Bendy

Art by: awaicu

“Hi! I’m Bendy!” Those were the first words he ever uttered. As the world came into focus, he looked around curiously. The walls were made of pale, chilly stone, and pasted against them were papers, all drawn upon in heavy black ink.

“‘Bendy’? You call yourself ‘Bendy’?” The voice was old, scoffing. Irked, the little Fae turned around. He was on a large desk, and seated before him was an aged Pearlcatcher, with his pearl at his elbow.

“Yeah, old man, that’s me.” Bendy snickered. The Pearlcatcher’s brow furrowed. “‘Man’? What is this ‘man’ you speak of?”

The Fae’s snickers turned into full-blown cackles. He doubled over, clutching his gut as if to keep the giggles from fluttering away, and he rose, turning like a soap bubble. The Pearlcatcher watched him in exasperation and then, with visible effort, he forced the irritation from his face.

“What can you do, Bendy?”

Bendy looked down at him. Beyond the old dragon, on the floor, he noticed something else: large blobs, lying inert, the same deep black as the scrawls on the walls....

“Bendy. Answer me. What can you do?”

“I can stretch,” he answered promptly. The Pearlcatcher scoffed again. “Really. How fascinating.”

And then a chill rippled through his hide as Bendy grinned with teeth as white and even as piano keys. “You wanna see?”

With that, the Fae stood at attention and bowed in midair, as if standing on an invisible platform. As he straightened up, the Pearlcatcher blinked — where Bendy’s claws had been empty a second ago, now he held a white ribbon. The Fae tied it in a bow around his own neck, adjusting it deftly.

“Witness the Great Bendy! He floats...he sings...and of course, he bends!”

Bendy’s limbs suddenly lengthened to unnatural proportions. They looped and twirled, brushing against the walls. Where they touched, ink began oozing from the stone, running down it like tears.

“It’s very impressive, Bendy.” The Pearlcatcher struggled to keep his voice level. He half-rose, preparing to bolt from his seat, and picked up his pearl.

“I can dance, too. Bendy’s the best swinger to ever slide off the silver screen! Hey, chief, let’s cut a rug. But we won’t need that glimmering gewgaw.” One of Bendy’s long arms snaked around, reaching for the pearl.

The Pearlcatcher recoiled. He ducked and wove, trying to avoid Bendy’s looping arms. The inky Fae cackled. “Whoop, you’ve got it! Let’s swing, chief!”

“Not my pearl, don’t touch my — Nooooo!” The Pearlcatcher broke off into a blood-curdling shriek as Bendy’s claws brushed his pearl. The claws left hairline scratches that quickly bled black — and suddenly the pearl was gone, melted into a puddle of night-dark ink.

“My pearl! MY PEARL!” The Pearlcatcher bellowed like a wounded animal as he fled through a doorway. Bendy heard him screaming beyond, nothing but wordless shrieks of anguish.

The Fae shrugged. His limbs shrank back to their normal sizes with a zhwoop! sound. He sauntered around the room to examine the drawings, the inert things on the floor. As he pushed one, it liquefied with a sigh, turning into another puddle of goopy black ink.

Bendy shrugged, turned back to the desk. He was examining an inkwell when, with a tremendous crash, something huge destroyed the door. A Guardian dragon.

“Demon!” she gasped. Her orange eyes widened in shock. Bendy stared back in pouty disbelief. “‘Demon’? Lady, that ain’t a nice thing to say—”

Fire bloomed between the dragoness’ paws, and she flung a spell towards Bendy. And stared in horror as her target stretched, a hole opening up in his center with an absurd, rubbery noise. The fireball passed through, destroying the wall behind him.

Bendy whirled, grinning his piano-key grin. “Close, but no cigar! Show’s over, ladies and gents, nothing to see here. Exit stage right, pursued by a fire-breathing lizard...!”

Out through the hole he burst, and quickly darted into a nearby dark-pine forest. Behind him, shouts and crashes told him the Guardian and her companions were giving chase.

It started raining fireballs again. Bendy somersaulted through the air, whooping and cheering. “Close...Soooo close! OH!” Suddenly he found himself halted in his tracks: a bubble of pink light had closed around him. His limbs pedaled uselessly, and stretch though he might, he couldn’t break through the barrier.

His captor descended beside him: a Nocturne garbed in a twinkling cloak. She studied him closely, but shuddered and turned away when she saw his stark black-and-white eyes.

The Guardian was close behind, still huffing and puffing. “It’s some kind of demon!”

“I’m not a demon! I’m a cartoon!”

They ignored him. “You saw what was left of Horace’s pearl — nothing but vile black mucus! That thing’s a danger to everyone and everything it touches!”

“Did you find a suitable vessel?”

“Only this little bottle it was playing with. It didn’t melt, so maybe it’ll work.”

The inkwell gleamed upon the Guardian’s paw. The Nocturne took it, held it up. She started murmuring, and the bubble around Bendy began to contract.

