Chapter Text
The letter in his hands was no surprise.
Dark words, written with swirling ink onto the crinkled paper, edges faded and stained from the miles it had traveled. Stamped with the king’s seal, the wing of a gull twisted around a golden shield, the words copied and sent to a thousand men in the kingdom- No, it wasn’t unexpected. Not in the least.
Everyone knew this was coming. It was inevitable, in all its twisted glory.
But staring down at the twisting words. The power a simple piece of paper had. He couldn’t help but hate it.
He held the letter with shaking fingers, gripping onto the paper like a lifeline, staring at where it had been left on the porch. It wasn’t a surprise, no, everyone knew what was coming, war was on the horizon and the King had announced a draft weeks before, but he never thought it would happen to him .
His life was shattered, in the palm of his hand, all because of that dreaded letter. Paper and ink. Its innocence had been truly deceiving.
The world seemed to spin. The words dripped off the page, onto the creaking wood of the deck below his feet- and he’d never see this house again. Not a surprise, expected by every man of age in the country, but he’d grown up on this porch, the grooves of the wooden planks were welded into his memory, he knew every knot and splinter and crack, and now it would be gone. He stood there for minutes, hours, he didn’t know, but eventually the door opened and his mother led him inside.
He tried to tell her what had happened, but his voice was gone, and had disappeared deep inside of him. It was all he could do to hold out the letter, and watch her eyes widen. She smiled, the smile that had always told him it would be alright. It didn’t cover the pain.
Dinner that night was quiet. The smell of roasting carrots, rabbit, freshly made pie filled the air, and he couldn’t bring himself to care. The worries bubbled up, stealing his appetite. He felt nauseous, knowing what was out there, knowing what could happen. A plate was set in front of him, and he stared, looking up and into his father’s eyes.
Everyone knew what this was, even though it was left strictly unsaid. That night, words exchanged in nothing but quiet whispers, might be one of the last moments he would have with his family. The thought chilled him, knowing that this might be the last night where he would steal food from his siblings plates, giggling and fighting and shoving each other back and forth. This might be the last night where he would watch his father retire to his study, but not before smiling and kissing his mother goodnight, whispering words that only she knew into her ear.
This might be one of his last nights alive.
No one said it, but everyone knew what the draft meant. They were all keenly aware of what horrifying game he would be thrown into over the next months. It was a chance, a gamble of life and death, but it was safer to roll the dice than try to run. Running was a death wish.
But hearing the rumors, the whispers of what happened on the battlefields, the ground covered with corpses as far as you could see, it made him think that maybe packing up and slipping away wouldn’t be so bad.
At least it gave him a choice.
He nearly did, nearly stayed up waiting to disappear under the cover of night, but of course the King had thought of that. Of course he’d thought of stopping it, those irrational hopes and dreams of avoiding an inevitable war. One man from every household, those were the rules. Even if he ran, and was shot down by the very arrows meant for the enemy, someone from his family would be dragged to be a pawn in the same war.
His brothers were young, far too young for those sorts of horrors. He couldn’t imagine condemning them to that- 14 and 12, fighting for their lives, holding blades meant for the hands of men. And his father, wounded from a battle forgotten, wouldn’t make it out.
So, against everything in him screaming to please, just get out, he stayed. Hoping he wouldn’t regret it.
Two days later, the fog dense and hanging over the valley, early morning crickets sending a humming noise to the open air, the soldiers arrived and he went with them.
(The memories were faint, almost forgotten, but he remembers his youngest brother running after them, screaming at him not to go.)
They traveled for three days, his feet aching and body sore from the early mornings. Every village they went to, the parade of soldiers grew longer, people dragged from their homes to join the war. As they walked, he could see the world changing around him, villages growing sparser as they hiked towards a battleground. When they arrived at the training grounds, it was nearly dark, and he was given an old uniform and a sword, told to go to the barracks.
The next month was… difficult. What he would do to go back to it.
Up at the crack of dawn, endless hours of training. He went to bed with his hands hurting and body covered with bruises from the day. He wasn’t a warrior, no, he was meant to run and jump and climb and leave the fighting behind him. The blade that he carried was too big and too slow and the thought of carrying it into battle was too horrifying to reflect upon.
Over time, he formed a mantra, repeated in his head time and time again. Just keep fighting. Don’t think, just do, whether that be dragging himself out of bed or stabbing that godforsaken blade into another man’s chest. Just to think of such things was awful, and sent him spiraling in the dead of night, so he didn’t. He didn’t think.
He got up and faced the day, going through the movements like an endless dance, jumping and twirling in this meaningless parade of strength.
