Dark Tales From Dandelion

1

Fiona’s thoughts exploded in a rainbow as the effects of the Lysergy Fruit took hold. She saw visions of herself going in different directions toward a hundred potentials. One of them left, walking away into the Dead Lands. Another stabbed herself right there with the sesnickie blade. More often than not, these versions of herself climbed the black mountain-like tower, walking up the slope that encircled the tower all the way to the top. Fiona turned and looked at the bush the fruit had come from; it was on fire. She walked toward the flaming bush. In the flames she saw Prudance in chains while Leere and Carter held blades to the girl’s throat. She spread her wings and jumped—and fell on her face. She got up, one of her cheeks dripping blood. She tried again, this time careful not to angle herself parallel to the ground to avoid another face-plant. Her wings would not catch the air. Flapping them felt like trying to move them through water. She tried the lightening mantrum but it made no difference where her wings were concerned. She tried running but felt a similar weight. The only time she didn’t hit a wall of added gravity was when she was walking.

Along the path she saw her different potentials going every which way, some trying and failing to fly, others running against the invisible current regardless of its slowing effects. The rainbow in her mind told her to continue walking, never stop until the top is reached. She saw more of the burning bushes as she walked and they spoke to her like old friends.

“Find the truth at the top of the tower,” said one.

What truth? That my daughter is held captive and my husband is going to try and kill me again? My second husband? I have two husbands. That was going to get confusing. She might have to just kill one of them off.

She walked this way for thirty tiks before reaching the top where the slope widened and then leveled out. This top ledge had no wall to keep those that would wander from falling—only a worn copper railing—and Fiona watched as several of her potential selves fell from the straight drop. She turned to her left to look at the large red door with one black circle in the middle of it. The door was six times her height. She shivered at the sight. A hallucination appeared in front of the door as she neared. She jumped back from it and it was gone. Was that a … sesnickie’s skeleton? She thought. She took a step forward and it appeared. Step back. Gone. She understood now.

This was a very large sesnickie skeleton, almost as long as the door behind it was tall. The skeleton was coiled up on itself, all four legs held the body up and the head looked at Fiona. For a moment she thought it served no purpose other than giving her the creeps before she entered the tower of truth—but then it spoke.

“Two truths of you, for you to be through. Two truths that you’ve kept until now. Two truths of you, only lies block the view, be it true and the view will be found,” said the sesnickie skeleton.

Fiona cracked a knowing grin. “I am the Woman in White. I am Prudance’s mother,” Fiona said confidently. She thought these would be best because they would have felt like hidden things only yesterday morning.

“Two truths of you, for you to be through. Two truths that you’ve kept until now. Two truths of you, one chance you have used, only three chances left, here’s a clue.” Then the rainbow in Fiona’s head danced and spun as she saw herself when she was twelve, pinching a two year old from behind. When the child turned around to look the twelve year old Fiona in the eyes and scream, The young Fiona smiled. The child could not speak intelligibly yet, so when the mother came running, Fiona stared at her with a look of utter bewilderment on her face. Fuck. Forgot about that.

“Ok, I’ll use that one,” Fiona said to the sesnickie skeleton.

“Two truths of you, for you to be through. Two truths that you’ve kept until now. Two truths of you, two chances you’ve used. The last of them you must make count,” the skeleton said.

Fiona groaned in frustration. She searched her brain for something she’d kept hidden. Void, I can’t think of anything. She looked at the images that were walking out of her and heading in different directions to fulfill some potential that she hadn’t. A few of them stood next to her, mouthing words soundlessly. What are they saying? Maybe I could use theirs, she thought, and she tried to read their lips, but as she did, their mouths became blurred.

What haven’t I told anyone? What truth do I have to give? Nothing came for a time. She saw more versions of herself. More often than not she saw them jumping off of the edge to their deaths. What could be so bad ….

A tear fell down her cheek and her throat grew dry as she remembered. She had them. Both of them.

“Vermilion … thought the spoons were just of a bad make … and that’s why they broke. He bought me a new set from a different craftsman for my birthday that year. I never told anyone. Prudance was three, and I was alone with her a lot. I didn’t feel like I could do the things I wanted to most of the time. She was acting like any three year old—willfully disobedient and unresponsive to discipline. I got so angry that I broke the wooden spoons across her backside … I would tell Vermilion that she fell playing, or she had a rash, if he happened to see it that is. I did my best to hide it,” Fiona finished, her irises red and the area around her eyes covered with hives that looked like tentacles spreading out across her face.

“This truth is acceptable. You have one more to go. Be careful this second, be sure noone knows,” said the sesnickie skeleton.

“Prudance is deaf in her left ear because—” her voice caught and she put her head into her hands. “Because … I … screamed so loud into it that it bled,” she sobbed. “She’s never been able to hear out of it since.” Fiona collapsed in tears. The ground shook and she could hear a loud grinding that she assumed was the door but right now she did not care. She was finally facing the grief of the permanent damage she’d caused her child that she’d stuffed away somewhere to hopefully rot and die.

Nothing was quite as painful as the pain that came from remembering something you’d been blocking out for years. These were two of the things that motivated me to go to the Lady Fae. I wanted to forget. I wanted to save Prudance the grief of our vibrational blackouts, but more than that I wanted an escape from what I’d done, she thought. She looked up to the door. The sesnickie skeleton was no longer there. More potential Fionas were jumping off of the slick black surface of the ledge she kneeled so closely to. It would be so easy … but no. She had taken that road before. She wanted to try to do something differently. She may not be a fit mother for her daughter, but she could save her daughter from those that would hurt her more than she herself had already done.

