KNOCK ON WOOD: The Dark World (Ch.13)

They were falling.

And then, suddenly, they weren’t.

One second the wind was whipping past them, air whistling past their ears as they tumbled in freefall, so fast that they couldn’t scream without the sound being left behind. Then, between one breath and the next, they were lying on their back on cold stone.

There was no transition between the two. Falling, and then laying.

Kris opened their eyes, and saw absolutely nothing. It was a darkness so profound, that they feared they had gone blind. But then they sat up, and saw. The sky overhead was empty, but there were lights in the distance.

They stood, and it was harder than they expected. They clanked, and the sound was unexpected enough that they stopped to inspect themselves. Gone was their green sweater, worn jeans and ratty black sneakers. Now, they were wearing a steel chestplate and armored boots over what appeared to be some kind of black leotard--no wait. They could see it against the black ground, so… maybe a really dark blue? And over all of it was a pink and purple cape over one shoulder.

Kris rubbed the cape between their fingers. Their hands were armored too, but even through that they could tell the material was tough and sturdy. It was Frisk’s favorite color.

Oh, and also their skin was freaking blue. Where were they?

What did Old Man Puckett do? He just, just stabbed the wall and now they were--somewhere.

They tried to take stock and walked to the side. They immediately bounced off a wall they couldn’t see because it was the same color as everything else. They met the same results in two more directions; the only way they could go was towards the lights in the distance, and so along they went.

Was it dark, or was everything black? They couldn’t see crap, but they were able to see themselves just fine. Were… were they--

Fumbling to loosen the armor a little, they eventually managed to pull their chestpiece down enough to pull at their collar and look down at their chest. It should have been dark in their shirt(?), but sure enough they could see their very blue skin just fine.

Were they glowing?

They bumped into a signpost and jumped, startled. Kris hadn’t really been watching where they were going, but the lights had looked a ways off yet.

The landscape had changed while they weren’t paying attention. For one, it now existed. There was a faintly purple road beneath their feet, and it was a crossroads. The sign they’d walked into pointed in all four directions. Only one of the signs said anything; left of their current position, which read ‘This way’ alongside a picture of a bucket.

For a moment, Kris was tempted to be contrarian. This was all way outside their expectation, and now a sign was telling them what to do. But the need for answers made the decision for them.

As they walked, the world faded in. It was the weirdest thing; it wasn’t that more things appeared as they went. It didn’t go from bare dirt to grassy fields, not the normal way. As they walked, the grass appeared like it had been there all along, but invisible. The further they went, it became more opaque, more there. When they looked behind them, the grass stretched all the way to the crossroads. And things kept coming.

Next the trees came in. With orange leaves and chocolate-brown trunks, an orchard lined the path and extended out of sight. A leaf fluttered down in front of them, and Kris surprised themselves by snatching it out of the air. It was weightier than it looked, and it smelled strongly of oranges. It was, in fact, an orange peel. Kris took a bite out of it. Definitely an orange peel. They let go of what was left of it and it went back to fluttering in the breeze.

Eventually the path widened out, and they came to a fence of orange wood, a hanging sign declaring they had arrived at Fisher Farms.

Beyond the fence was the farm, which consisted of one large farmhouse… and the same barn that had been sitting on the shelf in the closet, blown up to actual size and then some. Kris couldn’t help but stare. How did they not see it from the path?

“Oy, there you are!”

Kris started. They hadn’t realized how quiet it had been until they heard something. Coming out of the barn was Jim Puckett, his skin faintly glowing blue and wearing a cartoon Robin Hood costume. He looked ridiculous.

He was being followed by a bipedal cow in overalls and carrying a pitchfork.

“Close your mouth, boy, or you’ll catch flies,” Jim said, smirking. “Not a bad look you’ve got there, Kris. I didn’t figure you for the knight in shining armor. Thought you’d be a rogue, you rascal.”

The cow-man snorted. He looked vaguely uncomfortable with Kris’s staring, but didn’t elect to say anything. He just stared calmly back.

