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mellointheory · 2 years

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God’s Favorite Angel - Pt. 2

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 , Part 4, Part 5

(this takes place after the Egg explosion. idk where this all came from i have religious trauma i guess)

“You betrayed me,” God says, and it sounds so disappointed.

Punz takes a breath. Air goes in, lungs expand. Air goes out, lungs retract. This is all just a dream, but he can’t help needing to do it. That’s the curious thing about the little dreamscapes XD creates; Punz may be lying on an obsidian pillar surrounded by void, but they still need to breathe. There’s something amusing about that.

“I wouldn’t betray you,” he says. He flexes his hands. First one, then the other. The slick black stone is cold under his back, but he doesn’t get up. XD is angry enough with them already.

“Oh, and now you lie?” The god turns, striding past Punz’s head. His cloak swirls over their face as he passes and for a minute all Punz can see is stars. “You took the gifts I’ve given you and wasted them for some Egg?”

“I wanted the chaos,” Punz explains. They’re aware of how quiet their voice is in this vacuum between worlds, this purgatory their god has made them. It’s only a dream, only a dream, and so when he speaks his words are steady despite how small he feels. “It would have been a chance to take more lives. I thought you would be hungry.”

XD turns and bends down by Punz’s head, robes pooling across the obsidian around them. Punz stares up into the hood, the crossed halos hover around it, the vast emptiness that serves as its eyes.

“I’m always hungry,” XD says. He reaches a claw down and taps the medallion that lies across Punz’s bare chest. The single eye in its surface stares at its creator, a curved eye that reflects them both in its smooth surface.

“You’re supposed to fix that, angel-of-mine.” The smooth blank whiteness of XD’s face seems to expand and fill Punz’s vision. “Instead you gave yourself to that filthy thing. What a waste of time, of all the gifts I’ve given you.”

The white mask warps and grows and brightens, and as Punz stares up at him all of a sudden the obsidian pillar drops from under his back and he’s just staring at the moon as he falls, plummeting through a night-dark sky.

“I was going to give you wings,” XD hisses from everywhere around Punz. There’s ground below them now, the stone of the overworld far beneath. Wind whips past their ears.

“But you can’t even prove worthy with the things you do have.”

Now comes the pain. Their skin burns, as if they are back in that cave with the taste of gunpowder in their mouth. The wind stings, ripping tiny cuts in his skin. He bleeds as he falls, droplets of gold whipping from his skin.

He plummets and watches his lifeblood flow away into the sky.

“So let’s do a little test and see how you survive without them.”

They hit the ground.

XD leaves them there for…time. Minutes, hours, weeks, time is different in Dreams. Punz lies broken in a pool of his own aureate blood and stares at the moon. He can’t stand, but that isn’t what XD wants from him.

Punz has known this god for a long time. XD does what it wants with whoever it wants. Right now he’s upset that Punz drifted from him.

Can’t do much drifting like this, Punz thinks in amusement as they lie on stone and their blood cools beneath them.

“Puuuuuunz,” XD sing-songs. A clawed hand forms out of the golden blood and curls around their neck. “I think we should keep talking.”

Punz forces one last breath into their fragile lungs and XD pulls them under.

It’s like being on fire, being submerged in that pool of bled gold, dragged in by the hand around their throat. Then an arm slides under their shoulders and lifts them from depths. Molten gold streams from his skin as XD bends over him. The god’s arms are wrapped around him, keeping him from sinking back under the surface of the pool. He’s whole again, fractured body healed by the liquid they float in.

“I can fix you,” XD says tenderly, setting Punz down. It holds out a hand to them, taking a step back. The surface of the pool ripples around its robes.

“And I feed you, that’s the way it goes.” Punz reaches up and takes his hand. XD tips his head and moves up the wide steps that lead out of the pool, steadying Punz as they walk. Melted gold streams from their clothes as they step out of the water. The dreamscape XD has constructed this time is wide; black marble floors and melting yellow-white candles that line their path as they walk away from the pool.

