Dark Tales From Dandelion

1

Leere walked through the cyclone of purple-red shadow. From time to time a form drifted by, some of these laughing, some wailing with grief. Leere was entertained by both types as He made His way in this artery of potentials. The price for passage through the Strings had cost Leere exactly one human heart to the Lady of the Strings, Shalonudra, who had devoured it promptly upon reception.

Some Strings led to the potential reality itself, and some led to the perception of that reality within someone’s mind, though traveling to someone’s perception was a great deal more difficult than going to the reality itself; there were usually walls put up by the perceiver that shut out visitors.

Leere was not traveling the String of someone’s perception, however, so he did not run into any walls.

The String closed as the endo appeared around him. Gnarled roots of ancient trees splayed out along soft, muddy earth, and the branches obscured any light given by the alien sun. Leere spread his wings to fly just above the ground and thrummed into his feet to get the mud off. The trees’ looming branches varied in length and he had to dodge them often as he flew toward a soft glow up ahead. He heard croaks and squawks and a soft buzzing that went on without interruption. There was a light fog and the air smelled like shit.

As he drew nearer the soft red glow, Leere heard the sounds of a city. Desert sand replaced the trees and soft earth. Leere found the source of the red glow: a giant chasm in the sand with hundreds of buildings built into the walls and beams that crossed its width every thirty feet or so. Near the top he could see some creatures with crimson skin bustling about. There were several narrow stairways that spiraled around the walls of the chasm for the purpose of descending into the city.

Leere flew directly above the middle and dived headfirst into the city.

2

Fiona and the others rose and had a quick breakfast of dried meat and cheese before starting off on the rest of their trek to Endynas City. Fiona felt odd about her three failed Fishings. What could it mean? Is there something wrong with me? A thought she kept cycling back to, which annoyed her to no end. Quint had said it would take about two cycles to get to the city, and Fiona was ready to be off. She approached the Drake, trying to forget about the Fishing.

“Could we start my training on the way to the city?” she asked. Vermilion was chewing on a piece of meat while changing Prudance’s cloth diaper. He rinsed out her old one with some cleaning solution and water, then set it on a rock nearby to dry.

“Ahh fink at’d be fon,” he said through the meat that filled his mouth, and with a motion Fiona knew she wouldn’t have seen without her Ken-Phae training, he moved Prudance to the crook in his left arm, drew both seven-shooters from his hip, and flipped them over so the grips faced Fiona. The empty chambers of the cylinders hung open and Fiona looked through them to the other side. Vermilion swallowed. Fiona’s mouth felt dry.

“We’ll start with the guns themselves. Go ahead and take them, but don’t do anything until I tell you.”

Fiona reached for the two revolvers hesitantly, her hands shaking slightly as she drew near the handles. When she grabbed them, she noticed how smooth the handles were—a white, sturdy, but light material.

“Those are the cylinders,” Vermilion said, pointing to the place where Fiona knew the bullets went, “these holes are called chambers, this is the safety, this is the cylinder release—that’s how you get your cylinders open to reload— this is the hammer, you pull this back to fire. Here is your rear sight; this is your front—”

“What kind of bone is this?” Fiona asked, pointing to the grip.

“It’s sesnickie bone,” Vermilion said plainly. Fiona dropped the guns in disgust, but Vermilion was too fast to let them touch the ground. “What’d you do that for?!?!” He hissed. “My daughter is right here. If you do something so careless with those seven-shooters again, I won’t let them get within two feet of you, is that understood?”

“You said sesnickie bo—”

“Is that understood, Fiona?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Vermilion said, handing the guns back to Fiona, “they are sesnickie bone, but just who is it that we Drakes hunt? And just who is it that has a habit of chaining up sesnickie and forcing them to Move for them? Why are these guns our weapons of choice?” Fiona said nothing, staring at Vermilion attentively, so he went on. “The Rakshasas are who we hunt because they oppressed our people for so long. Our guns are made specifically for the purpose of putting down those abominations. The sesnickie do not share in our purpose, but they do sympathize, especially considering their own suffering at the hands of the Hate; many of the sesnickie agree to donate their bodies to our purposes after they die. We use every part of the sesnickie, but the bones we save specifically for the purpose of putting them in our grips. I’m not sure how much you know about sesnickie, but their fangs can drain someone who can attune the Inner Vibrations, preventing them from trancing—or thrumming as you call it—while the bones of a sesnickie actually repel the vibrations. Granted, the bones won’t completely shield you, but they do act as a buffer, dulling the effects. This is very helpful when facing Rakshasas because they can attune the Inner Vibrations. The standard bullet is just that—a bullet, but if you can get your hands on fang bullets—made with sesnickie teeth—you can actually stop the things from thrumming altogether.”

