Vampire Verse [Dreammare] ~☆

Dreamtale's Magic

Trigger warning: ⚠️ cutting/self harm

  
   With guards at every entrance and exit, and Eterna the witch on her way back to Undertale, blocking the road, Lord Nightmare seemed to have no way of getting to his Lord Dream before sunrise.
   Hours. He had only hours. That wasn't even enough time to search the library for answers. Though Nightmare already knew where they would tell him to go. He grabbed a book from the library and tore a page out. Normally, that kind of action could be used to torture Lord Nightmare just by making him watch. But he was tried, desperate, so beyond emotions that his soul was on the brink of shutting down. Leaving Lord Nightmare to appear numb.
   The perfect disguised. He looked as if he'd given up on fighting. Walking around the halls of his lonely castle like a husk.

   "Where are you going?" A guard asked as she saw Lord Nightmare opening a large door with a key. The guards didn't know where the door led, but they did know that a cold breeze came through it as if it led outside.
   "It's a garden. I want to read." Lord Nightmare answered compliantly, opening the doors to show the courtyard with a few flower beds and soft moss that climbed up the stone walls of the castle. Under the moonlight, it seemed like a perfect place to read or even nap.
   "What are you reading?" The guard wasn't ignorant to what kind of books a vampire pet might be keeping in his library. But Lord Nightmare showed the cover of a storybook. One of harmless fiction. "Very well. Enjoy your book, Lord Nightmare." The guard let him go and allowed Lord Nightmare to close the doors behind him.

   As the doors hinges stopped, the protective illusion died so that the Tree of Feelings would appear in the center of the courtyard where it never left. Lord Nightmare knelt before the tree, under its branches where the ashes of his mother and ancestors fed the grounds of the courtyard.
   His book opened to where he kept the ripped page, as well where the book's pages had been carved into to fit a small dagger. The tree was the source of his ancient family's most powerful magic.
   Stone prisons and wooden weapons. But that wasn't going to help him.
   Army's of darkness and manipulation of dreams. That wasn't going to help him either, unless the armies could teleport.
   Teleportation was an impossible magic. Mostly existing in theory. More than ever, Lord Nightmare wished that he had studied it instead of his dusty old books.

   Lord Nightmare looked to the tree, his wilting soul draining out of his eyes in tears.
   He begged it for help. A higher being or force of power somewhere must have been willing to help him if he offered everything he had. But praying to an old tree or dead ancestors wasn't going to help him in the present moment when he needed immediate assistance.

   He needed to do something.
  
   "I will die for this." Nightmare spoke as the world faded.
   "Then die." A response spoke in the wind with his own voice. Though, it wasn't Nightmare who spoke. The Devil spoke with his voice.
   A black apple fell from the branches of the tree and rolled to Lord Nightmare's feet. But before Nightmare could take it, he woke up.

   The world spun around him as he pushed himself off the ground, still lying under the tree, but with blood on his shirt and hands.
   With cuts running all up his arms and legs, he remembered. He had passed out. Trying a blood sacrifice to a vampiric tree that thrived on death didn't seem like all that much of a bad idea at the time.
   Though maybe Nightmare just wanted to feel hurt...

   Or maybe it did work? The dream he had was fading in his mind, but he was asking for answers, and he'd received one.
   "Die."
   He couldn't remember who said it, of course. Or the darkness behind the voice that answered him. But in all honesty, even if he did remember, it's doubtful that he would have hesitated any more than he did as he reached up to the branches of the tree.
   And, as though the black apple wanted to be picked, the branches seemed to lower themselves to Lord Nightmare's hand only just enough that it would otherwise be unnoticeable.
  
   He picked it off its branch. Almost turning darker in his hand. As if Nightmare's own dispare could corrupt an already negative magic.
   Lord Nightmare didn't know how much time he had left. He could've been asleep for hours, minutes, even just a few seconds. Either way, he had no time and no choice. "Die."

   The first bite made Nightmare tremble with a fear he'd never felt in his life, made him angrier than he'd ever been, his sorrow grew tenfold, as all of his guilt and regrets rushed through his body and was swallowed down his throat. The second bite burned like acid, the feeling of thorns tore his insides as he forced himself to swallow the piece. The third bite surged with power through his bones. The strength of a bear ran through him but the last bite almost made him go faint with a dream like haze. His bones ached, his magic strained like never before. His body begged him to sleep as his magic turned and changed, but he knew that he didn't have the time or luxury.
   The second apple made every scar, bruise, and cut burn. Every one of Dream's bites felt like they were on fire. The fifth apple almost defeated him, making him gag in pain as every bone in his body cracked from the pressure building up in his magic.
   The power of Hell overflowed his magic and kept pouring into him with every bite of apple. Finally, the tenth apple did make him gag and throw up blackened magic that constantly grew and grew and burst inside his soul, leaking out of every crack in his body as if something inside of him was pushing its way out. If his bones were a dam, the river was breaking through. The twentieth made Nightmare cry out in madness. The pain made Nightmare learn the true meaning of torture.

   The golden apples of the opposite side of the tree wilted as they turned black. Just as Nightmare's bones leaked black ooze, every crevice in the bark of the tree rotted and oozed the same black magic. Slowly the branches started to grow weak and fall, the leaves turned brown before crumbling into dust before they could even hit the ground. Meanwhile, Lord Nightmare's power grew as he tore down the higher branches to get his hands on every bit of power that he could.
   The fiftieth apple broke through his body and mind. It burst out of his skull and the back of his ribcage. His legs, his arms, his spine. The magic broke his body before reforming it into something new.

   He ate every apple left on the now dead tree. Standing over its decaying branches on his new legs. His bones were black as night, four great and powerful wings sprouted from his back. His head had grown a pair of horns to go with his bloodshot deviled eyes.
   The tree died because it had fulfilled its duty. To bring Hell on Earth.

   Lord Nightmare, if it was still him, stood with a mad look on his face, panting with the weight of dragon's lungs and sweating of exhaustion and shock.
   His four wings spread out to a monstrous size before taking off in flight straight up beyond the walls of the courtyard and creating a wind strong enough to blow the rest of the old tree down.