Of monsters and beasts
Dedede couldn't move.
No matter how hard he tried, his body didn't respond. He couldn't even open his eyes to see where he was and what was going on.
"Ah shit, here we go again" he thought frustrated, sensing that something had taken the control of his body.
Suddenly, without him wanting it, his eyes open wide and he could finally see where he was: on the stage of a great theater, facing straight at the audience.
When he saw the audience, his blood ran cold. Sitting in the seats were all the beings that had ever controlled him. The Dark Matter, Fecto Forgo, Ying Yarn... even Taranza was there, although the spider was the only one who looked at him with pity and regret. And although the idea of having all those beings in front of him was terrifying, what scared Dedede the most among such a creepy audience was something else.
In the front row were Kirby and Bandana Dee, locked in cages similar to the ones the Beast Pack had used in the Forgotten Land. They were looking at him with faces full of sadness and concern. Beside them both was Meta Knight, frozen in time within a crystal, a fate equal to that of the infamous Galacta Knight. And in the middle of all of them, looking at him with a cruel smile of amusement, was Nightmare. How eager he was to smash that villain's nose with his hammer.
Dedede immediately tried to run towards his friends in order to free them, but even with all his effort he still couldn't move a single muscle in his body. He tried to say a few words of encouragement to them, but they couldn't leave his throat.
Then Nightmare raised a finger and, as if commanded by some unseen force, Dedede's arm move forward. The king could now see his hand: it was made of wood and had strings sticking up from it. A feeling of horror filled his entire mind at what that meant.
"This is who you are, Dedede. Not a hero, not a king"
He was a puppet. A literal puppet, condemned to dance under the yoke of cosmic horrors that watched him with macabre amusement, unable to save his friends.
Bandana Dee's cage was then carried onto the stage. The Waddle Dee looked at him with teary eyes, but said nothing. Dedede then noticed how Nightmare forced his body to take out his hammer. Next, he began to move dangerously close to where Bandana was. A cry of despair choked inside of the king as his body raised the hammer, ready to smash his most precious Waddle Dee.
But what did escape from his mouth was a cry of pain, just after feeling a series of sharp punctures in his left hand.
Dedede's eyes widened as he yelled. Dyrn was biting his hand again with its small teeth.
"Let it go, you little piece of...!" he ordered the creature as he tried to shake it off by waving his arm.
"Stop it, Dyrn!" Zooey scolded her dragon as she grabbed him by the tail, trying to separate it from Dedede. After some effort, Zooey managed to free the king's hand from the dragon.
"Damn lizard" Dedede insulted Dyrn. In response, the little dragon stuck out its tongue at him. Zooey reprimanded the dragon with a glare, the little being shrinking in on itself a bit.
"Are you okay, Dedede? You were struggling in your sleep and you didn't react when we called you..." Zooey asked him with concern.
"It was just a nightmare," Dedede reassured her. He was relieved that the horrible dream was over, though he was still disturbed by its content. How would the dream have continued if Dyrn hadn't bitten him? He didn't want to imagine it.
"Well, I'm going to continue watching out for monsters. I'm taking this little rascal with me so it doesn't mess with you anymore" Zooey said, as she grabbed Dyrn firmly and took it with her to the entrance of the cave, where she was stationed vigilantly.
Dedede remembered that before he went to sleep, they had agreed to leave at dawn, so he looked out of the cave to check the time of day. It was still night, so he lay back down on the bed of leaves that he had made. It wasn't fit for a king to rest on something so rudimentary, but it wasn't like there were better options either. Besides, it wasn't the first time he had camped in precarious conditions either. At least the small fire gave some warmth to the environment.
The nightmare had left him quite tense, so he doubted that he would be able to fall asleep soon. To clear his mind, he decided to try to strike up a conversation with Sandalphon, who was staring thoughtfully and bored at the ceiling.
"Hey, Sandal," the king called to the angel. "How is your sight?"
"Still a bit blurry," Sandalphon replied. Lyrn was curled up on his chest, dozing. "I hope it returns to normal soon because I can't stand this boredom anymore. I couldn't make coffee with my eyes like that even if I had brought the utensils."
"Do you know how to make coffee? I wish you could prepare some, because it would come in handy for when I wake up in the morning" Dedede said, knowing in advance that he was going to have a bad night.
"Wait, how do you know what coffee is? Did someone already discover it where you come from?"
"Of course," Dedede answered, surprised by such a strange question. In his dimension, coffee was ancient. "Did you invent coffee in this world?" he inquired with interest.
