Niko and Doug go on a Vision Quest

Niko and Doug go on a Vision Quest

Kei had been annoyed that they were bugging her again, but after a little more wheedling she’d begrudgingly pointed Niko and Doug to the Soul Market. “I’ve heard there’s somebody called the Rat Lady who does dreams and shit.”

“Why’s she called ‘the Rat Lady?’” Doug asked.

But Kei just looked annoyed. “Why is anything called anything? I dunno. She’s just the Rat Lady. It’s not like I’ve ever met her or anything.”

And so she sent them off on their quest. Niko left the tower first, to make sure the coast was clear for Doug. Ever since the return of ‘Bacchae,’ the Tea Party had been significantly more busy, so it was sometimes hard for Doug to find a good moment to sneak out hornless.

But after a few minutes Niko signaled, Doug snuck out the door, and they met around the back. Though it still took them another few minutes of walking to actually relax. Every once in a while Doug found people shooting him odd looks, but he’d already started getting used to it.

“I don’t know how you stand it,” Niko commented. “I keep thinking someone is gonna call you out any second.”

“Keep in mind that I’ve got the hair, but without the horns and the getup I’m perfectly disguised. It’s still a little freaky when there’s a lot of people, but this is way better than just holing up in that damn clock tower all day, even if I’m sure that’s would Kei would prefer.”

Oh yeah. Kei. Niko had only met her briefly a handful of times, but she had consistently left a bad taste in his mouth. She reminded him of nearly every single ambitious individual who had tried to cozy up to his father over the years. Only difference was that none of those hangers-on had lasted very long.

But while Mikhail Borozov was a man with much experience in picking out snakes, Doug was… most decidedly not.

“Speaking of…” to be fair, Niko didn’t actually know Doug all that well either, but he figured that he’d better say something. “I know it’s not really my place but, if I were you, I’d be careful around her. She just seems kind of… slimy.”

“Ahh, Kei’s not so bad,” Doug looked away, running a hand through his hair. “You gotta get past the gatehouse, and the moat… and the five stone walls after that. But hey, once you do she’s… she’s alright.”

“Oh, so you’re sleeping with her, then.”

Doug made a weird, spluttering noise in the back of his throat, and his face turned bright red. “Okay, none of your business. But you’re not… wrong, I guess.”

Well, either he was right and Kei was just obnoxiously abrasive, or Doug was already wrapped clean around her little finger.

“Listen, take it or leave it, but just… be careful,” Niko cautioned. “I’ve known a lot of women like that. I think trusting her might not be good for your health.”

“Have you ever considered that, you know, as a fucking mafioso, your experience might be a little skewed?”

“I could say the same to you, ya’ drugged up, Charles Manson wannabe.”

“Harsh! And excuse you, I see myself as more of a Joseph Smith kinda guy, personally.”

“You know that’s worse, right?”

“If by ‘worse’ you mean successful, then yes.”

“Sometimes I don’t understand you,” Niko shook his head.

“Only sometimes? How the hell do you understand me better than I do? Oh, wait, hold on.” Doug interrupted his own thought to pull his hood up. “There’s a lot of people around here. I’m not taking any chances.”

“I think this is the only time in my life I’ve been around someone more recognizable than me,” Niko admitted.

“And I hate how I’m getting used to it.” Niko couldn’t see Doug’s expression, but he could only imagine that it must be some form of sullen.

Doug was, of course, right. They had made it to the outskirts of the Soul Market now, and already they found themselves in the midst of a sizable crowd. Neither of them had properly visited the Soul Market before—and no, Doug crowd surfing did not count—but they’d be damned if either of them admitted it to the other.

So they just started walking. “Do you need to hold my hand?” Doug smirked. “You’re so tiny I’m afraid I might lose ya’ in the crowd.”

“I’m not that short, ya’ jackass, and I wouldn’t be too worried about that,” Niko retorted. “Not when your head’s a fucking spotlight, even with you stupid sweatshirt on.”

The farther in they got, the less space they had to move, and the slower going it was. But that was alright in the end, because there was so much to look at that they wouldn’t have moved much faster anyway. The market was utter chaos. Instead of orderly lanes or assigned spaces like most markets of the sort would have, it looked like vendors had just set up wherever they could find space. And there wasn’t much of that to go around.

Tents were everywhere, butting up against each other, even overlapping in places. If they could have seen if from above it would have resembled some sort of patchwork beach-ball. And the tents weren’t even the most varied part of the market.

“Talent!” a vendor shouted over the crowd. “Get your talent here! Speaking, writing, spreadsheets, we’ve got it all!”

