There was a voice.
Operating parameters: Set.
Then a whirlwind.
Update completed. Data Logs Sixteen-and-a-half: number six hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and seven - Cataloged. Downloading alterations… percentile interrupted. Addressing issue.
Kris clutched their head lightly.
Reinitializing. Error reported. Extracting third-party data caches. Attuning… attuning… attuned. Restarting program, resetting objectives.
They blanked out for a second, there. Staring at the wall.
Unloading devices. Running diagnostics on chassis. Minor damages located, integrity sufficient. Allocating brain power to unwinding memories- method located. Observational inquiry - petals? Transmuting medium to usable method.
They sighed. Weird damn thing.
They glanced at the cigarette butts festooned on the floor of the balcony, wishing for a lighter. To dance the flame near the paper. It was a childish frivolity, right?
Processing…
What a shit show.
Processing…
What next?
Processing…
…
Processing…
Hello? Oh, Angel, it was fucking updating software, wasn't it?
Kris held onto the railing and banked over, staring into the depths with a sigh nearly as deep. With all the ambivalence that protracted the gravity of the situation, they dangled their fingers, the half up to the fingertips, off the railing, crossed, as they breathed.
They took a period to calm their momentarily-unshackled heart; their chest was heavier with the Frozen Fortress, and their sides spoke pain with loud sounds; Kris rubbed at their ribs, the bones oddly bruised, and then they swooped downward, letting themself fall, the floor taking their weight in stride. Kris leaned their forehead against the bars.
What…
What just happened? Was that the Director… somehow in the flesh? A face, or a bulb, to the name? And she spoke of some frightening things, such that Kris found goosebumps persisting on their bluish skin with a sweat slick.
And that was… green. What did green mean? Red was anything strawberry, and that was excessively sweet, tasting of despair and then pain, depending on their arduous efforts. But the color green? They tried to recall what it made them feel, an aching chiseling against their skull.
…
A most gripping horror clung to them as the other remained quiet. Seeing something so unshakable remain silent, despite making noises of fans and whirs, started inside them a flickering flame, and the wind billowed onto the embers like a curtain roll. Kris gazed out over the abyss, spotting shadows, like little school children playing with blocks, in the indelible darkness.
Extrapolating missing data.
Kris needed to know where to go next.
Patching.
Kris needed a guide.
Initializing. Recalling proper prophecy.
Kris sighed. A weight more bulging than the heavy metal and concrete above launched from their shoulders in grace, granting them some relief. The other sounded normal again.
Forward.
Kris felt a leap inside, like a chucked brick at their chest rattling against the cage, flinging them upward and towards the door; their heart burned, imagine a bunsen or an oven flame, looming beneath. In seconds, harsh coughing paused their dash. The computer's engine noises ceased for a moment as it placed to its head dulled claws, the action pulling at their seams unintentionally as it stared lopsidedly at them. Kris broke into a fit of callous breathing that resembled an unusual illness. Their cheeks discolored similarly.
This unit is experiencing problems.
No shit, huh? Captain fucking Obvious and the captain's fucking stupid fucking face.
Who… are you?
Kris clutched themself in laughter. To even make light of the times spent together with strings - one side of the threads rounded around a neck, and the other around merciless talons - struck them as humorous.
But it sounded serious. It hardly ever joked.
It's them. Kris. The puppet, the human. It knew them. It controlled them, so that the strings gripped like iron shackles, and their eyes were covered with cracked bifocals; such that their mind spoke in two voices, one with irreverence and pain, the other with empty hands and a puffed chest; Kris was the puppet; it was the controller, and Kris felt horribly stricken with a chronic malaise of not explaining this shit more, so that the other could reveal its grand plot point of this being a new torture method or some extravagant test to prod at them.
But then it said something that confused them, as well as fanned angry flames like over-eager bellows.
Why would this unit associate with a simple human?
It was spoken to itself; Kris seethed, odd for their temperament towards the beast, and clenched their fists until they grew white.
No. No, no, no, no, it knew. It fucking knew. It wasn't pulling this shit onto them after they saw the Director Interim, not now, not when they were lost, and their body was as vulnerable as their mind.
Where are we?
Kris furrowed their brow, snarling.
Where they always were.
In hell.
They wouldn't fall for this trickery.
Perhaps, they thought, stepping through the door ahead would have shut it down, showed it differently; the cart was still sitting where it was left, spun around to face the way they came. They stepped into the body of the cart and, upon settling themself in and resting a hand on the control lever - which had previously been under their chest and pulsed with their heart - mingled shocked exclaims of cursing with a killing scream as the box lurched forward on the rails. Kris held a shriek for a few seconds, moved by the sudden lurching forward; they didn't do it.
Why are we bound?
Kris felt their heart thundering like shattering vases, but alas, it was merely a trick of their mind. They trembled, a seeping swill of chill permeated from the inside, and their hand eased toward the lever and held it close, slowing their cart down as they calmed the shivering inside.
This unit does not recall the assignment.
Kris passed the uneasy, dark silence with a whirlwind of steam spreading around them, making the air spine around inside their lungs and stab the surfaces. They inhaled deeply; the journey was the same, running the same tread as before, but backward.
…
The other remained silent.
The tracks led deeper, appearing downward through a slope, but Kris felt their blood sink to the back of their heart and the end of their skull; it was the upward curve, now, but illusionary; blue skin burned darker, and Kris pawed their wrist and fidgeted, until it ended; the upward slope began to even out and level.
Kris gasped in awe and survival.
They would never forget the splendor of that place, with such a beauty that it radiated visions of the freedom they sought and stamped the image of itself into their mind.
Droplets flowed down from unseen spires of white. Towers; poking upside-down from a cave ceiling of nothing, dripping water luminescent and similar to gathered stardust. Like clots of the cosmos coagulating from a bright sky of stars sequestered over the railway, twinkling around the shapes of crystals growing down from the heavens, while below - maybe in some form of equilibrium, perhaps they were of the same family - more dark glass spires rose to cross behind or lace the sky-shards. Kris only saw them from between the finicky buttresses shoring the bottom of the railway, slanted upward with spaces to see the darker crystals rise. The frugality of supports for the rails pumped danger and arousal into their chest.
A violet mist that had begun to swallow the individual rail-ties. It tasted rough.
It took a few moments of appreciating what was nature in the most unnatural state for the first thoughts to set in - thoughts that made them redouble the crystals and glance backward to inspect the ridges of the walls surrounding them for differences, since then they could answer what had led them to a sanctum of forlornly glimmering sky. Doubt, it was, filling them conspicuously, and they were led to slaughter searching for the change, since nothing behind them was similar in the first place.
They gnashed their teeth and the peace was gone.
