Chapter 9: Realization
?
The girl laid on the grass in the courtyard, watching the clouds go by. She enjoyed doing this. When she wasn't sent out to guide those younger ones on their way, or spring traps on Dimentio, this was all she did. She did it because the only thing in her vision was the sky. The beautiful sky, tainted red by the setting sun, and the wonderful fluffy clouds. They were the same as she had seen growing up. No matter how similar this place might be to the world she knew from her past, it would never replicate it. Even the people who shared her own skin, rather than the dark blue of Dimentio's people, were different in ways that went into their very hearts and souls. The sky was the only thing that allowed her to pretend she wasn't in a foreign world. The only thing that could let her feel free.
'My Lady?' A castle worker came into view. 'Is there something I can help you with?'
She gave a smile. 'No, I don't think so. Thank you, though.'
The white-skinned female bowed, her short brown hair briefly obscuring her green eyes. 'As you wish.'
As she turned and began walking away the woman felt like something valuable was departing with her. She didn't even know her name, yet still...
'Wait,' she called.
The worker stopped and turned around. 'My Lady?'
'Come lay down here. Please,' she added.
The woman looked confused and a little worried. 'But...'
'Please,' she pressed. 'I just want some company. I'm waiting for...his Highness.'
The girl looked conflicted, but obeyed and laid down. 'What are you doing?' she asked, making sure to keep a respectful and courteous tone.
'Just looking at the clouds.' Her bright eyes traced the movements of the fluffs in the air. 'Sometimes they form shapes. That one there looks a little like a person, don't you think?' She pointed to one.
The girl beside her squinted. '...no. I don't see anything, my Lady.'
The woman still wasn't used to that title. "Lady." It sounded like she was married to a Lord. It wasn't as lofty and important as the one she used to use. And then there was him. His "Highness." Even though he wasn't royalty at all. He wasn't anything here, no better than she was. He had accomplished nothing, and yet he has assumed command. Dimentio, the fiend with his Chaos Heart, had done the creating. The man ordering her around like a servant had just been an unfortunate accident in the magician's design.
The distaste must have been clearly shown on her face, for the woman asked, 'Is something wrong?'
She banished the look and shook her head. 'No. Nothing is wrong.' She looked at the woman beside her; she wasn't rough or calloused like some people she had seen around. Her skin was smooth and fair, her hair well-done, and her face free of sleep-deprivation and toil. It was more likely she was a castle occupant, doing some sort of job for the council; her features would be worn and tired if she worked in a village. 'What's your name?'
'I don't know if I'm worthy of being on a first-name basis with you...' she muttered, her eyes turned away.
'Nonsense,' the Lady insisted. When the girl wouldn't yield, she sighed and said, 'Name. That's an order.'
The girl sucked in her breath and exhaled, as if ashamed she were in the Lady's presence and needed to give her name. She had always hated when people did that, walked on eggshells to preserve their dignity or status because she was of a higher class. 'My name is Hana,' she said.
'Hana...' she repeated. 'It's a nice name.'
'Thank you, my Lady.' Hana smiled slightly, but not too broadly.
'Would you like to know my name?'
Her new friend seemed to ponder the thought. 'No,' she finally said. 'I don't think it would be proper.'
The Lady sighed.
'What a pleasant sight.'
Both the girls jumped to their feet, Hana letting out a cry of surprise. 'Your Highness!' she croaked. 'I was just—'
'Calm down, I'm not going to lynch you for taking a short break with my subordinate. I'm not a monster.'
Hana was still flustered and left without a word. The woman looked on sadly. 'Power is frightening,' she said to herself.
'Even when it ought not to be,' her superior added, crossing his arms. 'Have I not been benevolent enough?'
'It's the mere fact that you have power that frightens them. Even if they revere you. It's a terrifying reverence to be sure.' The man seemed to dislike this.
'So,' he said with a sigh. 'I had to meet with the council and put their minds at ease. Ever since that fluctuation in the sky people have been more on edge. More than one of them were worried it was an assault by Dimentio on us. None of them ever feel safe.'
This was one of the few times the man wasn't condescending or snide to her. Whenever he was flustered in trying to deal with people it reminded her that beneath his surety he was just another human being, and not even a very old one at that. She was older than he was.
Well. That was debatable of course.
'What of Fawful and that other girl?' he asked.
'Rose, you mean.'
'Yes. Rose.' The world rolled off his tongue unpleasantly. 'The ghost girl. Ow!' She had smacked him across the back of his head.
'Don't say that,' she snarled. 'She is not a "ghost girl" anymore than you are.' She pinched his cheek hard, reddening the white skin, then flicked a finger through his white hair.
The man's face flushed. 'How dare you,' he growled.
'I would advise you not get too haughty, sire,' she warned him. 'We're all in this together.'
He glared at her, trying not to lose control. She loved seeing him like this; his almighty attitude was just a façade. '…well,' he said finally, looking up into the sky. His expression went softer, though still irritated, and the woman allowed her own light anger to fade. 'What's the news?'
