Despite the fact they just almost died, Barnaby is, as always, resoundingly cheerful!

 

Usually, Kinger would be finding that odd. Optimism is hard to upkeep, after all, as Kinger knows very well. Yet Barnaby saunters along exactly as he had before, tail swinging, cartoonish mouth moving as he chatters on, talking about the princess and how very excited he is to see her, and isn’t it great they’re so close, and wow is he relieved not to be stuck trying to climb walls, and so on and so forth, without a single pause. 

Not that he minds! It’s actually very refreshing. And, to be perfectly honest, Kingers just sort of accepted the fact that Barnaby is a walking pillar of optimism. Nothing makes him falter, not even their “current situation.” 

…That being, having to hike through the most depressing environment Kingers ever seen in his life. Kinger gets the feeling he’s hiked before, but even he has no idea how Barnaby stays so cheerful in the face of this. Cold wind blows through the usually stagnant cellar air, ruffling his hair and whispering through the rubble, rustling the leaves of dreary hedgerows, bent lampposts creaking and flickering in the breeze. But still Barnaby saunters on, clambering over rubble and squeezing himself through teeny-tiny gaps with little issue and a grin on his face. When Kinger asks about the destruction, he’ll go off on a ramble about one specific ’critter’ or another — he has names for all of them, (Bone-Boy, Duchess, Two-Head, Pretty-Eyes) and will gladly recount grand tales of his ‘close shaves’ with them for a few (admittedly rather concerning) minutes. Sometimes he even whistles.

…Kinger doesn’t know how he does that without lips, but hey, the tune is nice.

Speaking of kinger, he has nowhere near as much energy, having to settle for violently ignoring any thoughts of impending abstraction that cross his mind and gingerly picking his way over the rubble, which is gingery itself. He often has to remind Barnaby to wait for him as he clambers over a boulder or hops over a ditch, but this is more due to Barnaby's limited range of vision than him just not caring. Kinger has learned the hard way that he has to walk directly next to him if he wants to be seen — much like a very talkative horse! At least, probably. Kinger doesn’t know much about horses, that’s more Ragathas thing…And even if he did, it wouldn’t be a good idea to try and remember it. He’s been taking special care not to do that. Not to…slip. Lose focus. That wouldn’t be polite. And anyway, Barnaby has the torch — Kinger can’t leave that behind! After all, he has no idea what happens when he slips! He doesn’t know what those big gaps in his recent memory are! He doesn’t know what would happen! Where he would go! What he’d do! What Barnaby would do. He has to focus on the here and now.

Still, despite how dedicated he is to not losing the only decent source of conversation he’s had in six hours, the going has been getting harder. The farther they walk, the worse the terrain gets. At first it was gradual, Kinger noticing a few craters here, a large rock there, a bent lampost in the middle…compared to the giant hole in the castle palisade they had hid in, it seemed mild. ‘Just a bit of wear and tear!’ In Barnabys words. But then rocks turned to boulders, boulders turned into huge piles of rubble, piles of rubble turned to entire sections of collapsed wall, which then branched into a myriad of other things — crushed wagons, piles of goo that might’ve once been gummy elephants, actual gummy elephants which Barnaby is weirdly stingy around, deep craters Kinger really hopes aren’t footprints, and other such extremely-hard-to-traverse things. Like an entire house!

 

Apparently, the abstractions really like tossing things at eachother. There’s also a ‘town’ beyond the palisade, that’s full of very tossable houses.

You can imagine the result.

 

”I mean, she can always watch out her balcony at least! She loves the balcony, dunno why…Probably cause o’ the view! Shucks, the view! Pardner you’re gonna love it! And haven’t even told ya bout the—“

Barnaby is saying, his claws clicking softly on scratched liquorice-wood. Kinger is, admittedly, a little zoned out— he’s feeling kind of lightheaded, and so is lagging behind slightly.

