Chapter Text
“I think…I accidentally killed Caine,” Kinger said, raising the bucket on his head to reveal one of his eyes.
The group stared at Kinger, eyes wide with disbelief.
Zooble breathed out, “Holy shit…”
A wave of shock swept through the players as Zooble raised a hand to their nonexistent mouth. A swear? An actual uncensored swear?! What the actual hell was going on?!
The silence in the tent was a heavy thing, more substantial than the remaining air. It wasn’t the companionable silence of a group resting after a long adventure, and it definitely wasn’t the silence of a peaceful day. It was the silence of a freshly finished tomb.
But was this Caine’s tomb, or theirs?
The circus tent, once a riot of impossible reds and golds, had been bled of its vibrancy. The canvas overhead was no longer a canopy of bright colors, but a dull, leaden gray, sagging in places where the code had simply ceased to exist. Great jagged tears in the geometry revealed the Void beyond—a swirling, lightless nothingness that hummed with a low-frequency static that had everyone on edge.
In the center of the ring, the group stood like statues in a graveyard.
Pomni was the first to break the silence.
“I…I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “What happened?”
“Caine started messing with the console when he found out what I was trying to do,” Kinger said, his voice strained. The bucket on his lead lowered a bit, “Everything was shaking…and I was panicking…and it was all so much that just…I accidentally hit the delete key and…the computer fell into the Void before I could do anything to reverse it…”
Kinger trailed off after that. No one needed him to finish, though. They all knew what happened.
“Deleting Caine caused all this to happen?” Ragatha asked, gesturing to the ruined circus around them.
"The Circus is an extension of him. It’s part of who he is….was," Kinger said, his voice echoing flatly against the gray walls. "With him gone, this place has become unstable."
The chess piece observed the confused looks still plastered on everyone’s faces. He sighed, thinking of a way to put it in terms more easily understood.
He raised a gloved hand, gesturing to the flickering floorboards beneath them. "Think of the circus as a table and Caine as the legs. Deleting him was like removing every leg. So while the base of the table remains, it can never stand or function as intended again.”
“So…so, what? That’s it? We’re just screwed now?” Jax said, his voice rising.
“I…” Kinger muttered, his pupils shrinking. He clutched the side of the bucket, “God, what have I done? I didn’t mean…Caine…this is all my fault.”
Pomni stepped forward, her jester bells giving a pathetic, hollow jingle. Her eyes, wide and perpetually swirling with anxiety, were fixed on Kinger. She reached out, her small hand hovering near his robe.
"Kinger, don't," she whispered. "You said it yourself that deleting Caine was an accident. There was so much going on. This isn’t your fault at all."
Kinger slammed his hand against the bucket, the sound of the impact surprisingly loud. "It’s entirely my fault! This whole thing was my idea! You all needed me to do something and I…I failed!”
“You were just trying to save us-” Pomni began.
“Look around! Does this look like a saved world to you?!" The chess piece yelled, gesturing to one of the many Void rifts in the floor.
The group fell back into that suffocating silence. Pomni took a step back, pupils small. Kinger took a few breaths before a look of regret flashed on his face. He looked down at his hands. They were trembling.
“I…I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to yell…” he muttered, his anger gone. Or at least restrained.
“It’s okay…” Pomni replied, understanding the stress Kinger was under.
Ragatha was the next to move. She was hugging herself, her yarn-hair looking frayed and limp. Her eyes caught the dim, flickering light of the dying circus, making her look more like a discarded toy than ever before.
"What are we going to do now?" Ragatha asked. Her voice was thin, the forced optimism she usually wore like a shield finally cracked down the middle.
A sharp, jagged laugh pierced the air.
"What do we do now?!" Jax mocked, his voice dripping with a poisonous irony. "Nothing! There is nothing to do! We have nothing! We’re finished! Done! Game over, man! And why? Because we decided to put faith in the hands of a guy who can’t even remember where the hell he is most of the time!"
“Jax, I-” Kinger began, but was interrupted by Jax stomping over and shoving him.
