#something a capricious king would do when choosing his successor | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

takerfoxx · 7 years

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And as promised, here’s another preview of Subconscious! The others should come out faster since I don’t have any chapters to focus on anymore.

Though if you’re just checking in and want to see the first one, just check my FF.net profile for the link or search the Subconscious tag on my tumblr wall.

"The war was a mistake," Eric solemnly told his captive audience. "A very big mistake. As strong and fearsome as the Nightmares were, we were outnumbered. Everyone all joined forces, united against us. And when they stood together, they found that they no longer feared us."

The two six-year-old children sat together on the girl's bed in the room they shared together, listening with rapt attention. They were twins, a brother and sister, sharing the same light brown skin, dark eyes, curly black hair, and solemn expressions that only the very young and cats seemed capable of pulling off.

It was Eric's second time communicating with the pair. And as before, it was through a mirror, in this case the full body mirror that sat in the corner of their room. It had to be that way. Reflections were special things, in that they didn't actually exist but were instead mere tricks of the mind that appear in one's vision when the light bounced off the right kind of surface.

It was through those illusions that those in Eric's world were able to communicate with those who had the potential to fill Thelonious's empty throne. And so when the time came to tell of their destiny, it was through mirrors. A bit over the top perhaps, but Nightmares were nothing but devoted to the dramatic. Besides, having a magical friend that spoke to them through mirrors and only they could see was a common fantasy among children that age, or so Eric had been told. Personally, he felt that it was a bit creepy, in a Phantom of the Opera sort of way, but the system was in place and wasn't going to change, so on that point at least he kept silent.

Of course, Eric's reservations had been proven true the first time he had made contact, though that admittedly had been his fault. Instead of waiting until they were alone in their room, by chance Eric had appeared to them when they had been at a park restroom, the Girl's Room no less. And naturally, the bewildered children had caused quite a fuss when they told their mother about being approached by a weird man in the bathroom who talked to them about taking them away to a magical world. It wasn't until they had said that the man had been inside the mirror that it had been concluded that they were just playing a game and the cops had been called off. Either way, they weren't going to be taken to that park again.

This time, Eric made sure to do it right, waiting until they were together in their room with their mother watching television in the living room. It was still incredibly creepy as far as he was concerned, but that was what happened when millennia old traditions were still carried out in the modern world. Come to think of it, just about everything became uncomfortable when viewed in the right light.

Fortunately, if there was one thing children from any century understood, it was a good story, and as dark as Nightmare history was at times (okay, pretty much all of the time), it was certainly captivating. "They beat you?" Paul asked, his eyes wide with intense interest.

"Yes they did," Eric said. And deservedly so. Just because he served the Nightmare people didn't mean he felt any obligation to justify the atrocities they had committed. He wanted them to be better, to learn from the past rather than sugarcoat it. "They destroyed our army and attacked Thelopolius, our capital city. We tried to fight back, but there were too many. The city was overrun. And in the chaos, King Thelonious disappeared."

"What happened to him?" Kaitlyn asked.

Eric shook his head. "Nobody knows. The night before their army arrived, he was still there, sitting on his throne. But when the next day dawned, he was gone, leaving nothing but his crown, his royal regalia, and a note, all sitting in the middle of his throne."

"His royal what now?" Paul said, his brow furrowing with confusion.

For a moment Eric faltered. He had expected the next question to be about the note, but he kept forgetting that he was talking to very young children. Maybe he should attend a teaching class or something. "Oh. Uh, his king clothes. His…his robe and sword and stuff."

"Oh," Paul said. Then his face brightened, no doubt at the mention of the sword. "Oh!"

Kaitlyn, who was proving to be quite sharp, asked the required follow-up question. "What did the note say?"

"The note was from Thelonious himself," Eric said. He had seen it several times himself. It was preserved in the deepest of the royal vaults behind multiple layers of security and was only trotted out for special museum exhibitions once in a blue moon. Entire college level classes were devoted to it, despite it being no longer than six paragraphs. "He said that he was leaving, and it would do no good to find him. He said that he had realized that he had been a bad king, and we needed to find a new ruler. But of course we couldn't just hold an election." Unfortunately. Eric was actually quite in favor of the idea, but while his elders were willing to listen to some of his more progressive ideas, on this they refused to budge. "No, our new King had to be someone special. So he set up a way to find that special person. Every hundred years, a pair of twins would be born in the Waking World, your world. And when they were old enough, they would be brought into our world. And then they were to sit on Thelonious's throne, and the throne itself would tell us if they were supposed to become the new ruler or not. That was over a thousand years ago, and we still haven't found the right one."

