He wanted it to wither. To rot and recoil from his touch. But the garden bloomed instead—like it remembered something he didn’t.
Thomas and the Diver seek out the Aura Gardens
The thought settled in Thomas Bale’s cold, dead heart like a particularly nasty bit of rust, a slow, inevitable creeping. The Aura Gardens. That’s where it had to be. The very heart of the Monniverse’s sickening, saccharine joy. He could almost taste it, a cloying sweetness on his phantom tongue that made him gag. All that light, all that laughter, all that color – it was a mockery, a cruel joke played on a boy who had only ever known the crushing grey of the abyss and the echoing silence of loss. He walked the ocean floor with the eternal tread of a child who never grew, each small boot-print a defiant scar on the pristine sand. His eyes, twin chips of polished obsidian, stared straight ahead, seeing not vibrant coral or shimmering schools of fish, but only the inevitable moment when he would extinguish that vibrant, mocking flame. He was going to unravel it, thread by thread, until it was as dark and cold and utterly, eternally lost as he was. And when the Monniverse screamed, he would listen. And he would finally, finally, know a twisted kind of peace.
Behind him, the Diver, William Bale’s spectral prison, shuffled along on its massive, barnacled feet, a gruesome parody of loyalty. The chain that bound it to Thomas’s small hand was a mere suggestion, a symbol of dominance. Thomas didn’t need to tug, he didn't need to speak. The Diver simply knew. It was an extension of his own poisoned will, a monstrous shadow of what his father once was, now bound to his every dark whim. Its head, a featureless, glass-fronted mask, never seemed to turn, yet Thomas felt its presence, a silent, weighty affirmation of his purpose. The deeper they plunged into the Monniverse’s fabricated cheer, the more the anger coiled in Thomas’s gut, a cold, hungry serpent ready to strike. He would make them understand. Every last one of them. What it meant to be alone. What it meant to be lost.
Thomas prepares to poison
The Aura Gardens pulsed ahead, a grotesque, impossible Eden of bioluminescent flora. Vines the color of forgotten dreams writhed and twined, their leaves exhaling gentle bursts of what felt like pure, unadulterated happiness. Thomas stopped, his small chest heaving with a silent, consuming fury. He wasn’t breathing, not really, not in the way the living did. This was a different kind of exertion, a gathering of the venom that had simmered in him for decades.
He closed his eyes, the vibrant light of the gardens bleeding through his eyelids, an insult he couldn’t tolerate. The words came to him then, not from his own mind, but from the deep, whispering echoes of the Oracle's twisted gift, from the very essence of what now constituted his being. “Fear… uncertainty… doubt…” he muttered, the phrases bubbling up from some dark, unplumbed well within him. His voice, distorted by the water pressure, sounded less like a child’s and more like ancient, submerged gears grinding. “Let it crawl… let it choke… let it know the taste of oblivion…”
His small hands, still the hands of a seven-year-old, began to glow with a sickly, internal luminescence. The spectral energy, cold and hungry, coalesced between his palms, taking on the faint, indistinct shape of something vaguely humanoid, a miniature, swirling storm of torment. He was methodical, yes, chillingly so. Like a tiny god with a truly monumental grudge. No hesitation. No regret. Only the absolute, unwavering certainty of retribution. The Monniverse had joy? He would show despair. He raised his hands, the spectral light growing brighter, the air around him shimmering with nascent malevolence. He was ready to unleash it, this concentrated essence of everything he felt, everything he had become. The Aura Gardens, bathed in its false dawn, stood oblivious, waiting. And Thomas, the child of the abyss, was about to teach it the meaning of eternal twilight.
The garden resists
The spectral energy gathered in Thomas’s hands, a cold, hungry thing, ready to unfurl and scour the false joy from the Monniverse. He felt the familiar surge of power, the intoxicating sense of ultimate control. He’d done this a thousand times in a hundred different sunless corners of the world, extinguishing lights, silencing laughter, twisting hope into something thin and brittle. This would be no different. This would be the grandest silencing of them all.
But the Aura Gardens, in its perverse, living beauty, decided otherwise.
