Dreblr Spooky Week 👻

existing out of spite. or something similar; dream breathes, and his lungs scream, drowning in his own blood and constricted by ill fitting ribs. (they're broken, he deduces, no wonder.) the nerve endings of his arm screams as he lays atop his left elbow, which he assumes is dislocated, with little care, unable to quite find it in himself to move. he's sure quackity broke part of his head open. he's bleeding too much.

he hears, vaguely and echoed, the redstone pistons of the bridge carry his butcher away after yet another day of attempting to out-stubborn the most stubborn man alive. silence fills the room; the coppery smell of blood, something too familiar and too intrinsically known to him, the unbearable heat. he's almost happy, if only he weren't in such a pitiful state.

not even the cries of the obsidian and its tears, dripping over him and rolling down to mix with the pool of blood beneath him, break him out of his haze. shallow and slow breaths; pain remained as it always did, but ignorance is bliss. he ignores the discomfort of his tattered jumpsuit soaking up in crimson. he too ignores the blatant, stomach churning agony that tunes out the harrowing melody of starvation.

the only thing that unsettles him is the warden returning. he does not approach, but he does not walk out. he does not pearl across the gap, and neither pries his gaze away from dream.

he lies there, contorted, unmoving. his tangled and knotted locks of hair, thank prime, cover where his gaze wanders. blurry, sure, but the silhouette is unmistakeably distinct. gold on netherite, the purple glow of enchanted gear, the wrathful yet distant gaze. there is no assuming otherwise.

for one moment, maybe, he thinks he's hallucinating. he's not so sure when his gaze focuses and so does his mind, amplifying his own agony. there's a limit to how far he can wander mentally and equally focus on his surroundings.

watched. he is being watched.

maybe for minutes, maybe hours, maybe seconds. he does not know. something in him refuses to move his body. as far as he can tell, he looks just barely alive. not conscious, but certainly not dead.

it's obsession. dream is familiar with being on the giving end of such a hateful devotion. he isn't, however, accustomed to being on the receiving end of someone being so intent on ruining him. so so intent on soaking up this visage; of his thin and starved body contorted and dislocated, broken apart in a pool of his own blood.

dream thinks of calling out, and dismisses the desire a moment later. he instead begins attempting to pry himself upwards, to face sam, dragging disobedient arms to his forefront and leaning on them; hands gripping the jagged vantablack edges and his head lifting to face the warden.

something about the way he tilts his head, glowing evergreen eyes piercing him with a gaze devoid of emotion. something about the way that unmasking the tyrant made it worse, perhaps the way he persists so solemnly and almost nonchalantly, or the way he shrugs off pain after screaming for hours on end. it unsettles the hybrid. deeply.

sam turns on his heel and leaves with more questions than he had before. dream collapses back to the puddle of crimson in disturbingly loud silence.

he'll stay for a little while longer like this, he thinks. this could be worse, and his memories agree in tandem with a sharp, grim reminder jabbing at his mind if only for a minute.

possession is one interesting word, he thinks. his mind drags through an incomprehensible fog of condensed agony and fleeting nerve endings. it means so so many things.

it can mean control. it can mean manipulation; the carnal, deepest desire to have, to own, to monopolize. it too can mean to belong. to wield. it's something he thought— had?— he's unsure if he still possesses such a thing. once, this server and its residents danced upon his fingertips. some many months ago.

he does not keep count of the days. he only keeps track of time, the best he can. and right now, one could say his grasp was slipping, like loose hands scooping up sand. it slips him betwixt his fingers with an imperceptible delicacy.

so why, he ponders, dragging his thoughts through this thick mist comprised of burnt flesh, torn teeth, torn fingernails, why is the warden insisting he heals this brand over?

to be fair, he initially thought quackity burned him alive or something similar. he wasn't quite sure what happened then; his consciousness, ironclad as it may be, gave out when he felt the white-hot iron against bone. it feels eerie to move his shoulder, to feel bone against skin. (not that it is unfamiliar by any means. but it is raw. it's an unsettling feeling— not quite pain, not quite bothersome. somewhere in-between the horrible specifics of the two.)

