Book 3 Chapter 12

Andrea watched Willow leave the dreamscape and felt less than useful. Their binder was often bearing the bulk of the cost for the constructs the two of them made, which helped to explain why she was already out of qi when the fight had barely started.

The gnashing teeth of the Grudge shifted and attempted to cut through the vines Willow had made before leaving, and Andrea did what they could to reinforce them and keep them contained while continuing their assault of petals and stems when they could.

They weren’t the smartest of spirits, they knew, instead relying on instinct to guide their way. Andrea felt that was why they were the first to find both of their concepts, they simply didn’t think too hard on it, unlike some of the others.

Case in point, Phoebe still hadn’t found Meteor even though they knew it was what they wanted to be. Which felt so silly to them, if they wanted to be a meteor all they had to do was be one.

The Grudge fully broke free with a scream of curses, the area around the malignant spirit growing dark, warped, and cracked as it did so. Willow was better at reinforcing the dreamscape and fighting off the corruptive influence Andrea was sensing. They could prevent a collapse, but not as neatly as their partner, rough roots holding the fractured pieces of the dreamscape in place.

Following their instincts still hadn’t made using Dream any easier. No matter how hard they tried, it was difficult to move beyond the physical and become something more than a spirit of roots and petals.

Were they wrong to choose Dream over Rot? The flower they’d been born from had an imprint of a powerful beast that used such a concept, and Rotter was an example of that same concept being used for good.

But they didn’t want to corrupt and decay like either of their progenitors. They didn’t want to darken the world like the Grudge was during its mad charge through the dreamscape. Andrea wanted to Dance and Dream of happier times for their friends. They didn’t want to fight monsters, even if they would support Willow to that end.

Maybe that was the issue?

They never wanted to fight, so the constructs they made in the dream were always at odds with themselves. Were they actually ignoring their instincts while claiming to follow them? What a silly thing they did.

Willow could focus on fighting.

Andrea would play.

They poured out qi interlaced with their concept, dancing with the Grudge to draw it away from the cocoon Willow had made for the human master of this Dream. They didn’t even try to direct the qi they spewed out, instead they thought of happier days spent with their friends, laughing in the sun near a cave on the side of a mountain.

The dreamscape shifted, cracks healed, and the sun shone down upon the mountainside they now found themselves on, banishing the darkness left by the Grudge.

That wasn’t the only addition to their surroundings, as now they weren’t alone. Constructs of Eos, Phoebe, Xandra, and Calypso now danced and played around the spirit of broken promises and clutched anger, confusing it further. As they began to play the Grudge grew increasingly agitated as the positive emotions surrounding it intensified.

That worked better than Andrea thought it would!

Their smile grew wide as they began to play with the Grudge in earnest.

***

When Willow returned to the dreamscape things were not as she left them, and she was in awe at the changes.

Gone was the nigh endless field of flowers, and in its place was a familiar mountainside with even more familiar spirits playing around an increasingly ragged Grudge. None of the constructs created by Andrea were directly trying to harm the malevolent spirit, yet the joyous activity was still anathema to the spirit of long-held anger.

It seems she was worried about nothing. Andrea had made some sort of breakthrough in the brief time apart.

Good for them.

“Great job!” She called as she shaped the faux earth beneath into metal chains to bind the Grudge more firmly in place, taking care not to disturb the play of the facsimiles of her friends.

“Yep yep!” Andrea called back with a wide smile on their face, clearly having fun with their new method. The false sun shone down bright and cheerful, filling Willow with joy and nostalgia for the days spent at her grandmother’s cave home.

She tried not to bask in it for too long, she had a job to do after all, and if Andrea was working so hard it wouldn’t be fair to them if she slacked off.

Willow checked on the cocooned Remy, and found them in the back of the shallow cave in the mountainside. Both out of sight of the Grudge, and completely unharmed. Things seemed to be going better than she could’ve hoped, and with her reserves basically full it meant she could attempt to keep the malevolent spirit alive, if in a different form.

The stop motion thrashing of the bound Grudge slowly weakened as Willow approached the spirit. Its eyes were half lidded and the curses uttered from the gnashing teeth were more of a mutter compared to the earlier cacophonous shouts.

They should be weak enough for the twin’s idea now. She just had to hope that it worked the way she thought it would.

“Harmony, Change, I’m gonna need your help for this.” She sent to the two of them while her projection remained in the dream.

Change chuckled. “As I told you earlier, the process isn’t exact, friend. Just flood them with our concepts and hope for the best.”

“Though it might be best to start with mine, child.” Harmony advised, and Willow was prone to agree with her, as her concept tended to play nice with most others.

Her body let out a breath as her projection placed a hand on the Grudge. It weakly struggled at the touch, but the fight had gone out of it already.

Willow did as her friends suggested, opening the floodgates of Harmony and Change in the spirit of ill intent, starting with the former, and finishing with the latter. She had expected the spirit to resist or struggle, for them to thrash against the fundamental shift in their very being.

Much to her surprise, they drank deep of the offered power instead. The spirit shuddered and shifted, and Willow watched in amazement as they became something new.

At the core of the Grudge was a broken promise.

A bargain made and discarded for convenience, and the anger attached to such an act of callousness had birthed them.

They had stewed in the head of the wronged party for years, unknown to all, and when their host passed they had learned to feed on others, making them feel as wretched as their parent had.

But they were given a chance to Change, and they took it with desperate hands.

Using the given energies they fixed what was broken within themself.

They became an oath.

A bargain struck in good faith.

A Promise reforged.

Darkness, pain and rage sloughed off the spirit and only light remained.