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ask-codeearasure · 1 month ago

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The Outer Realms -- Chapter 17

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Chapter Seventeen:

Opposition

—----

“You can’t escape the past. Right? Be a shame if I had to put them on again. Cast Irons… well, it’s hard to clean.” – Vander (Arcane)

—-

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” asked Error, confused.

Ink had just finished filling him in on the information he got from Edge. Error was right, Dream was not dead, but technically he was dying or in critical condition. Whatever golden apples that other skeleton threw at them back in Dreamtale were probably sick twisted copies of his friend’s soul, but it also implied they probably knew where Dream was.

“I don’t know, who knows where these… Outer-what-ever is at…” Ink shrugged, “I just want to check on my dads before we even begin trying to find it.”

Zephyrtop was the last AU in the lineup anyways. For Error, sorting through the code there would be a breeze while Ink caught up with Gaster, Aster, and his four brothers. And considering the former two were the technical creators of Zephyrtop altogether, the probability of it staying destroyed if they were too late was second to none.

Besides, with two of the very few creators left in the multiverse secure under his belt and held highly in his figurative heart, maybe they could help Ink find Dream. Error could only do so much with a being who had no code to his existence anyways.

“My guess is we’ll have to pick a direction and then just keep going until we find something.” Error huffed, cleaning his glasses with his scarf. He was already annoyed with the prospect of another AU he had to recode, remove another destruction code, and-or adding that blasted counter-command just to keep that weird copy of himself from destroying another AU.

“But what if we go in the wrong direction?” Ink asked.

“Then we can loop around. If they called this place the Inner Circle, then the best assumption we have is that everything is in a circle, we can loop around until we find your side-piece.” Error stated as if it were a simple matter.

“Dream is not my ‘side-piece’, Error,” Ink hissed through his teeth.

The glitch rolled his eyelights. Though he had to admit, he was downplaying the entire thing. Who knew how many AUs were technically out there. It could be hundreds to millions, a good amount of said AUs likely being destroyed by the copy-cat and thus just being blank white nothingness. So if they made the wrong assumption as to how far they could go or not would mean they’d be searching for days to even years.

Even Error understood they didn’t have much time, but there really was not much they could do outside of participate in these fucking guessing games. At this point playing a game of Russian Roulette would get them closer to finding Dream. They could split up, but Ink and his memory problems were as untrustworthy as a pipe bomb with a broken timer the size of a tactical nuke. You don’t know whether or not you defused the damn thing, and even if you did, would you really trust your life with it? So he was stuck here.

Plus, there was that husk running around, that stupid fucking anomaly wearing Ink’s face without a single care in the world. If there was the copy-cat and the husk, that meant there was the likely chance that they both have a similar history to him and Ink. They likely both fought each other over the same reasons and since that anomaly was a pain in the ass to take down, that meant that the other glitch was also going to be a problem.

Either that, or the only things they had going for them was at face-value.

Or he was overthinking it.

He probably was overthinking it.

Definitely.

There is no way Error couldn’t kick BOTH of those impostors’ asses SINGLE HANDEDLY, NO SWEAT, NO FUCKS GIVEN!

Ink tapped him on the forehead, prompting Error to jump and swat their smaller hand away. His friend wasn’t phased.

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

The glitch snorted. “Not much. Are we going to your weird parents’ place or what?”

“Awww, did ya finally wanna meet my old men?” Ink playfully rocked back on his heels, loosely crossing his arms behind his back. “It’s about time, they’ve been asking about you for ages!”

He’s…? There is no way they’ve been talking about him to their fucking parents…? Why would they?

“Uh huh. Sure they were.” Error clicked his tongues in repulsion. “No, I just want to get this over with then go back to my Anti-Void and pretend none of this ever happened.”

“Oh. Okay.” Ink’s face fell, but at least they didn’t push the issue. They opened a portal to Zephyrtop’s motherboard and jumped in. Error followed suit, wishing that one day Ink would learn another way to make portals with literally anything else but paint. He hated the texture.

Both outcodes arrived, Ink pleasantly surprised at the fact Zephyrtop’s motherboard was actually decorated, and Error looking through every nook and cranny of the space to find the coding ‘screen’.

The motherboard looked like a warehouse, storing blueprints and bullet point-filled cork boards, whiteboards only half cleaned, couches, coffee tables, a couple TV screens overlooking the main plaza, circus, and mansion where Ink’s fathers and siblings lived. It was obvious that through thick and thin, this universe was a well cared for outlier in comparison to the neglect all the others had gone through.

