What This World Has to Offer- Story

[RhymesWChronic]

Chapter 93. Innocence - Part 1

 

Chapter 5 of 5

Darkness

 

 

Webber's POV

There was nothing new or unique to waking up from nightmares. It was something we had all experienced a million times before, some worse than others. I, in particular, was no stranger to waking from a dead sleep drenched in cold sweat, body shivering violently despite the heat of a fire nearby. Some time ago, we had come to a silent agreement not to wake someone up when they were visibly having a nightmare. It happened to all of us, and while they were never fun to experience, it would be a waste of valuable sleep to be woken from them. Then there was the period of time that it took to relax and calm down, to reassociate oneself to the real world, to get your breathing and heart rate back to a pace suitable for rest... it was a whole ordeal.

So, honestly, waking from a nightmare was fully expected at this rate.

What wasn't expected was how normal my nightmares had seemed. For once, they did not revolve around Wilson or WX, or any Giants or painful situations or any of the sort. They were... just... the kind of thing you would expect a child to be dreaming about. Monsters hiding under the bed or in the closet. A pet dying. Being lost in a field and being unable to find your parents.

I woke up more confused than scared.

The air was heavy and impossibly thick, like trying to breathe through water. I had gotten pretty used to the acidic stench of nightmare fuel, but that didn't stop me from wincing as all of my senses were assaulted with the smell. It was omnipresent, and it didn't take long for me to realize that the grass below me was slick with it.

Huh. So it hadn't been cold sweat after all.

I painstakingly dragged myself up to a sitting position as I rubbed the sleep from my eye. Rivulets of the foul stuff rolled down my back, causing fur to prickle along its path.

I tried opening my eye, and then I tried again because it clearly didn't work the first time. It wasn't until I blinked several times that I realized that this was certainly the real world and not the back of my eyelid, and that was only because I noticed vague shapes in the darkness in front of me.

I turned my gaze back to see my companions still unconscious. Wilbur's tail and hands were twitching furiously as if in some vivid dream, but the others seemed to be in a more peaceful state of rest. The fire that they were in the range of burned gray-white, the crackling muffled as if under a foot of snow. My sword was stuck into the ground, glowing vividly amongst the faded colors. After another moment, I realized that I was not in the range of the light. I immediately scrambled over, entirely unwilling to let the creature in the dark claim me.

Even though the others were asleep, I felt the innate sensation of being watched. Worse than that, though, was the way I could see movement just feet away from me. Not the movement you would see from a creature, but it was as if the darkness itself was a living creature, moving and writhing in time with its breaths.

I heard a sharp intake of breath in the back of my head, and such powerful waves of excitement flooded over me that I didn't even immediately realize they weren't my own emotions. I could practically feel Webber vibrating with anticipation and glee. And yet, strangely enough, he didn't try to take the reigns from me. He was simply watching.

Movement again. Closer this time. Just out of reach of the light.

I immediately bared my fangs and hissed, whiskers curling tightly against my cheeks in fear. Someone was watching me, and I couldn't tell what kind of intentions they had for me.

The others were still asleep. Why were they still asleep?

“What a time to see you again, Young Heir.” The voice came from somewhere else. I whipped around, a deep growl rumbling in my chest as I tried to find the source of it. I knew it was Nightmare. It had to be. A voice of paradoxes and contradictions. The movement was all around me, now, kept at bay only by the fire still burning with its sickly flames.

Every single muscle in my body was tight with terror. When the seconds ticked by without any other words, I couldn't help but hiss again. It was all I could do.

“I should be flattered, really, that you would come so far just to see me,” Nightmare purred. Its voice was everywhere. I couldn't pinpoint it.

“Get away,” the words came out quiet and low, a demand that shook so much it was a wonder the words could be heard. “Get away, get away, get away-”

“I promised I would be waiting for you here, and yet you're so determined to be rid of me so quickly? Come now, it has been such a long time since we truly saw each other. Perhaps come a bit closer, so we can truly get reacquainted~”

Claws dug into my temples, and I only dully realized they were my own.

We'll be waiting for you in darkness.

We'll be waiting for you in Darkness.

We'llbewaitingforyouinDarknesswe'llbewaitingforyouinDarknessWe'll-

Darkness.

It all made sense now. What fools we had been. We had walked right into their trap.

Had Maxwell been trying to save us by keeping us in the previous world?

Was he afraid of Nightmare?

Nightmare's claws were so close to me, how could I be sure they weren't my own?

Claws were digging into my temples, and I could feel a slight trickle of blood from a minute puncture on the right side, but was that blood? Maybe it wasn't warm. Maybe it was cold cold cold and maybe it was Nightmare's blood. Maybe it wasn't even my claws doing it.

There was a strong metallic taste in my mouth that was definitely blood. Was I dying? Had Nightmare killed me?
Maybe it had. Maybe that was why my heart was struggling so hard to beat. Maybe that was why every single breath seemed to catch on the blood in my throat and lodged into my lungs.

Maybe I was dying.

I had to be. My mouth was filled with blood and spitting it out only lead to more replacing it.

A hand touched my shoulder and I choked back a scream. My gaze shot up as low whine escaped my throat.

Instead of any demon, there was only a slightly tired set of warm brown eyes staring at me in confusion and concern. I sucked in a harsh breath at the sight of the prime ape, the terror easing just enough for the growl to taper off.

Wilbur didn't just look slightly concerned. In fact, his face was pale with fear of his own that he seemed to be fighting back. His mouth was set in a firm line, his eyes dark with apprehension.

Somehow, knowing that Wilbur shared my emotions in this case seemed to help my body to realize it wasn't in any immediate danger. The blood was still in my mouth and very real, but the sting that was slowly making itself known from my tongue did well in alerting me where it had come from.

I spit out another glob of blood and rasped out a quick “Bit my tongue,” before Wilbur could panic any further.

He gave me a tight smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. “Are you okay?”

Instead of giving him a direct answer, I chewed on my lip (careful, this time, to keep my fangs from digging in too deep) as I turned my gaze back to the shifting shadows around us. Another shiver of discontent washed over me, but it wasn't the same heartstopping terror that had held me moments before. “Nightmare is here,” I whispered.

Wilbur hesitated, then sighed. “Probably.”

Probably!? I shook my head violently. “It's here,” I urged. I couldn't keep my gaze on both Wilbur and the shadows, but I could certainly try. “Why did we come here? It's- it's going to kill us, Wilbur. It's going to kill me-”
The prime ape hushed me and bumped me with his shoulder. “Hey, Nightmare hasn't succeeded in killing us yet. What makes you think it'll succeed now?”

Because it was furious at me. Because I was here to usurp the Throne. Because it didn't kill me when it should have. Because I shattered it-

“Ty? Hey, come on, you can't just stop breathing on me. We can't have the both of us dissociating, can we? And if you freak out, then I'll probably freak out, and that does not spell good things for Wilson and Winona, right?”

I had to physically force myself to breathe. The air was so thick, I felt exhausted just for the attempt. My nose burned. I spit out more blood from my sliced tongue.

“Did you know we were coming here?” I hissed at Wilbur. “Did you know?”

He raised his hands to stop me in my tracks. “Okay, listen, you're not the only one that's gonna have a whole bunch of questions about this place. Let's wait for the others to wake up before I explain what I know.”

So Wilbur did know about this place. He probably knew we would be coming here as well. Or, at least, he had an inkling... But if he was knowledgeable about this world and as scared as he was, I couldn't even imagine what kind of horrors would be here.

Still, though, I wasn't going to just force him to talk. Instead, I kept my silence as he gingerly led me back to the not-quite-a-fire. It was probably inaccurate to just call it a fire, what with its coloring and the fact it seemed to give off no heat at all.

I couldn't shake off the feeling of being watched though. I found my gaze snapping from side to side at every movement and sound, a feat made much harder by only having one working eye. By the time Winona, and finally Wilson, started to actually stir, I had been on edge for so long that the terror was beginning to dim into a dull background hum. There was only so long you could be in such a state of fear before your body tried to even itself out.

Winona's first reaction to our surroundings was to give a slight frown, a surprisingly mundane reaction. “Oh boy, aren't we lucky. Didn't he already try the super long nights before, though? Kind of retreading old ground again.”

Wilson seemed to have a much more reasonable reaction, which was to freeze completely with dilated pupils and stare blankly into the night. “Darkness,” he whispered.

“Ah, so you're familiar with it,” Wilbur said calmly. Really, it was remarkable just how calm he was able to act when he was clearly shaken by where we were. Wilson's eyes darted to Wilbur, then back to the ground.

“Er... not really. There was something... you guys also experienced those visions, right? In the last world?”

Winona was the first to give an affirmative hum. When Wilbur nodded, I simply murmured a small “yes”.

“What did you guys... er, see?”

A sudden wave of deja vu hit me. The last time we had this conversation, the visions had been very different, and our group had had very different faces.

But I couldn't recall anything prophetic about my own vision. When it had happened back then, the three of us had been sent on the wild goose chase to kill the giants. It had been Webber to appear to me, in one breath giving me the mission and showing me exactly how my friends were to die. Erika, however, had not shown me anything like that. Was I the odd one out here?

Wilbur waved his hand as if to brush off the question. “Typical stuff. Nothing unpleasant, but you know, it's always bittersweet.” At the expectant look on the humans' faces, Wilbur sighed. “I saw Roselyn. But she didn't say anything about Darkness. She just...” He shuffled his feet. “Tried to... you know, get through some of my insecurities. That's how she always was. It was just her as she was.”

“Oh,” Winona said softly. “I... yeah. Same.”

“Winona, are you telling me my mate talked to you about your guilt and insecurities? That's kinda weird~”

“No!” Clearly startled by Wilbur's words, she let out a little laugh. “No, it, um. Was Scarlet. My Roselyn, I guess. For me. But it was just... her. Telling me that she was still waiting for me. That she still loved me. Trying to comfort me about some things. Nothing about Darkness.”

“I didn't know you had a girlfriend,” I hummed under my breath. It was left largely ignored, but it wasn't the point and I knew it.

When they glanced at me, it was to get my own story from me. I folded my knees to my chest and rested my arms on them. “I dreamed about Erika. But as she would be now if she was... still...” 'Alive' wasn't the right word. Especially when Wilson and Winona had already met Erika before, just not as I had once known her. “Human,” I finished lamely. “But it's like what you guys said. I mean, I guess she... acted differently? She wasn't quite herself. But she didn't say anything about Darkness.”

I had heard about Darkness from Nightmare itself, back when it was wearing Wilson's face before we entered Maxwell's Door in the first place. But it hadn't given me any information.

Just that it was waiting for me.

“Okay.” Wilson took a deep breath and folded his hands together. “Well. The person speaking to you wasn't any one of those people.”

Winona didn't seem surprised, and frankly, neither was I. Wilbur seemed unhappy about this, though, looking away with his tail twitching.

“I don't know who- or what- it was,” he continued. “I'm not surprised you guys saw... the ones you did, though.”

“So it actually talked to you, then?” Wilbur asked. He seemed annoyed by this revelation, although that might've been because he had just been told that he had talked to someone wearing his mate's face. “Did it also speak in cryptic riddles? Was it Very Obviously Nightmare and you're just choosing to pretend like it wasn't?”

Wilson shook his head vigorously. “No! It wasn't Nightmare. I think it was... friendly...?”

“Every time a creepy demon creature gives visions and talks to you, it's Nightmare,” Wilbur said confidently.

“It's talked to all of us before.”

That finally seemed to catch the prime ape's attention. He narrowed his eyes at the scientist.

My interest was piqued as well, but I felt as if I knew exactly what he was talking about. Something that had spoken to us before that wasn't Maxwell and wasn't Nightmare. Something possibly benevolent.

More accurately, something that had spoken through us before. Something seemed to click in my mind.

“The lessons,” I breathed, which only seemed to further Wilbur's confusion.

Winona, however, seemed to understand immediately. “In the previous worlds!” She exclaimed. “It couldn't have been Nightmare. It spoke through me as well, and as far as I know, Nightmare doesn't have any control over me.”

Wilson nodded. “I think it was the same thing.”

“And it told you about Darkness?” Wilbur asked. I could tell he was still suspicious, but interest seemed to have been slowly taking over. At least, his lashing tail had calmed to just waving slightly.

“It... helped me, I think. Or it was trying to help me.” Wilson pressed a fist against his chest, but I couldn't tell why. He paused for a long moment as if looking for his heartbeat. Whatever he was doing, he seemed satisfied. “And it told me that it would 'last through Darkness'.”

“What would?” Winona pressed.

For some reason, Wilson seemed to have to genuinely consider this question. In the end, he simply gave a confounded shrug. “Love?” He guessed.

“So there's something else out there,” I said sharply. My voice must have been a bit louder than I intended, because everyone's eyes immediately snapped towards me. I took a deep breath before pressing on. “There's someone else who has been... what? Trying to help us?” The tension in my muscles seemed to finally snap as I drew myself up to my full size, anger momentarily replacing the fear I had felt before. “Well, Mystery Creature, if you really wanted to help us, you sure came late, didn't you? You could've said something years ago and stopped so much from happening. Do you seriously think helping us now would do anything!?”

“Ty-” Wilbur started, but I rounded on him with bared fangs.

“No! I'm supposed to just accept that there was a supernatural entity out there that was strong enough to give visions and speak through us, but it simply chose not to?” I shouldn't have been angry at something that... probably wasn't there. I really shouldn't have been angry at all. There was something out there that was trying to help us, and all I could think of was the things it hadn't done. “Sure, yeah, I guess you helped push us through Maxwell's Game. Thanks a lot! You were a huge help when we fought the Dragonfly. And I can't even express how grateful I am with your assistance against the Ancient Guardian. Oh wait-”

“Maybe,” Wilson cut off. “We shouldn't antagonize the one thing that might want to help us in this world.”

“Fat lot its help did!” I snapped.

“This is not the place to be cursing out the supernatural,” Wilbur chastised. “In fact, I can't even think of any worse place to be challenging Them like this.”

“What, Darkness?” I scoffed. “What difference is it going to make? They've already been waiting for me.” I turned away from my companions and opened my arms to the shadows that surrounded us. “Well I'm here!” I shouted. “You've brought me all this way and I'm right where you want me.”

The shadows remained in their place. Swirling and hovering around us, but not daring to move any closer. Not daring to breach our small circle of light. I sneered at them. I could feel my body shaking, though whether it was with fear, anger, or exhaustion, I couldn't tell. What I could tell was that everyone else was clearly uncomfortable with the way I seemed to be trying to bait Nightmare into the light. Maybe they thought the coward would actually get near me. Laughter, harsh and hysterical, rose in my chest. “Is that it, Nightmare? You're a coward? Preying on people in the dark because you can't stand to see yourself in the light? If you're so eager to get me, then get me!”

The relative lack of movement only served to fuel my rage. For such a supposedly powerful demon, Nightmare seemed to show no interest in collecting its prize. Which meant I had to do it myself.

The second I started to move, though, someone grabbed my arm and dragged me away from the edge. This time, I found myself hissing at Wilson, who looked both unafraid and unimpressed.

“Gonna be honest, didn't think I'd see you like this again,” he said, refusing to release his firm grip even as I struggled against it. “You realize the last time you went insane, we had to force-feed you mushrooms, right?”

“I'm not going insane!” Again, I tried to rip my arm back, but he held fast. “This is Nightmare's domain and I know that because it has been waiting for me to get here! Let me go Wilson, I swear that I'm going to shatter that demon again. You hear that? I don't care how many times I have to stab you again, I will destroy you.”

“Tyler,” came Wilbur's patient voice.

Wilson still wasn't letting go. I snapped forward to bite him, but he caught my forehead with his palm before I could make contact. The stupid scientist was not letting go. Why would Nightmare let him act on his own? It wanted me, right? It wanted me so why wasn't it taking me? “I swear to God I will bite you.” The threat was empty, but its meaning was entirely true. If Nightmare wanted me so desperately, then the only way to get rid of it was to let it have me and then destroy us. I couldn't care less what any stupid scientist or stubborn monkey had to say about it. I would kill it. It wanted to kill me so it was only fair that I killed it first.

“He's at least partially right,” Wilbur hummed. “This is Nightmare's domain. This is where Nightmare is at its strongest. I'm sure it knows we're here.” He blinked up at me, his gaze unwavering under my glare. “But that doesn't mean it's smart to try to purposely catch its attention.” He breathed out a hiss of air from between his teeth. “The best thing for us to do would be to try our best to keep its attention away from us.”

“So... I guess that means I'm the only one that heard that,” Winona said uneasily. My eyes snapped back to her as she rubbed her hands together, looking deeply concerned. “Tyler, what did you mean by 'stab you again'?”

Wilson's eyes widened at the question, an unknown expression coming over his face as his eyes darted from me to Winona. Wilbur's twitching tail stilled; his eyes narrowed.

I rolled my eyes and bared my teeth in a grimace. “I've stabbed it before, and I'll gladly stab it again.”

“When did you stab Nightmare?” Wilbur pressed.

I opened my mouth to answer, but the memory that had been so bright in my mind just a second before seemed to slip away before I had the opportunity to give any details. I closed my mouth again, eyes furrowing in irritated thought. My word should have been enough, even if I couldn't properly explain when it had the chance to happen. “Doesn't matter,” I grumbled instead. “I shouldn't have to explain that.” The audacity of someone so close to me to doubt my word. “It clearly didn't work last time, so that means we'll have to try again until it works.”

I nearly jumped out of my fur as a hand touched my shoulder. I hadn't noticed Wilson coming up on my blind side, and as such, I felt it was quite appropriate to growl deeply at him. I didn't shake him off, though. The weight was strangely grounded, enough so that I didn't even realize that I needed such. I hadn't even realized that Wilson had let go of me in the first place.

“That would be a suicide mission,” Wilson said in a grim tone. “If Nightmare wants you, that means we have to keep you away from it, not throw you into its clutches.”

“So you just want to let Charlie suffer?” I snapped.

There were a lot of things I could've said, and really, I knew that was the exact wrong one. However, I felt that getting just one of the members of the group to agree with me would be enough. It was a low blow going for Winona in that way, but it dripped with truth. She winced back as if I had physically hit her and sucked in a harsh breath.

“You can't save Charlie without killing her.” It was Wilbur who said that. His voice had lost most of its emotion, his eyes dulling as he spoke. “Or at least deeply injuring her. They've been together for so long that I don't even know if she would survive having Nightmare stripped away from her. It's poisoned every ounce of blood in her body.”

“Not if I stab it.”

Winona perked up as soon as I said that. She suddenly gasped loudly and slammed her hands over her mouth as the realization hit her. “Your sword!” She exclaimed. Her voice was tight with excitement, and I couldn't hold back the small smirk that made its way onto my face. Bingo.

“It absorbs poisons, right? It purified the Ancient Guardian.” I tried to keep the tremor out of my voice, but it betrayed itself nonetheless. From an outside perspective, there was a good chance the others would take it as the ever-lingering grief from losing my brother.

I didn't exactly want to fight Nightmare, but the urge deep in my stomach was insanely strong. There was an innate knowledge, bubbling in my chest, that we were brought to Darkness for a reason. It had specifically mentioned that it was waiting for me here, and that meant it wanted to take me.

I had to kill it before it had the opportunity. I had already dealt with one intruder in my mind for years, I wasn't sure what would happen to me if another force tried to take it. Would it kill Webber? Would they both haunt me, exerting such force that the likelihood of me being myself again would be next to zero? Would my body split under the pressure?

Or would something else happen? Something that I couldn't even comprehend?

With the taste of nightmare fuel on my tongue and the crushing knowledge of something watching me at this very moment, Nightmare's death was the only end I could think of that ended in a somewhat positive way.

However excited Winona seemed to be at the prospect of saving her sister, though, Wilson seemed unconvinced, and Wilbur looked downright upset. “Nightmare is stronger than the Ancient Guardian, Ty. If we tried to fight it, we would all die for the attempt. Would you like a conclusive list of all the crap that Nightmare can do that the Ancient Guardian probably couldn't? And if Nightmare didn't kill us, They would without hesitation. Wilson's right. It would be a suicide mission.”

“Then how do you propose we help Charlie?” I asked, sure to add just a little bit of oil to my voice. I didn't care how much I had to manipulate them. “You're okay with just letting her suffer?”

“However much you pull that card, I know you're not thinking about Charlie,” Wilson accused. “How many steps back did you take to end up right back to where you started? You've gotten better about this. If you really want to fight the literal Big Bad Evil God of the world, then don't try to manipulate us into agreeing with you.”

Winona seemed hurt by this, which sent a spear of guilt into my chest. I swallowed hard and struggled to find my words. “It wants me,” I said in a small voice. “I have to kill it before it can kill me.”

“Different card, same deck,” Wilson growled. “I've known you for years now. I know what you look like when you're trying to get what you want. I can't believe you are doing this again.”

“Wilson...” Wilbur said.

“Neither of you guys were around in the beginning,” the scientist immediately interrupted. “This is exactly what he acted like when we first met.”

“Because I was scared and angry!”

“So you're scared and angry now?”

My whiskers trembled as I bared my teeth at him. “Yes! I'm terrified, Wilson! We waltzed right into Nightmare's domain, and none of us have good experiences with Nightmare in case you didn't notice!” My head whipped to the side as the feeling of being watched increased tenfold. It had to be Nightmare. There was no one else it could be. Suddenly, I couldn't even speak if I wanted to around the growl once more rumbling in my chest.

I couldn't see any eyes, but that didn't mean I didn't know they were there. They had to be. I could taste the nightmare fuel that betrayed Nightmare's presence; it was all around us, soaking deep in my fur and trailing icy paths of frost through my veins. It was cold. My teeth were chattering. I couldn't tell if it was from cold or anger or terror.

The others were still looking at me. Could they not feel it?

Of course they wouldn't be able to. Nightmare didn't want them. It wanted me.

Soft shuffling from their position was enough to tell me that one of them was moving, but I kept my eyes straight on the invisible presence. I couldn't look away.

As it turned out, the brave soul who decided to confront me was Wilbur. He immediately stationed himself between me and our observer, and while I immediately moved to keep my eye fixed on it, he moved with me.

“Relax,” he said softly, his voice trembling very slightly. “It's okay.” He inched closer, and I met his advance with a hasty backpedal. His brow furrowed, but he simply moved faster until he was close enough for me to scratch.

Wilbur reached out with one hand to the back of my head, before promptly pulling my face down into his furry shoulder. I instinctively stiffened and tried to pull away, but he held firm.

“Don't look at Them,” he said. “Don't look into the darkness at all. Keep your eyes on us, okay?”

The growl in my throat tapered off, but I didn't loosen into his grip at all.

“Listen, Ty, you've gotten us this far, but for this one, you can rest, okay? I know this world better than anyone else here. Let me handle it.”

I didn't reply verbally, but I gave him a weak nod. Resting sounded nice. The last world had been a taste of relaxation, but the fear of the unknown had kept me from truly calming myself down.

Wilbur could handle this one.

He gave me a quick scratch behind the whiskers before finally letting me free. “Good.”

Instead of letting my eye turn back to the darkness, I followed Wilbur's advice. I kept my gaze firmly on the monochrome fire, forcibly pulling it away from any semblance of shadow and darkness.

Wilbur spoke. “So... yes. This is Nightmare's domain, colloquially called Darkness. This might seem like the worst place to be, but that means we are tantalizingly close to Maxwell's domain. There is no place closer. A few things to note about this place, though.” He opened up one hand to count on his fingers. “It's always dark. This world was made to forever be like this in order to protect Nightmare. Never go out into the darkness. No matter what's going on or what you see or hear. It doesn't matter how dire the situation is. Never let yourself leave the light. They can only live in the darkness, and Nightmare is actively harmed by light. As long as you are near a torch or a fire or whatever, then you're safe from Them.”

I let out a disbelieving scoff under my breath, but I didn't protest. Wilbur had known Nightmare for much longer than the rest of us. He knew how it worked.

“While we're here, we can look for... I dunno. Clues, hints. See if there's any way to save Charlie from Nightmare.” At Winona's surprised glance, Wilbur only gave a smirk. “As if I wouldn't be loyal to her, Winona. She got me through the worst times. It's only fair that I try to return the favor.”

“So then how do you propose we continue at all?” Wilson protested. “If it's always night and stepping away from the light will leave us vulnerable?”

Wilbur's smirk only grew. “The same way we got past the previous worlds.” His eyes darted to me for just a second.

“By waiting.”

[The Starver]

Oh, YES!!! This is leading up to something incredible! ...I can feel it...

Also, what happened to Wanda? Where's she? Is she just being enigmatic and cheating death as usual?

[RhymesWChronic]

Chapter 94. Innocence - Part 2
 

 

 Chapter 5 of 5

Darkness

 

Wilbur sounded so confident and sure about his words that Winona couldn't help but think they were reasonable. The unfortunate part about it, though, was that just 'waiting' was much easier said than done. The past few worlds they had been through had taken some time, but there had been a little more emphasis on doing something. Either something as simple as 'surviving' or, as it had been in the previous one, 'try to figure out Maxwell's scheme'. And while surviving was definitely still something on the table, naturally, it still felt like there was something else important to be done.

After all, as the others had stated, this was Nightmare's domain. Simply 'waiting' did not seem like it was going to be enough to get them through. They were tantalizingly close to Maxwell, but more than that, Charlie was just within their reach.

At the thought, Winona felt her heart clench in her chest. She closed her eyes tightly and pressed a fist against her breastbone to try to relieve some of the pain. It had been so long since she had truly seen her little sister. Memories and dreams could only sate her for so long.

Since the moment Charlie was born, she had had such a bright and loving spirit. She was always the first to make friends, the kid that brought all the other children together to play elaborate games, the one every parent wanted their own kid to be. She was the opposite of Winona in that way, with the older sister being far more reclusive and absorbed in her own mind than anything else. It wasn't as though Winona didn't like people, but she couldn't stand having idle hands.

And yet, they had been inseparable.

Even with such an age gap between the two, it was rare to see one without the other. Charlie spent much of her free time watching Winona work on whatever project she had that day, asking questions and telling stories and anecdotes to pass the time. Winona would have been willing to sell her soul to protect the younger girl.

But in the end, she had choked. In her attempt to give Charlie the space she needed to truly develop into the adult she wanted to be, Winona had let her be swayed by the whims of a man who meant her harm, and now, her once-bright spirit was cast in shadows and dulled beyond recognition.

Winona wasn't stupid. She knew that saving Charlie was an impossible task. Maybe literally. Her soul would have been so entirely consumed by Nightmare's influence that they couldn't really know for sure if it was possible to banish the darkness without crippling her soul entirely.

Winona knew that Charlie was too far gone.

That bright soul. That big smile and those glittering eyes. That life, once so beautiful. Winona knew that Charlie's only salvation was Nightmare's banishment. And by extension, the ending of her life.

She couldn't focus on that now. Focusing on those things would only ruin what little hope Winona was trying to cling to. Right now, she had to focus on what she could control. Control the controllable. She had to focus on that monochromatic, heatless fire, the cloud-shrouded moon, and the tension of nerves that sparked between her friends.

Wilbur was doing a good job of acting like he wasn't nervous or scared. He spoke with the same bravado he always did, with the appropriate amount of pep and energy. Yet, Winona could see the stiffness of his tail, the weariness glinting in his eyes. Even though he had firmly told Tyler to keep his eyes away from the darkness, he did not heed his own words. His eyes kept flicking back to the shadows, an unreadable expression creasing his face when he did.

Even if Winona had known Wilbur for years, she didn't think she could ever truly grasp his experience with Nightmare. The prime ape had been friends, allies, rivals, enemies with the demon. He had been under Nightmare's influence enough to do terrible things in his past, but he had broken through it.

(Could love save Charlie, the same way it once saved him?)

(Somehow, she doubted it.)

Wilson's relationship with Nightmare was what Winona was most familiar with now. While she had never known Wilson before Nightmare had any control over him, she did know that Wilson had been getting worse the closer they got to this place and the demon that resided within it. His hatred had been primarily focused on Tyler, which was peculiar, but it was clear that Nightmare had something against the boy that caused Wilson's behavior

Admittedly, he seemed to be doing better at the moment, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think that it was the end of his fight. After all, Wilson’s struggles with Nightmare had come and go, waxed and waned. It stood to reason that it would come back with a vengeance.

While Winona herself had never interacted with Nightmare directly, hostility burned in her chest at the thought of the torture it had put her sister through

(The only thing they could do for her was put an end to them both.)

And she wasn’t the only one desperate to save her! Sure, Tyler might have been trying to be… manipulative. Play on her feelings to get her to agree with his desperate lunacy. But it held true that Wilbur truly did care about Charlie. He had stated before that she had stayed with him during some of the harshest times of his life. He had even implied that Charlie was the only one that kept him from doing something stupid to himself after losing his mate and daughter.

It sounded so real, so familiar, so Charlie that it hurt Winona to realize that the torture she had gone through under Nightmare’s hand wasn’t enough to fully destroy her light.

“You’re gonna think yourself into a pit.” Speaking of the prime ape. Wilbur touched her shoulder with the tip of his tail as he came to sit beside her. While Winona turned to glance at him, he didn’t turn his eyes away from the fire. Its faded crackling echoed into the uncomfortably quiet night. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Winona sighed and perched an elbow on her knee. “I’m sure you can guess.”

“Mm.” Wilbur’s non-answer confirmed this. “Don’t be too angry at him, Winona. I’ll lecture him later about trying to-”

She found herself snorting in a sort of amusement. “No, not that. I mean, yeah, it kind of makes me angry that Tyler did that, but I’m honestly more worried about other things right now. I’m…” Winona sighed again and shook her head. She pulled her knees to her chin and rested her head on her arms. “Is… is there any way to save Charlie without killing her?”

Wilbur’s expression soured. He pressed his lips together into a thin line. “...Probably not,” he answered truthfully. “But… it’s important for you to know that Nightmare was never able to really drag her under.”

“Is it bad that that doesn’t… really help?” She picked at a stray thread on her clothing, decidedly keeping her eyes away from the prime ape. “I mean, it should, I know. I should be glad to hear that she never let Nightmare control her. But that also means that…” Winona couldn’t find the words to explain it. Somehow, it would have almost been a comfort if Charlie had no awareness of herself anymore. If Charlie didn’t have to experience the torture that was her current state.

Wilbur seemed to understand, though. He bobbed his head and shifted into a more comfortable position on the ground. Which was, admittedly, hard to do. The grass felt damp and swampy beneath them, and the sharp tang of nightmare fuel made it hard to breathe comfortably, let alone sit comfortably. “I think I get it. You don’t have to explain.”

“Thank you,” she breathed.

A small moment of silence flickered between the duo. Behind her, Winona could hear the others moving around and exchanging words here and there. There was still a tense air of hostility between Tyler and Wilson, but it seemed more awkward than violent. Still, she kept an eye on them, just in case. Or maybe it was a defensive mechanism to keep her from thinking too hard. Who was to say?

“You know,” Wilbur said breezily, causing Winona to flinch at the sudden interruption of her focus. “Charlie was one of the few people to meet Elizabeth.”

“Your daughter?”

He nodded with a smile. “Yeah. Even though I had split myself from Nightmare at that point, we were still…” Wilbur waved his hand as if looking for the words. “She was still my friend. After Nightmare… After Nightmare. She was my only friend.”

Winona had to take a moment to think out her next words. “Did she ever…-”

She was not able to finish her question.

Icy wind suddenly blew from the darkness, whipping the monochromatic gray flames into a frenzy. The slick fuel coating the ground began to bubble as if boiling, despite remaining cold. Winona immediately snapped into a defensive posture, her good hand thrust out in front of her as she flipped around. She was just in time to see Wilson taking several steps back, chest heaving with harsh breaths, and Tyler tearing his sword from the ground and aiming its tip towards the spot where the shadows coalesced into the shape of their captor.

In the previous worlds, Maxwell had acted with an air of confidence. Smugness, if you will. He always had this sort of persona of someone who could never fail, a psychopath who thought it was amusing to see people suffer around him.

In the days Winona had known him, he had had many similarities and differences in that personality. It was impossible for her to not realize that he had dropped ‘William’ almost altogether, and that he seemed to now fully embody the superior, self-serving, cocky persona of ‘The Great Maxwell’.

Now, though, the smugness that once wrapped around him like a cloak had been shrugged off entirely. What appeared to them was not a man of calm indifference or patient confidence.

What appeared to them was hardly a man at all.

“You insolent.” Maxwell lurched forward, his eyes ablaze. “Pitiful.” As he spoke, clear black fluid dripped from between his lips and stained his chin. “Insignificant.” His clothes were torn, exposing swathes of deathly pale skin and mishappen bones. “Ants.”