at least he gets to lay face-down as his ears, ringing as they are, do their best to try and decipher what the warden was speaking. rough and metal-protected hands handle his wound with a known roughness, a known distaste, something he thinks might border on hate.

the wound has long since closed; not the brand in question, but the wound of knowing even sam has betrayed him. he takes comfort in what little conviction he has that he's over it; he knows he is not so. he knows this will eat him alive. but here is not a place, and now is not a time for this.

as for the burnt flesh, embroidering on his skin a lovely square bracket smile in the style of alexis' casino chips; it bleeds, of course it bleeds. the flesh screams and dream does not listen, mind having wandered far and away in the secure disconnection between imagination and reality.

words hazily hit his brain. although sam does think he's far too out of it to understand; and he is far too used to not responding, even when he is fully grounded. dream restrains a smile from hearing those words and syllables fall out of the warden's mouth, if mildly distorted by the gas mask.

possession. he is upset the butcher thinks he possesses the right to own dream. that dream is pandora's prisoner, if not directly belonging to the warden himself— and dream does not need the full words to comprehend this.

in a spark of newfound pain, hair-raising and off-guard, he yells as the warden drives his netherite blade over the brand. fire aspect. something that's scarred him in the past too many times; this is not new, but that does not mean it is any less agonizing. as quickly as it came, it went, and the warden stops speaking, of course.

he treats and dresses the newfound burn in silence. dream does not dare speak. the warden will not stay, and he knows this; there is no use in asking.

quackity was upset about the brand, the next day. it didn't end well. dream made the mistake of screaming for sam.

dream has stopped respawning with full health.

sam's not quite sure what to make of it. before him lays dream, unconscious in the water pool. it's been tainted by crimson, a coppery colour in its nature, and his nose wrinkles. he's never able to get used to the smell, not even with the gas mask.

it's quite the harrowing realisation, really. the panic crawls up his back, steady and slow; he pries the limp body out of the water, and lies to himself when he's mortified that potions don't work.

there's a gash between his ribs he's sure runs deeper than it looks. dream is bleeding. it's warm and thick and it's all sam smells and his hands are covered in it. he sighs though his mild desperation, like a stupor born of denial, and begins stitching closed the wound.

something in him compels to ponder if he should worry about internal bleeding. he does not listen.

he bandages the wound with hesitation lacing his every move. the blood seeps through the stitching and the bandaging anyway. sam tells himself he's stopped caring; his actions say otherwise, as he redoes the bandaging as many times as he sees fit.

dream is light like a feather when lifted. lighter than the last time he's bothered to come here and make sure quackity's doing it right. something in him whispers it might not be about the revival book anymore. he dismisses the thought in the same second.

if it weren't for the shallow breathing, sam would've assumed he's already dead. since he's already halfway there, he might as well check what else is missing in him other than... musculature and weight. he's never seen something so small and thin and frail. he wonders how much an administrator can handle before they begin starving to death repeatedly.

it's quite the morbid train of thought, frankly. it keeps him entertained while he notices multiple molars and fingernails are missing. while he notices the plethora of newfound scars that seem to refuse to fade with respawning. the unspoken tolerance of the flesh refusing to mend as potion after potion is wasted on him. the deniable reassurance he is knocking on death's door with each day that passes.

at one point, he wonders how dream is still alive. he banishes the thought without hesitating. it's good, right? that he's supposedly so powerless. he sure is when unconscious; unarmed from his only way of manipulation, his words, sam reassures himself. it has to be. it must.

the warden finds himself stripped of his mask. dream's blood tastes like ichor. he realises he's just disregarded every warning to walk the earth that administrative blood must not be consumed. he feasts regardless. his tongue runs over his bloodied glaive, and red eyes glisten, accompanied hand in hand by a hiss.

he brings himself to a stop, mouth inches away from dream's jugular. prying himself back, his mask is returned to his face with haste, his footsteps uneven with the dawning realisation. he'll wash the blood out later, he lies.

there's a certain charm to a chase. there is a certain taste to it; one dream's never found himself refusing.

