#mycotale

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PAPYRUS

papyrus got up at dawn. that was how he woke, every day, without fail, since he began his training; his body had grown accustomed to rising with the morn. he groaned and stretched as he peered outside, greenish light from the spores filtering in through the blinds as he cracked his back.

light snow. spores floating in the air, as usual. quiet- none of the usual spell-fire. he had learned not to trust silence.

he went through his daily routine. a very brief shower to not waste clean water, clothes pressed and crisp, badges arranged neatly, weapons and boots polished- ready for action.

he headed downstairs to find sans at the kitchen table, tapping away at his ancient laptop and holding a steaming mug of ground chicory. his expression was grave, dark smudges beneath his eyes telling of another sleepless night.

sans wordlessly pushed a cup and a slice of toast towards him. coffee had long stopped coming with the ration shipments, but chicory, a bitter, floral weed, grew well in the cracked corners of the waterfall's caves. it made for a poor substitute, but it was something.

he sipped at it with a grimace. "GOOD MORNING, SANS. WHAT ARE THE READINGS FOR TODAY?"

sans' concentrated frown only grew deeper. "airborne spores are at 32.4%; higher than last week. 16 deaths last night. no progress in lab, but we must be patient.. though it feels like we're doing fuck-all at this point."

he sighs heavily and takes a bite of stale toast. "WE TAKE WHAT WE CAN GET, I SUPPOSE. BE ON YOUR GUARD. THE CULT OF DECAY HAS BEEN TOO QUIET LATELY. THEY ARE PLANNING AN ATTACK, I'M CERTAIN OF IT."

sans scoffs,his eye socket twitching slightly. papyrus knows his frustration is more directed at the situation then it is at him. "they're always planning something, paps, y' don't have to worry so much. I can handle them."

papyrus drains his chicory in one go and places the mug on the table. "I WILL WORRY REGARDLESS. JUST..."

he trails off, his jaw clicking slightly. he wants to tell sans to be careful, but he knows care means little when the world is destroying itself. what else could he say? he merely turns away and puts on the scarf sans had knitted for him- deep purple, to match his uniform, and gives him a crisp salute. "I WILL BE HOME BY SEVEN. YOUR LUNCH IS IN THE FRIDGE. SEND WORD IF YOU NEED ANYTHING."

they had long stopped saying goodbye as a custom. it felt too final.

papyrus marched out to his usual patrol route, his face blank and his eyes focused. nothing... amiss. the usual timid hustle and bustle of town was present, but there was a tension there that unnerved him. snowdin seemed to be holding its breath. either something was about to happen… or something already had.

he headed towards base and watched as all of his soldiers lined up and saluted, a fist over their chests. the crease between his brow-bones deepened and he resisted a scowl. two monsters were missing. dead, defected, or lazy, he would soon find out.

"AT EASE. LUITENENT, REPORT."

the luitenent saluted, gulped slightly, and began.

"Squad 3 encountered four armed cult members at ruin's gate. They seemed to be trying to break it open with motive to assassinate the former queen.

Two soldiers fell, and one cultist escaped. Another has been taken into custody, though they refuse to speak, and the other two were killed in battle.

Other patrol routes remain secure and the rations shipment from New Home is set to arrive on schedule. No rouges sighted."

papyrus regarded this for a moment, sparing a brief prayer for the fallen. the attack did not surprise him much, except for it's small scale- perhaps the group was a splinter faction? or maybe this was an attempt to lull them into a false sense of security, a cover up for a larger attack…. hm.

but no rouges… this was unusual. rouges, or those with extreme cases of Rot, were violent and unpredictable, but there was always at least one wandering the wastes. none at all... that was suspicious. he clasped his hands behind his back and began issuing the day's orders.

"SEND A MESSAGE TO THE CAPITAL THAT WE HAVE CAPTURED A TRAITOR AND HAVE THEM TRANSFERRED TO NEW HOME; IF WE CANNOT GET ANYTHING OUT OF THEM, I'M SURE GENERAL UNDYNE CAN. THIS MAY BE ABLE DRAW OUR ENEMY OUT OF HIDING; THEY MIGHT WANT TO DEAL WITH THEIR COMRADE BEFORE THEY SPILL ANY SECRETS.

TIGHTEN SECURITY ALONG THE RATION'S ROUTE; THAT IS THEIR MOST LIKELY TARGET. OTHER PATROLS MAY PROCEED AS USUAL. CALL TWO SENIOR CADETS IN TO REPLACE OUR FALLEN FOR THE RUIN'S GATE POST, AND HAVE THE MOVEMENT REPORTS ON MY DESK BY NOON.

