AUTHOR'S NOTE: thank you Anonymous Guest for the review; I'm glad you liked the chapter. There will be more Vervain and Blueberry soon.

Chapter 94: Camp 2000.

"[...] followed by a large mass of sticks which had crumbled from the collapsed section of the wall. Soon the sticks caught up to them and to add to the pain of them both grasping on to the other, they were now filled with a crushing pain as they fell on top of them."

-The Rush, The Last March of the Efrafans

Campion fell for a long time, squealing the whole way. His fall after breaking free from a hawk's talons the previous summer was nothing compared to this. Around him, the black pit gradually turned blue; despite having fallen through the ground, he was now in the sky. The total silence was broken by the sound of a helicopter. The noise gradually became louder until Campion was struck by one of the blades; surprisingly, this was not painful at all. He landed on his back, on the edge of a cloud. As he tried to get up, however, he slid off the cloud, continuing to fall through the deep blue sky, with the noise of the helicopter gradually becoming softer, until he could not see or hear it anymore.

Suddenly, the area around him instantly turned black and he crashed onto the ground; once again, he could not feel any pain.

-"I must be dead," he said.

-"Yes."

Campion was startled by the voice, and bolted away, only to crash head-first into a wooden post; unlike when he hit the ground or the helicopter, this did hurt. At the top of the post, there was a sphere, with a sharp thorn visible inside. He turned around to face the rabbit who had startled him.

-"Why didn't you save my life this time, Aspen?"

-"I couldn't. One of those rabbits we were fighting, I think he said his name was Bluebell, had me pinned to the ground. Oh the horror! He was tormenting me with such ridiculous jokes!"

-"Fine." Campion rolled his eyes. "While you were listening to jokes, Woundwort was eating my brain."

-"You mean he's...a zombun?" Aspen made a few steps backwards in fear. "Well that explains a lot. But...in that case...you will soon become one of them too!"

-"No, calm down, I was just hallucinating, nobody ate my brain. Anyway, let's find the Black Rabbit. She should be here soon, if she isn't here already."

-"Campion, I tell you, that was NOT the Black Rabbit."

Campion, however, was no longer paying attention to Aspen. Instead, he was staring at his surroundings. The ground was made up of tiles of alternating colours; it all appeared very unnatural. Also, there were several large objects flying in circles, a small distance above the ground, making a loud noise as they approached the rabbits, with the noise getting softer as they flew away.

-"This has to be the weirdest part of the shadowlands."

-"There is a section of the shadowlands that is weirder than here Campion; and this isn't the shadowlands anyway; and there the fact you are here is..." came a barely audible whisper.

-"Where am I, then?" Campion asked, cutting off the voice. "And where are you, BRofI?"

-"...I am not the Black Rabbit of Inlé; and also you are standing on my face; and I would greatly appreciate it if..."

Campion looked down. The tile he was standing on was not of a single colour like all the others; instead, it seemed filled with all the colours in the world.

-"Whoops. Sorry. I hope I didn't hurt you. Who are you, though? You don't look like BRofI."

-"...you didn't hurt me; also my name is Prince Rainbow; and I am..."

-"Prince Rainbow? What are you doing here? What's going on? Where's BrofI? Can you speak louder?"

-"...please stop shouting Campion; I will not speak any louder; I do not like loud noise because loud noise is going to destroy the fragile ears of the glanbrins; and because of this I will not speak louder; and as for your other questions do you want the short explanation or the long one; since the..."

-"Let's start with the short one."

-"...the short explanation is that reality has completely collapsed; and you are partly to blame; and your repeated deaths are starting to make me believe you want to cause all this trouble; and awaken..."

Campion was getting impatient. While the Black Rabbit's shouting got annoying after a while, Prince Rainbow was speaking very softly and monotone, making him hard to understand. Especially since what he was saying didn't appear to make much sense anyway.

-"I am partly to blame for what, now?"

-"...as I said; you are partially responsible for the reality crash; and you may be trying to..."

-"What is a reality crash?"

-"...that would the long explanation Campion; which I will now explain to you; so you may have noticed how every time the Black Rabbit of Inlé brought you back from the dead you got a new scar; and the problem is that if you get any more scars your body will be unable to sustain life; which would require..."

-"Why don't you just stop scaring him them?" Aspen asked.

-"...there's more to it than that; the scars have to serve as a permanent reminder of the past; and it is also the only way to build a stable bridge to the land beyond life; also Campion you need to stop letting your heart do your thinking instead of your brain; if a few details had gone slightly differently other rabbits such as Blueberry would..."

-"But I thought her name was Blackberry?"

-"...I am not talking about Blackberry; I am talking about Blueberry who is a completely different rabbit; but to tell you the truth Blackberry would have died too alongside Blueberry; which would have caused reality to break a few days earlier than it really did; but fortunately this didn't happen so both Blackberry and Blueberry are still alive; and if the crash had occurred a few days ago other rabbits would have died too including Cowslip Hyzenthlay Holly Primrose and..."