“Good evening to you, too,” Wilbur snarked, his eyes narrowed.

“Do you not understand what forces you are toiling with? What eyes you draw upon you?

“What do you want, William?” Winona snapped. She stepped forward until she was standing beside Tyler, who stood stock still with his sword still pointed towards the beast of Maxwell’s avatar. To say the man appeared mutilated would be an understatement. His limbs had blackened and his fingers tapered into blade-like claws. His pupil was a mere pinprick in wild, bloodshot eyes in a face sunken with darkness.

“What do I want?” The man’s voice seemed to bubble and gurgle in his throat. “I gave you everything you could want. I carved the perfect little cage for you. And you instead choose to incite the wrath.” He drew himself up to his full height, taller than anyone in the group by several inches (and positively towering over Wilbur and Tyler). “Of the Great and Powerful Maxwell.”

“We’re beating your stupid game,” Tyler growled.

“Yeah! Are you scared of your own rules now?” Wilbur taunted. “You can’t back out now.”

A flicker, and claws tore from the ground and snatched up both of the smaller individuals. Wilbur hung limply in the restraints aside from a furiously lashing tail, and Tyler actively growled and hissed at his. With his arms pinned to his sides, though, it was only a matter of seconds before his sword slipped from between his fingers and clanged uselessly on the ground beneath him. A splash of nightmare fuel followed in its wake. Winona shot forward, but without anything to defend herself (or her allies) she was pushed back with a wave of his hands. Wilson also had no weapon, but Maxwell didn’t actively push him back. Instead, he held a simple hand out towards the man.

One of Wilson’s hands shot up to his chest as his breaths caught in his throat. Even from Winona’s prone position, she could see the agony scrawled across his face as he pressed his palm tightly against his ribs as if struggling to keep something in.

Or struggling to keep something out.

Maxwell’s face split into an ugly snarl. “Little Scientist, what deals have you gotten yourself into?” He stalked closer to Wilson, fuel weaving around his feet and building into writhing tendrils. Winona dragged herself back to her feet. Now that Maxwell’s focus was elsewhere, she sprinted towards the restrained Wilbur and Tyler

“Are you guys okay?” She whispered harshly as her hands hovered over them.

“I’m not the one I’m concerned about,” Wilbur muttered, which at first was an obvious claim, but it wasn’t until she realized it was Wilson that his concern was on that she realized the situation might be even more dangerous than she thought.

Even though Wilson seemed to be fighting back against whatever Maxwell was trying to accomplish with him, he stood unnervingly still, refusing to move away even though it would have been the reasonable reaction. Instead, he let Maxwell come right up to him without even trying to back up.

“It appears you have been dancing with the fates, Scientist.”

Wilson just barely managed to look up before Maxwell was throwing the other man’s arm to the side

Maxwell plunged his arm into the scientist’s chest.

With that, a dozen things suddenly happened at once.

Wilson let out a loud, harsh gasp and his chest shuddered as if suppressing something. Drops of blood dripped from the point of entry.

Wilbur started to struggle violently against his binds, letting out some of the worst noises she had ever heard anything make as he fought to get free.

Tyler shrieked. His body ragdolled against the restraints, his eyes suddenly growing wide and distant.

Before Winona could even think to move, several of the tendrils that had formed from the fuel wrapped tightly around her wrists and ankles and dragged her back to the ground.

And Maxwell.

Maxwell screamed.

It was the taller man who ended up stumbling away, hunching over a hand that had been burned horrifically up to the wrist. Similarly, it left an awful, red-black burn directly in the center of Wilson’s chest. He fell to his knees, his face twisted in agony as he helplessly covered the wound that had carved away at his skin.

Though, honestly, it appeared in that moment that Wilson was the lucky one.

For Maxwell, the burn seemed to go straight to the bone. For only a moment, the stench of burnt meat overpowered nightmare fuel. Winona didn’t need any form of medical experience to see the way the skin of Maxwell’s hand seemed to slough off of the bone.

The emotions that poured over Maxwell’s face were a sight to behold. Agony, rage, shock, but it all settled into something so potent, so familiar, it could only be one thing.

Pure. Unbridled. Hatred.

“You useless creature,” Maxwell hissed, still clutching at the wrist of his injured hand. “You absolutely, useless, wretched, ABOMINATION!”

He raised his uninjured hand, murderous intent clearly visible on every inch of Maxwell’s face. Wilson remained still, too deep in the shock of his most recent injury to even notice the threat. The shadows wreathed around his arm and obediently formed a blade in his hand.

Winona shouted helplessly. She begged him to just look up. To just move. But it was as if he didn’t even register that she was there.

The sword was brought down upon Wilson’s head just a second after Tyler successfully slipped free of his binds.

…

Tyler’s POV

The sound of metal on metal echoed into the starry night. Despite the shake of my weak hand, I managed to hold my sword strong against ‘Maxwell’’s, even though it caused a grunt of effort to escape my chest. With a low snarl, I managed to push him back into a stumble. The dark sword whipped back behind ‘Maxwell’, as he caught his balance once more.

I let him do so.

“Are you so much of a coward that you have to hide behind someone else’s face?” I spit. “The play-acting is over, Nightmare. Come out and face me if you’re so desperate for blood.”

‘Maxwell’ narrowed his eyes, then let out a low chuckle. “You are keen, Young Heir.” He waved a hand, but I was ready for the restraints this time. I cut them down before they could even make contact with my skin, and they fell limply to the ground with the hiss of boiling liquid.

It didn’t stop them from wrapping around my friends, though. Winona and Wilson were both scooped up in the shadow’s embrace, thicker than the ones they had used on me, and Wilbur’s grew thicker to accommodate. Wilson still did not move, although it was clear he was still alive and conscious. The wound on his chest was ugly, but not very deep. Still, it had to be painful, if the faint cry he let out at the pressure against it meant anything.

This, I was fine with. I always intended on fighting Nightmare alone.

“If you are so desperate to fight, then let us make the field fair, hmm?” Nightmare’s grin on Maxwell’s face was unnatural and eldritch. The gray flames of the fire that had kept us from the darkness’s reach until now began to fade until only a small circle remained.

I had an idea that this is how it would want to fight. It could control the whims of people it had its claws on, yes, but if I was to truly fight Nightmare, it would have to be in its own battlefield.

“Wait!”

The call came from Winona. My gaze shot towards her, widened in warning, but she didn’t seem to care. She probably couldn’t even see me anymore.

She struggled against the tendrils binding her arms to her sides, but it was clear that they were far from the biggest stressor of her’s.

At the sound of crunching movement, I took a step back and pressed the flat end of my sword against my chest. Its glow wavered against the darkness that thrived all around me.

“Where is Charlie?” I growled. I knew it was what Winona wanted to know, even if she seemed to struggle against the words. She looked as though she could barely even breathe. “Is she here?”

“Charlotte is always here,” Nightmare purred. “Would you like to see her?”

Movement towards my right. I twisted around to face it just as claws came threatening close to my face. In any normal circumstance, the proximity would have been enough to send me into a panic.

This time, though, I felt nothing but a cool calmness sweep over me. I bared my teeth, letting the sword’s glow glint against too-sharp fangs. “Let us speak to her, then,” I demanded. “I will not give you any fight without that.”

“You behave as though you have a choice, Young Heir.” The voice came from behind me, and I turned just in time to see a figure etched from the shadows. As cloaked in darkness as it was, it was only the faintest glint of blue light that highlighted some of its features.

I had never seen Charlie myself. The only things I knew about her were taken from the words of Winona and Wilbur.

This, though. It had to have been her.

There might have been a time you could describe the person in front of me as beautiful. Now, though, all I saw was a too-wide grin plastered on a face dripping with darkness. One time, this might have been Winona’s sister.

But this. This was Nightmare.

I was facing away from my friends now, so I wasn’t sure what they were seeing, but I did hear Winona’s wet gasp. Wilbur shouted incoherently.

“Do you like what you see, Young Heir?”

I swallowed hard against the dryness in my throat. “Let her go.”

“Soon.”

It immediately melted back into the shadows. My instincts screamed at me to scramble for the faint light still present from the dying flames, but I stood my ground. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I had experience with a lack of sight. This was no different.

My whiskers stretched to their full length as I took in the area around me. Listening. Waiting.

A twitch. Air from an attack stopped in its tracks by the sword deflecting claws. I found myself grinning at the low hiss that seemed to emanate from the shadows around me.

Just one hit. If I could just hit it once, I could end this. I was the only one who could.

(It was my duty to fix what I had broken, all those centuries ago.)

The next time I heard movement, I was the first to lash out. A growl rumbled in my chest as my blade moved through empty air, nearly taking me off of my feet with the force. Fur pricked on the back of my neck, dampened slightly with a thin layer of sweat. For a long moment, the only thing I could hear was my own heart pounding in my ears.

“You will tire of this dance eventually, Young Heir.”

Shick- something that came so close to my face that it nearly took one of my whiskers with it. Movement from below, sliced apart with just a few more cuts. Despite the strength it contained, it was keeping its distance from me, instead using the shadows around us to do its bidding.

“Coward,” I hissed beneath my breath.

The crunch of a footstep caught my attention. I twisted to face it just as air brushed against my side from another direction.

Then, pain, as something cold and sharp tore a line across my chest. A cry tore itself from my throat as I stumbled back, one hand clutching at the wound.

Nightmare’s approach seemed to have slowed. Or perhaps I couldn’t hear it over the sound of my panting breaths. Hot blood dripped from the slash, caking into uncomfortable clumps around my midsection. Still, though, it wasn’t debilitating. Even though I couldn’t hear it, I predicted its movements well enough to barely duck under another attack. I whipped my sword out, catching just the sight of blue light against its figure before it darted back into the darkness.

“Coward!” I repeated in a shout. “Don’t wanna get any closer? Are you scared I might hit you?”

It gave no response. Perhaps it had already tired of the sharp wits of verbal battle.

The smirk that was growing on my face fell as something cold and viscus latched itself around my legs. Something that would have been a minor annoyance if it weren’t for similar tendrils whipping through the air and pulling my arms away from my core with a violent pop of my shoulders.

My sword slipped from my fingers and clattered to the ground.

My limbs were roughly pulled at again until I was held in a starfish position, every inch of delicate stomach and neck flesh exposed. Still, though, I growled and hissed as two minds struggled helplessly to come up with a way out of Nightmare’s grip.

The demon approached me slowly. At first, it was only the soft footfalls of a creature moving through the inch of sludge that covered the ground.

Then, a too-long set of claws settled against my chin and gently pulled my face upwards.

The shadows remained just as thick as before, but the longer it made contact with my skin, the more and more I could make out of what had become of Charlie.

Nightmare fuel seemed to leak out of every orifice on her face. It dripped down her cheeks like the tears of a grieving sister and stained her teeth with ink. Once upon a time, her hair might have resembled Winona’s, but now, to even call it hair would be a stretch. It was darkness, pure and solid, wavering gently and resembling fire in every way sans color. Black markings marred her jawline, each one intricately carved from her skin and weeping the same black fluid as everywhere else.

It wasn’t the mutations that caused my heart to stutter a cold fear in my chest, though. It was how human the creature still looked. Its eyes, though narrowed and slitted with red, were uncannily similar to Winona’s. The face shape, too, was similar, and it was impossible not to notice the way that its twisted body still held onto its former shape. The soft collarbones and gentle curves.

There were other markings on its face, something that caught me off guard as I noticed them. Little white spots dotted around its eyes, lined with a sort of off-gray fuzz. The pattern was immediately familiar to me, though I couldn’t tell why until it reached out a single claw and traced the scar down my face. It was a gentle, thoughtful movement. Something so impossibly tender that you couldn’t even guess it was the one to give it to me.

(The spots mimicked Webber’s eyes.)

I could feel it. The way my blood turned to icy slush. The weight that settled, fiery hot and icy cold at once, in my chest. My heart struggled to pump between the terrified, random fires of nerves desperately telling my body to run.

My cocky bravado slipped away with the tears that wetted my cheek.

One second, a warrior desperate to defend my friends.

The next, a tiny child suddenly hiccuping and whimpering on sobs that were unsuccessfully stifled before making themselves known.

The claw on my face moved slowly towards the other side, inching uncomfortably close to intact skin and stopping just millimeters before plunging directly into my only good eye.

“All these years,” Nightmare hummed gently. The claw twitched but did not break skin. My stomach lurched. I had to clamp my mouth shut around the sickness. “All these years, and still, you so closely resemble them.”

“I’m not their Sibling!” I snapped. The words were raw and harsh, and spoken before I had the chance to comprehend their meaning. I twisted in my binds, but they remained fast. In fact, the ones around my wrists grew tighter. Dark tendrils wrapped around the scarred flesh on my lame hand. Their intentions remained docile, but I could almost sense the hunger piercing through them. Whatever it was, it wanted nothing more than to pierce the skin.

“It was never the Sibling’s blood that I tasted.”

The binds grew tighter still. My hands and feet were beginning to go numb.

The demon’s eyes glittered with ravenousness.

“Once, you were mine,” it whispered. “I consumed the heart that beat in your chest. The thoughts that rose in your mind. You were mine. And nobody else’s.”

I couldn’t stop the violent tremors that had taken my muscles. Flashes of memories, locked behind years of nonexistence, pierced my brain. They were only impressions, nothing more, but that didn’t stop the pain that seemed to tear my body to shreds.

“And yet…” It continued, with a musing hum. “Never could I quite break through the light in your soul. As consumed by darkness as you are now…” The claw on my face moved to rest against my chest instead. My lungs seized entirely. “Perhaps you will finally allow me a taste~”

I couldn’t see what happened after that. As suddenly as it had crowded into my space, Nightmare drew back. It looked… perplexed.

Then suddenly, I was able to move my hands again. The bindings fell away as if they had been slashed, and although my legs remained stuck, I was suddenly much less helpless than I was a moment ago.

Something. Someone. Touched my shoulder. A firm grip, cold to the touch. And a voice whispered something in my ear.

“GO.”

The next few seconds would soon disappear from my memory. But in the moment, they were clear as day. Nightmare seemed to recover from its confusion just as I twisted to recover my weapon.

Its glittering eyes flooded with rage, and all pretenses of gentleness vanished.

Pain.

Pain.

Pain.

Blood rose in my throat and pooled around my feet.

Claws tore through chitin and flesh and muscle. Shredded all in its path. Deeper, deeper. Razor sharp.

 

It’s a funny thing.

To be wounded.

In such a way that your body immediately shuts down.

Shredded nerves cease to properly transmit their signals.

Your body recognizes it’s in pain, but somehow, the message is lost somewhere along the way. It makes the motions. Your hands still try to cover the wound. The cry still erupts from your throat.

Your body knows it.

Yet your mind.

Just.

Chooses to ignore it.

Ringing ears.

But no pain.

Blissfully painless.

Blissfully blank.

Yet. Yet.

I still had the strength.

And the mental ability.

To look down.

And see something.

Spilling from my stomach.

Yet I could only recognize what had happened.

Because I had seen it before.

In animals I had butchered.

And I was able to see my hand.

Wrapped tightly around the hilt of a sword.

And the blade of that sword.

Plunging just as deep into my opponent’s stomach.

But before it could even fall.

I simply.

Turned to my friends.

(My friends, my family, my home.)

And say softly.

(Could they hear me? Would they hear those words?)

“I’m hurt.”

(Blissful.)

(Blank.)

(Empty.)

 

[The Starver]

Wha'...

Oh, yeah, leave me hangin'

Edited March 16, 2024 by The Starver

[RhymesWChronic]

8 hours ago, The Starver said:

Wha'...

Oh, yeah, leave me hangin'

Hhehe, it’s my job!

[The Starver]

On 3/16/2024 at 8:50 PM, Pokemaniac7000 said:

Hhehe, it’s my job!

Great answer. Actually, it's not often I find a cliffhanger as epic as that last one. Keep up the awesome job!

[RhymesWChronic]

Chapter 95. Innocence - Part 3


Part 4: Dust, the Void, and Them

 

Chapter 5 of 5

Darkness

 

At first, none of them knew what had happened. Even Wilbur, who had better night vision than most, wasn’t able to see anything past the small circle of light left from the fire. What he did know was that the darkness binding his limbs suddenly loosened, then fell away altogether. He landed heavily on his chest with an oof as the air left his lungs.

Winona and Wilson, too, were released, with the former landing on her feet and the latter immediately falling to his knees as soon as he was no longer being held. Winona immediately rushed towards their companion’s side, but the flutter of anxiety in Wilbur’s chest faded slightly as Wilson blinked up at her, his face still held in a grimace but fully aware once more. Still, the burn-like wound across his chest was ugly and certainly needed to be tended to as soon as possible. With proper care, though, it would heal just fine. And really, it would just blend in with the terrible scars already etched along his skin from a battle long ago.

He left Winona to take care of that situation in order to establish the chain of events that had happened.

Nightmare had power over Maxwell. That much was obvious. Wilbur had known that for as long as he had known the two of them. What he had never seen, though, was Nightmare actively using that power to control the man’s image, avatar or not. It was strange for the demon to do such a thing, especially when, in a place like this, it was fully capable of remaining in its normal form.

Nightmare had likely been trying to pull on the strings wrapped around Wilson’s heart, leading to the injury that now stretched across his chest. Somehow, it had failed. Possibly from the interaction with the strange creature that had talked to them before? At the moment, all of these were unknowns.

Then, there was Tyler and his repeated reckless behavior. Taunting the demon while staying out of its range of motion was one thing, but actively challenging it to a fight in the darkness? It was a move that was either impossibly brave or stupid, and knowing the kid, it was probably the latter.

Any sounds that had come from the fight had been muffled, so Wilbur couldn’t even begin to predict how it had gone. Nightmare wasn’t actively gloating and their binds had fallen, so hopefully, the boy had managed to chase the demon away for now.

Then… Wilbur noticed something.

It was something small at first, but as it grew it became more and more noticeable.

It was becoming brighter.

Not daytime, no. Night still hung cold and heavy over the world. But as the seconds ticked on, the moon’s silver light began to trickle down from the sky. It was plump and round and bright, lighting up the eternal night with an ethereal glow.

From Wilbur’s vantage point, he was slowly able to make out the details of the world beyond the fire. Blades of grass dipped with nightmare fuel were outlined carefully in silver. Scraggly trees seemed to shed the liquid from their branches, growing stronger and healthier with every second.

Charlie’s dark visage, Nightmare itself, stood stock still. Frozen in every limb, eyes wide and pupils constricted. A glowing blue sword pierced its stomach, held firmly in place by the boy almost half its size.

Tyler released the pommel of his weapon and stumbled back a few feet. His hands cradled his abdomen.

Wilbur was frozen. His mind had gone completely blank. At first, his attention landed on Nightmare as the demon collapsed, the sword stuck fast in its flesh. The blade eagerly consumed the darkness that held it in its grasp, causing its body to deteriorate and crumble. It thrashed helplessly, mouth half-open as if gasping for air it didn’t need.

In the span of a single heartbeat, Nightmare was dead, fizzling away into wisps of darkness that were promptly absorbed by the Sword of the Martyr.

Then, a tiny voice pulled his attention back to his son. At first, it was a bubbly whimper, wet and choked. Then, it was a harsh swallow that failed to keep dark blood from dripping from between his fangs. Then, it was two, quiet, impossibly weak words.

“I’m hurt.”

Wilbur couldn’t move. Tyler trembled terribly in place, his hands desperately clutching his stomach. And yet, it was impossible for such small hands to hold everything together. To hold everything inside. It spilled from between his fingers and peaked out from his palms. It was blood. It was gore. And, Wilbur realized, it was viscera.

The sounds from behind him went silent, but whether it was because shock was settling into his bones or because the others were suddenly realizing what had happened, he didn’t care.

And like a puppet with its strings abruptly cut, the boy startled to crumple.

Yet still, the night wasn’t done with its stream of surprises, because before Tyler even completely fell, a person standing next to him suddenly lurched forward and grabbed onto him. They lowered him the rest of the way down with surprising gentleness.

It was a cruel joke. It had to be. That was the only explanation for why this person had a massive hole in their own abdomen, now mirroring the one that had ripped the boy nearly in half. Tyler’s hands had fallen away the second his consciousness left, but this person was now desperately pressing their own hands against the wound, whispering something repeatedly under their breath.

Their gaze snapped up towards Wilbur, harsh and angry and… terrified.

“DON’T JUST STAND THERE!” They demanded. “HELP ME.”

Their voice was what finally broke Wilbur from his trance. He shot forward to press his own weight against the laceration, ignoring the sticky blood and cold nightmare fuel that immediately dirtied his hands as he did so. Unbidden, tears slipped down Wilbur’s face as the blood leaked from between his fingers. It pooled on the ground beneath them and mixed into a near-black solution as it made contact with the damp grass.

“NO NO,” they hissed. “ABSOLUTELY NOT. YOU ARE FORBIDDEN FROM DYING NOW.”

“...WX?”

The voice came from somewhere behind Wilbur. Despite the interruption, neither of them turned away from the pressure they were applying. Yet Wilbur didn’t miss the way it was laden with so much hope and confusion it was clear that whoever spoke had no idea what was happening.

“LATER,” they said quickly. “WE WILL TALK ABOUT THIS LATER.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Wilbur breathed. “This happens all the time!” Tyler always nearly got himself killed! This was practically a daily adventure at this point!

The other times, he had looked so much more peaceful.

“GREAT. WONDERFUL TO HEAR. GLAD TO KNOW THAT YOU LET THIS KID GET EVISCERATED ON A REGULAR BASIS.” They let out an angry huff, then turned their attention to the space behind Wilbur. “ARE YOU JUST GOING TO STAND THERE BEING USELESS? DO SOMETHING.”

“What do you expect them to do?” Wilbur said. His voice cracked. He desperately tried to uphold his facade of bravado, but the fact of the matter was, Tyler had lost so much blood already that shock would claim him soon, and that was only if he didn’t bleed out completely before that could happen. Even if they got him to stop bleeding, what then? Wilbur did not know how to treat internal injuries.

They stared at Wilbur for only a moment before promptly reaching out and smacking the prime ape across the head. It wasn’t a hard hit, just enough for Wilbur to feel it, but that didn’t stop him from yelping in response from the suddenness of it. Only a second later, though, they cursed again under their breath and pressed down again.

“I HAVE WATCHED YOU PULL THIS IDIOT FROM THE BRINK OF DEATH HALF A DOZEN TIMES ALREADY. THIS IS THE TIME YOU CHOOSE TO CHICKEN OUT?”

“Y-yeah, but-” Wilbur swallowed. The past times hadn’t been anything like this. There hadn’t been so much blood. The previous times this had happened, anything that was bleeding was a secondary concern to something else. It hadn’t been a matter of holding his body together with just their hands.

They had come up with solutions to missing certain medical necessities, but most of them took time to prepare. You couldn’t just pull bark off of a tree and expect it not to give someone an infection. At the moment, they had nothing.

“WILSON!” They shouted. Their voice rang with fury. “GET OVER HERE.”

“There’s nothing we can do.”

The voice came from much closer than Wilbur anticipated, causing him to jump in surprise. Without removing his hands, he craned his neck to see the last two members of their group behind them. Wilson’s face was twisted in pain, and he was leaning a good portion of his weight against Winona, but he was standing, and his eyes were dark. The wound he had sustained from Nightmare was burned and blackened, and it wouldn’t be able to be properly treated until they could scramble together some supplies, but it had stopped bleeding almost entirely, and it appeared as though it had been bound at least by strips of cloth torn from Winona’s sleeves.

“DON’T YOU DARE SAY THAT,” they growled. “YOU ARE NOT GIVING UP ON HIM LIKE THIS.”

With Winona’s help, Wilson was able to crouch on the ground behind Tyler’s mangled body. The boy’s chest shook with shallow breaths that barely reached his lungs, and it was clear by the flow of blood that his blood pressure had tanked. Despite the heat of the blood soaking into Wilbur’s fur, the boy’s skin was already too cold to the touch.

The scientist barely even looked at the wound. Instead, he opted to gently cradle the boy’s head in his lap and run his hand through fur slicked with blood, sweat, and nightmare fuel. Tyler gave no sort of indication that he even realized Wilson was present.

“Is there really…?” Winona started. Her voice wobbled with pain.

Again, Wilson shook his head. “These kinds of wounds take so much more than we can even do. Occlusive dressings, surgery, sterile environments. That’s assuming that it’s only deep enough to affect muscle. Evisceration… I can’t imagine this being able to happen without significant damage to vital organs. Even if we managed to stabilize him now, sepsis would do him in.” His sorrowful eyes landed on the slowing flow of blood. “And I don’t think there’s any hope of stabilizing him.”

There was a moment of silence as the group took in Wilson’s words. Considered them.

The robot screamed.

It was an awful sound, piercing and loud. Harsh and rough. One of their hands tore away from Tyler’s abdomen and reached for their neck, towards one of the necklaces hanging there.

It was something that Wilbur had only ever seen a few times, worn by this very person, but he had seen one a lot like it quite often. Instead of yellow, though, this one was red. Like its counterpart, it gave off a faint glow, although while Tyler’s necklace held a steady, soft light, this one seemed to pulse.

They ripped it off with an audible snap and pressed it against the boy’s chest with a harshness that was probably unnecessary. “ABSOLUTELY,” they hissed. “NOT.”

“Yes, fantastic idea, I’m sure that’ll help,” Wilbur said with absolutely zero confidence. He had no idea what the robot was doing, but the determination scrawled across their face told him that something was up. Perhaps they had simply gone mad

They leaned forward slightly, pressing on the gemstone harder than before as if they were trying to shove it through his ribs.

And for the longest time, nothing happened.

There was an unbelievable silence hanging over them. Wilson, giving space for them to come to terms with what was happening. Winona, shocked to silence with pupils shrunken to pinpricks. Wilbur, swallowing back the tears that welled in his eyes at the sensation of life slipping out from between his fingers.

Her body was slick with blood, her ocean blue eyes wild with panic and agony. Wilbur helplessly pressed against the wound bisecting her body, but he was all too aware that she was bleeding too quickly, losing too much blood. He was losing her. Her name settled in his throat, choking him until he whispered it over and over, just to get it out.

The longer it went on, the longer the terrible moments dragged out, the more tremors began to appear in the robot’s limbs. It started as a faint tremble in their hands before slowly enveloping their arms. They ducked their head away and refused to meet anyone’s eyes.

Wilbur cried the tears that they could not.

It happened all too quick and yet, far too slowly. Little by little, the quick, shallow breaths deteriorated into barely noticeable wheezes. A flow of blood impossible to stem slowed of its own accord as it slowly began to drain empty.

The boy’s life slipped from between their fingers.

Not like sand, but like water. Like blood.

Wilbur stepped back. His extremities felt ice cold. His mind hovered somewhere else, far disconnected from his body.

It took the robot longer to give up. They still seemed to cling to the hope that their gemstone amulet would do something, refusing to back away or relieve the pressure they put against it. Slowly, though, the desperation drained from their face. Their arms began to grow slack.

“IS THIS REVENGE?” It was a question asked tentatively. Guiltily. “IS THIS REVENGE FOR LEAVING THE WAY I DID?”

Movement from Wilbur’s side, and a quiet, disconnected voice. “WX…”

“I DID WHAT I THOUGHT I HAD TO,” they whispered. “I DID WHAT I THOUGHT… I THOUGHT WOULD SAVE YOU.” They drew their arms back and curled miserably into themselves. It failed to cover the gaping hole in their own abdomen, exposing sharp metal and disconnected wires that had long since stopped sparking.

“IT WAS SUPPOSED TO SAVE YOU,” they repeated.

They reached towards their brother again with hesitant movements. As if they weren’t sure they could touch him, even though they had already demonstrated the physical ability to. Instead, they let their hand rest on the amulet still resting on his chest. It pulsed under their touch.

Wilbur blinked at the sight, his mind and body suddenly slamming back together. He stared at the amulet for a long moment and winced when its light seemed to pulse again.

With each flicker of its glow, the color seemed to dim, the light fading.

Fading?

…no.

Draining.

The light, the glow was draining. It seemed to leak from the crystal and into Tyler’s chest. Lines slowly spiderwebbed away from it, tracing veins and arteries with slow progress.

And yes, the progress was slow. Inching forward by centimeters at a time. Wilbur could only watch, curious despite himself.

The robot said something again, but Wilbur wasn’t listening anymore.

The second the lines reached the terrible wounds across his chest, they seemed to recoil. Then, they stretched beyond the confines of the injury.

Wilbur didn’t miss the joy suddenly lighting up the robot’s ‘eyes’. The hope and excitement as bands of red light carefully pulled him back together.

They didn’t even wait until the wound had fully healed over. After only a moment, they pulled their brother to their chest, hands grasping his shoulders so hard Wilbur was sure they would bruise.

And yet, nobody told them to stop, or to loosen their grip. There was a good chance that the robot would actively harm anyone who even suggested they might pry the boy’s body from their arms. They held on like letting go would cause Tyler to fade away again. Like it was their grip holding him together instead of bands of tough tissue.

They remained in silence, holding vigil for someone who was still alive.

Or perhaps, they were holding vigil in acknowledgment of the moment happening in front of them. Two brothers finally reuniting after so much had happened. The miracle that the robot had been holding on to for far too long.

The only thing to finally tear Wilbur’s gaze away from them was the sight of faint movement in the direction of the amulet that had since fallen to the ground. The red light was entirely gone, the gemstone itself cracked. And from the crack, a delicate, glowing blue flower had grown, bright and beautiful.

A Glowing Tear Root.

(The tears of a god.)

…

Tyler did not wake up after that.

Even when the robot finally released him after a minimum of half an hour, the boy remained silent and limp. His breathing was fast and shallow, his heartbeat so faint they kept thinking it had stopped entirely.

The amulet had healed the wound that nearly killed him, but it was clear that his body was still in a bad way. Wilbur couldn’t help but worry that the massive amount of blood loss had led to permanent brain damage, and if that was the case, then it was impossible to know if he would ever wake up.

Wilbur fell into silent agreement with the robot to not mention this possibility, even though he was sure they would be aware of it as well.

There were a lot of questions that needed to be answered. Questions buzzed between them, but it took much longer than expected for any of them to be asked.

Predictably, it was Wilson who managed to gain the courage to speak.

He had been staring at the robot pretty much the entire time, even while they were properly cleaning and treating the wound on his chest. Each time Wilbur looked over, there was another question burning behind the scientist’s gray eyes as he looked them over. His gaze would always land on the hole in their abdomen, and the words would waver and die.

Wilbur was almost impressed when he managed to actually choke them out.

“You’re alive,” Wilson said. He sounded choked, like they weren’t the words he wanted but he couldn’t think of anything better. The robot simply glanced at him before turning back to their protective vigil.

“ON THE CONTRARY,” they said. “I HAVE NOT BEEN ALIVE FOR QUITE SOME TIME NOW.”

“But you’re here,” Wilson argued. “You’re… right here. You’re standing right in front of us.” He shook his head. “How…?”

“HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF A GHOST, WILSON?”

“You are not a ghost.”

They shrugged. “USE YOUR SCIENTIFIC METHOD, SCIENTIST.” As he opened his mouth, they quickly cut him off. “DO NOT PRETEND THAT YOU HAVE NEVER DIED BEFORE. THAT IS THE STATE I AM IN. EXISTENCE DOES NOT END WITH DEATH.”

“I’m not surprised to see you here,” Wilbur said to the robot. “I knew you were a weird one. You weren’t stuck in the Prison. Since you were able to move freely around Checkmate, it stands to reason you’d be able to come here, too.”

They nodded and pointed towards Wilbur with their thumb. “PRECISELY.”

“You… knew WX-78?” Winona forced out after a moment. The woman had been unnaturally quiet, something Wilbur kept in mind for later. He wasn’t sure how much she had seen since she had gone to check on Wilson as soon as they were released. He desperately hoped she had not seen the demon fall.

“We go wayyy back,” Wilbur said breezily as WX said:

“WE HAVE MET TWICE BEFORE.”

“Glad to see you’re still rocking-” Wilbur waved one hand towards the hole in their abdomen. “That ‘hole’ thing. Looks great on you.”

They almost seemed surprised by this, one hand moving to trace the shredded metal at the edge of the wound as if having forgotten about it entirely.

“Where did you get that necklace?” Wilson asked.

Again, they seemed startled. Had they really not expected any questions about their appearance? They tugged uncomfortably on the string around their neck, seashells clinking together musically. “I…”

Wilbur stepped in. “He means the magic one, Wix.”

“DO NOT CALL ME THAT.”

“Your name is unfairly long for only being four letters.”

“YOUR NAME IS UNORIGINAL AND UNINSPIRED.”

