Chapter Text
Dream is the villain.
That much is clear from every scripture and book the great City of Mizu owns.
No matter if it is from the accounts of Ranboo the scholar himself, or from the hymns in King George's glory, they all at least vaguely mention the masked sinister figure that was behind every bad thing that happened in the era of the SMP.
Ranbob loves studying history. He adores spending his time buried deep in the books, even more so than helping his father with mechanical maintenance around the generators. Life in the Underwater City of Mizu, as beautiful as it is, is also monotonous, and books allow him to disappear into different worlds, where it's sunny and no one is surrounded by water all the time. He has already read pretty much everything he could get his hands on, even things technically above his reading level of fourteen years. Journals, accounts, fairy tales, legends telling of distant lands and times. Mostly about the SMP though.
He knows that the Historian is considering him to become his apprentice. He'd said so at the last community gathering.
It's not a bad fit for him, theoretically. However, it would require Ranbob to choose his own ancestor as an idol. Only Ranboo followers become scholars themselves.
He isn't too sure about that yet.
He likes the guy, don't get him wrong (like, c'mon, without him he wouldn't even exist), but he still doesn't know if he wants to uphold all the things Ranboo stood for. He has the dedication and patience, but moral flexibility isn't his strong suit.
Ranbob is pretty stubborn and doesn't like to change his viewpoints. Not the ideal trait for someone who is supposed to be always open to 'being proven wrong'.
Ranbob thinks of Dream, of the sermons that tell how his unwillingness to negotiate drove his allies away, and how he started war after war, and he scolds himself. You're supposed to learn from history, and Dream was the best example of what stubbornness could escalate to.
Still, he stalls on his idol choice as long as he can.
The decision is taken out of his hands when one day, the explorer group comes back with a new artifact.
Followers of Sapnap are the only ones that are allowed to leave the City, to brave the dangerous world outside. Maybe once upon a time, Ranbob would have chosen that idol, if only so he could get to experience the real world for a change. Get to see the real sky, real forests and lakes, and land.
Then the group reveals what they had uncovered, presents the find in the community room before dinner.
After a perilous journey, ripe with encounters of hostile creatures, they had stumbled upon ruins, half-covered by dirt and weathered by the tooth of time. And buried deep, among black stone and obsidian columns, they had found an intact chest containing books and manuscripts. A true treasure trove, an event to celebrate! The community always loves new scriptures to debate over, to reaffirm the greatness of their ancestors.
But in Ranbob's opinion, the true crowning find is the mask at the bottom.
Growing up, Ranbob imagined the dreaded Dream's mask to be some demonic visage. A sinister grimace, huge eyebrows, maybe even fangs like those pictures of demons he found in that old 'Bibble 2' book.
Instead, inexplicably, it's a simple rounded disk, off-white, with a very stylized smiley face in the middle.
Looking at it, Ranbob doesn't get what's supposed to be so intimidating about it, even while he's sure it's the original. Maybe the smile is a bit too life-less? Personally, he thinks it looks happy almost. Harmless.
Valuable.
The rest of the city doesn't share his opinion. They decry the mask a cheap prop and lock it away. The journals, however, are kept. Most of them are indecipherable, written in code, and those that aren't are generously poured over, analyzed and plucked apart. Turns out, they were the plans and construction notes of a massive prison - Pandora's Vault. The famed place where the unkillable Dream was kept after his defeat, and the place where he died (presumably).
Ranbob looks at the neglected coded journals. There's something in there that draws him, and wouldn't it be a shame, to leave that much knowledge uncovered?
He makes his decision.
His father tells him how proud he is, and how proud his mother would be, to have him follow in her and their ancestor's footsteps.
For days, people come to congratulate him, praise him for his choice (Though most say it was 'just what was expected', and he wants to bristle at the connotation. He's his own individual, thank you, he already has nearly the same name-)
Ranbob pretends to be excited all throughout the following ceremonies and celebrations. The rite of passage is a chore, the oath he takes is boring and long. He is restless and distracted, and only his reputation for being a bit of a daydreamer saves him from being looked at weird.
When he is finally alone with the historian, his new teacher with whom he'll be living, he asks for his first project.
He stands, gleaming eyes, and tells the man that he wants to translate the untranslatable journals.
The historian is skeptical. Such a huge project for one so young, he says, and perhaps he's right, but there's something burning that drives Ranbob, and he argues that he already knows most of the techniques and the history, he can handle it.
