The Isle

"I.... want to hear about those later," Ian said, then gave a small head shake. "Asriel couldn't bear to kill anyone and decided instead to lay Chara to rest in a patch of their favorite yellow flowers. But humans saw only what looked to them like a monster, carrying a child they presumed the monster had killed. Asriel managed to get back Underground, but died of the wounds. Monsters, when they die, don't leave bodies. They turn to dust."

Ian took a deep breath. "So the King and Queen's last memories of their children were Asriel turning to dust over Chara's body. They buried Chara, and.... Things broke from there. The king, Asgore, was full of fury. He wanted revenge on the humans, he wanted to get to the surface and kill them all. The Queen, Toriel... she wasn't like that could never be like that. They divorced and split up. And sadly... things got worse."

"In the middle of this, the king hired a new Royal Scientist for... reasons that frankly are another whole story. The new Scientist, Alphys, was tasked with experimenting with a thing called Determination. Asgore was sure that Determination was what was behind Human's ability to persist after death. Because, like I said, Monsters turn to dust when they die. Even their heart doesn't linger. Except for Boss Monsters. But Human Hearts, Human... Souls... persist, and can be captured. The King decided it was down to Determination and that it could be somehow harvested. The scary thing was that he was right in a way. The scarier thing was that it worked. The scariest thing though was Alphys' first test subject. A small dust covered yellow flower..."

Ian took a breath, there was only so much they could delay this.

"Alphys doused the flower in the Determination serum and it came to life. Confused disoriented. The flower... was what little remained of Asriel Dreemur, mixed with the flower and Determination. At first Asriel tried going back to the Dreemurs. But something soon became obvious. Through no intended malice... It was more than Asriel's body that was gone. Asriel's ability to love was gone as well. And Asriel was suffering. Finally the flower... tried to end itself," said softly. "It worked... and it didn't. Asriel woke up in the lab again. With Alphys shocked that the experiment had worked."

A deep breath, a hand ran through their head.

"Time had reset. And the only one who remembered... was Asriel. Asriel was trapped in an unending loop, unable to love. Unable to die. Desperate to feel... to feel anything... Asriel started doing more and more extreme things. Moved from self harm to trying to help others. But every time it started again it was the same questions, the same requests, and there was no satisfaction from helping. In fact the only things Flowey, as Asriel now called themself, could feel... curiosity, pain, frustration. So one time through Flowey... killed someone. And everything changed with the death. But then it all reset again. So Flowey tried killing everyone. Tried killing just some people. Desperate to feel Flowey tried every extreme thing he - because somewhere in there he began identifying as male - he could think of. Being kind being mean healing helping... none of it... did anything. Everything was the same. Over and over. Every time."

Another breath. "Until one day there was a change. A child fell down. As Chara had once fallen down. And suddenly Flowey could no longer reset things at a whim. He no longer had the highest Determination in the Underground. The new child did. And this.... is where things get really weird."