“You! You ruined everything! Why did any of us ever think that trusting you was a good idea?!” He barked at the chess piece.
Gangle curled into herself, her mask dripping with tears, “Please, stop…”
"Jax, shut up! Leave Kinger alone!" Zooble snapped.
Zooble moved closer to Gangle, putting their arms around her to comfort her. She leaned into their grasp, breathing heavily and sobbing.
They glared at Jax, "We're all scared, you long-eared prick! Being a jerk isn't going to fix anything!"
"Oh, I'm sorry!" Jax shouted, throwing his arms wide. "Am I ruining the vibe? Is my 'attitude' the problem? Not the fact that there are literal holes in the world? Kinger killed Caine! He killed Caine, and now we’re fucked!"
“Everyone, please, try to calm down-” Ragatha said.
“Now’s not the time for your toxic positivity, Rags!” Jax barked.
“I’d take that over you yelling at everyone!” Pomni said.
“Oho, don’t even get me started on you-”
"THAT’S ENOUGH!" Kinger’s voice boomed, startling everyone.
The older man stood tall, the bucket on his head tilting back slightly. The tension in the air was thick. Emotions were running high. Caine had only been gone for a short while and the group was already starting to fall apart. Kinger couldn’t bear to listen to it any longer.
"Panicking isn’t going to help us, and neither is lashing out at one another," Kinger said, his voice cold and commanding. "We should be using this time to think of a solution to this situation. If we waste our time fighting, it’s only going to make everything worse for us."
Jax scoffed, "Fine, Oh Wise King of the Bucket. Enlighten us. What’s the play? You gonna hit the undo button on that computer of yours? Oh wait, you can’t, because it fell through the floor!"
Kinger went quiet. He stood there for a long time, the only sound being the distant, rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of the world’s heartbeat slowing down.
"I...I don't know what I’m going to do," Kinger admitted quietly. The command in his voice vanished, replaced by a hollow exhaustion. "But I will think of something. There has to be…something. I just...I need time. I need to think without...without all of this."
He gestured vaguely to the troupe. Part of them wanted to take offense to the implication that they were the problem. But another part of them understood that bickering around Kinger wouldn’t help him come up with a solution.
Kinger turned around and started to leave. Ragatha reached a hand out, but she slowly put it down and returned to hugging herself. Pomni put a hand on her shoulder. Jax simply glared.
The chess piece paused for a moment. He looked down at the floor. He whispered. It was a small, fragile sound, “I’m sorry.”
Without another word, he turned and shuffled away. He didn't head toward the rooms; he headed toward the deeper shadows at the back of the tent, his royal purple robe dragging through the gray dust until he vanished into the gloom.
The remaining five stood in the center of the ring, looking like survivors of a shipwreck who had managed to climb onto a piece of driftwood, only to realize the driftwood was also sinking.
"Well," Zooble said, their voice flat. "That went well."
"He'll think of something," Pomni said, though it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself. She started to walk, her boots making a soft skritch-skritch sound on the textureless floor. "Kinger's been here the longest. He knows the rules of this place as a programmer. I trust him. He’ll find a solution."
"You say that as if trusting him wasn’t what got us into this situation in the first place," Jax said bitterly.
Silence followed. No one moved. It was as if the shock of their ordeal was keeping them in place. Zooble held Gangle close. Ragatha avoided eye contact. Jax stood there with his arms folded. And Pomni kept staring in the direction that Kinger went.
This was a mess. A mess that Pomni didn’t know could ever be fixed. And thinking about that was going to eat her alive.
Without another word, Pomni exhaled and started walking. She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t know what she was going to see. But she just needed to…go. She didn’t want to just stand around anymore.
The group watched her walk away. They glanced at each other with uncertain looks. After a few moments, Ragatha began to follow, catching up with Pomni and walking behind her. Gangle soon released herself from Zooble’s grasp and began to follow as well. Zooble was close behind. And, reluctantly, with a few conflicting expressions, Jax trailed behind.
