Chapter 18: Growing Pains Part 1
Nightmares and dreams are often consistent in their disorientation while making perfect sense. The fear and joys in everyday life bleed into them. Events that consume one’s existence or tiny blips of unimportant things that only barely register as actual events. To the person in these lands of unknown over-emphasized meaning, reality can be terrifying, enlightening, pleasing, filled with sorrow, or surreal as the waffles chase you toward the clown sage responsible for the beginning of the downfall of your dynasty.
Often, our unconscious can try to tell us things in these dreams that we aren’t paying attention to. Things that may be crucial to our survival. Other times, these seemingly prophetic messages from our inner selves are the scrambled screaming for more cheesecake, wine, or some unfulfilled desire.
The world of dreams in which Winnifred Alba Ashman-Ludmillia, Winnie to anyone she cared about more than a mouse fart in a hurricane, was of the surreal sort. She understood that things around her could not be correct in their manner of disjointed presentation and couldn’t bring herself to reject it.
She sat in a comfortable reclining chair made from candy cane-colored stone, watching a small box with a glass front in front of her. Inside the glass-fronted container, mice were acting out a play.
She did not understand the squeaks of rage and sorrow beyond the apparent base emotions they were attempting to convey. As far as she could gather from the production put on by the players, it was a story of betrayal suffered by the main character by some force they had trusted. Act two had just begun, though she didn’t remember the first portion of the mousy play in any great detail.
It began with a jarring tone as the announcement was accompanied by a female mouse dressed in a scandalous, for a human, outfit carrying an enor-mouse placard declaring, “Murini Companies Presents: Act Two of The Betrayal Of The Cosmos!”
In the way of dreams, she did not question the unreadable text being translated to meaning she understood. The play continued as the main character was revealed by a curtain rising on a hospital scene of them laying in a bed surrounded by official-looking mice in multicolored lab coats rushing around the room, squeaking in distress.
The main character was screaming in squeaky rage at the figures, asking for explanations. They were ignored as the medical mice angrily tapped at their tiny clipboards, arguing with each other.
A shadowy figure loomed next to Winnie in her recliner. She could see the tuxedo it was wearing clearly, but the figure’s facial features were obscured in smoke that drifted from around the room to coalesce around its head.
The figure was holding a silver filigreed copper platter with a single goblet resting upon it. At the sudden appearance, a feeling of dread started at the base of her skull. She thought of getting up to be away from the goblet, but her seat was a comfortable trap with no escape. Like a warm bed after a night of drinking way too much lousy liquor, you would wake up and not want to move even though you had to pee and the curtains were on fire.
“Your medicine, Miss Ashman-Ludmilla.”
“No, thank you.”
“The Cosmos prescribed it, my lady. It is imperative that we not miss a dose.”
“This seems cliché.”
“Cliché refers to a saying, my lady.”
“Still.”
“Well. Then, let me badly paraphrase one to fit your situation. Though the doctors treated her, let her blood, and forced her to drink her medicine, she nevertheless recovered.”
Thick leather straps erupted from Winnie’s recliner, restraining her. Her dread spiked into panic as the figure plucked the goblet from the platter. The silver filigree constricted around the copper platter, forcing it into a funnel shape with a sharp tip.
She started to scream but, thinking about the funnel, clamped her mouth shut over the noise. This figure would not get whatever was in that cup into her without a fight.
The mousy main character in the box before her was restrained by multi-colored robed figures. Another mouse entered the room, struggling to carry a needle the size of its tiny body.
The smoke-enshrouded figure shrugged.
“Your call, not mine.”
The funnel was plunged into her stomach violently as the ridiculous-sized needle impaled the restrained mouse. Their shrieks of pain made a ghastly duet as the faceless figure above her poured the goblet into the funnel, its contents sizzling the metal as the liquid poured into her. A paradoxical feeling of being drained of something vital by the surface of her recliner started as the contents of the goblet seared into her.
