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Bright sunlight reflected off the snow, blinding Tubbo as he rubbed his hands together and breathed hot air into them whilst he was walking through Snowchester. He let out a sigh as he mentally ran through all of the tasks he had set for himself to do today.
When he stretched his back, a shudder ran through him. But it wasn't because of the cold. His long, floppy ears twitched as Tubbo suddenly felt like he was being watched. He glanced around him, his one eye that still had vision scanning his snowy surroundings for any other signs of life.
He held his breath for a few seconds but there was nothing. No one that he could see, at least.
“Pull yourself together.” He muttered as he started to walk in the direction of the water highway that would take him past the prison, in the direction of spawn.
As he plunged himself into the water, the feeling of being watched slowly faded and he took out his trident. The cool water was both refreshing and suffocating as he propelled himself forward, guided by the dolphin’s buff. It left him alone with his thoughts, about the current state of the server and his relationships to everyone.
Things felt tense, to say the least. Even though they were at a time of peace, something always seemed to be brewing under the surface. Some kind of evil snaking its way around, gripping innocents in its madness. Not quite as literal as the egg's vines once had, but similar to how that had sprung up out of nowhere and caused so much damage, it was more of a question of when and not if the malice would take hold of a new victim.
A light at the end of the tunnel signified he had reached his destination and Tubbo gasped as he resurfaced from the cold waters, shaking away drops that clung to him.
"Good morning, Tubbo. I was actually just on my way to Snowchester. Glad I caught you here."
Tubbo raked a hand through his still damp hair to lift it from his eyes and find the owner of the voice. Eret smiled at him as Tubbo put away his trident and greeted them back.
"Morning Eret. Did you need me for anything?"
"Ye- ac–ally I wan-d – ask y-..."
Tubbo gripped his head as a spike of pain suddenly shot through his head. Half of what Eret was saying to him sounded static in his ears, the world temporarily blurring before refocusing on the sight of his worried friend.
"Tubbo, are you ok?"
"I'm fine, am fine. Just a headache. What were you saying?"
"I just wanted to ask you if you had any donations for my museum."
The pounding in his head subsided for a bit. Enough for him to process Eret's words and for his mind to mentally dig through his vocabulary to form a response.
"I'm sure I have. Do you have an enderchest on you?"
"There's one at the museum. I could also show you what donations I've received so far."
Eret still looked worried for Tubbo's health and the young man forced a smile to reassure them. Had Eret always worn a cape that was glowing?
"Sounds good. I would like to see the progress you've made on the exhibits."
Eret nodded and they both set off in the direction of Eret’s museum. The road there was filled with small talk, something that took Tubbo’s mind mostly off the growing pounding of the headache. He frowned slightly at Eret's mention of them stealing historical items for their collection but eventually shrugged it off. With so many random chests all around the server and bases that had been long abandoned, maybe some minor crime could be overlooked in favor of preserving history.
An orange blob in the distance caught Tubbo’s eye as they walked along Prime path, a blob that took a familiar shape when the pair got closer. Name. Name- the orange blob had a name, what was it again?
“Hey Fundy. What are you working on?” Eret addressed the fox hybrid, who was rummaging in a chest.
“Oh hi Eret, Tubbo. It’s nothing big, just needed to make a temporary build for something."
"What for?"
Tubbo missed the reply to that, he could see Fundy and Eret talking but his mind was distracted by Fundy's build. A simple, unassuming shack made of cobblestone, and an iron door with a button next to it.
That iron door looked dangerous.
The iron door was dangerous.
Tubbo hated it.
He hated it.
An iron door.
Tubbo wanted to get rid of it.
Tubbo wanted…
Tubbo…
Tubbo….
"Tubbo?"
Shit, Eret and Fundy were staring at him. "Sorry, what?"
"You ok, man?" Fundy frowned.
"Yeah, just… why an iron door?"
"I, uh… found it. Yes, I found it. Definitely didn't steal it cause I couldn't be bothered to actually go find resources to make something else."