“This isn’t enough, is it?” Punz asks, hand still wound around the god’s larger one.

XD’s white face turns towards him. “You made me mad, Punz. Of course not.”

“That’s what I thought.” Punz stops and turns to face XD. The eye medallion thumps against his bare chest when he moves, his little talisman. It’s the mark he bears that proclaims his master. Hallways of black marble and endless flowing candles stretch past them on either side. In front of him stands the god he serves, a creature in flowing green robes with wings innumerable tucked up behind him. Void slashes across its blank white mask, behind the halos that surround it.

“So what’s the next lesson, then?” Punz asks, releasing God’s hand.

XD tilts his head and that void in his mask widens into a smile.

It lays him down and cuts him open, picks his ribs apart.

“Do all humans look like this on the inside?” He asks. Punz gasps as he wrenches their sternum out of their chest.

“They’re redder,” Punz says, forcing air through naked lungs.

“Hmm. Red.” The god tilts his head, lifting his hands. They’re drenched to the wrist, dripping with Punz’s blood from wrist to fingertip. “Let’s try that.”

Gold spatters to the black marble.

They’re in the Egg cavern this time, Punz can tell by that same strange conviction that holds true even in the strangest of dreams. He’s lying on the warm, soft surface of the cavern’s floor. Above them vines trail from the distant darkness of the ceiling. It’s all crimson and scarlet, red leaves and red flowers.

Punz sits up in the eerie quiet. There is no sound except for their heart. It beats bare in their chest where skin and bone were stripped away, a red-flesh organ wrought through with veins of gold.

He turns to the corner of the cavern where the Egg has always sat, and sees XD there instead. The god reclines amid shards of broken scarlet eggshell, white mask somehow not reflecting the red light all around them.

“Well? Is this better?” XD’s hands are clean now, not a trace of Punz’s blood on them.

“Is this better than me? How could it be?”

Punz stares at the god, sitting crosslegged with his chest flayed open. They already know there’s no point to speaking, nothing to say. XD was slighted and this is his revenge. It’s the punishment for turning his back on the god he serves.

“Of course it’s not,” they say. It isn’t meant as reassurance, because if the gods have one thing in abundance it is arrogance.

“Let’s make certain you’ll remember that,” XD says. He leans forward, crushing fragments of shattered shell beneath one hand, and reaches out. A single clawed fingertip rests on Punz’s beating heart. “Shall we?”

And the nightmare continues.

#gore tw #torture tw #punz #c!punz #dreamXD #xdrunz #punzxd #mello writes #long post

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mellointheory · 2 years

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God’s Favorite Angel- Pt 4

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 , Part 4, Part 5

Punz leans on a windowsill and watches the sun set. His tower windows give him a perfect view of its fading glory, flares of purple and pink and orange clouds trailing across the sky. Behind him the sky darkens. He wonders if tonight is the night his god will return.

In recent days DreamXD has vanished from their nightmares. Punz doesn’t know whether it’s due to Dream’s escape, XD having found something new to combat his boredom, or merely the god’s nebulous relationship with time. It doesn’t matter. All it means is that, for now, when Punz sleeps their dreams are their own.

He turns away from the window and crosses his room, lighting candles one by one. They check that the potted plant by their bedside is watered, shoo a few wandering bees out of the window so that they can close it against the crisp winter chill. He hangs his trident on the wall and sits down on the edge of the bed. And he waits.

For the two weeks since Dream’s escape Punz has sat after sundown, waiting to hear the whirr of a trident and the sound of boots landing on the highest floor of their tower. But tonight, like every night past, there is nothing. So they go to sleep.

They dream.

XD comes to Foolish as he builds, balancing on scaffolding and molding gold into a fringe for the robe of a statue of God. It’s just a voice in his head, vibrating through the strings of his mind.

Shall we go nightmaring? XD asks in glee.

“What, right now?” Foolish stops building, looking around.

Yes.

“I dunno, I thought I’d get more of a warning. What even is nightmaring?”

Are you coming? XD demands impatiently.