“Wait, if these repel the Inner Vibrations,” Fiona said, pointing at the sesnickie bone grips, “then why was I able to thrumm so easily into you at the second Veil?”

“I’m not exactly sure how easily you thrummed into me. I wasn’t really there, remember?” Vermilion said.

“That’s true.” Fiona looked to Quint and Pip who were getting things together, preparing to leave. I’ll ask them later, she thought.

“Anyway, sesnickie tooth bullets are harder to come by; they are sold and regulated almost exclusively within the Great Drake Halo. Of course, some get out, which can be convenient if you’re running low, but we’d rather none got out because they’re a powerful weapon, and we don’t want them in the wrong hands,” Vermilion said.

“Makes sense. So when do we get to fire them?” Fiona asked. She had that image of the sword and gun in her head, and she reached her free hand up to her mouth to chew on an excess of nail on the middle finger.

Vermilion laughed. “We won’t get to that for a while yet, Fiona. Right now, I think we need to get moving; Quint and Pip look ready,” he said. She turned her head and saw that Pip and Quint both were waiting patiently for her conversation with Vermilion to be over.

“Is there anything you can show me on the way?” she asked.

“There are a few things we can do while moving, but we won't be shooting,” Vermilion responded. The rising sun was hot on her back, and her anxiety to start shooting the guns was manifesting in uncomfortable sweat beads that dripped under her shirt in the middle of her breasts. Fiona handed the seven-shooter back to Vermilion, rolled her sleeves up, and left Vermilion to walk over to Carter and make sure he was ready for the day. Carter babbled and Fiona handed him a wedge of cheese and meat. Fiona felt a responsibility for Carter like that of an older sister now. There was a certain freedom in this; the feeling of lost love had been building up in her for a while, and she hadn’t noticed how much it had built up until now.

Before the mantra scramble, she’d tried planning special dinners and walks; she’d tried even to share in the obsession with him, planning her time in the meditaz when she knew Carter would be in there, but he would usually say he needed to do it alone or that he didn’t have time for special occasions, his work was the occasion.

She’d felt cheated before, but now she felt … bored. It was a good bored, like ‘glad I don’t have to go there anymore’ kind of bored. There was a bit of fear involved, of course, like—what would happen if Carter woke up from the scramble? What would she say, and how could she explain that she wasn't with it in the same way anymore? ‘Hello Carter, I know you just woke up from a serious head injury, but I had relations with three light creatures down in a well and, well—I don’t love you anymore.’ Of course there was more to it than that, but all the same, that had been the tipping point. Ah, the lights. My little lights, she thought, exhaling.

Fiona told Carter they needed to start walking, and he got up to follow behind her.

“Fiona.”

She spun around to look at him. That had been Carter’s voice. Carter had said her name. It was a shock to her; she hadn't heard him speak intelligibly in so long.

“Carter … What did you just say?” she asked. Carter stared at the ground, his eyes obscured by his hair. Was there a darkness to his face? “Carter? What did you just say?” She repeated in a very small voice. He was scaring her. In broad daylight, she was afraid of the dark that seemed to play on his face. “Carter!” She cried, and then she grabbed his face with both hands and made him look at her in the eyes. Dead eyes. Black eyes. Eyes refusing to focus. Fiona could hear Quint trying to get her attention, while Pip was trying to get into her mind to send her messages. She blocked them out. Carter’s eyes suddenly focused on hers and his lips twitched into a small smile.

He began babbling again.

Something broke in Fiona. It had nothing to do with her love lost, nor her fatigue, nor her sisterly affection for this man; it was something else much deeper that couldn’t be defined by words. It was an intuition. She felt the hives around her eyes. The veins of her arms—which still gripped the sides of Carter’s babbling face—were becoming black in color; she’d never noticed that happening before, but then again she was usually wearing long sleeves—she had rolled up her sleeves because of the heat. She paid this no mind, in fact, she slipped into a place where no mind existed.

There was no mind, no separation; she and Carter and the feelings between were one, and she attuned the Highest and the Lowest vibrations. She didn’t know how, but she really just didn’t know anything in a cognitive way, she just knew. The sky was blood red, and everything besides Carter and Fiona was black; vague shapes floating in the periphery of awareness. Time … did not exist.

She thrummed into him and could see the vibrations coming out of her like black tendrils, reaching toward Carter. A quiet, high pitched squealing was the only sound, like a mosquito buzzing too close to her ear.

