Survivor’s Guilt — an abyssal leviathan who wore my face, who bore within her heart all my most furtive fears, whose void-dark eyes burned with the fires of my very own self-righteous rage — slammed a wrecking-ball fist into the weakened glass of her prison, breaking the watery bonds which held her at bay, parting the final barrier between us and Maisie.

  Glass exploded inward, filling the little steel room with flying chunks of razor-edged debris; a tidal wave of bitter cold seawater crested above my head and that of my Lonely Counterpart, as we lay locked in our sobbing reconciliation. The reek of brackish water and dying fish-flesh and matted seaweed invaded my nostrils, coated my exposed skin with unclean air, and pulled fresh tears from my stinging eyes. The hooked claws of That Great And Terrible Guilt unfolded through the falling wall of water, unfurling from a palm which could crush me and myself and all my other facets with a flicker of one swift squeeze. Guilt reached out for us — for myself and my Lonely Half alike, who clung to me, screaming and sobbing for mercy; six Abyssal Heathers raised their barbed tentacles and opened their fanged maws, hissing a warning at the top of six identical lungs. But this Giant Of The Deep, she could not and would never heed any warning, because her cause was just and right, and we were all so very wrong and wretched.

  A shadow of flesh and water descended, to crush us all beneath sheer weight of guilt. In the darkness of that death, I believed for just a moment that this was what I had deserved all along. Self-love fled in terror; acceptance curled up and went silent. I felt nothing in my arms, certainly not myself. My eyes began to close.

  At least Maisie’s prison was broken. At least that—

  Strong hands hooked beneath my armpits, dragged me to my feet, and hauled me away from the brink.

  Guilty Heather’s giant fist snapped shut on empty air. Black claws raked across bare steel, their tips screaming like nails down a chalkboard. Pale fingers flailed, flexing for the fleeing prey.

  And all about my ears were the voices of those who loved me.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”

  “Stop yapping! Just run! Run, now! Everybody out! Out that fucking door! And get Heather on her—”

  “I’ve got her, I’ve got her! Eileen, you carry the other, you—”

  “Hahahahahaaaaa! Shaman! We will fight as we once should have!”

  “Somebody grab her, too! She can’t fistfight a giant!”

  “I thought you said it was just Heather?!”

  “Yes, and she’s furious — mostly with herself! We don’t want to get in the way! Run!”

  Before I could protest, struggle, voice a complaint, or even comprehend what was happening, I found myself cradled in strong, protective, reliable arms, carried against a warm chest which felt like home. Eileen’s face was above me, pink eyes burning in the sudden dark; a familiar presence crawled into my yellow blanket — the Praem Plushie, telling me to hang on as tightly as I could. We were at the centre of a mad scrum of all my friends, as everybody rushed for the exit from that little steel room. Water sloshed around everybody’s ankles, flowing in a stuttering torrent from the shattered glass wall; the worst of the water pressure had been blocked, dammed up by the sudden stoppage of the Guilty Leviathan’s hand, still snapping and grasping for her prey denied.

  Lonely Heather still clung to my own right hand, screaming and sobbing against our separation as we were pulled apart; for a terrible moment I thought my most beloved people in the world were leaving her behind, leaving behind a part of me, leaving her to drown in that awful steel prison. I think I screamed too, screaming out that I loved myself too much to let myself go — but then our hands parted, too slippery with sweat and blood and freezing cold water to maintain our grip. But then I realised with sobbing relief that Lonely Heather was being carried too, cradled in Raine’s arms.

  “Out, out!” somebody shouted again — Twil, I thought, with the snarl and snap of too many teeth in her panicked snout. “Back the way we came! Double time!”

  “You wouldn’t know double time if it hit you in the cu—”

  “Just run, hey?! Argue later, like!”

  Everyone bundled out of the little steel room, bursting out onto the metal walkway beyond; water was already trickling through the door, falling through the metal mesh holes on the walkway, plummeting into darkness. Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight paused by the door, counting off names as everybody fled, then ducking at the last second to scoop up a bundle of russet fur — the Saye Fox, not to be forgotten. Above us, Tenny’s single black tentacle whipped through the air as if startled, tip-mouth opening wide, lined with tiny black teeth.

  We — me and myself and all of I, and all the companions who had descended into this abyssal inferno alongside me — sprinted away into the darkness of the Box, our gang of footfalls ringing out into the drowning shadows.

  I clawed my way up Eileen’s shoulder. “No!” I wheezed. “No, I can’t run, I have to face her! I have to face myself … ”

  My complaint was rather premature.

  Behind us, the glass of the aquarium shuddered, quivering like molten light beneath a beating star. A spout of solid water exploded from the doorway of the little steel room we had just fled, bursting free in a horizontal torrent, crashing down onto the walkways behind us, pouring a waterfall of icy brine into the depths below, splashing into the vast seas which already lay heavy and dark in the sump of the Box.

  The aquarium glass shuddered a second time, ringing like a bell of lead and iron, a great gong vibrating all through the interior of the Box. Several of my friends winced and hissed as they ran. Zheng shook her head at the terrible noise. The Saye Fox whined. Twil barked.

  The twin shadows of gigantic clawed hands thumped against the glass, moving slowly as if trapped in tar, framing a glass-blurred vision of my own gigantic face. Once, twice, three times she thumped on the weakening walls. Cracks the size of canyons spread across glass as thick as redwood trees, spider-webbing outward, filling the air with an artillery barrage of crack-crack-crack-crack!

  The aquarium burst asunder.

  I am convinced that if this had happened beyond the cushion of a dream, we would all have been struck deaf in an instant. The shock wave alone would have tossed us about like leaves before a hurricane. None of us would have made it a single additional step. This would have been the end.

  But I — and me — was still grappling for control of the dream. And self-love reduced certain death to merely the loudest sound we had ever heard.

