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ask-codeearasure · 8 months ago

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The Outer Realms --- Chapter 3

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Chapter Three:

Equivocation

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“Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker.” - Bram Stoker (Dracula)

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Carrot and Edge hadn’t seen Dream or Ink in over a week. It was starting to get concerning. There was no telling where they were, and it was bad enough that the two of them couldn’t really open a portal into that strange white void that they tended to explore. The two of them tried to use their magic in conjunction, but got nothing. Not even teleporting worked out. They also realized that if they did get there, they’d run into a problem with the possibility of death. They’d be trapped there.

Carrot was starting to get nervous and wasn’t sure whether or not his new idea was going to get himself killed or if he’d be walking into a trap. As he walked through the halls of the queen’s castle, he thought about how he could best go about convincing her of his idea.

Hey, ya know, I was thinking, that doodlesphere place is dying out and that guy stole our only hope to leave, maybe I could borrow a soul or two and try to get it back that way?

He stopped when he got to the outside of the throne room. He was asking to be incinerated. He couldn’t see any other way. If he didn’t convince her, he was either going to get himself killed in that room, at worst. At best, he was going to have to look for another job.

He didn’t know what to do at this point.

“Where the fuck is Dream?” Carrot mumbled to himself.

—

Dream stared at the burning AUs, watching as they crumbled and disappeared into nothingness. That glitch wasn’t like anything or anyone he had ever seen. To think they mistook him for their Error was an issue. And this was what he called mercy…

One of the corners on the pages fell to the floor. Dream caught it but it crumbled away before he could think to do anything else. This was not just cruel, it was diabolical. He couldn’t understand the impostor’s justification.

He needed to find Nightmare. If anyone had a lead on this person, it was him. He supposed he was going to have to find the most negative AU he could at this point. It would increase his chances of finding him. —

It took about an hour before he saw anything interesting, but it wasn’t a sign of his brother. It was a great sense of negativity regardless, despite its small size. It was a white fox with red and dark indigo markings that looked like clouds, walking with a small basket of food in its mouth. There was an inkling of the thought it was definitely more than it appeared, but Dream closing the gap between them didn’t provoke a response.

“Hello?” he said.

The fox looked directly into his eyes with unnatural, ruby red orbs. It took a seat, perhaps with the thought they would be here for a while. Definitely has an extent of sentience.

That’s unexpected. Dream thought. I’m standing here talking to a fox radiating negativity, but there are stranger things in the multiverse.

“Can you speak?” he asked.

The fox remained silent and stared at him.

Dream sighed. “I’ll take that as a no….”

They stared at each other for a short moment. Dream gently lifted the creature, ignoring the weakness the negativity spread to his hands. “I’m sorry, I need a lead to my brother and you’re the best bet I have right now. But I also don’t want you to get hurt…”

He needed a plan, and seeing as the fox still didn’t give any signs of discomfort or any indication that it wanted to leave, he set it back down, then gave himself a seat next to it. Very few times did he ever need to seek out Nightmare. If anything, it was the Lord of Negativity who relentlessly hunted him down, and he did not discriminate who got hurt when Dream was in his sights.

While Dream was stuck in his thoughts, the fox tipped over the basket and dug out what looked like a bun, maybe a pastry, and chewed on it patiently. A moment after, it decided to get another one and place it in the guardian’s lap.

It was feeding him.

“Oh… thank you.” Dream said.

He got the bun and took a bite, pleasantly surprised at the red bean filling. He looked at the fox and mumbled, “Why are you radiating so much negativity if you’re so… nice and calm?” Dream reached over and pet the creature, a tingling numbness cursing his fingers.

He remembered the time Carrot had what he called vodka, claimed a shot of it could get someone drunk if they were what he called ‘lightweights’, he supposed that the fox was comparable to that vodka. It was just a pure concentration of negativity, and very little positivity to numb the effects. It was impossible to even try to figure, considering the creature couldn’t talk.

He lost himself in his thoughts, but suddenly everything went dark. He looked around and saw the fox, its ears folded back. It looked over at him and got a bit closer. Dream stood up and readied himself, summoning his bow and breaking it into his blades he steeled himself for what was about to come.

Dream opened a portal next to the fox, pointing the creature in its direction.

“Go. I don’t want you to get hurt. Please.”

The fox shook its head, remaining where it stood.

“Please go…”

The fox sat down as if to say ‘No, I’d rather stay here with you.’

