Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Not a single shout rings out in the darkness of the eternal night, nor does the pain of a single soul cry out to the fallen one. How empty it is, this world, after he finished with it. How pathetic it is, this world, now that he has had his fill.

He craves more, a deep-seated need boiling in his soul, the pain of that hunger gnawing at him, consuming him. It is not enough. He has been without it for a while now, has he? Been without the succulent taste of pain, of fear, of agony. How long?

He remembers the feast. It was not at all like what he knows now, for an icy satisfaction had filled his bones in those times. It has been years since then, five years. He is eleven now, is he not? Eleven.

It comes like second nature, the opening of the portal in front of him, though he had not known it was of his nature to make one.

Empty is the universe that stretches before him, and so empty his disappointment feels. But he notices- a soul filled to the brim with guilt and agony. His motion through the portal is swift and decisive, leaving the village behind himself, and coming face to face with a skeleton.

He had not previously met any skeletons, not any besides he and his brother, so how odd it was to see another. But then again, they were not really skeletons, were they? This one was a true skeleton, down to the white soul in his ribcage.

“Hello.”

That is how one says it, is it not? He wonders.

The skeleton looks up from the corpse on the ground. His eyelights are red, though one contains a hint of blue, causing its light to come across as a purple.

Silence fills the corridor, and minutes pass until it is broken by the skeleton.

“Who are you?”

That is a question he has not yet had to answer, not really. Neither him now or before, for Dream had always been the one to introduce him. He contemplates his answer.

The name he has always had works just fine here, he finds, so he opts to use it.

“I am the one known as Nightmare.”

“Bit on the nose.”

The skeleton comments.

“Or perhaps the lack of one.”

A sadness fills the skeleton, which Nightmare greedily laps up, a delicacy in its own right.

But it does not satiate him. Why does it not feel as fulfilling as the meals of the past? Why can he not be full?

“That would be funny, wouldn’t it.”

The skeleton comments.

“They’re going to reset. It isn’t enough. I wonder why they haven’t done it already. I’m…”

The skeleton hesitates.

“It doesn’t fit anymore.”

“You are Dust, then.” Nightmare decides. “For you have caused much of it, and it coats your hands.”

“... That works.”

A light flickers at the beginning of the corridor, a figure coming in and out of existence, all the while time warps around the two. The power of determination attempts to shove Nightmare out of the universe, for he was not there previously, but is no match for him.

The human walks past him, going straight for Dust.

“You dare ignore me?”

Nightmare asks, grabbing the human with a tendril. The room shifts into a black and white perspective, and he looks down at the human.

“NOBODY gets to ignore me. Not anymore!”

Dust notices, beyond the sheer arrogance of the words he speaks, that there is a desperation in those words. Not just to be paid attention to, no, to be respected, even if all that respect comes from fear, even if nobody will love him.

He crushes the human, tentacle wrapping around their soul. It does not shatter to reload, no, it stays there, pulsing softly, even as their body falls to the ground.

Dust watches on in horror as Nightmare rips the soul apart with his teeth, not absorbing it like a monster would, no. Eating the soul, an act nobody would ever consider.

Nightmare sighs in relief, satisfied on the memories of pain and death and trials, the memories of a thousand lives. He is full, his cyan eyelight flickering to a much calmer purple, his tentacles relaxing back into his form.

Nightmare slinks against the wall, nodding off to sleep as Dust watches.

“It’s over.”

He realizes. The resets, the agony, it’s over for good.

… They’re all dead, permanently, because of him. He can’t bring them back. He doubts Nightmare can.

“You’re just a kid, aren’t you?”

He says to the unconscious being- not a monster, not really. No monster could stop the human like that.

“You’re just a babybones.”

The revelation strikes Dust like a knife. All of this, a slaughter started by a child was ended by one. How ironic.

