"Curious."

You were suspended several feet in the air, held against your will as as the demented skeleton surveyed you curiously. "And you are the one called [Y/N], is that so? I find that hard to believe, that a human so pitiful and abhorent as yourself could be the one threat that stood between me and domination of the multiverse. Well now that time has passed for no resistnace lives to oppose me any longer. The painter was a fool even in his final hours."

Nightmare grinned before you, looking like something created within the depths of one's mind, a creature so foul and an abomination that could surely never exist in the mortal world. But here the foul thing stood, reminding you eerily of how Abyss had looked in his final hour, when the creatures of hate had corrupted his soul and turned him into one of them, just as Nightmare was.

"And yet you think you can win," Nightmare laughed as you narrowed your eyes in the sight of him, every inch and fibre of your being craving for the slightest opportunity in which you could break his hold over you and stick a knife down his windpipe. "How can you possibly be so stupid as to believe that hope exists even now, when there is not even the slightest chance that you can escape? You have been betrayed, your friends captured, maybe killed, I won't ruin the surprise. Yet you still stay determined, how hilarious is that?"

The other skeletons standing nearby joined in with their commander's laughter, heads shaking at the irony of it all. "But what I find the most peculiar of all is the nature of your soul." You froze at the mention of it, not wanting Nightmare to discover the true nature of how you had managed to evade his soul weapon, how you had managed to reconstruct your soul even when it had been split in two. But it was inevitable that he would discover -

"Now that is strange."

Your soul was brought into view resembling the strange display of Error's half and your soul bound together, both halves distinct and visible. "You should be a blubbering mess without the other half of your weapon nearby and yet here you stand, completely coherent and aware of your surroundings with an intact soul, or a patch upgrade I would presume."

You said nothing, refusing to give in to Nightmare's growing satisfaction. "But what I dont't undestand is why that anomaly of a comedian would give you half of his soul, it seems the last thing he would ever do." There was a brief moment of silence before Nightmare broke down into a fit of hysteric laughter. "Oh, that is hilarious! Is it possible that Error, the one destined to eradicate the multiverse, the one that the painter has struggled so much against, actually has emotions? The nerve of that!"

Heat flaed in your cheeks and you struggled against the invisible hold over your soul, hating being so trapped, so damn helpless to do anything but watch as you were ridiculed by the group of skeletons.

"But what I wonder," Nightmare continued, lowering you closer to the ground so that the two of you were eye level. "I wonder if there is a link between the two of you, if my theory is correct that the two of you share a split soul. Because if one's half of a soul is to die or endure unbareable agony, surely the other half would feel it, if even a little? Shall we test it?"

Nightmare's hand was inches away from your exposed soul when the realisation slowly clicked into place. "You haven't caught them," you gasped, relief flooding through you. "Because if you had caught Error and the others, there would be no point in any of this. There would be no need to torture me in hopes of rendering Error vulnerable if he was already in your grasp, right? You're not as powerful as you may think. Because as long as they walk free, there is still hope. And hope is the only thing stronger than fear."

"Enough!" Nightmare spat and you were slammed to the floor before being lifted back up again. "Nothing, they are nothing compared to me! I have won this war and they in time will face their own ends. With you gone the resistance will crumble and no one will dare oppose me. Not with Ink gone and finally you, the one they deem to be the painter's successor once he dies, is that right? A funny thing that will be."

The skeleton's hand was inches from your chest, the tips of his fingers ready to rip into the fibres and sinews of your abdomen and rip apart every internal organ lodged there, ready to bestow upon you a long and painful death. But yet the pain and torture did not come, your muscles slowly relaxing as you stared Nightmare down, wondering why he hadn't worked up the nerve to kill you.

It appeared that Nightmare was caught in the midst of a conversation with some unseen figure, a conversation that the other skeletons shifted uneasily, always put on edge whenever their leader frequented in conversations with himself. But their placated reactions suggested that this wasn't the first time Nightmare was caught having these one-sided conversations, but just who was he talking to?

"But - " The protest left Nightmare's mouth as he engaged in indistinct conversation. A tense minute passed before Nightmare finally pulled away from whatever unseen figure he had been conversing with, a sadistic smile plastered on his features. "You just never seem to run out of luck, do you? My master deemed it worthy that we keep you alive, at least for now. How special you must be, a roach such as yourself getting a personal spare from the gods. How peculiar, very interesting."

Gods? Were there truly bigger forces at play, had you been wrong that things such as fate and destiny were things that the lower creatures could sort for themselves? Even still, if Nightmare's god was truly real, you would never bend the knee and swear allegiance to the invisible figure. Your gods had been as real as the one that Nightmare spoke to even now, and your gods were dead. Nothing ever lasted forever, not even the gods themselves. Everything eventually sank from the sands of time into a forgotten age where none would remember them, such is the fate of all living things.