Underneath their feet, the ground rumbled, vantablack negativity crawling over the stark whiteness Dream had become accustomed to. The equally blank sky above them faded the same shade.

Dream tightened his grip on his twin swords and breathed in. “Nightmare?” As if on cue, the shape of the negative lord surfaced from the depression, the weight of the negativity heavy, almost crushing on Dream’s shoulders. Nightmare’s grin was the first thing to flash before him, a dark, satisfied chuckle echoed throughout the void. “Hello, brother. I was wondering where you went.” Dream flinched, but held his ground. “Nice to see you too.”

The fox growled at Nightmare, peeling its lip back to bear its teeth as if knowing that Nightmare was not someone to tolerate, let alone trust. Nightmare’s grin only widened, his eye fixated on the positive guardian before him; the canine was but an afterthought. A miniscule feature, despite its complicated, swirling emotions. “We both know you don’t actually mean that. Underneath that gentle mask, your efforts are in vain.”

Dream ground his teeth together, stepping in front of the fox as if to shield it from Nightmare’s overpowering gaze. Before he knew it, he was on his feet, dodging a swipe from one of his brother’s tentacles, then slicing clean through another. He was on a mission. What he needed was to convince a standstill out of his opponent.

“Where are your friends, brother?” Nightmare purred, an unsettling rattling sound. “Have you been abandoned? Or perhaps you left, knowing this struggle would have them meet their end?” The elation Nightmare felt was twisted, a corrupted form of the emotion usually associated with happiness, pure glee. The best move Dream could take was to make a distance between them, knowing Nightmare would follow. There was no doubting why Nightmare tracked him down so quickly this time. With the vast majority of the Doodlesphere emptied by that other “Error”, there were barely any other options of negativity for the corrupted being to feed from. Ignoring the fox chasing after them both, Nightmare continued in determined pursuit of his prey.

“Right now is not the time to fight!” Dream yelled. “There is a reason the Doodlesphere is losing so many universes so quickly! If you help, we can continue this later!”

Another wave of negative force knocked Dream off his feet, Nightmare looming over him, his body having grown to an intimidating height. But for once, he froze in his efforts, but not without sustaining a burning grip on Dream’s ankles, forcing the guardian to bite back a wince.

Nightmare’s eerily bright blue eye searched him, as if to scan his entire being. Another rumble shook the ground, but there he remained regardless. He could finally kill Dream, here and now, and everything would suffer in his absence, regardless of the limited number of universes now. He could end it all. “I disagree, dear brother. Why give you another chance to live, when the obstacle at hand is you and only you?”Nightmare shrunk, returning to his usual height and shape, but yanked Dream down to the floor so he could continue standing over him, relishing in how his own existence rendered his target into a simple puddle of agony he could watch directly. “We have continued this game for far too long. Saving what is left of this existence is pointless.” The grip on Dream only tightened, suffocating him as Nightmare’s tentacles slowly climbed up his legs and arms. This was perhaps the dumbest decision he has made today. “Your effort will get us nowhere. Besides, was it not your goal to save the multiverse from all its suffering, in spite of my own? I died because of you. I suffered to keep you safe. YOU ARE IN DEBT TO ME!”

Suddenly, Nightmare screeched, an overwhelming roar covering the noise of several golden throwing stars striking off the tentacles around Dream, causing them to turn to dust, and several more gunshots were barely audible. Nightmare tugged himself away with a multitude of holes struggling to close themselves up.

Where the fox once stood was another skeleton. They wore a rather ornate red, indigo, white, and gold kimono with snow-white fur around the collar. They held two more handfuls of shuriken, and sent them both a polite smile.

“I’m afraid Dream-Sama doesn’t owe you anything.” the stranger said softly. “I will not allow this to continue further.” They summoned a golden scythe and charged at Nightmare, swinging to slice the being in half.

Nightmare narrowly dodged, pieces of negativity crumbling off his body with what Dream recognized as an effect of the weapons the stranger used on him. As Nightmare responded in kind, aiming to slice the odd skeleton’s head clean off, Dream dragged himself to his aching feet and summoned his bow, jumping away from a now multitasking Nightmare to avoid a lopsided smack across the void.