The thrummings reached Carter and his eyes became huge ovals of terror as he convulsed, arching his back and shrieking soundlessly. His forehead started to expand slightly, as if something were trying to come out of it. One long, thin, insectile leg stuck out of Carter’s forehead and a trickle of blood fell down his face. Fiona didn’t know how or what she was doing. She wasn’t even aware that she was doing anything; something was being done and that was all. Another leg, then … something tore into Fiona’s right ankle and the pain ripped her back into separation and self. The squealing noise was gone—The thrumming ended abruptly, and she saw two bug legs slide back inside of Carter’s forehead. Carter fell to the ground as Fiona collapsed and everything went black.

Jekken‘s large boots clunk across the floor of Diana’s bedroom. The light sting of mint tickles Ali’s nostrils as she sits just outside the window in the grass, listening. Ali hears her mother sip the mint tea.

“I’m so sick of these headaches,” Diana says weakly.“Jekken. Can you draw the curtains? The light is hurting my eyes.” Ali tries to make herself small so her father doesn’t notice her eavesdropping. Jekken draws the curtains, but does not notice Ali.

“I’ll take Ali to the shop with me again; she’s waiting outside. She's doing so well with the hammer and tongs; you'll have to come and see sometime when you're feeling up to it,” Jekken says softly. Ali knows that anything too much louder than a whisper aggravates her mother’s already sensitive state. Her father is a very big man, but his smooth bass of a voice could soothe a bucking dirfweed. The headaches come infrequently, but when they arrive, they are unrelenting and last days. Jekken had been taking Ali to work with him at the little tower whenever Diana was bedridden like this.

“Jekken.”

“Yes?”

“Id love to see her with the hammer and tongs. You do so much.”

“It’s nothing.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

“Jekken?”

“Hm?”

“When I feel better, I’d like to get back to my training. Could we do that?”

“Of course,” he says. She gasps. “What is it?” he asks “is there anything I can do?

“No,” she says through clenched teeth.

“I’ll … see you after work,” Jekken says, his voice pained. “On my way to the little tower, I'll stop by the laboratory and see if they can send someone over.” She doesn't respond and his boots thunk away from the room. He’d be out soon. Ali jumps up and starts back to the front yard, when … dark light, like a lamp casting shadows instead of illumination, was shining out beneath the drawn curtain of the window. Ali slowly moves forward, lifts the curtain, and what she sees horrifies her.

Her mother’s back is arched, her eyes are surrounded with red hives like tendrils, and her veins are black as tar. Ali stumbles back and falls on her back end.

“Ali?” Jekken calls from the front yard.

Ali runs up to meet him.

3

Quint looked at Fiona and Carter who lay on the ground. This has become quite the trip, he thought. Rakshasas, the light creatures, Fishings, and now Fiona’s wild vibrational abilities, and this time … against her husband. Quint had seen her behave this way before. He’d been trying to train her how to fine-tune her abilities while under the protection and seclusion of the Manor House in the hopes that she’d be able to channel this raw power and control it. There had been times they'd ventured out from the Manor House, though.

In Tissington, Quint and Fiona had gone shopping for supplies and had split up for a time. There had been a group of men that had gotten to her before Quint had reunited with her. He had walked up just as she became completely covered in shadows and ripped the hearts out of all four of the men whose hands reached to grope her in inappropriate places. He also had his suspicions about the Rakshasas they had run into outside of the Endynas Valley, as well as the phase-shifters in the Forest of Midnight that Fiona had told them about. This might be the best possible time that we could be traveling to The Mother, he thought. I don't even know if I should tell the girl. I'm lost. If I have no solution, I should wait. But if I wait and this happens again …. Quint thought of Fiona covered in blood on the cobbles of Tissington.

He looked down at the dressing on Fiona’s right ankle, which was quickly becoming more red than white. Pip was sitting next to Fiona; Quint knew the sesnickie felt guilty for biting Fiona to cut her off from the Inner Vibrations. Quint hadn’t been able to stop her with his own thrumming. Why? Why Carter? The only other incidents that Quint knew of, Fiona had been in some kind of serious danger where she’d been rendered helpless. Why had it happened with Carter? He’d have to take care of the man from here on out as a precaution. They couldn’t risk losing both Carter and Leslie if Fiona lost control again.

Quint couldn’t help but feel he had failed Fiona. He’d tried everything he could to train her how to be mindful of her emotions, how to channel them, and how to accept them. He’d been so impressed with her at the second Veil; she’d managed to smile at her fears, yet here it was again—this loss of control—but this time it had been unleashed without provocation.