He picks Nightmare up, taking a shortcut back to his house in Snowdin, where he lays the kid on Papyrus’ bed. A bed that will never have his brother in it again. Against his wishes, tears roll down his sockets, falling on the ground, cleaning some of the dust that seems to cling to him.

Dust hasn’t slept in thousands of resets. He’s not going to sleep now, he doesn’t think. So instead he watches the child.

It is morningtime (or so Dust thinks), when Nightmare wakes up.

“Where am I?”

A reasonable question.

“You’re in my house.”

Dust explains.

“I’ve never slept in a bed before.”

Nightmare notes.

“It’s soft.”

“That’s why he liked it, besides it being shaped like a racecar.”

Dust agrees. Nightmare does not know what a racecar is, but decides that this mysterious ‘he’ is more interesting.

“Who?”

Dust’s eyelights flicker out for a second, and a wave of sadness hits Nightmare like being tossed a blanket. Odd, because he’s never been tossed a blanket, so he doesn’t exactly know how he knows how that feels.

“... Papyrus, my brother.”

The name rings a bell, somehow in two different ways.

“The paper?”

“The font.”

“What’s a font?”

Exasperation, tasting like fresh milk. At least, how he remembers fresh milk. It’s been so long since milk was anything but spoiled for him.

“A typeface? Handwriting?”

“Oh!” Nightmare nods. “I understand.”

“Where are you from?” Dust asks. “You’re no monster.”

Nightmare contemplates the question, because in all honesty he does not know what the villagers called the place before its destruction, nor does he truly have any words to describe the difference in worlds.

“The hill atop which all emotion lies.”

Nightmare explains. It’s the best he can do.

“Really working with me here, bud.” Dust says. “Thanks.”

Nightmare smells the sarcasm, a sort of burnt caramel.

“Well excuse me for not knowing the name of my village! Nobody bothered to tell me.”

“Really?” Dust says, not exactly believing him.

“Yes, but they’re all dead now. I killed them.”

So he’s something like the human, Dust figures. If you could even call the ‘human’ one, which he doubts. They’ve never been particularly human, not since they reset perfection to square 0, just to see what would happen.

No human would do that.

“Do you have anywhere to stay?”

Dust asks, and Nightmare nods, extending a hand. Shadows swirl around it, expanding into a hole in reality itself. All the while, the room itself brightens to a complete white in comparison, making it impossible to tear his gaze away without pain.

Nightmare walks through, and Dust follows, not out of any sort of compulsion, but out of a need to protect this kid. This kid, who just ended it all.

Just a kid.

How long has it been since he thought of the human as a kid? He can’t quite remember. They stopped being a curious kid when they did it again.

Nightmare’s only committed one genocide, if he’s guessing correctly. And if Dust can sway his future decisions, it’ll be the last.

It’s the surface. He doesn’t know why this is so shocking. He saw it, once, on the first- no, second- run. But this is different. In the surface they’d arrived to, not once had he seen a sky full of stars. It had been a tragedy, to all of monsterkind, that you could no longer see them. Steps were… right, they had been working to reduce light pollution.

The second Asgore shook the hand of the president, that’s when he woke up in Snowdin.

It’s a fuzzy memory to him.

“You’re staring.”

Nightmare comments.

“At the stars? Haven’t you seen them before? Everyone has.”

“No kid, not everyone has seen the stars.”

Dust answers.

“They’re out all the time now.” Nightmare informs him. “Because I like them, so I said so, and they obeyed me, because Dream’s too petrified to tell the sun to show up!”

“Dream?”

“He doesn’t matter!” Nightmare’s purple eyelight turns cyan. “Not at all.”

The sudden drop of his voice, the anger behind it. How long has this kid been alone?

“How long…”

Dust trails off as Nightmare runs up the hill at a pace nearly unmatchable. Even Undyne would be impressed.

She wouldn’t ever see that. She was dead. Her dust was on his hands.

He can’t forget that fact.

