Dark Tales From Dandelion

1

“They answered the call, Lord, but none came back. Nothing remains of the forest but a crater spanning the entire length of the catoptric cistula. We are … unaware—“

“Un … aware?” Said Leere. He stood looking out a large window with no glass at the top of the Tower of Hate. He liked this place. When the sky was red and the wind blew, it felt true to the name of this order of fools that followed him so reverently. Hate. Hate to purify and make everything one—rigid lines to keep out the rest. Hate would root out the worst in all. A choice to fight against the things that made people inherently ‘bad’. Leere wondered what these empty ones and Rakshasas would think if they knew about Leere’s relationship with the demon Shalonudra. “Yes … you are so very unaware … what was your name again?” Leere’s voice went into the mind of who he spoke to—he never spoke out loud.

“Keeney, Lord. Keeney Fadswallow,” the Rakshasa said.

“How many children do you have Keeney Fadswallow?” Leere asked. His voice had a low, gravely cadence with a slight warp to it like two voices fought for the dominant tone.

“I have three with my partner, Lord.” The Hate did not specify gender, but those that would normally be called ‘men’ did mate with ‘women’ which resulted in the birth of new little apprentice empty ones.

“And what is this little one’s name?” Leere asked.

“This is Ostio,” Keeney said a bit shakily, holding the shoulders of their child. Childrens’ heads on Lavender were shaved to show renunciation of gender. Leere thought little Ostio looked like a boy, but he’d been wrong about these things before.

“Hello Ostio. How are your studies coming?” Leere asked.

The child remained silent. The Rakshasa parent whispered something into their ear.

“M-m-my studies are w-w-well, Lord, thank you,” Ostio said, placing their middle and forefinger together while holding their other fingers down with the thumb, and touching their forehead, palm facing out. Ostio kept their eyes on the ground the whole time.

“That is well. Tell me, Keeney, what it is that you are unaware of?” Leere asked.

“Yes, Lord. We are unaware of whether the shape-shifter Red or the Drake called Vermilion is now with the girl and the baby. Our Rakshasas that went were all sucked into the endoheist that we can only assume was created by the phase-shifter or the shape-shifter,” said Keeney.

“It was the phase-shifter. And Red is dead. Vermilion carries the child,” said Leere.

“How can you know this Lord?” Keeney asked.

“I just. Do. The child must reach The Woman. I have some power, but I am not yet completely able to impose my will. Something … blocks me. If the Drake makes it to the Woman and kills her before the child can unlock her head … Your incompetence will not be repeated,” Leere said, pacing back and forth in front of the window.

“Certainly not, Lord. I would never—“

The throat of Keeney’s child was ripped in half and the two broken pieces of the windpipe writhed as blood covered the floor. Keeney screamed and bent down to hold little Ostio, the blood staining the pure white of the Rakshasa garb.

“Two more, Keeney. Two. More. Living children. See that the Rakshasas do not fail me again. You are in command of tactics. Show that you have some … tact,” Leere said, then he disappeared from the tower in a warp of the air.

Keeney sobbed and held the dead child long into the night, unable to face their partner and tell them how they’d failed. Keeney wanted to jump out of the window, but knew that Leere would have their last two children killed if they did.

Eventually Keeney walked down the steps of the Tower of Hate very slowly, carrying their mutilated offspring down, truly feeling the tower’s namesake for the first time. Hate. Keeney hated Leere. Ostio was only ten. Ten years old, and dead. Dead because the Rakshasas had been sucked into an endoheist which had nothing to do with tactics. No one could avoid an endoheist that just appeared and sucked everything into itself. Keeney felt nothing but his sore muscles from walking down all the steps, the blood covering him from the open throat of his dead child, and a cold hatred for Leere.

