Chapter Text

I sucked back tears as my mother prodded my bruised ribs with both hands. Determining that nothing was broken, she turned her attention to the burns on my arms and applied some magic that stung even as it healed me. Chara stood in the corner of the room.

“Honestly I should ground both of you,” Mom said. “I don't even care whose idea it was. You're both knuckleheads as far as I'm concerned.”

All around Home, away from the brick buildings we were used to, there were tunnels and caverns still in their natural shape, and exploring them was one of my and Chara's favorite ways to spend a summer day. What got Chara going this time was a tree. There were plenty of trees in Home, but somehow he had gotten the idea that this one grew a sweet star-shaped fruit found nowhere else in the Underground, and he really wanted to try some. He made himself a map, he knew exactly the way to go, and he said if we were quiet, we could get in and out before anyone knew what was up.

We picked our moment to sneak off, and Chara led the way. We crawled through the tunnels for about an hour before we found it, and as we approached the tree, Chara cautioned us to walk lightly and keep our voices down. He climbed the tree while I waited below to catch the fruit and put it in the bucket we had brought. He'd thrown down just over half a dozen before we were spotted. I heard them coming and called for Chara to come down, but he just stayed there clinging to his branch, and I held my ground for as long as I could before self-preservation took over and I booked it. I stumbled into a moldsmal that, in a defensive reflex, shot me with its acidic goo, and as I recoiled from the pain I was body slammed by a froggit, and my head hit the stone. The froggit sat on top of me and rained down blows until Chara came and pushed it off. He beat the froggit over and over with his fists. After a while it stopped even trying to fight and just lay there.

I begged him to leave, and pretty soon we did, leaving the froggit where it was. We ran all the way back the way we came, straight into our own front door. We didn't have time to think of a convincing lie, so we caved and told Mom the truth. Burned, bruised, covered in dirt and our clothes ruined, there wasn't much we could have said to explain it.

“You're not going to do something like that again, right?” Mom was just finishing with her treatment.

I shook my head.

“Good,” she said.

“Why do some monsters attack us?” I said. “Isn't Dad the King?”

“Just because your father's the King doesn't mean you can go anywhere and do anything you like. I don't imagine you would like it if someone snuck into our home to steal a slice of pie, or one of your chocolate bars.”

“But it wasn't like someone's house or anything, it was just a cave.”

“Some monsters prefer to live in caves. To them, it's just as much a home as our house is to us.”

“But they can't really be said to own it, can they? Dad's the King—if anything, we own it. And besides, they didn't warn us or yell at us to leave or anything, they just attacked. Aren't you not supposed to do that?”

“If you want to get political, we haven't formally claimed that territory, so it doesn't belong to us either. But that's not the point. Monsters have a certain nature, and to keep things peaceful, your father thinks it best at times to accommodate monsters as they are, rather than try to force everyone to live a certain way. As long as they're not going out and hurting anyone, it's all right to let monsters live in caves if that's what they want. Now go and get ready for your bath, both of you.”

She left to go fill up the tub while Chara and I went to our room. We started undressing and threw our messy clothes in the bin. Chara unwrapped his shirt to show me two pieces of the star fruit he had been hiding, and tossed one to me.

“Thanks for not throwing me under,” he said.

We bit into the fruit. It wasn't like anything I was used to, but it really was sweet, and Chara was plainly delighted.

“I'm sorry you got beat up,” he said. “Even so, it was fun, right? Imagine if we'd gotten a whole bucket of these.”

“You beat that froggit up pretty bad,” I said.

“He was beating you up. I had to stop him, didn't I?”

“Did you have to beat him up that badly? He even stopped moving.”

“He'll be fine. Maybe he'll know not to mess with us next time.”

“I'm not sure if I like it.”

“I don't like it either. But sometimes monsters want to hurt us, and we have to protect ourselves. You need to learn to protect yourself, too. I'd hate if something happened to you when I wasn't there.”

He saw the frown on my face and put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey. I'm proud of you. It was hard, but you handled yourself well. And you didn't cry. You know how much I hate it when you cry.”

