Fanfic / Legacy Of The Magi

Legacy Of The Magi is an Undertale fanfic written by TimeCloneMike, the sequel to Ebott's Wake. It is the third (chronologically second) entry in the We're Not Weird, We're Eccentric series.

Frisk has faced danger far too many times for a ten-year-old and come out on top every time. The Anti-Monster League is in a shambles. The last of the Sages has been imprisoned, seemingly with his spirit broken. Asriel has a Soul again and is reunited with his family. You'd think Frisk could start to have a normal life now.

But Frisk is the first human in millennia to have magic, and they've discovered a head roommate to boot. And even if those weren't the case, they live in Ebott's Wake. "Normal" isn't even a concept that makes sense.

You can read it here on Archive of Our Own.

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Legacy Of The Magi provides examples of:

#–L

• 20 Minutes into the Past: Set in summer of 2016, first chapter published in 2018.
• Accidental Public Confession: During an argument with Frisk (with Asriel nearby), Chara says, "It was never about saving me, it’s about saving you!" Beat. "...I just said that out loud, didn't I."
• Air-Vent Passageway: All Fine Labs has a few specifically to distract would-be snoopers.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Asriel is embarrassed to have Toriel hugging him in public before class.
  Dr. Aster: ...don’t feel bad about being embarrassed. It’s a parent’s job to embarrass their offspring. Can’t tell you how many times Semi pulled the rug out from under my social life in school.
• Angst: Chara feels really guilty for taking over Frisk's life, body, and voice, even though Frisk seems to be fine with it. This is on top of their guilt over the buttercup plan and everything that followed.
• Animal Wrongs Group: PETA shows up to protest a local Build-A-Bear Workshop. Somehow, Build-A-Bear Workshop gets rid of them by… redirecting them towards the nearby Build-A-Bread Workshop.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Cater summons the Demon. He asks some questions, gets some not-entirely-helpful answers. The Demon comes back with a question of its own: "What exactly do you think happened when you shot Frisk during the State of the Kingdom Address?"
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Frisk's Mental World has a variety of nightmare versions of Undyne in it.
  Reason: The one we just fought is the version of Undyne that knows about the timelines and realizes that Asgore died in the previous one, and blames you for it… There is also the variant of Undyne that hates you for being able to use magic, the variant from the dreams where all your ambassador work failed or backfired and she accuses you of sabotage, and the variant from the fever dream nightmare where the time loop broke under the strain and reset while giving all monsters memories of the last time, with full knowledge of the freedom they lost. Oh, and the variant that hates you because you lied about anime being real.
• Atlantis: In one of Frisk's dreams about the War, the Magus of Perseverance mentions that Atlantis and Mu are destroyed.
• Back from the Dead: Chara gets their own body again and can now be fully considered alive.
• Badass Bystander: The Demon warns Cater that if he tries escaping to ambush the Dreemurrs in a public place, some random bystander takes them out.
  The Demon: Muffet, Michael Van Garrett, Gerson, Grillby, Quentin Forsythe, Kevin Dugan, Jeff Walsh, Jason Taylor, Lance Lepus, Traveling Tom-
  Jordan: Wait, from the puppet show?!
  The Demon: I know, I was surprised too.
• Balloonacy: There's a sort of Running Gag of Douglas and Frisk flying using a single balloon made out of blue magic.
• Big Damn Reunion: Asriel and Chara finally get to see each other, as themselves, in real life again.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Undyne comments that Sans is full of surprises. At least, the parts of him that aren't full of puns or ketchup. Frisk adds, "Or puns about ketchup."
• The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: Chara confirms that Quentin Forsythe was right about the Sages being a Breeding Cult.
• Creepy Child: Frisk does a good job of unnerving Mr. Coppersmith when he visits after Chara is brought back.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Frisk and Asriel discuss how PDF stands for "Portable Document Format" and the confusion that results from it being an acronym, such as people calling it "PDF format."
