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

Never in my life had I become so angry with someone that was nowhere near me.

How was it fair that Alexei could literally disappear just because he felt like it, but I had to break into cold sweat because I was terrified of being discovered?

All he had to do was lean against walls and look like he was made of stone. What did he need such a convenient power for?

There were so many times in the short part of my life that I could remember that actually disappearing would have been helpful that I had forgotten half of them.

I could have been halfway back to my room in Precept Cherith's hall instead of trying desperately to sink into the wall behind me.

By her movement alone, I recognized the first of the blurry silhouettes that came into the room.

"No. I have been over this a thousand times. You, me, and every other healer in Zenithcidel have all tried everything we can think of. I am not strong enough. We can't keep pretending-"

Nami. I said to myself, her presence bringing several other feelings to the cold fear that had already taken me.

"-I'm not her, I can't do the things she could, and I will never be able to."

I knew her well enough to know that something was wrong.

Even when we had been in Precept Jasna's quarters and I had held her through her afterglow, she had not sounded the way she did then.

She stepped onto the rug that I had disturbed not very long before. Her shape tipped backwards as the rug slipped across the stone beneath her.

Before she could hit the ground, before she could truly begin to fall, the second silhouette reached out and caught her with one hand.

"You must stop saying these things before you begin to believe them." I heard the second silhouette say as she pushed Nami back onto her feet and held her steady.

The lich could have come creeping in behind The Mother in Blue and it would have scared me less than who was actually there.

Tall, slender, and moving with an impossible grace, I was left with no doubt about who else had arrived with Nami.

Azza.

Already having no space left to back into, instinct pushed me harder against the wall and I slowly turned my feet inward to keep them from sticking out past the bottom of the curtain.

"So, this is her study? More times than I care to remember, I sat and waited in her quarters while she was holed away in here." Azza said as she turned Nami towards the shrines that I hid behind.

Any anger at not being able to disappear left me.

If I could have died at that very moment, I would have accepted my end with no complaint.

Azza had never wanted me to come to Lun.

Azza had never wanted me to be anywhere but buried underneath her sand.

If she finds me. . . I thought and found that I could not even imagine what terrible things would likely happen to me.

It did not matter to me that she had apologized to me the last time I had seen her.

If her seeing my soul had truly changed her or not, I did not care.

She was still the same Azza that had buried me alive.

She was still the same Azza that had come to my rescue during The Mother in Green's punishment, but that felt much less important as she was walking straight towards where I was hiding.

I held my breath once again and closed my eyes, desperately hoping that I would suddenly gain the ability to move through stone like Alexei had when he had transformed into a ghost.

Those desperate thoughts were not for nothing.

Just as Azza's shape reached the third statue, the wall disappeared behind me and I fell straight back.

I did not fall far, but I could not stop the sound of me collapsing back into whatever was behind me.

Azza's and Nami's shapes snapped still as I covered my mouth with my hands and started dreaming about death once again.

"What was that?" Azza said as she turned back to look at Nami.

Three things happened all at once.

I crouched down as quietly as I could and pushed myself further against the hard surface behind me, something struck the top of my head on its way down to my lap, and Sam appeared before me.

I heard Nami start to speak. "I don't-"

Sam's eyes changed from deep blue to a vibrant yellow. As my contemptuous familiar vanished and left Othersam standing in his place.

So fast that I thought he tore a hole through the purple fabric that concealed us, he burst into sudden movement.

The quiet that had filled the room before The Mothers had arrived gave way to sudden chaos.

Books thumping against the floor, the frightened screams of The Mothers, wild growls from Sam, glass breaking, and all manner of other sounds that I could not recognize filled the air.

"Is that Aubrey's familiar? What is it doing here?" Azza called out, her shape snapping from one direction to the other as she followed the sounds of Sam's chaos.

Nami reached Azza's side and flinched as something else shattered on the other side of Katarina's crystal. "I don't know! He got into the inner halls a few weeks ago, but I have never-oh no, don't!"

