‘wait, wait, wait- you’ve been using it without having any idea what this does?’ Rivper’s eyelights fizzled out, near silent pop as his magic rushed into a churning pit where his stomach would be.
Helical shifted uneasily, glancing at the now softly swaying key dangling from the brim of his hat, orange gems glimmering softly.
‘well, i suppose… i never really thought about it, came with the eye,’ his hand waved non committedly around his right eye socket, the cracked glass of the prothetic eye light, a matching shade of orange. The panicked whine that escaped Rivper’s throat was, under most circumstances, quite impressive, currently though, Helical new better then to push the Sans that had survived multiple encounters with Nightmares gang, even earning a few G during said encounters. Helical himself had met the gang a few times, though he’d never been payed for his hospitality, escaping, barely, with his life being the most compensation he’d ever received from the cutthroat group.
The Sans equivalent of a multiverse taxi pressed the palms of his hands into his sockets, groaning,
‘you’re a magical item merchant, you literally deal with magic items daily, if anyone were to grasp the concept of unbelievably dangerous artefacts it should be you.’
Helical shrugged, gaze falling to the wayside, slightly left of Rivper’s hip, as he avoided eye contact,
‘well, i don’t, but i do enjoy learning about any magical item i may or may not have gotten myself cursed and soul-bound with.’ He tried for a reassuring smile, the act quickly falling at the others shout.
‘you what??!’ Rivper’s hands moved in a motion betraying his desire to strangle the salesman,
‘no, no, one thing at a time.’ Taking a deep breath he steadied himself, letting his shoulders slump along with the resigned puff of air.
‘that,’ he flicked the key, sending it swaying once more, ‘is a trans-dimensional gateway skeleton key, a tsk for simplicity, and it’s not from our multiverse.’
Helical, who had been snickering at the skeleton pun, choked on air,
‘w-what? how the hell is this thing not from our multiverse? and if so; how did i end up with it, surely one of the star sanses, or heck, even nightmare’s lot, would have gotten to this before me.’
Rivper shifted awkwardly, feet digging into the damp grass, of Idletale’s Waterfall, below them as he rubbed the back of his neck self consciously,
‘t-the thing is, i don’t think the stars are aware of this, only people who get a key really know about them, apparently they’re supposed to be passed on by hand, but it’s not unheard of for them to simply disappear from one au and reappear in another. and, as to how they’re from a different multiverse,’ Rivper paused, trying to remember exactly what his predecessor had told him.
‘as you know, there are multiple universes, aus, but there are also multiverses, like, a multiverse like ours except all our personalities are swapped.’
Helical nodded along, dimly aware of the concept after overhearing a few AUs in the Omega Timeline discussing something along similar lines.
‘well, this one multiverse, never got told the name, only had seven aus in it, and even that was too much, it quickly got overcrowded and started collapsing in on itself. the ones in charge of that multiverse, uhh they were riverpeople by the way, not sanses, decided the only way to survive was to escape to a different multiverse.’
‘our multiverse, right?’ Helical butted in, not particularly liking where this story seemed to be heading.
Rivper nodded, he had temporarily forgotten that, despite his antics (read: habit of creating disasters) Helical was a sans, and a bloody smart one at that, so it shouldn’t be too surprising he was catching on.
‘exactly, seven aus, and a key for each, i’ve, uhh, never been exactly told what happened to the original key owners, and honestly, i’m not planning on going looking. the point is, all seven keys ended up in our multiverse somehow, and, with a surprising amount of sentience for keys, keep finding themselves keymasters.’
Helical’s face scrunched, confusion bright in his one real, teal, eyelight,
‘okay, while that does sound thoroughly confusing, and upsettingly morbid, i’m not really seeing the danger here, so far all i know is that this key allows me to travel between aus and that’s pretty much it.’
Rivper bit his knuckle, humming in thought to himself,
‘okay, i will admit, not the best explanation, uhmn, okay, so, yes,’ he stalled, struggling to unjumble the wire mesh of words bubbling in his throat.
‘these keys have the ability to rip holes through space time, like a sort of wormhole, except they can travel between universes, between multiverses if really pushed, but like any tool, can cause irreparable damage if used incorrectly. each of the seven keys is based on one of the seven human traits, yours is bravery,’ he paused, slipping something silver with a dark blue glean to it from his robe, ‘mine,’
He steamrolled over the gasp Helical let out at the information of Rivper owning his own key, ‘is integrity. this is why i can only use the key to a place i say i’m going to, no changing my mind halfway through, the reason i’m a great multiverse taxi is because i have to stay integral about my intentions, gotta stick to my rules, 5g and i’ll take you wherever you need no matter what no questions asked. thinking about it, i suppose it’s also why you can never know where your key will take you, you’ve got to brave about going somewhere you don’t know for it to work, overcome the fear of the unknown.’
