“Yo, guys!” Tamsin’s voice was bright and excited. Their adrenaline fueled eagerness pushing through the exhaustion of their fight. “We kicked it’s ass. Tonnerre you were like, ‘shing shink’,” Tamsin gestured with his own solid cleaver, mumbling around the hilt. “And Frisk you were like ‘Hya! Bam!’.” Still mumbling, kicking out their legs to demonstrate.

Tucking the cleaver back behind them, Tamsin nudged the last of their little group with his shoulder. “You were freaking awesome, Smudge.” On Tamsin’s back, Musca rustled their wings, lying flat, exhausted and dramatic. 

They turned to give the bat similar praise as the group of them trotted down a passageway leading from the large, darkened cavern that had hosted the Skull. If it should have felt strange to loot the Skull’s abode, collecting the fallen treasures of Courser’s past, Tamsin didn’t acknowledge it. 

He had some neat new things tucked away that he couldn’t wait to show to someone that actually knew what they could do. 

Still high of their victory, Tamsin shoved his way through a familiar doorway without acknowledgement or recognition… “What the…?” Turning to look back at the group, Tamsin shook their head. “Did we go the wrong way?”

—

Frisk hummed along with Tamsin’s enthusiastic reenactments, made permissive of the standard goofiness by the thrill of victory still humming in her veins.  They had kicked its ass; she could still feel the splintering of bone beneath her hooves, see the eerie green flame in its hollow sockets flicker beneath their blows.  She didn’t mind hearing it a second time around — and shot Tonnerre a sharp glance to tell her so, too. 

The corridor twisted in a way that she hadn’t expected — but it wasn’t until Tamsin faltered and turned, ahead of her by several horselengths, that Frisk recognized it. 

The arena. 

The shadows. 

The dark shape that slunk across the Sands, too, maybe restored from when they’d shattered it to wisps the first time, or maybe a new entity altogether indistinguishable from the first, its edges bleeding out against the sand. 

It was followed by another. 

And another. 

Frisk snorted.  Flattened her ears. 

“Well, we killed ’em once, we can do it again,” she snapped, annoyed but not worried.  This time, Vex recognized its cue; the bat flitted up away from her nervously.  Frisk tossed Tonnerre a look, bright with challenge.  “Best of three?” 

—

Smudge had not come away as energized as the other three. 

In spite of their victory, he felt as if the Skull had taken with it a piece of him. 

He wasn’t sure if he missed it.

“Thanks,” he said to Tamsin, soft and contemplative. It was praise far more genuine than any he had ever received, and he wondered if it was perhaps true. He hadn’t been the one to smash through it like Frisk, nor had he sliced across it like Tonnerre, he hadn’t even been ready to defend them all as Tamsin had been. 

What had he even done? 

Was it enough for him to be present? To support his party, rather than be the face of it? 

He looked to Tamsin again, so genuine in their grin and could not help but respond with a smile of his own, “You were awesomer.” 

Smudge thought to laugh, but it turned to ash as they stepped somewhere all too familiar.

“Again?” 

He could not keep the dread out of his voice, even as Faithful yipped in excitement.

—

Where Frisk and Smudge seemed amused by Tamsin’s exuberance, Tonnerre was stone faced even in the song of her praise. She knew she was like “shing shink” she did not require them to tell her so. Still, she was in a good mood, and so rather than chastise him for the waste of his breath, she allowed him to continue even as Frisk glanced her way, nearly glowing with her smug superiority.. 

As soon as the sand crunched beneath her hooves, that good mood melted away.

“The dead should stay zat way,” she voiced in return, casting a cold eye up towards the stands and the phantasmal trapped there. A horrible fate, she might almost feel pity for them, if Frisk’s challenge had not drawn across her attention like a blade. 

“Meilleure des trois,” she agreed, leaving her cleaver sheathed at her side. 

It would be unnecessary in this battle, and she could not have Frisk thinking it was only the weapon at her side that had granted them this win.