"No, coffee was invented by someone very important to me. I only perfected the technique because those made by him tasted horrible. Seriously, it was like putting mud in your mouth," he remembered nostalgically, a sad and wistful laugh leaving his lips.
Dedede started thinking of a different topic of conversation. The way Sandalphon had just spoken about the inventor of coffee was just like Taranza's when he spoke of the person Sectonia had been before her corruption and subsequent death. Although he was intrigued, he did not want to delve further into a wound that did not seem to be completely closed.
"And how long have you and Zooey been travelling together?" he finally asked.
"It's complicated. If you mean when we have become closer, I'd say that it has been about a month or so since she became a permanent member of the crew. But actually, we've been in the same boat for at least four years, although she came and went."
"That's weird. How come you only started to get along with her now?"
"Until I opened my cafeteria onboard, I avoided associating myself with most of the crew members. I didn't feel comfortable showing my face after trying to destroy the world and all that" the angel revealed. "Even if no one holds a grudge against me anymore, it was very uncomfortable for me."
"Yeah, that usually happens. I'm also ashamed of all the questionable things I did in the past" Dedede admitted. "In fact, if I met the me from back then face to face, I'd probably hit him hard with the hammer to knock the nonsense out of our head" he laughed.
Dedede had thought about this topic many times, which had led him to consider alternative scenarios. What if Kirby had never made it to Dreamland, or if he had discovered Nightmare Enterprises before he met Meta, and the knight had told him the truth about the sinister company? What kind of person would he become?
"I don't know what I would do if I met my past self. Maybe kill him: everything would have turned out better and he would still be with us" Sandalphon declared in a somber tone.
"And what kind of people are those captains you and Zooey talked about?" Dedede asked, uncomfortable, in an attempt to divert the subject back to something more cheerful.
It was clear that Sandalphon had a lot of regrets and grief inside of his heart, apparently having to do with that person he had lost. It almost looked like he hated himself. Dedede thought that maybe getting him to talk about the people he cherished (and who were alive) would cheer him up a bit.
"Gran and Djeeta are one of a kind" the angel began to say in a warm tone. "They are a magnet for trouble, but they always manage to come out on top. They are brave, fearless, intelligent, and have a huge heart. They make friends so easily that it's overwhelming. They are able to forgive even people who have tried to kill them in the past."
Upon hearing the description of the captains, Dedede couldn't help but burst out laughing. That description reminded him too much of someone he knew very well.
"What are you laughing at, Dedede?" the angel dismissively asked, annoyed at the thought that the king was laughing at his friends.
"King Dedede," the penguin corrected him once more. "And I laughed because that sounded like you were talking about Kirby. I bet my beak that that little menace has managed to end up on that ship of yours."
That softened Sandalphon's reaction. The angel sensed that Kirby must be as important to Dedede as the twins were to him.
"Is he really a menace?" the angel wanted to know.
"Only for the pantry: he eats way too much" the king laughed again. But he hid the fact that he usually ate as much as Kirby. "He is also a menace for the bad guy of the week, specially is someone touches his food or hurts his friends."
"Well, if he gets together with Lyria we are going to have a problem, but of an economic nature: she has a big appetite too" Sandalphon joked. Dedede was quite encouraged to see the angel in that more relaxed attitude.
"Lyria?"
"She is Gran and Djeeta partner. I have never seen a soul as pure as hers. Although Gran and Djeeta were the ones who forgave me, it was she who saved me. I owe everything to the three of them and to Vyrn."
"Vyrn sounds like a dragon's name," Dedede commented with apprehension. "Does it bite too?"
"No at all. You see, Zooey named her dragons after meeting those four, so I think Vyrn inspired the names" he told him. "And no, Vyrn is not like Dyrn and Lyrn. You see, Lyrn and Dyrn are a manifestation of Zooey's leftover magic when she's in her human form," he clarified as he gently caressed Lyrn. "I think Dyrn has a thing against you because you're an alien, the kind of thing Zooey is supposed to protect the world from."
Sandalphon pointed at the dragon, which Zooey had a good grip on. Dedede looked at Dyrn, who looked back at him as if to say "I'm going to bite you as soon as Zooey lets go of me".
"On the other hand, Vyrn is a real dragon, albeit small" Sandalphon continued explaining. "He's like a little brother to everyone, although he was the one who raised Gran and Djeeta."
"Do they not have parents?" Dedede inquired, couldn't even imagine what being raised by a dragon would be like.
"Yes, but everything related to them is a touchy subject. Besides, it's not up to me to talk about that" he replied.
"I get it, I get it" the king understood. "And what about you beasts? Do you have parents?"