Mom always had to deal with us when we got in trouble because Dad was always busy at the castle. He brought me and Chara with him a lot, dressed in our nicest clothes, because as the King's children we needed to learn how governing worked, as he put it. What we all particularly hated were the council meetings, a chance for two dozen plus representatives from various districts to take turns airing their individual grievances and arguing with each other about what should be done. Nobody could agree on anything because they were all different species, but lately their complaints were starting to line up: rising cost of housing, rising cost of food, higher crime, higher pollution, and general overcrowding. Pressure was mounting for Dad to expand the borders of the kingdom.

Dad didn't want to do that, of course, because there were already monsters living on the land they wanted to expand to. Outside the walls were ice caps, ice wolves, snowdrakes, and all kinds of others—and they had all lived there since long before we ever came to the Underground. Some of them were mad about the land we had already taken, and aggressions were constantly starting up and stopping. There was always a military commander at the table to fill us in on the state of things in the wild.

Frustrated and desperate, the representatives switched to trying to talk Dad into sending small bands of explorers to map out the Underground. When we had first been banished from the surface, in haste to escape our persecutors, we marched straight for the deepest caverns without making any note of the regions we were passing. Now we knew nothing of those regions except for what remained in the fragmented memories of the oldest monsters, so for the sake of increasing the knowledge of the kingdom, the representatives started insisting on these expeditions. Dad still didn't want to do it. He didn't want to put any of his own monsters in danger, but he gave in and permitted the representatives to start polling their constituents for volunteers.

That's what was on Chara's mind when he asked me, “How'd you like to go on a really big adventure?”

I was intrigued, and said, “What are you thinking?”

“I think the King is misguided. Those expeditions they've been talking about, to map out the Underground—they need to happen. The adults can't get it together, but we can. We could leave tonight and go east through the caverns, all the way to the Barrier if we like.”

“There's no way Mom and Dad would let us do that.”

“That's why we're not going to tell them. They might not like it, but they can't be mad if we bring back lots of new information about the Underground. It'll be the biggest adventure of our lives, and for once we'll be doing something really helpful.”

I could tell by his voice that the thought of uncharted lands lit a fire in him. His excitement was rubbing off on me, and a big adventure really did start to sound like fun, just the two of us.

What could I do? I said yes.

We waited for Mom and Dad to go to sleep, then quietly got our stuff together. We retrieved our winter clothes from the storage closet and stuffed two backpacks full of as much food and supplies as we could carry, and since the dead of night seemed like the best time to sneak past the guards, we set out immediately. We got got past the wall through a gap in the patrols, and we were off.

No sooner had we crossed over than our feet started crunching through a foot of powdery snow, as if the wall had been holding it back. We walked straight through a forest of pine trees, more trees in one place than I had ever seen before, and it wasn't until I saw Home's walls disappear that it sunk in how far we were going.

Chara gestured at me to halt, then beckoned me to walk up beside him and see what he was seeing. He had managed to spot a monster before it spotted us.

“An ice wolf cub,” he whispered.

The cub was walking through the forest on all fours, sniffing around like he was trying to find something. We waited a few minutes for him to move on, but when Chara took another step, the cub heard the crunch and his glance shot in our direction.

“Hey,” Chara opted to be direct. “We mean you no harm.”

I don't know if the cub heard him, but before we could do anything else he bolted into the forest. We decided not to think too hard on it.

The forest opened up into a spacious cavern, and we found we were perched high on a narrow passage with steep drops on either side. The drops went a long way down, and the ceiling was high above us—I never thought so much space could exist underground.

We kept our footing carefully along the winding path, and after a time we heard something behind us. The wolf cub was approaching us as carefully as we had earlier.

“H—Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Chara said.

“I, um, I've never seen monsters like you before,” the cub said. “I'm such a butt. I'm sorry. Are you going to see Amaryk, too?”

“Who's Amaryk?”

“You've never met Amaryk? He's only the coolest and most terrifying warrior in the entire world, and he's patrolling somewhere around here right now.”

The cub perked his ears toward a noise we couldn't hear, then darted for a nearby snowbank. He covered himself in the white powder, and Chara and I dove for the bank nearest us. We watched a full-size ice wolf come through where we had just been standing, walking on all fours, wearing no clothes and carrying no weapons. He sniffed everywhere. He came up very close to our hiding spot, but for some reason he decided to back off.