Jim clapped a hand on their shoulder and pulled him along. “Come on then, Kris. You wanted answers, and now that you’ve gotten the preview you’re ready to hear them.”

“Mr. Puckett?” Kris began, their own voice sounding distant.

“Yes, son?”

“What. And I can’t stress this enough. The fuck.”

The old man cackled, damn him, and led them into the farmhouse.

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“So,” Jim began. “Before I go into it, I wanna hear what you think is going on.”

Kris shook their head, shrugging helplessly, but the old man didn’t let it go.

“No, none of that. Calm yourself down and think, son.”

“I guess…” They stopped, took a deep breath, and started again. “So, I was in the closet, and there was a toy barn with toy cows, and now I’m on a farm that looks just like the toyset, with cowmen wandering around, and all the colors of things are messed up, and the tree leaves were dried orange slices,” Kris went on, talking faster. They paused as they remembered something. “There was dried fruit sitting in a potted plant, and now there’s an orchard of dried oranges. I bet if I kept walking, I’d find something like, red trees that taste like apple. Or bananas.”

“Something like,” Jim agreed easily. “Keep going.”

“And there was a fishbowl. If I took the right instead of the left, would I have ended up at a lake?”

“Straight ahead, actually,” Jim said. “The right path heads out towards the jerky farm. And somewhere out there is Kylie’s stimpak factory, though it hasn’t borne fruit yet.”

“And you… used a knife, and stabbed the wall…” Kris trailed off, because somehow that made the least sense of all.

“Yes, well. You’re supposed to stab the blade into the ground,” Jim said, rubbing his neck. “But I’m old, and bending down like that’s not so easy anymore.”

“And there were symbols on the door…”

“Ayup.” He finally relented, shifting in his seat as he prepared to explain. “Our tribe, the Ebotters, have lived around Mt. Ebott for countless generations. Before America, before Columbus, before the vikings, the Mayans, the Aztecs, before Jesus Christ, we were here. And we weren’t alone. Our story is older than Christianity, Kris. And every word of it is true.”

He waved a hand at Kris’s skeptical look. “Oh, sure, for sure, some details mighta got mixed up over the centuries, because that’s just what happens when you don’t write things down, but the broad strokes are true, and we had ways of filling in the gaps.”

“The monsters? The great war?” Kris leaned forward. “What about the monster and the dead kid?”

Jim winced. “It’s real, all right. We never put them on display, for what I hope are obvious reasons, but… there’s pictures of the beast.”

“...Really.” Their voice was so flat it could be used as a level.

“It’s true.” Jim wiped a hand down his face. “My great-great-grandfather was a freelance photographer for some newspaper or other in the big city, and he’d come back to Bellome to take pictures for a story about the Great Depression. Some think piece or something about how people from all walks of life were being affected. He’d taken his pictures and was showing some old friends how the camera worked when it happened. The pictures are in a lockbox in the museum’s basement, I’ll show you later, but…” He shuddered. “Lord almighty, even the pictures are scary. Eight feet tall at least, eyes black as sin and horns like the devil himself, all while carrying a dead girl? No wonder folks shot at it.”

“Ol pappy could have sold the photos for a fortune.,” he continued. “It was the depression, he’d have been well within his rights to. But he didn’t. He decided that it was in everyone’s best interest that Bellome’s history stay in Bellome. Or under it, as the case may be. And because of that, my family got pulled into the fold.”

“The knife thing?” Kris clarified.

Jim gave them a look. “The magic, son. If you know how, you can take a sharp edge and cut the dark away from the light.”

Kris shook their head, bewildered. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand any of that…”

“Hmph.” The old man rubbed his chin. “Maybe I should start from the beginning. Let me tell you the story of Ebott one more time, but this time, you get the full story.”

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Two thousand and more years ago, there were the People, and there were the Monsters. We lived above the ground, and they lived below the ground. We lived under the mountain, and they lived atop it.

Over and under, below and above.

They came in every shape and size you could possibly imagine. Some were small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, others were big enough to do the same to you. They were dragons, and demons, and zombies, and things that defied our ancestors’ ability to describe. And they had magic.