• Description Cut: Chara says that nobody on earth cares what the Guardians thought anymore. Cut to O'Dell trying to decipher Guardian lore.
• Dissonant Serenity: The fur on the back of Toriel's neck stands up when she hears Frisk talking about their first time using Pattern magic.
• Doorstopper: Not as much so as Ebott's Wake, but over 350,000 words is nothing to sneeze at.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Frisk has a dream about planning talent show acts with Chara and Asriel—the latter of whom, notably, has visible horns.
• Dreaming of Times Gone By:
  • Frisk starts having dreams about the War between humans and monsters.
  • Frisk later has a dream about when Toriel got angry after Asriel came back.
  • O'Dell dreams about the time he summoned the Demon.
  • Frisk has a dream about Flowey giving them his post-Neutral speech.
• Dream Walker:
  • Frisk's head is crowded enough with two people in it, so Chara always knows when there's somebody else in there. They say that when the Riverperson shows up in Frisk's dreams, that's the actual Riverperson.
  • The Demon shows up in one of Chara's nightmares and points out how unrealistic it is.
• Earth Is a Battlefield: The War between humans and monsters covered the entire world and brought multiple civilizations (such as Atlantis and Shambhala) to ruin. The loss of magic after the creation of the Barrier did in what few remnants of civilization were left, resulting in there being no trace of the war or the civilizations preceding it.
• Foregone Conclusion: The moment Frisk found out Chara was in their head, there was no doubt the latter was going to get their own body eventually.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Frisk notes that there aren't many revelations that could shake the Dreemurrs at this point—only something like "extraterrestrial aliens, parallel universes, evil twins, or giant robots" could even make it register. By the end, we do indeed see visitors from alternate universes.
  • While he's under anesthesia to get his robot arm attached, the Demon gives Joe three pieces of cryptic advice: a) O'Dell is alive, b) he needs to clean out the carburetor on his motorbike, and c) next time, he can't afford to hold back.
  • Dr. Aster determines that the anti-photon interference can't be coming from forwards or backwards in time, which leaves only one option: sideways.
• Foul Waterfowl: The goose that steals Chara's shirt and the swan that interrupts a KEBT FM broadcast.
• Funny Background Event: While Toriel and Undyne are discussing the plans to get Chara their own body and whether Toriel is overreacting to the dangers to her children, Frisk, Douglas, and Asriel are playing around with magic outside.
• Given Name Reveal: The archmage from Frisk's dreams reveals that their name is Coda.
• Godzilla Threshold: Remember how Asriel said he never wanted to do the Omega Flowey thing ever again? You knew that was gonna happen again, didn't you. In fairness, he does it to stop the literal end of the world.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • When Toriel gets angry after Sans explains the time loop to her, Undyne bursts in and yells, "OKAY WHAT'S WITH ALL THE YELLING?!"
  • The Riverperson calls the Demon a "cryptic asshole."
  • Frisk's dentist.
    “Eric Biggby is a good dentist, in spite of his obsession with fishing,” said the man with an office decorated within an inch of its life with Western themed doodads and knick-knacks…
• Ignored Aesop: Frisk cannot seem to get it through their thick skull that Toriel loves them unconditionally and is not going to reject them over… most likely anything, but certainly not a few tantrums or a couple secrets.
• Immortality Seeker: The king who started the War between humans and monsters.
• Improperly Paranoid: The remaining AML members panic when Agent Black shows up. He wasn't going to (and couldn't) bust them for anything, he just wanted to learn about them.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: We see Tim at the Dank Memehaus, where he refuses the bartender's offer of another drink. The Demon shows up and tells them why the entire DC area had a blackout. Once it leaves, Tim gets the bartender's attention, saying they spoke too soon.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: When Crysta shows up to give Alphys a pep talk.
  The four figures stood in silence for a moment, before Undyne’s jaw dropped and she jumped over the other figures.