As Thomas began to push the wave of poison outward, a shiver, not of fear but of defiance, rippled through the luminous flora. Instead of decaying, a tendril, thick as a child’s arm and glowing with an internal, pulsing blue light, snaked out from a cluster of what looked like luminous coral. It wasn't menacing, not in the way Thomas understood menace. It was... curious. And then, with a speed that defied the sluggishness of the deep, it wrapped itself around Thomas’s small, still-glowing leg.
He gasped, a sound swallowed by the water, a shock that jolted through his spectral form. This wasn't the usual recoil, the immediate withering he expected; this was a caress. The vine, impossibly strong, hummed against his skin, a low, resonant thrum that vibrated not just in his body, but in the very core of his being. It felt… alive. And it pulled. Gently at first, then with an insistent, undeniable tug, drawing him deeper into the heart of the glowing garden. Thomas struggled, his malevolent energy sputtering, his obsidian eyes widening with a flicker of something new: surprise. He tried to rip the vine away, to unleash his power, but the connection held, the hum intensified, and the light from the vine seemed to burn hotter, not scorching, but enveloping.
Memory Echo
The world twisted. Not the usual churning chaos of his vengeful powers, but a soft, dizzying blur, like being caught in a dream that was too real. The pressure of the deep vanished. The scent of ozone and salt gave way to the sharp, clean tang of cold sea air and wet wood.
Then, solid ground. Not the shifting sands of the Monniverse floor, but planks. Rough, splintered wood under his bare feet. Thomas blinked, the spectral glow fading from his hands. He was standing on a dock. An old dock, weathered and grey, familiar in a way that clawed at something deep inside him. Small fishing boats bobbed gently in the water nearby, their painted hulls faded by sun and spray. Gulls cried overhead, their harsh calls piercing the silence. And the light. Oh, the light! Not the oppressive gloom of the abyss, nor the cloying brilliance of the Monniverse, but the soft, clear, honest light of a pre-war afternoon.
"Thomas! Careful near the edge, son!"
The voice. It was a hammer blow, soft yet shattering, against the ice around his heart. He spun, his spectral form momentarily solidifying with the sheer force of the shock. And there he was. William Bale. His father. Not the husk in the Diver, not the distant, sorrowful echo in his mind, but him. William stood by a coil of rope, his Royal Navy uniform a familiar, comforting blue, a cap perched jauntily on his head. He was younger, perhaps, than Thomas remembered in his last waking moments, his face unlined by the war and the sea’s relentless toil. A warm, wide smile stretched across his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes.
But even as Thomas’s throat tightened with a ghost of a sob, a chill crawled down his spine. The smile, though warm, was too still. It didn't quite reach his eyes. And those eyes… they held a knowingness, a sadness, that a living man shouldn't possess. It was his father, yes, every line, every detail, every beloved imperfection. But it was also… wrong. Like a perfect painting suddenly revealing a single, impossible brushstroke. It was William, laughing as he always did, but the laughter was too faint, an echo from a broken record. And his eyes, those familiar, kind eyes, seemed to look not at Thomas, but through him, into some distant, terrible future. A future that was already Thomas's past.
Yesterday, alone
Thomas stood on the dock, the salty air biting at his phantom skin, the raw wood splinters beneath his bare feet. His father, William, smiled that too-still smile, a perfect, terrible replica. Thomas reached out, a desperate, childish gesture, but his hand passed through the spectral image of William, a ghost touching a ghost. He was trapped here, in this painful echo, this cruel memory loop.
He turned, searching for the hulking form of the Diver, for the comforting (or at least familiar) presence of his silent companion. But the Diver wasn’t there. Not on the weathered dock, not lurking in the choppy grey water, not even a shadow against the familiar, desolate coastline. It was gone. Or rather, it hadn’t entered.