“Well I think it would get tiring to just keep calling you The Martyr,” Wilbur pointed out. “Especially since you’re kinda not. ‘Tyler’s Brother’ is cute but way too much of a mouthful. I know your full name is-”

“Guys.”

“Right, yeah. His question. The magic necklace?”

“A LIFE-GIVING AMULET,” they said. “RAW LIFE FORCE. IT WAS… AN APOLOGY.”

“An apology,” Wilson repeated dubiously.

“YES.”

“You were given a magical necklace with the ability to… what? Resurrect the dead? And you didn’t…?”

WX scoffed. “I CAN SEE YOUR CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS HAVE NOT IMPROVED. I WAS NEVER A LIVING CREATURE, WILSON. IT WOULD NOT HAVE WORKED ON ME. IF IT HAD, I WOULD NOT STILL BEAR THE WOUND THAT KILLED ME.”

“So you saved it for your brother?” Wilbur finished, eyes widening. “That’s adorable! Oh my goodness, he always talks about you like he thinks the world of you, and clearly you’re the same way! He’s gonna love hearing that.”

“I LOST MY LIFE PROTECTING WEBBER,” WX reminded him. “AND I HAVE SPENT MY DEATH LOOKING FOR WAYS TO SAVE HIM FROM HIS FATE. YOU OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD UNDERSTAND.”

“He goes by Tyler now,” Wilbur said. “But yes, don’t mind me squealing on the inside. That is adorable. I had no idea what I was missing out on until now.”

“If the life-giving amulet was supposed to heal him, then why is he still unconscious?” Wilson interrupted. As soon as the tension started to melt from WX’s shoulders, it reappeared full-force. They glared at the scientist as if it was somehow his fault.

“IN CASE YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN BASIC BIOLOGY,” they growled. “YOUR ORGANS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ON THE INSIDE.”

“Well, technically-”

“BEING EVISCERATED,” WX continued as if he hadn’t even spoken. “TAKES A LOT OUT OF YOU. TAKE IT FROM THE EXPERT.”

“But will he wake up?” Winona asked. Her voice was quiet, timid almost. Wilbur suspected his earlier hopes of her having not seen Nightmare had been dashed. “That… that was bad. Bad bad. Even with something like that amulet, how do we know…?”

WX seemed to puff up in anger. It was honestly amazing to see how much emotion they could put in their eyes while actively lacking such things, because Wilbur swore he could see rage glinting in their gaze. “YES. HE WILL.”

It was defensive. It was angry. It was… unsure.

Wilbur would not be the one to correct them.

“NEED I REMIND YOU HOW MANY TIMES HE HAS ALREADY NEARLY DIED? ON YOUR WATCH?” They gritted out. “STARVING IN A COLD RECEPTION. POISONED IN THE GAME IS AFOOT.” They squared out their shoulders. “SUICIDE IN THE KING OF WINTER. I HAVE BEEN THOROUGHLY UNIMPRESSED WITH YOUR ABILITY TO KEEP HIM ALIVE. I HAVE CLEARLY SHOWN THAT I AM SUPERIOR IN MY DUTIES, SO I AM LIBERATING YOU ALL FROM EVEN TRYING.”

“Nah, you can’t chase me away that easily. That’s my son now. Hmm.” Wilbur tipped his head. “If Ty’s my son, and you’re his brother, does that also make you my kid?”

“NO.”

“You’ll come around.”

“So that’s it?” Wilson demanded. Wilbur separated himself from the conversation and drew up next to Tyler again. If it weren’t for the faint movement of his chest, he would have believed the boy to have gone. As it was, though, he settled himself next to the boy and carefully started to clean his fur of blood and debris. “You died, WX. You’ve been gone for almost an entire year now. And then you just… reappear, like none of it ever happened? You’re not going to explain anything?”

“WHAT IS THERE TO EXPLAIN?”

Wilson threw his hands in the air. “Everything! Why you did what you did! What you’ve been doing for the past year! Why you just now decided to show yourself!”

“THOSE ARE THE QUESTIONS YOU HAVE?” They looked unimpressed. “TRULY, WILSON?”

“What questions do you expect me to have when you suddenly come back to life?”

“I AM NOT ALIVE. YOU HAVE SIMPLY ARRIVED IN A PLANE CLOSER TO DEATH THAN LIFE.”

“That only raises further questions.”

“THAT SOUNDS LIKE A ‘YOU’ PROBLEM.”

Regardless, they straightened themselves out and turned their gaze towards the others around them.

“THE PAST YEAR, I HAVE REMAINED FREE OF THE PRISON FOR… UNKNOWN REASONS. DURING THIS TIME, I HAVE DEALT WITH FORCES BEYOND WHAT YOU ARE USED TO. ‘NATURAL’ DOES NOT DESCRIBE WHAT NIGHTMARE  IS… WAS.” They glanced at Tyler. “CHARLIE WAS THE ONLY THING STOPPING IT FROM COMPLETE CONTROL.”

Winona twitched, ever-so-slightly, but she did not say anything.

“WHILE NIGHTMARE’S BACK WAS TURNED, I SPENT EVERY SECOND OF MY DEATH RESEARCHING. READING THE SOURCE CODE OF THE WORLD.”

“Spending an unhealthy amount of time watching us,” Wilbur piped up. “Considering you knew exactly what had happened to Ty in the previous worlds.”

“OBSERVING,” they corrected harshly. “WITH EVERY MEMORY OF THE WORLD AT MY FINGERTIPS, WOULD YOU EXPECT ME TO IGNORE THE GROUP THAT I ONCE WAS A PART OF? EVEN IF I HAD NOT KNOWN YOU PERSONALLY, YOUR… ESCAPADES… HAVE GENERATED BUZZ NOT SEEN IN THE PRISON FOR CENTURIES.”

“What were you trying to research?” Wilson asked.

They were quiet for a moment. They wore a contemplative look on their face, as if considering their options for a response. “I WAS HOPING TO FIND A WAY TO DEFY FATE.”

“Defy fate.” Wilson raised an eyebrow and chuckled. “Really? You’re turning poetic on us?”

“I AM NOT LAUGHING.”

“Well, then… what did you find?”

They did not immediately respond.

“WX?”

“NOTHING,” they said, and the defeat was obvious in their voice. Their shoulders slumped as though holding the weight of the world on them. “I FOUND NOTHING.”

 

[RhymesWChronic]

Chapter 96. Innocence - Part 4
 

 

Chapter 5 of 5

Darkness

 

WX-78’s POV

I stood, just out of the reach of the monochrome fire, and waited. The night air was oppressive and heavy, tendrils of darkness weaving in and out of the ground like snakes. I was lucky to be unable to smell the nightmare fuel, as I had seen just how badly it seemed to affect the others.

My companions? Would they even still consider me that, even after all this time?

The nervousness had been there, but now, it was beginning to overwrite the excitement. I wasn’t expecting to be anxious for this moment.

“WX?”

“CHARLIE,” I hummed in acknowledgment without looking in her direction. I didn’t need to; I could sense her standing beside me without even glancing.

“Are you planning on trying to talk to them?” Charlie asked, and her voice was gentle. I tipped my head towards her, surprised at the hesitance I could hear.

“OF COURSE,” I said. Did she expect me to try not to?

Neither of us were really sure if we would be able to interact with them, even as they passed through Darkness. No Survivor had ever been here before, as it had been almost exclusively inhabited by Nightmare and Charlie herself until I came along. There was no precedent on how this would go.

There was the possibility that we would be as invisible to them as ever, only capable of interacting through dreams in the best of times. Then, the possibility that we would be visible and/or audible, but unable to touch them. This one was preferable, if not the best outcome. I was little more than a ghost, after all; it would make sense that I would behave as a ghost in the presence of the living.

Then, there was the possibility that we both secretly hoped for.

That we would be fully corporeal to them, capable of appearing, speaking, and physically interacting. The thought was too good to be true, but that didn’t stop the hope that it could happen.

“Are you nervous?”

I scoffed. “WHY WOULD I BE NERVOUS?”

“You haven’t talked to them in almost a year,” Charlie said, still keeping that gentle note in her voice. “You’ve seen them grow without you. Are you worried that they won’t need you anymore?”

There was that pang of doubt in my chest, sharp and painful. It was true. I had never been a member of this group. The second Wilbur joined, they became a group now far removed from the one I knew. There were so many things that I was not there for. So many things that I wasn’t there to stop. Would they hold that against me?

“Are you worried that he won’t need you anymore?”

This was the point where I fully turned to glare at her. Charlie normally wasn’t one to be so pessimistic about something like this, which is why I was so surprised to see the serious, pitiful look on her face.

“WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME THIS?”

She dipped her head just an inch. “It was just a question, WX.”

It was then that something clicked, and I suddenly understood why she was asking a question like this. “ARE YOU ATTEMPTING TO COMFORT YOURSELF WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT I AM NERVOUS AS WELL?”

Charlie let out a soft chuckle at that, and she smiled sheepishly. “Well… you got me there.”

“I WOULD NOT HAVE EXPECTED THAT FROM YOU.”

“I don’t know how long it has been on Earth,” she said. “But to Maxwell and I, it has been hundreds of years. I can’t even remember the last time I saw Winona face-to-face.”

“AND YOU BELIEVE SHE WOULD HAVE FORGOTTEN YOU?”

Charlie hesitated at that, and I let the words hang. Perhaps I was also trying to draw comfort from our matched uneasiness.

“I… don’t know,” she admitted after a moment. “If she knew I was the one to bring her here…”

“SHE WOULD NOT CARE.”

“And you know that?”

No. “YES.”

Again, she laughed softly. “Thank you for that, even though you’re lying.”

She still looked deathly nervous, which I supposed made sense, if it really had been so long since she had seen her sister. I would never be able to fully grasp her emotions, and I knew that. She was human, or at least once human, and emotions were something natural to that kind. As I had learned, both from my personal experience and from watching thousands of years of history in the span of a few months, humans were naturally far more emotional than I was capable of being. Likely due to the nature of real versus simulated emotions, although that was not something I felt necessary to debate. She had grown up alongside Winona, raised in one family as a pair. Not only was I much younger than her, only a handful of years old (younger than Webber, even), but the first couple of years of my life had been lived under the thumb of a creator who held no love for me. The only person I would have considered my family I hated for the first year or so that I knew him, and only really understood the depth of our bond after I was unable to act on it.

Lastly, it had been a year since I last really had contact with him, and Charlie had been entirely isolated from everyone but Nightmare and Maxwell and the occasional Survivor since she was taken from Earth. Trying to make friends out of the toxic circle she had was futile, because no matter what, she would always outlive them. Even if she aged like a normal individual, nobody survived in the Constant.

Even if any of the circumstances were different: were I human, were I a semi-immortal being, were I capable of understanding emotions in the same way- I could never fully compare my situation to Charlie’s.

I hadn’t really understood the relationship between Charlie and Winona until recently. Winona had expressed to us, once upon a time, that she had come to the Constant in search of Charlie, but Charlie seemed to avoid speaking about her sister at all. The woman had been too concerned with the Hell that her life had become. She never was in the mood to share fun childhood stories, and I was often not in the mood to listen

She had grown visibly fond, though, seemingly remembering a life that I couldn’t imagine, as we waited just out of sight.

“She practically raised me, you know,” Charlie said.

I had heard Winona speak about this, but I had never heard it from Charlie. It seemed the situation at hand had finally brought on enough nostalgia for her to speak. “DID YOU NOT HAVE PARENTAL FIGURES?”

“We did,” she said. “But… it was never them I really listened to.” The fond smile grew more wistful as she spoke. “I refused to do anything that Winona wouldn’t do. I never had the same interest in mechanics as she did, but that didn’t stop me from trying to learn it… never stuck, but I certainly tried.” Charlie laughed, and I couldn’t help but give a faint smile as well. “I didn’t really have my own opinions until I was in my late teen years, I think. It wasn’t anything she did, it was just… you know. The way I was. Red wasn’t my favorite color, but Winona said it was her’s, so you’d better believe I told everyone my favorite color was red.”

She looked down at her hands, each finger tipped with claws. I didn’t need to ask her to know that she was looking over herself, the monster she had become since those days.

“You know I convinced myself that I liked chicken?” She chuckled. “For years, I genuinely believed I loved chicken. It wasn’t until William noticed that I never finished anything with chicken in it that I realized I never did enjoy it. Just convinced myself I did because Winona loved chicken.”

“I STRUGGLE TO SEE YOU SO DEPENDENT ON THE OPINION OF ANOTHER.”

“Peculiar to think of, right?” Charlie said wryly. Then, she sighed, and she suddenly seemed so much sadder than before. “The first thing I really did by myself was get that job as a magician’s assistant.” She clenched her fists. “...things would have been a lot different if I had continued to follow her lead.”

“SUCH DEPENDENCY IS NOT CONDUCIVE TO A FULFILLING LIFE,” I said. “IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT THAT A LUNATIC TOOK ADVANTAGE OF YOUR NAIVETY AND EAGERNESS.”

“...I suppose that is true,” she conceded. “...I really loved him, you know.”

Maxwell. William. I was aware. I did not answer.

“She always told me that there was something wrong with him. We had a fight, once. About him. I thought she was just mad that I was trying to become my own person. I didn’t really consider that she might be right…”

“DID HE LOVE YOU?” I asked, because I just had to know. William, before he had become Maxwell, was someone I knew even less about. For all I knew, he was exactly the same, and Charlie had been manipulated into falling in love.

She tipped her just, just a bit. “I’d like to believe so, yes. He had been the one to propose, after all. Before things went… poorly.”

“PROPOSE?” I echoed, a bit in confusion and a bit in surprise. “YOU WERE MARRIED?”

“Not quite. Engaged, but not married. Things got… pushed back a lot.” I began to ask another question, but the woman cut me off by raising one hand and shaking her head. “Let’s not talk about this now. Some other time, but not now.”

Which meant that Charlie was at the end of her willingness to speak. That was fine, I supposed. There were more important things to worry about, after all.

“Surely you are not awaiting the arrival without me, hmm?” The darkness materialized on Charlie’s other side, amorphous and grinning widely. I could see the faintest of flinches in Charlie’s shoulders as Nightmare rested a hand on the back of her neck. “Charlotte, you must be so excited to soon meet your end.”

Without even really thinking about it, I put myself between Nightmare and Charlie, practically forcing the demon back and planting myself firmly in place. Nightmare chuckled, a grating sound that made my hearing modules ache.

“Come now, Little Pet, you must understand my own excitement at the events to unfold.”

“BACK OFF,” I growled. “NOTHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN.”

“Are you sure about that?” Cold shadows wreathed around my feet as Nightmare inched closer. “How can you control the narrative of this story, Little Pet, when you can’t even truly figure out what part you play in it? Were you ever really a part of the group you are so desperate to be a part of again? You realize that Alter created souls to befriend the Sibling, correct?”

I wanted nothing more than to push Nightmare away again, but I couldn’t deny the interest I suddenly took in its words. I recognized that name- Alter. If I remembered properly, it was the Moon God. But creating souls, that part I was unsure of. My lack of immediate response elicited a soft chuckle from the demon.

“Oh, Little Pet. You cannot even fathom the information you are lacking about this world. The Sibling was the first, but they were not the last. They begged Alter for companionship, and that is what they gave them. Four souls for four people. Born again and ripped apart, but brought together for the end. But without a soul, Automaton… what makes you think you were ever meant to be one of them?”

“Tyler is not the Sibling,” Charlie growled from behind me.

“No, perhaps not. But would it not make sense for the four original souls to come back to defend the Sibling’s successor? And if three of those four souls are now doing exactly that…?” Nightmare crowded further into my space, enough that I struggled to keep myself strong and steady in its wake. “Then what does that make you, Soulless Automaton?”

“WHAT IS YOUR GRUDGE AGAINST HIM?” I demanded, which only served to amuse the demon further.

“Oh, you have it all wrong!” It proclaimed. “I have no such grudge against the Boy, Little Pet! Grudges of that variety were not passed on to me. Did you ever consider that I just… particularly enjoy the sound of that Boy’s screams?”

“That’s enough Nightmare,” Charlie snapped, which for some reason, seemed to delight Nightmare.

“Oh, Charlotte, that reminds me!” Without expending an ounce of effort, Nightmare phased past me, instead pushing up against Charlie and grinning wildly into her face. “You see, with my new host coming straight to my door, I came to the realization that I have to dispose of the old!” Charlie took a step back, chased closely by Nightmare. “Come now, don’t resist. You know I enjoy the thrill of the hunt, but time is running quite short now, hmm?”

She stiffly turned her head away, but it didn’t stop writhing darkness from wrapping tightly around her neck and dragging her to the ground. The second I moved, Nightmare easily pushed me away without even looking in my direction. Charlie, to her credit, did not make a sound, but I could see the way her shoulders trembled as Nightmare looked down at her.

“Do not worry,” it cooed. “It will all be over soon, Charlotte.”

And with that, Nightmare’s visage fizzled out of existence, leaving me alone with the woman on her knees, staring down at the ground. I already knew it had taken full control, even before it slowly dragged itself to its feet and stretched its arms out, face stretched into an unnaturally wide grin and eyes twisted with pinprick-red pupils.

“That is so much better, now isn’t it?”

…

I knew the night air would be cool, though I could not feel it myself. The landscape glimmered eerily as the moonlight caught on dew-covered blades of grass. Normally, the presence of nightmare fuel would have rendered the moonlight useless, but most of the fuel had melted away by now. All that was left was congealing puddles that slowly absorbed back into the earth, back into the core of the world.

It was quiet. So, so quiet.

Nightmare had lost its grip on Darkness, which should have invited a bright, warm feeling over the land. Instead, it felt still and silent, as if the world itself was mourning its oldest resident.

It had been so long since I had interacted with more than one person at a time. I found myself overwhelmed by it, needing just a few moments to myself. I needed some time to come to terms with what had happened, just twenty-four hours ago.

Charlie was gone.

Her presence had once been my only solace, separated from life as I was. If it weren’t for her, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to hold my own against Nightmare’s suffocating presence. Still, in the puddles of nightmare fuel that crept at the edges of my vision, I still thought I would see her. I knew she was gone, and yet… I somehow struggled to come to terms with it. I struggled to truly grasp the idea that the long-reigning Nightmare Captor was gone. Destroyed.

Alas, my desire to be left alone was not going to be fulfilled. I stiffened as I heard footsteps from somewhere behind me, but I did not turn around. It didn’t matter who it was. It wouldn’t be anyone that mattered.

“HAS HIS CONDITION CHANGED?” I asked, assuming that the one thing that would cause the others to seek me out to be something related to Webber.

“No, sorry.” It was Winona. She sounded strangely… timid. Nervous. At the sound of her voice, I glanced over my shoulder.

The woman, for lack of better terms, looked like crap. Deep bags had sunken in under her eyes, bloodshot from lack of sleep or crying or both. Her sleeves were tattered and torn from using them for makeshift bandages, which only really added to how tired and miserable she looked. I could see her eyes flicker down to the wound in my stomach for just a second before they settled back on my face.

“THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE?”

“What happened?” She blurted, wincing back at her own question. When I simply stared at her for a moment, she folded her hands together and fiddled uncomfortably with her own fingers. “I… Charlie. I just want to know what happened with… my sister.” She swallowed hard, once again casting her gaze away. Suddenly, her haphazard appearance made much more sense.

With a grunt of effort, I pushed myself back to my feet and offered her a hand. “COME WITH ME.”

Again, she winced, even though my movements were not at all hostile. Did she think I was going to hit her?

“Is… there something you have to show me?”

“NO. BUT IT APPEARS THAT I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO NEEDS TIME TO GRIEVE.”

With that, Winona nodded hesitantly and took the offered hand.

I had lost the ability to feel a lot of things, but strangely enough, the living was not one of those things. I could still feel the warmth from her skin, the prickling knowledge of being observed, the heat of blood caking my fingers-

They were clean. Washed off of any blood. But in the back of my mind, I swore they were stained red-black for just a moment.

“SHE HAD BECOME A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE,” I mused to the empty air in front of me as we walked. “IT WAS DIFFICULT NOT TO ADMIRE HER. I DO NOT BELIEVE I SHARED THAT WITH HER ENOUGH. I SUPPOSE I LET MY OBSESSION CLAIM ME JUST A BIT TOO MUCH.”

“When Tyler… stabbed Nightmare. Would that… could she have survived that?”

“NO,” I answered immediately. I was not about to give Winona false pretenses that her sister was still alive after that. “CHARLIE WAS STRONG, BUT SHE WAS NEVER STRONGER THAN NIGHTMARE. IT WAS SOMETHING FAR BEYOND HER ABILITIES TO FIGHT BACK. IT CONSUMED HER BODY, AND WITH NIGHTMARE’S DESTRUCTION, IT WOULD HAVE SIMPLY CAUSED HER TO FALL TO PIECES. YOU DO NOT SURVIVE BEING NIGHTMARE’S HOST.”

“You could have stopped that fight from happening, though, right?” She pressed. Suddenly, her voice had hardened and turned very, very serious. “You could have stepped in. You could have forced Tyler to back off. Why didn’t you? Why did you just let her die?” Accusatory. I should have reacted with anger to it, and perhaps I would have under any other circumstance, but instead, I just felt defeated.

“YOU WOULD NOT UNDERSTAND-”

“Then make me understand, WX-78.” She stopped abruptly, her grip tightening on my hand and forcing me to stumble back from the step I was in the middle of. Her voice cracked. “Make me understand why you just stood by and… and let that happen.”

“WINONA-”

“And what about Tyler?” She threw her hands out, a flare of anger lighting in her brown eyes. “You could have stopped that from happening, too. He nearly died, WX-78, and you just let Nightmare get to him. Don’t you care about any of that? Any of them-?”

I swung around with a violence that I had not possessed before as rage flooded my system. The woman was grieving, I understood that, but I couldn’t help be blinded by the fury her accusations made me feel. I managed to keep my hands to myself, but I wasn’t able to keep myself from forcing myself into her face, shoulders stiff and voice low. “YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO ACCUSE ME OF NOT CARING ABOUT CHARLIE OR WEBBER. I HAVE DONE EVERYTHING I CAN TO SAVE HIM. I DEDICATED MY DEATH TO SAVING HIM. CHARLIE WAS TOO FAR GONE BEFORE I EVEN CAME TO THIS WORLD. SHE WAS LIVING ON BORROWED TIME, IT WAS NOT MY DUTY TO BABYSIT HER.” Winona took a step back, but I followed it. “DO YOU EXPECT ME TO FIGHT OFF NIGHTMARE, WINONA? DID YOU EXPECT ME TO STAND IN THE WAY OF THE MOST POWERFUL BEING IN THE UNIVERSE? DEFENDING AGAINST NIGHTMARE, NO MATTER WHAT, WOULD MEAN HARMING CHARLIE. WHAT HAPPENED TO HER WAS NOT MY FAULT.”

She seemed to falter at this. The fire faded back into the melancholy state she had been in prior and she let out a sigh. “I’m- sorry. I didn’t mean to… I just…”

“I DID WHAT I COULD FOR WHO I COULD. I WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN STRONG ENOUGH TO SAVE YOUR SISTER.”

The quiet moment after that seemed to stretch on for far too long. Winona seemed to be waiting for me to continue.

“I WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO STOP THE FIGHT FROM HAPPENING. IF I HAD TRIED TO STOP NIGHTMARE, I WOULD HAVE BEEN DESTROYED FOR THE ATTEMPT. OR TORTURED,” I added, just in case she didn’t realize how dire the situation was. “IF I HAD TRIED TO STOP WEBBER, I WOULD HAVE ONLY DISTRACTED HIM, AND HE WOULD HAVE BEEN DESTROYED BY NIGHTMARE WITH NO HOPE OF SAVING.” I noticed a moment too late that I was toying with the seashells around my neck again, but I didn’t force myself to stop. My neck felt bare without the life-giving amulet that had hung from it for so long, but at least the flower tied to the string of my necklace simulated the glow of it.

“Then… why didn’t you reveal yourself when we first got here? Before Nightmare appeared at all?”

That… was a question I had been anticipating, really. Wilson had asked it as well, although I had been more concerned with other issues at the time. And it wasn’t an answer I felt entirely content giving. The reasons weren’t world-shattering but they weren’t… the most flattering.

Still, I had a feeling I would be asked this a lot before they finally just accepted me back, so it would be better to get it out of the way now

“I WAS SCARED.”

A simple answer, but one I hated all the same. Winona seemed to come to what most would consider to be the logical conclusion. “Of Nightmare? It was only able to attack in the darkness, though. If you had stayed in the light…”

“OF NIGHTMARE, YES.” I couldn’t even try to deny that. It was the mark of a moron to not be scared of Nightmare. (Webber.) “BUT OF YOU AS WELL.”

“Of… us?”

“YES.”

Winona seemed completely baffled by this.

“YOU MUST UNDERSTAND. I HAVE WATCHED YOU, AS A GROUP, SURVIVE EACH OF MAXWELL’S WORLDS. I HAVE WATCHED EVERY TRIAL YOU HAVE COME ACROSS, AND EVERY PROBLEM YOU HAVE SOLVED TOGETHER.” I kept her gaze evenly. “WHO WAS I TO BREACH THE BOND YOU HAVE CREATED?”

“What?” She blurted out. “What are you-? WX-78, why would you-?”

“I WAS NEVER A PART OF YOUR GROUP,” I pointed out. “I FAILED TO BOND WITH ANY ONE OF YOU, EXCEPT FOR WEBBER. IF I PRESENTED MYSELF WHEN YOU FIRST ARRIVED, THERE WAS NO WAY FOR ME TO BE SURE I WOULD BE ACCEPTED.”

“You were scared,” she repeated, slowly, as if she could understand it. “That doesn’t…”

I smiled wryly. “SOUND LIKE ME? YOU DID NOT GET TO KNOW ME VERY WELL, WINONA, BEFORE MY UNTIMELY DEATH.”

She let out an awkward laugh, although there was no joy in it. “Haha, yeah, I mean… I suppose.”

“IF YOU WISH TO BLAME ME FOR CHARLIE’S DEATH,” I said. “THEN THAT IS YOUR CHOICE. I WILL NOT BLAME YOU FOR IT, AS I COULD HAVE ATTEMPTED TO STEP IN EARLIER.” I let my face harden as I continued. “BUT I WILL NOT TOLERATE BLAME FOR MY BROTHER.”

Her eyes widened in surprise, which only served to irritate me. Did she expect I would gladly take blame for his injury? For his near-death? Wilbur thinking such, I could understand more, but Winona had seen how I had died. She had been the one to tell Webber…

“You… you called him your brother.”

Oh.

The irritation immediately switched to embarrassment. I finally backed away from her, letting my gaze drift elsewhere as I mumbled: “DID YOU BELIEVE I FELT OTHERWISE?”

“It’s not that,” she argued. “It’s just… I never really expected you to flat out say it.”

“AS I SAID. YOU DID NOT GET TO KNOW ME VERY WELL BEFORE MY DEATH.”

“It’s not just that, though, is it?” She pressed. “You’ve grown since then. I think even Tyler would agree that you never would have called him that before.”

I let out a noncommittal hum. “PERHAPS NOT.”

The next pause was less awkward than the previous one, which I felt eternally grateful for. Eventually, though, Winona sighed and crossed her arms loosely. “I’m… going to head back. You coming with me?”

I hesitated. While I wanted to keep an eye on things going on, I was not eager to be surrounded again by people. Are you worried that they won’t need you anymore?

Still, I had been out long enough. I had learned my lesson about trusting these people to keep Webber from running off and killing himself. Sometimes literally, apparently. We have to talk about that, I realized with an internal groan. When he wakes up.

‘When he wakes up’. I was being awfully optimistic these days, wasn’t I?

The truth was, I had no idea if he would wake up. I could have been too late in giving him the life-giving amulet. The immense blood loss could have caused him to go into a vegetative state that nothing could repair. The amulet repaired the most visible damage, but I had no way of telling if it fixed everything internally as well. One missed nick, one single scratch that hadn’t been healed, and the boy’s body would be riddled with sepsis. He could simply fade away again from organ failure. Literally anything was still up in the air, and we wouldn’t be able to truly know anything until he either woke up, or…

Until he woke up.

Because he would. He would.

(He had to)

I didn’t say anything to Winona, but I allowed her to lead me back. The monochrome fire had long since burned out, but it wasn’t really necessary anymore for light purposes. The moon was bright enough to allow them to see without it. Still, though, the others weren’t entirely idiots. A normal fire was burning, warm and bright. For them, it might have been an instinct thing. For me, I was just glad to see there was something protecting Webber from shock-induced hypothermia.

Speaking of which, it appeared that Wilbur was the one tending to the boy at the moment. Given, that was true more often than not, but I was still glad to see it. I had seen the way Wilson had treated him up until now, and no amount of potentially divine intervention was going to make me trust that man with him again.

Wilbur had taken to practically sleeping on top of the kid long before the injury, so it wasn’t a surprise to see him curled around him, but Wilbur was being surprisingly gentle about it. The amulet had healed the wound, yes, but the new scar tissue was still fresh and unappealing to look at. There was no doubt it would be causing pain even now, but Webber seemed entirely oblivious to it. Still, Wilbur was careful to not touch the scars except to check for the heat of infection, which I couldn’t help but be thankful for.

As soon as I came over to them, Wilbur started to speak. “I’m worried,” he blurted. He didn’t look at me, instead focusing on dancing fingers that carefully cleaned Webber’s fur of mud and blood, but I could see the tension in his shoulders.

“WE ARE AWARE THAT HE IS IN A COMATOSE STATE,” I said as I settled beside them. It was peculiar to see Webber’s face so slack and at peace. Even while sleeping, he often held a scowl on his face, or even sometimes bared fangs. Even though Wilbur had clearly been religiously checking, I couldn’t help but check for his pulse. It was present, but weak. Fluttering and slow, always feeling like each beat took just a moment longer than the last.

“It’s not just that,” Wilbur pressed. His face creased with worry and I noticed him tugging a little too hard on a knot, even if Webber didn’t react to it. “If that wound was supposed to kill both of them… who would be coming back? Webber or Tyler? Or both? What if all of this was for nothing and we still lose Tyler anyway? What would we even do if it’s Webber who wakes up?” At this, he looked up at me. “What would we do?”

I was well aware of this risk. In fact, this risk had been running rampant in my head on repeat for months now. It had been the very reason I hesitated to use it in the first place.

I had personally seen a discussion between Maxwell and the spider about this very topic. This was exactly what he had wanted.

And yet, there was a chance that my brother would be the one to prevail. That was the chance I had to cling to. Just because the spider wanted to use the life-giving amulet did not mean it would succeed in that. It simply meant that I had kicked the ball into Webber’s- Tyler’s- whatever- court, and it was up to that boy to take it and win.

“THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN,” I decided out loud. “HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN FAR TOO STUBBORN. I HAVE NO DOUBT IN MY MIND THAT HE WILL WAKE UP, AND IT WILL BE HIM. NOT A SPIDER.”

Wilbur pressed his mouth into a thin line, his expression innately uncomfortable and unconvinced. And, before I could stop him, he said those words that I was tired of hearing, tired of thinking, tired of believing. “That’s assuming that he wakes up at all.”

“HE WILL,” I snapped. I looked at the boy- at my brother. His fur mostly cleaned of blood but still slick with nightmare fuel and sweat, the fresh, ugly scars that bore three long, wide portions of skin on his stomach, the too-slow, too-weak heartbeat, the shallow breaths that were so faint you could barely even see them. And I felt that familiar ache settle in my chest. I had to come to terms with the possibilities, but I couldn’t give it up. If it took a day, if it took a year, he would wake up.

He had to.

 

[RhymesWChronic]

Chapter 97. Innocence - Part 5

 

 

Chapter 5 of 5

Darkness

 

 

Tyler’s POV

 

The world was warm, and the air was still. I felt like I was flying… or perhaps floating. Yes, floating, that was it. Floating in a void of warm, comforting black. It was soft, comforting. A sigh of contentment left my chest. When was the last time I had felt such comfort? Such safety?

The inky darkness around me cradled my body like a pillow. My thoughts were slow and drowsy, but I was able to make small observations. It felt like this little place was carved out for me. Perfectly formed to my shape.

The memories it brought back were of an easier time. It was the sensation of being held close, the gentle heartbeats of my parents thrumming in my ear, or drifting off to the rhythmic sound of someone breathing near me. It brought memories of crowding next to a hearth blazing with contained flames after staying out in the snow all day.

The urgency to leave this state was nonexistent. I was warm and content in a way that I hadn’t been in years, and I was not keen to leave it soon.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware that I was dying. And yet, I couldn’t find it in myself to care. In the past, I had never been given this comfort. The one time I had come this close, Nightmare had dragged me away before I could truly find peace.

