After how long she'd been in the Horizon, the memory's bright atmosphere took some getting used to. She had to shield her face against the warm light that washed over her, giving her eyes a long moment to adjust. Really, the sounds were what she noticed first—so contrast to the ghostly realm's almost overwhelming silence. There were voices: A chorus of them, all overlapping one another in a wonderful mess of chatter, laughter, and song. There was even the distant call of music, someone playing the guitar, fife, and drum. Beneath all of that was nature's soft ambience.
Hat Kid opened her eyes to find herself standing in the heart of Subcon's future ruins. Its stone walls and high towers meshed with both its buildings and the land; weaving around large trees, the cobblestone roads matched by small gardens that ran along either side—similar to the layout of Subcon Village—and the canopy above siphoning beams of sunshine to cast the whole town in a fantastic glow. There was some kind of festival going on. Lanterns, bows, and streamers hung everywhere, and everyone wore masks.
Dressed as she was, Hat Kid blended in perfectly with the crowd, not that anyone would find her out of place to begin with. Since it was just a memory, she was practically a ghost this time. She couldn't interact with anything and no one would pay her any attention. She could only act as a silent observer to whatever events unfolded before her.
It wasn't hard to figure out whose memory she was in from the dozens of Dwellers that surrounded her, not when one knew how to look for the right signs. She looked over the people in her immediate area before settling on a boy with copper blonde hair and a deer mask with gold patterns and wide antlers. After speaking with a nearby vender, he darted past her. The memory slightly distorted as he moved, staying clear only in the direction he ran toward. If she stayed around long enough, it would blur out of all reality. She followed after him at a brisk pace.
The brief trip led her to the familiar courtyard, its gates wide open. As she'd already guessed, in place of the run down, boarded structures stood a small, but shining palace. She had always thought that the fountain—now sparkling with clear water and polished stone as opposed to the murky grime that consumed it in the present—was too big, but now its design made a little more sense. The wide space had a series of walkways that looped around its circumference and connected to castle's second level, the fountain's true base acting as a kind of center post. The tall statue that adorned it still had its head. Although she shivered at its future, deadly potential, the girl still found it to be very beautiful.
There weren't as many people here, although everyone seemed just as busy—likely preparing for events later in the day. The boy she followed cut through the courtyard and entered a narrow, winding passage. It spilled them into yet another hall before they entered a noisy kitchen. Dishes of all sorts littered every counterspace and both servants and townsfolk bumped shoulder-to-shoulder to finish making an apparent feast.
The boy approached one from behind: A servant girl with a delicately framed face and curly, dark hair, her mask tied to the side of her head at an angle so she could work unhindered. Her mask was more standard than the boy's, following the kitsune-like design she was used to seeing, but with a lavender color and navy patterns. He wrapped his arms around her waist, hugging her with his face buried against her spine as he greeted her in a teasing voice, "Guess who?"
The girl shook him away, but there was a tickled smile on her lips. Rather than answer, she spun around with a light smirk and asked a question of her own, "Don't you still have work to do?"
"We finished early," he huffed as he picked up a platter of deviled eggs and lifted himself onto the countertop in its place, setting the dish in his lap. "I wanted to see you."
Twisting around his mask in a manner similar to hers, he plucked up one of the eggs to take a bite only for it to be quickly snatched from his hand as the girl scoffed and silently nagged at him with a chiding finger. He tilted his head, earthy eyes pleading with her until she rolled her own and relented just a bit. She plopped it halfway in his mouth with one hand and snuck the platter out of his grasp with the other as he fumbled not to drop the egg. The platter was set at a distance.
The pair looked to be about fourteen or fifteen. Young love. Hat Kid normally didn't mind it, but nevertheless stuck out her tongue in mock disgust. The exchange was cute, but it was a far-cry from what she hoped to see. It just wasn't a piece of knowledge worth anything to her right then.
The memory wasn't ready to end quite yet either. The couple continued their banter for a few minutes longer before one of the older maids called them out on it—to their embarrassment and the amusement of their audience. Excusing herself with a plate of light snacks—the boy offering to "help" with a tray of his own laden with water goblets—they exited back into the hall and moved deeper into the castle, picking back up where they left off.
Again, Hat Kid followed. She didn't really have a choice until the memory faded and the time rift's made-up reality bended back into place. At that point, the young alien only half-listened to their words and instead paid attention to her surroundings. Unlike the Horizon's palace, not only were these halls easier to navigate through, but she felt more at home walking through them. There were still some wide windows facing the courtyard: Even though they were fewer in number, the warm light emitting through them cast a golden glow against the walls. The painted ceiling was the same, but the innermost walls were decorated with soft tapestries, paintings, and potted plants spaced out to keep the area from feeling too cluttered or gaudy. It made her wonder again how much inspiration for Moonjumper's palace had actually been drawn from this one and how much had been drawn from his own mind.
The pair guided her to a wide set of double doors, knocking before creeping one open and stepping inside a wide dining hall. Hat Kid weaved around them to peer in, but despite her desires still wasn't quite ready to face the group of figures that stood before her. One was a lean, but elderly man; another servant, dressed a little finer than the others she'd seen who didn't have a mask with him. Two were a king and queen, dressed in simple, but elegant clothes, the woman's mask in her hands and the man's set on the table before them.
The last person in the group was all too familiar: The Prince, a little younger than she'd come to know him before Vanessa's storm, dressed in similar attire to what he'd worn then as well. He gave the two a kind smile, moving forward to help them with their loads before the other servant could. What caught Hat Kid's attention the most, however, was the mask hanging from his belt. It was undeniably Moonjumper's.