Knowing all this sooner would have made Error’s job so much easier in the past, but now that he’s thinking about this in the current day, any kind of prideful satisfaction the younger him would have gotten was nonexistent. Instead, the destroyer could only define one thing he felt from staring at the larger picture for so long.

Pity.

But of course, only Ink’s family would have given enough of a damn about their home to keep it this vibrant and alive, efficiently and effectively meeting the needs and wants of the characters inhabiting this universe.

It’s almost like being caretakers was a common theme in Ink’s family, and Error definitely didn’t fit the part. He didn’t even understand why he found this revelation so intriguing. It was unsettling, but Error had already been unsettled since before Ink made the portal.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, like they were being watched.

“I can’t find it,” Error set down the couch he had lifted and flopped on top of it. Since Gaster and Aster were still around and thriving, what was the point of going through this universe’s code? They probably had already thought of something to keep every creation of theirs protected.

“Maybe we should leave; take our chances looking for Dream without them.”

Ink shook his head, but didn’t look his friend in the eye and fiddled with the empty vials on his sash. It didn’t take rocket science for Error to tell he was anxious. The artist had been nothing short of distressed this entire time, both with and without sufficient doses of his paints.

“I can’t do that, Error, I need– I just need to see my dads, man. Maybe they don’t know what’s going on. I mean, they barely get out as is…”

“So what makes you think they’d know what to do?” Error sat up, grabbing a pillow and squeezing it, venting his frustration little by little into the carefully embroidered floral design in the fabric. “You just said they don’t leave as much. They don’t know the multiverse like we do.”

“Yeah, I know that, it’s just–... They’re creators, Error. They have access to some influence over all universes that we don’t!”

“So did XGaster, and look at what happened to him.”

Whatever train of thought Ink was trying so hard to uplift might as well have just crashed and exploded into a trillion pieces. The artist’s hands dropped from their sash, and they didn’t do much aside from stare at the floor. Right. Him. How could he forget?

“XGaster had… ambitions, I guess, but asking any help out of him would’ve been like pulling chicken’s teeth. Impossible,” Ink started. “I don’t really… know where that guy went either.”

“Oh, he's as good as dead,” Error’s tone lightened, using one of his arms to cushion his head and pulled a thread out of his eyesocket with the free one to fiddle with.

“Last I heard, he got killed by his own creations! If only I could’ve seen it myself, but when I went to XTale for any kind of entertainment, nothing was left.”

“Really?” Ink looked up, eyes wide. “Nothing left?”

“Nada!” Error twirled the string around his index finger, grinning to himself in amusement. “If anything did survive, maybe Dream or that BUG Core!Frisk got to them first.”

Maybe Ink should check the Omega Timeline for them later. He slightly recalled the XTale inhabitants primarily having a black and white color palette for their clothing, but because he had to juggle an overabundance of creators around the same time that AU was active, it’s not like he could go out of his way to give it any special attention.

Oh, how the tables have turned since then.

“Well if you don’t want to go, that’s okay, but I really want to.” Ink reached back for Broomie, but then the motherboard shifted.

The both of them froze immediately, then whipped around to stare at each other. Ink cleared his throat and slowly took down his hand.

“Did uh… Error, did you do something?”

“You think I’d be quiet if I did???”

“Good point, good point…”

Suddenly, there were teal strings that quickly ripped through the ground beneath Ink in the shape of an ‘x’, the air was rushing towards the strange hole they made, dragging the artist with it. Error used his own string to ground himself as he grabbed Ink’s hand. The rushing air was unrelenting as if it was demanding Ink be dragged into whatever hell it had in waiting. Error could see that the window frame his string was tied to was starting to break, forcing him to make a choice.

Either he let go of Ink, or he went with them.

He undid the string and they both were dragged in.

The portal was unlike anything they had ever seen. It was like an endless hole of cubes that made reality. He could sense it was like the Anti-Void, but also not. This was nothing like his home, but it had the same energy as it. When they finally crashed into the ground, it was as if they had fallen off of a twelve story skyscraper.

As Error got up, he saw the ground was blocky and uneven, as if it was destroyed, remade and re-destroyed endlessly, glitching out like some awful video game that had been both incomplete and re-coded constantly.

He looked over to Ink who was rubbing his head and popping his neck, the impact obviously still affecting him somewhat.

Then he heard it.

A glitch-filled laugh.

“Really? I thought I was doin’ yous a favor ‘ere,” said the voice.

How the fuck did Ink mistake that guy for him? Color him insulted to the highest degree.

