Horror felt his breath raking from his nasal cavity as he marched down to the frantic warriors surrounding a lone hostage, feeling a growing Determination rising within the depths of his Soul. The spirits around and within him were practically frenzied by his contagious whirlwind of emotions.
He was stressed.

He saw his father figure gravely injured after just having gotten out of a battle with the one person he was most terrified of, only to..
Find Gaster there.

Not an alternate. He remembered his old man, how he felt, how he acted..
That.. concern over his scar struck him deep.
After all those years of problems that were the cause of his father who was gone…
But he didn't mean to.
That face, that loss…

He growled to himself, ignoring the chorus of voices asking of his welfare, demanding to enact vengeance on his part, hammering with questions-
"Shut. Up." He finally snapped, hissing at the innumerable spirits. "I need.. I need a minute." He glanced behind himself, seeing the crowd behind and around him, yet seeing through them.

Ghost met his gaze, Phantom standing just beside him in concern.
The taller bent over slightly, flashing as kind of a smile as he was able to before speaking in as gentle of a voice he could manage.
"Should we go home for a while, other brother?"

The expression on his face, so kind and so understanding…
Made him miss his own brother.
"Yeah." He ignored the crack in his voice. "The fighting's over for now. I need a minute. Please."

Ghost rested a hand on his shoulder as Phantom hugged him tightly, the embrace still so ethereal and weightless. The shorter spirit smiled.
"It's been an unexpectedly long day. We should all just chill out and give you a minute of silence, right?" He asked the conduit, though speaking loud enough for a good number of others to hear him.

Thankfully, everyone either agreed or decided not to fight against it as they were all drawn in. He couldn't stop the sigh of relief when he was met with the relative silence around him, the only thing left being the muted, easily forgotten murmurs within him and the panicked shouts close by- right.
That.

He glanced back over at the group, seeing Saphira crawl over to join the gathering.
Yes, he nearly forgot. He wanted to know what was wrong with those soldiers, what made them so supposedly unkillable. He'd find out about Cicállaé later.

He teleported over, beside Saphira's right talon as he got a good look at the single human standing in the center of the wary circle. The first thing he noticed was the blood pouring out in dark sheets from below one of the human's ribs, then the odd birthmark on his neck and the arrow pinning his right foot to the packed dirt. Then he went cold as the human suddenly laughed, a sound not unlike a madman, eerily close to that insane skeleton, 404.

"What are you?" Cried the Surdan king from atop his steed on Saphira's other side. The lone man just chuckled at him.
Orrin swore and addressed him again.
"Answer me, or I'll let my spellcasters at you. Be you man or beast or some ill-spawned demon?! In what foul pit did Galbatorix find you and your brothers? Are you kin of the Ra'zac?"

It didn't escape him when he noticed Eragon sit bolt upright at the last sentence. The horrifying human paused his derisive humor.
"Man. I am a man."
"You are like no man I know." Orrin accused.
"I wanted to assure the future of my family. Is that so foreign to you, Surdan?"

"Give me no riddles, you fork-tongued wretch! Tell me how you became as you are, and speak honestly, lest you convince me to pour molten lead down your throat and see if that pains you."

The other fell into near maniacal giggles once again.
"You cannot hurt me, Surdan. No one can. The king himself made us impervious to pain. In return, our families will live in comfort for the rest of their lives. You can hide from us, but we will never stop pursuing you, even when ordinary men would drop dead from exhaustion. You can fight us, but we will continue killing you as long as we have an arm to swing. You cannot even surrender to us, for we take no prisoners. You can do nothing but die and return this land to peace."

He then reached down and wrenched the arrow from his foot, flesh ripping as he then waved it at the archers, meat dangling from the tip, then he launched it at them, damaging his hand in the process. He then stumbled forward, dragging his useless foot behind him, raising his ruined sword.