He stopped, no longer bouncy and carefree. The mage tilted the inkwell towards him, and his eyes were drawn to the opening, which was just as soulless and dark. It called to him....No, it was pulling him...!

“H-Hey, lemme out! I didn’t do anything wrong—”

“No mercy for demons!” The Guardian’s roar drowned out his cries. The spell was completed and Bendy was pulled into the bottle, and the Nocturne sealed the stopper with a final muttered word.

~ ~ ~
The dragons had called him a demon, but Bendy couldn’t be sure that that was true. He knew he was a cartoon — did it really matter?

“I’m a cartoon,” he declared to the next dragon who’d removed the stopper — a mage, by the looks of it. The Ridgeback looked down his nose at Bendy. “Really?”

The same condescending tone, the same calculating glint in his eyes, just like the old Pearlcatcher. Well, Bendy knew what to do with those kinds of dragons now! He grinned, held out his claws....

The Ridgeback didn’t change fast enough. His screams alerted his colleagues, who wasted no time in bottling Bendy up again. Bendy screamed and fought back as much as the Ridgeback did, but it was no use. The wizard died on the cold stone floor, ink and blood blurring together inseparably, and Bendy went back into the inkwell.

He had gone to sleep last time. But in their panic, the mages must’ve botched the spell. Now he remained awake, and it was utter agony. He could feel the glass bottle, saturated with magic, throbbing against his sides. No matter how hard he pushed, it wouldn’t break, not even a tiny bit! And the space was so small and confined, he couldn’t move an inch....

His inkwell was kept in a dark vault, and the only company he had were moldering tomes and jars. There was no one to talk to, no one to see....Then one day, voices sounded beyond the door.

It opened with a quiet clunk. Two Wildclaws peered in, their eyes gleaming over the rogue masks they wore. The one on the right pointed and whispered, “That one.”

Bendy felt his inkwell scooped up again. As he was placed into a pouch, the other one whispered, “It’s just an ordinary ink bottle. Demons — they hide in the darnedest things sometimes.”

“Makes ’em harder to steal, yeah, but that goes for anyone who’d want to nick it from us too. We’ll make a killing on the market with this little guy!”

Bendy understood what that meant: He would be sold, probably to another unsuspecting dragon who didn’t quite know what he could do. The stopper would be removed, and he would be able to dance and sing again!

He had forgotten one thing, though: His previous owners had been mages. They had studied the bottle carefully after their colleague’s death, had written copious caveats. When he came to a new lair, his new owner read the written instructions. And Bendy was locked away in yet another vault, left to rot and seethe among other curiosities. That was all he was to them: a curiosity, a thing!

He would be briefly pulled into the light, then sold to another dragon, shoved into another musty vault. Again and again...As months crawled by without any reprieve, the little ink-demon’s anger grew. His first memory had been of the old Pearlcatcher; he still didn’t know if he had been created, summoned, or awakened. Did it really matter? The point was that he’d been brought here, and all they wanted him to do was sit in a bottle on a shelf...!

He began remembering those who sold him. Even their faces, distorted through the glass — each one made an impression on him, as indelible as the ink he was made of. Sooner or later, something would give. The spell would break, the glass would shatter, or some idiot would remove the stopper again. He would burst loose in a deep, dark tide, and he would never go back into that puny bottle.

~ ~ ~
“Sold for...!”

The gavel banged, and in his bottle, Bendy grinned in anticipation. His previous owner had died — shockingly, Bendy had had nothing to do with it this time — and now her estate was being auctioned off. About time, too: Bendy had languished in the old hag’s studio for 30 years, 7 months, and 21 days. Yes, he had been counting — time flies for many beings, but for Bendy in his bottle, it always moved at a crawl.

At least things were getting exciting now. Through the glass, he caught a glimpse of another dragon protesting, saying that the old artist had been his relative, and how dare those Shadowlings steal the inheritance that was rightfully his...!

“It’s been paid for,” the Shadow buyer answered coolly. The other dragon said no more, but Bendy could feel the animosity radiating from him like heat. “We’re gonna see some action and derring-do soon!” he thought with glee.

Sure enough, the courier was waylaid later on, much of the purchases snatched from him. The footpads fled through the Tangled Wood. They were unfamiliar with the land, however. In their wild flight, they were separated from each other, and Bendy’s captor found himself sprinting alone across a moonlit field, heading for a grove of twisted trees.

The moment he left the moonlight, a black dog sprang. It caught his leg and dragged him through the woods, to a clearing where a great beast waited. The thief could only gibber until he, too, was a unmoving tree of the grove.

In his wild struggles, the robber had dropped his bag, strewing stolen possessions around the clearing. The dog approached, sniffed curiously at the ink bottle.

Perhaps it smelled the other being inside, or it simple needed to keep the grove clean. It grasped the bottle in its fangs. As it did, Bendy heard a soft tchik! — the dog’s tooth had opened a small crack in the glass.