In the face of such passion, the kind-hearted man gives in quickly.
And so Ranbob gets his own room, a scholarly office.
He sits with only one flickering light on, which might be bad for his eye-sight, but he can pretend that it's a candle.
Before him, spread over the desk, are the coded journals, ready for him to unravel their secrets.
He pours over them, day after day. He tries key after key, but no progress. The symbols seem to correspond to letters at least, but he has the sinking feeling that it's doubly encoded.
Nights are spent awake, scribbling out notes and guesses. He shows himself more scarcely at mealtimes, preferring to take his plate with him to his office, eating while brainstorming possible solutions.
Until, finally, he has a breakthrough.
He is so excited he doesn't even bother telling anyone, jumps right into translating instead, grabbing a random book off the pile.
And soon he realizes, that this is Dream's journal.
He could faint from elation. This is even better than any prison schematics! An account directly from the tyrant, a glimpse into the mind of the monster himself!
He feels feverous as he writes down translated word after word.
At first, all he gets is rambles. Pages of unfocused sentences, about adventures with friends, about the start of the SMP (it's interesting. None of the other journals had ever mentioned that King George, Warrior Sapnap, and Dream were close friends, before. Is it all lies? No, way too much detail for that).
Then, slowly, discordant notes push in-between. There are parts where the stories just break off, and ever-longer paragraphs are filled with questions and no answers.
'Why?', mostly, repeatedly. 'When?', sometimes.
Then comes a point where the normal stories stop, and instead the questions fill up pages, more elaborate.
"Why did they leave me?" "Why am I here?" "Why can't they understand?" "When will I get out of here?" "When will I get another visitor?"
The ever-more-sloppy handwriting paints a picture of a man slowly losing himself, to the insanity of past actions and isolation. Ranbob can confidently state that the book must have been created during Dream's time in prison - makes sense, considering what else it was found with.
Looks like staying in it did the man no favor in the mental health department.
Ranbob doesn't want to admit it, but reading Dream's suffering spread over so many pages makes him feel at least a little bit sympathetic towards the man.
Then he comes across an anomaly.
A whole page free, except for one word in the middle. It's scratched out furiously, but Ranbob can make out 'ig', an 'm', and 're'.
He frowns but moves on quickly.
Except the scratched-out word reappears. At first, interspersed randomly on some parts, then more frequently, until the pages are black and unrecognizable from spilled ink, obscuring the rest of the journal.
Ranbob feels a shiver climb down his spine.
It doesn't mean anything, he tells himself. Just even more signs of a damaged mind.
With the first journal translated, he finally shows himself.
His teacher is excited. As a historian, he can appreciate the work, and he is surprised but proud that Ranbob managed to translate it. He says so, and they spend an evening throwing theories at each other over what the contents could mean.
The approval from the rest of the community is... limited.
Ranbob is aware that without the scholarly view, the journals themselves could be viewed as a negative thing. Dream was the villain, after all. But he's still surprised when he's met with discontent and outright disapproval, even hostility from some. As if he chose to write those journals himself, as if he was at fault for their contents.
He shuns himself before anyone can do it for him.
He spends even more time in his own private space, and even his father sees him scarcely anymore. His fifteenth birthday comes and goes by unmentioned. The shadows beneath Ranbob's eyes grow as he throws himself into his work.
The contents of the rest of the journals get only more disturbing. Interesting, sure, but disturbing.
There are a few outliers he's baffled by - 'How to get girls', for example, written as if the author was either high or so sarcastic it's scathing. He kind of doubts Dream actually wrote that, but it fits the handwriting, if not the code used.
Overall, there's a progression to be seen. The journal he'd translated first seems to fit somewhere at the start of the timeline - it's at least comprehensible. Most others are filled with nothing but senseless scribbles and crossed out lines, words without context, and, in increasingly large quantities, smiley faces.
He'd have never thought that those could be creepy, but the more he finds and the more he looks at them, the more he could swear they were staring at him.
He shakes it off as simple side effects of his exhaustion.
One night, half nodding off, flicking through one of the more useless books, a sentence jumps out to him.
Against the blotches and scratched lines around them, the words stand out starkly, clear as day.
'Don't take the mask.'
He sits up, suddenly wide awake.
Amongst all the hectic of translating these things, he had almost forgotten about the one other artifact that had been found.
Now more than ever he is sure that that had been the original Dream's mask.
Something in him itches to hold it in his hands.