"It would be pointless anyway, killing you," Nightmare said as he motioned for two of his guards to pick you up from the ground, the invisible hold still on your soul. "With you alive, there stands a bargaining chip that can be used to bring your friends out of hiding, not that they wouldn't be found anyways. But Error is the one I want, the thorn in my side that has been evading my little invitations for far too long. I would have thought him eager to join our cause, we offer hefty rewards for those that fight for the winning side. And yet he cast his lot with those blood traitors, Ink's little band of rebels."

"The worst mistake you can ever make," the words left your lips, catching you surprised by the harshness laced in your tone, "is to misunderstand your enemy. Error doesn't want a reward or a change in leadership over the multiverse, haven't you been paying attention? He wants everything to end, no more parallel worlds or wars between losing sides, only quiet, nothing."

Nightmare paused for a moment before replying. "And do you agree with him, do you think the multiverse should come to an end? No more worlds, no more universes, no more anything?"

When you did not respond, the anomaly threw back his head in a fit of laughter. "The difference between the two of you is astonishing. You strive to protect as Ink once did, to guard and serve the universes while the glitch himself seeks to eradicate them, yet you still call him your friend? I would imagine him to first rip out your throat before giving you half his soul.

"But enough of this." Nightmare waved his hand, dismissing you. "You will be thrown into a world, a universe that has longed since decayed. There is nothing there, nothing exists and will exist there except you and your thoughts. That is your sentence and that is where you will stay until I have found your friends, from there I will drag you out from your prison and make you watch as I execute each and every one of those that have dared to stand with you and oppose me. And when there is nothing left, when I have taken away everything from you, then I will throw you to the creatures of hate that roam the Void, where your patched soul be twisted and corrupted until you succumb to their wrath. And so it shall be."

The enormity of his words were sinking in as you were slowly dragged away from Nightmare. "You bastards!" you screamed, thrashing against the iron grip of those that held you hostage. "He's going to kill you all!" You looked in desperation to the skeletons that were holding you prisoner. "Nightmare doesn't care for who or what you stand for. He only wants to rule, he cares nothing for those that help him. There's still a chance, there's still - "

You were thrown through a rift into a room of white, similar to the Void and yet completely different. It was the remnant of a deleted world that was long forgotten, without name or memory of those that had once lived in it. You caught sight of Nightmare's smile before the rift closed from view, sealing him away.

Your first motive was to reach into the depths of magic that were tucked away within your mind, but you felt nothing. Whatever or wherever Nightmare had thrown you into seemed to be laced with magic that rendered you incapable of summoning the power to open a rift and escape.

"They're going to come for me," you whispered, sinking to your knees and burying your head in your shirt. Error had made that promise to you not so long ago when your mind had been filled with thoughts of murder and chaos, when you had disappeared into Underfell.

I'll find you.

But no one was going to find you here for you were locked away in a world with no definition or place, simply existing in the blank graveyard of the dead. This was where you would succumb to insanity, this was where you would stare into the endless abyss of the Void and watched as it slowly morphed and stripped away your personality, creating an entirely new person. Who would you end up as in this game of charades? Ink had been crafted into its protector, Error shaped into its destroyer. What would become of you?

"You looked into the Void and the Void looked back."

At first you thought the words had come from your mouth, given the fact that you were the only living thing within this endless hell. At least, you were the only living thing present with a soul.

You had not known Ink for long, only having a brief exchange with him when you first appeared within the Void, world destroyed and no where to go, how long ago that felt. But there was something distinctly wrong about the way the painter was now, the slight tremor to his left hand, the way his eye sockets no longer shifted from different shapes and colours, two empty white irises that reflected the hollowness of the skeleton that bore them.

"How are you alive?" You took a tentative step closer to him, not sure if the painter was friend or foe. You had considered Reaper to be one of your allies, your friends, and yet he had sold you and the others out for an unknown reason. If you couldn't even trust those closest to you, who was there to trust?

"You can't kill something if it doesn't have a soul," Ink chuckled with blank humour, his irises flickering from the empty paint vials fastened around his sash and then back to you. "Plus Nightmare has an interesting way of entertaining himself, he likes to watch people rot away here."

"Are there others?" You looked around frantically, trying to catch a glimpse of other life forms here. But when no one else appeared, you turned back to Ink.

"Not anymore." Ink sat on the ground. "Maybe there once were others, it wouldn't surprise me. But if they were here, they have long since rotted away, not even their code remaining."