there is, however, a limit to everything. excess is never welcome. excess takes what it likes and leaves you hollow with the consequence.

these trees are thick and hollow; for they have suffered the consequence of war after war. explosives and flammables. a vying grasp from corruption, in the form of red vines.

his name is screamed between sirens, accompanied by orders and commands for him to unveil himself. the one screaming haunts his every waking moment, but he does recognise a missing piece; one he keeps locked where he once laid. it cracks a smile out of him, to know the warden was reduced to a resident of idiotville by a blind man.

charming, he thinks, that quackity's going so far out of his way to try and get him. muscle memory pries unseeing eyes to the source of the demanding, and he bites through a wave of horror from his own memories as it gets closer. faltering here means death, he knows, oh, how he knows.

he's always been good at turning hunters into feasts.

the dead leaves and branches crack, with a nauseating similarity to bones. milky whites are drawn to those very footsteps, slow as they are, and he has grown too accustomed to how sharp his senses have become.

alex does not scream as his throat is slit in the dead of the withering forest. warm, warm crimson spills over them both and dream relishes and bathes in it akin to ichor. he would've preferred a much more dramatic ending, but opportunities like this do not show their tails every day. copper invades the air, invades every inch of his perceiving, and to know it is quackity's blood is enough to feed the need for revenge. for now, he thinks, only for now. he has one more life left.

he ensures he's alone, in the dead of night, digging up a grave to go unmarked. bodies don't fade, sadly. (it was bizarre to see two other versions of himself as corpses when tommy did him the favour of killing him, twice.)

the grave is unmarked. a blind man can't quite engrave words onto sticks very well, let alone cut them out straight. he does not mind this. nobody would quite find this anyway, apart from the butcher himself. he strains to pull the body into it without falling into it, and he remarks it's likely quite a crooked grave. but one nonetheless. it isn't six feet deep, but it is enough. he doesn't bother covering the obvious dirt pile with much.

the soil guides him out of the forest. he's never quite been one to get lost so easily. he knows this server like the back of his hand, like the proportions of his cell, like the corridors of his newfound home.

Dream, being an admin, is well aware that amidst the many servers joined by the hubs, there is much out there that is still beyond explanation. The void, of course, is as mysterious as ever in the way that everyone and everything that exists floats on the surface of its sea, and its depths are not yet explored. Still, though he is not a scholar on the subject in particular, Dream well knows that it is widely accepted amongst the admin community that there are other worlds out there than just their own, different iterations of players, born from the same core code and bearing the same name but but living vastly different lives.

Suddenly conscious that perhaps the situation might be better off calm and not filled with the energy of a Manhunt – or the confusion of who is clearly another Dream on the scene of some ambush or such – Dream taps his comm and quickly types out a public message in it.

<Dream> manhunt’s off

<BadBoyHalo> is everything alright?

<GeorgeNotFound> coords?

<Dream> im fine its just

<Dream> complicated

<Sapnap> complicated he says

<Dream> 528, 109, -327

<Dream> gimme a min before you come

<GeorgeNotFound> u would need a min before we cum freak

<Dream> ha ha

<BadBoyHalo> LANGUAGE!!! George you muffin

<Sapnap> Bad i see you wait there

Dream removes his attention from his comm messages and looks up again. The other is still there, though a bit farther down the hall now. He’s scanning the area, and Dream must be in a place he’s already searched, because the other is quite thorough.

“Hello?” he calls, and the other whips around, his form trailing around the edges like an after-image before solidifying again – he must be some form of hybrid, in that other world, though which type Dream is not familiar with. The mob might not even exist in his world. His mask is nearly identical to Dream’s, white with a black smile and dots for eyes, but there are lime green inlays catching the flickering light inside the dark lines whereas his own is fully black, a couple of cracks in it, and around the edges it is chipped and worn. “Are you Dream?” he asks, because it’s still, technically, an assumption.

But the other ignores his words. “Have you seen them?” he demands, instead, half-walking and half-gliding closer, something desperate and frantic about him. “Have you seen Punz? Or – or Techno? George? Anyone?”