He shouldn't. He really shouldn't. But he's the only one likely to appreciate the significance of it, isn't he? No one else believes it to be authentic.
__-[_]-__
It's surprisingly easy to break into the vault rooms. Ranbob is on edge the whole time, sure that any moment he will be discovered, someone appearing to drag him away and punish him for his insolence. In the dark, lit only by moonlight filtering through miles of ocean water, he darts from cover to cover, skittish and ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble.
The keycard he'd stolen from his mentor weighs heavy in his pocket, his hand trembles as he uses it to open the access door.
The vault itself is dusty and smells like something had gone and died, and no one had bothered to clean it up. Boxes are stacked everywhere.
Carefully, he shifts through the junk, hoping to find his prize. There are tons of old artifacts here that nobody thinks worth anything - remnants of archaic rail systems, outdated redstone machines, clothes made unrecognizable with time.
At last, stowed underneath some leather that falls apart when he touches it, he finds it.
The mask almost glows in the weak light, and the dot-eyes are black as coal. He dismisses the feeling that it is looking at him.
He makes sure to lock the door behind him and quietly runs back. Around each corner, he expects to be caught, but miraculously nothing happens. He makes it to his room undetected. Once the door closes, he sinks against it, heartbeat loud in his ears. He feels restless. He feels like he could melt from sheer relief.
He stays that way for a long time, mask in his lap, until the lights flicker on to simulate the arrival of dawn.
The following days, he is even more skittish than usual. Every glance he receives seems to burn, every time someone speaks to him he tenses, ready for them to throw out accusations, telling him that they know, telling him that he will be summarily punished.
Yet, the longer no one speaks up, makes no indication of anything wrong at all, the more the paranoia recedes.
Then comes the giddiness.
He did it! For the first time in his life, he did something no one would approve of, and he got away with it!
He hums during breakfast, almost skips down the hallways.
When his mentor asks what got him in such a good mood, he notices and tries to tone down his hyperactive demeanor. But still! He's so happy.
That night, Ranbob retrieves the mask from where he'd stashed it in the deepest corner of his desk drawer.
He lays it on top of the opened journals and stares at it.
It doesn't deign to simply tell him it's secrets.
He takes it once again into his hands and moves closer to the desk light to inspect it.
The mask is very round, for one. There are latches on the back, presumably for a leather band to be put through, but otherwise, it's a perfect circle with a subtle arch.
For such an old artifact, it is in remarkably good condition too, only some scratches, no cracks. The surface is smooth and cool against his skin, the color off-white. When he taps against it with a claw, it clacks faintly.
It's not porcelain or ceramic, he thinks, far too durable for that, but he also has no idea as to what it could be made of, if not that. It matches no material that he knows of. He brushes his fingers over the surface once again, on the inside this time, and his claws catch on delicate grooves.
Curious, he tilts the mask against the light.
He can make out the faint impressions of runes - in galactic even, so he can find out what they mean!
Eagerly, he gets to work.
He copies each rune onto paper painstakingly, tracing their shapes when he can't see.
It is impressive enchantment work. So complex in fact, that he can only guess at the general function of the complex equations. He can make out 'Vision', 'Warmth', and 'Unbreaking'.
Also, something about 'Return' and 'Ownership', though he can't be too sure of that since it seems intertwined with 'Host', which he's certain is a mistranslation.
Soon enough, there's nothing more to do. He's already sketched the mask from all angles, held down his observations in his own little notebook.
The mask is just an inanimate object, but it seems to beckon him.
What would happen, if he just... put it on...
The mask touches his face.
It's dark, at first. His breath warms his own face, trapped by the curvature.
Then, a barely perceptible hum, and suddenly he's seeing the world again. And not only that, he's seeing it better than before! Everything is crisp and bright, and he could swear his field of vision is wider, too.
He looks at the desk, follows the grain of the wood with his eyes, observes how each color is so much richer and deeper.
So cool!
No wonder Dream was said to never take it off!
He plays around for a while, inspects everyday items as if seeing them for the first time.
Eventually, however, he gets a headache. Probably from too much unfamiliar sensory input.
He get's dizzy for a second when he moves to take the mask off, and he stumbles.
When he rights himself, there are journals on the floor, pages scattered all over. He must have knocked against the desk in an effort to balance himself.
Ah well. He sets the mask down and back into his drawer.
He goes to sleep and dreams of masks leering as darkness drags him down.