Fiona stood up. It was hard, and she did it slowly, shaking slightly as she did. She felt very tired, but raw and awake at the same time. The color red was most prevalent in the rainbow that played in her mind. Red for raw, red for anxiety, red for hate—hatred of myself. She walked on. Where the large red door had been, there was now a dark opening much like the one she had gone through in the Endynas Valley that had led to the light-creatures; much like the Loose Strings she had been pushed through in the kitchen of the Manor House. She looked up at the towering darkness and realized she was not afraid to die. Once again, she had been given the sweet grace of embracing death. Both times the feeling had faded, but she wasn’t afraid of that either right now. She embraced it. She was going to get her daughter out of there and if she died doing it, maybe she’d be able to forgive herself for the way she’d treated her. She stepped into the void.

2

Fiona was covered in darkness. She felt like she was falling, but she remained upright and no air rushed past her face to indicate that she actually was. She took a step forward and light blinded her. When her eyes adjusted enough to see again, she noticed she was in a room lined with red-and-gold marble pillars on either side of her, leading toward a large dais with two figures standing to either side of a metal platform in front of a throne. The glossy red floor made a slapping noise underneath her bare feet, and as she walked toward Leere, Carter and her daughter—who lay on the metal platform—the white robed Rakshasas turned their heads to look at her. The creatures did not have their wings out, but they were just as imposing as if they did have them extended. The Rakshasas lined the throne room and behind her they guarded the ‘door’ she had come out of. Behind the Rakshasas that stood to either side of her were several red banners trailing down from the ceiling, stopping slightly above their heads. She heard the tik-tik song of the Eraser coming from outside of the hall. It was like razors to her ears. The sound of death, she thought.

The Rakshasas lining the hall took a step forward, then another; and then they were surrounding her. She attempted a thrumming, but it was no use against the might of a combined assault of vibrations that the Rakshasas dropped down on her. She felt like a sack of lead, impossibly dense, she was unable to even move. They took the canvas bag that held the Eraser from her. No, Voids no, this is not how it was supposed to go!

White-cloaked Rakshasas carried her toward the awful red-cloaked figure that was Leere, or an imposter, or whatever it was. Leere moved the bones of his goat-skulled face to make that impossible smile. Carter stood. By his side with a stupid expression on his face. Just up ahead, not much further now. Prudance … at least I will die with her. If only Vermilion could be here. And as if in response to her thoughts, she saw his face, screaming and firing shots impossible to keep track of at unexacting Rakshasas. He seemed to fly through the air above the white-cloaked angels, his face red with rage—and behind him, through the door Fiona had just come through, a sea of oil black figures holding white blades poured into the room. Fiona was dropped onto the red carpet, and as she fell, so too did the vibrations that had been imposed upon her.

She watched as the Rakshasas pulled out their own Fang blades out from under their cloaks. Good luck against all those phase-shifters you Voidless shits, Fiona thought, a smile creeping onto her face. Picking herself up, she drew her own fang blade and blew a path through the distracted Rakshasas and ran for Leere.

3

Quint arrived on the despicable tik-tik-ing planet of Lavender. Unlike Dandelion, it was freezing outside and snowing on Lavender and Quint shivered, pulling his blue cardigan tight around his chest. He dismounted Carl, a pleasant sesnickie with a hairlip and wide gait who had transported Quint and three other members of his squadron. Grey, black and white buildings shot up in right angles against a purple-grey sky. The only exception to the right angled architecture were the Tower of Hate and the Temple of Emptiness—the tallest buildings—which had sloped sides and ended in points. All buildings, however, had the same goat head and horns of Leere painted on each wall in the exact middle. The old thrummer looked down at the black veins that moved up his wrists as the anger of all that this planet implied vibrated within his mind.

“Everyone. Unless they yield, every Voiddamned Rakshasa dies. Take the empty ones prisoner,” Quint said to his squadron of thrummers. “Get Fiona and Prudance. Kill Rakshasas. Got it?”

The twenty men and women standing behind him nodded their heads and Quint started walking toward the Tower of Hate, sesnickie materializing with thrummers and Drakes on their backs all around him.

“However,” Quint amended, “spare the children. It’s not their fault this out-on-The-Strings religion exists.”

As if in response, a long line of red cloaks poured from the buildings surrounding Quint’s squadron. All holding transmogrifiers. They aimed, and as they did, shining white skinned figures descended upon the squadron with black bat-like wings. It was almost hard to see through the snow drifts, but Quint had been adjusting to seeing these creatures more in his life. He allowed the blackness of his veins to move up to his skull and he felt the red tendrils of hives surround his eyes. Eat pilgrim shit, he thought, and he pulled the hearts from three unsuspecting Rakshasas before moving his attention to the empty ones firing transmogrifiers and seven-shooters. Remaining lucid—he suspected this was due to the awareness of the Thrast being a form of trapped vibration rather than a disease—he was cognizant of his actions, and it felt spectacular.

Though his squadron knew nothing of using Thrast themselves, they had been trained in the Tower of Tones just as Quint had, and most of them believed him when he’d told them the Woman in White was very much still alive and needed their help.

He dodged to the left as a feeyoop sound made its way past him in the familiar warping of air that the transmogrifier made. Unfortunately, the circular air-warping hit one of Quint’s squadron that had been behind him, turning the thrummer into a fox. How appropriate, Quint thought.

“Cassidy, change the fox back into a thrummer. Squadron? Cover Cassidy!” Quint cried. They made a circle around the fox and thrummer and aimed their vibrations out. “Focus on the transmogrifiers! Disarm them!”

Just then, a squadron of sesnickie appeared in front of them, carrying no riders, with Pip in the front as their commander. Pip sent a mind smile to Quint as he tore his long black claws into the face of a transmogrifier-weilding empty one.