They could summon fire, and heal wounds in seconds, and alter the land around them in impossible ways, and we feared them. But they feared us more, because for all their power, they couldn’t take a punch.

We lived in an uneasy peace for a long time. The Ebotters were never the largest tribe, and we preferred to stay in one place rather than wander around. The monsters would wander great distances, alone or in groups, but would always come back home sooner or later.

Then one day, they came back with unwelcome guests. Another tribe had identified them as evil spirits, and it was their way to hunt down evil in all its forms.

Who were they?

No one knows, any more than they know the Ebotters. It isn’t important, not really. All that matters is that they wanted the monsters dead.

And at first, we didn’t do anything. We didn’t hate the monsters, but we didn’t like them either. They were different, and frightening, and maybe a few of the tribe thought that this battle was a long time coming.

But more and more of the other tribe arrived, chasing more and more monsters back home. And more and more monsters died.

They don’t leave behind corpses, when they fall. Monsters aren’t flesh like we are, Kris. When they die, they turn into dust, leaving nothing behind, not even the clothes on their back. According to the stories, so many were dying that the dust turned day into night.

The king of the monsters was a massive beast, slow to anger but powerful, and the attackers had awoken the sleeping giant. He strode onto the battlefield in shining armor and pushed the attackers back. He was smart enough to recognize that they weren’t the same people as the Ebotters, so he came in person to the People and asked for aid.

The elders refused. It wasn’t their fight, they said, and we wanted no part of it. The king was crushed by their rejection, but he left them alone peacefully and turned his full attention to the war.

But while the elders refused, the young’ns of the tribe had ideas.

The monsters had magic, and you don’t live side by side to someone for so long without learning a thing or two about them. The People had magic, too. We couldn’t use it for much, not compared to monsters, but what we could do was powerful.

Magic isn’t much like what you read in stories, Kris. You don’t read a book for a few years and understand how to summon flame, or pray to a god and gain the holy healing light. It’s not about learning to find some mystical energy. We don’t need to find it, because it’s already in us. In our soul.

…You see it, Kris? Take a good look at it, because I don’t like showing it off for long. Leaves me feeling hollow.

That was my soul. Yes, it’s a cartoon heart, I know. It’s not something we have, it’s something we are, and for our people it’s the source of magic. It’s also, according to the tales, the source of our emotion, and the two are related.

Perseverance. Integrity. Patience. Kindness. Justice. Bravery. Determination. There are other things that make a soul, but those are some of the most important, and they were the traits that embodied the seven mages of our People who stood in defense of the monsters. Those concepts powered and fueled their spells, and with those emotions they could work wonders.

But it also meant they couldn’t stand idly by while the elders did. The seven of them, plus a few others, went to the King and tried to find a solution. They fought by monsters’ sides, healed wounds, erected shields, and more.

But they were only a few, and while they saved lives they couldn’t save the battles. And more and more enemies kept coming. Their ways demanded that their foes be smited, and honor meant they couldn’t back down.

The King, his Prince, his Knight, and the seven mages all met and discussed, but they knew that if they continued to fight, monsterkind would be doomed. Even the Ebotters all together might not have been able to turn the tide. Many solutions were tossed out there, but eventually they settled on the best of bad options.

The leader of the mages went to the enemy chief. The mages had worn robes up to now, not revealing their human nature to prevent endangering the tribe, and so he presented himself to the chieftain with a ‘solution’ to the monster problem. He played up how dangerous they were, and how many there were, to make them seem like an insurmountable foe.

To aid in this deception, the Monster King rallied his remaining forces and amassed the greatest fighting force he could, while the Prince and the Knight helped every monster still on the surface get underground. The losses were immense, including the King himself, but they made it look as if many more still waited below to crawl out of the earth and attack.

The chieftain agreed, shaken by the display, and allowed the mages to do their greatest work.