The cub came out and shook all the snow off his fur. Chara and I followed.

“Wasn't that awesome?” said the cub. “If there'd been any bad guys here, you know they would have been in for it! I'm going ahead to see if I can catch him further on.”

He ran off, but not before tripping and planting his face in the snow, his back legs flying off the ground for a moment.

We decided to move on. The passage narrowed and winded in all directions, and later on more pine trees appeared. We decided to take shelter under a tree and catch our breath.

Something hit the ground next to us. At first we thought they were icicles falling off the branches, but they came at us at an angle, and we looked in that direction to see the massive figure of the full-size ice wolf standing there. Amaryk had found us, and he was magically conjuring ice shards and launching them toward us like throwing knives.

We ran as fast as we could through the snow, but he was right behind us, raining ice on our heads. We went for the thickest part of the forest, split up, and threw ourselves down among the foliage. Amaryk scanned and sniffed around the forest floor. He followed a trail up to a particular bush, stuck his head in, and pulled it back with the cub clamped between his jaws by the scruff of the neck.

He left, taking the cub with him. Chara and I came out slowly. We hoped that might be the end of it, and moved on.

We cleared the forest and came out onto a new passage. The passage thinned to just about a foot wide, so that Chara and I couldn't stand side-by-side on it. We went single-file, and I had to crouch down to keep my balance. It was icy and slippery, and the edges dropped down farther than I cared to fall.

We looked back and saw the cub following just behind us.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” said Chara.

“Amaryk told me what was happening. He said you guys are from Home, said he could smell it right away, and he said he's going to kill you when he catches you. But that can't be right, right? He only kills bad guys, like the guys who raided our camp the other day. You don't look like bad guys. But he sounded serious, so you should probably get out of here and get back to where you came from.”

The taller figure of Amaryk appeared behind the cub.

The cub lost his footing, and Chara, without a second's delay, grabbed the cub and shielded him as they both slid down the icy cliff. Without any time to think about it, I jumped down after them. The three of us slid down however many stories of stone and ice until we hit the bottom. Even though the snow broke our fall a bit, I was still sore when I tried to get up.

We walked along the cliff face, hoping it would keep us out of sight. We went far enough to think maybe we had lost Amaryk, but he spotted us again from up top and dropped down on us.

Chara picked up the cub in his arms and we ran. We took the first path we saw hoping to get up top, but it lead to a dead end in a crevasse, and Amaryk occupied our only exit.

As he conjured his ice shards for the last time, Chara said, “Asriel, the knife. It's in your bag.”

He was talking about his knife, the knife he had with him when he first fell into the Underground. I hadn't seen the point in packing it, but Chara was always more comfortable when it was around, so he insisted. Even now, I didn't see the point. What was I going to do? Run through a barrage of ice magic and stab this imposing warrior in the head?

Nonetheless, I flipped my bag around and retrieved the knife as quick as I could. I held it toward Amaryk.

“You have to do it,” Chara said. “He will kill us if you don't.”

I knew that was true, but even so I couldn't make the attack. I held the knife steady and said, “I—I don't want to fight you!”

He launched his ice at us. I only managed to dodge them by ducking very low.

“I know the monsters of Home have been giving you trouble,” I said. “But we're not here for that. We're explorers. We're just gathering information about the Underground.”

He launched more ice, and again I only dodged by a hair.

“We could be friends. Home would look kindly on you if they heard about how you helped us …”

It didn't work. He readied his shards again for a final attack, but the cub pushed his way out of Chara's grasp and ran to stand between me and Amaryk.

“Stop fighting!” he cried. “They're not bad guys. They're my friends. If either of you want to hurt each other, you'll have to …”

Amaryk held his magic. For a few agonizing minutes, nothing happened. Then the ice disappeared.

He hoisted himself onto two legs. “All right,” he said. “I'll trust my son's judgment … this time. If you really are explorers as you say, I suppose I can spare you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“What are you doing here?”

“We're on official Home business,” said Chara. “This is Asriel Dreemurr, the Prince. We've been sent to explore the Underground and learn all we can about it.”

“The King sent his own son to explore the Underground?” Amaryk said.