 “— an not to mention, sometimes the shadow critters like to tussle, so hopefully she aint been too bored…”

Barnaby chatters, climbing over an upturned gingerbread table. This house in particular was (by Barnaby’s assessment) too large to detour around, so they are going through, despite the fact it was halfway embedded in the ground. Having entered through a door that was very nearly horizontal, Kinger is now walking over the crook of what used to be a wall. His shoes crunch on broken crockery, pieces of glass glinting where they cling to the tail-edge of her cloak. He wonders if anyone lived here, or was ever meant to — A family maybe, judging by the four broken chairs, limp mannequins still mangled in with the pieces.

“…They don't roar though, so that's weird, but otherwise it’s just crazy cool to watch ‘em duke it out, y’know?? With all them divin’, and crashin’, and wham-bang-pow!”

Barnaby says, spinning so as to shoot some air-punches for extra emphasis. He grins, proud of himself, and Kinger nods, recalling distant memories of something vaguely similar. Not animals though…something to do with…battling…? Something Caine made them do, probably.

“It’s about the spectacle of it. Like kaiju movies.”

Kinger concludes wisely, and Barnaby grins wider, baring a set of cheerful cartoon fangs.

”I ain't got a clue what, uh, several of those words mean, but ab-so-lutely!”

He replies, making finger guns before twirling back around (with a flourish, of course,) bounding on all fours towards an open window on the other side of the room. Kingers noticed he likes doing that — switching to all fours. It seems to be his version of a sprint or jog…? Maybe he just likes it. It’s probably faster that way, what with how short his legs are…Kinger shivers, a cold breeze sweeping over his shoulders.

Kinger just follows with an affirmative noise, ignoring the not-there horrors wreathing half the room.

Enclosed spaces make them worse, he thinks. The shadows. More surfaces to leech onto, her broken body flickering in and out of existence, stretched over the mangled wooden skeletons already strewn about the room. Snatches of her face have been coming back, slowly, but they are never worn in the right places. Kinger ignores the golden crown that sometimes appears, buried between shuddering white ribs, it’s spikes digging into bloody and still-pulsing places that human eyes are not meant to see. They’re not real. They’re not real. They’re not real. She’s not dying before his eyes, he's dying inside his own head. It's fine. He’s not. Those are not memories, they are not true, he is not fine and he is not sane and they are nothing but fiction and they are nothing but fake and he will not look at them.

Her death, however graphic it was, has already happened, hundreds of thousands of times inside his own mind — and Kinger knows damn well he wasn’t there to see it.

Kinger shakes his head, drawing in a deep breath. Inhale, hold until he feels the burn, then exhale. The air tastes like metal. The shadows are not there. He is not sane, but at least he remembers how to pretend to be. His arm hurts, and Kinger just buries it farther into the folds of his cloak. He can’t see it there. Then it isn’t real. Then everything will be okay, and his headache will fade, and his mouth won’t taste sour. Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Don’t look back.

 

(Hundreds of mannequins moving in sync, all eyes locking on a geometric leviathan, rings of eyes snapping left and right, wooden hands tearing at low-poly talons. They could tear at his eyes. They could tear his humanity away from him. They certainly tore away her.)

 

He shakes his head again, harder, shoulder leaning against a shattered picture frame — No. No, no. He’s not thinking of anything, he's not thinking of that. The glass presses dangerously through his shirt, close to breaking through into the soft flesh of his shoulder. He’s not thinking of anything, hes not the person who thinks. Hands clench into fists, one set of knuckles turning white, the other buzzing harder with ghostly pins-and-needles. The shards are close to drawing blood. No. No, he's not — he won’t, he can’t. He won't, he can’t, he won't, he can’t he won't — Stop it. Stop it, stop it…focus, focus—!

 

Inhale. Hold it until it burns. Hold it seven seconds longer.

 

Exhale.

 

Kinger shudders as he releases the tension in his shoulders. Not real. Just breathe. He swallows, throat dry. His arm hurts.