Except it wasn't a dance, it was a war, and if he wasn’t careful he was going to die.
Don’t think about it.
Of course, there was always a light in the endless darkness, a solace in a time of pain. He found it in his companions, his bunkmates- friends, if you will. Not men, just boys, just like him, barely old enough to call themselves adults.
There were two, in the end, that he grew particularly close to. One was from the desert in the east, who was loud and wild and had grown up wielding a sword, who would teach him the ropes of battle when the generals turned a blind eye, too focused on gathering men to send to the fields to die. The other was quieter, almost kind, which would kill him on the battlefield. He would braid other’s hair to keep it out of their faces, sing drinking tunes at night, and spout utter nonsense about the world. An intellectual, really. A man who had wanted to go back to school, be a professor within time. A man with his whole life ripped away from him.
They were his lifeline throughout all of it, interlocking hands on the final night of training, then sneaking a bottle back to the barracks and drinking themselves sick. That first battle, he almost didn’t feel afraid, because they were there, beside him.
The battle was where it all fell apart.
He didn’t remember much of it. The yelling, the screaming, the cries of a dying man. His uniform had been stained, with blood and mud and who knows what else. He remembered feeling the cold touch of flesh against his hands when he tripped, falling onto a body. It hurt and it stunk and he wanted to vomit, to throw down his sword and run.
But a man who runs is a dead man, so he got up and kept fighting.
The sword was painfully heavy in his hand, movements slow and jerky, technique falling to pieces against the will to just survive this. To make it out. He had a faint picture in his mind of seeing an ally on the battlefield, stabbed in the neck by an enemy soldier, and he had an even fainter memory of kneeling by their body and shaking their shoulders.
They didn’t wake up. He wanted to try to help, to give them back their life. He knew this man, vaguely, he was older with a beard just turning gray, and he had four kids back home. But he was dead, and there was no going back from that.
Rage and pain and fear. It had overtaken him.
A haze. That was what it was, everything had turned blurry and sideways and he really couldn’t remember what had happened next. He’d sobbed, he’d fought, and maybe, he really didn’t remember, he’d stabbed another man in the stomach. What he would do to take it back.
The guy had been dead before he’d ripped the sword out.
The sound was horrible, the squelching of flesh and guts and the sobs of the man he had killed wet and ragged and loud, and then quieter, quieter still, until they finally faded into silence. It made him want to throw up, and maybe he had, retching on the ground next to the body. He’d discarded the sword, he knew that much, stumbling to his knees in front of the man.
And maybe, maybe, he’d put his hands onto the man’s chest, it’s too faded in his head to even be sure if it’s real. He’d sobbed, because he’d killed him, killed this corpse that had once been a person, a living, breathing human being. He’d screamed, the world had been too much, and suddenly the man had gasped.
Again, he didn’t know if it was real.
It couldn’t be.
But then again, it had to be.
He’d stared, because he was sure, he was sure that the man had been dead. He’d killed him. And yet, despite everything he’d ever known, the man sat up, and stared at him with wide eyes, and he could only stare back as the wound on his stomach seemed to disappear.
The man was dead. And then he had touched the body, and the man was alive again.
Now, he wasn’t one for fairytales. But watching, too stunned to speak, as the man stood up and ran, battle forgotten, the stories couldn’t help but slip back to him.
His mother’s fingers, combing through his hair, speaking of tales long forgotten. Hundreds of years before, a man, or woman, or perhaps someone else, had lived on the edge of the kingdom. Not much was known about them, they were reclusive and lived out in the woods- few people ever saw them, and even fewer lived to tell the tale. There’d been rumors, of course. Rumors of dark magic, of witchcraft, of something so “other” that no one could put a name to it.
His mother would poke him in his nose, her stomach round. She was expecting his younger brother. He could recall brown hair falling in her face, smiling softly as he squirmed in the blankets. He’d ask her if it was real. She’d said she didn’t know.
The story was faint, tucked in the back of his memory, but it was a story all the kingdom’s children knew. They all knew about the mysterious someone, who was rumored to have been able to bring people back to life.
A necromancer, with the power of life and death in their hands.
The story had crept into his brain, and it wouldn’t let go. He had stared at his hands, and there was no power coursing through them, they were just hands, pale and covered in dirt and bloody and scars. He wasn’t a necromancer, a witch, a fae, wasn’t anything whatsoever.
He was scared. He wasn’t anything else, except so, so scared.
…
When the battle finally ended, the kingdom retreating from a horrid defeat, the troops regrouped at the edge of the treeline. It was a terrible sight indeed- the field, originally blooming with flowers, now covered in bodies. The uniforms blended together, showing it for what it truly was: there weren’t sides, not anymore. Just people, taken from their families far too soon.