  “Oh hey I just remembered! I have to… uh… do a survey!”
  “A survey, that’s right!” Asriel pointed and ran over to where Undyne had landed. “And I’m helping Undyne do the survey!”
  “Yeah!! We’ll be back later! When the survey is done!” Undyne picked up Asriel like a football and ran down the hallway, vanishing around a corner.
• Internal Reveal:
  • Asriel tells Dr. Aster about how he broke the Barrier.
    Dr. Aster: ...that’s a hell of a thing, Asriel.
  • After looking through some security footage, Steve tells the rest of Shop Class that Cynthia is still alive.
  • Frisk shows Toriel and Asgore Coda's message.
• In Spite of a Nail: The Demon Discusses this when trying to explain why it needs O'Dell.
• Intangibility: O'Dell uses Wave magic to phase through the bottom of a police transport so he can escape. This is the first use of Wave magic we see that doesn't simply involve blue attacks.
• Is This Thing Still On?: Coda forgets to stop the Orb recording.
• It's All My Fault: Chara can't help but blame themselves for pretty much all the bad things that happened after the buttercup plan, even though just about all of those were decisions other people made.
• Jump Scare: The Demon keeps on accidentally doing this to people.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The Demon wants to savor The Reveal of what it wants O'Dell for, saying it's been waiting three years for this. Three years would be somewhere in early 2016, shortly before Ebott's Wake got started.
• Light Is Not Good: In the first chapter of what the author calls "the endgame" in a note, a being made out of light appears in the Arboretum. Next chapter, we see it in the CORE with a large number of downed humans and monsters behind it.

M–Z

• Mental World: After Chara gets separated from Frisk, Frisk starts having more dreams in their mental world, which is now much less foggy and appears to be a dilapidated version of Ebott's Wake. It's also full of various nightmare versions of Frisk's friends, and it contains Reason, a Flowey-shaped representation of Frisk's ability to reason unclouded by emotion.
• Mood Whiplash: Frisk has a panic attack, momentarily calms down, then suddenly lashes out at Toriel… and shortly after they run out of steam, we see Chara and Asriel chasing after a goose that's stolen Chara's shirt.
• Mr. Exposition: Mary complains about always being the one to explain human stuff (like human dentistry) to her friends.
• Never Found the Body:
  • In-Universe, Thomas O'Dell seems to drown in the river after he makes his escape. They find his jumpsuit later, but no body. The audience, however, knows full well that the Riverperson picked him up.
  • Cynthia Thorton's body was mentioned as never being found in Ebott's Wake. Here, we find out that she's trying to fight the Demon for some reason. The Sages didn't get her because she was their Councilor of Determination.
• Nightmare Fetishist: When Mary explains human dentistry to the monster children, Casey is disgusted and horrified right along with Poncho and Skate; however, when Mary finishes, Casey says, "Oh man. I wish I was a human."
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Joe and his friends Discuss this when he tells Hal's parents that he'll be a Cyborg Scientist with magic powers on a motorcycle.
  Joe: If I could get like a katana or something like that[,] we could kick this shit up to five exponents.
• No Name Given:
  • Nobody seems to be able to decide on what to call the Demon. The Sages call it the Demon (and the audience only knows it by that name for a while into Legacy Of The Magi), monsters and the magi call it the Trickster, the tags imply it might be the Player… the Demon itself acknowledges "the Trickster," but the only time it actually puts that name forward is when talking to Frisk and Chara (who already know of the myths about that name), and even then, it's "for the sake of brevity and convenience." Tim and O'Dell, the ones who interact with it most, usually refer to it euphemistically (e.g., "our mutual friend").
  • The human king who started the War between humans and monsters is never named. Coda knows his name but refuses to pass it on to anybody in the future.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: This topic comes up while Eli and Lars are discussing the former's art.
  Lars held up his claws around his chest. “You do realize that female dragon monsters wouldn’t look like that, right?”