‘get rid of them’
Fundy’s ear nervously flicked as he covered up his lie.
‘get rid of the door’
“Shut up.” Tubbo shouted at whoever was telling him to get rid of the door. Both Eret and Fundy jumped at his reaction, crap. That was not what he wanted, he needed to avoid suspicion. He turned around so he wouldn’t have to see the iron monstrosity and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you, Fundy.”
“Tubbo, are you sure you’re okay? We don’t have to go to the museum right now. I can get you back to Snowchester so you can rest.” Eret offered, ever so kind.
“I’m fine. Let’s just go already.” His tone was clipped and held a level of anger that shocked even himself. Tubbo started to continue to walk towards Eret’s museum, a path that he knew well and that shouldn’t be a problem to navigate- however, something stopped him. Glancing down at his feet he saw he stopped just before a small patch of carrots, growing in the farmland that someone had plowed. Eret, who had followed Tubbo as he walked away, stepped over it- but stopped as well when they noticed the other not crossing over this small patch of land.
It was stupid, this was stupid. He commanded the body- his body- to move but it refused. It should be easy- it should, just- lift one leg.
He couldn’t even do that.
Fundy poked his head around Tubbo’s back and looked at the ground in front of him. “Eret, what’s wrong with Tubbo?”
The monarch just shook their head. “No idea. He said he had a headache but I think it might be a migraine.”
“Iron door… farmland… It couldn’t be, it shouldn’t be- Tubbo can’t be possessed by them.” Fundy muttered to himself mostly as he carefully studied Tubbo.
It clicked when he said that, even though Eret stared at the pair in confusion. “Fundy, no- like you said, I can’t be possessed. It’s not Dreamons.” Tubbo said.
A spike of pain flared up as he said the name of the creatures Fundy and himself had hunted so long ago.
“Dreamons?” Eret questioned, but Fundy ignored them.
“Then cross this farmland.” He said, stepping over it himself and joining Eret on the other side. Tubbo grit his teeth, willing his body to move and complete this easy task. But no matter how much he tried, he remained as still as a statue. He averted his eyes from Fundy’s shocked expression.
“Will someone please tell me what’s going on? What are Dreamons?” Eret crossed their arms in front of them.
“Dreamons are creatures Tubbo and I hunted a while back. They possess a person and can only be exorcized with a ritual. We tried to exorcize one from Dream, but we may have just split the demon from him instead.”
“What, so Tubbo is possessed by this Dreamon?”
“No- well, we thought we established that Tubbo couldn’t be possessed. This is… weird. Transmuted Dreamons are normally constantly shifting between themselves and the Dreamon. While they are the Dreamon, they are frightened by iron doors and they can’t cross farmland. But the host is unconscious at that point and doesn’t remember the Dreamon’s actions.”
Their voices sounded far away as Tubbo still tried to cross the one block in front of him.
“Tubbo, you still remember us right?” Fundy asked him, a distracting noise that was trying to distract him from just stepping over this goddamn piece of dirt.
“Of course I do. We built those tents together and eventually Sapnap joined us after he saved me from a creeper.” Tubbo finally looked up. “I can’t be possessed, you know that. There has to be another reason for this- maybe I am just having a migraine.”
“You know there is one way to know for sure.” Fundy said, motioning off into the distance. “We take you to the point of the radio frequency for Dreamons.”
“Where is that?” Eret asks. “And what does it do?”
“Oh come on Eret, you’re not seriously going to believe I’m possessed?”
“I don’t know what’s going on and quite frankly, you’re scaring me a bit Tubbo.” Eret let out a sigh. “If you say you hunted these things in the past and Fundy says he recognises the symptoms then I think it’s worth checking out at least.”
‘don’t want that’
‘don’t trust them’
“If that’ll help you sleep at night.” Tubbo muttered, stepping to the side and around the farmland, continuing in the direction Fundy had pointed at.