I WILL BE INVESTIGATING THE LAST ROUGE SIGHTING PERSONALLY. SEND WORD OF ANY NEW DEVELOPMENTS. MOVE OUT."

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

he encounters a sad, but familiar sight.

two monsters, surrounded by townsfolk pointing weapons at them in terror. a mother, protecting her red-eyed, infected child who was foaming at the mouth and attacking anything that moved with wild, untamed magic and blood-lust. the mother looked desperate. the child was a rouge.

they knew they wouldn't last long. they wanted to survive. The Rot wanted to spread farther, and the type this little one had, the decay- it did not care who or what was in its way. it would consume without pause. it would devour them all, as it's meeker cousin strains had tried.

the people parted for him; they knew better then to get in the way of an execution. he unsheathed his sword, staring the mother and child down as he summoned his magic. his LV made the air feel like static, grating and muffled and ominous. copper sparks crackled around his hands and bounced off his sword in little arcs, his eyes aglow.

"MADAME. STEP ASIDE. YOUR DAUGHTER IS A DANGER TO ALL THAT ARE HERE, INCLUDING YOU."

she throws herself over her daughter. the girl growls and throws attacks indiscriminately. the mother is barely able to dodge a bullet to the head that screams of mad, confused, desperate intent. papyrus sidesteps the attack easily.

"No, no, no, not her, not my daughter, take me instead, captain I beg of you, take me instead- we can, we can wait for a cure, I can keep her contained, captain please-"

papyrus lets her plead, his expression without feeling. he didn't want to kill the girl, truly. he wished he could spare her. he wanted to believe that there could be a better way.

but he had a duty to fulfill. they did not have the resources to spare to keep the girl contained. this was all he could do. he would be stone where his people were salt. he would give the child a painless death with honor, however bitter it made him. and he would do the same for her mother, if she got in the way of protecting everyone else.

"WE BOTH KNOW I HAVE NO CHOICE, MADAME. STEP ASIDE. YOU DO NOT NEED TO DIE HERE."

she tremulously sets her jaw and summons magical attacks herself, throwing her snarling, rabid daughter behind her, who releases more wild magic into the forest surrounding them. a pine tree falls and the others watching scramble to get out of it's way. to her credit, the mother doesn't flinch, splinters flying through the air.

"I would kill and die for her. I knew you wouldn't understand, you emotionless bastard-"

papyrus knocks her out with single hit, and watches as she crumples to the ground.

the girls manic eyes clear for a split second as she stares at her mother, collapsed in the snow. she sounds afraid. it makes him ache.

"….mama?"

he beheads the child in one strike, containing the red spores that spread with the girl's dust with a small, sphere-like barrier of bone. he carefully placed it in his dimensional box so he could submit it to the labs later.

he glances at the other folk, who stare, petrified, and nods at the monster unconscious on the ground. his tone brooked no argument.

"TAKE HER TO THE NEAREST BASE AND SAY CAPTAIN SERIF SENT YOU. WE WILL PROVIDE MEDICAL CARE IF SUPPLIES ALLOW."

papyrus saluted the small crowd, then turned on his heel and stalked off to finish his patrol, flicking the blood off of his sword and sheathing it. he tasted iron. his bones felt gritty with remains of the fallen. his boots crunched through the snow and he studied it grimly. it was always hard to tell how much of the white that blanketed snowdin was dust.

he kept his back ramrod straight and marched on, his oath in his ears alongside the girl's last, terrified squeak, echoing in sync, rattling around in his skull as he tried to quiet his grief.

"….mama?"

"I swear on my soul to protect monsterkind. I swear to serve with loyalty and dignity. I swear to follow the orders of my king. I swear to fulfill my duties with honor. for king and country, hearth and home."

he wondered how much of home was left. how much of it he had destroyed with his own two hands. he took solace in the small mercies, though- that should he ever succumb the decaying Rot himself, his fellow soldiers would kill him without a second thought.