There’s a crunch as Barnabys tail sweeps over broken sugar-glass, clambering out a small window and perching on its sill. Kinger looks up, gladly watching him calibrate for the jump down. Barnaby hunches his shoulders in deep concentration, tongue sticking out from between the slats of his mouth, before hopping down with a pleased ‘hup!’ 

Kinger picks up the soft-yet-suspiciously-distant thud as Barnaby lands on the other side, and sighs with relief, pushing all thoughts of glitch-hunting mannequins out of his mind. It’s fine — it's fine! He just. Won't let anyone, or anything, see it. It will fix itself on its own, eventually, won't it? He just cut his hand. It was an accident. It doesn’t matter that he can’t remember when. It doesn’t matter that glitches crawl around it like flies. It doesn’t matter that his hand is going numb, finger-by-finger. It doesn’t matter that he's inevitably going to die.

He has a princess to help rescue, doesn’t he?

Yes. Yes, he does. He made a promise to Barnaby that he’d help. And it doesn’t matter what happens after, it doesn’t matter what happens before. He’s not going to end up back in those infinite, winding halls. He's not going to lose the feeling of air in his lungs, blood in his veins. He's not going to lose the bruised remains of a man named John, buried yet still breathing. 

He is not going to go back to that.

Poking his head out the window, Kinger is relieved to see it's not so far of a drop. Just…a couple hundred feet or so. Maybe. At least he can still see Barnaby waving enthusiastically from down below, visibly grinning— wasn’t he hurt from the fall? No, probably not. Kinger smiles back, pretending to understand the excited gibberish that's being shouted up at him with an awkward nod. It's definitely too far for him to jump, but considering the house is at such an uneven angle, it should be manageable to just climb down, right? … Didn’t I…used to be good at that?

Kinger shakes his head. Focus.

 

”I'M COMING DOWN, OK??”

 

He yells, and Barnaby gives him an enthusiastic thumbs up, shouting something that sounds suspiciously like ‘okie-dokie!’ Kinger nods and leans out a bit farther, craning his neck out to see the definitely-very-vertical wall below him. He frowns, mapping out one or two windowsills he can use as footholds. He’s obviously rather… out of practice, when it comes to climbing— or just anything involving legs— and it's a little hard to think over the blinding headache he suddenly has, but he can manage, right? Can’t be too hard. 

Looking at the drop makes him feel sick. He stares out over the courtyard, lips pursed — he’s not going to throw up. He doesn’t want the first non-digital thing he tastes in far too long to be bile…

At least the view is pretty. Or it would be, if it weren’t so depressing. The ravaged grounds stretch cold and dreary into the distance, crumbling structures spiraling upward like splintered, rocky crags. He can see what’s left of a half-built town beyond the castle palisades, most of it untextured, and dotted with paths of destruction from passing abstractions. In the distance, hidden in thick black murk, he can barely make out what might be the tower — but it's dim and obscured like everything else, and Kinger can’t quite squash down the unsettling thought that this is all so much bigger than any adventure he's seen in years. It almost looks like a Campaign.

Back before Caine was, well, how he is now, there were longer adventures. Multi-day with overarching stories, almost like mini worlds. Glistening cities, grand fortresses…That was what he fell into, on his first day. A gigantic checkered forest, with chess pieces and players pitching cannonballs at each other from either side. He can still remember how the wind tore at his cloak as he plummeted, screaming. He can still remember that brief first glimpse he caught of her.

 

But that was…a long time ago, now.

 

…focus focus focus, Kinger tells himself, throwing one leg out over the sill. 

Cold wind ruffles his hair, and kinger shivers, even under the cloak. He’s glad of its warmth as he clings to the crumbling gingerbread wall, levering himself downward, footholds steadily becoming handholds. His calf muscles are violently protesting at being used in such a way, but Kinger is well used to ignoring pain by now, and barely notices. He just keeps his eyes shut, his knees locked, and a mantra of focus focus focus steadily looping in his mind. The shadows-that-do-not-exist-and-are-not-her live to terrify him, after all, and could easily flash in any of those dark windows. So it’s better not to see them all.

