He drifted

For aeons

'We shouldn't be here . . . not this far.'

'This should of ended centuries ago . . . your guilt.'

'We exist on borrowed time . . . that's why I'm here!'

'Xindii?

Xindii? Wake up you silly boy.'

He pulled himself out of the mud and looked beyond. Out into the darkness. 'Hello?'

'What are you doing down there?'

'Who are you?'

'You are tired aren't you?'

'Where are you?'

'Over here. Shall we put the light on?'

'Yes please.'

The lamp came on and she sat on the end of the bed. Xindii checked his hands but the mud had disappeared.

'Are you dreaming again? Fighting dragons on the islands of Bish?'

He studied her closely. 'Yes. Yes. Bish.'

'You read too much my man.'

'Ma?'

'Yes. Who else would it be?'

'But, how?'

'Well I wasn't always a mum you know.'

She was beautiful. Clad in a felt brown dress that dangled elegantly at her heels. A dark blue silk shirt which accompanied a spruce waistcoat where a silver fob watch sat comfortably in her pocket. Brown curly hair bobbed with assuredness and her smile could melt your soul.

'You're beautiful.'

'Such a charmer. Like your father.'

'Why are you here?'

'I've always been here. Always, speaking to you.'

'I thought that was madness.'

'No, don't be silly. Our conversation is real. A part of me has always resided here. Hidden. A story within a story.'

'But why?'

'Because I wanted to tell you the truth. About us!'

Xindii leant forward, pulling the sheets down a little.

'They robbed us, Xindii. Robbed us of you. Our time.'

'Who?'

'Your father commited a crime. The greatest crime imaginable to his people. He fell in love. Became connected to events he shouldn't have!'

'He was Yanir. The stories were true.'

'They took him from me. And made me forget.'

'Then how are you here telling me this, Ma. It's a dream surely?'

'No dream. I'm here. This is a constructed moment. A living Reverie . . .'

'A Reverie,' he laughed, 'but . . .'

She smiled. A smile that came with it the feeling everything was alright with the world.

'You're a Mapper?'

'Once. A long time ago. But not just any Mapper my gorgeous little boy.'

He leaned forward.

She pulled her hair back to reveal her elven ears.

'You're Kissledawn.'

'And so are you.'

Xindii held his head in his hands. 'I've missed so much. I . . . I killed you, Ma.'

'Look at me, Xindii. Look at me sweetheart . . .'

He looked up and saw her fabulous green eyes shimmer. Eyes that spoke of a heritage older than time itself.

'You didn't kill me, Xindii. There is power in you that has wanted to break free since you were born. It wasn't your fault. This guilt . . . this should have ended centuries ago.'

Her words struck a chord which resonated through his marrow. This should have ended centuries ago. He had took it for madness. A voice from his fractured and dependent need for Xelofremanine. Perhaps he was wrong. It had been a transmission all this time. A living Reverie embedded in the depths of his mind.

'Why have you drifted so far, son?'

'I'm lost. Dying.'

'We shouldn't be here . . . not this far. This is the end of the road. Even the Murk disperses here.'

'What lays beyond?'

'No one knows . . . not even Kissledawn. What made you venture so far, Xindii?'

'The Flea King . . . I had . . . I had to take it in to me. It was the only way, Ma.'

He started to cry. The Reaper was eating his heart. There was hollowness, the gospel was right.

'You silly boy,' she said, holding her boy to her chest. 'Silly silly boy. What have they been teaching you at that school of yours?'

'School? I'm a Professor of Dreamurlurgy at Varosium.'

'Precisely,' his mother exclaimed. 'A school.' She held out her palm and her Beat shone brightly, a pink brilliance that sent flurries of excitement across the skin, rousing gooseflesh and static. 'Dreams, Xindii. Dreams don't die. As long as there is someone to remember them then they can flourish forever.'

He looked at his mother affectionately. 'That's silly.'

'Dreams are silly. Little hopes and aspirations that power us forward in the hope that one day we will meet them . . . like you. You were our dream. Dreams are not death, dreams are life. Remember that. We exist on borrowed time.'

His mother's Beat grew and intensified and she kissed him goodnight. 'Get some sleep. You have a long road home my boy.'

'What are you going to do?' he asked, totally intrigued by the way she handled her Beat.

'You're my dream, Xindii. And I'm going to show you the way home. Because one day, I think, everyone is going to know Heironymous Xindii.'

She leant over and kissed his forehead and the Beat burned and burned until mud became ash and the darkness shone with a fire that knew no limit.

Burn it all.

The Don walked into the Hall of Thought and saw the monstrosity skulking in the corner. Its two mute nurses slathering the much needed cream into the deep cracks of its chapped lips.

'Ah, your grace. What news from the land of slumber?'

He held his hands behind his back as the Gob ushered away the nurses and the yellow tongue licked the residue from its lips.

'Xindii still sleeps your eminence. What traces of the gospel tainted his skin have now dispersed. He's lost to the Murk now . . . how long it may be for his return is anyone's guess.'