  Chunks and spears and plates of glass the size of train cars flew into the air, raining down upon the cavernous innards of the Box like a shower of meteors, crashing into metal walls, crumpling the walkways either side of our fleeing group, smashing down into the deeper seas below to throw up huge plumes of water. Somebody screamed — perhaps myself, wild with panic and fear and worse.

  Somebody else shouted, “Duck and cover, duck and cover!”

  A third voice — Raine? — laughed with manic terror. “Are you fucking mad?!”

  “It’s better than nothing, ain’t it!?”

  Evelyn screamed, “Keep running, you imbecile!”

  Tenny’s silken black tentacle whipped overhead, to provide the cover we could not. She smashed aside falling chunks of Guilt’s demolished prison, deflecting boulders of glass, catching them like tennis balls and hurling them back the way they came.

  “Puppy!” Zheng roared.

  Lozzie — her voice blurred by tears and panting lungs — howled a thank you as Tenny protected us.

  A true tidal wave of water followed the eruption, exploding outward as the aquarium collapsed. Billions upon billions of gallons rose in a vast wall behind us, crashing down onto the walkways, swallowing the metal innards of the Box, devouring the corpses of Empty Guards, demolishing the dead automatic turrets, sweeping up a mountain of debris before the waters, drowning all the lesser seas over which we had passed. The former inhabitants of the Box — the hidden creatures of the deep who had breached their tanks and joined the seas — roared and squealed and lashed as the waves swept them forward, trapped in the chaos.

  “You can’t do anything against that, Tenns!” Lozzie shouted. “Go back, go back outside for now! You’ve done so so so well, go back! We’ll see you outdoors!”

  A great throaty ‘pbbbbbt!’ of distress echoed from beyond the Box, barely audible above the rage of the waters.

  “Just keep running!” Evelyn roared from within Praem’s arms, cradled in an awkward princess carry. “Keep running! Stop looking back, that’s how it gets you!”

  “How what gets you!?” Twil shouted. “You can’t outrun a tidal wave! That’s not how it works!”

  “This is a dream, you mongrel! Keep going!”

  Brackish rain began to fall — the leading edge of spray from the tidal wave. It began as mere spitting, turned within seconds to a steady pitter-patter, then burst upon us as a downpour of reeking seawater, drenching us all in Guilt’s Accusation. Salty water stuck my hair to my scalp, sluiced my clothes to my skin, and ran in little rivulets into my mouth. It tasted like bitter tears and stagnant hatred, the rotten remains of a forgotten brew.

  And at the centre of that crashing wave of water an abyssal goddess reared up, breaching the surface, clawing at the air — Heather The Leviathan.

  Armoured in scales of midnight black and luxurious fur of peach-fuzz pink, with eyes the colour of the void between stars, her claws each longer than a great white shark, her vast mass propelled on a dozen flippered legs, body studded with hundreds of barbed tentacles, spined and spiked and bristling all over, she was the abyssal truth grown to titan proportions. Giant Heather — Guilty Heather, Heather The Murderous, Heather The Bitter, Heather The Vast And Terrible And Full Of Punishment — rode the crest of that tidal wave, pulling herself forward with each smooth swipe of her arms, crashing through the metal innards of the Box, reaching for us with the descent of her clawed fists.

  We outpaced her by mere seconds, more by luck and chance and dream logic than natural speed — and by divine intervention, for Tenny had not left us behind at Lozzie’s urging.

  As Leviathan Heather ate up the walkway behind us, dragging twisted metal scrap down into the depths with her lashing tentacles, or biting into the metal with a vast and hungry maw full of silver teeth, she had to contend with a single silken black tentacle. Tenny, still reaching in from far beyond the Box, thwacked Guilty Heather in the forehead every time she threatened to gain on our little scurrying group. Every time Leviathan Me raised a clawed hand to cut off our escape, Tenny’s tentacle was there to wrestle her away. Every time she reared up out of the waters to crash down upon us, Tenny’s tentacle darted in to slap her across the face. Every time she opened her maw to roar us into submission, Tenny shoved her head back below the waters with a piston-slam of tentacled strength.

  I howled over Eileen’s shoulder, shouting at my Leviathan Self.

  “Stop it!” I yelled. “Stop this! Stop, please! We’re so close to Maisie, we almost had her free! All we have to do is go back, we can swim down there and free her! Why won’t you stop!? I love you too, do you understand?! You’re still part of me! Stop!”

  Lonely Heather joined in, bawling and braying in Raine’s arms. “Stop hurting Tenns! Stop it! Stop, stop!”

  “We love you!” I hurled at her. “Even you, even the guilt! I love you, you don’t have to do this!”

  A voice rumbled from beneath the onrushing water, a voice from the abyss — “TRAITOR. WEAKLING. COWARD. WE LEFT HER BEHIND!”

  “And we’re leaving her behind right now!” I shouted at My Giant Self. “We’re inches from getting her back! Who’s the one betraying Maisie now!?”

  Leviathan Heather raised her gargantuan face from the waters for but a moment, opened her maw, and hissed with a noise like the burble of a volcano.

  Tenny slapped her across the mouth, loud, wet, and crunchy, breaking bones and pulping meat. She crashed back into the waters and resumed her submarine pursuit.

  All around me, my friends fled before the crashing wave of my own Guilt. Eileen cradled me in her arms, no longer upon her back. Raine held the other me, comforting her sobbing, bloodstained face against her chest. Praem carried Evee, Evelyn’s eyes crammed shut with real fear. Twil was almost all werewolf now, using her wolfish strength to haul the less glamorous prize of Evelyn’s wheelchair, holding it two handed above her own head. Zheng sprinted, her half-naked blood-streaked form washed clean here and there by the water, running in bloody tracks down her skin. Lozzie hopped and skipped and slid as if the fear was no impediment at all — but she clung to Jan’s more clumsy hand, pulling along Jan’s armour-encumbered frame. Seven-Shades-of-Swiftly-Striding had her shoes off and dangling from one hand, her umbrella over one shoulder, running barefoot, the Saye Fox cradled in the crook of her arm. The Forest Knight jogged almost at the rear, his joints lubricated and accelerated by the strange symbiosis of Mister Squiddy, with Maisie’s destined new body still strapped to his back.