'The assassination attempt was a success,' she reported. 'By that I mean the assassination attempt occurred, not that Dimentio was successfully assassinated.'
'Of course. Nothing can kill him yet. Did you confront him?'
Her heart thumped and she grimaced. 'Yes.'
'And?'
'He was incredibly angry.'
'Ah ha ha!' the so-called king laughed. 'No doubt!' He grinned and looked straight at her; his expression was partly heartening and partly unsettling to her. 'It should put him on edge. He should know he's dealing with things out of his control now that he's aware of your presence here.'
'I don't like it,' she told him. 'What if he—'
'He can't touch you, don't you worry. You're too valuable to me to lose.' He said it completely devoid of emotion. 'Back to the previous topic; what of the other two?'
'They found that thing I was leading them to.'
The man was curious. 'What was it?'
'A temple. They went inside and I came back here.'
'Why not follow them in?'
'I'd be useless in there. I don't know anything about it.'
'That means,' he said, 'we have no more control over them.'
'Not until they find whatever's in there.'
They both looked at each other; the woman was worried and the man was unnerved. Fawful, at least, was the only way they could find the Purity Heart. She would be overtaken by the planet, and even if he was powerful Dimentio could kill him with the raise of an eyebrow. Neither of them had been imprinted upon by the Purity Heart, and neither of them were from the Mushroom World that the Heart had been created in.
'So,' the woman muttered, 'we wait.'
'So we do,' the man replied.
Both turned their eyes to the sky, looking for a hint of that ripple they had seen before.
Dimentio
Another red sky. Another day gone by.
The torches around the castle were lit; they weren't as efficient as electric lights, but they had an old fashioned charm he liked, so torches it was. He could hear the sounds of people going to and fro in the castle. The night guards would be beginning their rounds, and the people living in the castle would be going to bed to prepare for work the next day.
Dimentio, on the other hand, was not in the castle; rather, he was on the roof. He was laying down, gnarled hands behind his deformed head.
'I wonder,' he mused. 'Could it have worked?'
'That Inverse/citizen hybrid you sent?' the Chaos Heart asked.
'Indeed.'
'I wouldn't put too much faith into them,' was the response. 'They may have more than mindless savagery in them, but the boy is far too lucky to be killed so easily.'
'Lucky,' Dimentio repeated. He doubted it was all luck, otherwise he'd have surely been killed by now.
'What of the girl who contacted you?' the Heart questioned.
The king gritted his teeth, forcing himself to quell his own fury. 'She can't hurt me.' His words were pure venom.
'She did something to that boy who attempted to kill you,' pressed the voice in his mind. 'What else could she do?'
'How can we know if she did that? She's powerless!' He didn't want to entertain the thought that she could have some influence over him.
'Perhaps in her old world. But here, in a world made from the Void? Who knows?'
That was a frightening thought. She wasn't from here. He was completely certain her male accomplice was also from a different world, perhaps one he had never visited before. It was more than probable that they could have some sort of Purity Heart-esque influence on the people of this world. If they could use that to control the will of his citizens...Dimentio got a very bad feeling in his chest.
Deciding that he needed some more space to think, the jester teleported off the roof.
Upon reappearing, the first thing he saw, felt, and smelled was the grass that grew up over his head. He sputtered through a mouthful of the long blades and flew up over the foliage.
Looking around, he realized that he didn't know where he was. He could teleport back to his castle easily (all the people provided an excellent beacon), but when it came to going there to somewhere else, he was effectively blind. In places he knew like the back of his hand it was easy to go anywhere he wanted, but otherwise he needed a reference point. It embarrassed him to admit it to himself, but he had such a small understanding of his world.
'How ironic, for a god to not know anything about his own magnificent creation.' Dimentio really, really wished he could have made the Chaos Heart non-sentient. It's constant mockery of him was exhausting and annoying.
'I may be omnipotent,' the magician said, irritated, 'but I am not omniscient.'
'Only omnipotent through my power,' the Heart responded. 'Without me you are nothing.'
'I have a body,' Dimentio snorted. 'I could say the same about you.' The Chaos Heart declined to reply.
Grass and trees. That's what he saw around him. Nothing more. No buildings or people. He floated through the air absentmindedly; no wind blew and he found himself hot in what he was wearing. Now that he was reminded of his attire he realized that he hadn't changed out of his jester underclothes for the entirety of his time here. It hadn't been long, but he'd expected to have to at least sleep.
'Why have any need to rejuvenate your body when my power runs through your veins?' Dimentio felt pleased at the thought of never needing to sleep, ever; it heightened his sense of godhood.
The sun was dipping very low; he mustn't have been incredibly far from his castle, due to the identical time of day. Going too far around the planet would likely cause some changes.
The air was getting cold. He watched the sun's light gradually recede.
'Chaos Heart,' he said to no one. 'I created this planet. What about the sun and stars?'
'Those are woven from the Void as well,' came the Heart's answer.
'So what happens if I go beyond this planet's atmosphere?'
'You suffocate in space.'