*********
Frantic figures in the various colored robes of the mages’ guild rushed around the room to different consoles and controls—slamming buttons and attempting to change the positions of various levers. One man with more colors to his robe and symbols embroidered on his shoulders at the center of the room stood calmly using a device to issue orders. He did not raise his voice as the device he used carried the sound directly to whomever he directed his attention.
One younger-looking mage in a corner was attempting to stuff a screeching and furious owl into a cage. His task was made more complicated by its willingness to use its sharp talons and beak to emphasize its unwillingness to be confined and his orders not to harm the creature. Like an owley cat that understood you were now the embodiment of baths and vet visits, Pellet tried to kill him in her escape attempts.
After several gashes from the bird that was far too close to vital spots for the villain's comfort, he managed to contain it and rushed, still bleeding, back into the chaos unfolding in the rest of the room.
The control stations around the room were oriented toward one wall that held a large container recessed into the surrounding rock wall. Inside the transparent, shimmering barrier enclosing the container, Winnie’s feet were firmly planted in a mound of dark-colored soil, with her back pressed into the rock. She was restrained at her hips, arms, legs, and neck, pressing tightly against the rock wall.
A thick woven cable of unknown material stretched from the ceiling of her container and attached via a harness to her chest. The material of the harness was straining against small vines, extruding from her skin and pulling at the harness.
Alarms and flashing red lights resounded around the room as the mages collectively started to panic. A word from the mage standing at the center to all those present caused them to rush for the exit as a pillar of shining metal rose next to him out of the floor. A glass container atop the pillar was flipped open, and the man placed his palm over the large red button with an expletive written on it.
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The room cleared until all that remained was the man standing with his hand over the button, Winne behind a glass wall, and the screeching owl in its cage. The man looked down, away from Winnie’s container, at a monitor in front of him. Arcane symbols flashed on the screen as a row of metered bars crept farther into the red. A sultry voice echoed from around the room.
“Danger, overload imminent. Evacuation is too late. Emergency rations of alcohol dispensing.”
Around the room at the controls, other shorter pillars rose from each station, and their fronts slid open to show tankards of a liquid bubbling with fog and hissing. The man snorted at the tankard sitting in its container at his station.
“Drama machine.”
“Hey Derek, how about you don’t give me shit for doing my job?”
“Shut up, Sarah. I’ve been doing this longer than this version of you has existed.”
“You’re bragging about screwing up that long?”
Derek ignored Sarah’s voice and kept his eyes on the metered bars. They had stabilized a few ticks from the mark labeled “uh-oh.” He smiled at the unmoving bars and turned a knob on his console. A muffled shriek of protesting metal could be heard rumbling from somewhere outside the room. Sarah commented on the noise.
“If you keep doing that, there will be a containment breach. The system wasn’t designed for this. If you would permit me, I have seven-hundred and thirty-two different sol-“
“Shut up, Sarah.”
Winnie’s eyes snapped open as she started shrieking in pain. Her thorny teeth were gnashing as her head rocked from side to side, and the rest of her body convulsed. The screeching of the owl in its cage rose in volume until Derek pressed a button on his control, and the sound from that corner of the room was silenced. Her wordless screams of pain lasted until her voice gave out.
Derek spoke calmly to her in the silence as she fell limp against her restraints.
“There, that wasn’t so bad. Was it?”
Winnie lifted her slumping head with great effort and attempted to swallow. She looked around the room with slowly fading pain in her eyes.
“Now, now, no need to talk just yet. You are disoriented from your treatment. My name is Derk Cobble-Sprocket. I am the head of the containment division in the researchers’ guild of the Knowets here in Purpolis. You are in a recovery facility. You have suffered a rather nasty accident.”
Sarah’s voice interrupted in an inappropriately sunny disposition,
“Hi, Winnie! I’m Sarah! Welcome to-”
“Sarah, notes and observation mode.”
The command cut off Sarah’s voice, and Derek smiled at the restrained woman.
“Apologies, that was Sarah. She is a magical construct we use for storing and retrieving data throughout Purpolis and can be rather obnoxiously helpful when it is unwarranted. We’ve been working on rooting out that personality trait, but there are only so many hours in the day.”