The mound of fat stretched in its chariot 'There is something else I feel?'

'The Baroness . . . she is clinically dead, yet somehow, her cells still repair themselves. I believe there to be a remnant that still exists within.'

'A remnant? Of the gospel? Burn it.'

'That was not Xindii's desire.'

The Gob cantered forward in its machine of pistons and steam. The legs lowered and the fat slug peered forward. 'Burn the bitch.'

'Xindii . . .'

'Yes?'

'Xindii believed. He hoped, that the Auditors had means in which to, shall we say, save a shard of the girl.'

'A SHARD,' it screamed. 'We are in the business of collecting souls for the engine, dear fox. Not fractured shards.'

'It was his price for the job. He told me before his folly.'

The Gob screamed. 'His price. The memory of a girl long since perished?'

'It's what he asked, your eminence. Could it be done?'

'You doubt us, fox?'

'Not at all.'

It stretched and yawned and stared into the Tatterfox. 'He asks too much. Such means are not beyond our limit for everything is measured. But this? The price is too high. Yet,' it waved its tongue to and fro. The sheer thought of possibility and the numbers that ensued aroused it. 'And what do you ask dear Tatterfox. You, who helped in our cause. What is your price?'

'I ask for nothing your eminence.'

Its smile stretched across the whole of its fat body. 'For a learned man you lie poorly. I think we know your price. Speak it.'

'I will not.'

'IDIOT,' it shouted.

'Twice now I have heard of dreams walking the streets. The Flea King goaded me with promises of my lost love and you too, sir. The God House warned me of a war of faiths –'

'Pah, don't believe the rambling of that demented rabble.'

'Just so. Any price I feel would cost me my soul.'

It slunk back into its chair. 'You will waver in the end sweet fox. Your faith will be tested too. But as a show of faith I will do as you ask. For my friends. For my family.'

It smiled. The sheer contempt of its features curdled the contents of the Don's stomach. It activated a button to its left which then bestowed a lime green sheen over the Pope of Numbers.

'Dispatch a Liquidator on the sub atomic register. Purify the id with teeth and fire. Leave no light or fractions to flourish . . . save the girl.'

The Gob smiled. 'I am kindness, no?'

The Don smiled and bowed.

'LIPS.'

It fell from the sky with the sound of a dying city. A leviathan of metal and teeth and the smell of sick.

The tumour consumed.

Hadigan bestride the peak of Kinrashi and sparked up a cigarillo. Darkness gave way to flame and the realm burned. It was only moments until the flames reached the summit of the mountain and consumed everything.

The man of pockets smiled and enjoyed his last iota of consciousness.

'Well done my boy. Well done indeed.'

Hadigan fell to ash and teeth.

Xindii opened his eyes and saw the face of his friend leering over him. 'Tatterfox, you really do have the most fabulous whiskers.'

'Welcome back from beyond.'

'How long was I out?'

'Five months, ish.'

'It's a record, then?'

'Well it's good to be proud of something I suppose.'

'I'm starving. And thirsty. Dinner at Caravaggio's?'

'Optimistic to say the least.'

Xindii tried to pull himself from the gurney. The same place he had slept for the past five months.

'Your muscles have atrophied. It will be a while before Caravaggio's.'

'Wheelchair. You can push me.'

'One thing at a time old friend. First things first! How the hell are you still alive?'

'I don't know. I confronted the Flea King and felt the Reaper doing its work . . .'

'And then?'

'I saw my mother, Tatterfox. Bold as brass and brilliant.'

'Delirious?'

'No. No my friend. She was a Mapper, Tatterfox. She wielded Reverie like I had never seen. She was Kissledawn. And fabulous.'

The Don raised his eyebrows. 'How far did you go?'

'I know what you're thinking. I'm not mad. I never have been. The voices. It was my mother speaking to me through a Reverie. A hidden Reverie she implanted within my mind when I was a boy.'

'Xindii? You've been out for a while . . .'

'Tatterfox, I know my mind . . .'

The Don nodded. 'That's what scares me. You don't pause for breath. You've been asleep for five months lost in the Murk and wake as if nothing has happened. Take a breath. Take a holiday. You've saved the world, Xindii.'

Xindii smiled and nodded and then looked to his right. To the empty gurney where Gwendolyn had lain opposite. 'What happened?'

'She died, Xindii. I'm sorry. We cremated the body four months ago.'

'I'm sorry, Tyke.'

The sound of spinning wheels and heavy footsteps brought their attention to the burly Krazzi walking through with the wheelchair and the box of chocolates.

'Welcome back to the land of the livin.'

'Brick. How was Bish?'

'Lovely. And dull. Couldn't wait to get back and smash the living shit out of some petty hoodlums.'

'Well lovely.'

'So, how's things?' the Inspector asked, slightly unnerving the Don and the Mapper to his tactile tone.

'Lovely, thank you, Brick?'

'Alright, enough of this touchy feely Bish crap. Who's for cake?'

