A doll sat contemplating all she had seen, and wondered: Why? She knew she had been a bit withdrawn, maybe she had been more curt lately but this. Why show her all this? It was nearly too much to even wrap her head around it. This was the same man she found wandering between life and death. Despite all he went through he was still the same. How could he not be changed? She stared at every new story, every change, that’s when she saw it. The slight drooping of the eyes, his determination ebbing and flowing, constantly. She saw how tired he was, how his comments became more bitter. He was changing he was just too stubborn to give up.
Even so, she still wondered, “So this is all fascinating. I don’t want to belittle what happened to you, and I have to admit I think I became a bit numb to the horrors a few calamities back. But why show me all this? It’s a bit overboard to show me you understand”
“Yeah, that’ll happen. Circles back around to horrifying strangely. Then when you have time to reflect. That’s when it really sticks with you. As for why?”
Well, that’s completely and utterly horrifying. Drystia could only look at Nicki and wonder how he was not a raving loon. Nicki looked at the screen and paused for a while not saying anything. Drystia wasn’t even sure he was going to answer.
“Why am I showing you all this?” It sounded like he was asking himself that question to Drystia.
“Yeah. Why?”
“At first. I wanted to show you you’re not alone, and I’m not sure I did that right.”
Drystia thought back and couldn’t really say she felt better watching them. More like a pity for what Nicki went through, then moved to a horrified awe. She couldn’t help but be dreadfully curious about what happened next. If anything she felt closer. “You showed me you.”
“Yeah. Once I started I couldn’t stop. I think I wanted someone, anyone to know. Maybe they could understand if I showed them.” Nicki fell quiet again and Drystia didn’t know what to say. Nicki eventually broke the silence. “Should I continue?”
“Please.”
The screen started again. The scene looked familiar to Drystia, “That’s when they caught me.”
#
Deep in the chaos between one moment and the next. Where dreams are born and fade. A place between life, death, and that strange little bit betwixt them. A doll wanders. Her body cracked and broken. Her dress is torn and faded, the fabric thinned from age and used as worn holes fill the crimson dress. Her one good hand held her little plastic sword, one she carried into the dream. Where she held back the dark, fought a child’s fears, protected him from nightmares, and banished those little insecurities hiding in the back of the mind, at least for a time.
Drystia was broken and useless. She could no longer protect her child. She couldn’t even find him now. Her body and mind were unmoored in this place, of dreams, or perhaps nightmares. Her mind flashed to the night the burglar broke in and her little shelf fell alerting her child. It wasn’t much or anything at all. Even she was unsure if she had moved or if the shelf itself finally collapsed with age. Then she was smashed, and she could only hope he was safe.
Her mind kept going back to that night as she wandered through the between. Wondering if she was actually dead, or if this was just what happened to broken dolls. Was this a kind of purgatory? A transient place she needed to traverse and find her own way out? Maybe.
She wandered for what felt like years when something made her feet pause in the depths. A yearning, a cry, foreign yet so familiar. Something that made her little plastic feet change directions. While she didn’t know what was guiding her, the only thing she knew for certain was a child needed her.
#
Somewhere else within no place and every place a man appears and always was within a bubble of order, a hollow place, which was his first clue something was wrong. Normally Chaos was simply Chaotic. Where primordial energies and entities lurk. Where sometimes souls wander, or traverse dimensions pulled through eternity. The possibilities, almost endless, that was except here.
Here deep into the depths of the primordial, a man stands confused. There was no world in jeopardy, there was no hero, and no web of fate. After all his uncontrolled travel through the multiverse, this was an anomaly that did not sit well. Especially, with the power beneath his fingertips. His hands were literally vibrating with raw uncontrolled power, and he did not like the feeling of lighting crawling beneath his skin. Nicki had hoped to let some of it out in the next world or at the very least somehow calm it down.
I hope this is just a nice little break. He thought, knowing his luck wasn’t that good. Hoping for something he reached out with all his senses to see what this was. To his growing horror, there was nothing. It was more to say there was an absence of everything. No tapestry to fix, no fate lines to follow except his own, even that seemed like a ghost of a line, obscured and blocked, nothing except chaos, and him. And he couldn’t even reach the chaos surrounded by the hollow dome. He was so isolated he wouldn’t even have been able to make a door. There wasn't anything for him to connect to. It would just be a hollow frame.
It was the perfect trap for Nicki. As soon as he had that realization he spat out,"How much power did this cost you?" Nicki didn’t know for sure if anyone was there or if they would respond but he had a hunch and was not wrong. He got a response almost immediately.
“More than you are worth.” An aged woman’s voice scoffed from just outside the hollow spot.
Three women of three generations stepped out of the darkness arguing. Not even looking over at Nicki. Their bodies changed between young and old as they spoke.
“He will be too weak to be a fulcrum now.”
