Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As he stepped through the mass grave, Dream picked up the hem of his cloak, trying not to let it drag on the bodies. There wasn’t a plague, thank Prime, but there was a famine, and having piles of corpses was simply begging to be the breeding grounds for a nasty sickness. Physical afflictions were of no concern, but famines bred resentment, and resentment could be the seed for magical illnesses that could punch through even Dream’s protections. He might not die from it, not like most would, but it wouldn’t be an enjoyable experience.

Dream didn’t need to be tracking some new, virulent strain of infection through the village, either. Attracting attention from the government would be annoying, to say the least.

He wasn’t actually sure which regime currently ruled over this area. The last time he’d been here, it had been the Antarctic Empire, but that could have easily changed in the last decade.

Though if anyone deserved a famine under their rule, it was the Antarctic imperials.

The inconvenient thing about famine, however, was that the bodies tended to be in poor condition at best. Emaciated and with brittle bones, too, so he couldn’t even use that. He would almost prefer the plague. But with all the boils and pustules and everything else, plague-ridden bodies were, quite frankly, disgusting. And this was coming from Dream. Battlegrounds weren’t bad, but they tended to be difficult to access, and by the time the armies had cleared out, and it was no longer contested territory, all the bodies were in terrible condition. Even if he managed to grab one or two early, the heat of battle wasn’t good at preserving corpses.

No, Dream’s favorite was executions. Decapitated offenders were useless, but death by hanging left bodies in nigh-perfect condition. About as good as corpses got. Except for poisoning, possibly. It was rare for him to find one of those, though, and even then, it depended greatly on the type of poison.

From a single glance, he could tell that none of the bodies met his standards. A wasted week, then, considering that he’d gone all the way into proper civilization in order to find a mass grave. Dream’s home, if it could be called that, was located as far from people as possible.

He sighed. Onwards to the next mass grave, then. Dream turned, only to pause.

One of the corpses caught his attention. It must have been recent. Presumably, at least, with no visible decay and laying on top of the pile. There wasn’t much light out, only pale moonlight from a half-moon, but it was enough to catch a glint of something shining.

Stepping closer, Dream knelt. Internally, he winced at the way his cloak and robes dragged on the bodies, but the longer he looked at the corpse, the more interesting it became.

The glint that had caught his eye was light, reflecting on a golden bracelet. Slightly muddied it may have been, but still, it shone through the muck. Its owner’s arm was outstretched, thrown out and forward as if the corpse had tried to crawl out of the mass grave. The arm must have been broken, too, with the angle it was bent at. The corpse laid face-down, short blond hair muddied and flattened against its scalp. Its clothing was filthy, but it had likely been worth some money once, dyed a deep red and neatly stitched.

Gold was one of the best conduits for magic, and if the bracelet was real, Dream could turn it into a nice present for Sapnap or some such. He reached out mentally, poking it with his magic. If it was genuine gold, he expected his magic to easily flow through the bracelet.

Instead, the bracelet snapped back, performing the equivalent of magically hissing and clawing at Dream. It didn’t hit, of course. Dream’s own magic slid off it like water off a duck’s back, though, which was a surprise. He hadn’t even felt a hint of the bracelet’s power, so it must have been weakened greatly. For it to still be able to repel Dream’s magic, even in a minuscule amount, it must have once been a powerful tool.

Cursed, perhaps, if the owner hadn’t sold it in order to stave off starvation.

He took a closer look at the bracelet, trying to determine the enchantment. Whatever it was, his original assessment had been correct. The magic holding it together was faded, barely holding together at the seams. A lesser working would have fallen apart by now, drained of energy as it was. Whoever had created the bracelet had been an incredibly skilled enchanter, weaving magic together in a tapestry that put purported masters of enchantment to shame. Despite that, though, if Dream tugged too hard at the right section, the whole enchantment would collapse.

Instead of doing that, he fed more magic into the bracelet, trying to determine what its original enchantment had been.

The bracelet accepted his magic easily, which was a surprise. A way to differentiate between friendly and unfriendly magic wasn’t unusual, and any good enchantment had a recharging method built in. But Dream’s magic didn’t play nice with most other types, and even other mages tended to get an instinctive feeling of uneasiness around him.

Dream’s magic had been described as sickly before, a black tinged with lime green, twisting together in weaving coils that reminded people of infection. Clearly, the bracelet didn’t feel that way, lapping his magic up with all the eagerness of a starving dog. As it grew in power, the outlines of the enchantment grew more defined, enough that Dream could finally make out its purpose.

Protection. An interesting one, at that, closer to retribution and designed to bring misfortune and death upon anyone who hurt the bearer. But a method of protecting them, all the same.

Offense was the best defense, or however the saying went.

He could see why the creator had chosen to design it that way, rather than simply create a shielding bracelet or similar. Whoever they were, their creation hungrily absorbed Dream’s power, and for one reason: their magic was like Dream’s.

Death.

Not well suited to defense or protection, but someone had put a great deal of time and effort into ensuring the bracelet’s bearer was safe. Given the former owner’s state, it hadn’t worked terribly well, but a lack of energy in the bracelet played a large part in that. Now pulsating with energy to Dream’s sight, it was something even Dream wouldn’t mind wearing.

Though he would bet more than a few gold pieces that anyone wearing a piece of enchanted jewelry as nice as the bracelet might also have a necklace, an earring, something.

With some effort, Dream flipped over the body. Face now visible, he would estimate it at a teenager, though a well-fed one with plump cheeks who’d likely never gone a day hungry in their life.

Crimson soaked the front of its tunic, barely visible in comparison to the cloth’s own color. The tunic was torn, though, a slash straight through the middle that opened up to reveal a jagged wound.

Highly unprofessional, in Dream’s opinion. Whoever had made that injury had no idea what they were doing. It would have taken the teenager half an hour to bleed out, though that did explain the body’s position, with one hand thrown out as if it had tried to crawl out of the pile.

No other gleaming jewelry jumped out at him, though. Just to sure, Dream ran his magic over the corpse, checking for any residual magic.

Nothing.

Dream reached out his gloved hand, carefully pinching the edges of the bracelet that remained clean. He tugged at the bracelet.

It didn’t slide off.

He tugged again.

Someone moaned, and Dream froze, the bracelet dropping from his grasp and subsequently the arm as well, which hit the pile of bodies with a thud.

The not-so-dead teenager moaned again, features scrunching in pain.

Well, fuck.

Tommy woke up, which was a surprise.

Was he dead? His chest hurt. If he was dead, this was a shitty afterlife.

He was probably alive. That was a little unfortunate. Not that he wanted to be dead, but at least if Tommy were dead, they couldn’t use him against his family. It was all too easy to imagine being used as a hostage, a knife to Tommy’s throat. Ordering Techno to stand down, undefeatable in combat but brought down by Tommy’s weakness. Wilbur being clapped in chains and led away, never to see the light of day again. Phil, bowing his head and accepting the kiss of a blade, crown tumbling from his hair.

They were all powerful. Dangerous.

Tommy wasn’t.

That was why they’d taken him, after all. He was the weak link in the chain. A symbol, too, that not even the palace’s security, warded to the point that not even an army of mages could easily besiege it, could stop the Manbergian rebels from sneaking in under the cover of darkness. That the presence of the Angel and his Blade was no deterrent to grabbing a prince from his room, stealing away in the dead of the night.

If the Empire fell, if his family surrendered—it would be Tommy’s fault. But if he could escape, that would neatly undercut the rebels’ plans. Carefully, he cracked open one eye, trying not to alert anyone to his newfound state of wakefulness. His hands were unbound, which was a mistake on the Manbergian rebels’ part. He would show them not to fucking underestimate him.

All he could see was a wall, lit by a burning torch. Tommy blinked and reopened his eye, unsure if his vision was blurry.

No change. The wall was made out of dirt.

He couldn’t see anyone, so he risked opening his other eye.

Still dirt.

There was a shuffling noise on his right, and Tommy froze.

Then, someone stepped into his view, clad in a long cloak, porcelain mask covering their face. That was a good sign, right? It meant that they didn’t mean to kill Tommy, or they wouldn’t bother to hide their identity.

Though staying alive wasn’t necessarily in his family’s best interests.

“You’re awake,” they said, voice oddly clear despite the mask.

He risked glancing to one side. No one else. On his other side—

That was a fucking wall made of diamond. Diamond. If the rebels had this much funding, there had to be someone supporting them. Even the Empire wasn’t rich enough to waste that many diamonds on decoration.

Unless it was the basis of some intricate spell, which was a horrifyingly possible thought. The only spell that Tommy knew which might need that many diamonds was a beacon spell, which would severely hurt the Empire’s chances against the rebels, and that was a passive spell. If this laid the foundation for anything worse, a spell of destruction or blood or death, then it could spell ruin.

The cloaked figure stepped closer, and Tommy eyed them warily, pushing himself up on his arms. Pain shot through his chest, and he winced, arms almost giving out and sending him crashing back onto the bed. They didn’t, but it was a struggle to keep the pain off his face.

He must have failed because the figure said, annoyed, “Stop moving. You had a nasty infection—lying on those corpses like that, you’re lucky not to have parasites or some shit—and the chest wound isn’t fully healed. If you reopen the stitches, I will be very fucking annoyed.”

That was a lot more care than Tommy would have expected a rebel to express over the health of a prince. And his memory hadn’t failed him; the rebels had thrown him into a mass grave after slicing his torso open. The guards had caught their trail, hot on their heels, and the rebels hadn’t wanted to risk being caught with the prince, unwilling to risk their lives for a hostage. Tommy’s screaming, flailing, and attempts to bite his captors had probably contributed to their decision as well. Not very tactically intelligent of the tebs, but not everyone would put the cause before their own lives.

But if that was the case, what was Tommy doing alive?

“Who are you?” he asked, voice a low croak that surprised even him.

The cloaked figure jabbed a gloved finger at him. “And stop talking. You’ve been asleep for half a week, fighting off that infection, and carefully tipping water into your mouth can only get you so far. You need food, too, because I wasn’t about to chew it up and stuff it down your throat.”

Now that they mentioned it, Tommy’s stomach felt like it was eating him from the inside out. The rebels had hardly bothered to feed him more than a slice of hard bread a day, not with the famine in full swing. Even before his kidnapping, the palace had been rationing, too, not to the point of starvation, but enough that they were down to two meals a day.

Still better off than most of the Empire, though, and Schlatt had taken advantage of that to whip the citizens up into a frenzy.

When they held out a glass bottle of water, stoppered and clear, Tommy took it eagerly. Greedily, he gulped it down. Some of it spilled onto his shirt, but he didn’t care. When the whole bottle was drained, he finally tore his attention away from drinking and refocused on the cloaked figure.

They’d stood there patiently, waiting for Tommy to finish, but now, they spoke up. “Don’t move,” they said sternly. “I’ll grab food, and if you’ve moved an inch when I get back, I will make you sit through an hour of redoing your stitches before I give you any food.” Casting Tommy one last unreadable glance through their mask, they stepped around the corner, heading somewhere down the dirt hallway.

And wasn’t that such an oxymoron, dirt and diamond. Underground, perhaps. There were no windows, and that would explain why anyone would have a base partially built out of dirt. That would be tricky to escape from, but at least now, Tommy knew.

The figure came back, holding out a tray of battered metal, upon which a bowl of steaming soup and a slice of thick bread rested. It looked surprisingly good, even at first glance. And as they drew closer, Tommy could make out more details, including the fact that the soup was thick and filled with vegetables.

Soup was a common meal, these days, but only by virtue of the fact that it was easy to stretch rations with a soup. Throw in a chicken bone, some wilted vegetables, and there would be enough soup to get a person through the night. Not the tastiest, but edible, and that counted for a lot. The cooks at the palace wouldn’t stand for that, not for the royal family, but Tommy knew all too well that good food was a luxury.

But the tray that they carefully placed on Tommy’s lap was far from being a meal that anyone would feed to a prisoner. Even through the thick blankets, he could feel the heat radiating from the tray. His mouth watered at the sight of the food. Without care for the heat, he picked up the spoon and gulped down a mouthful of soup.

A second later, he remembered that it could have contained poison or some other form of drug. Tommy halted, eyes darting up to the figure, who didn’t move. When his stomach didn’t suddenly twist, though, and he didn’t fall over convulsing, Tommy went back for another bite. It was irresistible, a combination of gnawing hunger and genuine enjoyment of the flavor driving him on.

Partway through the meal, though, the cloaked figure said, “So, care to explain who you are?”

Tearing into a chunk of bread soaked in broth, Tommy choked slightly.

Nonchalant, they continued, “Not just everyone is carting around a bracelet worth a small duchy. And especially not during a famine.”

“You don’t seem to be suffering much from the famine,” Tommy retorted, food finally forced down. His diplomacy teacher would have sighed loudly, but Rosie wasn’t there, so imaginary-Rosie could go fuck herself. He cast a glance at his wrist, though, and was unreasonably relieved to see that it was still there. Its protections were supposed to stop anyone else from removing it, but weak and drained as the bracelet’s magic had been, he imagined it would slide off without any protest.

But if his—rescuer—didn't even know who Tommy was, then they weren't with the rebels.

Chuckling slightly, they said, “Fair enough. I don’t have occasion to use them much, but my gardens were set up by a good friend with a touch of magic when it comes to plants, and they’re plenty to support the occasional visitor.” They leaned in closer, blank white mask radiating an aura of calm. “Still, though, I have to wonder where you picked that piece up from. It’s certainly… unusual.”

“It was a family heirloom,” Tommy snapped. “We’ve had it for hundreds of years.” That was true enough, considering that Phil had first made it for Techno when he was a small child. Obfuscating the truth was better, though, if he could make the figure think that the bracelet signified nothing unusual about Tommy’s origins.

They looked almost disappointed, withdrawing with slumped shoulders. “Unfortunate,” they mused, “though it would make sense.”

Despite their sudden lack of interest, Tommy still placed one hand over the bracelet protectively.

It sparked beneath his fingers, and Tommy almost jumped out of his skin.

The rebels had used some magic-dampening device to prevent the wards from triggering, and it had sapped Tommy’s bracelet to almost nothing. And with Tommy’s own magic placid and still, he’d been defenseless. Unable to even call for help, and then they’d taken him.

If it was working now, though, it had been recharged somehow. His magic wasn’t terribly compatible with Phil’s, but it was possible that Tommy had unconsciously charged the bracelet enough to react, at least.

He reached out for his magic, not to use it, but merely trying to test that feeling of change, slipping into another form.

It didn’t react. Tommy felt as if he were bashing his head against a glass wall, perfectly able to see the calm pool of magic on the other side, but unable to reach it. Whatever the rebels had done to shut down his magic was still in effect, it seemed.

At least it hadn’t snapped him back to his natural shape. Phil had described Tommy’s magic as more of a one-and-done rather than an ongoing spell. Which was a fucking lifesaver, because trying to hide a giant set of wings and pretend he wasn’t a member of the Antarctic royal family would have been a doomed quest from the onset.

But if no one had provided magic to the bracelet, the only possibility was that it had recharged itself. Which was possible—it was a common feature, and Phil was hardly going to leave it out—but that required a strong source of the appropriate power.

Tommy tried not to think too hard about how many people must have been thrown into the mass grave. The bracelet required massive amounts of death-aligned magic to function, which Phil could easily supply, but it was almost impossible to find naturally outside of places like battlefields or execution sites. Even traditional cemeteries couldn’t provide that much power, with enough time passing between deaths and the fact that simple lack of space reduced the number of people in any given cemetery.

Prime, he’d known the famine was bad, but Tommy hadn’t realized it had become that bad. For a single mass grave to generate that much energy, let alone one not near any major city, so many people must have died.

He swallowed thickly, hiding it under the guise of nibbling at his soup, but his appetite was largely gone after that revelation.

“Well,” the cloaked figure said after Tommy had set his spoon down, “I’m Dream. And back to my earlier question, who are you?”

“Tommy,” he said on instinct and immediately regretted it. Whoever the cloaked figure was, they didn’t seem to know that Tommy was the prince. And it was a common name, but one link to being the third prince of the Antarctic Empire was one more than he could risk. At a minimum, they weren’t aligned with the rebels, though, and that was enough for him.

They accepted that, though, nodding and humming thoughtfully. “Tommy,” they said, as if savoring the taste of the word. “A good name.”

“I should fucking hope so,” he retorted.

They just laughed.

Chapter Text

“Your bandages need to be changed,” Dream said as he walked into the room.

Tommy, sitting up in bed and reading a book, looked up and glared. “I’ll do it my-fucking-self, then.”

“You do know that I already changed them a few times, right?” Dream pointed out. “Your infection was bad enough without letting you wallow in the same blood-encrusted bandages for four days. And I had to get you out of those filthy clothes and into new ones, not to mention that I originally cleaned and dressed the wound.” Tommy wouldn’t have survived if anyone besides Dream had been the one to find him. Maybe a healer could have done a better job than Dream, but an affinity for life was equally rare as one for death. Far more valued, admittedly, but Dream’s skills had served just as well.