2

Pohsib Werdna was enjoying his time alone in the Manor House. He cooked his own meals, and he cooked them whenever he wanted. His duties pretty much only involved staying at the house. Oh sure, he’d had to zap a few flies trying to get into the concealed clearing of stargazer lilies; he’d felt every one of the winged creatures as they tried every trick in the Void to get through his defenses and find the clearing. They wouldn’t; not as long as Pohsib Werdna stood rocking up on his tip-toes, burping and clearing his throat when there was nothing in his throat to clear. His ticks had come to be unnoticed things that sometimes served him as material for the bad jokes he loved telling.

Another Rakshasa hit one of his detection areas in the Shadow Wood.

“What do you call—eh-ehhhhm—a fly without wings?” He said aloud as he ripped the creature’s wings off in his mind with a few branches. “A walk!” And then he laughed and burped until it hurt. He finished the job with a shadow tree, the roots coming up from the ground and infiltrating every orifice, coming out the anus of the Rakshasa. It had tried to scream. The tree swallowed the body into the earth below it. Thank you, shadow brother, Pohsib thought to the tree. It sent back its appreciation of the gratitude.

Every few weeks, Pohsib came out to the Shadow Wood to speak with his tree brothers. He’d bring food he’d made for them, specifically the completely matured ones who were partial to food of walking creatures. The one that had just killed a Rakshasa, for example(Pohsib called it Fist, but not because of the way it had exited the Rakshasa, this just made for a nice coincidence,) enjoyed chocolate chip pancakes. Pohsib would put the food near the tree’s roots and it would lift the roots up and shovel the food into its mouth. Though these trees enjoyed food made by Pohsib, they especially enjoyed it when Pohsib allowed them to eat the creatures that stumbled into their forest.

Treespeakers had a connection to the forest that they set down roots in. A Treespeaker that was especially skilled and treated their trees with kindness, could get those trees to bend to their will. If the Treespeaker had planted the forest, well … they earned a loyalty from the trees only rivaled by that of a Treespeaker’s family, and sometimes surpassing even that.

Pohsib had planted the first seedlings of this forest hundreds of years ago. He and the trees were as one. Their mind connection was strong, as was the love they felt for each other.

Another Rakshasa made it past the point of gratuitous passage and into the place where trespassers were no longer welcome to meander through the woods at their liesure. Pohsib had it decapitated and eaten by a shadow tree. They were trying to find a weak point in Pohsib’s barrier, but would be thoroughly disappointed to find there weren’t any. This was his forest, and no-one but the Treespeaker himself would be able to navigate through the tangle of its ancient roots. Only those that were approved could make it past the barriers that Pohsib had in place—whether that be by Moving on sesnickie or traveling through the forest on foot. Currently the approved occupants of the Manor House were Quint, Pip, Putnam, Carter, Leslie and Fiona; any of these six could bring people they trusted to the house. The permanent members of the house had to be approved first by the trees and Pohsib, then by Quint as a kind of after thought. This was Quint’s house, but it was Pohsib’s forest.

When Fiona had wandered into the forest, she had been assaulted by the worst kind of phase-shifters. They were the kind that indulged fully, sucking on the extra depth of energy that thrummers had, tearing them apart and eventually shifting them from a solid-liquid form into gas.

Most phase-shifters had a strict code against this type of behavior; they could get their energy from normal foods. There were those however that weren’t willing to be satiated by normal food. They wanted the full satisfaction that came with devouring someone who could attune the Inner Vibrations. The ones that attacked Fiona were such phase-shifters. They knew, however to only lurk in parts of the forest before the barrier. As much as Pohsib was a friend to thrummers, Treespeakers were life nurturers, not death-bringers. Pohsib would not kill those that did not pass the barrier.

After killing these phase-shifters in one of her blackout vibrational fits(which she didn’t remember), she had passed through the barrier and had been accepted by the trees and Pohsib who had then showed her the Manor House.

