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The bird cocked its massive head to the side, gazing at you with all it’s glory.
“You can feel the rage shining behind those beady eyes. And they are beautiful, but so, so, terrifying.”
“And maybe that’s what calls you to them. Maybe it is the knowledge that they could destroy you without a single thought.”
The evil grin that follows the malicious glare is no less than breathtaking.
The flames it ignited being enough to consume all the air inside your lungs.
“As it is here, not a game of life. Not a game you should choose to play, or can choose either way.”
“Don’t play with Fate, they say.”
“Don’t play with Death, they say.”
“Don’t play with It, they say.”
But you paid them no ears. You ignored what you’ve been told through your whole life.
And now, you find yourself here. Standing on the edge of Its realm, standing in front of something inherently dangerous. Standing in front of the starting house in a board game.
“A game you’ve already lost.”
———————————————————
Quackity woke up with a gasp, the words spoken to him so long ago still clear in his mind from the dream.
He knew he was fucked, he didn’t need any reminders.
It was still pretty early, the sun not yet breaking through the horizon. This was going to be a long day. Since he was already awake, Quackity had to start moving again.
It wasn’t the smartest of ideas, to travel alone in the situation he was in. But Quackity wasn’t known for being a smart man.
All he knew was that he had to leave his old village behind. It was his best chance at giving his son the life he deserved, after all. He had to leave Slime behind, in the hopes that It would keep following him.
The forests were no easy place to go through, not for an ordinary man. But Quackity was no short of ordinary, growing up a hunter from the day he was born.
It could go fuck Itself.
As long as his son was safe, Quackity had nothing to worry about. He could take care of himself, after all.
Quackity collected his few belongings, his crossbow and his axe, from the branch he fell asleep on and climbed back down.
He was in the middle of planning his day in his head when he felt it. Not It it, not exactly. But he sure as hell felt something.
The air around him felt staty-cy, cackling along to some unheard joke. The spring he had just passed turning ink black, birds flying away in the sky. The foul reek of blood inviting itself up his nostrils, golden cracks shining on the barks of trees all around.
And that cold, otherworldly mist rising up from the ground.
”You,” Quackity shuddered.
Then, and only them, came the caw. Followed by another, and another, It laughing at his antics.
“No!” The human yelled, his will still unwavering. “You are not going to fucking get me!”
Not wasting a single second, he bolted forward.
It didn’t matter where he was going, as long as he managed to get away from It.
Quackity ran and ran, but still it wasn’t enough.
The whispers never ceased.
The mist never faded.
The gold never melted away.
The static never dissipated.
The stench never subdued.
It never truly left.
Quackity could hear the sound of massive wings flapping lazily behind him. It didn’t even bother to take him seriously; It knew the human was no match to Its greatness.
What was Quackity to a being like It, after all?
He was only human, no way he’d outrun the whole will of the Other Side.
He wasn’t even supposed to know about Its existence.
Because, just like Knowledge spoke, “To know everything is to lose everything.”
He had, once, chosen to ignore those words. Just like those from all elders that warned people. He never regretted a choice more.
To beat Blood’s beast was a completely different thing. Blade was just fae. Quackity could deal with fae, even though his blind eye showed it was not an easy fight. A high fae from the wildest of courts is one thing, It is a completely different thing.
To seek out Knowledge’s Masked may have been a stupid choice, but he had been able to pull that one up. She was also fae, and as cold and cruel as she usually acted, she still had a kind heart behind her mask. The Trials of Knowledge were something he could beat, he did survive,after all.
The youngest of the Kindred, Energy’s Wave. The chaotic gremlin put up a great fight, but he was too young to master his power. Quackity managed to strike a deal with the incorporeal fae, giving his blind eye in exchange for the ability to defend what most don’t notice coming.
To gaze into what was to come, with the king of Death he had to talk. The king, Her Angel, and the first fae to meet with Death Herself. To catch the fastest of fae, what a task he received, but one Quackity could manage. When there was no way to outrun him, Quackity turned to strategy. He doubts the king didn’t see it coming, but is thankful to have passed the challenge.
”To have beaten my sons.” The oldest of fae spoke. ”Is enough to have earned a question. Though I should not know all, as Knowledge who rules is my daughter, I know quite much of both lands. The Time the Other Side has granted me has helped me learn, so ask away, and one doubt Time may resolve.”