Here, the memory ended.
Again, she needed time for her eyes to adjust as she reentered the grim, forested island that made up the first level of the time rift. As the child waited, she tried to process the tiny, new piece of information with the odd assortment she'd already gathered. She thought and thought until her head hurt, as so much still made so very little sense.
Moonjumper's mask clearly belonged to the Prince. The clothes hanging in his room belonged to the Prince. If she didn't know what she did, all signs pointed to Moonjumper being the prince, but then what about Snatcher? What about everything she'd seen from his and Vanessa's storybook? She just couldn't dismiss all of that when it too had to be fact. A couple different scenarios ran through her mind:
It was possible that Moonjumper was a regular ghost that had stolen the Prince's identity and just tricked the Dwellers. Since he always wore his mask, no one ever saw his true face—or, at least, she sure hadn't. Since he had fabric dangling around it, even the back of his head was hidden and she couldn't even tell if their hair might've been the same. It didn't make any sense to her how he could've stolen the Prince's clothes. For one thing, the very idea of robbing them off a rotting corpse was as insane as it was grotesque. For another, he would've had to have done it without alerting Vanessa or her statued minions—and that was what seemed nigh impossible, given her own escape.
Her thoughts briefly flickered to the loss of her own soul thanks to Snatcher's contracts. Despite this loss, she still had her free will and moved around in her own body just fine, if feeling a lot emptier than usual. Much to both her pride and disgust, it managed to escape him for a short while by possessing an old, wooden toilet. Could something similar have happened to Snatcher and Moonjumper, one acting as the Prince's soul and the other his undead body? It seemed possible, but even that theory had a dent in it. It again countered her own experience.
First, there was Snatcher's threats when he'd made her sign her initial contract. When she'd tried to refuse, he'd told her to either do it or 'he'd make her dead, hollow body sign it for her.' Unless it was an empty threat only meant to trick her into tethering her soul to him through the contracts, it meant that he'd intended to steal it anyway. However, he would've had to kill her beforehand in order to do it. In that case, her body wouldn't have gone on with its own consciousness.
The second issue was that, when her soul managed to escape Snatcher and possess the toilet, it didn't act like a person: It had been wild and unthinking, as though fueled only by the desire to flee and find its rightful host. Even then, after finding a 'body'—albeit absolutely the wrong one—it wouldn't respond to her and instead constantly lashed out until the outhouse was destroyed and Snatcher took it once again. It had lacked something, and her present consciousness still connected to her body was likely just that.
Moonjumper was definitely his own person. So was Snatcher, even if he could act like a total monster sometimes. So where did the Prince's identity divide between the two of them? She still couldn't figure it out… Hat Kid hoped that whatever else she would see through the Dweller's eyes would give her more than just another, small hint. She had her doubts though: After all, just because he was one of his subjects didn't mean his life had revolved around that.
Hat Kid was sitting in the same tree that she's found the first storybook page in. At last, she climbed back down, her mind no more at ease than before. What piece was she missing? What didn't she understand? She looked around the island a while longer to make sure she didn't miss a second page hidden in the foliage, gathering rift pons all the while, before hunting down the exit to the level.
She didn't know why the exits took the form that they did—a cylindrical hatch with a clock face—but, given how it matched her ship's vault seal, she imagined it had more to do with her people's technology and the hourglasses' makeup than the memories that permeated the rifts. She had gathered more than enough pons to access it and travel to the next level in a blur of energy. This time, the trees had vanished only to be replaced by buildings and walls floating in the air. Some of them were broken and surrounded by hovering rock, in a state of paralyzed destruction.
The cold, blue-greys that surrounded her made it easier for her find things from a distance. The child could already make out the shimmer of two rift pons where she stood. Again, red thread littered the area. With little place to suspend from though, most of the loose strings were strewn along rooftops and walkways. Hat Kid scuffed at one with the tip of her shoe, knocking it a meager, few millimeters away as it clung to the rough texture of the stone.
She had to use her ice hat for a short moment to bound across the massive descent into nothing and over to another rooftop. From there, she continued her search simply by aiming for what was closest first and peering into every secret corner that she could find along the way. She wasn't entirely alone though: Manifestations of dweller crows and raccoons roamed the area. These weren't like the Horizon's visions. They weren't real, but to her, whatever injury they could cause would be. As a visitor to the rift, she was exposed to any of its dangers.
Hat Kid met the first of two crows head on, activating her mask's abilities in time to meet it with a wide swing of her umbrella. It was a direct hit, and the crow was knocked away with a burst as it vanished. The second, however, wasn't caught off-guard so easily. It lunged for her before she could recover, forcing her to swerve out of its way rather than immediately jump into another attack. As pounced again as she found her balance and she stepped back—right under a raccoon.
Startled by her presence, the mammal jolted in surprise and started to fall. Hat Kid dove out of the way, tucking and rolling along the platform then spinning around into a crouch as her feet went flat against its surface. She kicked off like a spring, avoiding the raccoon, but striking the crow with ease. The hit sent it flying off the edge of the platform before it too disappeared.
She saw more of both species further ahead, but almost equally spread out. The numbers were nothing she couldn't handle. Two buildings to her right were close enough together that she was able to scale them easily by jumping from one wall to next. From the higher position, she was able to grab another pon and get an even better look around.
It only took a short while to find the second storybook page, nestled between the corner merlons of an outer wall set not too far from the next exit. Just as before, she took it in her hands and was instantly warped away to a new scene in the distant past.