Quint looked back up to check on the descending Rakshasas that he had torn hearts from. They were gone. What in the Void, Quint thought. He looked to the place where the hearts had landed on the cement, just to be sure. His eyes went wide. Gone as well.

”Pip!”

“I see it, Quint,” Pip sent back. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Disappearing Rakshasas, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about.

“Are they Moving? Like sesnickie?” Quint called up to Pip.

“I’d be able to smell it if they were. They carry no scent. As if they aren’t even there. Illusions maybe? Like the third Veil?”

“Well this is going to get confusing, knowing where the real threats are coming from,” Quint said to himself, then he said to his squad: “There are illusory Rakshasas, squadron. You may be able to feel the real ones if they attune thew vibrations, so go for those if you can get a feel. Otherwise, continue as if they are all a threat!”

4

Fiona saw the Eraser in the hands of a fallen Rakshasa, bleeding from a bullet-sized hole on the red carpet. The phase-shifters and Vermilion still fought all around her, and she was being cautious not to become involved with them—she had business with Leere, and with the Eraser. Leere saw then where she was heading, and left Carter and Prudance alone on the dais to try and get the smooth black tablet before Fiona. She pushed at Him with the vibrations, trying to knock him back to which he countered with a similar thrumming, but she dodged and then jumped for the canvas bag the Eraser was in, and it seemed her vibration had been enough to give her an edge. She picked it up, then rushed Him with her fang blade, making herself lighter as she went with a thrumming.

Throwing her lightened body at him, she readied for a killing stroke with the blade, but Leere dodged, His red cloak trailing behind Him, though her blade did tear through a piece of the red cloth.

Leere spun on her and she felt a vibrational tug on her sword, but held tight to it, pushing back with her own vibrations, and rolled behind one of the large pillars that lined the throne room.

“Fab-insidi-shan,” Fiona said—a vibrational mantrum using emotions that occurred when one was being resistant. The thoughts she used were from memories of different times where she’d been completely closed off, resistance to trying something new, resistant to give in to Vermilion’s side of an argument … refusal to accept the damage you’ve done to your daughter, she thought. The vibration resisted Leere’s pull on the sword and actually pushed into Him, breaking His concentration. If He didn’t act fast, she would clog His arteries and His heart would stop. He managed to get the vibration out, but then Fiona was upon Him, slashing downward at Leere’s torso. Leere caught the blow with an arm and the sharp sesnickie blade cut straight through, severing Leere’s left arm at the elbow. He jumped back and knocked over a few of the fighting Rakshasas and phase-shifters. The phase-shifters spun like tornadoes, their blade skills far outmatching that of the Rakshasas who seemed not to know what to do with their fang blades.

Leere was so much bigger than Fiona had realized before, at least eight feet tall. Taking advantage of the distraction, she pulled on Leere’s face with the mantrum of hatred. The mask stuck. Fiona pulled hard with every bit of hatred she could muster—hatred of herself, mainly, but also against this monster that had terrorized her and her friends, resulting in the deaths of Putnam and Vance, maybe Pip and Quint as well.

The face came off, confirming a suspicion somewhere deep within that this was indeed an imposter, and this was a mask. A phase mask, she thought with horror, realizing where the mask in her bag had gone. When the mask came off, the entire body of the creature changed, shrinking at least three feet. Carter looked at her with the hating eyes of someone who has been hurt very badly, but has buried that hurt under layers of fury so thick it should surely never surface. Hives surrounded his eyes in red tendrils and black veins ran down what pieces of his neck were exposed.

Fiona looked from the Carter that stood on the dais near Prudance—one that was not so hateful—to the red-cloaked one that lay breathing raggedly, missing half of his left arm, on the floor in front of her.

“Carter? What—” Fiona asked, but Carter immediately jumped for Fiona, trying to thrumm into her with the same hatred she had just used to rip the phase mask off. The vibration tugged on her heart, but she waved it off with her own vibration of forgiveness, counteracting the hate that Carter had tried grabbing her heart with. Like Fiona, Carter seemed to be able to attune the Inner Vibrations after being struck by a sesnickie blade, but he was weakened by the cut to his arm, making it easier for Fiona to avoid his thrumming.

A different feeling then consumed Fiona … empathy? Love? Both? Pity? She wasn’t sure, but she used them like a barrier around her with the mantrum Vance had used in the Forever Forest.

“Give me … the Eraser, Fiona,” Carter said through clenched teeth, panting.

“No, Carter, I won’t,” she said, clutching the Eraser tight to her left side. “What is this? Why?” She waved her right arm to the carnage all around them, and to Prudance and the other Carter. Three Rakshasas pulled a phase-shifter apart, black blood covering the red carpet like oil, while another phase-shifter flipped over the body of its fallen comrade to slice all three of these Rakshasas in half, adding red to the black sea on the floor. The other Carter that was not Leere still stood looking blankly at the fight as if nothing were happening, and Prudance was still unconscious laying on her back on the metal platform. She heard some of the Rakshasas commenting on the fact that their Lord was an imposter. Not the prophesied messiah they’d thought, then, Fiona thought.

Carter again jumped at her and Fiona just dodged, choosing not to strike. They circled each other.

“He’s a fraud!” a Rakshasa yelled.

“No! It’s Him! Leere! Keep fighting, this is all part of it!” Another answered. It seemed some of the Rakshasas were losing heart, surrendering to the phase-shifters at the realization that they’d been tricked, while others were fervently holding onto the idea that this was all a part of the grand plan to initiate the One Dream.

“A mask! It was a mask!” another Rakshasa yelled.

“I think you’re going to run out of options very soon, Carter. Explain yourself,” Fiona said.

“I did what had to be done. And I still plan to do what has to be done. I must become the Necrolore. All realities must merge. The world craves a reset—as it did three-thousand years ago. You can help me, Fiona,” Carter said.

