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

"They were just standing there looking at me. And all the way down to our quarters after class, I kept catching other moons looking at me." I explained, trying my best to get my words out through the heavy breaths that wracked my chest.

Sam did not seem to care about my newfound fame. "Just because we have reached the depth that prevents us from being overheard does not mean you must speak."

"That doesn't worry you at all? Have you forgotten that I am not who everyone thinks I am?" My voice turned into a groan as we finally reached a place that I could stand fully.

Crawling up to my feet and stretching my arms high above my head, I realized that I had not been half as smart as I thought I had been that morning.

Tucking my rolled up stockings into my cloak had not been a dumb idea. Putting them on after Sam had come for me had not been either. Thinking that they would be enough to keep me from freezing like I had last time, that had been my mistake.

A chill ran through me as I stretched, and I accepted that while I was with my familiar, I was just going to be cold.

"What concerns me," Sam began answering my last question as he turned onto something that resembled a narrow hall. "Is your ability to defeat Lun's strongest moon when she means to redeem herself. You have been rewarded for disobedience far too many times for me to fear your discovery."

"What does that mean?" I asked, bunching the hem of my cloak in my hands so it would not catch on the uneven edges of the rocky wall.

Sam was so blue, that in the azure shadows of my werelight, he almost seemed to disappear.

If not for his rumbling thunder of a voice, I likely would have lost track of him several times in the twisting tunnels we crept through.

"All sorceresses are petty and childish. She will not stand for being thought of as weak." Sam explained without slowing down his too quick pace.

I didn't like that.

I didn't like that at all because I knew the truth.

Maletta could do whatever she wanted to me and there was very little I could do to stop it.

It had been luck, anger, and desperation that had let my low blow strike true.

If Sam was right, it was not hard to imagine what Lun's strongest moon would do to change the way that everyone was thinking about her.

Not very long after, my big blue cat of a familiar stepped into a wall and vanished from my sight.

I followed in his tracks without hesitation. Just like the first time several days ago, it felt like I was running straight into an actual wall, but then the glamor gave way and Sam appeared in my azure light once again.

Gone was the dirt, narrow halls, and twisting tunnels. With one step, I had been returned to somewhere that looked almost like Lun. The stones were different, rounder and less uniform, but there were stones. The hall was not nearly as wide as what lay above, but it was a hall. There was only one major difference between where we were and the halls that filled the school above. Small gems, no bigger than the nail of my thumb, had been set into the floor, walls, and ceiling.

Tiny azure motes, like stray ash from a fireplace, flitted off of my werelight as I passed underneath them. Whenever the motes were drawn all the way to the little gems and vanished into them, an icy blue glow began to light my way.

"Where are we?" I whispered to my familiar as I skipped to the next set of surrounding stones and watched as they were lit as well.

Sam growled out his answer as we walked. "A place of flux. The end of something and the beginning of something else."

"I don't-" I started, confused and distracted.

Sam cut me off as he continued. "These are some of the personal quarters of The Mother in Blue. Your obsession with Katarina's memories made me believe that you would gain something from seeing them."

My eyes still focused on the little blue gems, I did not realize that I had reached the end of the hall until I tripped on the curled up rug.

It slid underneath me as my hands and knees hit the hard floor.

After tripping and falling so many times in my short life, I had hoped that I would develop some kind of tolerance for the pain. How long it took me to unclench my teeth and take a breath told me that my hope was little more than a dream.

Sam came to me and gave me a disappointed scowl. "The purpose of entering this place without disturbing the locks on the door was to conceal our presence. We must hope that anyone who enters here is not familiar with its usual state."

"I will try to remember that next time I trip over something." I grunted as I stood.

Everywhere the square rug had been before I had so thoughtlessly fallen on it was clean and free of dust. Everywhere it had not been looked like years had passed since someone had swept.

"As you should." Sam growled in agreement.

The room I had fallen into was not small.

And just like the hall before it, motes of my power streamed off of my werelight and filled an uncountable amount of gems. It was not my blue or Katarina's that lit the room fully then, it was a clean white light that left almost no shadow as it brightened.

Bookshelves of iron and dark wood lined the round walls from one side of the entrance to the other. Ornate rugs in every shade of blue, white, and gray littered the dusty floor. Chairs, desks, tables, and several things that I did not know the names of lay atop them. Three shrines, like the one I had seen of Hexis on Silkcradle, lay to my right, but something else caught my attention before I could go to them.

The stone floor stopped in the center of the room. In its place, stretching up from beneath my feet and extending through the gemmed ceiling was a massive crystal.

The same cold shade of blue as all the precepts cloaks, identical to the aura of the lost Mother in Blue, and big enough that it would have taken a dozen of me to wrap my arms around it, the crystal was frigid to the touch.

Stolen novel; please report.

"What is this?" I asked, unable to take my hands away from the glowing stone.

Sam did not approach it like I did. Instead, he leapt onto a too small desk on my left and sat down.

"An end. Somewhere between here and the lowest floor of Lun, the singing stairs begin." He said simply.

I knew what her power felt like, both because I had seen it in person and because I had used it myself when I had been her.

A memory of the broken spot I had left on the wall in my place inside Precept Seram's classroom came rushing back to the front of my mind.

The glamor that hid Lun from anyone outside of the black iron gates, how it was always just warm enough to not shiver in the halls, the little blue gems that had taken from my werelight, it was all her.

The aurament that stared out of where Alexei's left eye should have been.

Realizing what power was chilling my hands, all I could do was break my promise to The Mother in Red and say her name. "Katarina."

