Guinevere’s world was obscured by the red smoke of the Caterpillar’s hookah, billowing all around her. Ava stepped in close to her, so they wouldn’t be separated.
The vapors began to mold themselves into images, three-dimensional structures with hazy outlines. It took Guinevere a moment to recognize she was standing in a garden, a garden she recognized just by its silhouette, even though it lacked the usual sunshine and vibrant green of grass and leaves, the pops of yellow apples in the trees or blue and purple flowers in long, well-tended beds. It was all red mist, but this garden…
It was the garden she’d spent so much of her childhood in. The garden at Artorius’ manor, so lovingly tended by his parents.
“What… why am I here?” Guinevere asked. “The Phantom didn’t plague my dreams until years later!”
“Hmm, this is unexpected,” came the Caterpillar’s ponderous, sleepy voice.
Guinevere turned at the sound of footsteps on the mossy forest floor. There were Tobias and Flynn, Alice, and Sheena — and above them, Akko’s gigantic head peered in at the scene. All of them looked as surprised as Guinevere to be here with her.
“You are bonded by an uncommon event,” the Caterpillar said. “Ahh, I see. That Mirror in the Queen of Hearts’ employ… so you braved his trials, and prevailed.”
“That connected us,” Alice said. “I see.” She looked around the misty garden scene. “So… where is this?”
“It’s…” Guinevere started, then shook her head. This made no sense. Even if they were bonded together, why would her thoughts bring forth this vision, this place? Why…
“Hold on,” Alice said, and Guinevere looked up to see the vapors swirling away, forming into a new vision. “Where are we going, now?”
“Your minds are linked,” said the Caterpillar. “It will be a more complicated task to isolate the source of Guinevere’s torment and extract it. This… is curious. Who are you?”
“Who’s who?” Alice asked.
The Caterpillar said no more. The smoke formed into a nightmarish vision, a grand hall on fire. Guinevere felt the heat on her face and recoiled from it. But peering through the flames…
There, in the center of the fire, was a boy, sword in hand, standing over two dead bodies. He was made of smoke, so features couldn’t be made out, but he was too small to be a man. And before him were…
Two other boys, swords drawn as well. And with those boys, two dogs.
Flames crackled. A voice spoke, sinister and malicious, but the words couldn’t be made out. The boy over the dead bodies leapt in an attack. The other boys weren’t prepared for it.
One of the boys’ dogs leapt into the attack’s path. A heart-rending cry of pain filled the space, and then the smoke swirled in a vicious explosion, the vision vanishing.
Rain.
Rain fell onto the forest floor, a soft rain that didn’t wash away the smoke, but worked in tandem with it.
A new vision. A boy, lying in the mud, cradling a pointy-eared pup close to his chest. Gasps of exhaustion, and sobs of sorrow.
Then, footsteps. A man strode onto the scene. He held out his hand to the boy, and in a deep, steady voice, he said, “You look like you could use some help.”
Beside Guinevere, Alice let a out a little gasp. Guinevere looked at her, and saw her staring wide-eyed, confused, at the scene.
And then the scene was being blown away, reformed, restructured. The rain slowly came to a stop.
“Your dreams are intertwined in this space,” said the Caterpillar. “Dreams, or… ah, of course. The slumbering mind pulls forth memories. Memories that sympathize with the Promised Queen’s.”
“What does that mean?” Guinevere asked.
“Your sorrow,” said the Caterpillar. “Your heartache. Your fear.”
He went silent again. The smoke roiled and fumed, sweeping across the mossy floor, obscuring the ground beneath their feet. It created a façade of wide stone streets, and springing up around them were beautiful flowering trees, and grand, ornate buildings in a style completely foreign to Guinevere. And then she started slightly as people appeared around her, marching past her on all sides, in front of her, and behind. Down the wide promenade went vaporous, ghostly figures, heads bowed. A song filled the air, a song of heartache and sorrow.
“My brother,” Sheena said softly, watching the mourners parade past. “He was… given a ceremonial funeral. He isn’t dead. But in Haruo… he is treated as such.” She bowed her head, closed her eyes.
The procession… shifted. It was such a subtle thing, the vapors lightly modifying the scene, that Guinevere didn’t notice at first.
It was the change in song that clued her in first. Asbel’s funeral procession was accompanied by foreign instruments, but now there was a brass band and string orchestra playing the royal funeral march of Ars Moran.
It was the funeral procession for Artorius and his parents. A funeral that contained three caskets…
One of them empty. One of them for a boy that Guinevere knew with all her heart wasn’t dead.
But the scene was strange. For Asbel’s funeral procession, they had been in the midst of the mourners, as if they were part of the procession. But here…
They looked upon the ceremony as if from the outside, looking in. As bystanders.
But I was part of this. I was in the midst of this — up there! I can see myself. And my parents.
From the outside looking in…
“We approach,” said the Caterpillar.