• Noodle Implements:
  • Douglas, Casey, Skate, and Poncho come looking for Frisk and Asriel.
    “Wait, what were you doing before we got here?”
    Frisk looked down at the baseball bat in one hand and the pocket mirror in the other, then turned to look at Asriel[,] who was still holding a fireball in one paw while magic vines grew out of the other, and finally turned to look at Douglas again.
    “Isn’t it obvious?”
  • More like Noodle Instructions, but Tim has some extremely random backup plans for Demon-related contingencies. Stuff like, "Step Nine: Draw graffiti of Pac-Man eating nuclear trefoils outside the community college performing arts center."
• Not Afraid to Die:
  • Sans says this about Frisk.
    Sans: That kid has already died who knows how many times. If they think they can help everyone by doing it one more time, they won't even hesitate.
  • Gerson is fine letting everybody else evacuate before him.
• Not on the List: When Chris tries to read Frisk's mind, all they see is Reason telling them this.
• Not So Stoic: While O'Dell is viewing the War through his "Wayback Machine," which is showing piles of human bodies put to the torch, Tim is very grossed out.
• Ominous Obsidian Ooze: Humans who use magic to do something that makes them hate themselves start to cry, bleed, cough up, or vomit a volatile black liquid. At least it evaporates in seconds, so it doesn't leave a mess. During the climax, it starts happening to people who don't even know how to use magic.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten:
  • Asriel and Chara will never let Frisk forget the time they walked in on Asriel changing.
  • Mary will never let Frisk forget the time they explained how a clock works when somebody asked what time it was.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted for laughs. The Lost Eagle County False Mustache Enthusiast Society replaces Henry Best, their representative at the Changing of the Bell, with… Henry Best. A different one, that is.
• Overt Operative:
  • Agents Black and Brown return. A little while later follows their boss, Miss Beige, and she gets found out right away as well.
  • A long while later, an entirely separate group shows up, better prepared but equally conspicuous as a result. Two residents across the street can tell they're agents after less than a minute of watching them. They don't seem like they're supposed to interact with Brown, Black, and Beige, but they out themselves to them immediately by accidentally using the same nonstandard equipment and frequencies as them.
  • Late in the story, Jason Taylor explains this as being a result of "trauma-activated pattern recognition": they had to watch out for small details while the Sages were working behind the scenes, and those habits don't go away quickly. This on top of the fact that small towns are difficult to infiltrate to begin with.
• Perpetual Frowner: Miss Beige never seems to be having a good day.
  Miss Beige frowned. Or rather, her default expression became more intense.
• Poke in the Third Eye: When Chris tries to read Chara's mind, not only are they unsuccessful, but Chara also seems to come up with some mental image that spooks them. The narration doesn't say what, but it's not like Chara has any shortage of disturbing memories.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • From Sans when Toriel gets angry about the time loop:
    Sans: ...if either of these mugs, or both of them, had hit the floor and broken just now. Frisk would have heard that noise. I saw their expression when the plate was dropped. They would have run in, even if Undyne tried to stop them. Hell, they might try to bridge their way in. And they would have seen you angry and for fuck's sake Toriel they can't see you angry about this.
  • During a flashback to the archmages discussing the War, the Magus of Patience talks about it being because of monsters stealing human Souls. The Magus of Kindness breaks in with "HORSE SHIT!" and goes on a tirade. Also an Atomic F-Bomb.
  • Dr. Aster hardly ever swears, but when he realizes how the DT extraction went wrong, he does so multiple times in short succession.
  • Reason is Frisk's ability to, well, reason unclouded by emotion. So when they panic and say, "Just run, just fucking run!" you know things have gotten bad.
• Psychic Block Defense: Chris finds themselves completely unable to read anybody's mind beyond surface thoughts in Ebott's Wake. When they try to read Frisk's mind, for example, all they see is Reason telling them they're Not on the List.