His question and Death’s answer remain lost to time, as the years that passed didn’t help his memory at all. But one thing he did remember, were the last words he heard from the fae king.
“Your time awaits, as it is for all things living. Though it may come earlier, as it is for those who challenge the Kindred. You may think you’ve beaten all, but you couldn’t be farther from truth. A last one will hunt you. Haunt you. Hound your soul. The one who the whispers weave the tales, the one unseeable to mortal eyes. Beware of the mist who raises upon thou realm, beware of the monster that hides behind those beady eyes.”
The words still resonated within Quackity’s mind, more warnings to the list he regrets ignoring.
He ran and he ran, until he could no more. Stopping by the barrier between his world and the next.
Quackity knew he had no other choice, It was almost there after all. He could either step through the circle and fall right into the Other Side, or fall victim to Its ire.
It was mainly formed of golden runes marked into the grass in the shape of a circle with a triangle in the center and five smaller circles on the outline of the bigger one. Each of the smaller circles has a mushroom inside of them.
The one farthest from him never kept the same color, always shifting, from purple to blue, from blue to pink, from pink to yellow, to green, to blue, to orange, a chaotic mess of neon colors transformed into a mushroom.
To the right of that one, and also on the right side of the circle, was the scariest of them all. That mushroom was a mass of gas, deep, dark, gray gas, always contracting and expanding, like it showed the people of their Reality the breath of some big, dangerous creature.
On the bottom right diagonal of the circle was the mushroom that looked less out of place there. It was a simple beige mushroom, with golden veins moving all around it, as if someone- or something- had their nervous system turned into a mushroom.
On the bottom left diagonal was a reddish mushroom. Drops of a rotting blood-like liquid forming on its teeth and sinking into the ground below, a rotted and bleeding carcass of a mushroom.
And lastly, to the left side of the circle, was a deep black mushroom cap. More exactly, a death cap mushroom shrouded in a dark substance, it painted the whole mushroom in tones of black and gray, killing all the rest of the grass inside of it’s own small circle, as if it was the only thing allowed in its twisted afterlife.
To complete the circle, a faint golden light going up from the whole thing, so high that his eyes couldn’t find an end to it.
In Quackity’s hesitancy, It finally caught up to the man. It flew over and past him, winding up Its flight inside the circle, staring down at the human, who could finally gaze at It in all Its terrifying glory.
It was enormous, to say the least. Its back legs were similar to a bird’s, while Its front legs were more like a wyvern’s wings, two other pairs of wings above the main ones, each one going farther into Its back.
The thing that really differed It from what most people imagine are not the number of Its wings, but how they looked. It wasn’t the scaly monstrosity that people imagine, rather the feathered cause of all of Quackity’s nightmares. It was covered in feathers, from Its head to the end of Its tail. Said tail which was quite similar to a peacock’s, in all it’s layers of feathers, but different in the fact It couldn’t raise it, only open it a slight bit.
What did surprise the human was Its color. What he was once sure was a completely black creature, now he could clearly see how wrong that was. Its wings were of a deep blue color, the main pair shifting slowly to white and then black at the end of the feathers, while the others skipped the white section and turned directly black.
Moving to Its face… Its beady eyes were even more terrifying than those of his dream. The right eye shrouded by those all-seeing ethereal golden sparkles, the right one by the rage-filled red drops. They weren’t enough to lessen the depths of the endless void pools that were Its beady eyes, just keeping themselves to top and bottom, making Its eyes all the more scary.
Its ears were similar to the many wings. Just like a miniature of the others, but completely black and with an also black spike on it.
And the final piece to that puzzle that was Its existence, Its beak. Dark gray, nearly black, Its gunmetal beak was just as bird-like as the rest of Its being, very fucking far. Around the edges, It had multiple pointed fangs on the beak, only visible when the beak was open.
It roared, a sound that was neither human nor animal, worthy of a being from beyond. The Other Side didn’t take it easy with its fae.
They stared each other down for a few seconds, before the air around It shifted, sizzling as It shifted forms Itself, growing smaller and smaller as time stopped ticking by.
