You say goodbye to Marlow and head out for the library.

There's a lot to think about on the ride there. You could do game themed arts and crafts as a video project, combining your main source of income with your house decorating needs. You could start walking regularly, letting you get exercise and scout the neighborhood for discarded furniture.

In general, you suspect that if the number of plates you need to keep spinning continues to multiply, then you're going to have to start combining plates. ...Or something. It's a bad metaphor. You don't know anything about spinning plates.

While you suspect that the talking bus may have some thoughts on how to deal with a fussy house, the journey ends up being a bit crowded; you don't really get a chance to talk with her alone. That said, just considering the nature of the bus gets you thinking--would giving your house a name help...? On the one hand it does further cement a relationship, establishing that it's not just any house, it's a special house that you hold in unique regard. That's good for trust. On the other hand... while plenty of people name their cars, you don't think too many houses get names. Deciding that your house is suddenly named Robert might further confuse it away from being a house.

Which is fine, if it's happier that way, but hell if you know.

. . .

Anything has to be an improvement over "the spooky house," right?

Maybe if you gave it a name but like, one that sounds like a proper place. Something not related to its status as a nightmare zone entrance and/or emotion having architectural abomination. The esteemed... something-or-other manor.

Frankendyke HQ.

Casa del Salamandra.

The Fool... Cave.

Hmm.

Cherry arrives at the bus stop. You thank her and head on into the library.

Seeming to have heard the front door swing open, Cici explodes out of the back office area with enough force to startle Meatloaf.

Seeing that it is in fact you, Cici declares "We need more people!"

"WELL," you didn't expect to drop this news immediately but alright, "...to borrow Marlow's ghost hunting equipment me and Kate kind of had to let him in on what we're doing. I... I think the plan is to give him a shot at accomplicing tonight, to at least see if he can handle it."

"Which one's Marlow?," she asks. "From the Back Room, right?"

"The... older... white guy...? He wasn't there when you went with me the last time--"

Her face scrunches up. "...Can he handle it?"

If you heard correctly the other day, then Marlow's done prison time. That you wouldn't have guessed as much without it being mentioned probably speaks to his mental fortitude, because you personally would be a shrieking animal after like ten minutes in a holding cell. They would have to stop you from trying to eat your way out of the back of the squad car on the way there. Even picturing a judge sentencing you to prison makes your brain want to pack its shit and take the first flight out. You don't think you've ever been in a court room, and yet, visualizing a court room makes you nervous. It's only been a week or so of dream dungeoneering, you're not even sure you can actually handle it yet why would you be the arbitrator of who can and cannot handle it

"I think he can, yeah," you finally reply. "He's also friends with Franklin, so he's got a foot in the door on all the other goofy shit going on. Kate's known Marlow a long time, so we know he's not trying to burn down the house or anything."

Cici's face remains quite scrunched, but she eventually nods. "I'll give him a chance, but! I want it on the record right now, if the old guy from the weird toy store doesn't work out I'm gonna hoot and holler about it and you guys'll have to put up with that. Don't act like you won't know it's coming!"

You laugh a little, and nod. "Deal. You have 100% Told You So rights if this decision blows up in our faces. I considered trying to recruit Maria, buuut..." uhhh "what are you thoughts on Maria? Do you know anything about Maria...?"

Cici inhales deeply. "I... don't know much about Maria. I had to get a snake out of her lab one time--her dad's funny! But Maria was pretty quiet the whole--"

"Back the fuck up," you blurt out, putting your hands in the air, "lab?"

"Yeah!," Cici replies. "Under the grocery store."

. . .

Cici shrugs. "Where else would she build all that stuff? She had computers and plants and like a whole engine down there. Not a lot of room, though! She had so much machinery there was barely room to sleep, and she'd definitely been sleeping down there."

You squint. "What was she building besides the grocery stuff? Wait--she said those space gardens take a lot of power, I... I guess that's why she might have been working on an engine...?" Hm. Hmmm. She did mention tinkering with car batteries, but that's not quite

"Beats me!," Cici says. "Anyway, she's smart, which is good... but there's something going on between her and Kate I haven't really pinned down yet and it's weird."

"Something... like...?"

"Oh, I have no idea!," she declares. "But something. Kate tell ya what happened in the dream last night...?"

"Yeah," you say simply. "At least, I heard her side of it. She only vaguely remembers the error message you guys got, and obviously she missed anything that happened after... after uh..."

Cici gives a more shallow nod. "She, uh, missed a few things before that, too--okay, so,"

She takes a very big breath.

"I had an idea," Cici says quietly, "the other night after me and you talked about spending mana on getting my eye back, and it costing too much... and you, spending mana to shrug off pain and not even realizing it." She visibly focuses on recounting how she got here. "I! Had also been spending mana and not realizing it, because I! Had something I wasn't supposed to that whooole night me and you were running around that dungeon. In the heat of the moment with crazy monsters comin' out of the walls and everything... well, I didn't think about it then but when I thought back on it later, it was right there smackin' me in the face!

Depth perception.

I still only had one eye in the dream," she continues, "but I had perfect depth perception. It makes no sense at all, but I couldn't remember having a single problem aiming, or gauging distance, or... anything, really! But I knew I'd only had one eye, we had a whole damn conversation about it! Turns out dream bird biology's a crapshoot and I have depth perception in my one eye."