Beside an old oak, looking over the battlefield, two soldiers found each other. A scholar and a warrior, each one turned into a killer within a few short hours. They were bloody and had a haunted look in their eyes, carrying the souls of the dead along with them.
They each stared at their companion, an understanding reflected back in the other's eyes.
The army left, leaving a boy with green eyes and blonde hair and a strange power in his fingers, in the eager hands of the enemy.
The fog is terribly thick, curling around his feet like a snake around prey, leaving a chill on his skin that never seemed to disappear. It creeps up the sides of tents, blurring the jagged mountains in the distance, leaving dewdrops on the foliage above and sending drops of water splattering to the forest floor.
Dream stares at the ground, and admires the rocks.
He can feel the cold air slip into his collar and chill his whole body beneath the ragged jacket he’s wearing, and he does his best not to flinch at the feeling. He tugs his coat tighter around himself, and it doesn’t help, but that’s to be expected. His coat is old and beaten and the seams are beginning to tear. Dream ignores it as best he can, forcing his gaze to the ground and skipping over the grays and browns of the world beneath him. It’s easy, all too easy to just stare at the dirt and the rocks and the grass, and pull at the loose string on the pocket of his coat. It’s all too easy to ignore what’s going on.
He stares at the ground, and pretends that nothing is happening.
“This is it?” The general asks. Dream can’t see his face, so he simply imagines the man, picturing the dark green hair and an olive coat, covered with all sorts of medals. The man’s voice is deep and clipped at the ends of his words.
Dream doesn’t look up, he doesn’t want to look up, he doesn’t want to be reminded of what's going on. But even with his eyes planted firmly on the ground, he can still feel the others watching. Judging looks that strip him bare, tear him open for these people to see.
He curls further into his jacket, trying desperately, desperately not to flinch. Next to him, Quackity makes a noise that’s halfway between a laugh and a snort. He pats Dream’s arm, a mocking sort of encouragement.
That does make Dream flinch. Luckily, none of them seem to notice.
“This is it,” Quackity says, echoing the words. “It doesn’t look like much, I know, but trust me. You’ll be impressed.”
The general hums. Earlier, when Dream had gotten the chance to truly look at his face, more than just nervous glances, he’d looked straight into Dream’s soul with dark eyes. He’s a tall man, dwarfing both him and Quackity in comparison, and the sword on his back made Dream’s breath catch in his throat.
“Would you like to see it?” Quackity asks. He’s still touching Dream, his hand is still on his arm, and it’s like ice coursing down his back.
“That’s the reason I’m out here, isn’t it?” The general sounds more than a bit annoyed at the words. He gestures forwards, into the distance. “I’m not usually one for the front lines, Quackity.”
“Of course, of course. You have nothing to worry about. We’ve taken additional measures to make sure nothing breaches the camp borders while you’re here. Of course, if something did happen… it’s not as if anything permanent would be inflicted.”
Dream has to disagree. He runs his hand over his arm under his sleeve, feeling the raised scars against his skin. A snail makes its way through the dirt on the ground, infuriatingly slow, and Dream traces its path with his eyes.
The general laughs, the sound clipped. “I’d rather not go through that. I’ve heard it’s less than pleasant.”
“Of course.”
Quackity pulls his hand away, and Dream doesn’t get a chance to catch his breath, because suddenly they’re walking. Dream keeps his eyes carefully glued to the ground, watching the heels of Quackity’s boots as he walks in front of him. They make a faint clicking sound as they make their way through the forest, echoing out into the distance.
It’s harder to walk without looking up, but Dream manages. He nearly trips as they cross the small creek that runs through the area, completely soaking one boot through with water, but it’s fine. The forest goes silent as they pass- bird songs play in the distance, never close enough for Dream to see them flitting throughout the trees. The forest is always quieter out here. Even the animals know something is wrong.
Dream follows Quackity’s footsteps, walking a path he knows by heart. He can feel the sweat already beading on his brow, and he tucks his hands in the pockets of his coat to hide their shaking. It doesn’t stop the trembling, but it’s a relief nonetheless. No one can see his fear.
They walk, and the shaking only gets worse, and Dream feels like his heart is going to beat out of his chest. At first, doing this hadn’t been as terrible. He’d thought it would get better.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, but so far, it’s only gotten worse.
They walk, and eventually they step into the smell. It hits them all at once, a physical force keeping people out. It smells horrid. Dream takes a deep breath through his mouth and tries to ignore the feeling swirling in his gut. He’s used to the smell, so he can just breathe through it.