If someone were to try flying above the Manor House, it would be hidden from them unless they were approved by Pohsib and the trees. If, say, that person who flew above the shadow wood were to try landing in the middle of the forest to maybe chance upon the Manor House, the forest would rip them apart as soon as they flew within reach of a branch.

Pohsib had the next Rakshasa pushed by one tree, then swallowed whole by a gap between the ground and roots of another. These fools tried to use the vibrations on the trees, but this was an ancient magic from another place, another world; Thrummings held no sway against the trees of the shadow wood.

The only way the Rakshasas would be able to get through is if they could get to Pohsib first and kill him or make him tell the trees to allow Rakshasas through.

Pohsib had plenty of food stocked up, and the running water came from a room in the Clever. If Pohsib were to need something, he could always use doorways in the Clever to get supplies. No, Pohsib really couldn’t be caught by the shits because he was content to stay here in the Manor House, alone, for a long time. And Pohsib had become quite fond of his new cutting board. The leavings from vegetables just slid right off without a stain. It never had to be washed! These Rakshasas would just have to find themselves another cutting board somewhere else.

3

Leslie the mantra scramble bug sat inside of Carter’s brain right at the front, his legs inside many of the various nerve endings and control centers. The legs acted as extensions of the bug’s brain. Leslie was no longer Leslie exactly, but a bug controlled by the horned creature who had put him here. He was a piece of the horned creature. The horned creature that called itself Leere was him. The desires and motivations of Leere were felt just as vehemently by the bug that Leslie had become, which in turn were felt by Carter. The three felt as one, sharing thoughts, feelings and experiences. Carter, however, was already lost to the Low Vibrations before Leslie entered him. Carter wanted this. Leslie—the Leslie that still floated somewhere in the periphery of the three-way connection—hadn’t known this about Carter before he’d began sharing his thoughts.

Carter and Leslie were slowly aligning in their intentions and vibrations, and would soon merge completely, for what purpose exactly, Leslie and Carter did not know; this piece was hidden from them. All that was shared with them was an insistence that they align and become one. Carter’s hole had been ripped before Leslie had entered his brain as the bug, though Leslie didn’t know exactly how it had happened or where—this piece was hidden from Leslie. It mattered not; the holes ripped in each of them were becoming the same size and of the same vibrational frequency: a need, a longing. A Low Vibration. Fiona, Leslie would think, and at the same time, Carter would think, the vibrations! Their obsessions—the things they lived for, and what created the sympathetic link between them like two wheels spinning at almost the exact same speed. The reason for the individual wheels spinning mattered not, because once at the same speed, they could carry the vessel where it must go.

The babbling was lessening as a result of the two becoming one, and it was easier for Leere to work through the brothers, but it was still not complete. Calling the Rakshasas had been an achievement, a sign that it was really happening. Leslie and Carter had thrummed with their Lord’s contentment at such a feat. So close, Leere had thought through the bond. We are so very, very close, my flesh and blood.

4

“Jakki, Fassen needs more fluids,” Jakki heard from behind her. Fassen was basically gone. He was in the ‘comfort care’ segment of the vibrational sickness called Thrast. Jakki spun around and switched out the bag of water at the old thrummer’s bedside. The liquid immediately went through a tube and into a golden syringe connected to a vein in Fassen’s wrist. Fassen coughed weakly and mouthed something. Jakki generally ignored these incoherent ramblings of patients, but they had been saying odd things the past few weeks. She stared at him. His red eyes, surrounded by hives, were mostly closed in his Roxy-induced state of pain relief.

“What was that, Fassen?” Jakki asked. She moved closer to him. “What did you say?”

“She … come. Two time. I … can … feel,” Fassen said through a mostly closed mouth, saliva dropping out of the side that was opened.

“Who comes Fassen?” Jakki asked.

No response.

Her patients had been saying this right before the Thrast took over their entire body and put them in an early grave. It didn’t make any sense to Jakki, but none of them remained lucid enough to explain what they were saying.