Tommy must have had Prime’s favor, though. Even another necromancer couldn’t have saved him. It was only Dream’s spells, designed to hold a person between life and death, that had kept Tommy alive for the weeklong hike back to Dream’s home. He’d invented them for and used them on himself, and if there was anyone else in the world who knew how to cast them, he’d eat his left boot.

Not literally, of course, since that would be tricky. But no other necromancer could have ceaselessly carried a body for a week, maintaining a spell all the while. The Angel of Death, maybe. He was the only other necromancer on Dream’s level—or possibly even beyond, loath as he was to admit it—that was still alive. But Philza would never lower himself to save the life of a random teenager like Tommy.

…Dream hadn’t exactly done it out of the goodness of his heart, either, but he’d already invested time and energy into helping Tommy. And he was bored. So, taking care of a teenager during the next few weeks of convalescence it was.

A recalcitrant teenager, admittedly.

Tommy stabbed a finger at him. “Yeah, well, it’s not like I’m fucking bedbound any longer.”

“Really,” said Dream.

“You’d better fucking believe it,” Tommy huffed, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

On one hand, as Tommy’s self-appointed doctor, Dream had an ethical responsibility to stop him.

On the other hand, if Tommy thought he was fully capable of standing unassisted, who was Dream to hold him back?

His feet hit the floor. Immediately, Tommy planted a hand against the diamond wall, stabilizing himself as he slowly forced himself to stand fully.

Dream watched him steadily, holding a roll of bandages.

Grunting, Tommy removed his hand from the wall. He reminded Dream of a newborn calf, wobbling around on weak legs. Relative to Dream’s own age, he might as well have been one, which was a strange thought.

He hadn’t been around normal people in so long. Dream had plenty of friends, of course; he wasn’t a total recluse, but most of them were either mages or spirits, and any enterprising person with access to magic could easily prolong their life.

Like he had done.

Unlike a newborn calf, however, Tommy was entirely unwilling to accept any external aid. He limped along, legs barely supporting his own weight, and one hand was pressed to his chest. Tommy was breathing faster, too, in short gasps that were almost wheezes. It had been so long since Dream had needed to worry about things like physical limitations or pain that he’d half-forgotten how bad they could be. Intellectually, of course, he knew, but that was different from actually experiencing the limitations and pains of a mortal body every second of every day.

Maybe Dream should help him. He moved closer.

With the other hand, Tommy flipped him off.

Never mind. He could suffer.

“So,” Tommy said, teeth visibly gritted, “show me around your shitty little house. I want to see those gardens you talked about.”

“It’s not shitty,” Dream muttered, but he turned all the same, cloak swishing around his ankles. “Right, well, the garden is outside actually.” He slowed his pace, allowing Tommy to plod alongside him.

“Outside? Isn’t the whole house underground?” Tommy asked.

Dream twisted to face him fully. “No?” he said. His voice was rising, he knew that, but he was stunned. “Why would you think that?”

“There’s no windows,” Tommy said. “The walls are shit because they’re made of dirt. Considering the Empire just got hit with the worst blizzard season in over fifty years, it’s warmer than it should be if the insulation was as bad as fucking dirt should be providing. Not warmed by fire magic, though, or the temperature in here wouldn’t be barely livable.” With a glare at Dream, he said, “Your shitty house is surrounded by dirt, the floor is made of dirt, the ceiling is fucking made of dirt, and it’s fucking cold.”

“You seem to be strangely preoccupied with dirt,” Dream drawled, but it was a more automatic response. He took a moment to think about that. They were surprisingly good points, though he would hardly say so aloud. But Dream had simply gotten lazy during the construction. What need did he have for windows when enchanted torches kept the interior lit? Dirt was a perfectly acceptable construction material as well, considering that it was both plentiful and easy to build with when suitably compacted. As for the temperature-

“We’re not in the Empire,” he pointed out. It was winter, admittedly, but Dream had situated himself nicely between the Antarctic Empire’s southern border and the Badlands. They were in territory that no country would bother to claim by virtue of being a valley surrounded by mountains. He thought it might nominally be Snowchester land, actually, but only insofar as the cartographers drew the border around the mountain range, not even knowing that there was a valley within that could be added.

Or maybe not. The last time Dream had gotten a message from George, he’d mentioned a new movement for rivers and mountains and other topography that was used to demarcate country borders not to belong to either country and instead be neutral territory.

He was pretty sure it hadn’t happened. There was too much money to be made in taxing waterways and mountain passages for any intelligent ruler to give up their half. But then again, Dream hadn’t ruled a country in over a century. Maybe ruling practices had changed since then.

Probably not. More than a few of his major contemporaries were still alive. Bad, Quackity, Sam… even Schlatt hadn’t kicked the bucket yet.

And Philza, of course.

“That’s impossible,” Tommy said, drawing Dream’s attention back to his conversation partner.

Fuck, he really needed to stop drifting off. The last time he’d talked to anyone in-person was years ago, in his defense. “When I found you, you were in a village right on the border of the Antarctic Empire,” Dream explained. “And I live outside the Empire’s borders, where I can’t even remember that last time a blizzard hit.” That was true enough. The mountains surrounding his home kept the weather largely consistent throughout the year, though it didn’t matter much to Dream.

Tommy shot him a suspicious look and started shuffling forward again. “Still,” he said, “we can’t be that far from Empire land. And it’s not like the shitty blizzards stopped right at the borders.”

Dream didn’t respond, and Tommy took that as an invitation to keep talking. “If this is some sort of fucking Manbergian attempt at tricking me—I’ll—you’ll regret it, bitch,” he finished.

“I’m not Manbergian,” Dream said, a mixture of offended and confused. Aligned with Schlatt? Really? Not that he couldn’t agree with the sentiment of overthrowing the Antarctic Empire and reclaiming conquered lands, but Schlatt was an asshole.

When they finally reached the door, Tommy placed a hand on the doorknob and hesitated. He cast a glare at Dream, as if daring Dream to stop him.

Dream raised his arms placidly. There was hardly any harm in letting Tommy go outside.

Under Tommy’s touch, it swung open with only a slight shower of dirt from above.

Tommy took one step forward. Two more. Then he was stumbling forward, bare feet almost tripping over each other in their haste to run. For one half-insane moment, Dream thought Tommy was about to run, but instead, he knelt. One arm was still in a sling across his chest, but Tommy planted the other in the ground.

Dream stepped around him, concern rising. He looked Tommy up and down, trying to determine what had happened. “Tommy? Is it your wounds?” For the last few days, he’d been soaking the bandages in potions before applying them, and that had sped the healing along. But the infection was far along enough that Dream might risk dumping a regeneration potion down Tommy’s throat if that was what it took.

Maybe letting Tommy walk had been a bad idea.

Mutely, Tommy shook his head. He raked his fingers through the dirt, before holding up his hands, palm up, soil slipping through his fingers and intermittently dotted by torn blades of grass.

“This is real,” Tommy whispered, looking up to face Dream.

Dream nodded. He understood that feeling. Sometimes, after a particularly realistic dream, especially if George was involved, he would wake up and question if he was still sleeping. Considering that at least once, it had turned out to be George messing with him, Dream considered it understandable wariness.

“You’re really not—you fucking saved my life.”

“…Yes?” It was hardly as if Tommy would’ve made it on his own.

“And you don’t—” Tommy shook his head. “Fuck. This—” Tommy sat back, gaze fixated on Dream’s mask. Wildly, he gestured around him. “The sun’s out. You’re growing a fucking vegetable garden. The giant forest around your house is budding new leaves. ”

Technically, it wasn’t really Dream who was growing them. It was hardly as if he ate them, so the garden only saw use whenever visitors showed up. The rest of the time, he just let the animals take advantage of his garden and waited for the spells to regrow the crops. Hannah had set it up for him years ago on the basis that Dream would never take care of a farm—sadly accurate—and that when they did show up, most of his friends needed to eat. He had plenty of food stored away, but people who could still eat had the weirdest hang-ups about eating fresh food and not jars of pickled vegetables. It was kept fresh by preservation magic, but Hannah insisted there was a difference in the taste.

Dream wouldn’t know.

Instead of saying any of that, he said, “It’s spring. The mountains keep the blizzard out, so everything’s growing right now.”

Tommy laughed, a little wildly, an edge of disbelief to his tone, then clutched his good hand to his chest, grimacing.

Right. As the only person above the age of—how old was Tommy? Sixteen? Seventeen? Twenty, at most—a hundred years, Dream was taking charge of the situation. “That’s enough walking,” he declared. “You are heading back to my bed, where you will content yourself with resting for the next few hours. The giant fucking gash across your chest is still infected, not to mention your numerous other small injuries.”

Tommy looked mutinous. Dream prepared himself to bodily haul the teenager back indoors. But after only a moment, his face shifted to a more thoughtful, almost concerned look. “That’s your bed?” he said.

Dream shrugged. “Yeah.” It wasn’t as if he got much use out of it, barring the occasional message from George. Mostly, he was just grateful that it was clean enough to provide a space for a severely injured teenager to recuperate. Tommy being in it for a full four days was probably the most continuous use the bed had seen in decades.

“Don’t you need to use it?”

The truthful answer to that was that Dream didn’t, but revealing that to Tommy would have been a bad idea. Instead, he simply answered, “I can sleep downstairs just fine. Come on, back to resting.”

“I want to stay outside,” he said, almost a rasp. Tommy didn’t move.

“The grass will be here tomorrow,” Dream said. “And so will the flowers and the trees and everything else. Now, c’mon, we should get those bandages changed.”

Tommy huffed but didn’t argue, slowly standing and waving off Dream’s offered hand. If he’d thought Tommy would accept it, Dream would have helped him regardless, but he figured there was a decent probability of Tommy instead throwing it off and subsequently falling over. Tommy muttered something, quietly enough that Dream couldn’t hear.

“Sorry? What’d you say?”

“I said,” Tommy said, louder, “that I can’t believe you had this much fucking raw material to build a house with and you chose dirt.”

As an adult, Dream chose to valiantly ignore that.

Tommy was still snickering quietly as they walked back inside.

The fact of the matter was that objectively, rationally, by-any-reasonable-standard-ly, Dream’s house was shit.

Not that Tommy wasn’t grateful for getting to share the house for free because he was. He might have been rich, but that didn’t make him spoiled, and he got that not everyone grew up in gleaming palaces with an army of servants at their beck and call. Really.

But Dream’s house was nigh-unlivable. If Tommy didn’t know that Dream had somehow managed to survive in it somehow for years, he would’ve said it was unlivable.

Oh, sure, it had all the basic ingredients of a house. There were walls and a roof over his head. Dream had given up his bed to Tommy, and there was even a set of positively ancient wooden chairs and a table that Dream had dragged out of storage. Over the last week since waking, Tommy had slowly grown bolder when it came to exploring, venturing outside and into the woods, poking the farm carefully, and even heading down into Dream’s basement.

Dream had a basement that, for some un-fucking-knowable reason, was so much nicer than the rest of his house. It contained all the stored food, for one, sitting neatly in their enchanted room. He’d lost quite a bit of respect for Dream after finding out that Dream had just grabbed a jar of soup and a loaf of bread and warmed them up, as fresh as the day they’d been made.

But for someone who was living in a dirt hut, Dream’s basement wouldn’t have looked out of place in a palace. Tommy, as someone who had lived in a palace, could say that with certainty. Sure, the storage space was nothing out of the ordinary, basic enchantments that any halfway-competent mage would make for their house, and plenty of mages hired out their services for everyday enchantments. Typical anti-vermin protections, though the preservation on it was a bit beyond the norm.

The library, though.

Fucking Prime, the library.

Stone-lined walls wrapped around a labyrinth of ceiling-high shelves, stretching to twice Tommy’s height and hewn from rough granite, where they intersected with a stone ceiling that lay below the surface soil. And at every possible turn, dusty tomes lined the shelves. Somehow, they hadn’t crumbled yet, despite the fact that he’d found one dating back to before Techno was born. Techno. None as old as Phil, but Phil was one of the last elytrians, and their civilization had collapsed so long ago that their spires and cities had long since fallen to ruin.

The price of books had dropped dramatically after an entrepreneurial metal mage invented the printing press, but Dream’s collection still dwarfed what Tommy imagined a normal library or book collection might be like.

Then, again, maybe this was a perfectly normal library size. The royal library was larger than Dream’s several times over, and it actually had convenient things like a place to sit. And huge glass windows that captured the sun perfectly in the afternoon, unlike Dream’s dreary basement, lit by enchanted torches.

It seemed like a safety hazard to Tommy, but the library hadn’t caught on fire yet.

So it was entirely possible that Dream’s book collection was nothing out of the ordinary. Considering that Dream lived in a house made of dirt, it made sense to keep books underground, out of the rain, sun, and everything else that destroyed fragile paper.

Yeah, that made sense.

There was one more room that Tommy hadn’t been able to get into. The shape of a door was carved into a wall, but it refused to open, and Tommy wasn’t fully convinced that it wasn’t just an unfortunate pattern of cracks.

It did seem like it would be right underneath the diamond wall, though.

But without being able to get into the maybe-fake-room, that was the extent of Dream’s basement. And of Dream’s house. There was a makeshift fire pit outside, but no proper kitchen. Dream owned a grand total of three bowls, two spoons, zero forks, five knives, and a tin kettle that had probably been new when Wilbur had yet to be born.

Wooden utensils also had the nastiest tendency to give him splinters in his fucking mouth. Tommy had no idea how Dream managed to use those shit spoons for years before Tommy had come along.

“Dream,” he said, stomping down the stairs.

Dream, who was turning a jar of jam over in his hand critically, didn’t turn to look at Tommy before saying, “What?”

“We need to go buy stuff in a town,” Tommy declared. “Like metal utensils. Clothes, so that I’m not wearing your friend’s fucking castoffs. Here’s an innovative thought, but maybe fucking soap?”

The forest had rivers, but Tommy was used to the not-quite-magic of plumbing and the definitely-magic of hot water. Showers. He missed showers. Those might have been the number one thing Tommy missed about the palace.

Wait, no, that was his family. Showers were number two, then, and ahead of Wilbur when Wilbur was stealing Tommy’s food.

“Since we’re in the asscrack of nowhere, information about what the fuck has been happening in the Empire would be useful, too,” added Tommy. Not out of any desire to see Wilbur, of course. He was entirely motivated by the promise of showers in the royal palace.

“We don’t have the time to travel far,” Dream said. Finally, he set down the jam and turned to face Tommy, backlit by the torches in the food storage. “So that’s a no.”

“Look,” Tommy said, scowling. “I get that maybe you don’t want to take me back to the shitty little town where you found me in a grave, but if that’s the only option, we can go there.”

“Too far,” Dream responded blandly, and Tommy fucking hated that he couldn’t read any of Dream’s facial expressions. Even his body language was muted, under those shapeless robes and the cloak. “It’s a week’s travel.”

Tommy would say he was expressing incredible skills of diplomacy by flipping Dream off. “Get better at lying, bitch, because we both know that’s impossible. I’d be dead.”

Dream hummed noncommittally. “Well, I wish you the best of luck trekking through the forest and trying to find the right passage through the mountains.”

Fuck, Dream had him there.

He crossed his arms. It was a novel feeling, being able to move his broken arm, though it still twinged slightly. “Fine,” Tommy muttered, “we can stay here with your shitty splinter-filled spoons, bitch.”

Dream paused for a moment, then said, “Sorry.”

Hah. Like that was true.

“I’ll see what I can do about the information, though,” Dream said, as if he was planning to take a quick stroll to greet the spymaster and access a vast network of information that spanned two and a half continents.

Tommy squinted doubtfully but let it slide.

“Can I use the bed?” Dream asked, apropos of nothing.

Tommy blinked. “Uh, it’s your fucking bed. I’m not going to stop you. Though I’d really appreciate having somewhere else to sleep than the shitty dirt floor.”

“Oh,” Dream said, waving a gloved hand, “not permanently. You can keep using it. All I need is to use it right now.”

Crossing his arms, Tommy said, deadpan, “It’s fucking noon.” Or thereabouts. Dream didn’t have any clocks, so Tommy was reduced to guessing. They – or rather, just Tommy – had woken up a few hours ago, greeted by the sun rising over the mountaintops.

Neither of them could see the sun in the library, but Dream must have agreed with Tommy’s assessment of the time because he said, nodding, “I know. George is currently traveling halfway around the world, though, and it’s nighttime there.”

Tommy had no fucking idea what ‘George’ had to do with Dream’s sleeping habits, but he wasn’t using the bed at the moment, either. “Whatever,” he said.

Dream didn’t smile—couldn’t, not visibly, not with the mask on—but he sounded almost cheery when he said, “I’ll see you in a few hours, then. Oh, and don’t worry, we can wash the sheets.”

He watched Dream start heading back upstairs, vanishing around a turn in the stairwell. It was strange that Dream would be sleeping at midday, but it was almost comforting in an odd way. Tommy never saw Dream eat or drink or even relieve himself, let alone sleep, but it seemed like Dream got all of his basic human functions in when Tommy wasn’t around to see it, for some odd reason.