  Six Abyssal Heathers raced to either side of myself and Lonely Heather, as if protecting and herding us, turning now and again to hiss and screech at the crashing giant of our own Guilt, flaring their tentacles and baring their teeth at this hundred-magnified mirror of their own abyssal beauty.

  For one dizzying moment — as we raced across those ringing metal walkways, with the Box collapsing around us, the waters of the abyss rushing at our heels, and Tenny’s single tentacle the only thing between us and the oblivion of a nightmare — I saw us all, from behind, from above.

  I saw us — me and Myself, all my friends, Raine and Eileen carrying our opposite halves, surrounded by a phalanx of abyssal tentacles, racing ahead of inevitable doom. We were so very small, insignificant remnants clinging to a reality which could never be, trying to reverse history, to deny causality, to make a world where Maisie had never sacrificed herself.

  I saw through giant’s eyes, for just a moment. I saw us how she did — as irritating denials of what had come to pass, as those who needed punishing, as the last thread holding us back from well-deserved self-destruction.

  There were so many of me — one and two and six and eight and nine.

  Staring up at that crashing wave of water, staring out of the water down at myself, staring through a twinned pair of crying eyes, through six pairs of abyssal senses all around us. For one moment, I saw through them all, and they saw through me, and we were almost one again.

  “Oh,” I breathed to nobody in particular, for no ear could hear over the waters of Guilt. “Are we recombining? Are we—”

  “No!” wailed Lonely Heather, and her lips were mine, my voice was her own, she took our vocal chords and screamed. “No, we can’t! She’ll kill us all, she’ll overwhelm us! There’s so much more of her than us! There’s so much of her! Stop!”

  The Abyssal Heathers joined with a chorus of hissing — they agreed, the Guilt could not be allowed in, for it would devour them all, overwhelm their defences, and swallow me whole. The six hissing voices suggested victory over ourselves was the only way out. She must be beached, starved of water, dried out in the light of the Eye’s gaze, denied and deconstructed and left without a single way back in, for she was death and self-ruin and suicide. She must be killed.

  Though I was only human, and my throat was but meat and gristle, and rather sore at that, I opened my mouth and hissed right back.

  “No!” I screeched. “No! She’s part of me, she’s part of us, she’s us too! And I have to, I have to love her all the same, I have to, I have to—”

  Another shout broke in from beyond this inter-Heather conversation — Twil, up front.

  “I think we’re almost at the doors!” she yelled over the sound of the crashing water behind us. “We’re almost there!”

  Jan yelled from inside her armour, “And what the hell do we do when we get out!? Run sideways?! What’s your plan?!”

  Raine shouted, “Keep running, mostly! Clang clang clang, Jan! Keep clanging!”

  Twil was correct. A few moments later a pinprick of silver-grey light floated up out of the shadow-wreathed metal ahead, surrounded by massive chunks of glass thrown clear from the exploded aquarium tank — the doorway. Huge gashes had been torn in the surface of the box by giant spears of broken glass, hanging in the dark like icebergs on a metal ocean. The great circular door frame rushed toward us as we sprinted down the final walkway, racing ahead of the crashing wave at our heels.

  The door was partially blocked by jagged debris from the glass tank. Lozzie raised her voice in a shrill shout, “Tenny! Tenn-Tenns, get the door!”

  Tenny obliged. We had long outpaced the single tentacle with which she had assisted and defended us from my own Raging Guilt, but now a fresh trio of silken black tendrils appeared around the edges of the door; huge black mouth-tips opened wide and swept aside the debris clogging our escape.

  Lozzie whooped. “That’s my girl! That’s my Tenny!”

  “Mine as well,” I whispered, filled with a pride I had never known before.

  We burst free from the Box, stampeding back out into the grounds of Cygnet Asylum, beneath the grey daylight of the dream and the silver glow of the Eye which filled the sky. The subterranean darkness of the Box receded behind us, leaving me blinking against the sudden blinding light.

  Nobody slowed down or stopped — none of us was foolish enough for that, the power of the dream extended only so far. Water was flowing out of the doorway already, sluicing around the sides of the fallen metal door, splashing down the concrete, flooding out onto the green lawns beyond, beginning to trickle into the trenches and craters of the mock battlefield. Footfalls splashed through the running stream, racing across the concrete, heading for open ground as quickly as we could all run.

  The rest of our split party was waiting for us. The Twins — Zalu and Xiyu — stood in front, with Horror’s decapitated head clipped to one of their belts, now gaping wide at the sight of the torrent rushing behind us. All six of the Caterpillars had formed up into a protective wall, as if to receive and shelter us from a pursuing foe, with the thirty Knights ready at their collective rear. The remaining six of Lonely Heather’s Empty Guards stood with their hands bound, escorted by a pair of Knights, to make sure they behaved.

  Tenny towered above it all, a vast moth-shape clad in velvet black and fluffy white, topped by twitching antennae and the iridescent flutter of her huge wings. She was already disengaging from the Box, unwinding her tentacles from where she had grasped it, her many legs backing away from the twisted metal wreckage and the trickles of water flowing from the many cracks and splits and breaches in the surface.

  Xiyu was shouting, “What’s on your rear?! What’s at your rear? Orders! We need orders! Where’s all that water coming from, where—”

  “Run!” Raine yelled. “Just run, get out of the way!”

