#i obviously won't answer horribly spoilery things

[brushstrokesapocalyptic]

The Legend of Asriel PART 2 | THE LOST CAVERNS

two companions try not to get too horribly lost.

Chara leads Frisk to the alternative route they spoke about. According to them, they can use it to cut weeks of arduous hiking through the desert down to less than a day. It’s also significantly more dangerous and hard to find than the regular route, but both problems are more-or-less mitigated by the fact that Chara remembers perfectly well how to get through!

...Well, they thought they remembered. They really should’ve expected a place called the Lost Caverns to be a little hard to navigate. Welcome to the first dungeon!

As one might be able to guess, this place is basically just the Lost Woods but underground. I could spin a whole tale about why and how the magical forest migrated into an intricate cave system but honestly, it’s zelda. Locations arbitrarily moving around between games is par for the course.

All that aside, it’s really not that different from how it’s traditionally depicted. Thick, magical fog makes it hard to keep directions straight, and despite Chara’s best efforts to remember their own trek through the cavern they keep hitting dead ends and landing right back where they started as if the paths are changing when they’re not looking.

With some very intense trial-and-error they eventually find their way to a section of the cavern that’s a little less clouded with fog. They’re just about to sit down for a breather when Frisk notices a strange figure with a flower mask, and the figure notices them.

[ID: A two-panel comic. In the first panel, Frisk and Chara are looking up at someone sitting on the edge of a ledge, wearing a flower mask. Flowey notices them as well. The second panel is a closeup on Flowey, showing more details; the mask has a smiling, jagged mouth, and there are cords wrapped all around their forearms and lower legs. In the second panel, Flowey is speaking. “Howdy!” End Description.]

“What is that, a Skull Kid?“ Chara wonders aloud, squinting up at Flowey. Frisk glances between them, unsure exactly what’s going on, then tentatively waves at the mystery flower person. He laughs and leaps down from his perch.

[ID: Another two-panel comic. In the first panel, Flowey drops down in front of Frisk, looking interested. Frisk has their sword drawn and looks uncertain. In the second, Flowey has circled around behind Frisk, and looks a little too eager. Frisk’s head is turned to keep their eyes on him, and has raised their sword. End Description.]

Flowey circles Frisk a couple times, being all friendly and intruding on their personal space. "What’s a little desert kid doing all lost in the Caverns alone? Did ya take a wrong turn?” Chara attempts to point out that they’re not alone, but Flowey doesn’t hear them, and when they go to grab his shoulder their hand passes right through.

It’s at about this point that Frisk gets tired of letting this weird stranger poke them. They push him away, giving Chara a pained look and signing “I have no idea what this guy is saying.” Chara is quick on the uptake and tells them Flowey’s curious about how they got here.

What follows is a short back and forth with Chara playing interpreter to Flowey’s curiosity while Frisk writes out their replies in a small notebook they carry for exactly this sort of situation. Frisk tells him they’re looking to take a shortcut from the desert to Hyrule Field, leaving out exactly why that is. Flowey is impressed that they managed to get this far without a guide and offers to help them find their way around.

Frisk is ready to accept his help, but Chara catches their hand as they go to write. It’s a little awkward trying to write by holding your hand over someone else’s, but Chara manages to at least somewhat legibly write, “Who are you?”

Flowey laughs again. “Wouldn’t you like to know!”

Chara is supremely unimpressed with that non-answer. They have a rapid-fire silent argument with Frisk over whether to trust him, and Frisk manages to convince them to give the guy a chance. He’s the only hope they’ve got at the moment.

Flowey just watches, eyebrow raised, until Frisk finally turns back to him and gives a firm nod. He doesn’t comment on all the signing, just leaps back up to the roots and calls for them to follow.

It’s not easy, considering the guy is almost unnaturally fast and able to leap from root to root without breaking a sweat. After a while, Chara starts to suspect he’s just leading them in circles, and that suspicion doesn’t go away when he simply vanishes in the blink of an eye, leaving Frisk surrounded on all sides by swirling fog with no idea which way he went.

Chara refuses to panic, though, taking their hand and leading them further in the direction they were already heading in. They’re back to trial and error, but eventually they manage to find their way to... another dead end, but this one has some kind of ribbon hanging from a branch... root... tree... thing.

[ID: A four-panel comic. In the first panel, Frisk is looking up at a ribbon dangling down from a small tree. There are a multitude of question marks and arrows pointing towards the ribbon. In the second panel, Frisk pulls down on the ribbon with enough force to bend the tree down. In the third panel, the ribbon comes free, the hook at the end hitting Frisk upside the head. In the fourth panel, Frisk holds up the combination grappling hook/ribbon up with one hand in the typical zelda style, but they have their other hand on their head and there are stars swirling around it. A pair of speech bubbles read: “You got the Ribbon Grapple! (you might want to get that bump looked at.)” End Description.]

After confirming Frisk probably doesn’t have a concussion, Chara identifies their new toy as a weirdly fancy grappling hook. Like really, a rope would’ve worked fine, did they need to use ribbon? No wonder it was just tangled in some tree, whatever adventurer lost it clearly had no sense.

Whatever the case, it’s Frisk’s now!

The grappling hook opens up some paths that previously appeared to be dead ends, using it to swing from stray roots and branches to reach new heights. It’s much smoother sailing from there, and soon they can practically taste freedom.

And then Flowey reappears, expressing surprise they managed to get all the way here. “I thought for sure you’d’ve been way too lost by now! D’you have some other guide or something?”

Chara says some very colorful words in an impressive array of ancient languages, to the point where it’s a shame the only person who could potentially hear them is deaf. “I told you he was bad news,” they tell Frisk. Frisk gives them a flat stare.

Flowey announces that if they’re not gonna get lost like a good little child, he might as well kill them the old-fashioned way. By which he means, he kicks awake a huge-ass golden Deku Baba and leaves it to eat Frisk, then ollies on outie.

[ID: A sketch with simple color added underneath depicting a massive plant-like monster. It has a head resembling a golden flower but with teeth and meaty flesh on the inside of the petals, and the rest of its body is composed of a mess of writhing green vines. Frisk is visible near the bottom of the image, they’re only about as tall as one of the vines is thick. The background is blurry and vague, but is intended to convey an overgrown cave. End Description.]

A boss fight ensues. Listen, I’m not here to design a video game, forgive me if I don’t have anything more detailed than that written up. Zelda Tradition states that the Ribbon Grapple be involved in it somehow but that’s about it.

What matters is that after Frisk gets done weeding this garden and Chara finds that indeed, Flowey is nowhere to be seen, they finish their climb to the surface and taste sweet, sweet sunshine. And then...!

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