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Chapter Thirty-Four — Gerard the Very Very Sane Plushie-Maker
Chapter Thirty-Four — Gerard the Very Very Sane Plushie-Maker The weird stuff turned out to be a sort of constant, rhythmic chanting. Charlotte couldn’t make out the words, not quite.They sounded like she should understand them, almost familiar but not. She had once tried to learn another language from a cousin who spoke two fluently. Just a word here and there, and maybe a sentence or two.It had been a wasted effort, in the end. She didn’t have a gift for languages, and no real opportunities or needs to practice.The chanting ahead reminded her of hearing snatches of that language, a few words that sounded almost, tantalisingly, familiar.She shifted her shoulders and tried to ignore the shivers crawling up her spine.Dreamer stopped in front of a door. It was one of the last ones in the long corridor. Light was spilling out from beneath it, oranges and yellows and reds, the colours of open flames. Charlotte suspected that they were somewhere under the centre of the hill.“Do you have a plan?” Charlotte whispered.“A plan?” Dreamer asked.“Well, I’m pretty sure that whatever’s on the other side of this door, they’re not going to be too happy to see us,” Charlotte said.“That sounds like a them problem,” Dreamer said.Charlotte exhaled from her nose. “Maybe. I’m just worried they might attack before we have time to ask any questions or find out what’s happening.”“Oh,” Dreamer said. She frowned and crossed her arms. It was a strangely Daphne-like gesture to make. “Okay, so I’m going to grab everyone in there before we walk in. then even if they want to attack, they won’t be able to.”“That sounds like the start-” Charlotte cut off as screams, squeals, and a few shouts of panic came from the other side of the doorway. “Did you already grab them all?” she asked.Dreamer nodded. “What’s the next part of the plan?”Charlotte sighed. She reached over to the door and shoved it open. “We assess things, I guess,” she said as she pulled her sword out of its sheath and held it up in a simple guard posture.Dreamer skipped into the room ahead of her, head tilted back to take it all in.Unlike most of the rooms they passed, this one seemed far more unfinished. It was more of a cavern, wide and deep, with a good half of the area taken up by a shallow pool of water that disappeared into a crack in the far wall. Two large braziers burned bright, wood and books within them making the room uncomfortably warm.Charlotte only spent a moment taking in the room itself. What interested her a lot more were the people held in mid-air by coiling tentacles that sprouted from nothing and that grasped them around the waist and head and arms.In reality, there was only one person in the room. All the other tentacles were gripped around dolls. Hundreds of dolls who were trashing and fighting and screaming.“Wow, they’re noisy,” Dreamer said.“Yeah, I guess they are,” Charlotte said. She held her sword lower, ready to snap it out towards anything that jumped at her, but it seemed that Dreamer had everything in hand... so to speak.“Right, well enough of that,” Dreamer said.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.There was a single loud squelch, and all the dolls in the room were crushed the same way Charlotte might squish an over-ripe lemon. Plush and entrails splattered to the floor, some of them disappearing into the gaps where Dreamer’s tentacles retreated to.It left the room blessedly silent.The only remaining person was gently swung around so that he hovered before Charlotte and Dreamer.He was an older man, in dirty clothes stained by water and blood. He had an apron on, with a few tools left in it, and a mod of frizzy white hair on his head, somehow unstained despite the rest of him. His eyes were wild as they took Dreamer and Charlotte in. “W-who are you?” he gasped.“Hello sir,” Charlotte said. “You wouldn’t happen to work at the plush shop?”“We’re looking for a plushie for the Winter Solstice,” Dreamer explained. “It’s for Abigail.”“A... what?” he asked. He blinked slowly. “You’re not with the Inquisition? You’re not here to stop me?”“No?” Dreamer said. “We’re here for a plushie.”“That’s why I’m here too!” he said. “I’m here to make the greatest doll of them all. One so life-like, so real that it will be indistinguishable from the living! No! It will be better than the living!”Charlotte sighed. “He’s insane.”