Nightmare stands at the top of the hill, standing on a giant tree stump. Whoever cut it down must have been a boss monster, because that thing was twice the height of Asgore just in width.

“This is the Stump of Nothingness!” Nightmare announces, eyelight purple. “It used to be the Tree of Feelings, but then I cut it down.”

Dust doesn’t even know why he’s surprised Nightmare was the one to cut it.

“And that,” Nightmare points at the statue of a skeleton reaching out for something, someone, “Is Dream!”

The kid’s delusional, Dust thinks to himself, to the point where he’s even made pieces of art into ‘friends’.

“He didn’t do anything, not really. But he got in the way, so I froze him in stone.”

That somehow makes less sense, so Dust figures it must have been modeled after one of his friends, before he killed them all. So something must have been the breaking point for this kid, right? Like the five hundredth genocide. Had Nightmare also been caught in a time loop?

“You’re staring at me. Why?”

There’s something god-like in the way he looks at Dust, something that can only be described as wholly other

“No reason.”

“Liar.”

Dust backs away, something in his very soul fearing for his existence.

“Why are you scared? I didn’t do anything!”

This is the softer Nightmare, Dust recognizes. The one who’s less insane and more of just a child.

“You scared me.”

There’s no way the kid will believe a lie, if Dust’s theory about him being able to sense them is right, which it is.

“I’m sorry.”

It feels genuine, though he has no way to know if that’s actually the case of if that perceived ‘reality’ is just an illusion. He hasn’t known reality from illusion for quite some time now, anyways.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?”

Nightmare asks.

“...”

Nightmare opens a portal, and Dust walks inside to the next universe.

It’s daytime, and houses in varying colors and shades line the pavement.

“Do you know where we are?”

“No. It’s happy here.”

Nightmare shudders, eyelight dimming.

“I don’t like it.”

“Do you want to leave?”

Dust asks him.

“NO!”

The conversation is paused when a small, grey version of the human appears in front of them. Not the genocidal human, Dust knows, just looking at them. This one is a pacifist, and it puts him at ease. It does the opposite for Nightmare, instantly making him defensive, his tentacles wrapping around him like a blanket.

“Welcome to the Omega Timeline. Who teleported you here?”

Dust points at Nightmare.

“I see. You’re lucky. Your universe was destroyed by Error, correct?”

“Who?”

“So it wasn’t… Odd. Unless you’re an outcode, you shouldn’t be able to find this place. Although you could if you were a god, but We doubt it. I am Core Frisk. If you do not know any Frisks, you may just call me Frisk.”

Nightmare looks up.

“I haven’t met any Frisks.”

Core smiles, and Nightmare winces at the gesture, grabbing Dust’s arm with a tentacle and squeezing.

“What are your names? You’re both Sanses, I see.”

“Sanses?” Nightmare asks, though Dust already has a sort of idea of what Core means. There are more.

There’s a multiverse.

The knowledge eases his soul, somehow. Because, he supposes, that means his friends, his brother even, are still in a way alive.

“Short skeletons. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the general gist.” Core Frisk explains. “You’re welcome to stay, you two.”

Nightmare shakes his head.

“It’s too happy here. It hurts.”

He turns to make a portal, but the shadows barely make it before his eyesocket droops and his tentacles turn limp. The idea of doing it is exhausting, not with all this happiness around.

“How about for a night?” Dust suggests.

“Fine.”

Based on the tone, Nightmare isn’t exactly happy about this.

“Follow me.”

Core Frisk turns and walks to a house.

“You can stay here for the time being.”

Dust nods.

“Is that okay with you, Nightmare?”

“Whatever.”

Nightmare finds a suitable patch of floor and sleeps on it. Core pulls Dust aside.

“What is he?” They ask, concerned.

“I met him yesterday. I don’t know.” Dust tells them, and they nod.