“Yes, I’m coming!” Foolish blurts, and then he’s swept away in a whirl of white wings. Between the feathers he catches glimpses of a million different dreams, a thousand different minds. It’s dizzying.

If this is what full divinity is, Foolish has never wanted it so bad.

Everything stills around them and the wings open, revealing the dream XD has chosen.

The first thing Foolish sees is the spire. It’s a slender spear of obsidian that extends far up into the sky. They’re floating in the air beside it. Foolish’s gaze follows the spire downward, all the way to the ground. He almost throws up.

Punz lies there, pinned by the spear of stone like a butterfly on a tray. He’s shirtless, and Foolish gets a perfect look at the stone piercing through their chest as he drifts down. The blonde man has his eyes closed, arms extended on either side of him and hands half-curled shut. Some strange liquid pools underneath him instead of blood; like melted gold.

XD lands beside Punz while Foolish is still in the air. The god’s robes trail through the puddle of gold as it half-circles Punz. The mercenary’s eyes remain closed.

“Hello, angel,” XD says fondly. He bends down, drops to one knee, and presses the smoothness of his mask to Punz’s forehead. For a minute Foolish is confused until it clicks in his head. It’s a kiss.

“What the fuck?” He asks as his feet hit the ground.

Punz’s eyes open up and XD’s mask tilts up towards Foolish.

“Is he real?” Punz asks, their voice strangely calm with a spear through their lungs. They address XD rather than Foolish.

“Yeah, it’s me.” Foolish furrows his brow, approaching the spire.

“He wanted to go nightmaring,” XD straightens up and steps back. The green of his robes are stained with the gold that leaks from Punz’s body. “So I thought we’d start with you.”

Punz lifts one hand, slowly, and taps the slick stone that pierces his ribcage. “Is this nightmarish enough for you?”

“I think not. Let’s start with a classic.” XD grins with the void slashing across its mask and suddenly everything dissolves.

They’re plunged into an ocean. Foolish sucks in a deep breath of salty water as the gills on his neck open up, webs reknitting themselves between his fingers. He spins in the water, trying to reorient himself and figure out what’s going on.

He sees Punz below. A trail of liquid gold floats from the man’s chest as he sinks through the blue water. Their eyes are open, but they aren’t trying to swim.

Foolish dives for him, reaching out a hand. Punz blinks over to him and half-raises an arm, then lowers it again. Bubbles escape from his lips as he speaks.

“There’s no point,” he says softly, voice carrying through the water to Foolish’s ears.

What is this? Foolish turns, trying to catch sight of XD. The god is nowhere to be seen. Foolish growls and reaches out again, grabbing Punz by the gold chain around his throat and swimming up. Their weight drags him down, but he was an ocean god long ago and he’s not going to be sunk by a human with a hole in his guts.

Foolish’s head breaks the surface of the waves and he pulls Punz up with him. Golden blood swirls in the water around them both, still spilling from the cavity in Punz’s chest.

“Why are you here?” Punz asks, arms moving in the water to keep him afloat. Foolish releases his grip on their chain so that he can use both his arms for swimming.

“I got an invitation from a god to go nightmaring,” Foolish shrugs. “But, dude. What the fuck is going on.”

Punz tilts his head as if Foolish’s question is dumb, as if they weren’t just kissed on the forehead by a god, as if the blood spilling from his torso isn’t liquid gold.

“We’re drowning.” Punz says patiently, swimming closer to Foolish.

“I can breathe underwater.”

“Right, this is my nightmare not yours.” Punz wipes a hand down his face, flicking saltwater out of his eyes.

“So let’s make it more interesting,” XD’s voice vibrates through the water and Foolish’s bones. Foolish turns slowly, kicking in the water, trying to see the god.

Gravity flips..

Punz and Foolish fall up and the ocean streams up after them. Foolish spins out of control in the currents, arms outspread to stabilize himself. He’s lost sight of Punz and he sighs, kicking off his robes and fully transforming. His legs fuse together into a single shark tail, jagged fins rising along his spine.