“Would it help if we all focused our minds on our objective?” Alice asked.
“Conscious thought plays no part in dreams,” said the Caterpillar. “I must wend my way through the fog of the subconscious towards our destination. But we are getting closer. If…”
The Caterpillar went silent again. The smoke transformed the scene in a sudden gust of wind, swirling around them all, an obscuring cloud of crimson.
When the smoke cleared away, reforming into a new scene, it was the voices that stood out first. Voices that made Guinevere tense up, angry and resentful.
“Guinevere, darling,” said her mother, all simpering, false affection, “it’s your special day! Won’t you at least pretend to smile?”
“Yes, sweetheart,” said her father, in his usual distant, distracted way. “Smile a bit. It’s a lovely day. Plenty of good food, good drinks, good company…”
“The mayor’s arriving soon!” her mother said. The scene was of a party, Guinevere’s fifth birthday party, and her first in the royal manor that had been established for use by the Promised Queen and her family. All of this was still very new to her. She wasn’t happy about having to move, about having to be in a giant house, about being surrounded by servants as if she couldn’t do anything on her own, about watching her parents drink in all the grandeur as if it was what they always deserved, all they ever wanted, all that ever mattered…
Her parents swept off to meet the mayor, and several foreign dignitaries, and who knew who else. The point was, they left Guinevere alone as if they’d forgotten she even existed. As if they’d forgotten that all these important people were here because of their daughter, not because of them.
“It’s a bit much, isn’t it?” asked a boy.
Little, vaporous Guinevere turned at the boy’s voice, to greet the little, vaporous Artorius.
That’s right, Guinevere realized, her heart leaping in her chest. This was the day the Promised Queen and Promised King had finally met. The day Guinevere and Artorius first laid eyes on each other, first heard each other’s voices. From that very first moment, they’d been the best of friends.
The conversation continued, but Guinevere barely noticed the words. She knew them by heart, knew this day so well. Her attention was instead drawn to all that this moment represented. Why it had been drawn up out of her. Why she had to relive it.
And what lay ahead.
Loch Reòsair. The Intersection. Returning to Albia, to Ars Moran…
Close to home. To my parents.
She didn’t want to face that. To face them. She’d had enough of them from the very start. As soon as the ordained day had come, as soon as Guinevere had been identified as the Promised Queen, her whole childhood had been upended, her whole life transformed in all the ways she now hated.
She would never forsake her title. Being the Promised Queen meant everything to her.
But she hated what it had revealed to her about the two people who should have been the most important to her in all the world.
But then something strange happened. A ghostly girl traipsed onto the party scene, pocket watch in hand, her head turning back and forth, as if she was looking for someone. Then a voice spoke — Alice’s voice. “Oh, where has he gone? I can’t believe he’d just abandon me like this! You can’t leave a girl alone at a party. That’s just cruel!”
“What…” Guinevere started. “You… you weren’t there.”
“I wasn’t,” Alice said, looking and sounding just as perplexed as Guinevere.
“Lacie?” Sheena asked.
Alice shook her head. “No, that’s… me,” she said softly.
“Caterpillar?” Tobias asked. “What’s going on?”
“An anomaly,” said the Caterpillar, who sounded just as perplexed as the rest of them. “I cannot discern its origin. Already it slips away…”
The whole scene dissolved into vaporous ambiguity, taking any hope of answers with it. Smoke swirled, rising up in columns that expanded into new forms. Four columns — bedposts. And around the grand canopy bed, bookshelves, and windows. A writing desk. A wardrobe. A floor space cleared, with string marking out certain points on the floor.
Guinevere had sewn those pieces of string into the carpet — much to her mother’s chagrin. But they were there to mark points for steps, helping her practice her footwork for both fencing and dancing when she was in her bedroom.
She spent so much time in her bedroom, in those days. Shortly after Artorius’ “death,” shortly after chaos had erupted. After her life had been horribly upended for a second time.
“We arrive,” said the Caterpillar.
Guinevere tensed up despite herself. Already she remembered the nightmare she’d been brought to in the Library, meeting her younger self, and being caught between fear of the song of Elysia, and fear of the Phantom himself.
“Stop!” Guinevere cried. Because she saw, then, the great shadow looming over her bedside.
The Nightmare King. The terrible Phantom that ruled over nightmares.
The shadow turned towards her. He alone in this vision born of red smoke was dark, pitch-black. And he was more constant, more solid, than the smoke bedside and bedroom surrounding.
He was real.
“A remnant,” Tobias said, one hand on his sword, though he didn’t yet draw. “Caterpillar!”
“I shall begin the extraction,” said the Caterpillar. “Promised Queen… do you wish to see this fear banished from your mind and heart?”
“Yes!” Guinevere said without hesitation.
“Do you wish to be protected against him so that he can never return?”
“Yes!”
“Then see now the final threshold holding this fear captive in your soul,” said the Caterpillar.
