---Maddy---

  Maddy and all four of her friends had rushed to the moon as fast as they could. This trip was fast, their equipment and vehicle many times more effective after testing parts in Richard's sandbox beforehand.

  All that led to her current situation.

  Maddy looked across at R waving his fingers flirtatiously.

  This was…her chance to regain something. “I have questions for you.” Maddy called and watched as the figure spun in the sterile air of the space station. His form waved and rippled as if on an invisible wind.

  “A trade perhaps? An exchange of sorts?” R called floating over on his back. Between his hands a crude blue box sat.

  “No trade. No bargain. I simply want to talk.” Maddy frowned across at him.

  “That is what you want my dear. It’s a demand.

  "Demands are oh so selfish you know – trades are much better! Trades are about the give and take. The ebb and flow and all that jazz. The consent of two instead of one. Come on a date with me and I’ll answer any question you might have. My only request is your company after all.” R rolled about, a smirk on his face.

  "Fuck off, she said no" Jess called from beside Maddy. Maddy appreciated the support but...she shook her head. Maddy could make her own decisions.

  Maddy hadn’t noticed till now just how…deep his eyes looked. They were like ‘normal’ eyes poorly hiding empty voids in the world… but as soon as you looked even closer, those voids had galaxies inside them. Whole universes – the empty blackness no longer quite so empty with its backdrop of stars. The shear scale of his eyes…would it really be that bad?

  Was she really considering it?

  “Just a date? No hidden agenda? No ongoing obligation? What am I signing up for before I accept” Maddy called.

  “What questions might I be answering? Must I continue answering them from now until forever? Are your questions paradoxes you seek to bind me with – or maybe simple curiosities you wish to satiate? A date would be…dinner. Dinner and a movie would be best but I’d settle for Dinner and your company. My treat! Lasting as long as your questions may arrive and no longer than they take to be dissected.”

  Maddy tripped over her thoughts as she tried to focus on responding.

  “My questions are curiosities, I guess? I need to know…I want to know…and I can leave at any time? No wordplay hiding an endless time? You have to actually answer me? I’m not going be trapped forever? Nor harmed?”

  “Of course! A meeting between fae is as far from boxes as you might expect. Just hold out your hand and I’ll take it from here if that sounds agreeable my dear.” R held out his hand.

  Maddy hesitated a moment longer than raised her own.

  It was disorienting seeing two realities at once. It never stopped being disorienting – especially when you knew one was the ‘truth’ and the other was just a ‘dream’.

  In the dream R stepped across and took her hand – skipping slightly as he led her away from her friends and into the surrounding nothingness.

  In ‘reality’…the computer in front of them broke. The top half was a mess of hundreds of different colored chips and wires and the bottom half was…

  The ‘truth’. The single unbreakable truth hidden among truths and content to stay out of petty factions or politics.

  A single severed tentacle the size of a small dog hooked up to all sorts of tubes and syringes like an alien on life support.

  With a sharp spasm, the tentacle burst into ten separate tentacles inch worming in all directions at a speed so fast everyone appeared to be frozen.

  Shrapnel from the computer floated slowly away from the site of the computer even as the mini tentacles – each looking vaguely like a single severed finger – jumped between bits like miniature acrobats.

  Converging on Maddy, the fingers took hold and pulled her body so hard and fast into the darkness that her skin brust and bones broke.

  There was a brief sensation of being pulled through an impossibly small gap before Maddy’s “reality” perspective found her corpse dragged across the moon. Her organs seemed to be exploding out of her skin in the lack of atmosphere – her? ?–? ?w?as a bumping?,? ?–? ?a?nd disorienting mess o?f? ?–? ?e?verything kept flashing the? ?–? ?b?eside her was???? ?????–??? ????t????o??? ????–????? ????–???? ???–?????.???

  Maddy’s view of reality faded away as R pulled her closer to him. He wrapped an old jacket about her shoulders and continued to pull her onwards. She no longer knew what was happening. Her mind stuttered through static, the meaning of each interaction twisting away into nothing.

