The Distant Princess

by GMBlackjack

XXXII - How a Master Holds His Sword

Dreams have their own existence apart from what is understood as reality. They stand in a place just outside the world that can touch other realms. Fueled by imagination and minds beyond comprehension, dreams exist in a state that cannot truly be studied because to look at them is to change them with your own thoughts.

However, many creatures call dreams home. Some are benign creatures who drift aimlessly through imaginations, others are guardians of the weak and lost. However, there are also creatures of nightmares that prey upon the minds of many, subsisting off fear, pain, and madness.

Most of these nightmare creatures are rather inconsequential, but occasionally… every now and then you get a hateful pile of evil garbage that has a real force behind it. Those beings need to be pounded into dust, turned into a fine paste, and thrown into a volcano where they can burn for eternity.

Unfortunately they lack physical bodies so my power fantasies can go nowhere.

~~~

Finn jumped through a hoop of fire, running away from an incoming tidal wave of ice. He heard laughter from all around him, of both the Ice King and Phoebe. Both laughs turned into sobs, and the world filled with water. Finn screamed as the water entered his lungs, where he sat, drinking tea with a snail that kept waving at him. The snail burst into green flames and Finn found himself hanging upside-down from a tree branch, watching Starlight and Jack fight below.

Starlight stabbed Jack. She screamed in panic.

And then the image froze.

“Well well well well well well well well well…” a higher-pitched reverberating voice said. “You’ve got some trauma in here, butterfly!”

Finn struggled to turn around so he could see who was talking to him, but the tree branch broke and he fell to the ground. The grass rippled like jello, cushioning his fall. Looking up, he saw the sky was shifting rapidly from night to day, but there was no sun, moon, or stars. Floating next to where he had been hanging was a golden triangular creature with a single eye and four black limbs. It wasn’t this that made Finn realize he was dreaming—it was the fact that the triangle was wearing a top hat.

“Who the blizz are you?”

“Name’s not important, what is important is you, butterfly!” He closed his eye in what Finn assumed was supposed to be a wink. The triangle stretched himself in a wide arc, sliding behind Finn with a laugh. “You’ve got a lot of messed up things in your head, human.”

“Well… that’s why I put things in the Vault!” Finn pointed angrily at the triangle.

“Your Vault is useless against me.” He snapped his fingers, summoning a large safe into his hand. “I could open it right now and unleash your worst nightmares… but I won’t!” He clapped his hands together, flattening the Vault like a pancake. He folded it into a paper airplane and tossed it into the air where it became a massive rabbit with wings, flying off into the unknown. A meteor hit it, blowing it to bits.

Finn blinked. “I have no idea what any of that meant.”

“Does it have to mean anything?” the triangle asked, leaning closer to Finn. “This is a dream, as you know. Reality might as well be a lie, here!”

“Huh. Good point.” Finn scratched his chin. “So…”

“So!” the triangle took a seat upon the frozen form of Jack, kicking his feet up on a nearby mushroom. “I see you’ve got the samurai on the mind, hmm?”

“Well, yeah, I met him recently.”

The triangle broke into several pieces and reassembled, looking down at the stabbed Jack. “Hmm… you know, he looks different.”

“He’s not usually stabbed.”

“Something else, something… missing.” The triangle was suddenly in Finn’s face. “So, butterfly! How about we talk business?”

Finn stumbled backward into a large gummy bear. “What? Business? I don’t even kno—”

“Yes, business, business! I can give you virtually anything your heart desires, and all I ask for in return is permission to hold one of your swords. You are a legendary hero after all, and I—”

“Begone demon!” A deep, booming feminine voice called through the dream, removing all images except the triangle, Finn, and a bright moon that hadn’t been there before.

“What the—hey!” The triangle shook his fist at the moon. “This isn’t your kingdom, moonbutt, get out of here!”

A dark face with a horn appeared on the moon’s surface, glaring intently at the triangle. “He is under my protection, demon. You will not assault him or any of his friends.”

“It must take a lot of power to reach out this far, Moonbutt.”