The world shifted. Not smoke this time, no.
Everything was solid.
And Guinevere was alone.
Alone in the dark, on a tiny boat in the middle of a wide, glassy lake. She couldn’t see the distant shore.
“Where…” Guinevere started, staring. This place… she didn’t know it. She’d never seen it before.
“This is the Inverse,” said the Caterpillar. “One side is truth. The other, reality.”
“Those are the same thing,” Guinevere said, brow furrowed.
“The distinction is everything,” said the Caterpillar. “If they were the same, the same word would be used. Words hold power, Promised Queen.”
Smoke wafted up before her, little tendrils of red vapor. She looked aside, and saw the Caterpillar, a mere two inches tall, perched on the edge of the boat, smoking his tiny hookah. He gazed meaningfully at Guinevere with his sleepy, yet penetrating eyes. “What Word is yours?” he asked.
“My word?” Guinevere asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Here in the Inverse, the Word is what matters most,” said the Caterpillar. “You know it. Bring it forth to your conscious thought, and carry it with you to the other side. That will be your defense. That will be your freedom.”
“I don’t understand,” Guinevere said.
“But you do,” said the Caterpillar. He puffed out three smoke rings, then turned to look out across the lake. Guinevere looked with him, and the cold talons of terror seized her heart.
Walking across the water was the great crowned shadow. The Nightmare King was approaching.
“Caterpillar, please!” Guinevere cried. “I don’t… I thought you were supposed to help me! I can’t do this myself, that’s why I came to you!”
“The final step is yours to take,” said the Caterpillar. “Tell me: what is your Word?”
“I don’t understand the question!” Guinevere reached for her sword, but it wasn’t there. Ava wasn’t here to comfort her. Tobias and Sheena weren’t here to defend her.
She had nothing, and no one.
“You have your Word, deep inside of you,” said the Caterpillar. “And you have me. Search, Promised Queen. The beginning of your Song, the first Word. What is it?”
My Song…?
And Guinevere was suddenly seized by a very different fear. The song she had heard, the song that had frightened her, the song of Elysia was echoing at the distant edges of her memory. The song that threatened to unmake her…
“Your Song, Promised Queen,” said the Caterpillar. “Fear guides you to shore. You must find it here, on the water.”
“I don’t…” Guinevere started. And then a smoke ring floated up to her face, touched her nose, and vanished in formless vapors.
But what was left behind was a strange scent. An aroma. Like fresh-fallen snow, like a crisply cold glass of water, like ice on a lake.
Clarity.
And Guinevere found the song. Different to the Elysian tune that frightened her, but distinctly related to it. A counter-melody, one that had lived in her heart her whole life, and yet only now did she recognize it, did she single it out, did she truly hear the notes in her heart.
And as she stared down the Phantom approaching her on the lake, those notes resolved to lyrics, and the first word sounded like a clarion call in her heart.
“Aurora,” she said.
“And so it is,” said the Caterpillar.
Guinevere knew just what to do. She stepped out of the boat, onto the glassy lake.
The world flipped. Not a simple reversal, but something… more. An upending of what was, into what would be. A single step, from the Inverse, to the place she’d been. Where night had fallen, dawn was now breaking in the mossy meadow, surrounded by mushrooms. Crimson vapor still billowed around them all — for Guinevere was not alone anymore. She was with Alice and Tobias, Flynn and Sheena and Akko…
And Ava.
“It comes to a close,” said the Caterpillar. Smoke approached Guinevere in a funnel, its narrowest point touching her chest. When the smoke receded, Guinevere felt a strange sense of loss. Captured within the smoke, she saw a writhing ball of darkness, struggling to get free.
“Wait!” she cried, reaching for the darkness. But a strong hand grasped her arm. She looked back, and saw Tobias holding her.
“Let it go,” he said gently.
Guinevere held his summer-sky-blue gaze for a long moment. When she finally looked back at the retreating, captured darkness…
She didn’t pursue it.
There was a sense of loss, still — but she understood it, now. The part of her that had been beholden to the Phantom for so long, that had accepted his presence within her since she was fifteen years old… it was a part of her she needed, and longed, to be rid of.
But it had been part of her for ten long years. Even things that needed to go, that she never wanted in the first place, were painful to lose. They left an ache in their wake.
The smoke parted, dissipated, and she could see the Caterpillar upon his mushroom, reclining slightly, puffing at his hookah. “The extraction is complete,” he said. “You are now free of the Phantom, Promised Queen, and free to pursue your purpose as a songbird.”
“Thank you,” Guinevere said in a small voice. She had so much still to process about this, so much still to make sense of. It would take time for her to figure out where she now stood, and what the path ahead would hold for her.
But she had a word. Her Word. Aurora. What it meant, she didn’t yet know. There was still so much fear of the Song that called to her.
But she’d let one fear go. Perhaps now she had opened the door to leave the rest behind, in time.