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

For as much as I needed her, for as much as I wanted her, for as much as I loved her, even I forgot just how strong those feelings were.

Zizicoltain opened its gargantuan maw and showed its pale blue fangs just as Anna put herself in front of me.

It would not harm her.

I would kill it. And if it proved true that spirits could not be killed, I would unmake it into a pile of glimmering motes. If that was beyond my mere talents, then I would die before it so much as touched one of her raven hairs.

My aura flared to life within me without me having to think about reaching for it.

If I wanted to make a big firework, one that could really hurt if I hit something with it, I normally had to wait and let it build behind my channel.

There was no waiting.

More than I had ever felt before filled me with so much pressure that it felt like I would be blown apart from the inside.

Just before I let my furious power loose and struck the terrifying creature that loomed over us, pain shot through my hand. It was pulled back and I was pulled along with it before I could roll onto my side and see what had harmed me.

Sam, with both of his long fangs sunk into the center of my palm, glared at me with so much anger in his eyes that it shocked me still.

"You have to-" I cried out.

He dug his fangs in further and let a low rumbling grow echo from his chest. His deep blue eyes glanced towards Anna and Zizicoltain once, twice, three times.

I never knew when my contemptuous familiar would be displeased with me, smack my face with his paws, or bite me, but I knew without a doubt that he was trying to tell me something.

Sam would not have bitten me for no reason.

Anna still stood between me and the spirit.

Her legs were shaking and her arms were wrapped around herself, but she did not turn away.

She did not turn away because Zizicoltain had turned away from her.

With one of its pale blue eyes still staring down at her, it slithered back into itself and hid its head behind the massive coils of its body. Motes of light filled the air as it went, swirling and spinning like embers from a fire.

As soon as the spirit's eye could no longer be seen, Anna collapsed.

"Go." Sam growled after unclenching his teeth from my hand and leaping towards my beloved.

It took me so long to understand what he had told me to do that he had already taken Anna's sleeve into his mouth and started dragging her back behind the wall of ice before I could make myself move.

All the way up the frozen tunnel, I chased after Anna as she was dragged up to where the ground started becoming dirt again.

I threw myself down to her side when Sam released her and took her face into my hands. "What were you thinking?"

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know," She cried, her voice high and panicked. "I couldn't let it-I'm crazy. I am actually crazy."

"What were you going to do?" I demanded, my heart pounding so hard that I thought it would burst from my chest.

She shook her head as she clutched my arms with her hands. "I don't know. I'm not a sorceress. I can't even walk fast without running out of breath."

Her panic turned to a shrill laugh and then something that was close to a sob. She pulled me down for a kiss before sitting up and realizing that I had bled all over her cheek.

"If the two of you are finished, it is no longer safe here. The presence returned while the mortal was protecting you. Let us leave these depths." Sam growled after Anna learned that he had bitten me and scowled at him.

She stood up and helped me so the same before she dusted herself off. "When was it ever safe? You led her to a monster."

"Which you inexplicably intimidated into retreat. Not even I have dared to stand before the spirit, and yet you threw yourself before it to protect my lady. I am in your debt." Sam said simply as he pushed his head against the back of my legs and forced me forward.

Anna looked down at him for a long moment before softening her posture through a sigh. "Do I get another skull?"

Sam padded past us and started back the way we had come. "Perhaps."

I had been asleep, falling asleep, or just waking up for most of the walk to the cave of ice, so I couldn't really remember, but it felt like the way back took twice as long. Once my heart settled back down and I finally took a proper breath, it felt even longer. By the time we climbed through a painting that I was certain I had never seen before and stepped into a bathroom that I had no memory of, I could barely stand.

Sam stayed with us until we passed the landing of the singing stairs that would have led me to Precept Cherith's classroom.

I let myself fall back onto the stairs and closed my eyes.

"I can't. I have to go to sleep." I groaned, the thought of seeing Tana being too exhausting for me to think of.

Sam took that as an invitation to leave. "Rest well, My Lady."

"Samsara, wait. Do you really think that I scared the snake away?" Anna called after him and asked as I slid down another step.

It hurt my hips and back, but it took less effort than walking.