The general isn’t so lucky. The man gags and stops short. Quackity stops behind him, and Dream nearly stumbles into Quackity’s back. “What in Prime is that?” He asks, putting a hand to his nose as his face turns a shade paler.
“I’m sure you already know,” Quackity says simply.
Dream feels the shaking in his core as they continue, Quackity grinning and joking and oblivious to the disgusted look on the general’s face. It takes another few minutes of walking to reach the spot, and Dream savors each and every second of it. When they finally stop, in a field full of drying grass, the shaking has reached Dream’s legs, and his vision seems fuzzy. He bites his tongue so hard he feels blood bubble up from the spot.
The general curses at the sight, and when Dream presses a hand to his face, his forehead is hot. He doesn’t know if it’s fear or a side effect of what he does, or if something is truly wrong within him. No one has ever bothered to figure it out.
Maybe it’s the odor, now that he comes to think of it. It’s more potent here. Just breathing feels like he’s drinking in the smell, the smell of rot and decay and death. Drinking in the blood and the souls of those who’ve died.
That was a rumor that went around the camp, once. That Dream drank the blood of these bodies.
It’s a little funny. The thought that people thought he could do that, would do that, when the thought of even touching a dead man makes him want to throw up.
“Hey.” Dream feels something hit his ribs, and he flinches so badly he nearly falls over. “Eyes open.”
And he doesn’t want to open his eyes, because he’ll vomit, surely, but Dream knows an order when he hears one. He sucks in a deep breath and peels his hand away from his face, dropping it to his side.
Quackity smirks back at him, eyes dark and unreadable, mouth quirked up to the side like he finds the whole thing funny. The general is watching him, too, his mouth slightly open, and so are the two soldiers they’ve brought along.
Dream would give anything to just stay in this moment, stock still as Quackity admires him like a piece of prized cattle. It’s terrifying; it electrifies every nerve in his body until he feels like he’s been set on fire. But it’s better than the alternative.
The general shifts, and Dream catches sight of what's behind him.
Bodies. Drenched in red and damp from where it had rained the night before. Dead soldiers, every last one of them, lined up in a row for him to bring back.
And Prime, does the sight make him want to scream. Dream stares, because once he’s looked, he finds he can’t tear his eyes away. It’s a gruesome sight, a terrible sight, captivating in the worst way possible. He feels his heart stop, his breathing pick up, and he nearly takes a step backwards to run. It would be so easy.
Instead, he forces himself to breathe, analyzing the view. Dead men, sixteen in all, in various states of decay. Body after body after body. Some have been left here only after last night’s battle, but some have been lying dead in this line for at least a week. A week where Dream had been curled up on a cot as he threw up a dozen times over into a rusted bucket, his body expelling the very last traces of death from his soul.
Dead men, corpses, bone and flesh and blood. Quackity must’ve told him to get started, because Dream suddenly finds himself on the ground, sitting on dried leaves as he stares at the first man. He’s been stabbed in the chest. There is blood all over his uniform, his eyes lifeless and cold. Dream breathes. He forces himself to breathe.
It’s a shock to the general behind him- Dream can hear it in the man’s voice. Dream understands his horror, because even as a man broken through war, he’s probably never seen something like this.
All his life, before this, Dream had seen death as something pretty. Bittersweet funerals, makeup covered corpses, wounds hidden by flowers and jewelry and the tears of those around them. Now, kneeling over death as it stares him straight in the face, it is anything but beautiful. Body after body after body. The men’s corpses are cold, stiff, faces a deathly white. They haven’t been dead long, but they already smell of blood and urine and the nature they’ve been left in.
Body after body after body. And Dream will revive them all.
“Well?” Quackity says, and his voice is different, now that he isn’t talking to the general. “Go on. Do it.”
Dream breathes again, it’s all he can do, and he forces himself to focus. His fingers are shaking as he brings them out of his coat pockets, and he places them carefully on the man’s chest. They’re immediately tinged red from the drying blood, and that alone makes Dream want to gag. He closes his eyes, distantly hoping that Quackity won’t notice. Then he goes deeper, away from real life, into some sort of dissociation he can’t even explain. Voices slip past, colors and faces, a ringing in his ears.
He breathes, and he slips away from the world of the living.
This part is easy. Searching for this power, this magic he knows he has in him, this curse that follows Dream around and eventually brought him here, finally being put to use. It’s unattainable but so close, so there, Dream can taste it in his mouth over the smell.