Rehiding the key into his clothes, Rivper made eye contact with Helical,
‘however, no matter how cool they are, these keys only work with someone who has the same main soul trait of the keys, that’s why they usually find themselves aligned with a human, but,’ he paused, the risk of showing his soul weighing heavily, before sighing, drawing out the glowing culmination of his being, deep royal blue, pools of integrity dripping off the shaking soul, ‘i happen to have the soul trait of integrity.’
Helical’s gaze never left the soul, peacefully floating in Rivper’s grip dripping through his fingers unnaturally, his own hand moving to his chest where he knew the cracked and dimly flickering orange of his own Bravery adjacent soul lay.
‘it’s just as well, because, if anyone who didn’t share the soul trait with their tsk attempts to use the key, it would eat their soul whole and then everything else in their universe and, thusly, anything their universe touches.’
‘what?! are you telling me this whole time I’ve had a literal black hole waiting to happen attached to my hat like a decoration?!’ He shook Rivper’s shoulders in distress, the blue clad skeleton pushing his hands off with ease,
‘do you understand where my distress was coming from now?’
‘oh stars- and nightmare nearly used it-‘ Helical ignored Rivper at the memory of the negative skeleton, dark oily tentacles curled around his only escape, hand tightening around his throat as the king pondered the key curiously. If he hadn’t hit Nightmare with one of his platforms, effectively distracting him, he may very well be dead, deader then dead, and possibly have taken half the multiverse with him.
Rivper sighed, gripping Helical by the arms,
‘look, it’s- well, not okay, but you weren’t aware, and now you are, you’ll be more careful right? hey, we can even teach eachother about what we know of with the keys and any necessary safety protoco-‘
‘there you guys are, I thought we made it a rule not to wander off for more then five minutes.’
The two broke away from their conversation as a fatigued but content voice called out to them, belonging to a shorter skeleton. Barrier, stood at the end of the path, left hand gripped tightly around Idle’s right, betraying the fact that the taller of the two had probably been attempting to get himself into more trouble. Next to them stood Spoke and Climate, the two having a pleasant conversation from the looks of it, Spoke explaining the intricacies of echo flower tea while Climate nodded along sagely, likely not actually understanding anything the other said.
Rivper, despite himself, hadn’t noticed how long they’d been gone, having separated outside Gerson’s empty shop, the after-Genocidal quietness of Idle’s AU allowing for time to loose meaning relatively easily. Helical took the sudden interruption with stride,
‘ah, sorry bars,’’don’t call me that.‘i’ve spent the last twenty minutes trying to convince ripver to let me have a spin at his ferry.’
Helical was unsettlingly good at lying, something Rivper didn’t fancy looking deeply into,
‘and i’ve spent the last twenty minutes telling you over my cold dust. i’m not letting anyone take my pride and joy for a ‘spin’, least of all a sans that somehow causes more destruction then idle without even trying, and idle is a maniac that can summon a gun out of nowhere whenever he so pleases.’
Idle’s offended gasp at the, honestly quite just accusation, added the needed humour to break any remaining tension in the conversation, the six sanses quickly falling into familiar ease as they formulated their next plan, running out of supplies as they were it was looking likely that they’d have to send someone to the Omega Timeline to restock.
As the conversation drifted toward’s why it wasn’t a good idea to allow Idle alone in the AU unsupervised, Helical couldn’t help his thoughts lagging on one small problem.
If Helical and Rivper each had one, where were the other five keys.
______
A few people have asked about Helical’s key, and I actually have a lot of lore set up for it, so I thought I’d write a small one shot thingy explaining it, also revealing that Rivper also has a key!!
The key idea is completely mine, I don’t think anyone else has done this(??) sorry if someone has lol,
But I’m also leaving it as an open thing, as in, if you wanna give your AU one of the five keys go wild, free reign, as long as they share the soul trait with their tsk key they’re pretty much open for interpretation and you can use them however
Here’s a little sketch of Rivper and Helical’s Keys as an example:
But yeah, that’s it, hope this didn’t bore you lol
(Also the keys hold some more very important lore but no spoilers (; )