The dog loped through the trees. It traveled swiftly, but was completely silent; even the lanterns swinging at its sides made no noise. Soon Bendy made out its destination: a Shadow lair.

The dog dropped him on the doorstep and then flowed back to the grove. Bendy pushed at the cracked bottle, but it failed to break. It looked as though it couldn’t be shattered from inside. But perhaps...

~ ~ ~
“What have we here?”

Afternoon of the next day, and Bendy was looking through the glass at a prospective new owner. A Pearlcatcher, just like the one who’d first awakened him....He grinned at the thought of showing this pompous new dragon what was what, too.

The stopper came out. Bendy whirled up into freedom, expanding like an inflated balloon. “Hey, everybody, Bendy’s baaa-aaaack!” he sang.

“Bendy! Is that your name? I never would’ve thought anything was living in there, though I have seen things that live in paint....”

The dragon’s voice stopped him. It was an animated chatter, free-flowing and warm, and he paused in the act of extending his claws. The Pearlcatcher stared back, not in horror, but in fascination. He watched ink drip from Bendy’s fingers.

“Incredible! I haven’t met an ink-beast that could live outside the canvas. Most of them stay stuck in there.”

“I’m a cartoon,” Bendy protested.

“I suppose you are. Since you didn’t walk out of a canvas, you’re probably not like my creations.”

His creations? Bendy looked around. He was in an artist’s studio, and the pictures on the walls, they moved, they breathed....Bendy’s jaw unhinged, hit the floor with a crash, as a flock of birds raced across a painting of a sunset.

The Pearlcatcher exploded into laughter. “Oh, that’s hilarious! I haven’t seen anything half as wonderful in ages. What else can you do, Bendy?”

This time, it didn’t sound like a challenge. The Pearlcatcher leaned forward eagerly, waiting to see what would happen next. As Bendy’s jaw latched back into place, he looked around, taking in the moving paintings, colors racing across each canvas....

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours!”

“Eh, why not?” The Pearlcatcher reached back, grasped his overlong tail in one forepaw. “By the way, I’m Amusei, a painter and wizard. It’s nice to meet someone else who appreciates art.”

Bendy’s chest swelled with pride. There was something nice about those two words: someone else. It was better than the usual yells of “demon” and “thing”.

He conjured a smart top hat and bowed to Amusei. When he straightened up again, he waved his claws, pulled a pristine bowtie from the air, and tied it neatly around his neck.

He had been ready to reduce this dragon to yet another smudge on the floor, but it seemed it’d be more fun to go along with him — for now. And it didn’t look like he’d be going back into that bottle any time soon. For while the inkwell was still here, the written instructions for his entrapment were gone, scattered in the edelwood grove and trampled to shreds by its inhabitants.

Bendy grinned at Amusei. As the painter turned towards a blank canvas, the Fae reached back, picked up the bottle and stopper, and slipped it into a pocket at his side.

~ written by Disillusionist (254672)
all edits by other users



By: DragonScales123



By: Roboa


By: Turquai

- REPLACE
By: Hexxious


By: DoggoneCreature


By: geistgrace

- REPLACE
By: AtherValence


By:JellyRaven

- REPLACE
By: GilatheHybrid


By: Guzmas

- REPLACE
By: Alixe

- REPLACE
By: SkullLotus

- REPLACE
By: GoldenFae


By: Wolfberry

- REPLACE
By: Dragonartist24

- REPLACE
By: Vektrie


By: Helbram


By: bonesguy


By: Pande28


By:SqueakyDuck


By: GeckoLogic


By: abyssalcat

- REPLACE
By: RabidWhovian


By: CelestialNarwhal


By: cybonicdragon


By: Riko


By: PuffyRuffy


By: InfectedGenetics


By: AmnesiaDragon


By: SnailTea


By: ranchysauce

- REPLACE
By: zerrace


By: 1579


By: CommanderDrift


By: Ardroth - REPLACE



By: Cryogonal


By: IceMelody


By: turtlee

- REPLACE
By: AtherValence


By: Haddork


By: Sirk


By: Suffer - REPLACE


By: Ecca


By: Quandary


By: Miragaia


By: PaperPony

- REPLACE
By:bamboo1996


By: RhyzaSkelwid - REPLACE


By: Tomata


By: Blurry


By: quirkysilvester


By: Sil


By: GoblinQueen72


By: ThineRIddler


By: artificiiial


By: xxdarkraven


By: Rubytalon


By:gilili


By: UnhappyJoker


By: WhiteAqua


By: Rolyo


By: NameChange851


By: Celandine


By: ShadowPiper

Inky Octopus
The ink sacs in this species makes up 20% of it's body weight. While the ink is not poisonous, it has a foul taste and is not usually eaten.


Melon Squirmscoot
Expels a cloud of glittering green ink when frightened.