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crash-hawk · 2 years

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Branding the truth on a world of liars (please your god and release the hounds)

In honor of my Kaleidoscope!WitherDuo ficlet ending up surprisingly popular on Tunglr Dot Hell and the last two Shrike chapters giving me The Brainrot, I decided to write a sequel.

Did I write this instead of working on Color Wheel ch. 16 like I should be? Yep. Will this make a whole lot of sense to anyone not a regular on the Hermbi and/or Kaleidoscope Discord servers? Probably not. Am I unreasonably happy with it anyway? Fucking shit yes I am.

Part I can be found HERE The fic, the legend, the OGs Passerine and Shrike can be found HERE Kaleidoscope AU collection can be found HERE Of particular note: @lunarblazes’ Kaleidoscope!Last Life fic when I’m far too tired to fall asleep

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George wakes in the iron dark with his nerves screaming and a taste like spoiled copper and dead roses in the back of his throat. Every candle, torch, and lantern in the Community House is extinguished, leaving them in pitch darkness. His blankets feel like chains; he can feel every inch of his flesh on his skinny frame trying to crawl madly right off of his bones. It’s very cold.

He gropes desperately in the dark, flailing until his hand finds something solid, wrapping around the post of his bed frame. But it’s only dead wood, lathed and sanded and varnished–it can’t tell him anything, can offer no insight into what’s awakened him.

What? What, in the name of all the gods—?

A flicker of movement across the room catches his eye: dim moonlight filtering in through the window, reflected in the large mirror that had been the house’s first real bit of furniture. It shifts and ripples, and for just a split second takes form: a small girl with blank white eyes and black blood in her pigtail braids, mouthing something silently at him from behind the glass.

It looks, George thinks, almost like “run”.

There’s a sound, then, like a great intake of breath from a thousand dead throats, and George feels the rickety old house shake from the force of it. Somewhere in the dark beside him, Sapnap shouts “What the fuck–!?”

And then the world explodes.

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He comes back to himself slowly, in stages, aware of a suffocating weight pinning him down and of a horrible, hideous racket nearby that threatens to send him mad: snarls, shrieks, more explosions. He can’t move, can’t see, can’t breathe–

“...ge?? George! Don’t just lie there, you useless fucking pile of–rrgh!”

There’s a crash and a thud as the broken beam pinning him down is heaved off of him, and suddenly he can breathe again. He coughs, blinking, trying to bring his vision back into focus. “Sapnap…?”

“Oh good, you’re awake. Get the fuck up, George, we need to get out of here before the whole bloody place falls on our heads.”

He totters to his feet, dizzy and still half-breathless. Sapnap stands before him but makes no move to help him up, and after a moment George’s vision clears enough for him to see why. One of Sapnap’s hands is occupied by his sword. The other arm is cradled against his chest, his sleeve torn, black streaks slowly inching their way up the exposed skin of his forearm from the crook of his elbow.

“What the fuck is it?” George asks, feeling slow and stupid. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Wither,” Sapnap answers, gritting his teeth, clearly in agony but remaining stubbornly on his feet regardless.

George’s jaw drops. “That’s impossible,” he croaks.

“Glad we’re in agreement,” Sapnap grits. “Do you want to tell it, or should I?” His legs buckle abruptly; George stumbles forward to catch him, tripping and nearly falling himself over a hole in the floorboards.

“It can’t be a Wither,” George insists, slinging Sapnap’s good arm over his shoulder unmindful of the blade. “They don’t exist anymore. And if it was really a Wither and you took a hit you’d be dead and rotten before you fell.” The front door is blocked by more fallen beams, but there’s a massive hole in the common room wall that George reckons will do just as well for an exit, the wood surrounding it black and spongy with rot. “Wait, where’s Dream?”

“Where the fuck do you think?” Sapnap mutters. “Outside. Fighting it. Told me to come in after you. It winged me on the way. Fuck. Fuck!”

Another otherworldly shriek splits the night as they emerge. George stops dead in his tracks, openmouthed. He can feel his skin humping itself into gooseflesh, every hair standing on end.

