Chapter 5960 Animals

<Henry>

Henry had never once thought of comparing himself to his father. It was not modesty, and it was not fear, it was only that the idea had simply never made sense to him.

He had grown up with a father who came back from apocalypses of Domains and Wheels and Observable Existences different every time, and then from things far worse than apocalypses, and somewhere along the way Henry had simply accepted that his father was the kind of being existence rearranged itself around, and that he himself was not.

But he wanted to make him proud. That had never gone away, not in all the centuries he had lived inside the Dream Engine, growing and learning while his father fought somewhere outside, and not after he woke up and his father turned him into something new.

He still remembered his father’s face when he had turned the five of them into Risen Nightmares, the apology in it, and he remembered telling him how he was still him and meaning it. He was still himself, only with obsidian hair now and dark, gold-edged moth wings that lay against his back, with closed eyes marked along them that sometimes opened when he was not paying attention, and with a strength in him that had not been there before, enough to stand against an Established Immense One and win.

That was the thing he kept thinking over while he waited. His father had shown them how vast existence was, and how terrifying, full of monstrous lifeforms that could swallow regions without noticing, and Henry knew exactly where he and the others stood in all of that, which was not very high. So what would his father ask of them now? Would he send them out against some Legacy to unleash their Nightmares on it, or against Ancient Immense Ones, beings far beyond anything they could fight, so they would learn by bleeding?

His whole existence buzzed with the possibilities. He had so many new things inside him that he had barely tested, and every one of them wanted to be used, and he had spent so long behind his father that he could hardly bear the thought of standing still any longer. Then he felt it, deep in the center of himself, the call he had been waiting for, warm and familiar and unmistakable, and he answered it at once, his heart pounding, wondring what his father would have him do.

---

He arrived on a farm. It was small, perhaps a mile across, with black-gold soil and three bright rivers running through it and snow falling softly over all of it from a sky that did not seem to end. For a moment Henry only stood there in the snow, confused, and then the pressure of the place reached him, and his knees nearly gave owt.

It was dense. Every grain of that soil was heavy with power, and so were the rivers and the falling snow and the air itself, and when Henry reached out with his senses, he found more power packed into this one small farm than in the whole of THE Infiniverse!

It was grand several times over, all of it held in a single quiet mile of earth, and his wings opened on their own and the closed eyes along them all flew open at once.

Beside him, the others were arriving. Thalia stepped out of nothing with her nine golden tentacles on each side lifting in alarm, Kazuhiko appeared with his blade arms already raised, Barbatos landed in a crouch with her devil wings spread wide and her stellar obsidian skin catching the snow, and THE Emperor Penguin came last, his black-glass plates chiming as he turned his crowned head in every direction at once, all six of his gold eyes wide. None of them said anything, because none of them knew what to say.

Henry looked around. There were long rows of mounded soil across the field, and at the center of the farm stood a small blue-gold tree with six Branches and glowing flowers, and beside the rivers a tall green woman in a linen shirt and a work apron was pressing soil back into place with her boots, pouring out an Ancient Immensity so calmly that it made his teeth ache.

On the porch of a small house built from curved dark shell, a slender winged woman who looked partly insect was watching them with quiet, ancient eyes, and on the porch rail a small white cat lay curled with one bright eye open, and Henry could feel something old and enormous curled up inside her, sulking.

And there, walking toward them across the field with a hoe resting on his shoulder, in a plain work shirt and worn trousers and boots and a wide straw hat, was his father.

Henry stared at him. Where were the enemies, he thought, and the grand battles, and the terrible things his father had called them here to face?

His father stopped in front of them and looked at each of them in turn, the five of them standing in the snow, and then his eyes came to rest on Henry. He came forward and set his free hand on Henry’s shoulder, and the weight of it was very familiar.

"My dream," his father said, "of taking care of a farm in peace, even while existence burns and toils all around us, is finally starting to come true. I wanted you all to get a taste of it yourselves, before you decide how you want to follow your own dreams." He looked out over the field and the rivers and the little shell house. "To start us off, we have a house, and we have farmland, but we don’t really have any animals."

He turned and nodded toward the far edge of the farm, where the soft grey light of the Fallow rose from the gaps beyond the field. "Out there are Nightmares that have been hanging around since I opened the Fallow of Existence here. So let’s put your power to the test. See if you can capture them and domesticate them, so they can be the first animals on our farm."

His eyes came back to Henry, and there was something bright in them. "I plan to shape them into lifeforms that can make Narrative all the time, Narrative we can harvest and share with everyone. The more we harvest, the stronger you all become, and everyone else with you."

...!

Henry stared at his father. This was not anything he had imagined, not in all the possibilities he had turned over while he waited, and for a moment he did not know what to do!

He looked at Thalia, who looked back at him with her tentacles slowly lowering, and at Kazuhiko, whose blade arms had sunk to his sides, and at Barbatos, who had closed her wings and was frowning out toward the edge of the farm.

Then Henry felt them too. Out past the edge of the field, in the grey gaps where the Fallow had broken through, there were Nightmares, and they were not small. Some of them were very strong, strong enough that he could feel them from here, waiting in the soft grey dark, and some of them were already watching the five newcomers with interest.

Henry nodded slowly, almost without meaning to, and then he made himself focus. He had always trusted his father, every time, without exception, and if his father said this was what they needed to do to grow stronger, then he would do it without a second thought. His wings spread wide behind him, the closed eyes on them opening one after another, and he began to move toward the edge of the farm.

Beside him, the others moved too, Thalia’s tentacles rising and Kazuhiko’s blades lifting and Barbatos taking to the air in a single beat of her wings.

THE Emperor Penguin was the most excited of all of them, his black-glass plates ringing as he threw back his crowned head, and he let out a great, joyful cry across the snowing farm as he shot out, and he was filled with determination!

"RAA!"