  “We can’t,” Xiyu snapped. “We need orders, we need—”

  I wondered briefly if six full-grown Caterpillars would have been enough to stop Heather The Leviathan. Maybe, if everything else about the situation had been different. Maybe if they had six times that number. But not these vulnerable, half-restored Cattys; they could not fight that giant, no matter how loyal and stout their hearts. I would not see them swept aside and drowned by my own Guilt.

  I twisted in Eileen’s arms as we passed through the phalanx of Knights and Caterpillars.

  “It’s me!” I screamed in their faces. “It’s me! It’s all my guilt and hate and everything bad about me! Run, now!”

  We flew through the cordon and burst out the other side. Zalu and Xiyu shared a look, then glanced in twinned unison at the way the gushing river of water from the doorway was beginning to lift the massive steel door from the ground. They broke and ran, joining us in our flight. The Knights hesitated all as one body, then turned and followed the Forest Knight too, dragging the Empty Guards after them. The Six Caterpillars let out soft little ‘doot-doot!’ sounds, closing ranks as if to buy us more time.

  Behind us, the flow of water from the doorway turned into a gushing spout, a solid mass of liquid shooting forth and spraying out over the grounds of Cygnet. The concrete and metal walls of the Box creaked and groaned with pressure. A great thumping, cracking, banging sound rang out, shaking the mud and soil at our feet.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Where do we fucking go!?” Twil yelled as we stumbled into the remains of the battlefield. “There’s no high ground or anything, there’s just the hospital rooftops, and there’s no way in from over here, there’s no—”

  “Just keep going!” Raine called. “Keep running!”

  Evelyn raised her head from Praem’s chest, hoarse with panic. “We can’t keep running! We have to have a solution! Heather! This is your dream, how do we—”

  “I don’t—” I panted with the effort. “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do! Love isn’t— love isn’t enough! She won’t stop, she won’t—”

  “She’s going to drown us all!” screamed my Lonely Counterpart. “She’s here, she’s here, she’s all—”

  Screeeeeeekt-crunch-krrrrrang!

  The front wall of the Box buckled outward in a flower of metal and concrete, blossoming with bent girders and twisted pipes, bursting asunder under the pressure of two fists full of black claws and titanic muscle. An ocean of water cascaded from the breach, pouring from the Box and out into the dream, a deluge drowning concrete and grass and trenches and trees and light and dark alike. A wall of water splashed and sloshed forth, to smother reality beneath the waves.

  Survivor’s Guilt — The Terrible Leviathan Inside Myself — hauled her vast bulk through the breach in the Box, clawing at the ruined edges of the wound in the world, carried through on the tumult of gushing water. She snagged herself on spikes of metal and grazed her flesh on exposed concrete, uncaring of these wounds, adding pinkish froth to the braken seas. She slopped forth like a breaching whale, stumbling in the rushing murk; she strode out onto the surface of the dream, tides swirling around her dozen ankles. Her footfalls cracked the concrete and cratered the earth. She straightened up to her full height, taller than the Box itself, tall enough to scrape the air.

  She raised her face to the sky, staring upward into the Eye, then opened her maw, each tooth as long as a human being.

  Hissssssssss!

  Her hiss split the heavens and made the ground tremble. The dream itself quaked at her arrival.

  Eileen gasped as if struck; in the sky above, the Eye — her true body, vast beyond human scale, a crust of mountain-range lid-lip enclosing a silver sea wider than all the Earthly continents combined, a god of hyperdimensional mathematics, a leviathan in her own right, self-liberated and uplifted from the darkest reaches of the abyss — flinched.

  A cliff-face of water bore down on us, stretching the width of Cygnet’s grounds, sweeping up the discarded tanks and abandoned corpses from the mock battlefield, churning with the lethal debris from inside the box, studded here and there with darkened patches — the other leviathans from the deep places, struggling for their lives amid the cataclysm. We stumbled and lurched past waterlogged trenches, Raine shouting and urging us all on. But there was simply nowhere else to run. Behind us, the six Caterpillars stopped and turned, as if they planned to face the wave head-on.

  We were all about to drown in the salt-water afterbirth of my own Guilt. And all I could do was stare upward at the most beautiful version of myself I had ever seen.

  Despite all that she represented, the Leviathan Heather was an abyssal beauty to surpass all.

  Standing at six stories tall, framed against the black ridges of the Eye, she was a true giant of the deeps. Her face was mine but sharper, so much more predatory and full of clarity, with none of the careworn lines of stress and exhaustion. Her eyes were the colour of interstellar nebula, pupiless and black and glittering in the light. Her hair was a flowing mass of quasi-fleshy tendrils, floating like seaweed in a placid current, as if she had brought the ocean abyss to the surface with her emergence. She possessed a mouth full of shark’s teeth, muscles like butter, and all the grace of an oceanic predator, moving with fluid speed in the open air despite her incredible size. She was clad in both scales and fur, in the armour of midnight and the blush of dawn, streaked here and there with the gently strobing colours of rainbow bioluminescence, ghostly in the daylight, like a phantasm which refused to lie down at night’s end. She was lined with hundreds of tentacles, each one barbed or spiked or with a fanged maw gnashing and snapping in the tip. Her belly was taut with muscle — something I had never experienced before — and her hips were skirted with flared plates of chitin. Her legs branched outward into a dozen separate limbs, each one multi-joined, each one ending in a flippered talon, tipped with curling claws. Great ink-dark membranes hung from her shoulders like a cloak, or wings, or a sail with which to catch the hidden currents out in the black.

  She was sublime, perfect, divine.

  If only she could have understood how much I loved her.