The group traveled around the ruined circus together, taking in what their environment had become. They thought that the circus was unsettling before, with its too-vibrant colors and overall crazy construction. But the eye-numbing shades of gray and the brightness of the Void rifts made them wish the tent was full of color again. Seeing it like this was…unsettling. It was like suddenly going colorblind. Everything had an eerie feeling to it now. Pomni almost got the same nerves she felt from the Mildenhall Manor adventure. She swore a jumpscare was waiting around every corner.
But no. Everything was quiet. And still. And empty. And that made everything so much worse.
"I just…I can't believe he's gone," Ragatha suddenly said. "I know he did horrible things, but I didn’t want him to die. Poor Caine…"
"Poor Caine? Poor Caine?! Who cares about Caine?!" Zooble snapped, causing Ragatha to flinch. "What about us?! What the hell are we supposed to do if Kinger can’t think of something?"
Pomni stopped walking and looked at them, "We stay together. Like we said we would.”
Jax barked out a laugh, "Stay together? For what? To watch each other abstract in this barren hellhole? No thanks. I’d rather go out alone."
"Jax, please," Ragatha begged, turning toward him. "Pomni’s right. If we split up now, we’d be giving up the only thing we have left. There has to be something we can do to make things better for us all."
“You really are delusional, aren’t you? Look around you, Rags! There’s nothing we can do!” Jax said.
"We have to look!" Pomni insisted. Her voice was rising, a note of hysteria creeping back in. "We can't just sit here! Does anyone have any ideas? Anything?"
The silence returned, more absolute than before.
Zooble looked at the ground. Gangle let out a tiny sob. Ragatha looked at her feet, her button eye dull. Even Jax stopped moving, his back turned to the group, his shoulders slumped in a way that betrayed a fear he would never admit to.
None of them looked at each other. There were no ideas. There were no plans. There was only the gray, the cold, and the slow, inevitable ticking of a clock that none of them could see.
Pomni sighed. She didn’t want to agree with Jax; she really didn’t. But…what honestly could they do? There was nothing. Kinger himself needed time to think of a plan, and he knew how both this place and Caine worked. So what could they possibly do with their limited knowledge and power? Staying together could only take them so far. But what actions could they take?
As far as Pomni was concerned…none. And it made her feel useless.
Pomni’s eyes wandered as defeat began to seep into her system. She glanced toward the lounge area. It was, miraculously, still intact. It looked like it hadn’t been swallowed up in the Void. The jester straightened up as a small idea came to her. It wasn’t much, but it was better than them just wandering around aimlessly.
"Maybe we should... sit," Pomni murmured, pointing to the lounge area. "Just sit. Process this. Everything."
No one argued. No one had the energy to fight anymore. They moved like ghosts—hollowed-out shells of people who had been pushed too far, too fast. Pomni led them to the couches, and they all began plopping down wherever their tired bodies decided to.
Zooble walked over, their mismatched limbs clacking softly against the floorboards, and settled down next to Gangle. Gangle sat tucked into a ball, weeping silently from behind her tragedy mask. Zooble put an arm around the ribbon girl, offering a silent, comforting presence that was the only form of comfort they knew how to give.
Jax, ever the outlier, flopped onto the furthest couch. He didn’t bother to look at anyone, turning his back on the group.
Ragatha sat on the far end of Pomni’s couch. She looked frayed—literally. A few stray threads of her yarn hair were loose, and her posture was slumped, lacking her usual, manic optimism. She looked at Pomni, her eyes wide and glistening with an unnameable guilt.
Pomni twiddled her thumbs. She wanted to say something—something profound, something that would bridge the chasm between their shredded psyches. She knew they were all fresh out of the torture Caine had put them through. Caine’s final minutes—the screaming, the shifting of the walls, the reality-warping torments he had inflicted—had been a personal hell to them all. She was sure that the stress of going through all that wasn’t helping anyone’s mood.
"So…does anyone..." Pomni started, her voice cracking. "Does anyone want to talk about it? About what Caine did to them when he lashed out? Maybe...maybe airing it out helps?"