It takes a moment. A long, agonizing moment, a moment that leaves Dream fearing that somehow this power has been drained from his body. Then he feels a familiar tug in his gut, and pushes deeper. He can’t describe it, can’t even admit it to himself, but the feeling is there, and Dream latches onto it, holding onto it like a man would to a dingy in a hurricane.
The strings appear, invisible to even him, but reaching out like some foreign sense. Dream pauses, momentarily. He can go deeper, can visit this man in whatever death he experiences, but he doesn’t. He tugs the strings that entangle the living to the dead, and unceremoniously drags the man back from the underworld.
For a moment, a flicker of fear lights up in Dream’s chest, more potent than anything else he can name. He breathes.
Dream is afraid, he’ll admit it, but for a better reason than anyone knows.
Revival hurts. This fact irks him, keeps him up at night, is the sole reason Essempi hasn’t already won this war. It’s more of an annoyance than anything else, as Quackity often puts it. One life brought back leaves Dream weary and lightheaded; Another has a headache pounding in his skull, and another still has his skin aching like he’s been beaten.
The pain doesn’t make sense. Dream has loose theories, but nothing rational, not truly. Maybe, he often thinks, it’s just the gods way to get back at him. The Goddess of Death has no power against him. Maybe this is just her gift in return.
Dream gives one final push, one final tug, and the thread snaps. His eyes shoot open, and he watches, shaking, as the man abruptly sits up.
They lock eyes. Dream can feel his gaze, feel the man staring into his very soul, and perhaps he is. Death does strange things to people. Dream stares back, watching the wound on his chest close with a strange sense of fascination. Then he opens his mouth, and he doesn’t know what he’s possibly going to say, but the dizziness strikes him fast and hard and he nearly falls sideways.
From above him, Quackity offers the man a hand. The man takes it immediately, and they shake, the man thanking him again and again. Quackity offers him a smile, and then points in the direction of the army camp. “Thank you for your service,” He says, sweetly, and the man thanks him one last time, reverence and fear at war in his voice, before heading back towards his life.
Dream stays on the ground. He looks at the blood on his hands, flaking off into the grass.
Quackity turns back around, and as the soldier disappears between the trees, the smile grows cold. Quackity shoots him a stern look, the general watches him in horror, and Dream can feel the headache already beginning, so he moves on to the next man.
It’s after the fourth revival that Dream feels his entire body begin to shake, like he’s going into shock. After the sixth, anywhere where he touches the corpses begins to burn. It’s almost like he’s on fire, singing his skin and sending hot tears coursing down his cheeks. On the ninth, the pain is so extreme that he collapses into the newly revived man’s arms, who immediately shoves him off. Dream hits his head on a boulder jutting from the drying grass, and forces himself up on trembling arms.
And yet, it is on the eleventh revival when things take a turn for the worse.
Dream stares at the corpse, his head spinning and his vision too blurry to see clearly. He doesn’t know exactly how this man died, but it has to have been brutal. The man’s body is littered with cuts and bruises, half his face crushed and disfigured, like his skull was smashed in with a rock.
These are the revivals that Dream hates the most. The ones who are so terribly injured that it’s easier for them to just stay dead. They hurt worse than others do, like acid being poured onto his skin, poison injected straight into his veins.
Trembling even worse than before, Dream shoots Quackity a pleading look, silently begging for just a day, just a break, just a moment. Quackity gives him a crooked smile, and every hope Dream has is drowned as effectively as a flame doused with water. The man makes a “go on” gesture with his hands, and Dream has no choice but to obey.
So Dream does just that. He turns to the corpse and places his hands on the dead man’s chest, and tries to pull him back up.
He only makes it halfway through the revival, before it gets to be too much. Dream opens his eyes, and the entire world is spinning, and he can’t breathe, and the nausea rests uncomfortably in his gut— he vomits just inches away from the dead man’s head.
It isn’t a choice, that his body falls sideways into the grass, curling into a haphazard ball. He tries to move, to sit up and keep working, because Quackity will be furious if he doesn’t. But his body won’t- can’t- work.
Something hits him in the stomach, and he looks up through half closed eyes at Quackity’s face. The man glares at him, and then he’s lifted upright as Quackity grabs the collar of his jacket in his hands.
“You aren’t done,” Quackity hisses into his ear, his voice poisoning Dream from the inside out. “You revive them right now, or I swear to every fucking god that’s listening that you’ll wish you were dead.”
And Quackity is a lot of things, but a liar isn’t one of them.
An hour later, a soldier throws Dream onto the floor of his tent. He doesn’t move, isn’t even in his own body anymore. He just lies there, shivering against the stone, until the next morning comes.