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

"Autumn. Wake up. You can't sleep here." Anna said as she gave me a gentle shake.

I threw myself up and covered my face with my hands. "I wasn't."

"Then why was your werelight getting dim?" She whispered, a laugh playing at the end of her words.

A yawn took me and stretched me out until my hands and feet hit the walls that surrounded me. "It wasn't. You're going blind."

I slumped back against the wall, knowing that I wouldn't be cold anymore if I just went back to sleep. "I was dreaming."

"Tell me about it. What was happening?" She asked as she pulled me back up by my arms.

I yawned again. "I don't know. Warm. By a sea. Soft grass. I'm gonna go back."

"No, no, no," She chuckled quietly. "You have to stay here with me."

I smiled a sleepy smile and tried to pull her back down with me. "You can come."

"But what about Gup? I still haven't seen him and I miss seeing your red." She said, pulling back against my attempt to bring her with me.

I heard Anna's feet shift against the dirt packed ground, but could not bring myself to care.

The soft tone in her voice shifted along with it. "Wait. No. Don't do-"

Light bloomed behind my shut eyelids as pain spread across my face.

"Awaken. We have little time." Came a hushed growl from what could have only been my contemptuous familiar.

The edges of my warm dream by the sea frayed and tore apart completely as I threw myself up and covered my face once again.

"Why are you like this? If you had not dragged her out of bed this early, she wouldn't be falling asleep." Anna whispered harshly.

Sam hissed. "This is the only opportunity she will have. If you had not insisted on trailing after us, mortal, then the necessity for my increased caution would not exist. Enough. The way is clear and she is awake. Come."

I hated it when they fought.

Which meant I hated most of the time that they were in the same room, but there was nothing I was willing to do about it.

As soon as my face stopped stinging from the pain that Sam had caused, we continued down the tunnel that my familiar was leading us through.

"We will reach a point where both of you must be silent once again. This is not a suggestion, it is a requirement," Sam growled back at us, the blue glow of my werelight making it difficult to keep my sleep burred eyes on him. "In that silence, she will step out, see where I have brought her, and return."

Anna looked back at me and squinted her eyes. "It's not she, it's we, cat. I'm going with her."

Sam stopped dead in his tracks and whirled around.

"Understand this mortal, if I am forced to make a choice between her safety and yours, I will not hesitate." He growled, every one of his bared fangs showing just how serious her was.

Anna laughed once. "Good. That's how I feel too."

"Then we are in agreement. As long as you accept the danger you put her in, you may go with her." My familiar agreed, giving Anna permission to do something that he would have likely had to force her to not do.

I held my hands out to both of them.

"No we aren't. I don't even know where,"Another yawn took my breath from me and I could do nothing but let it pass. "We are going."

Anna rubbed my back and let me lean my tired weight against her. "Neither do I. Why couldn't you just tell us? Then she could have gotten the sleep she needs."

Sam let out a shapeless growl in obvious frustration. "Because I seem to be the only one that values her desire to witness things with her own eyes."

"Wait," I said, throwing my hand up again. "If you have to choose between saving Anna or me, you save Anna."

"No." Both of them said in unison and I was too tired to argue any further.

Sam turned back around. "You both will step out, see it, and return. We must press forward before the opportunity passes."

We started following after him again, but it did not take long for Anna to take issue with a different part of our journey through the tunnels beneath Lun.

"If you can feel something down here that wants to hurt her, then why even risk bringing her down here?" She asked, her voice returned to a quiet whisper.

Sam carried on without answering.

"You didn't even think about that did you?" Anna called out to him.

Sam stopped again as all the mottled blue hairs on his body stood on end. "If this is a sign of how it will be when she decides to leave this place, you will need to find your own way out. There is nothing I have not thought of. I have only brought her this deep when I was certain that what wishes to take her away was absent. I will not stand to have my intelligence questioned further, mortal. You forced yourself into this. If you cannot do as I say, then I will force you out."

I took her by her hand and squeezed it. "Leave him be, I don't want to do this without you."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Fine. Let's go." She said through a long sigh.

All things considered, even with Sam and Anna arguing so much, it was my favorite trip through the inner halls that I had ever taken.

For one, I wasn't wearing my sandals. When I had told Anna that Sam was going to come for me early the next morning, she had laid out layer after layer of warm clothes for me to wear. I was still cold, and my black lace boots still made my feet hurt, but I wasn't shivering like I had been any of the times before.

The second reason that I was enjoying myself as much as someone could when they were doing what I was doing was because of Nami.

I was still worried about The Mother in Grey coming for me at the end of the day, but I had told Anna everything that The Mother in Blue had said to me after Tana had healed the fawn, and she could find no fault in it.

It only made sense that Nami's opinion of me truly leaned towards the Rhiannon side of things and that was enough for me for now.

The third reason was the simplest.

Anna was with me.

That made everything better.

What I had learned about tunnels after spending so much time in them recently was that they all looked the same. There were turns, dips, and rises, but there was really no way for me to know how far we walked or how long we had been in there. After some unknowable distance, and an uncountable amount of time, we came to a solid wall of dark gray stone.

