//-------------------------------------------------------// The power of SOUL -by Garnet Naturea- //-------------------------------------------------------// //-------------------------------------------------------// Prologue //-------------------------------------------------------// Prologue Checking his watch for the fifth time in five minutes, Nathan looks around the lot by his dorm for his friend. He was starting to get impatient. Checking over himself again, his bright, fire red hair is set in its natural messed style. He traces his deep green eyes over his clothes. His outfit of a pair a black cargo pants, white t-shirt and dark blue hoodie is freshly washed and clean. He is wearing a pair of black fingerless gloves with a white heart outline on each and a pair of black combat boots. Most would see him as either a goth or something like that, but in reality he just liked black. Most would also think that Nathan would be one of those loners that doesn’t talk to anyone, but really, he was rather popular in his college. He was taking psychology and medical science classes with his hopes of being a health care aid. He is also a pretty good athlete, having won a hometown martial arts tournament when he was younger. But aside form all this he was one thing above all else. A fan of Undertale. And by a fan, we mean an super fan. He has played through the game itself nearly a hundred times, gotten plenty of merchandise like shirts, figurines, and fan made comics. Also he was an avid reader and watcher of online Undertale AUs comics and shows, like Glitchtale and Ask Frisk and Co. He looks away from his outfit as he hears a car entering the lot. Looking around he finds his friend Sam come driving in with his pickup. Nathan crosses his arms as Sam drives up to him. “Your late.” Nathan says annoyed. Sam raises his arms in defence as his friend gets in. “Dude, chill. I was five minutes late. Remember the con doesn’t open its doors for another hour or so.” Sam says back, driving out of the lot with his new passenger. Nathen sighs. “Yeah, I know. Sorry. I am just super excited to go. This is my first gaming convention and I really wanna meet Toby Fox.” Nathan says with excited. Sam just laughs as they get close to the convention hall nearby. “Yeah. I know how crazy you are about Undertale related stuff. But you should try to reign it in otherwise you might embarrass yourself.” Sam says, looking for a good parking spot. Once the duo finds a good spot, they walk out to the entrace hall and wait, a few gamers already there. “So why couldn’t your brother come again?” Nathan asks his friend. Sam shrugs. “Jason got sick with something. We think the flu, but considering all the bugs going around, he may have gotten something worse. For now he is staying home and mum and dad are taking care of him.” Sam says, and after a few minutes the doors to the building opens. Going in, Sam and Nathan join a crowd going to the main floor where some new games are being unveiled. They spend about an hour there before moving on and finding the next area which had a large amount of merchant booths with at least one booth for every major gaming series each. CoD, Battlefield, Halo, Fallout, XCom, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Even some for some older games like Left 4 Dead and Warframe. Going past the major company area, Nathan finds himself in the area sectioned off for Indie and Fan made games. FNAF and its spin-offs, Shovel Knight, LISA, Pokemon Uranium, Pixelmon and TABS just to name a few. But Nathan was looking for one booth for its specific items. After wandering the sea of gaming booth he finds what he is looking for. He finds what looks like a guard station from Undertale, but it is full of things from the fandom. Looking around the booth he finds plenty of things he would love to get for his collections, but the only problem is there was no one there. Checking in front of the booth there was a sign that said ‘be back in five’. Nathan sighs and takes out his phone to watch some videos to pass the time. After a few minutes he feels a tapping on his shoulder from behind. Turning, he sees some guy with white hair and blue eyes, a blue winter jacket overtop a white t-shirt and black shorts with a white line down the sides, pink slippers and dog tags. All in all, he looked like a human version of Sans the skeleton. Odd, Nathan didn’t see anyone walking up. “Hey there bud, don’t ya know how to greet someone?” He says raising his hand. Nathan can see where this is going and smirks. Shaking his hand, he get rewarded by the sound of a fart. They both laugh a little at the gag. “Hehe, the old whoopie cushion in the hand trick. Never gets old.” Nathan says to him with a smile. “You said it bud. So what are you buying from my humble shop?” The human Sans asks, leaning onto the counter. Nathan then trails his eyes over the booth and finds several pieces that would do well in his collection. “I’ll take the Delta!Sans Tough Gloves, the Xtale Sans scarf, the mini Gaster Blasters, Betty’s Kumu hair clip, the Chaos Sabres and the book on monster/soul magic and heart locket please.” he says, pointing to each item in turn. Sans nods and grabs the items and brings them to the front of the booth for Nathan. “Is that all?” Nathan searches the shelves of the guard post and his eyes settled on one item he looked over. On one of the shelves are what look like a bunch of hearts in their own separate jars. There are ten in total, each being their own color. Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, white and black. The last one however, was different. It was changing between the colours of the others at steady intervals, like the color was changing with a heartbeat. Nathan points to it. “How about the SOUL?” Sans looks to it then gets a slightly worried expression. “Look bud, that thing is pretty expensive, so I’ll make you a deal. If you can answer three of my questions about the Undertale multiverse, I’ll let you have it for half off. You will still be paying for the other things in full though.” He says, grabbing the soul in a jar and placing it on the counter. Nathan smirks at the man. “Bring it on.” he says, as said song was beginning to play through his headphones. Sans gives a very good impression of the skeletons smile. “Ok, first question. In Glitchtale, how was the Bête Noire or Betty created?” He questions. “Many centuries ago, the wielders of the Determination and Bravery were having an argument on if they should release the monsters still trapped under Mount Ebbot. Determination wanted to release them while Bravery wanted to reinforce the barrier. Their fight eventually lead to a dual between the siblings and Determination won. Bravery was scared after that, losing her trait and running away for a time. While she was away she found a spell that inverted her very trait, turning from using a soul of Bravery to one of Fear. She returned, Determination welcoming her back. Some time later, Bravery and Determination got into another argument and Bravery attacked him. Determination was forced to fight back against his mad sibling. While they fought, their younger sibling was forced to run, but Bravery wouldn’t have it and attacked her. After temporarily knocking Determination down, she turned her attention on their sibling and killed her. Determination lost his trait in the shock of seeing their little sibling dead and Bravery struck him down. Bravery was soon beset by the side effect of inverting her soul and used her magic to turn the corpse of their younger sibling into something else. The Bête Noire. The SOUL of Fear.” Sans looks to him and smile at the story answer. “Correct, but you could have just said that she was made from a foolish wizards spite.” He says with a smirk. “Where is the fun in that?” Nathan says back with his own smirk. “Fair enough bud, next question. In Underverse, why is Cross stealing things from other universes?” “Cross came from a Genocide timeline without reset possibility. During his final battle with Chara, their souls merged and Chara became trapped in Cross’s head. Cross goes to other universes and steals certain aspects to rebuild his world after being told by Ink that he could not bring his universe back.” He answers without problem. Sans nods after checking his phone for a second. “Correct again. Now for your last question.” Sans suddenly loses his smile and looks to Nathan with a serious expression not unlike the skeletons eyeless glare. “Who is W.D Gaster?” That caught Nathan off guard and he had to think and remove fan theories from canon material. “Well, canonically he is the royal scientist before Alphys. He was the one in charge of the creation of the Core which provides the Underground with magical power. While working on it one day he ‘fell’ into his own creation and was shattered across time and space. You can only find him in there game behind the grey door in Waterfall.” Nathan pauses and thinks again, Sans not reacting. “There are a lot of theories about who Gaster was and is right now. Most say he is in some way connected to the skeleton brothers Sans and Papyrus. Some say he is their father, some their other brother, others their creator. After his incident, most agree he gained the ability to look into the other timelines and that he was trapped as a type of ghost in between the timelines.” Sans closes his eyes for a moment, seemingly thinking before his goofy smile breaks his face again. “Nice job Bud.” He says before going to the register on the left of the booth and ringing up the items. “Ok, all together that is about $650 dollars.” He says, and Nathan has to do a double take before remembering that the soul itself was apparently very expensive. Good thing he just got paid from work and that his parents send some money for his birthday last week. Taking out a few hundreds and a fifty and hands it to Sans before putting the gloves, scarf, locket and clip on before putting the book and soul in my pockets in my coat and holding the sabres in hand. “Well, nice meeting you bud! Enjoy your trip and good luck!” Sans says as Nathan begins to walk away. Nathan turns back and finds Sans no longer at the booth. Suddenly, Nathan get a pain in his chest. He lets go of the sabres only for them to disappear and then for the him to hear the sound of entering a fight from the game. His vision begins to blur and then feels like he is falling, losing his consciousness with the sound of a soul breaking. //-------------------------------------------------------// Arrival of a Strong SOUL //-------------------------------------------------------// Arrival of a Strong SOUL Deep in a cave within a dark forest a large crystalline tree pulses with strong dormant magic, lighting the cave. As the tree lights up once more a different flash goes off as a certain red haired human falls next tree and tree reacts and begins to pulse in time with his own heart. As Nathan begins to come back to the waking world the tree begins to glow brighter, seemingly happy for a new soul of harmony. Coming back to, Nathan opens his eyes, seeing darkness in front of him, and to see a light coming from behind him. Beginning to rub his head, Nathan looks over himself, seeing his new additions to his outfit and feels the book in his coat, but he is missing his swords and new rainbow heart. Getting to his feet, Nathan begins to check himself over again and