Instead of the terrifying drop, Kinger focuses on the clatter of Barnaby messing around down below. Risking a look down, Kinger sees him stacking rocks— oh, hopefully he’s not bored. Just a few more meters, then maybe I can jump…?

____

Barnaby himself, well, he's having a ball of a time! He hums happily as he stacks peppermint pebbles— or pepples, as he likes to call ‘em— into little princess-towers, hat placed neatly by his side. 

Barnabys record stack so far is seventeen pepples, and right now he's gearing for twenty. He plucks another pepple from the path beside him, tail smacking happily against the path as he carefully places it onto his stack. His bright humming fills the still air, searching around for a nice cone-lookin’ one to make the roof…Pepples can be cone-shaped, right? He wonders, claws sifting through the piles around him. Or is that just normal old ordinary pebbles…Barnaby isn't quite sure what an ‘ordinary pebble’ even is, considering he's never seen a non-peppermint one, but he assumes its somethin’ small and shimmery. That can, hopefully, be cone shaped!

Wonder what non-peppermint pebbles would be like? 

He ponders, absentmindedly flipping a pepple with his tail, the clatter of which meaning he completely misses the disgruntled muttering from above.

Probably white’n shiny, cus peppermints got red stripes…or would they be red and shiny? Or pinkish?

Barnaby nods importantly, proud of himself for his amazing deduction.

‘Cause the candy stone is! Yeah, that makes sense!

He sneezes, scrubbing his snout free of gingerbread dust, a small shower of it falling from above. Barnaby looks up with an annoyed snort, but can’t make out anything in the gloom. He shrugs, and so returns to his pepple-stacking. His pardner should be down soon, right? Another chunk of gingerbread thwacks onto his head, and Barnaby growls, whacking it away.

Gee, what's he doin up there? He wonders, squinting up into the gloom. Probably…player-y stuff. Whatever that is!

Honestly, Barnaby knows next to nothing about players. All he's got for reference is one half-remembered adventure that he shouldn’t really have access to, and a whole bunch of guesswork tacked together with plain ole’ assumptions. Still, despite that, he's still been pleasantly surprised by his new pal. Why he's the best audience Barnabys ever had! Not to mention he knows a bunch o’ facts about a ton of stuff Barnaby didn’t even know existed — It’s been really fun learning about players, what they can n’ can’t do…like stretch! Barnaby thought players would have just as many bendy-bones as he does, but apparently, their bones are rigid as anythin’. Who woulda thought!

Granted, he's stranger than a bakers dozen o’ loons, and for the life of him Barnaby still can't quite figure out what kinda’ creature he's meant to be, but he’s also just plain ole’ nice. And, well, that's all that really matters in the end, isn’t it? After all, according to the Cowboy Code— blessed may it be— the most important thing for a cowboy to have is a good heart. And Barnaby, well, he thinks his new pal would make a pretty good cowboy! Maybe Princess can duplicate him a hat when we reach her… Barnaby thinks, tapping his chin. She's always been real good at that codin’ doohickery…maybe he’ll even stick around after! That’d be nice, I like havin’ him around.

Barnaby grins, leaning back from his tower– Finally finished! N’ before his pardner made his way down, too!

 

 

Barnaby pauses. He…. hears something. Usually his hearing is pretty darn good, but the coding can be kinda dodgy sometimes… Is someone hollerin? He wonders, looking around. He sees nobody, and isn’t surprised, considerin’ the sideys barely talk. Maybe it’s his hearing glitching out again. Just in case, Barnaby tips his snout up to check the sky — 

— just in time to see the blur of red cloth crash right on top of him.