  “You looked cold, Sorry outdoors is a bit chilly sometimes. Hang in there just a moment longer okay? We are nearly there! I have a great place picked out. I’m positive you are going to like it. Just a moment longer…”

  Maddy opened her mouth to complain – where did she leave her mouth? Was it back there scattered some?????????? ???????????????????–?????????????????????? ?????????w??????????hy did her mind keep blanking as soon as she tried to see what was happening in reality!

  This was getting annoying. Hadn’t R promised her she wouldn’t be harmed? He had definitely just broken his promise in a hundred different ways.

  “Here we are. Your seat my dear.”

  “That was very rude.” Maddy spoke up – figuring out she could just make herself a new mouth out of her need to communicate her annoyance. Somehow her words still failed to impart just how annoyed she was.

  “You don’t like men who are forward? I do apologize. I haven’t done this in…well anyways. I’ll try to be less forceful. I’m from a different age. Speak up if I’m out of line. Here we go! Some quick appetizers while I dig for the good stuff. " R waved a hand dismissively tossing a pair of marbles on the table. The marbles both rolled off the edge while Rumpelstiltskin began rifling through his pockets.

  Maddy sat on a small oak chair covered in an incredibly thin purple cushion wanting nothing more than to leave.

  The chair was unadorned in finery – had no embellishments or distinguishing features…and yet somehow it felt like a throne. In front of her was a round wooden table with a thin white tablecloth that reminded her vaguely of a café she might have been to once a lifetime ago.

  All about them was nothing but churning chaos. TV static like the soul surroundings, but darkened a few times from what she was used to.

  The backdrop was shades of black and grey and muted tones. It rippled slightly, shapes almost appearing and disappearing between each blink.

  Muted swaths of colour swirled and combined like ribbons. It almost looked like the aurora Borealis seen through the grainiest film ever made.

  Across from her, R excitedly filled two plates with a flash of silver. Two faded copies of himself wearing waiters suits appeared to their side with a bow and then quickly set the table.

  A single fork for each of them.

  A dusty looking napkin.

  A candle in the middle.

  They handed R some other tools then silently stepped backwards fading into the chaos once again.

  “This is a good ice breaker,” R smiled across at her. He pointed back and forth between two daggers, one on each of their plates.

  “The blade that slew a king and the blade that slew a great monster. Both are simple but strong flavors. I’ll let you try a bit of both and you can tell me which you think is which! It’s like a game but there’s no prize or punishment for failure!”

  Maddy stared down at her knife even as she collected herself and began to feel grounded once again.

  She wanted answers…but playing along should help her gain some good will first.

  “How am I supposed to eat this?” She finally said squinting slightly at the very solid looking blade.

  “What sort of question is that? Are you perhaps asking me to feed you or…oh! Oh! Sorry I didn’t realize I was being that stifling. And here I was promising no boxes as well! One moment.” R clapped a sheepish smile upon his face.

  Reality began to return, the distant perspective feeling like it was the dream instead. This spot right here in the void was reality. That spot over there was the mirror.

  Maddy was…physically on the dark side of the moon. Her mangled body was wrapped and folded in a neat little pile – her two eyes perfectly safe and unharmed on top.

  There was a thin atmosphere of sorts surrounding them. She didn’t need to breath and was relatively sure it wasn’t oxygen…but the gas protected them from the vacume.

  Surrounding her roughly three meters out in all directions was a transparent dome of twisting hands and body parts. Above in all directions Maddy could see a warped view of space – it looked like someone had skinned a grey man several times and glued each part to another part in a way that broke topography.

  Too many hands as well – and if Maddy stared too hard at some of the knotted bits she could almost catch a glimpse of????? ??????–???? ???????

  Best not to stare too close at her protective dome. That was her limit before perception stopped working.

