They were not pursued by screaming or rhyming, but they fled all the same. There was no sense in keeping up that pseudo-invisibility; the black sphere would only make them more visible against the faintly glowing cardboard.
The staircase was wide enough for the Queen, and the throne room they entered looked like nothing so much as a nest. Twigs with orange leaves on them were arranged in a bowl shape in the center of the room. The walls, floor, and even ceiling had been heavily scratched and scored, revealing a rough, black surface, and more of this surface was visible as they continued to flee.
Another large staircase continued to the castle's center, which was wide open, clearly meant for the Queen's use. It was almost like an office building in its architecture; levels of empty, narrower stairs surrounded this open area, many doors facing the center. Panoptical, Michelle thought. Anyone in the middle could see everything going on. If it weren't a dark world, it'd probably be light, open, and airy; as it was, it simply made it very difficult to hide, and as the group looked down at the Darkners returning into the castle, they knew they'd soon be spotted unless they found somewhere to go.
A narrow hallway, fifteen feet long and about fifty feet from the large stairs, looked promising, almost too promising. "Before we go down there, I want to know what this stuff is," Michelle said, halfway ducking down into it, trying to determine whether or not they were about to walk into a trap.
"What, the rough paper?" Sheila asked.
"No, that's cardboard, I know that stuff. What's underneath it?"
"That's boiled leather. Rawhide." Sirale made a faint sound of disgust, but Michelle was disturbed for other reasons. Being in a building made of cardboard and hardened animal skin was bad enough, but rawhide was the stuff that you gave dogs as chew toys.
"Come, children," a gentle, elderly voice called, opening a hidden door at the end of the hallway. The voice was utterly familiar to Michelle, and with a start she knew who it would be even before she saw him. Her overtired brain reacted with it can't be him before she rallied and realized of course it's him. He was the stereotype of a wizard, a stereotype that had come and gone long before Michelle was even born: large conical hat with a bent tip, four-foot beard, gnarled cane, heavy robes, the works. He was illustrated on the cover of a puzzle book, and Michelle could recall the exact moment when she'd opened the Christmas present when she was five; it was a gift from Asmodeus, the wizard who had first introduced her mother to human magic. She'd fantasized that the wizard on the cover had been the one to give her the puzzles in that hundred-page book, which she'd utterly annihilated well before her sixth birthday roughly six months later. He'd given her more difficult puzzlebooks later- all of which she'd completely crushed well before she was supposedly old enough to do that- but they didn't have wizards on their covers, and she'd continued to pretend that this wrinkly stereotype had been the one to give them to her.
"Auzen," she said, running down the hallway, the others close behind her. She had never spoken his name aloud before; he didn't have one, so she'd given him one. "I'm sorry about skipping your puzzles, and I promise I'll go back and do them when I have time."
"I hadn't imagined that those would be your first words to me," the kind, patient voice said (for in the younger Michelle's imagination, he was always kind and patient, encouraging her to do the things he had created), "but I accept your apology all the same. Even though we both know what I am." He seamlessly closed the door behind Flapper, and his room was much like Sirale's, only his was full of all sorts of arcane knick-knacks, physics toys, diagrams, and a pendulum that sat utterly still and motionless in the center of the room.
He looked down at Sirale, who was looking back up at him with a slightly confused expression; Auzen looked so very much like a Lightner, after all, even though aging had been abolished on Michelle's world for more than a decade. "Do you know what you are?"
"He kind of does, and I've actually been trying to avoid that," Michelle replied before Sirale could say anything. "I'm sorry, I need to get home soon, and the Queen's still out there, and we don't want to have to LOAD, so can we just acknowledge that you're toys come to life and save the existential crises for later?"
"You must have time to recover," Auzen said in a tone that reminded Michelle of her actual monstrous grandfather. "You're tired and your blood sugar is low. Eat. Relax. The Queen, clever as she may be, will not find you here." The chair to which he gestured was very well cushioned and comfortable, and the thick, rich bread in front of her smelled freshly baked (with what flour?); she briefly considered the idea of poison before discounting it and deciding to eat, sitting down with the Gluesword across her lap, the other three following her lead, Sirale taking dainty bites while Flapper gulped down the small loaves. There was no chance- absolutely none- that an Auzen this faithful to her mental ideal would actually be loyal to the Queen. Whatever the catalyst for this 34(b) was, it wasn't that kind of troll.