"No. Except for primal beasts that take form from another, there are no kinship relationships between us and our creators" Sandalphon began to explain. "We do not have a natural birth or growth. We are created in laboratories and are awakened with the age and knowledge that we need to fulfill our purpose, although some beasts can alter their appearance."
"Despite that, an Astral can force a primal to play a role of kinship or even that of a romantic interest" Zooey said from the entrance of the cave.
She hadn't wanted to interrupt her companions' conversation until that moment, because it finally seemed like Sandalphon and Dedede were getting along. But that was a subject that she could deal with better than the archangel, since he had been "absent" during much of the war.
"During the Great War, many Astrals used the process of creating primal beasts to try to bring back the people that they lost. Although, of course, without the soul of those beings, the only thing they managed to do was to create a new existence with their image. Those stories always ended badly, both for the Astrals who fell into these practices and for the beasts that were created in such conditions."
Zooey paused briefly before continuing.
"There is also another reason to force the beasts to follow the role of a relationship: manipulation. It's easier to keep a beast bound to you if you make them think you care for them, or that they need you because you are a way too important figure in their lives. "
"That sounds kinda scary," Dedede said, a little overwhelmed by the information.
"For the beasts that ended up in those situations, it was" Zooey sentenced, the sadness for her fellow beasts reflected on her face.
Even if she was the part of Cosmos in charge of looking after the inhabitants of the Sky Realm (the role of looking after the primal beasts corresponded to another part), their welfare genuinely mattered to her.
"They were the most likely to be abused, both by the Astrals and by the inhabitants of the sky" she finished.
"You were right with what you told me yesterday: you guys are a complicated subject" Dedede admitted. The fate of those creatures seemed to be very cruel.
"That's what happens when someone decides to play God and his peers decide to imitate him" Sandalphon said, not hiding his anger.
"And you say that Nightmare is actually one of these beings? Are they all that ugly?" Dedede wanted to know.
"Not at all," Zooey denied. "The average Astral only differs from a human inhabitant of the Sky Realm by their powerful magic. Nightmare must have undergone some sort of transformation that has given him that unnatural appearance."
"And I sense that this is not something that should happen to these Astrals."
"No, but there are a couple of precedents""Sandalphon replied. Again, Dedede couldn't help but notice the barely pent-up rage in the angel's voice. The king was tempted to ask him about those precedents, but he had a feeling that it wasn't a good idea.
At that moment, Dedede couldn't hold back a yawn. He felt very tired. It seemed that his conversation with the beasts had helped clear his mind of the nightmare.
"You should go back to sleep" Sandalphon advised, upon noticing the king's tiredness. "Tomorrow another long day awaits us looking for that freaking research center."
"Well, it seems that we both agree on that. Good night, guys" Dedede said while lying down on the bed of leaves. Sandalphon did the same.
Soon Dedede was sleeping again. The bad dreams followed one after another, although in none of them did Nightmare appear again. When morning finally came, Sandalphon and Zooey were waiting for him. Dedede got up, preened quickly, and after eating a little, they started walking again.
Although it seemed that Sandalphon and Dedede had become closer during the night, there was still some friction between them from time to time, even going so far as to argue, albeit less heatedly. Zooey supposed that was what happened when you put two short-tempered people together and they both wanted to call the shots. It was clear that they were both born leaders with different methodologies, and that was why they clashed.
During the day, they explored the overgrown forest, fighting off the occasional monster. At least Nightmare hadn't thrown any of his creations at them, all the creatures they had fought against being natives of the Sky Realm. Sandalphon's vision was fully restored, and he slayed any monster that dared to attack them with unrivaled speed and lethality. Dedede had jokingly told the angel to leave some for him, because he wanted to show off his muscles, but the angel ignored him. Sandalphon appeared to be upset with himself for being incapacitated the day before, and he wanted to make amends in some way.
They had continued this way until, several hours later, they came upon a stone wall. It belonged to a circular structure the size of a cabin. The closest thing Dedede had ever seen to the architecture of that structure were the Dream Palaces he had visited with Kirby and the others during their adventure against the Jambastion, except this one looked a bit dilapidated, overgrown (which camouflaged it with the surroundings), and did not have any kind of visible door.
"Astral Architecture. It's here," Sandalphon informed flatly.
"This? I was expecting something bigger" Dedede commented, disappointed. He had expected an enormous fortress or something like that.
"It must be an underground facility," Zooey deduced. The arbitrator put her hand on the wall and said "it seems that the door is sealed."
"Let me try something" Sandalphon requested. Z
Zooey brushed her hand away and Sandalphon took her place. A golden aura appeared around Sandalphon's hand as he ran it along the wall. He was using the elemental power of the earth to try to force the seal open. Suddenly, the angel received an energy discharge from the seal, making him let out a groan of pain and jerk away.
