---
Sometimes, when Xanthar sleeps, I lie on top of him and watch his dreams.
Often it's simple dreams. He imagines running through a vast landscape filled with colorful flowers of all shapes and kinds. He dreams of rolling in butter-swamps and playing with jelly-fish that splatter and smear sugary fluids along his sides. He goes on exciting adventures in deep oceans filled with friendly triangles.
Sometimes though, he remembers his family. His mother, father and sister. The burning hot caves they used to live in. The younger brother who never finished baking before the poachers arrived. He remembers the fear when his family was captured. The desperate thrashing of his father when he was sold and dragged away. The horror when he watched his sister carved open. He remembers the way his mother clung to him, unwilling to let him go even as they jabbed her with electro-spears. He remembers the way she fell limp as they finally dragged her away.
He remembers being all alone.
I try to wake him before the dream goes too far. Sometimes I stop the dream altogether, steer it away from his memories. I could easily just erase those painful memories but I won't. They're all he has left and it would be wrong to take them away. Even if they cause him pain. All I can do is be there when he wakes. All I can do is hold him until he stops shaking.
Sometimes he forgets where he is. Waking from a nightmare in which I never found him. For a moment he believes he's still with the Baron. His Fear is pungent and I feel disgusted with myself for finding it delicious. Sometimes his nightmares are graphic, he imagines being torn apart, sliced into so many pieces and eaten by sneering mouths.
Sometimes he dreams that I leave and don't come back.
As the years go on the nightmares lessen but they never stop. I ask Jessie if she could do anything to help. She's a Healer after all. Even despite her best efforts, there's nothing to be done. Nightmares happen as they do. Even I cannot prevent that. I can only watch over him and stop them as they begin.
I don't like leaving him alone when I get summoned but there's not much I can do. I tried to 'See' if any of his family survived but they haven't. I hunted down all those who've hurt them, petrified them and arranged them into a (conscious but frozen) totem pole of eternal torment. I had it displayed proudly in a galactic history museum with a plaque reading "The fate of poachers", the curators of the museum were too afraid to take it down. I considered going after the Baron as well but frankly I wanted nothing to do with him.
On the underside of Xanthar's body is a marking of a small black triangle with an eye. If Xanthar is ever in danger, I will be alerted. Am I paranoid? Yes, definitely, absolutely. But I'm always afraid Time Baby might forget about his Favor to keep his grubby hands off my friend.
It was a simple Favor. Neither Time Baby nor the Federation is allowed to harm Xanthar or take him from me. Time Baby managed to put in the stipulation that the Federation is allowed to arrest him, non-lethally if Xanthar harms any innocent people. He seemed to believe I was going to use my friend as a War Beast. I have no idea where he got such a stupid idea.
From what little I can catch from Time Baby's thoughts, he feared that I was going to build an army of beasts and demons to try and overthrow the Federation. Which was stupid, I've had one terrible experience with overthrowing a government and dear god I was not doing that again.
I just try my best to take care of Xanthar the best I can. I refuse to think of him as a Pet because Zyun-Jan never had good luck with pets. Something awful always happens to them. My pet chick was accidentally crushed underfoot by my great-grandmother, my betafish accidentally tore it's own fin off and bled to death, a random seagull I was feeding crackers to was hit by a car and the list just goes on.
Xanthar is not my pet. Definitely not.
I wanted to help him get over his trauma, I just wanted him to be happy. What can I even do? After another night where I was forced to interfere and stop a nightmare I just lay on Xanthar's back and sing softly.
"Does anybody have a map~ anybody happen to know how the hell to do this~ I don't know if you can tell but this is me just pretending to know~"
I'm not a therapist. What psychology I do know is based around humans. Xanthar, for all that I love him, is not human. He doesn't think the same way a human does and I can't expect him to. All I can do is help him through his problems as they come up. In that way, I suppose we're a good pair. Both of us with our deep seated issues. Both of us needing the other for stability and comfort.
I wish Xanthar could speak in real words. I wish he could talk to me. His species cannot think in words, even if they can understand them.I feel bad for being greedy and wanting more out of him.
---
Time Baby inevitably summons me for another job. I left Xanthar in Iznang this time. Jheselbraum was giving me some irritated looks the last time I made her babysit.
I actually understand where he's coming from this time. It's not an assassination because my target shifts fate off course. It's an extermination. An entire planet infected with an insidious parasite. An entire planet that would need to be destroyed.