then looks around for his missing items. Looking behind him, he sees the source of the light. He just stares at the large tree, seemingly in awe by its light and energy. Something seems to resonate within him as he looks at the tree and he walks forward, takes his glove off and places his hand on the front of the tree. In that instant a rainbow aura begins to covers his arm and then go to his chest. After that happens it leaves his chest and a familiar looking heart is left floating in front of him. He puts his hand out and the heart goes and hovers over his hand, the color changing with his heartbeat. He looks at the heart for a second, shocked by this new power he knows before closing his hand, the rainbow of energy returning to his chest. “SOUL magic?” He questions. After a second he gets an idea and thinks of the weapons he bought and opens his hands. He hears what sounds like shimmering as closes his hands around the handles of two Chaos Sabres. He looks at the two weapons in his hands, seeing them being exactly the same as the game, but real and sharp. He smile and dismisses the weapons into his ‘inventory’. As he is about to leave, he feels something moving on his head. Confused, he reaches up and feels something. Something....squishy? Pulling his arm back, the feeling leaves and he gets a surprise. Floating next to him looks like hand sized pink blob with a cartoony spiky smile and eyes. “Kumu?” He asks, the blob nodding with a smile. Even though Kumu was a very dangerous creature in Glitchtale, Nathan felt oddly relaxed around the pink blob. Reaching up, Nathan begins to gently scratch Kumu under where his chin would be, earning a purr and a nuzzle in response. He laughs a little as the blob take position on top of his head. He looks up at Kumu with a good natured eye role and smile before looking back to the odd tree and smiles before leaving the cave. Going out the cave he finds himself in some kind of gorge in a forest. Looking around, he does a double take at seeing a large flight of stairs off to the side. Scratching his head he walk forward and up out of the gorge. Looking around from the top of the stairs, he sees forest all around and then the ruins of an old castle behind him, past the gorge. Something about this seemed very familiar to him, but he couldn’t place it. Looking to the sky, he sees it is still early morning, around eight. As he looks to the sky two questions pop into his head. “What the hell happened? And why aren’t I freaking out?” Kumu comes down from his ‘perch’ and looks at Nathan with a curious stare. He idley scratch’s his head with his clawed gloves, not really finding a good reason for his calmness until he pulls his hand back and looks to the glove. They are bright orange with a black heart on the back of both, the gloves reach down to his mid forearm. “Bravery.” He remembers that his soul changes from the seven main colours of the game as well as black and white representing Hatred and Love. The only color and trait he was missing was pink for Fear yet he still has Kumu with him. He smiles and looks to his new companion. “Hey Kumu? Wanna go exploring?” He asks, the blob smiling and morphing into a small pink flower and attaching to Nathans coat. He looks to the forest and walks in, his eyes bright orange and filled with Bravery. He walks for a few minutes before pulling out the book he bought and begins to read through it. The book explains the concept of SOUL alongside LV and EXP in terms of the Undertale universe. SOUL like many thing is an acronym. It stands for Source Of Undying Love. The more powerful a persons SOUL, the more they can use magically and each trait for a SOUL directly impacts the wielders personality, strengths, weaknesses, and virtues. Aside from that, he read that every trait allows for diffrent uses in combat. A soul of Patience uses things like magical ropes and traps to ensnare and trip up opponents to drag on fights, making their opponents tired and give up. Integrity uses attacks that have specific rhythm and beats, like attacking in time with a certain beat to a song. Justice seems to focus on ranged attacks, ranging to long range sniping to rapid fire blasts. Bravery increases physical traits like strength, speed and stamina allowing for strong close range combat as well as having a natural connection to fire. Perseverance seems to specialize in creating heavy weaponry manifestations like large battle axes, broadswords and shields, making the user forgo things like speed. Kindness focuses on defence and healing over offence, making them essentially a white mage. Some Kindness users can apparently make animal manifestations if they have a strong connection with nature. Whatever that means. Determination. The most powerful in terms of raw energy and strength, it is also the most versatile, making things like weapons out of magic as well as being able to launch ranged attacks. Unlike the other traits, those with enough determination, like Frisk and Chara, can pull enough strength of will to survive even some of the most fatal of wounds. And they can even alter the very fabric of reality itself. IE Reset, Save and Load. Hatred. A deadly and dangerous trait to earn. If filled with enough Hatred, they can overpower even Determination users, however it acts like a parasite, making the soul itself all the weaker the more Hatred they use. If not stopped quickly, the Hatred can completely consume the soul, leaving behind an empty shell of a wizard, devoid of magic and in most cases, life. Love.The powers of a Love user is completely unique to each individual. There is no clear connection or similarity from one Love user to the next. What is consistent, is its ability