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

Anna and I sat by the fireplace where Mother Grey and Mother Ali had been not very long before.

Nami, Headmistress of Lun Arcanicil and The Mother in Blue herself, stood before us with a defeated expression on her face.

"Wait, wait, wait. I need to understand this better. So you have not spent very much time soul searching, right?" She asked with her the thumb of her left hand held out.

"Right." I agreed as I stared back at her.

The way her hair shifted seamlessly from a shade that was so dark a blue it was almost black at its roots to the cold white of its tips had caught my eye for whatever reason. If it was a glamor, I was almost certain I could do it with Ire's black or my own red. I would not even need to understand why she wore it like that. She did, and just like Rhiannon's roses wearing the sandals like what I wore on my feet, that was enough for me.

"I don't blame you for that. Being a new moon is difficult enough for anyone, and you have far more to deal with than anyone your age should. But, nothing happened for weeks, and then something happened, right?" She asked.

"Right." I answered again.

I tried to imagine myself in one of the dresses she always wore. They were terribly thin and would offer no protection from the cold that draped Lun, but I did not think that was an accident.

I wore my sandals because I had come from Erosette, and if I ever went back there, I would be wearing the little silver moon hanging from my ear because I had come from Lun. She wore her dresses despite the cold because she had come from somewhere that was warm.

They were always some mix of blues, greens, and whites, but the way the colors mixed together were the opposite of what I would call a pattern. It was a wash, and none of them had ever been the same. Compared to how she looked in them, with her strong shoulders and long muscular legs, I would look like a soggy piece of bread. Too pale and soft for something so revealing. It would not flatter me the way it did her.

"So, something happened, but it was not a single moment of good fortune. You were able to repeat it?" She continued.

"Almost every day since it happened." Anna answered as she cut her eyes over at me.

A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it. I clamped my hands over my mouth and snorted in surprise. Anna let out a giggle, and both of us struggled to calm ourselves.

Nami could have gotten angry with us an uncountable amount of times since the other Mothers had left.

We had given her plenty of reasons, but she hadn't.

For better or worse, that only made me even fonder of her than I already was. From the first time I had met her in the room of dark water after Sorceress Ulet had brought me back from the mortal plane, I had liked her.

When I had known far less than the almost nothing I knew then, she had told me her name. Just before Underwitch Maletta had discovered my glamor, Nami had come and taken me away. Not only had she argued with Azza on my behalf, she had won and succeeded in ways that I did not know were possible. She had healed my ripped up ear and given me the jewelry that would I would not have been able to wear if it weren't for her.

Nami was like Rhiannon, I had felt that for a long time.

I just did not know what that meant.

"But when you have tried to explain it, the two of you speak so vaguely and laugh so often that it sounds like you are making it all up?" Nami sighed as she reached the same point in her questions that we had come to several times before.

"Right." I agreed again.

Nami shrugged and raised her eyebrows. "Well then, if you cannot tell me about it, show me?"

Anna and I's jaws dropped in open mouthed disbelief as our eyes met and both of us thought about doing what Nami had just asked us to do.

"That's even worse!" Anna cried as we fell into each other in yet another fit of laughter.

Nami looked to Alexei and held up her hands in defeat. "Can you help me understand this, Alexei? You spend more time around them than anyone."

"Headmistress, consider your own interests at their age. It should not be difficult from there." My white haired guard said from where he leaned against the wall.

Nami shook her head. "No, I have a hard time believing that finding fresh water and trying to not be eaten by a titan is what they are refusing to talk about."

"Not age then, station. What did you care about when you were a new moon?" Alexei asked.

"Hmmm," Nami said and put her hands on her hips. "I haven't thought about that in so long I'm not really sure. Impressing Katarina, avoiding Maletta, trying to not scare the other moons, things like that."

I could not keep my eyes from Alexei at the mention of his mother's name, but unsurprisingly, he didn't so much as blink.

He continued to question The Mother in Blue. "What else? After you adjusted, when you began to feel comfortable here, how did you spend your time? I believe I remember a classroom on Precept Bellum's floor being flooded and made to look like a beach."

"Oh! You mean Nixie? What does she-" Nami began as she turned back and looked at Anna and I.

Her eyes went wide.

"-Oh! Bellis's black maw, of course that's it! Red is rage and passion, I should have been able to tell by your swollen lips. Forgive me, being a Mother has not left much room for romance in my life." Nami said excitedly as understanding spread across her face.

It had been funny when she could not figure out what we were talking about, but now that she knew what Anna and I had to do to turn my eyes red, I felt myself begin to blush.