  As that wave crashed toward me and my friends, I could see no other way out. Our tiny little group was all stumbling to a halt — even Praem, even Lozzie, those who never seemed to give up, they too were turning in awestruck surrender, stilled by the certain knowledge that we could not outrun a true tidal wave, even in a dream. Raine stumbled to a halt and hugged Lonely Heather to her chest, kissing her hair, muttering words I could not hear; Lonely Heather clung to her in turn, weeping freely. Twil turned like a wolf at bay, showing all her teeth and claws, howling at our doom, fur bristling all over. Zheng stood tall, grinned wide, and raised her fists, ready to fight anything, even a wall of water. Jan slapped down the visor of her armour, grabbed Lozzie around the waist with one arm, and started making strange symbols with her other hand. Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight simply stopped, hugged the Saye Fox tight, and closed her eyes. Before us, the six Caterpillars dug their front ends into the wet soil, as if trying to anchor themselves, wiggling back and forth like little digging mammals.

  “No!” I cried out. “No, we can still make it! We can— somehow— there has to be—”

  Eileen murmured, “I will carry you until the end. Whatever that may be.”

  “There doesn’t have to be an end!” I screamed. “There doesn’t— we don’t have to die here! This isn’t how it was supposed to—”

  “Prrrrrrrrbbbbbbt-brrrrrrrrrttttt!”

  A giant of our own came splashing through the climbing waves.

  At the very moment we began to accept that the dream would end as a nightmare, Tenny skidded up beside our ragged little group, her many insectoid legs hoisting her far above the limit of the crashing waters. Two dozen thick black tentacles writhed out from beneath the wings upon her back, then shot downward toward us like a cluster of guided missiles. Sticky black mouth-tips opened wide, then clamped shut on collars and shoulders and waists, plucking us upward one by one, wrapping supporting coils around those who wriggled or panicked or yelped in surprise. She grabbed Eileen by the scruff of her laboratory coat, Raine by her waist, and had Twil dangling upside down from both legs, growling and barking and yapping at the top of her lungs. Zheng roared with exhilaration, Jan squealed in surprise, while Lozzie whooped and cheered and cried with relief. Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight rode a tentacle up in perfect composure, the Fox cradled in her arms, and Evelyn crammed her eyes shut, still held in Praem’s grip as we were all yanked off the ground and hurled into the air. The Knights clung to a single tentacle all together, hands linked in a long chain, like ants crawling across a moth’s leg. Six Abyssal Heathers scrambled up Tenny’s fur, accepting the tentacle-ride without so much as a hiss of mild surprise. Zalu and Xiyu held on together, Horror screaming in wordless terror.

  My stomach lurched, left somewhere back on the ground, as Tenny lifted us all into the air. Wind whistled past my ears, my heart gave a terrible spasm of fear, and—

  And Eileen’s feet found solid ground — or at least sturdy concrete, followed swiftly by everybody else.

  Tenny deposited us upon the top of Cygnet Asylum itself, on a nice flat rooftop, with lots of wide open space. Thirty Knights climbed off one tentacle, while my friends staggered and heaved for breath, wild-eyed with shock or composed as if they had expected nothing less. Twil fell onto her backside with a loud thump, swearing with guttural creativity. Praem bowed her head in thanks, while Sevens let the Fox down, to scamper across the rooftop. Lozzie hugged one tentacle with all her might. Zheng roared “Puppy!” at the top of her lungs. Jan turned aside, opened her visor, and vomited onto the floor. Evelyn blinked her eyes open, clutching Praem with hands like claws, staring about as if she couldn’t believe we weren’t all drowned.

  Eileen looked up at Tenny’s cat-like face, hovering above us, and said: “Thank you for the lift, granddaughter.”

  “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrt!” went Tenny, smiling with that curled and cattish mouth, full of delight and mischief.

  Far behind Tenny, framed by the twisted metal ruin of the Box, Leviathan Heather lowered her face from the Eye-wrought sky. A void-dark gaze stared at Tenny, with none of my affection.

  “Hissssssssss!”

  With the last of us safely on the rooftop, Tenny turned away, facing her opponent. “Brrrrrrrt!”

  “Hisssssssssssssssssss!”

  Survivor’s Guilt strode forward, wading through the rising water, raising one giant fist as if to smash the rooftop to pieces. Tenny scuttled out to meet her, trilling at the top of her lungs, waving a battery of silken black tentacles.

  “Oh my gosh,” I whispered, heart leaping into my throat. “Oh my gosh, no, no, they’re going to fight, no!”

  Lonely me screamed from Raine’s arms. “Don’t hurt Tenny! Don’t you dare hurt her! You bitch, you foul monster, I hate you, I hate—”

  “Tenns!” Lozzie shouted, hands cupped around her mouth. “Remember to dodge! Light on your feet! Bounce bounce bounce! You can do it, you’re my girl!”

  Twil shook her head like a wet dog — which she was, just then. “You cannot be serious. This can’t be happening. Who the hell is in control of this part of the dream?!”

  Jan sighed, wiping her lips on the back of a gauntlet. “I seem to recall the last surprise dream I got dragged into also ended with a kaiju fight.”

  “But that’s Heather!” Evelyn shouted, gesturing wildly at Leviathan Me. “That is Heather! Look at her! That’s Heather!”

  “Sure is,” muttered Raine. “And she sure is beautiful. Wish she’d listen to us, though.”

  “Eileen,” I said, twisting around to look up into her face. “Take me to the edge, take me to the edge, I need to see!”

  Eileen did as I asked; she carried me to the lip of the roof, where a low concrete wall rose to prevent accidental falls. Raine did the same, then gently placed Lonely Heather, my mirrored counterpart, back onto her shaking legs. Eileen lowered me gently beside her, so I and I clung together, our arms clutching each other, supporting each other’s body weight. Lonely Heather’s right fist was closed tightly around the pebble, which she still would not release. The six Abyssal Heathers drew close in turn, sliding stealthy tentacles around my waist, supporting my sagging muscles, soothing my bruises and my wounds and my sheer exhaustion; I hurt so badly I could barely stand, worn down to a stub by panic, by effort, by pain, by the dream itself. But within seconds I was locked in mutual support with my Lonely Half and the six expressions of my Tentacles. We were all here, all except her — the Guilt.