But now, Nightmare wasn’t here. It was just me, floating endlessly in a void, as my senses drifted, one by one. If this is what it felt to die, then I would be happy to do so. More than happy. This was what I had wanted all along, wasn’t it?

And now, I felt no pain, no worry, no fear.

And then… there was something solid beneath me. The sense of incorporeality fled in a moment’s instance, causing my body to suddenly feel heavier than before. Sensation gradually spread to my limbs again, until I was aware of every finger and toe, every wisp of hair and inch of skin.

I opened my eyes.

The place before me held a strange sort of familiarity. Warm, golden light streamed through an open window and landed delicately on my skin. My back was pressed against wooden flooring, worn down by years of foot traffic.

The walls, though, and ceiling, were not the same as my old childhood home. Instead, thick swathes of silk stretched across them, concealing the old colors entirely in a sea of white. As I slowly pushed myself into a sitting position, I noticed that the webbing was entirely around me. Here and there, I recognized little things from my old life, like the mantle with its collection of cracked picture frames and the window that was always just a little too tall for me. The rest had been consumed by silk.

I swallowed hard. Why did it still feel so… familiar? Like an itch in the back of my brain?

As I climbed to my feet, I recognized that I was taller than I would have been in any of my old memories. Given, I was certainly not as short as a five-year old anymore, but to be both my current age and in a human form… it was unnatural for me. The window was no longer too tall for me to look out of, and I didn’t have to strain at all to grab the pictures from the mantle.

The last time I had seen this place, in the vision given to me by the unknown entity, these frames had been smudged and cracked. Now, they were entirely blacked out, like someone had dumped them in black paint and left them to dry.

My movements felt clumsy and stilted. The floor was uneven, a messy hodgepodge of wood and clumps of built-up silk. On top of that, my feet felt numb and heavy, as though I was wearing cement shoes instead of soft socks. Still, I pushed forward, making my way towards the opening that I knew would lead to the kitchen.

The second I stepped out of the room, though, I found myself outside. Still human, still nine years old, but now looking out over a hilly landscape that had once been familiar to me. It had always been dotted with holes, some wider than others, but I couldn’t help but feel the twinge of nostalgia as I recognized the opening that had formed when WX and I, long ago, had fallen through the ground. The memory was faint but fond, of stalking the robot and pouncing on them to frighten them. Of convincing them to explore and finding this patch of hollow ground. That was when we had first found Erika again, before I even remembered who she really was.

Wilson had been furious when I returned home. It hadn’t been my fault that the fall had injured me, and that the cave spiders had been so willing to patch me up!

I started forward, careful to avoid the sinkholes that had formed over time. It appeared as though there were more than usual. A little bit further ahead, I was easily able to find another recognizable sinkhole.

This one had come later, I remembered, and the memory was fresher. This was when I had met Winona, when we had been chased down by the Bearger. It had been the first time I had learned how to really use my whiskers to make up for my vision difficulties. The woman hadn’t even known me, but she had immediately tried to help me, even though I had become so used to the dangers of living in this world and she had only been here a week. Realistically, she should have been terrified of me. And yet, she had never pressed about my condition, had only calmly waited for me to explain things instead of bombarding me with questions about my appearance.

I couldn’t help but wonder: how would things have gone if she hadn’t come around when she did? I could see her trying to downgrade just how much her presence had helped me through the tough times. I would have to tell Winona how much I appreciated her when I saw her again. And I would have to tell her that I was sorry. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I knew that it was important for me to do that.

I continued walking, although I wasn’t sure of what my destination was or if I was going in the right direction. Something simply tugged me along, and I felt no choice but to follow it to see where it took me.

The hills turned to trees, and soon I found myself in a clearing that just barely teased the edges of my memory. There wasn’t anything special to behold, simply a patch of bare grass surrounded by tall pine trees. And yet, I recognized it all the same.

We had woken up here. The original three of us. I had only been seven years old, entirely on my own for the past two years, and I had been so scared of them that I immediately lashed out. I had growled and snapped, all the while desperately hoping they wouldn’t realize that their mere presence brought me more fear that I could express. Fear was weakness. Weakness was death.

Our very first interaction hadn’t been hostile, but it had been anything but polite.

“Whoa… can you speak?”

“WHAT ARE YOU?”

I stood there for a long moment, frowning lightly at the grass. Another memory sprung into the back of my mind, one that I had long since forgotten about. A dream, a nightmare, call it what you will. Voices that I had heard before waking up.

At the time, I wasn’t familiar with the voices. There had been four people speaking, and only two had been in front of us. Even then, I would not have been able to recognize them even if all five of us had been present, if nothing more than just because of how different they sounded.

The voices drifted to me again, although they no longer felt as though coming from a dream. They echoed from beyond where I stood, people speaking about me from a place I couldn’t presently observe.

“How is he doing? …Do you think he’ll be okay?” Winona. The first one to speak. Her voice was pitched with concern, but dull with pain and grief. Whether it was aimed at me or not, I couldn’t tell. Still, though, I longed to reach out, to let her know that I heard.

“I... no. I can't say that... that I think he'll pull through. That wound…” Wilson. He sounded uncertain and defeated… and distracted. Like he was answering a question that he didn’t care too much about, or a question that he didn’t want to acknowledge. Perhaps a mixture of both. I felt my hands clench involuntarily as harsh gray eyes and a glittering gray knife flashed behind my eyes, but… I had forgiven him for that. It didn’t mean I wasn’t scared of it anymore.

“He can't die... I won't let him. Please, we can save him, right? Right!?” Wilbur. He was trying to hide it, but I could hear the panic in his voice. I couldn’t quite remember what had happened to land me in this place of sunlight and memories, but whatever it was, it must have been terrifying to cause Wilbur to be so terrified.

It was the fifth voice to speak that caught me most off guard. The one that I expected the least, if nothing else than because of how impossibly soft it was. “I JUST GOT BACK, KID. YOU CAN’T LEAVE US NOW. DO YOU HEAR ME? YOU WILL PULL THROUGH, I SWEAR. I’LL DO ANYTHING TO MAKE SURE OF IT.” They sounded so gentle, so unnaturally not them. Yet, I still recognized my brother’s voice. If I was dying, then what would happen to me? Would I see them again, or would I…?

I reached out towards the sky, blinking against the sunlight and grasping uselessly for the voices that I could no longer reach. My vision blurred for a second, and I was confused until I blinked and a single tear rolled down my cheek, which was an unfamiliar feeling all on its own. I was used to my tears soaking into my fur. It tickled.

Either they had stopped speaking, or I had drifted further away. Either way, I couldn’t reach them. I couldn’t hear their voices anymore.

So, I did what I had been doing the entire time, and continued onward. What else was I to do?

As I walked through my old stomping grounds, little events that happened at each of these places came to mind.

That was the hill I had tackled WX down once, when we angered the tree guard and received our very first set of ‘possibly fatal’ wounds. The memory was amusing now, and I couldn’t help but chuckle faintly as I remembered that stupid fight. Then again, had we really had any legitimate fights? It had all just been petty drama, really.

That was the place where we were attacked by hounds and adopted the little pup Popsicle. Even just the thought of the ice hound brought unexpected pain to my chest. Even as he had gotten bigger, he had never shown any sort of violence or wildness towards me. He had always been loyal, to the very end.

What are you doing now, Popsicle? I wondered faintly, pausing for a moment to think. Some part of me hoped that he had found a new pack to be a part of, but then what of Chester and Pyrite? Chester, surely, would go back to whatever life the little creature had been living before coming to us, but Pyrite…

I sighed and shook my head. I hoped Popsicle was taking care of her. He always had a fondness for the lavae. I couldn’t imagine him abandoning her for anything.

Further still, and the ground shifted from mud and grass to cold, clean flooring. The chill of marble immediately sunk into my feet, but it was far more than that that caused the faint shivers that wracked my body. I pushed through it until I stood, once more, in front of the Teleportato.

What a name for such a device. A machine that had always been present in our world- what would have happened if we had used that instead of Maxwell’s Door? Where would we be right now? Would it have taken us home?

Even though rain and wind would have washed away all signs of what happened here, it still felt like very wood was soaked with agony. I reached forward and ran my hand over the smooth wood until I found the small notch that I was looking for. It was thin and narrow, just wide enough to indicate something stabbing into it, like a knife. It was lower down than I remembered, something that really struck me as I realized just how much smaller I had been back then, when that notch was formed.

It was strange to realize that Wilson never would have been able to kill me. Nightmare never wanted me dead. It wanted me weak enough to control. And yet… how did it fail back then? How were the injuries done to me not enough for Nightmare to possess me?

I turned away from the Teleportato, unable to look at it any further. Such terrible things had happened here, things that would forever leave me scarred and broken. But I survived this event, if nothing else than because of the dedication of my best friend. My brother.

Soon, I left it far behind, where it deserved to stay. The tug continued to pull me onward, pulling with increasing intent. I was nearing my destination.

The trees suddenly broke away, a small stretch of grass overlooking the sharp drop into the ocean. I felt my breath catch in my throat as I inched towards the edge, the ocean’s mist speckling my hair and eyelashes with fine droplets.

The waves were quieter than they had been that day. They were calmer, lapping against the smooth rock like a catcoon cleaning its kittykit. It was nothing like the torrent that had so eagerly claimed me.

Then again, maybe it just seemed that way because of my eagerness to meet it. At the time, I had not realized the aching desire lurking in my brain. The black stain that had twisted a fundamental part of my being into wanting nothing more than to simply stop existing. I hadn’t understood why my feet kept bringing me closer to the edge. Why I was so desperate to taunt the world that had taken so much from me, and was fully capable of taking everything I had left.

Popsicle had tried so hard to save me, but he should have known it was a futile effort. He should have known that the only way for me to fully grasp the situation was to stare death in the eyes and realize that I wanted to live.

And it was true. I wanted to live. I wanted to live.

I want to live.

I want to live.

If only I had realized that sooner. If only I had come to terms with that dark part of myself so long ago, then maybe it wouldn’t have festered for so long. Maybe it wouldn’t have spread so far and burned so deep.

A sharp pain in my stomach jolted me from my thoughts. I groaned lowly and doubled over, pressing hands against the spot that the pain was originating from.

Nightmare. The sword. Looking down and seeing… seeing…

A wound, so different yet so much like the one that had killed my brother.

The laughter that bubbled in my throat was more than a little hysterical, and every single laugh jolted sharp lines of fire through my veins, but what else could I do? I had looked death in the face once more, and this time I fought back.

And look where it got me.

Laughing hysterically on the edge of the cliff where I once tried to end my own life.

I wasn’t even sure if my attempt had worked. I had no idea what happened after I thrust the sword through Nightmare’s body. I didn’t know if it had even done anything

But I had made an attempt… that was more than I would have been able to say before. I had fought back against my death.

I turned on my heel, away from the cliff, and just as I did, the scenery changed. The smell of salt that had permeated the air vanished in an instant and the pebbles beneath my feet softened and spread

Until I stood, alone, facing a towering pile of silk. And at the very top of the den crouched a spider, fangs bared and claws ready to strike.

I simultaneously felt too young and too old. Too big for the body I was in, too small for the world that surrounded me. Had I felt like that back then? I… couldn’t even truly remember what I felt back then other than piercing grief.

But then, the spider paused. It lowered its claws and straightened its stance, eyes narrowed as it surveyed me.

And I realized, just a moment too late, that this was not how the memory went. That this was not a memory at all anymore.

“I remember this day,” said the spider. His voice was low, hoarse almost. Just a whisper of a growl on the breeze. “My colony was starving, Tyler. The settlements crept closer, and with every new construction, more animals fled. The beefalo and volt goats were captured and placed in pens, while humans would kill every spider that they laid eyes on.” He inched a little closer, the web trembling under his weight. “The beefalo we did find were wild and lean, not the pathetic plump creatures overfed by the humans and butchered for meat. Meat that was stolen from us.” A hiss rattled in the air, but I wasn’t sure if it had come from him. His mouth didn’t move to make the noise. “My colony was starving. My queen was starving. I was starving. Because of what your people did to us.”

“I… I had no part in any of that.”

“Rubbish,” he spat. “You grew fat from the food you stole from us. You wasted food that would have fed my colony for weeks because of your pickiness. And your family took to the fields and slaughtered hundreds of us, simply for trying to survive.” Short, wiry fur prickled along his body as he inched closer still. “And in the end, you stole everything from me.”

“I didn’t do anything!” I protested. “Do you think I specifically chose for this to happen?” It was always this argument. Always the same points.

At that, he only chuckled. Light on his claws, he jumped to the ground in order to brush past my legs. Somehow, his fur felt thicker and more wiry than my own had been. “Well, luckily for the both of us, none of that is important anymore.” I didn’t respond but he must have known how the comment would leave me confused, because he glanced back and smirked. “Because we’re dying now, right?”

I stepped away, severing contact. Is this truly what was happening?

“It was quite the spectacle, really,” he mused. “Who would have thought that there was so little really holding your body together?” He clacked his front claws together, the sudden sound making me jump.

That was what had happened, wasn’t it? And my friends would have to see me…

“Don’t worry, though!” Suddenly cheerful, the spider turned again to face me with a positively amused expression. “Because a little birdy told me that one of your friends had a life-giving amulet. Doesn’t that just sound splendid?”

All of the information in that one sentence hit me at once, and I struggled to unpack it. I decided to focus on what I deemed to be the most important part of it. “A life-giving amulet,” I echoed flatly. “What is that?”

As I asked the question, the tug in my chest returned tenfold. I gasped out loud at the sudden sensation. It felt as though it was attempting to tear my heart from my chest. As such, it beat frantically and out of rhythm. I immediately grasped at it, fingers sinking into fabric and skin instead of fur and chitin.

It was an urgency I had never felt before. When I had been compelled towards the Teleportato in the past, it had been an urge. Like someone had tied a string to my heart and tugged at it whenever I tried to get off track. This, however, felt more like something had grabbed directly onto the organ and yanked. I stumbled forward a few paces even though I still struggled against my own lungs and heart.

I couldn’t breathe.

I knew with an undying certainty that the pull was leading me towards the only thing that would make my lungs work again.

So I followed it, as best as I could while stumbling helplessly into trees and bushes. My legs were suddenly too weak to carry me; my knees trembled with every step.

Would this truly be my end? After everything that had happened, everything I had gone through, was I doomed to suffocate due to the failings of my own body?

At some point, I wasn’t exactly sure when, the scene gradually melted back into the web-covered living room I had originally woken up in. The tree that my shoulder slammed into turned abruptly into a wall, and the force of the impact nearly sent me spiraling to the ground.

From just a few paces away, the spider watched.

He seemed to find amusement in my failing body. Even as I stood still, I could feel liquid building in my lungs. My throat seemed to close in on itself and I fell to my knees, heaving. Blood was blocking my airway, and I couldn’t breathe.

Splatters of red stained the webbing, but there was always more coming up.

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I felt my own organs decaying inside of me until it felt like my body was nothing more than an empty shell. I was drowning in my own blood, and it covered my hands and dripped from my eyes. Through blurred vision, all I could make out was a splotch of black and specks of red.

Red like blood.

Red like anger.

Red like life.

One hand grasped at my throat, spasming wildly, and the other desperately reached forward. I tried to speak, but all that came out was wet, choked sounds. Still, the words rose in my throat, over and over again, as desperation gripped me.

I need it.

I need it.

IneeditIneeditIneedit-

Another gasp, more blood in my lungs, but I needed it, so despite the way I could feel my body failing, I gathered my remaining energy and lunged.

The spider let out a startled hiss as we collided, the life he clutched spiraling away from his grip. As soon as it did, I felt air rush back into my lungs. Without even touching it, I could feel the way it wanted to breathe life back into my body. I could sense it.

But it was clear that he could sense it, too. Keratin claws struck out, sinking deep into my sides as he pushed me back. I was human in this form, but years of arachnid instincts did not just fade away in an instant as I hissed back at him and lowered my center of gravity.

He didn’t try to attack me, though. In fact, he almost entirely ignored me in favor of pouncing towards the life on the ground. I was just a tad slower than him, but I managed to latch onto one of his back legs and send his body slamming hard into the floor with a deafening crack. He didn’t hesitate to retaliate, kicking out and just barely missing my good eye as he tore a gash into my cheek.

In my shock, I released him, and he scrambled forward once more, claws grasping the amulet with excited determination.

Immediately, I could feel the effects again. The blood in my throat. The fluid in my lungs. Now, though, I knew that it was directly caused by the life, when held in the spider’s claws.

It would only save one of us. Whoever lost this fight was doomed to drown in their own fluids.

And I was not going to let that be me. I had to fight against the rising lethargy to renew my attack. The spider scrambled away, growling all the while as he held it just out of my reach. He could only get so far away before he backed into the wall, but he didn’t cease the deep rumble from his chest.

I bared my teeth, spat out another mouthful of blood, and shot forward to corner him in his position.

In any fight, I had grown used to being the fastest person. It was true for the giants and it had been true for any skirmishes I had with my friends.

But the spider was smaller than me, something I was not used to, and he was faster than me, which I certainly wasn’t used to. Oh, and of course, I was actively choking, which wasn’t the best way to hone your fighting abilities.

He darted between my legs and my inertia caused me to crash into the wall he had been standing against. Stars burst into my vision and pain raced through my skull. I stumbled, eyes struggling to decide which spider I was seeing was the real one and which one was just my double vision.

He sneered in amusement, fangs glinting in the low light of the room. The pain from my wound flared back up. My knees hit the wood hard as I moaned in pain. I was burning alive from the inside, that had to be it. Fire was scorching my veins and burning the inside of my skin. Through blurred vision, I saw blood leaking from my stomach.

“You took everything from me,” Webber hissed. His claws shook, but I couldn’t tell if it was from concealed laughter, anger, or fear. “Don’t you think it’s only fair that I take everything from you?”
“Please-” I wheezed. Liquid rose in my throat immediately after, and it was all I could do to choke it out. Iron coated my tongue. Something was coming from my eyes and smearing the world in red. I swallowed more fluid back and choked on the words I tried to speak. To plead with him. To make him understand that I didn’t mean for this to happen. That I didn’t want our lives to collide in the way they did.

Instead, all that came out was a feeble: “I don’t want to die.”

“Liar.” His body rumbled with the force of his accusation. “You’ve tried so hard to kill us in the past, and now you stand afraid of it?” Webber’s claw curled around the life, and pulled it closer to his core. I was beginning to fade. “You have always been nothing more than a coward, Tyler. It’s time for you to take a step back and let the adults play.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. My chest had grown heavy and solid, so much so that my lungs spasmed under its weight. Warm liquid dripped from my nose, my eyes, my mouth. “Please.” I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to see this to the end. I wanted to be there for the people that had helped me so much. I wanted to tell Winona how much I appreciated her, to learn to be completely comfortable around Wilson again, to spend just one more night curled into a pile with Wilbur, the soft rumble of his snores harmonizing with the low purrs that shook my chest and throat. I wanted to see the sun again. I wanted to spend just one more second splayed out in the grass with the warmth of the day soaking into my fur.

I wanted to live.

As I curled into myself further, I could feel my body shutting down. The energy to clear my throat was quickly fading, but the flow of blood in it only grew in pressure. It leaked down my chin and stained the webbing at my feet red. I was becoming hollow, empty. Everything that had once made up my body was turning to liquid and dripping from my face.

I prayed for a miracle.

The next stilted inhale I took was clear of liquid. After the first, my waning breaths quickly increased to violent, gasping inhales. Fingers tangled in the fabric of my shirt and my head snapped up, if nothing more than to clear my airway better.

At the sight before me, my body decided it was the perfect time to stop breathing again.

The life was no longer in Webber’s grasp. Instead, it was being held aloft but a gentle stream of what appeared to be magic. The spider hissed furiously, but his advance was quickly halted by something akin to a hoof pressing his body into the ground. Still, he scrambled, tearing up silk and carving deep gashes in the wood, but he was ultimately stuck.

My eyes traveled up the hoof to see… one of the most gorgeous creatures I had ever laid eyes on.

Outlined in a faint blue glow, its very skin seemed to swirl with the light of galaxies. Stars winked in and out along its body and fluffy plume of chest fur. Even standing perfectly still, eyes watching me steadily, its form seemed to shift and waver with tiny pinpricks of light. Peering through glowing red eyes and down a short yet graceful snout, it spoke.

“There you are,” it said softly. Its voice reminded me immediately of Nightmare, but somehow distinct. It held the same quality of paradoxical descriptions, of a layered voice that wasn’t quite layered, but the tone of it was entirely different. It flicked a long tail, and the red markings on its leg, stomach, and said tail pulsed with warm light. Great, fingered wings stretched out from its side

I couldn’t exactly talk at first, as occupied as I was trying to regain the breath I had lost, so I simply stared back. My eyes only briefly glanced over its form before landing squarely on the antlers that sprouted from its head. Like most of the rest of it, they seemed to give off light. These colors were unique to the rest, though, and achingly familiar: Yellow at the tips, then orange, green, and purple at the base.

Once I connected those with something familiar, many other aspects of its appearance seemed to tug at my memories. The markings, the tail, the wings, the eyes. I swallowed hard, and in a whisper, I uttered a name that I had not spoken nor heard in hundreds of years. “Constant?”

This seemed to amuse the creature. It tipped its elegant head as if in thought

“I do not identify with that name anymore,” it said after a long moment of consideration. “Although… you can debate whether I identified with that name at all.”

This was fine. This was totally fine. I was only face-to-face with an actual God of Creation, that was all. The knowledge I had of it was vague and fuzzy, remembered through lifetimes that I surely would forget the second I thought about it too hard, but I knew to be scared of it.

As soon as I got my wits about myself, I quickly backed away until I physically couldn’t anymore. But then, it continued.

“I am as much Constant as Nightmare is. Born from the soul, born from the body, that was us.”

“I don’t care what you are,” Webber growled. The creature seemed surprised at this, as if it had forgotten that it was pinning the spider in place at all. “You have no part in this.”

“I would argue I have as much of a part in this as any,” it replied calmly. “For this is the boy who once created me.”

Darkness. Fluttering terror in my chest. A glowing blue sword held in shaking hands, then thrust into my stomach with a wail of pain-

“When… when I stabbed myself. To destroy Constant. It didn’t destroy it, it created you. It broke into pieces. It-” The realization hit me, and my stomach turned in horror as acid coated my tongue. “I- I created Nightmare. Nightmare is- is my fault.” My legs suddenly couldn’t hold up my body weight anymore. I sank shakily back to the ground and grasped at my head. It felt like my brain was threatening to explode, and the pressure against my temples was the only thing keeping it together.

“You did not know the consequences of your action, little one,” the creature cooed. “You acted as you were commanded to. The fault cannot be placed onto your shoulders.”

As it spoke, the life- an amulet, I now recognized, gently floated down until it was placed against my chest. The second it touched my skin, I heard a choked gasp coming from the spider pinned beneath its hoof. One of my hands drifted towards the amulet, and I rubbed my thumb gingerly against the smooth surface.

“There were many things beyond your control. And there are to be many more. Your story is not over.”

The knowledge still pounded deep in my chest, and I wasn’t quite convinced by its words, but I was able to recognize that it was helping me nonetheless. So many explanations came into light.

The colors of its antlers were the same that had followed me through the worlds.

“You’ve been helping us this entire time. You were the one that spoke to us in the last world.”

“Indeed I have.” It bobbed its head in agreement. “But this is the first time I have been able to speak to someone as myself.”

“But why? Why are you suddenly able to do that now? Why didn’t you-” I swallowed hard and clenched my fists. “Why didn’t you help us before?”

“Nightmare and I are one in the same,” it said. “When Nightmare gains power, as do I. I did not have the strength to do more than I did.”

Warmth was starting to seep into my fingertips. I tore my gaze away from the creature and turned it towards Webber.

I could recognize that he was quickly suffering from the same inflictions that had consumed me when he was holding the amulet, and to see it on someone else was horrifying. Blood pooled around him from his mouth and eyes and his helpless struggling had turned desperate. I subconsciously clutched the amulet closer, even though it was clear he was not about to get free any time soon.

“You have been given chance after chance at life,” the creature said. “Through rebirth, resurrection, and resuscitation. This is your last chance, Tyler.” I shuddered at the sound of my name in its voice. It sounded too much like Nightmare. “Do with it what you will.”

“You…” Webber hissed. Bubbles formed around his mouth as he spoke, and his voice was so distorted. “You favor… him?”

“You would have made a good king, once,” it said, partially responding to the spider but aiming it at me. “You would have been loved. It was our rage and jealousy that stood between us and the future you would have led us to.” It seemed to stare directly into my soul. “I am righting the wrong we caused so long ago.”

Had that been what had caused the war between us, so long ago? Kingship?

“Time is fleeting, Young Heir. Wake soon, and lead us into the future we should have had long ago.” The stars seemed to grow fainter as it backed away, leaving nothing but the corpse of a bloodied spider behind. Blood still trickled from between his fangs, but his eyes had grown dull and lifeless. To the contrary, strength was quickly returning to my limbs. I could finally fully breathe again, the fluid having finally exited my lungs entirely

To a point, I knew I should grieve for the spider. He had been a part of me for years now; his thoughts and I had been one for a handful of those. Really, his fault was the anger that permeated every inch of his being. It had twisted me into someone entirely different from who I should have been.

Instead, looking down at him… I really felt nothing more than apathy.

My fingers curled around the amulet protectively. I was unfamiliar with it, I realized now. You’d think I would remember seeing a glowing red amulet somewhere, but now as I looked at it, I realized I had never seen it before in my life.

“Where did this come from?” I asked the creature, turning my gaze back up for an answer.

It did not answer my question with anything other than a gentle, knowing look through vibrant red eyes.

I opened my mouth to press it, but the second I did, cold air rushed into my lungs.

Everything slammed back into place with such violence that I ached from the force. A harsh sting rose from my abdomen, enough to elicit a faint groan of misery. My ears rang with tinnitus, and when I opened my eyes, my vision was so blurry that all I saw was vague colors.

I noticed other things, too. My whiskers curled inward, no longer stretched out or sensitive by any means. I raised one hand to tug at one of them, only finding the limb to be stiff and cooling. I felt distinctly gross, suddenly far more aware of the body I was inhabiting and the way it looked.

It was that wound that really pulled me back, though. It didn’t feel wet, so I could assume it wasn’t actively bleeding, but it felt raw and exposed and ached fiercely. I struggled to sit up to examine it closer, but a cool hand suddenly pressed against my chest and pushed me back down to the ground.

Someone was speaking to me, I knew that, but the colors swimming in my vision were only just beginning to form definitive shapes. I dug my fist into my eye to wipe away the remaining gunk and blurriness, but even then, it didn’t make any sense to me.

The creature had said I was alive. It had promised me that I had one more chance to live my life. I was supposed to live.

But I had to be dead. There was no other explanation.

How else could I be looking directly at my best friend, my brother, the Martyr?

How else could I be staring into the eyeless gaze of WX-78?

 

 

[RhymesWChronic]

Chapter 98. Innocence - Part 6

 

 

Chapter 5 of 5

Darkness

WX-78’s POV

The silence that followed was thick enough to be cut with a knife.

Webber was wide awake, although after his initial attempt to sit up, he didn’t seem to have any intention of moving much. Instead, his eye stared back at me, glossy and disbelieving. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but nothing came out except a raspy squeak that seemed to tear at his throat, if the look of pain that crossed his face said anything.

In those moments, I was able to get a good look at him too, and the changes that seemed to have happened. The smaller eyes of the spider were now as tightly shut as his missing eye, and the whiskers that always showed so much emotion had gone stiff and still and curled tightly against his cheeks. In general, he appeared much softer than usual. His features looked rounder, sharpened lines smoothed out into something much more befitting the child he was.

The thing that really stuck out to me, though, was his eye. His original eye color was still strictly hidden, but he stared at me through a faded pupil blown wide with shock. Instead of any proper iris, shards of color decorated his eye and glowed in faint shades of yellow, orange, green, and purple.

He seemed to be observing me just as much, although, to my surprise, it wasn’t my fatal wound that his gaze darted to. Instead, it was the mismatched collection of seashells that hung at my neck.

I managed to get my wits about myself before he did.

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” I snapped. “HOW IDIOTIC COULD YOU BE TO DECIDE ON SUCH AN INANE COURSE OF ACTION? DID YOU SOMEHOW GROW MORE MORONIC SINCE THE LAST TIME I SAW YOU? I DID NOT THINK IT WAS POSSIBLE, AND YET, YOU COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT FIGHTING NIGHTMARE- ALONE- WAS ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE RIDICULOUS, USELESS, POWER FANTASY THAT IT WAS. TRULY, I CANNOT EVEN FATHOM-”

Webber lunged forward with frightening speed, giving me only a second to react before the dumbest human being in existence was attempting to crush me with his arms alone. I instinctively stiffened, even as he ducked his head and pressed himself against my chest as though hiding from the world. Claws dug into my back with a desperation I had never quite seen before. I remained stiff, with my hands kept firmly in the air, until I heard a sad little sniffle coming from him, and noticed the violent shivering that seemed to consume his body in place of the eerie stillness from before.

Slowly, I let my hands drop. When tiny drops of water hitting the ground confirmed to me that, yes, he was crying, I finally gave in and held my brother back.

Even if the extent of his injury had left him still slightly out of it, he was certainly aware enough to recognize the reciprocation, and I found myself thankful for lacking lungs because I was sure I wouldn’t be able to breathe even if I had them due to the strength of his embrace.

Such strong shows of emotion like this were not commonplace with Webber when I had known him before. I had witnessed him grow more into the kind to seek physical affection, but to be the recipient of it was an entirely new experience.

He was an idiot, and I wouldn’t entertain any argument to it for as long as he lived, but by god somehow that idiot had become family to something that was never supposed to feel anything other than bitterness and hatred.

The slightest hint of movement outside of the circle of silence that had fallen between us was what urged me to finally look up. I felt my grip tighten a little bit as Wilson came into my field of view, and the scientist seemed fully aware of this.

“WX, let me see him. I need to know if we should be worried about any complications from this.”

Webber shook his head firmly, and I simply shrugged at Wilson in response. Wilson folded his arms expectantly. With a huff, I turned back down to the boy that had not let up one bit.

“HE HAS A POINT.”

“...don’t care.” The first words out of his mouth since waking up. His voice was rough and raspy, but it was distinctly missing something. The hiss, the low growl that seemed to hover over his words. Instead, replacing it, was a thicker version of the accent he normally carried. The change was not drastic, but it was noticeable, and it somehow made him seem all the tinier.

“YOU WILL CARE IF THE AMULET DID NOT COMPLETELY HEAL YOU AND LEFT INTERNAL INJURIES. JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE AWAKE DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE MIRACULOUSLY PERFECTLY FINE.”

“I’m fine,” Webber muttered, though it was barely audible considering how muffled it was. I moved one hand from his back to his head and pushed him away just enough so that he was actually looking up at me. His face was scrunched with emotions that I couldn’t quite decipher.

“LET WILSON CHECK YOU OVER.”

Again, he shook his head, stubborn as always. “I won,” he whispered, voice cracking a little around the edges. “I won.” He blinked up at me, his gaze clearing just a bit as he did so. “I’m alive.”

“YOU ARE AT THE MOMENT, BUT IF-”

He ignored me, naturally. I couldn’t even bring myself to be annoyed by it- it was so undeniably Webber that I couldn’t help it. “I’m alive, WX! I’m alive!” His laughter was thick with tears, but achingly joyful nonetheless. He ducked away from my hand in order to press his face back into my chest, bubbling laughter rising in his chest.

“Alright, move aside, it’s my turn,” huffed a voice from behind me. Wilbur had an expression of fond amusement as he padded up and tapped on Webber’s shoulder. The boy startled slightly, though a moment later his expression brightened even more as he recognized the prime ape.

I expected him to finally release me, but instead, Webber reached over and pulled him into the embrace, effectively crushing the three of us together. Wilbur huffed as the air was forced out of his chest.

“Do you remember what happened?” That was Winona. Her voice was rough, although it was clear she was trying to sound gentle.

Webber hummed for a moment, then turned his head just enough to respond normally. “I… think…?”

“YOU FAILED AT KILLING YOURSELF. AGAIN.”

He immediately pouted at me, down to even sticking his lower lip out in the most childish expression I had ever seen him make. “I did not try to kill myself. I’m not that stupid. I was trying to finish what I started.”

Wilson opened his mouth, likely to ask the obvious question, but a quick glare from me stopped him in his tracks. There was a good chance this group was not aware of the story of Nightmare and The Boy, and how the latter had shattered the former. That can of worms would open up far more questions than I did not want to answer.