  In front of her body sitting on the dusty ground lay a pair of plates. Identical plates to the dream – two knives in the middle roughly placed as if positioned between ‘her’ sitting on her body and???????? ?????????–????? ???????b?????????ending out of the dome in front of her t?e?e?t?h? wide and exposed.

  “Maybe you want me to try a bit of both first?” R asked after a moment. Maddy nodded then pushed her plate slightly towards the monster.

  “Sure! Okay we can do it like this. I didn’t want to start with that as it felt a bit more intimate…I’ll leave you both the tips and handles. Those are the best parts!” R spoke and Maddy watched twin actions play out.

  In reality…sorry no. In the dream, R held out a fork wiggling it back a fourth a few times with a smirk, as if showing her the utensil for the first time. Reaching across the table to ‘her’ meal first, R quickly jabbed and chunked off a bit near the middle. As he pushed the fork down the sword cut apart like cake. It was exactly like one of those ‘item or cake’ videos Maddy had seen once a lifetime before.

  Rumpelstiltskin quickly brought the metal morsel towards his mouth then popped it in without any trouble. He reached across and chunked his own knife then took a second bite with a tiny bit of a mocking ‘tada’.

  Simultaneously in the distant ‘real world’, a finger extruded out of the surroundings dripping void mana. With a light scrape, the nail dug into and pulled apart some section of the blade, scouring the matter from the metal. To Maddy’s void sight, the finger was then raised, now holding nothing but the messy ‘meaning’ or information of the item without any of its physical form.

  Undulating for a moment, a second fleshy appendage churned out of the surroundings.

  It looked like someone puppeting their hand to look like a mouth complete with finger tongue…and some body horror just for fun.

  The body horror partially converted this puppet halfway into a real mouth its tongue-thumb flicking in and out as if it didn’t have any bones. The whole mouth-hand then darted forward and ‘sucked’ the information out of the air in a way that hurt to look at.

  Maddy nodded slowly then reached out for her utensil only to find it missing.

  R had both forks.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  She stared across at him.

  Why?

  This was a power play wasn’t it? He wanted her to ask him for her fork back?

  Staring beside her plate in annoyance Maddy reached…and found her void mana sister willing to lend her the necessary destruction mana for a moment. Nodding in thanks Maddy borrowed her sisters fork.

  She then watched her sister step back into the surroundings in a mirror of R’s butler.

  Maddy took a quick glance across the table to see if R was impressed…he wasn’t. The fae continued to smile waiting patiently.

  Taking a deep breath Maddy scooped some sword and bit down – watching her destructive mana manifest as several altered void maggots that appeared across the sword with a crackle of tiny pops.

  Her spell in the dream was altered from what she was used to…but close enough to her capabilities they didn’t seem too out of place.

  As soon as the void black worms had their fill, they transferred back to her…except instead of bringing back life energy, they brought scrambled ‘meaning’ which immediately began to dissolve in Maddy’s body.

  It tasted like…it didn’t really taste of anything if Maddy was being truthful. Was that it? For some reason she had expected something more...

  R continued to stare across at her for a moment before looking disappointed.

  “You’re swallowing it whole without properly letting the flavors wash over your existence. I’m not one to tell others how to eat…but try to at least chew a bit? Don’t worry I don’t think chewing is unwomanly or anything.” He added.

  Why did he have to make everything weird?

  Maddy's perception doubled up meaning translated by the metaphor around her.

  In the ‘real world’ his advice rumbled from the walls wet and raspy. His translated advice made more sense even if it sounded worse, “Use your domain activation. Don’t worry. I’ll keep you contained like a perfect gentleman.” The walls oozed a slimy sort of feeling as they spoke.

  Maddy paused. She didn't trust him.

  She…didn’t use her activated domain often. It felt like a trump card. Something to bring out only when in danger. Only when she couldn’t otherwise use it…

  Was it really okay to waste on something like this? Was this a trap? It certainly felt like a trap…

  Maddy stared across at the creature in front of her. What now? She…couldn’t read him. She didn’t understand what he wanted. She didn’t know what she thought of him and more importantly she didn’t know what he thought of her.