“If I’m right… he’s a god, or perhaps a guardian.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Guardians are embodiments of the energy they protect, whereas gods simply look after their domains. Reaper, for instance, is a God. He watches over the domain of Death, but it would still occur without him thanks to the Guardian of Life and Death, Quetzalcoatl. He simply helps guard souls over, and his assistance is invaluable.”

“Is there any way to test for it?”

Dust hasn’t forgotten science altogether. It has been such a long time since he’s used it, but he still knows how to experiment.

“Yes. Summon out his soul, and I could tell you for a glance.”

Dust nods and gently uses blue magic on the soul. Core Frisk sucks in a breath, though the sound feels hollow and fake, as if there are no organs in their body.

“His soul is composed entirely of negativity.”

“So a guardian?”

Core Frisk nods.

“Great.”

Dust presses the soul back into Nightmare’s body.

“Though he has a significant concentration of Determination, akin to the type found in a human soul. We think he may have consumed one.”

“You all think correctly.”

Dust tells them.

“The human who committed genocide a thousand times over. He ended it.”

“That must be a relief for you.”

“Not when he ended it at the end of their path.”

“We know he did.”

So they’re omnipotent.

“But he’s not the only one who can do that. And We had never seen him before.”

“His universe is hidden from you, then.”

“That’s correct. But We knew of the universe, and if I am right, then this is a very important thing to have been brought to Our attention. Because that means the Guardian of Feelings is dead.”

Dust nods.

“And that explains everything that’s happened the past five years. We can connect the dots now… positivity dwindled significantly. Do you know how old he is?”

“He never told me. Maybe six?”

“Eleven.”

Core decides.

“We think him to be eleven.”

Dust is forced to wonder, then, if Core is right, what happened when Nightmare is six?

“You should go get some sleep.”

Core tells him.

“You haven’t in centuries of your own time.”

“Of my own time?”

“Resets are an interesting phenomenon. They take the universe back in time. In reality, this ends up giving Us millions of realities to watch at once. Since yours are connected with each other, We know that you haven’t slept in centuries of your own time. You should. Mortal bodies need it.”

“Fine.”

With that, Dust heads off to sleep, for the first time in centuries.

Chapter Text

Nightmare wakes up disoriented and hungry. He’s in a building, he thinks, thoughts muddled and fuzzy like the dust of monsters for a second before he remembers.

Right, he was in the “Omega Timeline.”

It hurts to be here, his soul crying out for pain, needing suffering it’s not getting. It hurts to be here, and Nightmare wants to leave. He reaches out a hand to make a portal, and can’t even grasp enough negativity to do that.

He’s stuck, and the realization is maddening. He can’t be stuck here, no way he’s going to stay here! Not in a place where he feels this way- no.

He rushes outside and immediately winces, the light from the sun hitting his eyesocket like a rock.

“Go back to bed.”

He tells the sun, and though it temporarily heeds his command and dips below the horizon, it almost immediately pops back up.

He rushes out, trying to find somewhere here that’s not so positive. As runs past colorful buildings echoing with the sound of laughing children, he finds himself in the center of this joy that feels like sticks and stones bruising his bones. It feels like mocking laughter, it feels like being exposed and vulnerable, even though all of his bones are protected by layers of negativity and cloth.

He wants to scream, and can’t even muster enough energy to do that. The only thing keeping him from collapsing is the determination of the soul he absorbed, and even then it’s simply not enough.

Hunger, a gnawing, all-consuming feeling, spreads through him. It hurts, hurts every bone in his body, hurts his tentacles, his eyesockets, his soul. He needs food, desperately needs real negativity.

“Nightmare?”

Core Frisk asks.

“Are you alright?”

Their concern is delicious, but it’s not enough, it’s too positive. The intentions behind it are too pure, and he wants it to stop. So he hits Core with a tentacle. Their body cracks and dissolves, but there is no pain to bring satisfaction with the attack.

He feels that concern again, from behind him this time, and immediately turns.

“Go away.”

“Alright.”

