1


    “Twenty years we’ve held the Eraser,” Keeney said. “Twenty years since we wrestled it from the Woman in White’s bony hands, at your command.”


    Leere’s hooded red cloak whipped in the wind as he looked out over the sharp angles of His city.


    Keeney’s belly quivered. But he had resolved himself to this. How many did we lose to get it? He cleared his throat.


    “And we give it away, my lord?” Keeney added.


    With a voice like the hiss of leather, Leere said, “We will have it back. For now, this must be.”


    Leere raised a black-gloved hand.


    Keeney clenched his fists, taking a step forward to protest further, but the air grew thick, dark, heavy. Shadows flickered out from every corner, and Keeney dropped to his knees. Low vibrations assaulted him, pulling thoughts of death and isolation to the forefront, thoughts of his son dying a dozen gruesome deaths to the hands of this thing, this monster, his lord.


    “This—must—be.”


    Keeney fell to the obsidian floor, cold and slick with his own sweat and blood from a split lip.


    “P-p-p,” he sputtered, managing to turn his face to Leere.


    Leere dropped his hand. The air thinned, darkness lifted.


    Then Leere shifted and disappeared. He had come and gone like this many times since returning twenty years ago. The savior of the Hate, the Necrolore, had wished to remain discreet during that time, coming for short periods to give instructions to the Rakshasas, then disappearing again. Though Leere told them He was here to stay this time, He was rarely in one place long.


    “He has much to attend to before the One Dream can come to its true fruition,” said the Rakshasa guarding the doorway. “And then everything will be set right, Keeney. These false idols, illusory beliefs, Thrast, all gone—obliterated. In His hands, we will all dream His dream. The true dream.”


    Keeney nodded and chanted it to himself like a mantrum. His son had the black veins of Thrast running through his flesh and would die unless the One Dream was true.


    “I was … mistaken,” Keeney said through sharp indrawn breaths.


    The Rakshasa nodded, and gestured Keeney through the door. “You were.”


    2


    Bookshelves walled the common room floor to ceiling. Leslie rushed through. He’d had enough Leere and One Dream shoved into him on Lavender that he’d be happy to never see a book again.


    Tik-tik.


    Leslie felt the Eraser calling to him. The mantrum slipped into the edges of his awareness again. No. I gotta take it to Alfred.


    Tik-tik, the chaos music challenged.


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    A babbling voice grew louder with each step toward the dining room.


    “Bab-goob job-job,” Leslie’s brother Alfred said in his unintelligible dialect.


    At the head of the dining room table sat Quint. On the long side to Leslie’s left sat a woman with dark hair and dark eyes, reading a book.


    Necrolore and Merrilore was the title of this one. The exact fucking fairy tale that Leslie had read over, and over, and over again on Lavender.


    There was Leere, the story-taker, the Necrolore that absorbed all into itself to make the One Dream. Then there was the Merrilore, who shared the stories of all and allowed them to be as they would.


    Fiona was always reading some damn book.


    “Pleasant reading?” Leslie said. “Better watch out or the Necrolore might take your books!” Leslie still didn’t know what it meant, really. The Necrolore would take all the stories away and give back His?


    Leslie had walked past the statue of Leere, the prophesied Necrolore, every day before entering the Temple of Emptiness on Lavender. The hooded thing had goat-like horns, held a key that looked almost like a wailing, deformed child, and His left foot was set forward because there was no ‘right’ reality, only His One Dream. And despite Leslie’s claims that it was all bullshit, whenever he passed the statue, something pricked the back of his neck, and it had nothing to do with the snow covering the planet, and he would look behind him just to be sure nothing was there, watching.


    He had those goose pimples now.


    Fiona did not look up.


    Alfred, who sat next to Fiona, had the same dirty blonde as Leslie, dark circles under pitted blue eyes, and pale skin.


    “Hello, Alfred,” Leslie said. Alfred’s only response was to continue babbling, looking from one hand to the other, then at the ceiling as if something was just about to make a whole world of sense.


    “Hello, Leslie,” Fiona said as she looked from her book to Leslie’s exposed manhood. Then a small grin cracked the thin line of her mouth. “Chilly?”


    Leslie realized his robe had come undone. His face flushed, and he started toward Alfred, wrapping the robe tight about himself.


    Quint said, “It won’t hurt him to be this way for a time longer. Sit, Leslie. You need a real meal.”


    Leslie hesitated, then pulled out the chair closest to him at the opposite side of the table from Quint. Quint coughed wetly into his shoulder.


    So it hasn’t gotten any better, Leslie thought.


    Leslie held tight to the Eraser. It was as if it wanted him to forget about his brother and use it for himself.


    “Leslie? Are you alright?” Quint asked. Leslie hadn’t realized that his face was slowly inching closer to the Eraser in his hands. He put the tablet down on the table and smiled up at Quint.


    “Yes. Fine. Um—sorry. I could just see my reflection in it, and, well, you know … they don’t have mirrors there, and—”


    “And you finally saw how fucked you look!” Quint said, peering at Leslie over his circle-rimmed glasses. He raised his drink. “Cheers to your restored self-awareness! Now let’s eat! Putnam!”


    The kitchen door opened, ushering forth the steam and savory scents of a cooked meal. Putnam the manservant glided in.


    Phildrious Putnam, bald and straight-backed, carried a tray in one hand, while the other hand was a tray. The not-hand held little crumble cakes while the other held a metal tray with creamy, bacon-flaked potato soup and freshly baked sourdough bread.


    “Welcome back, Master Leslie,” Putnam said with a small bow. His voice was cordial and uninvested.


    Leslie could feel his robe sticking to the sweat on his stomach, chilling him.


    “Thank you.” Leslie could feel his robe sticking to the sweat on his stomach, chilling him. His heart pounded. He looked first over his shoulder as the goose flesh broke out again, then down at the Eraser. Putnam leaned over the table, pushing the crumble cakes from his not-hand onto a silver dish in the center. A human hand replaced the tray and Putnam made his way around the table with the tray of potato soup and sourdough.


    When Putnam got to Fiona, he paused to look at the book that sat in front of her. Putnam frowned and shook his head.


    Leslie was covered in sweat now. Was Quint looking at him again? The tik-tik had left his head as soon as he put the Eraser down and Leslie missed it. He actually missed the chaos music of Lavender that the black tablet played inside his head when he touched it. If he could just hold it, one more time … the mantrum … what was it?


    Leslie …


    Leslie …


    Leeeslieee …


    “Master Leslie?” Putnam said behind Leslie’s left shoulder. “Would you care for some potato soup?”


    Leslie jumped in his chair, nearly knocking the ladle and bowl right out of Putnam’s hand. “NO I DO NOT WANT ANY FUCKING SOUP!” He grabbed the Eraser, muttered something under his breath, and disappeared from the room.


    3


    “Bas-ani-con-funishtu. Bobishbo can-toni,” Alfred said as he continued to fidget in his seat, worrying some impossible problem that only he could see. The Eraser, his brother, and the hope of fixing his addled mind, were gone.