“He said there was no one he trusted more,” Chara said.

“Well, as a friendly gesture, I'll take you to our camp and show you some hospitality. After some food and rest, you'll be much more suited to continue.”

“Thank you very much,” Chara said.

We followed Amaryk. We walked along the cliff face for some distance until we came to a path that zig-zagged up to the top. The plateau widened into an open space, where the ice wolves had made their camp. Their dens were dug out of the snow and appeared as domes sticking up. There were few wolves walking around at this time of night, but we could see smoke and light coming from inside some of the dens.

Amaryk turned to another wolf and said, “Tell the Elder I've brought some guests from Home.”

A few minutes later, an older wolf came out to greet us.

“Amaryk,” he said, “what fresh misfortune have you brought?”

Amaryk laughed. “I hope you can handle the threat of these two children. They're from Home, and this one,”—he pointed to me—“is the child of the King.”

“I'd ask what you're doing here, but I'm sure Amaryk will tell me everything once we're inside.”

We went for the largest den at the head of the village. A female wolf joined us, who must have been Amaryk's mate. He hugged and kissed her. The inside of the den was spacious, and the fire in the middle made it surprisingly warm for a house made of snow. The Elder, Amaryk, and some others sat down and invited us to join them, while more went and returned with food. They skewered the red strips with poles and hung them over the fire.

“Meat!” Chara said excitedly. “I haven't had that since …”

I couldn't muster the same excitement. I thought about asking where it came from, but I didn't have the courage.

While it was cooking, Amaryk regaled everyone with the tale of how he had stalked us through the woods. The Elder listened with cautious curiosity.

“Am I to take the presence of explorers as a sign that the King is looking for peace?” the Elder said.

“The King is always looking for peace,” said Chara.

“You say that, but it seems every standstill ends when your soldiers raid us, or your people do something or other to reopen aggressions. What was it that set us off last time? I remember—a merchant from Home offered to pay us some gold for a few sacks of food. He got the idea he had paid us when in fact he hadn't, and when we refused to give him the food, he flew into a rage, ranted something about 'what savages need money for anyway,' then grabbed one of our younger men and beat him mercilessly. We attempted to scare him off with threats, but he wouldn't hear it, so to protect the young man, we were forced to kill the merchant. Of course the King only saw that we had killed one of your citizens, and so the fighting started again. That seems to have died off, but how long will it be before the next incident?”

Chara and I said nothing.

“And if that wasn't enough,” the Elder continued, “we also face attacks from the east, from Aseyzil.”

“What did you say?” said Chara.

“Aseyzil. Do you know him?”

“Aseyzil was the King's most trusted captain,” Chara said. “He disappeared about three months ago while on patrol. Other patrols searched for him, but they didn't find him. The King was heartbroken.”

“If you think Aseyzil is dead, you're quite mistaken,” said the Elder. “He's in the molten lands, and by some means or other, he's converted the tribes there into his own private army. The waterfalls still serve as a buffer between us, but he's been working on them as well, and now the attacks are making it through to us. Thanks to Aseyzil, my people face danger on all sides.”

“The King would be very happy to know that Aseyzil is alive,” Chara said.

“You were going that way, were you not? Perhaps you'll run into him.”

“We'll do better than that. We'll bring him Home.”

“You might have a hard time disentangling him from his followers. They worship him like a god. Still, if anyone could reach him, I suppose it would be his own Prince Asriel. If you could dissolve Aseyzil's band of fanatics, it would relieve us greatly.”

They all looked toward me eagerly, waiting for my word as the Prince.

“It looks like we have a mission,” I said.

Amaryk said, “The river by our camp flows east from here, through the waterfalls and straight to the molten lands. Aseyzil's camp is on it. We'll lend you one of our canoes, so you should be able to reach him with little trouble.”

We slept in the Elder's den, and the following morning he fed us a small breakfast. Amaryk led us to the river, selected a dugout canoe, and pushed it into the water.

“Remember, we're only lending this to you. We expect it to be returned on the way back.”

“No problem,” Chara said.

“Good luck, friends.”

We threw our backpacks inside, Chara sat at the back and I at the front. We floated out into the current and were on our way.