The stranger dodged the attack and cut through it before teleporting the scythe away and exchanged it for a set of thick chains, bright gold and radiating positivity, almost sickeningly so. Another shot rang out and tore through Nightmare, but another quick glance at the stranger gave Dream another nugget of information- they didn’t have a firearm on their person. So where were the shots coming from? Nightmare’s roars of outrage only doubled in volume and disastrous effect on the void, forcing Dream’s body to tremble with weakness against his will, even as Nightmare’s own state was deteriorating as well. Reaching out to whatever positivity he could, to the shock that he now sensed to much coming from the stranger’s weapon, Dream drew on that strength to form his arrows, and not a second to lose, shot three into Nightmare’s back, interrupting his next attempt at dismembering the intruder before him. The negative lord screamed this time, the darkness he initially entered with flickering away at the edges bit by bit in rapid succession, gaining speed the more Nightmare deteriorated. If he was trying to get a word in, Dream couldn’t determine what he wanted to say.

The stranger used his magic to fling glowing chains around Nightmare, reeking of positivity, but certainly not Dream’s own. “I suppose your time in that poor body is finally at its end. I do hope you understand this isn’t as personal as you believe it is.” They summoned a golden spear that radiated twice as powerful as the chains. Raising it up, Nightmare was impaled.

A final shot rang out as silent footsteps echoed. “Really, thiz waz that problem Klezmer mentioned. Ha… Skill issue iz far more accurate of a description.”

The darkness broke around them, the speaker looked like Killer, a far… shorter version of Killer, with a strange black uniform, and held a gun that had golden smoke flowing out the end. They blew the smoke away, then sent Nightmare a disappointed look.

Dream felt like he was going to collapse any second, but pushed himself to approach Nightmare, splitting his bow back into two swords. His brother was worse for wear, his body married to the floor and partially melting into it, the rare sight of white bones showing up here and there amongst the boiling corruption that has been covering it for centuries. Nightmare’s eye was rendered unfocussed, now absently staring in Dream’s general direction. The guardian swallowed down his nausea, then turned to address the two strangers. “Are you okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

The Horror-like giggled at the question, it was almost menacing, hiding his mouth as he did so, “Oh no, I’m quite fine.”

“Zat idiot did hurt me the last time we met but it wazn’t much…. Not like this.” he aimed the gun at Dream.

BANG!

In shock, Dream didn’t process what just happened. He took one step back, then another, before he lost balance and dropped his swords, landing backwards at a painful angle. Distantly, he heard Nightmare’s beginning laughter, distorted and clear, and it quickly mutated into manic cackling right before the dark lord teleported away. No, he couldn’t lay down. Not now. A shaded cloud formed around Dream’s vision, and he finally brought his hand up to his chest to check his throbbing soul, his glove coming away caked in red.”

“Oh, don’t act like zat,” the Killer look-alike complained, “You’re not going to die.”

The skeleton in the kimono snatched the gun out of the other’s hand, snarling, “Idiot! Why did you do that!?”

It seems politeness was off the table.

“Simple,” the soldier smiled, “I felt like it.”

“You felt like it?! Edelweiss….” the growl was deep and demonic.

“Izanagi, don’t look at me like zat, you know it’z better to keep zese things balanced. We infected zat monstrosity, and so it’s only fair to do ze same with Dream. Zey’ll balance themselves out… maybe.” Edelweiss glanced at the suffering guardian to confirm his train of thought, “Yeah, zey’ll balance zemselves out.”

“You don’t know that!” Izanagi hissed. “That venom has far more power than any of the–” he looked like he was heroically holding back the urge to strangle the gunman then and there.

“I know zat!” Edelweiss said, as if offended by Izanagi’s statement, “I barely used less zan a drop. It can fit on ze tip of a sewing needle. So don’t blame me for hiz pain.”

“Why I oughta…” Izanagi’s grip on the gun tightened to the point the weapon snapped in half. “It’s one thing to use countless weapons filled with a Level one of Violence of venom and one drop of venom with a LOVE that is immeasurable.” Izanagi looked at Dream with an expression filled with worry.

Their words were nothing more than muffled blurs to the guardian, their exasperated expressions and gestures falling flat in terms of meaning. Dream could not pay as much attention as he should have, his head spinning and pain weighing unbearably on his body. Agonizingly, Dream dragged himself back up, failing to hold back a groan. He squeezed his eyes shut, and attempted to summon any degree of healing magic available to him, but got no results past his shaking hands flickering with dim light. The dizziness and nausea only built, this alien but sickening feeling creeping outwards from his chest. He had to leave. He didn’t know where, not when he could barely think as is, but he couldn’t stay here any longer.

With the last bit of willpower, he reached out towards the positivity of Underswap.

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