Maybe Dream had leprosy or some shit. He never let Tommy see any of his skin, keeping his entire body covered constantly.

But it was still relieving to know that Dream was human, after all.

Chapter Text

“I heard the Antarctic Empire finally fell,” Dream commented. “Good riddance.”

Tommy’s face paled.

“Oh, right, you’re from the Antarctic Empire.” It was so easy to forget when Dream didn’t pay much attention to national borders. Caring about countries was hard when they rose and fell every time he went outside his valley. “Sorry. Nothing against you or anyone else from the Empire. Just the Antarctic imperial family. Honestly, fuck them.”

Oddly, Tommy didn’t look reassured at all.

Dream would have been happy to let that be the end of it, but Tommy cleared his throat. “What—uh, what happened to the royal family? And who took over?” he said.

Right. Tommy had been out of the Empire for the last month with Dream. It made sense that he wouldn’t know any of the latest news. Dream wouldn’t even know, but Tommy had wanted to know, so Dream had asked George.

George had this whole hang-up about sending semi-frequent messages. He made sure Dream ‘maintained contact with the outside world’ and ‘talked to someone besides his zombies more often than once every few years.’ George’s communication worked quickly, at least, even if the method—falling into magically induced slumber—inconvenienced Dream. It did mean that Dream was up to date on the latest information, so he put up with it.

He rested his chin on his hand. “About three weeks ago, the youngest prince went missing. It was around the time I found you if that helps. Apparently, it was an attempt at taking him hostage, but the kidnappers never made any demands, so half the country’s convinced that he ran away and the other half thinks they just murdered him.” Dream paused. “Except for the small—but vocal—minority who thinks it’s all a coverup so that the emperor could sacrifice the prince and feast on his flesh. Wouldn’t put much stock in it, though. The royal family are dicks, but it’s a baseless rumor.”

“Never could have guessed he didn’t kidnap, sacrifice, and eat—” Tommy hesitated for a moment “—the prince. What a fucking shock,” he muttered.

Sometimes, people could have interesting imaginations; it was true. Dream would know. There had been an oddly persistent rumor under his reign that Dream stayed eternally young by absorbing the lifeforce of unborn fetuses and causing miscarriages throughout the world, which was blatantly untrue but somehow widespread. The average citizen had the strangest ideas about immortal rulers. For some reason, it was always dead children and human sacrifice. He’d never been able to pin down the exact cause.

“And… the rest of them?” Tommy prodded. He didn’t sound terribly concerned about the youngest prince’s fate, though Dream supposed that made sense. The prince was reportedly also named Tommy, and Dream’s Tommy had probably faced his fair share of nicknaming and miscommunication for it. Parents loved to name their children after whoever the latest royal was, especially if they’d been born recently, and Tommy was just about the right age to have grown up with another five kids named Tommy next door. There was no better way to breed resentment against the royal family than to name one too many kids after them.

It sounded melodramatic. It really, really wasn’t. All it had taken to convince Dream of that fact was one rebellion. A rebellion composed entirely of bitter, disgruntled citizens of which every single one was named ‘Dream.’ It hadn’t succeeded, of course, but it had convinced Dream to lay down a royal decree that no one was allowed to name children after him.

“Well, you know about the unrest in the Empire, right?”

With a nod, Tommy said, “Obviously.” The look he shot Dream easily conveyed exactly what Tommy thought of Dream’s intelligence.

“Turns out,” said Dream, “the emperor and his general are great at conquering stuff that already belongs to other fucking people, not so great at keeping it.” Not that Dream was upset about it or anything. “Anti-Empire sentiment finally spilled over about half a week ago, and between the famine and Schlatt, enough people stormed the palace that the royal family was forced to flee. And now the revolutionaries are in power.”

“The revolutionaries are what?” Tommy yelped, voice cracking slightly on the last word.

Ah, puberty. Dream had only the faintest remembrance of his teenage years, but he was pretty sure he’d just repressed the terrible memories.

“In power,” Dream repeated. “With a tenuous hold on the rest of the Empire, but most of the rebels are bunkered down in the capital, I think. Most other cities are just in general chaos, and the rebels happen to be leading the riots.”

“Uh—” Tommy’s gaze flickered to the table, then back to staring at Dream’s mask. “So, what the fuck did happen to them, anyway? The royal family. Just wondering.”

Dream hummed. “Easiest one is the emperor. The Manbergians—that’s the revolutionaries— captured him, and he’s under what amounts to house arrest. Someone found a stash of null metal, which is the only reason they’ve been able to keep the emperor under control. It’s made them arrogant. Just because they have a little anklet on him, they think they can keep Philza under control and that there’s no need to kill him.”

Dream and a coalition of mages had gone to great lengths to eliminate all the null metal they could find and the knowledge of how to manufacture it, but they’d clearly missed some. He’d have to rectify that mistake.

If someone snapped a null metal cuff on Dream, he was pretty sure that he would flat-out die, or at least be heavily inconvenienced. The treatments used meant that not only did the metal go straight through enchantments and warding, but it also canceled out any magic it came in contact with. There was a possibility the Manbergians would remain in power for a while yet, and if that happened, Dream would need to take care of the null metal himself.

That being said, Philza didn’t suffer from the same weaknesses as Dream when it came to magic. And Philza was, though Dream was loath to admit it, possibly almost as powerful as Dream. Almost.

Just because Dream deeply despised Techno—and by extension, Philza—didn’t mean that he didn’t have a healthy modicum of respect for the Antarctic Emperor.

Scoffing, Dream added, “Philza’ll probably break out within the next month, taking a contingent of rebels down on his way out.”

Tommy nodded along. The relief on his face was as plain as day. The patriotic sort, maybe? Dream had assumed Tommy was bitter towards the royal family because of his name, but maybe Tommy was the sort of person who took it as a sign of allegiance toward his nation.

“And, of course, we have fucking Technoblade,” Dream said. Tommy flinched back at the vitriol in Dream’s voice, and Dream hurried to assure him, “It’s old history. No bearing on my relationship with most of the Antarctic Empire, promise. It doesn’t affect you at all.”

Looking a bit pale, Tommy’s eyes darted away from Dream’s mask. A little bit rude, to be honest, but Dream understood. It must have been hard to focus on the smooth white surface without any indication of where Dream’s eyes were located.

Technically speaking, that was nowhere, but the mask hid that too.

Tapping a finger against his mask, Dream said, “He’s still alive.” Whether that was fortunate or unfortunate, Dream couldn’t decide. He’d be overjoyed to see Technoblade dead, but Dream hardly wanted to lose the privilege of being the one to kill Technoblade to someone else. It didn’t really matter, though. There was no way that rebels would be able to kill him. If the bastard was that easy to kill, Dream would have won their duel all those years ago.

So the next time they fought, Dream would bring an army down on Technoblade’s fucking ass.

Setting that aside, Dream said, “He’s not in the Empire, though. Ran off from the battle, or so they say.”

With a snort, Tommy said, “Yeah, well, ‘they’ don’t know shit. Techno would sooner slit his own throat than run from a fight.”

Dream shrugged. “Look, I didn’t exactly go and ask Technoblade himself about it, but this is what the common knowledge is right now.”

Tommy, more confident than any random peasant had a right to be about their nobility, said, “It’s impossible.”

Normally, Dream would take any opportunity to slander Technoblade’s unfairly good name, but in this case, he had to admit that the rumored circumstances surrounding Technoblade’s retreat were probably deserving. He would have to broach the topic carefully. Dream’s social skills had rusted significantly over the last century, but even he could tell that Tommy was a very patriotic, overly-attached-to-the-idea-of-royalty sort of person. “Well,” Dream began, “maybe not.”

In response, Tommy just eyed him suspiciously.

“Right, you know Wilbur, the middle prince. What kind of name is Wilbur, anyway?” Dream had never figured that one out. In a family of Philza and Technoblade, they’d gone for… Wilbur. And then Tommy, but Wilbur had been the first one to break away from the mold. “The point is—”

How was Dream even supposed to break this gently? There weren’t that many ways to put it. And honestly, would Tommy care that much? It was hardly as if he knew the royal family personally. It might be a bit jarring to hear that the Empire’s rulers were not, in fact, as invulnerable and immortal as they liked to pretend, but Tommy shouldn’t be overly bothered.

“—he’s dead.”

The blood drained from Tommy’s face. “What the fuck?” he screeched.

“Yeah,” Dream said, “I didn’t think Schl—er, the Manbergians would actually have the balls to go through with killing any of the royal family. Props to them, I guess.”

“Not fucking really,” Tommy ground out.

Dream waved a hand. That wasn’t his finest moment of sympathy, he would admit. “I heard it was an accident. A nasty gut wound in the heat of battle while defending the palace. Or maybe it was a chest wound? No one seems to agree on the exact nature of the stabbing, except for the part where the sword went straight through him. A guard ran with the body, so no one’s been able to investigate the prince’s survival one way or another. That’s reportedly why Technoblade retreated.”

Tommy swallowed, throat bobbing. “But—if there’s no body, are you sure that Wil’s dead?”

“Wilbur?” Did the middle prince usually go by Wil? In Dream’s opinion, it seemed an excessively familiar way to call a royal, but he’d also ruled as an immortal god-emperor, so maybe it was different for not-quite-mortal second princes. “Not certain, I suppose, but fighters on both sides saw him get stabbed.”

“R-right,” Tommy croaked. He was still looking awfully pale. “I’m going to—I’m going to—” He stood, pushing the chair back from the table, chair legs scraping in the dirt that made up Dream’s floor. “I’m gonna get some fresh air,” he finished, voice wobbling a little bit.

Dream couldn’t squint, but he watched Tommy’s eyes carefully. It almost looked like he was crying. And just because Dream hadn’t properly been around another person, let alone a mortal person, in a few decades didn’t mean that he couldn’t recognize someone in distress. In a half-aborted motion to stand, Dream reached out one gloved hand and said, “Tommy—”

Tommy took a shuddering, slow breath, then turned and ran.

Running blindly through the forest, Tommy reached up and scrubbed his eyes. His arm, freshly healed, ached slightly, but that didn’t matter.

Fuck. Nothing mattered if Wilbur was dead.

He took a slow, shuddering breath. Slowing his run, Tommy dropped down next to a tree. It was some fucking random tree. It didn’t matter because Wilbur—Wilbur couldn’t be dead. It was inconceivable. The thought of his brother, who’d always been there, who’d been a constant presence, who didn’t leave even when Tommy wanted him to fuck off—

But they still didn’t have a body. His thoughts kept circling to that. They’d never found a body. At least, Dream didn’t think they’d found a body.

And fuck, Tommy didn’t even know where Dream had gotten the information from. A messenger bird? A spelled communication mirror? Scrying? Dream could have incorrect information. That was possible. It had to be possible.

It was all rumors, anyway. That was all Dream had known. And that meant that it could be wrong. So, Wilbur could be alive still, and Tommy’s world wouldn’t be falling to pieces around him.

Pulling his knees up closer to his chest, Tommy sucked in ragged gasps for air and tried to convince himself. Dream didn’t know what he was talking about. Everyone was wrong. Wilbur had to be alive.

He had to.

Wilbur was Tommy’s older brother, and that meant he wasn’t allowed to die. Not until Tommy could see his family again—alive—and not until he could get the fuck back into the Empire, not until they could all sit together underneath the sun and the flowers bloomed and everything was normal again.

It was going to happen. It was going to be fine. If he told himself that enough times, he would believe it.

Tommy choked back a few more sobs.

Over the course of his very, very long life, Dream could admit to having made more than a few fuck-ups. From the small things like deciding to dump a bucket of water on Sapnap to the large things like dodging in the wrong direction and getting beheaded by Technoblade, making mistakes was simply part of being alive.

Or not being alive, as it were.

But in all of those cases, at least Dream had known where he fucked up. Dumping water on Sapnap was a bad idea because as it turned out, phoenixes flipped out if their fires were doused. Getting beheaded was problematic because in the time Dream had taken to reform, not only had he discovered some very major issues with his particular version of immortality, but the Antarctic Empire had also absorbed his territory.

Conversely, Dream had absolutely no idea what had set Tommy off.

Sure, he knew that people in the Antarctic Empire liked and respected their royal family. The degree to which one of them dying would affect the general populace was probably worse than most countries because of the undying image they’d promoted. Not a single Antarctic royal had ever died, and quite frankly, Dream imagined that if Philza died, it might actually shatter the Empire. Dynasties founded by a single immortal didn’t tend to last long after the immortal died, as Dream could attest to.

But the distress that Tommy had displayed was far beyond typical. In fact, if Dream didn’t know better, he’d say that Tommy was as upset as if one of his own family members had died.

Dream ran into a tree, face-first.

No. No. That didn’t make any sense.

He shook off the initial surprise and backed away from the tree.

Sure, Tommy shared a name with the missing prince, but that was where the similarities ended. Elytrian wings bred true, for one, and having cleaned and bandaged Tommy’s wounds, Dream could attest to the fact that Tommy was fully human. He’d seen Tommy’s back. Tommy didn’t have—and had never had—wings. The members of the Antarctic dynasty were mages, for another, and Dream would’ve sensed if Tommy had any magic. If anything, Tommy was about as magical as a rock, even taking Dream’s wards into account. At least the rock would contain trace amounts of metals that could be used for enchantment work. Not to mention the fact that the third prince had been kidnapped to be a hostage, not to be murdered and dumped in some tiny backwater village.

The only odd thing about Tommy was the bracelet. But the bracelet had been so drained of magic that Dream wouldn’t have been surprised if its inactivity had lasted entire generations, just as Tommy had claimed. One tiny discrepancy next to a mountain of evidence that Tommy was nothing more than a normal human.

That still left Dream with one distraught teenager, no explanations, and zero ideas on how to handle the terrifying creature known as emotions. Especially other people’s emotions.

Dream usually just waited his emotions out. When equipped with an immortal lifespan, he could afford to wait a day, a week, even a month or a year for them to fade. Unfortunately, that didn’t work quite as well on other people.

Sometimes, Dream wished he could still sigh properly. The effect produced by magic just wasn’t the same. As he resumed walking towards the forest, heading towards the beacon that was Tommy’s soul, he dragged a hand down his mask. Fuck. This was going to be trouble.

Ironically, Dream mused, it would have been easier if Tommy was secretly the missing Antarctic prince. At least, then, he’d know why Tommy was sobbing his heart out over an elytrian he’d never met.

“Tommy?”

Tommy froze. That was Dream’s voice.

“Tommy? You didn’t get eaten by a bear or something, right?” A quiet curse as a boot caught on a tree root. “I knew I should have gotten rid of those grizzlies that moved in sixty years ago.”

Gathering the strength to project his voice, Tommy managed to say, “Not eaten. I’m fine.” The words came out raspier and a little more choked than he would have liked.

Dream crunched through the forest, steps growing louder as he grew closer to Tommy. Eventually, he came within eyeshot and crouched. “Sure. Fine. This,” he said, gesturing to all of Tommy, “is the peak of fine-ness.”

In response, Tommy just glared.

Dream sighed. The sound came out warped and strangely muffled by the mask. “You can stay out here if you want. There’s not exactly anything dangerous. Well, besides the bears, but they’re not usually aggressive.” He paused for a moment. “If there’s something else going on…”

It was a clear offer to talk. Dream had to be under the impression that Tommy was affected by knowing the fate of the royal family—which was true. But Dream probably thought that it just hit a little too close to home, not that it involved Tommy himself. If he started talking, Dream was going to expect the backstory to everything that led to Tommy ending up dumped into a mass grave, still breathing, with a very pricy bracelet.

Tommy-the-prince could weep for Wilbur—not mourn because Wilbur wasn’t and couldn’t be dead—but Tommy-the-totally-normal-peasant couldn’t afford to seem too grieved over news of the second prince. And Tommy couldn’t afford to risk Dream suspecting that he was actually a prince himself, no matter how friendly and kind Dream might seem.

He closed his eyes. Raising a hand to scrub at the remnant tears, he reopened them and said flatly, “I have a brother. Had. When I was kidnapped, they…” Trailing off, Tommy let Dream fill in the blanks. “I saw him get stabbed.”

Dream nodded along sympathetically.

Tommy’s breath hitched. It wasn’t entirely feigned. “The things you said—it reminded me of then.”

“Ah,” Dream said. “Sorry?”

It wasn’t a very good apology, but Tommy was willing to allow him some leeway for the fact that there had been no way for Dream to predict what Tommy’s reaction to the information would be. “Not your fault,” he mumbled.

“Right. So, about those bears…”

Tommy stood, waving off the offered hand. “It’s fine,” he said. “We can head back.”

“Right,” Dream repeated. “Okay. That’s good. Uh. Sorry about your brother?”

Tommy winced. “Let’s not talk about this ever fucking again.”

Sounding more than a little relieved, Dream said, “That works for me.”

