This portion of the forest wasn't as empty or untamed as Hat Kid had first thought. While the rest had been a dense, but bright wild wood, the area around her was littered with brick. The clean-cut stone was set within the earth at random, strewn along winding trails, and stacked neatly as if someone had tried laying the foundation of a small town and just… stopped. She could make out the perimeters of buildings and the streets that crossed between them, the early construction of walls and porch steps.
Of course, woven through all of it stood barren trees and pillars of ice. Her experiences in Subcon and with the snow women kept a feeling of unease pinned at the back of her neck, but despite that it did have its own beauty. Everything glistened like crystals in a soft glow, as if the ice and snow were a cold reflection of the Horizon's starry atmosphere. Not too far in the distance, she could make out the hills that the spirits had told her to search in.
If they could be called 'hills' at all. The landscape before her was nestled right against the wide ravine she'd come across several times now. Here though, some of the rock broke apart and stayed captive in the air as it did where the Goat's lived, at the Twilight Bell. Many of them overlapped or connected to slopes of ice. She'd had to be careful crossing any.
The glow of the snow and stars made it hard for her to get an idea of where the Time Piece was though. If the snow women were even telling the truth and there's actually one here, she thought to herself, but she didn't have the time to reconsider and she'd already come all this way. Shuffling off her pack, she fished around inside it for her ice hat. Whether or not she'd need its abilities, the knit fabric was still warm. She pulled the hood of her cloak back and nestled the cap on her head. She hesitated to put her Dweller mask away in its place though, instead strapping it to her hip.
Hat Kid always had a familiar feeling about this part of the Horizon, from the town to the forest, but she'd largely brushed the idea aside until now. Now, as she walked past the abandoned groundwork of civilization, the feeling struck her again for some reason—especially as she came to a broken bridge over a gap that seemed to split the land in two, forcing her to ease across it along the left to avoid its collapsed side. Although she made it across just fine, she still paused to look back at it in wonder before shaking her head and moving forward.
The further she went though, the harder it was to avoid her feelings and blame them on a trick of the mind. The stonework began to dwindle away, but in in their place—further ahead—she spotted the frame of a large structure just standing out in the open. It towered over her, and she ran to it out of curiosity. She was still several meters away from the structure before she skidded to a halt again and just stared.
Unlike the stone remains of buildings behind her, this had been largely made of some kind of wood. Also unlike them, which had been carefully placed and seemingly just forgotten, the remains of this construction were greatly damaged. Although much of its large form still held together, there were snapped and splintered boards lying in heaps all around her. Hat Kid tripped over a couple of them that had been hidden completely in the snow. It was as if a massive storm had ripped it apart before it had any hopes of completion. Ahead of her was a large, stone stairwell and the base of a circular veranda had held together well enough. The young alien moved up and across it with a cautious tread.
It was huge, and she'd almost walked around its entire perimeter before she finally realized where she was standing—just as she spotted a deep pit at the back. It was a basement level, or at least had been intended to be one. It was almost filled up, both by debris and large rock, to the point where she hadn't really been able to tell what it was if only its rectangular frame and the child's own memory hadn't given it away.
She couldn't believe it at first, couldn't understand why, but the longer her eyes followed up the beams and shattered floors, the more she was able to recognize. The damage aside, it matched the layout of Vanessa's manor.
Hat Kid shivered.
It was like she could hear the ice queen's sadistic laughter in her head, and she pictured her shadowy figure wandering the naked, wall-less halls. Why was this here? If this was supposed to be a replica of the manor… that meant the abandoned area she'd just passed through had been some bare copy of Subcon village! The pieces were starting to fit in place. The village, the woods, the town, all designed within the limits of the area's original, formally barren wasteland to match the real Subcon Forest!
By Moonjumper… His words echoed back to her, "This is my territory, manipulated according to my design." He'd left this side in ruin, but the other must've been something close to how one section of Subcon—the area she knew to be dotted by stone towers and crumbled ruins—must've looked before Vanessa's storm had ripped it apart. She could follow the trails in her mind's eye, both here in the Horizon and in Subcon, and knew they mimicked each other almost perfectly. She'd walked along them both too many times to be wrong.
Guess turnabout's fair-play… she quipped silently. There was more to it than that though: She could tell. Why even start remaking this part of Subcon at all if he was just going to leave the work behind before it was ever close to finished? It just wasn't like the Moonjumper she knew to do something like that. She doubted this was the snow women's doing either, given how they talked about Vanessa: They might not have even moved into this area until much later.
The girl ran her hand along a broken beam slanted in the ground. It was obvious that the manor had been personally targeted, from the fact that it was only building truly damaged to the filled-in basement level. Why even try reconstructing it in the first place though? Why destroy what he'd started?
She had to talk to him. She had to answers on who he really was and what he was doing. Did the Dwellers know about this? They had to, surely. Were they ok with this—could they have asked him to do this? Everything was starting to feel very, very wrong…
Get the Time Piece, get to Moonjumper, the child ordered herself. One thing at a time. Slowly, she was able to pull herself away from the wreckage and dart across the snowy landscape.