Dream only recognises one of those names. The voice is almost his own, but scratchier, a bit deeper, like it’s undergone strain. “I know a George,” he says, “but not yours, I don’t think. Are you Dream?”

“… Dream,” the other repeats. “I’m – I – I was, I think.” He flinches, shakes his head, raising his hands either side of it as though cradling a headache. “Dream,” he murmurs, sounding upset. “Yes, yes – I am, I am – but…” He looks at Dream. “… You are, too. You’re not a spectre in Limbo, an apparition of an idea, you’re… alive.”

Dream shifts his weight at his alternate’s distressed ramblings. “I am,” he confirms. “I’m alive. And you are, too, you’re here in front of me.” He intends to reassure someone who’s clearly very lost and confused – possibly injured? – but it doesn’t seem to work as the other Dream’s shoulders tense.

“No,” the other Dream denies immediately, “I’m not. I’m a ghost. I know that much, at least.”

The words ghosts aren’t real spring to Dream’s lips but they go unspoken when his friends finally round the corner behind him and start calling his name. His alternate flinches harshly, and Dream’s hand strikes out and takes hold of his sleeve before he’s even thought about it, trying to keep him there.

It feels like cloth spun from wool, but somehow there’s a lightness to it, a sheen like satin, and it’s freezing cold in the ambient heat of the Nether. His alternate hisses at him, but it’s a human-sounding hiss, which silently crosses out vex hybrid from the back of Dream’s mind. Those things fucking death rattle at you.

“Hey!” Sapnap calls down the hall, the sound of multiple armoured footsteps converging on them. Ugh, they’re all in full iron, that would have been annoying to deal with if the Manhunt hadn’t been called off. “Who’s this, your long lost evil twin? How’d they get on the server?”

The other Dream tries to twist out of his hold, breath speeding up and yanking hard, but Dream holds fast, ignoring his friends in favour of trying to comfort his alternate. “Hey, hey,” he shushes, confused, “it’s okay, it’s just Sapnap. He’s my friend.”

“Let me go!” the other Dream says, fear in his voice, before stilling in place, seeming to come to some realisation. He promptly escapes Dream’s grip by going through it, temporarily intangible and backing up several steps. He’s shaking, though, and he doesn’t fall through the floor, so – maybe vex hybrid is back on the possibilities but the ancestry is further back? Enough to have limited intangibility but not enough for his vocal chords to be affected?

Either way, he seems to be about to leave, and – well, Dream feels a bit cruel, but the desperation of not letting an actual alternate version of himself disappear without a trace is high. One, he seems to be in some distress, and two his fellow admins would be frustrated at evidence of a long-held theory being lost instantly.

“Stop him!” he calls, and his friends obey, ready to trust in his judgement. Bad uses a thrown ender pearl to teleport behind his alternate and block the hall in that direction, while George blocks the third path in this little junction. Sapnap comes up by Dream’s side and is clearly about to pull out his sword, but Dream says, “No, wait, don’t threaten him. It’s – fuck. Don’t scare him.”

George shoots him a withering side eye at that, which is fair. They’re blocking this man’s escape and are all armed and armoured, it’s kind of hard not to come across as threatening. Maybe Dream didn’t quite think that far ahead, but he can’t just let the meeting end like this, so abruptly.

He raises his empty hands slowly, as though approaching a distressed animal. “Hey, hey, shit – I’m. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. And – hey, look, it’s George. Do you recognise him? Is he like yours?”

The other Dream keeps his gaze firmly in his direction, but not, Dream realises, on him. “Why are you even here, Sapnap?” he asks, bitterly, voice thick with upset. “Can’t you see I’m already dead? You’ve no promise left to fulfil.”

“The fuck are you? Why are you dressed up like Dream?” Sapnap replies immediately, accusatory. He clenches his hands into fists in lieu of the sword Dream knows he wants to draw, protective and defensive over someone he is clearly seeing as an invader and impostor.

“He’s Dream,” Dream inserts, quickly. “Just like I’m Dream – he’s a different Dream.”