The glitch barely looked anything like him! In fact, there were more differences than there were similarities. The most prominent thing was the hood of the jacket. It was easily comparable to a large lion’s mane, almost like Mufasa got skinned after everyone left. Bright golden fur was so long that it reached the glitch’s knees. The jacket was black and lined with neon blue but also had teal diamond markings, showing where it had been resown together on the sleeves. Even his shorts had the same markings. He wore a dark maroon turtleneck and a gold and gray-indigo vest over it. There was also an odd neon blue animal skull on the side of the jacket, right below where the hood started. He also carried a similar colored sickle with a golden chain wrapped around his waist. Another thing was his left eyelight. It had the shape of an ‘x’ with several rings around it.

He didn’t even wear his Papyrus’ scarf.

If he did, then Error would at the very least believe Ink had some reason to mistake them for Geno. But no. Their stupidity truly outweighed the odds.

Maybe he should lend Ink his glasses sometime.

“Really, Error?” asked the glitch, “Yous just had ta follow tha idiot ‘ere?”

“And what’s it to you, of all anomalies?” Error himself straightened his posture, already reaching up to his eyesockets for more strings. In the corner of his vision, Ink was already on their feet, their grip on Broomie firm and ready for a fight.

“Oh nothin’,” the glitch hummed, he touched the corners of his own eyesockets but instead of summoning strings like the way Error himself did, they did come, but rather they stood straight like claws, “I was just gonna take ‘im out for ya as a little practice run for when I have ta put up wit’ an idiot of my own.”

Error heard Ink suck in a breath, the artist inching closer to him. Something about this new guy pissed him off beyond what he considered the normal annoyance, which is what every other anomaly had become to him these days.

But no. As far as the destroyer was concerned, this fucker’s intentions were clear.

He wanted to take his place. That very thought on its own made his marrow boil, his teeth baring to match his growing hatred.

“I see what you’re putting on the table, and my answer is FUCK NO.”

“Really think ya had a choice in dis?” the glitch asked when suddenly two large blocks of the land suddenly appeared and collided with Ink from two different sides. Sandwiching him before two teal strings cut right through them. “I was merely tellin’ yous what was about ta happen.”

Ink rematerialized next to Error, a portal painted below him. Broomie’s length was already chopped in half, and the artist’s hands were sporting new cuts, spewing his namesake out from between the joints, a stark contrast to the pristine white Error expected to see every time.

The guardian of the AUs blinked several times, his eyelights spinning several shades of red in different shapes before settling on a triangle and a target symbol.

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR!? THAT WAS A TOTAL SUCKER PUNCH!!!”

“Awes, ya pretendin’ ta be mad at lil’ ol’ me…” the glitch cooed, calmly walking off to the side, not really paying much attention to them. This was his domain, and it was clear he was beyond comfortable and confident here. “It’s real cute that ya pretend ta have emotions, Inky-boy. But ya really shouldn’t be playin’ wit’ people’s emotions, things can get real messy.”

The other error’s new target opened his mouth to interrupt, but then shut it, the accusation taking him off guard.

“What…? I don’t do that!”

“Suuure ya don’t. Like the way ya don’t treat everyone around ya, like they ain’t people? Like they’re jus’ some characters in a book that ya can interfere wit’, o’ watch dem struggle in tha misery planned fo’ em. Like tha way you don’t see me an’ Error as people?” the copy-cat stated, he checked his claws for a second and shrugged. He paused and looked directly at Ink, “Ya only go around an’ play hero, an don’t even care if dey get killed off anyways. Horrortale, Somethin’ New, Dusttale, or the otha AUs’ my friends are from. Ya don’ care about anyone or anythin’ but ya own entertainment.”

Error squinted bullets at the other, his freakish New York accent was getting annoying, and really fucking quick too. He’s sounding a hell of a lot like Nightmare with all that YAPPING.

“Ink, he’s fucking with you.”

Ink went to answer, but nothing he could possibly say came to mind. He wasn’t guilty of whatever the Error-copy was getting at, at least currently, he was free from it, but where the hell did he get that information? Why use it against them now? Was their decision and work to change completely ignored?

Error shifted, looking at his friend from the very edge of his vision.

“Ink?”

“I know he’s fucking with me! I want to know why.”

“Am I now?” the glitch snickered, “Ink, can ya really say I’m lyin’ ‘ere? I mean, let’s look at yer history! Tha moment yous get bored wit’ an AU your first tactic is ta ignore it like a child does wit’ a toy they’ve grown tired of, an’ if it still ain’t entertainin’ enough you let it destroy itself. Isn’t that why ya let Error run around? Yous was bored with Underswap an’ so ya let him keep that Swap!Sans around and let him do whatever he wanted?”