She slipped on a patch of ice. All of a sudden, with a startled cry, she was flying down one of the hills with a spray of frost trailing after her as she moved. Ahead, there was a sudden drop down into the ravine, but there was a floating ledge of rock just beyond it. Hat Kid could only brace herself, adjusting her body to slide with her hands braced to one side and her legs bent to time it right and propel herself off the ground to make the jump.
She reached safety with a harsh thud, air bursting from her lungs. Looking behind her, she saw where the ice turned into a frozen waterfall off the side of the ravine and down into darkness. After the incident with the skeleton, she didn't even want to think about what horrors might've awaited her upon that descent—if she even survived it. Standing up and brushing flecks of snow off her skirt, she looked for a way around. There were multiple paths she could take, but still no clue as to where the Time Piece was.
Until she looked up. The patch of sky above her had suddenly grown brighter. Stars blinked to life and then, shaped by them, a tall figure with a circular clock for a face and a pendulum in one hand seemed to appear. It was one of the celestial spirits, staring back down at her. Quickly, Hat Kid grabbed her Dweller's mask to see if it was another one of the Horizon's tricks, but nothing changed.
She didn't know why it had appeared before her or what it wanted. It said nothing and didn't move for the longest while. After a moment, it raised deliberate finger and pointed across the sky to where it seemed to be touching one of the floating rocks. Then, to her astonishment, a bright, familiar light bloomed on top of it. The Time Piece!
Hat Kid gaped back at forth, from the direction of the hourglass to the 'face' of the spirit. Rather than take the magical relic for itself, however, it simply drew its hand back to its side and regarded her again with its eternal, blank expression. It was showing her the way.
For the first time since she'd stolen Moonjumper's monocle, she smiled. A wave of relief passed over her, both from the fact that the spirit hadn't taken the Time Piece for themselves as so many others might have and at having the help. It gave her hope. "Thank you!" she shouted up the to sky, but if it even heard her, it didn't react. It just continued to stare, then steadily blinked out of existence.
Not entirely though, it left behind a kind of trail for her: Stars shaping arrows across the void for her to follow, just as the celestial spirits had done for the Alpine Skyline's founder. Hat Kid didn't waste a second, looking around for the easiest way across. Throwing herself over to another rock, she leapt across one after another in a nimble fashion.
She allowed herself a brief moment to enjoy her surroundings. It felt like she was sailing across space and treading over asteroids, as if she'd become a celestial spirit herself. If she didn't have to hurry, she might've actually followed the snow women's recommendation and stayed for as long as she dared, enjoying her dance among the stars.
Snow and ice still clung to the rocks. Occasionally, she was able to find a natural platform that let her spring over the void with her ice hat—before the frozen casing that would surround and protect her shattered upon each landing. Hat Kid had had plenty of practice doing this by now, and felt comfortable enough in the Horizon's atmosphere and under the celestial spirit's sight to get across at a quick, steady pace.
Bridges of ice made for improvised slides to and from some of the platforms. She did worry about a few of them, which were too thin and often tried to shatter under her weight. She was careful to avoid those when she could or else quickly lunged over to the next available space.
The only thing that halted her progress was a streak of red that soon enough darted the sky. It was impossible to miss, and she pulled to a halt at the sight of it, tracking it with her eyes: A Dweller, flying over the ravine. She watched it for the longest time, but it didn't seem to go much of anywhere, as if it was instead patrolling the area, looking for something.
It wasn't until the stars that were her guide began to blink out that she began to worry again. Of course, they were impossible for the Dweller to have missed: Maybe they were why it was out here in the first place. By the time the last one has vanished though, it still hadn't gone anywhere. She took the celestial spirit's cue and jumped over to another floating, misshapen ledge, ducking behind the cover of raised earth. There she watched the Dweller for a while until a handful more had begun to appear after it, all darting across the void with the same, searching behavior.
She looked back in the direction of the mainland, toward the forest and town, and her eyes widened at the sight of red dots covering the once calm palette of blues and whites. It was impossible to tell what they were though, that is until her mind went back to the first time she'd visited the snow women and had nearly been caught under the gaze of a red eye set within a tree.
Another thought clicked in her mind as well. A wild field of big eyes… At last, that line from the snow women's song made sense to her. From this distance, she could see it, washed over the whole of Moonjumper's domain. His eyes were everywhere. He was a part of this Horizon—and even where he couldn't look, he had the Dwellers to do so for him.
Was he looking for yet another run-away ghost or for her? Did he know what she had stolen or was he just worried since she'd pretty much darted out of the castle without telling him anything? Had someone spotted her coming here and tipped him off? Whatever the case, she kept low until the Dwellers had glided far enough away that the stars slowly began to creep back into place.
Hat Kid picked up speed once again, darting across the void with newfound urgency. The stars continued to faded in and out, disappearing when a Dweller began to turn in their direction and reappearing when the coast was clear up until the ghosts seemed to just give up entirely and dismiss the action as just another one of the parades of light that the celestials loved to create.
When the child, at last, reached the Time Piece—nestled among the rocks of the wide platform it rested on—she didn't feel the well of success she normally did. She was too frazzled to feel much of anything, too focused on her next objective: Confronting the prince of the Horizon.