“You … killed me. Or at least a version of me. And what do you plan for Prudance?”

“All necessary sacrifices. You do not understand. Prudance is key. The forgiveness you poured into her … no-one else could do that but you and the circumstances would take so long to repeat themselves. We needed Carter and Leslie too, but—”

“For what? What are you wanting? Why merge realities?”

“There is so much you do not understand. There must be a Necrolore, and I need it to be me. I will end the vibrations.” A pause. “Fiona … Quint has Thrast,” Carter said.

“What?”

They continued to circle each other.

“He has it, Fiona. His aura is a black mess, and I’ve seen the blackening veins on his chest,” Carter said. Coming close to a pillar, Fiona fidgeted slightly, thinking it was a Rakshasa for a moment, her fang blade coming close to touching the Eraser for a moment. Carter visibly tensed up, his eyes darting to the Eraser, then relaxing as Fiona moved the blade away from it again. “People that don’t attune the Inner Vibrations are getting the sickness. Pigs in Arak-Sharak are showing signs of Thrast. The world is dying, Fiona. If I end the vibrations, I end Thrast. We must reset. The One Dream is the only way.”

Carter glanced nervously again at the canvas bag that Fiona held. Why does he keep looking at the Eraser that way? And the fang blade?

“The Eraser—”

“You won’t have it, Carter.”

“The Eraser—no, I should go back. LOW came to me when I was trying to fix you. I wanted you to be better, Fiona. I was helpless. You kept having blackouts, and I just felt that if I worked harder …. He spoke to me, while I was in the meditaz. He told me what to do,” Carter said, lowering his voice. “He planted these prophesies—in the Hate—years ago so that He could use them to align the realities. I am but a conduit of His power. He can end the blackouts you experience. He can keep Prudance from having to go through them. The vibrations can end.”

Fiona shook her head dismissively. “What is Prudance for, Carter?”

“I mean only to use her power, then return her to you in the same shape she is in now,” Carter said.

“I’m sure. And you really think life will be better? As one reality? No opposition?”

“Oh there will be opposition. I will incorporate that into this reality.”

“But is it opposition if you create it? That would mean you agree with it which makes it the opposite of oppositional.”

“It will be a healthy opposition. One where no-one hates; the Hate will no longer exist. High and Low will cease to be problematic. They will be balancing weights rather than nooses that are tighter around one neck the the other is loose.”

She circled close to the dais, and she could feel the other Carter leaping toward her. She whirled around and threw him into the pillar nearest Prudance’s metal platform with the vibrations, knocking him unconscious.

She turned back to look at the Carter in the red cloak. “Trying to trick me?”

“He has a mind of his own, Fiona.”

“He, as in you?”

“He is not me. Not yet. But soon.”

“How?”

“Quantum Entanglement. The One that is Two must choose to be One again.”

“But the vibrations, Carter. They are balance. The nooses. They ebb and flow.”

“No,” he said, his face contorting. “Not like this. Not the way it is. It’s too extreme. There is too much death and it’s due to the vibrations. They are being overused—over-relied upon. It’s the vibrations that are killing Quint! The vibrations that led you to your blackouts—”

“Led me to pinch a child. Led me to hit my child with a spoon, yell in her ear until she went deaf on that side. Led me to run away, forget everything and try to completely suppress my vibrations. Led me to fear myself.”

“Yes! YES! See!”

“Led me to love with my whole heart. Led me to laugh with my friends, taste foods that excited me, fuck with everything I had. Led me to cry and to hurt, and to love a man and the child that he put in my belly. The vibrations let me to LIVE!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms up, the sesnickie blade almost touching the Eraser. Carter’s eyes shifted to the Eraser, then to the blade, then back to Fiona’s face. She looked down at the objects in her hands. For fuck’s sake, she thought. She remembered the page that had been marked in her sesnickie book: ‘sesnickie teeth can also cut through the thrumming that vibrationalists have put on inanimate objects,’ it had read. We had it the whole Void-forsaken time! She looked at the Eraser and then her fang blade. Her eyes widened with the sudden realization. Carter’s eyes were wide as well, but with terror. Fiona took the sesnickie blade and turned the point toward the Eraser which she grabbed by its slick black surface, allowing the canvas bag to drop—she heard the mad tik-tik music inside her head as she held it. A mantrum seemed to scream from the object, begging her to come inside.

Carter slammed into her with an unfathomable power. Fiona’s heart felt like it had been stabbed with a knife. Her back arched in pain and she wanted to scream, but her face was paralyzed by the force. Where had this been before? Had Carter been holding back? Had he actually meant for Fiona to join him? No … no, Carter was trying to kill her, trying to rip her apart, actually. It felt like being dragged across some impossibly sticky surface, but by each body part in a different direction. It was the worst pain Fiona had ever experienced. ; it was all she could do to hang onto the Eraser and her blade, still trying to drive the point into the smooth, black, rectangular surface while also holding her body together with the vibrations. She was slowly failing at it too.

The toes went first, on her right foot—the foot attached to the injured ankle that Pip had bitten what felt like years ago—starting with the big one, then the three in the middle, then her foot went flying into one of the nearest battling Rakshasas, impaling the oblivious angel. The next thing to be pulled away from her was her right eyeball, leaving a trail of blood down her face as it disconnected and flew across the room making a small splat on the wall furthest from Fiona. She could feel her will fading, along with the vibrations holding her limbs to her body. The Eraser went flying next, and she watched as it made its way through the air toward Leere. How? How has he done this—this power, I—and then she saw it: the black in Carter’s veins … was fading. Slowly, but surely, the blackness that had been inside of his veins only moments ago was turning to a normal, healthy blueish-green. She looked up to Carter’s eyes. The Hives … like tentacles. The whites of his eyes are completely red. This is Thrast. This is what happened to me when I blacked out. I … used the Thrast. Anger—desperation—disgust.