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SANS

sans taps away at his laptop, near feverish as he calculates and recalculates and recalculates. no. the spore concentration had increased. the Rot was spreading faster, growing stronger. they didn't have time-

sans forced himself to take a deep breath. it was a 0.2% increase from last week. it was manageable. it was manageable, they would deal, the mountain would hold, they wouldn't starve….

he hears screams in his ear, the mushrooms growing out of his head pulsing in time with them. the tortured wails of all those he could not save. the wretched cries of his people, reaching, wanting, and left hungry, crumbling, accusing-

his eye-socket twitches and he pinches the bridge of his nose, swearing. not real, he reminds himself. auditory hallucinations were a common side effect, and it would not do for him to lose his mind now. if they were real, papyrus would have already left in answer of whatever screams were out there- his brother was one to act now and ask questions later. instead he could faintly hear the sound of water running as his brother took his usual morning shower. he stands to make him something to eat before he heads out.

he frowns at their empty cupboards and takes the last of their bread and a can of dried, powdered chicory. he places the bread in their near-dead toaster and sets their old teakettle to boil. soon enough there's a plate of stale toast and two steaming mugs on the table, and he quietly pushes papyrus' meager breakfast towards him as he nurses his mug and re-reads the numbers.

he barely hears his brother's morning greeting, as caught up in his own head he was. he tells papyrus not to worry about him. there was already enough to worry about. he did not say goodbye to his little brother as he marched out of the door with so much purpose. he was not so cruel as to remind him of last goodbyes.

sans grabbed the lunch papyrus had prepped from the fridge, gathered his notebooks and laptop, slung on his frayed lab coat, and shortcutted to the labs.

the labs were a different kind of beast then what remained of their crumbling, fungi-infested infrastructure. centered in hotland and close to the CORE, it was a gargantuan building that had been expanded upon multiple times, fortified with magical steel-alloy and crawling with guards. second to only the royal palace in security, this was where sans and the few surviving scientists of the underground tried to battle the infection that was killing them all head on.

sans flashed his ident pass to the guard at the door and gave a curt nod to doctor alphys as she greeted him when he entered. the woman was a nervous wreck during any social interaction, but her mind was a brilliant one, and sans respected skill.

"D-dr. Serif, what will y-you be doing t-today?"

"same as usual, dr. alphys. the synthesis team will continue working on the new fortification alloy under my supervision, and I will be in the agriculture lab. the newest fungicide looks promising."

alphys mutters to herself, considering. she grew remarkably less nervous when there was science involved. "hmm… send s-samples of the fungicide to the medical labs. I want to see if they could be synthesized into a t-treatment with alterations; we must attack from all a-angles, after all."

sans gave a sharp nod in acknowledgement, then turned and headed towards his lab.

it always smelled strongly of formaldehyde and ethanol here, sour and clinical. his lab and office was a mess, but it was one he knew how to navigate, frantic papers and whiteboards full of notes adorning the space, sample jars and petri dishes stacked all the way to the ceiling, and vats of various compounds pushed against the walls.

he pulled out the sample jar and petri dish that he had been working on labelled in his messy scrawl: the mutated strain of The Rot that had infected their wheat.

The Rot worked uncannily like an intelligent enemy, though sans always dismissed his more unhinged colleagues arguments to its sentience. it mutated disturbingly quickly, though all of it's strains came from a mother genetic code, and jumped from host to host, species to species, with extreme efficacy- likely because of it's magical nature. it behaved like a virus but grew like a fungus. some variants ate through stone and mortar. others plants and crops. and the worst of them all, the infecting Rot, the one that hunted monsters ruthlessly and seemed to affect every person slightly differently. sometimes it killed. sometimes it didn't. it was like trying to fight a creature that changed disguises at the drop of a hat.

he had purified and grown the wheat-killer strain, and was now going to test which of his proposed synthetic fungicides would work against it. slow, meticulous work, but essential nonetheless. it narrowed their options.

his first test of the day failed. as did the second, and third, and twentieth, but he would keep going…

he was pulled out of his focus by a timid hand tapping his shoulder. he turned to glance at the small crowd of lab techs that had clearly scurried here together to ask him something.

scowling thunderously, he pulled away from his microscope to answer questions from his clueless subordinates. his voice was sharp and clipped.

"I gave you those projects because I believed you could complete them with minimal supervision, but it seems I overestimated your intelligence. how could you ask me a question that anyone with basic schooling could answer?I would have been better off growing my own assistants from the fungi itself you incompetent piece of-"

sans ranted at them and knew damn well that he was being unfair. most of the lab technicians and students they had taken in were half trained since their universities were of the first to collapse. the majority of them were armed with textbooks, the surviving journals and papers, and self-study. their incompetence was systemic, not a personal failing.

he wanted to teach them, properly, but they did not have the time to do so. he wished he could do it all himself, but he could not. he had to settle for barked verbal lessons in between experiments and hope it was enough; and demand better when it wasn’t. anything less then perfection would get them all killed, and sans had no desire to feel any more dust on his hands.