“Your petty insults and name-calling will do nothing to dissuade me.”

“Ah, but what about a de—”

“I said begone!”

With a rush of cold wind, the triangle vanished into nothing.

“Finn, I apologize, you are being forced awake,” the voice in the moon said. “I’m sorr—”

Finn woke up with a start, discovering that he was in his bed in the Tree Fort. Jake was sleeping in his strange cupboard bed, and he could hear the sound of Lapis playing video games and relaying stories to BMO downstairs.

What in the world was all that about? Finn wondered, sitting up. ...You know what, trying to figure out my dreams has never gone well. Best not to think too hard about it.

Despite this resolution, the dream wouldn't leave him. It wasn’t the triangle guy, it wasn’t the voice in the moon, and it wasn’t even the horrific crying at the start; it was Jack getting stabbed that wouldn’t leave him. Jack was fine. Jack was fine.

With a groan, Finn grabbed the Finn sword and walked down stairs, passing Lapis and BMO.

“...and then the Cluster formed a hand and arm-wrestled the ship!” Lapis declared as her character on the game putted a golf ball into a living windmill’s head. “It was one of the coolest things ever.”

They paid Finn no mind as he went to the basement. Starlight and Rainbow were sleeping on separate couches, the former of which was grunting angrily at something. Jack was not on his couch.

A pit formed in Finn’s stomach. He ran back up the stairs in a hurry.

“...I dropped a barn on them…”

He ran past his room and up more stairs until he came to the roof. He had been planning to use the vantage point to look for Jack, but instead, he found the samurai sitting at the top of the Tree Fort in a meditative position, the long leaves of the tree providing a comfortable cushion.

“You are troubled,” Jack observed without opening his eyes.

“Uh, yeah, had a nasty dream.”

“Dreams often carry meaning, but just as often they are nothing.” He opened his eyes and stood up, the wind of the night blowing through his hair and beard.

“Uh… yeah.” Finn put his hands behind his back. “So, what are you doing up here? Instead of… sleeping?”

“Rainbow snores. It made meditation difficult.”

“Oh,” Finn said. A second later he paled. “Oh, sorry, sorry, I’ll let you get back to that!”

“Finn, come here.”

Nervously, Finn did as was asked. He was much shorter than the muscular form of Jack. Even though he regularly spent his time in the company of people much larger than himself, standing in front of the samurai made Finn feel… insignificant. Here was a real hero with real skill and real power. Finn was just a kid who got lucky.

Carefully, Jack took the Finn sword and examined it, spending a good long while examining the craftsmanship, the edge, and the blue crystal in the hilt that reflected Finn’s face—never anyone else’s. “A beautiful blade… and one of great power. Who forged it?”

“Some guy named Prismo.”

Jack, for all his stoic controlled expressions, could not hide the shock from his features. “You… wished for this sword?”

“Oh, no, my wish was something else… apparently.” Finn decided he wasn’t going to try to explain something he didn’t fully understand. “The sword came from a bunch of weird time loops and other nonsense. It’s literally made of me! Like, it’s real sweet, best possible sword ever.”

Hefting the blade, Jack swung it around a few times. “There are very few things in this world that can harm the darkness that plagues it. This may be one of them.” He twirled the sword in his hand and offered the hilt back to Finn. “You have the mark of the hero, as I once did.”

Finn took the sword back. “Once? Dude, you’re one of the heroes! You’ve done a bazillion amazing things today alone! You’ve still got it!”

“It is refreshing to see such faith.” Jack laid a gentle hand on Finn’s shoulder. “But my quest has stagnated. I have achieved nothing in many, many years.”

FInn tightened his grip on the Finn sword. “Jack, you—”

Jack interrupted Finn with a look. “You need to learn proper swordplay. You have strength and agility, but no finesse. Let me show you.”

Finn’s jaw dropped. “You… you’re going to teach me? Right now?”

“Yes.” Jack drew his curved blade, holding it out. “First, we will focus on your stance.”

Taking a deep breath, Finn placed his feet firmly on the ground. “Right. How’s this?”

“Terrible.”

“Figures.”

“Put your dominant foot far in front of the other, and hold your blade in front of your chest. You must defend yourself with it as much as you threaten your opponent.”