• Rage Breaking Point: Frisk tells Toriel about trying to kill Jason when they got back home after the first run, and it's not easy for them. The first time she says something, they interrupt her with a huge "SHUT UP!" and start ranting about the laundry list of things everybody has done to them that they (justifiably) feel angry about. It's the first time we see them angry where Chara wasn't involved and the first time they get angry at Toriel or any of their friends. It's all the more shocking because there's no discernible "last straw," they just go from calming down from a panic attack to lashing out in the blink of an eye.
• The Reveal:
  • A mysterious woman talks to O'Dell and appears to be working secretly with some rich government figure named Mr. Stewart. We later find out that her name is Cynthia. As in, Cynthia Thorton, the wife of Byron and mother of Sam and Andrew.
  • Chara says at one point that the Sages were wrong about Determination being the power of Red human Souls, but they don't elaborate as to what it is (if they even know). Coda later tells us that red is actually the color of Love.
  • When Frisk arranges a meeting with Jason at the Dank Memehaus, we find out why he never tried to reclaim them: he saw Frisk laughing with Papyrus on TV, and he realized he didn't know when he'd last seen them happy. He also reveals that their human mother, Diane, left when the Sages got busted.
  • He later reveals that Diane was way deeper into the cult than he'd realized at first, and she even took part in their weird astrology breeding program. Frisk has a half-brother named Kris. He didn't bring this up at the Dank Memehaus because he was fully aware he'd already dropped enough bombshells on them.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder:
  • Cynthia loses her temper when talking to Mr. Stewart:
    Red eyes blazed out from behind a face twisted in fury, indignation, and grief. “YOU THINK ANYTHING YOU MIGHT LOSE COMPARES TO WHAT WAS TAKEN FROM ME?!”
    “I don’t know.”
    The blunt honesty in the reply stopped the woman in her tracks.
    “I don’t know what you’ve lost. I don’t know what you were trying to do with that, whatever it was. I don’t know anything about you."
  • Near the end of the story, Frisk says, "We can't always get what we want, can we?" To which Chara starts listing off all the miraculous things that have happened recently.
• Running Gag:
  • The terrible tourism slogans continue. Ebott's Wake: For All Your Lumber Needs; Where Dreams Go to Fly; One for the money, two for the show; Where Nothing Is off the Table!
  • Hal Greene keeps sneaking up on people with his super stealth stilts.
  • Douglas and Frisk often float using a single balloon made out of blue magic.
• Salt the Earth: Gary wishes God would do this to the Tourism Board's land.
• Sarcastic Confession: Of a sort. Mary asks Frisk about their glowing red eyes… while they're drugged up on laughing gas. Frisk replies that it's because they're possessed by a zombie ghost—which is true, but it's impossible to take them seriously when they're so out of it.
• Screw Destiny: The Demon can traverse up, down, and between timelines with ease. Theoretically, it should be able to know every possible decision somebody might make and the consequences thereof. Somehow, though, people still surprise it at times.
  • The Demon had been absolutely certain that Jason Taylor would challenge the Dreemurrs for custody of Frisk. Of course, he never did that.
  • The Demon tells Cater that there's no way he survives breaking out of prison again. It goes over every possible way he could attack the Dreemurrs and describes how he gets killed in each timeline. Cater, of course, breaks out anyway, and rather than trying to attack anybody, he just tries (successfully) to find Chara and apologize to them.
• Seeks Another's Resurrection: Now that Asriel and Frisk know that Chara's spirit is in Frisk's head, they will not stop until Chara has been brought back.
• Self-Deprecation: Agent Black says about Miss Beige: "She got assigned to keep tabs on us, how good can she be?"
• Serial Escalation: Bar the near miss with Cater almost gaining control of the time loop (which was mostly talked about in retrospect), the fate of the world was never really in the balance in Ebott's Wake. Here, it quickly becomes clear that the story will have implications reaching far, far more widely than a single town.
