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

No strings or threads fell from Underwitch Yume.

A blue grey storm of blankets came ruffling out from her shadowy sleeves like a mass of thunderous birds taking flight.

The billowing sound filled the room and my heart sped along with the fuels and beats as all of my opponents' workings darkened the ceiling above me.

My eyes snapped to Anna.

Her mouth was open in an expression that was somewhere between shock and wonder.

You can look at her when you're done! If you do something worthwhile, she might even look at you that way. I snapped at myself silently and shook my attention back to the storm above me.

Having learned my lesson with the gemman the day before, I tried to count them so my mind would not think there were more than there was, but it was useless.

There were so many blankets, so many things that could trap me within their folds, that counting would have only been a distraction.

One split from the bottom of the mass and twisted into a spear shape before plunging straight down towards me.

I lashed out and struck it across its middle with my azure whip.

Bending from the impact, the blanket went limp around my working, but before I could draw it back again, another spun down towards me.

It was harder than keeping Tana pinned behind her waves of watery blue had been, but I stepped forward and folded the second cloth like the first.

Again, again, and again, I sent my whip cracking into the air until it was so covered in blankets that there was more of Yume's fabric showing than there was my bright blue.

Then, just when the weight became too much for me to continue to swing my working and I knew I had to shed the collected blankets, all of them unfolded and tightened around my whip in one sudden shift.

They closed around it and pulled its length up towards the storm that hung beneath the ceiling.

"Hey! No! That's mine!" I shouted as I tried to snatch it back.

They were too strong, and my grip was too weak. With nothing to stop my working from sliding through my fingers, the blankets won and I watched my whip, be carried up and away from me.

If I had been made to duel Yume a month or two before, that would have been it. I would have frozen in my panic and let myself remain defenseless until I was unavoidably defeated.

I had grown.

Surviving the drowning cave, having myself being caught off guard and exposed by someone I had just beaten, dueling my sisters at the end of every week until each of us were exhausted and in tears, what was all that for if I let myself be defeated so easily.

Yume was a half moon, but she had not done half of the things that I had.

She did not have a vial of The Mother in Yellow's dust hidden underneath her collar.

The Mother in Blue's little silver moon was not hanging from her ear.

She was not inexplicably loved by The Mother in Red as I was.

Everyone in the room had gathered to watch me duel her, the other way around.

I turned my eyes from my stolen working to where she still stood on the other side of the room and brought my power to bear once again.

I did not waste my movement by throwing my second whip out to my side.

Dashing forward like I was going for a kill in points, I swung my empty hand out as if my whip had never been taken.

My aura coiled out of my palm and grew along the path that it was meant to take.

Another blanket sliced down through the air, as straight and rigid as a knife's blade.

I rolled my wrist and watched my new working wrap around one of my opponents billowing sleeves just before the taught blanket cut down against it an arm's length away.

My working would have been ripped from my fingers if I had not learned from my past mistakes.

The flat lip that I had created, like the metal part of Alexei's swords that separated the rope wrapped handle from the blade, caught on the edge of my hand and kept my second whip from being taken from me.

"Yes, Ire!" Precept Zetta shouted.

A brief moment of celebration at her words nearly broke my focus, but I choked it down and began to wrap my improved whip around my wrist.

Every length I pulled through the still rigid blanket that blinded me did not come easy, but I worked my way to the left as I pulled to lay my eyes in Yume once again.

Before I could, another blanket cut down and blocked my way. I took a hard step to my right and we met with another of the same taught walls that were slowly closing me in.

I had cornered myself when all five of my teacher's gemman had been stalking towards me the day before.

Underwitch Yume had decided to do that for me.

But I still had hold of her. Even if I could not see it, I could feel it.

I lowered myself into something resembling my points stance and began to take difficult steps backwards as I waited for one of them to try and smother me like the first had.

They didn't.

As soon as I escaped the walls that had formed around me, more blankets fell and met the edges of the others.

My channel open and my aura pouring into my new whip, it grew along with the distance between my opponent and I. Panic turned me around and sent me running backwards as fast as I could without tripping.

I did not know what would happen if she boxed me in, but finding out would likely mean losing.

I would not lose.

Stolen story; please report.

Not with Anna there to see it.

I would defeat the half moon.

Even if it was beyond my limited skills, I would will it so.

Every single desperate step I took towards the back wall dueling room was matched by yet another blanket taking its place next to the last.

I lost sight of everything on either side of me.

Not even the gaps between the taught walls that formed around me were wide enough for me to catch a glimpse of anything.

The ceiling above, the floor below, and the fabric that was closing in around me was all there was.

I was not Precept Jasna.

I could not fly upon wings of jagged white bone.

I was not Maletta, I could not sink into a lake of my own crystalline frost.

Just as I reached the wall and turned to escape the fabric bound hall, everything went dark.

My ears were filled with the billowing thunder of Yume's blankets once again.

My free hand snapped to my face and pawed against it wildly in an attempt to pull the fabric from my eyes.

There was nothing there.

Other than the dim glow of the short amount of my working that I could see, there was nothing light.

She had covered the hall she had made with even more of her blankets.