Kinger bounces off Barnaby like he’s made of rubber, complete with cheesy sound effect. He lands face-first with a hard Oof!, getting a solid mouthful of dusty sugar-grass in the process. This feels familiar… Kinger thinks to himself, mildly disappointed to find it doesn't taste like anything. Well, at least it was a soft landing…

The soft landing in question groans loudly from nearby, and Kinger coughs back in agreement, still face-down in the grass. At least he got down alive, though! Considering his luck so far, Kinger is just grateful he didn’t split his head open. I guess I’m still a bit rusty on the whole ‘legs’ thing… Kinger thinks, managing a slightly delirious chuckle that's probably more due to the whole ‘sleep deprivation’ thing than anything actually being funny. His mouth is really dry…

Barnaby bounces back to his feet as easily as a rubber ball — Kinger crops that up to him being made of roughly the same stuff— and shakes himself like a dog, pink candy dust falling off him. 

“Jeepers, pardner! You sure know how to make an entrance!” 

He says brightly, still as full of energy as ever. That is probably due to the fact he’s not bound by pesky things like ‘hunger’, ‘thirst’, or ‘muscle strain’ all of which are being pretty annoying at the moment. Kinger himself just winces as he climbs to his feet, bruised shins still understandably mad at him. His knees ache from slamming into peppermint pebbles, (pepbles? Plebmints?) Kinger carefully picking a few of them out of her cloak with his good hand. 

“Oh, sorry about that, I ran out of handholds and…well, that’s self explanatory,”

He apologizes with a wry chuckle, brushing dust off his arms. His bad one prickles and buzzes, Kinger squeezing the offending wrist as if that will convince it to stop— it’ll be fine. He tells himself, tugging his sleeve down and shoves his hand into his pocket. His headache is coming back…

“— are you alright? Did that hurt?”

He asks, looking up. Barnaby is standing with his shoulders slumped, staring forlornly at a small pile of peppermint pebbles. Kinger blinks— he’s never seen Barnaby look so disappointed before.

“My tower…” 

He mutters, tail drooping. It takes a moment for Kinger to retrieve the Barnaby-stacking-rocks information from earlier, but the moment he does, he cringes.

“Uh— we can put it back together?” 

Kinger suggests, but Barnaby shakes his head, straightening back up. 

“Eh, don’cha worry about it! Just a stack of rocks — an we’re nearly at the real one anyhows!” 

Barnaby says, grinning and nudging Kinger with his elbow. He waves to the pretty much solid-black horizon, and Kinger tilts his head in obvious skepticism, looking out over the dimly-lit wasteland of upturned structures. It’s not that he thinks Barnaby is a liar, but then again, he said the exact same thing two hours ago. In fact the grounds are only getting more and more torn and hard to traverse with every step they take, and Kinger, well…He's not really sure how much more walking he can handle. 

“…Are you sure?”

He asks, as gently as possible, and Barnaby nods furiously. 

”Yeah!! Look, y’can even see the tower from here!”

Kinger squints into the sky, much darker now he's standing back in the torch glow. After a few moments, a claw lands on top of his head, turning it so he's staring slightly to the left. There, he can just make out a shape in the distance, a thick cylinder rising from the oppressive gloom. He looks back to Barnaby for confirmation, who flashes an excited grin.

”See? Almost there!”

Barnaby says,

“Now c’mon, I gotta tell you about the gates, and mind you its real tricky cus they’ve got a bunch o’ levers but only two of em really do anything I think –“

He continues as he bounds toward a nearby path, Kinger following close behind. He feels a little better now, out in the open air with the torchlight beaming from inside Barnabys middle. The shadows retreat, drowned out by the light — and Kinger is sorely glad of that, turning his mind to Barnaby's ramblings instead of the bloodshot eyes still peeking from behind twisted lamp posts and torn-up hedges. The eyes especially have been getting…bold, lately…

“—I mean they got all sorts of levers! I mean, I haven't been there in a while, but from what I remember it was mighty complexicated. All kinds of gears and switches and doohickeys n’ stuff,”

If human ears could prick up, Kinger’s would’ve. Caine doesn’t make complex mechanics anymore — maybe it’s just…oh what’s the word…greebled? It’s hard to think past this headache he has…Kinger frowns, rubbing his forehead and shelving the ‘gate mechanics’ info dump for later use.