“Hey- HEY- NO, YOU THINK I KNEW WHAT HE DID TO BLUE??” Realizing what had happened to his friend had devastated Ink back then, almost to the point he genuinely thought of killing Error like Blue already tried. Where the fuck did this guy get off on assuming he didn’t care!?

“No, but yous expected it.” the glitch frowned, “I mean, yous had every opportunity ta stop ‘im before an’ after. But instead, ya just ran off wit’ tha rest of tha AU, replaced ‘im tha first chance ya got because ya realized far too late that tha poor guy was too far gone. I mean, it’s not like ya leave Error alive because ya like him. Ya don’t even actually feel anythin’. If ya did then… well yous a shit friend. Constantly leavin’ ya friends ta die in horrific ways, be it a Killer bein toyed with by Nightmare, Error ‘imself destroyin their AUs, Horrortales being allowed ta exist, leavin Dream ta get shot by Edelweiss– Oh…” he grinned as he feigned it as a ‘slip of the tongue’, “Oh right… Ol’ Dreamy gettin shot and put on life-support. And yous… yous was nowhere ta be found! Talk about carin’ ‘bout yer friends!”

“I DIDN’T KNOW ANY OF THAT UNTIL CURRENTLY, I–” Ink’s ribcage rattled, an indication of his frustration, which would only continue to spike to higher heights as their opponent kept talking.

Before Error could catch onto what the artist planned next, Ink was already gone, having summoned a gray and black gaster blaster and shot after the other error.

Error raced after him, letting his strings fly to as many lengths as possible, mainly in hope of grabbing his friend and dragging him back, but Ink had a head start and was too far ahead than what the glitch had accounted for.

Ink’s blaster wasn’t used to shoot their new adversary out of the air, but to propel him forward to fight him head-on. He did feel! His emotions were his own! And if he had known sooner what happened to Dream, he would have tracked down whoever had him themself just so they could be at his side! Whatever he needed and it was HIS!

But soon enough, the only thing Ink began to see for certain was the blind red of unrelenting rage.

“I’LL MAKE YOU EAT THOSE WORDS!”

The glitch dodged Ink in an extremely odd way, Ink just…fazed right through him. The glitch patted his body down and grumbled, “So uncivilized…”

Error almost froze when he saw the scene. The glitch destablized himself. He turned himself into a string of code.

The copy-cat used his strings to grab Ink in a near identical way he did the first time when they met. But rather, they wrapped around his joints. "Oh what's tha matta Inky boy? I was jus’ sayin' tha truth! Ya neva thought we even truly felt pain, or despair. It was only until ya really started lookin' around that you toyed wit’ dat idea, and even then... can we really trust that ya learned yer lesson? That ya see us as people? Tell me, Ink, if ya really cared, then what would ya do on instinct if I were ta... order my friend ta kill that twerp Dream? Would ya even try ta care? Or would ya sit back an’ watch tha show jus’ ta see what’ll happen?”

They didn’t even answer, summoning bucketfuls worth of ink from between their joints, materializing bones and blasters to barrage the glitch with.

Error blasted the other’s strings, freeing Ink for only a second before they were snagged again in his own contraption of electric blue strings, yanking them back to his side as he reached out for the code to this place, only for the singular thing for Error to hit was a barrier.

The glitch swerved his blaster sideways, ducking under a floating, disembodied wall he recognized as corrupted, carefully crafted code as well, but appeared in the form of organized rubble.

“Why didn’t you hit him too, Error? He wants to hurt Dream!” Ink pulled himself up and struggled against his bindings. Error only tightened them, which served to enrage the artist further.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?”

“WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS, DUMBASS!” Error shot back, continuing to dodge and weave between chunks of rubble and ruin. He noticed all of them had a particular pattern, grays and whites, teals and reds, some gold here and there. It was like his prior-known ‘copy’ themed this Anti-Void after himself!

As much as he hated other errors more than anything else, there was a certain danger that came from being in another glitch’s direct territory. Given two other errors had almost succeeded in wiping him off the census in the past, Error wasn’t about to risk his neck a third time.

“He wanted to get a rise out of you, Ink! He was manipulating you–” Error looked back as he made another turn, only to see the artist gone, and his strings cut through.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?”

“He didn’t really think dat through, did he?” asked the other glitch.

Error screamed, spinning around to face the other error, the strings hanging from his fingers and eyes whipping forward to snag a grip on him, but all their intended victim had to do to avoid them was lean backwards.

“How rude of me, I didn’t even introduce myself!” the glitch snickered, “The name is Digital Klezmer! Nice ta meetcha. Though it really don’ matta, I mean ya probably gonna die ‘ere too. Speakin’ o’ which, why’s you helpin’ that guy anyways? I thought you wanted ‘im dead.”