It’s fully twelve feet high and misshapen, its spine and ribs twisted and many-jointed, pinpoints of strange blue fire glinting from deep inside the eyesockets of its three skulls. The bones are as black as the Void where it has made its lair for untold millennia. Not fully real, not all the way–George can see the trees through its hideous form–but real enough.

Glimmering green strings lash themselves around the bones, snapping as it moves only to fasten themselves anew, and George follows them back to their source, to where Dream stands fast in front of it, dancing out of the way of the shadow-skulls it throws. His clothes are torn and his hair is singed and there’s a starburst-shaped black splotch across one cheekbone, a wound that George knows with a sudden cold certainty will scar past the ability of any god’s power to heal.

Dream is laughing.

The two of them stand together and watch as they fight, clinging to each other like children who just found out that the boogeyman is real after all–or boogeymen. Neither George or Sapnap can say which one of them is the more terrifying.

Dream yanks on the strings a final time, heels digging inches into the dirt, and then suddenly it’s gone. There’s a short, sharp “pop!” as air collapses back into the space it had occupied. Real, George thinks dazedly. My gods, it was really real.

“What. The fuck,” Sapnap croaks, “was that all about.”

Dream doesn’t answer. He laughs and laughs, eyes flashing green, rage and amusement in equal parts meeting on his face and mixing uneasily. He sounds insane. He looks insane. “Clever bird,” he marvels as he laughs, to nobody in particular. “Clever, clever bird. Let’s see how you do, hm? Let’s just see.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Dream?” George calls, aghast. “Who are you even talking to?”

Dream looks up, finally seeming to register their presence, and makes a token effort at bringing his wheezing laughter under control. “Never mind,” he says. “Nobody you know. Nobody who matters. We’re safe now. It’s gone, and it won’t be back.”

“What was it doing here at all, Dream?” George presses, frowning. “It shouldn’t even be able to exist on this plane anymore. It–” He wants to continue, to keep pushing, to not let Dream off the hook, but then Sapnap groans, black sword clattering to the ground as he sags.

Instead of answering, Dream rummages around in his pocket before coming up with some small object. He presses it into George’s hand–hard and glassy and strangely warm, shaped like a teardrop, with an iridescent sheen like a fire opal.

“Grind that up and put it in some milk, the icehouse is still standing. I think. Make him drink it. The milk’s probably spoiled, but whatever, he’ll be fine. Don’t let him whine about it or he can whine about relearning how to fight with one arm.”

“F-fuck you,” Sapnap mutters, baring his teeth, half-delirous.

“Atta boy,” Dream says with a grin, patting him on the shoulder of his uninjured arm. “Take care of him, George. I’m going to see if any of our stuff survived. Looks like we’re homeless again, boys.”

“Dream,” George tries again as Dream starts moving off toward the destroyed house. He can feel the adrenaline crash setting in, can already feel the events of the night growing fuzzy, unreal, dreamlike. “Dream, what happened here? What really happened?”

Dream glances back at him, frowning. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think we’ll ever know. All I know is that it’s over.”

Liar, George thinks, the thought there and gone like a meteor.

He shifts, redistributing Sapnap’s weight over his shoulders. “C’mon,” he murmurs. “Let’s get you to choke this down and then you can pass out. Can you make it to the icehouse? It’s maybe twenty yards.”

“‘ll make it,” Sapnap mumbles, taking a lurching step forward that nearly pulls George off his feet. “Asshole.”

Halfway to the icehouse George pauses, glancing back to see Dream disappear through the hole the Wither blasted into the common-room wall, thinking in a distant, sub-rosa way that what he’s seen tonight is as close to the truth of the man–and, indeed, of the house–as he’s been allowed to see since the first day they’d stepped through the splintery old door together a dozen lifetimes ago.

He glances over at Sapnap, seeing the same thoughts in his friend's dark, haggard eyes, and then back at what remains of the Community house, and thinks: Good riddance.

#Dream SMP #Last Life SMP #Shrike #Fanfiction #GeorgeNotFound #Sapnap #Dream #A cookie to anyone who can spot and correctly identify the bonus easter egg character :)

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