“We shouldn’t have bothered to trap him. Like I’ve been saying he would already be too weak to run anyway.”
Do they think I was just leaking essence the entire time? He thought in disbelief. They were completely ignoring Nicki, and by the sounds of it, they had fully expected him to be in worse shape than when they last met. They had no idea he had healed and grown stronger. Did they think I just ran off to die?
“Look at him he's not even leaking essence anymore he must be nearly gone.” One of them said pointing at Nicki. That made him almost snort. He held back to not give the game away. This was his chance. He needed just a few more moments to prepare. Just keep arguing.
“We can still punish him.”
“Can we?” One said frustrated, “He might just disintegrate if we do anything. What kind of punishment would that be?”
Nicki took that as his cue snapping his fingers, and purple lighting flew out striking one of the sisters. She screamed as her body locked up and her hair stood on end. The other two looked all around now guarded to what might be intruding on their prize. "Who Dares interfere with our hunt? One shouted searching beyond the cage.
They didn't even consider it came from Nicki, giving him just enough time to gather and focus the power beneath his skin. He let another bolt fly striking a second sister.
She screamed and locked up like the other, As the first fell to the floor golden ichor dripping from her ears, nose, and eyes, her skin burned crispy. She lay unconscious and damaged.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
The final fate didn't hesitate, to strike, realizing their prey might not be so helpless after all. With the discipline of an ancient war Goddess, she seemed to fly across growing in size, as she began to weave threads of fate all around her.
Nicki was absolutely terrified, at the sudden size increase. He never realized how intimidating something the size of a building rushing at you. Nicki would like to think he had been completely desensitized to things like that with everything he’s been through, but he was wrong.
He immediately lost control of the power he was building as a stray bolt exploded in front of him and threw him across the room. Moving him just barely out of the rushing Goddess.
Nicki’s brain was still whirling as he felt something loosen inside him, his essence flooding out. Groggily he looked down and realized he was missing part of his stomach. This is not good.
Nicki knew there was no chance in a direct fight. He was fresh, new, and using power he barely understood, or controlled. A power that was ready to kill him just as soon as his enemies. His best bet had been a surprise attack, which everything seemingly lined up perfectly to let him have a chance. A slim chance that he didn’t actually believe would happen, but a chance. He was right he hadn’t even lasted a second and that was with his own power, and the lightning was locking up his muscles.
Now the ancient Greek war goddess was staring him down and evil smile plaster on her monstrous face. Her thread slowly creeping forward towards the downed Nicki. He could see the future in every fiber of the thread. Once they touched Nicki would be wrapped in there worlds fate. She would weave what was left of his thread into theres knotting it up, forcing him to go through a thousand thousand lives each designed to direct there will, then be discarded once done, warping his very being to nothing. With a cold rage at this creature for trying to take his life, he did the only thing he could think of. He let go of the tenuous control on the lightning beneath his skin. The world became a purple plasma ball.
#
A broken doll limps through unformed chaos. A thread pulls her along guiding her through the impossibility. Moving between universe after universe, dream after dream, all the while limping forward heeding the call. Hoping she wasn't too late.
Time had no meaning to her, none of the sites through the between drew her eye not even when a silly white fancily dressed rabbit hopped on by. Looking rather frantic saying he was late. No. Only the call mattered. A child needed her.
After forever and no time at all, a doll finds herself just outside something different. A place of order within the chaos. A void rejecting everything, and cutting off the between itself. Here was where the call drove her to. Not even this gave her the slightest pause as she limped forward through the barrier like it was nothing. Nothing had stopped her so far why would such a flimsy barrier stop her?
Stepping through she saw him. He was on the ground, essence leaking from his body, and purple lighting crawling all around keeping the giant angry woman away. When she looked a little closer she saw the red strings trying to worm their way toward the man. He looked terrified. Every time a string got too close he flinched back, or would have if he could. He looked to be too injured to move.
She walked forward, only having eyes for the boy. She barely registered the two other women whose essence was being sucked away. Ichor dripping from every orifice. She didn’t even notice that with every step, she became more whole. Her cracks sealed, and her limp disappeared. None of that mattered. Only the safety of her child, and the nightmare attacking him.
She stepped forward readying her sword, like she’d done a thousand times before, when her previous child was having a dark night. When she held off the demons, dreams, and dark thoughts, she knew how to fight such creatures, they were nothing to her. Before the monster knew it she was there swinging her sword, cutting all the strings, and launching the woman back.
The lightning stopped, and the boy fully collapsed his body twitching barely held together. He looked confused but thankful. Drystia reached down placing her hand on the man’s head, “Rest child. I’ll take care of the monster.”
She turned back to the monster harrying her new child sword ready. The monster woman looked confused and incensed. “You will pay for your interference.”
“Come nightmare.”