“How complex is complexicated, again?”

Kinger asks, at this point completely desensitized to Barnabys ‘interesting’ pronunciation of long words. Barnaby himself just shrugs, whipping off his hat and pulling a jawbreaker out of it.

“‘Bout this much! At least, from what I remember, anyhoo…kinda fuzzy.”

It’s a completely nonsensical answer, but it’s the second half that catches Kingers attention.

“…Wait, hold on. You…don’t remember? Barnaby, did— did you spend that entire week just searching?”

Kinger asks, concerned, and Barnaby blinks. 

“Pfft, heck no! I spent most of my time tryina to climb the tower! Well, that or wandering around the grounds…or hidin’, but I don't haf’ta do that too often. Shadow critters ain’t common, y’know, n’ they mostly go crashing around out in town — anyway, my memory’s just super janky!” He laughs, tapping his head. “Not much goin on up here ‘part from good ole’ cowboy spirit, pardner!”

Barnaby shrugs, still grinning.

Barnaby shrugs, and Kinger frowns. Wandering…The thought of Barnaby wandering aimlessly like he was leaves a sour taste in Kingers mouth. Barnaby isn’t like him, he doesn't deserve to be left wandering in the dark. What was Caine thinking, leaving him like this? And all while dodging the Abstracted, too, which appear to be actively hunting and eating any NPCs they can get their jaws around— with no light, nobody to talk to… 

God that’s depressing. Almost as much as his entire life.

Kinger looks up at Barnaby, whistling happily next to him, tail swishing, a cheerful grin on his face. Has he ever…Does he know this destruction isn’t normal? Should I tell him? Would he care?

Kinger stares at the path below him in disturbed silence. Barnaby whistles happily next to him, tail swishing, a cheerful grin on his face — he seems relatively fine, doesn’t he? Maybe I’m thinking too much into this. Kinger remembers his own unhealthy coping mechanisms and immediately discards that explanation. Doesn't he ever think about them? The Abstractions? They must be terrifyingly unknown to such a new NPC, to any NPC. Do the glitching black fluids smeared on every surface not bother him? And the fact that he knows he has backups while less important NPCs don't — does that mean he's died before? Kingers face twists. How many times? Did it hurt? Can he hurt? Kinger knows he himself has a more realistic sense of pain than the other humans in the circus — Jax, for example, can’t feel anything at all— so is there similar variation in NPC’s? Can Barnaby feel pain? If he can feel pain, does it hurt if he dies? What would respawning feel like? No— he knows the answer to that question, he’s been respawned before, and it was fine…If a bit traumatizing, the first time. Thinking he was going to die then just ending up in the tent, alone, with the neon lights and empty halls, thinking he was all alone until the others came back, and she was furious and oh god what if Barnaby ends up in the void if he respawns, Kinger has no way of knowing if that’s the case! He has no way of knowing anything, he’s just guessing and since when has that been reliable!? His character archetype is crazy idiot, plain and simple, so—

Kinger twitches, biting down on his tongue. He’s going down a rabbit hole again. He shakes his head— no, no I’m not guessing, I know things. I already know the answers to some of these questions, don’t I? 

Kinger nods, counting the pepples under his shoes to ground himself. Yes, of course he knows things, he’s been on too many adventures to count. He’s met so many NPC’s over the years their faces blur in with the players, and they’ve ranged in awareness from “Yeah isn’t Caine a bastard?” to “hark, travelers!”, Clancy Cotton, the most profane NPC he ever met, to the Unnamed Extra 357 he was trapped in a closet with that one time. There’s a very good chance it's just in Barnabys programming not to worry or dwell. 

…Kinger hopes it is. ‘Dwelling’ has caused him more suffering than Barnaby deserves.

• ↑ Top
• Last Chapter
• Next Chapter
• Comment