~~~

Deep within a tree of darkness, a room with walls like fire held a single occupant. Black, dark, and terrible, with eyebrows of crimson flames and a sickly mouth filled with angled teeth, he was the epitome of evil. When at his full height he towered over most buildings and could vaporize all who opposed him with but a thought. All but the most legendary mortals were insignificant to him, and the very world itself trembled before him.

Currently he was slumped down, leaning against the wall, throwing the skull of a failed servant against the wall, letting out a disgruntled sigh every few minutes.

Throw skull. Thunk. Catch. Throw skull. Thunk. Catch. Throw skull. Thunk. Catch. Throw skull. Shatter. No more skull.

He ground his teeth. “Do not worry, there will be more failed servants. There always are. The latest assassin will come crawling back with cries for mercy. The machines will demand another chance. The spirits will mock me with their persistence. I will always have more to punish.” He reached into a pile of skulls and threw it at the wall again. “Always more. It never ends… as eternal as I, Aku, the Lord of the w—”

Something tickled at the back of his mind, ending his self-absorbed rant. He focused on the tickle, eyes widening. “Who would be so foolish as to touch my mind through the Dreamscape?” He stood tall, scraping his noxious black claw across the wall in front of him, opening up a display of the dreaming around him. He never slept—he did not need to—but he would have been foolish not to have a way to access the realm of dreams. “Who dares disturb Aku?”

“Ay, Aku, buddy!” A triangular shape appeared on the display. “Been a while!”

“Bill Cipher…” Aku leaned in, narrowing his eyes. “What particular breed of insanity has possessed you to bother me?”

“You know, the usual! I’ve got information!”

“I do not play your games.”

“Ah, no games this time! Because today, one time offer, I’m giving it to you free of charge!” He spread his arms wide and confetti flew everywhere in the Dreamscape. “Because you’re my good friend and I want to do you a favor!”

“You expect you can predict me,” Aku said. “And you expect my actions with the information will further your goals. I am not one of your mortal fools. I know your game.”

“You really do take all the fun out of everything, no wonder you sit in the bottom of that tree feeling sorry for yourself all the time.”

“You know, I think I have an artifact around somewhere that can destroy dream-spirits…”

“A certain Samurai appears to have lost his sword.”

Aku froze.

“I don’t know why, Moonbutt kicked me out of the dream before I could learn more, but he doesn’t have it.”

Aku cut off the connection to Bill. He stared at the wall in front of him for several seconds. Then, slowly, his blank expression twisted into a malevolent grin of unspeakable evil. He clasped his hands together and began to chuckle. “The grand adventure of Samurai Jack ends not with a grand final battle, but with a careless loss of a legendary weapon! After all these years, I will wipe him from the face of the Earth! Yes! Yes!” He threw his head back and let out a bellowing laugh that cracked the dead earth outside with its power. “Your hours are numbered, Samurai Jack…”

Comments

[hamster wizard]

“Your hours are numbered, Samurai Jack…”

[FanOfMostEverything]

Give them something good enough, and it doesn't matter if they know they're playing into your hand. They'll do it anyway. Really, Jack was already in trouble when he took on the role of mentor to another hero. That's not a career that usually ends pleasantly.

[Ri2]

Oh shit.

[Mal Masque]

And thus, Aku, the Shogun of Sorrow, Master of Masters, Ruler of All That Is... now takes the stage.

[Crack-Fic Casey]

Aku and Bill, on-screen at once! This story is underated.