And why are these wounds giving me such trouble with healing? He wondered. Carter’s was healing better now, but the bite in Fiona’s ankle …. Is she resisting healing somehow? And as Quint pondered it, he realized he had not ever had the need to heal Fiona’s wounds before. This was his first experience with trying to mend her hurt, and there was a wall blocking him.

Quint bent down to change the dressing on Fiona’s leg and then Carter’s forehead. Carter stirred and started babbling as his eyes opened. Fiona would probably take longer to—Fiona’s eyes shot open and she looked up at Quint with a blank expression. She coughed.

“Is there any water, Quint?” She asked in a rasp. He got her a water skin. After taking a long drink, she asked, “what happened? Why was I asleep again? We have to get going!” She shot up, then recoiled in pain, grabbing her right ankle.

“You need to rest for a bit, Fiona,” Quint said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She looked dazed. Quint had already talked with Pip and Vermilion about the importance of being discreet. Vermilion had protested, but Quint had finally convinced him to wait until they had seen the Woman In White to disclose any information to Fiona. There just wasn’t enough to go on. What if she found out and lost it again? This just wasn’t something you dropped on someone who was potentially very unstable unless you had professional help. Quint should have sent her here sooner, but he had thought he could handle it. He had been an arrogant fool.

Quint saw something dark blue out of the corner of his eye and turned to look, but there were only moths floating in the air where he’d seen the figure. He looked at Fiona who was also looking in the same direction. Had she seen it?

Fiona turned her head to look at Carter lying next to her. Quint tensed noticeably. “I’ll be taking care of Carter until we reach the tower, Fiona. Pohsib told me a while ago that he actually feeds himself without any prompting on your part. I’m afraid you fell unconscious into Carter and he hit his head on a rock,” Quint said, repeating the rehearsed lie.

“I … fell unconscious? What?” Fiona stared off and put a hand to her head.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just that I want to make sure you both are alright. And yes, you fell unconscious. Pip tried to catch you, but ended up puncturing your thigh with his fang. I’m not sure why but I wonder if maybe the, um … events that took place in the cave may have had something to do with it,” Quint said.

“The … cave? The light creatures?”

4

Leere landed on one of the beams that spanned the chasm. The beam was like a little town unto itself with shops on one end and a residential district on the other.

The red creatures were avoiding Leere as much as they could as they walked across the beam. They wore simple clothing, robes of white and brown and sandals. They were as tall as any normal human man on Dandelion so Leere towered over them all. They all looked terrified of him. Two guards with spears were making their way toward Him. He smiled at them with his face of bones. They hesitated for a moment and looked as if they might turn around, but then continued walking to Leere.

“You are scaring the people of this beam, creature. What business do you have here? We’d sooner have you gone,” said the guard on the left.

Leere’s voice was hushed like a hand brushing against leather as he said, “shape-shifter … Alamy.

The two guards shared a look.

“What makes you seek the Great One?” said the bigger nosed one on the right.

Leere said nothing.

“You will have to come with us, creature. We cannot allow you to walk freely in our—“ the handsome guard on the left was cut off by what Leere knew would be a crushing feeling in his chest. Big nose looked panicked as he shifted his eyes from Leere to the handsome guard and back again. Leere stopped his thrumming and handsome guard collapsed onto the sandy ground of the beam. Big-nose shifted into a large black-haired beast that was a head taller than Leere with beady eyes, sharp teeth, and a snout.

“No! Don’t! He’ll kill you!” Croaked handsome-guard, but it was too late as big-nose jumped at Leere. People on the street scattered and shrieked. Big-nose made it to Leere’s face before Leere said:

“Freeze.” As the word came out of his mouth, cool and calm as ever, the creature froze in mid-air, its snout almost touching Leere’s bone-face. Leere reached up with a gloved hand to pet the creature. It floated above the ground.

Handsome-guard said, “please. He-he didn’t mean … please—”

Leere didn’t move, but big-nose started to. Leere took the image of this scene and reached out to every sentient being within this city-chasm, allowing it to play in their minds. Big-nose’s head was the first body part to move toward his back. The head bent, bent, bent, until the top of the head was touching his spine. The limbs began to follow suit, bending backward. Every limb snapped and cracked its way to big-nose’s spine until finally Leere did a similar thing with the spine itself, bending it backward until it broke. By the end of it, Sniffer looked like a ball of fur floating their in the air. Leere let go of big-nose, his dead and broken body falling with a thud to the ground.