"And it could be us?" Paul said eagerly.

"It could very well be," Eric said with a nod. He remembered what it had been like when he and his own twin sister had received a visit from a mysterious person from the world of dreams, who had spoken to them from mirrors and promised them the world. At the time it had seemed almost too good to be true. Strangely enough, everything that had been promised turned out to be completely true. They had just omitted a few key details, much like Eric had to now. "You two are the latest to in a proud dynasty, one that stretches back hundreds of-"

"Huh?" Kaitlyn said.

Eric blinked. "What?"

"We're what?"

Paul's excited face then scrunched up with worry. "Did you say we're gonna die?"

"What?" Then Eric understood. Whoops. "No. I said you're part of a proud dynasty."

Paul kept staring. "What's that?"

Eric struggled to come up with an adequate explanation, but now that he was put on the spot, his mind had gone blank. "A long line of very special people."

"Oh," Kaitlyn said, though the frown on her face made Eric doubt that she really understood. Yup, he definitely needed some lessons in how to speak to children.

To move the conversation along, he rushed to the pitch. "And one day, you too will go to the magical land where I live. You too will have the chance to become our new King or our new Queen. Would you like that?"

To be honest, he had sort of been fearing that question. It was necessary, but what if they said "no"? Eric couldn't blame them if they did, but it was still his responsibility to convince them otherwise.

However, that wasn't what they wanted to know. Instead, Paul asked, "Why us though? What's so special about us?"

Well, that was a much easier question to answer, even if Eric didn't actually have one. "Nobody knows why those chosen are selected. I certainly felt like I was ever anything special, but something did."

Kaitlyn asked the next question. "Okay, but only one of us gets to be King or Queen, right? What happens to the other one?"

Eric was impressed. These kids were sharp. "Then they get to be the Prince or Princess, which is almost as good."

"But what happens if it don't choose none of us?" Paul wanted to know. "What happens if the throne don't like us and says it don't want us being King?"

"Nothing bad happens to you," Eric reassured him. "Remember, I wasn't chosen, and I did all right for myself. If it doesn't choose you, then you get taken to a very big house with lots of servants and lots and lots of money. And when you're old enough, you'll help the rest of us boss everyone around until we find the new King or Queen." Then he winked at the pair. "And when that happens, they'll have to listen to what we tell them, because we'll be the ones who know how things work."

Paul perked up at that. "So we'll be rich?"

Eric paused. This felt a bit slimy, like dangling a carrot to get the horse to run. But he still had a job to do. "Very rich."

Naturally, this seemed to erase any doubt in Paul's mind. "Can we go now?" he said eagerly.

Eric shook his head. "No. Not until you're a little older." When the boy's face fell, he said, "Don't worry, I'll be looking after you. Anytime you want to talk to me, just ask a mirror, and I'll be here to answer any questions."

…

"Oh, and this time, please don't tell your mother," Eric said. "I don't think she would understand."

The images of young Paul and Kaitlyn Rouge winked out, leaving the screen a transparent pane of glass.

With a sigh, Eric leaned forward against the control panel, hands seizing onto the sides with a white-knuckled grip. Sweat dripped down his forehead as he mentally reviewed his conversation with the twins.

On the whole, it had gone a lot better than the initial contact had. After learning of the fuss his poor timing had caused, Erich had wanted to melt into the floor with embarrassment. He had finally earned the opportunity to push for his vision of the future of Nightmare and act as the mentor for the latest generation of potential successors, and he had blown it. Years and years of earning the capricious traditionalists’ trust, and he had come off as a playground stalker. Not exactly a sterling first impression.

Fortunately, his elders had seemed more amused than anything. Apparently such misunderstandings were common with first contacts, and he had not been taken off the project. However, lately he had been reconsidering whether or not it had been a misunderstanding at all.

