Written by Fulgur
Illustrated by Crosschan

Chapter 18

Mindscape

Grace slowly awakened and immediately wished she hadn't done that.
It was dark where she was. And cold. Not a sound. She tried to touch something, but nope - not even that worked.
"Hello?" she cried.
Her voice sounded only briefly before the sheer volume of the silence drowned it.
Then there was light.
Grace realized that the faint light comes out of the amulet she had on her neck. She also realized that the amulet seems to be the only piece of clothing - if amulets can be considered clothing - she was wearing.
She seemed to be in a strange place. It managed to look at the same time like a small room and a vast grey plain. Above her could be ceiling - or a sky. There was no way to find out.
Several bodies were lying on the ground. It was impossible to see whether they are just sleeping - or whether they are dead.

"Grace!" I shouted and grabbed the fallen girl. The monstrosity that used to be Spectre was quickly dissolving in black, stinking liquid, but the damage was already done.
Soot grabbed my hand. "I don't think you should touch her."
"But..."
"She might attack you," she pointed out. "Zack... Grace is lost. We can't do anything for her."
"No!" I shouted. "I won't take that! There must be a way!"
Soot shook her head. "Believe me, I wish there was. But I... I just don't see one."
"There must be a way!" shouted Rosey. "We can't just let Auntie Grace die!"
"No," I said. "We cannot..."
But I wondered. Oh yes, I wondered.

Merta jumped, suddenly totally awake. What has just happened? She remembered having a breakfast... then it all was blurry and indistinct.
"Zack," she murmured. "Is Zack OK?"
"Oh, he is - I guess," replied another voice. "I would worry about us if you don't mind..."
Merta raised her eyes to meet her exact mirror image. The other girl looked exactly the same - but her clothing was different, black outfit with white markings, looking a bit like armor.
A memory swelled.
"Ra...ia?" said Merta.
"It takes all of my remaining power," said Raia, "to talk with you. We were never supposed to meet, Merta. But we need to talk."
"Talk? What about? And just who are you?"
Raia shrugged. "You may think of me as your... dark side. There is something we must do, Merta. Something you must do. It's not a pleasant for either of us, but if this world is to survive, it must be done."
"What are you talking about?" cried Merta. "What has to be done?"
Raia sighed heavily. "I'm sorry," she said. She moved her hands and a truncated tetrahedron appeared in front of her. "You take more and more of my power, Merta. But you can't use it properly. I can. And in order to get it back - you must be sacrificed."

Grace grabbed the nearest body and shook it heavily. It was a dark-skinned, thin girl with black hair, also nude. She moaned faintly.
"Wake up!" cried Grace. "Please, just wake up!"
The girl opened her eyes. "You!" she cried.
"Excuse me?"
The girl looked at herself. "So that's it," she said, sadly. "No more chances, I guess."
"What are you talking about?"
"Can't you tell?" The girl flashed her a very sad smile. "I was defeated by Spectre. We are dead."