Whatever Nami did not want Othersam to do, he did.

Something hit the floor hard and broke against the stone.

"That was a gift." Nami said in a tone that was something between a sigh and a cry.

Azza's shape took a hard step forward. "Enough."

The power in Azza's voice made the skin around the scars she had left on me crawl. Whatever she was about to do would not be good for my familiar.

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A mountain of writhing sand? Unimaginable pressure and weight? Gold that spread like flowing water? I did not know what Sam was capable of, and I knew even less about Othersam, but Azza was Azza.

I had seen what could truly only be a small fraction of her power, and that was enough to know that whatever she willed would be.

The Mother in Brown knelt down and held her hand out to where my familiar must have been.

Sam! Run! I shouted at him in my mind.

"Pssp, pssp, pssp. Here, you little devil. Come to me." Azza called out, her voice soft and warm.

Nami's silhouette took a step back. "I would not do that if I were you. I don't think he's very nice."

"No cat is nice. There are only brief moments between displeasure and apathy. I have lived with them long enough to know that better than most." Azza said with a little laugh.

Both of their shadows joined with the dark place the statue made on the purple curtain that I hid behind.

Othersam let out a sound that vaguely resembled something a cat would actually make. "MEOW."

Nami and Azza both broke into laughter at the sound of my familiar's greeting.

Azza's voice grew even softer. "There, that is not so bad. You cannot destroy things just because you wish to. Do you understand this?"

"MEOW." Othersam replied.

"Would your cats even think he is a cat?" Nami asked.

Azza laughed once again. "Of course. He would likely usurp Butter without having to try."

"Butter is the brown one right?" Nami asked.

Azza stood and left the cover that the statue provided her. "No. She is white, with the long tail? Do you not remember? She scratched your face the first time that you visited me."

"She is still alive? That was so long ago!"

Nami cried out in obvious surprise.

Azza's shape turned to face me and I saw that she was holding my big blue cat of a familiar in her arms. "Why am I to be judged when Rhiannon keeps her harem of men? They are only cats. And besides, if The Silken Queen would have favored me with a familiar, keeping my companions alive would not be necessary at all. Do you understand this?"

"I take it that Durath will still not bond with you?" Nami shook her head and asked as she peered down at the cradled Othersam.

The name of the familiar that the warden had called a sphinx brought memories of riddles and threats of being consumed back to my mind.

"I have been trying to befriend that beast for longer than I can remember and it still will not give me the time of day." Azza said with a sad sounding sigh.

Because Hexis likes me more than you. I thought angrily at Azza.

It had only been a few days since Sam had cut me to shreds for trying to hold him. How was it fair that someone I had every right to call an enemy could come in and tote him around like a sleeping kitten?

"It could still happen. Maybe you just have not needed to have one yet," Nami said as she dangled her fingers above Othersam's face. "I have never seen him be this calm. Half the time he is around Underwitch Autumn, it feels like he hates her."

Othersam reached up and pawed at Nami's hand playfully.

"Do not curse me with such luck. I could not withstand learning that my journey is only beginning. Even if it meant receiving something as cute as this." Azza said as she lifted Othersam high enough for him to catch Nami's hand.

Trying to free herself from my cute familiar's grasp, Nami went rigid. "Wait. You can talk can't you? Why are you in here?"

"MEOW." Othersam rumbled for the third time.

Almost too quickly for me to see, he turned in Azza's arms and bounded off of her chest. His silhouette leapt through the air and disappeared from my view.

"Don't break anything else! Please!" Nami shouted after him.

He must have done something in response to her request because both Mothers laughed once again.

Still hiding inside the wall behind the shrines, I wondered if either of them remembered when Azza had punished me.

It had been Nami who had forced Azza to release me from my living tomb. If she had not come, if she had not done what she did, there would have been even less of me left for Bool to find.