Kindness wished to protect the monsters, and Perseverance wished them to survive. Integrity and Justice wished to see innocent people kept from further harm. Given fuel by the King’s Brave sacrifice. Patience provided an out, that one day they might return, and Determination tied it all together with undeniable power. The seven erected a Barrier around Mt. Ebott, and then pushed it inside the rock. The underground Kingdom of Monsters was protected, while making it look like imprisonment.

The enemy tribe was satisfied, and left. The monsters were gone, sealed underground, and the People were left alone on the mountain.

We were left to pick over the remnants the monsters left behind. Small villages, covered in dust, so very much like our own. The monsters, they saw now, had lived lives like any other; they laughed, they loved, they made art, and now they were gone forever, or as close as makes no difference.

And the People mourned for what they had never known until it was too late. And the story was passed down from them, to their children, to their children, all the way down to me.

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“...and now to you as well.”

At some point in the story the cowman had entered, and he now handed Jim a glass of water which he accepted gratefully.

Kris sat, staring at the table as they absorbed the story, thinking. “That’s a lot more involved than what you tell the tourists.”

“Tourists.” Jim spat on the floor, making the cow grunt in annoyance. “We tried to tell the real story, once upon a time, but the kind of people who come to gawk at  little Indian villages on vacation aren’t the type to care about moral complexities or stories about tragedies and beauty tarnished. And then, of course, in the 1950s Communism went into full swing, and trying to tell people that the other side isn’t always as bad as we think got the white folks to look at you funny. Judith’s grandfather changed the exhibit in 1961, after his uncle got arrested for wearing the color red while saying we should all just get along.” He grumbled inaudibly for a moment.

The cow walked back in with a mop and started wiping the floor where Jim had spat, giving him a pointed look that wasn’t even noticed.

Kris glanced at the cowman, curious, before turning back to the old man. “...That’s all fascinating--big if true--but what does any of it have to do with… this?” they asked, gesturing vaguely around them.

“Well, the magic wasn’t all forgotten,” Jim said. “It got passed down along with the story. Kylie’s already started learning healing, now that she knows everything, and Judith can make things lighter or heavier. Me? I can do this.”

Kris raised an eyebrow. It was hidden under their bangs, so the effect was ruined.

He still took their silence as an invitation to continue, luckily. “Well, I don’t fully understand how it works, myself, but thankfully that doesn’t stop me from doing it. My teachers told me something about ‘cutting the light from the darkness,’ or somesuch.” The old man shrugged helplessly. “I can’t tell you much, but it can turn a packet of trail mix into an orchard and a fish in a bowl into an entire lake of carp. Take a small space and turn it into a bigger, darker world.”

After a moment’s silence, Kris’s eyes widened. “Wait, hold on hold on. Are you saying you can make infinite food?” That was a lot. That was a lot. Kris had already been wondering what they were going to do when the markets ran out, but if they could just make food out of thin air--

But Jim shook his head. “It don’t last forever. You mighta noticed that the milk and the packages weren’t full. They’ll run out eventually, and trying to do it again with food you pull out of the dark world doesn’t work. That was one of the first lessons I learned.”

Okay, that was disappointing, but still big. The food stores they saw in the other room would still last a while. And if they could save the food from the supermarket for these Dark Worlds, they could stretch them out a good long time… Kris’s mind raced with possibilities.

Would a box of spaghetti turn into a wheat field of dried noodles? Would donuts turn into… okay Kris had no clue what they would turn into, but what about steak, or the snack cakes? Nuka-Cola? Maybe not that stuff, actually--

Jim cleared his throat loudly, and Kris jumped, realizing they’d been ignoring him. “Oh, sorry Mr. Puckett.”

“It’s fine, son. I know it’s a lot.” He gave them an expectant look. “So, when do you wanna start?”

They blinked. “Start… what?”

“Why, learning magic, of course!”

“What? What?”

“I’m old, and I’ve gotta pass it along to someone,” Jim said. He winked. “I saw what you did to that door, son. You’ve got the spark. What do you say?”

Kris stared at him. They looked at the table. Then at the wall. And then back to him.

“Sure, why not. I didn’t have any other plans.”