“Oh!” Bad says from behind, comprehending what Dream means. He should have trusted the admin of MunchyMC to get it. “Oh, wow, that’s so cool, actually! But, uh – Dream – other Dream, I mean. You don’t, uh, look so hot.”

That’s true, as well. Behind the similar mask and clothing, the other Dream is thin, and he trembles ever so slightly, his form hazing at the edge like mist. And his words…

“Hey, um,” Sapnap says, taking a step back at Dream’s cue – an elbow discreetly lodged into his side – and raising his hands to imitate Dream’s, unclenching his fists. “Dream? Dream. Man, I’m not gonna – hurt you or nothin’.”

“I don’t believe you,” the other Dream insists, and it’s so – broken. Dream wonders what can hurt ghosts; if, indeed, the other Dream is a ghost. He wonders why the other Sapnap would want to try. “Leave me alone, I just – I just want to find my – find Punz. I don’t care to get involved in – this. Leave me alone.”

“You’re in another world,” Dream says, pitching it helpfully, soothingly. He hopes to drive away some of the distress and fear of the other, to reassure that whatever it’s like where he’s from, it’s not here. “This is a private server, us and Callahan are the only ones here.”

“Callahan…?” the other Dream murmurs, before he shakes his head. “The Revive Book did say…” He cuts himself off, swallowing. “Punz? Have you seen Punz?” he asks, a bit desperately. “I have to find them.”

“We don’t know a Punz,” George pipes up. The other Dream whips around and stares at him, wringing his hands, and there’s something inside Dream that aches. His alternate looks so unsure, so unwell, and – nothing good led him here, of that Dream is certain.

“I have to find them,” the other Dream repeats, distressed, stuck on this one point. “The plan went wrong – everything was in flames, Tommy fucking lied – he killed us all, there was no peace, no growing old – I have to find them.”

“Hey, it’s okay, you muffin,” Bad tries, much better and more practised at comforting than the rest of them. “We’ll help you find them, I promise. And, hey, it’s going to be okay, all right? We’ll get you back to your world and stuff, back to your friends.”

But the other Dream shakes his head, frantic, desperate. “That world is gone… there’s nothing – there’s nothing you can do for it any more. They're dead, they're all dead. My - my... I tried. I – I fucking tried. I swear I did!”

“Well,” Bad falters. “We’ll help you find this Punz, then. Do you know where they might be?”

The other Dream shakes his head again. “Dead, like me,” he says, empty now, as though that’s just a fact that should be self-evident. “But their ghost should be somewhere – we promised we’d hold on and linger, if revival took long enough for the limbo to fracture and let us through.”

Dream has no idea what his alternate is talking about, but it really seems like he could use some help. “We’ll help you,” he echoes Bad, and George and Sapnap murmur the same, following his cue. “I promise. It’s gonna be okay. And I’m sorry for acting like a dick earlier, I just – didn’t want you to leave. There’s nothing here to be afraid of, none of us are gonna hurt you or shit like that.”

“Punz was the only one who didn’t leave,” the other Dream tells him, half talking to himself rather than Dream, finally calming down from some of his fear, or at least getting a grip on it, though it’s still winding his body like a spring. There’s something about it that looks natural on him, like fear’s carved so deeply into his bones that his very posture and gait is marked by it. “I’m – it’s blurry. But they didn’t leave. They didn’t leave and everyone else did.”

“Then we’ll help you find them,” Sapnap declares, and long exposure to him means that Dream can pick out the way that his friend has refiled the other Dream from potential threat to needs to have a protector. Sapnap’s always been so fucking kind underneath his bluster, and Dream is in agreement that his alternate does seem like someone who needs a bit of TLC. It’s disconcerting to see a mirror of himself in so much silent pain, and he bets it’s hurtful for his friends.

The other Dream draws back from Sapnap, tense, but says, “I’ll be gone after – I won’t – I just want to find them and go. I just want to go. I don’t mean harm. I – I’m not evil.”

“Then we will,” Bad soothes. “Come on, let’s message Callahan and get back to spawn. We’ll decide on a game plan there.”