Fundy and Eret soon followed, the fox hybrid still explaining things to the other. “It’s in front of the Quartz mansion, we performed the ritual on Dream there. Every coordinate is a frequency and at 249, -789 is the frequency Dreamons use to communicate.”
Eret nodded at him, interested in learning about this new adversary. It didn’t take them long to arrive at the Quartz mansion and Tubbo double checked his communicator to make sure he was standing on the right block.
“Here we are, and I am completely fine. See?” He hopped around on the line.
“You don’t feel anything weird? Or hear any voices?”
Not anymore. “No, I don’t.” He had his back towards his companions, gazing at the mansion. Maybe the short walk here had cleared his head. Maybe the stress had been getting to him. Who even knew anymore?
The grass around him was green, the sky blue and he breathed in the air as the wind blew past him gently and he was alive. He turned around.
“I’m fine so can we just go-”
The rest of his words died in his throat as he didn’t see his friends as he expected. Well, they were his friends, but their faces were wrong. They both looked younger, and their clothes had changed as well. Bright, light blue and pink on Fundy and dark blue on Eret. His past stared directly back at him in the form of his friends in their uniforms from L’Manberg.
‘not your friends’
‘enemies’
‘they want to get rid of you’
“What do you want from us?”
Someone said. Was it… was it him? Judging from the looks on Eret and Fundy’s faces, he was indeed the one who said that.
“Tubbo…?” Fundy reached out. No. no. no. wrong.
“Leave me alone.” When did he get dizzy? The world spun, colors blending together into a nauseating mess.
“Tubbo!”
“What the fuck?!”
They were still shouting, shut them up then. But why were they shouting? Tubbo looked down, trying to get rid of this sudden dizziness and nausea and his heart dropped when he saw he was no longer on the ground- he was hovering a couple of feet above it.
“Eret, get someone, anyone! Get help, we need as many people as possible. I’ll try to hold him here!”
“Fundy…?” His voice had never sounded this small, but Tubbo was terrified. “What is happening to me?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know… You taught me everything I know about Dreamons.” Fundy whispered back, voice also showing his fear. “Shit, uh… I’ll build the tower we made.”
Fundy picked up some dirt and started making the tower Tubbo had shown him how to make before. The pain in his head returned and it started to creep into the rest of his body. His body, still floating in the air as Tubbo hugged his knees close to himself. The scar on his face burned- it burned as it had when it was still fresh, when it was made. Sounds around him grew louder and louder until even the wind rustling through the grass was deafening to him.
And through the cacophony of noises, he could hear them again- this time even more clear then they had been. Voices screaming, voices begging. Voices that sounded otherworldly. Finding a target- finding him, he had been chosen. It drowned out even the sounds of the peaceful world around him, until there was nothing but screaming in his head. Had he at some point started to scream himself?
He couldn’t be sure how much time had passed, but his throat felt raw and his face burned with tears streaming down it. There was a tower around him now, he could feel its presence. Could feel it rejecting him- no, them.
Something splattered on his face. Tubbo lifted an arm from where he had been digging his fingernails into his legs and felt the liquid drip down his face. A moment of clarity in the chaos-
Fundy was in front of him, holding an egg.
There was a crowd now gathered behind him, Eret must have returned by now.
Screaming.
Not from him.
Inside him.
Egg white dripped down his face.
Words, he was supposed to repeat.
The orange one was shouting them.
I am one
A soul
A higher power
I wish for this no more
I will be fixed
Words that sounded familiar in his mind but unfamiliar on his tongue. Yet he repeated them nonetheless. And he felt something break free.
Floor, cold, underneath him. Tubbo opened his eyes to see clouds above him, gently floating past. His entire body hurt, but it felt different from before.
“Tubbo… Tubbo! Are you okay?” Fundy was crouched next to him. Tubbo coughed and pushed himself up to his knees.
“Have been better.”
Fundy let out a sigh of relief and turned to the crowd. “The ritual worked, thank you everyone. With more people involved, that Dreamon didn’t stand a chance!”