"I know that you sorceresses have a lot of different thoughts about that kind of thing, but I would rather not put on that kind of show in front of you and the creep, Mother." Anna said without a hint of the embarrassment I felt in her voice.

"There we are," Alexei said as he opened the door and made his leave. "I will be in the hall."

"Right," Nami said slowly as she followed the white haired man. "I have something to attend to, but if her red makes an appearance by some stroke of luck, call for me. I will not be far."

The door shut behind them with an audible click, and Anna and I were left alone in the room that had been full of Mothers not very long before.

"Am I crazy, or do they want us to make out right now?" Anna chuckled.

I stood up from the fireplace and wrapped my arms around myself like Azza had after she had seen my soul.

"We can't. That's private. And it probably wouldn't even work. I'm still trying to figure out why Gwyn was so scared of me." I said, thinking of being close to Anna and finding it impossible to not let my mind wander to everything else that had happened.

I did not realize that Anna had followed me up until she turned me around and put her hands on my hips.

"We can, we're alone, and I know for a fact that what I can do will turn those pretty green eyes of yours as red as your nails before you can count to ten." She said softly through a sleepy looking smile.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Her touch was cold, but after sitting by the fire for so long, the difference in temperature was pleasurable. Still, I resisted her.

"Right now, really? I'm all twisted up inside, remember?" I asked, not pushing her away but not sinking into her either.

She let out a little laugh and I nearly melted at the sound of it.

"Yes, right now, or any other time honestly. If you knew how much effort it takes for me to not wrap myself around you every time you come through the door, you would not be so surprised right now," She whispered as her hands crept from my hips to the small of my back. "And you are twisted up, but every time I make your red come out, even if it's just your eyes, I'm helping you get untangled."

Her hands went lower, and the realization that I had lost settled over me. I don't know why I was surprised, Anna could not be beaten.

"Let me help you, Autumn Aubrey." She whispered again as our lips grew closer and closer together.

The way she said my name, the feeling of her hands on me, and the scent of her breath swirled into something that was more powerful than any charm I could ever hope to make.

Then, just before we kissed, the door to the room swung open and banged against the wall loudly.

Anna's eyes went wide and I saw my red shining back at me within them as Alexei came sprinting into the room.

"You are a creep! You've been listening this whole time haven't you!" I shouted as the wonderful warm feeling that Anna had given me flared up into real anger.

"Shhh!" Alexei hissed as her hands went to the window overlooking the courtyard.

"No! I'm not going to be quiet. You couldn't even knock? You have to rush in and scare us like that? This is my super secret training and-" I began to rant.

Nami came striding into the room and cut me off. "What is it? Did she do it? Oh! She did! That's-"

Alexei cut her off. "All of you, quiet!"

I had never heard him yell before, but the power in his voice was enough to silence me, Anna, and The Mother in Blue.

"Listen," He said, his voice quiet once again as all of us did as he said. So slight that the crackling of the flames in the fireplace almost drowned it out, a gentle hissing could be heard underneath all the other sounds in the room. "Rain."

It never rained at Lun Arcanicil. Or at least, it was not supposed to.

A single drop struck the frosty glass of the paneled window at the back of the room and Alexei's reaction was as strong as if it had shattered. The white haired man did not jump back, he simply disappeared from the window and reappeared in the center of the room with his white sword partially unsheathed.

A second drop followed, and then just as quickly, a third. The rain fell fully then and filled the room with a roar of uncountable impacts.

"Alexei?" Nami said towards my guard, her eyes taking on a much different look than the good humor I had seen in them before.

My guard shook his head. "It is impossible, Nami. You know that as well as I. Even if he somehow escaped her, I searched every peak of Golgladdagell and every frozen mile of the coasts after the attack on the theater. If he were truly here, I would have found him."

Azeralphane. I thought to myself as my anger was washed away by the rain and I took Anna back into my arms.

Thunder struck loud enough to shake the window glass and rattle my bones alongside it. A memory of the wall of windows in the ballroom cracking and breaking from a storm came to the front of my mind. The way the air had felt just before the lightning had struck in Hymneth brushed against my skin like the touch of a ghost. It had been so long ago that I had forgotten how long it had been, but a vision of The Blue Death crept out of the blurry back of my mind. It came from a memory that was not mine, and I was nearly certain that it had not been truly he is but I saw him just the same.

Long white hair, pale blue skin, hypnotic yellow eyes, and a tongue that moved like a serpent when it left his mouth. I shivered at the thought and hoped that my guard had not been lying to me when he said that The Walking Storm did not exist.

Alexei's head snapped towards the door, and his sword came free of its sheath with a metallic chime.

"What is it?" Nami demanded.