  The others all followed too, clustering around, staring up at Tenny with wide eyes, or out across the flood with gaping mouths.

  The grounds of Cygnet Asylum were rapidly drowning beneath an ocean of water, solid shafts of liquid pumping from the ruined shell of the Box as if from a burst dam. The trees of the little woodland were still above the surface, but not for long. The bottom floor of the hospital building itself was beneath the churning surface by then. In the distance, off to our collective right, the liberated patients and ex-nurses were running for higher ground, where the landscape curved upward into gentle hills; those hills would protect them for a few hours, but not if the water level kept rising. Down in the Box, that final aquarium had held more water than all the oceans of Earth. Lonely Me had not exaggerated — Guilt would drown the dream and kill us all.

  Far below us, the six Caterpillars we had brought to Wonderland had apparently learned how to swim, bobbing and dipping on the surface of the crashing waters. They darted about like lifeboats, rolling on the waves, propelling themselves forward with some arcane power. They circled the many ankles of my Guilty Monster, shouting up at her with a chorus of angry doot-ing.

  To my relief, The Guilty Leviathan ignored the Caterpillars; I could not have endured it if she had spared a fraction of her power to scoop them up and crush them within their shells. I would have cursed her to oblivion for that.

  Instead, she did worse — she strode forward, hissing and spitting, and slammed into Tenny.

  “Prrrrrrrrrrrbttttt!”

  The pair of dream-titans crashed into each other, their ankles sunk in the churning waves, their tentacles slapping and lashing and cracking at the air. Guilty Heather bared her teeth in an ear-splitting hiss; Tenny raised her trilling so loud it shook the hospital building and made the water vibrate around her legs. Tentacles clashed and locked, struggling against each others’ strength. Guilt-Ridden Me pulled back a fist—

  “Don’t you dare hit her!” I screamed, red in the face. “She’s our daughter!”

  The Guilty Leviathan hesitated — only for a heartbeat, but that was more than enough time for Tenny to lash out with a clutch of silken black tentacles. She grabbed Titan Heather by the wrist, stopping her punch and hauling her to one side, forcing her to stumble and stagger through the waves. Leviathan Heather hissed and screeched. Her other fist lashed out, unhindered by further hesitation. Tenny bobbed sideways with a moth-like grace, wings fluttering for lift, dodging the fist by what seemed like inches. She caught the offending strike in another clutch of black tentacles, holding Guilty Me by both fists.

  Leviathan Heather screeched and hissed and raged in frustration, struggling against her fresh bonds.

  “Prrrrbtttt-brrrrrt!” Tenny trilled in triumph.

  From behind me, Jan sighed. “This is your fault, you know that, Heather?”

  Raine spoke with a low warning in her voice, “Hey. Jan. No, not here, not—”

  “No, no, no,” Jan huffed and tutted. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t mean because it’s her guilt or whatever. I mean because … look!” A shiny metal gauntlet flashed in my peripheral vision, Jan gesturing out at the titans locked in combat. “You lot keep saying this is a dream, or a play, or whatever. And there you go. Final boss fight. This is only happening because Heather and … Heather, and Heather and Heather and so on and so on, they all think it should be happening! You can stop this any time, can’t you?!”

  “She’s right,” I murmured. “She’s correct. But I can’t stop it. Not like this.”

  I nodded as I spoke, numb to everything beyond the sight of Tenny fighting my Guilt.

  Tenny was, after all, the only thing which could fight my Survivor’s Guilt head-on, toe-to-toe, as an equal. Tenny was proof that I’d done something good in the world, that I had given selflessly, to help raise her from nothing but spare spirit parts. Tenny was external proof that I was capable of more than this self-destruction.

  But that didn’t mean she was going to win.

  Out in the giant’s battlefield, Leviathan Heather managed to wrench her left hand free of Tenny’s tentacles, ripping it from the spongy grip with a great tearing sound of sticky suckers and toothed maws. She reeled back as Tenny was forced to let go, as if winding up for another punch; but Leviathan Me spread her fingers instead, massive black claws catching a glint of light from the Eye above. Her talons sliced through the air, too sharp and too wide for Tenny to catch in time.

  My Guilt raked her talons across Tenny’s snout-like dream-form face; a spurt of dark blood shot into the air, caught as an arc of blackish crimson before splattering down into the waters below.

  “Prrrrrt!” Tenny trilled in wounded pain, stumbling to one side. A trio of nasty gashes marked her cheek, bleeding freely down her face. “Prrrrbt-brrrt!”

  Beside Me, Lonely Heather exploded with incandescent rage. “How dare you?!” she shrieked. “You— how dare you strike her! I did everything to avoid that! You— you— I hate you! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”

  I and the six Abyssals had to cling to her, or she would have climbed over the ledge into empty air.

  The Leviathan swept her hand back for another open-palmed strike; Tenny lashed out with a cluster of tentacles and stopped her arm mid-air. The pair of them grappled together, great churning seas sloshing about their legs, waters still rising, rapidly now. Six Caterpillars circled the Leviathan of Guilt, dooting and tooting up at her, but to little effect. It was only a matter of time until she managed to hit Tenny again, or the waters rose and rose and rose until her natural aquatic biology would give her the advantage in the fight. She would wear Tenny down. Without intervention, my Guilt would win.

  Fighting was no way to end this.

  I could not win by killing my Guilt, just as she would not win anything but her own extinction if she triumphed over Tenny and drowned us all in the waters of her womb.

  “Tenny!” I yelled. “Tenny!” I slapped the low concrete wall with one hand, a rather absurd gesture to get her attention. “Tenny, Tenny, I need you to listen to me! Tenny!”