“I am not insane! I am Gerard the plushie-maker! And I have never been more sane!”Charlotte lowered her sword. “Is that why you were chanting while surrounded by living meat-dolls?”“We were chanting to a greater being! I sought guidance, counsel from beyond the veil! Let me go, and give me your flesh so that I might make life!” Gerard screamed.Dreamer stared at him for a bit, then turned to Charlotte. “He’s nuts, right?”“I think so, yeah,” Charlotte said.The air between the braziers warped and twisted. “Quick! Give me your flesh! I must feed the being from beyond the stars! Feed it, and it will give me the spark of life!”Dreamer sighed.A pair of tentacles appeared above and below and reached into the warping space between the braziers. They pulled, and it opened a hole in the world.Charlotte stared in. It was dark, darkness unending, but filled with billions of specks. They twisted around and blinked, and Charlotte realized that they were a multitude of eyes.“Hey,” Dreamer said into the pit. “This guy’s one of yours, yeah?”Something passed through the void.“Yeah, okay,” Dreamer said.She tossed Gerard in. The man’s screams were muffled almost as soon as he was past the gap.“Now go away. This place is mine.”The eyes blinked at her.“Fine, then I’ll-” Dreamer began.The opened shut, like an eye blinking closed on being poked.“Oh, it left,” Dreamer said. “I barely started to eat it at all.”“W-what was it?” Charlotte asked. She took a moment to compose herself. Things were moving fast.“Just a tadpole that thought it was bigger than it is. If it really was strong, then it wouldn’t be bothering with some human for its lunch.”Dreamer turned and started to leave the room.“Where are you going?” Charlotte asked.Dreamer shrugged. “To get an Abigail Plushie. This one didn’t work out at all. But it’s a good thing we can time travel, that means we’re not wasting any actual time.”
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Chapter Thirty-Five — A Bit Silly
Chapter Thirty-Five — A Bit Silly Dreamer felt... a bit silly.It was strange, she’d never really bothered feeling that way before.Sure, she’d made a mistake or two during her long, long, long life, but before when she did something wrong it didn’t really matter. She’d acknowledge it, or she wouldn’t, and then she’d go on doing whatever it was that she felt like doing.The whole ‘feeling silly’ thing that now happened sometimes-usually when she made some sort of mistake-was entirely new.Was her exposure to humans and friends and pats changing her? Would she continue to change? Would she wake up from her eternal dream one day only to discover that she was an entirely different Dreamer?She thought about it...Nah, she was fine.She tossed the thought aside and forgot all about it.She didn’t feel like having to deal with the consequences of her own actions. That was for weak beings that had to deal with causality.“Okay,” she said to Charlotte as they exited from the plushie shop. None of the plushies that remained were good enough for Abigail. They were all too meaty according to Charlotte. “This is the plan now. We’re going to go even further back in time to before that plushie maker guy went nuts, and we’ll buy a plushie from him then.”Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “Couldn’t we have done that from the start?”“Don’t be silly,” Dreamer said.She raised her arms above her head and stretched a bit. She didn’t mind being stuck in deep underground tunnels much-there was a certain feel to them that was nice-but she liked being outside more.Even if outside currently had about twenty Inquisitors with strange hats on and crossbows pointing at them.“Uh,” Charlotte said. She slowly raised her arms over her head. Was she stretching too?“Surrender! Drop your weapons and step away from the anomaly!” one of the inquisitors said.Dreamer glanced back to Charlotte. “Should we do something about them?” she asked.“If we can find a way to escape, that would certainly help, yeah,” Charlotte said. She lowered her arms a little. “I don’t know if there’s much more for us to do here.”“Okay,” Dreamer said.“Drop to your knees!” shouted the Inquisitor with the biggest hat.Dreamer sighed.A rift opened in space above her, and she heard the men gasp. From the rift came Dreamer’s hat. It was a nice hat, stolen from the most important inquisitor she had ever met, and modified by Dreamer herself with little tentacles that clung onto other, smaller hats.She placed the hat onto her head. There were little tentacles on the inside that kept it even, mostly because the hat was about as big as Dreamer’s little body. “No. You get on your knees,” Dreamer ordered.One of the inquisitors fired.A tiny tentacle snatched the bolt out of midair, freezing it halfway between Dreamer and the man who’d fired.