"What?" cried Grace. "No way! We can't be dead! At least I..."
She remembered dark tentacles... and the sensation when they penetrated her skin. Not pain, not exactly - more like sheer cold. And numbness...
So this girl...
"You are... Nyx?" she asked.
The girl shook her head. "No. I'm no longer Nyx. My name is..." She hesitated, but finally said: "Claire."
"Grace."
Claire nodded. "I guess we will spend lots of time together now, huh?"
Grace hesitated, too. "You... don't speak much like Nyx."
Claire sighed. "Why bother pretending now? I am dead, so I can just be myself - right?"
"Why did you do that?" asked Grace, quietly. "I've seen the Queen, the true Queen, and she is a horrible person. So why? Why were you serving her?"
Claire shook her head. "No. I don't want to remember that. Please."
"Why, Claire?"
"The Queen..." said Claire quietly. "You can't imagine the wonders. She gets in your blood, and there she whispers. You see what she shows you. You see her dreams, the dreams of glory, and you would do anything to make those dreams continue."
"Who is she? Who is the Queen?"
Claire shrugged. "I don't know. She never told me. She is not human, I'm sure about that. But I know that every Geomancer has a trace of Queen in his or her blood. She is the one who makes it all possible. Without her, I could never use the power... neither could you."
"What?" Grace was puzzled.
Claire smiled. "You too have Geomancer blood in your veins, Grace. I knew that from the first moment. The Queen knew. Your blood called to her, you know."
"I am... Geomancer?" breathed Grace.
Claire shook her head. "No. Your powers are inactive. You would need a dose of the true blood to awaken."
"Raia's blood."
Claire nodded. "Like I got."
"It changed you."
"It destroyed me," said Claire, sadly. "All my life was a failure. And even my death. I could never make a difference."
She looked ready to cry.
"When I was little," she said, "I had to work in the mine. Coal mine. It was terrible place. We had to work all day and only got out at night. I never saw the sun when I worked there..." She paused. "And they beat us all the time. Some of the adults just chose a kid and beat him or her. They didn't need a reason. Or, better, they could always find one. Not working hard enough, they said. They were saying us that is the right way to treat us. Can you imagine a life like that? Day after day, month after month? For years?"
"So that's why..." said Grace, quietly. Her own life wasn't pretty, but compared to this it paled.
"I can't believe people can treat children like that, nowadays!" she cried.
Claire nodded. "I didn't have parents. None of us had. Nobody cared about us. And then, one day..."
She trembled. "Someone cared about me. Someone visited when I was sleeping. Told me about the power. Brought me the new blood. And I... I accepted. I became a creature of darkness."
She paused. "The next day they foudn I was missing. They tried to find me, but in the end they went down to the mine, as usual. On that day, the shaft suddenly collapsed. There were no survivors."
"Did... did the Queen do that?" gasped Grace.
Claire shook her head. "No. I did. I wanted to avenge all the pain I've suffered. I've killed the bad men who hurt me. But with them, I also killed people that never did. I killed the other children, too. And the Queen laughed while I did that and told me that is the right way to go. She told me that Geomancers are the lords of this world. There can be no opposition. They can show no weakness. They can't expect mercy - nor show it."
Grace was horrified. "But... but..."
"I'm kinda glad it ended up like this," said Claire quietly. "I had this nightmare, you see... that I will die and all the children I've killed will come to greet me. That they will ask me why they had to die - and I will have no answer to give them. I will rather spend the eternity alone."

Grace's body moved, then opened her eyes. A smirk appeared at her lips.
"In the end, I always prevail," she said in Spectre's hoarse voice. "For I am the Death herself."
"You are not!" I cried. "You are just an usurper! I want Grace back! I want her back!"
"You will join her soon," sneered Spectre. "I will collapse the water and bring the end to this island. All of you will be dead in a short while."
She tried to get up.
And she failed.
"What?" she faltered. Then her eyes fell on the amulet on Grace's chest.
She twitched and squirmed, but the body refused to listen. She could control the head, but that was all!
Somehow, Grace managed to trap the monster in her own skin.
I've never seen that amulet on Grace. I looked at it.
It was a plain golden heptagon.

"What do you mean?" whispered Merta.
"Don't make this harder than it is," sighed Raia. "I thought it over and I just can't find another way. I've needed you, Merta, and that's why I created you. But you blocked me. You wanted to live and your desire was taking over my powers - and my mind. In the end, we can't live in the same brain, Merta, not for very long in any case. And yet - I didn't really mind. I didn't mind that I was about to disappear. I did many things - bad things - in my time."
She sighed. "But that has changed. I realized that the Queen must be stopped. I can't disappear and let her roam freely. So once again, I have to take the possession of this body."
"You want to kill me," said Merta. "Don't you?"
"Queen survives in the blood," said Raia. "In the end, I could bury her - I drowned her out and stopped listening to her, but she is still down there... waiting. If you stayed in charge, sooner or later she would find a way. I have to kill her - and I have to die myself to prevent her from appearing ever again."
The truncated tetrahedron in her arms started to glow.
"That's why," she said. "I'm really sorry."

"Why do I have this?" asked Grace. "We are nude, but I have this amulet. It must mean something."
"I've never seen one like that," shrugged Claire. "I never had much experience with jewelry, you know."
"I got it from Mom," said Grace. "I think it's a thin slice of gold or something like that."
"It's heptagon," said Claire. "That's a funny shape."
"Why?"
"Geomancy doesn't use it," said Claire. "I think you can do heptagonal prism - and antiprism, but I've never tried those. Not even the Queen was sure what effects they would have. But apart from those two, heptagons just don't fit anywhere. But... I've seen it somewhere."
"Where?"
"In the castle..." said Claire slowly. "The lower room... That's it! The seal - it's made of heptagons!"
She started to draw a diagram in the soft dust that was covering the floor.
"Three heptagons at every point," she mused. "And they get smaller as they approach the edge of the room... That was the ultimate Geomancy, the one that sealed Raia for almost three centuries - as well as most of the Queen."
"Most of the Queen?"
"A part of her stayed in the surviving Geomancers," explained Claire. "She went to sleep - a deep sleep. But when a person with Geomancer blood appeared in the vicinity of the seal - she knew. And she could affect that person, in small ways. One girl did, several years ago. Then, the Queen managed to break a little bit of the seal. But she couldn't control Raia anymore. She could only use her blood, and in the end Raia escaped anyways and we - we were sent to bring her back."
She sighed. "It was a very bad idea from the beginning. Now I can see it. The blood gave us... the power, but it also changed us. We were not compatible enough. The blood of Geomancers is too weak in me... or in Swarm."
"And Spectre?" asked Grace sharply.
"The Queen tried to infuse a dead body with Raia's blood," said Claire quietly. "She thought she will be able to directly control that body. Instead - she created her. She thought she can control Spectre - but Spectre always resented her, you know. She didn't want... to be alive. Yet she couldn't counteract her orders. In here, she managed to shake her influence. And now she's going to kill everybody - including herself."