"Are you okay?" Dedede asked, concerned. "What happened?"
"The seal rejected my power" the fangel replied, frustrated. "We're going to have to think of something different."
"Don't worry: there is no door that doesn't open with some good hits of my hammer," Dedede laughed presumptuously as he drew his weapon.
"I doubt that, but feel free to try" Sandalphon replied with a teasig tone, while the penguin began to hit the wall with force.
– – –
And that was how Phoebe had found them.
The girl didn't really know what to think. Everything she had been told about Nightmare was devastating to her. Had the person she had loved really changed that much? She would never say that her creator was a good person. After all, he was an Astral who had experimented on the inhabitants of that island in the past, but an intergalactic conqueror? A tyrant who did delight in the suffering of others? Fear incarnate? What had happened to him?!
Maybe she was wrong and he had always been that way, everything she had known about him being just a facade. And still, she couldn't stop loving him. She wanted to keep believing that it wasn't too late, that if she talked to him she could fix things and get her father back.
Then there was Dedede and this Kirby guy. They had technically killed him, even if he had managed to be reborn. She should hate them for it, and yet she couldn't. If someone came to her home trying to destroy the lives of the people she held dear, wouldn't she have done the same? Hadn't she considered from the start the fact that she would have to fight him herself in the worst possible case?
Those present, especially her brother, looked at her with concern. It seemed that they had sensed that doubts gnawed at their core.
The beast sighed and looked intently at Dedede. She didn't know how he was going to take what she was about to disclose, but she had already committed to it. After all, he was her father's enemy.
"This was my home once" she finally revealed. "My real name is Oneiros, the primal beast of dreams. Although the inhabitants of this island called me, along with my creator, "the curse of the island". I am the daughter of the one you call Nightmare: his first creation."
"Wait, what?!" Dedede exclaimed, stunned.
The penguin came running to her and put her between his arms in a protective gesture. If he took into account what Zooey had told him about the relationship between Astrals and primal beasts, that had very negative connotations.
"Oh, poor little thing" Dedede pitied her. "It must have been horrible to have had that ugly, evil guy for a 'father.' Don't worry little one, it's over now" he added while patting her. "As long as I'm here, I won't let that tyrant hurt you."
That had left Phoebe completely baffled.
"Emm, he had never hurt me" she corrected, as she separated from the penguin a little incommodated. "He may have used me to experiment on the islanders, but he never mistreated me or anything. My memories of him are not terrible. In fact, some of them are quite happy."
"Uh, so you mean Nightmare wasn't always evil?" Dedede asked, confused. He couldn't imagine Nightmare being a good father, or a good person in general.
"Well... he wasn't perfect," Phoebe admitted. "He always put his investigation before everything else, including me. In addition, like most Astrals, he did not value the lives of the skydwellers, so his treatment of the inhabitants of this island was quite amoral."
They had earned the pseudonym "curse." The experiments that her father had subjected the inhabitants of the island to, and in which she had helped, had been cruel. Forcing them to stay awake to see how prolonged sleep deprivation affects their brains, invading their most private memories in dreams and turning them into nightmares, creating illusions based on their deepest fears, making them lose their sanity in such a way that it was impossible for them to discern dreams from reality...
Now that she thought of it, maybe all of that had been the foundation of the modus operandi of... Nightmare (it was so strange for her to think of him with that new name). But he had always justified it with "it's for our own good," and she and her brother had blindly believed him.
"He was also quite resentful" she added. "I caught him a few times muttering the name of an Astral who had offended him in the past and something about a serpent..."
A chill ran down Sandalphon's spine at the word 'serpent'. But it had to be just a coincidence. Not all the 'serpents' related to Astrals had to be that particular person, right? Maybe it wasn't even a person at all, but an animal.
"But he never did anything bad to me or my brother" Phoebe clarified.
"Is that true, little guy?" Dedede asked Morphe doubtfully. He wanted a second opinion.
"Emm, I'm not that brother," Morphe clarified quickly, finding himself in an embarrassing position. "I'm just an independent manifestation of Phoebe's powers."
"Ahh, just like Zooey's darn lizard," Dedede understood, remembering what Sandalphon had explained to him about Dyrn and Lyrn.
Hearing the king dismissively refer to it, Dyrn lunged at Dedede at full speed and bit him in the side.
"CAN YOU STOP DOING THAT?!" the king yelled, in pain, at the dragon as he roughly ripped it out. Dedede grabbed him tightly and said, "I'm not an evil alien!" he added as he handed it back to Zooey.