Dream shuffled toward Tommy. He ran his fingers over the curve of his mask as he approached, looking more awkward than Tommy had ever seen him. As awkward as it was possible for a man whose entire face and body were covered by a mask and robe, respectively, to be, at least. “Okay,” Dream said. “Uh. There’s not really a good way to say this, and I know we agreed not to talk about it, but do you have any family members left? Living ones,” he clarified unnecessarily.

Warily, Tommy said, “Yes.”

“Do you… want to see them?” Dream offered. “It’s a long walk, but it’s not like we couldn’t make it. I brought you here, after all.”

Tommy froze.

He could see his family again. He could help Techno and find Phil and—

Wilbur was fine. But Tommy could check on him and make fun of him for getting stabbed. And then they’d all be together again. He hadn’t seen his family in so long. It was strange to think about it, but it had been almost a month. That was the longest he’d gone without ever seeing at least one of them. And they needed his help.

Didn’t they?

“You’re being unusually silent,” said Dream dryly. “Deep thoughts?”

Tommy grimaced. “It’s just… complicated.”

Dream nodded. “Family can be like that.”

He sighed. “Not in that way. Won’t they be fucking safer without me?” Tommy raked a hand through his hair. “They threatened me,” he admitted. “In order to get my family to cooperate. I don’t want that to happen again.” It was the most he’d said about his family in the last week.

Dream fell silent. After a moment, he said, “You could always stay here. It’s safe. I promise.”

Tommy managed a half-shrug. “They still think I’m—kidnapped.” Not a hostage. That would probably make the wrong associations. “Won’t it be better if I let them know that I’m not? Even if it means risking getting kidnapped again.”

“Would you be interested in sending a letter to them? You could let them know while staying safe.”

Tommy blinked, momentarily stunned into silence. “Uh,” he managed. “Sure?”

“That didn’t sound very certain,” Dream noted. The doubt bled through his voice.

“Yes,” Tommy said more firmly. “But how would you do that?” Depending on the method, he realized, he might have to backtrack. If Dream was planning to somehow find Tommy’s family, there was no way he wouldn’t realize Tommy’s identity if Tommy asked for a letter to be sent to Crown Prince Technoblade of the Antarctic Empire. In fact, the more Tommy thought about it, the worse of an idea it became.

Before Tommy could take back his words, though, Dream said, “All I need is a little bit of blood, then.”

“What?”

“Please don’t panic,” Dream said, which didn’t really help. Slowly, he untucked his hand—previously hidden behind his back—and held it out to reveal a small skeleton nestled in his gloved palm. A bird skeleton, to be more specific. “This was the backup plan. It’s harmless, I promise.”

It wasn’t like Tommy had never seen a skeleton before. But the bird twitched, bones rising into the air and supported by some unseen force, and that was surprising. He stared.

Dream stood there, looking very small, waiting for Tommy’s reaction.

Tommy uncoiled slightly. “Like I’d be scared of a little bird. It’s just necromancy,” he said. With a scoff, he added, “I can handle a skeleton.”

Relief evident in his tone, Dream straightened and said, “That’s right. It was made by—a friend, as a present, because I live alone out here. They wanted me to be able to stay in contact with people. The bird can take a letter to whoever you want, provided you give it the right kind of tracking details.”

Dream seemed to have a lot of powerful friends, considering the offhanded comments he’d made previously about the enchantments all over his house. Still, that wasn’t very specific. “What kind of tracking details?”

“Oh.” Dream waved a hand. “It depends on the situation, but for you—the person you want to send the letter to is blood-related, right?”

“He’s my half-brother.”

“Perfect!” Dream said. “That’s even more specific. At least, assuming you don’t have any other half-brothers. You don’t, right?”

Wilbur, Tommy thought immediately. But Techno would be taking care of Wilbur, so they would be in the same spot, really, and if Wilbur were dead—which he wasn’t, but if he were, that wouldn’t be a concern either. After a few more moments of thought, Tommy realized he was taking too long to answer and jerked back to reality. He said, “Not unless my father has more kids than he’s willing to admit to.”

Dream laughed awkwardly. “Right, of course. Uh. Well, it should be fine.” He paused. “To be clear, he’s not the kind of person to keep a mistress or visit brothels or even just have another previous marriage you didn’t know about?”

Tommy shook his head.

Nodding more to himself than to Tommy, Dream said, “I just need a few drops of blood from you. It’s perfectly sanitary, don’t worry. I sterilized the beak with boiling water this morning.”

Tommy eyed the skeleton cautiously. “It needs to fucking peck me?” he said, slightly incredulous. He’d been around death. He’d been around magic. He’d even been around death magic, courtesy of growing up with the Angel of Death for a father. But reanimated tracking bird skeletons were new, even to him.

“Yeah. Is that going to be a problem?”

Tommy sighed. “For the letter, innit? I’ll do it.”

Dream didn’t visibly beam, not with the mask covering his face, but he projected the same energy. “There should be extra paper and quills and ink down in the library. Waterproof, so don’t worry about that. Here, take the bird,” he said, shoving the skeleton at Tommy. “Whenever you’re ready, hold out your finger in front of it, and it’ll peck you. Come find me, and then we can give it the letter and release it outside.”

Tommy took the bird.

It was still a little creepy, but when the bird twisted to point its skull at him and fluttered its skeletal wings, Tommy grinned.

A letter. To his brother. It would be perfect. He could reassure Techno that the Manbergians didn’t have him, get an update on Wilbur, and then stay with Dream until the war blew over, not having to worry about being used against his family.

Techno might be a little upset at first, but he would see the advantages.

Techno,

If the Manbergians tell you they have me as a hostage, they’re fucking liars. They tried to kill me, dumped me, and then ran off, but they did a really shitty job of it, and I got saved by a healer. He’s helping me send this letter, actually, so please don’t break his bird.

Is Wilbur alright? I heard he was dead There’s like thirty fucking rumors going around, so let me know which one’s true. If he’s not okay Tell him he’s a little bitch for managing to get himself stabbed and that I can beat him with a sword any day.

I know you won’t like this, but I’m not coming back to the Empire until the war’s over. I know you’ll win, don’t worry, but I already got kidnapped once and I’m useless. There’s no way the Manbergians will make it here, so you don’t need to invest time and energy into guarding a burden me. It’ll be safer that way.

Don’t worry, Dream’s taking great care of me. He’s that healer who rescued me. And he gets news from his friends sometimes, so we can hike back to the Empire once you’ve won. Or just send me a letter. Give the bird some blood, and it’ll fly back to me.

Your better brother,

Tommy

Techno crumpled up the letter, hand clenching into a fist. “Fuckin’ bastard,” he snarled. With his other hand, he crushed the skeletal messenger. A spy, no doubt. There was no telling how much intelligence it had already managed to gather on his forces. He’d need to bring them when he went to rescue Tommy.

There was no way in hell that Techno was going to let Dream get away with kidnapping his little brother.

Chapter Text

The first sign that something was wrong was the fluttering feeling of someone brushing against his wards. Dream froze.

“Ha!” Tommy crowed. “I knew you were bluffing. Hand over your spades.”

“Be quiet for a moment,” Dream said. “Someone’s here.”

Tommy stiffened. He set down his hand of cards on the table. “What do you mean, ‘here?’”

“Someone’s trying to get past the wards,” Dream said absently. He reached out his senses to investigate further. “Multiple someones. At least sixty of them.” He concentrated harder, trying to pry out the details. “One powerful mage with them, twelve other weaker ones. Maybe more, if they’re shielded.”

“You have wards?”

“I have to focus,” snapped Dream.

Tommy, for probably the first time in his life, fell silent.

Dream didn’t really have eyes to close, but he shut out his physical senses. They were powered by magic, and he redirected all of their energy, focusing only on the spiritual. He pushed harder, reaching for the faint thread of power pulsing from the strongest mage. They had to be the one who’d led the others to Dream’s home. There were enough misdirection wards—not to mention the sheer physical difficulty of stumbling into the valley—that the only way to reach the valley was with Dream’s guidance or prior experience. They weren’t just a raiding party trying to cross the mountains and reach another kingdom. They were battering at his wards. At least half the mages were working together to form a minor ritual circle and pierce straight through.

This was a targeted attack on Dream.

Finally, he managed to grasp onto the thread, tugging it hard. They recoiled, of course, magic lashing back at Dream, but it was enough for him to get a taste of their power.

Blood. War and violence and lifeforce, all concentrated into a single mage. Tinged with an undercurrent of faint decay that marked the mage as one of Philza’s children, but Dream would have known the identity regardless.

There was only one blood mage powerful enough and with a large enough grudge against Dream to besiege his home with the aid of a small battalion and troop of spellcasters.

Technoblade.

Dream stood, pushing his chair back. “Get down to the basement,” he ordered. “You should be safe down there. Whatever you do, don’t come out.”

“I—” Tommy broke off, indecision flashing across his face before his expression firmed into resolve. “I can fight. If you have a sword, I know how to use it. I can fight,” he repeated.

“No,” Dream said, not unkindly. “You can’t. Not against this.”

Seemingly invigorated by Dream’s initial foray, Technoblade hammered his magic against Dream’s wards. Backed up by a ritual circle, even one formed with lesser mages, it wouldn’t take long before the defenses fell.

“It’s not safe,” Dream said. Before Tommy could retort, Dream added, “He’s more powerful than anyone you’ve ever met. All you’ll do is get yourself killed.”

Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “So you know who it is?” he demanded. “And what makes you able to stand against him, then?”

“An old enemy,” said Dream grimly. “And yes, I can fight him. Ask questions later, hide now.”

If I survive, he didn’t say. Technoblade had—barely—defeated him the first time, and for all that Dream had striven to improve his power in the century since, Technoblade must have done the same.

“I’m a necromancer,” he admitted. “I made the bird. There’s going to be hundreds of undead moving through the library. The corpses won’t attack you. Don’t worry about them. Just stay safe and hidden.”

Tommy stared.

For a moment, he considered giving Tommy his mask to safeguard. But even setting aside the potential consequences of Dream revealing his face—there was a large difference between being a necromancer and whatever the hell Dream had become—enough of Dream’s power was tied up in the mask that he didn’t feel comfortable confronting Technoblade without it. There were risks to bringing the mask into battle, certainly, but the chances that Technoblade would break it were low.

No. He couldn’t give it to Tommy.

Dream hesitated. “If things start going badly… there’s a door in the library. I know you’ve seen it. It’s the unopenable one, outlined by cracks. I’m going to open it, and if it seems like I’m losing, I’ll send you an undead. Take as much of the nonperishable food and water from the pantry as you can and hide in there. It’s not safe long-term,” he cautioned, “but the room will survive anything short of a dragon attack. If I win, I’ll come find you. Otherwise, wait it out for a week before opening the door. The energy in there isn’t exactly healthy, but it won’t kill you immediately. As long as you have enough food and water—”

Initially taken aback by the flood of information, Tommy finally regained his senses enough to sputter, “No! I’m not going to just go and fucking hide away while you fight whoever the hell is invading!”

“Yes, you will,” Dream said. “This isn’t up for debate, Tommy. This is a real battle, and the mage that’s coming…” He shook his head. “He won’t hesitate to kill you. The fact that you’re a noncombatant won’t matter, not when you’re with me.”

“Who the fuck even is it?” Tommy cried out, throwing his hands up. “The way you’re talking about him makes him sound like a mass murderer or some shit.”

Technoblade was technically a mass murderer, but Dream was willing to acknowledge the fact that most of Technoblade’s kills had been on the field of battle. There was a difference between striking down a soldier and striking down a civilian, though Dream had been honest when he said he didn’t think the difference would matter when it came to Tommy. Technoblade wouldn’t trust anyone who was living with Dream willingly.

Regardless, Dream couldn’t exactly leave Tommy out in the open. It probably wouldn’t matter in the event that Dream lost, but Dream could at least keep Tommy out of the way of the fighting. That bracelet wouldn’t protect him from a stray blast of magic. “Stay down here,” instructed Dream.

Tommy glared mulishly.

Dream would have argued with Tommy more, but a burst of shock ran through his body as the wards finally gave way. Technoblade was coming.

It was, Dream reflected as he herded Tommy down the stairs and then ran back up to face Technoblade, very unlikely that Tommy would stay hidden in the basement.

Unfortunately, Dream had more pressing problems to deal with.

There was no way in hell that Tommy was going to just wait while Dream fought and bled and potentially died.

A zombie brushed past him, and Tommy shuddered.

He might wait to head up until all the zombies were gone, though.

It wasn’t that Dream was a necromancer. That didn’t really bother Tommy. He’d grown up with the most powerful and famed necromancer in the world for a father, after all, but he knew that they had a bad reputation. Still, there was a vast gulf between reanimated messenger birds and human corpses. Dream’s fucking army of the dead—which Tommy was still wrapping his head around—might have been moving again, but they weren’t exactly in perfect condition. Preserved, probably, but that didn’t change the fact that Tommy could see far more exposed muscle and guts and brain than he was comfortable with.

At least the skeletons were just bones.

It reminded him uncomfortably of how he’d felt in the mass grave, unable to drag himself out, staring straight into a dead woman’s eyes while laying on top of a pair of children.

In hindsight, though, this explained a lot about why Dream had been rooting around in a mass grave in the first place.

Tommy pulled himself deeper into the stacks of books. The undead headed single-mindedly for the stairs and presumably out to fight the invaders. It’s my fault, he thought. The Manbergians were coming for him. There was no one else who would be attacking with that kind of force. Dream thought it was someone he knew, but Dream had also apparently lived peacefully in this valley for what was either years or decades. Tommy was the new addition.

It had to be the Manbergians.

He still didn’t have his magic back, odd as that was. He’d have expected it to recover within a matter of days, but even now, two weeks after sending Techno that letter, Tommy’s power lay dormant. Still, Tommy didn’t need his wings or magic to be a fighter. He wasn’t anywhere close to Techno’s level—or even Wilbur’s, as much as it stung to admit—but that didn’t mean he was incompetent. Those two were just unreasonable standards to match. Tommy had decades less experience than Wilbur and centuries less than Techno.

Tommy had originally planned to stay with Dream so that he wouldn’t have to risk fighting the Manbergians, but those were different circumstances. Placing himself back into harm’s way to risk getting captured as a hostage again would be stupid. Now, though, the Manbergians were coming for him, and they’d followed Tommy straight to Dream’s doorstep. Even if Dream was apparently a powerful necromancer-in-hiding, Tommy couldn’t just leave him to fight off Tommy’s pursuers alone.

There weren’t any swords to be found in the library or the pantry, and Dream’s house wasn’t particularly large. He resigned himself to fighting without a sword.

Hand-to-hand combat was very far from Tommy’s forte. It would have to suffice, though.

The sensible part of him pointed out that trying to punch a mage was a great way to get obliterated by a blast of fire or acid or something and trying to punch a knight would be ineffectual at best against armor and probably lead to beheading at worst, but Tommy ignored that part of him.

Instead, he edged closer to the library’s exit and prepared to fight.

Well, once the zombies were gone.

“Be careful,” Techno murmured to his subordinates. “He’s dangerous.”

That was an understatement. It was unmistakably Dream standing there across the open clearing, though the aversion to exposed skin was new. There wasn’t a single part of Dream’s body that wasn’t hidden under clothing, though the mask was Dream’s signature. He hadn’t worn it during their original duel, but Techno had heard rumors of it for years beforehand, and now, he was seeing it in person. More than that, though, Techno could recognize the coiling sensation of Dream’s magic, like a venomous serpent waiting to strike. Carefully constricted in a way that explained how Dream had hidden for over a century, yes, but no less deadly for it.

A form lumbered out from the opening in the mound of dirt behind Dream. Then, another. They trickled out at first, then flooded in a wave of reanimated corpses. Bony skeletons and fleshy zombies alike rose from beyond the grave. Controlled by Dream, undoubtedly, though Techno couldn’t even begin to imagine where Dream was finding the fuel for the spell. There weren’t many sources of power that could sustain an undead army. Even during the height of Esssempi’s power, Dream had relied on the living for bodies to throw into war.

The thought occurred to Techno that Dream could be using Tommy. His lips flattened. Each of Phil’s children had inherited a measure of his power, subtly influencing the tilt of their own, and they were a prize for any necromancer, let alone Dream.

Within a matter of minutes, the ranks of corpses stood arrayed on the field. Hundreds, against which Techno’s own forces seemed a meager adversary. Several of his troops shifted behind him, but he raised his hand, ordering them to wait. They couldn’t attack before knowing where Tommy was. It was all too possible that Dream had placed a curse or guard on Tommy that would kill him if Dream fell. Techno wasn’t going to risk that.

As if to confirm his fears, a shaggy head of blond hair poked out from the entrance to the mound, and Techno’s blood ran cold.

Tommy.

Dream didn’t seem to notice, occupied with directing his undead army. Streams of necrotic energy pulsed through the ranks, suffusing each of the corpses.

Tommy, for his part, glanced around, eyes darting wildly before they landed on Techno. He paled.

Techno stared back and tried to convey a sense of confidence. He would rescue Tommy. There was no need for his brother to be worried.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” Dream said, breaking the moment. “I told you to stay inside.”

