Dungeons & Grandma's

"I would be delighted to meet you again, Distinguished Delay. When in of course you find yourself trapped on the other side. Here is a parting gift for your memories."

The salon door unlatches with the softest release, like a page being turned before its reader is ready.

A figure crosses the threshold then, Countess Whisperbane, she moves with weightless as if someone rehearsing their own legacy on the tongue. She is tall but not imposing, graceful but not soft. Her cloak does not stir as she walks; it trails behind her with the precision of redacted text. She carries in her hand a stack of thin, frayed papers in one hand and sorts through them with a steady, unbothered rhythm, her gaze barely touching them.

Her face too is smooth in the way old documents are smooth, from being handled too many times, interpreted too often by too many faces. Her features holding no tension, but there is no comfort either. What lingers instead is the imprint of having once belonged to something terrifying and never fully having let go of the shape since.

Eileen does not rise for she does not need to. For it feels like the room is already gently tilting toward the Countess even as the center of gravity remains with Eileen.

A fact that makes Countess Whisperbane wary as she approach's a small brass bin nestled unobtrusively against the wall. One by one, she begins to discard the pages in her hand in a way that makes it seem like she has not read them. Until she encounters the fourteenth letter which she hesitates over, turning it once between her fingers before then placing it in the bin without expression. The fifteenth one she tears, not into halves, but thirds. One third she keeps and the others she discards as they fall in slow spirals, vanishing before they touch the bottom of the bin.

Eileen watches her, not with suspicion, but with interest. Whisperbane's presence does not feel like intrusion instead it feels like evidence. Of a remnant of a problem not solved, but shelved.

The Countess glances briefly then toward the lacquered tray on the table. Then to the spot on the floor where the black liquid had dispersed and disappeared. Her eyes narrow, but not in judgment, more in recognition. She begins searching the room now but it is clear she cannot see Eileen, the chairs or the tea set, just a lacquered tray and the table, both which she touches several times.

The Countess action of motion, precise and unceremonious, coupled with the documents held not like a scholar, but like a supplicant told Eileen more than anything else ever could. Her posture no matter what she was trying to hide was fluent in service. But not to the nobles in the ballroom or the eye in the sky. But to a structure older than this place and quieter than any name remembered.

There is jealousy too behind her gaze. Not petty or bitter. But the kind born of long obedience in service to the quiet of coldness. The ache of having shaped oneself into what was acceptable, only to see someone walk freely in a place where you once only barely permitted.

Eventually though the Countess goes to leave, but she pauses near the doorway, the last page of her stack still in her hand. For a moment, the air tenses, expectant. And then she speaks... not to Eileen, not to the scroll, but to the room itself or whatever she could feel was watching her.

"In the end, we are all trapped by the fabric of our own desire."

Then she vanishes through the door, leaving nothing behind. Not even a pause in the air.

Only when she's gone does the fabric table runner butler lift from the table once more. It flashes through a quick pulse of symbols... approval, verification, release. Then it bows seemingly to itself.
"The Rejoining Spiral awaits, Distinguished Delay. We are honored that you have indulged the ritual so far, it is a delight to behold to be sure."

Eileen gives a single, measured nod. She lifts the cup to her lips and sips just once. The taste lingers, both familiar and indistinct, like a smells that reminds you of someone else's home. She returns the cup to the tray, carefully, then rises from her chair. She does not look back.

The salon door opens with the soft conviction of consensus being reached in a room full of weary clerks. In that it does not beckon, it merely makes way. The hall beyond is unchanged, soft, scentless, unremarkable in the way truly deliberate spaces often are.

No signs guide her now and no symbols glow instead Eileen finds the corridor simply acknowledges her as she walks, the sconces flickering with polite attention. As if the rugs beneath her shoes do not remember what it is like to be stepped on.

She passes portraits then that have no faces. Pedestals that have never known sculpture. Display cases still locked, holding nothing. Somewhere in the background, a clock ticks but the sound is reluctant, like it measures history in favors rather than hours.

At the corridor's end, a door waits. It is not ornate or ceremonial, just slightly ajar. From behind it, a ribbon of golden light stretches across the hall floor like a welcome that is unsure if it is still deserved. Eileen slows, not out of hesitation, but from recognition. The kind of recognition that lives in the bones, not the mind.

She approaches the doorway slowly now, the warmth spilling from it brushing gently against her skin, as if the room itself is trying to remember how to greet someone new. But she does not enter and let it try, for something in her stomach shifts, not unpleasantly, but with certainty. This is another one of those moments to witness, it did not require a disturbance. She realizes then she unsure of how she knows that, but she trusts the feeling anyway. So she places one hand lightly on the door, just to feel the hinge beneath her palm, just in case it opens suddenly.