Leere spoke to the minds: “This was the fate of one who opposed me. I look for a shape-shifter named Alamy.” Leere looked at handsome-face who backed away. Leere decided he would leave sleeping lilies lie with that one, he seemed to be out on The Strings with the loss of his partner. Instead, Leere jumped off the side of this beam and descended further down. He slowed his fall with flapping wings as he reached near the bottom, then touched the cobbles. It was darker down here, but still well lit by wall sconces. The buildings that surrounded Leere were the yellow color of the desert sand like so many sand castles made by a child with a bucket on the beach. A group of the red creatures stood in a circle outside of what looked like a tavern. Leere approached them. One of them gasped.

“Alamy?” Leere said.

“This way,” said a thin, high pitched, musical voice from behind Leere. He turned around and saw a small girl with dark skin that smiled and crooked a finger. The child couldn’t have been any older than ten, but that voice … it was much older than ten. Leere left the circle of terrified red creatures to follow this child. The child ran off down the alleyway she had come from and Leere ran after. She giggled, then turned left down an alley up ahead. There were clothes and linens on clothes-lines hanging between windows up above, and some red creatures leaned out the windows to peer down at Leere and the running child. Every time he caught up to her, she turned down some other street or alley. He tripped over a black and grey striped cat with four ears, landing face-first on the hard-packed sand. He got to his feet, preparing to attune the Low Vibrations, when he saw that the girl stood in front of him, smiling.

“Alamy is there,” she pointed to a large tower that stood in the middle of a large square. Leere had tripped over the cat, out of the alleys and into this business center. Shops and red creatures surrounded the building. The tower looked to be at least two hundred feet high, it ended in a point and was made of the same sand that he stood upon. One hundred steps led up to a circular stone door at the entrance to this tower. He turned his head back to the child, but she was gone. Leere got up and started toward the large structure made of sand.

5

It was hard for Fiona to think. Quint was explaining to her that she had fallen unconscious, Pip had tried to catch her with his … teeth; then she’d fallen into Carter and he had hit his head. Carter had said her name. Then nothingness. But she remembered him saying it, speaking. Was he trying to get through to her through his sickness—through Leslie? He had pulled her away from the light creatures, and he had said her name. Carter hadn’t spoken intelligibly in six months and he’d started with her name. It changed nothing of course, she was free of him in the way of being his wife, at least in her own mind, but it was all so confusing. The mantra scramble, the obsession that had preceded it, Leslie being the cause of the mantra scramble.

She didn’t mind taking care of Carter, but it was nice that Quint would be taking over now that she had changed. It had been a lot, but it had also been a labor of love before now; she thought at some point it would become burdensome without affection playing a roll in her caretaking.

The light creatures had put holes in Fiona’s soul and hooks to fill them, hooks that pulled her onward and away from the man she’d called husband. That wasn’t the only thing though, it had been the look on Carter’s face when he’d pulled her out … indifference, impatience, duty. She’d hated him for it. She’d been lied to by that face when it had been in love with its precious work, but in that moment, it had been honest. “You are but a child inconveniencing me with this frivolity,” is what that face said to her—To her! The person who’d taken care of him for so long, who’d tried to spend time with him, who’d helped feed him, and then … “Fiona,” he had said.

And then it hit her. She hadn’t fallen unconscious; she had attacked Carter. She had attacked him with … Voids, I don’t even know what that was, she thought. Things had become dark and heavy, like when speaking Seru, the hives had surrounded her eyes as they did before she got very angry or passed out from intense emotion. Her veins … she frantically pulled at her sleeve which someone had rolled back down: blue-green. Maybe it had been a trick of the darkness. She sighed in relief. Adding Thrast to the list of her burdens was not something she wanted to do just now.

Fiona had been trying to pull Leslie the bug out of Carter’s forehead—leg by leg—with the Inner Vibrations. It was hard to imagine; she’d never been able to do anything like that consciously, but this had not been a conscious act. It had been some kind of knowing like when accessing the RIGHT UNDERSTANDING in Svargaloka. It had felt right, though logically it made no sense and seemed very wrong, it felt like the only thing she should be doing. But wouldn’t that risk Leslie’s life and potentially damage Carter’s brain permanently? Isn’t that why they were here? How could it feel right to just do that when they’d come to the Endynas Valley because they didn’t know what to do? And why was Quint lying to her? Vermilion was too, but it was Pip that bothered her the most. That pain that had stopped her thrumming must have been Pip’s fang; it had felt like an electric shock, and then she’d been cut off from the vibrations altogether. Why had they lied to her? Didn’t they trust her? She had only thrummed into Carter because she knew she was supposed to. Right? I was supposed to! It felt … right!

“Why are you lying to me?” Fiona asked Quint.

“I don’t know what you—”

“Yes, I think you do. And I think Pip knows too, but I believe you talked them into this. Do you think I can’t handle hearing it from you?”