A flare of vicious satisfaction ran through Techno, and he smiled. That was Tommy, defying Dream just as soundly as he’d always rebelled against Techno or Wilbur. The fact that he was a hostage was certainly less than ideal, but it was better for Tommy to be out on the battlefield. At least Techno had a chance at spiriting him away from there rather than inside Dream’s lair, which was certain to be layered in enchantments and guarded by more of the revenants.

As nonchalantly as he could, Techno said, “Hand him over, and we can resolve this peacefully. It doesn’t have to end in fightin’, Dream.” If it were up to Techno alone, he’d separate Dream’s head from his shoulders for a second time, and he’d make sure that Dream didn’t come back this time. But with Tommy at risk, Techno was willing to leave Dream in peace.

For the time being, at least. Considering that Dream had already kidnapped Tommy once, now that Techno knew Dream was alive, there was no way Techno would let Dream remain alive and a threat in the long term.

“You want Tommy?” Dream said. His voice was tinged with what might have been incredulity were it not for the fact that Dream knew all too well why Techno might want Tommy back. “Absolutely not.”

Techno set his shoulders. His wings lifted in a threat display. “Leave, Dream,” Techno said. “And maybe then I won’t have to execute you. Just go runnin’ back to your friends like the coward you are. We both know you don’t stand a fuckin’ chance against me.”

“Is that a challenge?” Dream said, stepping forward. Both of his hands trailed black-green smoke that spiraled into his army. “Between the two of us, I don’t think I’ll be the loser this time.” He tilted his head, white mask unnervingly featureless. “I’ll take Tommy, you take your army, and we can both be on our merry ways. No one has to get hurt, Blade.”

“Stop,” Tommy cried out, finally moving. He ran in front of Dream, and Techno froze, reaching slowly for his sword. If Dream meant to hurt Tommy, Techno would be forced to act. “What the fuck do you both think you’re doing?”

Dream stiffened. So did Techno.

And then an arrow sprouted in Techno’s shoulder, landing in the chink between his armor. Another four bounced harmlessly off, and Techno grunted at the sudden pain.

“For the glory of Manberg!” someone shouted.

The voice had come from behind him. There were traitors in his own ranks, and Techno whirled to face them.

In that moment of distraction, Dream struck.

Bones erupted from the earth. Skeletal hands clawed at Techno’s ankles, and he snarled, unsheathing his sword to cut them off. The rebel soldiers were engaged in combat with Techno’s loyal forces, and the fracas only grew more chaotic as Dream’s undead rushed into to join the battle.

Techno gritted his teeth and swung away from his soldiers. He would trust his troops to take care of the Manbergian infiltrators. He had a more important duty.

Rescuing Tommy came first.

From across the battlefield, Techno locked eyes with Dream—or, at least, with Dream’s mask. There was no way that Dream would want to face Techno in single combat, not when he had an army of minions to weaken Techno first and Tommy was tucked behind Dream’s army. Even as Techno watched, a pair of skeletons seized Tommy’s arms and wrestled him away, pulling him down into the depths of Dream’s lair. Dream’s mask remained as unreadable as always, but Tommy screamed bloody murder.

Techno would have to cut his way through.

He raised his sword and charged.

“Fuck you, Dream!” Tommy shouted. Dream couldn’t hear him, but that didn’t make it any less satisfying. He kicked the skeleton in the shin again.

The skeleton, being unable to feel pain, did not let go.

He snarled and tried to tug his arm out of the surprisingly tight, bony grip. Bones were supposed to be brittle, but even after Tommy had successfully tackled one of the two skeletons down the stairs, it had simply stood back up again, still holding onto Tommy and all of its bones unbroken.

Dream might have wanted him out of the way and unharmed, but Tommy knew for a fact that he was perfectly safe even in the middle of the battlefield. None of the combatants wanted him harmed—well, except for maybe the Manbergians. He’d screamed when that first arrow landed in Techno’s shoulder, but Techno’s troops outnumbered the rebels by far and had quickly turned to deal with them.

The real concern was that Techno or Dream would kill each other.

Once, Dream had told Tommy there was ‘history’ between him and Techno.

Tommy was starting to think that was an understatement.

Techno had never mentioned Dream before, but Techno also very clearly didn’t like Dream either. It was the first time Tommy had ever seen Techno so furious. The flare of his wings, the anger in his voice… and the entire fucking platoon Techno had brought.

Futilely, Tommy made another attempt to break free of the skeletons’ grasp. They hadn’t pulled him in yet, but they were standing next to the open door that Dream had mentioned. Tommy glanced in.

Diamond. So much diamond that it was almost blinding, strung together in a great, sparkling wall of inlaid runes and webbed fractals. The delicate, nigh-invaluable tracery joined at the ceiling, blazing with the clear signs of an ongoing spell, looping in on itself. Tommy couldn’t even hope to start understanding what the spell was, but he’d seen enough to put the clues together. One wall of Dream’s house was made out of diamond, but only visible as such from the interior. That had to be the focus. Dream was using the spell to power his army of corpses. There was no way that any necromancer could hope to control that many semi-intelligent undead without an external power source.

For a moment, Tommy debated the merits of trying to break the spell. Dream was fighting Techno, and Techno was Tommy’s brother. Tommy hardly wanted him dead, and if it came down to it, he’d pick Techno over Dream every time.

That didn’t mean Tommy wanted Dream to die either, though.

Honestly, Tommy was more worried about Dream’s survival than Techno’s. Dream was powerful, but there was no way he was as powerful as Techno, and Techno had brought his own soldiers, anyway. Not to mention that rituals could react unpredictably to being interrupted, and the odds that a ritual with this much power flowing through it simply blew up and killed them all were as likely, if not more, than the ritual just quietly shutting down.

He leaned in slightly, trying to get a better look at some of the runes. Sure, Tommy had seen rituals before, but nothing on this scope. The skeletons were only restraining his arms, after all.

The tip of his shoe scuffed against the entryway, marked out with a channel of diamond that ran across the floor.

Tommy froze.

Rituals weren’t that susceptible to interference. Especially not ones that used diamond. Still, there was always a risk—

A tiny spark of magic jumped from the ritual to Tommy. Nothing dangerous. Not even enough to light a lamp. It couldn’t possibly affect the ritual. The spark was the equivalent of a single crumb taken from a bakery filled with bread.

It was, however, enough to jumpstart Tommy’s own magic.

He gasped as power came flooding back, rushing through his veins. More unconsciously than purposefully, he released his wings. Bone twisted and expanded, reshaping the muscle and sinew until two glorious wings of bright red extended from his back. Operating on instinct, he hadn’t had the foresight to absorb the shirt first, and the wings tore through the fabric.

Fuck it. The shirt didn’t really matter that much.

Tommy flexed his wings, allowing an ear-splitting grin to extend across his face as he rolled his shoulders, stretching his wings to their full height. They weren’t finished growing yet. The rest of his family had a gargantuan wingspan, but Tommy’s were still at least good two meters in length.

There were more pressing things to do than enjoy his wings, though.

He slipped into a mouse’s form, dropping to the ground and scurrying away before the skeletons could realize what had happened. They didn’t react, though. Whatever magic Dream had put into the reanimation, it didn’t make them intelligent and independent enough to recognize that Tommy-the-mouse was the same as Tommy-the-sort-of-human. Still, he wasn’t going to risk transforming back to human or elytrian as long as the skeletons were still within eyeshot.

The dog it was, then.

As a dog, climbing the stairs was easy enough. There was a raw physicality to canine forms, and Tommy wasn’t even winded after bounding up the stairs. Only there did he risk transforming back into his normal shape.

Tommy waited for a moment. The skeletons didn’t come after him.

His wings were with him, and he shook them in relief, a few loose feathers drifting to the floor. Strictly speaking, he didn’t need to stretch them, but having his wings back after over a month trapped without them meant feeling whole again. The transformations were a little more taxing than usual, but he’d only just recovered his magic. Sort of like walking again after being confined to bedrest. It sucked.

Tommy really missed gapples. He could use the energy boost.

The doorway of Dream’s dirt house wasn’t large, but it wasn’t small either, and there was just enough clearance for Tommy to fit his wings through as long as he held them tucked close to his back. There wasn’t anyone by the exit. Dream had shifted positions closer to the center of the field, and the fighting wasn’t anywhere near Dream’s house, though Techno seemed determined to change that. He cut down swathes of the undead with every swipe of his sword. With each passing moment, he advanced closer and closer.

But it was slow. Bones reassembled into complete skeletons. A decapitated zombie kept lumbering closer. And every so often, Dream would raise a hand and fire a beam of energy at Techno, who would be forced to dodge.

Tommy swallowed. The skeletons were ignoring him. The zombies did too. He could probably sneak up on Dream by shapeshifting and help Techno win.

Did he want Techno to win?

Someone’s fingers latched onto his wing, twisting his feathers, and all thoughts of interference flew out the window. Tommy screamed. In response, his assailant yanked on his wings, hard. “Imperial,” they hissed, as if it were a dirty word.

His back hit the ground. In his peripherals, Tommy saw Dream turn at the sound of his cry, but Tommy’s attacker loomed over him, a knife in one hand and a snarl on their face. Tommy began to transform, but they kicked him in the stomach, interrupting him, and he groaned. Several of Dream’s closest undead were running towards Tommy, but they wouldn’t make it in time. Tommy could tell.

Then, a skeletal hand burst from the ground, fingerbones dripping with necrotic energy, and plunged into his attacker’s chest. They fell backward, slumping to the ground with a hole where their heart should have been, flesh rotting around the edges.

Tommy stood, panting. His first guess was Dream, but when he looked, Dream was busy trying to fend off Techno, who’d taken advantage of Dream’s momentary lapse in attention to charge. Tommy’s wrist was slightly numb, and he shook it. When the sensation didn’t leave, he glanced at it.

A green-black haze surrounded the bracelet’s edges, fuzzy and indistinct, but clearly still strong enough to kill someone. Tommy had never seen it kill someone quite so directly, but he was also standing in a necromancer’s stronghold, surrounded by the undead. It wasn’t a huge leap to assume that affected the bracelet’s power.

Dream’s zombies drew closer, arms outstretched. Tommy backed away. He wasn’t afraid, but the zombies would take him back into the house. He couldn’t let that happen. Reaching inside himself for the well of power, he shifted into—

The trio of zombies crumpled to the ground, animating force drained away. Tommy startled. Transformation dissipating, he pulled his wings in, already searching for the cause. There wasn’t anyone next to him that had cut the zombies down, though. They had simply dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, and as Tommy watched, a squad of skeletal archers went the same way.

Dream. It had to be. The center of the battle was a raging maelstrom by now, tendrils of necrotic energy being sucked inwards, funneling into Dream. He was floating now, accompanied by a pair of monstrosities that were barely recognizable as amalgamations of human corpses and skeletons. Techno dueled one of them, barely holding off a blow from an axe crafted of bone. There’d been enough deaths—did corpses have blood? Did it count for the purposes of Techno’s magic? Tommy wasn’t clear on the particulars—by now that Techno had formed his characteristic shell of bloody armor. It lent enhanced strength and speed to every one of his movements, and Techno’s sword was similarly coated. The sword didn’t just cut through matter, it severed life itself.

But even Tommy could tell that it wasn’t enough.

Techno’s armor only allowed him to keep up with the undead’s physical capabilities. His sword’s severance was useless against creatures that were already dead. A swirling sphere of green and black energy surrounded Dream, and as Tommy watched, someone on the other side of the battle shot an arrow that bounced harmlessly off the shield. Every mage had limits, even Techno. Even Dream. Yet, somehow, Dream’s magic seemed to be unending.

Considering that there was a giant ritual room of diamond fueling Dream’s magic and he had an army of undead, maybe Tommy should have expected that.

And sure, Techno could be annoying, and sometimes he was an asshole, but Tommy didn’t want him dead.

Tommy melted into the form of a wolfhound and raced across the field. As he drew closer, he shifted back into his elytrian form so that he could speak. His heart raced. It didn’t look like either of them was in immediate danger of dying, but one wrong move in battle could be the difference between life and death. “Stop!” he yelled, praying fervently for them to hear his voice. “Just fucking stop!” Tommy called out again, feet pounding on the churned dirt.

Dream turned.

“Oh, thank Prime,” whispered Tommy. He exhaled slowly.

Raising a hand, Dream halted his offensive. Both of the more-than-slightly-horrifying necromantic colossi drew to a halt, flanking him. He didn’t seem that worried about turning his back on Techno.

For his part, Techno, behind Dream, managed to struggle to his feet from where he’d been on the ground after throwing himself out of the way of an attack. Before Tommy could do or say anything, Techno pulled a small knife out of his belt. He spread his wings wide, then threw himself at Dream. With his arm outstretched, he hit the shield knife-first. For a moment, the dagger seemed to sink.

Then, it punctured fully, and the shield popped like a bubble. Dream whirled. He was almost fast enough. Techno’s knife tore through Dream’s robes and went off-course, cutting through his arm rather than implanting in his chest.

Dream crumpled. His attendants collapsed.

Tommy’s breath caught in his throat. It was a minor wound. It had to be. He waited.

Dream wasn’t getting back up.

“Techno?” said Tommy. His voice wasn’t shaking. It wasn’t. “What did you do?”

Techno met his eyes. With teeth bared in a rictus grin, wings flared wide, and gore splattered across his face, he looked entirely the avenging Blade that had once wiped out nations. “I killed him, Tommy,” Techno said. “I put that bastard down once and for all.”

“No,” Tommy said. “No, no, you can’t have—” He twisted into a sparrow, diving for Dream. Techno made an aborted lunge, but Tommy knew from experience that Techno wouldn’t be fast enough to catch the bird’s small, fleet form without resorting to force. Tommy landed next to Dream. He shifted back into elytrian, ignoring the burning sensation that accompanied the drain. He was running low on his freshly recovered magic, and he’d probably be recuperating for the next few days.

That didn’t matter.

Tommy knelt. With shaking hands, he pulled the cloak aside, then the robes. He stared numbly.

There wasn’t a body. Not in any traditional sense.

All that remained of Dream—all that Dream had ever been—was a pile of bones.

Chapter Text

Tommy still wasn’t talking to Techno.

Which was fine. Techno could live with his brother not talking to him for the next six months if it meant having him back safely, decidedly not with the Manbergians or Dream, and hiding out in his room. The rebels had been driven back. Techno and the royalists had retaken the palace and freed Phil. Wilbur had woken up from his coma. There were only remnants of the Manbergian sympathizers to deal with now.

Techno could afford to wait.

Still, Tommy’s fury hurt.

Dream was dead. For good, this time, and Techno was never going to count on beheading to kill his enemies ever again. He’d ground the bones to dust himself. There was nothing left of Dream except for the mask and clothes. Even a necromancer couldn’t come back from that.

Techno’s lips curled in distaste. He didn’t mind death, but knowing that Dream had been a walking, talking skeleton was just… unnatural. Phil only really used his powers to kill people, not to reanimate the dead. And even then, most necromancers drew the mind at creating thinking undead.

They’d been forced to leave the diamonds behind, but Phil was with them now, so Techno would have to arrange for Phil to take an expedition back and recover the gems. Despite searching the entire house from top to bottom, no one had been able to find the nexus stone for the ritual, and without it, it was impossible to drain the remnant energy in the ritual. Techno wasn’t going to risk trying the null metal knife on it. It had barely worked against Dream’s shield in the first place—not to mention that it could irreparably damage the diamonds, and the Antarctic Empire wasn’t so rich as to pass up that much wealth.

For similar reasons, Techno hadn’t bothered to destroy Dream’s equipment. Phil would take a look at it once he had more time. Techno could tell it was heavily enchanted, but the intricacies escaped him. He wasn’t nearly skilled enough with necrotic energy to determine the nuances.

The problem was that it left Techno with very little to do.

Phil was reorganizing the empire. Wilbur was recuperating from the stab wound and coma. Tommy was shut in his room and refusing to come out.

There was only one of those things that Techno could actually do anything about.

Well, technically, he could help with all of them. Despite being a blood mage, though, he’d never been particularly interested in the life side of things, and he flat-out refused to help Phil do paperwork. He’d already done his part by kicking out the Manbergians and rallying the royalists.

Which left Tommy.

Techno sighed and trudged down the hallway.

Another day, another hour spent trying to figure out what Dream had done to his little brother.

“Leave,” Tommy said.

“Tommy—”

“Fuck off,” Tommy bit out. He turned away to face the window in sharp dismissal. His wings drew in, pinions held tightly against his back. Clear discomfort, and it was with Techno.

After a moment, Techno sighed. He slipped out of the room, shutting the door behind him with a quiet click. It would almost have been preferable if Tommy had screamed at him and sworn at Techno at the top of his lungs. At least that would be familiar. The Tommy who’d come back from Dream, the one who shut himself away in his bedroom and that Techno had caught quietly crying more than once—

There was a multitude of reasons that a talented necromancer might want access to an elytrian, to their blood and flesh and bone. None of the reasons were good.

And yet Tommy appeared to be perfectly untouched.