Max and May were running through the forest, cast in strange gloom thanks to the tons of water hanging over their heads. Max even left his cart in there - he was busy holding Swarm in his arms. Now she had the form of five-year old girl, and traces of black particles were evaporating from her at random times.
"I'm sorry," she whispered through tears. "I'm so sorry..."
Max told May the whole story along the way. His father was a descendant of Geomancers, and that made the Queen interested in Max's sisters. One day, when Max was in town, she came. Max found the house burned down - his mother was dead and there was no sign of either of his sisters.
"I wandered the world in desperation," he said. "In the end - I tried to kill myself. But she saved me. Mrs. Tain."
"Mrs. Tain?"
Max nodded. "She told me who killed my family - and why. She wanted my help in her fight against the Queen. I accepted, of course. But she told me that my sisters are dead - I never imagined..."
"I think there is lots of things Mrs. Tain didn't tell us," said May. "What are you going to do now?"
"Pauline is losing power," said Max sadly. "She... might disintegrate at this rate. Maybe the Queen is trying to kill her, now that she can't use her anymore."
"How do we stop her?"
"I don't know, May." He looked desperate. "I... I just don't know."

The ray of light flashed from the polyhedron towards Merta. She quickly jumped aside. With just a thought, she called forth a truncated tetrahedron of her own. Here, in her own mindscape, it was easy.
"I don't want to die," said Merta. "I'm sorry, I just don't believe this is the only way. I want to live, Raia - live with Zack!"
"If the Queen wins, Zack will die," replied Raia. "There is no ideal solution. You can't defeat her."
Merta suddenly threw her polyhedron aside and it exploded. As Raia looked towards the explosion, she got a hit with fiery tetrahedron in her chest.
She gasped.
"I love Zack," said Merta. "I won't let anything happen to him. And I won't let anything happen to me, either."
Despite the pain Raia felt, she smiled. "You are... more like me than I thought..." she acknowledged. "But you are not good enough..."
A complicated diagram appeared in the air, and suddenly a wireframe flashed around her.
"Truncated icosahedron, the Fuller barrier," said Raia. "A bit further than where you got in your silly book on geomancy, right? And now, I can..."
Suddenly, Merta disappeared. Ten identical copies of her surrounded Raia.
"This is my head!" they shouted. "Not yours! I have the control in here!"
"Rhombicosidodecahedron, The Multiplicator," shrugged Raia. "I can counter that, you know."
Merta smirked. "Just you try. You won't defeat me. Noone will get between Zack and me!"
Raia laughed. "Let me show you something, you foolish girl..."

"Who is she?" asked Grace. She indicated a third girl, or woman, to be more precise, lying on the ground.
"Beats me," shrugged Claire. "I've never seen her."
But when Grace took a better look at the woman's face, she realized that she had seen her... She definitely seen her.
She touched her shoulder. "Fia? Wake up, please."
This time she noticed that. The faint glow of the amulet increased when she touched her. Fia opened her eyes.
"Am I dead?" she asked.
"Yes," nodded Claire.
"No!" cried Grace. "We are not dead! I know where we are - this is Spectre! We are in her mind!"

I wished the sword in my hand and I aimed it on Spectre. "You're done," I told her. "Let her go back. If you do - I won't kill you."
"You don't understand anything, you fool!" spat out Spectre. "I have no yearning to live! I'm only alive because I cannot die! My essence - it just moves on its own, I can't stop it, I have to continue with this stupid, meaningless existence! But when the water falls, there will be no place for it to go, no living thing for me to move into, and then - then, maybe, I can truly disappear. And that's why your threats are meaningless. I'm trapped in this body, but I still control the water!"
"If you do," said Soot, "why didn't you let it fall already? Why do you waste time and keep holding on the existence by this meaningless chatter?"
"I'll let it fall!" screamed Spectre. "I really will!"
"You won't," shrugged Soot. "I'm a pro, girl. I know when I see someone bluffing."
Spectre shrieked and tossed around wildly. But to no avail.
"I know," smirked Soot. "It's just one of those days when everything you do goes wrong, isn't it?"

