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The night they get back to Elmville, Gorgug dreams of somewhere new.
It’s dark. It’s a thick, soupy darkness. He can hold his hand right in front of his face without seeing even the faintest outline. There’s no temperature or sensation to this space, but he knows that he could walk for eternity and never run into anything. It isn’t trying to harm him. It would need to care about him in order to do that, and this place doesn’t have the capacity to care, or even acknowledge, that anyone exists here.
Nothing leaps out to attack. There are no razor-sharp leaves to slice his hand open. He doesn't know what to call this place, but he has this quiet, alien inkling that he's been here for a long time. As much as Gorgug can figure, there’s nothing here at all. Nothing except for him.
In the midst of this dark, unfeeling void, Gorgug doesn’t think, this is scary. In the midst of the dark, unfeeling void, it isn’t.
It’s when he wakes up with a gasp, a torn and sweat-soaked sheet between his fingers, that fear finds him.
The weight of sensation hits him like a cement truck. Sitting up in bed (a dangerously creaking bed), sight and sound and space break against his body, his quiet bedroom too loud, his tidy floor in disarray, his walls always, always too cramped. He throws his sheets off and tries to stand, but dizziness makes him stagger back down. He tries to whisper out a curse, but he can’t remember how to use his voice.
Nausea curdles his stomach. If he hurls in his room, someone’s going to be upset.
Someone is going to be upset.
He— he knows someone will be upset. Someone will care, at the very least. Whoever owns whatever structure he’s inside. A structure that is a… Gorgug looks frantically out his window. A tree? He lives inside a tree?
Thistlespring Tree. With…with parents. And they’ll be upset if he ruins his carpet by throwing up on it. Theoretically.
Theoretically, Gorgug has parents. But it’s eerily still outside Gorgug’s door.
Gorgug blinks through unfocused eyes. He has a door. He could use it, right now. There must be something outside of it. Maybe even parents. Maybe it will take him right to the outdoors, and there will be grass and wind and a moon in the sky.
Fear grips Gorgug. It’s the same fear as before, and it’s asking him a question.
What if there isn’t?
There must be. Gorgug can look through his window and see a breeze ruffling branches, see stars above.
Just because you can see it, doesn’t mean it’s real.
As Gorgug flinches, the wooden bedframe cracks. It shoots a sharp noise out in all directions.
But nobody comes running.
Gorgug looks at his hand. He can see it. Scar and all. He remembers the floor of the cafeteria, the smell of popcorn, the hard linoleum when he fell. He remembers not just dying, but being dead. That forest. Those trees. A chilling certainty that this was Hell, and Gorgug was doomed.
Nobody comes running.
He woke up in this bed. Or did he? It’s fuzzy now. He was somewhere before he was here. In an empty void. Dark. Infinite. Gorgug died. He knows he died.
He can’t be sure…
He can’t be sure he came back.
Bzzt.
Bzzt.
Bzzt.
Clink.
Gorgug whips his head around. That noise came from somewhere else, somewhere not in this space. It sounded like — he racks his brain, which is like swimming in sludge — like…stone hitting glass?
Clink.
Only because his eyes are on his window does he see the little pebble that bounces off. Another follows.
Gorgug, in a daze, approaches the window.
On the grass below, Kristen Applebees points at her crystal, which is lit up in her waving hand, then points at Gorgug. She does this a couple of times before Gorgug pieces together the message.
He finds his crystal.
Kristen: are u okay
Kristen: im outside
Kristen: let me in
Gorgug: no
Kristen: are u okay
Gorgug stares at the message.
Gorgug: are you real
Kristen: yes
Kristen: can you come outside?
Gorgug: no
Kristen: okay
Kristen: can i come in?
Part of Gorgug is trying really hard to know something. A string of insistent truths — that Kristen is his good friend, that she’s a part of his adventuring party, that she’s real and he’s alive — bump dully against a thick pane of window glass barricading the inside Gorgug’s mind. None of it is strong enough to break the line. Logic fails. Truth is relative. Kristen is only as real as everything else here, which is to say, not at all.
But Kristen, Gorgug remembers, died too. In the cafeteria, same as him. Maybe they’re both in the void. Gorgug didn’t find anyone else, but he didn’t look very hard. Classic Gorgug, to just accept his circumstances. If he’s still in the void, it would make sense for Kristen to be there too.
Gorgug: ok
In an instant, she’s hovering outside his window.