  The Abyssal Heathers joined in too, tapping and hissing and waving their tentacles, until we all saw Tenny glance at us out of the corner of one eye. Amid the fight, she spared us a flicker of attention.

  “Tenny!” I shouted again. “I have to talk to her! I have to, it’s the only way to stop her! Tenny, I have to speak with her! I need you to hold her, pin her so she can’t avoid me, so she has to listen to my words. And … ” My stomach lurched and my guts rebelled at the thought of what I was saying, but the alternative was death and failure and Maisie’s loss. “And I need you to get me right up in her face!”

  “Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrbtttttt!” Tenny trilled.

  Perhaps it was greater purpose that gave her strength — Guilt could not win against Love, as Sevens might have said, if she had not been wide-eyed and out of her narrative element.

  Tenny surged up and out of the waters, wings buzzing too fast for the eye to see, cupping and pushing the air in great waves that made even the waters retreat for just a moment. She yanked the Leviathan sideways, forcing this Giant Me to stumble and crash down into the waves beside the hospital building itself. The ground shook with the impact, but we didn’t have time to scream.

  Suddenly one of Tenny’s tentacles was before us, before me, hovering at the edge of the roof, dipped to allow us to mount.

  Before I could make a plan, before I could even think, or hesitate, or feel the lurch in my stomach, ‘we’ acted as one — the six Abyssal Heathers looped their tentacles together with each other, cradling me and Lonely Heather within their combined arms. They scurried forward, clinging to the surface of Tenny’s tentacle with gentle barbs and the strength of their own limbs.

  And then we were aloft.

  I yelped as Tenny lifted us up and into the air. For a dizzying moment all of Cygnet was spread out below us — the hospital building in all its impossible gothic glory, folding in on itself like a flower of architecture; the Box, a broken wreck of metal and concrete, pumping out billions of gallons of water every second; the grounds, drowning beneath the dark salt waters of Guilt, the treetops struggling for a final breath, the lawns far beneath meters of murk; the distant perimeter wall, broken in one spot by Tenny’s entrance; the little specks of nurses and patients on distant hilltops. The dream was for one moment entirely within my grasp.

  A moment later we landed on Tenny’s back, just behind the swell of her head, amid a low landscape of black velvet and thick white fur. The six Abyssal Heathers clung hard to that snowy fluff, anchoring us as we rode upon Tenny’s back.

  She lurched round, returning to the fight, like the world moving beneath us.

  “Oh my gosh,” I panted, my stomach punching up and into my throat. “Oh, oh, okay, okay, this isn’t what I—”

  With an explosion like an undersea volcano, the Leviathan of Guilt surged back out of the waters right in front of Tenny. Her skin streamed with run-off as hundreds of tentacles lashed at the air. A toothed maw opened wide with a screech of humiliation and self-righteous pain. She screamed right at us, making the air itself vibrate within my lungs.

  Black claws swiped for Tenny’s face once again. Tenny was prepared this time; she hopped sideways, wings buzzing either side of her body, filling the world either side of my vision with iridescent flickering. I think I probably screamed again, but screaming was so beyond importance that nobody cared. Lonely Heather certainly screamed too, but I held tight to her, to my other half, and to all our anchors to each other.

  Tenny landed back in the waters, then lashed out and caught the Leviathan’s wrists again. Guilty Heather opened her mouth in a hiss, that sharp-toothed maw filling the world above me for one heart-stopping moment. But then Tenny drowned her out with a chorus of trilling, so hard and so long that the Leviathan was forced to shake her head as if plagued by a cloud of moths.

  In the moment that followed, I opened my mouth, and shouted up at my own Guilt.

  “I’m not going to abandon you!” I screamed. “Do you understand?! I’m going to feel this guilt forever! Even when we rescue Maisie — yes, when! — when we rescue Maisie, it won’t ever go away! You won’t be abandoned, or murdered, or suppressed, or silenced! I want to be one with you, one with myself again!”

  If the Leviathan heard a single word I said, she didn’t show it. She pulled both fists up and around, forcing Tenny to stagger after her or lose her grip. The six Abyssal Heathers hissed and clung on harder, lest we all be thrown off Tenny’s back.

  “You’re going to kill everybody?!” Lonely me shouted up at the Guilt. “Is that what you really want?! Raine, Evelyn, Lozzie, Praem!? All of them?! You want to drown Tenny? She’s an innocent! Are you trying to turn survivor’s guilt into murderer’s guilt?! Bury yourself in so much pain you forget you exist? Stop it! Stop it! Just stop!”

  Heather the Leviathan hissed in Tenny’s face, then yanked her fists the other way, finally ripping them free of Tenny’s grip.

  She reared up, both hands hooked into claws. Raising them high, she blotted out the light of the Eye, intending to slam Tenny’s head down into the waters below.

  I lurched to my feet, up on Tenny’s back, anchored only by the tentacles of my Abyssal Selves.

  “Do you want Maisie to feel what you feel?” I said.

  Survivor’s Guilt hesitated.

  Tenny took the opening; she launched herself forward like a battering ram, propelled by the great power of her wings cupping the air. She crashed into the Leviathan’s chest, sending her sprawling. Before the Guilt could slide into the water, Tenny grabbed her with as many tentacles as she could spare; Tenny swung her round and slammed her into the ruins of the Box, face pinned sideways on the roof of broken concrete, arms scrabbling for purchase against twisted metal, legs kicking helplessly in the churning water.

  “Prrrrbttttt!” Tenny trilled — not in triumph, but with great urgency.

  The Six Abyssal Heathers let go of Tenny’s silken white fur; we slid together, down the side of Tenny’s hide, a mass of tentacles and scales and hissing mouths, with two soft and vulnerable apes cradled in the core of this tentacle-ball. We hit the roof of the Box together, cushioned by the tentacles of the Abyssal Heathers, until we came to a stop on a relatively flat surface of metal.