-"I already told BRofI I'm sorry about Primrose. Speaking of BRofI, why can't I speak with her?"

-"Because she's not the Black Rabbit," Aspen said.

-"...you can't speak with the Black Rabbit," Prince Rainbow continued, "because they have been incapacitated by the reality crash..."

-"You still haven't explained what caused the crash," Campion said. "You mentioned something about my scars, but I don't understand it."

-"...if you stopped interrupting me with more questions I would have finished explaining by now; but anyway to resume the explanation; you attempted to access another plane of reality and should have failed because the data you were looking for should not have existed yet; however interference from a meddlesome bird child altered the flow across the various dimensions; as a consequence the information you were looking for actually did exist albeit in a slightly broken state because some creatures failed to fulfil their tasks in the correct way; but it should be noted that for all these reasons you ended up getting the wrong information regarding the union as it did exist a few seasons ago; but this broke the other reality; except that by the time it will have been repaired since the big rock will have caused a lot of damage over there; but the boom caused another dimensional merger and then another split causing the return of the pointless troublemakers and another breakage despite all my attempts at fixing it; so I will therefore have to stop trying to fix it because it will always break no matter what I do; unless of course I can convince Lord Frith to fix it through dimension hrair; but he can be very stubborn; but even if he fixes that the Black Rabbit of Inlé will have a huge overflow of souls to claim; and since they are already struggling with the workload from the dimension that just crashed this may result in the return of the irrationality; and I would have to send a message to someone else; which considering the many mistakes that happened last time I did this I hope it won't be necessary; to make things worse the return of the elil would raise deep philosophical questions that were never considered before any of this started; although it is unclear when 'before' was due to the..."

-"Woah," Aspen said, trembling. "I could almost see that other reality for a moment there, but it glitched out. I rather feel sorry those who didn't get much of a chance, the blackberries, the moving leaves, and the sword birds. Can't we do anything to help them, and perhaps save some of them from being killed?"

-"Wait. You mean you actually understood all that, Aspen?" Campion said in shock. "Can you please explain what's going on?"

-"I...think I understood. Or maybe I misinterpreted the whole thing. Prince Rainbow, could you clarify?"

-"...to make things simple; many realities have broken over time; most of them were in a state of total chaos before this happened; and repairing them might do more harm than good; it is better to leave those alone; and it is best not to try to access or..."

-"I'm sorry, Prince Rainbow, for this mess," Campion said, realizing he would never be able to make sense of the current situation. "Can my original reality be saved, though, or is it too broken?"

-"...I can restore the last stable backup state of the reality; which would be just before the battle started; and it should be noted that a few glitches will remain; but it's the best that can be accomplished; some of the damage you caused may be irreversible; for example there is a high probability that you will have to find yourself another mate; unless you act really carefully when..."

-"First I lose Primrose, and now I would lose Blackberry? I'll never find true love, will I?"

-"...I wasn't talking about Blackberry; but the fact remains that if you actually focused on your destiny instead of on romance this wouldn't be happening; although once your mission is finished you will be free to mate with any rabbit you wish providing your destinies are compatible; but the restoration will reduce compatibility settings if you..."

-"Could I mate with Hyzenthlay?"

-"Who?" Aspen asked.

-"Hyzenthlay," Campion repeated. "He mentioned her earlier, and she has a pretty name."

At that moment, Prince Rainbow flew out of the tile and repeatedly bashed himself against the nearest post.

-"...noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..."

-"Why not? You're taking all my options away."

-"...I would say I struggle to comprehend the thought process that lead you to ask such a silly question; but you probably do not realize that she is the rabbit who killed you in self-defence; and also considering a suspiciously similar situation in another dimension I can see where you made your mistake; and no I am not taking all your options away; several other options remain; and you will have to reach a decision once your mission is completed; but before you can resume your mission however I have to restore the last functional snapshot out of the timesystem management utility and repair glitches; but until then you cannot stay here; because this is dimension 'aargh real three' which will greatly torment you if you stay here too long; so instead you will have stay in a temporary recursive reality located in..."

-"But those realities have a limit of one mind!" Aspen shouted. "If Campion goes there, what will happen to me?"

Suddenly, Prince Rainbow shot a blood red beam at Aspen, causing him to fuse inside the floor tile he was standing on.

"...you will be staying here Aspen; but do not worry; you will not be tormented; instead you will think you are playing with bees in a park; but be careful not to stray too far from the edge of the bottomless pit; and..."

-"What will happen to all the others?" Campion asked. "Hazel, Hyzenthlay, Blackberry, Blueberry and everyone else?"

-"...they will have to be spread across various fallback realities; the reality you will go to Campion will be different from most of the others and may appear rather unusual at first; you will not be able to see very well; this is because simple images require less energy; fixing glitches and restoring everything will require a lot of energy leaving very little for your reality; and another thing keep in mind none of this is really happening; and to keep you distracted in this boring reality I will be telling you a story..."

Campion was struck on the head by one of the racing objects, knocking him over the edge of the tile map.