Chapter Text
It had been awhile since he shattered himself.
He had gained access to observing more worlds than his own, of course, but he still felt drawn back to his origins. He wasn’t sure why. That world had all but forgotten him and he too had forgotten himself.
It was a stagnant place, the inhabitants living their mundane lives as always. It was one of the reasons he pursued the experiments that got him into this situation in the first place.
The monsters were always concerned with finding a way out of the Underground and to the surface. But he had disagreed. Why should they attempt to return to a place where they had already been rejected? Why not go someplace more?
And, truthfully, he had succeeded. Just not in the way he particularly imagined.
His experiments with darkness had sent him to somewhere in between, to a place between existences, to nowhere at all. It behaved like the glue of the universe, holding the parts together. It contained the very nature of this world and others, its rules, its assets, the murky depths of existence. It was the very embodiment of imagination itself. It could turn any mundane thing into something magical. It was all quite incredible, and it was everything he was looking for.
Here, he could be the embodiment of his dream. He could create something very, very wonderful.
…
He has encountered a roadblock.
He had meddled with another world, one where the War never happened, one where monsters, even himself, had gotten to live normal lives. He found he had grown quite fond of it.
A quirk of this world was that the darkness, the Depths, had bubbled up just below the world’s surface, probing for a way out like magma under an awakening volcano. This was ideal for his work, after a certain amount of time a simple stab into the earth would be enough to release the darkness.
However, it would soon overwhelm the world. Too much fantasy, too much darkness would upset a balance. Of course, of course it would. He had found, and in a way had become, the Dark. But there was a counterpart, no? Eventually, an ocean of ink would wash over the world, and it would start over again.
It simply wouldn’t do.
He attempted many ways to prevent this from happening, but still the world would always end. It left him feeling hopeless. He was stuck beyond space and time with a doomed world and a broken dream. So he left it, and went back to observing other worlds.
…
He was back watching his old world, as he typically found himself doing recently.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been like this now, there wasn’t much to keep track of the time. He tried to avoid thinking about that.
Something curious had happened. A human had fallen into the Underground. And immediately, he could tell something was different about this one than the others.
It carried an extreme will, one that had for the first time overridden that of what’s left of the King’s fallen son.
How very, very interesting.
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He learned two things about this being. It was very, very persistent in getting what it desires, and it was kind.
He had also learned the will did not come from the human, but rather something beyond. Beyond even his domain in the Depths. It was painfully obvious now that he had noticed it. He felt as if he could press up against some invisible wall and that other presence would be just behind it.
They had gone through so much, surmounted incredible odds, just to give everyone a happy ending. He even found himself rooting for them. They had gone back in time after confronting the King’s son to help those they had missed. And they had succeeded.
Their will was like a white hot star, burning bright, burning up everything.
His thoughts drifted back to that other world. Could they be it? Could they help him in saving this other world he had loved so much? In achieving his dream?For the first time in a while, he had felt hope.
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They had not stopped there. They had begun experimenting now.
They killed, they spared, over and over just to see how the world would react. They had uncovered so much in this world that not even he in all his time observing it had found. He began to look forward to when they would come back to see what they’d do next. They’d rarely disappoint.
He learned something else. He recognized this. This was not apathy. They did this out of love. They loved this world, perhaps too much.
He found himself growing curious about this being. How did they find this place? Where were they from that he could not access like the other worlds? Unfortunately currently there is not much to do but observe it as it journeys through this one.
…
They had discovered him.
Of course he should have seen this coming. He wasn’t entirely erased. Pieces of him were scattered about like shrapnel from an explosion long ago. One particularly curious thing was that upon his shattering memories of him were destroyed, yes, but they had also been copied. Monochrome ghosts of people he had once known would reminisce about him in front of his visitor. And piece by piece, they were able to put together a picture of him and what he was like. A face. A name.
Despite everything he would be remembered.
He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
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They wished to see everything this world had to offer, even the bad and ugly, and as they had demonstrated before they were very persistent in getting what they wanted. But like all well-loved toys, eventually they will play too rough, and this world will snap under the pressure. As he feared, this had happened. Its demon had won out and the world was enveloped in a black wind.
They wouldn’t accepted this, couldn’t accept this, and it sold its will to its demon. They undid it, but still, even if the damage was patched up, it had still happened, and it would never go back to before.
…
This world was growing old.
It would happen eventually, he knew this of course. It was impossible for anything to last forever and eventually his visitor would leave.
He had learned so much and so little about them. And it wasn’t enough. Far from enough.
For the first time in a while, he thought about his dream. And realized something very, very important.
It would take a long time, yes, but time was all he had. He only hoped they would still be searching for him when that time came to pass.
He would see them again. He would make sure of that.