Core disappears, and he finds himself lonely. They’d gotten here in daytime, and it had hurt then, but at least the sun had been covered with clouds then. Now it hurts. It’s too hot here. He wishes he could sweat, but finds that the glare from the sun only hurts. The sun never hurt like this, back in the days where it still rose. The sun was always at least somewhat bearable. Has it changed? Has he changed?

He decides he hates this place.

The people of the timeline go about their daily business, and they’re happy. They’re happy. He wants nothing more than to wipe the smiles off of their faces, to torment them until they cry out in agony, because their smiles feel like the leering laughter of the villagers.

Most walk around him, ignoring him. It’s no better than a slap across the face, is it? When he’s finally around people, they don’t even care about him. It’s been years and people couldn’t care less.

He feels concern behind him.

“Child, are you alright?”

A regal goat boss monster asks. Her pity is bitter, horribly bitter, and he just knows that her terror would be sweet.

Just by looking at her, just by feeling her soul, he knows she’s innocent, unlike the villagers. She didn’t do anything to him. She doesn’t deserve to die. But maybe she could suffer a little, right? He’s sure that would be fine, he thinks, lying to himself, because if he doesn’t he will starve.

He rips her arm off with a tentacle, and guilt immediately fills him. But the satisfaction of her anguish, of her shock, it overpowers any guilt he might have felt, as it crumbles away into dust.

“CORE FRISK!”

She shouts, clutching where her arm used to be. They appear immediately, already having seen what happened.

“Nightmare.”

He’s still hungry.

“If you want to stay here, you can’t do that.”

His eyelight darts back and forth, and he makes a portal to Dreamtale.

It’s so empty compared to the Omega Timeline. Not a single emotion graces his senses, besides the remaining panic in Dream’s statue.

Core Frisk, of course, sees his disappearance and immediately makes a body near Dust.

“Sans.”

Dust jolts awake.

“Yes Pap-”

He never finishes the name, summoning a Gaster Blaster and shooting Core with it.

Core summons another body.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m not the murdering human.”

Dust takes a breath.

“It’s Nightmare.” Core explains. “He cut off a Toriel’s arm and fled to Dreamtale. She’s going to be alright, and I explained the situation to her.”

Dust sighs.

“I can’t just teleport across universes.”

Core nods.

“I know. But I have the coordinates for Dreamtale.”

“Why don’t you just go, then?”

Core shakes their head.

“Because Nightmare is the only monster capable of managing the universe, it obeys his every command. He doesn’t trust me enough for me to enter, or anyone else to be frank. I’m sure the universe itself will eventually be lost to time by all but those who can override his abilities.”

“Who can override them?”

Dust asks.

“Good question. It’s pretty much just Ink.”

“A god?”

“They preside over creation.”

“Got it.”

Core hands Dust a small cellphone.

“This is a teleporter. The coordinates are 22-555-2-222-55-2-00-00-555-33. And when you need to get back, the coordinates are 44-0-6-33.”

“What?”

“I swear it made sense when we were using the Nokia models.”

Dust inputs the code and points the teleporter at a wall. Light swirls around, creating a portal. Interesting, because Nightmare’s portals were made of darkness. So perhaps there’s a fundamental difference in how they work…

No, he has to focus on the task at hand. He’s not a scientist anymore. He doesn’t need to experiment, especially not on this little kid. Just a kid.

Thinking about it, it’s been far too long since his life had any semblance of normalcy. It’s frustrating, because any normal he’d ever established was immediately torn to shreds the second the human entered the underground, or reset, or… He shouldn’t be getting himself into his own head about this.

He walks through the portal, back into the world of endless night. It’s beautiful, the stars, though they look completely different from the ones back in his own world.

There Nightmare sits, on the top of the hill, gazing at the statue he calls Dream. Dust approaches him, simply sitting down on the grass next to him in silence.

“Why are you here?” Nightmare eventually asks.

“Because I was worried about you.”