Inside, voices can be heard, soft and familiar in tone, but lacking any kindness.

"I'm not saying she's anyone official," Xozo says, her voice caught between defense and longing. "I'm just saying… maybe she's the kind of person this place was meant to notice."

Someone responds, with the cadence of practiced contradiction. "Dear, we all saw the Eye shift."

"Yes," says another voice, airy and precise, "but that doesn't mean you brought her."

"She walked right past you dear," adds a third. "That's not inclusion. That's adjacency. At best..."

There is a pause. Fabric rustles in a way that sounds like Xozo's oversized cloak shuffling inward on itself. "But I know her..." Xozo insists. "I brought her here."

"You were in the Countess's line," comes a reply. "Besides she barely even glanced in your direction."

More silence follows now and Eileen breathes through it, slow and quiet. She does not flinch at the unkindness shown to Xozo for she has heard worse in smaller rooms.

"Knowing someone is a strong claim," a fourth voice adds, more gently than needed. "Especially when the one claiming the relationship has so many insignificant claims to their name."

One of earlier voices sighs loudly, "Girl, she didn't look at you. She looked at the room, your barely worth any breath. Why can't you notice that." The third voice adds, "Besides, if she's who you say she is, why didn't you manipulate her so that you could arrive together?"

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The breath behind Xozo's voice is sharper now, less certain. "I just thought…" she begins, but her voice cracks slightly. "I thought maybe, that it mattered more, that I made introductions for her. She's someone that really matters..."

A whisper, flat and factual. "It doesn't. Not here."

The first voice speaks again towards the fourth voice, "She's always been imaginative, dear." The the first voice then turns to Xozo, "But imagination doesn't confer importance unless it can be manipulated. No matter how much you try."

Xozo's make a peep sound, like a smile cracking at a corner, still the motion of restraint churns in Eileen's stomach. "I just thought…" Xozo's says, softer now, "I thought you might want to know. Before you make voting decisions about my future. She doesn't care about power, she's unlike anyone else here. That has to count for something."

A pause, something leans forward slightly covering the light streaming from the door. "It doesn't Xozo. It's such a simple lesson dear. We have been over this again and again."

Another murmurs, "Intent has no weight on this floor, only inheritance of rite or what one can manipulate into a rite in order to inherit..."

"And technically demonstration as well...," one of the voices adds. "But we don't mention it to you because you've always struggled to provide it. We're not here to see you fail dear, we simply want you understand the importance of place."

Xozo swallows in that deep kind a gulp that can silence a school bathroom before it turns into a beatdown. Her throat then makes a small sound that could be the beginning of a laugh, or the end of one. Eileen hears Xozo shift her weight presumably to pull her cloak tighter. The shape of her must have been shrinking slightly, drawn inward. "I know. I know how it sounds," she says. "But I'm telling you, when she walked in, the whole room changed. The air changed, my life changed."

The room erupts in raucous laughter, finally one of the voices gathers everyone's attention, "Dear girl, the air always changes with you. Its why it so easy for these rites to reset your expectations of them."

"Why can't you understand that the Eye really did adjust, then, it was simply a response to protocol or a correction to a rite. Or in this case, perhaps the quiet collapse of a former delegate's standing."

A light laugh resurfaces from everyone before their attention turns back to Xozo, "You see ghosts in every flicker, child. You are not destined for anything other then service..."

"I am a ghost," Xozo says, half joking, half defending. "That's how I see myself, that how I've always seen myself."

The room does not reward the attempt at her joke veiled as a truth, a motherly tone responds first, "It isn't sweet dear." Another voice murmurs, "How is she still loyal?" A third adds, "And to someone who hasn't even spoken her name, no wonder she's so wrapped around the Countess finger. We are going to pull so many strings for her..."

The first speaks again, "To survive here, one must be ready to discard everything for a chance at more then nothing." The third voice speaks again, "Why bother, are you sure she's even aware of you?"

Eileen hears what sounds like hands ruffling around in Xozo's robes, until Eileen hears Xozo's nail clutching a small brass clasp given to her by Audry. Yet the room doesn't get louder if anything it gets quieter, the kind of quiet that tucks itself into your spine and stays there for years. "I don't want anything from life other then purpose." she says, more quickly now. "I just thought, if you saw her, if you could see what I saw…"

"We saw the Eye," says the fourth voice, very gently, as if explaining something to a child. "We didn't see you." That comment lands, Eileen can feel it through the gap in the door and she can hear it in the way that Xozo's body practically collapses into a bench. "It's not about me," Xozo says to a room that is not listening to her "It's just… she's good. That should matter somewhere. In some room. In some place. In some world."

