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nikathingz · 2 years

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Witch’s Dilemma

Morpheus x Immortal!Witch!Reader

This is purely self indulgent bc I love him so much

Part 2 here - Masterlist

Word count: 2657

(Also this gif is so cute but it makes me want to cry knowing the short moments that follow 😭)

*RING* *RING*

You picked the phone up and held it to your ear with your shoulder as you scribbled runes and incantations into your leatherbound journal “Hello? L/n residence” You said absent mindedly and briefly placed your pen down to look over at the texts you were studying.

“Uhm, I would like to speak with the mage called Y/n please” a weary male voice spoke through the phone, this piqued your interest, prompting you to set your pen down and fully acknowledge the conversation.

“That would be me, now who is this?” You questioned leaning on your hand, you had not been known as a mage in many decades.

“T-this is Alex Burgess, you knew my father Rod-”

“-Erick Burgess, yes I do, he is the man to have captured a demon in his basement,” you said more to yourself than the man on the phone “He has asked many favors of me in the past, what is the meaning of this call?” You inquired Alex about his business with you.

“If you would miss, I was hoping you would come out to help me with something, a spell, if you will” His voice, was desperate

Now he truly had you hooked, what would a Megas's son need with a mage? Was he not magically endowed himself? “What sort of spell is it?” you were already running through thousands of possibilities but unfortunately the only answer that Alex gave, brought much disappointment.

“I'm afraid I can tell you no more until you arrive,” He said hastily, “Does this mean you will come?” His voice had a boyish hopefulness to it that made your lips quirk up in a slight smile.

“Yes, just tell me where I need to be and I will travel as quick as the crow flies,” you said, your curiosity sending you into a daydream of what the man could want.

You let out a breath of relief as you pulled into the gravel driveway of the Burgess manor it was late in the evening which basked the manor in an eerie light. You stepped out of the taxi and walked up the creaky steps, rapping on the old wooden door. You stood for a moment before a kind eyed old man opened the door “Well hello, please come in! My name is paul, and you must be Y/n yes?” He asked with a sweet smile and you nodded, returning it.

“Yes, that is me. It's lovely to meet you Paul” You said and he nodded, leading you to a study where an old man sat perched in a wheelchair by a window. “You must be Alex Burgess” Your words startled him as he jumped slightly and looked in your direction.

“Yes, yes come in, please” You nodded and allowed some of his help to take your bags, sitting in a cushioned chair he kept in his office. He chuckled and examined your youthful form “I'll be honest, I was expecting someone older, my age perhaps,” he joked and you shifted a bit awkwardly.

“Haha yeah… sooo about this spell, what is it?” You cut right to the point, you couldn't lie, the question had been eating you alive for the entire week it took for you to prepare and travel to the Burgess manor.

Alex seemed to stiffen at the mention of your coming here, wordlessly Paul walked behind him and started to wheel him out of the room, and you followed blindly, Paul helped Alex down steep concrete steps and into a cold damp basement.

The breath was stolen from your lungs as you laid eyes upon a glass sphere, and inside was a man, who had raven hair and sickly pale skin. He remained still and silent in his glass prison, his eyes closed in a false peace. Paul and Alex stood back as you approached the wondrous thing before you, while you had worked with Roderick Burgess in the past he had neither confirmed nor denied the rumor of the demon in his basement, not even to you.

But this man did not look like a demon, in fact, he looked to be the opposite, he seemed to be crafted by the hands of gods themselves, when you came within reach of the orb you placed a curious hand on the glass, causing the being inside to look up at you. In his eyes you swear you could see the whole cosmos, but past that you could see a human like being. “So the rumors are true…” you muttered

Behind the beauty, in his silvery blue eyes, you could see the faintest amount of curiosity as he looked from you to the firmly planted hand on the glass. When you snapped out of the childish trance the man had captured you in you whipped around to face the old men and the guards who were watching your every movement.

Your face contorted in disgust and disdain “What is the meaning of this, Alex Burgess? Why do you bring me here under false pretenses and show me this man you keep locked in here like some trophy!?” Your disgust was immeasurable as you turned fully to the men.

“Your mistaken mage, I did not bring you here under false pretenses, I brought you here to cast a spell that would bind this basement shut, and I do not keep him like a trophy! He has refused to speak for over a century! All he had to do was promise not to hurt us and he could be free!” Alex tried to argue his case but you already had all the information you needed.

Your lip curled in disgust “And how do you expect me to bar this being in your basement when I don't even know what he is?” You questioned and he faltered.

“It's a being more powerful than gods, my father called it ‘Dream of the endless’ it wasn't even the one my father wanted to capture in the first place, please we were just scared that it would hurt us, we never wanted to keep it here, we just wanted to be safe” Alex sighed and spoke more calmly.

Dream of the Endless, a being greater than gods? And yet here he was, trapped for over a century in glass confinement, all because some mortals got greedy and scared?

Your stomach churned at the thought of keeping him locked in here for as long as the foundation of this house stood. You gnawed on the inside of your cheek in thought, briefly glancing over your shoulder to look at the Endless, his eyes were still trained on your figure, but his brow was slightly furrowed as if deep in thought himself.

“Please, this is our last result. We just want to be happy,” Paul pleaded and he clutched his lover's hand.

You inhaled a deep breath and stepped away from the glass sphere, feeling overwhelmed at the moral dilemma. “I need to think…” you muttered and crossed the room to stand in front of Alex and Paul “If you would be so kind as to show me my room, I'm exhausted from travel. I certainly could not perform such magic in my current state,” you stated and they both nodded, understanding. You followed as Paul helped Alex up the steps.

As you walked through the iron gate you looked back at Dream, whose demeanor had changed from when you had first walked into the basement before it was curiosity, now it was cold. You couldn't get rid of this looming feeling of despair.