  What was this…was it all a game? It sort of felt like a game. One she was currently losing.

  Should she follow along? Was this a demand or a simple suggestion like it sounded? Maddy thought…and then decided it was better to assume the safer option.

  If this was a trap she was already stuck in it. The only thing she could do now was trigger and hope for the best.

  Maddy felt like she was hyping herself up. She held her fork and spoke.

  “I guess it's true, so I’ll listen to you. I wish to see, the world hidden from me. And so, in sight and sound and form, I give myself a push to swarm.” Maddy spoke in ‘reality’ and found her words almost drawn out of her by the end.

  Wait. What was that last part?

  On the dark side of an artificial moon, hidden from all sights but one, a simple rhyme acted as impetus for change.

  A mangled body dissolved into nothing more than information and power. The sum of Maddy’s form melted – shifting closer into mana before it spread and seeped into the surroundings.

  Maddy’s domain moved to copy magic. She reached out and touched something that should not be touched.

  Instead of touching something simple like the perspective of an earth mage or the perspective of someone who saw time…

  Maddy touched something eldritch.

  Her domain flinched.

  Her 'self' sampled the surrounding mana, the surrounding domain and surrounding magic…and then imploded inwards rushing down into a single sphere.

  An orb.

  A single glossy white orb just a bit larger than a basketball.

  Moments later the orb broke. No, not an orb – an egg.

  An egg incubating in esoteric flesh – it cracked and exploded as the creature incubating within burst out.

  The creature that immerged was fleshy and wet. It looked like sentient natto – or maybe a brain?

  Hundreds of thousands of tiny spheres – each almost an eye but less defined. Each moving and undulating out of the sphere shape into a maggot bean to push forward. Each was connected to each other by tiny tiny threads – tiny wet sinus or strands that broke and reconnected as tiny eyes tumbled over one another to prevent themselves from getting trampled.

  The eldritch creature formerly known as Maddy surged across the dusty ground rolling and undulating like a swarm of baby spiders.

  Several of the least incubated orbs broke – exploding into a dense sticky glue. Still others seemed almost to absorb the dust they rolled through – growing larger even as they fumbled to sink through the swords. Some of the tiny balls even cannibalized their fallen siblings, consuming the glued dust with tiny teeth as if picking up something they had dropped.

  And then she fed.

  ...

  Maddy wiped crumbs of sword from her mouth. How messy. Still. This time she definitely…experienced something different. It couldn’t be called taste but maybe it was related? if she had to pick a sense to relate it to that was definitely the closest...

  Something that surprised her was the cost of this domain activation. She had spent ‘meaning’ like water to activate her domain but had gained ‘meaning’ and more from her consumption.

  She almost felt bloated – more weight sitting in her existence than ever before. This forcefully acquired meaning sat heavy on everything that she was. It was truly like eating in that regard – this meaning was sitting inside of her but had not become a part of her. She hadn't digested it yet.

  “It’s a trick” Maddy spoke up staring down at the two remains. “Both swords are the same. They killed the same person, a monster and king.”

  Rumpelstiltskin laughed.

  “Close enough the killer duel wielded the blades. What do you think? Isn’t this a fun meal opener?” he asked as if trying to gain her approval.

  Suddenly Maddy felt strange. She was no longer a captive, no longer someone without any power in this situation. At least it didn’t feel like she was.

  She could feel the way he surrounded her...made a room she could safely sit in. But she could also feel how that was the extents of it. She could in fact leave if she wanted to, sure she was stuck without a ride but the barrier just kept the air in, it didn't restrain her as she first thought.

  “It's okay.” Maddy responded looking down at the plates. She felt most of the tension leave her.

  “I want to ask you a question. You know I’ve seen the shape of magic, It's beautiful and yet full of flaws. Why? Why are there so many flaws strewn throughout?”