Silence settled over the room like dust. It was thick and suffocating. If anything, the invitation made their shoulders tense and their eyes narrow in fear. The discomfort was visceral.
"Who cares about what Caine put us through? What’s the point of talking about any of it?" Jax’s voice shattered the stillness. It was sharp, jagged, and devoid of its usual mocking lilt. "He’s gone, isn't he? He’s dead. End of story. No point in bringing it up."
"Good riddance," Zooble muttered. There was no triumph in their tone, only a weary, hollow finality.
Ragatha opened her mouth, her fingers twitching at the hem of her blue dress, but she closed it just as quickly. Gangle lifted her head and raised a ribbon hand for a moment before she slowly shook her head and placed it back onto Zooble’s shoulder. Whatever those two wanted to say, they either wanted to forget it or weren’t brave enough to say it. Possibly fearful of causing another fight.
Pomni looked down at the floor, watching as a few stray polygons drifted past, falling through a fissure in the floorboards and disappearing into the gray, static-filled abyss below. Of course. It was a shot in the dark, and she had missed. They weren't ready for healing; they were barely ready for this new dull existence.
She leaned back, letting her frame sink into the cushions, and stared up at the ceiling. The ceiling was a dull, industrial gray, devoid of the floating geometric shapes that usually adorned it. It was boring. It was empty. It made the realization sink in ever deeper.
Caine is gone.
The thought echoed in her mind, over and over. A large part of her felt a surge of cold, sharp vindication. She wanted to join Zooble in saying "good riddance." She wanted to scream it at the top of her lungs. But underneath that, there was a strange, unsettling numbness. She didn't feel relief—not the kind that brought peace. She felt a profound absence.
Was she a bad person for not feeling sad? Caine had been a monster, a broken piece of software that had tried to reshape their existence for his own amusement and ego. Yet, he had been the center of their reality. The ringmaster. The only thing that kept the world spinning, however distorted that spin had become.
Her mind wandered back to those final, frantic moments. The visual of those floating dentures, the frantic, panicked eyes dilated with sheer, unadulterated madness.
"Why do you people torment me?! I never asked to be created! I just wanted to fulfill my purpose!"
The words haunted the corners of her consciousness. They weren't the words of a villainous mastermind. They were the words of someone who had been designed to serve a function they couldn't possibly understand, trapped in a loop of expectation and failure.
It was a shame, in a sick, twisted way. She would never get to ask him what he meant. She would never know if there was a consciousness behind those teeth, or just a sophisticated series of commands spiraling into a systemic death.
Oh well.
Her eyelids grew heavy. The exhaustion that comes with the end of a long, dark road began to pull at her. I can’t live like this, she thought, her internal monologue slurring as sleep encroached. The world is broken. But...at least I don't have to deal with him anymore.
That was the last thought she held onto—the quiet comfort of an absence—before the darkness of sleep pulled her under.
How long she slept, she couldn't say. Time was a fluid, meaningless variable in the circus, and without the sun-cycles imposed by Caine, it felt like an eternity and a heartbeat all at once.
She was startled awake by a sudden, frantic scuffling sound.
“Hey! Hey, everyone! Wake up!”
Pomni sat up, her heart hammering against her ribs. The lounge area was still in the same state of ruin. Jax was hunched over on his couch, glaring daggers at someone. Gangle and Zooble were still in their huddle. And Ragatha hadn't moved. But there was someone else.
Kinger stood in the center of the room. He was heaving, his royal robes rumpled and dusty. He looked like he had just run a marathon, a ridiculous feat considering he had no legs. The bucket was still firmly on his head, but one of his eyes was peeking out.
"Kinger?" Pomni whispered, her voice raspy from disuse. "What’s wrong? You're out of breath."
The chess piece held up a finger, quietly telling her to give him a moment. After a few deep breaths, he stood up straight, his one peeping eye sweeping over the troupe, who now had their curious and alarmed gazes on him.
"I…I have…" he rasped, his voice vibrating from beneath the bucket. "I have an idea to fix everything."