Your sleep was restless that night, tossing and turning and unable to get rid of the image of him sitting in there for gods know how long, it was early in the morning before you finally rolled out of bed, deciding that a cup of water might help ease your troubled mind.

The house was quiet as everyone was asleep, you padded downstairs and into the old creaky kitchen, rifling through the cabinets to find a glass to quell your thirst. Your fingers bounced in thought, did you really want to do this? If you helped Alex then when the Dream King finally did escape you would be the only one alive for him to seek revenge on, and quite frankly you did not want to piss off one of the Endless.

You had read about the Endless a few decades ago, they were exactly as they were named, endless beings more powerful than gods, created by Father Time and Mother Night, Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delerium.

You had met Death once, it was a long time ago but you remembered her kind smile, she was the reason you were still walking the earth today. You leaned on the counter in thought, remembering the deal you struck with her to gain your immortality.

Thinking about Death made you wonder why Dream’s siblings had not come to help him, the rumors of his predicament surely had to have reached the other Endless- of course, they had. You wanted to slap yourself, they knew what happened to him, and they were afraid that if they tried to come to his aid they would end up just like him. Your gut twisted in sorrow for him, abandoned by his siblings and made prisoner by the humans he was supposed to bring extravagant dreams to.

You finished off the glass and placed it delicately in the sink, padding back into the hall and stopping at the bottom step. You looked down the wall to the door that lead into the basement and heard a small voice in your head telling you to descend the stairs and gaze upon the ethereal being trapped like an animal.

Ignoring the pounding in your chest, you approached the basement door, there was a brief moment after you wrapped your hand around the brass knob where you considered turning and returning to your room, waking tomorrow, and just doing the damned spell. But instead, you pushed the door open and carried on down into the damp room, The Endless sat just as he did when you had last seen him earlier, elbows resting on his knees and arms crossed over his lap, in an effort to preserve his dignity.

One of the guards had gotten up to meet you at the gate, and you watched as his face was overtaken with confusion. “I apologize but I can't allow you to enter, Mr. Burgess doesn't allow any house guests down here alone, you’ll have to come back in the morning-” He tried to deter you but you stayed firm, giving him a hard glare.

“Mr. Burgess knows I’m down here, in fact, you both can go home, I've come to prepare my spell and it would be in your best interest to not be present unless you wanna be stuck in here with him for eternity,” you nodded past him to the Endless, who stared at you with a fierce glare. The man opened the gate and allowed you to step inside while he and his partner scurried to gather their things and leave the basement. You were honestly surprised he believed you, you were still in your pajamas and had none of your arcana with you.

Once left alone you shifted awkwardly on your feet, the cold concrete uncomfortable against your bare feet. His head cocked to the side as he watched you wearily approach, your eyes trained on the gold binding circle as you walked across the room to stand on the small water surrounded square of concrete where the circle was laid. His glare was unnerving as you crouched and ran a finger lightly over the binding circle and lifted it to see a slight residue on your fingertips.

She looked up at him and was almost taken aback by the mix of curiosity and pure displeasure, “Don't look at me like that, I don't actually plan on locking you down here, I'm just trying to actually get a plan together before someone realizes what I'm actually doing down here” You said and stood up with a sigh, knocking on the glaze to try and gauge just how much force would be needed to break it.

Dream’s jaw clenched and unclenched as you stared at him with a sour look on your face, you looked over your shoulder to the desk that the night guards had hastily abandoned, you looked at your hand and determined you definitely couldn't even crack the glass if you simply punched it. So you crossed the room to the desk and pulled the small lamp off of it, yanking the cord out of the wall, you turned on your heel and raised your arm over your head, and flung the lap right at the orb of glass.

Dream lurched back in surprise as the lamp collided with the glass, causing cracks to spiderweb outwards from the point of impact, but not enough to fully breakthrough through. His eyes were wide in disbelief as he stared at the damaged glass. You hurriedly walked back over and started to rub the gold runes etched on the floor with your foot while pressing a hand on the glass and giving the distraught Endless a slight smile “I'm sure you can take it from here yeah? Just one thing before I get the hell out of here though” you glanced down to see that you had rubbed a good chunk of the golden binding away.

“Just give me a few minutes to get properly out of here before you bust out of this joint, I’d rather not be around for what happens when you do break this glass cage,” you said with a light chuckle while walking back across the room watching as he shifted up onto his knees to properly examine the damage you’d done to not only the spell that kept his powers at bay but also the glass that kept him confined here.

He looked back up at you, his brows pinched together, so curious as to why you were different than all the other humans that visited the basement during the over a hundred years the Burgess’s had kept him bound here. He watched as your form retreated and disappeared from the basement and listened as the floors creaked above him, he didn't understand why but he sat there on his knees for several minutes until the house was encompassed in silence.

Meaning you were gone, and that he could finally escape this hellish place after over a century.

And he was correct, after you disappeared from the basement you had rushed as quietly as possible upstairs to gather the little items you had brought with you, then booked it out of the house not wanting to wait around to see how royally pissed the Endless would be when it fully registered to him that he was no longer bound to that glass case.

You felt light despite the fear that he might also want to knock heads with you, deep in your soul you knew that you had done the right thing by aiding in his escape, and a little voice in the back of your head assured you that he would be more inclined to spare you for not sealing him in the basement.

You were able to catch a ride back to the city where you could rent a car to get you back home, opting for it better than getting cabs all the way back as you had on the way over, you don't remember when but some days after you had arrived back in the safety of your apartment you had seen that Alex had caught a severe case of the sleepy sickness, and you had nothing but pleasant dreams every time you slept.

You had an inkling that both were work of the sandman.

•••

I love this sm, I had so much fun with it I hope you love it as much as I do