Chapter 35: Understanding Dante
“You finally trust me enough to tell me?”
“No, I’m just hoping if you know the truth them you’ll stop pestering me,” he said, “So here it is: Like I said before: I see things, just like my mother did. I get crazy hallucinations about demons and angels and things that didn’t happen, and sometimes I even think they’re real. Like I was pretty sure we were attacked by some kind of crazy stone demon last night, and last week everyone was running around trying to fight Godhand!”
Was that it? Was that what all his angst and self-loathing was about? That he managed to recall real events better than everyone else?
“Oh, don’t be silly, Dante, they are real!” she said. The reaction wasn’t anything like she’d expected. He stepped off the swing and his condensed aura spiked out, as if turning into a thousand knives.
“DON’T PATRONISE ME!” he snapped, “I know those things aren’t real! Why do you think I lock myself in my room? I’ve spent months trying to convince myself these things didn’t happen! That there’s no such thing as magic or demons or … or Erebus!”
“But…”
He swung a clenched fist at the metal beams. “SHUT UP! I don’t want you wrecking everything! I did this for Kat’s sake. I did this because I didn’t want them to take me away. Don’t you understand? I’m not just ‘special’! I’m insane! I thought you were a faerie! A faerie! Can you not see why I’m like I—”
He stopped mid-sentence because Phantasia had just let her human clothes fall through her body to the floor, revealing ethereal equivalents.
“I am a faerie,” she said, “And someone is playing with your memories. Those aren’t dreams or hallucinations you’re having, those things really did happen. You were there a week ago fighting alongside the rest of us against Godhand. We were attacked by a demon last night.”
Maybe this was the worst thing to do to the poor boy, but she couldn’t stand by and let him tear himself apart because of some stupid illusion spell. All she had to do was make sure his true memories remained intact.
And then the threatening aura receded and condensed as Dante fell back onto the swing, face etched in conflicted denial.
“So, it’s all true then…” he said, his voice hoarse, “It’s really all true…”
Phantasia nodded. She reached out to brush his pulsating aura with her own, hoping it might shine even a glimmer of hope into his torn heart. Instead he pulled himself from the swing and turned his back on her.
“The demons, the magic, the darkness…Erebus…they’re all real?”
There was that name again! “Erebus was the primordial darkness,” she said, “Formed from the corruption in human hearts, at least according to my kind. I don’t really trust their skewered viewpoints,”
“Darkness in our hearts,” he said, “So that’s what it is,”
“You okay?”
He glanced back with sorrowful eyes. “Yeah, guess I just realised a few things. Thanks for helping. I’m gonna head home now. Would rather you didn’t follow.”
Phantasia watched as he walked out of the park and paced up the cracked road towards the town, his white coat billowing around him while his aura remained dark and impenetrable, as if the truth had turned it to stone.
~ Dante suffers a shattering revelation! ~
~ Next: Phantasia seeks the truth! ~
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Chapter 35
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Aww man, I wanted to have this chapter up a couple of hours earlier but a series of power-cuts and the fact I’m suffering REALLY NASTY PAIN (in the form of kidney stones = said to be up there with the worst pain a human can suffer!) meant took longer than planned.
Next week SHOULD be a double-chapter special unless fate conspires against me (like I end up in hospital doped out on morphine like the last time this happened!!).
Another well written chapter, and as for why Erebus unsettles Dante so much I have a few… ideas gleaned from your foreshadowing, but I won’t post my thoughts I don’t want to ruin any suprises if I am right =)
so any odds on whether Dante actually remembers this talk? i say 7to3 he remembers, we know mindwipe guy is either weak or not trying hard, and Dante seems to be less affected but another forget spell and he will just go back to beleiving hes crazy. but looking at it as a story it would be annoying to write such character development and then have the character forget it right away.
I was writing about Dante and the illusionary stuff earlier XD As for whether he forgets everything… The next two chapters are very much about the effects of the spell and how people are dealing with it…
Poor Dante.
You just wanna tuck him under a blanket and spoon-feed him chicken soup or something (though something tells me he wouldn’t appreciate it).
Also, I would have voted for a healthy balance of both The Truth AND Shenanigans, but it wouldn’t let me vote twice. So, now that he has the former, much of the latter is needed to lessen the trauma. He needs to spend more time with Lysander and Angelo.
“I read the whole @%#! thing in one go…” which is why it’s so hard to wait for new chapters.
I admit to being shocked at how many people read through it in bulk. Especially since the common consensus regarding this whole webserial business is that people prefer short chapters for quick reading! I think I’ve shown that’s not the case here XD
I didn’t know about your serial until you’d already written 25 chapters, so of course I read them all at once.
But it’s like a comic book or any other serial. No matter how much you want to know what happens next, you have to wait for the next installment. Just because I *want* to read the whole thing NOW doesn’t mean you should give me what I want.
I found these serials through an ad on Sluggy Freelance. (It went Sluggy -> Strange Little Band -> Phantasia -> Addergoole). Sluggy… now there’s a “serial” that loves to leave you hanging. Pete is just mean. “Oh look, it appears that everybody just died! Time for a filler month!”
Also, you know what I’d like to bookmark on this site? A page that automatically redirects me to the first chapter I haven’t read. It would use a cookie to store the last chapter I looked at, and then automatically send me to the next one whenever I come back. (If there isn’t a next one yet, just send me to the last one I read or tell me there’s nothing new yet.)
Very simple to write, by whoever does your web development.
I do everything myself, and I’ve no idea how to do that…but I know a man/Samoan Attorney who does!
I can help you with it if you need it. You have my contact info already.
“What do you think Dante really needs?
The Truth
Better friends
A relationship
To, as Arnie put it, ‘Stop Whining!’
Shenanigans!”
To get laid.
If I could put a different one, I’d probably put “Phantasia”.
I can relate to the recent chapters, mainly I can relate with the characters Dante & Phantasia.
Funny enough, I want to mention kind of:
I’m a Phantasia X Dante Shipper (If I could be the one to give it a name, it’d be, Polar Opposites Romance)
I’ve been thinking that Dante & Phantasia should go out for a while, practically since the beginning!