"Well, I'd say you did pretty good overall," said a strong, wry voice from behind him. "You know, until you fumbled it at the end there."

Eric turned toward the young woman standing behind him. "Fumbled?" he said, a bit of irony in his voice. "I don't know. I'd say that was very much in line for someone in this business. The only thing that was missing was the offer of candy and the big white van."

The woman had the same dark chocolate skin and high forehead Eric did, though she was somewhat taller and much more athletically built. Also, instead of sharing his pure white eyes and wooly white hair, hers were both of a deep royal purple, with her hair being short and straight, falling to just below her ears like a helmet. Furthermore, she was by all appearances a classic demoness, with curving ram's horns growing out of her temples; leathery, dark violet bat's wings, long enough to reach the ground, extending from her shoulder; and a long, pointed tail slithering out from just above her derriere. She was dressed in a pair of tailored black slacks, black boots, and double-breasted black uniform shirt with silver buttons. The only ornamentation she wore were two rows of tiny silver skulls on her right shoulder, denoting her rank. Which, as it was, was very high.

Her name was Tyra of Flames. And like Eric, she was also one of the Uncrowned, the rejected contenders for the still vacant Screaming Throne of Thelonious. More impressively, she was also the Grand Warlord of the Nightmare Royal Army, a rank she had earned due to her exemplary performance in the Marauder War more than eighty years ago.

Also she was Eric's twin sister, his elder by about an hour, something that made him the baby of the Uncrowned, something that the others often took great delight in pointing out at each and every available opportunity.

At Eric's morose condemnation of his own actions, Tyra shook her head and sighed. "Oh, come on. Don't start this again."

"Start what? Let's call it for what it is, Tyra," Eric said, turning away from the control panel. All around them, the diligent uniformed engineers in charge of the Threshold slaved away at their tasks, stalwartly ignoring the disagreement of their superiors. "We're kidnapping them. It doesn't matter if we tell them years in advance. It doesn't matter if we condition them to look forward to it. We're still stealing them from their family and dragging them into a mess that they should have nothing to do with."

"I don't recall either of us complaining," Tyra said, folding her arms.

Eric fixed her with a steely stare. "Our situation was a little…different."

"Maybe so, but honestly Eric. It's still going to happen," Tyra countered. "You're not going to try to stop it, are you? Warn them not to trust us?"

At this, Eric had to shake his head. "No, of course not," he said. "But that doesn't mean I have to like it."

The two of them, along with the regular staff, were standing upon the circular platform known simply as the Balcony, though to the engineers that oversaw its upkeep it was known as Voyeurland. The platform itself seemed to float by itself, with nothing suspending it save for a tall metal ladder that stretched up into a hole in the sky. All around them were nothing but rolling clouds lit by golden light, though there was no sun to be seen.

And rising up out of those clouds were two enormous statues, ones seemingly carved from ice. They were perfect representations of Paul and Kaitlyn Rouge.

When most people thought of dimensions, their minds went to the ones that governed their physical world: width, depth, length, and, to some, time. A few theoretical scientists spoke the possibility of other dimensions that were beyond their ability to perceive or comprehend but surely must exist on some sort of existential plane. And those infatuated with science fiction and fantasy took it a step further, weaving tales of alternate realities filled with exotic monsters and unconventional quirks of physics, ones that had little to do with what the exasperated experts were actually talking about.

Amusingly enough, it was the latter that had it closer to the truth, though not in the matter they had expected. The fact of the matter was they had it backwards, imagining their mundane world as being the most basic of realities, with things becoming stranger and more wonderful the higher you ascended the dimensional ladder (or terrible, depending on how you looked at it). But in truth, their world, known to those who knew better as the Waking World, actually nested at the top of that ladder, with all the bizarre deviations occurring deeper down.

Directly below the Waking World was a place, if it could be called that, known as the Unconscious. It was there that the minds of the sleeping Dreamers sank whenever they slept, forming little worlds of their own that lasted mere minutes until waking dispelled them out of existence, bubbling up like suds in soapy water that tightly pressed against one another without ever overlapping. Most of the Dreamers imagined that their dreams existed entirely inside of their heads, a trick of the slumbering mind as it cleared out the mental cobwebs. If they only knew just how real those fleeting hallucinations really were, or just how close their minds came to touching the fantastic. All things considered, it was probably for the best that they remained ignorant.

