Chapter VI: Confection
519 Words
A hamlet slumbered in pastoral obscurity.
Frontline conflagrations remained distant rumors here, where barefoot children cavorted through meadows and shepherds squinted at silhouettes materializing from heat-shimmers.
"Stranger! From what horizon do you hail?"
The wanderer adjusted his peculiar hat, eyes crinkling above a leather-bound case. "Beyond your pastures."
The shepherd snorted, watching the anomaly proceed toward clustered cottages. Villagers observed with languid curiosity - such visits occurred scarcely once per generation.
Children clustered like starlings, mesmerized by twin marionettes perched on the traveler's shoulders. When daring fingers reached for the gilded doll, an invisible pebble struck with uncanny precision. Subsequent attempts met identical fate, until a bemused child retreated beneath parental escort, cranium blossoming with ruby protrusions.
"Observe the cretin's retreat!"
Aurelia's crystalline laughter echoed as Violet clandestined pebbles within the conjurer's hatband. Their hostess' barn now housed these peculiar guests, its proprietor having bartered shelter for labor. The golden doll took vicious pleasure in witnessing her master wield scythes under maternal supervision.
Upon the carved oak bed - claimed as royal dais by the miniature sovereigns - Aurelia sprawled in silken abandon. "Never again that accursed trunk," she decreed, rolling across linen expanses.
The conjurer returned at twilight, dust-gilded, to find his companions whispering like conspiratorial sprites. Aurelia assumed her imperious pose. "Has the fool procurator earned our keep?"
"Madame Alina's stray lamb warranted confectionary tribute," he replied, producing crystalline sucrose. "Bestowed upon shy Taya."
"Treason!" The doll's porcelain features flushed crimson. "All tributes belong to the Crown!"
"Marionettes lack digestive faculties," Violet observed.
Chaos ensued - a tangle of gilt and onyx tresses, peals of laughter echoing through rafters. The mage separated his squabbling charges with practiced ease, restoring order through lunar*'s rhythmic caress.
Dawn revealed an empty pallet. Violet found only slumbering Aurelia, their hostess having again conscripted the conjurer.
"Outing!" both dolls demanded when he returned. Thus they processed through hamlet lanes - a living carousel with twin riders. Villagers blinked sleepily, their world-weariness permeating sunbaked stones and woolly flocks.
Beneath the village heart-tree, children's anticipatory whispers stilled as the spectacle commenced. From void headwear bloomed peonies transmuting into chromatic pyrotechnics. Violet drowsed until nightmare tendrils coiled her consciousness - a cyclopean gaze, pupil-less and ravenous.
She plummeted into waking darkness, where fractal memories dissolved like sugar in tea. A shadow-lord advanced, its form defying geometry, until daylight shattered the horror.
In sudden sunlit gardens, a familiar stranger sipped bone china. "What alchemy shaped your form?" he inquired, gesturing to vacant space above his brow.
Reality reasserted through Aurelia's indignant cries. The mage pursued nightmare incarnate - a dream-eater grown corpulent on villagers' slumbers. They traversed cottage after cottage, extracting etheric parasites from comatose hosts.
Final confrontation occurred in their lodgings. The proprietress lay entranced, her daughter weeping ink-black tears. As the mage exorcised the gluttonous spirit, its dying susurrus chilled: "...Great...Master..."
"Shall she wake?" Violet whispered, observing the hollow child.
Miracles unfolded at twilight's edge. The girl stirred, demanding confectionary constellations. Opal petals drifted like spectral snowflakes as the mage bowed - architect of impossible benedictions.
Thus manifested the Paradox Artificer.
Merlin.
- Writer