Instead, I decided to tackle the other half of his claim, and something I was much more concerned about at the moment. “DO NOT EVEN TRY TO CLAIM YOU HOLD VALUE OVER YOUR LIFE. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID IN KING OF WINTER.”

If a boy entirely covered in black fur could go pale, he certainly would have. Instead, his shock and discomfort was only really portrayed by how wide his eye got, and the ineffective stutters that he spit out in an attempt to refute my words.

“I BELIEVE WE HAVE THE FULL RIGHT TO ASSUME THAT THIS WAS A GENUINE SUICIDE ATTEMPT.”

“It wasn’t!” Webber immediately protested. “I- that wasn’t- that wasn’t my intention!”

I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. He was terrifyingly good at justifying his suicidal actions. “I CANNOT TRUST THAT.”

“No! It- I didn’t-” Again, he couldn’t seem to get a proper hold of his words. I rested my hand on top of his head again, which had the benefit of stopping his useless sputtering in its tracks. All that was left was a pleading stare.

“I LOST MY LIFE SAVING YOURS,” I reminded him. “AND I SPENT MY DEATH TRYING TO FIND THE SOLUTION THAT WOULD SPARE YOU.” My voice hardened. “I AM NOT RISKING LOSING YOU, ESPECIALLY NOT TO YOURSELF, WEBBER.”

“You won’t!” Webber exclaimed, though only a moment later a wave of pain seemed to wash over him and he doubled over with a groan. I moved my hand just enough to press it against his forehead, though it did not feel like he was running a fever. “I… what happened in the winter world…” It was clear he was forcing the words out from between his teeth.

I pushed him with a scoff. “I AM WELL AWARE OF HOW YOU JUSTIFY YOUR ACTIONS. YOU ARE FAR TOO IMPORTANT FOR ME TO LOSE, ESPECIALLY NOW THAT WE FINALLY HAVE EACH OTHER BACK.”

I didn’t even really realize how sappy my words sounded until Wilbur piped up with an “Awwwww.”

Of course, that meant that instead of any proper reply, I found myself, once more, with an armful of child. Well, I had already managed to embarrass myself this much.

“I DO NOT REGRET WHAT HAPPENED TO ME, BUT… I SUPPOSE I SHOULD APOLOGIZE FOR LEAVING YOUR BEHIND. ESPECIALLY WHEN I WAS UNAWARE OF HOW HARD YOU WOULD STRUGGLE WITHOUT ME.” Had his fur always been this soft? I could have sworn it was always coarser than this. Then again, maybe it was just the fur on top of his head that was this poofy and soft. My voice was too loud for a proper whisper, so I would have to deal with the others hearing me and the inevitable teasing, but I weighed my options and decided it was more important to speak anyway. “I… KNOW IT MAY HAVE SEEMED AS THOUGH I ABANDONED YOU. BUT I WAS THERE IN KING OF WINTER. I WAS BY YOUR SIDE FOR AS LONG AS I COULD BE. IF I COULD HAVE LET YOU SEE ME BEFORE, I WOULD HAVE.” He didn’t look at me, but I could hear him sniffling again. “YOU ARE MY FAMILY,” I admitted in the softest voice I could manage. “MY BROTHER. I AM SORRY FOR NOT SEEING THAT BEFORE.”

“I was so lost without you.” Webber’s voice was properly a whisper, something that even I could barely hear. The accent I noticed earlier seemed to grow more prominent as his emotions heightened. “I… I held you in my arms, and I couldn’t do anything! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, WX. You shouldn’t have taken that hit for me. You should have just-” he choked. “You should have just let him kill me.”

To that, I didn’t say anything. It was clear that he was not in the mindset to have this conversation. Though, I supposed, the events that had just transpired were as good of a reason as any for that. Instead, I simply held onto him until his shivers finally died down. He breathed in with a final wet sniffle before pulling away fully.

“Thank you for visiting me,” he said quietly as he rubbed at his eye with his wrist. Surprise filled my chest as he continued. “I know there’s a reason why you haven’t before. So the fact that you are now… I mean… you’re probably risking something really dangerous for this.” He gave me a fangy smile. “I don’t want to make you stay longer than you have to…”

Oh.

I… didn’t even think of that. In hindsight, I should have figured that he would come to this conclusion. After all, what made more sense? The spirit of someone who has been known to visit people’s dreams in the past doing so again, or that same person (seemingly) coming back to life? And unlike Wilson’s resurrection, my arrival wasn’t preceded by crippling pain and exhaustion from all parties.

“WEBBER.”

Webber stared at me as if waiting for me to disappear.

“YOU ARE AWAKE.”

He blinked once. Then twice. Then, he craned his head to look around. I could see the recognition in his eye as he suddenly realized that he had heard and spoken to Wilson, Winona, and Wilbur. He looked desperately confused as he did a double-take to make sure I was still there, followed by once more rubbing his eye as if that would make everything make sense again.

I waited patiently for him to finish.

“WX?” He sounded uncertain now, like he wasn’t sure it was me.

“THE DEAD ROAM FREELY THROUGH DARKNESS,” I explained. “YOU ARE IN DARKNESS, THEREFORE YOU STAND IN MY DOMAIN NOW.”

Still, it was clear Webber wasn’t exactly grasping it. In fact, it currently appeared as if he was trying to stare directly through me through the force of sheer will.

I flicked him in the head to make him stop.

“You’re alive?” He whispered, so softly and with such a hoarse voice that I barely heard it.

“You’re speaking to a ghost, Ty,” Wilbur piped in helpfully. “More or less.”

“A ghost…?” Finally, Webber seemed to be getting it. A tiny glitter of joy lit in his eye as he nodded slowly, before suddenly brightening to an overwhelming surge of joy and excitement. I could tell he was about to lunge at me again, but I immediately placed a hand against his head to stop him before he could. Happy as I was to see him, I still had a firm limit on how much touch I wanted to deal with, and being crushed again by an overly-excited child did not sound entirely pleasant. “WX! You have a soul! I’m talking to your soul? I’m talking to your soul!”

Soul. Huh.

(“You realize that Alter created souls to befriend the Sibling, correct?

“But without a soul, Automaton… what makes you think you were ever meant to be one of them?”)

“YES,” I confirmed with a swell of pride. “YOU ARE TALKING TO MY SOUL.”

“And everyone else can see you?”

“YES.”

I could tell by the look in his eye that he was fully intended to bombard me with questions for the next three years, so before he could even start, I interrupted: “I WILL NOT ANSWER ANY MORE QUESTIONS UNTIL WE CAN CONFIRM THAT YOU HAVE BEEN FULLY HEALED. IN CASE YOU FORGOT, YOU WERE EVISCERATED BY NIGHTMARE. IF YOU WANT TO BE THE FIRST TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DIE IN THE LAND OF THE DEAD, THEN BE MY GUEST, BUT I SUGGEST YOU ACTUALLY LET WILSON CHECK YOU OVER AND LET ME REST BEFORE I SMACK YOU.”

It was clear that Webber did not like this, but he lamely agreed with a sour look on his face.

…

It didn’t appear as if anything was left untouched by the amulet’s healing. Though clearly innately uncomfortable throughout the exam, Webber managed to keep his complaints to a minimum.

“I’m still not seeing any signs of internal bleeding,” Wilson said. “No unexpected tenderness, bruising, or distention.”

Webber stuck his tongue out at the scientist as he spoke.

“I don’t think the scars will break back open, but it’s clear they’re still raw, so there might be some minor bleeding if you push it too much. Though… I don’t know how well-healed the scar tissue is. There’s still a chance that you can split them if you aren’t careful.”

“They feel fine,” Webber protested, only to be cut off by Wilbur’s arguing:

“Lie. You’re still in pain.”

Wilson frowned a bit at that as if he was unhappy to hear it, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that he was still in pain from the wounds. “That… might be permanent. I think your body has healed as much as it can. Pain might be something you have to live with for the rest of your life.”

“What’s one more spot of chronic pain, am I right?” Webber rolled his eyes, though the glance he shot my way was faintly amused.

“I’m more concerned about the… other things,” Wilson said with a general flourish at the boy. Webber tipped his head in questioning as Wilson elaborated. “Your eye, for one. We can see your pupil again, though it’s… faded. Can you still see fine?” Webber nodded. “Strange… and your whiskers…?”

“Have you ever seen a dead spider?” Webber asked with a grin. Following a lack of response, he placed his hands against his cheeks, fingers splayed out as if mimicking whiskers. Then, he let out a hiss (not a spider’s hiss, strangely enough) and curled his fingers against his palm (at least, the best he could with his lame hand.) “You know.”

I glanced at Wilbur, who, to my surprise, had a hint of grief in his eyes. “IT APPEARS OUR THEORY WAS CORRECT, THEN.”

“The amulet only saved one of you,” Wilbur agreed, though again, he still sounded like he was saddened by this revelation. Webber seemed to catch on to this immediately as he pouted in the prime ape’s direction.

“What? Aren’t we supposed to be celebrating?” The pout quickly turned again to a wide, toothy grin. “I’m finally free! I don’t have to worry about hurting any of you again. I don’t have to spend every second of my life worried that I’m going to fade away! This is a good thing!” He pushed himself to his feet, much to my chagrin, and he spread his arms as if welcoming the world. “I’m free, Wilbur!” He shouted into the night. “Never again! Never ever again!”

As much as I wanted to be rough with pushing him back down, I wasn’t stupid enough to risk breaking open the scars. Instead, I grabbed his shoulders and pushed at him lightly in hopes of making him get the memo. Webber did not seem discouraged, because one glittering eye landed on me and he brushed me off with one hand.

So, instead, Winona briskly scooped him up into her arms, ignoring his protests. “You still need to rest, Tyler,” she chastised. He rolled his eyes again and stuck his tongue out with an audible ‘blegh’.

“I just… feel bad,” Wilbur said. “For Webber. I mean… He wasn’t evil. He was put in a bad situation and reacted poorly. I wish we could have helped him.”

“Nope.” Webber popped the ‘p’ as he spoke. “Absolutely not. His fault. He ate me first. Not gonna feel bad. He sucked.”

“I AGREE WITH WEBBER IN THIS SITUATION,” I said. “THE SPIDER HAD FULL INTENTIONS ON USING THE LIFE-GIVING AMULET TO TAKE OVER ONCE AND FOR ALL. WEBBER WINNING AGAINST HIM IS SIMPLY KARMIC JUSTICE.”

“Ew.” Webber scrunched up his face. “I’m getting all confused with the names now. For the record,” he pointed one finger at me. “Not Webber. Never was and never will be. Reiterating: that guy sucked. I am way better.”
“YOU WANT ME TO CALL YOU TYLER.”

“Yup.”

“THAT AWFUL, STUPID, RIDICULOUS NAME.”

“Mhmm.”

I frowned at him, but he did not let up. He didn’t even seem too upset about the situation, more smug than anything. It was… something I wasn’t expecting on him. “FINE,” I huffed. “JUST KNOW THAT EVERY TIME I HAVE TO SAY IT, I WILL HAVE TO ACTIVELY FORCE MYSELF NOT TO ADD SOMETHING INSULTING ONTO IT.”

“Oh no,” he sounded unimpressed. “WX insulting me. So hurtful. I would never expect that in a million years. Please don’t. My feelings might never recover.”

“I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU ARE JOKING AFTER EVERYTHING THAT HAS JUST HAPPENED,” I said.

“Relax. I’m fine! Look at me; I’m the picture of health!” To be honest, he did look healthier than I could ever recall him looking. Perhaps the amulet had done more than just heal the wound that had nearly killed him.

“You were unconscious for days after nearly having your organs carved out of you, Tyler.” If nobody else, at least Wilson seemed to understand the gravity of recent events. He had his arms crossed and a faint look of disbelief on his face, which only grew when Tyler scoffed at him.

“Sounds like just another adventure for me,” the boy proclaimed. “At this point, coming in and out of comas should just be considered part of my regular sleep schedule.”

“You killed Nightmare,” Wilbur stressed, tail flicking. “I understand you’ve got your… I don’t even know. ‘Main character energy’? But that doesn’t change the fact that you took on the most powerful creature in the universe and killed it.”

“Did you ever doubt me?” Was Tyler’s cheeky response.

I was quickly beginning to wonder why I had missed this insufferable kid so much. I must have made some sort of audible scoff, because a moment later he was directing his playful sarcasm towards me again. “Come on, WX, you’re my brother. You’re supposed to enable my bad behavior. Then again, I suppose you’ve never had a sibling before. I might have to give you some lessons on how to be a proper bad influence.”

“WX is bad enough of an influence as it is,” Wilson said. Before I could even respond to that, the scientist pointed a threatening finger at me. “Do not give him any ideas.”

I wanted to shoot back some witty comeback, but instead, my mind latched onto Tyler’s words with such ferocity that I found myself taken aback. It was stupid to find myself so caught off guard; it had been him, after all, to originally use familial terms for me. And yet, the fact that he stood directly in front of me- speaking to me- and still used those terms filled me with warmth. It was one thing to overhear them in a conversation you were never a part of. It was another thing entirely to be directly referred to as someone’s family.

“I HAVE IDEAS,” I responded vaguely to Wilson, earning an eye roll from him and a light chuckle from Winona.

The mood suddenly seemed to sober up as Tyler looked down at his hands, his eye turning downcast and uncertain. “So… Nightmare is really gone? It’s not going to…?”

“Yeah, no, we all saw that thing die,” Wilbur confirmed. “You stabbed it right in the stomach. It’s not going to come back.”

“Are you sure?”

It was like a switch had flipped in him. I disengaged from the conversation to observe, trying to puzzle out what had caused the sudden shift from a sly, easy confidence to something more nervous and shaky. Tyler certainly wasn’t giving me any good hints, considering he seemed to be actively avoiding any of our gazes and instead focused all of his attention on his lame hand. He was scratching at it, a look of deep apprehension twisting his face.

“We’re sure,” Wilbur said. He was keeping his voice gentle, though it was obvious he caught on to this strange shift as well. “Your sword…”

“THE SWORD OF THE MARTYR WAS CREATED WITH THE INTENTION TO PURGE NIGHTMARE.”

“Constant, technically. And it failed to do that,” Tyler said wryly.

“ON THE CONTRARY, THE DAMAGE THAT ACTION CAUSED WAS THE SOLE REASON NIGHTMARE NO LONGER HOLDS A GOD STATUS. I WOULD ARGUE IT SUCCEEDED FAIRLY WELL IN ITS GOAL.”

And suddenly, three sets of eyes were focused on me. Tyler didn’t seem too invested in my argument, but it appeared as though the rest of our companions certainly were.

“DO YOU MIND?” I snapped.

“...WX?” Wilbur asked slowly. He looked confused, maybe a bit concerned. I couldn’t even fathom why until: “How do you know that?”

And it was only then I realized that there was a lot of information that I had failed to share with them.

 

[RhymesWChronic]

Chapter 99. Innocence - Part 7

 

 

Chapter 5 of 5

Darkness

 

Given how long WX-78 had been gone, and their proximity to Nightmare and Charlie, Wilbur should not have been surprised to hear that they had some knowledge of what had happened all those years ago. It wasn’t until Tyler had casually said that name that Wilbur found himself genuinely freezing in shock and terror.

Constant.

He wasn’t talking about the world that they stood on. He wasn’t talking about The Constant. He was talking about Constant. Wilbur could barely find it in himself to listen to WX rattle on about Nightmare and swords because things were sliding into place in his own mind, and by god he was terrified of the implications.

Once, Nightmare had been sent on a mission to kill Tyler when he was just a toddler. Wilbur remembered this interaction. The only reason it hadn’t followed through was because it ‘recognized something in him’. At the time, Wilbur had brushed it off as just being recognizing some sort of potential, like he could be an ally in the future. After that, he never really thought about it much.

Then, there was the things Tyler had rambled when they first arrived in Darkness. The boy had been so desperate to kill Nightmare, but his word choice had been very specific.

He kept using the word ‘again’. ‘I’m going to shatter that demon again’. ‘I don’t care how many times I have to stab you again’. ‘I’ve stabbed it before, and I’ll gladly stab it again’. Wilbur had caught on to that, but Tyler immediately shut down any possibility of answers, leaving Wilbur to simply ponder it without any real idea of what he was talking about.

The name Constant hadn’t been uttered in centuries, though. Even when discussing the story with Wilbur, neither of them had used the name. Wilbur had called it the God of the Ground, and Tyler had gone along with it without protest. Most of the world knew Constant as either that, or simply Nightmare.

But Tyler had mentioned Constant.

The implications- the conclusion that Wilbur’s mind was arriving to- it couldn’t be-

Wilbur’s first sin. His first betrayal. His first abandonment.

“How do you know that name?” Wilbur choked. He only barely registered WX’s annoyed glance at being interrupted. He was entirely focused on the Boy- no, Wilbur, his name is, was, Tyler. Was it? Had it been at the time, too?

Tyler blinked and tipped his head in confusion. His cheeks twitched just slightly as if expecting his whiskers to react, but they remained stiff. “I didn’t say anything. What name?”

Wilbur swallowed hard. Tyler had said it so easily, but Wilbur had to spit the name out like it was foul fish. “Constant.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess explaining that might help clear some things up.” Again, he seemed so careless about it, simply waving a hand as if it wasn’t that big of an issue. “Constant is what Nightmare was before I tried to kill it the first time.” His face scrunched up comically. “Emphasis on tried.”

“The first time,” Wilbur repeated breathlessly. How could he seem so nonchalant about something that was destroying Wilbur’s entire worldview? “You… you shattered Constant. It was you.”

The expression that Tyler showed now was not one that Wilbur expected: fear and guilt. He opened his hands and held them out in front of him placatingly, something desperate in the motions. “I- I didn’t mean to!” He exclaimed. “I- well, I mean, I did try to kill it, but I… I didn’t mean to create Nightmare! That’s not what it was supposed to do!”

While Wilbur didn’t turn to look, he could hear a muffle gasp from Winona and a disbelieving ‘what?’ from Wilson. Only WX seemed unsurprised by this information.

“IS THIS NEWS?” They sounded genuinely confused, like this was supposed to be common information. “IT IS NOT A COINCIDENCE THAT TYLER WIELDS THE SWORD OF THE MARTYR, THE ONLY WEAPON CAPABLE OF PURGING DARKNESS SUCH AS NIGHTMARE.”

No wonder Wilbur had been so desperate to love this kid as much as he did.

Had their entire relationship been built on Wilbur’s guilty conscience, trying to make up for what he had done?

Before he even fully realized it, tears were welling up in the prime ape’s eyes and slipping down his cheeks. “I abandoned you,” he choked.

“Abandoned…?” Tyler echoed. Still, it was clear he had no idea what Wilbur was talking about. He didn’t seem upset or angry, just confused. Did he truly not remember that night at all? He had to have- he remembered trying to stab Constant. Had he blocked it out? Had that even hurt him so much that he did everything he could to forget-?

“When Constant attacked that night. You… you needed help and I just ran like a coward.” Wilbur rose one of his hands to swipe at the tears on his face, but it only succeeded in betraying the faint tremors that had consumed him.

Still, Tyler seemed confused, even though faint glimmers of recognition had appeared in his eye. “What are you talking about? Was that… you?” Wilbur held his breath as he nodded, expecting him to snap any moment. Tyler let out a long sigh that seemed to turn into a light chuckle. “Really? How old even were you? A few months? A year? You were tiny!”

“Ty-” Why was he acting so loose? So jovial? The first person he had ever sworn to protect, and Wilbur had abandoned him. Left him for dead when at that moment, the boy had needed nothing more than someone with him.

“If I remember correctly,” Tyler said patiently when Wilbur’s panic clearly did not abate. “Which I might not, don’t get me wrong; I don’t remember much. But if I do.” He clasped his hands together and leaned forward an inch. “I told you to run.”

Had he? Wilbur couldn’t remember that part. Then again, many portions of that night were a blur to his ancient memory. It had been thousands of years ago at this point, and Wilbur had memories spanning the entire distance between.

And yet… if Tyler remembered that night from an event that wasn’t even part of his current life, who knows how many other memories he had? Did he even properly remember what had happened?

“I-”

“Not gonna hear it,” Tyler immediately interrupted. “No blaming. Even if I didn’t say that directly, I can assure you that that is what I wanted you to do.”

“THIS IS UNIMPORTANT TO THIS CONVERSATION,” WX said, a hint of annoyance clear in their tone. “THIS IS SOMETHING YOU TWO CAN DISCUSS BY YOURSELVES. WE HAVE MORE RELEVANT DETAILS TO CONSIDER AT THE MOMENT.”

“Right,” Tyler agreed immediately. Wilbur gave him a serious look that was meant only with a light, apologetic smile from the hybrid. This was certainly a discussion that would happen, sooner or later. “So, actually, related to that.” He waved one hand. “When I tried to destroy Constant, from what it seems, it ripped Constant in half? I think? It’s still kind of unclear… It described itself as ‘as much Constant as Nightmare is’.”

“And what is this ‘it’?” Winona pressed. She was hyperfocused on the two storytellers, whereas Wilson seemed to be listening more passively. Not uninterested, simply deep in thought. Winona was the opposite, hanging onto every word as if it was the answer to every question she had ever asked.

Tyler blinked, his brow creasing ever-so-slightly. “I don’t know its name. It said that it was trying to help us, but that it was weak before. And that it gains power equal to Nightmare.” He put his hands on top of his head, fingers splayed out to mimic his next point. “It had these really big antlers and they glowed the same colors we’ve been seeing! I think it was the one who talked to us in the last world.”

“I DO NOT BELIEVE I HAVE SEEN THIS CREATURE,” WX murmured. “I WAS NOT AWARE THAT NIGHTMARE HAS A COUNTERPART.”

“Had,” Tyler quickly corrected. The look he gave his brother was one of a strange type of intensity, Wilbur noted.

“Wait,” Wilson said. Wilbur nearly jumped out of his skin at his voice, having almost entirely forgotten the scientist’s presence at all. “It was weak before. But it’s not now?”

Tyler shrugged. “Um… yeah.”

“And it gains power equal to Nightmare. From the same sources.”

“I would assume?”

Something clicked in Wilbur’s mind. Suddenly, the troubling expression on Wilson’s face made much more sense. “So if it’s gotten stronger, then so has Nightmare,” Wilbur breathed.

WX snapped into attention. “NO. WE BOTH WATCHED THE SWORD-”

“We saw Nightmare disappear.” Wilbur tried to keep the panicked note out of his voice as theories and fears spun in his mind. “But it’s already failed at killing its target once. What if it failed again?”

Tyler violently shook his head. He clenched his fists against his side and took several deep breaths. “No. No, it couldn’t have. It failed at killing Constant because it was a god. Nightmare-”

“Has been around for thousands of years. It has recovered.”

“It’s not the same!” Tyler snapped.

“It got into his blood,” Winona breathed. The blood had drained from her face entirely. Her eyes grew distant and glazed. To Wilbur, it felt like claws had taken the world and forcibly turned it upside down. Like a pit had opened up in his stomach.

“THE SWORD OF THE MARTYR WAS CREATED TO DESTROY CONSTANT. IT BARELY SURVIVED. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK NIGHTMARE SURVIVED THAT BLOW?”

“Isn’t that what you said, Wilbur?” Winona pressed, ignoring WX’s protest altogether. “Before the Door, before any of these worlds, before you even spoke to us. The first time we talked about Charlie. Isn’t that what you said??”
Tyler appeared very much like he wanted to speak, but nothing seemed to be coming out of his mouth. He clamped it shut with an audible click after a moment. Wilbur could almost see sweat beading on his forehead.

“You told me that Nightmare jumps between vessels through blood contact, right?” Winona’s voice was feverish.

“It didn’t have blood contact though! Nightmare’s blood would have had to get into his bloodstream!” Wilbur’s heart was pounding in his ears. He could barely hear the others speak at all.

“See!” Tyler blurted. “I’m fine! Totally fine! Nightmare is dead and we don’t have to worry-”

“Are you telling me that there was no blood contact after both of those wounds? At all?” Wilson demanded. “You two were chest to chest when you stabbed it. It’s nearly impossible for there to have been no blood mixed during that.”

“I DO NOT APPRECIATE THE ASSUMPTION-”

“Easy solution!” Wilbur said, just a bit too loudly. “Nightmare’s host bleeds the same blood as Nightmare itself! We just see what color his blood is and any concerns will be nullified!”

“What if it takes time to fully spread? He could bleed red now but later-”

“WE ARE NOT INJURING HIM AGAIN SO SOON AFTER HIS RECOVERY!”

“Just a prick!” Wilbur insisted. “The tiniest of little injuries, that’s all we need! It’ll be fine! He looks fine! Not possessed at all!”

“Wilbur, his eyes are glowing-” Winona said.

“Not red though! Every color in the rainbow but red! Not Nightmare at all! We just need to quickly look at his blood-”

“WE HAVE SEEN PLENTY OF HIS BLOOD-!”

“Right! He lost a lot of blood, so realistically, Nightmare’s blood would have spread faster, right?”

“No.”

Tyler’s voice was small, but commanding. Wilbur immediately shut his mouth and turned to look at the boy, who was quietly massaging his lame hand with a look of deep apprehension.

“We’re just worried about you,” Wilbur started, but his voice faltered at the way Tyler’s face fell further.

“I know you are, but didn’t you decide to let me make some of my own decisions?” Tyler said stubbornly. “I don’t care how small of a wound it would be, I’m not letting you guys examine my blood for something that won’t be there.”

“GOOD.”

“You don’t understand,” Wilbur implored.

“If I remember correctly,” Tyler said, an echo of his earlier statement. “Then you were not the one who has been possessed by a demon before. In fact, none of you understand what it feels like to be possessed like I have!” He smacked a hand against his forehead, a hysterical laugh building in his chest. “I’ve spent almost my entire life fighting someone for control? Are you all so scared that I’ll be different without Webber that you are trying to… what? Manifest a new creature to control me? This is ridiculous!” His laughter started to sound a little choked. “Are you really not letting me even have this?”

WX wavered very slightly as they watched a smattering of tears fall from their brother’s eye. Wilbur felt his chest ache as he watched.

“It’s not that…” Winona said.

“It’s a possible danger-” Wilson started, only for WX to suddenly shove the scientist’s shoulder. “Wha- hey!”

“SHUT UP.” They marched closer to Tyler, ignoring the boy’s backpedaling and using one thumb to swipe at the damp fur under his cheek. The response was a protest and a rather pathetic hiss that sounded nothing like a spider’s. It wasn’t a comforting gesture, though. It was rough and stiff, and WX immediately examined the stain on their thumb under the moonlight.

“PERHAPS,” they said quietly. “WE SHOULD DISCUSS THIS POSSIBILITY MORE IN DEPTH.”

“You were supposed to be on my side!” Tyler protested weakly, only to be ignored.

Whether or not the others saw it, he couldn’t tell. All that Wilbur could focus on was the thick liquid that had replaced Tyler’s tears.

A liquid that was translucent, slick, and black.

 

[RhymesWChronic]

Chapter 100. Innocence - Part 8

 

Chapter 5 of 5

Darkness

WX-78’s POV

At this point, I was well-versed enough with Tyler’s specific brand of panic to recognize the way it seemed to slam over him. His breathing had already been gradually speeding up over the course of the arguing, but it hitched into straight hyperventilation the second he met my gaze.

It was also through both experience and luck that I recognized exactly what he was planning on doing before he even had the chance to move. My hand snapped out to grab his arm the same second he lurched to the side as if to run. Whatever the intention was, the result was a rather violent pop of his shoulder as he nearly wrenched it out of its socket. His next inhale was a weak wheeze as he stared fearfully up at me, his lame hand curling around my own as if planning to pry it off without any real ability to do so.

“Let me go,” Tyler demanded in what must have been one of the most pathetic displays of stubbornness I had ever seen on this kid, which was impressive if his track record had anything to say about that.

“YOU CANNOT RUN FROM ALL OF YOUR PROBLEMS,” I responded stiffly, squeezing his arm just a little. His single visible pupil had shrunk to a pinprick, and the bright dots of light in his eye had dulled. “THIS IS CERTAINLY NOT SOMETHING YOU CAN RUN FROM. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT TO ACCOMPLISH OUT THERE?”

Tyler swallowed hard and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was even able to hear me.

“WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS.”

“There’s nothing to talk about!” He twisted his arm to try to free it from my grip, but I refused to let go. I knew exactly how his mind worked at this point, and there was no way I was going to let him run off now. I didn’t trust him to not hurt himself, unintentionally or otherwise. If that meant trapping him as he worked himself into a panic attack, then that’s what I would do. Not like the others would do it: Winona would be too scared to hurt him, Wilbur would decide it was more important to let him calm down, and Wilson would be the worst person in the world to talk to him right now.

“IF YOU WILL NOT TALK TO US,” I said quietly. “THEN YOU WILL TALK TO ME.”

Claws just a little too sharp yet a little too weak harmlessly clawed at my hand again.

“NOBODY ELSE. EITHER YOU LET US DISCUSS THIS OR I WILL PERSONALLY SEE YOU TIED TO A TREE FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE.”

Tyler’s gaze darted towards the others for just a second before they went back to my face. “Just us?” He whispered, almost disbelieving.

“JUST YOU AND I,” I promised. I couldn’t understand why he seemed to almost relax at the thought of explaining himself to me. I would’ve almost expected him to beg for Wilbur instead. The prime ape had been ever the doting caregiver and had shown many times over to be the most emotionally mature of the group, excluding maybe Winona.

I admittedly felt a twinge of satisfaction as he gave a short, slow nod, still refusing to look elsewhere. Was it because he still trusted me the most after all this time? Or was it because it was easier to associate me with a less terrible time than the others?

Despite Tyler’s acquiescence, he still made no move to relax or speak. Maybe he didn’t trust me as much as I thought he did.

“YOU HAVE SEEN ME AT MY WORST,” I reminded him. “I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT NOTHING THAT IS SAID HERE WILL END WITH ANYTHING WORSE THAN THAT.”

Even if I did randomly decide to attack him, did he think he couldn’t hold his own against me? He could hold his own back when he was seven, and he had only gained experience and muscle since then.

“I WILL TALK TO HIM ALONE,” I said to the others. Wilbur seemed the absolute least happy about this, but Tyler gave him a single shake of his head so that he backed down without protest. Winona gave a tight, unconvincing smile and Wilson had decisively looked away likely some time ago. With that, I tugged at Tyler’s arm and pulled him away from them.

While I had watched him from afar, I watched Tyler become much more clingy and likely to pursue physical affection. Before, I had occasionally watched him curl up against Wilson, sleeping almost on top of the scientist in a rare show of trust. These days, though, he was rarely alone at all. Nights where he didn’t end up tangled in a ball with Wilbur had grown fewer and further in between.

Still, though, it was strange to have so much of that desperate affection aimed at myself. Some part of me had decided that he enjoyed cuddling with Wilbur due to the comfort another warm, furred creature must bring. Cold metal was quite the opposite, but you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference just based on how he reacted.

After some time of silent walking, during which I kept a much lighter grasp on his arm but never truly let go, Tyler slowly seemed to relax in my presence. Before too long, he was slumping almost all of his weight against me. Whether it was to draw comfort from my presence or because he could barely stand, I could only begin to guess. Maybe a mixture of both.

I knew him though. Even if I wanted to make him sit down or rest, it would only make him more miserable. He would rather drive himself into the ground appearing strong than admit weakness, and that was Wilbur’s job to deal with, not mine. So instead, I set a bit of a slower pace and kept walking until he broke the silence.

“What’s going to happen to me?”

I didn’t know. I couldn’t even begin to figure out how to answer that truthfully. I had never seen Charlie cry, so I couldn’t say for certain whether her tears were also nightmare fuel, but it was also impossible to say that it meant nothing. Instead, I did what I did best: stick to the facts.

“CHARLIE SURVIVED FOR MANY YEARS WITH HER AFFLICTION. I HAVE NO DOUBT THE SAME SHOULD HOLD TRUE FOR YOU.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

“THEN I DO NOT SEE HOW YOU EXPECT ME TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION, KID.”

“Kid…?” Tyler echoed, and for a second, his broken little voice actually sounded faintly amused. “WX… ha, I’m older than you. Remember?”

“I AM CHOOSING TO IGNORE THIS REMINDER.” Such a little, stupid detail, no wonder he remembered it. “AND MY AGE IS NOT WHAT WE ARE HERE TO TALK ABOUT.”