Core was more worried, Dust thinks to himself, but it’s not a lie.

“You were worried?”

The poor kid seems confused that anyone would actually care about him. Dust has to wonder what happened.

He wondered that for the human, too. Wondered why they were the way they were. Why their curiosity turned into endless genocide.

But it was a useless thing to wonder about, when despite all of his efforts, nothing changed. When the only way to stop them was to become worse than them- to beat them. And yet they had always come back.

“Of course I was worried. I woke up and you were gone.”

“You slept well.”

“How do you know that?”

“Your bad dreams taste like salt.”

An interesting choice of words, Dust notes. Bad dreams instead of nightmares, when Nightmare would obviously know the proper word for it.

“Thank you for that.”

Nightmare seemed stunned for a second.

“You’re… grateful?”

Dust chuckles.

“Of course I’m grateful. You stopped an endless cycle of suffering and let me sleep peacefully. That’s a blessing, kiddo.”

“I’m no blessing. I killed everyone. I turned my brother to stone. I’m a curse on the multiverse itself.”

Nightmare scowls and looks away.

“I’m a monster.”

“Hey, aren’t we all. I killed my own brother just so that he wouldn’t be killed by the human again. I killed everyone I loved, just to stop them from a worse fate. If anything, I’m the monster here.”

“That’s funny.”

Nightmare’s tone tells Dust he really doesn’t think that.

“Because if it wasn’t for me, none of that would have had to happen.”

“Really?”

Dust rolls his eyelights and scoffs.

“We all need suffering and pain, and fear. Or else things like that would happen more often.”

“No they wouldn’t.”

“If people had no fear, they wouldn’t have empathy, would they? If people didn’t suffer, than murder would be accepted.”

Nightmare begins a retort before stopping, eyelight darting focus between withered blades of grey grass.

“See? We need you.”

“But what about natural disasters? I cause those.”

“Do you?”

Dust asks, amused.

“... I don’t actually know. The villagers told me I caused them, though.”

So the villagers who he killed had bullied him. That would explain some of his villain complex- other children blamed him for everything that went wrong because he was frankly an easy scapegoat, Dust figures.

“That’s…”

“It’s because I’m the guardian of negativity. But I can’t even do that right. I chopped down the Tree of Feelings. It’s gone now. And I ate the apples.”

“And how old were you?”

“Six.”

“When I was six, I tripped over my own feet and called karate ‘cry-ate’.”

Nightmare giggles.

“Cryate? Karate sounds more like coyote than that.”

“I know.”

“Can we read one of my favorite books?”

Nightmare asks Dust.

“Sure kid. Sure we can.”

Nightmare grabs a very battered copy of Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers out from a hole he carved in the stump to store things in.

“Do you want to read it to me?”

Dust asks, and Nightmare nods.

“Once upon a time, there was a young boy named John. He lived in an ordinary village, much like your own, but there was no magic. He was a human, and monsters didn’t exist, unless you counted his friend’s teleporting dog.”

Nightmare continues on with the story, eye lighting up in excitement as he tells it. He does not tire throughout, though he does notice Dust’s eyelights flickering.

“You’re tired.”

Nightmare says, putting the book down.

“Let’s stop.”

 

Dust nods.

“Are you okay with going back to the Omega Timeline?”

He asks Nightmare, hand on the teleporter.

“Will you stay if I say no?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want to go back.”

Dust nods, and for that night, they sleep under the stars.

Chapter Text

There was no morning, because Nightmare would never allow it. But Dust still awoke like clockwork. Centuries of building a habit makes it stick, he thinks to himself, chuckling slightly.

He didn’t have nightmares the last night, he notes gratefully. And the reason for that is still asleep, leaning against the stump. His one eyesocket is closed, and he seems at peace. That’s good.