Dimentio paused. 'Assume,' he said slowly. 'Assume that I could breathe in space. If I went beyond this planet's atmosphere, what would I find?'
'Who knows? All you envisioned was this planet. You could find an endless expanse of stars and lifeless rocks. Or perhaps it would simply end and give way to eternal nothingness. You'd have to find out yourself, and you can't carry oxygen with you.'
The magician shook his head. 'I am the master of dimensions. I could find a way.'
'And leave your followers?' Dimentio had already known he couldn't do that.
The grass rustled. The king spun around in the air and looked down at the tall grass; nothing was there. It was motionless and silent.
'A predator of your own creation. Watch out,' the Heart warned.
Is there really anything to be afraid of? Dimentio replied in his mind, though he was nervous to find out what it was.
The grass shuffled again and the jester threw a block of dimensional magic at the moving spot. A boink! sounded, but nothing gave a cry of pain.
A few moments passed where Dimentio could only hear bugs chirping and wind blowing softly.
Suddenly a thing exploded out of the grass, spewing out a high-pitched shriek. The magician quickly brought himself above the creature's arc and watched the blur descend back into the grass.
Dimentio touched ground and flung his arms out to his sides; the grass around him tore itself apart from the ground up. He looked wildly around to find the thing that had attacked him, before finally feasting his eyes on what was likely a bloodthirsty, dangerous—
The magician's face turned incredulous. 'What the Underwhere?'
The thing, whatever it was, was about up to his knees in height. It's body was an almost spherical mass of light fur with two pudgy feet dug into the ground, allowing it to stand. It had two large eyes on the upper portion of its body and a huge mouth stretching almost from end to end with two white fangs sticking out from both the top and bottom of its mouth.
'It's like a...a...' He couldn't believe what he was seeing.
'What in all of existence is a "Goomba"?' the Chaos Heart demanded.
'Have you been reading my memories?' Dimentio growled.
'Sometimes even a disembodied, destructive heart can become bored.'
The thing gave a growl and jumped at him again, mouth agape. The magician, shocked as he was, put his arm in front of his face and blocked the weak attack with a barrier.
'I don't understand!' Dimentio exclaimed as he used a burst of energy to get the creature away from him. 'What is that thing?'
'I do not know everything, Dimentio.'
He ducked under another assault from whatever was trying very hard to bludgeon him into submission with its own body. 'And you don't have an idea?'
'Not a clue. I've never seen such a thing before.'
Dimentio racked his mind for an answer. Fawful had done something during the universe's creation. He had flown into the heart of the void with the Purity Heart and then...he couldn't remember anything coherent after that. His memories were a scrambled mess until he woke up on his world.
Fawful had been part of the creation of his world. Undoubtedly he would have influenced it in some way with his garbled thoughts at the time. This creature looked very similar to those creatures called "Goombas" that he'd seen scattered around the dimensions. In the Mushroom Kingdom they were everywhere, so that was likely their home dimension. Fawful had obviously been exposed to Goombas all the time then, so that meant...
'Oh Grambi above...' he breathed, terror gripping his heart. His guard went down long enough for the thing to collide with his head using its hard skull. He fell over and it jumped on him, shouting at him angrily. He snapped his fingers and it left the ground, flying off into the distance. This is bad, he realized as he stood back up. This is absolutely terrible. Like a pack of mountain lions chasing a frazzled hunter. Like a tornado assailing an unprotected village full of stubbornly stationary townsfolk. Like a king's consort who is secretly a middle-aged man!
'Your similes are beginning to worry me,' the Heart commented.
'Don't you understand?' he shouted hysterically. 'Do you have any idea what that boy has done?' His distorted face was contorted in absolute horror. 'He's influenced my world! He's put creatures here that shouldn't be here! Who knows what else he could have accidentally done?'
He was losing his grip on his own world. A boy with no idea what he even wanted had used his thoughts and run rampant through his magnificent creation. 'He was using the Purity Heart!' he continued to scream. 'My world is infected with its horrid energy!'
'Dimentio!' the Chaos Heart exclaimed, disgusted. 'Control yourself! The Purity Heart is of no concern!'
'No! You don't comprehend the severity of what's happened!' he spat, his voice shaking. 'I built a castle out of nothing! Automatically! Out of my own subconscious desires! If Fawful had a part in creating my world, that means the same thing could have happened! What he would subconsciously desire more than anything in the world is—'
He was interrupted by a brilliant flash as a pillar of bright light shot up into the air miles away from him, illuminating the night sky. Dimentio watched, aghast, as the sky shimmered slightly, just as it had before. Just like the last time, the magician felt a presence of goodness in the air.
'...a way to render you useless,' he finished, his throat turning dry. 'A way to link the world with the Purity Heart. Even if you took your precautions and sealed it away, the chain between us and it is woven into this world.' He felt a fear like he had never felt. He had created a perfect world and suddenly the possibility of it being taken from him seemed all too likely now. He knew now that he couldn't sit around anymore, he couldn't ignore the problem. Not with that boy running rampant. Not with those two interlopers scheming against him.
They all needed to die. If they didn't, he would.