  Our ball of tentacles and limbs unfolded. Bruised and shaken and with the wind knocked from my lungs, I staggered upright all the same, supported on six sets of tentacles. Lonely Heather clung to my right arm, crying softly.

  The Leviathan’s face was before us, crushed on her side, hair lying limp across the ruins of the rooftop. Those giant void-dark eyes rolled in their sockets, panicking as Tenny kept her pinned.

  “Look!” I shouted up at the sideways face of the Leviathan Heather. “Look here! Look at me! Look at me!”

  The Leviathan’s eyes rolled, focused on me for a fleeting moment. She bared her massive teeth, hissing deep in her throat, but I stood fast. I had something she didn’t — conviction based on something other than self-hatred. She kicked and struggled and tried to buck Tenny off her. Water sloshed and crashed around the box, giant waves threatening to overtop our precarious platform. But I stared up into my own eyes. To look away now was death.

  “Do you want Maisie to feel the way you do?” I repeated. “Do you want her to feel like this? Like you do, right now?”

  The Leviathan stopped struggling. She finally looked at me, with no other distractions.

  “Because she will,” I said. “If you go through with this, Maisie will be in your place.”

  She bared her teeth again, then spoke, so low and so deep that my flesh itself vibrated. “She should have been in our place. We should have been in hers. We left her behind, we abandoned—”

  “Then she would feel what you feel now!” I shouted into my own mouth. “She would be the one rescuing us! And she would feel the survivor’s guilt instead! And she will, she will do, if you don’t stop.”

  Survivor’s Guilt shut her mouth.

  “You think Eileen is going to keep her trapped, after all this?” I said. “The Box is breached, the waters are emptying. Maybe it will take years, decades, maybe longer. Maybe we all die here and that’s that for us, that’s all, that’s the end of our story. But the waters will drain, and Maisie will be free, years or decades from now. And if you win, if you drown us, what is she going to see, when she emerges? Who will be here to greet her? To hold her? To tell her she’s not alone? Nobody!”

  The Leviathan opened her mouth again. “It is what we deserve.”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “But is that what Maisie deserves?”

  The Leviathan’s brow furrowed.

  I went on. “If the cost of her freedom is my death.” I thumped my chest with one fist. “Our death, as you drag us all down with the rest of you — how will she feel?”

  The Leviathan’s massive form went limp in the grip of Tenny’s tentacles. Her eyes softened. “No … I …”

  “She’ll feel what you feel now. What I do now. Do you want to condemn her to that?”

  Leviathan Heather said nothing. Her lips went slack. She blinked.

  “And unlike us,” I said. “She won’t have anybody to rescue, to make it right. She will live with this forever. And will she be able to live with that guilt?” I shook my head. “Because you’re trying to prove that — that I can’t live with the guilt. So, she won’t either.” I swallowed, tears gathering in my eyes. “If we die here, because of you, then Maisie’s life will be very short indeed. Short, and filled with nothing but regret.”

  A vast sheen of tears gathered in the Leviathan’s eyes. She blinked, face misted with more than mere melancholy.

  She let out a soft whine. Behind her, Tenny slowly let go. The Leviathan Heather, my Guilt, my Regret, did not rise.

  I took a step toward her, guided and supported by my Six Tentacles, with Lonely Me hanging off my left arm. We walked up to the vast and terrible face of guilt. I reached out and touched her cheek, touched the scales, running my fingers through the fur. She was warm. She was alive.

  She was just me.

  “I’m not going to abandon you,” I repeated. “You will always be a part of me. But it doesn’t matter how guilty we feel, we still have to rescue Maisie. Nothing absolves us of that responsibility, no amount of self-loathing can relieve us of that. To save her, I will accept anybody’s help — my own Guilt, the Eye, Eileen, anybody. Nothing matters as much as rescuing Maisie.”

  Leviathan Heather whined again, like a wounded animal.

  “Punishing ourselves just punishes her,” I said. “We have to live, we have to win, we have to accept each other, ourselves. For her.”

  The Leviathan closed her eyes. Tears ran from between her lids.

  Beneath us, the wreckage of the Box shuddered and shook. Waters crashed on all sides, sending great waves of spray up into the air. The oceans were still rising. Back on the rooftop of Cygnet Hospital, my friends were shouting their encouragement, but I could barely hear them.

  “It’s time,” I said, with a lump in my throat. “It’s time to end the dream, before we all drown. And the only way to do that is to save our twin sister.”

  The Leviathan nodded, ever so slightly. Lonely Me took a deep breath and murmured, ‘Yes, please, yes.’ A chorus of Abyssal Heathers hissed in soft agreement.

  “It’s time for us all to be one again,” I said.

  A pair of clawed hands cupped my chin and stroked my cheeks. One Abyssal Heather — one perfect representation of my own abyssal truth — gently turned my head aside, drew my eyes into the black depths of her own gaze, and pressed her lips against mine.

  Reunion, at long last.

  Kaiju fight!

  Heather! For recombination, reunion, and ... rescue?! Yes!

  Neon Teuthis Katalepsis, The End of Bedlam Boundary, an edit/modification of a rather famous movie poster, made by the very talented Galactic. What a glorious way to end off this arc! And we also have of Heather (and Heather), and Heather, by the also very talented skaianDestiny! Thank you so much, it's a delight to see Heather in her full glory as Homo Abyssus!

  two chapters ahead! No matter what level you subscribe at! That's about 20k words at the moment. The more support I get through Patreon, the more time I can dedicate to writing, and the less chances of having to slow down the story or get interrupted by other responsibilities. The generous and kind support of Patrons and readers is what makes all this possible in the first place! I wouldn't be able to do this without all of you! Thank you all so very much!

  Heather, for the end of the dream, for the end of Bedlam Boundary.