Dust has no real way of telling what time it is, but guesses it’s probably six in the morning, because that was when he got up before. It helps that the underground didn’t have a sun itself, though he’s not sure if he would have preferred seeing the stars constantly. He would take them for granted, wouldn’t he, if he could see them every day?

Nightmare will probably sleep a good while longer, so Dust decides to explore the ghost town. It’s a long walk down the hill, and if he was human he would be struggling for breath. He’s not, of course, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t stop for a break.

“I’m not going to do that again.” He decides to himself, thinking of his lethargy in Snowdin. There’s a whole multiverse out there; not to mention, dying is now permanent, so he can’t waste his time.

He sees the hollow shells of buildings and continues on his path.

It’s a ghost town, obviously, and dust is scattered everywhere. Dust.

“I’m going to have to start calling myself that now, huh?”

He wonders aloud, because he’s still been calling himself Sans mentally. He walks through what must have once been a bustling marketplace. Rotting wood sits nailed into decrepit stalls, and some human corpses sit behind the frame. Their flesh has yet to completely rot, and the smell of garbage hangs heavy in the air.

The fabrics draped over the stall are full of moth-made holes, and the once-vibrant shades of red and green have faded to a near-grey. It hasn’t been that long since the place was destroyed, though, so he doesn’t understand exactly why it looks like decades have passed. It’s just another thing Dust classifies as ‘Nightmare driven oddity’.

He hears faint footsteps.

“Probably my imagination.”

It’s debunked as his imagination when a cat monster peeks around the corner before immediately running away.

“Wai- and he’s gone.”

Dust follows after the monster, mostly in curiosity. Eventually he makes it out of the marketplace and into a residential area, where stone houses supported by wooden beams stand in disorganized clusters. They must have been built rapidly and without plan, Dust concludes.

Eventually he finds the monster gasping for breath against the side of a house.

“What do you want with me?”

~

~

Nightmare woke up to Dust's absence. He didn't know exactly why he was so surprised, per se, but he did feel a gnawing ache in his soul for it. But...there were still two other people in this world. Neil and Dust. Dust must have just gone exploring, he reasoned. With that in mind, he set off to the town to go find the wayward skeleton.

He doesn’t often go here, because he no longer needs to eat (and even then he’s long exhausted the town’s very limited food supply), but he remembers the paths by soul, so it’s not hard to track down Dust.

He keeps his distance once he notices Dust is talking to Neil. Ever since the incident, Neil has avoided him like the plague he is. Neil sure as hell didn’t care about the village, but Nightmare understands. Making amends with the person that destroyed everything you ever knew…

It would be like making friends with the mean villagers.

With that in mind, he understands why Neil wouldn’t want to look at him anymore. Some days, he doesn’t even want to look at himself in the winding creeks and rivers of the nearby forest.

Those rivers were how he discovered he didn’t need to breathe, actually.

The conversation is boring, so he jumps down from the building he was using for a vantage point, landing clumsily and nearly tripping over his own feet. It’s been more of a problem these past years, tripping and falling.

“Probably because of the tentacles.”

Nightmare mutters to himself.

He’s hungry again. There’s no emotion here. It’s better than the omega timeline, though, where the emotions were sickening, smelling like bitter almonds and tasting like rotten eggs. The now faint flavours of Dreamtale were much more tolerable than that.

Dusttale had been so empty, but it had tasted meaty and full, a rich umami in comparison to the past few years. He can’t leave, though, not without Dust. Dust is the nicest monster he’s ever met besides Neil, and Dust wasn’t scared of him like the aforementioned cat.

There are some animals left in the forest, or what’s left of the forest. The trees have been dying, so he previously looked in the old library to find out why.

“Unfortunately, it seems plants require sunlight, and there’s nothing I can do about that. Welll. I could let the sun rise again.”

He shakes his head.

“But the sun hurts…”

He whines, continuing on into the forest to find a suitable animal. They’ve mostly cleared out or died, for some reason. The trees themselves are grey and wilted, the bark chipping away and decaying, almost turning into stone in some parts. The grass which once covered the place is mostly gone now, just a few spare blades poking through the malnourished dirt.

