Chapter Text
Once upon a time there had been a powerful native American tribe. Its name has long been lost to time but at that time they were the strongest tribe made up of humans.
They had very powerful shamans and they had been plentiful. They had also kept an alliance with another tribe. The other tribe was quite unique. Instead of humans, it was made up of monsters and it was far bigger than any tribe had ever seen. Together the two tribes had been strong.
And then monster discovered the souls.
At first shamans, later known as mages, helped monsters in studying this strange new thing. Neither of them had known about souls before and it hadn’t taken them long to understand that souls were intimately linked to them. It was also easy to see how magic came from the souls.
Things had been fine at first.
They kept studying the souls. They found out that each color represented a specific personality trait and that souls varied by state as well. Corrupted souls in particular were pretty useful in showing who not to trust. Clear Cored souls were a mere curiosity never fully explored. They had been studying Faded souls when it happened.
A human died and his monster partner absorbed his soul in grief. That monster gained so much power that it was easily sensed by all the human mages and they got scared. They hastily tried to kill the soul fused monster. They failed and the monster ran to her king, asking for help.
The humans grew scared of what the monsters would do once the monster told them of her discovered knowledge. They killed the other monsters that had been in the human village researching the souls and got ready for war.
The monsters hadn’t wanted to fight but the humans had been relentless. Both sides lost several people by the time the mages cornered the monsters on a cave. By then the monsters had been scared of what the humans were capable of and didn’t dare step outside on the cave.
The mages, on the other hand, had been reduced to very few of them, the mages knew that they alone couldn’t face off the monsters so they decided to trap them instead. They picked the seven strongest to cast the spell and, even thought they were the strongest, they went knowing that the spell would demand their lives in return.
As the mages started casting their magic, both humans and a few brave monsters, that had been guarding the entrance to keep them from coming in, witnessed a mage with prophesizing powers as they decreed the conditions for the barrier to ever break again.
The prophet mage dictated that a spirit -later translated as angel-, who had seen the surface would return to the underground and empty it.
Both humans and monster listened and kept the words, the monsters as a symbol of hope, the humans as a symbol of danger.
Once the seven mages were drained from their life essence and the barrier fully established, the humans’ tribe council gathered. They began discussing what to do about the barrier’s weakness.
The wording had been very clear.
The underground needed for a spirit, probably a human, from the surface to descend into it.
But it also needed for that person to be ‘returning’ to the underground, not going down for the first time and that narrowed down the list of potential people to worry about. They appointed guards around the entrance to the cave, people that had never even known there was a cave there, to keep others from venturing in.
They also made extra sure to keep every single member of their tribe away of why they should avoid the mountain. That didn’t account for people outside the tribe to come back initially and, by the time they realized it, they took notice that the barrier was still up so they had avoided that disaster.
Eventually all the people that had been alive at that time gave way to generations that couldn’t have seen the cave before as time reaped their lives.
They all thought they had somehow managed to thwart the curse, though they still kept vigil over the mountain and drove people away from it.
That had been foolish of them
Fate was not one to be thwarted, especially when it came to injustices. Fate had been counting on them to try and thwart her all along. Had they accepted her decree, the conditions would never have been fully met. Fate knew the monsters would also need the equivalent power of seven souls to counter the mages’ ones forming the barrier.
By purposefully trying to thwart fate, they guaranteed that the needed souls would be gathered by the time the spirit returned. But fate also had to make sure to connect everything in a circle too. Nature was ruled by cycles and for karma to be effective it needed to be moved in a cycle as well.
When Chara fell into the underground, all the generations of the tribe that had been alive on the moment of sealing the monsters had already died but mages still prospered. It had been pure luck that Chara had even managed to bypass the natives in the first place…
Except that it hadn’t been luck. Fate herself had nudged them along the path she created.
Chara’s soul was perfect for breaking the barrier. A soul of Determination. The only problem was that Chara was in no way connected to the tribe.
Chara had been doomed to fail from the start. As perfect as they had been, they could not fulfill the prophecy on their lonesome.
Fate then searched for the first link and found it in Brook, the soul of Patience. Brooks great grandmother had come from the tribe of mages, though she had been no mage herself. Tribe blood ran in Brooks veins. And, unknowingly, she had been searching for that very same tribe when she ran from the colonies.
Brook had almost reached the tribe but, like it was said before, Fate was not one to be thwarted.
Once again Brook had been destined to fail. Fate gathered the karma from the child, all the bad luck that had befallen her. Fate gathered it to use it on the barrier in the future.
Fate had a harder time pinning the next kid down.
Brook had escaped because of the help and compassion of a slave woman. A slave woman who bonded with Brook on several deep ways. Unlike Brook’s connection with the tribe, which was blood bound, this one was emotional.
The slave woman gave birth and prolonged her line until, way down the line, the next link Fate needed was born as well. His name was Taylor, the carrier of the soul of Justice.
Fate had to be far more patient with him than with Brook. Fate would not be rushed. Not if she wanted to perfect her justice. Taylor wondered for far too long but at last Fate managed to pin him down. She made him run to the mountain but she miscalculated a bit. Taylor found the tribe and they tried to apprehend him.