But of course, those small, transient worlds didn't simply just disappear entirely when the Dreamers that conjured them up awoke. All those places and people had to go somewhere. And that somewhere was known simply as Nod, the world that sat at the bottom of the ladder, where everything eventually dripped down and became real. Everything conjured up from the minds of humanity were there. Every monster that had ever made a child wake up screaming, every lover that had made someone throb with arousal, every long deceased friend visited but for a moment, every bewildering apparition that made no sense no matter how one attempted to analyze why they had been sharing a car with an elephant-headed woman wearing a slinky evening gown. They were all there, now with minds and lives of their own.

As such, Nod was not an easy place to govern, but they did their best. Like sought out like, with the monsters, murderers, shadows, and other troubling manifestations of troubled minds banding together while the beautiful, the ambitious, the reverent, the perfect, and other embodiments of what mankind wanted to possess and become gravitated toward one another, and so on. The Nightmares were only one corner of misshaped world forged by the fears, desires, frustrations, and madness of humanity. However, they were the only ones without a Monarch.

Taking things a step further, Threshold occupied a sort of middle ground between the three worlds. It was there that the minds of the potential successors were protected, from above and below. It wouldn't do to allow them to enter the Unconscious every night. The Nightmares were not starved for enemies, many of which could also invade the dreams of the Waking World. And having dreams spawned from the one that might one day ascend to the throne of Thelonious and reign supreme over all of Nightmare just had too many political ramifications. So their minds were kept there, allowing the Nightmares to watch over them, keep them from harm, while communicating with them from afar, preparing them for the day they would be plucked from the top of the ladder and brought down to the bottom.

Like Paul and Kaitlyn were now, Eric and Tyra had grown up in the Waking World. Like the Rouge twins, they had been spoken to by a strange but wonderful guiding figure, one that existed in reflections and could be seen by no one else. And like Eric and Tyra, Paul and Kaitlyn would one day leave their world, leave their family and friends, and be tested to see if they were the ones chosen to inherit the ugliest mess known to dreamkind.

What a glorious destiny.

At Eric's pessimistic words, the radio on one of the control panels suddenly crackled, and through it Altair's salty voice came through. "Theo's saggy left testicle, boy. Are you complaining again already?"

As Eric rolled his eyes, Tyra went over to the blinking radio. With a wry smile of amusement, she leaned over and pressed the button. "Sorry about that, sir," she said. "My brother's merely expressing discomfort at the moral ramifications of the job he agreed to do."

"Yeah? Well, tell him to get over it! We chose him for a reason, and the last thing we need is for him to start his infuriating speeches and confusing the kids!"

"Eric," Tyra said, her purple eyes glittering with mischief. "The Night Mare says-"

"I heard, thank you," Eric said shortly. "And don't worry. I'll do the job, my lord."

"See that you do," Lord Altair said curtly, ending the conversation with that.

Breathing out, Eric cast one last troubled glance over to the monolithic statues, standing out there in the mists. In addition to keeping the minds of his new protégés safe while allowing him to speak to them, they acted as a sort of countdown. The statues would grow and mature with the children they represented, and when the time was right, they would fall, crumbling away to be replaced by the actual articles. And then any claim Paul and Kaitlyn Rouge might have had to a normal life would be over.

Shaking his head, Eric ascended the steel ladder, up out of the Threshold and back into his world.

He came up into the circular black marble room that contained the port into the Unconscious. Straightening his outfit, he started to make his way through the Spearhead Palace's dark corridors, heading for the exit.

He was about halfway there when his cellphone chimed, informing him of a new text. Absently he pulled it out and checked.

The number was private. The message simply said, CALL ME.

Eric paused, his face hardening. A dozen different expletives raced through is mind, each one more obscene than the last, and he was sorely tempted to type out each and every one of them and send them back in one large profane reply.