  R paused, “Oh? What flaws are you talking about.”

  Maddy struggled to articulate what she had seen. “They aren’t individual rules or problems…more metaphorical flaws than anything else? Cracks preventing it from becoming perfect. Bad growths blocking new growth from entering an area its needed in?”

  R nodded slowly. “I have felt the tapestry and worked to remove any flaws I’ve felt before...sometimes what looks like a flaw is what makes it beautiful. Others are actually flaws but...Let me restart. I cannot see what you are claiming to see but…let me try to explain what they might be.”

  “The toy of structured magic given to mortals is a wish. The source of all magic. Specifically it's a shared wish, greater than the sum of its parts. A wish for power. For purpose. For a hundred tiny things and more. Its greatest strength is its collective. Wishes are tiny things you understand. Weak no matter how much ‘want’ they contain. A wish upon a star can barely move a grain of sand alone. The collective strength required to function as it does is built upon countless individuals contributing to the whole…what you noticed as flaws are likely similar to the ones I've found. They are the natural consequence of combining wishes and yet combining them is the only way the tapestry has been formed.

  “Individuals have competing desires even if their wish is the same. Sometimes granting one their wish crushes another’s. The strength of the shared wish is to give everyone a shared boon… but the boon that’s perfect for one is flawed for another. On a low level that means compromise. On a high level that means structured conflict. Separating out the wish into mana and aether in a way that the two strengthen each other even while sorting and separating individuals into sides…this has removed a large amount of those flaws. If we were to seperate it further…separating the whole into a million different parts. That would theoretically fix all flaws even as it weakened the whole into being useless. Theres a minor separation in between places and people that works rather well. The magic of one settlement is different from another and that separation improves the whole even as the group must compromise amongst themselves.” R waved his hands about.

  “After an eternity has passed this structure will become perfect. Up till that perfection, an eternity in the future, our toy is flawed but the best we can do with what we have.” R turned to her nodding slightly.

  “If you improve the weave you contribute towards that impossible goal. I can only wish you luck. Now then! I have more food for us, let me just try and find it.” The man stuck his fork into his pockets and began stirring pulling out heaps of items at a time.

  For a brief moment, Maddy thought his fork looked closer to a ‘fork in the road’ than an eating utensil.

  As he searched for pocket junk she thought about what he had said. In some ways she understood exactly what he had said. Why the theoretical flaws were there and why removing them was so hard…and shouldn’t the goal be perfection? If perfection was an infinite distance away…didn’t that mean that itself was a flaw?

  “It seems you are done digesting your appetizer! I have just the thing. A new course! A new Treat!

  This meal is one I’m sure you’ll love. A child’s tears paired with a cherished love letter. The balanced notes of simple sorrow really bring out the complex emotions left on your pallet after the letter has been swallowed. I call this dish bittersweet. Try it! Tell me what you think!” R happily jumped topics while bringing out the next meal.

  This one was a tiny shot glass full of liquid and a sealed envelope covered in rips and tears.

  Maddy stared at the offerings. They sounded sinister and yet the voice that whispered that sounded unsure and tiny. She licked her lips slightly. They sounded interesting? No…what was she thinking?

  Before she spent too much time considering them she reached out and took a bite. She took another – licking the liquid out of her shot glass even as she sunk deep into the sensations the meal provided.

  “Well?” R asked leaning across the table towards her. His face grew closer, his eyes expanded. Maddy felt like she would get lost in them.

  …

  “It's interesting,” Maddy responded finding her voice at last.

  “I can feel years of emotion sunk into these pages…she waited for him to come home from war didn’t she? She fell asleep one night with it in her arms. It's…interesting. I’m not sure the taste is quite to my liking but I’m glad to have experienced it.” She responded honestly.

  “Something happier next time, of course, of course.” R nodded reaching out and grabbing the leftover bit of letter off her plate.

  He shoved it in his mouth chewing on the paper before returning to shuffle through his pockets.