I wanted to see if there was anyone still healthy. If there was anyone I could save. There wasn't. They were all infected. They didn't even know. It was too late to save anyone. I questioned Time Baby if I could just go back in time and kill the first infected before it got this bad. If there was any way I could lessen the amount of Deaths I would need to cause.
He said no.
It wasn't like I could just...kill the parasites either. It was insidious because it fused itself into the host's DNA. It was only by some miracle that none of the infected had gone off planet. I jammed all the teleporters and then placed a bubble around the planet so no one could leave.
It took a lot of energy to do so. I wouldn't be able to finish this job in just one day. As I floated there in space, weakly trembling from the exhaustion of bubbling an entire planet (I couldn't even hold onto a physical form), I saw the people begin to panic. It took me a few days to recover enough energy to continue my job. By then the entire planet was in a frenzy over the 'force-field' surrounding them.
The parasites were finally beginning to manifest themselves as well. Stage one was just the initial infection as the air-born creatures began integrating themselves with their host. Stage two was when the host's skin began falling off while they still lived. I watched the people panic as those in stage two began shambling around and screaming in agony.
Is there any way for me to take out the whole planet at once? It wasn't as flammable as the 2nd dimension. Even if I sent out a thermal pulse it would just flash fry the people along the path of my attack. And the heat might not even kill the parasites. They were pretty much immune to anything.
Time Baby actually sent a few of his officers to try and stop the infection back when this organism first evolved. They tried burning, freezing, acids and everything else but the microscopic creatures just couldn't be killed. Even when the host was killed it just left the creature itself unharmed. Those officers self terminated after sending the information back to base, themselves having been infected.
I understand why Time Baby doesn't want these creatures going free. I also understand why he sent me. The question was, do I have enough power to do this?
I stretch my bricks out, pulling in loose particles and building my form larger and larger. It was taking too long. There weren't enough particles here. I could just convert my own energy into mass but then I'd be out of energy and have to wait a few MORE days for it to recover.
I turned towards the nearest star and grabbed. I'm sure it was a strange sight, the flaming edges of that star being pulled towards me like a fire whip. I felt like a black hole, just sucking in the plasma. I absorbed the mass of the star and grew my form until it towered over the planet.
Despite the loss of their star, there was still light, my bricks glowing brightly. I looked down at the planet, closed my eye and apologized for what I must do.
I opened my mouth and swallowed it whole.
Even if something is immune to physical harm, it isn't immune to my stomach. Everything breaks down in there. If it's made of matter, it will be digested. I don't even have to worry about the parasite trying to infect me.
I have no DNA for it to infect.
As my stomach tore the planet apart I groaned at the way my bricks burned. Shit. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. I was overheating fast and a quick check showed the nearest inhabited planet being 25 light years away.
Still too close.
Grunting and clutching my bricks in agony, I flew farther away. I panted with the effort it took to stop myself from going nova and simply exploding. Elements bled out of my bricks in a seemingly never ending stream. Each atom torn off from its chain releasing more and more energy exponentially.
I gasped in pain as my vision spun. Please no. I have to get away. I have to...
I screamed as everything around me ignited. Even as I burned I continued flying away from any source of life. A giant flaming comet. Shit. It's too much. Could I plane shift like this? I have to get to the Nightmare Realm. I can't hurt anyone there. It was hard to focus through the pain of feeling like I was going to burst open.
I twisted and cleaved between dimensions. Am I...? I strained to keep my eye open and glanced around. I made it. I could see the familiar twisting colors of the Nightmare Realm. With a painful exhale, I let go.
And exploded.
---
It's hard to know how much time has passed when there are no clocks. Still, simply going by my experience from the last time this has happened, I'd wager to say it took a least a few centuries for me to gain partial awareness again. Is that what it means for me to die now? Since I can't REALLY be killed I will simply be stuck in an unaware daze until I pull myself back together?
I blink slowly as I tried to remember where I was and what I was doing. Oh. Right. Ate a planet. Well that wasn't a fun experience. I groaned and wiggled my bricks. I've almost fully reformed myself. There were still a few missing chunks. I looked around the Nightmare Realm and find everything on fire. Funnily enough, the fire doesn't seem to be harming it so it's no biggie.
Wait. Where'd my house go?