“Fiona, you really shouldn’t strain yours—”

“I remember what happened. I didn’t fall unconscious. I attacked Carter and tried to pull the bug out of his head. Now I’d like to hear why you are lying to me, Quint Costello and I’d hear it now,” she said.

“We aren’t,” he tried again. The world grew dark and heavy.

“I’d hear it. Now,” Fiona said in Seru, directing her words to Vermilion and Pip as well. She said it with such force that they immediately bowed their heads. She’d never seen Quint affect people quite like this with the language before; she was getting good.

“We were going to tell you Fiona, when we arrived at The Tower of Tones. We didn't want to tell you and make things worse before we got there,” Quint said.

“How long?” Fiona asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How long has this been happening? How many times?”

Fiona had known about the blackouts, and she had just blamed these on her intense emotions. She always thought she collapsed and was essentially sleeping during them, not trying to hurt people. It had been one of the reasons Ken-Phae was so important to her. She thought that if she learned to regulate her emotions like Putnam, she wouldn’t have these episodes.

Quint was obviously hesitant, but he responded: “This is the second time that I am aware of for certain. You blacked out in Tissington and pulled the hearts out of four men who were assaulting you; you had no recollection of the event afterward, and the thrumming ability you showed when you did that far surpassed what you were capable of at that point in your training. I suspect that this may be what happened with the Rakshasas before we entered the valley. Then there’s your run-in with the phase-shifters in the Shadow Wood before you came to us at the Manor House. And I wonder if this is why you have no memory of your past before entering the Shadow Wood,” Quint said solemnly, obviously a little ashamed.

“And you knew about this, Pip?”

“Yes,” Pip sent, wilting.

“Why? Why would you not just tell me?” Fiona said, those familiar hives forming around her eyes. No, not now, she thought at them, lifting a hand up to itch at them, then catching a fingernail with her teeth and chewing.

“We were foolish. I was foolish. We were worried for you, Fiona,” Quint said.

“So you lied?”

“So we lied.” There was a submissive shrug in his tone. Vermilion sat silently on his haunches, staring off as if none of this was happening. Perhaps Fiona had a husband before she lost her memory, someone similar to this Drake, because that look—that feigned innocence and lack of engagement was so Voiddamned familiar. This thought only aggravated her further and she channeled her frustration into a withering look at Quint.

He withered.

“Go on,” she said.

Quint sighed. “I should have sent you to the Woman in White long ago. Carter and I … we thought we could fix you ourselves, so we set out to do so. I did this by becoming more involved in your training as a thrummer, while Carter … Carter threw himself into the vibrations to try and find an answer,” Quint said.

Fiona’s breath caught. Her eyes burned; a lump formed in her throat along with an empty, hungry feeling in her belly. He had been trying to … help her? That’s why?

“So that’s why he disappeared?!? You’re telling me he was trying to help me?!?” Fiona sobbed. “Are you out on the fucking Strings? Did you tell him to keep it from me?”

“We all agreed to keep it to ourselves but I did encourage it. I wanted you to be able to learn without this hanging over your head. I thought I could teach you. I thought we could help you. Pohsib is the only one who disagreed completely about withholding the information. I believe he was right after all and I am a fool. I’m so sorry, Fiona,” Quint said.

She stared at him, tears running down her cheeks, her mouth working. She looked at the big Drake again and wiped the tears away. “I … I think we should get going. I’ll stay away from Carter,” is all she said as she started walking away from the cave of the light creatures and down the path of grass that spread out before them. She wore a blank, glassy expression. She tried reading to get out of herself. She pulled out The Art of Mantrum and Vibration by Morrison Hycondecles to the spot she’d marked.

—Rakshasas could Move anywhere on sesnickie-back if a certain mantrum was spoken. All Rakshasas were bound to this ancient vibration and it could penetrate any vibrational barrier. They would feel a strong tug to the place until they went. It is said that Leere himself spoke the mantrum three-thousand years ago and from then on, Rakshasas had to speak it as an oath when getting sworn into their order. The mantrum is: Fa-ketskt-ma bishdu, but don’t go trying to attune it, nothing will happen. Some say—

She was so tired of hearing about Leere. She’d forgotten this is where she’d left this book marked after the encounter with the Rakshasas. She closed the book.

The path widened as they walked , and two miles from the cave, the valley filled with squim trees. They ate the squims as they walked, the purple fruit filling their mouths with its juices, stimulating their minds with its energizing effects. Though it did not brighten Fiona’s mood, it gave her the anxious need to do something other than ruminate. She walked up to Vermilion and asked if they could resume her training.