Instead he deleted the message and continued on his way, moving between the leering gargoyles and twisting pillars lit with hundreds of undying candles. He passed across perilously thin stone bridges that extended over sickly green canals. He made his way past guards with black armor and faceless helmets, all of which had been selected from the most terrifying of dreams, all of which straightened up and saluted respectfully as he passed. In his dark mood Eric barely remembered to nod in acknowledgement.

His mood didn't improve one bit even when he was out of the palace and in his car, heading back to Nocturnus Castle, that building that served as the seat of government until a new Monarch was found. The castle itself was about two thirds the size of the Spearhead, and was nestled deep in Thelopolius. The streets passed in a blur, and soon he was

Without a word he opened the body of the clock and tugged on one of the pendulums. The clock swung aside, revealing a short corridor that opened to a circular room about the size of a bathroom stall. The room contained nothing but a round wooden table, on which stood a plain, black, old-fashioned telephone.

The telephone had no means to dial a number: no buttons, no pad, not even a rotary dial. And it wasn't even ringing. Unperturbed by this, Eric walked up to it and picked it up.

"What?" he all but snarled into the receiver.

"What sort of way is that to answer the phone?" said the voice on the other line.

The voice sounded like that of a child, a prepubescent boy to be exact, one that spoke with a strong Turkish accent. But while the voice was young, the tone in which he spoke was anything but. It was snide, condescending, with contempt dripping from every word. It was the voice of someone used to getting his way and saw everyone about him as mere means in achieving his purposes.

Eric took a few moments to recompose himself. Then he hissed out, "What. Do. You. Want. Jacob?"

Jacob Draco clicked his tongue in disapproval. Then he said, "Eric, is the hostility really necessary? I mean, we've known each other for decades now. The war was almost a century ago. And it was, I should like to remind you, your fault."

Eric was quite certain that Jacob could hear the sound of his teeth gritting. He did not care. "Jacob, I have literally a hundred things I'd rather be doing right now. So, in the interest of upholding the treaty, tell me what you want and be done with it."

The other end of the line was noticeably silent. And then, with a sigh of resignation, Jacob said, "So. Dame Rumor has it that you have made contact with the next two potentials."

Several seconds passed before Eric trusted himself enough to respond. When he did, the venom in his voice had frozen into ice. "Tread carefully, Jacob. Treat very carefully."

"Oh, don't worry. You know my policies about making war on children. The kids have nothing to fear from me."

Liar, Eric thought. Jacob could go on and on about the superiority of his principles all he wanted, but Eric knew full well the sort of person he was and the sorts of things he did. Aloud, he said, "Then why bring them up? To reassure me?

"Well, no. It's me that wants reassurance. Now, how you people run your affairs is your business, and if this really is the lucky draw and you find yourselves with a brand spanking new Monarch, then you have my sincerest congratulations. But given our history, I find myself doubting that the Nightmares will still be willing to uphold our agreement should that happen. And in the interest of protecting my people from yours, I think it's time for us to discuss any possible changes to our relationship."

Eric considered this for a time. Then he said, "Jacob. Listen to me now and listen hard. The Nightmares have no intention of going back on the treaty we've signed with the Marauders. We learned our less the first time around."

"Yes, but-"

"However," Eric hissed out. "If you so much as breathe in those children's direction, our agreement is at an end. Any protection you derive from us will cease to exist. And more to the point, we will be very, very cross with you."

"Yes, because that worked out so well for you before."

"The last time, we were the ones that started the fight, I admit that," Eric said. "We blundered in ignorance and paid for our mistake. But that was nearly eighty years ago. We've learned since then. And this time, it will be you that throws the first punch. How willing will the other clans be to unite under your command once they learn that you're the one responsible for putting their lives in danger?"

Jacob didn't immediately respond, which to Eric's mind meant that he had scored a hit. Indeed, when his voice returned, all he said was, "We'll speak later." And then the line went dead.

Eric slowly breathed out. That they would be speaking again was something that he did not doubt. However, he still didn't have any intention of being polite when they did.

"I bet we will, you snake," he muttered as he left the room and its solitary telephone behind. Just you wait, he thought, in the paranoid chance Jacob had the room bugged. Just you wait. You'll get yours. Sooner or later, you'll get yours.

#Subconscious

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