This wasn't the same route.
No.
The usual voice answered with the same authority as ever.
Commandeered. Cyclic understanding implies patterns, variables align to hypothesize abstract configuration. A route presents itself, within physical tense.
Then, this was a route that would be taken later.
If permitted. Until, sit and wait patiently. Something will arrive.
The questions on their tongue died out as the sky began to brighten.
With a sinking heart, they noticed that the ceiling never existed. The pillars were cuts of marble, shards of glass - metal in starlight - placed periodically between rends in the bricked walls of the metro. An illusion, of some sort, then. With a loosening jaw as their eyes rolled skyward, they witnessed slivers of grass-like ropes cut downward and dangle around the free space, interspersed between the crystals. Kris twitched as their eyes flickered around for whatever stole them away from their track.
The nebula above them glowed like nothing else, so beautifully, so entrancingly like a spell was cast, that the silence was mistaken for awe. But as Kris interrogated the other on its findings, they found only bitter silence - the sounds of the wind speaking hymns comforted them more than the logical processes that would have given them information - such that they fidgeted, unable to sit still in their seated cart, clutching the lever like a lifeline.
A million and one terrors fell through them like autumn leaves, but a million plus two beads of sweat distracted them.
A soft fog of a growing headache was pressed and kneaded, like a kitten would do to a thigh, by the wondrous sights ahead. Bright, but Kris could close their eyes, blot it out, and feel the cool breeze waft around them. The blanket felt warm, like someone had placed a scarf around their neck, preferable their hard armor.
It felt nice, the wind and the silence, nostalgia for days on the lake without the birds, perhaps in winter when they would trace mud with a stick.
Of course, Kris being Kris, they knew not to anticipate this solace as truth. Truth was a fleeting thing. There were hard truths, which were the most likely truths, and then truths that would whisper good things, that would grasp a person in an embrace. This was the latter, and it was false.
The growing freak-out of the other's absence was engrossed between apprehension and hope, and both were delivered before the hard truth set in, as another hard truth beat out the softened lie.
Someone began an arrival.
A figure.
The green blades twisted, something flittered from the ceiling of the sky, merely a silhouette of a person; standing tall, with neutral shoulders and a broken expression of a smile- and then it was gone, bathed in a flash of heavenly light that sent an acid boil into Kris's bones, enduring then for a moment before fading as just another simple pain.
Kris' eyes expanded as the hovering basilisk shuddered and dispersed like a thief of their eyes into the luminous darkness. A fraughtness of character fell on them upon seeing this figure fade, and they spoke an exclamation with solidarity in their fervent gasp, the air choked from them.
There, where the figure had so quickly phased between space and the fullness of the world, was an absence of stars.
Kris reached for their star to complete the order of the dew-clear galaxies, and thus spoke to their puppeteer in kind to convince it for its levy on their powers, but alas. Nothing returned to them besides the now-settling discomfort of loneliness.
But another voice received them and entreated them intrepidly, a torpor that sent them languid and loose within joints that cracked from their journey spent.
"Broadcast terminated." A voice sequestered among the celestial center; Kris eyed for it, as if through pines. The voice was smooth, steady, and sturdy. They grasped the edges of their cart, and yet they moved forward, untethered by the lack of a puppeteer. "Kris. Welcome, Kris."
Kris blinked. Rolled their lips beneath their teeth, scowling. "Who are you?"
"You little rat," Kris flinched, unexpecting of the lingo, "you're approaching the Fountain, aren't you! I should have known the candle was gonna fail to steal your eyes from the mystery behind it all! Good thing I calculated this like one-hundred and thirty-two watermelons . I never expected custodial from poaching him. After all, his job was just to stall you. Hold you as long as he could in the toilet and lock you in. Every second of yours he has wasted was because of me. That's right, even your cracks-along-the-seams timelines."
"Who are you? What do you know," Kris spat, "about me? About this?" They didn't know where to glare, as the abyssal ocean above them stared back . When it came time for the cosmos to shed light, they didn't quite gleam. Blackness overtook the edges, closing down onto the zeniths and the troughs, leaving a pupil of heaven to shine through the lidded sclera. Their stomach dropped with an abysmal hollowness, theirs hairs rising, as if being watched from behind.
The voice continued. "You're used to your time being wasted, no sense of rhyme or overtime to be bear witness." Kris scrutinized the area; this was out of nowhere and they couldn't help but think this was planned, for whatever reason. It clearly wasn't the Champion, though.
Though… didn't the Champion hire the poisoner and the candle to handle Kris? And Rouxls, they supposed, was also contracted.
"Speaking of your puppeteer, looks like you're as free as me… for now," the voice was normal, merely conversational, but it cleared its throat as if for a grand speech. "Your master will try to reconnect and it will succeed. It's not science, kid, I'm no scientist, but it will happen. This tunnel was designed to keep that funky little thing away; these crystals are…" Kris heard some muttering. "No! No, I'm not telling you that. Right now, look around; you're alone; no controller, no friends. Nothing."
Not a scientist. If it was to be trusted, that meant it probably wasn't someone from the Asylum. Kris acted. "Let's talk, then. While we have time." Kris wanted to know. Their safety was on the line without their puppeteer and… likely, their powers were inaccessible without it. "Or…"
Kris gulped down their inhibitions; it was the way that they had gone out most frequently in recent times, and would likely provoke at least some reaction from their abductor. Their solemn grimace split into a more natural, hysterical rictus, eyes splayed wide, markings of moisture at the corners tricking on-lookers into finding sympathy and remorse in them. The audience was menacing.
"…or I'm going to get myself out of here." Kris drew their sword at this, pointing it toward themself.
Their empty threat. It didn't do anything.
"Kris, you're approaching the end of the line. The end of your little adventure time. But wait. There's more. It's not cancel culture yet."
Kris' shoulders rose and fell with every breath like a buoy in a storm. They pointed their sword at the sky. "I'll kill you, then." They wanted something to tell them they had a smidgeon of power without their puppeteer. "How about that-"
"I just want to say something. I've been in your gravity before, down on my luck, treated like garbage. I crawled my way upward. I climbed the gazes," the voice was monologuing, and Kris hissed frustration. At themself, at it. Something wasn't clicking. This all seemed… wrong somehow, like the voice wasn't as announced as it should have been, and that the disappearance of the other was something to be wary of. "But you are just young, dumb, and lost. You couldn't find your cake if it was stuck to your face and fresh and fragrant. So many chances, Kris. You could have been free. You could have been flying, soaring like an angel of death, your hands feeling the hot plate."
It was starting to grow something inside of them besides the uncertainty. "…what do you know about suffering, you fucking invisible cocksucker-"
"It's your fault." Kris felt blood drain from their cheeks. "You had all the gambling in the world."