---
I nearly forgot to slip into the timestream when I went to go pick up Xanthar. That would have been awful. Even if the time in Iznang flowed slower than most dimensions, I was still gone for many, many years. Time in the Nightmare Realm fluctuates. Sometimes it moves faster, sometimes slower and often it just stops altogether.
Either way, I calculated the distance and speed I had to travel in order to get to Xanthar only a few days after I dropped him off to leave on my job. Course, this also meant I turned on the tv to see the galactic news going nuts with the headline of 'Bill Cipher devours a planet'.
I sat there stunned as the multiverse lost their collective shit over the thousands of videos taken by the panicking people on the planet before they died. I may have blocked their teleporters but I hadn't thought to block communications. So many people were live streaming as the 2nd stage infected started falling apart.
No one knew about the parasites. No one knew what was happening. All they knew was that people's skin started slipping right off their bodies, all transport was halted and then I appeared. Larger than their planet itself. It was very...weird to see the videos from their point of view.
My massive eye staring down at them. My shape blocking out the sky itself. My eye becoming a giant maw full of sharp teeth, deeper and darker than anything else imaginable. I watch as my mouth closes over the planet. So that's what my insides looks like.
The real interesting thing was watching the digestion process. It was horrifying. Things just began falling apart. The only good part was that the energy released from the atomic breakdowns caused larger and larger explosions until everything was consumed in fire.
I watched as a person in the video simply had all their skin explode off them before being consumed in flames. Ugh. This is why I don't like eating people alive. It's just...gross. I felt uncomfortable watching it and changed the channel. It was the only thing being covered on multiple channels.
I shut off the tv and slumped in my couch. I could feel a headache forming and I rubbed my bricks with a sigh. I probably can't go out in public for a while.
I could try and explain why I killed everyone but I know that no one would believe me. I could try to get Time Baby to vouch for me but there's no way he'd stand up for me. I slumped further on the couch. Fuck my life.
---
It's really weird to think about how many people I've killed. An entire planet. Billions of lives. Gone. Is it bad if I can't even work up the energy to really mourn? I feel bad for it but I just...I'm too tired to really cry right now. I'm just so DONE with this.
I stay slumped on the couch for days until Xanthar pushes me off and nudges me across the ground curiously. "Stop it. I'm trying to mope." I grumble tiredly. He tries to pick me up but lying flat on the ground like this made it difficult for him to get a good grip.
He just spends the day sliding me around the house.
At one point he made a game out of flicking me by one of my corners so I start spinning. "Xaaaaanthaaaaar~stooooop~" I moaned as I spun into the wall and got a corner stuck. He just sits down and nudges me with his face.
'worry' 'confusion'
He pushes at me until I dislodge from the wall and slides me out into the garden. "Leave me alone Xanthar." I protest weakly, not making any move to really stop him.
'annoyance' 'determination'
I yelp as he drops me into the pond.
I flail around and sputter as I swam back up. "What the HELL Xanthar?!"
'annoyance' 'impatience'
I swam back to the edge of the pond and drag myself out while spitting out water. Ugh. I can't drown but it was still uncomfortable. Xanthar just sits at the edge of the pond and watches me. He still felt annoyed at me. "What?! What is it?!" I grumble as I float up into the air.
He pokes me while sending out feelings of 'exasperation' and 'disapproval'. What is he trying to tell me?
"Are you...mad at me?"
He nods.
"Are you mad because I'm moping?"
He nods again.
"Look...it's complicated. I...killed billions of people and I feel bad about it. But at the same time...I...don't? And I'm just angry and sad and...annoyed with myself for not feeling worse about this..."
Part of me is going 'well they were going to die either way once the parasite fully took over them' to explain away my lack of guilt. I granted them a more merciful death. But is it selfish of me to think so? Why am I such a terrible person?
I yelped when Xanthar pushed me into the water again. "Stop DOING that!!"
Even without a face Xanthar manages a reproachful look. I growl irritably. "Look, I'm trying to angst here."
His disapproval grows stronger and he tries to push me down into the water again. I dodge his hand. "Why do you keep doing that?!" He smacks his hand across the pond to splash me. I rub water from my eye and my bricks flicker red. "Seriously stop it!"
'determination' he puts his hand in the water in preparation for another splash.
"Ugh! Fine! If I stop beating myself up about this, will you stop doing that?"
He nods.
It takes me weeks to get over myself and awkwardly thank Xanthar for snapping me out of it. I make a note to teach him ASL so he could communicate easier.
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