From Murder to Dust

20 - Friend

It had been a year and one month since I had joined Nightmare's gang. Everything was running smoothly, and although Killer and Horror had been captured in the past month, Nightmare, Paps, and I managed to rescue them; the thing that most interested Nightmare was that they were barely injured at all, even if they were there for a few days, while the one time I was captured, I was less than lucky. It only revived lost suspicions of the past, but he wouldn't question me about it further. I knew what Ink did, and Ink knew, and I wouldn't wish that knowledge to be spread to anyone. In other news, Nightmare thought that Error was seriously considering joining our group, which was the best news in a long time. Error had agreed to meet with Killer, Horror, and I one-on-one so we could talk, I guess; I wasn't sure what this was supposed to accomplish, but it sounded exciting. At the moment, though, Nightmare was giving me one of my weekly checkups.

"Summon a blaster." Nightmare ordered, resulting in my doing the action, and Nightmare examining it. "It looks healthy. You can take it away now."

"Hey, Dad?" I solicited.

"Yes? Summon a few bones, please."

"What's Error like?"

"Nervous? Let me have a look at this one."

"Maybe a little. Is he lonely?"

"Well, as far as I know, he doesn't have anyone to talk to regularly. Summon a few more bones."

"What's his favorite food?"

"I don't know. These few bones are discouraging; you're okay with the others."

"Is he nice?"

"I don't think I've ever seen him in a good mood, if that's what you mean. Try a blue attack."

"Do you think he'll accept?"

"I hope so. Your blue magic seems to be getting weaker still."

"Is that bad?"

"If you happen to use it often, like most skeletons, it would be a rather hefty problem."

"I don't. Does Error have a universe?"

"I don't believe so - just his Anti-Void. Would you try to power up your eyelight?"

"Sure. What exactly is the Anti-Void?"

"Nobody knows much about it, except that it's white, time moves at a different rate there, and prolonged exposure can turn you into an Error. How long has your eyelight shone purple?"

"Ever since it went multicolored, I think: red and blue makes purple."

"That makes sense. I wasn't entirely sure, since only few skeletons in the multiverse actually have multicolored eyelights. Error's one of them, you know."

"Really?"

"Yes. You can cut the magic, now. Let me take a look at your results."

"Okay, Dad."

Nightmare collected his notes for this week, and turned off any devices that were monitoring my magic during the checkup, then walked to a nearby counter to look them over; I simply sat up on the table, kicking my legs back and forth like a bored child. We had done a lot of these checkups, and I knew Nightmare would take a little while to organize all the information to tell me what was wrong with me this week. I was thankful for his help with my condition, but this next part was never really exciting. My magic deficiency seemed to be slowly getting worse; I wondered why it wasn't noticed for almost a year, though, then suddenly popped up. Maybe some wrong twist of fate? Who knew? All I knew is that I wasn't getting any better, and it wasn't going to change. Papyrus really helped me, though, since we had been through something similar before. He always gave kind words and made me feel better; he's the best. After a while, Nightmare had this week's bad news report, which was no doubt worse than last week's. He walked up to the wooden table I was stationed at, and prepared himself to give the bad news.