He’s a shark and he can smell the blood in the water. Punz is somewhere up above him in the warped waters. Foolish’s tail lashes, sending him swimming upwards.

There’s Punz, clutching at their throat as they drown. Foolish grabs their shoulders, pulling them closer to him as he searches for air.

This close he realizes that Punz’s blood is gold. It’s doubly intoxicating in this form, a combination of the thirst for lifeblood he used to have and the hunger for wealth he still carries.

“How do we get out?” Foolish asks the not-quite-human in his hands.

Punz shakes their head. There can’t be any air in his lungs anymore. He’s probably dying. Foolish glances around frantically for the surface.

The water freezes solid. Gallons upon tons of it turn to ice in a single instant. Foolish’s vision clouds with the crystalline substance. It’s murky green, except for the place where streaks of shining, perfect gold trail through it.

“Let’s change this.” XD says thoughtfully. The ice shatters.

When it falls away they are in a desert. Foolish collapses to the ground, all the coiled muscles and ridged fins of his shark form rendered useless. Punz stands above them on the sands and the gold drips down his bare skin, droplets spattering inches from Foolish’s face and staining the sand.

This was not the way he thought it would go. He expected to drift merrily through a few nightmares and wet dreams, laughing at the unfortunates caught in them. He expected to be able to indulge the part of him that still hungers for deaths and destruction. He didn’t expect it to be Punz, and he didn’t expect to be caught in the whirlwind of the surreal.

Punz lowers himself to sit crosslegged on the sand. He glances down at Foolish, blue eyes thoughtful.

“Do you need water in this form?”

“What the fuck do you think, Punz?” Foolish rasps through dry gills.

“It’s over there.” Punz points over Foolish’s shoulder. The demigod curls his webbed hands into fists and cranes his neck to see. Punz is, indeed, pointing at the bright blue shimmer of a pool of water. The problem is the thorns.

A tangle of thick, twisted brush armed with curving thorns surrounds the pool. Foolish grits his teeth. “Bastard.”

“Is that any way to talk to the god controlling everything you are right now?” XD chides. It coalesces out of the air and lands gently on the sand before them. He’s wearing the skin he sometimes borrows, hands folded in front of him, green eyes bright with amusement.

“This is my nightmare, not his.” Punz cranes his head up at the god. Foolish’s breathing is growing more difficult, the heat and the air like sandpaper on his gills.

“He wanted to experience a nightmare.” XD says matter-of-factly, dropping to one knee in front of Punz. He reaches out and catches a drop of golden blood from the crater in their chest. He bends down and holds his hand out to Foolish.

Foolish hesitates only briefly before he opens his mouth and lets XD touch its forefinger to his tongue. The taste of Punz’s blood fills his mouth: rich golden-iron taste blossoming across his tongue. It almost distracts him from the fact that he’s dying.

“You might want to get to that water soon,” XD says as he straightens up.

Punz casts a sideways glance at Foolish, lying gasping on the sand. Then they turn their gaze up and reach out, grabbing the god by the neck of his hoodie. They yank him towards them, and to Foolish’s surprise, the god lurches forward with the pull and into Punz. And Punz tips his head up to meet him, sliding his hands into XD’s hair, pressing his lips to the god’s.

Foolish is suffocating in a dream desert and this is somehow still stranger.

XD moans—moans—against Punz’s lips when Punz pulls back.

“Water, please,” they say.

XD grins with the smile of a man Foolish has never met and raises a hand. In an instant every grain of sand in the desert melts into crystal-clear water. Foolish ducks his head under instantly, inhaling ice cold water through his gills.

XD and Punz are kneeling on a floating piece of ice above him, Punz’s hands still wound through the god’s hair. The front of XD’s hoodie is stained gold.

“Again,” XD says.

And as Punz leans forward, the dream around them shatters.

Foolish awakens sprawled on the sands of his summer home.

He has so many questions.

