Chapter Text
Webby stands in audience with her brother, a queen in white, towering over the world of men. Yet she can never be tall enough in this nightmare realm her brother had painstakingly fashioned by hand and eye. She will never be taller than him here, never be bigger, never be greater and they both know it.
“Brother.” Her throat is dry, a sensation she is wholly unused to. She is not afraid. She is never afraid. She cannot be afraid. Gods do not feel fear, and she is a god, so she can’t be afraid as she stands in front of her brother. “Please, you have to listen to reason.”
“ Reason ?” Blinky straightens his showman’s jacket and crosses one leg on his throne. He’s in human form, as is she, but his human form is somehow no less intimidating than the one he assumes as a god. The yellow eyes are no less piercing set within a humanoid face. “My dear sister, the Weaver of Fate, Keeper of Souls, Queen in White herself asks me to listen to reason .”
“If you won’t listen to reason, at least show mercy.”
His voice grows more and more amused by the minute and by the end of his sentence, at her plea for mercy, he’s laughing, a bone-chilling, scraping sound that echoes through the showman’s tent and out into the silent streets of Drowsy Town. The sniggles, arrayed in neat rows, join in, pointing and jeering as Webby becomes the size of a mouse at the feet of a giant. Whether she herself shrinks or Blinky grows she does not know.
She has made a fatal mistake. Reason and mercy are human concepts, scorned by the gods and especially by her brother, who thought himself above their petty acts of emotion.
“When our brothers said you were growing too attached to the miserable ants that populate that horrible planet.” Blinky has stopped laughing now. Now, he’s roaring. For all his overdramatic showman’s flair in absolutely everything, when it comes down to it Bliklotep acts like a god, all too aware of who holds the power. “I thought they were joking . Our sister, our powerful, wonderful sister who holds the keys to the fates of all couldn’t possibly fall prey to the whims of the likes of them. But now…now I see, just like I see all. ” Blinky’s eyes grow brighter, lamplike, trapping her in their beams and Webby feels like the fibers of her being are coming undone, burning in her own incompetence. “I see you’re no goddess. You’re….not much of anything, really. A pathetic little insect like the creatures you fashion yourself after.”
He reaches out a huge hand and wraps the tiny, frozen Webby in his fist, lifting her as she tries to struggle. She finds she cannot. In this domain, in Blinky’s domain, she’s all but powerless.
“I see your so-called friends,” Blinky continues, bringing Webby closer and closer. “Yes, I see them oh, so clearly. Look at me, Webby. Look and see how as the little witch begs him to recognize her. He won’t even look her in the eye . Oh, pathetic. He’s going to bleed to death right then and there just because he can’t stop looking. The memories. Too powerful .”
He looks down at Webby once more, struggling and tiny in his grip. She opens her mouth to speak, to protest, to do anything at all to save herself. But she finds that in the face of her brother’s all-seeing eye, she cannot.
“I’ve always wondered, sister,” Blinky muses, a sly smile crossing his face as his body begins to morph and change. “What would happen if we were to take a look inside that vast head of yours. I’ve never gotten to try it on one of our kind before, mostly because none of you are stupid enough to enter this place. But now it seems we have a lucky volunteer!”
He is in his full godly form now. The all-seeing eye holding Webby in a beam she can’t escape as Blinky’s eye stares into her. She feels as though layers of her skull are being torn away bit by bit as Blinky’s eye worms its way through. She grits her teeth against the pain, worse pain than the goddess has ever felt. Tears leak from her eyes unbidden as the sniggles watch and applaud.
Then, Webby’s pain ceases as the turmoil is cut through. All sound stops with it. The sniggles stop applauding, the wind stops howling and Blinky stops laughing. Everyone, and everything in Drowsytown listens as for the first time in quite possibly forever, the first strummings of a guitar spill into the streets. It is the opening notes of Miss Holloway’s song.