She pauses in the kind of way that tries to smother itself in velvet. "It doesn't," says the first voice, "Not here. You can't sell kindness in a room built to appraise suffering."

It is the kind of comment that has the door holding its breath in the same way Eileen does. Until a slim vent somewhere behind her releases a measured exhale. Not cold or dramatic, just a gentle stream of air that brushes past her neck, soft as a shawl settling into place.

The breeze of course pushes against the salon door, closing it a fraction further. But it is enough to issue a slight creak from the hinge, delicate as a piano key. Light vanishes then from the hallway forcing the beam into a warmer hue.

Eileen breathes in, quietly in response. The knot in her stomach tightening again, not in warning, but in affirmation. She knows this feeling, why was it pleased that she did not step in, the moment was about to pass. Soon it would be unwelcome for her to enter. Why did it want her to step back.

And then, a hand. Thin, gloved, disturbingly vague in ownership closes the door from the inside. "Just a trick of the light, dear," murmurs a voice from inside. "It's easy to imagine witnesses when one is performing for an audience," adds another. "Besides," drawls the third, "If this Eileen had come for you, you wouldn't still be groveling here, begging us to influence the rite."

Eileen walks, not quickly, not as one dismissed, but with the calm of someone who is ready to return to the ballroom, plan in hand. She was just going to have to find another expert to consult, she couldn't let Xozo be forced into yet another brutal family affair, she would get Xozo and her out of here and then they would never ever return.

The corridor of course is privy to none of this and it greets her now with welcome, in its usual, subtle kind of way. A sconce ahead brightens slightly as she approaches, but not enough to cast shadow. The carpet beneath her shoes lifts imperceptibly upward as if to help her, adjusting for weight it long ago decided was worth making room for. She hums once, low and private, a simple sound with no melody, only timing. In response, one of the empty pedestals to her right seems to sigh. As if recalling that time someone once came to take away its object without any thought of what deserved to sit in its place.

The walk is longer than before though, not so much by measurement, but by memory. As though the corridor stretches just enough to let her gather something unspoken. She accepts the moment to take a breath without needing to understand why it is given. For she has lived long enough to know that the best kind of wisdom often feels like unshakeable patience rather than burning clarity.

Turning the final corner, she sees it. The great spiral of the ballroom, tiers and tiers descending in graceful curves. She's back on the fifth floor again, though she hasn't climbed any stairs. Yet here she is.

The overlook stretches before her in hushed attention. Nothing in the space announces her return, and nothing needs to. The room absorbs her presence with the familiarity of a habit it doesn't want to admit it missed. Curtains draw themselves back a fraction as she approaches, not to reveal her, but to reveal to her the ballroom.

Below, Eileen finds the ballroom has become something else, aligned, arranged, expectant. The central dais, once spare, now blooms with preparation, purple velvet has been laid to bear around it, the faintest glimmer of sigils braided into its hem. A single pedestal stands within it, black marble, the same one she stood on, however like the dais she used this was also undecorated, but framed with light. Not a spotlight, but a kind of ambient insistence, it is clear the room intends to watch this ritual with exacting intention.

And there, at the center of the dais stands Xozo.

Her gown is crimson, rich but precise, woven through with formal threads that shimmer without ever seeming to sparkle. Yet no jewelry or embellishment adorns her body and it stands in clear juxtaposition to the gaudy nobles around her. Her face and hair too is hidden beneath a veil, far too sheer to be accidental and far too overwhelmingly deliberate to be generous. The cloth descending in layers, masking the curves of her face and all the wriggling snakes that made up her beautiful personality.

Her headdress locking both her and her snakes into patterns of obedience that have made statements before she has even spoken a single word. She is adorned not for celebration, but for scrutiny.

Around her, the nobles are seated in rings, descending in perfect tiers like ripples around a thrown stone. Their attention is fixed, but their posture is not relaxed. This is not curiosity to them, it is simply another form of calibration. Was this moment what she had asked Eileen to come and see? What kind of result could this bring to her? How much longer would she stay standing upon the dais before folding.

Eileen doesn't lean against the railing now but she comes close to. The room below is too quiet. Not reverent, but prepared. Even the chandeliers hold still, as if reminded that motion can be interpreted as bias.

Something unspoken unfurls in her her stomach again, yet she can feel it loosening all the same, the time for restraint was coming to an end and she would be there not a moment too late...