A gaster blaster that had the skull of some animal, maybe some sort of badger, appeared right beside Klezmer, aimed right at Error, ready to fire. Error mimicked the threat, doubling the amount of blasters on his end off the bat. His voice began to mutate, the tone fluctuating and basic voice changing dangerously. Error’s blasters fired.

“MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!”

Klezmer’s blaster fired off its own blast but it had a secondary action, shielding Klezmer enough to escape, teleporting behind Error and sitting down on one of the pieces of blocky rubble, “Oh Error, don’ tell me dat ya think he’s ya friend! That he cares about ya!”

The fellow glitch cackled, “Oh, dat’s RICH!” He summoned several bones to impale Error, but Error summoned another blaster to take the hit, the bones going right through it before both weapons dispersed.

Error bit his tongues. He wasn’t giving this freaking psycho more fuel to tend with. He already had more than enough to make Ink snap, and Error had to find that idiot squid before Digital Klezmer did.

He teleported back to where he and Ink were first dragged in, leaving Klezmer in the dust like he fucking deserved, only to find no sign of him there.

“IIIIINNNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!”

Error’s voice echoed off the Anti-Void’s floating walls and ruins, and he took to scouring the area close enough to the ‘floor’, keeping all his senses geared for any and every fucking noise that might give away the artist’s location. Ink was so fucking DEAD once he found them. He was so tempted to POP THAT LITTLE HEAD OFF THEIR MIDGET BODY AND CHUCK IT INTO THE NEAREST HOTLAND LAVAPOOL.

—----------

Klezmer sighed when he saw Error teleported away. He shook his head and teleported to a deeper part of his Anti-Void. He really wasn’t going to get an answer to that question, now was he. He knew where Ink was, but what was the fun of going after the guy directly?

Nah.

Too boring. He wanted to see them squirm.

So he settled himself in his seat at his piano and began playing one of his favorite songs, Altale. Whoever wrote that song was more insane than Katagma. It was an oddly upbeat song. But it was also oddly fitting for this little moment between the two knuckleheads he dragged here, letting their hopes rise with the song. Now all he had to do was keep playing. Sure, he was leaving himself as an ‘open target’. But who said he didn’t know everything that was going on in his own territory? Not him.

And like magic, his bait had an impressive effect, and of course it was the Inner Realm’s husk that took it the quickest.

Ink materialized next to him, and could have smacked him upside the head with what was left of his ginormous paintbrush if he didn’t dematerialize into raw code a second before.

Klezmer summoned a gaster blaster that bit down on Ink’s torso, as he spoke, “Oh buddy, I really thought ya had more brains than my husk. I really did. Thanks for correctin’ me.”

Once again, Ink didn’t answer. One of their own blasters was summoned, chomping down on Klezmer’s own and yanking it back, dislodging Ink from its grip. The artist’s namesake dripped to the floor, showing the enemy’s blaster did in fact cut through parts of his ribcage, staining his colorful clothing, but he didn’t seem to care about the weight of his own survival.

Then finally, the shortstack spoke up, his voice shaking with emotion, dominated by an overwhelming layer of rage.

“How dare you.”

They looked second to an animal, a feral beast. More ink leaked out between their barred teeth, some trails dripping from their sockets as the red of their eyelights glowed brighter.

But one look at their sash made it clear every one of their regular vials had already been drunk dry, and it was several days ago too. So the only source of this extra power could only be one thing, and Digital Klezmer already knew well.

Sketch had tried to kill Error before, when both stooges were in the Doodlesphere, and Sketch’s defeat led to the loss of its backpack. That was the only extra source of power Ink had access to.

Ink dropped Broomie, the tool useless to him and broken beyond use. Not even the bristles were in functional order anymore. Everything the artist was using now came directly from his body, from his will.

“I don’t know what hurt you this badly in the past, dude, but whatever you’re after now isn’t worth it. Seriously.”

“What I’m after isn’t worth it?” Klezmer cackled, rubbing his face under his glasses, he stopped almost as quickly as he had started, “Just die.” Two spears made of his strings appeared right from under Ink, unfurling and lifting him up to slam him down on another platform deep in the Anti-Void.

“I wanna reverse all negative creation.” Klezmer growled, “All of it! No more of dis needless sufferin’ ya view as cheap entertainment! And unfortunately I need dat useless guardian alive ta do it! Yous husks are nothin’ but a nuisance! Ya don’t feel, ya don’t care about nobody but yaselves! Hell, if yous an’ Error were ta make some stupid deal, ya’d grow bored of it instantly and jus’ find some bullshit loophole ta find somethin’ you think would be more entertainin’ ta yous and only you!”