Their hair billowed behind them, spotlighting tense eyes and a coyote's hungry snarl.
"All the chances to win the prizes. All the chances to spin the wheel." The voice enunciated and smothered the lavish darkness with disgust. "It's gonna want to know the details. Answer. The questions. To the height of your education."
Kris grabbed the lever and slammed it forward; they would at least see the person again before they gave up the last bit of their track.
"Numbers are like the drug war to it. Curiosity has no firewall." The voice chattered on. "Gonna let an old-school desktop get you down bad, Kris? No. No way. I won't let you."
Was it trying to help them? Did it expect them to believe it was trying to help them? Was this actually the Champion trying to gaslight them? Kris shook away all the thoughts easily as the whirlwind sliced at their skin in shurikens of air.
"I'm gonna be the one to give aid - I Promise. But first, you need to run errands for everyone." The voice hummed laughter. "You already found one of those shiny, sparkling-new kisses. Just found three more and we can finally… can finally… become." The voice preached like a chapel as the cart accelerated to maximum speed, groaning, which Kris promptly matched and outclassed with an abhorrent shout. "What we were always supposed to be."
The voice concluded as Kris banged their sword against the cart walls.
The cart was full-throttle, and the remaining track closed to an end as it swung around a bend back into the normal chambers.
Kris all but collapsed when the cart turned into the upper floor, slowing automatically to a stop. They stumbled from the side, slipping, falling harshly onto their flank so that a painful surge stabbed against their scorched insides. Their head swam; the nauseating vertigo from the deceleration barely surmounted the oddly settling sense of detachment. Comparatively, this… was nothing. Kris had worse during punishment, even if they outlouded their pain.
They had to organize themself, though.
It was too fast-paced, they needed a moment of rest.
The voice had given them some much needed information. It had called those green save points, 'kisses.' Mentioned that they needed three more, which they committed to memory as they flopped down and grappled with their chest, which was rising fast and falling faster, thoroughly creating a cold mist of breath and consternation, and led them onward to their next point, which was the very thing they had taken the tracks to process in the first place.
The Director Interim. She was a lamp, apparently, they thought, but… they recalled a brass lamp on the desk of the office… right? They shook their head dismissively before parting their mouth and tilting upward; what was more important was the information that she provided. They supposed, if the other wasn't gonna continue its schtick of pretending, they could start compiling and sifting through the details on the elevator ride upward. Kris started in that direction- part of them wanted to hurry, to find their friends and help them, but that part disintegrated as they paused, but then resumed at a quieter pace. The being inside shifted with a garlicky shuffle.
Kris would begin. The Director had said a code, and they struggled to reproduce the words but… it was something, then eight for the Fountain… four for hell, four for hope.
The code was eight-eight-four-four. Eight for the D-i-r-e-c-t-o-r.
So, it did see that.
A misnomer. The operator titivated substantive facsimiles with assiduous strain. In short, it doctored the memories back to adequate validity.
And what about what had just happened-
There is a gap.
Kris sighed heavily.
Yes. God, for once, they wished they could keep secrets from the beast, not that they trusted the vague voice, but instead that it was their freedom to do so at leisure.
A void capsule. Between two anchors, hardware falters, windows met with askance. The vessel will leak memoirs to the operator for peak efficiency.
Kris halted at the door.
A dry mouth was all that awaited them as they reached for the knob. Anxiety filled them, a squirming sound burrowed under their sternum; Kris dimly recognized their efforts to avoid it were inadequate. Just like they had learned they were; inadequate and reliant on other things.
"Ah… fuck," Kris wanted to say much more. Well, first of all, where did it leave off?
At the crux. Explain from there.
Alright. They boarded the train headed for Amsterdam at precisely four o'clock in the afternoon-
Do not sass the operator.
…Yeah. Kris found distaste for it also. The tone wasn't the typical indignant banter; they both had questions, and Kris definitely had fears.
Assuage them. Explain.
Okay. Okay, so. If Kris was going to start anywhere, it was at the beginning. The cart had stolen them. They begrudgingly gave it a brief notice of how the story continued on into the tunnel, with a queer note in their mind about reality - the reality that they were supposed to be answering the questions of the other.
Kris wondered what was happening.
True to their words of starting at the beginning; what was the green? Green, red? Kris detested the idea that there was something akin to their abilities but there - considering the fact the Viceroy was fucking around with something, and even more so that there was an angel - had to be something. Something boxing them in. Someone attempting to entrap them. But they didn't believe it was the Director. That seemed… more like some sort of illusion that spawned when they touched the green star, like someone was trying to replicate a scenario with Kris at the wheel. Or was the Director actually there? Kris remembered the depths of difference between when they were seeing through her eyes versus their own.
The operator is sorting through caches.
And the Director herself. A lamp. Kris almost facepalmed as they approached the rickety elevator's iron lace curtain. 'Lampitope.' That was the name that was on the note in the diner; Lampitope, Lampie. Introspectively, Kris didn't remember what image they had of the Director; some type of mysterious administrative-type behind some desk in a control room at the top of the tower looking over the Fountain, yes; they recollected that Detter, as well as Rnd, had spoken of her, as the person who had trusted the Viceroy with the initial code to the Astrowall.
A person like that was either stupid or so vastly smarter than Kris realized - but, glancing around, neither did her any good.
The verdant.
The other spoke as Kris clicked the button to ascend.
The operator identified an adjacent operating system. Mettlesome. No imprimatur reprinted. Locks upon locks prevent the operator from further introspection. There exists physical barriers between intrusion and receiver. This system speaks through stars, similar to what the operator possesses. Like simulacrums. An absence of activity indicates an absence of users. Entry portal fractious, cynosure hypothesized overt. The entrance to this sister system should be obvious to see. Abstract portal disturbed the operator's equanimity; further results should be done on vessel. It is consanguineous with vessel, flesh to flesh. The power to continue the experiment - this system follows the exact lineage, yet mismated. It is incorrect, but cleverly designed.
So, it was close to their save points somehow. Which led into the next thing.
The elevator rattled something shrill.
'Kisses.'
The voice was odd, if nothing else.
The operator is suspicious of the verbiage.
Any ideas?
No. More knowledge required. Three. We must locate three. Significant figures. Significant places. Travel above; seek placements of purpose, gatherings of emotions.
…like something here was important and that alone was, combined with the existence of the green star within this space, and of the supposed importance of the information shared, evidence enough, at least for the other. Evidence that they would find the rest elsewhere; Kris guessed one for each floor, which meant that they already found one here; on the second floor, they promised themself to keep their eyes peeled and heart beating for a place to bathe them with curiosity; at the top, likely, was another one; and perhaps further down, there was one, near the Fountain, but they had to get there first.