Willbur looked at the little human before him. It was ragged and broken, practically a shell of a once living being. Were it any other human, Willbur would believe it was simply a shell, being used by some higher, Other Sidely being. Though he knew that was not the case.
The creature’s face displaying such asymmetrical beauty. The left side of his place was a mess. Rotting skin roughly pulling at a reddened scar, pulsing in rhythm with Blood’s heart, showing its corruption. The socket where an eye once rested completely empty, a simple, ethereal star painted in Energy’s colors marked there in a way that was hidden from the common folk. Its other eye still a deep brown, with a few specks of blood red and gold thrown into the mix.
The human’s hair was void black, with a few white strands of hair. Mostly around the rotted side of its face. It wore clothes similar to those of Phil’s people, just much more bloody and tattered. Willbur imagines other humans would describe its clothes as ‘right out of a medieval fantasy game’, as he’d heard Phil’s saying.
Most importantly, Willbur could sense the way the Other Side hollering its name. Could feel the way Fear waited patiently behind his human’s back, just shy of actually forming the wings he knew would be sprouting from its shoulder blades.
His human was destined to be his since their first encounter many moon cycles before, and Willbur did not give up on what is his.
It was perfect, and it was going to join him, whether through the easy way or the hard way, it didn’t matter to him.
Quackity couldn’t tear his eyes away from It as It finished transforming.
It had decided to shift, apparently, into a more humanoid figure. Don’t get him wrong, It was still far from human, It was just closer than before. Which, really, wasn’t all that much, considering the whole, giant bird thing.
It had now a human-like face, the biggest difference being Its greyish skin and the black cracks on Its forehead, nose and cheeks that led to a mane of feathers around Its neck. Its hair was of a light brown color, shoulder length locks turning into feathers before getting mixed on Its mane. Its eyes were also a bit less weird now. Its left eye had the pupil and the iris as golden as the symbols on the ground, while the remaining of the eye was black, Its right eye being a mirror of the left one, but this one red.
It still kept Its many wings, all normal three pairs and the pair replacing Its ears. The main pair of wings were Its arms, which were inhumanely long. Its hands were as dark as Its bird-feet were in Its larger form, formed of only four fingers spread just like It magpie counterpart. The other pairs were each just slightly smaller than the one before, going more to the center of Its back and down as they passed.
It was shrouded by a thick robe, cloth as dark as void, but contained the entirety of the night’s sky within it. Very different from his own clothing, It's was spotless. The robe was detailed with both golden and silver accessories, though the latch was of a deep black material. Its robes just short enough to display Its uncovered feet, which were just the same as they were in Its other form. The tail was also still the same, long enough so that It had to raise it a bit just for the feathers not to drag along the ground.
The now-man was also really tall. Quackity had to admit he wasn’t the tallest human out there, but this thing was still massive. If he had to guess, he’d say the humanoid in front of him to be higher than 7 feet tall.
And the last difference he noticed with Its new form, was the color of the feathers. It still wasn’t black, not really, but It was now much closer than before. The feathers still held the colors of a magpie, following the same pattern as before It shifted, but now they were much, much darker.
Quackity simply stared, wide-eyed, at Its new form.
After a few seconds of that, or no time at all— not like Quackity could tell, either way— It held out one of Its taloned hands to him, the extensive limb reaching just a few centimeters after that golden light.
An offer.
It didn’t need to utter a single word for Quackity to understand what It meant. It was offering him an escape.
Join It or perish, basically. Either he accepted this deal and joined It in the Other Side, or accepted his fate and died to the very talons that were held out to him.
Quackity was not known for being a smart man, but he wasn't stupid.
He took a careful step forward, placing his hand over It's. It instantly pulled him closer, resting Its main wings around him as the world cackled around them.
Inside the circle, it shone. Brighter and brighter, as the human closed his eyes.
“Quackity.”
A single word, muttered to the ears of all that lay beyond, but at a time where only It would hear.
It grinned.
From the depths of that forest, a golden beam of light ripped through the sky, painting an image of a too ambitious soul to the inhabitants of Reality.
From the depths of that forest, the Other Side’s most dangerous monster hummed lovingly as it held its protegee through the journey.
From the depths of that forest, a human closed their eye for the last time, acceptant of their situation and ready to wake up as something else.