Tyler kicked the ground, decisively avoiding my gaze. “...I know. I know. I just…” He looked up at the sky. It was beautiful these days, patterned with swirling star systems and constellations. Whether the human (or spider) eye was capable of picking up on the subtle colors, I certainly could make out the curling streams of blues and purples that had replaced the suffocating black sky. “I’m scared,” he admitted quietly, voice shaking. “What if Nightmare… if I’m…” He looked back at his hands. The uninjured one was unremarkable, but I could make out the faintest of discolorations on his left. Like nightmare fuel was slowly leaking into the creases and pooling into the scars. I couldn’t tell if this was new or not. Tyler didn’t seem surprised to see it. Had he already noticed this happening before?

“YOU ALREADY KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN, DIDN’T YOU?”

“No… but… right after I woke up, I noticed it on my hand. I just… there was nightmare fuel everywhere. Why would I jump to the conclusion that Nightmare wasn’t dead? I just hoped…”

I hummed noncommittally as he failed to finish his thought. It was strange, the way the both of us seemed to refuse to say the truth of what was happening. The full extent of what was to come. But it was stupid to ignore the hand we were being dealt. Someone would have to breach it as blatantly as possible.

“NIGHTMARE HAS TAKEN YOU AS ITS HOST.”

A shudder ran through Tyler’s body as the words were said. He clenched his fists, but not before I noticed the way his palms glistened with nervous sweat. “That’s not… I mean, Wilson…-”

“WILSON,” I pointed out. “DID NOT HAVE NIGHTMARE FUEL SEEPING FROM HIS SKIN.” At this point, I was starting to get annoyed with walking. As I spoke, I dragged him towards a nightmare light that I knew would be nearby. I could see just fine with the full moon out, and I was sure Tyler could, too, but I knew all-too-well how much more comfortable it was in the light. “IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING TO YOU. CHARLIE…” Is gone. Dead. Likely forever. That little bit of light, snuffed out for nothing. “IS NOT AROUND TO GUIDE YOU.”

The light flickered on as we stepped closer. Tyler violently flinched away from it.

“THE NIGHTMARE LIGHTS ARE SCATTERED AROUND HERE. THEY ARE NATURAL AND SAFE.”

Tyler didn’t respond, instead hovering for a moment outside of the range of light. His brow furrowed lightly as he pushed closer, muscles stiffening but slowly relaxing as if getting used to it. He shook out his lame hand, appearing deeply unsettled. Still, though, he refrained from any complaining. Instead, the second I slid to the ground with my back against the base of the light, he climbed right into my personal space as I had seen him do a million times now. I resisted the urge to push him away and limit contact.

“DID IT STARTLE YOU?” I asked. I had grown quite used to the nightmare lights, but it struck me that the same likely did not hold true for anyone else. And yet, there was something strange about the way he reacted. Something more visceral than simple surprise. “OR DID IT HURT YOU?”

Charlie could only stand limited sources of light, and only in certain circumstances. In Darkness, Checkmate, or the World Between, she shied away from any light before it could touch her. It was a weakness that Nightmare possessed to an extreme, and something that she had inherited to an extent. Outside of those three worlds, it was merely a projection of her, so if Nightmare wasn’t actively present within her, it gave her much less issue.

Looking at it now, it was likely that this would become a trait Tyler shared as well. If it hadn’t already.

The boy in question didn’t give me a verbal answer, but he did offer me his lame hand. The little pools of nightmare fuel had bubbled up and burned faint lines in his skin, though it had settled now.

“I’m possessed,” he whispered as I observed the new injuries. They were minimal, barely first degree burns. He had likely had sunburns in the past that had hurt worse. His hand shook so violently I could barely focus on the burns. “I just- Oh god, oh no, no no no…”

This was something that I was very unfamiliar with. The way that Tyler would fold into himself and work himself into a terrible panic. He had certainly had nightmares in the past, but on the occasion he would wake from them, he would be able to calm himself down fairly effectively, even if he was more emotionally volatile for the rest of the day. After my… after the Ancient Guardian, these episodes had become so much more prominent and overwhelming. They occurred both during the day and especially at night, and it would take many long hours to fully pull himself back together. It was rare for him to ride one out without some sort of shallow injury to his arms or face. Wilbur had become adept at dealing with them.

I, most certainly, had not.

“Did you know??” Tyler demanded, voice cracking. “Did you know this is what it wanted? That its entire goal was to take me? Like it’s- like it’s some sort of game to it! Some- some stupid game! And all along, I was just a prize! Do you know what Nightmare did to me, WX? What it did to turn me into a monster?”

Many of the world’s memories of the Thulians had been unraveled. Very few still existed today, and unfortunately, the Boy’s life was not one of them.

“It ripped me apart,” he sobbed. “It tore my body to shreds and- it hurt. It hurt so bad. I couldn’t see it was just… it was nothing. I couldn’t breathe. It hurt, WX, I was choking. I’m- it was- I was so scared.”

I remained quiet. I had nothing to add.

“And then it took me and… for hundreds of years all I could do was hurt people. Children and parents and beloved pets and I just- It was the only way out! The only hope I had, and it didn’t do anything! It made everything worse!”

“WHAT DID?”

“The sword. It didn’t destroy Constant’s darkness, it freed it. And all it ever wanted was to ruin me again. It just wants to punish me for something I never even did… someone I never even was.”

From there, he poured out the story that was thousands of years old at this point. Of a people’s insistence that he had been the second coming of the first human, who had died so long ago. Of a jealous god who ripped apart homes and families and lives in its own rage and hatred. Of a boy caught in the crossfire simply because he happened to look like someone.

I wasn’t sure if I was more impressed by what appeared to be a razor-sharp memory or horrified by the implications of what I was hearing. Was the memory even his, or was it Nightmare’s, filtered through Tyler’s perspective?

He poured out a long list of terrible sins, each one painted in excruciating detail, fulfilling Constant’s twisted wills and desires. Sacrifices, families destroyed, lives ended in brutal fashion, all committed by the very same boy who had curled into the smallest form he could manage, choking out words like they hurt to speak.

And it was all I could do to listen. I couldn’t give advice or try to rebuff any of his claims. Anything I tried would just come off empty.

Finally, after speaking for long enough that his voice grew hoarse and his entire face and upper chest had grown damp with the nightmare fuel leaking from his eyes, Tyler finally seemed to have exhausted himself. His breaths had steadied out again, slow and measured, and his eyelids drooped dangerously.

“EXHAUSTED YOURSELF, HMM?” It was the first thing I had said in well over an hour.

Instead of giving me any proper response, he just let out a tired little mumble and something that sounded more like “Mhgmmf” than any actual words. He pressed his face into my side and shifted as if trying to get more comfortable.

“BE GLAD I AM NO LONGER ALIVE,” I lightly chastised as his damp cheeks touched my arm. “I WOULD HAVE ELECTROCUTED YOU IF I WAS.”

“Would’ve been nostalgic,” he mumbled in a voice slurred with sleep. “Been awhile since you beat me up.”

“YOU STARTED APPROXIMATELY NINETY PERCENT OF OUR FIGHTS.”

“Were you keeping track?” Tyler pulled away a bit at that, a sort of crooked smirk appearing on his face. “Would’ve thought the number was closer to… seventy-five or so.”

“YOU WERE RATHER INCAPABLE OF CONTROLLING YOUR EMOTIONS AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN ONE TO BACK DOWN FROM A CHALLENGE.”

“You act like I’m any better at controlling my emotions now. Wilbur has absolutely ruined me. Now you gotta start pulling your own weight and starting the fights. Can’t let death make you all complacent.”

I scoffed in indignation, earning a genuine little chortle from the hybrid.

“You’re… not… you wouldn’t hate me? If Nightmare… If I can’t control it…” Again, he shifted, though this time it was to look at my face as if trying to read my emotions.

I pressed my fist against his forehead and lightly shoved him back. “I WOULD BE A HYPOCRITE IF SO. CHARLIE HAD BECOME A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE, AND IT WAS NOT UNHEARD OF FOR NIGHTMARE TO FORCE HER TO DO TERRIBLE THINGS TO GOOD PEOPLE.”

“Like Wilbur’s mate?”

Roselyn. I was familiar with her, though not as much as I could be. It would probably be beneficial to learn more about her and Wilbur’s daughter. If nothing else than to understand what drove him more. I’d probably visit the World Between the next time the others were asleep.

“CHARLIE DID NOT WANT TO HURT HER,” I said, one of the few things I did know. “BUT NIGHTMARE CAN ONLY AFFECT NONLIVING THINGS WITHOUT ITS HOST. IN ORDER TO HARM HER, YES, CHARLIE HAD TO ACT AS ITS VESSEL.”

“And what if… what if something like that happens to me?”

“IT WILL NOT,” I responded immediately. “CHARLIE AND NIGHTMARE’S BOND HAD GROWN EXCEPTIONALLY POWERFUL OVER THE COURSE OF THEIR SHARED EXISTENCE. IT WILL TAKE SOME TIME FOR NIGHTMARE TO HAVE THAT LEVEL OF CONTROL OVER YOU.”

“But it will?” Tyler pressed. “Eventually?”

“IT WILL BE IRRELEVANT BY THEN. THERE IS NO USE CONCERNING YOURSELF WITH THAT.”

“But-”

“NO. TO TAKE ISSUE WITH ANYTHING THAT NIGHTMARE MAY ATTEMPT TO DO WITH YOU WOULD BE TERRIBLY HYPOCRITICAL OF ALL OF US. WILBUR, WINONA, AND I HAVE DEEP TIES TO CHARLIE THAT ARE UNAFFECTED BY WHAT IT HAS DONE, AND WILSON HAS NO RIGHT TO BLAME YOU.”

Although this didn’t seem to comfort him, it at least seemed to have placated him for the time being. He wiggled himself around a bit and forced himself back into my personal space. My hands twitched with the urge to push him off, but I kept them still. He was going through a lot right now, and if being annoyingly clingy was how he was processing emotions these days, it was only fair that I allowed him to.

“YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO EXPLAIN YOURSELF TO THE OTHERS.”

Tyler immediately went still, muscles tensing. “Can you…?”

“NO. THIS IS NOT MY EXPLANATION TO GIVE.”

I could feel him physically deflate, clearly disappointed. He really had gotten too good at running away from his problems. How in the world did the others manage to build such an ingrained habit in him in less than a year? “Then can we just stay here for a bit? I don’t want to go back yet.”

Delaying the inevitable was barely better than actively refusing to face it, but I could give him this at least. Besides, a lot had happened in the course of only a few hours. Perhaps it would be best to give everyone some time to calm down, and Tyler time to recover from the ordeal he had been through recently. His wounds were healed, but still looked raw and painful.

“FINE,” I allowed. “BUT YOU ARE ONLY PUTTING IT OFF. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT WILL GO AWAY ON ITS OWN.”

He didn’t respond to that. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was because he had actively decided not to or if it was because he had fallen asleep the second he had been given allowance to. I only realized after the fact that I had effectively let him trap me here, entangled in my limbs as he had made himself. I tipped my head back until it hit the light behind me with a dull thunk. This was going to be a long few hours.

…

Tyler’s POV

My skin felt unnaturally cold as I drifted off. The fire that burned above our heads gave off no heat and very little sound, the air seemed to have grown cool and still, and it wasn’t abnormal for WX to run cold, especially now that the faint buzzing heat of machinery had long since gone quiet. It seemed to leech the heat straight from my bloodstream.

(More likely, the blood in my veins wasn’t becoming cooler, it was actively disintegrating. Thousands of red blood cells being poisoned and dying every few seconds, quickly replaced with the unnaturally thick liquid that was slowly consuming me from the inside.)

I felt ill. Terribly so. Not quite nauseous, though the sheer levels of anxiety weren’t making my stomach feel the best, but feverish and weak. Because I was poisoned. My body was dying around me to make room for the new creature wearing my skin.

What an ironic thought.

WX didn’t need to say anything, but it was clear that they did not appreciate my clinginess. I still appreciated them letting me act in such a way, though. I needed someone with me right now. Someone to keep the monsters lurking on the edge of my mind away. Someone to help me forget the burns that had formed in the creases of my hand, and the slow, exhausted beating of my heart as it worked harder than ever to pump the ever thickening blood through my body.

As the thought crossed my mind again, I shuddered violently and a whimper caught in my throat. For so long, for thousands of years, Nightmare had been chasing me down. Whether it had known it, whether or not I ever understood it, it had forever been nipping at my heels. Over time it had forgotten my face and I had forgotten its threat, but it had never truly forgotten the boy who tried to destroy it over four thousand years ago.

Wilbur had mentioned being able to call for Charlie. It was some time ago now, back in the Archipelago, but was that something I could do? Call for those outside of normal existence? The thought appeared suddenly and brightly, and I grasped it as I fully fell asleep.

Constant’s Other Half. I need to talk to Constant’s Other Half.

“Auraris,” came the name, whispered in my ear, sudden and unexpected.

My eyes flew open as I violently jerked back. I was somewhere now that I didn’t quite recognize. I stood on water, though how deep it went I couldn’t tell. The world around me was dark, lit faintly not with any moon but instead thousands of stars that burned in all sorts of colors. Dark blues, purples, glittering greens and cyans reflected against the water and shone back against me in refracted light. I had never seen such a beautiful sky before, galaxies and glittering cosmos painting it with lovely swirls of color.

I looked down to see my own reflection.

My reflection had changed many times over the years. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was expecting to see, and the reflection itself seemed to realize this.

Liquid amber eyes, long hair and thick, matted bangs. Sallow, gray cheeks and arms so atrophied from starvation you could see every bone.

Shorter hair, kept clean but distinctly styled like my sister’s. A long shirt and trousers hand crafted out of spider silk and beefalo wool. Round cheeks and sunburnt shoulders.

Black fur and eyes with no pupils or irises. The hardest change to ever get used to. Long fangs, ‘whiskers’ (spider legs) stretched out to catch the slightest hint of airflow. A terrible scar ripping out an eye, a mutilated hand.

It settled into something similar to the last, but so, so much different.

The color melted away from my reflection into sickly gray fur that framed a hollow face and outlined every rib. It lacked any of my scars, but strange markings marred its arms and chest, purple and blue lines that traced every single vein and artery. A deep purple gem was embedded deep in its chest, pulsing with darkness, seemingly the source of these markings. The most glaring differences, though, were its wide, unhinged grin and eyes that glowed red.

It lurched upwards, separating itself from the water in the blink of an eye, and dragged me down with it.

Despite the cloying sense of pressure all around me, my startled gasp brought in air. I could still breathe, even as invisible claws dug into me and pulled me further below the surface. I gritted my teeth and wrenched myself away from it.

“Tell me.”

I was on solid ground again. Even though I hadn’t inhaled any liquid, my lungs felt heavy and my stomach churned unpleasantly. I coughed up empty air.

“When you look in the mirror, what do you see?”

I looked up.

The reflection was back, though not quite in the same way. Its form wavered and refracted as though underwater, but it was standing in front of me now. It tipped its head slightly as I met its gaze, identical to the first reflection of the Boy sans its glowing red eyes.

“Do you see the prophet of a god, gone so long from the world that their existence is considered irrelevant? A blasphemous creature whose body rots in the deepest pits of my world?”

It took a step forward. I took a step back. Its grin somehow grew wider.

“Perhaps you see a traitor instead.” Again, a shift. The second reflection, of myself as a small child. “Someone so consumed by their own curiosity that they watch those around them suffer for it?”

I swallowed hard. The sound echoed in the near-silent world, as did the gentle splash of the reflection taking one step closer, now a hybrid, body covered with scars and eyes burning with rage. “Or someone whose own body rejected itself, considered itself a toxin that needed to be disposed of. Who tried again and again to rid the world of his foul existence and yet always failed?”

“I don’t-”

“Or,” it was nearly on top of me. Its claws pierced my chest deep enough to drag me forward, pulling me closer and closer to its suffocating darkness. I instinctively writhed away from the source of pain, but its grip was unyielding, clutching tightly at my ribs. “Do you see me?”

It was a struggle to breathe in its proximity. The breaths I managed to take were harsh and took far more effort than I could expend for long. It seemed to realize this, and a strange sound tore from its throat. It sounded like… laughing?

“Poor little sibling, so far from home. So far from the family and the god you once loved. Your own body fights itself just to survive. What even is the point? Perhaps it is time for you… to… rest…” Its voice suddenly grew soft and welcoming. Its face softened, even as the visage it had taken on melted away to reveal its true form once more. Gray fur, red eyes.

“It is what your body is begging for, is it not?” It cooed. Gentle claws came in to cup my face, sharp tips pressing against the skin of my cheeks. “It is what you have begged for.”

“Nightmare,” I hissed lowly, even through my harsh breathing.

“Tyler,” it replied, in such a low, smooth purr that it was almost impossible to believe it was the same creature that had been hunting me for so long. My next breath out was shaky, and something nasty caught in my throat as my body rebelled against its saccharine voice. “You truly wish to go on? For what? For who? For the creatures who have hurt and abused you? For the people that would leave you behind the moment you suggested something was wrong? For the heart that you believe will save you?”

It was still speaking in that low, soothing tone, and images flashed in my mind unbidden. Of invisible shackles that rubbed my wrists raw with every step. Nasty snarks and violent intentions. A sneer, an insult, an injury. A backhand or a knife-

He put so much pressure against it. It couldn’t have been easy, especially with your target thrashing and kicking out and crying, but he did it anyway. Forever mauled, forever disabled, forever scarred.

And it took him eight months to even apologize.

The effort it took to rip myself away from the images was almost more than it took to breathe. So many of those things happened so long ago now. Maybe to something as ancient as Nightmare, it was only a blink, but two years was an entire quarter of my life, and many of those things happened way back when we first met. A violent shudder worked its way up my back. My heart stuttered and stalled.

“They’ve never left me behind,” I gritted out.

Nightmare let out what sounded like a long, annoyed sigh. A moment later, it dropped me unceremoniously on the ground. “Tell me, then. What have they done for you? The mechanic and the monkey, who only kept you around as a replacement? The robot, who abandoned you?” It leaned over me, eyes glittering. “The scientist, who tortured you?”

My chest seized as the memories came to mind again, much stronger than before. Wetness dripped from my face, shaking hands covered in blood and stars whirring in my vision. My head pounded to the beat of my heart.

A low moan of agony ripped through my chest as I folded myself as small as possible. Pain ricocheted off of every nerve in my body, lighting them up with sparks and setting fire to my muscles. I had to take shallow, short breaths just to fill my lungs, but even that movement sparked fire through my body. To rip myself back into reality took every ounce of focus I could muster, and was likely only possible at all from years of practice.

It was laughing again, clearly amused.

The first attempt back to my feet failed. My knees gave out from under me the second my weight shifted. My chest hit the ground, forcing out every last bit of air I had managed to grab. Instead of pushing back, Nightmare’s amusement only seemed to grow tenfold as my second attempt failed as well. “I am not a replacement!” I roared, and the cold grew stronger within my chest. My calves felt stiff, threatening to cramp under pressure, but I managed to bring myself back to my feet. My knees wavered under the weight of my own body and screamed in protest. My lungs ached. “They love me! And I love them!” Its eyes sharpened as my anger overpowered my fear. “You know nothing about me. I’ve been fighting against the likes of you for almost half of my life now.”

“Love means nothing, little dreamer. You will kill them all. Do you believe their blood is as sweet as your own?”

“Is that your goal?” I hissed. “Really? To use the body of an eight year old to destroy a world? You couldn’t do it with the power of a god, what makes you think you’ll be able to pull it off now?”

Nightmare did not look phased. In fact, it looked positively pleased with this development. It clasped its hands together. Small blue flames danced along its fur.

“Your very existence rejects itself. This reality frays apart at the seams, and I hold the strings together.” It pushed forward, forcing me back into a stumble as its suffocating presence washed over me. “Your body will begin to die as your blood congeals. Warmth and light will become foreign to you. Your lungs will struggle to work and your heart will fight to beat until they give out altogether. And yet, you will remain alive. You will remain alive to watch your skin boil under the light of the sun, and to watch my blood begin to leak from every pore on your body. In the end, you will beg for death, and it will never be given to you. For thousands of years I have waited to stand here again. To watch you writhe in terror as your skin dies around you. I will take immense pleasure in watching this play out all over again.

I have seen this happen before, Young Heir. Charlie was once just as stubborn as yourself. She bled herself dry for the Nightmare Captor. For the ‘love’ you are so desperate to tote around as the cure to your suffering. She let her body die to help him thrive, and where did that get her?” Wild glitches flew from its body, now unstable and flickering in and out as it reformed into Charlie’s appearance, a gaping wound torn from her stomach. “Fallen right at my feet.”

I had already had an idea of what would happen to me, and yet, hearing it so blatantly described gripped my chest with an entirely different type of terror. How long before the blood in my veins ran so thick that my own body couldn’t handle it anymore? Was it already happening now? I felt like I was suffocating.

“You will find yourself gaining abilities and strengths you never had before, and every single one will drag you further down the path destiny has intended for you. When the world itself molds to your whims, what will you do then? Will you send them home?”

Its form stabilized again.

“Or will you imprison them here forever?”

I wouldn’t do that to them. I couldn’t. After everything we had been through, forcing any of them to stay here would be downright malicious. Even if it meant leaving myself in an empty void alone. Even if it meant driving myself to insanity.

“The second immortality overcomes your mortal worries, the monkey will want to abandon you. You were only ever a project for him to fix and play with. Do you truly think you will ever amount to the ones he left behind? You are a reminder of his guilt. You are the reason he left his home behind.”

An orb appeared above its hand, dark and swirling with unknown possibilities, but I could make out one thing: Wilbur, eyes clouded and depressed, chained by the neck and wrists by shackles made of darkness.

“The mechanic will never forgive you for killing her sister. She stifles herself now, absorbed in shock, but it will become all too clear that you stole from her what she has given everything up for. She spends every night dreaming of the woman she left behind, grieving for the last part of her heart that yearns to be complete. You took everything from her, and now, you mean nothing.” The image within the orb shifted to Winona, huddled up with her knees to her face. Even if I couldn’t hear her, I could see by the shake of her shoulders that she was crying. “Look what love has done to her. To them. It has torn them apart and left them weak.

“The scientist takes pleasure in your suffering. You could send him away, give yourself the peace of never seeing him again, but deep inside you know that all you want from him is revenge. Revenge for how he hurt you. Revenge for how he treated you. Revenge for how he lied about loving you. You want to watch him feel the same pain you do.” Wilson, expression glazed and blank, held up by invisible strings that kept an empty grin on his face.

“And the robot. You have destroyed them, you know. Convinced them that they could feel anything other than ones and zeroes. They don’t even truly exist. Everything you think you know about them is just another line of code that could be erased as easily as blinking. You have manipulated them into believing that they are alive and real. What creature would not despise the one that forces them to feel the emotions they feel?” WX, shaking violently, fist closed around a spear that threatened to crack under their grasp. They were injured, long cracks down their face like the poor imitation of tear tracks. “No matter. What is rewriting a few lines of code if it means turning your rival into your best friend? Your last hope for love? It is as simple as that. They are nothing else.

“You are a poison. And yet, you desperately cling to them. Force them to stay around. You tore Wilbur away from everything he knew because you could not stand to let anyone be happy. Because the world has to be just as miserable as yourself.

“In the end, you will have nothing but puppets. They will just be toys for you to play with and then forget. And when that happens, and you find yourself entirely alone, you will regret making me into the enemy. The only real enemy in this world is yourself, and you know this.”

Wilbur and I tangled in each other's limbs, myself asleep and him gazing at me. The look in his eyes was not one of love, but one of deep pity and sadness. His hands reached out with infinite gentleness as he ran his fingers through my fur, wincing with every pass as he remembered grooming his daughter as she slept. My eyes were amber, not the ocean blue ones he loved so dearly. The one he was curled around was not the one he loved. I was never the one he loved.

Winona looking down at me while I was unconscious. Her face was carefully controlled, but the shake of her hand betrayed her rage. She had to take deep, thoughtful breaths as thoughts of revenge swirled through her head. If she couldn’t have Scarlet, and she couldn’t have Charlie, then she would ensure that at least one of the people responsible would pay. There was a faint reflection of blue light in her eyes.

Wilson apologizing for what he had done so long ago. He picked at his cuticles meticulously until his thumb bled, and something on his face grew dark and unhappy as my own softened. Ice crackled in his chest, but even as tiny shards split away from his heart, his expression never changed. His eyes never warmed.

WX-78, just minutes ago, promising that the others would not hate me for what was happening, but something about the way they spoke was unsure, unconvinced. They stared down hard at me, silently blaming me for Charlie’s death and believing I deserved this new prison I had placed myself into. I couldn’t stand the idea of them befriending anyone other than myself, so I tore apart every person who tried.

I swallowed hard. How had I missed all of these little looks? These little expressions betraying everything they really thought? How had I missed the anger and hatred they must have felt for me? I jumped from one near death experience to the next, only ever skirting by by the skin of my teeth and the determination of the others. It was an obligation, one not born out of love but born out of guilt for my youth. Nobody would simply watch a child die if they could stop it. It didn’t matter if that child was me or not. It was basic human nature, nothing else.

“The grudge held against the Sibling is not something I received in Constant’s split. I only ever wanted to bring this world down the path that is needed. I was able to further this goal with the scientist’s assistance, but that line has grown… dark… as of late.”

And suddenly, it was as though my head had broken through water. The fuzziness cleared and my lungs suddenly filled with great, deep breaths. Nightmare had once manipulated Wilson into letting it in. There was no doubt in my mind that its goal was the same here.

“I am not letting you in that easily,” I growled.

Its grin returned. “I would not have expected anything else from you, Young Heir. Your stubbornness breaks through when all else fails. Consider, though, paying more attention to the way your ‘friends’ look at you. You may find something you won’t appreciate the answer to.”

With those parting words, the demon blinked out of existence, leaving me completely alone under the endlessly starry sky.

 

[RhymesWChronic]

Chapter 101. Innocence - Part 9

Chapter 5 of 5

Darkness

It can only jump between vessels through blood contact.

Winona had turned those words around in her head over and over, examining them from every angle and every possible interpretation. It had been shared with her before Wilbur had been willing to speak to the rest of the group, so even though she had fully trusted Tyler’s translation to her, some part of her still wondered if there was something lost in translation.

Any time mentioning it to Wilbur afterwards though led to the same result: there was nothing lost or missed. The only way for Nightmare to leave one host was to take another through blood contact.

And for some time, Winona had truly, deeply considered her choices regarding that. Would she be willing to take on the burden herself to save her sister? One last sacrifice for the little girl that had shadowed her their entire childhoods?

On some days, the answer was a definitive yes, without any question. If given the choice, to become Nightmare’s host to spare Charlie, she would have done it without a second thought. Any doubt would be immediately squashed when she remembered the bright, beautiful light that once portrayed her sister’s soul. Charlie had always given off the warmest light, the way she would hold everything with such care in delicate hands. She was soft where Winona was hard, warm where she was cold, nature where Winona was machinery.

Other days, even just brushing the thought of taking Nightmare’s burden caused her hands to tremble uncontrollably. From what she had learned about the demon wearing her sister’s face, if Charlie struggled so hard against its influence, then it was doubtless that Winona would be entirely crushed by it.

Winona held her feelings of love close to her chest, tending to them gingerly like she was afraid they would break. Every little spark of love and affection she would capture in glass and squirrel it away as close to her heart as she could place it. People on the outside looking in would see nothing but chilled little emotions, blind to how impossibly dense and warm they felt to the touch. It was another way in which Winona and Charlie differed. Charlie’s love burst from her like the sun’s rays. It illuminated everything she touched and warmed everything she held. If Winona’s love was held in delicate glass marbles, then Charlie’s was held within individual stars in a galaxy: each one burning so bright it could be seen from miles away. If such vibrance could be dulled by time, stifled and dampened by darkness, then there was no doubt that Winona’s would be lost far quicker. Any attempt to save Charlie would almost certainly end with Winona’s undoing.

On those days, she kept those feelings as far away from her as possible. She locked them away so deeply that she would never have to bring them back out to examine if she didn’t want to. The next day, maybe, she would be more willing to peek inside Pandora’s Box, but that day was not today, and the box would remain firmly sealed.

Her hands hadn’t stopped shaking since coming here.

If anyone asked, Winona would find something to tell them. About the cold or how scared she had been or exhaustion or something different altogether. She wanted to pretend the tremors were small, insignificant, but the fact of the matter was, the tremors weren’t faint little twitches in her fingers. Her frostbitten hand wasn’t capable of such fine motor functions. Instead, the trembling came straight from her core, uncontrollable and deep. No matter how hard she held her own arms in an attempt to make them stop, no matter how many thin crescents she pressed into her skin as her nails scrabbled for purchase, they wouldn’t go away.

In the wake of such an argument, that was all she could really do. Hold on to herself as tightly as possible and try to keep away the creeping sensation of shattering.

WX-78 and Tyler had seen something, and Winona suspected that Wilbur had seen it, too. Whatever it was, it had put an abrupt silence over their concerned words and thoughts. If she tried hard enough, surely she could come up with some lie to convince herself, but it would be ignoring the blatant writing on the walls. There was only one thing that would cause such a reaction as that, and now that the brothers were gone, the only thing left to consider was the implications.

Winona had failed again.

The expressions on her companions' faces varied greatly. Left alone now with Wilbur and Wilson, there were only two to try to sort out, and they were both their own brand of both horror and terror.

“Nightmare isn’t dead.” Wilbur was the one brave enough to break the silence. His voice was so stiff that it barely even sounded like his own. Winona could almost hear the tightness of his vocal cords. “Nightmare- it- it must have jumped. Right… right before Charlie was stabbed.”

Winona turned on her heel and walked away.

If she wanted to be alone, that hope was dashed the second Wilson called after her. “Wait, Winona, you can’t just-!”

Process. She just needed to process. If she spoke now, she would end up yelling. If she spoke now, her anger and pain and fear and grief would immediately overflow and manifest as blame. It didn’t matter how much she wanted to blame Wilson for not being strong enough to win his own war against Nightmare, or Wilbur for helping the demon years ago, or WX-78 for not stopping the fight altogether, or even Tyler for being the one to pick the fight with Nightmare in the first place. There were only a few real people to place the blame for everything on, and none of them were close enough to yell at except herself.

If she wanted to wallow in self-pity and blame, then that was well within her right, thank you very much.

“I don’t want to talk right now, Wilson.”
“Nnnno, probably not, but I can assure you that just letting yourself spiral won’t help anyone or anything.” Wilson grabbed Winona’s arm. She stumbled slightly at the resistance, but the look she threw him was probably a bit closer to tragic than angry. “Listen, it’s okay to be angry right now, but-”

“You don’t understand!” Winona snapped, firmly taking her arm back. She immediately caught the boiling over emotions, firmly lidded them again, and turned her head away to keep them from resurfacing as she said: “I… I just need a moment.”

It wasn’t as if she was being rude either. Wilson was the furthest from understanding her thought process at the moment. Winona couldn’t even really decipher it, and the last thing she wanted was for the one person with no concept of love to lecture her about losing family.

She kept walking. Wilson kept following.

“This… isn’t the reaction I was expecting from you,” he said. Winona kept her mouth shut, which apparently was nothing but an invitation for him to keep talking. “This isn’t about Tyler, is it?” The ‘for once’ went unsaid but clearly insinuated by his tone of voice. Winona scoffed but otherwise didn’t respond. “Nightmare is… it definitely makes things…”

“I watched my sister die!”

For the longest moment, Winona wasn’t sure where the words came from. The knowledge that it had come from her own mouth was obvious but belated. Upon seeing the shocked expression on Wilson’s face, she pressed her palms against her eyes to both block it out and try to stem the tears threatening to swarm her vision. Her next inhale was threateningly shaky, and she had to take a good extra second to swallow her emotions back.

“I looked for her,” she said slowly, voice tense and thick. “And I found her just in time to watch her die. For nothing.” Winona slowly lowered her hands, staring down at the worn leather gloves as if they were the most interesting things in the world. Her tears made noticeable little tip tip tip sounds against them. “My Charlie. The girl I held as a baby and taught how to use a screwdriver. The girl I used to sneak into the bedroom of and have sleepovers behind our parents backs. The girl that used to bring laughter to every party and the light to every room. She’s gone. Charlie is gone.”

“Winona…-”

Her hands hadn’t stopped shaking since arriving in Darkness, but that wasn’t true. They hadn’t stopped shaking since she had seen that sword impale the mockery of her sister and consume everything she had left. Since she had watched a sword meant to banish darkness banish all that was left of that joyful girl’s soul because she was darkness. There was nothing left of her.