Orrin gasped, about to shout when Horror interrupted him.
"Wait."
Orrin noticed him then as he stepped out from Saphira's side, grinning.
Just one easy kill. He thought, feeling that old familiar hunger and thirst swell.
He deserved an easy enemy, a little bit of gloating.

He brought out his war axe, using the blunt end to quickly slam into the man's chest, likely breaking a few of his ribs as he flew backwards onto his back. The man laughed, moving to get back up when he impaled the human's forearms with basic bone attacks, doing the same for his thighs and legs. He approached the man then, studying his matted, brown hair under the helmet that was barely hanging on at this point.

The human peered at him quizzically, without fear. Huh. He glanced back up at the others gathered around in fear.
"We had something a bit similar with humans back home in the Multiverse. We called them zombies. Ink, he's a real psycho, he created them for fun. You wanna know how ya kill a zombie?" He asked.
"You know?" Orrin questioned in morbid disbelief.

Horror grunted in confirmation. "It's easy." He said while putting away his war axe, getting out his trusty older weapon. Axella deserved this little treat. He held the blade up proudly, unable to stop his grin.
"You aim for the head." He explained, bringing down the axe like a guillotine.

He picked up the now decapitated head, staring into the human's eyes as they rolled helplessly, working his mouth until they met his blood colored lights. Then he reached out internally, draining what little energy remained in the body as he grinned at the head.
He felt satisfied knowing that the soldier's last moments were spent seeing his visage.

He held it out to Orrin, displaying the now lifeless head to the king.
"So they can be killed." He marvelled. Then he ordered everyone present.
"Spread the word that the only sure way of stopping these abominations is to behead them. That or bash in their skulls with a mace or shoot them in the eye from a safe distance….Graytooth, where are you?"

A middle-aged man urged his horse forward. Orrin indicated for Horror to give him the head, to which the skeleton floated it over with blue magic, the poor man shivering at the sight before receiving more orders.
"Mount that on a pole by the north gate of the camp. Mount all their heads. Let them serve as a message to Galbatorix that we do not fear his underhanded tricks and we shall prevail in spite of them."

There was a moment as they began to disperse, Saphira trudging over towards a small group of Urgals, the others splitting to their tasks or duties. Horror was left alone, staring at the dead body at his feet and thinking about the emotional duress the day had caused him.

Every time he saw her sharp teeth, her enraged sulfurous yellow eye, her blood red hair that he imagined as a mockery of his brother's scarf… It sent him back to his worst times.
There was a reason he never went outside of Snowdin when visiting his home in the past.
He was traumatized.
He knew it.

Reset after Reset tormenting his consciousness, then the.. sudden end. A decay of everything he knew. That dreadful, insidious mania that worked it's way into his skull via that gigantic hole, wormed into his Soul from the hunger and fear.

And now the very person he could never match was here, the one who built that goddamn Core, who just vanished without a trace or memory after slipping off the walkway that needed railings, who relentlessly tormented him for years by appearing at the corner of his sockets until the Resets came, the man who was his father, appearing out of nowhere and asking if he was okay.
No, Dad. I am not okay.

He sat down on the dead man's stomach, ignoring the squelch it produced as blood squirted from a few wounds- including the barren neck. He felt as though stricken with whiplash. It was exhausting.

Horror groaned when he heard the footsteps cautiously approaching, the owner squatting down hesitantly beside him.
"What do you want?" He bemoaned, not looking up. He didn't want to. Didn't need to.

"How do you feel towards me, Sans? I just want to know."
He scoffed, suppressing a shiver as he recalled when he last heard that voice.
"Most call me Horror now, y'know."
"A nickname."
"We're all Sans, whaddya expect?"
"I don't expect anything else. It's perfectly reasonable."
He scoffed again, falling into silence.

About a minute passed before the other shifted. He could feel a hand hovering over the wound.
"Does it ever bother you?"