"Someone is here. No, there are two of them. All of you stay, I will see to this." He answered and without another word, he was gone.

He left me, I thought. Again.

Nami came to where Anna and I stood. "You may stay here if you wish, but I must go. If what Precept Zetta tells me about your strength is true, then I will trust that you can protect yourself and your partner."

I opened my mouth to speak, but what I had meant to say and what actually came out were two very different things.

I had meant to ask her if she was sure.

"Do you love me like Rhiannon? Why do you treat me so differently than the others?" Was what came out. It was a true enough question, but I knew better than to think that was the right time to ask it.

Nami furrowed her brows at me before sighing and letting a smile peak out. "Time, maybe. I have only been a Mother for a short while, but I was someone like you for far longer than that."

"Oh." I said, trying to understand what she meant.

"Probably not though. Maybe it's just hard not to love you. Zetta talks about you like you are her daughter and she hates just about everyone," Nami continued as she started hurrying towards the door. "Come along, but stay back. I can't hear like Alexei can."

Back down the hall of paintings that Nami didn't like, through the door we had come through, down the dark stairwell, and out into the hall near the singing stairs, I followed Nami and Anna followed me.

The first thing I saw was Underwitch Maletta. Lun's strongest moon was still in the white robes she had been wearing in the dining hall earlier that week, but she was not alone. Struggling against her grasp was a woman that I did not recognize.

Her clothes were torn and her hair was a mess, but the screams that were trying to leave her mouth were muffled by a gag of iridescent aura that glittered between her lips.

"Master Alexei has gone to fetch Precept Cherith," Maletta shouted with a pained expression on her face. "It is Gell, Nami. I found her wandering the halls alone, but something is wrong with her. She's been charmed."

With as much effort as it would have taken me to straighten my dress, The Mother in Blue waved her hands in front of her middle and sent waves of her ocean blue washing out towards the struggling sorceresses.

"That is the sorceress that was taken from the theater, right?" Anna whispered as she hid behind my back.

The waves of Nami's aura washed over Sorceress Gell and brought her to the grey stones underneath her gently. Maletta let out a rough exhale as she fell straight back, and if it had not been for Nami's working, she would have hit the floor hard.

"You should have called for help," Nami scolded as she rode small ripples of her power down the hall to where the two sorceresses lay. "Look at you, you are bleeding right through your bandages."

"You weren't there. I was." Maletta growled as she wrapped her arms around her blood stained middle.

Running instead of just appearing, Alexei rushed over from the singing stairs with Precept Cherith close behind.

"Tend to Maletta, Cherry. She has overspent herself." Nami commanded.

Precept Cherith did just that, the beautiful sorceress threw herself to the floor near Maletta's head and laid her hands on Lun's strongest moon. "You should be in bed. First you sneak into the dining hall and now this, I am beginning to believe that you like being in pain."

NamI brought her hand to Gell's cheek and began to speak very softly. "Shhh, you are safe now. There is nothing to fear. Take a breath. You are safe."

Anna and I inched closer and we came to Nami's side just in time to see the iridescent working that covered Gell's mouth turn to dust.

When it did, she gasped for air and the breath turned to light in her mouth.

"Mother in Blue, oh, Mother in Blue," She said, but the voice did not fit her appearance. "Your treasures. The six things you hold the most dear, you will give them to me."

The voice was bitterly cold and felt like it was crawling into my mind with every word it spoke. "In your courtyard, when the night arrives that the knights arrive. You will give them to-"

Gell gagged and the voice stopped as Alexei appeared beside her. His one white eye glowing blue and his fingers cloaked in the same shade, he reached into the sorceress's mouth and pulled something out of it.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and after another sudden gasp, she went completely still.

Alexei stood and brought his other hand up to whatever it was that he held.

"I do not have an explanation, Headmistress, but I will find one." My guard said as he formed a sphere of his bright blue around the small working that he had pulled from Gell's mouth.

Nami looked up at him without taking her hands from the unconscious sorceress. "That was his voice, Alexei. We can deny it no longer. Azeralphane has returned. You heard it just the same as I did."

Alexei's fists clenched and the stone underneath his boots cracked in a burst of blinding blue. "Nami. Enough."

"I-" She started again, but Alexei had meant what he said.

Faster than my eyes could follow, he left the place in the floor that he had broken and reappeared next to The Mother in Blue.

"If he is here, do you understand what that means?" He asked, his voice so low that I could feel it in my chest.

Sadness touched my guard's face and the same expression appeared on Nami's.

His eye glowing so brightly that I could not look at it directly, I listened to him like I had never listened to anyone before.

"If he is here," He swallowed. "Then my mother is dead."