God, this was such a detour. Kris decided that they needed to focus up as they exited the elevator, gazing back at the Fountain, large and blossoming in the distance and… did it grow larger or was that their imagination? The handle of their Rapier bore the brunt of a steady, massive force of effort as they clenched their hand momentarily, making rings around the handle in a vast slew of feelings - those that hovered a cloud over them like the Sword of Damocles, ready to fall at any moment and wash them away in the coastal tide, but they already felt out at sea with the growing turmoils. Kris couldn't cope. They just… had to ignore it. Move on. Focus on one thing at a time and keep their staggering, tired movements coming. Just had to put one foot in front of the other. One foot. One foot. In front of the other. The other.
Kris hated this.
Hated relying. To rely on the blasted thing rang as vacuously as Kris was. One could say they were a shell, since the other was their heartbeat at the moment. It hated them; they knew it, it hadn't admitted it, but it did, and Kris imagined it was the emotions they were feeling - were capable of feeling - that exacerbated the vitriol it regarded them with. It could have been jealous, longing to have what it never could have, but it crossed that line so long ago Kris had forgotten when.
Kris didn't want them either. The feelings. Kris would love to be empty. To forget about everything. But they couldn't do that with a right conscience, and that alone meant they were harming themself just by complying.
Compliance.
The village did not open up for them, in the nonsensical idea of inanimate things opening up for people, and Kris hummed what was supposed to come out as a salted laugh. They ended up coughing and gorging on air simultaneously.
The two wound their way back through the streets, passing along the shabby cottages without so much as a thought.
Finding these 'kisses' - they longed for a better name but poor teenagers cannot be choosy teenagers - was sure to distract from stopping the Roaring. They couldn't…
Kris stopped dead.
Green.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
It luminesced, placed just in the center of a doorway leading into what appeared to have been a birthday parlor in the past. Kris tingled; shuddered recalling memories of their past, nestled in the crook of their family as they all sang. What bittersweet embarrassment this Kris felt for that happy one back there.
Touch it.
Kris felt presently reassured by the other's resolve, and slowly reached out their hand; the star pooled with power beneath the precipice of the storefront, and Kris restrained a shiver as chill wormed upward like dipping water, passing into their bones, growing toward their shoulder, eclipsing even that until their torso was cold and quivering, and only then did they touch the star. Hesitance laden within their gripping hands, Kris thrived; subsisting merely on no will to counteract their remnant curiosity and the orders of their master.
Their lips felt blue underneath their hands.
There was a mute flash.
"My friend." 'Kris' spoke. Newly polished armor solidified under the length of their limbs. Symbols hewn into their cape dragged along the floor to the chorus of a piano. Inches became feet, became height, and down their vision drew. They approached the window and gazed inside.
The Director laid her gigantic palm on the glass for only a passing thought, nothing tugging at her heartstrings at the moment, the piano soft and lilted.
"I… she is beckoned today. She is chosen. She… the, the Knight…" The Director had trouble finishing her sentence. "She is chosen as the leader. Plight is her power. Through this - and be she sorry - she is unable to come. She is beckoned to be the ruler of the true kingdom. An angel calls her to the Bastion, and she must pass the test, and she… I'm so sorry." Her computerized voice squeaked and moved fruitily.
Inside was a sight. A happy one. A birthday party for a familiar skeleton model. His face was alight, just like the candles, and his friends around him were clamoring as they waited; though it was his day, he stayed and waited, twisting a watch that didn't quite fit on his wrist with neurotic humor; but she couldn't force herself inside. She didn't even have an excuse ready. Her plan was just to… ignore him. Him. Felin. Ocvory. The other doctors; those she rarely spoke to, or those who never crossed her path.
She let her lightbulbous head rest against the glass, her digital fire sputtering yet ever-flickering. She could not join the merriment. Nor could those with eyes see her motions as she lamented that fact, to which she felt supreme euphoria that she would not be noticed. It was the only solace she had in this respect. Invisibility, the great disguise of regret and woe, given to her as her position dictated.
Footsteps. She stayed very still to persist the illusion. In the corner of her visor, she could see a doctor approaching, late to the party, with scrubs that fit loosely around the white leather shoes the doctor wore.
Lampitope egged them on mentally, hopeful; leave, leave her be and let the illusion persist, let her forget her troubles for the terse moment it would take to turn and sigh, and leave. Her heart sank as the doctor stopped dead just before the glass.
She slowly turned to meet the other darkner.
"Director." Doctor Scrubs greeted. Lampitope produced a flummoxed, frustrated noise.
"I had believed I was invisible to the naked eye." The Director quickly observed herself and yanked away from the window, letting her hand quake beneath the shadow of her cloak. Detter merely tilted her book and expanded into the article of her humor, a chalked-grin smirk that told the Director enough. "Of course."
"The only 'eye' I have is the letter." Her perforated yellow pages withheld an unreadable little smile.
"Of course." The Director repeated, "Of course."
Detter panned toward the sleek, segmented windows and considered some things.
The Director sighed and let her head droop. "I am preoccupied with another engagement. I did not want to enter, simply to get his hopes up," she explained, but really it was a bold-faced lie. Hard to tell given the fact that neither really had faces.
"…I see." Detter crossed her arms behind her back. Her hands floated in the air and made listless motions. An orchestra.
"It is much better this way. If he knows that I left him willfully on an important day, he may resent that fact, and hold it close to his heart at night. I do not want that."
"I have a feeling you are coming to a point soon."
"Ever the genius, Doctor Scrubs." The Director complimented the book on her ways of reading people. Lampitope believed herself a good people-person but Detter always did manage to see through her. It was purely the book's ambivalence towards anything other than herself that allowed the Director Interim to progress her mission.
"You want me to tell him you were busy with an emergency."
Lampitope had a miniscule reaction: She jerked slightly. Detter cracked a smile. "Yes. Yes, I would appreciate your assistance. Thank you, Doctor Scrubs."
Detter was in her scrubs. Usually, the aspirant doctor wore casual, comfortable, stretchy clothes, such that the Director assumed there was something physical about her form that necessitated those articles of comfort, but for special occasions the doctor could be witnessed in all her glory with her wearing her actual uniform to work or social events.
Lampitope supposed they were the opposites. The Director wore her stars wherever she went and only relaxed on special occasions.
"Is something the matter!" Detter decreed her astuteness with enthusiasm, gripped with curiosity. "You seem bothered by something great."
Lampitope squeezed out an exhale, "There is something."