Vermilion gave her a look. “I’m not trying to comfort you—“

“Right. So don’t,” Fiona said.

Vermilion breathed out. “Prudance’s mom … well, as I said, she’s gone now, but … she would … hit Prudance. With wooden spoons.”

This was doing nothing to help Fiona’s morose state.

The Drake went on, “she thought I didn’t know about it. I’d come home from work and Pru would have these marks on her backside, and she would have some excuse, like Pru fell, or things like that. I never addressed it. I’d find broken wooden spoons in the trash.”

“You never addressed it?” Fiona said. The story was making her feel awful. She’d been trying to distract herself with the one member of their party that had not been tainted by a lie, but he was quickly becoming tainted by his willingness to gush his past horror.

Vermilion shook his head. “I didn’t. I could see it ate her up—what she’d done. She’d nervously run her hand through her yellow hair, untangling phantom knots, looking off into space as if space could change what she’d done if she stared at it long enough.”

“What are you trying to say? With this story. I’m sorry, Vermilion, but I’m not sure … I have a lot to think about.”

“I should have told her I knew, told her to stop, or that I could stay home with Pru while she worked or something. I kept it from her that I knew. Now, I’m not saying I did anything right by keeping—“

“No, I wouldn’t say you did anything right either,” Fiona said, biting a fingernail. The purple squim trees were growing thicker and Fiona pulled another fruit from the branches and sunk her teeth in, the juices dripping down her chin.

“Hear me out. I was a coward for not telling her, and Prudance only suffered more for it. I did it, though, because I loved her. I could see it ate her up. She was ashamed. And I thought maybe she’d get there on her own and stop hitting Pru. She never did. And then she left. Nothing got better, nothing changed, it only got worse, and then she was gone.”

“Why—“

“Because I’m trying to tell you I was wrong. But my reason was right. I wanted to spare her pain. That was my intention, though I may have just caused more for Pru and my her, in the end.”

Fiona wondered if Vermilion was trying to show Fiona why she could forgive Carter. Whatever the case, it wasn’t helping a whole lot. Right now, she was just feeling and there wasn’t much that could change that. Fiona was indeed looking for a release from her emotions, but not in the form of a Voiddamned understanding of the other side’s perspective. She wanted to rage, to yell, to condemn. Though … some kernel of what Vermilion had said seeped through as Fiona felt the smallest of comforts in knowing that Carter had not just given up on their marriage for self-obsession; he’d been trying to help her. Rage. Yell. Condemn, she thought almost like a mantrum. She looked at the glimmering silver hanging from Vermilion’s hip. And shoot guns.

“Thank you, Vermilion. You’ve given me … more to think about. Can I shoot the guns now?” she said.

Vermilion laughed, then drew the seven-shooters from their holsters. He showed her how to dismantle the guns, clean them, then put them back together again, all while walking. He used his gigantic forearm as a table and cradled the pieces in the crook of his elbow. He could take apart a gun with one hand and put it back together that way as well. Fiona watched, awestruck. The guns seemed to be made for one handed use, though.

“A flick to the left—or right, depending on which gun you hold; they’re each crafted for a specific hand—pulls your cylinder out to the side, toward your body. There is a button on the right side of the gun above the trigger right here—“ Vermilion pointed to it, guiding Fiona’s finger, “—that you press before flicking the cylinders to open them. If you then push the button forward, it ejects the cylinder completely.” There were similar buttons that could be pressed, then moved forward along the barrel of the seven shooter to dismantle it further. The craftsmanship of the guns was impressive to say the least; these buttons could hardly be seen before Vermilion pointed them out. Vermilion reached into a pocket on the inside of his jacket, pulling out a small vile of yellow liquid and a long wire with cloth on the end of it. He then showed Fiona how to oil the outside of the gun and clean the barrel with the wire and cloth. He reassembled the seven shooter and passed it to Fiona along with the tools he had used.

“Your turn,” he said. She nodded her head and set about doing everything exactly as she had seen the Drake do with one hand; this was made difficult by the small size of her arm so she untucked her shirt and held the pieces she was working on in a makeshift cloth bowl. She made every move … perfectly. Fiona couldn’t believe she’d retained everything she’d watched, but it just felt so natural to her. She put the cylinder and the barrel back onto the frame until the button-releases clicked for both, flicked the gun to the side so the cylinder came open, looked through the empty chamber, flicked the gun back so the cylinder closed, then—aligning the front and rear sights—aimed the gun at a squim on a far tree, and—

“Bang,” she whispered. There were no bullets in the chamber, but she knew if there had been, her aim would have been true. She didn’t know how she knew this, she just did, and that was just fine. She flipped the seven-shooter around on the palm of her hand and handed it to Vermilion, butt first. Vermilion gave her a searching stare.