"Seriously, Dyrn, why can't you be more like Lyrn?" Zooey scolded the dragon as she pointed to the one perched on his shoulder. Dyrn looked at Lyrn, who struck a smug pose as if to say, "I'm Mommy's favorite." Dyrn grunted under his breath. An amused laugh escaped Phoebe's lips at the scene, her first purely positive emotion since she had sensed her father's return two nights ago.
"Hey Phoebe, if it's not too much trouble, can you tell us more about this Astral?" Sandalphon asked her. "If it's hard for you to talk about it, you don't have to. But we would like to have a complete picture of who we are actually dealing with" he added.
"Fifteen hundred years ago, my father was investigating the dream world," Phoebe began to recall. "He never explained to me why or what for, I guess it was for the war. My brother and I were just content to help him and see him happy. But one day, one of the experiments, a project he had been working on for years, exploded. Everything was enveloped in white light and I lost consciousness. When I came to my senses, neither my brother nor my father were there."
Tears began to well up in Phoebe's eyes. As she was telling her story, she was remembering the terrible times that had come after that incident.
"I ran out to seek help, but the Astrals ignored me. They considered my father's disappearance as if he had deserted the war and they took me to another laboratory. I thought that if I did what they wanted, if I made them happy, they would help me reunite with my father and brother. But they cruelly used me to fight in the war and when I was no longer useful to them... they abandoned me to my fate, believing me to be mortally wounded."
Phoebe sobbed. Morphe ran over to hug her, to comfort her. The physical wounds her sister suffered in the war would have healed, but her emotional ones would never quite go away
"It's okay. It's over. You are not alone. You will never be alone again," he assured her as she stroked her hair gently. "You have Gran, Djeeta and the others, you have Ladiva and you have me. You have many people who love you. Even if he rejects you..."
"...I have a place to return to," she completed, grateful. A small smile appearing on her face as she dried her tears. "I'm sorry I lost my composure," she told the rest of them. "Remembering all that is always very hard."
"Don't worry. You have every right in the world to cry" Zooey reassured her. "I wish we could have done something for you before" the arbitrator lamented.
Dedede didn't say anything, lost in his own thoughts. It was becoming clearer to him that Nightmare wasn't the only monster in that story. It seemed that his entire species was just as rotten inside as he was. He knew that he shouldn't generalize, that maybe some of those Astrals weren't vile and perverse beings who created creatures with complex emotions to later treat them as simple throwaway objects when they were no longer useful to them. But for now, he had only heard bad things about them. He had a feeling that Nightmare wasn't even the worst of his kind.
Phoebe, for her part, pulled herself together before saying:
"Now that you know all this. Can I ask you for a favor?"
"You want to talk to him," Dedede guessed.
"Yes. How...? "
"... Did I know? It can be seen in your eyes and in the way you speak" the king completed. "You still think you can save him. Look, I don't want you to be disappointed, so let me tell you something: time changes people. Some of us change for the better, but others get lost along the way, getting carried away by the worst of themselves. And I fear that he was one of those who got lost. So surely the being you want to talk to is not the same as you remember" he warned her.
"I understand that perfectly, but I have to try" Phoebe said, determined. "At least I know that, in case I fail in my attempt to talk to him, you guys will get my back. You said that he had stolen a piece of that important artifact for your world, right?" she asked. Dedede nodded. "I'll help you recover it, as a show of good faith."
"Are you going to rebel against your creator, despite how much you cherish him?" Sandalphon asked.
"Yes. I can't let my love for him keep me from seeing the terribleness of his actions. In the past, I would have ignored it, but not now. In no way am I going to let him hurt the people who have done so much for me" she explained, determined to protect Gran, Djeeta and the others. Then she turned to her brother and said, "Morphe you... stay hidden, okay?"
"Eh, why?" he asked, confused.
"I already had my doubts about how he was going to react to seeing you. But now I'm sure it's not going to be a positive reaction" she affirmed.
"Hmm, I understand what you mean. I'll try not to be seen. But promise that you won't do anything dangerous!" he demanded of her sister.
"I'm just going to talk to him," she tried to reassure him."Nothing's going to happen to me."
"Besides, we'll be close if Nightmare tries to do anything to you" Zooey assured, protectively.
At that moment, Dedede took a determined step forward and asked:
"So what's the plan?"
Sorry for the amount of dialogue and lack of action in this chapter. The next chapter will be the one who closes the first arch of this fic.
"If I had a nickel for everytime I wanted to adopt a widowed young man, I would have two nickels - which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice" - Dedede, probably.