Chapter Text
Waking up was awful. Your body felt like something was trying to eat its way out of every pore in your body. You wanted to scream as you writhe in your bed, but your voice wouldn’t cooperate with you, choosing instead to let out some grating hiss. Your eyes snap open as you register that your voice sounds… wrong. In fact, everything about you felt wrong. It felt like something gross and invasive was crawling through your system. It being the black sludge-like substance that seems to crawl over your body beginning and ending everywhere and nowhere at once.
As you take stock of your body, you begin to notice that black, sludgy bones take the place of once soft hands. You pull your eyes away-. You glance around quickly, noticing how strange your right eye felt and pull your hand up to it, only to flinch as your fingers meet the black goop. You only have one eye now. What the fuck. What the fuck.
You look around the room frantically as your eye- not eyes because you cannot feel your other one- find a grandiose mirror across from the ginormous bed, and there, staring back at you in shock, is Nightmare. Nightmare as in Nightmare- Guardian of Negativity and boisterous awful being in every canon piece of media you’ve ever consumed ever- Nightmare.
Taking stock of the room you notice a few key details, along the walls are numerous end tables with items you assume to be “trophies” from worlds either conquered or long gone. You take note of the lack of windows presented as your only working eye shifts to the bed. The bed has a tall canopy with sheer curtains that are tied off to the best posts. There are tons of pillows encased in silk and ruffles. The sheets also appear to be silk, with the duvet having a plush, cool feeling to it. You notice that, in the far corner, sits a lounge area with a door that most likely leads to the bathroom.
This means the large door next to the mirror must be the barrier between you and whatever else is in the castle. The room is a mural of royal purple, black, silver, and flecks of gold; it was truly fitting for a supposed “King of Negativity and all Things Dark”.
Giving in to the insanity of the situation, you let out a sharp laugh, only to flinch because what came out wasn’t your voice but instead something grating and distorted. This cannot be happening to you. You fumble to get up as the tendrils attached to your back writhe and twist, seeming to have a mind of their own.
Oh, that’s just creepy as hell.
You finally get your bearings and head over to the door that looks like a bathroom, pushing it open. Instead of a lavish bathroom, however, you find a large office study… As well as three more doors. Why does he need this many doors? You scurry over to the desk in the center, slipping once or twice as the tendrils continue to inconvenience your balance. You begin to look for anything that can clue you in on what type of multiverse you’re in.
You can only hope and pray this will be like a Dadmare verse, and you cannot just walk up to someone and be like:
‘Hi yes, so sorry to bother you, but I may have taken of the Nightmare’s body, don’t kill me, please?’
Pausing at the thought, you shake your head, that’s absolutely not happening. You would like to continue living, thank you very much.
Your hand found purchase on the handle of a drawer, jerking it open only to cringe back- tendrils curling inwards- as it crashes a few feet away. Okay, you may be a bit stronger than you’re used to, oops. Trial and error, right?
You scurry over to it and sift through its belongings. A bunch of half-finished contracts and a handful fake ID’s for Horrortale Sans, Killer Sans, Dusttale Sans, and one Sans you didn’t know. Well, at least you know they are with you in some way: suffering Nightmare’s torture or not, you haven’t discerned yet.
You march over to the next drawer and very gently pull it out and find an ancient looking book wrapped in twine. You pick it up and sit in the large desk chair, body sinking in its assigned spot from where the chair was worn away. You unwrap the twine and open it, emotions flaring in relief when you realize it’s not a book, but a journal! Your tendrils wag behind you in poorly hidden excitement.
You immediately school your expression, because you need the practice for when you start talking to the rest of the multiverse, and flip the pages to the latest entry. You glance up at the little calendar on Nightmare’s desk and compare dates. This entry was written on August 8th and the calendar has it marked out but not the 9th. This means it’s either the 8th, 9th, or 10th. Your eye scans the text:
“Today’s plans of taking over a recently made storyshift did not come to fruition. The Star Sans, as they like to call themselves, brought two new Sanses with their pathetic group. Unfortunately, it was a ploy to separate the pawns from me as The Protector, The Guardian of Positivity, and The Destroyer have formed an alliance to, as the Ink bastard so put it, ‘knock me down a peg or two.’ They succeeded in injuring my soul in some way, which has left me weak. They forced my hand we made a tactical retreat before I lost anymore magic from those clowns.
My- something was harshly scribbled out- subordinates were emitting some exquisitely tasteful fear as they returned with me, sensing my mood. It is quite joyous to know they fear me so but still remain so unfortunately loyal.
The injury to my soul is not healing as it should, so I am assuming Dream used positivity magic with Error’s strings when he grabbed my soul. I, simply put, am not doing well, but only myself and this paper will know that. I will retire for the night and hope that improvement happens with some rest.”
