The Near Infinite Names of Autumn Aubrey (Psychological Fantasy Progression)

It turned out that morning light did not reach the balcony of Anna and I's room until just before midday.

If it had happened even an hour earlier, The Mother in Gray would have arrived to find me still lost in the deep sleep that had taken me the night before.

Instead, she had found me looking over her sunlit city from the unguarded balcony.

I was so fresh from the unfamiliar shower in the bathroom that I was still wet behind my ears, but that was only because it had taken Anna and I so long to learn how to make it work.

It was not built into the wall like the one we used in Lun. Upon my first look at it, it seemed to be little more than a tall square of solid glass. When we finally learned which tiles on the floor of it were tiles and which were triggers, water had begun to fill it from the bottom.

It had risen all the way up to my jaw, and I would have stayed standing in it forever if I could have found a way to keep the water from cooling.

"If you would prefer something warm to break your fast, it costs little." The Mother in Gray said as she came to where I sat on the balcony.

I shook my head and tried to choke down the mouthful of cold chicken I had just bitten. "This is good."

I could feel her haunting silver eyes on me, but as soon as I turned away from the city of stairs, she looked away.

"Keeper Anna, I will ask you to remain here until Underwitch Autumn's punishment has concluded. The guards and the steward will continue to be available to you if there is anything you need. I will have you both returned to Lun Arcanicil before dusk." She said as she walked back towards the door with her soundless steps.

Anna came and wrapped her arms around me.

"If anything goes wrong, run back here and we will jump right off that balcony." She whispered into my ear.

I kissed her on the cheek and gave her a real smile. "I will see you when I have finished."

Just like when The Mother in Gray had appeared in the doorway of Anna and I's quarters, it surprised me how little fear I felt considering what I was going to do.

I had spent most of a week being scared because of her letter, but since my punishment had actually arrived, that feeling had vanished.

It had not been that long ago that I had been waiting for Rhiannon and her lover's kindness to be revealed as a cruel trick. It had not been, but had I truly become so used to my punishments since then?

I had not seen a single grain of sand since we came through the black gate. There were no beasts chasing me or thorns tearing at my clothes. Many things confused me about The Mother in Gray but I did not believe her to be the one who would talk about a night she had spent with my one eyed guard and then drive her fist into my middle.

The thing that lived inside my belly told me so.

Whatever she had planned for me, I had been through worse.

"This shall be your punishment," Gray said once she stopped in front of the massive metal door that we had passed the night before. "Reach the innermost chamber of this room in the allotted time, and your punishment shall end. If it is found that this task is beyond you, your punishment will end. Do you understand?"

"You want me to walk into a room? That's it?" I asked, confused at how little that sounded like a punishment at all.

Gray nodded once without looking at me. "Yes. Follow me, we will go to your starting place."

She still wore her black and white shirt from the day before, her hair was still up, and her feet were still bare, but for the first time since the last time she had seen my soul, there was something in her voice.

The flat tone she always spoke in, the perfectly even voice that made it impossible to tell what she was feeling, came quicker that morning.

I wanted to hear it more.

I wanted to know why what she had asked of me was so simple.

I wanted to know what had made her leave the room the first time she followed me inside myself, what Nami and Azza said they would have to tell me if they would not.

"Do you live here?" I asked her as we started up an entirely different set of stairs than we had taken the night before.

"At times. Although, this is not the place I call my home." She answered.

"I like your clothes." I said without letting a moment pass.

"Thank you. I can have you fit with some like it before you depart if that is what you wish." She thanked me and offered.

In the same rhythm that I had spoken in twice before, I asked her a second question. "Are you being kind to me because you know what my soul looks like?"

Nami had said much the same thing about Azza after she had apologized to me at the end of my second super secret training.

If I had not spent so much time following her, it likely would not have seemed remarkable, but her foot made a sound when it met the next step she climbed and she paused.

It was just long enough for me to see it, but that was long enough.

My question had caught her off guard.

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She caught me off guard in return by actually giving me an answer.

"That may be true in part. Seeing someone's inner most self is not an easily dismissed experience." She said as we reached the top of the stairs

All my time with Alexei had taught me better than to push further. Keeping her talking was far more important than asking the things I wanted to ask right then.

"Have you done it often?" I said as I mirrored her movement and turned around to look down the way we had come.

Still refusing to look at me, her silvery eyes went up to the sleek black ceiling above us. "If my memory is correct, you were the first since Ola Gresha was named The Lady in Orange."

"Whose did you like more? You can tell me, I won't be mad." I said, remembering the sorceress that had taken Reese under her wing.

She was lean but not tall, tan, blonde, and had a scar at the corner of her mouth that made it look like she was smiling even when she wasn't.

All there was inside me was a bunch of twisted up knots and white nothing.

There was no telling what her soul looked like compared to mine.

