There were dozens of choices. An appetizing light green ice cream labeled, The First Spring Stroll, had caught Jun’s attention while Ella and Sophie were hovering over a range of sparkling flavors like Surprise Birthday Party, Warm Lullaby, and First Time Riding a Pony.

After several stalls of curious and life-threatening dishes, the trio had actually found a human run stall selling magical ice creams.

The old white bearded mage wearing luxurious magicians robes covered in mysterious tools of metals and jewels and an enormously wide brimmed wizards hat that looked like the entrance to an empty void, stood servilely behind the stall with a perfect customer support smile and a white apron with his stall’s name ‘Memorable Delights’ cutely embroidered in bubble hearts. and patiently waited for his customers to make their selections after explaining his creations without making them feel rushed.

Five stars for service. Highly rated. Was there a way to rate things here?

Walking out with their ice-cream cones, father and daughter both took a lick of their magical treats at the same time.

The yellow sun was shining brightly in the east, and the orange sun was peeking from the west. The smells of blooming flowers and the moist air of the giant, untamed forests. The feeling of grass and moss between the toes as you playfully shoot down man-eating moths from attacking you. Ah. Spring.

The fuck?

“Hehehehe - Daddy…” Ella kind of creepily laughed and tugged at Jun’s sleeves.

“Yes sweety?” Jun asked, now a little nervous about the flavor Nice Day at the Park.

“We should get cards. And make money. Lots of money.”

“Let- let’s give that to daddy… You can have mine. That should be fine. Yeah.”

Jun tried the light blue ice cream with its golden swirls.

The yellow sun was nearly setting, and the orange was not far behind as four moons took over the skies. Sitting on a nice and soft blanket with your close friends at the park as a pleasant breeze caresses your face. The deep satisfaction of winning everything they own, down to their undergarments with a single hand of cards, their beautiful wails harmonizing in the background as the last warm rays of sunlight relaxes your body. Ah. Such a nice day.

Jun looked back in horror at the smiling wizard. That man was a monster.

——

“Daddy look! Look! What’s that?!” Ella excitedly asked, pointing with her little free hand out the window of their seat, her other hand safely securing her position with a firm grip of Jun’s hair.

Turning over towards what his baby was so excited about, Jun looked past the flapping red translucent wavy fins of the giant transportation flying koi fish they were riding and saw a giant twenty story tall metal teddy bear, with lines of tiny hazy ant-like figures walking into an entrance at one foot of the sitting construct, and lines of drastically more colorful figures walking out from the other foot.

Jun watched with complicated expressions as he finally witnessed one of the key facilities of the modern Nexus era. It was an uncomfortable existence within the Nexus. The other patrons of the transport flight also looked away uncomfortably when they followed along the adorable child’s line of sight.

“That’s a place where people who can’t rest yet find a way to cope, and continue another day more.” A hoarse voice answered in Jun’s place from behind them. A cloud of blue dust in the shape of a tall and slender person was smiling gently down at them both.

“It’s not a place for someone as young and bright as a young father and daughter like you to visit just yet. It won’t be fun. Trust me.” She said with a wink that caused tiny blue fireworks inside her winking side of the cloudy mass that was her head.

Ella’s eyes widened and cheered.

Jun smiled as he watched Ella be entertained by a new friend, and thought about the Puppet Factory, and wished they could make it less sinister.

When a world fell to the enemy, and their spirit was at the brink of being devoured, many worlds chose mutual destruction.

The spirit of the World Fruit, the heart of a living universe, chose to concentrate its world’s essence and implode, both harming the enemy and preventing them from finding nourishment. They would not gain strength from their carcass.

In order to preserve as much energy for the continued war, a one time mass transfer of life, fueled by the initial implosion, would pay the fees and move all life within their last sphere of influence into the Nexus as Dimensional Refugees.

It was a move of desperation, because without the spirit of the world, there could be no further life and no hope for new buds. They just didn’t want the last of those little lifeforms that stood by their sides as demons gnawed at their essence to die with them. Even if they could only burn for another moment more, the dying worlds entrusted the Nexus with the last of their essence.

There were countless such aging groups, where the youngest was destined to become the oldest. But not parted.

In the Nexus, the sacred Divine Plane created by the Last Gods, the souls of those departed with no worlds to return to could only continue existing there. But although they did not fade, they grew weary.

When spirits without purpose grew weary, they slept, and if they slept too deeply, they wouldn’t wake up. There were countless such tiny specks of sleeping souls accumulated since the first group of dimensional refugees all closed their eyes for the last times, floating around like dust.

