Butterfly Reign - SilentTeyz

38

Dream finds some shifts less desirable than others.

Going from something quick and nimble to big and clumsy in a matter of seconds leaves him disoriented and aching all over. It's a feeling he could never put into words. Bones both growing and shrinking, body changing shape inside and outside, parts of his senses sharpening to a needlepoint while others nearly fade out of existence.

Even his mind doesn't stay the same. An animal's mind is simple, Dream discovered as years went on and the burdens of adulthood snared him in full. There are simple drives and instincts instead of cumbersome ruminations, and although he is not completely free of worry, it makes him focus on the here and now, and what can be done in the present.

At times he feels as though the real him is up there in the sky, and Dream with a face and a kingdom's worth of troubles is just a shape he takes occasionally. And then he wonders what it would be like, if he no longer had to...

But that is a dangerous train of thoughts. Callahan had warned him time and time again about the fate of fae who get too comfortable with trading their bodies, but it wasn't until his mother's death that Dream understood the graveness of a danger looming over him. Like the Moon in the sky, it was always there, even when he couldn't see it.

It'll tempt you more and more as the limits of your capabilities continue to expand, Callahan told him when Dream wanted to forget his grievances in freefall. Each time you experience grief, fear, pain, it'll be there, telling how much easier it would've been if you let go. Don't listen. Don't give in. If you do, you may not come back ever again.

Dream feels a touch on his ankle. A thin long viper with jade-drop eyes slithers up his leg, scales his chest in three slow circles and finally situates itself at the base of his arm, flicking out a forked red tongue. Wherever its cool scales have touched, ache dissolves like from a soothing balm.

"Are we going or not?" Dream hears Charlie's voice say inside his head.

He should've known that Quackity would send his little lackey along to make sure his side of the deal is fulfilled, even though it's been already established that his own nature would not allow him to violate an agreement. Words glowing through the skin on his forearm, invisible to anyone but him, would make him pay.

Dream isn't sure how he feels about having someone so close to his throat. He also isn't sure whether this snake specie is venomous, but if Charlie is anything like him, his pick would fall on something fatal and fast-acting. Would've sure been useful in dealing with Foolish's opposition... Although Charlie's a fae, one possibly as old as Callahan, he inspires little trust – even less so because he's fae, serving another nation's minor noble instead of his rightful king.

If there was one kind of person that evoked stronger wrath in Dream more than people who supported Schlatt's rule, it was those who had the power to help and yet chose to do nothing. Where was Charlie when the usurper seized the throne and executed Princess Hannah for the whole kingdom to see? Where was he when his family fought and bled to get the throne back?

Dream doesn't voice those questions. For now they need to work together and hostility from him is unlikely to inspire much cooperation. He balls up his feelings, throws them further away to be dealt with at some other, more convenient time and takes a firm step towards the vault. Wielding the ring like a key, he inserts it into the tiny chamber where two cracks meet, and turns it clockwise as far as it would go.

At first, nothing happens. Dream is lashed with the chilling possibility that he's done something wrong, or the seal isn't the only thing needed to open the vault, until a low whir starts up deep underneath him and he jumps away, the ring clutched hard enough to hurt, as the floor under his feet begins to tremble. In front of his eyes a solid slab of stone splits into four like pieces of a puzzle. Each of them slowly begins to retreat into hollow openings inside the walls.