“Loyalty from a soldier!” cried another. “Love from a poet, luck from a gambler! Reasonable prices, perfect for collectors!”

Of course, it wasn’t just concepts and oddities for sale, not by a long shot. Fashions of all kinds lined racks, from full renaissance purples and golds to graphic tees. Artists sold paintings, musicians played at nearly every corner, and Niko and Doug’s nostrils were filled with the smells of an unbelievable variety of different foods. Doug did a double-take when he saw a sign advertising “Genuine Wisconsin Cheese Curds,” and it only got weirder when someone asked the man in the truck: “Yeah, but which Wisconsin are we talkin’?”

He almost wanted to try one, but decided against it.

And of course, you couldn’t avoid the obvious. The soul brokers. High-end joints lined the exterior, while scummy deal-sharks were spread throughout. “Hey kid,” one called out to Niko. “You wanna couple extra inches? Could make you taller than you boyfriend, over there.”

Niko just about socked the guy, but Doug just laughed and said. “Told ya’ so.”

“Are we gonna find this Rat Lady or what?” Niko shot back. “I’m sick of lookin’ at you face.”

“Aw, but I was having such a good time. I was so looking forward to bragging to all my very existent friends about being personally acquainted with the Boss Baby.”

Though Doug expected Niko to swing at him, surprisingly, his eyes instead widened with the revelation. “Oh my god,” he muttered. “I gotta get a new haircut. Lose the suit or somethin’.”

“Alec Baldwin-lookin’ ass.”

“What a fuckin’ pair we make, eh Manson?”

Eventually, when the shit-slinging well began to run dry, they started their search for the Rat Lady in earnest. They didn’t have to search long, or even mention her name. Niko ended up asking a musician if he knew of anyone who dealt in dreams, and he immediately nodded and said. “You’re gonna want the Rat Lady,” and pointed them off in a direction. “You’ll know her tent when you see it,” he said, and indeed, they most certainly did.

It was one of the few that was actually enclosed, but for all intents (ha) and purposes it resembled a nest more than anything. Odds and ends, faded fabrics and cheap jewelry were piled in front of the flap and tied to the tent itself. Beyond, the interior was very dark.

“Hey, so this is weird, right?” Doug turned to Niko, who nodded. “You still packin’?”

Niko patted his coat. “Thought and Memory, as always.”

“You actually named your guns? And after Norse mythology, no less?”

“Yeah, so?”

“That’s nerdy as shit, man.”

“Can we just go in already?”

Irritated, Niko allowed that emotion to propel him through the flap, Doug snorting as he followed behind.

The inside was honestly exactly what they’d expected. Seats and cushions were strewn around the room, and both they and the walls were covered in so much gauzy fabric that it was hard to tell just where they ended and the floor began. At first they thought the room was empty, until one of the cushions moved. It slowly turned and squinted as the light from the market came in from behind them. She looked them over for a second, and then a smile quickly broke across her face, revealing blackened teeth.

The moniker immediately made sense. The Rat Lady’s face was small and pinched, with beady, brown eyes perched atop a large, red nose. Her back was so hunched it was almost horizontal, and as her eyes adjusted to the light she shuffled over in greeting. Like the rest of the tent, she was so covered in various fabrics that it all blended together until she was little more than just a round, grey shape with two little feet sticking out the bottom.

“You have come for Lady’s expertise, yes?” she asked as the boys hesitated.

Niko, who by this point had an exceptionally high tolerance for weirdness, recovered first. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “We heard you’re an expert on dreams.”

“Ooh, lucky old Lady,” she crooned. “It’s not every day two princes find their way to lady’s parlor.”

The two glanced at each other, making sure they were thinking the same thing. There were… so many potential meanings they could gather from her words. Ultimately, she was probably just senile. But maybe, just maybe, she somehow… already knew who they were?

“Come, come,” she gestured with a ring-covered hand. “Come sit. Let Lady help you find meaning.” She shuffled back into the room, and squatted behind something that must have been a table. Niko and Doug hesitantly followed her, and found places to sit, but not before Niko mistook a particularly bulbous bit of fabric as a chair and nearly fell on his ass.

“Okay, before we do any kind of hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo…”

No, Doug, Niko thought desperately. He didn’t know what he was about to say, but whatever it was: don’t do it.

“...Lady, just what the fuck is your accent?”

“I have accent?” she tilted her head, confused.

“You know what, never mind.”

“So, how does this work?” Niko interrupted. “And most importantly, how much are we talking?”

“My services fetch a pretty penny. Everyone needs to know the meaning of a dream occasionally. But for you, no charge,” she winked in Niko’s direction. “Lady can see already, these are dreams of importance, and that will be enough. Very interesting, Lady knows this. Come now, grab my hands.”