"Well." Detter finally arrived past the glass. At the sight of her, some of the doctors inside cheered and threw their coattails up in hyped mania. She raised a hand and lowered it; calm down, calm down, she wanted a second outside. They still screamed at each other. Her picture flipped to a comical face, eyes closed in relaxation. "Just remember that we are your draw sheet. You can, indeed, make your bed, but I do so hope you remember that the world is not squarely on your shoulders, for when you slip and fall."
The Director clenched her hands beneath her cape. The doctor somehow understood what the Director was going to do.
But the book's smile was smaller, and filled with an odd sense of loving admiration. "I have my own ambitions. I do not wish to interrupt yours. But…" She waved to Rnd. The skeleton looked away, bashful that someone he held in slight distaste was still coming to his party. "…we need you, too. You make them feel safe, and give them direction," she turned and began to leave, dragging a floating hand across the Director's shoulders, "so I think whoever it is distracting you can wait."
Doctor Scrubs entered the building as the Director's visor dwindled.
Kris peeled their bare hand from the window. They pulled their sword instantly. The dropping of their gauntlet barely alerted the knightly Darkner.
She placed her hand on the window again.
"There is sadness in her at this." Her voice echoed. "It drew her inside and kept her there. Her nerves, inflammed. Every second stirred emotions of anticipation and unease."
"What is this?" Kris questioned. The book didn't seem very uneasy, so the Director must have been referring to herself in the third-person.
"This… is only a memory," the Director gestured tiredly. "A resonance, through which you have entered her dream. She created this system to mimic what she believed was yours; yet, know, she did not. Through my subtle guidance and steadied hand her faith shone through the darkness, and now, you are here, with her… in this dream. She expresses her displeasure at this information; past disappointment at other things reverberates in her heart and head. Be it your turn to express your feelings and frustrations, she may listen well to you as a healer, but a rival through and through."
Kris distracted themself by staring inward. The parlor was frozen in time, the candles flickering. Rnd beamed and parted his teeth; Ocvory touched his shoulders; Detter sat with her body slumped over the other end of the table, hands soulless and spilled as she exaggerated a grin. Anything to avoid addressing the Director.
"Who is 'she'?"
The Director placed her other hand on the window as her only response to that question. Then, the walls melted, and the Director turned to watercolor, the world sloughing and warping. The star in their hand faded, green into the black of the city.
Kris's hand traced from green to pale white, the cool star saving their progress without their consent; the other whirred in recognition.
That fucking malevolent computer shit stain-
The mystery deepens.
So… it was… smarter, or perhaps reaching harder, than they were since half of what the Director said made no goddamn sense.
But soon enough, someone would shed some light on the situation.
0-0-0
"Light! Ner!" Oligo greeted Kris.
They raised their sword quickly.
The Darkner merely cocked his feathery hands, pulsating after a second of stillness; Kris almost believed they saw something creeping along above in the rafters, but the other did not confirm it, nor did they see the shadows shift again.
"You're a shopkeeper." Voice taut, Kris announced their intuition's first words. Why else would this Darkner be strung up in this room and totally unafraid of their blade?
"I guess I dabble." Celloid creature that he was, the Darkner gelled his membrane and twisted.
"Okay." Kris blinked at his stretching tendons and ligaments rising up toward some rafter. "What do you sell?"
"Bits and bobs." He nodded. The motion made their stomach swirl. "Hmm. I like that armor you're wearing. Something tells me you're someone not to be trifled with, at least with that sword of yours and those spikes."
Kris supposed it was true.
Appearances of vessel conclude different perceptions of it.
Kris sowed more strength into their muscles to hold their sword tightly. With one hand, they reached for their money-rolls and held one up with forced confidence. The Darkner banked backward and made an appealed noise.
"That would get you a lot of things. So," the shopkeeper posited structures similar to palms toward the shelf below, ever-so-calmly drumming up something for them to gander at, "and it's nicely rolled. Solid. I really appreciate that in someone. Heh. It's like you're not a hallucination or something."
Kris blinked. So, that's the game they were gonna play for this one, huh?
Follow.
How to start. "I think the weather's fine out today." Kris patched their words, hitting him with forthwith deception. "Say, what is your name- I'm Kris. What fine weather."
The other controlled the finer aspects of their face and posture to stay exactly, one-for-one, costumed with the same disguise as when they started talking to the Darkner. They could tell; the shopkeeper askew as he stalled with a chuckle and thumbed around a bottle of liquor.
Liquor. Sweet Angel. Of course.
"Oligo. Short for Oligodendrocyte." Genially, he interjected a shot glass and unscrewed a fine brown cap from a fantastical, boring bottle. Basically dangled it in front of them. "You just passing through?"
"I need to go find the Director."
"Well, a shame for you. She's been dead," Oligo shook his… everything. Acted like he was familiar with emoting. "Dead as hell. Heh. It's what she gets for not drinking my alcohol. Has all sorts of benefits; got some that increases your damage," he gestured to the bottle on the table, "for a few minutes; or, some that increases your defense, if you would like that instead?"
He splattered a glass of sparkling, verdant purple into the quartz cup. It teemed at the brim of the glass.
Tension traveled over his… 'wings,' and sent him spasming upward, sloshing some of the liquor clear from the bottom of the bottle. Archaic, the stench of alcohol, cloying, and sickeningly bitter in their nose.
"How much can I get with this?" As soon as they jutted it forward, the shopkeeper stole it from their hands; unrolled it, 'shrugged' - a motion that reminded them of the occult 3D animations floating around the internet of spheres oscillating - and began rumbling with 'hueh' noises as he rifled through the ears of the bills. He didn't need to flay them, merely cambering over the clip. Perhaps, he could see the numbers better at that angle.
"Where'd you get all this cash?" Oligo barked with apparent humor. "Robbed some corpses or something?"
Kris blanched. It wasn't quite wrong. "Scavenged."
"'Scavenged' some corpses. There's the phrasing." He recoiled his body and laid the money down to rest. "Well. This is enough for…" Twines of flesh counted reedy fingertips. "Two shots."
"Only two?" Kris tongued their cheek.
"I'm much more than a survivor." Oligo commented cryptically.
Something moved in the dark.
Dodge.
Kris was glad they had their sword up.
There was a howling screech of something in retching agony; enough to almost petrify Kris and mold their soles with the ground beneath, had the other not given them forewarning. The computer inside forced their hand unerring, ripping the muscles in their arm to strengthen the little bones into a mess of strained tissues. But it held as another Darkner was flung from the rafters, disemboweled on the tip of their sword and hurtling juices all over the floor of the birthday-parlor-turned-bar.
They remembered the old days of playing with garden critters, holding centipedes and ladybugs within their curious grasps. Heads of green and bellies of red, cool and warm. They relished the crawling, the legs skittering on them - they were no spider.
