CreaseTale 0.2 (ErrorInk ~ Undertale AU)

Shattered Dream

Dream opened his eye slowly. Wait, eye?

He felt a heavy weight fall all around him. Something was controlled his body, and he could see fuzzy shapes of people all around him. It was like being in the cinema, watching a movie, but in the view of one of the characters.

Dream inhaled deeply, hoping to clear his mind. He tilted his head to the side as he assessed the situation. He was... being possessed, maybe? He wanted to move his hand to rub his single eye - what had happened to the other one?? If he closed his eye, there was only darkness, like he was wearing an eyepatch or something. His hand didn't move.

"Oh, hello Dream," giggled a voice from behind him.

Dream spun on his heel instantly, raising his hands and summoning his bow, with arrows created from positivity. His stance was perfect for firing arrows at this strange, eerie voice - but... nothing appeared in his hands. His fingertips twitched, aching for his bow. Suddenly, as soon as he'd made this movement, he was detached from the possessive creature that he thought he was. Someone else, however, was pulling the strings to this little doll of theirs.

His sunflower-yellow eyes searched the looming form that strode through the shadows, giggling. It was creepy, and Dream felt a racking shudder pass down his spine.

The figure stepped into the light - if that was what you could call the smoky darkness that had abruptly started to surround them. He was... a very unusual, bulky shape.

"Who are you?" Dream exclaimed. At first, he thought the character was Nightmare. He certainly looked like him, with his long, sticky black tentacles that dripped the horrifying black goo all over the place. However, this version of Nightmare had a small ringlet of gold placed upon his head, that curled and joined together at the front, just the same as Dream's. His one showing eye was bright and the colour of melted sunlight, and seemed to leak and spill from the circle that encompassed his pupil, falling in streams and rivulets down his cheekbones - if that was what you could call the dripping black substance that he was made out of.

"Oh, you don't recognise me?" the figure said, his tentacles slowing stretching forward, reaching for Dream, who shook his head, now quivering. There were no positive feelings in sight, none that he could sense, to use as an escape.

The figure walked across some sort of space between them, but Dream wasn't sure if it was the floor, or just space. There didn't seem to be any walls or a ceiling, or... well, it definitely wasn't a room.

"I'm you."

...

"He's been... silent. All day," Nightmare relayed the information to his master.

The tall, sinister skeleton regarded his servant with a regal glare. "So?"

Nightmare looked a little afraid, not a common feeling for him. It made him uncomfortable. "He won't respond to any of the treatment, or the orders, or the t-torture..." Nightmare heard his voice crack and stutter on the last word, and he trailed off, knowing how pathetic he sounded.

His master's eye sockets narrowed. His glare was cold and hard, with hardly any trace of emotion. "Then torture him more. Use Ink,"

"Ink?" Nightmare felt his bravery returning to his tone. His brow furrowed. "How am I s'posed to use him?"

"It's obvious!" he huffed. "Hurt Ink, in front of him, and see if it works. Try the blue one as well. I believe they were all close,"

Nightmare considered this for a second. All he had wanted was his brother to see his point of view, to realise that what he wanted was easier and better, to wreak revenge on the world because it deserved it. And if that meant forcing Dream to take a bite of that apple, and hurting his friends to get him to speak, and whatever else his master wanted to do with him–

Was it worth it?

...

Still, he found himself heading to Dream's cell, deep in the strange lands between AUs. This was where the code was, where all the stories were written before they came to life and became the land of an AU. Nightmare created a portal to Ink's cell first - he was imprisoned in a strange box of codes. If he tried to get out, the codes would zap him, and blast him back, into the opposite wall. The codes in that wall would then spit him into the ceiling, then onto the other wall, and the other, then back onto the floor. Altogether, it was a painful experience.

Ink had already tried to escape, many times, doing everything that he could think of. He demanded to see the others, and screamed even though nobody could hear him. There were no guards outside his strange code cell, in the middle of nowhere, but they weren't necessary. Nightmare's master had simply coded the cells to be impenetrable, safe from everything.

That's why Nightmare couldn't get Ink out by himself. He waited for his master to decode a section of the cell, to let Ink out. Then, Nightmare would simply grab him - it would be easy - and take him to Dream's cell.

Sure enough, one wall of code disappeared with a small ding, like the noise of a soul turned blue. Ink didn't come barrelling out straight away like Nightmare thought he would, instead, the sneaky, annoying skeleton cowered closer to the corner.

They'd stripped him of all his paint, his paintbrush, his vials; everything. Even his scarf and the hoodie tied around his waist - although of course, he still wore his normal attire.

It was weirdly unnerving to see Ink like this, Nightmare thought, as he reached a slippery black tentacle through the open area of the cage, and grabbed Ink by the waist. The skeleton tried to dodge round it and make a run for it, but Nightmare was too fast. He snatched up Ink, and created a portal to Dream's cell.

Dream... no, it wasn't Dream. Nightmare wanted it to be, so badly that he kept calling him Dream, but it wasn't. Actually, Dream was lost, and his optimistic brother was finally... gone. Not dead, just erased from existence.

Or at least, he should be.