Many, many years had passed since Brook but the tribe kept the legends awake. Mages were starting to dwindle, though. Enough that they could no longer stand as independent and unafraid. Now they feared the Europeans. Now they formed an Indian Reservation just for the sake of keeping the mountain inaccessible.
As if that ever stopped anyone before, let alone Fate.
The next link was through Duncan, Taylor’s adoptive brother. It was also and emotional bond, just like Brook’s. Bur whereas Brook’s bond was one of mutual understanding, Taylor’s was one of brotherhood.
Duncan’s blood line eventually brought forth the birth of Ash, the soul of Perseverance. Fate had to proceed with caution with that one. Ash had been born with HIV so his life span was slowly bleeding away.
By then the tribe was small in size and gave less and less credibility to the stories of old, so Ash faced no obstacles aside of the fence. Once their purpose was fulfilled, Fate went on to search for the next one.
It was another emotional bond, this time a friendship one. Ash had been friends with a kid named Fabien. They forged their friendship on the fact they both had an everlasting condition. Fabien never got married and never sired children, but his younger brother did.
Unlike his older brother his younger brother wasn’t a good person and damaged his own son, the next chosen one to fall. That was Jules, of the soul of Integrity.
Fate had tried to keep the damage from happening but failed. Even fate had limitation and keeping Fabien, the only one to keep his brother in check, from dying was beyond her power. The only one who could rule over that outcome was death himself. So, it was with a held breath and crossed fingers that Fate watched the tale unfold.
Fortunately, none of the most important pawns that Fate would need got killed. It did end up with the royal scientist getting addicted to his work and not being aware of his surroundings when another person tried to murder him, but Fate could replace him eventually.
With Jules’ role over and done with, Fate had to target another.
This time Fate had little to choose from. Jules never really connected with anyone due to their madness. In the end Fate picked the people that had gifted him with the pointe ballet shoes. An object that was held do dear meant a whole lot as far as fate was concerned, especially when used as a weapon. This bond was through kindness and mercy.
Casey was already there and indirectly met Jules. Casey, the soul of Kindness had been inside the pregnant woman’s belly.
Regretfully, Casey’s life was cut short. Too short. They had been tagged for death from the moment that those despicable people kidnapped them from their parents. But Fate needed them more than anyone else. Jules had no strong enough connection with anyone else. So Fate made a deal with Death and, instead of dying at the hands of their captors, Casey would instead die on the underground. Death took the woman’s life as payment. It was one payment that Fate, and the Karma she had gathered until then, were more than willing to accept. So they made Casey kill the woman and the kid got to live just a little bit longer.
This time Fate had to have a lot of patience…
By now Alphys had already gotten the job as the Royal Scientist and had tried to give life to a plant. That plant was Flowey.
Alive again, and with the power to control time to a point, Flowey tried everything he could. He’d been good at first, but then he kept trying to goad Casey into killing. Never in any of the timelines did he succeed. Fate had to wait until he grew tired of that silly game, which he eventually did.
With that, Casey was finally sacrificed to Fate.
Fate then turned to her next target. This time Fate picked Casey’s best friend and the daughter of the woman who tortured them. Rowan, the soul of Bravery.
Rowan was a complicated case in the sense that Fate was now hard-pressed to close the cycle. She knew who she needed her to have a connection with to do it. The problem was getting them both in the same place so that they could bond.
For that, Fate had to sacrifice Rowan’s father and risk Rowan's rage by making her find out the truth about her mother. It took some time to set Rowan in the right place and right time. and then She had to set the final link to the chain there. Having Rowan see the videos made it so that she was more willing to go out of her own way to bond with the last link. Once the bonding was complete it was only a matter of moving Rowan to a family in which she would be alone that was so terrible she had to run away.
Rowan fell into the underground, as predicted. Flowey decided to let them have a good time at first, bonding with her until he knew all there was to know about her. Then he turned back time and started to manipulate her into trusting him almost immediately. A few mentions of Casey’s fate were enough to get her to start killing.
That had been almost disastrous. Fate had had to hastily relocate her pawns in a way that would make it impossible for Flowey to want to proceed. Since Rowan couldn’t remember the loads, she couldn’t learn from Sans’ patterns and try again, so she would always end up dead.
In the end Flowey had to give up on killing Papyrus that way and Fate had made it so that Undyne would go to Snowdin and deal with the kid in a way that left nothing to be said.
Frisk was the last piece of the cycle. Not only were they linked to Rowan by the oversized sweater, they were also descendants from one of Chara’s siblings and had a soul of Determination, completing the cycle by a bond of nurture and a bond of blood.
Once underground, Chara’s spirit entered their, thus returning the one who had seen the surface. The fact that Chara’s soul laid spread all over the underground helped fortify the link.
Fate wasn’t a fan of how many times Frisk reset time over and over again but in the end they finally freed the monsters for good.
But Karma still wasn’t satisfied.
By now all the descendants of the tribe were gone.
All… but for one.
A mage.
A mage of immense power.
A mage so powerful he could turn everything… into n o t h i n g . . .
So Fate saved up the left over Karma from breaking the barrier to defeat this last threat…
…and imbedded it on one last Pawn.