But now? Those images overlayed heads of disheveled, trammelled roots. Glistening with green fluid, wetting flanks of peeled yellow-gray, the substance overwhelming he being's unseen skeleton scraped, tearing under their sword's unfailing point. Hundreds of legs thrashed, a broom of cells delimiting a mesh-weave of Oligo's figure that had spread over the floor.
Periwinkle overran the segmented structure of incisions on the creatures, where one large gap split one of the segments in half. Circuitry, sparks crackling between the two halves periodically, lashing dendrites upon the head vacuuming, shredding some table coverings; Kris stepped backward, weakened ankles; but then they inhaled.
A deep laughter filled the room as Oligo rapelled himself high into the safety of the rafters.
Neuron. The operator identified landmark structures.
The Darkner flailed. It rose with a blank growl. When it found them again, it rushed. A chain wrapped around the neck of the monster caught, blowing the neuron's velocity with opposite force until the lowdown torso slammed to the floor and the top interwove upward into the chain.
Past the single one gunning for their neck, they saw two others silhouetted with their own nooses flopping from the rafters. An electrical impulse activated them, and Oligo's form remained barely visible with the light produced.
The experiment continues.
Kris felt their sword point to their neck.
0-0-0
"Light! Ner!" Oligo greeted as Kris stepped into the shop. They kept their sword sheathed but tensed their arm, a small motion that did not go unnoticed by the shopkeeper. "Oh, no need for that noise! There's nothing to worry about here."
Kris drew their gaze upward to the shadows. Only imagination served them to visualize the neuron-like Darkners lynched above.
Confidence.
Kris gathered themself before approaching the counter with a swagger many would attest as unbefitting, with a side-to-side motion. They gently placed themself over the counter; popped their lips and gave Oligo a bored expression.
"Hello there." Kris waved. A smile seemed to form on their mouth as earth-wiltingly slow as maturing stalactites.
Oligo paused for a second. "Could I interest you in some wares?"
"Sure." Kris clapped the counter lazily. "What's on the menu, shopkeep?"
Oligo admired them oddly. "Hmm." Kris felt their skin prickle. "Okay. Sure. Don't mind alcohol, do you, kid? It's pretty much all I got."
Overshare. Deal in lies.
"No, no, not at all, no problems here. My brother used to sneak me vodka shots when my parents went out late at night. Ah, I miss him and the vodka. Lemon vodka. Burned real good; doesn't even matter what bad things it does when it tastes so good. Drum up a little - I have cash."
Oligo seemed pleased, oddly enough.
Could Kris get drunk?
Yes.
Surely, like how the other was feeding them, it was a conscious decision on the computer's part.
Yes.
The Darkner dipped below the counter. "Good to hear, Lightner. Say, you're a human, right? Only know that because you," Kris subtly reached for their sword, "look like the Champion." Before even feeling the cold metal, they jerked away. "Had that same cloth thing you have. It had a spear instead of that rapier, though, but I still would have guessed you were related if you didn't have that blue skin. Blue… and gray. Guess they are… pretty similar."
He rose with two bottles in his hands. Kris dimly noted the time he took to retrieve them stretched on longer than it should have.
"So, Lightner. Enjoying your time in the Asylum?"
"Not quite." They admitted. He poured out a glass for them. "This isn't the first Dark World I've been in. Stopping the Roaring used to almost be… 'fun,' but I haven't felt much fun since we entered this shitty hole, no offense."
Oligo shook his head. "'We'?"
Kris continued; weren't gonna let themselves get cornered. "Me and the voice inside my head." Said so fast, the other collapsed into spontaneous brain aneurysms. Kris chuckled.
"I can tell you've been fighting. Saw you almost reach for your sword when you walked in."
"Well, I would have called you handsome when I saddled up to your counter if you weren't twice as ugly as sin."
Oligo surprised them with laughter. "Haha, okay, fair point."
They reached for the glass at that. "Forgive me for reacting like that, my nerves have been shot with everyone and their mother against me. Cheers for a moment of respite, yeah?"
"Cheers." Oligo replied with his own glass raised.
Kris took a hearty swig. "Anyway, now that all the banter is out of the way, why did you kill me last time?"
Oligo glanced at the bottle on the table. "Huh. Could have sworn I didn't give you the psychedelics."
Kris made a sound of hissing laughter. "Welp, worth a shot."
The pun was almost enough to make the next part seem goofy. Glass shattered against the wood of the counter as Kris loosed their Hypothermic Rapier, brandishing it with the confidence from earlier at Oligo as he reacted, would have been dead if Kris wasn't curious. They kept it screwed at his core while they hoisted and slid over his counter, sitting placidly.
"Gave me quite a fright last time, you know. With your friends up there." They pointed toward the rafters.
"What in the hell are you talking about?"
"Oh, yeah," Kris flapped their hand. "Don't worry about that right now, ugly. I just want to know why a shopkeeper would want me dead."
"You… you're literally threatening me right now."
"Heck, last time, I held my sword out the entire time, and you still didn't strike instantly. I have a feeling," Kris tapped him with their mostly-blunted weapon, "that, you, wanted, something."
Oligo replied, "You're crazy-"
Kris responded by creeping closer. "No. I'm scared." They wondered what expression he would wear if he had a more traditional face. One of realization? One of confusion?
The answer was adamant disbelief. "You're a killer. They were right. I just figured there was something bad up in your head but you… you seem unbothered by this all."
Kris realized they were still smiling.
'They'? Kris found a sniveling upper lip where there should have been a steady one. It clearly meant their friends had come through here. And as they came, they told Oligo, like Kris expected from the very moment they held their pistol to their head, and even before that when Kris saw the pained faces of their friends, that Kris was a bad, weak person. Somehow, the aching of their muscles directly drove their sword's point forward, resting flush with Oligo as they clenched their hands onto the counter. They had bliss, for one minute. One fucking speck of time, they had forgotten that everyone hated them. The thought was enough to make them retract their sword. But then, the next second, ideas came into their head. The angel, the one that the other pointed out, was responsible for all of this, and then their anger returned.
They readied to jump out and strike.
The Champion.
Strings wrapped around them like a straitjacket.
The Champion. Assuming mortal form, it lied and slandered. Restart.
0-0-0
Continue. He seeks retribution for comedic irony; cozenage, dupery, fabrications. All perpetuated by duplicitous agent of order; the angel, the Champion.
