Bad Things Never Die (Discontinued)

Chapter 4

Location: The Prison

Dream's POV

I think it had been a couple of days since I had imagined that Y/N had come to visit me, but I had no way to tell the time without my clock so I wasn't sure.
Everything had been a mess from that point onwards.

Ever since I had first arrived in the hell hole that was known as the prison, I pictured her coming to visit me every other day. Nothing ever seemed off. It felt as if she was really there. It seemed like my mind was so against the thought of her death despite the fact she died in my arms. I felt as if my mind was trying to distract me from her absence by making me think she was still around.

But that didn't explain the cat.
"The cat really is a mystery, isn't it? Although, there is a logical answer to it all."
I found myself frozen to the spot.
Confusion flooded over me as I waited for the voice to speak again, but no sound came.

As I tried to work out what was going on in my head, I recognised the similarities between my voice and the persons behind me. That's when everything started to make sense. Well, sort of.

I only knew one being that had a voice identical to mine. A certain god that I'd avoided for months on end. But there was no way he knew where I was. No one would tell him. No one else knew he existed.

I felt as if I was slowly going insane.
Imaging things that weren't there.
Visualising people that had been dead for a long time.
Well that's what isolation does to a person.
It destroys them.
"And destroyed you it has."

My knuckles turned white as my grip around the edge of the lectern tightened, confusion and fear coursing through my veins. I was beginning to panic, too scared to turn around as my breathing quickened.
"You're not real."

A cold hand came into contact with my shoulder and I felt myself jump, letting go of the lectern in the process.
Slowly, its owner turned me around with only the usage of his hand as I felt paralysed. Even if it was all a trick my mind was playing on me, I always found myself dreading the thought of the god, never mind talking to him.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I brought my left hand up and nipped my right forearm, attempting to make it all go away. After being met with complete silence, I let out a sigh of relief and I opened my eyes.

There was a man standing in front of me.
He wore a mask but it didn't have a smiley face carved into it like my old one did. There was an X to the left and a D right next to it. Both symbols had a dark liquid seeping out of the markings but it seemingly deteriorated as soon as the liquid dripped down from the mask.

A sort of halo hovered above his head. Its golden colour glimmered in the glow of the nearby flowing lava. He was dressed in an emerald green cloak with a hood that sat atop his head with a single tuff of blond hair poking out from beneath it.

My breath got trapped in my throat as I stared up at the god completely speechless. I was terrified. For as long as I could remember that entity had tormented me. He'd made me into the monster I was scared of as a child. I don't know how he did it, but he tried and he succeeded to manipulate the paths I took throughout my childhood and early teenage years before he disappeared, only to show up again in the middle of a war to threaten the people I cared about.

He had each piece of the puzzle lined up to be put in place.
He wanted me to end up in the prison. It was all part of his grand plan.
But I didn't, and I never will know, what the end goal is.

"What do you want?"
I brought my gaze down to the trim of the god's cloak that somehow managed to float a couple of inches of the ground.
"All I want is to help you Clay, I want to help you understand."

I felt the form in front of me shift slightly.
"Never knew you were artistic. I can tell that is going to be very detailed drawing of her once you're done. Are you trying to get everything perfect so you don't forget what she looked like before you stuck a dagger in her chest?"
I glanced over my shoulder at the sketch of Y/N I had been working on. It wasn't much, just a bunch of light pencil strokes across a piece of paper. I had been trying to get the shape of her eyes right before I got distracted.

"You didn't answer my question."
I looked up at the god, a fake smirk on my face to make me seem confident.
"What do you want?"
"As I said Clay all I want is to help you."
"Well go on then, no one's stopping you."
I felt my sly smile grow as I watched the god while he stood in silence for a few seconds.

"Let me put it simply so a mortal like you can understand. It's all in your head. Your guilty conscience is trying to make up for the fact that you fucking killed her. And no matter how many times you tell yourself it was an accident, we both know part of you wanted to do it. The real you. The one you've hid away from her. The part of me that's in you."
I stood in silence as the gods mask peered down at me. Part of me was intimidated by the power he held, yet I stood my ground, my eyes never looking away from his mask.

"You pushed her away in an attempt to keep her safe from yourself, from me, but we both know I'm smarter than that. I was in her head Dream. I could feel her pain, her sorrow, her resentment. You forced the distance between the pair of you with your cruel words and in doing so she just got closer to me, even if she was completely oblivious to that."
I scoffed quite loudly after he'd finished talking, unable to take what he was saying seriously.

"So how exactly was she getting closer to you? I'm a bit confused."
He let out a dark chuckle as his larger figure loomed over my own.
"Because that's how we work Dream. The closer someone is to you, the more fragile you make them. The more fragile they are, the more susceptible they are to me. It works every single time because you're so predictable."
I just stared blankly at him for a couple of seconds trying to find the right words.

"Why? Why would you go out of your way to do something like that? What did she ever do to deserve you meddling with her head?"
The god before me chuckled again as he turned away.
"You're acting as if you didn't do the exact same thing Dream. You manipulated her just like I did. You changed the way she thought about things, about people. Neither of us are innocent here, we're both as bad as eachother."

Rolling my eyes, I sighed loudly to try and diffuse the anger that was beginning to bubble up inside of me.
"I did what I did to protect her. I gave her the option to leave and she never did. I didn't mean for things to end the way they did..."
"Yet you stand here with the power to bring her back but you still haven't."
My eyes widened as I looked back up at the letters of his mask.

"How do you..."
"The revival book is a very powerful possession to own. I would be considered an idiot if I didn't know who had it. So why haven't you used it?"
I stood up again, looking the god up and down.

"You don't think I've tried? Do you think I wanted her dead? I would do anything to have her with me right now and you of all people should understand that. The stupid book does fuck all. I've stayed up for hours trying everything possible but nothing ever came from it."
The god shook his head and placed his hand back on my shoulder.

"Although it's never been done before, I know for a fact that it is possible."
"But what if it goes wrong? I don't want to hurt her more than I already have."
"Are you willing to take the risk Clay?"