“Unlock your window,” she says, although she’s really muffled through the glass.
Gorgug unlocks his window and opens it. Kristen, twirling her ribbon, floats through and lands, only tripping a little bit.
“Sorry for throwing rocks at your window,” she says. “I totally forgot I can fly now.”
Gorgug shrugs. He hasn’t tried talking since his first attempt failed. She’s talking just fine, though, so maybe he could too.
“It’s fine,” he manages.
Kristen closes and locks the window. She looks wind-ruffled and tired. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and she’s wearing a hoodie at least one size too big. Even though she smiles at Gorgug, he can tell there’s something off about it.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “Because Adaine woke me up saying she had some vision that you were kinda, like, drowning? But then she said it was metaphorical drowning, and I said what am I supposed to do, I don’t have Metaphorical Water Breathing, and she said she just had a feeling I should come here. So…” She spreads her hands with an expectant look. “Drowning? Not drowning? Metaphorically drowning?”
Gorgug blinks slowly. He's got no idea how to answer that. He didn't die from drowning, but Real Kristen and the void’s Illusion Kristen would both know that — not a good litmus test. She might still be playing the part, or she might just be waiting for him to signal her somehow.
“Can’t drown if you're already dead,” he says.
“Oh brother,” Kristen mumbles. The face she makes conveys a lot of worry, poorly concealed by the neutral expression she sticks on top. She glances around for someplace to sit before dropping cross-legged to the floor. “You wanna sit with me?”
Gorgug sits.
“Are you,” he starts.
Kristen prompts, “Am I…?”
“Are you in the void too?” Gorgug asks quietly. “I didn’t look for you. I’m sorry. I didn’t even try.”
Kristen frowns. “The void?”
“The dark place. The nothing.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kristen says gently.
Panic grips Gorgug. If she’s not in the void, then she’s not— which means none of this is—
“Are you real?”
He regrets the question right away; of course she would say she’s real, the illusion would fall apart otherwise, what a dumb question that was, what a dumb dead kid he is.
“I am, I’m real,” Kristen says, leaning towards him. She puts a hand on the floor between them but doesn’t try to touch him. You know why. He fell for it again. Stupid. Stupid. She's not here, she's not real, and he's alone in a void that is telling him a lie and he is never going to be free of this. “Why do you think I’m not real?”
“Wh—”
Gorgug tries to breathe in and discovers, at an inopportune time, that he can’t remember how. His inhale turns into a choking wheeze.
“Gorgug,” Kristen says, “oh, man. Gorgug. You have to breathe, okay? Just copy what I’m doing. Breathe in, nice and deep, then wait, then breathe out. Look, I’m not touching you, if you think I’m gonna do something, I promise I’m not, I’ll move back if it helps.” Gorgug shakes his head. It won’t make a difference, he knows that much. She’ll be just as not-real no matter where she sits. “Okay. Okay, then I won’t. Just take a deep breath.”
It doesn’t make sense that he needs to breathe. All part of the illusion. He wonders what would happen if he let himself “die” again. If he would wake in the void, where he’s been all along. He thinks about it for a second. A spike of fear goes through him. The thought of dying is paralyzing.
Doesn’t matter if he’s real. The perfect failsafe: he can’t let himself die. The illusion protects itself under the guise of protecting him. He’s not strong enough to overcome that. So he does what Illusion Kristen tells him to. He breathes.
“Okay,” Kristen says, twisting her sleeves in her hands. “If you’re able to tell me, I would really like to know why you think I’m not real. If you can tell me.”
“I died,” Gorgug spits out from the back of his throat. “So I’m dead.” He gulps air. “I saw the void. Where I really am. I know you’re not real. None of this is real.”
Kristen opens and closes her mouth.
“You’re not dead,” she says softly. “This is real.”
“You have to say that,” Gorgug says automatically.
A deep breath like wind goes through Kristen. Gorgug, against his own better judgment, focuses on his own breathing. He doesn’t want to die. What a stupid thought for a person already dead.
After a moment, the heavy quiet breaks again.
“What void?”
“The endless black nothing where there’s nothing forever.” Gorgug puts his head between his knees as a new wave of nausea rises in the back of his throat. He squeezes his eyes shut, sees darkness, and forces them open again. Grinds the heel of his hand against his temple. “And I thought you would be there because you also died. But if you’re not there, then you’re part of the illusion.”