The ribbon spears dragged the still tied up artist into a wall of the blocky rubble.

“And yous think that ya know anythin’?! I’ve watched ya long enough ta know that you’re only playin’ wit’ everyone’s emotions ‘ere! How long till ya get bored of Dream an’ Error? What about dem Swap-folk? How long till dey just bore ya? A week?! You’d probably drag a Dust over dere just for sick kicks! At least what I do is merciful, unlike yous!”

He let go of Ink to see if he’s still breathing. Letting the cloud of smoke from the destruction clear.

“Never…”

The second thing he got was a rough cough, but as the smoke cleared, Ink pulled himself back up, the ink in his body surfacing to repair the damage done to his body. Some of the artist’s clothing had been torn off, revealing tattoos that looked like random scribbles covering his lower arms and ribcage, and other discolored, gray patches of bone. The rage in their eyes didn’t subside.

“I will NEVER get bored of them. Not any one of them.”

He met Digital Klezmer’s eye, a spiteful smile gracing his face instead of the twisted snarl the glitch had plastered on it minutes ago.

“But of course you won’t believe that, since you already profiled me based on the other guy that tried to kill my FRIEND, right? Who’s the dumbass now?”

Ink coughed again, dispensing a pool of ink at his feet as his body struggled to cope again with the amount of damage this new error wanted so badly to remain in place. This guy wasn’t at all like Error, Ink knew this now.

He was worse, really, and that was from a mostly unbiased opinion.

“I don’t care what you assume of me. I would have been devastated if it succeeded, and I would have been devastated all the same if Dream died too!”

The artist stretched his arms out, the ink creating another Broomie right in his waiting hands.

“So fuck you.”

The glitch stared at Ink, almost as though he was seeing the words Ink spoke right before him in material form. Klezmer couldn’t help but mentally compare Ink to Sketch, chuckling. “I guess you’re right. Ya ain’t nothin’ like Sketch. Unlike Sketch, ya don’t just show off your emotionlessness, or selfishness… well, not anymore… And you are right, I don’t believe you’ve changed. Whether or not you have actually started to understand tha sufferin’ of those around yous or even have a speck of empathy. But you definitely ain’t anythin’ like Sketch.”

He summoned several strings and drew them back from a ring that circled them like a giant slingshot.

“Dis… might sting a bit.”

He let go. The makeshift arrow shot right through Ink, impaling him straight through the sternum and the vertebrae leading behind it, but before Klezmer could do anything more with it, a blast of energy snapped it into pieces at the midpoint, Error’s cobalt blue strings were flung about the immediate area, snatching Ink away.

If Ink’s rage was considered animalistic, Error’s was a different lifeform entirely. The glitch’s eyesockets were clogged with his namesake, binary code spinning in his skull like miniature supercells, collecting more and more power to properly launch the amount of destruction it considered a basic portion. The creature before the two other skeletons snarled, the glitching only amplifying the volume and distorting it beyond recognition.

It was debatable if Error could speak properly in this state, with his body barely keeping itself in one piece, but somehow he managed navigating his way all the way here from the other side of the Anti-Void.

“yOU SHOuLD KnoW BEtteR ThAN TO BREAK mY ThINgs.”

Ink could barely tell what the fuck dragged itself by its arms out of Error’s mouth, or if it even came out of his mouth in the first place. Before he knew it, his friend began to clog the area with electric blue strings, drowning their perception of the area in wires tying them down. Ink couldn’t get a word in, his body creaking under the weight and the tightness of what was, hopefully, a very temporary prison.

The sounds outside were muted to him, but he could figure they were fighting out there.

“--- .... / .-. . .- .-.. .-.. -.--?” Klezmer didn’t even open his mouth, rather the sound – the morse code just emanated from him. He didn’t seem to be shocked, rather his reaction was one that showed he knew what it was like to be in the very state Error was in.

He didn’t even struggle against the strings, rather he destablized himself and kept moving. Now he was the one on the run. Whether or not he had expected it was unknown.

Error pursued him immediately, blasting through entire walls of code that blocked his way. If he was saying anything, emitting any noise at all, it was unintelligible to him. Meaningless.

He used to destroy everything he hated to fuel his will to live, including minor glitches distantly related to the monstrosity he truly was. But at the same time, none of it made sense. None of the semantics surrounding his past were important. Only the anomaly attempting escape before his eyes, destabilized code bunched together in a being that only knew suffering and grief, abandonment and anger.