Winnie coughed and tried to clear her throat. Derek waited impatiently as the woman struggled to recover her voice. He mused on the value of her being able to speak for this while hiding his impatience.
A conversation with one person doesn’t do much, I suppose. Unless it’s a soliloquy, maybe. We only have Sarah as an audience, though. Would that make it a monologue? Are we the baddies?
Winnie coughed a few more times then asked a question,
“W-what happened? Where is Pellet? Where are the others?”
Derek’s face was sad. His shoulders slumped a little, and he rubbed at his jaw in sympathy.
Easy, Derek. Don’t oversell it. Isolate and support. She needs to be pliable, not suspicious. Test her reactions a little later.
“What’s the last thing you remember, Winnie?”
She tried to collect her scattered thoughts from among the whisps of her nonsensical dreams intruding into her still pain-racked body. The fogginess of her thoughts was not helped by strange stiffness to large parts of her skin. She tried to strain her head to look down at her body but could not see past the harness connecting a thick-woven cable of unknown material to her chest.
“Focus, please, Winnie. What do you remember?”
“We…were on a quest. Nixen and the others, we were fighting.”
“What others, Winnie? Be as specific as you can.”
She was getting annoyed at this man using her name so often but complied with the request.
“There were five of us. Pellet, Journeyman Nixen, Novice Omara, Novice Cato, and me. We were on a quest to clear some mobs from a village in…Bloody Viper County…no, Red Adder County. Nixen was convinced we could all handle the mission and was excited that we might be able to knock out our capture requirement for the guild.”
“Good, good. What happened in the fight, Winnie? Is Pellet the name of your owl?”
She frowned at the man's continued annoying behavior, using her name again. Her frown deepened into a scowl as she realized what he had just stated.
“I’m a druid. She’s not my owl. She’s my friend.”
“My mistake. As you say. What happened in the fight, Winnie?”
Winnie debated tearing into the man for his continued annoying friendliness. Despite the circumstances, she didn’t know this man. Because she didn’t have many other options, she answered him anyway.
“We had cornered the mobs and taken out the last of the threat, or so we thought at the time. I was having trouble calming down my simulacrum.”
“What do you mean? Trouble how?”
An embarrassed look crossed her face.
“How much do you know about Druids, Mr. Wobble-Dickett?”
The man showed some annoyance that was quickly covered by an expression of more concern. Winnie smirked in satisfaction at the flash. The pain of her body flaring disrupted her momentary feeling of accomplishment at the reaction.
Derek’s eyes narrowed as he observed the pain flash across her face. He briefly typed some thoughts on it into the console in front of him to look into later.
Correlation is not causation. Check for emotional linkages to instinct drive in other cases.
“I know more than the layman understands, but I don’t want my knowledge to taint your description. It’s Cobble-Sprocket, by the way. Please call me Derek.”
“Sure, fine. Whatever you say, Derek. Druids do not command, Derek. We don’t control, Derek. We convince nature to aid us, Derek. It’s easier the more we can show nature that what we want to accomplish benefits it.”
“The simulacrum wanted more nutrients, and from past encounters, it had learned that battle meant it would gain more. This means it is harder to calm it down after a fight.”
Derek kept the annoyance at the repeated use of his name off his face as he clarified,
“Other elder druids have stated that what you all do is more of a conversation with nature. Somewhere between what we mages do and the temple priests. Did you seek counsel from one of them before this event?”
Winnie’s face clouded at the question.
“If you have talked with an elder, then you know how rude it is to ask that question.”
“Rude or not, Winnie, part of my job is to collect as much information on the events leading to the accident so we can prevent it from recurring.”
Winnie scowled.
“Yes, I had sought counsel on it before joining Journeyman Nixen. It was decided that more experience conversing with nature during stressful situations would be the best approach. Walk on the broken leg to make it stronger.”
Derek blew out a long breath through his nose.
“I see. Please, continue.”