After a long moment, the other Dream nods slowly in acquiescence. It feels unsettlingly like someone admitting defeat, rather than someone accepting help. Still, Dream exhales a quiet sigh of relief – he knows himself, his own abilities, and he thinks that the other could have made this much harder if he felt the need to. They’ll just have to ensure that he feels safe enough to not feel that need, which - might be a tall order. Dream didn't exactly make the best first impression. But he wants to help, deeply. Even if there really is nothing they can do for the other Dream's world.

Las Nevadas seems to hold its breath for a moment, the body of its creator slumped to the ground with two lives stolen from him in as many heartbeats, the last of the glowing golden hooks fading from the air as Punz stops holding Quackity immobile, forcing him to respawn in the exact place he died and not in his bed. Then it exhales, and the music plays on, covering the muffled thud of Punz’s footsteps as they step forward to ensure that Quackity is dead.

To be certain, to be safe, they swing down with their sword again and lop off the corpse’s head, cleaving through the bone that now pokes out, white turning pink and red. It rolls, and now Punz can see its expression: mouth half open, eyes wide, the dark one slowly gaining the film of the blind one in death. They can’t hear the drip of blood, but that doesn’t matter – they have something far more important to see to, now that this deed has been done.

“That was quick,” Purpled comments from the side, arms crossed and jaw set. Punz had not promised Purpled one of Quackity’s lives, but they had vaguely implied it. They’re not sorry, though. Not with how much they needed the man dead, fearful of a risk of escape if they let anyone else have a go, even someone as skilled and as motivated as Purpled.

“Do whatever you want with the body,” Punz says, striding past and aiming for the other figure in the room, bound by the same chains of gold that have already faded from Quackity. They truly don’t care what might happen to it now – Purpled’s angry enough that he’ll probably string it up somewhere, now that he’s been cheated of getting to take a life, but really and truly, Punz has other things on their mind.

Then they pause, extract a leather pouch full of diamonds and emeralds from their belt, and toss it in Purpled’s direction. It lands on the floor with a clink just outside of the spreading puddle of blood.

“Silence?” Purpled asks, plucking it up readily. He opens it and hums at the riches inside. “You weren’t here, and neither was he,” he says, easily, and that’s the best Punz could have hoped for. Purpled can take credit for the kill on Quackity – it’s safer that way, long term, though they don’t know if Purpled’s quite clocked that taking someone’s final life in the eyes of the rest will have… repercussions. Whatever they are, Purpled can take them, Punz knows that, but it certainly won’t make him friends.

Not that Purpled’s ever been big on friends, still in the mire of teenage angst paired with their shared bloody occupation, but Punz has grown beyond that, knows the value of being picky about jobs, about having people they can actually rely on outwith money. One of them is before them now, their relationship long outgrown the transactional nature of its origins, bound in gold and cowering before them. That’s not – Punz didn’t want to, okay? But they couldn’t take the chance that Dream would try to interfere with Quackity’s demise, or try to run.

Dream cowers from them, understandably. He looks awful: too thin beneath his thick and baggy clothes, trembling like a leaf, his hair long and half-matted into dreadlocks, a thick metal collar around his neck. There’s a muzzle on his face, obscuring it almost completely with the way its aesthetic moulding rises above the mouth and curls around the eyes and forehead, over the nose in a short snout, short triangles spiking at the top to imply ears, pricked forward like a hunting dog. Punz seethes to see it. They don’t think that Purpled knows this is Dream, and they aren’t about to enlighten anyone.

“Hey, hey now, it’s okay,” Punz murmurs, slowly reaching out a hand and freezing when Dream flinches. “He’s gone, Quackity’s gone.”

“He won’t respond to anything but mutt,” Purpled calls from over by Quackity’s body. Punz glances back to see him holding the severed head up by its black hair, the beanie dropped to the ground in the blood pool. He laughs a little, under his breath. “Not that Quackity’s guard dog saved him.”

Punz clenches their jaw. “… Mutt,” they force out, turning their gaze back to Dream. Those green eyes land on them, attention caught, and then dip to focus their gaze on Punz’s collarbones, subservient. They swallow. “Will he attack me if I let him out?” they ask Purpled, keeping their gaze on Dream.