• Serious Business: Frisk takes grave offense at Chara's denial that skeletons are "super cuddly."
  Frisk: Papyrus would never lie to us! You have besmirched his honor! As soon as as we have separate bodies, you and I must duel. Water pistols at ten paces.
  Chara: That is absolutely not going to happen.
  Frisk: I demand satisfaction!
  Chara: Not happening.
  Frisk: I have a coupon for satisfaction[,] and you must redeem it. It is the law.
  Chara: That is not how anything works[,] and you know it!
• Skewed Priorities: When telling O'Dell to steal a car during his getaway, the Demon reassures him that the car is insured.
• Slasher Smile: The first titan has a very unnerving smile.
• Suddenly Shouting:
  • The magi are having a normal (if unhappy) conversation about the War. When somebody mentions the "justification" about monsters stealing human Souls, the Magus of Kindness suddenly breaks in with "HORSE SHIT!" and goes on a rant.
  • The first time Frisk gets angry after Chara is out of their head, they go from sobbing to lashing out at Toriel in the blink of an eye.
• Super-Strong Child: Asriel can carry Chara in their new body, which is about the same size as him.
• Tears of Blood: Well, mysterious black liquid that evaporates quickly, but it's a similar effect, and it does get mistaken for blood. It's an effect of Backlash Rot, which is what happens when you force yourself to do something you hate with your magic.
• Tempting Fate: Justin says he was expecting the Phase Differentiator process to be flashier. Cue red lightning all over everything.
• That Came Out Wrong: Not an innuendo, but when Frisk tells Undyne about their dream where she killed them, and how it ended after her first attack, she calls it "anticlimactic." Then she realizes what she said and says this.
• Think in Text:
  • Chara's lines inside Frisk's head are usually italicized and in single quotes. Though sometimes the quotes aren't there, and sometimes normal thoughts have this formatting.
  • The Demon's lines are apparently in italics because they're basically memories; since it isn't actually in this universe, people don't actually hear it, they just remember somebody saying its lines. Something similar goes for narration of its actions being italicized, just with people remembering somebody being there instead of somebody saying something.
• Time-Freeze Trolling Spree: Justin keeps on using his Condensentrator to mess with somebody at the VA who's trying to get him to steal the Phase Integrator.
• Title Drop: The Guardians of the Legacy of the Magi come up plenty, but Coda's message gives the impression that the fic's title is about something else.
  Coda: Where I destroyed, you can create. Where I committed terrible acts for a terrible cause and hid behind excuses and lies, you can be a force for justice, a beacon of truth. Let that be the legacy of the magi, the future we could not build in our lifetimes.
• Title Drop Chapter: Chapter 73, "The Legacy Of The Magi."
• Verbal Backspace: It's easy to forget there's three children when you only see two bodies.
  "…And it is important for both of y-” Toriel stopped abruptly. “I mean. It is important for all three of you to start of today on a good footing."
• Wham Line:
  • When the Demon is talking to the mysterious, red-robed woman, just before it gets cut off:
    The Demon: You can hold Sam again. You can yell at Andrew for going to Mt. Ebott even when you said it was too
  • Reason suggests that Frisk could use Pattern Magic to predict the nightmares' movements.
    Frisk: I can't use Pattern Magic.
    Reason: Yes you can.
  • "And the Legacy was wrong, all this time." Most people would take this as a given, but it's a shock hearing it from Jordan Cater.
  • Frisk is told that they might be able to answer a question about a strange phenomenon, and they're handed a picture.
    Frisk took the sheet of paper, stared at the photograph, and their jaw dropped: The picture consisted of a miniature star next to the commemorative plaque where the statue in Heritage Park used to be.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: One of the Child Protection Services agents is bewildered to hear about a kid named "Verisimilitude."
• Wiki Walk: Frisk compares getting off track with Pattern Magic to getting lost on Wikipedia.