So much like him but at the same time so, so different.

It was PATHETIC.

The entity let out a deafening roar behind Klezmer, causing the code closest to him to glitch out momentarily, then proceed to function as it was a second after.

Of course, not all gods went through life unchallenged. There were rules to the madness they shared and pain they carried. Rules not even they understood clear as crystal.

Klezmer used one of his strings to create a portal only for himself, a split second to get far from Error and to a higher ground, where he made hundreds of spears of his strings and even fractured bones. All with their own rings of strings like crossbows, all aimed at Error. With a golden smirk, he let them loose, each one doing thrice the amount of damage they did to Ink. All the while he made a crossbow for himself. One he could wield. But this one wouldn’t shoot a spear or bone. Rather the sickle’s chain that was previously tied to his waist and now having a small sharp knife made of his strings to ensure it went right through his target.

“Didn’t think I’d ‘ave ta use dis…” he mumbled to himself. “But color me surprised… bastard got a bigger temper ‘dan Wiess.”

There was a click in the Anti-Void as the hurricane of projectiles chased their target, just a shift in the layout code, like something just went missing.

Then, it was like the ‘ceiling’ grew a corn maze of red bones, stretching half a horizon across the new, demented plaza, connected to a million more blue strings. The ground shook with another haunting scream, and the source of the challenge pulled down the floodgates right behind Klezmer’s projectiles, snapping some in two every which way, cracking down on the ‘floor’ and disembodied walls, splitting some into smaller chunks than they were initially. Dust and grime filled the atmosphere, blocking a clear shot of wherever the target was.

Laughter without a direct source echoed off of what remained of the walls around them, morphing the acoustics and Klezmer couldn’t help but laugh alongside Error. He took aim with his crossbow as several portals opened up with more shots of the crossbow-spears and bones.

He saw the game Error was playing and he’d happily play along, but this was his domain, not Error’s. Thus, he knew every inch Error ran through. Every spot he paused. Every weak point. And thus, he fired the chain. With a rattling sound, it took off and the strings extended and extended further and farther than it would’ve otherwise, dragging the blade with it right towards Error’s soul.

The sickle wasn’t anything that the two idiots had ever faced. It was an Outer Realms specialty. A weapon that specifically did True Damage. There were specific damage types in the Outer Realms, and True Damage was a specialty that Klezmer had thanks to the weapon, specifically only the weapon really. It could bypass all resistances, all armor and specifically target the soul of the opponent, even going as far as latching onto it if the opponent could survive the attack. Meaning that they’d have the weapon stuck onto their soul and out for Klezmer to attack directly. It almost felt like cheating, but it wasn’t his fault someone was stupid enough to stand still long enough to get hit by it.

—------------

Ink made progress centimeter by centimeter, trying to ignore the sound of destruction, screams, and even more destruction. He thought back to the decay of Underfell, the compounding collapse of reality itself before everything imploded into white. Pure white.

He shivered and pressed on, cutting more divots into his bones in the process so more ink could join with the ‘floor’ underneath him.

Then came Error’s roar, the ring of the sound breaking his nonexistent ears, and then the ‘ground’ rumbled. Ink felt something slip under them, and the cocoon around them loosened, but not by much. They were a sitting duck like this, and whether Error wanted his help or not, Ink was convinced he’d die out there.

He had gotten an odd feeling this other Error was vastly more powerful than initially given credit when he was dragged kicking and screaming into this version of the Anti-Void, He didn’t know whether it had an actual name aside from that, but it’s not like they could afford to care, not when so much was at stake.

He wanted them both dead. He made that message abundantly clear.

Ink felt the hole in his sternum and vertebrae mend, and he could finally dematerialize enough to slip through the dozens of layers of strings that bound him. They knew they were getting weaker, having lost more paint than any other fight they could recall, and the migraine had come pounding in when he was dragged in this place too.

Error was right. They really didn’t have the position to fight in confidence here, but they doubted his impostor was manipulating either of them. The things he screamed several minutes ago were in complete confidence and backed with indescribable pain.

Think, Ink, think!

The ground rumbled again, knocking Ink back down in a pool of his own fluids. Another scream, and in the distance, he spotted one of the biggest walls in the area come crashing down, glitching back into the air in far more pieces than it started out as.

Summoning a gaster blaster, Ink jumped on its head and sped his way towards the ensuing fight, ripping off a lock of Error’s abandoned string as they zoomed by.

—-------------

Pain was the one thing Error knew best, but this was too much in one sitting. The glitch ripped out one of the stupid arrows that managed to snag him and snapped it in half, not bothering to watch the material crumble as he went to tend to another spot right next to it.