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.“Why aren’t they listening?” she asked. “My hat’s bigger.”“I think they have other things in mind,” Charlotte said. “Dreamer, could you tie them all up for us? We should probably get going.”“Sure,” Dreamer said.The inquisitors had a lot to say about her tying them up with tentacles pouring out of rifts torn open in reality, but Dreamer didn’t care for their complaining enough to actually pay it any attention. If they weren’t going to play by the rules (in which the person with the most tentacles and biggest hat was the person you listened to) then she didn’t see why she had to listen to them screaming about their rights to not be tentacle-tied.“Okay, we need to go back into the past now,” Dreamer said.“We’ll have to travel all the way back home?” Charlotte asked as she stepped past the Inquisitors. She took one of their crossbows, eyed it up, then slung it over her shoulder. Dreamer didn’t comment on the looting. She had her own tentacles going through their pockets and taking all of their coins and snacks. “I don’t think we need to go all the way back. I’ll just grab the TARDIS and pull it closer so that we can get in from here. That way we won’t have to travel all the way over again.”“That’s... handy,” Charlotte said.“It’s actually tentacle-y,” Dreamer corrected.Once they were done with the looting (including all the hats) and the snacking (excluding the inquisitors) Dreamer yoinked the time machine closer. At Charlotte’s suggestion, she placed it in a nearby alleyway so that the inquisitors wouldn’t see it.“Alright,” Dreamer said as she walked back up to the machine. “How far back do we need to go to see the plushie maker man?”“About two weeks,” Charlotte said. “Three to be safe.”Dreamer nodded, Charlotte got into the machine, and then she clawed at time, grabbed a tight hold of it, and pulled herself backwards through it.It was hard to tell how far back they were going. Time was like a big river, but instead of water there was time, and instead of riverbacks, there was more time, and instead of all the stuff around big rivers, there was the chaotic and unstoppable flow of causality ripping itself apart and recreating itself anew with no concept of when.Pinpointing ‘three weeks ago’ was pretty tricky.But Dreamer managed.She stepped out of time and into the present three week ago.The little factory village, with all of its workshops and crafter homes was busy and bright. People were moving by on the street, many of them with the slow pace of window shoppers, others carrying cartloads of materials.Charlotte stumbled out of the TARDIS, looking a bit paler than she had been three weeks from then. “Oh, I’m not going to be getting used to that,” she said.“It’s okay,” Dreamer said. “We’re in the right time, I think. Now, let’s go buy that plushie. I have a lot of money I looted now!”
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Chapter Thirty-Six — Back to the Future’s Past
Chapter Thirty-Six — Back to the Future’s Past Charlotte couldn’t help but feel a little weirded out as she entered the plushie shop.The shelves were covered in soft dolls and carefully crafted puppets. There was lace and soft pastel material all over, as well as hundreds of cute smiling faces looking at her wherever she turned. A shiver ran down her back at the sight of so many shiny bead eyes.She took just a moment to compose herself. Charlotte had always prided herself on being composed in the face of adversity. She didn’t want to lose that now just because she spent some time fighting meat-plushies in a haunted village.“Hello, hello!”A familiar older gentleman was behind the counter at the end of the shop. He had an apron on, with a few odds and ends tucked away in large pouches, and while he was a little stooped and wrinkled, there was no doubting the genuine kindness in his eyes.“Ah, hello,” Charlotte said. “We’re looking for a plush doll.”“It’s a gift for Abigail,” Dreamer said.“Oh hoh,” the man said. He had been working behind the counter, adjusting a tiny tin crown atop the head of an equally tiny princess doll. “And who is this Abigail lady?”“Abigail is the best,” Dreamer said with the absolute certainty that only children and horrific cross-dimensional monstrosities could have. “I’m getting her a gift for the winter solstice.”