#tw gore #tw violence #punz #c!punz #dreamxd #punzxd #xdrunz #mello writes #long post #foolish gamers

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mellointheory · 2 years

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God’s Favorite Angel - Part 3

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 , Part 4, Part 5

Punz stands in an ocean of glass and speaks to the figure beneath the surface. XD’s figure is warped by the layers of green glass that span to eternity in either direction, but the gash of void in his face remains crystal clear, like a slice of oblivion.

“When do I wake up?” They ask, hands in the pockets of their hoodie.

“When I decide you can,” XD replies brusquely.

Not very descriptive of him. Punz starts walking. The god in their reflection keeps pace with them as they move.

“Why the glass?” Punz wonders, mostly speaking to himself.

“What?”

“Why all,” Punz gestures at the infinite layers of rippling emerald glass beneath the featureless steely sky, “of this?”

“What else would it be?” XD asks from beneath him. He taps the underside of the glass and it cracks directly beneath Punz’s feet.

“Dunno. A forest?” Punz regards the single crack beneath his boots for a moment, then lifts a foot and stomps. Glass snaps and shatters, and they fall. Splinters threaten to gash their face and arms, but when they close their eyes the only thing that brushes their skin is leaves.

He’s standing in a forest now, the rich-earth smell of moss in the air. Water drips from the leaves and the ferns and the craggy trunks of ancient trees.

“What, you like this better?” A voice asks, this time absent the multi-layered timbre of XD’s normal voice. Punz turns to see someone he knows well. Dream.

The man’s hair is longer than it was when Punz last saw him, the time he was thrown into prison. His mask is pushed to the side, and Punz can see his sparkling green eyes for the first time in…a long time.

“You have the eyes wrong,” Punz says as they walk towards him. Moss crushes under their boots, leaving footprints behind.

“I do?” XD grins at him.

Punz reaches out and XD lets him angle its face so that a beam of sunlight illuminates the clear green of its eyes.

“Yeah,” Punz stares into the gods false eyes, lowering their hand from his chin. “The pupils are too dark.”

XD’s eyes are like void in the canvas of the world, and the pupils it’s made to fit Dream’s borrowed face are no different. Where the sunlight strikes his irises and sets the green alive like so many layers of rippling glass, the pupils remain pitch black and unreflective.

“I see now,” XD takes a step towards Punz, tilting his head to see their eyes. Slowly, as Punz watches, the surface of his eyes begins to take on the shine of a normal human’s, until there’s no discernible difference between the man standing before him and the friend he watched be cast into prison.

“Dream has scars,” Punz adds. On his back, his thigh, his arms. Punz has helped his old friend dress his wounds after many a war.

“Show me.” XD reaches for its throat and unzips the green hoodie, sliding it off and tossing it to the ground. He’s barechested underneath, unlike Dream. The man always had on a long sleeved or shortsleeved black shirt. Punz has had to cut it off many times in order to get to a wound. And, like Punz guessed, the god’s skin is unblemished aside from the copied freckles on his shoulders.

Punz wonders for a moment how long it’s been since they saw someone without scars.

“Punz,” XD demands, taking a stride towards them. “Show me the scars.”

“Why do you need to replicate them?” Punz looks up at XD’s face. It, like Dream, is just a few inches taller than him at the moment.

“For anyone who wants me to look like him.” XD grins.

“You couldn’t fool anyone into thinking you’re Dream, unless they’re delusional.” Punz reaches out and taps XD’s collarbone. “There’s no point in trying.”

“I think I could,” XD disagrees. “Look at me. I can eat like you, walk like you. This body does everything like one of you except die.”

Punz raises an eyebrow and slides his hand up, cupping the side of XD’s neck. They can feel a pulse there, steadily throbbing the lifeblood of a god through imitation veins.

“You’re not Dream, and you can’t trick me into thinking you are.” Punz tells him, and they lean forward, pulling him in to meet them, and kiss God. Just a press of lips against each other, a split second where he can feel the exhale of XD’s warmth in his mouth, and he pulls back.

XD stares down at him, its brow furrowed in confusion.

“I can’t?” It reaches up and touches a fingertip to its lips.

