#117

Originally, the voyage goes rather well. You is using his powers to keep the boat charged, and Susie is steering. Mina is keeping her eyes open for a trouble. About three minutes into the voyage (which leaves them still in Louisiana) they catch sight of the two capture-pods, very far in the distance. They seem to be gaining speed as they pick up, as they fade away into the horizon soon after. However, they are headed due south. And their destination seems very far.

But, as mentioned, things go s̶h̶i̶p̶s̶h̶a̶p̶e̶ s̶w̶i̶m̶m̶i̶n̶g̶l̶y̶ pretty well, for a good amount of time. They continue to pass landmasses, but it seems as if whatever presumed cataclysm narrowed down the population of this alternate America in the years leading up to the present year of 2070 has also reshaped Louisiana. They enter the open ocean much sooner than they anticipated. And as they do so, the waves seem calm. The boat perseveres. Things are as yet still good.

And yet, when the ocean is reached, there is no talking. It's not like there needs to be more focus on steering or something—it's just that the ocean itself commands a lack of speech. And this is when the dreaming begins.

The Ocean of Dreams is a makeshift name lurking at the back of the party's heads, except for that of You. Somewhere, in a familiar way, You is having a vision of something You's seen before. You has the name in Your head as well, but not in Your physical head. Elsewhere.

The name “Ocean of Dreams” is meant to recall some false cliché of an ultimate imaginary locale, not unlike “The Thicket”. The Ocean of Dreams is described, in its ideal form, of being made of pink puffs of sleep-stuff, wherein candy fish swim. Yet it can also be an Ocean of Nightmares; black as Hell, deep as night, and churning with the force of a galloping pony, suddenly now no tired girl's fancy. The Ocean of Dreams, as they enter it, begins to embody its Nightmare aspect, and that is when they begin to all feel odd. And scared. As odd and scared as Jacob was when he walked through The Thicket and saw a forgotten glimmer of Mark, just as Mark came across Susie and Jacob both.

Susie privately notes the shift of the Ocean, and as a pirate-storm crackles open overhead, her thoughts drift back in time, giving her faith in something, and belief in this penultimate “final trial”. Of course, these thoughts falling back in time are indicative of closeness not only to the spatial mass of Inspector Fox, but to the chronal mass of someone else, someone who hasn't manifested yet.

At the exact halfway point to the Blue Tower, where the Emperor waits, about an hour has passed. You must be somehow enhancing the speed of the boat—or else time is being abbreviated for the sake of the journey. Mina notes that, just as it was in her own travel through The Thicket, things seem to be moving too fast, and as such it all feels unnatural. But the trial is coming. Nothing can stop it.

It lunges out of the water with a terrible cry that shakes the stars.

Mina gasps and crumples to the ground as dozens of names spin through her head: she only catches those of Namazu, Ketos, Ceirain, Labbu, Cadborosaurus, Ravgga, and Dagon. This beast—simultaneously a shark, a squid, a whale, and an octopus, alongside any other terrible thing of the deep—is intended to be the literal archetype of all the beasts of the water. It's a living idea. Thus the battle is a mental one, but it is on the Ocean of Dreams. Therefore, all things are real, and even shadows can incarnate their stories. This creature—the trial whale—happens to be the largest shadow in the sea.

Susie knows now that she was right. And in response to that knowledge, she lifts her gun and opens fire at the beast. It rises again, dwarfing the sun in its hugeness. Her brain instantly scans it, and sees several things in its private mythos: and one of them is a phallic symbol. The entire quest is peppered with horrible masculinity. They have to defeat a penis-shaped beast in order to reach a giant Tower and free two men. And in that second, she instantly knows the riddle of their benefactor.

Mina senses it too, of course, and the idea of having to face a thing like this just makes her angry. But it's meant to draw out that anger, the trial. So she instantly draws her magic guns—which possess, of course, a shape that doesn't help this whole affair—and starts shooting.

Of course, as they unravel the riddle, that's already killing the thing. In command of power in the form of knowledge, and in the form of having overwhelmed the idea of the phallus, the two ignore You and find their weapons do incredibly damage to this giant whale. (A sperm whale, naturally.) It is not a terrible thing. It's a resolution to a big problem. And as they realize this, the Ocean grants them gifts that make their blows even harder. The evil in the whale dies away, to become something more equal. More manageable. It's a metaphor, and now as the Ocean opens up the gifts they can pick up the metaphor and use it.

The battle is much more fierce than can be described here. Rest assured, it involves much flailing and churning of fluids, and a bitter red sky that's also evidence of that future something that isn't here yet. The battle has to be difficult, but it goes much faster and much easier given the nature of the fighters. The whale was never meant to be defeated by man. It's a sign of absolute power. And so it's being conquered by something else.

The battle, from an external perspective, seems to go very quickly. That's because Mina and Susie are very clever, and, as we have mentioned, have already solved the riddle. This could be the product of another chronal echo—of a future version of themselves sending the answer back in time, at this time-vortex, creating a paradox. But they are also just very naturally smart, and have senses that their other friends don't.

When at last the beast is shrunken by the battle—not torn apart, not broken by violence, but equalized—Susie holds it in her hand. She senses magic flow into her, and then suddenly feels a kinship beyond even language with Mina. It's like a kiss or a wink. The two are reborn as sorceresses, and now as Susie holds the whale-magic in her hand, she converts it into a rawer form and knows what she has to do with it.

She unlocks Jacob and Mark's prison cells in the Blue Tower. How that happens, exactly, neither of them know. But we'll get that in a bit.

“Really?” Mina says. “We do all that and our fate is to...stick a key in a hole? That's terrible.”

“I'm glad you understood, though,” says the voice of someone invisible.