"They're more than toys. These ones are us," Sheila said, trying to sound like talking normally was normal for her, and Michelle knew that she was right. "Flapper isn't just my friend. She's part of me." She looked downcast. "So is the Queen." She looked at Michelle instead of explaining just what parts of herself the Queen was, and Michelle understood, and nodded, and changed her view of something very important. "He's your kindness," (I'm not the really kind one, that's Gary, Michelle instantly thought) "and he's the way you do things," she said, gesturing to Sirale and Auzen in turn. Sirale looked moderately shaken by the revelation but did not disagree.
"My rationality," Michelle said. Auzen, alone of all the Darkners, would have to know, or rapidly discover, the truth. She looked up at him, and in a fraction of a second, half an unspoken conversation passed between them. Despite what he looked like and what his mannerisms were, he was her creation, her aspect, her imaginary friend. It was almost a blasphemy to someone from her home universe. Monsters arose from humans, but human beings were incapable of intentionally creating them.
"Yes, that. So where's your bad stuff? Where's your pain? Do you have any?" The voice turned musical with mild indignation.
"No, I actually don't," Michelle replied somewhat guiltily. She motioned Flapper over and petted the big bird with one hand, gently feeling the soft feathers above her cloth skin and the soft feathers beneath it, feeling their texture, their density, and Flapper faintly crooned at the gentle treatment. No, she hadn't deserved to be burned, not at all. "I told you I was a princess. I don't think I really explained what that means in my world." She was too tired to feel embarrassed, and knew it. She knew she was going to have to do another magical sprint soon; she didn't want to wear herself out with emotions and really hoped that Sheila wouldn't react badly to this. "Mom, Dad, Uncle Azzy, Grandma and Grandpa... they make sure that all six of us know about those things and can handle them, but we don't actually experience too much of them." She looked at Sheila, and fortunately the other girl didn't see the point of getting upset anymore, choosing instead to pet Sirale the way Michelle was petting his counterpart. The fluffy goat did not mind, either. "Sometimes people like me make things like that happen to themselves, but we're all too smart to do that. Thank Dog, too, because we would not want an evil version of him," she said, gesturing to Auzen, who bowed slightly. "By the way," she asked him, gesturing at the cardboard-and-rawhide walls, "why is this place so obviously a lie?"
Auzen nodded subtly, as if acknowledging that she was asking the right question. "From your Darkners, I would imagine that your stories were all crafted propaganda that you've seen through long ago," he said, looking at Sheila, who simply nodded, "and you, well... is there any story in front of you that you don't take apart?" The voice was gentle, but it was almost like an accusation.
"No," Michelle replied evenly. "You know that better than anyone. And I'm in this one. I actually have a giant bird trying to kill me. If more people took apart the stories they were in, I think Mom, Azzy... probably Grandpa, even Dad would have a lot less to worry about." Auzen smiled, the way she'd always envisioned him smiling when she figured something out, and she wondered if he was actually wise or simply an echo of what she wanted to hear.
"I think my dad would have a lot more," Sheila quietly rasped.
"Oh yeah, I'll just tell you now, he's basically already dead now that I know he exists," Michelle replied in the same even tone. Every head in the room turned to look at her. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to make things worse by telling you before. My dad's job is to go between universes, wiping out versions of himself. He's one of the very few Charas who wound up being good" within a flexible definition of 'good' "and he... he's atoning by getting rid of the bad ones. I won't tell you what he's atoning for, you can just find that out later. Well, whoever here still exists can." Auzen solemnly nodded, but he was the only one who picked up on that part. Sheila looked like she was going to say or sing something but had neither the words nor the notes. "Overpowered," Michelle said. "The word you're looking for is overpowered. My whole family is. And we don't play roles, or act like people think we're supposed to act, we just find out what needs to be done and then we do it." Her parents had given her the talk of the capital-R Responsibilities of a Dreemurr princess only a couple of years ago. It was almost completely unnecessary.