Sam's tail swished violently behind him. "I am unsure. It may have been able to see that you were not a threat. Regardless, our debt will be settled."

"I'm pretty sure he just called me weak." Anna chuckled as she picked me up and helped me down the rest of the stairs.

Caerulus's lullaby had never sounded sweeter to me than it did then.

I'm almost certain that it put me to sleep somewhere before we reached our hall, but I was able to walk on my own the rest of the way to our door.

When Anna opened it for me, I had every intention to stumble forward and fall straight into the bed, but the sight of someone standing near the fireplace stopped me dead in my tracks.

"You have come earlier than I expected." Alexei said, his eye cast down at the flood of books and papers that littered our floor.

Anna stepped past me. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting." He said simply.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and shook myself awake. "Where have you been?"

"Fine, but why are you doing it in here?" Anna asked angrily.

Alexei looked up. "An eye for an eye. You went into my quarters, so it is only fair that I went into yours."

There was a long cut than ran across his right cheek and I saw several more on both sides of his neck.

"How do you know that?" I asked, having to blink away the blur that my rubbing had left in my vision.

"You are not the only one capable of stealth." He said with no emotion in his voice.

I stomped my foot in sudden anger. "You have been following me around this whole time?"

"Don't I always," He asked back as he leaned back against the wall. "I tried to ask you nicely how you were escaping me, and when you would not tell me, I was left with no choice. Although, I almost revealed myself when the two of you trespassed in my quarters."

I was so angry that I could barely speak properly. "The door was unlocked! I was worried about you."

My white haired guard smirked. "That should have been a sign of warning. Do I seem like one who would leave his door open for anyone to enter?"

Anna spoke quietly before I could respond, which told me exactly how angry she was.

"Did you destroy the library because Autumn beat you?" She said with all of her mother's steel plain to see on her face.

Alexei's one white eye narrowed as he turned his head in confusion. "No. I have been fighting my brothers for all of their lives. The ballroom has a window at the back of it because the hall and watchtower that once stood there was reduced to rubble."

"That's even worse." Anna growled.

My white haired guard's expression grew serious once again, but it did not harden into his mask of stone. "Our game has been truly enjoyable, but I cannot allow it to continue. You have found a way to slip from my watch, but if another were to find that way, a sorcerer or some other enemy of The Mothers, our playing could bring ruin to Lun Arcanicil."

"I," I started, meaning to yell at him again, but what he had said took the heat out of my anger. "I haven't thought about that."

He nodded. "But I understand the nature of reality. I do not expect something for nothing. So, I have sought guidance and come in humble defeat to trade. You have won, and I will give you whatever you desire for you to tell me how."

Alexei looked away from me and looked towards Anna and I's bed.

Like dust being beaten out of a rug, the blue remnants of the glamor that he had evidently placed before we had arrived fell off of what it concealed.

"Every color, cut, and style of dress I could find. If they do not fit, I will have a seamstress come to adjust them." He said as I looked at the dazzling mounds of fabrics that were piled onto my bed.

Before I could say anything, his eyes cut to the corner by the fireplace and another of his glamors fell.

An ornate cabinet with all the drawers pulled out appeared before my eyes. I could not see what they were filled with exactly, but whatever it all was glittered and shimmered in the firelight that danced off of it.

"Jewelry. Enough to buy Hymneth if you truly wished to." He continued, before looking to his side and revealing a third.

He walked over and offered me the two swords that had appeared in his lap. "When I was away and you kept my sword for me, I thought that you might like a set of your own. The colors should be an exact match, but I will replace them if my memory has failed me."

They were just like the ones that hung on his hip and the second set that was hidden away beneath the aura in his chest except for their length and their color. Instead of black and white, they were red and blue.

They were my shades of red and blue.

"I will train you myself, and you can tell everyone you meet that you were taught by the greatest swordsman in all of chaos." He added as he took my arms and placed the swords on top of them.

If I had not spent so much time around him, I wouldn't have been able to tell, but he was enjoying himself.

I could see it on his face.

Anna threw her head back and laughed. "You don't know anything about her do you? Dresses? She would be running around in nothing but her sandals if she had not been given uniforms."