Well, that was surly something. The others here must have known that Nightmare was injured, but you assume that they were merely too frightened to say or do anything to help.
You hear something rap against the door on the wall in front of you. It’s a voice, and they’re calling for Nightmare.
“Boss? Are you- is everything alright? You, uh, haven’t left,” a voice fumbles, outwardly nervous, “your chambers in two days now.”
The skeleton on the other side has a deep, growling voice. It sounds serious and lacking humor. You’re going to assume it’s Horror.
Your face twists in frustration, you didn’t ask for this! Now, you were probably going to be killed because his ragtag gang will know that you. are. not. Nightmare.
You sit and channel your anger for a moment and pick up a faint sensation of worry and primal fear… Is that Horror’s emotions? You distantly wonder if you can siphon them like the fanfictions say you can.
Your breath hitches when Horror knocks gently again, almost as if he’s too afraid to actually want his presence to be known to the occupant in the room. You hear his soft voice call out again, hesitant.
“Boss?”
For reasons you can’t understand, you feel a strong spark of irritation. As if your body’s natural response was to get annoyed at the inkling that someone wanted to check in. You finally breathe again when you realize he’s not planning to enter and speak up,
“What?!” Your entire body jolts at the distorted voice that seemed to darken the room around you. Okay so you can do an absolutely disturbing voice when your pissy and stressed, good to know. Though, you really didn’t want to sound so hostile to Horror, you liked his character and had believed him to be a sweetheart, with a hint of psychotic joy and dark humor when it comes to torture, in your head.
You hear some more shuffling beyond Horror’s shadow and someone muttering before they speak up and you can’t help but speculate by the gleeful edginess that it’s Killer:
“Sorry for the intrusion, Boss, but Dust and Horror have been worried since you holed up a while and wanted to make sure you were,” he pauses, as if Killer is trying to formulate a response that won’t anger the one they’ve pledged their lives to, “not in worse shape than what you’ve said.”
Your tendrils flicker with displeasure as you try to come up with something to say that won’t give away the glaring fact that you are not Nightmare. As you mull over your response, you feel a sudden influx of that fear again: a type of fear that began as stress and anxiety. You’re positive now that that’s the fear of Horror, because you can feel the worry and hunger creeping in between the lines.
Well, what you think you know currently is that this Nightmare is not the nicest out of the draw, but isn’t so cruel that his team would up and abandon him after he’s incapacitated. It’s almost like they care deeply, but are too fearful of Nightmare’s reaction to said care to actively partake.
You decide to take a neutral approach and see how they respond.
“And what, exactly, was it that I said?” You try to form it more like a statement of conformation to make them elaborate without giving away the fact that you simply do not know what was said.
You hear nothing as the two outside the door seem to freeze, but you feel everything. Dread, sinking down deep to their core. The freeze of a fight or flight response, and the slight apprehension mixed with guilt.
“Well- uh,” Horror begins before he’s interrupted by Killer,
“Well, My King, you wanted us to remain on standby and said you needed to handle a few things whilst your body recovers from whatever the ‘insipid’ Stars did during our latest playdate.”
You try to hum in agreement, but it came out more like a scathing rumble. You take on a false, inquisitive tone, trying to play up the “bad guy of the century” act,
“Then why, pray tell, are you here, bothering me and insulting my resolve. Do you not think I can handle something as simple as some flimsy strings?” You mentally pat yourself on the back, a tendril- reading your thoughts- reaches forward and does it for you. That was kind of cute, in a weird, creepy way, though, since it’s attached to your body. You try to become angry again to make the smokey room happen once more, but luck isn’t in your favor this time.
You hear them shuffle once more; the shadow of Horror retreats a little. You hear Horror take a short, hitched breath before he speaks,
“M’sorry, My King, I just, uh, heard something hit the floor pretty hard, earlier. Wanted to offer dinner and make sure you were okay…” He trailed off and the terror that you felt made you both miserable and feeling gross as it tugs at a strange tingly appetite you didn’t know you had. You compare it to eating too fast and getting that queasy feeling all over.
You also softly wonder if they call Nightmare “My King” when he’s upset at them to appease his prideful side.
Maybe you should be a bit softer than what you’ve been doing, or maybe you should continue the charade until you leave and take stalk of everything. You like the latter plan since it avoids suspicion and stick with it, channeling the irritation from this ridiculous situation and take it out of the two subordinates on the other side of the door.
“God’s sake. I am not some child to be coddled,” You stop again at the hitching sound. You feel like a shitty person, so you decide to give some leeway in your plan, “However… I will join you all again tomorrow. I do not require dinner.”
Dread and anxiety flood your body from the occupant outside, and it. tastes. delicious. Damn, no wonder this guy was looney for some suffering. It felt like every bone in your body was properly realigned while a five-star chef handfed you freshly picked grapes from the vine. It felt like you’ve gotten the best darn meal you’ve ever had, probably made by Chef Gordon Ramsey himself.