“A bit early,” the shopkeep said. “But there’s no such thing as too early when it comes to a good and proper gift.” He reached up and stroked his bushy moustache. “Now, what sort of gift are we looking for? A nice princess? Maybe a knight? Maybe a little home for Abigail’s other dolls to live in? Or are you looking for something really special?”Dreamer froze up for a moment. “Abigail’s special, so that would be good.”“Hmm hmm. Well, I have a bit of time for a pretty young lady. Now now, there are all sorts of special kinds available out there. What kind do you think would fit your friend Abigail best?” The man leaned onto the counter with his elbows and smiled through his moustache.Charlotte had to give it to him, he was probably really good with children. Then again, she imagined that it was one of those skills he had to hone when his job was making toys for said children.“Charlotte, what kind of special doll should we get for Abigail?” Dreamer asked.“Well, you could make her a plush of herself, but I don’t think Abigail is that... narcissistic? How about a teeny tiny Dreamer plushie? I’m sure Abigail wouldn’t mind sleeping with that on her bed?”Dreamer’s eyes widened. “That's a great idea! We can make her one that will protect her while she’s sleeping, and make sure she sleeps well.”“That does sound mighty special,” the shopkeep said. He chuckled. “Are you miss Dreamer?”“Yeah, that’s me,” Dreamer said. “Can you make a plush like me?”“Oh, sure, sure, easy as pie,” he said.“Just make sure that when you give it life, you do it the right way, okay?” Dreamer said. “While using the meat and flesh of a living person to encapsulate their soul and lock it into the form of a plushie works, it’s very messy, and I don’t want a plush that’ll go squish when Abigail hugs it.”Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.“Pardon?” the shopkeep asked.Dreamer nodded. “Yes.”He chuckled, a bit less certain this time, then asked them to give him a minute or two.The man was fast. He had some ready-made plushies that were mostly shapeless figures of people. It only took him a few minutes to sow long threads of ‘hair’ onto the dolls head, then he found a tiny dress that was about the right shade of purple, added a bit of lace to it with a few quick swipes of needle and thread, and finally he set about giving the little doll some beady eyes.Charlotte was impressed, it was fast work, and well-crafted too. Maybe the man really did earn his reputation.“There there,” he said. “We’re nearly all done,”“That’s Plushie Dreamer?” Dreamer asked.He nodded. “That’s right. What do you think of her? Will your Miss Abigail like her as a friend?”Dreamer looked at the plushie. “It’s nice, but it needs more tentacles.”“Hmm?”“And it’s not really alive, is it?”“I like to think that, with a pure heart filled with imagination, every one of my little creations can come alive for the boys and girls that play with them,” he said with genuine reverence. “They’re not just toys you know. They’re companions and friends, sometimes when a little someone has nothing else.”“Oh,” Dreamer said. “I get it.”He grinned. “You do?”“Yeah, you give it pretend life. I guess that makes a lot of sense. It’s real clever, for a mortal.” The air behind Dreamer started to waver as if caught in a heat-haze, and Charlotte started to worry. “Life that’s not true, but is born from creation and the act of willing it to be true so much that it almost becomes real. I guess it’s a bit like living in a dream.”The air rent softly, and something formless came pouring out of the void.Charlotte and the shopkeep stared at the nothing as it came in and caressed the doll.He gasped and stumbled back a step, dropping it.It didn’t fall. Instead, the tiny plush Dreamer caught itself with a flex of cloth knees, then stood up tall. “I’m Plushie Dreamer, and I’m going to be Abigail’s best friend!” the plushie declared.Dreamer sighed. “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she said as she reached up and grabbed the doll. A tentacle appeared out of nothing and dropped a few small coin purses onto the table with a clink of metal on metal. “Bye now!”The man stared.“It was alive,” he muttered. “How?”Charlotte cleared her throat. “Sometimes, sir, it’s best not to ask things that you don’t want to know the answer to.”“But... but my creation was truly alive,” he said.The reverence there creeped Charlotte right out. “Uh-huh... well, have a nice day then,” she said before following Dreamer back out.Hopefully, their next stop would be home... home in a few months, that was.
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