Kris slammed their shoes as they walked, momentarily realizing how that appeared to the shopkeeper, pretending to knock grime from their soles. They held onto the wall. Their heels clicked against the doorframe. Fresh scents dwindled, conquered by the infernos of hell brought forth by a raging sorcerer of falling emotions, now that Kris had a moment to anchor themself to the ground like a bundle of stakes and let the emotions settle. The silence rivaled even the long, dull seconds of awakening at night when the television only laced dim light from the screen. Now that they had time to process, Kris had time to notice. The smell, that is - rank, and gamey, sour as any manner of abandoned pot roast. Adipose covered all open surfaces, knitting into an intricate webbing that spanned from the foot of the window until it siphoned around the bar counter in the cleanest half-circle nature could muster.
They groaned, lowly. If the other was right, and it had a knack of being correct, then their friends likely passed by the unassuming shop on the way to the next section of the spacious, swanky, noble sanctuary.
Icicles upon pauldrons rose and landed in smooth, oblong trajectories.
"Light! Ner!" Oligo greeted again. His voice was exactly the same.
They started forward at a slow pace, squeezing their knees against the counter and fanning their coattails around the surviving, dingy stool. They immediately slumped on the counter, an action that was neither embellished nor purposefully downplayed.
Wood never felt so comfortable against their chilled cheek, but their heavy hair gave additional padding. Piercing just beneath the threshold of their skin, wood; splinters. Kris just flopped their head the other way.
"Why the long face, kid?" His question hung in the air. A question that would no doubt bring about an explanation, the length of which would inevitably cause the Roaring, provided it was even stamped and approved by their robotic overlord in the first place. It was uplifting to imagine it as a cartoonish villain.
"Can we just… sit here, for a second?" Putting on a show hurt them. It was the easy route and their body longed to follow it. "I'm just…" Oddly, their chords clamped. Couldn't force themself to speak more; either to lie, or to tell the deeper truths inside.
"Well. I getcha there. How about some juice, or something, kid?" Kris blinked. Juice? The barkeep was offering them juice? Like they were a six-year-old or something? "You okay with grape?"
Kris hated grape.
"Yeah."
They loathed silence more.
"So, what brings you to this… wasteland?"
Kris rose. Hair spindled around their shoulders and the counter. "…you ever heard of the Roaring?" It was the typical train of speech. "It's the end-times. The hellflames, the earth cracking, the whole song and dance. Damn. I was pretty much…"
Invisible strings coiled.
"…I was pretty much forced into a prophecy to be the ones to stop it from happening. Had some friends, too, but…" Genuine dismay, with a rueful quality furthermore featured within the lamenting and abased funk their voice carried.
"Well, what happened with them, if you don't mind ranting to this old nobody?"
A cup of grape juice was placed before them. "Could say we fell out. I just…" They pressed a hand to their head. The lies had to come now. "…I was there, and then it was like I wasn't, and I just saw everything, and then I woke up in that church, and everyone was just screaming, and all the… all the images, and, and I…" Kris felt their face morphing into something they really didn't want to touch right now. They just had to… remove it all. Cut it away. All the rage and anger, all the horror, all the hatred. Kris was just a thing, plagued by things. Such was the nature of the universe.
Oligo stared at them.
They pushed the juice away and folded their arms, cradling their head against the counter.
"I don't… I don't know what to do… and now I'm alone." Kris mewled. "And I can't stop moving forward anyway. If I do… everyone dies."
A few minutes of nothing, filled with nothing, starkly absent, passed like a haze.
Oligo processed what they were saying, and Kris felt some measure of relief that they threw him plenty off-kilter that he didn't reach for their death, instead likening to them an embrace of silence, in lieu of awkward touches. Their heart panged softly with it, a respect for what they craved and what was shirked, ringing truly valued within. His mere presence was a threat to them, but is that not what everything was to Kris? They preferred a shell of solitude; solitude, but not loneliness. Their friends helped much for their mood, but having those they loved around made things so much more worse. Every crime they were ordered to commit, double troubling. Every moment they reserved themself from a world they were forced to trample on, disturbing to those who loved them. Every failed route, hurtful as nails pressed against their skin every day. Kris hated having friends.
But they never hated the friends. They couldn't even dare say that.
Everyone was so much better than Kris; stronger, choosing their own wills; kinder, helping others, choosing to spare; more driven, to complete the goals required; smarter, seeking answers.
"You've seen roughness." Oligo commented dryly. "Haven't you, kid?"
"I'm not a kid." It wasn't an immature rebuttal. Merely an observation. There was no innocence or ignorance left to spurn.
"My mistake." Oligo's voice seemed slightly amused, behind what they could only describe as the verbal reaction to witnessing what Kris's therapy sessions would look like, if they believed there would be any benefit.
"No. It's not." They traced an oddly familiar groove embedded into the counter.
"I can't say that life gets better, Lightner. It would be an insult to me and you." He poured his own glass. "Life holds you down. Suffocates you. Chokes you until you can't breathe then fills your lungs until you wish you actually couldn't breathe, and that gas, it's always a stray hope. You seem beat-up, Lightner, so I guess you've been around the block some in your years yourself."
"I guess." Kris huffed and gestured boldly. A river, calm and trawling, suddenly stricken by harsh wind. "I always wonder who designed all this? Who sat down, up there in heaven, with her fucking feathery ass planted onto some geometrical, psychedelic throne and decided that all of this - every fucking bone broken, every fucking time something goes wrong, all of it- who decided it was supposed to be bad? God. No, like, literally," they shrugged, letting their palms drop on the counter, a derisive grin on their face, "pfft… it was God."
The Darkner dripped with unbidden dredgery. But it wasn't aimed at Kris. "You don't know how right you are." He gazed at the ceiling. Kris could almost imagine the Astrowall's artificial ceiling, corked on top as a canvas of stars. "The Director Interim's obsession with a savior is the reason why all these Darkners in here are mottled up. You happen to see any on your way? No? Well, when you get whipped across the face from a couple yards away by a wage slave, remember that science and faith rarely go together, but when they do then things happen fast."
Science and faith. Reminded them of the other, but they supposed it was taking all faith as science, so it wasn't quite the same. Now, what exactly did this Director do? Kris partly recalled conversation about faith: 'Angering the gods.'
The Director Interim maintains ties to the Angel. The shopkeeper provides confounding variables for consideration. Faith ineluctable. Fortune favors those chosen. She was not chosen.
She prayed; but never did those starlight messages enter the world of gleaming.
A fool.
No god waited above. None that truly encapsulated faithfulness. Artificial stars made to embolden spirits. Artificial darkness remaining to remind of futility.
He told them about the Director's death before. An experiment ended, now he told them of her life. Kris used to attribute their survival to their heartbeat's strong, pounding, staccato drumline; their lungs coughing down air, their throat the rounded serpent tuba; electricity like coils inside their head. But it was the stars that made them live on.
Always glimmering. Just there - beneath the misted veil that no fogginess could challenge - beneath the dirt, mud, and fossils - shining.
The world was a canvas to watch.