"In Spectre's mind?" repeated Claire.
"Yes," nodded Grace. "All three of us were absorbed by Spectre at one point or other. This must be her..."
"Her mindscape," said Claire quietly.
"Her what?"
"Every person has a world in his or her imagination," said Claire. "That is the mindscape. A whole world in your head. We are quite literally on Spectre's mind."
"Can we do something in here?"
"There must be a way!" cried Claire. Suddenly, she was agitated.
"My amulet," said Grace slowly. "That's what woke us up - all of us."
She raised it towards her eyes.
"If something can defeat Spectre, it's this."

It was a cold stone vault, roughly circular. There was a big heptagon in the centre and other, smaller surrounding it... and further...
"This is the seal," said Raia. "The landscape changed in three hundred years, a bulding was built, but the seal remained. But look here!"
In one part, some lines were broken. The free ends glowed faintly.
"The Queen did this," said Raia. "This allowed her to leak the power back into the world. This let the time run again for me. But as long as the central heptagon stayed intact - I couldn't leave. Not as Raia."
"I remember..." said Merta slowly. "I remember the little girl - Pauline. She... gave her my blood. And..."
"She doesn't care for humans," said Raia. "She didn't care for me - and I was foolish I didn't find out sooner! That scene with Pauline - that was before you came. I gave you a little bit of my recent memories when I made you."
"So... I'm only a figment of your imagination?" asked Merta.
Raia hesitated. "You were," she said in the end. "But not anymore. Not now."
"Does this seal work?" asked Merta.
Raia looked puzzled. "Excuse me?"
"I mean - is this just an image of the real thing - or does it actually work?"
"As you told me, this is your head - so if you want it to work, it will."
Merta smiled. "You have experience, Raia. I don't. I understand you can destroy the Queen - but I don't want to die. So - what if I just stepped in here? I can just go to sleep, right? And you can take back all the power. If I can have Zack, I don't need the power."
Raia gasped. "I just wanted to kill you! Do you really... trust me that much?"
"You might created me as a trusting person," replied Merta. "But really, I believe you are not a bad person."
"Because a bad person couldn't create someone as lovely as you?" smirked Raia.
Merta blushed. "If you want to think that..."
"But even if I defeat the Queen," pointed out Raia, "she will still survive in my blood... in our blood."
"Can't you do something about it?" asked Merta. "Even if we wouldn't be Geomancers anymore... could we still survive?"
"Probably," admitted Raia. "But I have way too much bad memories. I'll destroy the Queen... and I disappear. Let's do it your way, Merta. You can have Zack and the happy life you want. I... I will have the oblivion. I will be relieved from my guilt - and from my duty."
Raia broke one line in the central heptagon and Merta stood in there.
"Are you sure?" asked Raia.
Merta nodded. "It's the only way. Only way I would agree to."
Raia closed the heptagon. Then she moved her hands.
The heptagons came alive, spreading towards the boundary circle, smaller and smaller, ad infinitum. Merta froze.
Raia shook her head. "You foolish girl," she murmured. "Trusting me?"
She smiled sadly. "Sweet dreams," she said. "Dream about your happy life with Zack - but I know what must be done."

"How is Rosey?" asked Fia. "I feel so bad she was left alone at her age."
"She has Soot," pointed out Grace.
"Ah, yes..." Fia made a sour face. "I'm not sure if she is the best person to take care of my child."
"What did she do to you?" asked Grace. "Do you really hate her that much?"
Fia shrugged. "I never liked her, you know. She was always the bad apple. And my father - she was his favorite! I wasn't bad enough for him! Sure, he pretended to be pleased with the good girl I was, but he never - ever - fooled me!"
"Yet - you named your daughter after her..."
Fia looked sheepish. "Do you want to know the truth? I did it so that one day, I could bring her to my father and tell him: This is the little Rosaleen. Look how different she turned out from yours! ... I just wanted to prove to him that I'm right, that thievery isn't the way you should make living."
"But it didn't work as expected," said Grace.
Fia nodded. "Right."
Grace looked at Claire. "OK, then, what should we do?"
Claire shrugged. "It's yours. Try something."
Grace grasped the little golden heptagon in her hand. It started to shine brightly.
"Let us go!" she cried.