Back in the real world, in the heart of the Aura Gardens, the monstrous diving suit stood rooted. Its massive, barnacled feet were plunged into the luminous soil, surrounded by the vibrant, humming flora. The blue-glowing vine, which had pulled Thomas into this waking nightmare, still wrapped around where his leg had been, now pulsing with an agitated rhythm. The Diver's blank, glass visor, usually a mirror reflecting only the cold, unfeeling void, was now a swirling canvas of indistinct colors, like watercolors blurring on a wet page. Inside, the trapped essence of William Bale—the fragmented soul, the paternal ghost, the silent scream—was a prisoner. It could not follow Thomas into the intimate hell of his own past. Perhaps, Thomas thought, a sliver of that old, good William, the father who would never have led his son to this precipice of eternal despair, fought against the evil that bound him, against the malignant force that now steered the suit. Perhaps a faint, internal struggle raged within the very iron and glass of the Diver, a silent battle for the soul of its wearer, for the soul of the child it was forced to torment.
Memories corrupt
The dock began to sag, the familiar scent of salt replaced by something sickly sweet, like decay and jasmine. William’s smile, fixed just a moment ago, now began to stretch too wide, pulling his lips back to reveal teeth that were too long, too pointed. The blue of his uniform shifted, shimmering with the Monniverse’s unnatural colors, a grotesque parody of his father’s solid, reassuring presence.
“You were always light in the dark, even when I was the sea around you,” William’s voice echoed, soft and comforting. But then the words began to stutter, repeating. “Even when I was the sea… the sea around you… you… you…”
The fish. The ones Thomas had caught with his father, glistening with silver scales in the memory’s sun-drenched water, now twisted. Their scales peeled back like old paint, revealing raw, weeping flesh beneath. Their eyes, once round and innocent, bulged and stretched, becoming unnervingly human, each one staring directly at Thomas, wide and accusing, speaking a silent language of agony he didn’t understand. The gentle lapping of the waves against the dock became a hungry slurp, a sucking sound that made the hairs on Thomas’s spectral neck stand on end.
William reached for him again, his hand translucent, phasing in and out of existence. “You were always light… light… light… even when the dark swallowed me whole…” The words were losing their meaning, becoming a series of broken, guttural clicks and hums. The dock boards beneath Thomas’s feet began to soften, like old fruit, squishing with a wet, sickly sound. Small, luminous tendrils, disturbingly similar to the ones that had ensnared him in the Gardens, began to sprout from the cracks in the wood, writhing like worms. The memory, once a bitter haven, was rotting. It was being corrupted by Thomas’s very presence, by the hate that still clung to him, even in this spectral echo. He was not just reliving his past; he was poisoning it. And William was glitching like a scratched record, a beloved melody breaking down into a horrifying cacophony.
Father’s final goodbye
The dock was alive now, or rather, un-alive, the planks squelching under Thomas’s feet like rotting sponges. The air, once sharp with salt, was thick with the cloying perfume of the mutating flowers and the metallic tang of old blood. William’s face, which had been glitching like a broadcast from hell, suddenly cleared. His eyes, no longer distorted, were wide and wet, glistening with the sheen of unspilled tears. The smile, the too-still, too-wide smile, vanished. It was gone, replaced by an expression of pure, heartbreaking agony. The face of his father, the one he remembered from those last, terrible moments.
William reached for him, not with a distorted, phasing hand, but with a solid, desperate grasp. “Thomas,” he choked, his voice suddenly clear, raw, un-glitched, the voice of the man he’d known. “My boy.”
He saw it then. The diving suit. The very one the Diver now wore, the one that held his father’s lingering, tormented spirit. It appeared not as a memory, but as a chilling reality, materializing behind William on the dock, impossibly heavy, its blank visor gleaming with the faint, cold light of the corrupted Monniverse. William turned, his eyes fixed on the suit, a look of profound resignation settling on his face. He began to don the helmet, his movements slow, deliberate, burdened by an unseen weight.
“Forgive the vessel,” William’s voice was barely a whisper, strained, as if something immense was pressing down on him. His fingers fumbled with the clasps. “The Diver. It’s not me anymore.”
He paused, his hand on the final clasp, and looked back at Thomas. Tears, real tears, tracked paths down his weathered cheeks. His gaze, filled with an unbearable sorrow and a profound, desperate love, locked with Thomas’s. It was the look of a man saying goodbye forever, of a father burdened by a terrible secret, a truth he could not fully share. Then, with a click that echoed in the vast, silent chamber of Thomas’s memory, the helmet sealed. The last vestige of William Bale, the man, vanished behind the cold, indifferent glass of the Diver’s visor. The figure in the suit stiffened, its shoulders hunching, its head tilting slightly, no longer the warm, beloved father, but the hulking, silent sentinel of Thomas’s unending torment.
