The Neverending Cycle.

Current M!A: None. • Unofficial Nightmare + others blog with several dozen twists // Nightmare and Dream belong to @jokublog. The fucked up multiverse this takes place in as a whole belongs to the mun, @thegreatyin. TWs for sibling abuse, abuse as a whole, brainwashing, attempted suicide attempts, actual suicide, and self harm.

[darkness-regins]

at this? some of the tension seems to leave her, and child smiles, reaching out to brush her fingertips over them again. "is like da," she echoes, satisfied- for now. she still didn't wings would help protect her partner, but she'd just go back to practicing in private. she'd figure it out. "has very prettys wings, too."

"Prettier, really." Nightmare snorts.

"Inarguably." Sci hums, without missing a beat.

Dream laughs, and Nightmare glares with all the menace of a very insulted stuffed animal.

[darkness-regins]

okay, word it right, this time.

"..." there was no right. not with this. "do you know... if you're from before the multiverse was remade? overwritten?" they start to take a step further in the direction they'd already been going, but stop after a couple steps, realizing they weren't sure if this was the way.

"I didn't find my way here until after he did it," they continue, their own darkness shifting in the somehow coarser darkness around them. "but... I knew Dream and Nightmare, before. and when I met them again... I couldn't even recognize them. and they didn't know me."

"-it was still them, inside," they add, more quietly, thinking again of Twilight, "but the lives they'd lived had been different. and the people they'd become, too. it-" a hesitation, before admitting, more quietly, "it happened to almost everyone."

"but. if you were outside the multiverse, like i was. or maybe here in the void. it may not have happened to you. so... do you know?"

A rustling of branches, somewhere distant, somewhere deep.

Oblitus breathes behind you, ancient and still.

They shake their head, in one swift motion, and say no more.

[darkness-regins]

a grumble from the small child. "can't be more da than da. da is da." still, judging purely by empathic type stuff, she does seem at least a bit comforted- and amused, as she runs her fingertips against what feathers of his she can reach.

Nightmare purrs, slow and careful, stretching his wings and giving them a a few careful flutters.

They're still very tiny, all things considered. They probably always will be.

[darkness-regins]

void. probably they should have recognized it sooner. they extend a length of their darkness against the... well. darkness, lost in darkness. "it's so different from the void that holds my home." they, should still attempt to follow...

"I can't remember if I've been here since that bastard stole away Diliget," Bells lets the length fall back to them, "and Sci led the way into the dark, after the bastard who ruled this place." their voice drops to a soft sound of pain, "that melting bastard, with his fucking overwrite, and his fucking perfection." they look at the rotting fruit again, then around at the... nothing.

he'd told them- what, that day? that guardians weren't people, or something. that they couldn't feel pain. Bells soul sinks, and the question they'd tried to ask once before-

"Oblitus?" their voice wavers, "can I please try asking my question again?"

A small rumbling rings in your ears, soft and warm and deep.

That... sounds like a yes?

[darkness-regins]

Raine frowns, staring at the tendril wrapped around his arm. a soft sound, and she closes her eyes, wrapping her arms around him, tightly. "like da," she insists, her voice a bit unsure, but stubborn.

the colors of her tendrils bleed together more quickly once she's no longer paying attention to them, but they themselves remain. each a perfect ribbon of light and dark, capturing the entirety of the sky from it's last fading light, to the deepest starfilled colors of midnight. what had been limp and lifeless, now seeming almost to breathe with soft movements.

they begin to revert to wings again, after a few more seconds, but not the same way as before. not like a too tight grasp forced to let go, but an unused hand falling into a more relaxed position.

"...you don't need tendrils to be like da."

Nightmare flutters his wings, feathers ruffled and silky. "Hell, you're more like da than I could ever be.

"...they do look healthier like that. Way healthier."

"Healthy?" Mea echoes, soft. "Healthy partner?"

"As close as any of us can ever be."

A tendril promptly wacks Sci in the back. He barely flinches.

[darkness-regins]

"..." Bells. takes a step away.

then looks up, wary of falling fruit. that had come from somewhere after all...