“You’re sure you’ve never handled one of these?” He asked.

“Not that I’m aware of, though I do black out from time to time,” she said with the hint of a smile.

He handed her a bullet. “Load it up and shoot a squim fruit up ahead,” Vermilion said, nodding ahead of them to a tree about a quarter of a mile away. Fiona didn’t waste any time; she grabbed the bullet, flicked the cylinder open, slid the bullet in the chamber, flicked the cylinder back closed, cocked the hammer, aimed—and fired. The fruit exploded. Vermilion laughed.

“Well it looks like some of my work has already been done for me. I wonder … ” he hurled seven bullets into the air. “Catch them when they come down.”

Fiona looked up to the sky then opened her cylinder and she caught every one of them in the chambers of the cylinder, closed it, then fired seven shots at seven squims, every one of them turning into purple pulp as they were blown apart. She wondered what she’d be capable of if she thrummed into the bullets; it would probably have to be after they were fired considering the vibration-repellant sesnickie bone grip on the gun. But she had thrummed into Vermilion at the second Veil. She handed the gun back to the Drake.

“I’m going to try and thrumm into you like I did before, is that alright?” She asked.

“What’re you thinking? Trying to get through the grips?” Vermilion replied.

“Yeah. I was able to make you light on the island. I must have gotten through the buffer at least somewhat.”

“Go ahead, that’s fine. What will you do?”

“Make you light again, like before. You’ll probably enjoy it actually, I always do.”

She attuned the vibration of bliss and thrummed it into the Drake. She hit a wall where she’d normally been able to lighten people fairly easily. This wasn’t here before, she thought. She pushed harder, but to no avail. Then she remembered something.

“Vermilion, are the chambers emptied in both guns?”

“No, not in this one,” he said, holding up the gun he’d kept while Fiona had used the other.

“Empty it. Your guns were both empty when I thrummed into you,” she said. They continued walking; Fiona grabbed another squim and took a bite out of it, she was enjoying the feeling of wakefulness that they provided.

Vermilion emptied his other gun and Fiona tried again. She attuned bliss and when she ran into the wall again, she pushed as hard as she could. At first, nothing seemed to change, then Vermilion jumped into the air higher than what would normally be possible, and he laughed like a little kid.

“So you’ve been using sesnickie tooth bullets, and they actually have a vibration repelling effect that compounds with the grip,” Fiona stated.

“Well really, you shouldn’t be able to affect me this much while holding the grip. In my experience it basically makes vibrations like drops of water where they’d usually be a flood,” Vermilion said.

“That’s no ordinary vibrationalist you’re dealing with, though. I’m willing to bet she could break all the way through those grips if she were angry enough,” Quint said.

“What do you mean if I were angry enough?” Fiona asked, not looking at Quint.

“Well there’s no point keeping anything back now. Each time you’ve blacked out—that we know of, that is—you’ve been under extreme tension or stress emotionally or physically. With the phase-shifters and the men in Tissington, your life may have depended on it. You were probably terrified and furious, pushed to your limits emotionally until a kind of breaking happened in you. Although I’m not sure what happened with Carter back there, we can assume from the intense feelings built up between the two of you that you could have been triggered by anything with him. You go deep; deeper than other people can go, which grants you a well of vibrational potential. I think this is how you were able to kill three Rakshasas. Your intense feelings allow you to access the most extreme forms of vibrations—High and Low. I hope that when we reach the Tower of Tones, She will be able to help you access this consciously. We have more than just Carter bringing us to the Tower,” Quint said.

They walked in silence for a time. Vermilion showed Fiona how to make the wax casings from normal candle wax, how to load the chambers with the trick he’d used at the second Veil, and the wax ejector. It was an interesting system. You loaded the bullets with the wax casings, pushed the melting button which would melt the casings off, press down on the wax ejector—another hidden button—which would drop your melted wax out of the bottom of the gun handle. Vermilion said that it could be a useful tool in a fight after reloading, distracting your enemy with the hot wax of the casings, possibly injuring them with it.

Fiona could do it all after being showed just one time. It felt like she’d been doing it all for years. She glanced at Carter and felt something bubble up; not a lover’s affection, no that was over, but she imagined, perhaps it was a feeling akin to that which a sister held for a brother. I may not want you like I did before, but I will make you better, Carter, she thought. I swear it. The realization that he had been so absent because he’d been trying to find a solution to her blackouts … it gave her a new perspective on their relationship, and a new resolve.