  It seemed like it was Maddy’s turn to ask another question?

  “Why are monsters?” She asked pausing and trying to frame her question once again. Something about their surroundings made the act of formulating a question harder. She had more than this back in ‘reality’ but now that they were one step into metaphor her words died before they were formed.

  “What about them?” R asked swallowing the piece of paper and looking across at her in curiosity.

  “Why do they exist? Why are they negative? Why do they hate us so much? Why can’t they be better? Why do they exist only to be killed? They are the cost…and yet why must that cost be constantly paid?” Maddy asked.

  R nodded slowly his hands dropping to his side as he paused the search.

  “Monsters have no capacity for anything more than what they are. They know this and resent it.” He began.

  “One of the absolute rules for growth and fairness means we all must start at the beginning. We must start at rank zero. We must admass strength over time and effort. No instant free pass to the top. Monsters on the other hand start with power. They are born at rank two or three or five because they aren’t truly born at all. Because they started with the strength that we must work for they…cannot gain more. They cannot advance. It is balanced and yet what we consider fairness they consider an unfair barrier. That’s one aspect.” R paused.

  “There isn’t some trick. Some way to make them benevolent. Some hidden button you can press to make them follow your desires for them. No missing ingredient they can use to make themselves better. If a miracle happens and a monster changes…well then they are no longer a monster. By definition, a monster is the unchanging. If they change they are no longer a monster.” R nodded and left it at that.

  Maddy felt like there was more. She felt like there was more she wanted to ask. They had studied essence. Monsters could have non monster children… and those could grow so they weren’t monsters anymore. But why were they the cost of the wish?”

  “Oh? Why does your beautiful gaze look so disappointed! Disappointed by what you already know to be true? Disappointed by me reiterating what you’ve already heard? Were you hoping for something else? A secret proving they were more than rocks for you to break and kick aside on your way to build a home?” Rumpelstiltskin laughed and shook his head.

  Maddy felt frustrated by the direction this was heading.

  “They…think, don’t they? They live? I’ve seen monsters that are intelligent – I think I have at least. If they can remember that’s a change. If they are intelligent and are able to change, they have the capacity to become better!”

  R sighed. “Once again, if a monster ‘becomes better’ – whatever ‘better’ means for you – then they are no longer a monster. The definition of a monster is one who cannot become better. They are the soulless where souls are the capacity for change. You can become friends with a monster in the same way you can become friends with a rock…but that relationship is one sided unless you change the rock.

  “And before you ask why we don’t change the rocks then…we can and do and have and will. You can change them...but that is you shaping the change not them suddenly doing so. Even if you change a single rock there are still more out there. Still, fields of rocks made faster than we can work on them and unable to change themselves. Our best use of rocks is to do what we have done. Sand off any points they might have and leave them as they are.” R pulled out a new plate. “Let’s have cake!”

  …

  Conversation and company rose and fell a few times after that point. Maddy asked random questions that had been hard to answer or confirm. R responded – sometimes with a detailed response. Sometimes a simple confirmation. He brought out an increasingly strange array of objects to ‘eat’ – Maddy had long since grown stuffed. She could barely manage to ‘take a single bite’ of each offering. The only real benefit to the parade of meals was what she could only call domain training. It became easier and easier to activate her domain for each bite. She lost less each time. She gained more or at least tasted more as she grew more practiced.

  Rapid advancement had never been the goal of this meeting however and Maddy tried her very best to extract as much information from R as possible.

  Finally conversation steered towards their plans and Maddy asked about the higher realm and class system they were creating.

  “I’m not going to to help you with this.” R spoke, his very first refusal. “Not more than I already have, not more than you’ve already done…but how about this. A single lesson on magic. Not a lesson of mana and rules. A single trick you can use with true magic. Follow me I'll bring you back to the game you're missing out on."

  incomprehensible eldritch motives fae whimsy darker.

  Anyways! Mini rant below~