The void is- well, void, as always.

It's suffocating. Like a prison.

[darkness-regins]

Raine draws two before her, one shining like the last burning lights of a setting sun, one nearly pure starlight. that one was new... it extends, wrapping around her da's arm. "always sees it change," she shrugs, though her gaze does linger on the shimmery silver white of distilled starlight. "doesn't know why. is pretties though."

the ones she's not watching fall, the colors slowly returning to what they'd been- a piece of ribbon, cut from the full length of the sky, and something closer to relaxed, than lifeless. almost as if distilling the wide spectrum of hues and shades that makes up the sky into singular aspects just might not be a good thing.

as if the child of light and dark, death and life, maybe shouldn't be separating herself into pieces.

Nightmare watches them fall for a moment, humming softly under his breath. "...ah. That-"

Sci leans over. "Perhaps they aren't supposed to be made into tendrils?"

"What? Why?"

"She's your daughter. Well- adopted, really, but close enough to matter."

"Yes." Nightmare huffs, waving a tar-coated tendril in the air. "My daughter."

"...and you were intended to have those from the start?"

Nightmare opens his mouth, then closes it. "Ah. I suppose- that is an argument, yes."

"...so." Mea chirps, softly and carefully. "Not like da? Or- like da-?"

Sci only waves a very unhelpful hand.

[darkness-regins]

"Is... new..." Raine echoes, frowning slightly in concentration as she attempts to turn her head enough to see. slowly, as he watches, they 'unbraid' before him- and in those moments she watches, intently, as for an instant her tendriks do jn fact match her wings, stars towards the tips, sunset towards the base-

a soft huff, annoyance maybe, as the colors briefly shift and blend in confused patterns, before settling into their more distinct coloration under her eye.

"..."

Nightmare makes a soft sound in the back of his admittedly-non-existent throat, his own tendrils flicking back and forth as he thinks.

"...do they. Need to be the same as your wings?"

[darkness-regins]

already uneasy from the sense of utter age from this place, Bells us stopped in their tracks by the falling fruit, and a decided familiar smell. "Oblitus?" their voice cracks slightly, their magic suddenly drawn very, very tightly to their body, the only movement a slight bristling of it. "what is this place?"

The apple just lays there, motionless and dull.

It looks tasty.

[darkness-regins]

Raine nods, taking a deep breath. Beneath his hand, her wings are a shimmery stuff- with far more than four feathers each, of course. It can be vaguely seen where the tendrils might divide though, almost braided along the 'framework' of her wings. Something not unlike ecto, though it resembles a chitinous cartilage more closely than flesh, offering a semi rigid support- her non may be responsible for this, as it resembles the stiffer framing of the wings they'd once had.

Without careful inspection, it would be easy to miss that some parts of her wings were marginally more solid than others, but the distinction is there. Four lines on each fall into what resembles the skeletal structure of a bat's wings more closely than a bird's, her wings proper simply cast from these like light through a prism, blooming into the sleek and soft sets of feathers fanning from and between each.

A notable difference between wings and tendrils, is the pattern between the two not matching. Her tendrils had each captured one part of a range between sunset and starlight, seperated, and each side perfectly mirrored. These? Had no such clear divides, flowing fluidly from sunlight to starlight, and of the two, mostly starlight, from the tops down. There was more sunset towards the inside of her wings, but it still made no sense that each should be so different, or the pattern change so much.

"...huh." Nightmare mutters, low and soft. "That's. New."

"...new." Sci echoes, almost curious, almost teasing.

"It's. Different than expected. Not that it's bad! Of course not! Just- new."

[darkness-regins]

that... doesn't entirely surprise them.

even as they walk, half of their mind is occupied with trying to sort through the sense of it. Being a necromancer sometimes let them pick up things just in the overwhelming sense of death's presence. how much death, how old- they don't expect to pick up more than whether it's a few, a lot, or legions- recent, old, or ancient- if that much.

and of course. they watch. listen. smell. and do their damnedest to figure out what they're walking into.