Instantly, the mindscape changed. The formless grey stayed, but now the horizon appeared.
It was near or far - impossible to tell. But the three girls saw a face - barely a skull - appear in front of them.
"What?" It seemed puzzled. "What's happening here?"
"We want out," said Grace firmly. "You have no right to do this to us!"
"You are dead!" screamed Spectre. She seemed to be afraid.
"No!" cried Grace.
"So that's why..." whispered Spectre. "Why I can't send the water down. You are blocking me, Nyx. How?"
"There is no Nyx anymore. I'm Claire. You used to have another name, too."
"No. I was never alive. I was always like now - not quite alive and not quite dead."
"I can make you forget," said Claire. "I still have some power left."
"I don't believe you!"
And Grace moved her hand and the golden heptagon flew through the air.
In the mindscape, the distance is largely a matter of personal preference.
For Grace, the skull face was only a few inches before her and she pressed the amulet into her forehead.

Spectre screamed...

...and fell back. The eyes - Grace's green eyes - closed.
"What now?" I whispered.

Spectre was screaming but she didn't make sound anymore. A pattern of heptagons started to spread around the skull.
"Can we now go back?" asked Grace. "Back in the real world?"
Claire looked at Fia. She nodded.
"You can go back now," said Claire.
"What do you mean?"
"Your body still exists," explained Claire. "But ours are gone. You are a living person, Grace - but we are not. We are mere shadows, brought up by your power."
"What?"
Fia smiled. "Tell my daughter that I always loved her. Even when I had to spank her at times. And tell Soot... to take good care of her."
Claire started to draw a large diagram. Spectre's screaming skull was inside of it - but so was herself and Fia.
"What are you doing?" shouted Grace. "No! Come back with me!"
"It would only make trouble." Claire shook her head. "We have decided."
She smiled. "You might want to close your eyes," she said. "I've lived in darkness, my whole life. In death, I want to finally see the light."

And then there was a light.

Grace opened her dazed eyes and looked around.
"Zack!" she screamed. "What... what happened?"
I jumped. "Grace? Is that really you?"
She started to cry. "Zack! It was... terrible! Zack!"
She hugged me and was trembling and crying.
"Spectre..." I tried to say.
"She's gone! And this time, she won't come back - ever!" sobbed Grace. "But also - Zack, I met Nyx there! And... and Fia!"
Soot gasped.
"They didn't want to come back," she said. "I tried to make them, but they just... they just... they are gone, too!"
Soot looked horrified. Grace looked into her eyes.
"She asked you to... to look over Rosey," she said. "Believe me - I wanted her to come back! But I couldn't do anything!"
She collapsed against my shoulder, still crying.
Suddenly a roar sounded from outside.
"The water!" yelled Soot.
With Grace in my arms I ran in front of the house.
A huge barrier was shining above the island and the water was streaming down - safely disappearing in the sea where it came from.
"Claire managed to save us..." whispered Grace.
"And I helped a bit, too," said a voice behind us.

We turned around.
"Merta!" I cried. She was awake, too!
The girl just shook her head. "I'm sorry, Zack," she said. "I'm Raia. Now and for ever."
"What do you mean?"
"Merta is gone, Zack," said Raia. "You know we couldn't survive together for long. In the end, I've won."
I was speechless. She turned away from us.
"I will make an end to this," she said. "This way or another. We will never see each other again, I am sorry."
I wanted to shout, to stop her, but my body refused to move.
Raia took her tear-shaped amulet and threw it on the ground.
"I won't need this anymore," she said with a sad smile. "Thanks for all the protection... my Knight. But our deal is over."
She waved her arms and a cube inside another cube appeared in the air. They formed a tunnel to... elsewhere.
Before she disappeared, she turned back once more and said:
"Tell Max that he owes me one."
And then she was gone.

Swarm stopped to sob and Max gasped.
The trace of black particles came back, infusing her body, until it stopped at the age of ten.
Swarm smiled. "Bro?" she said sleepily. "I've had a weird dream just now..."
Then her eyes closed and she fell asleep.
"What the...?" asked May.
Max opened his mouth. "I think... we've just seen a miracle."

End of Chapter 18

  May's Readers' Corner:
Pheew! In the end, we got a happy ending. Right? Didn't we?

Oh - that's what happened when I was away with Max? Oh no! Is Merta really gone? You have to wait for Chapter 19 to find out!
May