"our studies are the last defense we have against the rot. you can come here ready to be efficient, or stay out and die as one of the unmourned thousands.

you know what you signed up for so either take some goddamn initiative or get out of my laboratory. refer to the following titles and journals, then return with real questions before I take those books and beat you to death with them!"

most of the techs looked cowed and scampered off to find the textbooks he spat at them. he caught a stray glare aimed at his back and narrowed his eye lights at the little froggit who dared do so, pointing at them threateningly. they squeaked.

"affirm your base knowledge and come back if you don't get it. I don't have time for hand-holding. move it, people!"

he turns back to his testing. another failure, damn it all. time to try the next one.

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PAPYRUS

papyrus had to kill three of his fellow monsters today. he stubbornly refused to think about it as he reviewed his troop movements, finished his paperwork, and cleaned his office. he had to keep a cool head. if he faltered, his soldiers would falter- so he remained steadfast and straight-spined as he walked home.

he did not… regret his choices, per say. he was good at war, at killing. at battle, at strategy. at making the hard decisions and remaining steady without fail. and who else would fulfill a role then one who was best at it? his fault was lain in the fact that he yearned for there to be no death at all. and he yearned so deeply it made his every step walked as a soldier feel burdened with sin.

he walked in silently and sat on their old coach, just…. staring. he turned the TV on, but didn't really watch the shows that flicker before him. he can't break now. he can't. if he falls to pieces who will protect everyone? who will protect his brother? who…

despite all of his stoicism, there's howling, desperate creature inside of him that scrabbles at his bones and begs to simply stop. to rest. to lay down his sword and let whatever happened pass him by. he bows his head, and he almost wished he could simply walk out into the snow and let it swallow him. dust to dust. at least sans wouldn't have to bury him.

he tries to remember his training, from so long ago when the world started to end. as flowers are grown by rain, so is the soul grown by war. battle is his crucible. duty is his way. suffering may be his only reward, but that pain will shape him into someone better. there is no light without darkness, and he must endure for the sake of all that depend on him. his task is a thankless one, but it is not without honor. or so he is told.

he doesn't feel grown, or bettered. his soul feels no honor in culling the defenseless. destroying the wretched few for the good of many. he just hurts. he's not strong enough…

there's a fine tremor shaking his bones and he clenches his hands to try and still it. his marrow aches. he can see them, flashes of all those who's lives he snuffed out at the corners of his vision. just out of his peripheral; never directly facing him, but taunting him all the same. he's swallowed up by the ghosts that haunt his every step, every choice, wailing into the black on how he so terribly failed them. he-

he startles when he feels something being pressed into his hand. a steaming mug of…. hot chocolate? he glances at sans, who looks at him flatly, the blue light of the TV washing his face in a cool glow. there's something in his eyes that papyrus is too tired to try and read. he settles next to papyrus and leans his head on his shoulder. papyrus sags, his skull tapping sans', and doesn't bother to hide the full body shudder that escapes him. he places the mug on the table so he could curl in on himself.

"I……"

"I know, paps."

there is no respite for them, not as they burn and bleed in the name of making a better tomorrow. this is something he knows well. he drowns in it, most days. but here, with his brother beside him, he cannot hide behind the usual desperate lie.

"WE'RE LOSING, AREN'T WE?"

sans is serious, a bit of his temper sparking in his eye-lights, and somehow papyrus takes comfort in it. if sans still has enough in him to be angry, maybe they hadn't lost everything yet.

he can't remember when his big brother turned from a chronically unserious prankster to a foul-tempered, world-weary man, but then again, he can't remember when he became the duty-bound shell he is now.

"it doesn't matter where we think we're heading, paps. we keep trying. maybe fate will surprise us… and if not. we can say we fought. until the end. that makes it worth it. that means we didn't give up."

sans tries for a smile. those smiles used to come so easily. now it's the barest of twitches. "besides, I'd still have you, yeah? if we're going down, at least it's together. at least we tried to do the right thing while the world went to shit."

he holds papyrus' hand. papyrus feels it shake. "at least we're not alone."

papyrus closes his eyes, leans on his brother, and tries to settle the bitter, grieving creature in his bones so that it would not torment him so.

"THERE IS THAT. WE TRY. AND WE'RE NOT ALONE."

perhaps what he did was not honorable. but it was necessary. that would have to be enough for now. he could not obsess over his failures, not when there was so much left to protect and death loomed over them like a constant warning. there was no time to search for the wasted meaning behind it all.