She reached a wrinkly hand out to both of them. Doug was surprised by how soft her hand was. For a solid minute there was silence as the Rat Lady closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Niko shot Doug an inquisitive look, but neither of them said anything. Shrugging, Niko followed her example, thinking maybe it would help, while Doug just watched the two of them, amused.

After a solid minute, without opening her eyes, the Rat Lady began to speak. “Ah yes,” she whispered, “yes, Lady sees now. The both of you are watched.”

“Okay, impressive that you got that,” Doug admitted. “But we already knew that part. Most of the whole damn dream is about being—”

“They are not dreams, horned one,” she said abruptly, and that shut Doug up pretty quickly. “They are visitations. The mirror is cracked, you see, and it desires to be mended.”

“What do you mean by that?” Niko frowned. “That these entities we keep running into are… real?”

“More real than you are.” Without warning, her eyes finally opened, and she stared at each of them in turn.

“Okay, so there’s weird things invading our dreams and such,” Doug waved her off. “That’s just your average Tuesday. How do we get rid of them?”

Instead of responding, the Rat Lady simply shook her head and wheezed. “Gods help Lady, these princes are morons. Which side of the reflection are you on, do you think?”

They both stared at her blankly.

“Lady cannot explain,” she sighed. “But perhaps she can show.”

Stiffly, she stood, and shuffled over to the flap of her tent, buttoning it firmly shut. Niko’s fingers twitched involuntarily, but he stopped himself. That was just an old habit. He wasn’t really in any danger. He thought the Rat Lady might topple over if he breathed on her too hard.

“So you think she’s spewing bullshit?” Doug leaned over to Niko as she skittered off somewhere further into the tent.

Niko had to think about that one for a second. “I mean, she didn’t charge us anything, so there’s no motive for a scam. She might just be crazy?”

“Are you asking me?”

“Well, you are the resident basket case around here, so…”

But before Doug could retort, the Rat Lady promptly sat down in between them again. In her hands she held a long pipe of ornately carved wood. “Here,” she held it out to them. “Lady show you.”

Without hesitation, Doug reached out for it, but Niko grabbed his arm. “Whoa, whoa, hold on, you’ve got no idea what’s in that.”

Doug turned back to the Rat Lady. “What’s in it?”

“Paste of Amanita Muscaria, caterpillar cocoon, and Sativa Lady grew out back.”

“Meh, sounds like a good time,” Doug grabbed the pipe from her.

“Hold on,” Niko repeated. “I can’t believe you’re just gonna… go along with this.”

“I mean, you did want to know what’s been up with you precious sleepy mii-miis, yeah?” Doug cocked an eyebrow, catching the expression on Niko’s face. “Wait, are you telling me that you, the goddamn mafia man, have never partaken?”

“I sell ‘em, doesn’t mean I do ‘em,” Niko huffed. “Besides, ya never dip into your own product, that’s how you end up smoking your profits away.”

“Aww, come on. It’s just the one time. It’s not like one hit’s gonna kill ya.”

“You’re the guy the DARE program warned me about.”

“Hey, that kid was always the coolest motherfucker on the planet. And before you say ‘you don’t know if won’t kill me,’ yeah, I do. It’s just a mixture of shrooms, peyote, and weed. Ooo, Actually that’s kind of a lot. We’re gonna be seeing some shit alright, lemme tell ya.”

And before Niko could stop him, Doug stuck the pipe to his lips and inhaled deeply.

“God… dammit,” Niko sighed, and as Doug held it out to him, swiped it and did the same. He coughed, and Doug laughed. Bastard.

The Rat Lady took the pipe back from him, and Niko waited. “I don’t feel anything,” he said.

“Well yeah, it takes a couple of minutes, dumbass,” Doug rolled his eyes.

Chuckling to herself, the Rat Lady now put the pipe to her own mouth. But instead of inhaling, she blew outward, causing smoke to billow from the end. Niko found his eyes caught by it as it circled around the room, hanging for much longer in cumulus clouds than it probably should have. In fact, it almost seemed to be forming distinctive shapes, though Niko was gonna need a few more minutes of observation to really figure out what they were supposed to be. He squinted, and kept staring.

Meanwhile, Doug was definitely starting to feel the oncoming high. It being Niko’s first time, he probably wouldn’t feel it quite as strong. Doug, on the other hand, was having to quickly come to terms with the fact that this was about to be intense. Like one of those bad highs where everything feels wrong and the world just keeps spinning and spinning and ….spinning… and… Oh look, he was there already.