It wasn’t just shapeshifting. Injuries and scars stuck around between Tommy’s forms. Somehow, though, despite a team of trained healers looking over Tommy—Techno had put his foot down about that one against Tommy’s protests—not a single one found anything worse than a healed broken arm and a long scar across his chest, both of which were from two months ago.

Tommy insisted the wounds were from the Manbergian kidnapping. The healers, despite Techno’s lengthy interrogations and insistence on triple-checking, agreed. Neither wound was consistent with the type that might be used to extract tissue or blood.

But for all that Tommy seemed to be untouched physically, his mind was a different story.

He’d spun a story about Dream rescuing him and taking care of him. Two months spent in Dream’s care, however, was hardly something to disregard. Dream was a uniquely skilled mage. Dream hated the Antarctic Empire.

It wasn’t exactly unbelievable that Dream might have done something to Tommy.

There were lingering remnants of unidentifiable spells on Tommy, and Tommy didn’t know about them. Either that, or he was purposefully keeping silent—potentially not of his own free will. Not for the first time since rescuing Tommy, Techno rued the fact that he hadn’t ever been talented with enchantments of the mind.

Wilbur would know more about potential magical manipulation, but Wilbur was also awake for eight hours a day and confined to bedrest for seven and a half of those.

Techno paced the halls, pressing his knuckles into his forehead.

He hated feeling powerless.

“Techno?”

He looked up. It was Phil. In other words, one of the last people wanted to see right now.

Not because Techno disliked Phil. He loved his father. But seeing the rest of his family just made all of Techno’s guilt come rushing back. If he’d just done a better job of disposing of Dream the first time, none of this would be a problem. And anything that Dream had done to Tommy—the blame lay on Techno’s shoulders. Dream wanted revenge.

And Techno had been the one to kill him a century prior.

“This isn’t healthy,” Phil said.

Techno laughed. The bitter edge to it was evident to both of them. His wings drooped in a mixture of shame and guilt. “It’s my fault,” he said, unwilling to look Phil in the eye.

“You hardly had any way of knowing that he could come back from cutting his head off,” Phil said softly.

“He’s a fuckin’ necromancer!” Techno snarled. “And he survived to hurt Tommy.”

Phil touched a wingtip to Techno’s shoulder, feather-light and unbearably gentle. A request to comfort Techno, to wrap him up in charcoal wings and reassure him.

Techno backed away, enough for the feathers to fall from his shoulder. He didn’t deserve comfort. Tommy was the one who needed that after spending months in Dream’s hands.

Exhaling slowly, Phil said, “It’s okay, mate.”

It wasn’t okay.

They both knew that.

There wasn’t any point in sneaking into the dungeon-adjacent storage rooms where all of the potentially cursed or otherwise dangerous, unidentified magical objects were kept. Tommy wasn’t an idiot. It wasn’t like staring really hard at Dream’s mask was going to bring him back to life or any shit like that.

Still, Tommy couldn’t stand the thought of just leaving it down there.

None of the guards would stop him, but there were decent odds that one of them would report back to Techno, and then Techno would be even more convinced that Tommy was under a spell or otherwise manipulated.

Which he wasn’t. Nothing like that had happened, but no one would fucking believe him.

So in order to lower those odds, Tommy buzzed through the air as a small mosquito. Its main disadvantage was the possibility of someone swatting him and killing him, but as long as he stuck close to the ceiling, he could avoid notice.

Probably.

If anyone looked like they were about to try and smash him, he’d just turn back into an elytrian or human form and damn the consequences.

The storage room wasn’t guarded. Sure, there were regular patrols nearby, and the room was locked, but no one had posted a guard at the door itself. Techno had probably assumed that no one was dumb enough to try and mess with the almost-certainly-cursed items looted off a necromancer’s corpse.

Well, Tommy was dumb enough for that, so he flew down and slid through the minuscule crack between the door and the floor.

Once inside, he stretched himself back to his full height as a human. He wasn’t going to risk an elytrian form. There were enough very breakable objects scattered on the shelves that having a wingspan as wide as Tommy was tall seemed like a bad idea.

It didn’t seem like he’d tripped any alarms, so Tommy cautiously worked his way over to the far end of the shelf where Dream’s stuff rested. Even in the dimly lit room, he could make out the sheen of Dream’s white porcelain mask. The last time he’d seen the mask, it was after Techno had killed Dream. And then Tommy had pushed the mask and robes and cloak aside, and there’d been that skull, grinning up at him—

Tommy swallowed, reached out, and picked up the mask.

<Hello, Tommy,> said Dream’s voice.

Tommy dropped the mask.

When no other auditory hallucinations appeared to be forthcoming, he cautiously bent and picked it back up, dusting it off. He turned it over in his hands, inspecting the edges. Luckily, the mask hadn’t chipped or cracked. It felt like porcelain, but there must have been more to it than that.

Then, Tommy heard Dream again, and he only narrowly managed to avoid dropping the mask a second time. <Please don’t put the mask down again. I can’t talk to you unless you’re holding it.>

“You’re in the mask?” Tommy shrieked.

<All I did was tether my soul to the mask, ensuring that if I died, I wouldn’t pass into Limbo. It’s really not that unusual.> The words were said casually, but there was a smugness to Dream’s tone that belied his pride. <Aren’t you Philza’s son? You should have experience with a variety of magical items.>

“Not ones where someone is fucking possessing an object!” Tommy paused. “Wait, did you say—”

<Yes, yes,> Dream said. <I know you’re the prince. I’ve been sitting in this storage room for the better part of three weeks with nothing better to do than to think. You know Technoblade. Technoblade clearly cares about you. You have the same name as the third prince. I pulled you out of a grave around the same time as said third prince went missing. You came out of my house with wings.> He paused, then added dryly, <Also, I can still see and hear inside the mask. A cadre of soldiers fussing over ‘Prince Tommy’ isn’t exactly subtle.>

Tommy didn’t really have anything to say to that. There was hardly any point in denying it now.

Dream continued, <Don’t worry. I don’t have any plans to kill you. Sorry about all the insults, by the way. I wouldn’t have said those things if I knew you were the prince. I like you.>

A little strangled, Tommy managed, “That’s okay.”

Sounding a little pleased, Dream hummed. <Could you help me out with something, then? Nothing dangerous. I just need someone with a physical body. Hands are great. You don’t know what you’re missing until you don’t have them.>

“Sure?” Tommy said. “Uh. What do you need?”

<Check the interior of the cloak. Keep holding the mask, though, or you won’t be able to find the pocket. I didn’t want the nexus to fall out because I tripped over a root. >

Tommy ran his hand over the fabric before feeling a raised seam beneath his fingers. He pried his nails into it before opening up the pocket. It shouldn’t have existed—there was no exterior bulge or indication of a hidden pocket, but when he reached inside, his hand closed around a hard lump.

He pulled it out. Even to his untrained senses, it shone like a beacon. Magically and physically. The diamond was closer to a miniature sun than a rock, blindingly bright in the darkness of the storage room. He raised a hand to cover his eyes, both from the light and from the fact that he’d almost been bowled over by the mystical force behind it.

<Um. Shit.>

“What is it?”

<Anyone with a drop of power to their name within the city, let alone the palace, would have felt that.> Dream coughed delicately. <I… may have forgotten that the cloak was keeping the nexus hidden.>

Tommy’s eyes roved over the room, settling on the door in a panic. He ran to it and locked it. It was more for peace of mind than anything, considering that it wouldn’t stop Techno for more than a few seconds, or even a particularly determined guard with an axe. “Now what the fuck do we do?” he hissed. He wasn’t afraid for himself, but given how Dream and Techno had treated each other, Techno wouldn’t hesitate to throw the mask into the nearest volcano.

Dream didn’t have a physical body, only a voice, but somehow, Tommy got the impression that he’d winced. <You’ll have to trust me for this part.>

Loud footsteps echoed through the halls above them. Someone shouted, and armor clanged outside the door.

“Whatever it is, just do it!”

“Alright,” Dream said, except this time, his voice was an actual sound instead of just in Tommy’s head, and it was also coming out of Tommy’s fucking mouth. He added, “Please stay calm. This is hard enough without you fighting me.”

Tommy wasn’t sure what ‘fighting’ entailed, but he tried to relax. It wasn’t easy. Dream puppeteered his body with jerky, unnatural movements, and it was beyond strange to watch his hands move and know he wasn’t responsible for it.

Dream hefted the diamond. The power began to spool out of it, draining the ritual at Dream’s house into the diamond and then into Dream-in-Tommy’s-body, guided into the mask held in the other hand.

“Fascinating,” Dream murmured. “I thought your magic was transmutation. But it’s closer to flesh, isn’t it?” He shook his—Tommy’s—head. “Another time.”

They were building up to something. Tommy wasn’t in control, but he could still feel the magic coursing through him. He wouldn’t ever risk trying to channel that much power on his own, but Dream was a far more skilled mage than him. They were close. Tommy could feel it, both in the magic and in the satisfaction that rippled through Dream.

The door flew open.

“What the hell do you think you’re doin’, Tommy?” Techno demanded.

“It’s good to see you too, Technoblade,” said Dream. He smiled blandly.

Techno’s eyes widened. “Dream,” he snarled.

“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”

<Please don’t antagonize Techno,’ Tommy begged. This couldn’t end well. <He already thinks that you’re an evil bastard, and I don’t want to have to spend five fucking hours talking him out of it again.> Not that he’d succeeded in the first place.

<I’m stalling,> Dream said. Then, aloud, “I don’t suppose I could convince you to give me a few minutes? You can have Tommy back after.”

Techno just unsheathed a knife. Tommy hadn’t exactly gotten a good look the first time, but he would be willing to bet it was the same knife used to kill Dream. Disembody Dream? Was Dream dead?

Dream was talking, so Tommy figured the answer to that was no. “I’m surprised you’re not scared of carrying a null metal knife around.” Dream’s voice was mild, but Tommy could feel the fear bleeding through his mind.

“Not as scared as you, I’m willin’ to bet.” Techno slowly leveled the knife to point at the mask. “Want to guess what’ll happen if I end up scratchin’ that mask of yours with this?”

Dream’s smile remained fixed on his—Tommy’s—face. “You’ll have to go through me, first. And by me, I mean Tommy.” In a mockery of Techno’s words, he echoed, “Want to guess what’ll happen to Tommy if we fight?”

To Tommy, Dream added, <I don’t think it’ll actually come to a fight, but I’ll make sure you don’t get hurt. Technoblade doesn’t want to hurt you either.>

That wasn’t particularly comforting, but at least that was one less thing for Tommy to worry about.

Techno’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t have to stab him. All I have to do is scratch him a little with this knife. Isn’t that right?” His wings twitched. “Then I’ll make sure you’re finally fuckin’ dead. That’s not a mistake I’ll make a third time.”

Dream opened their shared mouth to say something, but Tommy intervened. As he pushed against Dream’s control, Dream subsided, and Tommy broke in, “Techno, I let him possess me. It’s not what you think.”

At that, Techno barked out a humorless laugh. “Of course. Consensual possession. And you’re sayin’ all of this of your own free will, I’m sure.”

“He is, actually.”

Techno’s head snapped up, whipping around to stare at the sudden figure that had appeared next to him. “You’re supposed to be restin’,” he ground out.

Wilbur, skin ghostly pale and leaning heavily against the doorway, said, “And leave you to deal with this alone? I like to think I’m a better person than that.”

“Wil,” Tommy whispered.

He’d gone to see Wilbur several times, but Wilbur had still been in a coma. And then after Wilbur had woken up, there had just never been a perfect time. Or Tommy had told himself that, at least.

Mostly, Tommy didn’t want to deal with the last member of his family also berating him over the situation with Dream. He wasn’t brainwashed or manipulated or anything, but if Wilbur of all people had told him that—

It didn’t matter. Wilbur was here, now.

And he seemed to be on Tommy’s side.

“Hey, Tommy.” Wilbur offered a shaky smile. “I would say it’s good to see you again, but these aren’t really the best circumstances.”

“I missed you,” Tommy said unthinkingly. The moment the words were out, he half-regretted it. He’d meant the words. He just hadn’t meant to say them.

It was more than a little fucking embarrassing, but all that Wilbur said in response was, “I missed you too, you gremlin.”

“Not that this isn’t real heartwarmin’ and all,” Techno interrupted, “but you seem to have forgotten the part where a necromancer is possessin’ our little brother.”

Wilbur shrugged. “Tommy says he agreed to it. And as far as I can tell, he hasn’t been enchanted into saying that. At least, not magically.”

<Wait,> Dream said. <How does he know that?>

Tommy wasn’t quite sure how to project a mental message at Dream while being the one in charge of the body, so he settled for saying aloud, “Wilbur’s a telepath.” Both Techno and Wilbur shot him an odd look, but Tommy ignored them.

Dream fell silent, but the terror that bled through their mental link was even stronger than the fear of the knife Techno had. Which said something, considering that Techno thought the knife could kill Dream for good.

“Dream?” Tommy prodded.

Finally, Dream said, <He’s a psychic, Tommy.> The words were innocuous enough, but there was a depth to them that belied exactly how Dream felt about that.

“Yeah,” Tommy retorted, “and you’re a necromancer. Suck it up. You can both be scary.”

<Death magic has a bad but unfairly deserved reputation. The worst thing I’ll do to someone is kill them. It’s hardly worse than a fireball. Just slightly more unsanitary. And sure, maybe I’ll use your corpse for spare parts, but you’re dead at that point. You don’t care.> Dream conveyed the sensation of shuddering. <Mind magic, though? That’ll fuck you up. You won’t even realize you ever wanted something different.>

“Wilbur’s not like that. He’s nice.”

“Thanks?” Wilbur said.

Tommy frowned. “Not talking to you, Wilbur.”

<Still,> insisted Dream. <I don’t trust him.>

“Well, you don’t have to. I do. And Wilbur is also the one who’s on our side, so try not to piss him off.”

“Yes,” Wilbur said. “About that. Obviously, he’s not using spells to influence your mind. That doesn’t rule out traditional methods of manipulation.”

Tommy flipped him off.

“Okay,” Techno said. “Fine. He’s clearly still himself. No magic. But I wouldn’t put it past Dream to manipulate him in other ways.”

Wilbur coughed. “We… could check. I could cast—”

“No,” Dream said, abruptly pushing Tommy out. “Absolutely not. You try to use any fucking mind magic on me, and I detonate the nexus and we see what happens.”

Tommy shoved his way back into bodily control. “Dream, don’t be a little bitch.”

<You distracted them for long enough,> Dream said mulishly. <I could reform my body now.>

“And fight your way out through the whole castle?” Tommy pointed out.

At that, Techno seemed to remember he was holding a magic-canceling knife. His knuckles went white with how tightly he was gripping it.

“If I can interject,” Wilbur said smoothly, “it’s just a truth spell. There isn’t even a compulsion to answer the questions if you don’t want to, but anything you say has to be truthful, both in letter and spirit. Nothing else.”

“Or we could just kill him,” Techno grumbled.

“Or we could try to avoid rebuilding the palace in the aftermath and ensure that Tommy is happy with us.”

Abruptly, Dream said, “Fine. Truth spell. Nothing else. And Tommy gets to poke you with the null knife afterward to make sure you end the spell.”

Wilbur inclined his head.

Techno’s lips thinned, but he didn’t object.

Tommy, for his part, projected satisfaction at Dream.

<Tommy, shut the fuck up.>

They’d agreed to move to a different location that wasn’t filled with cursed objects. Dream begrudgingly put the nexus down and unraveled his skeleton-forming spell. He sat down at the table. With Tommy’s body, at least.

The sensation of Wilbur’s magic washing over him was a bucket of cold water straight to the face. Dream shivered.

Wilbur cleared his throat. He was sitting, now. He still looked unhealthily pale, which would have been comforting under normal circumstances because it meant Dream could probably take him in a fistfight. Under these, though? Wilbur didn’t need his fists to be dangerous. “Well, let’s begin,” said Wilbur. “This shouldn’t take too long. Did you ever hurt or have the intention to hurt Tommy?”

Dream was about to say, ‘No,’ but instead, it came out as, “I did accidentally convince him you were dead at one point. He seemed pretty upset.”

His face flushed red, of Tommy’s volition rather than Dream’s. Tommy said, “That—that never happened. He’s a lying bitch.”

“The spell only applies to Dream,” Wilbur said. “Noted.”

“Fuck you—”

With a sigh, Dream regained control and said, “Besides that, no.”

Technoblade kept glaring.

Ignoring the looming presence of his brother, Wilbur jotted some notes down on the piece of paper he’d brought. Then, he said, “Did you force Tommy to stay with you in any way?”

“How are we defining force?”

Wilbur hummed. “Against his will.”

“No,” said Dream.

Tommy added, “I wanted to stay.”

“Did you attempt to manipulate or influence Tommy’s decision to stay with you in any way?”