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SANS

he comforts his brother, because that is what older brothers do, as best as he can, but he had to be honest with him. there was no escaping the inevitable. the numbers did not lie, and the current statistics did not speak of a cause that was "winning."

yet he clung to foolish hopes. he extrapolated beyond logical reason, not following any rational thought, but instead a manic, feverish need to make all their effort mean something. he has the funniest feeling that the apocalypse had broken them in different ways. papyrus used to be the idealist of the two; perhaps the guard's brutal training had beaten such idle thoughts out of him.

it hurt him to watch the light in his brother's eyes slowly sputter out and die, so he adapted. he was never one to shy away from responsibilities; he would just have to have enough faith for the both of them. the lingering habit of numb, empty hopelessness from his youth would merely have to be stamped out with vengeance, and well, spite and anger were great motivators.

even if, perhaps, his dogged determination was beginning to veer into delusion. bah. if he was self-aware enough to know he sounded ridiculous, he wasn't completely mad yet. he had to keep believing that dying for something meant more than just dying, and somehow, convince papyrus of that too. it was the only way either of them were going to survive this hellhole. fuck despair. they didn't have time for it.

he was trying to sell the broken world to his brother, and well, like all salesmen, half of his pitch would be random virtues pulled out of his ass and dressed up pretty.

so, he bundled his brother up in every blanket they owned, pressed mugs of scarce, watery hot chocolate into his hands, and stubbornly refused to acknowledge how his hands shook. on nights like these, they tended to pass out on the couch, and he knows the cushions are going to give them both a horrible crick in the neck, but eh. worth it.

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he woke the next day with blankets draped over him and his brother already gone off to work, having left him a quick note. he got off the couch to crack his back, wincing as he felt his neck pop. he felt so old sometimes- his aches had aches, these days.

welp. back to the grind, he supposed. he popped to his room to sling on a fresh hoodie and lab coat, though they were just as frayed. he washed his face, took a ration bar from their bare bones cupboards, and headed straight to the labs.

the same routine, the same work- it became monotonous, after a while. at the stage their experiments were at, it was simply a lot of repetition as they gathered data. they couldn't draw conclusions from papers that didn't exist, after all, and sans was patient in this regard. maybe that was why he found it difficult to keep a lid on his temper lately; he was using up all his patience on grueling studies and it left none for anything else.

as he did the endless task of logging and writing and pipetting, he let his mind drift, and of course the first thing the traitorous bastard decided to do when he let it wander was go to the things he didn't want to think about. his hands tightened around the test tubes he was holding, and he carefully gentled his grip. he felt his knuckles creak with the effort.

the resets. that horrible, sickening, cellular dread and deja-vu. the quicksilver memory of calculations he hadn't done yet, results he hadn't run, the dust, the dust, the dust.....

he remembered the first fragments with perfect clarity, is the thing. a face, pale and smiling far, far too wide in a glasgow grin, determination spilling across the ground in flooded red, the brilliant light of the judgment hall and it's shattering windows. the rain, and an odd new friend, something was off about him, why was his voice so familiar, this cycle, why wouldn’t it break? golden flowers, flowers, it was something like a flower-

but something shifted. his basement machine stopped working. as the fungi overtook his body, thoughts of fragmenting, repeating timelines filled his head with white noise. buzzing static in the soul where memory should have been.

sans is a scientist; he knew how to deduce conclusions from yawning absence. now, the resets always came back to the same point- when The Rot first began to spread. he had realized, with dull horror, that the parasite fed on determination just as eagerly as it did magic, and imposed limits upon the most determined entity in the underground. the creature could now only reset to that first point in time, that first, terrible spore- and not a moment before. and sans would feel himself making the same choices all over again, going through the motions as time folded in on itself like quantum origami.

yes, the appearance of an apocalyptic bigger bad didn't bode well, but it allowed for one, crucial detail.

the rot was using it as fuel; the determination itself was running out. the resets grew less frequent and shorter in length. the fungi were growing faster, yes, and choking them all for breath, but the rot's relentless consumption meant they were inching closer and closer towards a permanent timeline. the fits and starts of endless saves were stuttering.

they were barreling towards a timeline that would stick, and for that, he could bear to chase hope that bordered on delusional. permanence was in sight. meaning was in sight. he had to keep working on a cure no matter how many times he had to restart, because at some point time would only move forward, and it would then begin to run out. permanent mortality- it was coming. it was coming, and there was no turning back, not even for that wretched plant-creature that liked to toy with their lives.