Horror paused, then quietly reached up, avoiding the hand and reaching inside, pulling out two chunks of wrapped chocolate. He silently offered one over. Gaster hesitated, then took it without a word.
"It used to control my life." He finally explained softly, biting into the chocolate, listening to the murmurs within him.

"I would get dizzy all the time. Could never remember things, and I would often forget things after a few moments. I was tired all the time, and if I was thinking too much it was even harder to focus. Was blind for a long time on the right side. That, and I went absolutely insane." He finished darkly, feeling a dark satisfaction to be able to say that.

He finally regarded Gaster directly. He was expecting fear, not.. sorrow. It was odd, but he didn't let it faze him.
"You wanna know how I got this thing?" He asked menacingly, gesturing to the hole. Gaster sighed, indicating that yes, he did. Horror got up in his face.

"Because your Core fell apart. Your greatest creation broke. And I was made to fix it by the bitch who took the Queen's throne after that motherfucking shit Frisk abandoned us all to rot, killing our king. And guess what, Dad? I couldn't fix it. Your goddamn puzzles and insane processes meant to prevent meddling made it fucking unfixable. And y'know what? The piranha decided if I couldn't fix it, me, the son of the mysterious, erased from fucking existence original Royal Scientist, couldn't fix it, that meant I wasn't! She decided I was betraying monsterkind! Can you believe that? Ha! She even went so far as to attack Papyrus after leaving me to dust on the flowers. But no, I'm not dead yet. I'm a little more thick-skulled than that, bitch."

He stopped ranting what he couldn't say to the fish lady then, panting slightly from the intensity of his whirling emotions. The voices within his Soul were calling to him in concern and confusion, all overlapping into a dull roar inside him.

He rubbed at his skull, wincing. The chatter quieted, mostly directed by those who were more attentive to his irritation at the noise. Horror sighed, slumping over.

"The Underground ran outta food, Dad." He murmured, staring into the sky as an arm curled around his tense shoulders. He slowly leaned into it, letting the stress go.

"It was a while ago." He sighed again, losing his previously blazing anger. "But it got so bad. I had to protect Papy… like you told me. I was so scared then. I somehow got Snowdin to listen to me and we rebelled against Un.. Undick, but we still kept running out of food." He studied one of the clouds, looking for a shape he could recognize in it, finding nothing.

His gaze drifted over to the shockingly calm and patient face beside him. Something in him started to believe he was imagining his father beside him.
"I don't know when I thought it was okay, but.. another human fell one day while we were so hungry, and I… we didn't even bother with the kid's Soul. The human was food." His eyelights glazed, remembering the terrified screams.
"We gave credence to those stories humans had of us on the Surface. Bloody, hungry, scary creatures in the dark looking to eat children. It's so.. stupidly ironic."

He rubbed his skull, phalanges bumping over the sharp ridges of his old wound. "It started because we were all losing it and starving. But then there wasn't any more food and people were getting sick from it, Falling Down. I… I remember seeing the Moldsmols just sitting there. Kinda huddling. Hiding in the grass. And I guess I suddenly imagined they were snails or something? But.. yeah. I started a really, really dark path after that. I hated it. I hated it so damn much, but there was this point I reached were I sorta.. liked it. I was torturing myself -I mean, I was literally a cannibal- but I could feel them in me. I could sense stuff that I shouldn't have been able to, I was able to sometimes see when something was coming up behind me in my mind, and I could occasionally feel like I wasn't alone. A good kind of not alone." He explained, gesturing vaguely.

He ran his phalange over the jagged edge, thinking. "This damn thing was why I was never sure. I just know I got it in my skull that I was protecting them, but I could never quite tell. All that time I couldn't really think, my own thoughts were kinda just.. slow." He paused, arm falling back to his side.

"Eventually Nightmare came. He was terrifying at first, but that's just what he was like. He promised food, for me and my bro, for Snowdin… just Snowdin. I had eaten most of the rest of the Underground by then, anyway." He chuckled harshly.