"Yes, My Lady. You have arrived at the same understanding that I have," Sam agreed with a rumbling growl. This place is of great interest to your mortal. Much of what she says she seeks has been collected here."

I heard what he was saying but could not pay attention to it.

Without pulling my hands from the crystal, I turned around and looked at the rug I had displaced. "I tripped, and my werelight fell apart."

It was true.

Azure dust blued one edge of the cream colored rug and covered part of its light blue pattern.

"She is. . ." I began, my words failing me as the memory of where Katarina was came crawling back.

I snatched my hands away from the crystal as tears filled my eyes. "She is, somewhere? Nowhere? I don't know, but it feels like nowhere. But, all of this is still here. I trip, and that is enough to break my working. She is trapped somewhere or almost dead or something, and her power remains."

"There are many truths about her that I have discovered that places her will above any other that I have met. Come, we have little time and there is more I must-" Sam explained.

Almost giddy with disbelief, my mind continued to spin as I moved around the room.

"Are they all like her? I don't know much about aura, but I know more than I ever have before, and this is," I asked as I went to the three shrines that had interested me before. "It doesn't even feel like the same thing that the rest of us do."

Sam leapt off the small desk and carefully wove his way across places that the dust had already been disturbed. "Quiet, My Lady. You must contain yourself."

I couldn't.

Sliding to a stop and pulling my stockings back up my too cold legs, I gazed up at the first shrine on the left.

Black and white fabric hung around a statue in alternating columns. The man had long flowing hair and he wore a robe that hung down to his ankles. Despite him being made completely out of stone, the carving had been masterful enough that it looked like he would lean forward and take a step at any moment. The features of his face and the two swords that hung at his side made me realize who I was looking at.

Alexei.

But no, it couldn't be. His jawline was softer, more delicate. His nose was thinner and his mouth was wider. The statue resembled him, it just had none of the things that made my guard look like his mother.

The middle statue could not have been more different from the first.

The man was draped in light grey fabrics and sitting. His eyes were closed and his chin was resting in his palms.

I did not recognize any part of him or the third statue.

The third man's hands had been shaped into a circle over the top of where his navel would have been. A single sheet of perfect purple hung on the wall behind him, and there was a determined edge that had been carved into his face.

Staring into his eyes of stone, he somehow felt defiant, like he would decide that he was no longer a statue at any moment.

"They are familiar to you?" Sam asked as he came padding up behind me.

I shook my head in denial. "No, but that one looks like Alexei, doesn't it?"

"Yes. Come, there is more." Sam said simply before leading me away from the shrines.

It took me just a bit too long to understand what I was looking at, and even then, I was far too distracted to care all that much.

Two long tables were absolutely filled with chains, shackles, leather scraps, drawings, and rounds of glass that hurt my eyes to look through. Stacks of notes, tiny hammers, a half empty bottle of wine, a shiny ring that fit perfectly on the pointer finger of my left hand, there was so much.

I had seen those shackles before, and I even thought I knew what they were for.

"Gatekeepers." I said under my breath as I reached out to touch the clear surface of a big glass box.

Inside it, somehow shades darker than any black I had ever seen before, was a broken stone that I could not turn away from.

Up onto the table Sam leapt, his big paws finding gaps in the clutter that he could stand in without disturbing anything.

"Do not or you will find yourself in chains that are much more physical than those you already wear." He growled, pushing my hand away.

I did not fight him. The memory of the tongueless gatekeeper's blackened flesh was enough for me to listen to my familiar's warning.

"She was trying to help them because this makes them sick." I thought aloud, feeling like there could be no other explanation.

Sam growled in agreement. "Well done, My Lady."

I sat in that thought, silently looking over all the things that lay atop the tables. Like what was on the floor, there was dust that had settled over most of it, and I found myself wondering how long she had truly been gone.

A single piece of paper lay tucked under the corner of the half drank bottle of wine. In fear of knocking everything over or disturbing it in some way, I did not pick it up. Even still enough of it was uncovered for me to read.

"-cannot accept my failings. Halting the corruption is not enough," I read, somehow knowing that it was Katarina's writing that I was reading. "I must discover how to purge it fully. For my children, for Alexei, Radomir, and my lost Jaka, I will not fail." I read it out loud, and then several more times to myself.

Katarina was a Mother, but she was also a mother.

Everything I knew of her, both by memories and living inside her school, was a reminder of that.

Long after she had been lost to the nothing place that I knew her to be in, she still provided warmth, safety, and comfort to everyone inside of Lun.

Sam had brought me something that was not a nothing place.

Even though she was gone, it was absolutely full of her.

If it was not for the dust, it almost felt like she could come walking back into the room at any moment.

"This has saddened you. Why?" Sam growled as he leapt off the table and sat at my feet.

I swallowed, sniffled, and wiped the tears from my eyes before they could fall.

"I have to tell them, Nami and Alexei. If I can help bring her back, If The Well can led them to where she has been lost, I have to-" I started.

Sam threw himself against my legs suddenly and cut me off.

A heavy sound came echoing into the room from the hall, and for a moment, I thought that I was being taken by The Well.

"Conceal yourself!" Sam whispered harshly as he pushed me back towards the shrines.

I tripped backwards and fell through the grey fabric that covered the second statue. A blue streak was all I saw of my familiar as he darted away to the other side of the crystal.

Sliding back until I hit the wall behind the purple sheet that hung behind the third statue, I managed to cover myself just in time to see two blanket blurred figures come walking into the room.

All I could do was hold my breath and hope that I was not found.