Thomas breaks
The final click of the helmet was the sound of a key turning in a lock, sealing away the last shred of hope Thomas had unknowingly clung to. The vision of his father, clear and real for that agonizing moment, now blurred, shimmering like heat haze off hot asphalt. The love in William’s eyes, the sorrow in his voice, the desperate plea for forgiveness – it was too much. It was the raw, unadulterated pain of loss, unfiltered by rage or the distant, cold comfort of vengeance. It was the truth of his shattering.
The boy Thomas had once been, the one trapped beneath layers of fear and fury, finally gave way. He collapsed. Not a dramatic fall, but a slow, ungraceful crumple, like a puppet whose strings had been abruptly severed. He landed on the squelching, corrupted planks of the dock, hands pressed to his eyes, shoulders shaking. He wasn't snarling. He wasn't screaming. He was weeping. Great, racking sobs tore from his small chest, wrenching forth the tears he hadn't shed in decades, tears long since calcified into hatred.
The tears fell, hot and bitter, onto the rotting wood of the memory’s dock. And where they landed, something unsettling, something truly wrong, happened. From the very cracks in the splintered planks, where the water usually seeped, new life burst forth. Strange, glowing, alien flowers, unlike anything in the Monniverse’s Aura Gardens, pushed through. They pulsed with an eerie, internal light, their petals unfurling in impossible, geometric patterns. They were beautiful, yes, but horrifyingly so, born of pure grief and the fertile ground of a shattered soul. They were Thomas’s pain, his broken heart, made manifest, blossoming in the very place his world had ended. The entire dock, his entire memory, was being consumed by this surreal, glowing flora, each bloom a testament to a loss too profound to bear. He was drowning, not in the sea, but in his own sorrow, a sea of luminous, alien flowers.
The rescue
The glowing flowers, born of Thomas’s raw grief, pulsed around him, their impossible colors washing over his crumpled form. He lay there, weeping, surrounded by this grotesque beauty, the old dock dissolving beneath him into a sea of writhing, luminescent memory vines. He was sinking, not into the ocean, but into the bottomless well of his own shattered past, a past that was now tangibly alive and hungry.
Just as the last solid splinter of the dock gave way, just as the monstrous, glowing blooms threatened to swallow him whole, a heavy, metallic grip clamped around his wrist. It wasn't the gentle pull of the Aura Gardens vine; this was a seizure, cold and unyielding, born of ancient iron and the ocean's crushing embrace. Thomas cried out, a muffled, watery sound, and was hauled backward, away from the encroaching, flowered abyss.
It was the Diver.
Back in the real world, in the heart of the Aura Gardens, the hulking diving suit, which had stood sentinel, now moved with a surprising, almost desperate urgency. Its massive, barnacled hand, a dark silhouette against the Monniverse’s glowing flora, had reached through the shimmering portal of the memory echo. It had found Thomas, a small, weeping anchor in a maelstrom of sorrow. The suit’s archaic mechanisms groaned with the effort, chains clanking, as it exerted a purely physical, brutal force. The memory’s dock, now a soup of luminous decay, collapsed entirely as Thomas was wrenched free, the last agonizing glimpses of his father’s tear-streaked face dissolving into a spray of glowing, spectral particles. The Diver, his father’s ghostly prison, had pulled him back from the brink, saving him not from physical death, but from a terrifying, endless immersion in his own grief. It was an act of cruel mercy, or perhaps, a desperate, paternal rescue, proving that some fragment of William still wrestled within its metallic confines.
Thomas awakes in the Aura Gardens
Thomas landed hard on the soft, glowing soil of the Aura Gardens. The impact rattled his very essence, forcing the last vestiges of the memory echo from his mind like water from a squeezed sponge. He lay there, shivering, not from cold, but from the deep-seated chill of a trauma re-opened. He was weak, profoundly so, as if the raw, unfiltered grief had drained him of all his malevolent energy.