You let out a deep sigh, hoping the Nightmare you now occupy would’ve done the same at Horror’s fears,
“I will be fine without a meal or three, but please do continue to worry, the meal is very refreshing. Now be gone, the both of you.”
The feeling becomes fuzzy, and you can only think that it’s due to Horror calming a bit from what you’ve said. The two shadows slowly disappear from the door. You really hope the false bravado of wishing continued panic on Horror would distract from the fact you technically reassured him.
This was going to be hard.
After silently waiting a until you become something that is not about to fall apart at the seams, you slunk back in the chair. This is going to suck. You have no idea what anyone’s dynamics are. You have no idea what your new enemies are like. You have no idea how Nightmare himself behaves. And, you have no idea how to use magic.
That last thought is probably the most worrisome. Maybe you should go ahead and start trying since you’ve already told the others you’d be out by tomorrow. What if they could tell that you weren’t Nightmare? Hell, maybe this new chapter of your life will end before you make it out of this castle. You quickly shake your head, banishing the thought. If you begin to be pessimistic, it will follow you into real life.
You spread your legs out and sink deeper in the chair, and you decide to continue to thumb through Nightmare’s journal. You’ve come across some entries of the gang’s beginnings and set your sights to learn how the operate.
It’s clear to you that Killer is very close to the original version of him: believes to be a thing- not human or monster, emotionless past stage one, and very fucking funny and crass. It seems this Killer had his Chara disconnected in a way you can only assume was outcode interference. He was Nightmare’s first member after Nightmare was ambushed by the Star Sanses during his negativity spreading activities. He wrote how “If Dream gets a team of subordinates to fight under him, then I should get one too. It’s only fair, after all.” Nightmare writes about Killer’s stages and how he’d beg Nightmare to “take the guilt away”. You assume that’s when he reaches stage one, and this Nightmare keeps him in stage two, like most renditions.
Horror was the next. Nightmare wrote that his brother fell down after Undyne shut off all connections Snowdin had with Waterfall and Hotland, making whoever remained live off tree bark and whatever animal or human that fell down the melting roof. Nightmare offered food to The Ruins and Snowdin and an item to awaken his brother. Horror could not resist, feeling the overwhelming guilt. He started off harsh, argumentative, and violent until Nightmare forced him to eat. After a few months, Horror began to recover from the famine, though he was still rather keen on psychological torturing a civilian or two that they bring back after missions. He wrote that Horror is simple and domestic, in a way. He takes care of the others’ needs and dissolves the fights Killer and Dust get into with a matter-of-fact flare.
The last Nightmare gathered was Dust. It was clear to you that he seemed to be more of a challenge then the first two. He was solely driven to keep going because he believed the human would return, so Nightmare decided to wait. As soon as the human returned, he swiftly plucked the child and Dust out of the AU and killed Frisk, ending that AU copy’s story. This Dust is a bit more… psychotic then the one’s portrayed in the fanfictions you’ve read. He seems to be intensely triggered by humans and started off extremely rebellious and depressive. Dust so badly wanted for a happy ending in his world, but it’s impossible now that Nightmare killed the kid as no one else can RESET.
With the new information stored away you carefully rebind the journal and put it back in the drawer.
It seems like Nightmare might somewhat care for them, but he kept them at a distance. The way he writes about them is like something you don’t want to be interested in, but cannot help but be drawn to. In some recent entries he’s marked their names out and replaced them with words like thing or pawn. Maybe he realized he began to grow close and wanted to push them away? Maybe he was expecting a betrayal from someone? You can’t really ask him about it since you’re in his body now, so you move on to the magic part.
You’ll need to learn all the crazy shit Nightmare can do… in a single night. Deciding to start with looking at his soul, you try to remember what everyone describes pulling a soul out and struggle in silence. Your hands rest on your chest was you visualize a soul in your ribcage. You shift back and forth in the chair, frustration coming to the forefront of your mind once more as nothing happens.
“Why does this have to be so difficult? Maybe I should just go for it and hope his muscle memory stayed with this body.”
You try and force your mind to go blank and imagine Nightmare’s soul. A muddled tug makes you gasp and clutch on to your hoodie. You try again with slightly better results.
You try one more time without forcing your mind to empty, honing in on the appearance of Nightmare’s soul and wishing to see it.
Suddenly, something makes a strange crackle and your breath stutters in your chest.
There, in front of your face, floats a single black apple, the first eaten apple from The Tree of Feelings. Your face contorts to horror when you realize the apple has only half, the half not facing you shredded off with jagged marks. It leaks a slow, glowing fluid, almost as if it’s crying out in pain.
Well, you’re utterly screwed.