To combat the withering, a soul puppetry technique was developed by a genius where nearly exhausted souls would willingly posses specially designed and crafted puppets. These puppets required the souls' will to operate basic functions, which was a way for souls to sharpen their existence that they couldn’t do alone, which naturally preserved their states.

All good things.

Problems?

With his superior vision, he watched as gloomy fading souls walked in with staunch resolves, glancing nervously at the colorful figures being released from the other steel foot that would soon be their fates

Dolls.

Giant fabric boys and girls in colorful rural clothing or fanciful dresses. Walking teddy-bears, green and blue puppies, and waddling penguins with umbrellas.

Many different kinds of children’s toys on the scale of large adults trudged out and bemoaned their new forms, unwilling, unwilling, unwilling.

Everything was alright with the initial intent, and real technology. The puppets could extend the possessing spirits for as long as they wore them. It was their choice.

What kind of forms they got was the creator’s choice. And this creator was an 8th ranked being that never stopped being a child. Literally.

She made them like she wanted to make them. No one was forcing anyone to do anything. If they wanted to possess one of her dolls, they just had to pay her merits. Why was she being cursed at? Someone explain it to her.

Landing at the side of a fancy metal dock that was hanging halfway up a two-hundred story metallic sky-scrapper, one of numerous sky reaching structures that ran along the Cloud Streams, doors opened and solid ramps and quickly and safely discharged the occupants for the next boarding group.

Saying goodbye to her latest interesting encounter, Ella’s head was busy swiveling in every direction she could reach while walking with her hand in her father’s, so that she could take in as much of the wonders around her as she could. It was a technique she’d been developing since she met her dad.

He was pointing out different groups of buildings they could see from up in the sky and from the tall buildings they explored, and tellings Ella what little he knew about the more popular features they could see.

The Nexus Marketplace wasn’t just an arms market or a place to seek guidance. It was an entire world with billions of trillions of lives from countless different worlds, with Keyholder combatants holding the lowest percentage of the population.

The world’s of the Elders, like Jun, could accept physical beings, regardless of qualifications of existence, by ways of the Elders’ authority.

But the vast majority of lives within the Nexus were dimensional refugees who lost their universes to the enemy, fated to fade away with time as their members dwindled from the living to the sleepless and then to dolls.

Each group, without hope, grew desperately eager to leave behind a lasting memento of their legacy behind to be preserved and carried forward by the Nexus.

Temples, museums, training grounds, palaces, and academies, heritage sites like these were built by the living and managed by the dead, forming a colorful and bustling ecosystem of the paranormal vitalities.

The reason they rode the skyfish bus was because they saw a billboard advertisement for Dorthy’s Bespoke Dreams Emporium. After asking around, Jun had an idea of what the product did and became hopeful.

Ella didn’t sleep well.

She had terrible nightmares that had her in tearful fits.

Thankfully, the little thing never seemed to remember her nightly torment, but Jun would rather spare her the experience all together.

Walking into the large tent through layers and layers of fabrics that kept out the outside, the trio found a dimly lit room where the only lights were the small softly glowing marbles on the countless rows of glass shelves that lined the sides of the tent, and the tray of glowing marbles on the low table sitting in the center where an old presence that lurked under layers of fabrics sat behind and waited.

That was so creepy.

This was no way to operate a business!

Fighting his instincts that wanted to run from all things so very inhuman, Jun walked in slowly. They couldn’t be hurt. Not in the Nexus. He knew that. No problem. He was the bossman, looking for goods. Yup. Not terrified at all. Strong front. Lil girl is watching. Hu-rah!

Getting a polite nod from the mass of sheets, Jun returned a small nod, and Ella and Sophie waved enthusiastically.

“How may this humble Dor-Thay, be of assistance to you this fine day?” a surprisingly youthful feminine voice came from the mysterious mass and inquired.

“Do you sell happy dreams? Age appropriate dreams!” Jun nearly shouted to clarify. He didn’t need his innocent little girl being scarred by a purchased dream. She was still hinting at him to take up gambling. It was awful.

The mass of fabrics leaned towards the curious Ella and nodded in understanding and shook to the sides in confusion as she continued her examination.

“Bad dreams. Many, bad dreams. Too many, bad dreams. Odd, odd, and odder still.”