"I thought you would feel that way," Alexei said as he turned his cold gaze to my beloved. "Follow me."

They went out into the hall, but there was far too much for me to look to think about going with them.

There were colors I could see in the mounds of dresses that I had never seen before, and none of them looked like they were anything close to silk. It was all I could do to not run over to the jewelry cabinet and put everything in it on all at once. One glance down at the swords was all I needed to imagine how carefully Tana would have to mind her words when I had them on my hips.

I wanted it all.

I probably wanted it more than Alexei wanted to know how I had escaped him.

But, there was something I wanted even more than that.

"Autumn, it's not fair. He made the storeroom down the hall a wine closet." Anna cried as she came back into our room.

Alexei appeared in the doorway, his one white eye searching my face silently.

I took one more look around at all of the terribly tempting things he had brought to trade, met Anna's eyes, and nodded.

"Fine. I will tell you," I said as I leaned down to place the swords gently on the floor. "but not for any of this."

A hint of a smile appeared at the corner of Alexis's mouth before disappearing completely.

"Then what will it take? I will play points with you." He asked as he crossed her arms and furrowed his uncovered brow.

"No." I said simply.

"I will arrange for the two of you to be moved upstairs to one of The Mother's quarters. There is no nicer room in Lun." He tried again.

I answered him just the same. "No."

He let out a slow breath and brought his hands back down to his swords. "I will have Spring Tana sent away from here."

That almost got me.

"You can do that?" I asked, not knowing what I would do if he said yes.

"No, but if that is what you wish for I will find a way." He said, and I could see in his eye that he meant it.

Still, I found myself wanting something even more than I wanted the wonderful dream that Tana being gone would create.

"I will tell you, but only if you teach me how to disappear like you do." I said honestly, the memory of Anna being in danger being far too bright in my mind for me to forget.

Alexei's expression turned to an open mouthed smile as he looked up towards the ceiling. "Give me patience mother, I beg you."

I could not let myself feel the joy I wanted to feel at seeing him smile like that.

He looked back down at me with a heavy sigh. "I cannot do that."

It was my turn to cross my arms. "Why?"

He shook his head in obvious frustration. "Because I can't. What else? There has to be something."

"That's what I want. I don't care if you don't want to teach me. That's it." I insisted, trying desperately to hide my smile.

He brought his hand up and massaged his temples with his thumb and pointer finger. "You do not understand. It is not a matter of want. I cannot teach you because you have not spent a decade walking across paper thin glass without breaking it. You have not trained your eye to understand the smallest details of every room you walk into. You were not born with the natural speed that I was. If I could give you all these things this very moment I would, but I cannot. The working is mine, it is impossible to teach it to another."

That made more sense than I wished it had, so I decided to ignore it.

"So? I learned how to make my fireworks from watching the real ones during Amoranora. My whip came from needing to reach something that was too far away. My aura wasn't blue until I needed it to be. I don't care if it's exactly what you do, I just want to do something like it." I said, holding my arms against my chest so hard that my shoulders were shaking.

Alexei laughed.

It was not small, it did not end quickly, and he did not try to hide it. For a long moment, I felt like I was seeing what he was like before Katarina had been lost.

"Remarkable," He said to himself as he brushed back a lock of his hair that had come loose and fallen down across his face. "I feel like I am speaking to a ghost. If that is what you wish, then we have reached an agreement. Come, it is customary to shake hands when the deal is made."

He offered his hand to me and I could not keep myself from smiling as I walked over to take it.

"Wait. Does that mean we get to keep everything else?" Anna asked aloud as I shook Alexei's hand.

Alexei sighed. "I suppose. Dragging it all in here the first time was bad enough."

"All this time I have been worried about you, and you were just off shopping." I laughed, so happy from getting what I wanted that I thought I might float.

His expression settling back into its usual nothingness, he turned back towards the door. "I do not intend to delay this any longer, let us find somewhere that I may teach you."

I looked past him towards the door and saw that someone was standing in it.

"That will have to wait, Alexei," The Mother in Grey said as she stepped into our quarters. "My time with her is about to begin."