“Dunno,” Purpled says, somewhat uncaringly. Purpled’s never been great at compassion for others, especially strangers to him, and it’s something that will lead him far in his chosen career but is very much a double-edged blade for his personal life. Punz has told him before about trying to cultivate deeper relationships than contacts but that’s probably something Purpled will have to learn for himself, through life experience he just doesn’t have yet. “Just tell him not to; you’re his new master by way of conquest. Kill Quackity, get his stuff, right?”

Stuff. Dream is not a thing. Still, they need to get Dream out of here, get him away from Las Nevadas and Purpled and every-fucking-one else in this forsaken land. Nearly everyone is a threat to him, and Punz just can’t take chances, not after the whole prison plan went this far wrong.

Punz stands up. They call upon their most neutral, unaffected voice, and say, “Mutt, I have killed your old master and you are mine now. I will let you out of your bonds and you will not attack me. You will follow me.”

Dream nods, bowing his head, and Punz feels sick.

With a wave of their hand, Punz dismisses the golden binds, magic learnt from the Revive Book long ago. Dream slumps a moment, then gets his knees under him. For a moment, Punz thinks he’s about to stand, but instead he settles into a practised kneel at Punz’s feet. Like a dog.

For a moment, Punz is frozen beneath the horror, but then they beat it back, seal it away for later. It won’t help them here. They think of Quackity and what he might have done, what lessons and conditioning he must have tortured into Dream. Taking a stab in the dark, they say, “Heel, mutt,” and turn, starting to walk away.

Dream rises and follows, exactly two steps behind and slightly to Punz’s left, where Quackity’s blind spot would have been, guarding it. Inarguably, he comes to heel.

–

Dream remembers Punz, he thinks. He remembers Punz’s hands, their callused fingers, familiarity echoing somewhere in his rib cage as his new master carefully pries the muzzle off of him when they make it back to a tower Dream has seen in his dreams before, invisibility potions sneaking them through the rolling landscape and an order to not make noise silencing his body as the metal tongue in his mouth does his voice.

But Punz is taking that away, has settled him down in a basement and into a chair. He’s supposed to kneel next to chairs, not sit in them, but Punz is a different type of master than Quackity, it seems.

Punz hisses, a sharp inhale, at the sight of the scarring on Dream’s forehead, cutting through his skull and growing his hair white through the scar tissue. Dream doesn’t offer that Quackity had done that to him – had smashed his head again and again against obsidian – until half of Dream’s memories were gone and his thoughts got muddled. Easy, his old master had said, to properly train him after that. He’d been more receptive.

Punz doesn’t ask, either, just brushes it with their fingertips while their brow furrows, the mouth drawing into a deep frown. Dream hopes they’re not displeased; he has no idea what Punz will use as punishment for shortcomings or transgressions, and a part of him feels like he hasn’t done anything wrong yet.

Yet. Dream always does something wrong at some point, which is why he has to be punished so often.

Punz inhales and exhales a few times, deep and steady, measured. Dream stays frozen, keeping his eyes respectfully low, examining the gleaming gold of Punz’s necklace. Finally, Punz leans back, and says, “Dream.”

Dream flinches. He’s not been called anything but mutt in – in – he doesn’t quite know how long. He’s not allowed to be called Dream, to call himself Dream, even if he still does secretly, in his own head. Mast – Quackity would be so mad if he found out, but. He’s not here.

“Dream,” Punz repeats, voice tight. “That’s your name. I’m not calling you mutt.”

Dream stays silent. He’s not allowed to speak, Quackity always made that very clear even before he enforced it.

“Quackity had rules,” Punz says, and that’s very true. “None of them apply here. Your name is Dream and you’re not a mutt, not an animal, not a thing, and you – you are allowed to speak. I am not your master; nobody is.”

Dream looks up at them then, frightened by this – strange proclamation, this unnerving claim.

Punz sighs, sad. “Come on,” they say, quietly, “let’s get you a bath. Then we’ll see about some food.”