake, beyond the predetermined boundaries of their town, she manages to send them both rocketing directly to the end of the story. they aren’t dead, they’ve just gone Beyond. and so, if it’s possible for them to skip directly to the end of the story, who’s to say they couldn’t have gone to the very beginning? as far back as they possibly could, to "somewhere no one has ever been before": a place in time that we, the players, have never been.

for the record, i think calling them an amalgamate isn’t really accurate — they’re more likely to be akin to asriel in UT after absorbing chara’s soul. meaning that yes, technically the knight would be just noelle with kris’ soul, but we know from asriel’s dialogue in UT that chara had control over their body, so kris’ consciousness would still be in there anyway. my theory is that the boundary breaking Would make them merge akin to an amalgamate, but not as what the amalgams actually are (melting monsters with too much determination) and more as “we were never meant to go this far and have glitched together into something less than the sum of our parts”. they would be broken and ugly and look more like a creepypasta antagonist than anything. it would also likely destroy any higher functionality either of them have: their thoughts and goals would become simplistic, basic concepts and reflexes, and whatever gets through would be whatever thoughts kris+noelle agree on. such as...

part 3: “find her”

so: the knight is creating dark fountains (confirmed cyber world, 1st + 3rd sanctuaries). some of the dark fountains have been made by kris (tv world, flower king). the knight’s fountains and kris’ fountains are always the same, visually. why?

prior assumptions have been that it’s because kris and the knight share a goal, which is likely true. but what does kris actually get out of working with dessknight? maybe nothing — it's very possible they're only doing it because carol is blackmailing them, and because they feel guilty for whatever happened Back Then... but that doesn’t explain dess’ motivations. i don’t think dess as herself would want to bring about the roaring, and i don’t think kris does either. but if dess is being puppeteered, then surely that puts her goals at odds with kris, the hero? nevermind whatever carol has to do with any of this — she likely just wants her daughter back, but what does the end of the world contribute to that goal?

what i’ve been thinking about is this: maybe the knight, as it exists, does not actually Want to bring the roaring about. frankly i don’t think it cares either way. assuming that the knight is WR kriselle, then the logical conclusion is that they are simply doing whatever they can think of to get dess back, who kris knows disappeared into the dark somewhere. what other goal would kris and noelle share so potently that it becomes their entire identity? everything that went wrong between them happened because of that day. if they could go back and fix it, why wouldn’t they? if they could find her first, why shouldn’t they try? it doesn’t matter if the world ends. they’re not capable of that kind of forethought anymore. they just want to find dess. which would tidily explain carol and NR kris' contributions to the plan: if dess can still be saved from wherever she is, there's no amount of fountains they wouldn't agree to opening, even if that means bringing about the roaring as a consequence. for the record, this entire theory does operate on the assumption of a closed time-loop: dess cannot be saved by kriselleknight because the prophecy dictates that the knight must battle the heroes. because dess cannot be saved, kris must accept (our) the soul's influence. because kris must be controlled by (us) the soul, there is a possibility that (we) the soul take them down the WR. basically, even though this theory assumes kriselleknight can go back to the point where dess was taken, it doesn't actually change anything. anyway

part 4: so why doesn’t this work?

issue no.1: "if dess isn't the knight, what's the point of her character?" is a question i keep seeing people ask, and it baffles me because it's not as if toby fox hasn't made other characters just like dess who very specifically only exist to be referred to and rarely if ever seen. chara has maybe (if you count the flashback sequence of them with the dreemurrs) two on-screen appearances ever, and only one scene where they address you directly (regardless of whether you subscribe to narrachara theory or not). they are also referenced constantly throughout undertale, primarily by flowey for obvious reasons, but also by other NPCs and bonus flavour-text like the books frisk can interact with throughout the underground. does their haunting the narrative make chara any less of a character? does it make them any less beloved by the UT fanbase? it doesn't, so i'm not sure why dess would be any different.