After a pause, Dream admitted, “Yes.” At that, Technoblade drew his sword. Shock rippled over from Tommy’s mind, and Dream hastened to add, “Not like you’re thinking! I just… said that it would be difficult to get back to the Antarctic Empire. Which it was! It’s a one-week hike through difficult terrain, as you very well know, and he was still recuperating from almost dying. I offered to take him back—perfectly genuinely, let me add—once he was healed.”

Wilbur eyed him. “Were there any other reasons?”

Dream wanted to deny it, but he couldn’t. Grimacing, he said, “Yes.”

“Which were?”

“It wasn’t nefarious,” Dream protested.

Suspicion dripped from every word that came out of Technoblade’s mouth as he said, “So why won’t you tell us?”

“It’s really not important.”

<What the hell, Dream?> Tommy chimed in.

Dream groaned. “Fine! I was lonely, okay? Tommy was the first person I’d seen in years, I got attached, and I didn’t like the thought of losing him. But,” he added, “if he’d expressed strong desire to leave at any point, I would’ve helped him.”

<That explains a lot,> Tommy mused.

“Shut up,” Dream muttered. Then, to the pair who were physically present, “Not you. Tommy.”

Technoblade sheathed his sword, pointedly slow and staring Dream in the eye the whole time. He crossed his arms. The suspicious glaring continued. “Helped him,” Techno said. “Like you ‘helped’ those people who came to you, lookin’ for cures?”

Glaring back, Dream said, “They were going to be dead either way. At least this way, they had a chance at—”

“Can we try to stay on-topic?” Wilbur said with an affable—and very clearly artificially pleasant—smile. “So, Dream, when did you first become aware of Tommy’s identity as a prince?”

“For certain? When I was in the mask and someone called him Prince Tommy,” Dream said. “I was very close to completely confident after Technoblade showed up and Tommy ran out of my house with a pair of wings, though.”

“Yes,” Technoblade drawled. “Your house.”

Dream bristled. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Shrugging, Technoblade said, “Nothin’. Just that no one sensible would call that pile of dirt a house.”

“Oh, like it’s not your fault that I don’t have a palace of my own anymore—”

<Sorry, Dream,> said Tommy all too cheerfully, <but I’m with Techno on this one.>

Wilbur, at least, didn’t seem interested in lambasting Dream’s building skills. He just groaned. “If we get off-track one more time, Techno, I’m kicking you the fuck out.”

With a final smirk at Dream, Technoblade subsided.

Dream narrowed his eyes back.

“So you didn’t know Tommy was related to Techno while you were taking care of him,” Wilbur clarified.

“No,” Dream said. “I had suspicions after the whole… incident. He was unreasonably upset by your rumored death for someone who’d never met you, but I discarded them on account of him not having wings.”

Wilbur swept his papers together. “Well, then, it’s been a pleasure, but it seems like we’re done. Unless Techno has any additional questions?”

“Wait,” Technoblade interjected. “The spells you cast on Tommy. What were those for?”

Dream stared at him. “I knew you were an idiot, but I didn’t know you were that dumb.”

“Answer the question.”

Rolling his eyes, Dream said, “Yes, I cast spells on him. Let me think. Why did I do that, again? Oh, right, to save Tommy’s life, maybe?”

“You’re a necromancer.” Technoblade’s suspicion didn’t abate.

Dream clapped slowly. “Thank you for pointing out the obvious.” Sarcasm evident, he added, “Really, thank you. Never would have noticed otherwise. To answer your question, they were preservation spells. A… personal adaptation. Most necromantic preservation spells are designed for keeping corpses fresh, but I modified them to work on the living. He was half-dead when I found him, and he wouldn’t have survived the journey back without them.”

“Techno,” Wilbur said quietly, laying a hand on his brother’s arm. “I really don’t think Dream meant Tommy any harm.”

“You’re not the one who had to put him down for trying to subvert the laws of the natural world.”

<Seriously?> Tommy said, laughing. <‘Put you down?’ That’s how Techno talked about his dog that caught rabies.>

Valiantly, Dream ignored Tommy. Throwing up his arms, he said, “For the last time, how is it any worse than what other mages do on a daily fucking basis? If it wasn’t so taboo to research, we could’ve had resurrection by now. Necromancy is hardly worse than other disciplines, not to mention significantly less terrifying.” He paused. “For that matter, take the fucking truth spell off.”

Wilbur inclined his head.

The aura around Dream dissipated. It was like a light cloak being lifted off his shoulders. Not that he trusted that. “The knife,” he said.

“I’ll give it to Tommy,” Technoblade retorted.

“Fine,” Tommy said. “Can we just get this over with?”

Technoblade warily held the knife out, hilt-first. Tommy took it, turned to Wilbur, and poked him lightly in the finger. Deep enough to draw blood, but not enough for anything else. No other enchantments seemed to lift off Dream.

All of this might have been actually an illusion in Dream’s mind created by Wilbur, but down that road lay paranoia. If Wilbur was powerful enough to weave such a complex hallucination without Dream noticing, then it didn’t matter in the first place whether or not Dream consented to the truth spell.

Dream was maybe still a little worried, but he tried to brush that aside. “Happy now?” Dream demanded.

Looking as if it pained him to say, Technoblade said, “Yes.”

<Tell him he’s a little bitch who should’ve fucking believed me at the start.>

<No,> Dream projected back. <I only just got him to settle into unhappy rivalry instead of murderous nemesis-ship. You know it’ll upset him, which is why you’re making me tell Technoblade that.>

Tommy just grumbled.

Rather than insult Technoblade, Dream heaved an overdramatic sigh of relief. “Fantastic,” he said, and the exasperation and relief weren’t entirely melodrama. “Can we focus on getting me a new body, then?”

“Absolutely not,” Technoblade said immediately.

“Or I can bodyshare with Tommy for the rest of his life,” Dream pointed out.

Horror readily apparent, Tommy took control to say, “We are not fucking doing that.”

At least someone was on Dream’s side.

Chapter Text

Techno glared at Dream.

He’d been doing a lot of that, lately. Unfortunately, it was one of the few remaining weapons available to him. Tommy vehemently opposed any attempts to kill Dream, and Wilbur was agreeable enough as long as it made Tommy happy. Even Phil couldn’t recognize the real danger, simply accepting that Dream had changed.

He hadn’t. He absolutely fucking hadn’t.

For as long as Techno had known Dream, Dream had been obsessed with resurrection. Techno had spent a decade as the diplomatic envoy to Essempi, years before the relationship between Essempi and the Antarctic Empire had deteriorated into warfare, and Dream was exactly the same. Interested in pushing the bounds of knowledge. Meddling with things that, if not outright forbidden, really shouldn’t be meddled with. Determined to uncover possibilities that everyone else abandoned for the inherent danger. Experimenting with no regard for collateral damage.

Techno could believe that Dream genuinely liked Tommy. Dream had friends, after all, and Techno had watched him interact with other people for long enough to know that Dream had feelings and relationships beneath the mask. So, yes, Techno could begrudgingly accept that Dream didn’t intend Tommy any harm.

The key word there, though, was intend. Dream might not mean to hurt Tommy. Dream might not want to hurt Tommy. But being around Dream was dangerous, and Techno had seen the aftereffects firsthand.

Dream wanted to understand resurrection. That wasn’t the kind of knowledge that could be obtained through simple, safe testing. Techno had seen animal souls forced into the wrong bodies, flesh sloughing off their bones within a matter of days. People who agreed to Dream’s experiments, afflicted with lethal illnesses and nothing left to lose—most of whom had died screaming on the examination table. Even Dream’s vaunted preservation spells, used to keep him alive for a century before Techno killed him, had followed years of experimentation and people trapped in eternal comas between life and death.

So, no, Techno didn’t trust Dream’s experiments to be safe. And he certainly didn’t trust the fact that Dream wanted Tommy to help him with resurrection.

Most of all, though, there was no fucking way that Techno was going to agree to help Dream.

“Please?” Dream said. His mask’s painted eyes grew eyelashes and batted them at Techno. “Tommy would want you to.”

“Tommy,” said Techno, “agreed to help you make a new skeleton so you’d stop possessin’ him. I don’t know how you got him to help you with this resurrection plan, but—”

Dream heaved a dramatic sigh. “Oh, whatever am I going to tell him? And here, Tommy was so excited to finally see my real face. It was going to be perfect. The ritual was planned to precision. Yet, I’ll have to break the news to him that his beloved eldest brother is unwilling to contribute a measly amount of his power to our cause, and all of our preparations will have gone to naught. How sorrowful he’ll be! The tears that will streak down his face! The wailing laments! I suppose there’s nothing to do but follow you around and explain in great detail for the next few days exactly how deep a wound your decision will inflict on Tommy.” He inhaled deeply, seemingly in preparation to launch into a speech despite the fact he didn’t even need to breathe.

“Fuckin’ Prime,” Techno grit out, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What will it take to get you to shut up?”

The inky tear streaks on Dream’s mask dried up. Sporting a smile, he straightened. “Great! I’m so glad you’ve agreed to help.”

“Bruh, I never—”

Dream tapped a finger against his chin and added, “Also, could we have some money? I need to buy some materials, but Tommy says all of his allowance gets spent on golden apples and women.”

Techno stared. He took a long, slow breath.

There was no getting out of this, was there?

“Fine.” He pulled out a few gold coins and tossed them to Dream. “There’s your money.” He turned on his heel and stalked away.

“Technoblade? Wait, Technoblade! Could I have a couple more coins? Just a few? I’m broke, you know, and it’s your fault for wrecking my house! I—”

At least this way, Techno could keep an eye on the resurrection and make sure Tommy didn’t end up dead from some poorly thought-out experiment. That was what he told himself, trying to somehow salvage the situation.

It didn’t help.

The sun shone down over the capital. Rays of light played over rooftops, casting tiles into shadow and brightening the streets. A gorgeous day by anyone’s standards.

It also meant the city was hot. Really, really fucking hot. Undeniably, that was better than being trapped in the blizzard. Tommy would take a heat wave over a sudden freeze any day. Still, everything about the temperature made the current situation worse. For one, sweat poured off Tommy in waves. For another, it stunk.

Not Tommy. The load of offal he was carrying, on the other hand? It wasn’t spoiled, but the heat only served to enhance the smell of raw meat and blood.

“You… could… have carried… some of this,” he managed.

Dream, whistling at his side, shrugged. “I’m a skeleton, remember? No musculature,” he said. Which was true, but Tommy also knew he was perfectly capable of holding and lifting things. However that worked. The enchanted clothing even gave Dream the appearance of having things like ‘a normal body silhouette’ and ‘actual flesh and other bodily tissues,’ so Dream couldn’t reasonably use hiding his skeletal form as an excuse.

Not that Dream really cared about things like reason if it was an opportunity to make Tommy do extra work.

“Also, I got us the money from Technoblade,” Dream continued, oblivious to Tommy’s thoughts.

Tommy would have flipped Dream off, but the thought alone made the tower of packaged meat begin to tilt. He hurriedly adjusted his hold. Instead, he said, “Fuck you, bitch.”

Dream’s mask displayed a small frowny face. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in a child’s drawing. “That’s not very nice, Tommy.”

“Forcing me to carry all your fucking experiment materials isn’t very nice, either!” He pushed the words out all at once, then immediately regretted it when he had to gulp for air and inhaled more of the offal’s stench.

“You were the one who agreed to run an errand with me,” Dream pointed out. He probably thought he sounded reasonable, the bastard. “And you said it was a nice day and wanted to stay undercover, so we could walk instead of taking a carriage or bringing servants. We could’ve had someone move all this for us and been back at the palace by now. Forget that, we could have just someone else to get it for us.”

Shooting him the dirtiest look possible, Tommy said, “Shut the fuck up. I’m never fucking running a fucking errand for you ever fucking again.”

Someone gasped and pulled their child away from Tommy and Dream, covering the child’s ears.

In hindsight, it probably said something that none of Dream’s other friends had wanted to head to the city with him. There were at least two of them visiting right now. Tommy could never keep track. Some phoenix had shown up, and then everyone that Dream knew took it as an open invitation to visit.

Tommy vowed to himself that he’d learn the lesson well. Never agree to help Dream buy materials for his experiments. Groaning, he said, “What the fuck do you even need this much offal for?”

“Making a body, of course. What else?”

Panting slightly, Tommy grimaced. “What happened to being a necromancer? Just… that… shitty at it, huh?”

With a dismissive wave of his hand, Dream said, “Too much work.”

Tommy glared at him as best as possible. It wasn’t very effective, considering that he could only half-see Dream past the mountain of offal in his arms.

“Don’t give me that look. Here, I’ll explain it to you.”

The absolute last thing that Tommy wanted was to spend the next thirty minutes hiking back to the palace and being forced to listen to one of Dream’s science lectures. Those were new. Apparently, when Dream wasn’t focused on building up power and an army to fight Techno, he was obsessed with research. Unfortunately, Tommy couldn’t exactly run away.

“There are two main barriers to creating a proper body,” Dream began. “The first is that you actually need it to be alive and self-sustaining. That’s why I need your—” his mask’s frown grew deeper “—and, unfortunately, Technoblade’s help. None of us have to have intricate knowledge of anatomy as long as your combined magics provide a template for life. It sounds simple, but without flesh and blood mages—both incredibly rare—we’d need to steal someone else’s body.”

Tommy wasn’t advocating for body theft. He wasn’t, okay? But here he was, carrying a heavy load of meat on what had to be one of the hottest days of the year, all so that Dream could get an actual body back—

“That’s way easier, innit?”

Dream raised a finger. “That’s the second part. Unless you’re not looking for something more complex than a homunculus or golem, you need room for the soul. Bodies are naturally born with a soul that… ‘fits’ them. Think of it like a key. The soul is the key, the body is the keyhole. You can change keyholes to fit a new key, but it’s easier if the new key is already similar to the old one. If they’re not, it’s much simpler to just build a new one from scratch.”

Tommy turned that over in his mind. It made sense. Sort of. “You possessed me, though,” he pointed out.

Shaking his head, Dream said, “It’s like how some keys can fit into the wrong lock but won’t be able to turn. I couldn’t have possessed you for more than a day or two before your body started to reject me.” He coughed awkwardly. “Soul magic is really just an extension of necromancy. Your body would have rotted away.”

That was a deeply unpleasant mental image. Still, it didn’t explain why they needed all this meat. Tommy said as much, if with a few more expletives added in.

“Mass can’t come from nowhere,” Dream said. “The amount of energy required is obscene. It’s why you don’t see hydromancers summoning tsunamis in landlocked cities—they need a source of water to work with. I buried hundreds of skeletons around my house, on top of the army in the basement, just so I could have the bones as a terrain option. Why do you think I needed the energy from the nexus just to make myself a skeleton to inhabit? After being decapitated the first time, it took me ages to gather enough power for that on my own. All the meat we got from the butcher will go into the new body. At the end of the day, the ingredients for a cow and a human are pretty similar.”

Tommy fell silent for a moment. Then, he said, “How does my magic work?” Not that he was interested or anything like that. Expressing even a modicum of curiosity during Dream’s rants could lead to being trapped in an endless hell of magical theory—but he had to admit that he wanted to know. They’d only just exited the city limits, anyway. There was still the long trip to the palace, located on top of a hill tall enough that Tommy’s legs would be burning by the end. If Dream was going to rant endlessly about magic either way, Tommy wanted it to be useful.

Dream fixed him with a flat stare. Two horizontal lines on his mask represented his eyes. “Tommy. You have a golden apple addiction.”

Automatically, Tommy retorted, “No, I don’t.” The packages were slipping again. He curled his fingers around the edges in the futile hope of providing a more stable foundation.

“You go through three a week. Three, Tommy. If the average person tried that, they’d be dead, broke, or dead broke within a month. Most people can’t consume that much magic on a regular basis.”

“Humans,” Tommy insisted. “I’m half-elytrian.”

Dream sighed. As always, it carried the strange, artificial edge of being magically produced. “Regardless. The only reason you like them so much in the first place is because they’re providing you with a vital nutrient—namely, extra magic.”

Tommy drew to a halt. One, because he needed a quick break. He set down the packages on the grass, arms aching in relief. Finally freed from his burden, he stretched a little.

And two, he really needed to scream at Dream.

Drawing in a deep breath, Tommy shouted at the top of his lungs, “You mean we could’ve eaten some fucking gapples for the spell and skipped all of this?”

Dream reeled. Good. He deserved it. “Volume control, Tommy. And if you’d let me finish explaining, it’s not that simple,” he said.

Tommy eyed him suspiciously.

“You’re not actually creating mass from nowhere,” Dream explained. “Without testing, I can’t be sure, but I think what you’re doing is summoning things from… a pocket dimension of sorts. It’s why you can absorb your clothes when you shapeshift. And in that pocket dimension, you have a ton of flesh. Your magic lets you then reshape that flesh into whatever form you want, but the summoning is power-intensive, if less so than outright creating new mass. That’s what the golden apples are for.”

Wrinkling his nose, Tommy said, “Flesh? Really?”

“For lack of a better term. It’s raw organic material.”