Tubbo scanned the crowd as he looked around, who had Eret managed to bring here? He saw a lot of familiar faces, and he was surprised that this many people had responded to his emergency.
“I do need to test all of you for Dreamon possession now though, so if you could line up here-”
“Why do we need to be tested?!” Tommy yelled, standing at the front of the crowd. Blood poured out his mouth as he spoke.
“We don’t know how Tubbo got possessed, it could have been because he’s been in contact with someone else who was possessed.” Fundy’s face warped, mouth exaggerating its movements and jaw growing slack- threatening to fall off his face and take the skin with it.
“Tubbo, are you hurt?” Eret kneeled down beside him. Nausea grew again as Tubbo stared at them- their body covered in open and infected wounds, the stench causing him to finally turn around and retch as he gagged.
The noise from the crowd grew quiet as everyone focused on Tubbo again.
He could see concern in the eyes of everyone around him. No animosity towards each other, but shared worry for the one in the middle of the small circle that had formed around him.
And yet, all of them looked wrong. Grotesque, mauled and mutated versions of the people he knew stared back at him.
“It’s not gone.” He spoke past the nails in his throat, scraping at his insides and making breathing agony.
At the same time the people around him started shouting, the screaming in his head started again. But this time, somehow- it was even worse.
‘devour you’
‘devour you’
‘devour you’
‘devour you’
Tubbo gasped, trying to calm himself as the world spun again- or maybe it was because his head was flailing wildly.
Heat all around him, unbearable, scorching, it felt like being dipped into lava. It felt worse than dying the first two times, and he knew he was again. The beasts inside him clawing at his very soul as he writhed on the ground- no amount of help can save you now.
He was going, he would be gone, he was going to be nothing. Faces around him blurred and the last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was pure panic.
.
.
.
.
.
—
Cataclysmically, he opened his left eye. Then, exploded spontaneously into a firey, flamey death. And his blood was then used, and snorted as cocaine.
He was still somehow conscious, or at least he thought he was, and he could finally see them. Long shadows, like a human body but stretched beyond its limits. Pointed teeth, rows of them, dripping with crimson blood. Their dark green color made him sick, but it was all that filled his world now- or what was left of it, what was left of him.
Time seemed to be moving continuously forwards and backwards. His exploding body reformed in the blink of an eye so the Dreamons could feast on it again and again.
They ripped into him, teeth scraping against bone, digging into his organs with a squelching noise. The cycle continued and continued, every single small bit of him devoured, exploded, burned, deliciously.
He was not dead, or was he? Unclear. He couldn’t trust his senses anymore.
The cycle continued.
Until it didn’t.
A woman. Her arms outstretched, they still barely reached past the rim of the enormous hat she was wearing.
But the Dreamons’ hands dragged him under again, before he could grab her hand. She seemed to be screaming silently, but Tubbo was too numb at this point to care- to hear, to feel any agony like the emotion painted on her face.
A black, dark, ink void swallowed him, and Tubbo fell- or floated, downwards…
downwards?
Flashes of white hot- blinding pain- but the teeth weren’t on him anymore.
A hooded figure, two halos crossing over each other in the middle of where their face would be. A white pair of wings, even more pure than the fresh fallen snow of his home.
He reached out- anything would be better than returning to those teeth. He can’t save him. He said so. But he could bring him somewhere else. Was he sorry? He was sorry…?
And then there was only darkness again.
—
He wakes up and he is still floating- but in a different way.
He is not supposed to be here, he knows that.
He feels water against his face, he is floating in an ocean.
A familiar face and an even more familiar voice.
“Tubbo? Why are you here? This is Limbo. No, no, no, no, you shouldn’t be here.”
Ranboo grips his arm as Tubbo fades away.
“No please, please, stay with me!”
He begs, and Tubbo still fades.
He can’t stay.
He closes his eyes and sinks away into the void. The void beyond Limbo.
Away. But safe.