A tear trickled down his face. "I was told to instill terror in people, kill them, scar them, all that. I'd already made a habit of spooking others horribly for fun, but I.. couldn't stop when I entered the Multiverse. I would see someone I was supposed to kill or leave scarred some way, and I would.. get hungry. So hungry. It took me a whole year to get it under control, but I would still relapse if someone was particularly in a bad way."

He hesitated, listening in, ignoring the tears on his face.
"I... ate other skeletons, Dad. I thought I'd never forgive myself, but at the same time I could feel relief! I thought I was so hopelessly insane- maybe I really am- but then we were here in Alagaësia. Everything's so different. So much happened between now and then, but.. but then we went to Ellesméra. The Agaetí Blödhren, Blood-Oath Celebration, it summoned.. things. Souls. Some.. being."

He shuddered at the memory. "It was like something was welded into my hole and lava was injected into my Soul. It hurt. More than anything else I can imagine. I couldn't make a damn sound, either. But.." His eyelights flashed, fuzzed and blurry as they went unfocused.

"I was right the entire time." He murmured, smiling faintly. He gestured to his cavernous gap. "Before, this messed with my mind and my Soul, they were asleep and I couldn't feel them, but after that day…. Heh. I haven't had an actual moment of silence." He smiled. "I don't mind. I can't take dead silence anymore. Too empty, too dead. But.. Dad. They're alive." He tapped his sternum.

"I was so scared for so long, but now I feel okay. I can accept the fucked up things I did. I can live on with that. They made me who I am, and I'm not great, but I can be proud. Look at me now. I have a giant hole in my skull, but I'm fine. I don't mind being holey. Heh. I'm alive, and a good chunk of monsters are alive with me. I had my reasons for what I did."

His smile slowly faded. For the first time since he started his rant-turned-lifestory, Horror focused on Gaster's confused and concerned, yet patient face.
"Maybe I am completely insane." He said, studying the deep cracks in the other's face. "I don't even know if you're my dad. There's just so many AU's. We're all the same. Different variations of the same crap. Timelines, AU's, Outcodes, gods, demons, monsters, humans… what's the point of the Multiverse?"

"There doesn't need to be any sole purpose." The elder murmured. "It just is. One can choose to find their own purpose or lack thereof, if they wish. I.. do not care for some great, unequivocal truth of existence. I care for my people, and I care for my sons. I may have not been able to protect and provide as I could have, but now I have a chance. Would you really condone me for my lack of oversight?"

Horror stared off into the distance thoughtfully.
"I.. m not mad at you. Frustrated, sure. Irritated, definitely. But I don't blame you. You didn't plan for what happened. You weren't expecting that issue to crop up- I remember you were worried about the lack of rails, too. What hurts is.. just how no one could remember you. It was just left to me to explain all that shit and I'm pretty sure Undy thought I was making it up and I built the damn thing. But.. you know me. I could never finish big projects; that was Papyrus's thing."

"Well, now I am here." Gaster muttered. "And I'm grateful to be."
Horror scoffed lightly. "What good would that do now?"
His less than solid form shifted around as he gave Horror a dry look. "I can give you a list."
Horror blinked at him, sockets wide as he recognized the behavior.
"I think you can keep it."
"Oh, are you sure?"
"Positive."
"It's quite the list of possibilities."
"I remember your lists, Dad."
"Oh, then you remember how wonderful they are!"
"Nope, not enduring this, I'm leaving."
"Sans, no!"
"Sans yes."

Horror abruptly teleported to his feet, already walking as the dead body they were sitting on made a slight wheezing sound as it recovered from the absence of weight. Gaster leapt up in disgust of it and chased after him, leaving behind the corpse as someone a few feet away realized what they had been using as a bench.

As Gaster half-heartedly argued for him to agree to listen to his likely hour long list of good outcomes of his arrival here, Horror couldn't help but smile to himself.
This was okay.