But that means... "Holy shit," you mutter, "so you found a... like a glitch, kind of. Depth perception's not actually caused by our eyes in the dungeon, or not the same way, it's-- it's just another fucking STAT I guess? Someone designed that dream dimension, which means they had limits. Maybe they had limits in how they could implement real world physics, or maybe--like us--they just... didn't think about it in the moment, or nobody in the testing stage thought about it, and--depth perception's probably just coded to drop to zero when you can't see at all, or something."

"It might not've been made by a human," Cici points out. "It could've been someone like the tradesman, or those big guys hanging around outside--somebody workin' off secondhand notes or something, I dunno. Anyway, it's not just that it's a glitch," Cici says. "I made a mental note to mess with it when I got back in there, and... it turns out not only can I crank my depth perception up or down, I can do MORE! Still only in the one eye, but I can use mana to see farther away and it is super cheap."

Oh, shit...?

The Sun. A bird. Eyesight. Of course.

"...So you saw things Kate didn't see."

She nods.

Hesitates a little.

"It's a lot," she says. "And I'm being real with you here, it's a LOT. I've been trying to figure out how to explain it all day."

"Explain what...?"

"What I saw," she says. "Things kept moving around, and it was... miles away so it was hard to get everything to line up just right so I could get a good look, but--I saw your castle. It's still there even if you're not, and me and Kate were just dumped way outside it when we dreamed without you. I'd say we could've reached it from where we started buuut I don't think we could've reached it."

You squint. You're still holding your breath a little. "And you weren't sure... how to explain that...?"

"Your castle's in a bubble," she says.

Ah, there we go.

Cici takes another wind up breath. "The yellow sky we saw the other night? It's like a tinted windshield! The clouds are real, but they're this weird... wispy... yellow... smog haze sort of--anyway, when you're inside it looks like that yellow sky but when you're outside you can almost see right through it."

"...So when you say it's in a bubble--"

"It's in a bubble!," she repeats. "The castle, the prison, that overgrown lookin' place, the island it's on and the water that sits in, it's all in a big ol' snowglobe looking thing. Miiiles outside of THAT is where me and Kate wound up, and if I could figure out how to take you there and show it to you I still wouldn't because it sucked. Kate called it Hell, but I personally think Hell would take some breaks to keep your hopes up! This didn't stop. Your castle's in a bubble! Inside a bubble everything stays the same, outside it... doesn't do that. Your castle bubble just kinda hangs out in the air while everything else goes all crazy around it. AND I saw the big god things!"

Oh.

"...Without the windshield," she adds.

Oh.

"One of them was cool!," she quickly clarifies when she notices how distressed you're starting to look. "He put a real catchy song in my head about being an earworm, and--no lie--it helped me focus when everything kept changing."

"Was... was HE an earworm? Like literally an earworm?"

"Yeah!," she replies.

"An earworm like he himself was a catchy song, or he was an actual worm that goes into actual ears?"

"Yeah!," she replies. "I wish I could remember that damn song, though, it was like... THE catchiest song. Anyway," she concludes, "I drew... this..." Cici very carefully fishes a piece of paper out of her pocket, unfolding it on her desk. Depicted is... an expanded map of the dream, apparently.

...Alright. So if a mastermind is present, the dreamers spawn inside the bubble. If no mastermind is present, the dreamers spawn outside the bubble. That part, at least, seems really simple... which is good, because the rest of it makes you want to scream.

Also, this makes the second person (after the blood note writer) to draw the castle with square-ish battlements, like the classic stereotype of a medieval castle; you suppose it's easier to draw and have it readily signify a castle that way, it's just funny because the real deal has more of a... towery... citadel look. It's probably not a castle at all, technically, but having only seen the dungeon part of it (and from a distance, the shitty lawn) you're going to keep calling it a castle.

"I drew all the guys I could remember," Cici continues. "The spirally guy and the woodgrain vagina blackhole guy might be the same guy? They both had the same kinda non-shape-shape... shape. But this isn't even half the guys! There's a lot of them and they're all HUGE. The bad news is, they were all trying to break the bubble, and I mean they were givin' it the business. They're not just working together on this, they're taking turns. Not just hitting it, either--they were doing strange stuff, Plaire. The earworm gave me a song just by looking at him, that level of strange. The good news is, I don't think they're really gods."

Oh? "Why not?"

"Because your bubble didn't break!," she declares. "They were at it when me and Kate showed up, and it looked like they were still at it right before I burned all my mana out. The surface is showin' some wear and tear, but at the rate they were going I think we've got at least a couple days until they get through. Whatever those things in the cheap seats are, they're not as strong as whatever's protecting your castle. AND, I don't think they were doing it when me and you were in the bubble, or I'd have noticed them sooner!"

"Unless the dome... shield sphere shit is soundproof," you point out. "Maybe vibration-proof. It's hard to make out details on the creatures through the glass, so it could be hard to see them attacking the sky... especially if most of their attacks are more, uh, esoteric than just slamming their faces against it. ...Still, though--what the fuck? What are they after?"

Cici shrugs. "The song didn't really cover that part, I just know they want inside the bubble. I don't blame 'em, the outside's pretty terrible."