Jun thought about the sleeping souls grafted to his Ella’s, and wondered how much he should share, when Dorthy, or Dor-Thay, straightened her posture and revealed her towering height, if not her form, as a fifteen foot mass of startled fabrics that loomed closer to Jun’s not totally freaked out face.

After observing him for a few aggressive moments, she finally settled back and stated rather than asked, “You did not do this to her.”

“No, I did not.”

“Do you know who did?”

“I’m working on it.”

“You must find them. Such evil must not go unpunished.”

“I know. I won’t let them live easy lives.”

The tower quickly shrank to a small heap of towels the height of Ella’s eyes, and a scarf looked like it wanted to reach out and pat her head.

“I will make a dream for you. It will take me a few minutes. Why don’t you look around over there and look at some of my favorite dreams? Just place your hand close, and you can get a little taste,” the heap of fabrics kindly encouraged Ella to explore.

Seeing the little girl with her little red long eared creature scamper off to touch everything she could reach, Madam Dor-Thay rose in height to meet Jun and got to business.

“I can sense a terrifying strength from you, but are you rich? The kind of dreams I’ll need to make will be beyond the common wares you’ll find on these shelves. It isn’t meant for only one dreamer after all.”

“Oh?” Jun dumbly asked, surprised about how much this strange creature had already gleamed.

“I sense terrible nightmares from her as we speak. Terrible and countless. I know not their numbers and their strengths, but the amount of nightmare essence her body is accumulating cannot be solved with just a normal Dream. We must draw in all the splintered spirits sleeping in her body together and soothe their suffering at once.”

“What do you need? Is it merit? I should have quite a bit. I think I’m fairly wealthy at this point.”

“No, it is more. We need a guide to enter the dream and serve as the anchor to prevent them from drifting away and show them the way out.”

“That sounds like you’re about to have an interesting experience. Is that something that you want to do here? Or…”

“You must enter the dream and guide your daughter and awaken all the nightmares.”

“You must be crazy,” Jun spoke flatly. He didn’t know the first thing about dream-travel of guiding anything anywhere. This raggedy - If Madam Dorthy presumed to think him qualified to not mess up and make things a thousand times worse, she hadn’t met him yet.

“It must be you,” Dor-Thay said adamantly for a mass of fabrics. “It needs to be someone she trusts. Is there anyone else this child trusts more?”

“I-.”

“Alright, you go and accompany the child while I whip up something with what I have to stem the tides, but it will take me a few days to concoct something of the levels we need.”

“I-.”

“Don’t let her look at the dreams on those shelves if you don’t want to traumatize the little thing,” she warned.

“Ah!”

They spent close to an hour trying out the age appropriate dreams by touching the glass enclosures and getting brief flashes of all kinds of dreams.

Jun reached out and touched a case labeled, Frustrating Motivation, and got an image of himself at a cooking stove, repeatedly failing to flip a pancake as he screamed at his spatula over and over again, “I am a GOD!”

He had concerns.

“Jun,” a tiny nose poked his ear from his shoulder and whispered, “someone is approaching the pass. They’re heading straight for the planted biotracer signal.”

Already? It hadn’t been that long since they began emitting the bait. They must have departed the moment they sensed it. It seemed they really wanted his little Ella.

It was time to learn more about who his enemies were.

Perhaps sensing his intentions to leave, Madam Dor-Thay finished her last refinement and sealed her newest masterpiece into her clearest dream-pearl and placed the glowing experience into a small box and handed it to the avenging warrior seeking to right wrongs.

Without waiting to receive payment, the dark heap of sheets in a dark tent, illuminated by soft tiny pearls, shrank once more and this time gently embraced the most abused soul she’d ever dared to imagine and whispered into the ear of the blessedly innocent creature, “You are many but you are whole. You are broken, but you are loved. That is enough. That is power.”

Turning to the startled guardian, Dor-Thay didn’t speak of payments, merely instructed them to return after a number of days and dismissed them from her tent.

Jun took charge and didn’t waste time going back the way they came and decided to return directly.

A snap.

A small portal.

Back home.

Portal gone.

Time for answers.

Madam Dor-Thay.

What had she just seen?

 

 

---

 

lol ok, so yesterday we started off with 14 votes at 4.4 rating because of two 1 star ratings. 

I asked you guys for a bump up vote cause 4.4 is a B, which stands for 'Bitch, yo momma gonna whoop yo ass' in korean society. 

Now there are 14 votes at 4.7 with only one 1 star rating. 

Guys, did one of you track one of the 1 star guys down and threaten them into changing their vote? Like how? What is the story here? I need to know!