Fassen was only thirty-five years old. He looked like he was at least twice that. Hives surrounded his eyes, eyes with no white in them, only red. His teeth were rotting, his face wrinkled, and the black color his blood was turning to showed through his perpetually deteriorating skin. Jakki listened to his heart and checked it with a vibration watch. The thrumming hadn’t run out yet. These watches were a dime a dozen, but every time the thrumming wore off, another had to be bought to replace it. Another vibrationalist, risking themselves by attuning the Inner Vibrations so that life could be a bit more convenient for the rest of the population. Jakki felt a twinge of shame at owning the technology. It was something very necessary for her to have in her line of work, but still … her patients … most of them were vibrationalists, and they were dying of Thrast because they chose to take the risk of attuning the Inner Vibrations. The funny thing was … she had thought Thrast was strictly a sickness for those attuning the Inner Vibrations, but they had been getting regular people coming to them with black veins and red eyes, holes decorating their skin in yellow-red patches.

“It’s not fair,” Jakki said as she marked the time of death on a sheet of paper by Fassen’s bedside.

“What isn’t?” Asked a distracted Thaolain. “Is he dead?”

“Fassen is no longer with us. It isn’t fair that some of them can use the vibrations and live a full, long life while others’ blood turns black, and holes get ripped in their skin,” Jakki said. “And then there are the people who can’t even attune the vibrations coming in now! I mean—is it contagious? Are they getting it second-hand from the vibrationalists?”

“I think it’s fair,” Thaolain said. Jakki gave her a withering look. “Don’t look at me like that. I mean, yeah it’s fucking awful what they have to go through, but they knew it. Everybody knows that this shit kills people. Yet they keep doing it.”

“I don’t see you throwing your watch away,” Jakki said.

“I don’t see you throwing yours away either, Jakki. What am I gonna do? Stop checking blood pressures?” Thaolain said.

“No I just mean—“

“When they ask if I wanna round my Worth up to support dying trancers, I do it. When I see ‘em on the street, out on The Strings—I toss ‘em a few dandys every now and then. When I’m here, I use a vibrational watch that may have been the one vibration that sent one of ‘em over the edge, to help the ones that are over the edge,” Thaolain shrugged her shoulders. “I’m gonna have one of the CHGCs roll him out, I’m stepping out for a smoke while they do it. Wanna come?”

“No, I’ve got another one that’s close on the floor,” Jakki said.

“Still on about that huh?” Thaolain nodded at Fassen’s still body, “he say it too?”

“Yep. Same way,” Jakki said.

The south doors to the open hall hospital wing opened and in walked an old man, a Drake who held what looked like a baby in a sling attached to his chest, a young man, a white sesnickie with scars down its sides, and a young woman with dark hair and Rakshasa wings that were folded behind her, making her appear to have a large black cape. She looked frantic and her friends didn’t look very far off from that state themselves. Great, Jakki thought. What now? Thaolain better wait to smoke now, I need her. Too many of them. She looked around at all the beds in the improvised hospital wing. They’d had to use this space as overflow for all of the extra cases of Thrast that had been popping up.

She took a deep breath and walked toward the strange group. She wore a smile that she intentionally did not allow to touch her eyes—someone needed to know she did not have time for trivialities—and as she approached the group, she extended her hand to the calmest looking one of the group, the Drake.

5

Vermilion shook the hand of the nurse with the fake smile.

“Hi I’m Jakki. Is there something I can help you with?” Jakki asked. Vermilion looked about at all the beds that sat in rows all through the open hall. The large windows making all of the suffering and death that much easier to see. The beds were set in rows of eighteen by ten, the foot of each bed facing Vermilion and his friends. Every bed was full.

“I was—we were told to come here for … my friend,” Vermilion said, his eyes shifting toward Fiona.

“What happened?” Jakki asked, looking at Fiona.

“Well she—“

“I can speak for myself. I did not have these … wings before this morning. We asked the man in the greeting chamber and he told us to come here to be seen by a healer,” Fiona said.