“I looked for her for so long.” Winona had thrown away her entire life looking for her. “And I was just ten feet away from her. And I-” She clenched her jaw as the tears started to fall faster. “I didn’t even get to apologize.” For not stepping in sooner. For not keeping her safe. For leaving her alone for so long, that light slowly dimming and that joy slowly fading.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Wilson murmured. Winona spared him a glance, noting the shadowed cast of his face as he looked away. “You’re right. I don’t understand.” Still, though, he beckoned at her with one hand, inviting her to sit. The ground was unpleasantly damp, but much longer on her legs and they probably would’ve turned to jelly. “I’ve never been in your situation before.”

There were a million sharp comments she could make about that observation, but mostly, Winona was just glad that he admitted it instead of dancing around his words.

“But… Charlie didn’t die unloved.” Wilson’s voice was more of a quiet musing, like he was talking to himself rather than her. “You didn’t need her light anymore. There were people that needed her so much more. And I’ll be the first to tell you that her situation was awful. Just a taste of Nightmare’s influence…” He shook his head, something dark fluttering over his face. “But she held on. She held on long enough to see you again. For you to see each other.”

“She was killed,” she growled. “To destroy Nightmare-”

“And it weakened it,” Wilson said.

“-And maybe she got to see me, or maybe she didn’t. We don’t know how much control she had over herself anymore.”

“We know that she had enough of herself left to spend hours trying to comfort people who died,” Wilson countered. “How often did WX say they had to meet her there? She wasn’t gone. She was enough of herself to know that what was going to happen was for the best. Don’t you think she could have convinced WX to stop that fight if she didn’t think so? If she didn’t have the utmost confidence in your ability to keep moving forward?”
Winona wouldn’t meet his eyes

“She must have known that someone wasn’t leaving that fight alive. She must have known that she was at a disadvantage, going against the one weapon that could critically injure Nightmare, and she…” Wilson sighed, rubbing his hands across his face as if trying to scrub it off expression. “Do you really think she didn’t help throw that fight?”

At that, Winona’s gaze shot up to meet her companion’s. He had a settled expression on his face, one that didn’t invite room for interpretation or doubt. “What do you-”

“Think about it for a moment,” he said. “Really think about it. After everything we heard from WX and Tyler, about Constant and Nightmare. Nightmare was a god. It was the most powerful creature in the world for centuries. It consumed this world, completely obliterated the mind of the Ancient Guardian, stole my ability to be happy. Anyone or anything that came into contact with it went insane or was utterly destroyed. And you think that a nine-year old child took it down on his own?”

Winona opened her mouth to respond, but little came out. Wilson’s face, impossibly, softened further.

“If Tyler was on his own in that fight, Nightmare would have torn him to shreds without hesitation. Something slowed it down. Something kept it from being at its full strength. Someone did everything they could to throw that fight. The only person who could have done that was Charlie.” He folded his hands together and closed his eyes for a moment, searching for words. “If we… if we win. If we get home safely. I have no doubt in my mind that it is entirely because of her, and I have no doubt that Wilbur and WX would completely agree.”

For a moment, Winona turned Wilson’s words over in her head. It… it sounded exactly like the Charlie she knew. Fighting until the end, even if she had known that it would be her last minutes. The leather of her gloves creaked as she twisted her hands together. “...give me a bit. I just want some time to myself.”

Wilson nodded and offered a small smile. “Alright. You know where we’ll be. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. As soon as she was sure that the scientist had left, she settled herself into a more comfortable position and finally allowed the grief that had been building for the past several days come rushing out.

…

When Winona returned, a couple of hours had already passed. She was sure that her eyes were still a bit red and puffy, but overall, she felt marginally more like a human being again.

Wilson was right, and it would be a waste of Charlie’s sacrifice to spend the rest of her time grieving now. There was plenty of time for that later. For now, there were bigger things to worry about.

(That’s what she told herself, at least. There was a good chance she would completely flip the next day, but as long as she was feeling a bit better, she would take advantage of it.)

It appeared as though she had been right on time, too. Wilbur was still settling himself around a sleeping Tyler, and WX-78 was in deep conversation with Wilson, heads pressed together and faces creased with concern.

WX-78 eyed her up as Winona came to join them, but they inevitably decided to let her in on the conversation.

“HE IS DESPERATE TO IGNORE HIS AFFLICTION,” WX-78 said, scowling ever-so-slightly as they glanced back towards the duo out of earshot. “I INFORMED HIM THAT I DID NOT INTEND ON BEING THE ONE TO PASS THE NEWS.”

“But you are anyway,” Wilson pointed out. “You really have gone soft.”

“THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ‘GOING SOFT’,” they scoffed. “THIS… SITUATION… HAS GONE BEYOND WAITING FOR PEOPLE TO TALK TO EACH OTHER. NIGHTMARE SURVIVED THE FIGHT, AND THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH NOW. THE IDENTITY OF ITS HOST IS IRRELEVANT.”

“But it’s not. We all know that you think the world of Tyler. Given that you are trying to deflect that, something tells me that you are just as stressed about it as they are.”

“‘They’?” Winona echoed. “And you’re not stressed?”

“TO BE THE HOST OF NIGHTMARE IS NOTHING LIKE WHAT YOU EXPERIENCED, WILSON,” WX snapped, almost immediately on the defensive. “AND YOU HAVE ALREADY INFORMED ME THAT MUCH LONGER WITHOUT INTERFERENCE LIKELY WOULD HAVE ENDED TERRIBLY FOR YOU. THE POSSESSION THAT CHARLIE UNDERTOOK WAS SOMETHING COMPLETE. HER BODY, MIND, AND SOUL ALIKE HAD BEEN CORRUPTED AND POISONED BY NIGHTMARE’S INFLUENCE. IT IS EXACTLY WHY HER LIFE WAS UNSALVAGEABLE.”

Winona flinched hard, but she managed to keep a straight face. There was something sad in the way they said the final sentences. More than just sad, almost… broken. Depressed.

“See!” Wilson exclaimed. “The second anyone acted unconcerned, you totally flipped! This is bad bad, isn’t it?”

WX glared at their companion, but didn’t protest it. They looked away after a moment and shook their head. “CHARLIE WAS OLDER WHEN SHE POSSESSED BY NIGHTMARE. I CANNOT GUESS WHETHER A YOUNGER BODY WOULD MAKE IT HARDER OR EASIER FOR NIGHTMARE’S INFLUENCE TO TAKE EFFECT. THERE IS A CHANCE THAT WE HAVE MUCH MORE TIME THAN SHE DID… BUT THERE IS ALSO A CHANCE THAT OUR TIME LIMIT IS MUCH SHORTER. THERE IS VERY LITTLE INFORMATION FOR US TO GO OFF OF. THEREFORE, WE SHOULD BE CONSIDERATE OF BOTH OUTCOMES.”

“So then… what do we do if he can’t fight back against Nightmare? Would we have to…” Put him out of his misery? Winona’s unfinished words hung in the air, but the implication was clear if the sudden sour expression on WX’s face meant anything.

WX broke away from them just enough to pace without bumping into anyone’s elbows. They crossed their arms and kept their gaze firmly on the ground. “NO. WE COULD NOT DO THAT. IT WOULD BE… COSMICALLY UNWISE, FOR LACK OF BETTER TERMS. THE BEST PLAN WOULD BE TO ESCAPE DARKNESS BEFORE NIGHTMARE CAN TAKE HOLD.”

“We have no idea what we need to escape, though!” Wilson protested. “The past four worlds gave us the path forward eventually, but it could be anywhere from a few hours from now to months from now! What exactly is our time limit? How long do we have until the best bet for anyone’s survival is to kill him?”

“IF YOU EVEN CONSIDER THAT-”

“We don’t have much to work off of,” Winona interrupted. There were far more important things to do that argue about that, especially when the best case meant it would never even have to come to hurting Tyler. “The previous worlds - Integrity, Tenacity, Love, Forgiveness - what goes with those?”

“Even if we knew it, it’s not like you can just force the concept into the kid’s head,” Wilson grumbled. “He’s famously stubborn, in case you forgot.”

“What about his sword? If we are careful about it, we could remove small amounts at a time-”

“TOO LATE FOR THAT.” WX shook their head. “I SUSPECT A LARGE AMOUNT OF HIS BLOOD HAS ALREADY TURNED. IT WOULD IMMEDIATELY PUT HIM INTO HYPOVOLEMIC SHOCK, AND WE HAVE A DISTINCT LACK OF MAGICAL ARTIFACTS TO PULL HIM OUT OF THAT AGAIN.”

“We could try bloodletting,” Wilson mused.

“NOT A CHANCE. ANY LOSS OF BLOOD WOULD IMMEDIATELY BE REPLACED WITH NIGHTMARE FUEL, ONLY FURTHERING NIGHTMARE’S STRENGTH.”

“There’s that creature that you talked to before, Wilson. The one that said it was trying to help us. Tyler said it was a sort of counterpart for Nightmare. Could it help us?”

“Even if I wanted to try to contact it again, we still don’t know anything about it. We don’t know its name, what exactly it is, or even if it’s really benevolent or not.”

“NOT KNOWING THE NAME IS ENOUGH. AS FAR AS I AM AWARE, YOU NEED THE NAME OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO CALL FOR THEM.”

“We’re just talking in circles,” Winona sighed. “We’re not getting anywhere. There’s no plan.”

“I BELIEVE THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION WOULD BE TO DISCUSS THIS WITH TYLER HIMSELF,” WX said.

“You think he has any idea of what to do?” Wilson asked incredulously. “Have you met this kid?”

“HE WAS THE CLOSEST PERSON IN HISTORY TO KILLING CONSTANT,” WX argued. “IF ANYONE COULD DESTROY NIGHTMARE, IT WOULD BE HIM.”

“Alternatively, that wasn’t him,” Winona said. “Sure, yeah, once upon a time it might have been, but it’s not anymore. We can’t just assume that because one kid several thousands of years ago stabbed himself on a sword that this kid is going to actually be able to defeat Nightmare without killing himself.”

“Which he doesn’t need much convincing to do anyway,” Wilson grumbled.

A moment of quiet as the three of them thought.

“Why do you think that Nightmare has already taken so much of him?” Winona asked.

“IT HAS ALREADY BEGUN LEAKING FROM HIM,” WX said. “HIS SCARS. I DOUBT THAT IS SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS EARLY IN THE PROCESS. THERE IS ENOUGH WITHIN HIM THAT IT BURNED HIS HAND WHEN HE ENTERED THE RADIUS OF A NIGHTMARE LIGHT.”

Winona glanced back at Tyler, a twinge of pain squeezing her heart. Even though he was asleep, his sleep appeared anything but restful. Instead, his face was creased deeply, one fang visible as he let out vague imitation of growls. She hadn’t noticed anything leaking from his scars, but maybe that was something that had advanced within the past couple of hours. Did it really develop that fast?

As carefully and quietly as she could, she left Wilson and WX to continue their hushed conversation in order to examine it for herself. Wilbur blinked up at her, and he seemed to hold on just a bit tighter to his son.

Luckily, Wilbur wasn’t so scared as to forget who she was, so even though he stiffened a bit as she gently touched Tyler’s scarred hand, he didn’t say anything or lash out.

Tyler, however, immediately snapped to wakefulness.

Before she even really had the chance to blink, he had already shoved Wilbur off and had his good hand reared back as if to claw her. Chest heaving, eyes wide with fear.

(The faintest flash of red. Wasn’t his fur darker than that?)

“Winona,” he breathed, slowly lowering his hand. Suddenly, he appeared very small before her, shrinking down into himself in an extremely unfamiliar way. “S-Sorry, you just-”

“Don’t apologize, I’m sorry for waking you up,” she said. “I just wanted to check on your hand. WX-78 said you burned it?”

“It… already healed,” Tyler muttered, tucking his injured hand away to the best of his ability. “Don’t… don’t worry about it. I’m fine, I swear.” He looked anything but fine, really. His fur was mussed and it was clear that he had been crying, too, though the matted fur on his cheek made it much more obvious on him than it was on Winona. He looked nauseous and tired and his fur was definitely paler than it should have been. “WX… said they weren’t going to talk about it.”

“Well… they’re worried about you. Of course they’re going to talk to us about it,” she said gently. “And hey, don’t worry, you’ve still got us. We’re not going anywhere.”

“No, though. That’s not right!” Tyler’s eye widened, something like shock or dismay darkening his face. “I… You should be mad at me right now. You are mad at me! You don’t have to act like you’re not! It’s- it’s fine for you to be mad! I get it!”

“Nobody’s mad,” Wilbur assured him. Tyler seemed to realize only then that the prime ape had fallen into their familiar sleeping positions, and he scrabbled away to sever contact almost immediately. “Why do you think we’d be mad?”

“Because of how many bad things I did, right? Like, Wilbur, you’re mad because I’m just a crude replacement for who you want me to be and Winona’s mad because of what… I did to Charlie. And it makes sense!”

Winona only felt confusion. Wilbur had been nothing but insistent that their relationship had nothing to do with his lost family, and Winona didn’t even consider it to be fair to blame him for Charlie’s death.

Wilbur verbally protested: “Tyler, what are you talking about? I thought we had been over this a million times already!”

Tyler took a step back, face creasing in confusion and now, little blooms of anger. “No, I- I saw the looks on your faces. When you thought I wasn’t looking. You don’t have to hide it! I can handle it! I can…” His gaze landed back on Winona, who still only looked back in calm confusion. “I… I don’t…?”

“YOU ARE ABOUT TO RUN AWAY AGAIN.” WX seemed to materialize from the dark behind their brother, hands pressing firmly on his shoulders. Tyler nearly jumped out of his fur, clearly having been completely unaware of the robot’s presence at all.

Can… did WX just teleport or are they just good at hiding in the shadows?

“They’re lying to me!” Tyler protested as he shook WX’s hands off.

“IF YOU SPOKE WITH NIGHTMARE, AND IT SHOWED YOU SOMETHING, IT WAS A LIE. NOBODY IS ANGRY WITH YOU.”

“Even you’re lying?” At that, he just sounded hurt. “I…” He shook his head, and Winona was pretty certain that WX was correct in saying that he was about to run off again-

When the boy suddenly lurched forward and face planted directly on the ground.

In Tyler’s defense, he immediately snapped back up to the best of his ability, but it was as though something had wrapped around his feet and tripped him the second he tried to move. When Winona tried to take a step closer, she was immediately forced to realize that the same thing had encased her own feet and kept her in place.

She only had to struggle against it for a moment before it split away and she stumbled forward, freed of the substance, but not before she recognized it as being eerily similar to the substance Nightmare had used to hold them before.

“AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHY IT WOULD BE UNWISE OF YOU TO LEAVE,” WX said harshly. “THIS IS ADVANCING FASTER THAN YOU CAN CONTROL. IT IS SMALL NOW, BUT IT WILL NOT BE SOON.”

“I didn’t do that-” Tyler choked in the most unconvincing voice Winona had ever heard.

“TYLER-”

They tried to step closer, but the uncertainty and terror in Tyler’s eyes had reached a fever pitch. Whether they didn’t realize this or simply didn’t care, Winona couldn’t tell. All that she knew was that they distinctly did not acknowledge the warning sign before he lashed out.

Whatever he had hit them with, it hit them hard. To Winona, it simply appeared like he had smacked them, or even tried to claw them, but tiny wisps of darkness followed his claws and cracked against WX, hard enough to send them sprawling to the ground.

Tyler froze with an audible squeak, hand hovering in the air and body so still Winona was pretty sure he had stopped breathing entirely. When WX pushed themselves back up, their expression was entirely consumed with rage. If they weren’t mad before, they certainly were now.

Tyler immediately covered his mouth with his hands and took several steps back. “I- I’m- WX-”

They were injured. Long, thin cracks sprawled out from under their ‘eyes’ like tears streaked across their face. The damage wasn’t severe, but it did look painful and relatively deep.

This time, when Tyler fled, they didn’t bother trying to stop him. Instead, they lowered their head and rested it in their hands.

Winona took a step forward. “Are you-”

“I AM FINE,” WX snapped before she could finish the question. “I BELIEVE THIS ANSWERS OUR QUESTIONS.” When they looked back up at her, Winona didn’t miss the grimace of pain or the tiny vestiges of fear on their face. Much more overpowering than either, though, was sheer anguish. “I BELIEVE WE NOW KNOW JUST HOW FAST NIGHTMARE IS CONSUMING HIS BODY.”

 

[The Starver]

[RhymesWChronic]

On 10/28/2024 at 8:04 AM, The Starver said:

[RhymesWChronic]

Chapter 102. Innocence - Part 10

 

Chapter 5 of 5

Darkness

WX-78’s POV

I traced a single finger along the newly formed cracks down my face as I stepped into the World Between. Nightmare had injured me before, but the wound had almost instantly healed. For some reason, these new cracks stubbornly remained. I hadn’t seen my reflection yet, but from touch alone I couldn’t help but compare them to tears.

Naturally, I was incapable of crying, but the streaks felt oddly right in their placement. What else would bring a robot to cry than the consumption of their brother’s soul?

I dreaded the idea that I would find him here, but I also instinctively knew this is exactly where he would be. The only people capable of being in this place were myself, Nighmare, and its Host, and… given the clear use of Nightmare’s magic, it was undeniable that he had already fallen far enough to be considered such.

When I had first found this place, I had spent hours watching my own death on repeat. I had examined every single corner, every millimeter of the memory in an attempt to find something new. To understand what my sacrifice had meant.

I wasn’t sure what I would find Tyler doing, but carefully putting pieces of an old memory together was not what I expected.

For a long moment, I simply watched the boy. It was strange. He remained himself here, but the signs of his possession had become much more clear. His fur had swiftly lost its shine and vibrance, instead dulling into an off-gray color. The markings were faint, but I could make out small, colored lines on his arms. His hands were surprisingly steady, especially considering his lame left hand, as he gently removed pieces of shattered memories from a pile and placed them back into their proper spot. I couldn’t make out what the memory was yet.

“YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE.”

Tyler jumped so hard he bumped the memory, which was only saved by quick claws steadying it on his lap before it could shatter again. “Wha-? What are you doing here? How-?”
“I AM NOT BOUND BY THE SAME LAWS AS THE LIVING,” I answered. I couldn’t explain much more than that: even Charlie and I had been uncertain as to why I could enter the World Between. And, of course, since the other dead Survivors were imprisoned, we couldn’t test whether any dead person could come here or if it was just me.

His gaze darted up and down, seemingly unsure of what to say or do. Then, his shoulders slumped and he sighed, picking another shard from the floor between two claws and setting it in its place. It fit seamlessly against the rest of the memory. “So… what now?”

“WHAT NOW?” I echoed in confusion.

“Well, surely you came here for a reason. If it’s to yell at me or something, you don’t have to.” Tyler snorted. “I’m pretty sure I’ve already yelled at myself enough for the both of us.”

“I AM HERE TO DRAG YOU BACK TO THE OTHERS,” I said. “THIS IS NOT A WISE PLACE TO BE.” Especially for someone still living.

“Hardly,” he muttered, but before I could ask he continued in a louder voice. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I just need to finish this.” Another shard slipped into its spot. His claws shook ever-so-slightly.

“IF YOU INTEND ON FIXING EVERY BROKEN MEMORY HERE, WE WILL BE HERE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.”

“Not all of them,” he protested. “Just this one. It’s important.”

I stepped closer to examine the memory, but it was still too damaged to fully make out. Honestly, I had never seen someone attempt to put one of these back together. Would it even function like it had before? Would those who had forgotten this memory suddenly remember it? Or would it remain darkened and damaged for the rest of time?

“WHAT IS THE RELEVANCE OF IT?”

“It’s mine,” Tyler said, and there was a glint of emotion in his eye that I couldn’t quite discern. “It’s- it’s my memory and I deserve to have it back.”

I had no clue how he knew whose memory it was. Perhaps he had just gone delusional?

“YOU WILL GO INSANE IN A PLACE LIKE THIS. THE MEMORIES HERE ARE NOT MEANT FOR THE LIVING.”

“Like I could even be considered living!” Tyler snapped. “How long has it been since I woke up? Like, a day? And already, Nightmare has-” He abruptly stopped, swallowing hard and letting the shard he held fall to the ground with a pathetic tink. “I’m already too far gone.”

Such a short amount of time. Somehow, I hadn’t even really realized it. My perception of time was warped as it is, having spent months away from any sun or natural light, but to genuinely consider that it had barely been a day-

“IT HAS NOT YET GAINED THE STRENGTH TO EXIST OUTSIDE OF YOU.” Stick to the positive facts. The few things that we could cling to when everything else was falling apart. While Charlie and Nightmare certainly existed as one in the same quite often, Nightmare spent a lot of time separated from its host. Tethered to her, wound so tightly that they could never be entirely separate, but existing on its own terms nonetheless. Since none of us had seen Nightmare itself, it was quite likely it still needed to build strength within the boy’s body. “WE STILL HAVE TIME.”

“How much? An hour? Two?” He wiped uselessly at his eye with one wrist as he picked up the fallen shard with the other. “I thought I was finally free. For once, I thought that I was finally myself-”

“THERE IS SOMETHING THAT YOU SEEM TO BE FORGETTING,” I said, which earned me little more than an unhappy smirk shot my way.

“And what’s that? Gonna tell me that Nightmare’s actually not all that bad?”

“NIGHTMARE IS A MONSTER.” Tyler rolled his eyes at me, but I continued without reaction. “IT FEEDS OFF OF FEAR AND PAIN, AND ENJOYS EVERY MOMENT OF IT. ITS BOND WITH THE WORLD IS ONE SO INTENSE THAT THE TWO ARE CONSIDERED INSEPARABLE. IT IS THE CREATURE THAT HAS HAUNTED THIS WORLD FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. AND YET, WILBUR WAS ABLE TO BREAK FREE OF ITS INFLUENCE. CHARLIE KEPT A STABLE MIND FOR CENTURIES. NIGHTMARE HAS A SINGLE WEAKNESS, AND YOU ARE OVERFLOWING WITH IT.”

I could tell he was still entirely unconvinced, but I had his attention now. He held the next piece of the memory in his hand so tightly I could see his entire forearm shaking from the strain. From his single eye, I could see the intensity of which he stared at me. A shard of green light flickered from within.

As used as I had gotten to the World Between, it was still a surprise I was able to pull the memory as easily as I could. It was still vibrant and solid, incredibly new and pristine compared to the others. While the other memories typically glowed with a soft white or gold light, this one hovered contently as an orb of grassy green warmth. Tyler’s claws twitched, but he didn’t reach for it, so I gently pushed it his way.

Tyler’s face was completely unreadable as it played out, but I could see the signs that he was trying to hold it together. He pressed his mouth into a thin line and swallowed hard before pushing it away. “So that’s what you’re telling me. That Nightmare really does have a weakness, and it’s…”

I nodded. “LOVE.”

He let out a small, hoarse chuckle, one that actually seemed to show genuine amusement. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I HAVE HEARD IT IS THE STRONGEST OF EMOTIONS. STRONG ENOUGH THAT EVEN NIGHTMARE CANNOT OVERRIDE IT WITH ITS POWER.”

“The strongest being in the known universe. The shattered remains of an old god, the creator of the world, and its weakness is love. What? The mere concept of loving? Or is it like, something more deep and profound than that?”

“I AM NOT THE ONE TO ASK.”

“I guess not.”

The silence was a little more comfortable, broken only by the tiny clinks of the memory being put together. He was treating it with such gentle care that I couldn’t help but believe that he actually did know what memory it was, but if he remembered it, how could it be broken? How could a memory still held by the world’s inhabitants be in pieces?

“So… are you just going to stare at me, or are you going to go back and tell everyone to prepare a big long speech about the power of love and how it’s going to get us through this?” Much to my surprise, Tyler actually sounded faintly amused by the thought. I could only imagine the kind of scene he had in his head.

“I WOULD RATHER BE POSSESSED BY NIGHTMARE MYSELF THAN DO THAT. OR HEAR ANY OF THOSE SPEECHES FOR THAT MATTER.”

“You’re right. Nobody would get away unharmed.”

“BUT I DO BELIEVE IT WOULD BE IN YOUR BEST INTEREST TO RETURN TO THEM. I NEARLY LOST MYSELF THE FIRST TIME I CAME HERE.”

“Let me finish this at least,” he argued. I nearly protested, but then something desperate seemed to wash over his face, like this was something he absolutely needed to do. I crossed my arms and huffed, but nodded at him to continue anyway.

If he was going to find any of these places, it was best that he found the World Between and not the Prison. I couldn’t even imagine what terrible things would go down in such a place, especially with the way we were viewed by the prisoners. Some seemed to have a vague hope that we would do something for the betterment of their treatment, but it was safe to assume a large majority would just as soon see us locked up right beside them. I couldn’t even imagine how they would feel about seeing the person who had killed Charlie.

Tyler shuddered, seemingly disturbed by something, but he didn’t explain and I didn’t ask.

I wasn’t sure how long I watched him silently work on the memory. I didn’t feel safe leaving him alone (he could find his way to the World Between, I was not about to see what other arguably worse place he could find himself) and any further conversation would be stunted and useless. Wilbur was more familiar with Nightmare’s weakness than I, for some rather obvious reasons.

I had grown far past my original coding, but I still felt as though I related more to Wilson’s conceptual understanding of love than anyone else’s nuanced perceptions. Despite everything, I was still a robot with some very firm boundaries that could not be crossed.

Wilbur had not only spent a significantly longer amount of time in Nightmare’s shadow than I had, but the time spent had been much closer and much more informative. He had been able to completely free himself of Nightmare’s suffocating embrace by the sheer force of will, and only because of his mate and daughter.

And it was true in assuming that Tyler had a much better place to stand against Nightmare than any of us would. After all, despite how much his physical appearance had already changed (gray fur, fuel leaking from his eyes and his scars, the chill of his skin) he remained still mostly himself. He was still holding on. He was still himself. Those little shards of light still decorated his eye, as bright as the moment they had appeared.

When Tyler fitted the last piece into its slot, he held the completed memory in his hands with such tenderness I almost believed that it had actually brought it back, even though it still appeared murky and dark.

After a good few seconds, though, he let out a deep, exhausted sigh and allowed the orb to roll out of his lap. Instead of floating and attaching itself to associated memories as they typically did, though, it simply clunked against the ground, dull and lifeless. “I thought I could…”

Memories didn’t just shatter on their own. They faded and frayed, unwound like a ball of yawn, but never shattered. For one to have shattered, it must have been destroyed by someone… and the only one I could see carelessly destroying such an artifact was Nightmare itself. I didn’t need him to explain his desperation to fix what Nightmare had broken.

“LET’S GO BACK.”

“...yeah. Yeah, okay.” Tyler finally pushed himself to his feet, knees popping from the awkward position, and met my gaze directly for what was apparently the first time. His morose expression suddenly turned downright tragic, and I couldn’t even figure out why until he reached forward and touched the new lines adorning my face. His hand shook, and his skin was cold. “WX, I… did I…?”

He must not have even realized that he had hurt me, if his expression meant anything. His eye had widened with horror. When he reached forward with his other hand to pull my face closer and get a better look at the damage, I could feel the clamminess of his palms. I had originally planned on thoroughly chastising him for attacking me as he had and then running off- couldn’t even give me the chance to fight you back, huh?- but he must have been telling the truth when he said that he had been yelling at himself the entire time. Instead, I scoffed and brushed his hands away.

“I HAVE RECEIVED WORSE.”

“Because of me,” he said in a tiny voice. I was confused until he elaborated with a suspiciously shiny eye. “The worse injuries you’ve received were all because of me.”

Nope. Absolutely not. We were cutting that line of thinking off before it even attempted to take root. “DO NOT EVEN BEGIN WITH THAT. I MADE A DECISION AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF SUCH ARE MINE AND MINE ALONE.”

Again, he was not convinced, but this was far from the last thing I wanted to talk about right now.

I didn’t like to think about my death. While it hadn’t been entirely painless, I could easily say that the pain was easy to ignore. Whether you explained that in a more organic sense as my body going into shock the moment I was impaled, or explained it as my mechanical body receiving enough damage that basic functions ceased to work, it didn’t really matter. I had certainly felt every aspect of it, but the sensations were stronger than the pain.

The process of dying was arguably worse. Actively feeling your own power slip away, damaged beyond repair. Tempted to make promises about being alright but knowing it would just be wrong. Realizing only at the last minute what it felt like to be cared about, and that it actually felt good, but only as long as you had left. It felt as though a world had opened up for just a tiny glimpse beyond the door before violently slamming shut.

Somehow, though, I hadn’t really considered how Tyler would take it. Obviously, considering how surprised I had been to see his poor state. But somehow, realizing that he had just blamed himself the entire time was probably the icing on the cake.

And would Nightmare’s host still be able to feel so bad over injuring someone? Does he realize the sheer body count that his predecessor had?

“I RECOMMEND YOU DISCUSS THIS SITUATION WITH WILBUR. I BELIEVE HE KNOWS MORE ABOUT NIGHTMARE THAN I.”

“Will you be there?” Tyler asked, voice just on the side of frantic. I didn’t even bother allowing myself to feel confusion.

“IF YOU NEED ME TO BE.”

He at least seemed satisfied by this. It was then, and only then, that he allowed me to lead him out of the World Between and back to Darkness.

…

“Okay, the guessing game is clearly unsustainable. We need to know more about what to expect.” It was Wilson to state the obvious, listlessly picking at his cuticles and watching Tyler like a hawk as the boy paced back and forth. He was similarly abusing his claws, chewing them down to broken points and he walked.

“CHARLIE HAD MANY ABILITIES UNLOCKED BY NIGHTMARE’S INFLUENCE. SHE WAS STRONG, BUT OFTEN REFUSED TO USE HER POWERS. THEY WERE NIGHTMARE’S TO USE, NOT HER’S.”

“But she did still use them,” Wilbur argued. “It wasn’t as if Nightmare actively stopped her from doing so.”

“Stop dancing around it,” Tyler snapped, whipping his head to face us. “Just- just tell me what is going to happen to me. What other things are going to happen to my body without my control?”

“We’ve all seen how Nightmare could shape the shadows to do its bidding. Like how it held us back during your fight,” Wilbur said, earning a nod from Winona and a grimace from Wilson as he rubbed his chest.

“OR HOW YOU TRAPPED OUR FEET DURING THAT ARGUMENT.”

Tyler winced. “Y-yeah. Obviously.”

“IT COULD ALSO TRAVEL ANYWHERE IN DARKNESS, CHECKMATE, AND THE WORLD BETWEEN AT WILL. CONSIDERING YOU HAVE ALREADY UPGRADED YOUR HABIT OF RUNNING AWAY TO FIT THAT I ASSUME THAT CAN ALSO BE CHECKED OFF.”

“This is stuff we already know,” Wilson said. “We need to know what to expect in the future.”

I wasn’t entirely sure of the extent of Charlie’s powers, now that I genuinely thought about it. If she ever used them, it was primarily how she shaped the shadows. She had to chain me by the wrists when I first met her, although it hadn’t been her first reaction. I thought for a moment, sparing Wilbur a glance in case he thought of something.

“Nightmare can read minds,” Wilbur said dully. “I’m fairly sure that Charlie could, too.”

How had I forgotten that part? I had almost gotten so used to it that I barely even bothered to think about that.

For the others, though, this seemed to set off a small bomb.

“Whoa, what? Absolutely not. Don’t you dare say that.” Wilson immediately jumped to the defensive- or, rather, the offensive if the glare he sent at Tyler meant anything. “I swear, that’s- if I find out-”

“That’s… that feels so wrong,” Winona muttered, folding her arms around herself. “Like, just… whenever?”

“No-!” Tyler immediately blurted. “Not just whenever-” It took him that long to wisen up and slam a hand over his mouth.

Oh.

Ooohhh.

No wonder. I really should have come to that conclusion earlier. Somehow, I hadn’t really noticed him seeming to react to things I didn’t say out loud in the World Between. The mumbled ‘hardly’ after I had thought about how he was still living. Shivering when I wondered how the Prisoners would react to him having killed Charlie.

Impressive that he managed to hide that for a whole few hours. Someone really needed to give this kid lying lessons.

And of course, my realization was immediately confirmed when he glared at me for seemingly no reason.

“IT’S TRUE. THAT WAS EMBARRASSING FOR SOMEONE TRYING TO KEEP A SECRET. I THOUGHT YOU WERE BETTER.”

Wilbur also seemed mostly unbothered, save for the faint grimace on his face. We were both used to it, apparently. Though, given what I had seen of Wilbur’s actions in the World Between, maybe I should’ve been more worried about the boy accidentally seeing those kinds of thoughts.

Wilson and Winona, apparently, were less comfortable with the idea of the resident angsty eight year old having access to their thoughts.

“Pardon?” Winona sputtered, taking an uneasy step back. “You- how long-?”