maybe it was already here, devouring them slowly as history often did to shattered worlds. perhaps the broken clock was finally right.

sans felt righteous fury burn in his marrow, driving him, fueling him, and he cursed when a glass beaker shattered in his hand from being gripped too tightly. he meticulously picked the shards out of his palm with tweezers and set his jaw.

he refused. he would not use the precious grains of sand in the hourglass as if he was without, lacking meaning or drive or love or hope. he had spent too much of his life numb to settle for more emptiness.

he would not lose anything else, even if all he had now is that ephemeral purpose that eluded him so- he wouldn't lose it, not to time, not to the grave, not to that horrible thing that reset over and over again in search of fulfillment long gone. papyrus had asked if they were losing. they were not. they were not. they were so close. they were so close-

TORIEL

the citadel was so much smaller, now.

toriel was part of the dwindling generation that remembered the sky. she was but a girl when they had first found themselves imprisoned under the mountain after a war with far too much loss, and began the arduous task of clearing away stone and and dirt and water and turning it into home, brilliant and strong. the earth was a rich, deep purple here, and centuries of old magic was steeped in every inch of stone and moss and crumbling mortar. the people expanded, left the original settlement, and when she returned there years later, for exile, she could see why it was called "the ruins" by most.

sometimes she would sit, near the only crack where sunshine came through, and try to find her lost ones in the patterns the floating particulates made. she tried to see her son's shape in the dust motes that glowed.

it had been so long now, and he was here for but a far too short time… what was the exact texture of his fur, again? his eyes… what shade where they? his sibling,,, were they more partial to butterscotch, or cinnamon? her boy. her child. did they hate her, for her withering memory?

it was a terrible, terrible thing indeed, to outlive one's children.

the details she wanted to keep kept on fading, and that in itself was a grief, because try as she might, she could not forget how he crumbled in her hands as she held his wounded form. as he cradled the other half of her world in his arms, blood on the corner of their mouth, smelling of iron and buttercups. how his dust coated their body- how she could not bear to move or gather it, for both she and the king had known that his sibling was indeed his favorite thing in the world. a part of her had gone dark forever when her children died, and that wound never really stopped bleeding with desperate yearning for light again.

the clearest memory she had of her children was not his birth or their adoption or both of their joys or achievements, but of their deaths, and that shamed her.

it was something that would never heal. she tried to atone every time another child stumbled to her, lost, broken, and yet, they would leave, and they would die; and that wretched wound would only grow wider. she didn't think she could ever forgive the king, for that. she hadn't yet forgiven herself, either.

people came and went. she had loved, and loved deeply, and lost them to various perils. death. time. betrayal. most recently, illness. the underground had grown sickly with a recent plague that fed off of their collective despair. no wonder it grew in her domain first- the rotting citadel certainly had enough misery to spare.

what little of her of her first, oldest home that wasn't ravaged by age had been utterly destroyed by the rot. the fungi grew and made already crumbling walls crack into pieces. safe terrain continued to shrink until only the small area she could maintain with her fire remained livable. her surviving fellow monsters flocked to the shelter she had carved out, and named it Queen's Keep. she hadn't called herself a queen in a long time. she scorched the earth and stone, for ash was better than spores, yet it only prompted fire-proof mushrooms to grow. ah, well. at least some of them were edible.

she adjusted- one did not live as long as her without learning to mold oneself to the times. heh, puns.

she protected her charges with as much fire and passion that she could muster, and tried to keep them safe. she walked her rotting home and looked for means to their survival; food, snails, water, the odd half-feral monster that she tried to take care of.

they all tried to make the best of the worst place in their underground prison, and their efforts were not completely wasted. they did not lose much more of Queen's Keep, the Rot at bay for now, and carved small, safe paths to and from her little sanctuary. one could find their way to her from any place in the citadel, now. they only needed to follow the burnt leaves.

secretly, selfishly, she hoped another lost, frightened human child would find their way to her, someday. maybe she could protect them, this time. allow them to grow and be children- already, their imprisonment had stolen so much from them. surely she could fight for a child to keep their childhood for just a little longer?

imagine her surprise when the next human to fall was neither frightened nor a child. she walked in on a strange, strange sight. An adult human, in a strange white coat, wrestling the wretched flower creature in a bed of fungi and golden flowers, screeching, "HOLD STILL, I NEED SAMPLES!"