The thought of simply staying in this place until you were forgotten, enduring years of isolation until even your code, the very essence of your being forgot itself, sent chills down your spine. Was it possible to forget yourself? "What happened to you?" The words poured from your mouth as you sat down next to Ink, trying to find out answers that had long since been nagging you. There wasn't like there was anything else to do anyway.

"Why do I seem less like myself?" Ink asked dryly, staring at his hands. "If you want to analyse myself in a literal sense, this is me, the closest I've ever been to my real self anyway."

Confusion washed over you. From what the others had described Ink and from the brief encounters you had exchanged with him, the painter had always possessed a sort of vitality and personality that no other living thing could ever embody. "I don't understand," you replied.

"I don't have a soul," Ink shrugged as if this was something completely normal. "When I first appeared in the Void I ripped it out of myself in hopes of forgetting my old world, to erase the pain and loss of it all. I supposed it worked for a while, but things got rather boring. I find myself wandering the Void for hours on end until I found this place, the place I believed to be the very centre, the very heart of the world itself. You have never been there before and no other living creature has, but it's sort of the hub for all of the alternate universes all at once, all the portals leading to the infinite amount of timelines crammed together in one spot."

"That sounds wonderful," you breathed, imagining such a place. Maybe you would go there one day, you had always wanted to explore the other universes, but the thought of it made you suddenly recoil. You could and would never step foot in another universe so long as you could help yourself. The three universes you had crossed paths with, your original timeline, the world of stars and the timeline called Underfell, they were all gone now, code eradicated from existence.

You break everything you touch.

"It's noisy if you ask me," Ink sighed. "So in this place, I usually like to call it the Doodle Sphere, I learned more about traits, the different aspects that construct a soul, both human and monster. And when I first met one a hate creature - "

"I know all about them," you chuckled darkly.

A wry smile played Ink's features. "Yes, they love giving warm welcomes, especially those new to the Void. But when I first met one, I didn't just see hate, I saw vitality and life inside of it, I saw the different traits that were put together in some sadistic fusion to construct the hatred trait. And through a very long and complicated process, I was able to convert the hate creature into each isolated trait, liquid versions that I used to fill the vials on my sash." He gestured to the empty containers on his chest. "And with the raw emotions, I could combine them and consume them so to speak, allowing me to simulate what it once felt like to have a soul, thus giving me emotions for a temporary amount of time."

"But that's why you don't feel anything now," you finished for him. "Because since you've been here, there's no way for you to track down another one of those things and refill your jars, right?"

"You're not as dumb as you look," Ink pondered, tilting his head to one side. You averted eye contact, feeling strangely disturbed by the white irises that replaced the once vivid ones.

"We've been looking for you, everyone has," you said, staring at the ground. "And once we find a way out of here, we can find the others and once the rest of the multiverse sees you're alive, we might actually have a chance. We might - "

Ink gave you a sad smile, seeming much more forced due to his lack of emotion and soul. "I have a feeling that after this chapter of our lives has passed that I will not be much of assistance."

What the hell was the artist talking about? "What do you mean?" you asked. "You and Error are two of the strongest beings in the multiverse, with the two of you together, there would be no chance for Nightmare and the rest of his followers to win. Things could go back to normal, things - "

Ink wasn't paying attention to you, his mind somewhere else. "Are you even listening?" you asked, feeling your temper rise. Even if he lacked a soul, didn't some part of him remember his former self, the dedication and perseverance he had once felt towards protecting the multiverse.

"Even if I were to join you and end this war," Ink mused, "things would return exactly to the way they were, would it not? Error would once more be free to do as he pleased and wreak havoc across the timelines, me attempting to stop him at every twist and turn. It's a never-ending cycle [Y/N], one that will only pick right back up again after this war has passed."

"That's not true," you bristled, remembering Error's words. "The two of you have a truce, he'll keep to it."

"Truces are agreements meant to be broken," Ink echoed the words many were so fond of repeating. "But what if there was a way to end the cycle, a way to overwrite everything? Imagine it, a place with no more destruction, no more creation. One universe, one timeline, the perfect ending with the perfect characters. That was his goal in the beginning, a goal I see only now."

This was not the painter, not the one you had known during your brief time with him. Something was off, very, very wrong with Ink, not just because he had lost his vitality or from the extended period of time he had sat alone in this prison. Or had he been alone?

There was one vial still on Ink's chest, filled with a purple fluid that contained a single glowing soul. Nothing was making sense, nothing at all..

"Thank you for playing our game," Ink growled, his voice no longer his own. Someone, something was something was standing behind him, something so large and so powerful that it moved the very core of your being.

And then Ink broke the vial, the vial containing the soul. A resounding shriek filled the air accompanied with a choir of laughter.

For Gaster was no longer bound to the Void, he was free, free at last!