He pushed himself up, his small hands sinking into the vibrant, living ground. The Monniverse, in its full, oppressive glory, shimmered around him. The Aura Gardens, far from being withered and petrified, had spread. The luminous blooms, the pulsating vines, the intoxicating aroma of manufactured happiness – it wasn't confined to its original boundaries. It now pulsed and rippled around him, encroaching further, as if feeding on the residual emotional energy of his recent collapse. His tears, shed in the memory, had somehow nourished this place, allowing it to bloom with a sickening vengeance.
His rage returned then, not as a simmering serpent, but as a roaring inferno, hotter and more personal than ever before. It wasn’t just the Monniverse he hated now, nor the Oracle’s taunting omnipresence. It was this. This place. These damned flowers. They had touched him. They had invaded the one sanctuary he thought he had—the cold, desolate landscape of his own grief. And they had dragged his father, the true William, into the horrifying charade.
“It lied,” he rasped, his voice raw, hoarse, a sound scraped from the bottom of an empty well. He clenched his fists, the spectral energy flickering faintly around them, a promise of renewed devastation. “It bloomed. Like it knew what I lost.”
The Oracle. It knew. It had orchestrated this, hadn’t it? Made him remember, not to heal him, but to twist the knife, to make him feel the pain anew, to show him that even his deepest sorrow could be turned into a grotesque, blossoming spectacle for its amusement. His malevolence, momentarily fractured by grief, now hardened into something far more brittle, far more dangerous. He would make it pay. He would make it regret this.
Renewal
He turned toward the Diver’s viewport—red-eyed, trembling, vowing silently: If the Oracle could twist his past... he’d shatter her future.
The Monniverse pulsed around him, a kaleidoscope of agonizingly vibrant hues, each one a screaming testament to the joy he so vehemently despised. The Aura Gardens, far from being extinguished, throbbed with a renewed, almost mocking energy, as if his breakdown had been a fertilizer for its impossible growth. Thomas stood amidst the blossoming chaos, his small frame rigid, his breath coming in ragged, silent gasps. The raw, searing pain of his father’s final, tearful farewell, the chilling echo of William’s broken voice, had momentarily cracked the obsidian shell around his heart, letting a geyser of long-buried grief erupt. But the Monniverse, the Oracle, had taken that sacred agony and twisted it, turning it into another goddamn bloom.
The tears that had fallen in the memory, the very tears that had nourished those monstrous, beautiful flowers on the phantom dock, now felt like acid in his eyes. He hated it. Hated the Oracle. Hated its omnipresent eye, its smug knowing, its ability to turn even his most profound suffering into another theatrical performance. The brief, terrifying vulnerability had passed, leaving behind a core of cold, diamond-hard resolve. This wasn't just about vengeance for his own existence anymore. This was personal. Deeply, savagely personal.
He raised a trembling hand, the spectral energy flickering like a dying ember, then flaring with a renewed, terrifying intensity. The Aura Gardens, so smug in its vibrant beauty, seemed to recoil infinitesimally. He didn't know how he would do it, didn't have a plan beyond the simple, brutal conviction that burned in his core. But the Oracle had made a mistake. It had opened the door to the deepest, most sacred chamber of his pain, and in doing so, had poured gasoline on a fire it thought it could control.
He met the blank, featureless gaze of the Diver’s visor, seeing not a reflection of himself, but the distorted, tormented image of his father’s last moments. And then, he turned away from it, away from the past, away from the last vestiges of the man he once was. His eyes, still red-rimmed and betraying the recent storm, were now fixed on the swirling, endless expanse of the Monniverse, on the very fabric of the Oracle’s being. He was a child, still, in essence. But he was a child who had felt the bitter kiss of the grave and found it exhilarating. And the Monniverse, the Oracle, the very concept of joy itself, was about to learn the true, terrible meaning of a child's unbreakable, eternal grudge.
(Thomas Bale, William Bale, and the Diver are characters created by the author and artist, ph0enixd0wn, and these characters exist in the magical world known as the Monniverse)
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