"And it is that philosophy that trivializes almost everything," Auzen acknowledged. "But beware. You are not the most overpowered one here," he declared. "If you choose to employ any means at your disposal, under the circumstances, I certainly cannot blame you, nor can I blame any of you for wanting to do the same. But your forthrightness and your curiosity will lead you directly to things that are considerably more powerful than you."
"Gaster," Sheila said.
"There is no need to court disaster by directly facing one such as Gaster," Flapper croaked out, barely remembering to keep her voice down.
"No. If it were him, this would be different. I would be different," Auzen said, and suddenly Michelle realized what he was talking about.
"There's a creator entity in here with us?" she replied, forcibly keeping her emotions in check, and Auzen nodded again. There were few things that could make her react like that, but an actual creator was one of them. Her classes hadn't gotten to that part yet, but she'd skipped ahead in the book as usual, reading about all the wild and wooly entities, sub-entities, and not-quite-entities roaming among and between the universes. A rigorous classification system like the kind used for universes hadn't yet been developed, but a self-aware entity capable of creating even this little 34(b) was decisively a god. Or a Dog.
The idea that she might actually doom or save her own entire universe by her actions in this place put everything into stark contrast. No, she really, really had no use for going along with things or playing roles at all today.
"This isn't part of the prophecy," Sirale said, a somewhat worried inflection in his voice, but he swiftly changed back into his usual chirpy self. "but that's not going to stop us. We're heroes, after all!"
"I am not," Auzen said. "No, Princess, as much as you may eschew roles, my role is as it was defined by you, so long ago. I know you've thought it, and your guess is correct; I don't actually know any more than you do, save for a few things from my all-too-recent origin here." He smiled his kindly, wizened smile, and Michelle knew it for what it was, and it was so terribly, terribly sad. He's a lie, too, and he knows he's a lie. Perhaps this was why intentionally creating monsters was impossible; perhaps Dog was more merciful than to allow this. Which would mean that the local creator isn't Dog. "It lies hidden in the basement, in the very deepest part of the castle, in a prison of its own making. My advice is to assume nothing about it. And do not let the Queen know. She has been searching for it as well."
"I thought the Queen just hated us," Sheila said, redoubling Michelle's opinion of the creature.
"She wishes to alter things," Auzen said. "I do not know if it is possible, but she intends to employ this entity to change the rules so that all Lightner-created objects- over a certain size, I assume- will be alive there, as they are here. All loyal to her." Michelle gasped, her hands briefly shaking.
"She's going to take over everybody's things?" Sheila asked, perplexed and disturbed.
"Sheila, you don't understand, you don't live in the modern world, if she can actually do that, she'll take over all our weapons-" How could she possibly explain what nuclear missiles were? "My whole world will burn. Billions of people will die, and Mom might not be able to undo it. We have to go. We have to go now."
"I hope to see you all again... assuming, as you said, that I still exist," Auzen said. "Now, how will you get to your destination, not knowing what lies between you and it?"
Perhaps he had expected some answer involving DETERMINATION, but Sirale, with his Asriel-like ears, helpfully informed everyone of what was going on outside instead. The Queen was standing at the top of the wide stairs, looking down at the searching Darkners, who were going up and down every hallway. More than one had passed by the hidden doorway. Good. She's still obsessed with us.
"I have a method," Michelle said, standing up. "Sheila, please... sing Flight for me, and accept what happens." Neither Sirale nor Flapper understood. Perhaps Auzen did, but he gave no sign. Sheila nodded. Michelle turned to Sirale, who was still so naive, so oblivious. "Is there a Darkner in the hallway?"
"Just... leaving... now," Sirale said, smiling.
Michelle threw open the door. Sheila ran behind her, singing the Song of Flight in her perfectly practiced voice, clutching her hooked trident with both hands. Propelled by Sheila's magical flight as well as her own, she rocketed towards the Queen at high speed, shining a bright violet light directly into the creature's face. The Queen screeched "YOU FOUL-" but whether or not she was going to rhyme was something that none of them would ever find out.
The Gluesword's glue was not used to stick the Queen. Nor was the hooked trident used to pin her down.
Instead, before Sirale, Flapper, any of the patrolling Darkners, or even the Queen herself realized exactly what was going on, Princess Michelle Dreemurr had already telekinetically seized the Queen by the head and clove straight through her neck with one two-handed swipe.