issue no.2: if the knight is kriselle, and their goal is to try and find dess by making dark fountains in the hopes that one may lead them to her, what’s up with the whole “police sacrifice” thing? i genuinely can’t think of a single good reason for why this is. i mean, like i said before, i do think kriselle knight would be fairly mindless of any thought other than Find Dess, so it wouldn’t occur to the kris side of their consciousness to protest against sacrificing their own father — but that still doesn’t explain why it’s necessary at all, no matter which knight theory you subscribe to. and it seems weird either way for NR kris to be cool with their dad potentially dying regardless… are they really being blackmailed so thoroughly that they’d gamble asgore’s life? is carol really so cruel that she'd let undyne and asgore die to bring her daughter back? i don't have answers to these questions. this is the biggest problem i personally have with this theory, because it's the only aspect i can't find a good explanation for.

issue no.3: a lot of this is based on supposition and guesswork and connections that make sense from one angle but not from another. like yeah, it Is weird that the knight’s sword initially appears as a bat, and i do think trying to claim kriselle are imitating dess because of their admiration for her is a weak explanation for that (though the knight’s weapon Is called a knife in both the prophecy and their battle theme, which i fear undermines the significance of the bat in exchange). i saw someone on twitter point out that ralsei says directly in ch4 that gerson can only exist as a darkner in specific DWs because the person who makes the fountain needs to be one of the deceased’s “loved ones” (though i do feel that kind of undermines dessknight too because sure he was her teacher, but a loved one…? one could assume that maybe kris knew him as a family friend because UT asgore and gerson were old war buddies, so maybe their DR counterparts were friends too, but there’s nothing to suggest that’s true either). there’s also the fact that the secret backtrack scene at the end of ch4’s dark world plays a note from dess’ guitar, which definitely seems like a point towards the knight being her, and i honestly don’t have a rebuttal for that one that’s just straight up suspicious lol. no matter which knight theory you personally subscribe to the most, what remains consistent is that there’s at least one fact hinting that it Could Be the truth, and another that contradicts it. which i think speaks to toby's skill as a mystery writer personally!

issue no.4, and this is the sticking point for a lot of people: how can the knight be WR kriselle if you as the player don’t do the WR? if we are the soul, interfacing with DR through gaster, then how can the WR happen without our input? my view on this is that it doesn’t actually matter. this theory is primarily about the knight existing as a nebulous Thing beyond the boundaries of the game itself. the knight is in the very fabric of deltarune; it is a part of its code. we the players are the ones who make that branching decision, but kriselle knight is already a foregone conclusion. not in the sense that you Have to do the WR, just that it Could Happen, and so long as it Could Happen then there is a universe where it does, because the possibility is literally written into the game. deltarune is a group experiment that gaster has asked many people to contribute to. some of them are almost definitely going to do the WR! which makes it an inevitability within DR's world.

and yes, maybe that means having to go back and replay DR from the very beginning, but that's not exactly unusual for a toby fox game. everyone knows by now that undertale is the game you play without killing anyone, unless you go out of your way to kill everyone, but i think people have forgotten that the expectation was that you play the game first your way, and flowey explains how to get the "best ending" to you afterwards. which, yes, is sometimes supposed to involve replaying the entire game, because the expectation is that you would have killed somebody on your first blind playthrough — either by accident, like with toriel, or because you played it like a classic RPG and didn't think it mattered. deltarune in comparison is almost easier to replay, because 1) the WR starts in chapter 2, so you don't even need to bother with ch1, and 2) chapter 5's "WR" is a single segment of gameplay and cutscene which then sends you directly to chapter 7(b). so the only thing stopping anyone from doing that is their own discomfort, which is fair! but you can't say it would be strange or unfair of DR to expect it from you, because it really isn't.

conclusion

i think this would be an awesome twist. i think it's very the logical inversion of kris' relationship with noelle (and susie!) in the NR: in the NR, kris has been distant from noelle for a long time, and is pushing susie and noelle together to ensure their happiness with each other. no matter how much they love suselle, they feel undeserving of that closeness.