That made the woman smile before she flew forward, threads and fists flying towards Drystia. She raised her small plastic sword, it looked so tiny, so flimsy like it couldn’t do a thing. Except when she swung it the little doll seemed to shift, to grow, become a seven-foot-tall woman holding a rather imposing weapon. She effortlessly defended the man on the ground. Not once did she miss, never did she grow tired, nor could she. Drystia was just a plastic doll, one with a mission.
The longer she held out the more the woman became frustrated and confused. With every parry, every riposte, every attack, the doll moved in the perfect counter, even drawing ichor from the monster.
“Why do you defend him?” She shouted. “He’s just a mortal.”
Drystia laughed. “No, he is a child in need.”
“No. That is a grown human, and he brought it up on himself for daring to undo all our work.”
She tilted her head, “Undoing a monster’s work sounds like a noble goal.”
“Monster? I am a God.” She said with a sneer at the little doll.
Drystia had heard that before. “You come for a child. To break him. Warp who he is.”
“Do you not know what he is?”
“A child.”
“No. He is a Hero.” She spat looking down disgusted at her child. “He is one who disrupts the Gods. Given power beyond a normal human. He does not deserve or need your help. This is his trial.”
“What does that matter?” Drystia asked annoyed at how this thing was trying to talk her into letting her have her child. She had never fallen for honeyed words or twisted logic. She, as always, would simply protect.
“He must fight on his own. It is part of his Heroes journey. Part of the rules.” The woman’s smile grew kind as her body shrank into that of a lovely woman in her prime. It seemed since she could not get past her the Woman took a different tack. She didn’t care and was as a matter of course tired of this thing speaking.
“Leave.” Drystia’s word was laced with power utterly rejecting everything about the woman.
Instantly the woman grew back to her monstrous form, “You have no power here little marionette. I will do as I please.” Power rose from the god trying to press down on her. Only for the little plastic girl to stare her down completely unaffected.”
Drystia’s eyes narrowed, “I have seen your kind before.”
“You have never seen the likes of me.” She stood to her full two-story height, “I am a God, a creator of worlds. I bring order to chaos.”
“A bully, a predator, one who does not care for those they hurt. You are just another nightmare.” She declared interrupting the Gods tirade.
The god was infuriated as she cast her presence directly at the doll again. Her entire godly visage was enough to burn any mortal to the dust they were created from. Except the doll didn't so much as flinch as she stared down the one she declared a nightmare.
Drystia did what she always did when one of her kind came for her child. She stood protecting her charge bearing the weight of even a God. Never so much as staggering even in the face of divinity.
The giant woman watched in disbelief down at the small piece of plastic, blocking her path, and withstanding her divinity. This only enraged her further as she began to throw spell after spell at the doll and man. Each expertly blocked or diverted like it was nothing.
“You should be careful,” Drystia commented.
“Me!? You are nothing but a toy! You will be melted into not being. Like the trash you are.”
“Am I really worth all the damage you've done to the woman behind her.” Drystia had been redirecting a lot of magic and noticed some of it was being redirected at the already downed woman. There were new burns and wounds all over the woman. As more essence drained out of them and into the vortex that was the dome around them.
The goddess turned her vision towards her sisters away as her face paled. “No no no no.” She started panicking as she ran to the women.
Drystia turned and looked around at the dome isolating the space. She didn’t like how it felt. It was keeping the child from healing, somehow, and draining all the energy inside. She looked down at the boy and watched as his energy was being pulled into the dome. Let’s fix that.” She drew her sword and swung shattering the dome. As soon as the dome fell she heard the scream of a God and along with her child was pulled away deep into the chaos with her child.
#
A man and a Doll sit in an auditorium watching a slightly different view of their first meeting. It was not quite what they both remembered but it brought new light to it.
“So she was actually a God. I thought they were some kind of nightmare.” Drystia watched thoughtfully.
“Yeah.” Nicki smiled. “I honestly thought you were some kind of fever dream or something. Or some side effect of the lightning.”
“I guess we know the rest then,” Drystia commented. They had watched so many, and she was there for the others.
“True. We went through a lot together out there.” Nicki thought back to all the strange adventures and the people the two of them were able to help.
“Did that dragon ever follow through preparing them?”
Nicki let out a scoff, “In typical dragon fashion. He burned half the audience, to establish his “Authority” then tried to demand tribute for his “Magnanimous” grace for not killing them, and would deign to prepare those he deemed worthy.”
“I’m sure that went over well.” Her response dripping with sarcasm.
“There was a bit of an uprising and quite a few close calls on taking him out before he was able to escape. It was a whole thing.” Nicki shook his head, “He did end up preparing them though. He had to take a human form to do it, and even that apparently nearly got him killed a few times.”
“Just so you know. I’m here if you need to talk.”
Did I go too far with all the messed up things I showed her? He was really worried about how much he was dumping on her. Maybe they didn’t need to watch them all. “Why don’t we skip to the end.”
* * *