“So you were just going to go along this whole time actively violating the privacy of everyone here and you weren’t even going to say anything!?” Wilson shouted. His shoulders hunched, eyes glittering with ire.

“You get used to it,” Wilbur said.

“I am not going to get used to someone just- digging around in my head! That is violating!”

“That’s not how it works!” Tyler snapped. “Just keep your thoughts to yourself and I can’t hear them! So far, it’s only been when something is directly about me! And it’s not like you guys are super secretive about how you feel about me. It basically comes right back out of your mouth anyway, so I don’t know what the deal is!”

Winona buried her face, apparently uncaring about how specific the parameters were. Really, now they were just being dramatic. “That’s still not right, Ty. You know that, right? You realize how that’s bad, right? It’s extremely important to me that you realize that.”

“Good for you. Still doesn’t mean I can control it.” Tyler threw his arms in the air with an irritated groan. “Surprise! There’s no manual on “How to Handle Being Possessed By a Vengeful Demon”!”

“So you were just going to let it get to the point where you can hear all of our thoughts without even a warning?” Wilson accused.

“I don’t know! What would you have preferred I done? It’s not like telling you earlier would have changed your reaction!”

“YOU ARE OVERREACTING,” I muttered. Honestly, you would think the two humans had just learned that the entire world was ending with the way their faces had darkened. “THIS IS AN ABILITY THAT YOUR OWN SISTER HAD, WINONA. ARE YOU TRUTHFULLY THIS UPSET ABOUT SOMETHING CLEARLY UNCONTROLLABLE?”

“I mean, I guess I get the shock,” Wilbur said. “If you’re not used to it I can see how you would be upset. But it’s a passive ability. Not something that’s supposed to be invasive. Nightmare was part of a god. It’s natural that it still has a fraction of its omniscience.”

“Oh my god you guys are so used to it you don’t realize how inappropriate this is.” Wilson pressed a hand to his forehead. He let out an awkward, uncomfortable laugh, shaking his head and looking positively horrified.

“I… I’ll be back.” Winona took another step back, brow creasing, before quickly retreating. Wilson was quick to follow. I would’ve rolled my eyes if I had eyes to roll.

“Great, so anyway, anything else you’re trying to hide from us?” Wilbur continued on, finally dropping the issue. Unfortunately, I was sure I would have to sit through more long, annoying discussions in the very near future, but at least we got to make progress for now.

“I didn’t realize it was such a big deal,” Tyler muttered. Even he didn’t seem too concerned, although perhaps sharing a mind with a violent spider for years meant he, too, cared little about others hearing his thoughts. In fact, he didn’t even seem too bothered with Wilson and Winona’s reactions. Instead, he gave me a sort of crooked grin and leaned back onto his hands. “It’s literally a one-way street in Wilson’s head about me. Something mean appears, he says it five seconds later. The filter is nonexistent. Though I guess that’s partially Nightmare’s fault.” He tapped his chin with one claw. “I wonder if that’s something I could reverse.”

“People like to think that their minds are private,” Wilbur shrugged. “I mean, I guess there’s a few things that I can imagine people wouldn’t want kids hearing in their thoughts, but if any of those thoughts are specifically aimed at a kid I think there are much bigger issues to consider.”

“HAVE CHARLIE AS A CONSTANT COMPANION FOR A FEW MONTHS AND YOU GET USED TO THE IDEA THAT NO THOUGHT IS TRULY PRIVATE. THOUGHTS DID NOT NEED TO BE DIRECTED AT HER. I IMAGINE YOU WILL ALSO LOSE THAT LIMITATION.” Terrifyingly soon, if the current progress meant anything.

“If it means anything, I’m pretty sure that you’ve already shown the majority of the Night Monster’s abilities, albeit in weaker forms,” Wilbur offered.

“No more surprises then. I won’t complain.”

“YOU SEEM ODDLY AT EASE WITH YOUR PREDICAMENT,” I said.

“I can assure you I am not,” Tyler said plainly. “But there reaches a point when you become so horrified, panicked, and confused, that it all just kind of dulls into the background.”

“So you’re dissociating.”

Tyler shot freaking finger guns at Wilbur.

“I would say something about how unhealthy of a coping mechanism that is but honestly, I don’t know what the healthy one is at this point, so I guess dissociate away or something.”

“Yes sir. Already several steps ahead of you.”

“SO, FROM WHAT I AM GATHERING, THE ONLY THING WE CAN DO IS SIT AROUND AND WAIT FOR WHATEVER THE NEXT DOOR REQUIRES TO SHOW ITSELF WHILE ALSO WATCHING TYLER DEVELOP INTO A FULL-FLEDGED NIGHT MONSTER WITH NO WAY OF STOPPING IT.”

Tyler laid back on the ground, lazily waving one hand in my direction. “Yeah yeah, basically. We’ll just watch as Nightmare completely consumes my body and leaves me nothing but a parasitic host. Been there, done that. There’s only so many times you can get your mind hijacked by some malevolent being before it really just becomes par for the course. Yawn. Something different next time. Be unique.”

“Tyler, go to sleep,” Wilbur sighed. “This is a discussion that we need to have when you are present and not dissociating so hard that you can barely comprehend anything happening.”

“That’s valid.”

“We’re going to really have to keep an eye on him,” Wilbur said, voice soft enough that only I could hear it. Although, I realized, it really wouldn’t matter if Tyler could hear our thoughts about him anyway. Then again, he seemed to be so dazed at the moment it would be a wonder if he could even understand someone actively speaking to him, so maybe there was a point to whispering. “I… don’t know everything about what Charlie could do, and I’m not sure if he will be willing to actually talk to us about anything new.”

I couldn’t help but take another close look at my brother. While the low light of Darkness meant it didn’t really stick out as much, it was clear that his fur was still as pale as it was in the World Between, but he hadn’t said a word about it despite physical differences being the most obvious. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. Maybe he didn’t want to think about it.

“I AGREE,” I conceded. We had no idea how long we would be here, and until this world’s requirement popped up, we wouldn’t be making any progress.

We just had to sit there and watch and pray, that no matter how much time passed…

I wasn’t going to lose my brother again.

 

 

[RhymesWChronic]

Chapter 103. Innocence - Part 11

 

 

 

Chapter 5 of 5

Darkness

Tyler’s POV

Tell them to shut up.

They wouldn’t. Not anymore. They had gotten so loud recently. The same words on repeat, over and over and over again. You already thought about that, why are you thinking about it again? Say something. Ask them. They like it when you tell them everything you hear. Maybe they think it means they still have some secrets.

That thought wasn’t about me. Ignore it. Push it down push it down push it down. Pretend like you didn’t hear it. Pretend pretend pretend.

Of course, I’m fine. No, don’t worry about me. Just a headache. Yes, I’m sure. No, I don’t need to step away from the noise it’s so loud I just want them to shut up. Yes, I’ve had them for some time now, don’t worry about it.

I couldn’t tell how many days passed.

Wake up covered in cold sweat. Pretend like there wasn’t a demon wearing your face in the corner of every dream. Sit up, ignore the way the sweat congealed and dripped from your back. (It wasn’t sweat. Not anymore. I couldn’t sweat anymore.) Pretend like your body could still produce water in any way. Ignore the way Nightmare Fuel feels when it’s clogging your tear ducts.

The fire still burns. Shift a little further from it every night. Hope nobody notices. Try to hide the blisters that keep showing up on your arms from getting too close.

No, couldn’t hide that. Wilbur touches my fur too much. He finds them when grooming me, and he looks so sad and horrified that I know it was stupid of me to pretend like they didn’t exist.

(He doesn’t take my lies as easily. When I tell him that I burned myself doing something stupid, he just looks so upset and whispers “why are you lying?” and now I feel worse.)

WX is trying to say something to me. The cracks on their face look like the tears I can’t cry anymore. The grass doesn’t bend beneath their feet, and the starlight warps when it touches them. They’re dead. Not alive anymore. Gone, gone, gone.

Wave them off. Yes, I’m fine. (Don’t look too close.) Just had some trouble sleeping last night. (My head is pounding so hard I can’t think.) Nightmares. Yeah, the normal kind. (They’re so real that it feels like I’m dying.) No, there’s nothing you can do about it. (I killed you why are you trying to help me.) Thanks for checking on me, though. I appreciate it. (Please, just tell me it’s going to be okay.)

Winona wakes me up in a panic. She’s been avoiding me recently. There’s nothing in her mind that she should be ashamed of. Her light is small but bright. Brighter than the stars above. Brighter than mine.

Wilbur is also staring at me. He’s crying.

I didn’t have a pulse, Wilson says. Even he looks scared. His hands are shaking. (They’re covered in my blood.)

I think my heart stopped beating at some point. It’s so hard to breathe that it’s easier not to do it. I think my body stopped needing oxygen anyway. It doesn’t cry out when I hold my breath. (I’m dying I’m dead how am I still here.)

I look at the sword more than once. Maybe it will work this time. Nightmare was weaker than Constant. When no one’s looking I lift it until the point is on my stomach. It doesn’t even draw blood before I’m shaking so hard that I can’t keep a grip anymore. The sword clatters to the ground. The others hear this and look my way.

I haven’t seen my sword in awhile.

“My Guardian, is it wise to gift a murderer with such a finely crafted weapon? Nothing but harm will befall the people in this world if this sword falls into my hands.”

I don’t know who I’m saying it to. Wilbur asks me who I’m talking to. I start laughing so hard that I can’t breathe. (I don’t need to. No heart no blood no oxygen no lungs no breath.)

Every time my mind tries to reconnect with my body, I shy away until it drifts again. What is left is a boy who is looking ever scrawnier, ever paler, ever sicker, ever emptier. My body moves like a robot with smiles that no longer reach my eyes.

WX knows that something is wrong with how my mind is working. They’re conspiring with Wilbur, and now they’re both trying to sit me down and ground me. I don’t want to. I don’t want to face it. I don’t want to face the voices. (WX runs cold, Wilbur runs hot. I feel neither.)

Warm, furry hands press circles into the skin of my hand. Goopy Nightmare Fuel sticks to his fingers, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, he watches my face with such intensity that I can feel it even in my hazy state. He’s trying to see if I react at all.

“You can’t hide from this forever.” This voice is different from the others. I try to ignore it, look away, but the glow of its antlers follows every eye movement. “This is unsustainable. You are hurting yourself.”

That can’t be right. I don’t feel pain right now. I don’t see any blood.

“You are only ignoring the present. You have to wake up.”

No. You can’t make me.

“Maybe not. Please eat something.”

I don’t need to. Why do you care what I do?

“You can’t survive off of nothing. No sleep, no food. What are you trying to do to yourself?”

What I do best. Ignore it.

“Ignoring it does not make the problem go away.”

Maybe I could ignore it out of existence. How do you know?

“Because I know you. I knew the Boy, and in a life removed from my own I knew the Sibling. And now, I know you. You can see every rib in your chest.”

It’s not the first time.

“Don’t make them lose you. Please.”

“Oh, Auraris,” I whisper to the stars above. “They have already lost me.”

…

…

…

The first thing I felt was gentle circles pressed into my lame hand. The sensation was off, not quite all there, but it was such a soothing and familiar feeling that I couldn’t help but lean into it. A soft voice murmured my name questioningly, and when I finally cracked open my eye again, my vision seemed to be in focus in a way that it hadn’t been for some time now.

Wilbur gave me a tender smile, but when his mouth opened again I couldn’t hear it. So close, I could feel the temptation of slipping away again. It was in my grasp, hovering so close to my hands, but something with velvet fur seemed to push me back, and I was slammed back into the scene in front of me.

He spoke again. “Do you know where you are?”

I blinked slowly at Wilbur, comprehending his words so slowly. Know where… I was? My tongue felt swollen and clumsy in my mouth as I managed “Darkness.” My voice rasped in my throat. I had to inhale to speak, and my throat spasmed as if unused to the attempt. I loosely pressed a hand to my mouth as I gagged at the sensation.

“Good,” he praised. He was slowly working his way up my arm, forcing sensation back into my limbs bit by bit. “Do you know how old you are?”

Five. Seven. Nine. Thousands of years.

I shook my head.

He seemed distraught. His brain lit up with worry, but the words sounded muffled. “That’s okay,” he said aloud. “Do you know when your birthday is?”

Spring. Early spring. Had it passed already? My sense of time was warped.

Another inhale. Liquid bubbled in my throat. “Spring.”

“What’s my name?”

“Wilbur.”

He nodded approvingly. We were alone right now. Where were the others?

I must’ve spoken the last part out loud, as the air pushed more Nightmare Fuel from my throat. It dribbled from between my teeth as Wilbur gave a soft reply. “They’ll be back soon. They’re just getting food. Are you hungry?”

Hungry? I couldn’t really answer that effectively. My stomach wasn’t sending any signals to my brain at all right now. “Dunno.” The word was slurred

“We’ll get you something to eat then,” Wilbur said. He started massaging my other hand. I flexed my claws, wincing slightly at the crack of my joints. They felt stiff and achy. “It’s been awhile since you ate more than a few bites of something.”

“How long wass’I…?” How much time had I been drifting in that haze? For a moment, I wished that Wilbur would just move away and stop touching me. I wanted to fall back into the fog. My head was already starting to pound a dull tempo, every thought not my own intrusive and loud.

Wilbur looked as though he was hesitant to respond. His hands stilled for a second. Then, he looked up at me, eyes sad and smile drifting. “A few weeks.”

Vertigo hit me so hard that I nearly fell while sitting. “‘S Nightmare…?” I couldn’t quite get the words to work in my mouth. So much had changed in the span of a day, and now time was slipping through my fingers so fast that I couldn’t comprehend how long had passed. If so much developed in a day, then how much had I missed over several weeks…?

“None of us have seen it,” Wilbur soothed. “You’ve been… stagnant. For a while.”

My fur had completely lost its black sheen. Now, it was dull and brittle. I recognized the markings that now covered my arms and chest. Blue and purple, tracing the blood vessels all the way to my heart. Remarkably, my necklace remained around my neck, still glowing faintly. This glow didn’t burn. It felt soft, still a gentle warmth against my chest rather than the sharp burn from the firelight. When I touched it with my hand, it tingled against my skin, but still refrained from burning.

“Do you know why you were so out of it for so long?” Wilbur asked. His eyes were soft, but his tone was worried. I blinked slowly and thought.

“S’what happened last time, too.” Except last time, waking up was one of the worst experiences I had ever gone through. I closed my eyes and leaned back. “Cept it’s better this time.” My organs might not have been working like they were supposed to right now, but at least my body wasn’t rejecting them. That was an improvement.

“Last time?” Wilbur pressed gently.

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, muffling my speech even further. “Spider. Wassout for a while.”

“When Webber ate you?”

“Mmmmm.”

“I… guess it makes sense that’s how your mind would react when fighting for control. But… you’re still here. Not Nightmare. Does that mean you won?”
“No winning.” Not against something like a starving spider with anger issues, not against a vengeful demon with pettiness issues. “Guess ‘m here now though.”

“Right,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “How do you feel right now?”

“Wanna sleep.”

“That’s alright. You can sleep now. I’ll wake you up when the others get back, okay? Maybe your mind will be a little clearer after some rest.”

I felt like I had been asleep for years. I felt like I hadn’t slept in centuries.

“‘Kay,” I muttered.

I was out before he even had the opportunity to say anything else.

…

I cracked open my eye at the feeling of someone shaking my shoulder. Immediately, I threw an arm over my face and groaned. The movement aggravated my pounding head.

“Ty?”

A feminine voice. Winona. I moved my arm in order to shove my fist into my eye, offering her a louder groan of protest instead of any real response.

“Wilbur said you were feeling better,” she whispered.

‘Better’ was an overstatement. It currently felt like an entire herd of beefalo had trampled my head before throwing me into the ocean and drying me off with pinecones. I much preferred the warm emptiness of the daze.

“Spend the past few weeks fighting off control from a demon and tell me how your head feels,” I muttered. My words were actually making their way out of my mouth this time though, which was a least a little bit of an improvement. The tradeoff was the feeling of having swallowed several gallons of acid and used a bit of it as mouthwash just to be safe.

“Can you at least sit up for us? You need to eat something.”

Oorrggg the mention of food suddenly sparked the most intense feeling of hunger I had ever felt. It was enough to allow Winona to help me sit up, though getting to my feet was absolutely out of the question no matter how they bribed me.

I was just out of reach of the fire, though I could see just fine without it. Wilbur was hovering over the fire, likely cooking as he did, having enlisted Wilson to assist him. WX was standing a few feet away from me, apparently present for the attempt at waking me without actually saying anything. They were trying to keep a straight face, but I knew them well enough to read the relief painting their expression. I could sense the millions of questions they wanted to bombarde me with, but they at least had the good sense to not try to ask any of them. Maybe I would be up for it later, but at that moment, I wanted nothing more than something to eat and then to be very unconscious.

Wilbur’s food was always good. The chef he had once been friends with had hammered the skill into his head until he was physically incapable of making anything bad. It always tasted like comfort food. The exact thing you would hope for when cold and miserable after a day of being out in the snow. How someone managed to make food taste like nostalgia, I would never know, but I wasn’t going to complain. It settled well in my stomach and soothed the aching hunger.

It wasn’t until I was halfway done eating that I realized there wasn’t any meat in my bowl. Instead, I recognized the main ingredient from a time so long ago I almost forgot about it entirely. “Mushrooms?”

“Figured it’d help a bit with the headache,” Wilson said. “I know it wasn’t insanity knocking you down, but it never hurts.”

Honestly, with the way it tempered the migraine, I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been a smidgen of that as well. I immediately accepted a second helping when offered.

My hands and fingers still felt a bit on the numb side, but I could think much clearer now that I actually had the energy to do so. Energy, of course, which was immediately being expended to my lungs to gain the air to speak.

“Thank you.”

Maybe Nightmare had finally had its fill of tormenting me from a distance, because for the first time in a while Wilson’s face seemed to soften at the roughness of my voice. He reached out towards me, and instead of flinching away, I leaned into his hand as he pressed it against my forehead. “You’re still running a little on the cool side.” Unless that’s normal for him now. Does Nightmare Fuel give off any heat?

“‘Prolly normal, doesn’t give off heat,” I responded to the unspoken question. “‘S not like you have to care much ‘bout keeping a body sustainable for life when it can’t die by normal means.”

A cool hand pushed my shoulder as WX walked past. “THEY’RE STILL SQUEAMISH ABOUT THAT.”

Oh. Right. The expression on Wilson’s face very much confirmed this. It looked like he had bitten into something sour, even though I had simply responded to a question. It wasn’t as if I was prying into some important information. I leaned back and groaned, eye squeezed shut. “Can I go back to sleep, or will I be woken up if I do?”

“Depends,” Wilbur said. “Is it normal to be this exhausted?”

“Mhmmmm. Should’ve seen me the first time. Took weeks before I could stay up longer than two hours.”

He didn’t protest that, but the discomfort on his face spoke enough. I was worrying them all, I knew, but there wasn’t any way to comfort them. There wasn’t any way to defend what I was becoming.

Even sitting up, I was already dozing off. Wilbur let out the breath he seemed to be holding in a faint chuckle. “Fine. Come here, Ty.” He patted the ground beside him. “The least we can do is make you a bit more presentable.”

All I managed was a faint grumble of protest, but I allowed him to freely maneuver my ailing body without resistance. Soon, I felt soft warmth beneath my cheek as he rested my head in his lap to start his grooming ritual.

I remembered hearing from him once that grooming was an important bonding activity for his species, in the same way that spiders purred to comfort their nestmates. It was something I had only ever seen him partake in when it came to me, though, and even then I wasn’t often awake for it. I typically just woke the next morning with my fur having been meticulously cleaned and a deeply asleep Wilbur somewhere nearby.

Because of that, I hadn’t really had the opportunity to experience just how gentle Wilbur was with me. Claws that he had once used to commit atrocities against his friends were now used to gently, ever so gently, pull free knots and remove annoying little insects.

I couldn’t understand how someone could be so soft with a creature like myself. It was true before and it was even more true now. I had spent years without receiving any contact that didn’t twinge and burn for days to come. The first person who had treated me with any form of gentleness after what happened with Webber was Wilson, and no matter how much I craved those tender touches, I was physically incapable of receiving them from him anymore. I no longer knew those hands as the ones that once wrapped my wounds.

But Wilbur had always treated me like something fragile. Outside of a rare spar, I had never known what it felt like to be hurt by him. He was always so careful, even though I always knew just how easy it would be to switch. I knew how easy it was for those claws to dig into flesh and draw blood.

My own claws were longer and risked so much more with every touch. It was always so hard to hold something in my hands without the desire to sink them into it. The same hands that could cradle a rabbit that wasn’t afraid of the dark could snap its neck without effort. The same claws that could gut an animal without a second thought were also gentle enough to draw warmth into cold skin. My hands were calloused, ridges built so thick over the years that they became almost numb.

How could someone so much older than myself remain so soft? How could they treat me like I was also soft?

Cool stickiness pricked at the corner of my eye. The tears that threatened to spill were thick and haunting, ghastly shadows of themselves. If I let them fall, they would probably stain my fur for a few days and leave my eye irritated and burning.

Today, though, I would let them. If only just to feel the careful movement of thumbs wiping them away before they sunk into the fur.

…

The night had become brighter following Nightmare’s… weakening. It was as though the shroud of darkness that hovered over the land had been loosened, allowing for the moon and stars to glow where they could not before.

As the colors in my fur started to fade, so too did the light. I used to think that Darkness had been a punishment created for those that went too far.

But now, I knew what Darkness was. It wasn’t a punishment. It was never intended to be a punishment. It was a gift. A beautiful world lit with stardust that only the Nightmare Servant could see. An everlasting nighttime lovingly crafted not by Nightmare and not for malicious reasons, but as a paradise for the one that could not see the sun. As the body deteriorated and the Nightmare Fuel flowed, even the light of the moon started to sting and itch.

Nightmare Fuel boiled in the light. I wondered if anyone knew that.

And so, with every passing day, I had to crawl further and further away from the flickers of light produced by flames and stars. My human half cried for warmth, but warmth no longer existed for me. All that was left was icy cold shadows or blistering hot light.

Still, I could never quite pull myself away. I could never really resist the temptation to drag myself closer to the fire in desperate hopes that this time it wouldn’t hurt.

Darkness was a gift that had been hand-crafted for the Night Monster. It was a gift that Charlie had passed to me in her dying breaths and it was a gift that I ached to share with my family, but they couldn’t see it.

They couldn’t see the stars the way I did anymore. I begged WX and Wilbur to just look, because they had to see it, but I had only been met with bewildered looks in return. The sky was black.

They thought the sky was black.

And oh stars, they were wrong. The sky was everything but black. It was great pools of navy blue, swathes of vibrant violet and twinkling cyans. It glittered with stardust like early morning dew on blades of grass. Swallowed in such a deep haze of darkness, they were too blind to see the world that had truly been created.

Had all the worlds been like this? Had the winter world hidden entire galaxies and star systems amidst its snow drifts? How much had I missed?

I wanted to show them the world. I knew that I could not.

I had started laughing at one point, which startled the others so hard Wilson nearly set his shirt on fire. It had been a light, joyful laugh, one that I hadn’t been able to produce for some time now.

“This world is so beautiful,” I marveled out loud. “And they made it for me. It’s mine.”

I wasn’t sure they quite understood what I was talking about.

“I think it’s taken all my color and given it to the sky,” I said, holding out my hands to cradle the sparkling glitter that hung in the air. Gray fur that had once been so vibrantly black, but now I fit in so much more with my world. The blue and purple markings that crawled up my arms no longer felt invasive and wrong. They matched the sky. I matched the sky.

She was lucky. It appeared suddenly in my head, and then it wouldn’t leave. Imagine seeing this world, seeing its colors, and then getting to call it your home. I wasn’t stupid. I knew this wasn’t where I belonged. Whatever reason we were still pushing forward for, I wasn’t sure, but we were nonetheless. Maybe it was in the vain hope that if we kept going, kept moving, kept doing something, then we would find a way home. Maybe it was in hopes of confronting the man who brought us all here to begin with.

Or maybe, this was the end of the line. Maybe this world made of colors not meant to be visible to the human eye was the goal all along. It felt like home.

“Charlie was lucky,” I said out loud one day to Winona. Immediately, her attention was drawn, eyes narrowing as I dared to suggest that Charlie’s situation was anything other than abhorrent. And it was, I would not deny. I was the last person who would deny that to lose your autonomy was to lose everything. But…

“This world wasn’t created like this. Someone made it for her. Someone spent so much time making a world that is just…” Safe. Beautiful. Home. Safe. Safe. Safe. “So… much. And she got to see it every day.”

Winona looked away, and it was clear that she was coming up with some very choice words for me. Which was fair.

“Nothing was worth what happened,” she said, voice low and angry.

You don’t understand, I wanted to say. You can’t see it. You can’t see the colors.

“Somebody must have loved her very much,” I said instead. I flicked one hand, dislodging several drops of Nightmare Fuel and disturbing the glitter that hung in the air. “She must have been so loved.”

“I loved her!” Winona snapped. She was immediately on her feet, eyes alight with fire. “Just because somebody decided to make her torture chamber pretty doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a torture chamber! She suffered here for years and you’re trying to say she was lucky?”

Ah, well, Winona was not the best person to say this to. I don’t know why it was her I brought it up to at all. Maybe I just wanted her to feel comforted at the idea that Charlie’s situation wasn’t the worst one. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to get through to her with that. They had no idea.

“Don’t you think I would know best?” I mused quietly.

She didn’t spare me another look. Winona simply walked away. It was probably for the best.

I leaned back until I was facing the sky. The Fuel that had once felt cold and unwelcoming against my back now sunk into my fur like a warm embrace. I sighed contently and closed my eyes.

It was only after that I decided it was within my right to practice using these strange new abilities gifted to me. As it currently stood, they were uncontrollable and flared with my emotions. I was no stranger to the way the shadows seemed to bend and twist with my every movement, eager to follow my will. The eyes that had once felt so hostile were now watchful and at peace with my presence. They were my only companions whenever I chose to embrace my new form.

This was something I didn’t want the others to see, least of all Wilbur or WX. Something that felt so natural to me would only scare them all. I didn’t want them to know just how far I had fallen in such little time.

Unfortunately, it was difficult to hide, especially from my brother. They seemed to have a built-in compass, an uncanny ability to know where I was at all times. Either that, or perhaps I was just too predictable.

So when they found me one night, coaxing the shadows to follow my movements and trust my words, I was barely even surprised. I simply gave them a raw smile, dripping with Nightmare Fuel as it leaked from my mouth.

“THIS IS DANGEROUS,” they said immediately. I had already guessed they would say such a thing and had rehearsed this conversation in my head a few times already.

“It’s dangerous to not learn how to control it. We know what happens when my emotions take over.” I waved one hand in their direction. The cracks never quite went away. “I know what I’m doing, WX. I’m fine. I promise.”

They did not look convinced. Instead, they came closer and rested a hand on my shoulder. “I DID NOT EXPECT YOU TO BE SO WILLING TO EMBRACE DEMONIC MAGIC.”

“What else was I supposed to do? Practicing… helps.”

“HELPS YOU CONTROL IT?”

I nodded.

They were quiet for a moment, thinking hard enough that I didn’t even have to try to listen to hear it. I didn’t react to anything. I had almost perfected my poker face.

“SHOW ME,” they said.

And so, I did without hesitation. I did step back a bit, severing contact with my brother just in case, and let the shadows bubble to the surface.

At first, they were hostile, uncomfortable with someone controlling them in such a way. I could feel it swirling in my gut, hissing with displeasure, but I was familiar with the darkness’s finicky nature at this point. It only took a bit of coaxing.

As it started to settle a little bit, it started to become a bit more suggestible. Tendrils of shadow wrapped around my claws, easing into my pores and following the flow of blood through my body.

Then, a faint breath out, and the shadows cast themselves over my body. They solidified over my chest and shoulders, remaining slightly gaseous at the ends but solid enough to protect my core. It swirled around my neck and covered my injured eye, though that was less conscious and more of a defensive response to old wounds.

Shadow Armor. Not something I could hold for long or without concentration, making it effectively useless in a fight, but letting it stay so close to my skin without letting it leak poison into my heart was a show of sheer control. A show of willpower, and the ability to hold something directly on a knife’s edge. It was achingly familiar in the way it felt like holding onto control over Webber- slippery and threatening to break at any second.

Almost as quickly as I had beckoned it to appear it vanished, leaving me on my knees and exhausted in its wake. It was never without a cost, and that cost was now working its way into a migraine pounding behind my eye.

When WX dared to approach me again, I forced myself to look up at them. Their mind was a mess of words and questions, none of which made it past their filter and into the still air between us. They offered a hand and helped me up when I took it. I hissed between my teeth as the headache flared up at the movement.

“IT HURTS YOU.”

“Didn’t it hurt Charlie?”

“NO.”

“Mmmmm.” I had nothing to say to that. I didn’t know my predecessor like WX did. I didn’t know what was normal and what was not normal. I didn’t know what was the typical price of speaking to the shadows and what was Nightmare purposefully causing me pain.

WX carried me home. I passed out before they even started walking.

I often found myself wondering about Charlie. Everything I heard about her was something positive, about how strong or smart or kind she was. About how she was a victim of circumstance and fought valiantly against the force possessing her. Winona put her on a pedestal so high I couldn’t even hope to reach it. Wilbur held her in equally high regard, speaking of how strong she had been and how hard she had fought for him. WX admired her and grieved her passing just as much as the other two.

But I… couldn’t find it in myself to care as much. I didn’t know the woman. It felt as though she was something supernatural at times, this hero that was able to fight back the darkness consuming her and still love as brightly as she did. But now she was gone, and I was left to take her place, and I just couldn’t do it. No matter what I did, what I said, how hard I trained myself or how much pain my body endured as I struggled to keep it together, I would never reach the same heights. All I could do was wonder if she felt everything I felt.

Did she feel like her body was rotting from the inside?

Did she constantly feel like she was choking even though she no longer needed to breathe?

Did she feel like she wasn’t worthy of love because of what she was?

Did she look at the sky and marvel at how beautiful the moon was?

Did… did she wonder if she should just let go and become the demon she was destined to be?

The second that last question ever entered my head, I immediately refuted it. Charlie was a victim. She had no responsibility in Nightmare’s existence. Nightmare had used her as a layover just to come back to punish me.

I was the one meant to become a demon. I was the Host. I was that child that Constant had once ripped to shreds and I was the one who had done the same to it in turn. Charlie was innocent. I was not.

I was as far from innocent as I could be.

Late at night, with only a quietly fretting WX to observe, I found myself shaking to pieces as images flashed through my head. As memories from a life I had never lived forced me to relive the suffering of a child I had never been. But I had. But I hadn’t. One in the same, but me and the Boy could not be any more different.

He had been gracious, loved, innocent. Everything he had done was for the good of his people. He had never wanted to be King. He had never wanted to usurp anyone. He had loved Constant.

He had loved Constant so, so much.

And Constant had betrayed him. Betrayed his love. Betrayed his loyalty. Betrayed his innocence. The Boy had only acted because he was suffering for so long.

My actions were completely my own. My situation was my own fault.

Charlie was dead because of me.

I was a demon because of me.

I was in this mess because of me.

It had been my fault from the start. I had dug my grave, and now I had to lie in it.

I was grieving as well, but not for the woman that had held Nightmare’s burden before. I was grieving for the boy I once was. I was grieving for the existence I once had, and those few glorious hours where I felt like myself before everything became so much worse. I grieved for Tyler, and as much as I hated to admit it I grieved for Webber as well.

Late into the night, I sat alone and grieved for my lost innocence.

 

[The Starver]

Are you OK? You haven’t posted in almost a year.

[RhymesWChronic]

On 8/16/2025 at 8:11 AM, The Starver said:

Are you OK? You haven’t posted in almost a year.

Yes, hi, I'm fine! I've been extremely caught up writing another series that I've been super invested in  I promise I haven't forgotten this fic or anything, just got super mega distracted! Sorry about the sudden disappearance and lack of updates! I'm not sure when I'll be working on this again but I absolutely will finish it. There's only a couple chapters left, after all! 

[The Starver]

4 hours ago, RhymesWChronic said:

Yes, hi, I'm fine! I've been extremely caught up writing another series that I've been super invested in  I promise I haven't forgotten this fic or anything, just got super mega distracted! Sorry about the sudden disappearance and lack of updates! I'm not sure when I'll be working on this again but I absolutely will finish it. There's only a couple chapters left, after all! 

No worries! Take all the time you need.
I totally get it about having other projects. I personally have a bunch of things to write hanging out in my head!

(Super excited for the next chapters, too)