to easily push back those using Hatred or Fear. Reading through he reachs Fear, but the page is messed up, the words being illegable and the images of the heart being completely absent. Kumu looks at the page too and gains a confused expression at the lack of Fear material. He floats down and looks at the page close, but gets no info. “Any ideas what happened to all this info Kumu?” Nathan asks, the blob shaking his head and adorning a disappointed look on his face. Nathan just reaches up and pets the little blob with a smile. “Well, we will just have to learn on our own time huh.” Kumu smiles at the reassurance and returns to his flower form. After reading that, Nathan goes through and begin to read about how to use one trait. Reading, it seemed that Justice is the easiest to control in terms of magic, while Perseverance is the hardest. All of them is different in styles of how to use them, yet Nathan understands it all. By the time Nathan managed to use one attempt of each trait he sees that he had managed to walk to the other side of the forest and reachs the outside. Looking around he sees that there is some kind large apple orchard. Looking up, it looked like it was around eleven. “Wow. I guess I was really lost in thought trying my new magic. What do you think this place is Kumu?” he asks, the blob looking around and noticing a figure walking in the orchard. Kumu goes up and pokes at him and nods to the person. “Nice. Someone to meet.” He pulls up his hood and scarf, covering his face. Kumu turns to his flower form again and taking his place on his shirt. Oddly, Nathan was not very hot with all of his layers. Nathan looks to the orchard and walks in, his eyes green and full of Kindness. Walking to the orchard, Nathan barely walk for a few minutes before hearing a women call out loudly. “Soups on everypony!” Following what sounds like a stampede, Nathan passes a small hill and sees a large gathering of....something? They appear to be some sort of mix between horses and humans. They all have human-like bodies with arms ending in hands and legs ending in hooves and pony muzzles. Almost all of them are wearing farmer style outfits, jeans, plaid shirts, overalls. Although the duo do notice one of them, a lavender one, is wearing a white dress shirt and purple vest with a black skirt and looks a little uncomfortable. She also has a horn on her head. “What the? Are they some kind of monsters?” Nathan asks aloud, Kumu looking equally confused by the creatures. As the duo continue to look over the gathered beings, one of them, a large red one with a red plaid shirt and dirty jeans, notices them and tenses up. The others notice him and follows his gaze, all of them soon staring at Nathan and Kumu. Nathan notices this and chooses to be careful. He walks down from the hill slowly, hand in his pockets, eyes locked on the big red one. They get within about half a dozen feet before another one, a orange female with blond hair and green eyes walks up with caution. She is wearing a tied green and white plaid shirt and short jean shorts with a lasso attached and a brown Stetson on her head. “That’s close enough there partner. Who are you and what are ya’ll doin here?” She asks with her arms crossed and narrowed eyes. “Sorry, we didn’t mean to intrude on anything. We were just-” Nathan gets interrupted by the red one. “We?” He asks in a deep baritone voice. In response Kumu flies up and hovers next to Nathans head with a smile. The gathered creatures look to Kumu in confusion. “Yes, we. This is my familiar/friend Kumu. My name is Nathan Blake. Pleasure to meet you.” He says with a slight bow and Kumu nods. The group looks to one another in worry while the purple one is looking at them with curious eyes. “Why are you wearing so many clothes? Aren’t ya hot?” Another one from within the crowd asks. “To answer your second question, not really. I am not rally sure why though. But for the first one, I don’t know where I am and I find a large group of creatures I have never seen before. I think it would be best to aire on the side of caution until I am sure I am in no danger.” The gathered group look to one another, more than a few nodding at his logic. “Well, ya’ll don’t need to worry there sonny. We won’t hurt ya.” An elderly looking green creature says from her seat. Nathan nods to her and removes his hood and lowers his scarf. Most of the creatures go wide eyed at Nathans appearance, his red hair seeming to glow in the sunlight and his green eyes full of kindness and safety. The elderly one whistles at Nathans reveal. “My word. Ya’ll are quite the strapping young stallion.” She says, most of the females giggling with her. Nathan just smirks with a small laugh. “Yeah, I get that a lot.” He says good naturedly, a few of the ‘stallions’ chuckling at his response. Nathan then gets an idea and takes out his book and flips through looking for something. “What are ya lookin for?” A young one with a pink bow in her red mane asks. Nathan smiles as he finds what he was looking for. “Oh, just a certain spell I wanted to test out. Do you think you can help me out?” He asks, crouching a bit to the girl. She smile and goes to walk up, before being held by the red one. “Hold on there partner. My little sis won’t be in danger with this spell of yours, will she?” He asks. Nathan just smiles calmly to him. “Of course not. I am not a monster. All I need her to do is just stand still and nothing will happen to her.” Nathan says. Though the red one is still cautious, he lets his little sister go. “Ok, just stand riiiight..here.” He says pointing to a spot a few feet away from himself. Once she is in position, Nathan focuses on his magic and thinks in his mind Act