Frisk shrugged. 

The box groaned.  The once-shiny lines of solder had developed cracks.  Splinters of rust, flaking away.  The rivets grew, worked outward; a first one leapt outward and clattered onto the stone floor, rolling on its head, clicking to a stop against Smudge’s hooves.  The smell of ozone burned sharper — the discharge of electricity, chemical build-up. 

“You can try, if you want,” she said to Spot, almost detached, watching the second rivet fall, watching the metal bowed outward by the force of its occupant.  A part of her recognized the wisdom of it — wanted so badly to run, the bone-deep instinct to turn and flee — but where would that get them?  Lost, probably, if they were lucky.  Cornered, if they weren’t.  “But I don’t think you’re gonna get very far.” 

And what, then, would she tell her mother, if they found her?  If they could find her—

I looked for you all this time.  I ran from the same monsters that took you. 

It was a matter of earning it.  Wasn’t it? 

The line of solder cracked cleanly down the center.  The chains groaned.  Snapped.  Frisk’s head sank low, her ears pinning back.  Vex was no baying hound, but it clung to her mane, its tiny voice a tea-kettle hiss in her ear, its fangs white as pearls—

The box snapped apart. 

So neat that Frisk almost didn’t hear the sound of it, the solder and the chain and the rivets gave all at once, whiplashing an iron panel across the stone floor. 

Pale and terrible, its eyes aglow with deadlight, the Skull rose from the box. 

Frisk blinked. 

The Skull, too, rotating on its neckless axis, its absent spine, seemed to pause for a moment. 

“We didn’t fucking summon you,” Frisk said. 

Its mouth opened — the long, tombstone teeth.  Its voice grated, abyssal, angry; the pale shine of its eyes turned between them — and seemed to land on Spot. 

Ah, it sighed, and lunged. 

—

Tamsin had smelled that before. That sharpness in the air, the scent that they could feel buried at the back of their throat. It was something, previously, that had only come to them with the reading of a book. Gibberish words to Tamsin, that they’d chanted in a monotone so as to focus on pronouncing them properly. Or at least… as properly as they may have thought for a language they did not understand.

Which meant, in all honesty… Tamsin was very confused. Why could they smell the skull? In that box? So far from where they had last summoned and defeated them? 

Confusion but not fear. Fighting that floating, chattering creature had been an adventure. Something thrilling and exciting. With Frisk and Smudge and Tonnerre by their side, it had not been a thing to fear. Tamsin was better now too, Frisk and Smudge had only grown, a privilege to stand beside and watch - even with Spot in Tonnerre’s place, Tamsin did not fear what lay inside that box.

Rolling their shoulders, Tamsin lowered his head, lips pulling back from their teeth in an excited, eager grimace, almost a snarl. 

“We got chu, Spot,” they murmured quietly, shifting their gaze slowly from left to right, Frisk to Smudge, watching them carefully for his next move. As the last of the rivets spilled to the ground, tinging softly against the stone floor, Tamsin turned their head to grasp the cleaver at their back in their teeth.

The box fell to pieces, coming apart so neatly at the seams, and the Skull rose, chittering and awesome and terrible.

It lunged to Spot and Tamsin dove toward it, snapping the cleaver up to halt its path. For a moment it rolled and bounced back, smooth cranium touching the ceiling as it backed away from the shine of metal.

Galatea. It muttered… teeth chattering loudly, clacking such that it nearly covered over the word it seemed to want to speak. Galatea. Clack. Crunch. And swoop.

—

You can if you want, Frisk said, and Spot felt his ears start to burn in shame. They fell flat as he looked at the roan, opening his mouth but thinking of nothing important to say. Nothing clever to say. Frisk and Smudge and Tamsin were all much braver than he was, but he wanted so badly to find his own feet to stand up. His heart hammered in his chest and his eyes prickled with heat, a heat he hated as it threatened to spill down onto his orange copper cheeks.

“I’ll stay,” he whispered, so quiet that not even Smoke seemed to hear him.

The small black-and-white hound had stepped forward in front of the chestnut, growling and flattening his ears as the box continued to open itself. “We got chu, Spot,” Tamsin said, and his chest felt too tight again, his eyes prickling with a different sort of heat as he glanced sideways at them. 

Oh.

That was new. 

When they were foals, Smudge had always been the brave one. He wasn’t much bigger than Spot, if at all – the chestnut was all awkward legs, gangly and tall before he filled out – but he never seemed to falter at all the things that made Spot freeze in place. Of course he had surrounded himself with like-minded coursers. 

Maybe I can be one, too.

Spot pressed his ears against his head and looked up at the ghastly, floating thing, too bizarre to be a real skull, too large. It lurched forward at him and his heart seemed to stop, but Tamsin was quicker, shunting the Skull away with their weapon. The clatter of its bone (fake bone, real bone, magic bone?) snapped Spot out of the fear-induced paralysis.

Smoke charged forward, barking and snapping his teeth. Magic or not, bone was bone, and he was not afraid. 

The second time it swooped, Spot spun around to meet it with the only weapon he had – his hooves. He kicked out, smacking the Skull, stunning it more than really wounding it. 

“Go AWAY!” he yelled, like his own voice might make him braver.

—

Galatea.

It hadn’t said that the last time. Nor the time before that. 

Galatea.

They didn’t fucking summon it.

GALATEA. 

The word reverberated like some horrible curse, as if it was his own skull that rose from that box spouting those words that meant nothing and everything. 

It was nonsense, it had to be. 

Nevermind that Frisk knew that word so well, nearly a lullaby from her mother. Nevermind that Smudge knew it too, a soft whisper from his father in the time between his training, almost in warning for the journey he would face. If only he’d known it then. 

It haunted him. Written in dark burgundy on cavern walls, on the lips of Coursers driven mad by a world they could never comprehend, whispered in the gas and waves and. 

And the Harvester refused to answer. 

Smudge had stomped a hoof, raised his head high and demanded an answer in his most practiced, most commanding voice. The gourd looked on, shaking their head in pity or silent laughter, Smudge could not ascertain, leaving them with far more questions than answers.

Now here, again. 

Galatea.

Smudge snorted, his ears flattening as Faithful skipped backwards giving him just enough run up to slam into Smoke, knocking the other hound out of the way in a dizzying blur, the golden dog yelping with the impact. It was unfortunate, acting off instinct, when your instinct was the same as another. He shook his head, trying to regain his bearings, as the appaloosa completed his assessment of the situation.

They’d defeated it before, it knew better. It would target what it thought was, yes. There.

Tamsin was already moving, Frisk no doubt behind him as it targeted what it assumed was the weakest link. Smudge snorted a laugh, it didn’t know anything about Spot. Spot who had always thought he was a coward, but had always trailed behind him, no matter how stupid he had been in his youth. It was not bravery to be stupid, no, it was bravery to move forward in spite of all your fears.

Spot was the bravest Courser he knew.

The sound of hooves on bone confirmed this as Smudge tilted to the side, making an opening for Tamsin and Frisk, certain they were flanking the horrible thing, sweeping the skull’s attention with a loud cry. 

He didn’t need to be the hero, that was a dream that had never been his. 

But he sure as hell wasn’t going to lose anybody else to fucking Galatea.