No matter how much his STATs fluctuated, flying up and down the border of 0 HP and MAXED HP to cope with the sheer amount of stress he just put his body through, Error felt it wouldn’t heal as quickly as he wanted it to, and it was just his luck that his sight cleared just enough before Klezmer pelted him with another barrage of projectiles, overloading his body.

He didn’t want to die like this, but begging was so far out of bounds of the question at hand that it was practically nonexistent, even as Klezmer shot another attack right at him, one the blur of his vision could not keep up with, not even if it were slowed down to fit his needs.

It was gold. Thin and gold and probably heavy, but boy did it look ugly either way.

It was already too late when Error finally registered the real weight of what was to come, if it were even possible for him. The glitch jolted backwards, a wildfire of agony igniting his body in response to its inability to move and its broken down state.

Then a dark blue blur of his own strings shot its way across his vision, wrapping around the attack. Ink entered the edge of Error’s sight, tugging the chain in his direction, ending up in pieces.

It happened far too quickly for anyone to truly realize what exactly the situation was. The crunching of bone or the splatter of thick globules of ink splashing on the destroyed ground. The most that the two glitches got was the horror on Error’s face and sheer shock on Klezmer’s own, but the thud of the body was heard and the moment the black and gray gaster blaster turned to a pool of ink in an attempt to save its master.

In that moment the two glitches realized exactly what had happened.

Ink had jumped in front of the attack to protect Error, sacrificing himself to the blade of the sickle.

“INK!”

Error jumped and tried to catch Ink but barely made it in time, catching Ink’s husk in mere centimeters before it hit the ground – if one could call it that, considering it still somewhat did. Ink’s husk was flayed, sliced clean in half, only leaving behind the rib cage and up. The last bits of ink from the blaster served itself to heal its master as much as it could but it wouldn’t reawaken him.

“Nononononononono—” Error’s glitching getting worse and far more unstable the more he spoke.

All the while Klezmer couldn’t comprehend the sight before him.

Ink had jumped in front of a fatal shot just to save someone that wasn’t himself.

He didn’t even dare speak. But all he could do was mentally argue with himself to try to comprehend the situation and what to do about it. He took a long deep breath and tore open a portal, bringing his chain back to himself.

“I’m gonna regret dis later, I jus’ know it.” he thought to himself. Out of the portal he got a vial of mixed oil paints.

Carefully he walked over to the fellow glitch, placed the vial and used a string to teleport Error, the vial, and the husk out of the Anti-Void without issues. He stood alone for a moment before sitting down at his piano and played a song he had received from Katagma who got it from some random game… something called Laura Plays the Piano. Whatever game it was, he was told it was depressing.

As if…

As he played though, he couldn’t get the image of Ink jumping in front of the sickle out of his mind. No, emotionless husk would do that. Sketch wouldn’t do it even if someone paid him.

No. That Ink did feel. And he felt a lot. He stopped playing and sighed, “Yeah… fuck me. I am tha dumbass ‘ere, I suppose.”

—------------

His soul raced a million miles a second, a trillion miles a zeptosecond, and no matter what Error said or how much he screamed, the body in his hands didn’t respond or move. Not an inch. Not a millimeter. Nothing.

And even then, as far as Error was concerned, nothing outside of him and what used to be Ink mattered.

The multiverse could burn.

It was like Error’s vision was set ablaze itself, both with glitches and tears he never thought he’d cry again, those blue-transparent pearls landing on Ink’s face, brushing away bits of their namesake, their blood.

Error felt the ground below them change to something softer, and air clearer, holding the weight of life, but what use was it if his friend wasn’t here? The one person who bothered to spend time and energy on him since they met, regardless of how destructive his behavior was by itself, was doomed, and the glitch knew exactly why.

Ink was low on paints, their literal fucking lifeforce, but he would have rather died instead of him, even if he didn’t truly understand how hard he’d be hit, or how many pieces their little body would end up in.

The destroyer’s vision began to black out, and Error heard the crunching of grass up ahead of them.

Danger. Danger. DANGER. He came to finish the job.

“G-GET AWAY FROM US— I’M WARNING YOU!!!”

The figure in the distance was colossal, bearing the slight reflection of light glasses would get from the sun at just the right angle, and it was just tall enough to be the threat at hand. It hesitated, then continued with another step forward, its voice ringing in and out of Error’s fried senses.

“Hell–..-? A|3 y0– 0;ay…—-?”

Its shape muddled further, the darkness closing in. Error knew he summoned something, some degree of magic in an attempt to scare them off, but he didn’t get to witness the result.

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