Chapter Seventy-Five

You adjust your new hat, then frown as it slowly tilts forwards until the brim covers your eyes. You need to reach up and fix it back into place atop your head, but the moment you do that, the hat will start tipping in another direction again.

If the darned thing wasn’t so cool looking you would have thrown it away already. But it is cool looking, so it’s worth the occasional need to adjust it.

“Oh, oh no,” Abigail says.

For a moment you’re worried that she doesn’t like your cool new hat. If Abigail doesn’t think it’s nice, then it must be wrong somehow. As it turns out, she’s just looking at all the dead, mostly dead, soon to be dead, and mostly non-existent inquisitors strewn about across the lawn around you.

“Don’t worry about those,” you say. “They’re the ones that I had little accidents with. The others are much better.”

The others, of course, being all the inquisitors you took for your tentacle patting experiments next to your real body. It’s a chore remembering that they need to breath and such, but you’re managing for now. Your experiments in tentacle-based patting are only just beginning, you can’t expect them to bear fruit so suddenly.

Meanwhile, you finally get your hat to sit on straight. “How do I look?” you ask.

“Dreamer,” Abigail says.

She’s speechless. The hat must be working.

Then it slides down a little and you wiggle your arms in distress as the brim covers your eyes again.

Charlotte comes over and tugs the hat off, then she turns it over and fiddles with the straps on the inside. “Here,” she says as she pushes it back onto your head.

The fit is perfect! Brilliant!

You skip over to the one of the glass walls of the greenhouse, wave to the wide-eyed girls within, then focus on your reflection. The hat is half as tall as your small body, with a peaked top and a brim covered in feathers and fur and intricate little folds.

You look very regal.

“What are we going to do?” Abigail asks.

You look over, to see that she’s hugging Daphne close.

“They, they knew where we were, and now this. They won’t stop.”

You narrow your eyes. “I’ll fix it,” you say.

Sure, you’re not the one who started it, but you can be, and literally are, the bigger person. You just need to have a chat with the nice inquisition people, tell them to leave Abigail and your friends alone, then Abigail will feel better.

A little better.

Abigail, you’re beginning to truly realize, is a very complicated girl. She can love more than just one person, and she worries about all sorts of things. You suppose that it’s only fair that the best human would be a little hard to understand.

You amble over to Abigail and pat her hand. “Here, I’m gonna leave you with some small Dreamers while I go take care of things, alright?”

She eyes you. “Take care how?” she asks.

Daphne squeezes her closer, which is just not fair, so you join in the hugging too, your hat leaning against the side of Abigail’s face while you bury your face in her chest.

“Maybe we should let Dreamer try?” Daphne says. “Honestly, I can’t see them being able to hurt her, and it would be unexpected. We... need to start seeing the Inquisition as an opposing force, I think.”

“I don’t like it,” Abigail says.

“I know,” Daphne says right back. “But we’ll figure it out, right?”

“Right!” you say. Pulling back, you turn to Charlotte and give her a very stern look. “You look after Abigail, okay?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Charlotte says. She looks like she’s having fun, at least.

“Okay. I’m leaving some of me here just in case.”

You open holes into the world and drop some of yourselves out of it, just a half dozen Dreamers in pretty dresses. They look just like you, and are you, but you’re wearing your awesome hat and are therefore easy to tell apart.

You see your other yous eyeing the hat with envy and smile smugly at yourself.

“I’ll be right back!” you say before the ground rumbles and a big tentacle pokes out of it to grab you by the waist. With a swing and a flick, you’re sent flying high into the sky, winds whipping at your pretty dress and cool hat so hard that you need to grab onto them to keep them on. Then, at the apex of your flight, you realize a small problem.

You’re not sure which Inquisition people you’re meant to talk to.

Shrugging, you grab one of the people next to your main body, the one that had been wearing the biggest hat, and bring him back into the mortal word.

“Hi!” you say to the wide-eyed man falling next to you.

Then you pull out the oxygen tentacle from his mouth. He starts screaming a lot.

Mortals. You roll your eyes. “Do you know where I can find the big boss of the Inquisition?” you ask.

More screaming. You wiggle the airticle--not be be confused for the tentacles meant for flying--before his face and he stops.

“The boss, where can I find him?” you ask.

More gibbering.

You glare. You won’t keep falling forever. A glance at the city way below says that you only have half a minute at most. And while you will no doubt land with grace, this mortal will go splat in a big way. “C’mon, I just need to know who sent you.”

“Lord Inquisitor Shooksword! He sent us!”

“Good, good. Where is he?” you ask next.

“The, the conclave?” he tries.

You know where that is. It’s the big building with all of the inquisition people in it. Easy.

“Thank you,” you say as you recall your manners. You even pat the man on the head, which brings a smile to your face. Being nice to people is nice.

Then you shove the airticle back into his mouth and flick him back to your main body for further experimentation.

It’s time to go meet the big boss and have a chat.

***