"Souls should never be compared, but in truth, I enjoy yours more. I have never cared for the sea however," She answered, surprising me yet again. "Now, it is best if we begin. When I am out of your sight, you will have fifty four minutes to reach the inner chamber. Time will begin when you leave this step. Are you prepared?"

Oh, right, we were not just talking. I was with her for a reason.

"Yes, I think so." I said with a nod and watched her walk back down the steps that I would be as soon as I could no longer see her.

I did understand what I was being asked to do, but I did not know why. And, if she had not left me so quickly, I likely could have gotten somewhere with my questions.

I waited until she was gone, and then spent a while longer wondering why she did not like the sea before I finally took a step down.

She had not lied to me.

Time started as soon as the bottom of my sandal met the marble underneath it.

The dull clicking that I had heard through the massive metal door the night before returned, but it was loud enough that I flinched as it echoed out.

"Fifty four minutes." I said under my breath as I continued down the stairs to the sound of the clicks.

How it was going to take me almost a full hour to walk in a room, I did not know, but I decided that I did not need to. I would do as she asked, Anna and I would go back to Lun, and that would be the end of it.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I saw no one or anything that was any different than it had been before. I had to force myself to not walk in time with the sound of the clicks as I went to the small entrance that had been revealed by the opening of the massive door. An empty hall was all that greeted me, with a door at the end of it and several more on either side.

With nothing else for me to do, I went towards the one at the end even though trying to reach the innermost chamber of any place could have meant any direction.

Going forward just felt more in.

A door opened on my right just as I passed it, and I spun on my heels in sudden fright.

"Who goes there! Begone, foul villain!" A man shouted as he bent at his knees and pointed the end of a long spear at me.

I backed against the wall as quickly as I could and held my breath.

The man was dressed just as the guards outside of Anna and I's room were. Black tights on his arms and legs, a silver coat of small chains draping down from his shoulders, and a section of cloth that covered every part of his face below his eyes.

Unlike the guards, he looked absolutely furious.

Did he not know who I was? Did he not know what I was doing?

"Stand down, Merick." Came Gray's flat voice from the door opposite the one the guard had appeared from.

I tried to meet her eyes, but she did not return my wide eyed stare. "I don't know what I did. Whatever it was, I'm sorry."

Gray walked to the man named Merick and raised the crystalline point of his spear away from me with a single finger. "You were early by twenty six seconds."

"Forgive me, Mother. I have long aw-" Merick tried to apologize as he relaxed from his stance.

"She is not a foul villain," Gray interrupted him, her tone still flat but coming quicker like it had before. "You would not be announcing your presence like a foolish guard in a play. And, you would have no reason to be angry."

Merick hung his head. "Yes, Mother. Of course."

"We must try again. Will you please return to your starting place, Underwitch Autumn." Gray asked as Merick walked back through the door that he had come from.

"Yes?" I answered with a question, only growing more confused with what my fifth punishment was proving to be.

Gray nodded to herself as she went back through her own door. "From the top of the stairs to the inner chamber, remember that."

It took me a moment to remember that I was supposed to be doing something.

When I did, I went back down the hall, through the entryway behind the metal door, over to the marble staircase, and back up them. The clicking sound had stopped sometime during The Mother's call for beginning again, but it began once again as soon as I took the first step.

I went faster that time, taking two steps for every click that sounded in my ears.

Once again, there was no one in the hall through the entryway, but I found myself watching the door and waiting for Merick to appear again.

He did, but only after I had opened the door at the end of the hall.

"Oh, what is this? Hello, child. Have you gotten-" He started in an overly nice tone.

"Early. Seven seconds," Gray said as she stuck her head out through her door. "You have just recovered from coldroot. Your pace would still be slowed by the sickness."

Merick nodded to himself as he backtracked for the second time. "Yes, Mother."

"Once more, Underwitch Autumn." Gray said to me as she pulled the door shut and left me alone.

What is happening? I asked myself as I went back down the hall, through the entryway, up the stairs, and turned back around again.

Taking steps only in the silence between the clicks that time, I did it all once more just like I had been asked.

I had it all the way through the door and let it shut behind me before Gray stopped me for the third time.

"I heard it shut, Mother." I heard the angry eyes guard say from the other side of the door.

"You did not." Gray disagreed.

"I understand." Merick agreed with her disagreement.

The door opened behind me and Gray did not look at me with her haunting silver eyes. "I will ask you to begin again once more, Underwitch Ire."

"Am I doing something wrong?" I asked before she could slip away.

Her answer came quicker than anything I had ever heard her say. "No. I am entirely to blame. Let us begin again."

There was something in the way she said it that would not let me put her words out of my mind.

Stepping onto the first step for the fourth time that morning, I wondered just how much of the fifty four minutes I had been given I would actually see.