Carter caught the Eraser and ran to the other Carter, lifted his unconscious form and put him on top of Prudance on the metal platform where she lay. Then he touched both of them with the Eraser and the two forms disappeared.

Fiona screamed. Carter flew back through one of the red and gold pillars , breaking it and smashing two Rakshasas. She thought of all emotions associated with this creature—her husband. She cringed. It fed her, the disgust, and she fed it with more thoughts, creating a loop. As it cycled, her veins became black on her arms and she could feel the familiar hives forming around her eyes. Carter shrieked as his right foot was ripped off, like her own, and then, panting wildly, Fiona limped over to the crippled form of her husband, using the sesnickie blade as a cane. The Eraser, she thought, having trouble staying lucid in this state, but somehow managing to maintain a bit of awareness, The Eraser, but first, this despicable—

“Fiona!” cried Carter, sounding like his old self, the one she had married. “Please! I-I was being controlled! THE LOW SELF! He made me! FI—”

She didn’t let him finish. He had crawled up against a pillar, his nails clawing into its marble surface. She balanced on her remaining foot—the left one—and pushed the sesnickie tooth blade through his throat. It slid like string through clay. Carter gurgled and collapsed on the floor. Fiona felt nothing but relief watching the man she had married drown in his own blood; the man who had gone mad trying to fix her.

Pulling the sesnickie blade free, she used it as a cane to help her as she walked over to the Eraser which lay where Prudance had been before she and the other Carter were sucked into the black object. She held tight to the sesnickie blade, though she could no longer could destroy the Eraser with the blade, not until Prudance was out. The third trap, she thought. The Eraser. There had been a vague image in the Fishing of the Door of Three Traps card where she’d touched it along with Carter and Prudance. It made sense now. Leg throbbing where her foot had been torn off, empty eye socket dripping a mess of fluids onto the front of her white wedding dress, she picked up the Eraser and uttered the mantrum that immediately came to her, and she disappeared from the Tower of Hate.

5

The Drakes were arriving on sesnickie-back now, firing as soon as they appeared, sometimes their bullets merely passing through the flesh of phantoms in the sky, but usually the bullets fired were true. So many fallen angels, so many dead empty ones in cloaks of red. There were many fallen chained sesnickie as well, unfortunately as a result of them being used during the battle. Used as if they were animals—or—well, like they were mindless beasts, rather, Quint thought.

The squadron had long since healed the fox, and they had lost three thrummers out of their original twenty. Not bad by Quint’s standards, though he hoped to lose no more.

“Be steadfast. I feel strong thrummings coming from the Tower of Hate!” Quint said.

Pip and his squadron of sesnickie were still just up ahead, and behind Quint’s there was another squadron of Drakes, as planned throughout the streets of this city of Hate. Quint could no longer feel his toes, and he wished he had chosen a different fighting technique besides the one where he stood mostly still feeling or thinking things.

One-hundred chained sesnickie appeared from nowhere with Rakshasas on their backs, all wielding sesnickie blades. Holy fuck. It was in front of him before he had any time to feel the vibrations that froze him in place, then the blade went through the side of his torso and he collapsed, passing out.

6

Pip jumped for Quint, but was met with another sesnickie in chains, blocking their way. The chained sesnickie had very sad eyes, and it clawed Pip across the face as it passed, its master commanding it to look for more victims. Pip recovered and bit the leg of the Rakshasa riding the chained sesnickie. The thing shrieked and Pip Moved just above it in the air, coiled around the Rakshasa, squeezing it to death.

Pip found Quint surrounded by a wall of thrummers—his squadron the sesnickie assumed—who were attuning all sorts of vibrations to keep anyone from getting to their commander.

“I’m Pip. Can I see him?” The sesnickie asked.

“Our healer is working on him right now, sesnickie. He will be better soon. You’d better watch your back though,” one of the thrummers said, and Pip felt a shiver run through them as a vibration moved through the air toward a fast approaching sesnickie and Rakshasa rider.

“Thanks,” Pip sent.

“Get out of here. Quint is fine. Your squadron needs you.”

7

Fiona opened her eye. All around her was a black and grey fuzzing. In her mind she could hear it pop and sizzle like a bole meat steak cooking, though her ears heard nothing.

Prudance floated in the air, twenty feet away from Fiona, and to either side of her daughter floated Carter and Leslie, their backs arched, their stomachs reaching upward. There was a head-sized black hole in the center of Leslie and Carter’s stomachs, and a white one of the same size in Prudance’s. All three shapes spun like the Loose Strings Fiona had seen on the wall of the mountain in the Endynas Valley, and then in the kitchen in the Manor House.

Prudance floated upright, facing Fiona, her eyes closed.

Fiona’s breaths came in ragged gulps. She looked down to her sword arm and gasped. Still grasping it, the sesnickie blade had merged with her right arm with a black, sticky substance. The veins in her arms were still black with Thrast. The area around her eyes felt like fire. Hives.

FIONA.

Carter, Leslie and Prudance stopped spinning. This place seemed to pause and become even more silent.

IT IS DONE.

The three figures in front of her resumed their spinning, only now Carter and Leslie were rotating around Prudance as they spun. As Leslie passed in front of Fiona, she heard a hushed, low voice that grew louder as it came closer to her.

“—Fiona. Fiona is all. She will make you whole. Make you one. Become one again, Leslie. Become ONE.”

The hiss of this voice trailed off as Leslie passed to her left, then Carter circled around to her right, bringing a new set of whispers with him.

“—You will be One. You will know all. You will make all One. Fiona will be healed. She will be yours—”

THE SAME WOMAN.