“Ah, so you spoke with John,” Jakki said.

“I don’t know what his name is. But he told us to come to the hospital wing. If you’re too busy … ” Fiona said.

“No it’s not that. John is new at this. He’s my brother. Unfortunately, we mainly deal with Thrast here. I believe you need the vibrationalists on the fourth floor,” Jakki said.

“Thank you, healer,” Quint said, sounding tired.

Quint walked out of the room, Carter trailing close behind him. Vermilion looked at Fiona and Pip, then nodded at Jakki and followed Quint. They walked down a long thrumming-lamp lit hallway that had large semicircle windows at either end. The tower so far was built big for the accommodation of sesnickie much the same way that Lack-A-Daisy’s had been.

“Quint!” Fiona yelled. Quint continued walking “Quint!” She said again. He continued to ignore her. The air grew thick and dark. “Quint Costello you will stop NOW!”

“You will NOT speak Seru to me now, Fiona,” Quint replied in the same way. Fiona immediately looked at the ground. Vermilion wasn’t sure when Quint had turned around to face her, but the group had come to a complete stop as Quint confronted Fiona. Quint’s eyes were glazed over. It looked as if he’d start crying any moment. “My two friends. No—two of my best friends, have just been removed from this plane of existence. I can only speculate that both are dead. I am not going to lose another of my closest friends this morning. We are going straight to the top of the tower. I don’t care what protocol is,” Quint said, raising his caterpillar eyebrows. Then he turned back around and headed for two sets of doors that Vermilion recognized as thrumming lifts.

The design on the walls was a mesh of colors and paint splatter that ended at these doors, which had pink-white stargazer lilies in the center of pure gold. Quint pushed a button and the doors on the left opened first. A woman in a baggy shirt and pants stood inside.

“Where to?” She asked.

A chiming rang inside of the lift and in the hallway. It was a loud, yet pleasant tone.

“Up to the Grand Lecture hall, please. Sounds like we are just in time,” Quint said.

“I’m sorry, but The Mother does not allow—“

“My name. Is Quint Costello. If you would like to tell the Woman in White that you turned away the inventor of The Cleverly Named Hallway, her former student, I am sure she would be happy to hire a new thrummer for her lift. Now if you do NOT start this lift, I will vibrate into it my-SELF,” Quint said in the same tone he’d used before on Fiona. Seru, Vermilion thought. He is good at it.

The lift thrummer thrummed into the lift and they began to ascend.

“It will be a while. There is some moderate lift traffic this time of day,” said the thrummer.

“That’s perfectly acceptable. I’ve seen it before, but would you mind opening the window so my friends can see?” Quint asked. The woman nodded, and a large part of the wall—about as big as Vermilion—became transparent. What Vermilion saw took his breath away. It was an enormous cylindrical chamber full of lifts driving along rails, reaching up higher than he could even see, into the bright light of what he thought was sun until he remembered he was in the school where thrummers learned how to manipulate the vibrations; it was most likely an intricate thrumming that kept the liftway lit at all hours.

Another lift went zooming past on a parallel rail, jumping right in front of their own and forcing the woman in the baggy clothing to abruptly slow down. They all jerked and grabbed onto handles that were attached to the walls all around the inside of the lift.

After he got his feet back, Vermilion looked across to the other side of the liftway. It was like looking across a giant body of water that has land you can just barely make out on the other side. It didn’t look real. Gold encased lifts the size of his pinky nail played out their rail-traffic liftway drama; lifts cutting in front of other lifts, some lifts arriving at their destination and going inside of the wall to deposit the passengers, windows appearing in the side of some lifts so one operator could yell at another(or so Vermilion assumed, as the operator in the baggy clothing had just screamed some very creative profanity at the lift that had cut her off.)