If you strain your ears, you can just barely make out whispers in the non-existent wind- calls and chirps and voices ringing from the depths, now irreversibly hollow.

The death feels old. Ancient. Older than the stars themselves.

Something clutters to the ground. A rotten, moldy fruit, almost resembling an apple.

It smells like blackberries.

[darkness-regins]

Raine listens, then looks at them, dubious. one is slipping off her days shoulder, but she nods. "is like this, too."

she holds up her small hand, squeezing it into a fist so hard that it trembles, then huffing as she's forced to let her fingers relax, because it's too hard to keep clenching. then looks at her tendrils, takes a slow breath, relaxes...

and they seem to unwind of their own accord, reforming into wings the moment she isn't actively trying to hold their form. Raine understandably looks somewhat frustrated by this. maybe a little dejected too.

she might like having tendrils like her da. just a little.

"...hm..."

Nightmare leans closer, running a gentle hand along the tips of her wings, taking note of the magic glimmering before his eye.

"Alright. Let's try something else. Take a deep breath?"

[darkness-regins]

her breathing finally starting to even out again, though her grip on Nightmare and Mea stays firm, Raine nods, if a bit reluctantly. "didn't want shows no one but mine until gots better at it- but, is really hards."

she half glares at two tendrils that are just, sort of hanging limply, like overcooked noodles, not so much as twitching, and huffs to herself, forcing them with some small effort to wrap around as well, mumbling something about 'too many.'

"...that was a problem for me, at first. They always feel like too many, don't they?"

Mea nods despite having no tendrils to speak of, earning her a chuckle. "Try not to think about actively using them. Think of them like... extra limbs, really. You don't really think about walking or picking things up, do you? It's akin to that."

[darkness-regins]

"..." well, they suppose that's an indication to follow. a soft exhale, squaring their shoulders- and rubbing their arms against the palpable sense of discomfort, they follow Oblitus into the dark.

maybe it wasn't going to ask about its daughter. maybe they were about to find out what gad happened to an entire species. this had gone very off path from their game if question and answer, but-

they walk forward, senses strained to pick out any more signs of life... or of the kind of deaths, that echoed the life surrounding them now...

The darkness trails ever onward, unseeing and unyielding in its monotony.

It's so very, very quiet.

It smells like death.

[darkness-regins]

Bells watches. not sure if they're meant to leave. not sure how it will react if they leave, or follow. it's quiet.

would it ask them to resurrect Nim? honestly, they doubt they could. ressurecting someone without a soul was... well. it wasn't exactly covered in their 'how to necromancy 101.' not that anyone had ever bothered to give them one of those.

they wait. just a little longer.

The longer you wait, the further Oblitus walks. And the more darkness looms around you. It's almost itchy, clawing and twisting like unfamiliar wool violently clashing with perfect silk.

Roots twist along the "floor", winding and curving and cascading in short bursts of gold and green, peaking out of the ground to grow and sprout and carve a path deeper into the abyss.

Seems like as good of a path as any, honestly.

[darkness-regins]

a nod, the tendrils returning to their place around Mea, with the rest. it must have seemed strange, the manifestations of pure magic, ecto, in so many slender tendrils shaped not that unlike his. starlight, and sunset, currently semi obscured by a dull, hazy gray.

"is hard, does for very long," she admits, in quiet frustration. despite this, not letting go, and seeming very grateful for Mea holding tight too.

she'll be okay, but the child has been visibly shaken by something.

"..."

"It is hard." Nightmare hums, quiet. "Do you want me to teach you?"

[darkness-regins]

a very visible hesitation, their gaze holding its for maybe a beat longer than comfortable, before admitting, "first x-gaster resurrected him. then, Dream briefly have enough magic that he was able to. this last time-"

"-this last time he fell to the scythe of Death himself, when the god came for Melior. Life, and Death, chose to allow him to return."

"But I did take a day trip to the land of the dead to find him, when it happened. I have resurrected before. And I will, again."

This had been the question they'd been waiting for...

Oblitus stares for a long moment, unblinking.

Then they turn away, walking towards the depths of the darkness, making no inclination for you to follow.

Huh.