THE HIGH AND THE LOW.

Fiona shivered at the voice. It was like a bullfrog’s croak, but muffled as if it were croaking through leather.

Prudance came forward.

“—You are filled with light. Your mother loves you, that’s why she healed you … you are forgiven your maladies—”

The voice surrounding Prudance was different, lighter, brighter.

THE FORGIVEN ONE.

I MADE HOLES IN THE OTHERS.

BUT IN THIS ONE, YOU CARVED THE HOLE.

AND FILLED IT.

“No!” Fiona cried. “You will not trick me!”

TRICK?

NO TRICK.

Fiona tried to pull up the sesnickie blade, but it was no use. The black tar-like substance was glued tight between blade and hand. She tried using the Thrast that blackened her veins, as she had with Carter for an added boost in her thrumming, but she could not attune the vibrations.

8

Quint awoke to feel his skin re-knitting quite painfully under the vibrations of an inexperienced thrummer. Quint pushed the thrummed out of the way and stood up, halfway healed. These Voiddamned Rakshasas and empty ones are distractions. I can feel … something coming from that Tower. Where in the Void is Pip?

Quint stumbled out of the wall his squadron had made around him to shield him. “Has anyone seen Pip? The sesnickie? Scars down their sides, white fur.”

“Yes, they were just here looking for you and I sent them away—”

“Where?” Quint growled at the thrummer, who pointed. Quint started that way, clutching at his side as he did.

“Commander!” The thrummer called to Quint from behind.

“What?” Quint hollered, not turning around.

“What should we do?”

Now Quint turned. “Fight! Toward that Voiddamned tower!” Quint pointed to the Tower of Hate.

Dodging two sesnickie blades—these Rakshasas were no blade masters, just swinging the things around as if that would solve all difficulty in this battle—Quint found himself in a sesnickie squadron. Whether it was Pip’s was anyone’s guess, but it was the nearest, so he assumed it was. He started to shout Pip’s name. We have to get to that Tower now. Fiona, hang on.

9

THRAST IS OF ME.

YOU AND YOUR BLADE ARE OF ME.

“It was in the Fishing! Not of you!”

YES. THE SAME METHOD

THAT PUT THE ERASER IN YOUR HAND.

IT BROUGHT YOU

RIGHT

TO

ME.

Fiona felt her back arching against her will as she was raised up into the air to float as Leslie and Carter were.

“Brought me to you?” She grunted. “What do you need me for?”

TO BE THE NECROLORE, CHILD

“Was it you, then? That saved me from the Shadow Trees when they attacked?

YES

“Why? Why me?”

YOU ARE OF THE HIGHEST.

AND THE LOWEST.

IT COULD ONLY BE YOU.

“Why not Carter?”

A PUPPET. A PIECE.

ONE HALF OF A WHOLE.

Fiona struggled against invisible bonds. She tried to move the blade again. LOW had specifically put this black tar on the blade. He had to know, then. If she could only—get—it—free ….

USELESS.

“What do you mean one half?”

THE ONE YOU CALLED HUSBAND.

HE WAS ONE WITH HIS BROTHER.

THEY WERE OF THE SAME AWARENESS.

THE ÜNTA OF ONE SPLIT IN TWO.

Her back involuntarily arched more and she bit back the pain with a grunt. “The bug?” She asked through clenched teeth.

YES.

I RIPPED HOLES IN THEM BOTH

THEN PUT THEM TOGETHER.

AND NOW THEY ARE OF THE SAME VIBRATION.

THEY ARE ENTANGLED.

ONE.

AND NOW THEY WILL MERGE

WITH YOU. AND I WILL ENTER YOU.

I. WILL. MAKE. YOU.

LOW.

10

“Pip!” The sesnickie heard Quint yelling, distracting them for a moment and costing them another claw to the face. Thankfully this sesnickie was taken out by a Drake garrison that had come in from the left flank of Pip’s squadron, taking out most of these chained ones and their Rakshasas. Poor bastards, Pip thought. But no time for saving chained sesnickie. That will only cost us more than we’ve already lost.

“Quint?” Pip sent out, finding the thrummer by the interesting assortment of vibrations that he always held within his head. It was a crude combination of humor and anger.

“Pip! Something’s wrong!” Quint yelled as Pip Moved to where Quint was. “The Tower of Hate. I … can feel something … very wrong.”

“Climb up, Ye Olde Nutsack,” Pip sent. Quint did not protest, and the sesnickie Moved them to the base of the Tower of Hate, right in the middle of a large mass of fighting figures.

A baby crawled through the street dragging a white blanket, crying, “da! Da!” But the cry fell on deaf ears. Phase-shifters with fang blades fought off inept Rakshasas. Some of these shifters took on wild forms instead of wielding their swords to fight. In a number of spots there was a tower of flames shooting up to the sky, burning all of those around them. One such tower manifested right where the baby crawled, burning it too a crisp. Voids’ sake! Pip thought, looking away.

“Can you Move us up Pip? To the top?”

“I’m blocked. We will have to climb.”

The two rushed up the steps into the building which was burning. Climb to the top of a burning building? Sounds smart. They ran through the flames, and Quint did what he could to shield them from excessive heat damage by attuning cooling vibrations, though these took a lot of energy. He tried to do it in small spurts when the flames were at their worst.

Three floors up, the two ran into there Rakshasas who had somehow overpowered the phase-shifters on that floor. Many black bodies lay sprawled across the wreckage of the floor. Pip readied their claws.

11

Fiona’s mind was attacked by images: Prudance’s mutilated form before she’d been healed; Vermilion making love to a beautiful strawberry-blonde haired woman; Pip dying in the wreckage of the Tower of Hate; Carter and Leslie both suffering because of her.