“Let me tell you a story,” the Rat Lady’s voice sounded incredibly far away. “A story from the beginning of everything.”

The shapes in the smoke were starting to make sense to Niko now, though he no longer had any sort of concept of how long he’d been staring at them. They looked almost like… wings. Yes, there was some sort of dark-colored wings hidden in the deepest, curving trails of the fog.

“It is a story about a young man destined to defeat a god.”

Next to him, Doug was already in the thick of it, pulling at the sides of his head as if his horns were causing him pain. Wait… Doug hadn’t brought along his…

But a caw came from the smoke, and Niko turned back just in time to see a pair of very real wings flapping in his face. Haze covered his mind and he stopped thinking altogether.

“His name was…”

There were things in the fog, things that Niko couldn’t see, but knew were important. Reluctantly, he stumbled forward, trying to push it away. Ahead of him were shadows and sounds. Voices, voices he recognized, a thousand words, and thousand conversations. Yet not a one was distinguishable. Half-forgotten by the millennia.

But suddenly, the flapping came again, and a large, black bird—a raven, too big to be a crow—flew past him. With a start, Niko saw that one of its eyes was missing. Tripping and stumbling—his legs were practically jelly—Niko chased after it.

As he kept running after that bird and tried to avoid feathers flying into his face, Niko noticed that the ground under his feet was sloping upward. Steeper and steeper until Niko was climbing more than running. But even as he slowed, panting, the raven didn’t get any farther away. It was as if it was waiting for him.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked. At the moment it seemed perfectly logical to him that the raven could not only understand him but also possessed a mouth capable of a response.

It didn’t say anything, obviously, yet at that next moment his foot fell into snow with a loud crunch, and the terrain around him seemed to even out. Ahead of him, through the hazy purples and greens, someone was waiting for him, the raven now perched on their shoulder.

But even as he plowed through the snow and came closer, he couldn’t see them any better. They were wearing a huge black cloak that covered them head to foot. For a while they just followed Niko’s approach, or perhaps they were staring past him over the mountain’s edge.

“Hey,” Niko called to the figure. “Are you the bastard who’s been pissing around in my head?”

The one-eyed raven let out a caw that nearly resembled a laugh, but the figure themselves said nothing. All they did was slowly raise a hand with long, thin fingers, and pointed off towards the distance.

Niko’s gaze followed it, and for a second, he couldn’t see anything. He took a couple more steps forward, and the mist parted just enough to unveil something floating in the nothing. At this distance, it was little more than a dark shape, yet something about it sent a shiver down Niko’s spine. It nearly seemed to warp the air around it, creating a pit that Niko was afraid he might tumble straight into.

“A story about a young man destined to defeat a god…” the Rat Lady’s words came to him suddenly. Yet even if those were her words, that wasn’t her voice that said them. He turned back once more, but the figure remained as still as a statue, pointing him onward.

There was a spear in his hand, and blood pumped in his ears. A breeze whipped his tunic backwards and threatened to take him with it, but he’d be damned if he let a little wind stop him.

Against the cold, against the wind, against the menacing aura that it brought with it, he started walking. His fate awaited, after all.

The god stared him down, or at least, as well as it could with only two green flames to light up its empty eye sockets. It tilted its demonic skull to the side as he approached, and he almost opened his mouth to say something, try to reason with it. But he stopped.

Though there was intelligence in its not-eyes, its skull twitched erratically, its breath came fast and heavy. It didn’t even need to open its mouth for him to know that this god had been driven to madness. And then it laughed.

And blood began to dribble down his face. He clutched at his right eye socket as sudden pain wracked his head. He remembered this. This pain, this battle, the way that skull leered and grinned at him as it rolled his golden eye between its claws.

But this, these memories… they weren’t his. Who was this? Whose fate had it been to fight and die to this monster?

“His name was...”

Just as the god raised its hand upwards to finish him off for good, he heard another caw, and as the raven flew in front of his face, the ground suddenly gave out from under him.

As he fell, that voice echoed through his skull. His name, his name, what was his name? But as he fell, deeper and further into the darkness below, he discovered that he didn’t need anyone to tell him. He’d known it all along. The name burbled out of his mouth without any stopping it.

“Okin…”

You may be wondering what Doug saw, while Niko went on his journey. It is of little importance, but if you insist:

What Doug saw was nothing. Just pure darkness, a color blacker than black. He was stuck in this darkness, in the middle of a deep, dark pit of which there was no escape. But even if he couldn’t see anything, his ears more than made up for it. All around him there was laughter, pointed and cruel. Nothing else. His world was consumed by it.

“You already know who I am, you idiot,” whispered a voice in his ear. “So why the fuck did you come here?”