One of them had done that to me, the other had stepped in to stop it, and they were laughing together.

In that moment, the sound of it made me feel so small that I pulled whatever had fallen onto my head to my chest and wished that I could hide all of myself behind it.

Their laughter faded and Katarina's study grew quiet for the first time since Othersam's rampage had begun. Both of their silhouettes left my sight in a much less exciting way than Sam had, and just when I thought they had left the room altogether, Azza cleared her throat.

"How is she? Is she doing well?" Azza asked, her voice just loud enough for me to hear.

Nami had not become as quiet as The Mother in Brown had.

"All of my moons seem to believe that she defeated Maletta in a duel. So, yes, I would say she is doing well. Zetta has asked her to be her apprentice in Velcreis." Nami laughed from somewhere that must have been across the room.

"Yes, I have heard," Azza sighed. "Because that is what all of us need most, that enigma of a girl to be trained by one of our most lethal sorceresses."

"Now that I have heard you say it, that is a good word for her." Nami agreed.

It was likely my imagination, but I felt Azza give The Mother in Blue a harsh golden glare. "Yes. That is why I said it."

"But she is still just a girl. And a rather lovable one at that. I think that it would be good for you to come to her next super secret training." Nami continued.

Azza's shadow appeared on the purple fabric I hid behind momentarily, but then she was gone again.

"What a ridiculous name, and you know that is not true. She is a girl, but the unfortunate truth is that she is not just that." Azza snapped back, sounding more like herself than she had for most of the conversation.

I leaned forward onto my hands as quietly as I could.

Azza continued. "How I wish that I had not seen her soul. I have not slept through the night since."

"Have they ever been like this before? I don't have very much experience with them." Nami asked as she appeared just like Azza had, but she did not disappear quite so quickly.

"When they first named me The Mother in Brown, yes. It took decades before I truly felt like they were my sisters. I thought those days were past, but from the time that she first found her blue, I have repeatedly learned that I was mistaken." Azza sighed again.

I crawled forward further and found that the floor of the small space I was inside was covered in a deep blue dust.

Nami sighed back at her. "If they continue to turn us away, we have to tell her ourselves. You know that."

Tell me what? I thought to myself, very nearly tipping forward and exposing myself to The Mothers.

"I am ashamed of how much I fear that coming to pass," Azza said as she appeared again and walked straight towards where I was hidden. "But, enough. She has taken far too much space in my mind lately. Until they all stop hiding in the temple and choose to tell us the truth, I cannot think of her any longer. Who is this? I recognize the statues of Alres and Ranus, but this one is not known to me."

Tell me what? I shouted in my mind.

Nami's shape appeared beside Azza and I was forced to hold my breath once again. "I asked her about it once and all she would say is that he was a friend. But, we should go back. I don't know what she expects to find, but Cherry is waiting for me to bring her this book. Getting the corruption to slow at their shoulders has reinvigorated her."

Tell me! I screamed silently, wanting nothing more than to leap out of the wall and force them to tell me what they would have to tell me if whoever they were talking about did not tell them the truth.

Their silhouettes leaving my sight and their voices growing quieter as they left the study, I heard Azza say one last thing before the room went silent. "Perhaps she could use that vigor to heal the heart of a grieving mother. Rory has been dead since long before you were named a Lady, and I have yet to find a way to bring her mother piece."

After a long moment spent trying to hear them once again, the purple fabric in front of me was pulled away and Othersam appeared at my nose.

"I learned how to walk through walls like Alexei." I groaned as I pushed myself back onto my legs.

"No, ignorant child. You broke through a glamor." My contemptuous familiar replied.

I understood that Othersam, the cute and cuddly version of Sam, was gone.

He had let Azza hold him.

All I got to do was be insulted.

Just as I began to grow angry with him, he pushed his big head against my leg and let out a thunderous purr. "But it was one that I was unable to find. Well done, My Lady."