If she wouldn’t have had her vibrational fits, Carter wouldn’t have sought to help her, thus becoming obsessed with the vibrations. If Carter had not become obsessed, Leslie wouldn’t have become the bug, going into his brain. If—

Wait. He was doing it to her. She could see it.

“NO!” She screamed.

YOU WILL ALREADY BE MINE, CHILD.

Fiona thought desperately of anything light and good and high. She could almost feel the High Vibrations, just out of reach like distant sunlight obscured by clouds. She attuned … nothing. The thoughts and feelings completely alluded her.

I FEEL YOU TRYING.

YOU WERE HERE BEFORE.

SHALL I SHOW YOU?

An image of Ali, the Woman in White … of … Fiona. In a wedding dress. Panting, with a sesnickie blade, but no tar holding it to her wrist. She was unbound, and screamed as she stabbed the blade into the ground and disappeared with the Eraser.

YES. THIS MOMENT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED.

YOU RAN, SEEKING POWER.

USING MY POWER TO RUN BACK THROUGH TIME.

The image of Ali was building the Tower of Tones, an army of vibrationalists ….

AND I KILLED YOU.

The sesnickie fang. Stabbing Ali to death.

KILLED BY THE MEANS YOU SOUGHT TO KILL ME WITH.

Fiona tried to move her sword arm again. If I could do what she did … what I did.

DO NOT PRESUME I WILL ALLOW

YOU A SECOND STROKE.

YOU ARE BOUND.

He fears it, she thought. I just need to get them out …. She looked to her daughter and her floating friends. They didn’t mean to do any of this. I’m the reason they are here. Me. I did this. IT was never Carter, never Leslie.

BEFORE YOU DIED.

YOU SERVED ME ONCE MORE.

The vision swirled and she saw Ali and herself standing above Prudance—two potential selves forgiving what they had done to their daughter, forgiving their daughter the malady they had passed down to her—the Highest and the Lowest—and in so doing, healing her. Ali looked into Fiona’s eyes and smiled during the ritual. It was like years were shaved from her face in the forgiveness; she had looked a decrepit wretch when she’d stabbed the floor, escaping with the Eraser. It’s as if she changed her aura from one that sought power to defeat this creature, to one that … would allow it to exist.

Fiona thought of Thrast leaving the body when someone changed their aura. Then … she forgave herself. The same way she had before, the same way she’d forgiven Red at the fourth Veil. It was a complete emptying, though she could still remember the past. She was like a crystal, and every memory, thought, or feeling that came to her was like a light that shined through, forgiven before trespassing upon the walls of her consciousness. Then the hopelessness returned, penetrating the crystal and getting trapped inside.

“You’re right. I cannot win,” Fiona said to the black and grey space. “I will be … your vessel.”

IT IS YOUR ONLY CHOICE.

12

The Rakshasas tried using the terror vibration on Pip and Quint as a triple combined effort, but Quint was too quick for them. Something I learned from the woman upstairs, Quint thought, kissing his right hand and raising it to the ceiling. The terror came into him and Pip, and the sesnickie immediately went to the ground, but Quint first used Fa-ren-bishdu, a mantra of pure forgiveness, which enveloped the offending emotions of terror that created horrifying images in their minds, then he split himself three ways while maintaining the forgiveness.

“Brace yourself, dear Pip,” Quint said.

“For wha—”

Fab-indindo-confin. Trapped happiness.

The three Rakshasas exploded with Quint’s Thrast enhanced push, and white light filled Quint’s eyes and he thought he must surely be blind. “Can you Move to the upper levels now that you can see them, dear Pip?” Quint said, rubbing his eyes. “Now that I’ve blown them away with pilgrim shit.”

“Pilgrim shit, along with some internal organs. I can try. Climb up.”

They Moved, one level at a time, up the blown apart hole Quint had made, all the way to the top of the tower.

13

A presence came into her then, coloring every thought with desperation and hatred. It was as if something terrible had just occurred and Fiona had been both the victim and the cause.

Burning. She had created the flames and now they scorched her skin.

“NO!”

The wooden spoon cracked against her daughter’s backside, leaving a purple welt; leaving a memory tar would stick and destroy.

“NO! I didn’t mean to hurt you!”

Trapped in the crystal … all trapped within the crystal … trapped with me … but I am the crystal and the one who sees it. I am not trapped anywhere.

I.

Do Not.

Resist.

Fiona relinquished all resistance to THE LOW SELF. The presence fully came into her, making everything LOW, and she forgave it.

She watched the thoughts as they passed through. Awful things. Children dying; Pip dying by Fiona’s own hands in the flames she had become at the Manor House. It felt horrible, but it did not get stuck. The horrible thoughts and feelings were allowed to be because they were. She bathed in the exaltation of allowing.

WHAT

ARE

YOU

DOING?

The presence within her shrieked. It did not understand this place within her. Fiona had pulled LOW into her own kind of Eraser, only it was the true emptiness of pure forgiveness.

Fiona spoke to the frail presence:

ALL IS FORGIVEN.

EVEN YOU.

Then it said:

I SHOULD HAVE FELT YOU.

THIS CANNOT BE.

She responded:

THIS SHOULD BE.

BECAUSE IT IS.

She felt the presence attempting to escape her, but she had absorbed it. LOW was her, and she was LOW. They were one inside of the space of her awareness.

LOW was forgiven by her, and in this forgiveness, His actions too were forgiven. In this space of merged consciousness, Fiona used LOW to stop the voices speaking to PRudance, Carter, and Leslie. The black tar that glued her sword to her right hand disappeared.

NO.

YOU CANNOT.

She sheathed her blade; then Fiona closed the hole in each floating body. LOW shrieked within her like metal scraping rock.

YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

THE ONE DREAM—

Fiona cut off LOW’S protests by grabbing onto an arm from each one of the floating figures with her sword arm while her left clutched the Eraser. She muttered the mantrum and all four of them were back in the throne room in the Tower of Hate.

Landing on her back, she let go of the hands, rolled over, drew the sesnickie blade and rammed it into the flat of the Eraser. The voice of THE LOW SELF within her shrieked again, but this was more intense than before; she could feel the hatred bubbling within, and as Fiona looked from the surface of the Eraser to the thing she loved most—her daughter, her ultimate forgiveness—LOW struck His final blow as its last home, the Eraser was destroyed and replaced by the cage of Fiona’s forgiveness. Black tendrils rushed up Fiona’s arm from where she held the Eraser. She could not put it down, could not let go of the blade. HEr arm shook as the tendrils traveled up her neck, past her mouth, then around her eyes like prowling sharks.

Fiona filled her remaining eye with one more glimpse of what she loved most, then the tendrils stabbed her remaining eyeball, filling it with black. She convulsed, opened her mouth to scream, but couldn’t make a sound. She pushed into her blade a final time and the rectangular shape in her left hand turned to what felt like dust in her hand.

LOW screamed within her. She forgave Him, though she also felt His pain as though it was a part of her too. She would live with this presence, and she would forgive it.

Fiona collapsed onto the floor, dropping the blade and reaching out to hold Prudance with her right arm. With one sightless, black eye, Fiona tried to see her daughter before closing her eyelids against what she knew would come next—what she knew she had to do.

Fiona felt two presences enter the room, two presences that had been here, hiding for quite some time now.

“Her face, Percy,” said one voice.

“I know, Keeney. Unlike the imposter who killed your child for no reason. She bears the marks. Black marks on her face, giving it a skull-like appearance,” said Percy. The footsteps drew nearer. Fiona picked her blade up with her left hand as she raised herself to a knee. She still held Prudance in her right arm.

“Blind, so as not to prefer one reality over the other,” Keeney said.

“No right foot to put forward. She is missing her right foot completely. She holds the key in her right hand, and the Eraser was in her left before she … made it disintegrate. She is—”

“The Necrolore,” Fiona said as she turned to look at both of them with sightless eyes. She could feel it. She had felt it since LOW had crawled up her arm from where she’d stabbed the Eraser. Was this His plan all along? The power to make One Dream, to mold it as she wished. Was right here, within her.

USE IT.

She could see the potentials, any she wished to pick from. She could reach out and grab them. Rakshasas, enslaved, or gone completely. All war, done and over.

USE IT. NOW!

14

The phase-shifters that Quint and Pip ran into on the fifteenth floor had stopped moving. They were … fading.

“What id happening here?” Quint said to them?

“Help … us,” said one of the shifters who had his arms behind his neck while he lay in the fetal position on the floor. He kept fuzzing, blinking in and out of existence. Quint looked up.

“Pip, we have to fucking hurry.”

15

USE IT.

She did. She smiled as she took the sesnickie blade, raised it in the air, and before the two men who had come out from their hiding place could voice their protests fully, Fiona plunged the sword into her stomach in three twisting jabs. THE LOW SELF died within her skull, shrieking, and Fiona willfully maintained her smile as the One Dream died, along with her own physical body.

She dropped Prudance to the ground along with her blade. Her wedding dress was soaked through, but the carpet was blood red, so the pool that surrounded her body could only be seen upon close inspection.

The two men who had realized what she was were on their knees wailing their disbelief.

The shifters floors below, and down in the streets of the city called Leere, got up from the ground and were no longer flickering and fading into non-existence.

The Rakshasas and empty ones that had been fighting only moments ago—before Fiona had killed herself, thus taking THE LOW SELF with her—suddenly stopped fighting, and looked around confused like they’d just been having a very vivid daydream and now they were ready to shake it off and go about their life. Some died in this pause, of course, because show were the Drakes and the thrummers and the shifters and the sesnickie to know that the Hate had been under a thrumming so strong that most of them had been acting against their will.

Putnam sat next to the fire he’d built and watched as the Rakshasas that he and Vance had been shepherding across the desert became slack, and then very friendly in the same moment. Also in that moment, Vance clutched his stomach three different times and cried out, much like he had a few nights ago in his shoulder when he’d known the Mother had died.

“Fiona, Putnam. Now she gone, too. She gone too … “

Vance’s voice broke and he collapsed into the shifter as both men began weeping.

Vermilion made it into the throne room just after Quint and Pip. He was elated to find his friends were here.

“I was down a few floors when the Rakshasas just stopped! Did you guys—” Vermilion stopped when he noticed the other two were not turning to acknowledge him. Then he followed their gaze. Prudance lay next to her mother’s dead and bleeding form. Two men kneeled over her body. There was blood all over Ali’s white dress and in her blonde hair. She’d been stabbed three times in the belly. “She’s—she can’t be. She—”

“She’s gone, Vermilion. I can feel her vibrations have left her body,” Quint said.

“But—no! I was supposed to—she was supposed—” his eyes were warm and the tears spilled over without his permission, down onto his bloodstained leather jacket, onto his Rocco class three badge.

Carter and Leslie lay next to Fiona and Prudance. What would they do when they woke up?

“Carter and Leslie both live. And so does Prudance,” Quint said dispassionately. “Something feels … different about the boys, though I’m not sure just what it is. Looks like Fiona, or Ali, the Woman—my friend,” Quint said, choking back his own tears, “healed Prudance after all, Vermilion. And the boys. All of ‘em, sure as shit.” He sniffed. “She healed them … forgave them. I can only hope, that in the end … she gave some of that to herself.”

The End Of:

Dark Tales From Dandelion

Volume One