“Which is weird, because the forest was… Was it thriving? I wasn’t there, was I?”

He knows for a fact he wasn’t, but he has a hazy sort of memory. There’s no sound, or sight, or even feeling to it, but there is definitely an experience.

Yes, yes, it was nothing if not a successful ecosystem.

“A badger!”

Nightmare smiles, wrapping a tentacle around the little thing and slowly squeezing it. The panic is a dull, musty sort of sweetness, and as the light leaves its eyes, he’s left without an aftertaste. All the best, strongest emotions have an aftertaste.

He still needs more.

But what if Dust has already left? His tentacles writhe slightly as he frets about the possibility.

Dust is a good monster, and his positive emotions are so weak that they only add notes of complexity to the delectable dish served up by his depression.

Though he still needs to feast, he slips back into the town to make sure Dust is still there, a paranoia he knows to be unreasonable.

He can sense the monster’s emotions, after all, so obviously he’s still there.

~

~

Now that Dust gets a closer look, he looks starved, and he’s missing an arm. His fur is green with accents of cream, and matted like he hasn’t taken care of it in years; he probably hasn’t.

“What’s your name?” Dust asks.

The question relaxes the monster, who stands up straight.

“Neil.” He answers.

“Sa- Dust. I thought Nightmare killed everyone?”

“I still don’t know why he spared me. Now unless you have some way to help me, then can you please leave me alone?”

“I have one thing.”

Dust mentions, taking out the teleporter.

“You’ll get help there. They have food, shelter.”

Dust informs Neil, who seems distrustful of the notion.

“You’re pulling my leg.”

Neil concludes.

“We lost all of our teleporters after his massacre.”

“This isn’t one of yours. It’s from the Omega Timeline.”

Dust informs Neil.

“That how you got here?”

“Yep.”

“Huh. Fine. Take me there. I’ve been hungry for the past five years, and I’m not resorting to corpses.”

He types in coordinates: 44-0-6-33. The thing makes a portal, though it seems a lot shakier than the one it made in the Omega Timeline.

Are all portals fueled by emotion, or are some fueled by the fundamental magic of the universe? Is this universe lacking in magic or emotion? What does that mean for the environment?

There’s too many questions to theorize about at the moment. He’ll put it off until later, just like he does with everything.

Neil walks through the portal and waves an empty goodbye just as it closes. The teleporter beeps.

[Low Battery. Recharge.]

“And how do I do that?”

[Recharge. Entering Sleep Mode.]

“Very helpful there.”

Dust comments.

“You’re done talking to Neil, right?”

Dust jumps, turning around to Nightmare. Blood coats one of his tentacles, which holds a very dead badger; what could the kid possibly need that for?

“You startled me! Yeah. What’s with the…”

“Can we leave this universe and move on to the next now? There’s not enough in it.”

Nightmare’s dialogue is eerily familiar, sending chills up his spine. It comes to mind… Chara. There was always a brief reprieve of nothingness before the resets, but one thing was constant: Every monster heard those words. Most forgot them; but of course, not Dust.

Dust never forgot anything.

“Sure, kid.”

Magic dances around Nightmare’s hand, swirling into the complex shape of a portal. It’s a sight to behold, that’s for sure, hints of a landscape showing through wisps of shadow. From what he can make out, there’s a countertop. Maybe it’s a Grillby’s somewhere. That would be nice, wouldn’t it, having Grillby’s again?

He hasn’t had it in centuries, too busy at the judgement hall (and gathering LV) to eat.

Walking through the portal, it’s clear he’s in a cafe. A cat cafe to be precise. The walls are a soft, gentle pink, and the floor is carpeted in some areas. Cat trees line the walls, where a multitude of cats rest.

“Hello!”

The cashier says, smiling.

“May I take your order?”