Sam passed through it like it was nothing at all, and I realized that we had come to another glamor.

"Wait." Anna said before we crossed over like my familiar had a moment before.

His voice came growling back through, but it sounded muffled and distant. "What is it now, Mortal?"

"Who made these? You said the dust from the one in Katarina's study was a deep blue, but we don't know who's that is. Doesn't it seem important to know?" She asked as she pressed her hand against the illusion.

I did not know, so I said nothing as I took the opportunity to close my eyes for a moment.

"I can understand that reasoning." Sam agreed, and sounded like it hurt him to do so.

"How do we find out? How do we turn it to dust?" Anna asked.

Sam spoke again in his muffled voice. "She would have to break it. Which is unwise, we should leave no trace of-"

I reached my hand out and placed it against glamour before letting a small amount of my aura pass through my channel. It wasn't a firework, just shapeless power, and I was happy when it did not pop or make a sound.

I broke it.

The sound of dust falling to the dirt floor told me that.

"Whoa," Anna said as I opened my eyes to see her kneeling down. "How do you know how to do that?"

"I didn't, I just wanna go back to bed." I admitted and took the handful of broken aura she offered me.

At first, I thought it was colorless like my mother's or my own before I found my red. It glimmered and shone just like it, but when I held it up to my werelight, a wave of faint purple washed over it.

"Children, come. There will be time for this later." Sam said as Anna took a handful and pushed it into the pocket of my uniform jacket.

We did as we were told, and continued down the tunnel as the air around us began to grow even colder. The ground began to change as we went. Small patches of ice littered the floor and the walls before giving way to larger sheets and sections.

Anna and I walked with our arms around each other, but that seemed like it was mostly for me because she didn't look cold at all.

Sam stopped just before we reached the place where the ice encased the tunnel completely. "Extinguish your werelight, My Lady. This is the place where we must be silent. Say nothing, walk carefully, and make no noise."

I did as he said and let my little azure light fade. I thought we would be left in the dark once it was gone, but faint light leaked out dimly from farther down the frozen tunnel.

"You both will step out, see it, and return. Repeat my words back to me so I know both of you understand." Sam gave another command.

Both of us did in puffs of white breath.

The tunnel of ice left us no choice but to walk carefully. Being able to look back and see its beginning told me how far we had come until all that was left was darkness. We reached its end after not very long at all, but it was not a glamor that we stopped in front of.

It was a wall of solid ice, like what Ranus was frozen within, and pale blue light shone through from the other side.

A mote of it drifted past my face as we crept towards the small passageway on the left side of the wall. Another followed quickly after and then there were too many for me to count.

I stepped out from behind the wall and Anna followed close behind me.

We saw it.

There was only the motes, and the spirit that they swirled off of.

Seeing Opa for the first time in the woods behind the boarding house had left me feeling scared and amazed. The little owl spirit still did every time he came flying out of Arthur's chest and took to the sky.

Zizicoltain left me too awestruck to know what I felt.

Katarina had not slayed the serpent, it had become a spirit.

It was too much for my mind to take in all at once.

Pale blue coil after pale blue coil of its colossal body pressed against the icy walls that surrounded it. I could not tell where it began or where it ended, but I knew that I had never seen anything that big.

Not Arthur, Schwarz, Fetti-Gami, Amabura, or Durath could compare. Not even the faded memory of a seabeast named Jotuza felt anywhere near as daunting.

I likely would have stood there and stared at it until I froze to death if it had not been for Anna, placing her hand gently on my back. Her eyes were just as wide and full of pale blue light as mine were. Meeting them reminded me that I was alive and capable of movement.

Sam had told us to step out, see it, and return.

As soon as I stepped back and stumbled over my own feet, all I could think of was that he had not mentioned tripping once.

Anna tried to catch me, but we were standing on solid ice, my fall came quick and hard.

The sound that came from me hitting the frozen ground was not very loud, but the gasp that slipped through my lips was loud enough.

Slowly, the coils of Zizicoltain began to turn as it raised its head up from within itself.

I had no illusions over what was about to happen to me. I had been inside its terrible maw before, and the spirit looked even larger than the remains.

One bite.

That's all it would take for me to be no more.

It turned its head around from the back of the cave and leveled me with its petrifying gaze.

Is this how Sam felt when the lich came for me? I wondered what was likely to be one of the last things I would ever wonder about.

If only I could have grabbed Anna and hurried her through the blur like Alexei had done with me the morning that I told a group of moons that he was Azeralphane.

But no, of course I couldn't. I could only make messes, ribbons, cords, whips, werelights, and fireworks. None of them were even close to being as ushering as what my absent guard could do.

My only hope was that my bones were hard enough to give Anna a chance to escape while Zizicoltain tried to break through them.

That hope died when Anna did not run.

With even less power than the little I did have, she stepped in front of me and stared down the monstrous spirit that I had awoken.