“Nope.” Punz releases his grip on the side of the god’s neck and slides both of their hands into their pockets. “I would literally rather lose a life than kiss Dream, that would be awkward as hell.”

“So you kissed me because I’m not him?”

“Just proving a point.” Punz explains. He glances down at the smooth, unblemished skin of XD’s torso. “So don’t bother with the scars.”

XD is silent. Punz shrugs and leans past him, eyes roving the depths of the forest. “So what’s in here? Acid dew? Starving beasts to devour me?”

“Kiss me again.”

Punz stops and stares.

This was not what they intended. They wanted to prove to the god that he wasn’t all powerful, that he couldn’t replicate being someone no matter how much he looked like them. The purpose was not a distraction or anything else; they were accustomed to the surreal dream-violence that overtook them in cycles. They weren’t used to this.

“Why?”

“Did I ask for questions, angel?”

“No, you asked me to kiss you.”

XD’s eyes narrow.

“You never say no to me.”

“I…” Punz stops to think. “I guess I don’t. There’s no purpose. But you ask me to do things in the real world, not here.”

“What makes this different?”

“It’s a dream, it’s too unreal to even pretend to be the waking world.” Punz nods at the sky. “There’s full sun, but there’s dew on the leaves. The trees are way too close together, but somehow light reaches the ground.”

“The kiss, Punz.” XD hisses at him.

“Oh.” Punz stops to think. “It’s not the kind of service I’m used to providing.”

“Aren’t you my angel?” The god demands. “You never say no to me.”

You never say no to me.

There’s a reason Punz doesn’t. Why deny God? XD defines their very existence, controls the dreamscapes he spends weeks in. It gives and it takes and Punz doesn’t bother caring which. So why should this be different.

Punz leans in and catches XD’s mouth in his, swallowing the last words it tries to form. They close their eyes, pressing closer to him.

And now the god is kissing back, his hands winding through Punz’s hair and his teeth catching their lip. Its body is pressed flush against theirs, all the human warmth under Punz’s hands as XD surges forward and knocks them both off balance. Punz falls and instead of moss he hits the feathers of a snow-white wing as XD’s weight bears down on him. They’re swathed in a cocoon of wings now and his tongue is in XD’s mouth and he wonders how in the world a god learned to be this hungry.

XD pulls back first, ever so slowly. His weight still pins Punz up against his wings, and Punz has to take a deep breath.

He always needs to breathe, even in these dreams.

“I’ve seen dreams like this,” XD says. He’s still so close that Punz feels the warmth of his exhale on their lips. “Time after time.”

“Do you understand why now?” Punz leans in and sinks their teeth into XD’s lip, bites down for a moment, then lets go.

“You asked what was in the forest,” XD says.

“I did indeed ask that.” Punz soothes the mark of their teeth with a quick swipe of their tongue.

“Starving beasts to devour you,” XD replies, and it dives back in.

And, in the moment between the need and the fulfillment, Punz wakes up.

When Punz awakens their dreams always burst like a bubble. One moment XD is swathed in his own wings, tasting the warmth of his angel on his lips. The next, everything vanishes. The smell of moss, the feel of Punz’s hair beneath his fingers, the hands pressing against the muscles of XD’s back. All gone, replaced by the void of its realm. Their human guise has vanished with the dream, and with it the heat and the hunger is gone as well.

No, no. He is still hungry.

XD spits a curse in the language of the gods, slashing its claws through the void.

He’s returned to his godly form and shed the trapments of flushed skin, rushing blood, and quickening heart. All he has now is the unmet desire.

It’s strange, really. XD knows his angel is his, body and soul. It owns the blood that runs through their veins, the dreams in their head. This touch, though…the kiss…

XD has torn this man apart in a thousand dreams. It has shattered his body and raised him whole from the depths of his own blood. It takes him apart and puts him back together, because thats what gods do with their toys.

This, however, is a new way to play.

Oh Punz, Punz, angel of mine. Our next meeting will be much sweeter.

#punz #c!punz #mello writes #long post #dreamXD #xdrunz #punzxd #i made this gaaaaay

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