“Gorgug, you came back,” Kristen says. “We both came back, remember? Aguefort and the phoenix egg and the whole murder-suicide thing?”
“I was in Hell!” Gorgug snaps. “And I never came back! I’m still in Hell. It’s just a different one. It’s a trick, and it worked on me because I’m not that smart. You’re not real. You died just like me. The real Kristen is dead somewhere too, probably in Heaven.”
“That’s not true, I’m alive, I came back, we both did.” Kristen’s voice is tinged with desperation. She really, really wants him to believe her. He took way too long to crack the mystery, like whatever being who created this torture knew he would, but now he’s seen behind the curtain, and he’s not giving up that easily.
“Then why are you here?” Gorgug demands. He picks his head up, looks her in the eye. “Pretty convenient for you to show up just as I find out the truth.”
“Damn it, Adaine,” Kristen whispers, possibly just to herself, and shakes her head at him. “I came to help you because Adaine was worried, and I care about you, that's it. It's not a trick. I'm the real Kristen and I'm here and I get it now, I get why it had to be me, but I just really need you to believe me, Gorgug. Please, what can I do to convince you that this is real? How can I help you?”
“You can’t,” Gorgug says. His voice wavers under the weight of a half-lie: the words true, their conviction false. She can’t convince him this is real, but there’s a part of him, trapped behind a window pane in his mind, that wants her to anyway. It hasn’t been all bad. He would take the bad with the good if he could choose to take it all. He would choose to be alive, but dead half-orcs condemned to Hell don’t get to just come back. “I figured it out, it's too late. Just let me go back to the void. If you really want to help me, that’s how you can help. Maybe you— Maybe I can find Kristen. The real Kristen.”
“I’m the real Kristen,” Illusion Kristen says sadly. She slumps her shoulders, but a second later they straighten again, and her face changes. A crease appears between her eyebrows. “Hang on a sec. Gorgug. How do you know I died?”
“I was there,” Gorgug says, glaring at her. “You— Kristen died in the cafeteria, from the corn cuties. Like me.”
“No,” Illusion Kristen says. Her eyes are wide. “Think, Gorgug. Really think back to that fight in the cafeteria. Did you see me go down? Do you actually remember watching me die?”
“Yes,” Gorgug says angrily, but he thinks anyway in case it will prove her even more wrong. He remembers trying to rescue Riz and Fabian from inside the creamed corn monster, Adaine braining the lunch lady, Fig unconscious but smiling, and Kristen…
Kristen…
Huh.
They were fighting side by side. She was right there, in the mix with him. But when Gorgug went down, Kristen didn’t. Except she did. He knows she fell. He knows she died.
Why can’t he remember her dying?
“Are you sure?”
“I…” Another wash of sickening nausea comes over Gorgug. He clutches his knees. “I— I know you died.”
“Yeah. I did.” Kristen leans in a little, watching him with huge, urgent eyes. “But you died first. If you were really still dead, you wouldn’t know that I died too.”
Gorgug’s brain feels like one big error message.
“C’mon, Gorgug,” says Kristen, bordering on pleading. “Am I right or not? You don’t remember me dying, but you know I died. How could you know that unless you really did come back?”
Gorgug is sweating. He is too big for this tiny room. His heart is like a drum cadence beating blood in his ears. He’s a drummer. In a band. And that was After, too. He couldn’t drum before. He couldn’t do a lot of things before.
There’s a wide crack in the frame of his bed. He reaches for it, and magic surges forth from him. The wood seals up the frame like new. He knows the Mending cantrip. He knows magic.
“Kristen,” he says carefully, because he’s still dubious, and his head hurts, and he has vivid memories of prom and the Hangvan and Leviathan and a Tinkerer’s Hall in Arborly and a thousand things he did in a life he thinks he’s lived, but also. The void. It is a hollow nothingness, and it is crystal clear in his mind.
“Yeah, that’s me, I’m Kristen,” Kristen bobs her head a lot, “do you believe me?”
“I don’t know,” Gorgug says. His voice fractures. “I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what to think.” Because if this is real, then something else is wrong, and the something is him. “I think— I’m really scared, Kristen. I don’t know. I don’t know if you’re lying.”
Kristen’s eyes go glassy. “That’s okay. Can I, could I touch you? Is is okay if I touch you, or would you rather—?”
“It’s okay.”