'Cake? I am being spoilt. I should sleep more often.'

'Well,' the Don said 'chance would be a fine thing.'

There was cake, and lots of it. And sausage rolls and gunark eggs. Xindii took small bites much to the Don's advice, suggesting that he nibble instead of gouging no matter how hungry he was. His stomach had shrunk and to fill it would be rather uncomfortable.

The Inspector opened a bottle of Frican blonde and they shared it out. Brick relating some of his adventures on the islands of Bish and the Don explaining the sheer boredom of Varosium.

The Don and the Krazzi drank further into the night and Babar slept at Xindii's feet, the Nelly-Doose's trunk never leaving the Mapper's calf.

At the stroke of midnight the Krazzi hit the brandy and was asleep by one. The Don placed another log on the fire and the two friends talked.

'Tired?' the Tatterfox joked.

'Strangely, yes.'

'I can leave,' he replied, for a moment genuinely concerned.

'No, don't be silly old friend. I'm glad of your company. The Murk is a lonely place.'

The Don poured them both a measure of Cobalt. 'Your dwelling on your mother I feel?'

'It's hard not to. Have you ever heard anyone – Mapper or not – to walk away from an injection of Reaper? It's lethal, Tatterfox. I shouldn't be here, yet I am. What power she must have held. What I know? I fear I am still in my infancy.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Find the answers. What happened to them? Who are my family?

'Tonight?' The Don joked.

Xindii smiled. 'Not tonight. Tonight is for drink,' he replied, taking the measure of Cobalt in its entirety.

The Don took a swig of his. 'I have a confession, my friend.'

'Oh? You're not applying for the football squad again?'

'Alas, no. When you were under, Xindii, I had a visitor. The Gob.'

'Lovely. Happy with our success I assume.'

'Oh, naturally so.

'Xindii, when you were out you cried out for Tyke. You muttered that the Auditors could get her out. If you were delirious or not I apologise but I took it upon myself to use my initiative.'

'What have you done, Tatterfox?'

'Nothing,' he stressed immediately 'I hope. I asked the Gob if they could rescue Tyke, whether it was in the remit of their power. It was.'

'I sincerely hope you haven't brokered a deal with that monster, Tatterfox?'

'No deal. Although the consequences of my actions will no doubt bite me on the arse one day. No, the Gob offered this deal out of friendship. A friendship that will no doubt turn sour over the coming years if rumour persist.'

'What rumour?'

'Of a war, Xindii. The war of faiths. When religion meets the dark.'

'There is never a dull moment nowadays is there?'

'Indeed. The Auditors had to purge the body of the Baroness, Xindii. A remnant of the gospel remained but they salvaged a shard of Tyke. What remains is not what you were quite expecting I imagine but it's all they could do.

They took her life and reconstructed – in a fashion – what they could.'

'What is it, Tatterfox?'

The Don reached behind the curtain and passed him the present. 'Happy birthday by the way.'

'It's my birthday?'

'Actually no. It was last week and you were asleep. But, better late than never.'

'Thank you, old friend.'

The Don smiled. 'You're welcome.'

The Mapper held the present in his hands, unsure of whether to open it or not. The Don sensed his uneasiness and kicked the Krazzi in the shin. 'Come on Inspector. It's time we were off. You can have the couch.'

The Don quickly rubbed Babar's ear and the Nelly-Doose offered a contented squeak as the Tatterfox guided the stone man from Xindii's sanctum.

'Sweet dreams, dear Mapper,' the Don said as he pulled the doors shut, struggling to hold up the Inspector.

'Likewise, dear Tatterfox.'

The fire burned hot and Xindii poured himself another measure of the Cobalt. Babar was asleep and dreaming, chasing hares across the Lint possibly. The exhausted Nelly-Doose snoring and farting with a glorious ease.

Xindii took a deep breath and pulled the paper away, smiling as he unearthed the gift from tough tape and intricate folding. He smiled, delighted with the Don's gift. And the Auditors of course. His payment in full.

He brushed his finger down the spine of the book and sniffed the paper. The binding, the scent of places not yet trodden.

Pulling the blanket over his cold feet he settled in, turning to the first page of The Gospel of Tyke. Nothing stopped him as the fire roared on. Time was no issue, sleep was no factor. He fell effortlessly into the tale, and like all good stories the characters flourished and became alive, shining bright in his mind's eye.

As Xindii came to the last page, one lonely ember burned in the fire and the light of a new day dawned over the city of Testament, eager for new stories to be told.

                                                        Professor Heironymous Xindii and the Don will return.

So, here we are, the end. Thank you all once again for joining  Xindii and the Don on their travels. It has been a seriously lovely honour to tell the first  tale of this adventure. Your votes, comments and continued support through various social media have been influential. So, what next? The boys are living by my keyboard as I type. There may be changes. There will be new enemies! There will be carnage! But, rest assured, they will be back . . . Thank you once again. Special thanks to Edward Cox and VK Bloodgood and the Cryptic.

See you soon . . . dream dangerous dreams!