That still sounded kind of gross, but not as bad as the idea that Tommy was putting the equivalent of all the offal he was carrying for Dream into his body whenever he transformed. He bent and picked said offal back up. “I thought my magic had to do with flesh or whatever, though. Where’d the pocket dimension come from?”

Dream shrugged. “Holdover of elytrian magic? Rare combination derived from the interaction of your natural magic and some inherited from Phil? Random happenstance? It could be anything, really. Most shapeshifters can’t transform into anything with a significantly different mass, and they carry around several extra sets of clothes, too. Your magic is unusual, to say the least. Not to mention that even if they had the ability, most shapeshifters also can’t afford to buy golden apples the way you do.” Dream paused, momentarily lost in thought. He added, “With some practice, you could probably learn to store objects in the extradimensional space without having to shapeshift.”

“So… what you’re saying is that I am the best.”

“That’s not—”

“I am the best shapeshifter,” Tommy continued. “The biggest man. The coolest. The one with all the women.”

“Wait, how does that last one relate—” Dream stopped and sighed. “Sure, Tommy. You’re the best.”

Tommy whooped delightedly. The packages shifted, and he hastily used his chin to stabilize the ones on top. “Oh, Wilbur is going to hate this. I’m going to rub it in his smug fucking face. Mimimi, I’m Wilbur, and I can’t stand the thought of Tommy having cooler magic than me. Hah! In your fucking face, Wilby!”

“This explains a lot about why Wilbur is the way he is,” Dream muttered.

Tommy narrowed his eyes. “Wanna say that again?”

“Nothing,” Dream said peaceably. There was nothing on his mask to indicate his true emotions—in fact, the surface was wiped clean of any expression. Still, the edge of laughter came through in his voice. “I didn’t say anything at all.”

Begrudgingly, Tommy let it slide. It wasn’t worth an argument. Not after Dream had provided him with the perfect tool to use against Wilbur. For once, Dream’s science nonsense had actually been useful.

Still, there was no way in hell that Tommy was ever going to run errands with Dream again.

“Is Kristin goin’ to be mad at me if I help Dream with his resurrection?”

Phil turned slowly to stare at Techno. “Mate. Kristin was pissed at Dream because he was getting close to creating a resurrection spell. Why d’you think I asked you to kill him in the first place?”

“I’m gonna be honest, I thought it was because you didn’t like the idea of someone else bein’ able to visit and flirt with Kristin whenever he wanted.” At Phil’s flat-eyed glare, Techno held up his hand. “Okay, okay, calm down, it was just a joke. Just a joke, I promise. But,” he said, drawing out the vowel, “I… might’ve kinda given Dream and, by extension, Tommy the idea that I’d help them out with the resurrection.”

Kristin and Phil had an interesting on-off relationship—the kind that two immortals developed after a few centuries of being together and realizing that sometimes they needed a break from each other. They always ended up back together, though, and even during the phases when they’d mutually agreed not to be involved, one of them could end up a little… possessive.

Sure, Techno had been joking, but it really wasn’t that unreasonable.

With a sigh, Phil said, “She’ll probably allow it if you two are involved. No promises if Dream tries to replicate it on his own, though.” He paused. “Still, I thought you didn’t like Dream?”

Techno grimaced. “Tommy likes him,” he said succinctly. “And someone needs to keep an eye on Dream and make sure the ritual doesn’t go catastrophically wrong.”

“When is the ritual, anyway?”

“Today.”

Phil sighed. “Really, Techno?”

“Better to ask forgiveness than permission and all that,” Techno said.

Phil sighed again. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. “Just… this is a one-time thing, okay?”

“Of course,” Techno said. He scoffed. “Who d’you think I am, Tommy? I learn from my mistakes after makin’ them once.”

That drew a small smile to Phil’s face. “Don’t be an asshole to your brother,” he admonished.

Techno grunted.

“That wasn’t a yes.”

“Hm.”

“Techno—”

If questioned later, no one could prove that Techno had run away.

Dream spread his arms wide in a grandiose gesture. “You and I, Tommy, we’re gonna make something revolutionary. Do you understand how important this is? The applications, the possibilities—”

“Leanin’ a little too much into the mad in mad scientist,” Techno remarked.

Turning away from Techno in a deliberate fuck you motion, Dream raised his chin slightly and turned back to Tommy. “The point I was making before being so rudely interrupted is that that the two of us—”

“Three of us,” Techno said. The satisfaction bled through his voice, a small smirk flickering on his lips.

“Fine,” Dream grit out. “Three of us, if you’ll stop talking.”

Techno inclined his head silently.

Tommy huffed. “Can we skip the shitty science talk?”

Dream couldn’t glare without eyes—at least, not in a way that was noticeable to anyone else, and the effect of the mask just wasn’t the same—but if he could have, the force of it could have leveled cities. Rather than respond, he just held out one of his hands, palm-up. “Hands,” he demanded. His other hand held the nexus crystal. The meat lay stacked in a small pile around him, encircled by a ring of white chalk.

Rolling his eyes, Techno stacked his hand over Dream’s. Tommy followed suit. Both of them stood inside a second, larger circle.

There weren’t that many uses for weird, fleshy-shapeshifting magic that wouldn’t be better served by a healer or transmutationist. Tommy hadn’t ever worked magic with other people before. In theory, Tommy knew all about channeling magic into a joint spell. He’d even let Dream possess his body and use it as a conduit. Basically the same thing, right?

In practice, straddling the fine line between holding tight enough control over his magic to only allow a precise amount to flow into the spell and still succumbing to the goosebump-inducing sensation of someone else sucking his magic out was hard.

A shiver went up his spine. Techno had his eyes closed, though, a bored expression on his face, and Dream didn’t seem bothered either.

There was no fucking way that Tommy was going to be the only one expressing discomfort. As subtly as possible, he gritted his teeth. It didn’t really help. Dream kept tugging on Tommy’s magic, and Tommy kept giving it up. Like a leech and its host.

Better than tapeworms, at least.

Tapeworms had fucking sucked. Bad memories.

On the subject of those, watching Dream’s spell was giving Tommy some new bad memories. The meat slowly squelched together, clinging to Dream’s bones, and yeah, Tommy did not want to be seeing any of this. Techno had the right idea by closing his eyes. Tommy shut his eyes tightly and thought about tapeworms instead.

Lost in contemplation of gut parasites, Tommy only jerked back to awareness when Dream pulled his hand away. “That’s it?” he said.

Then, Tommy realized Dream’s hand wasn’t the only thing that was missing.

Dream himself was gone.

Death was surprisingly boring.

Not death, as in, being dead. Dream had been there, done that. This was different.

Or, rather, she was different.

Faced with the personification of Death, Dream couldn’t help but feel like she was a little understated. Where were the legions of the dead? The twisted crown made from tortured souls? The three dozen eyes blinking in unison? Despite being a goddess, Death looked… mortal. The fact that she was reclining on a couch in what looked like a sitting room didn’t help.

“It’s to make you a little more comfortable,” she said. “Oh, and sit, please. Any of the chairs will do. But we can also do the eldritch horror and throne of skulls if you want.”

Dream grimaced. With his own face, for once. Couldn’t even properly appreciate it, though, considering he was trapped in Limbo with Death. Remaining standing, he said, “Can we not do the mind-reading thing? Seems a little rude.”

Death fixed him with a piercing stare. “You trespass on my domain. I’d consider that more than ‘a little rude.’”

“Okay,” Dream said. “Wait. Let’s get one thing straight here. I might have died, but my soul never passed into Limbo, so I feel like that doesn’t really count. There’s no trespassing involved.”

She sighed. In an oddly human gesture, Death pinched the bridge of her nose. “Alright. Let’s lay out a comparison here. You used to have an empire. Now, imagine that some armies are massing around your border. They haven’t crossed it—but they’re ri-i-ight on the edge of your empire. What do you do?”

“You don’t know for sure that I’m going to try to figure out the process of true resurrection and attempt to pull back souls that have already crossed beyond Limbo and left the mortal plane,” Dream protested.

“Setting aside the suspiciously specific denial,” Death said, “who do you think asked Techno to kill you in the first place?”

Dream gaped. “I didn’t even do anything!”

“You were trying.”

“But it didn’t work!”

Flatly, Death said, “So can I assume that attempted murder wasn’t a crime under your rule?”

He scowled. “That’s a false equivalence.”

“I keep an eye on talented necromancers,” Death said. “That’s how Phil and I met. But you, Dream? You’re dabbling in things beyond your comprehension.”

“I understand exactly what I’m doing,” Dream said. “I just need to figure out the right process.”

Death sighed again. She’d been doing a lot of that. “There is no ‘right process.’ Not one that’s safe, in any case.”

“I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“We could change that.” At the look on Dream’s face, she laughed a little. “No, but really. Like you said, you were never really dead. Not in the proper definition of the word. Sure, your physical body died, but your soul never went to Limbo. It’s a similar mechanic to how phoenixes operate.”

“Like I don’t know these things,” Dream grumbled. Being friends with a phoenix meant that he’d been able to observe the process on a few occasions. “Phoenix souls are tied to their ashes. It’s where I got the idea for the mask from. But once the soul passes beyond Limbo—”

“—You can’t get it back,” Death cut in firmly. “Well, you could, if you were fine with destroying the world in the process.”

Dream fixed her with an incredulous stare. “It can’t be that bad.”

Death waved a hand. “Not at first. You’d get the soul back. But there’s a balance to these things, and true resurrection would destabilize it.” She met his gaze calmly, pools of obsidian for eyes. The only not-quite-human aspect to her. “Believe me on this. It wouldn’t be worth it.”

He scoffed. “So, what, you want me to just give up on my life’s work?”

“Yes.”

Dream retorted, “Absolutely fucking not—”

When Death spoke, her tone was placid, but the shadows grew elongated, and for a moment, the intangible pressure in the room was almost unbearable. “Dream. There are limits upon the gods, and sometimes, we require mortal agents.” She smiled, but it wasn’t pleasant. “Right now, though? You are in the seat of my power. I could kill you with barely a thought. Were you anyone else, I would have already severed the link between your soul and the mortal plane. It is only for the sake of Phil and his children that we are even discussing this.”

He swallowed. “Okay,” he said, voice smaller than he’d intended. “Fine. So what now?”

She shrugged. “What you did with the mask? Acceptable. But don’t meddle with the souls who are really, truly dead. If you attempt to reach Limbo or beyond, I will not hesitate.” Death paused. Smiled, this time genuinely. “I’m glad we could reach an accord. Tommy would be sad if my hand was forced.”

Dream mustered up the will to say, “Yeah, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m pretty happy about that too.” He’d only just gotten his body back. It would have been depressingly ironic to immediately lose it.

“Oh, and if you could do me a favor?” With a laugh, she added, “Tell Techno that he should be nicer to his brothers.”

Then, Death snapped her fingers.

“Ow, fuck, fuck, get the fuck off me—”

Dream grumbled, “Why did you go crawling around in the center of the ritual?”

“You disappeared!” Tommy shouted. He managed to untangle his legs from Dream’s. “What the hell was I supposed to think?”

That was fair. Unfortunately. It did also mean that Dream had rematerialized on top of Tommy, whereupon they’d promptly collapsed into a pile of twisted limbs and faces smushed into the floor.

“I did tell you it was nothin’ to worry about,” Technoblade drawled, leaning against the wall. “Didn’t seem to be interested in listenin’, though.”

With some more muttering, Tommy pulled himself away from Dream. He stood. Dusting himself off, he said, “Maybe because you wouldn’t give a fuck if Dream dropped dead right now—” Tommy stopped. Stared at Dream. “Right. About that.”

“I see the haircut is as bad as ever,” commented Technoblade. “Almost as bad as Tommy’s.”

“Take that back right fucking now!”

Dream grinned. It was nice to be able to smile for the first time in over a hundred years, even if neither of them could see it beneath the mask. More than that, he wasn’t at all opposed to carrying out this particular request from Death. “Technoblade,” he said, injecting a sing-song element into his tone. “Death has something to tell you.”

At that, Technoblade looked marginally more interested. “Oh, Kristin said something?”

Dream nodded. “She did.” He lifted his chin, declaring loftily, “She said to be nicer to Tommy.”

“She did not,” Technoblade argued.

For once, Dream wasn’t lying. With a smirk, he said, “Ask her yourself. She did. Well, and also Wilbur, I guess.”

“Yeah, Techno,” Tommy chimed in. “Be less of a little bitch. Even Kristin thinks so.”

Under his breath—but still audible—Technoblade muttered, “Damnit, Phil.”

“Your mom is terrifying, by the way,” Dream said. He shivered slightly.

He did appreciate that she’d given him some clothes, though. That hadn’t been his doing—wearing clothes during the ritual had the potential to interfere with the formation of the body. He’d only had the mask. But in hindsight, if Dream had finished the ritual and ended up completely naked in front of both Tommy and Technoblade, he never would have heard the end of it.

“Not my mom,” Tommy said. He grinned. “But Kristin’s great.”

“Really?” Dream said. He reexamined Tommy with renewed interest.

Tommy shrugged. “She and Phil do these—uh, like, cooldown periods in their relationship? Half a millennium is a long time to be with any one person. Me and Techno and Wilbur were all born during those off periods.”

Nodding, Dream said sagely, “You’re right. I don’t know how I could have missed it. You? A demigod? Absurd.”

“Oh, fuck you too,” Tommy complained.

Technoblade laughed. “Heh,” he said. “Now who’s the asshole?”

“Both of you,” Tommy declared immediately. He put both his hands to use flipping off Technoblade and Dream.

Dream looked at his own hands. Death—Kristin?—had been thoughtful enough to add gloves to the ensemble. Actually, the clothes weren’t bad at all. He pulled off a glove and stared at his decidedly skin-covered, human hand.

Tommy peered a little closer.

“Huh,” Techno said. “It worked.”

Outraged, Dream said, “Of course it worked! My calculations were perfect.” He raised his hand to his face, then paused.

“You should take the mask off,” Tommy prompted. “Lemme see your face. Is it ugly? I bet it’s ugly. You’re just afraid of getting bullied by me. Don’t be a coward, Dream.”

Dream sighed—and for once, it sounded like an actual person sighing—and pulled the mask off.

“Well, you look like a human,” Tommy told him seriously. “Except for the extra eyeball. I think you should do something about that. It makes you look like Kristin.”

“Tommy, I know there isn’t an extra—”

“No, actually, he’s right,” Technoblade commented. He stepped away from the wall and drew closer. “Right there.” He jabbed a finger at Dream’s cheek, falling slightly short of actually touching Dream.

Eyeing them both suspiciously, Dream ran his hands lightly over his face. Then, accusingly, he said, “You’re both such fucking liars.”

Tommy burst into laughter.

Being alive was a lot like being dead. Except for the part where Dream could go out in public without ten layers of clothing. And the necessity of actually maintaining his body. Or the fact that he could actually get sick now. Sunburn was new and unpleasant. Besides all that, though, death and life were the same things.

…Okay, so maybe being alive was pretty different from being dead.

There were upsides. Food was great. Dream was a huge fan of food. Taste was an underrated sense, and the living didn’t know what they were missing until it was gone. Sunshine was also pretty good. Unlike what rumors would have, undead didn’t immediately self-immolate in the presence of sunlight, but they didn’t feel temperature, either. But the living? The living absolutely did. Basking in the sun was Dream’s new favorite activity.

There were also downsides, though. Like sleeping. Dream was spending an obscene amount of time sleeping, and if he didn’t sleep through at least a third of the day, he could barely function. It was ridiculous. There was so much research Dream could have been doing during those eight hours.

It was a good opportunity to see George, but still.

Eating too much food could also lead to stomachaches. Nothing could ever be simple. For every upside of a living body, there was another downside.

Despite all of that, there were distinct advantages.

Dream glanced at Tommy, who was arguing with Wilbur. Tommy, whose hair was bright green. Everyone knew who was responsible. Techno, not-so-subtly laughing in the corner. He’d definitely had a hand in it. Phil, watching it all with mixed bemusement and amusement.

Tommy stomped over to Dream, a dark expression on his face. A lock of lime hair flopped in front of his eyes. Tommy pushed it aside, scowling. “Dream,” he said. “I’m going to take them the fuck down. Help me.”

“Of course,” Dream said. “I could hardly pass up the opportunity to prank Techno.” They’d made up—sort of—but it was Dream’s responsibility as Techno’s rival to ensure that Techno didn’t get too complacent. It would hardly do to have someone else assassinate Techno before Dream could get around to it.

“Good.” Tommy nodded decisively. “Here’s what I’m thinking…” He continued talking, but Dream zoned out. He didn’t need to pay any real attention to the details of the plan. Tommy wasn’t very good at plans. The minute any actual enactment happened, the plan would instantly go awry, and they’d have to come up with something new.

Dream smiled. Yes, sometimes he missed the quiet ease of his house tucked away in the mountains. Sometimes Tommy could be incessantly annoying. Sometimes Dream looked back at the days when he’d been alone with an air of nostalgia, if not quite longing. But this? The companionship? The friends, the people around him, vibrant and full of life?

He wouldn’t give it up for anything.