She’s hugging him before his mouth closes around the last letter. Her hoodie is soft and thick like a pillow. She wraps her arms around his shoulders in a firm, tight hold; her face tips into his neck. She radiates warmth the way a campfire does, creating an aura of light and safety and holding darkness at bay.
“If it would make you feel better, I can do a Zone of Truth,” she murmurs.
That window in Gorgug’s mind cracks under pressure. It splinters, hisses, and shatters into oblivion, sending a torrent of thought and emotion crashing through. Something rigid snaps inside Gorgug’s chest. Bones breaking, ribs angling to pierce his heart. The things he was holding at arm’s length close distance with him. Some of it is pain. A lot of it is fear. Underneath both of these is a layer of hope, which flickers in him like a traitorous flame.
He hugs Kristen back as hard as he can without hurting her. He wants this to be real. He aches with how badly he wants it. Kristen’s hair is damp against Gorgug’s cheek, and after a second he realizes it’s because he’s crying.
“I know I should believe you,” he says thickly. “I really want to. But what if— if it’s not—”
“I know.” Kristen squeezes him. “I get it. It’s really scary to take a leap of faith. Trust me, I know that better than basically anyone.”
“You died.” Gorgug sniffles. “You died two times. How are you so sure this is real?”
“Honestly?” Kristen says, her voice low and soothing by his ear. “Sometimes I also doubt myself. But I think there’s something really valuable in not knowing for sure. That’s what faith is. It’s why I really connected with Cassandra.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
“You don’t have to believe in Cassandra. You don’t even have to believe me. But you have to believe something,” Kristen says. “So if you’re never going to be sure anyway…why not choose to believe that the life you want to be real is real?”
Gorgug’s grip goes slack as he grapples with that line of reasoning. He doesn’t mean anything by it, but Kristen pulls away, sinking back onto her heels. She looks at him — there are a couple tear tracks down her face, too — and gives him a tiny smile.
“It feels real,” Gorgug says, testing it out. “The memories I have seem real. You look real.”
“It’s okay if you’re not always sure,” Kristen says. She grabs his hand, which is almost the size of both of hers. “If you want, we can come up with a code word, and that way I’ll know when I need to remind you that this is real and whatever void you saw is just a bad dream.”
“A nightmare,” Gorgug says instinctually, thinking of the forest they just narrowly escaped.
“A nightmare,” Kristen agrees.
Gorgug thinks about the void. Then he thinks about waking up in his bed. It could have been a nightmare. There’s power in nightmares, but now that the Nightmare King is gone, that power is a lot less…powerful.
He stamps nightmare onto the void. It makes it feel a lot less real.
“I’d like a code word,” he says. “How about: ‘Metaphorical Water Breathing’.”
Kristen laughs. “Kind of a mouthful for a code word, but I like it.”
“Did you say…” Gorgug shakes his head a little. Everything since he woke up feels fuzzy and detached. Now that he’s a little more grounded, he remembers something Kristen said: “Adaine had a vision of me? Drowning?”
“Actually yeah,” Kristen says. “And what she actually said was drowning in a sea of nothing.” She gives his hand a quick squeeze. “I’m not gonna pry, but if you ever wanna talk about whatever you saw, the void or whatever, just know I’m here.”
“Thanks,” Gorgug says, his face heating up. “Sorry for not— sorry for, um, the whole state you found me in, I guess?”
“Hey. No apologizing. We take care of each other. I’m glad I could be here for you.”
Gorgug swallows and manages a small smile. “I’m, uh, really glad you came.”
“Anytime,” Kristen says. “I’m gonna text Adaine that everything is okay here, and then, if you’re down, maybe we can have a little sleepover?”
He fixed his broken bed with magic. He can do things like that now. He’s not the Gorgug that died in the cafeteria on the first day of freshman year. This Gorgug has Kristen Applebees to hug him and hold his hand and anchor him to reality. For a certain definition of reality. A reality of his choosing.
“That would be nice,” he says.
Kristen smiles. She squeezes his hand again, and this time he feels the cool shadow of her twilight magic wash over him.
“Protection From Evil and Good,” she tells him. “Just in case.”
“Thanks,” he says. Honestly, it does make him feel better. Safer. “I wish I could return the favor, but, uh, I don’t think Jump would be too useful right now.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Kristen says. “I don’t need magical protection. I’m protected by the greatest magic of all.”
“Chronomancy?”
“Friendship,” Kristen says, and grins.