Their lift came to an abrupt halt in the middle of Vermilion’s musings about the immensity of this place. Vermilion looked up through the window on the roof of the lift to see they were directly underneath another stopped lift along the liftway. He peaked his head out of the Drake-sized window in the side of the lift and looked up. Lifts were stopped for at least a quarter of a mile along this particular rail. He looked down and saw that below them was a similar story.

6

Fiona sighed. Her wings sat uncomfortably behind her. She was not able to share in Vermilion’s sense of wonder at the liftway.

She felt so foolish. Everyone was avoiding eye contact with her, and when she did manage to look at someone in the eye for longer than a click, they looked away sadly as if they were the ones carrying the ugly bat-like things on their back.

The lift began to move slowly and Fiona looked up at the window in the ceiling. Her heart jumped with excitement to be moving again and hopefully out of the jam. They moved about one lift’s length up and then came to a halt again. Her premature relief made the disappointment of another stop that much worse. She decided to go look at the sights outside the Lift. So bright, she thought. The white walls in-between golden rails and lifts was very pleasing to look at despite her current mood. She felt very young and naive then, looking over the vastness of this liftway. There was so much she hadn’t seen—she couldn’t remember anything before the Shadow Wood five and a half years ago, and this made her feel as if she were a five and a half year old child

Her thoughts turned to the beds filled with Thrast patients on the ground floor. So many with the hives around their eyes, the black veins, the red eyes. She thought back to when she had tried to thrumm into Carter to get the bug out of his brain; her own veins had turned black that day while she held Carter’s face in her hands. Do I have it? She thought. She rolled up her sleeves and looked at her veins: blue-green. It still didn’t make sense, though most of what had happened in this valley hadn’t made much sense to her. They’d been in the Endynas Valley for almost all the month of Summer I, and Fall II would be starting soon. Thinking of the possibility that she may have Thrast while she sat with bat-wings did nothing to help her mood. She felt like a monster. When her veins had turned black, she’d almost exploded on Carter. She was getting so tired of her emotions having their way with her. Until recently, she’d thought they were just detrimental to her because of how they affected her relationships and hurt the feelings of others, but she’d actually learned that she blacked out and killed people when she got upset enough. Though killing Carter before he’d called those Rakshasas might have saved Putnam. But that wasn’t fair. Carter had called them, she was sure of it, but how much was Carter in control? And which one was doing it? Leslie or Carter? Or were they both being controlled by someone or something? Leere? She shivered at the thought. Regardless of the reasons, she had attacked Carter and tried to pull the bug out of his head—pull Leslie out, she thought—Fiona had to get some sort of control on her emotions before she hurt someone she loved; she almost had at the clearing in the Forever Forest. It had started to take her over, the feeling of anger and emptiness, and she had almost killed the real Vermilion, Putnam and the new man Vance.

What if she lost control now? I mean, I wouldn’t mind getting through all of these liftcars with one of my explosions, she thought amusedly. She glanced up at Vermilion who looked like a child gazing out at the giant liftway. Something about the sight was very different from the shape-shifter’s face, she noticed. Red had never been so convincing as this, the sweet innocence and relaxed nature of the true Vermilion. It filled her up to see him like this, even though it still scared her to see him at all because of what she’d been through. Pip, it seemed, had felt her confused train of thought because they snuggled in beside her to look out the window with her. Fiona pet Pip’s mane.

The lift began to move again, this time not stopping immediately after moving. It ascended the rest of the way to the floor of the Grand Lecture Hall in this slow way. When they finally arrived at their floor, and the liftdoors opened—almost a full two cycles after they’d boarded the—Fiona felt an instant rush of excitement. The light that shone from the windowed ceiling of the wide hall that stretched out before them was blinding. The group stepped out of the lift and followed Quint down to the end of the hall toward two giant golden doors that connected in the middle.

“I should have done this so long ago,” Quint said, giving a sad look to Fiona before pushing open the doors with the Inner Vibrations.