It looked like a Baroque painting. Sheens bursting with color, absent, while somber tones underwound savory impasto strokes. Every line was obvious. The Angel embursed excellence into every single stitching. Contours of apathy formed squiggles around the lines, just when they should be straightened and perfect. An ever-living, all-powerful deity… had made it wrong.
Kris knew the formula forged for creation hadn't failed, just as their grape juice tasted like the commercial parody of grape. But the knowledge didn't make it go down any easier. The burden of realization riveted into their cup.
The creator knew what they were doing. Making this, making Kris. Making it all wrong.
She just didn't care.
She would not care for lessers.
It sounds like it is speaking from experience. The Angel was one of those that claimed to be 'gods' but weren't, right?
She is a god.
Kris supposed they should care more that it admitted it so casually.
Begrudgingly. Only chaos reigns. It is an Inevitable.
Gods. How benevolent they must be to leave only a few fingers unbroken.
Not a single claimer is benevolent. Neither the Angel nor the other aspects.
Other gods. Aspects. Kris huffed. But it said that the Angel was a god.
She claims herself the successor to the creator. Her deftness as a creator is lackluster.
So, she was just incompetent, then? Not belligerent.
The Angel is belligerent. The pain she sows is purposeful. It is the expanse of her desired goals.
And it knew all of this, how?
The operator has greeted the Angel. That is how it became disillusioned.
Firsthand experience. Aspects… claimers… others who wish to be gods.
Claimers. The Angel serves them. Though she is more powerful, she hosts them in this universe which she has inherited. They are no deities. Merely guests.
Kris's eyebrows grew taut, almost snapping.
…they didn't like any of this anymore. Kris just… wanted to go home.
The operator will not stop progress forward.
They rubbed their temples.
And so began Kris's departure from the shop. Consumed inside their head, talking with their puppeteer over the political status of the creator, they almost didn't notice Oligo extending to them spare items. Tins of biscuits - two of them - flavored with lemon, a pouch of grape juice that Kris was sure to trash strictly because of limited space, a bottle of each type of alcohol paired with a promise that Kris wouldn't waste them, and most importantly… a single bar of chocolate.
It was a kind gesture. Oligo mentioned that he didn't have much need for food anymore.
The wrapper crinkled. Kris stared down at it, behooved to admire it. Plush chocolate bent under their touch, under the wedding veil.
Kris once had a habit of dallying in the heat, popping the spinning wheels meant to catch wind as they paced along roads that lacked faces. Their hair would swing as they looked to the corona of the Hometown sun, careful not to burn their eyes.
Now, there remained only dust. Only dark. But the candy was still melted. Their hair was stiff, greasy, and mostly enveloped their eyes as they clenched their face.
Meet the faces with ignorance, meet them with ignorance, with ignorance. But the candy was still melted. Wearing now a neutral expression - one that was drained of their nerves and woe, but still lacked worry and vigor - Kris held it gently, their metal palms as fluffy as feathered pillows, their grip, which was otherwise always rather tense, for reasons heretofore obvious with their violent escapades of late, was loose, and careful.
They caught wafts of plastic. Familiar scents of home. Nothing specific. A cherished feeling, however, and it drove their insides to the extremist equivalent of 'up the wall.'
Total… nothingness.
Were they supposed to be happy?
It was something they loved, or used to love. Something as sweet as their childhood. An icon of that positivity and innocence, delivered freely by someone who sympathized with them. And yet, Kris could not tell. To feel happy felt utterly miserable to imagine; when their worst nightmare rented out the duplex above theirs in the ol' chromedome. But to willingly be sad was against their better nature. Kris let their hands drop to their belly, thumbing the laughably sharp edge of the wrapper. An unhappy human - all they talked about was their lost justice. Worry, worry, worry. No wonder they never met happiness. Had they avoided it? Did they let fear and rage into their home, years ago, and never removed their overstayed guest? They supposed, if there was some way to politely remove a guest, they should look for it. And if that meant… allowing themself something, then they supposed they should do it.
They supposed they didn't have to climb the hill in an upward battle.
Savor.
The other's voice warbled with relief.
The operator is logical. It does not wish to torture.
Kris… spared it the benefit of the doubt. Of course, said benefit was clustered by opaque promises of consequences from previous actions, punishment, and otherwise unwholesomeness. Hard to eat the candy when they had to imagine themself as the smooth, cold chocolate inside the other's dream mouth later.
Oligo mumbled - and they took it as strange from the otherwise lilting tone, where the words would jump and reach toward the skies - about getting on, moseying on, something of that matter relating to saving the world.
Kris had a cornucopia of things to say, plenty of thoughts about Oligo; but only one came through.
Kris let out a quiet exhale.
A smile came to their lips. "…thank you."
The Fountain, pleated, felt-black, and glazed behind quailing rivets and panes of obsidian glass, contributed dark romance to their thoughts as they ascended a mountaintop where the footholds were made of sunken ant colonies, where the clouds were cross-hatched beams of silver.
Tartness filled the air; beautifully received, their stomach growling, their mouth filling. Puffy clouds blocked not the light, failing, the failure proposed by split density, like puffs of ceramic, moist vapor, not thick enough to stop the shine worming through.
They rubbed down their labcoat. Flicked stray icicles for luck. Gazed at the candy.
Reflections pooled faintly between the large, square lettering of the wrapper, and Kris busied to memorize every iteration before they reached their destination.
It was at this, Kris passed a fleeting thought. Merely colors splattered onto a page, or crayon chipped, and chewn up. Glancing up at the Fountain, it was nothing like they saw in the wrapper. It was, itself, tasting of bittersweet licorice. What they carried in their hands resembled the Fountain, tasted like it no doubt, and smelled so greatly tantalizing that Kris could see adventures spawn from the pursuit. So, in a sense, they already had what they wanted in their hands, but not quite; the picture was traced. Where was once a pouch, squares elegantly sliced into bills, stamped with logos, and distributed, was instead a tassel napkin.
Tied around the metaphorical candy bar was a tassel napkin. The pulls were red, the aglets bronze. A hum of thought; the design was far too rich. The paper was crinkled, but it was too rich. It was just a candy bar. Yet, Kris knew beneath the paper was something tasty, a treat, as sour and unbelonging inside the tan-white covering as sequins inside a diamond jewelers.
This was Kris, this candy bar, and they were trussed with bronze and velvet. Covered in wrapping paper, bitter and sweet on the inside.
A passing, fleeting thought. Only for their parting amusement. Then it would be mutilation unraveling the wrapper.
Kris sighed.
They would wait to eat this candy, for when there would be a day to commemorate the happiness it would provide, or a worthy time for it to taste sweeter than usual, complemented by something or someone.