I had been trapped, but I would never find a way out without my sight.

I had to do two things at once.

My mind had to be split.

So be it.

A dark cave being washed in azure light, The calves of Nami's long legs tightening as she climbed a narrow staircase, Anna's face painted blue in the terrifying moments after one of her nightmares had woken us both, I thought of everything and sent a werelight rising up from the center of my palm without breaking my focus on my whip.

The bright blue light that hung above my head showed me that I was wrong.

She had not just covered the ceiling.

There was no longer anything above me or below me. A narrow passageway of her working was all there was.

I heard Precept Zetta shout something from somewhere unseen, but it was so muffled and distant that I could not make out what she had said.

I was trapped, but I had been there before.

Whenever I had found myself closed in, bound, or sealed, what had I done?

I had ruined things.

It was just who I was.

I was not like my guard, I could not step through stone like someone would thick fog, and my opponent's working might as well have been just as hard as that.

I could not go through them, a push in one of the seams between them told me that there was no way I could separate them, so I did what I was meant to do.

I ruined them.

Still feeling Yume caught somewhere at the end of my long working, I pulled it right and whipped my arm from side to side.

The azure cord followed my movements and lashed wildly against the sides of the blanketed hall.

Everywhere it touched, it cut great tears in the blankets, and I wasted no time running forward and ducked through one of the gashes.

From one hall to another, I found myself in a maze of blue grey blankets, but I did not slow.

My shoulders dragged against the unending fabric as I ran and tightened my working around my wrist.

I was hunting.

And as long as she did not come free from my whip, I knew how to find my prey.

Left, right, forward, right again, and then back to the left, I kept moving because standing still felt too much like losing for me to stand it. I kept my aura building within me while I held my whip and werelight. Focusing it behind me my right palm let me hold much more than I could with only my left, and I knew I would likely need it very soon.

I got hot, sweat began to drip from my brow, and though I was lost, I would not accept that I had lost.

If Underwitch Yume wanted to beat me, she would have to a lot more than trap me in a maze of blankets.

I had once been bound and surrounded by The Circle of The Nine Mothers.

I had still found a way to attack Azza.

Just when I knew I had found my prey, I cut through another blanket and found the end of my whip.

It was no longer wrapped around the sleeve of the sleepy underwitch.

She had coiled it around a column of her fabric and held it in place with her will.

A hand appeared between two of the blankets on my right and grabbed me by my wrist.

"Precept Zetta asked that I not put you to sleep. It is best if you withdraw." Yume said, her face appearing in the blanket beside me like she had lowered herself to her ears in a bath.

Just like the first, her blankets folded around my whip faster than I could avoid.

I let it fall from my hand the moment before the fabric wrapped around my fingers.

It no longer mattered how pretty she was.

Seeing a face and being grabbed by a hand from a place that my mind did not think those things could be was enough to send me into violent terror.

I held my left palm up to her, screamed, and let my power loose.

All the things that I had become much too used to happened.

A flash of blinding blue light, the impact of my working blowing back against me, and the sound of my dust settling onto the floor filled my senses.

When I opened my eyes again, my werelight was gone and the maze of blankets was no more.

I looked to my left and saw every corner and wall had been filled with the cast off workings of my opponent. A glance to my right showed me much the same, but with the addition of everyone that had come to watch my duels slowly uncovering themselves.

I tried to sit up, but found that I could not move.

Underwitch Yume appeared over me. She knelt down and placed her unseen hand on my stomach gently.

"No one that I have dueled has ever thought to do that. When I am in the dark tonight, when all my sisters have gone to sleep and I am truly alone, I will dream of this, rest assured." She said as a single tear rolled down her cheek.

Her eyes were just a bit too wide and her voice a bit too intense for me to feel anything but uncomfortable in the presence of her afterglow.

"Easy, you are going to give her nightmares," Precept Zetta said to Yume as she knelt down on my other side. "What did I tell you? Her instincts are sharp aren't they?"

The blanket that held me pinned to the floor relaxed.

The lids of Yume's blue grey eyes began to sag shut as she answered through a heavy yawn. "She could defeat me, if she began to dream of it. All that weighs her down is what she knows but has not let herself know."

Precept Zetta furrowed her brows and shook her head. "Listen. Don't get caught up listening to her, she's always been a bit of a strange bird. How's your afterglow? What do you need?"

If we had been in class and I had just defeated one of the others or a gemman, a trip to Zetta's sparse covery, fried potatoes from the dining hall, or a few moments holding my vial necklace in my hand would have lessened the sorrow I felt.

I gave my teacher my answer as I turned my head and met Anna's dark eyes. "Nothing."

She smiled at me and made a show of clapping silently.

I smiled as the joy she brought to me dried up the sorrow that my fireworks had left me with.

"Strong girl, very well done. That was better than I ever could have expected," Zetta said as she patted my shoulder and stood. "Thank you, Yume. You may go. It is Ailin's turn."

"But I lost." I said as I rolled onto my side.

The tears that trailed down my cheeks and over my nose told me that I might have been just a little too quick to think I had escaped my after glow.

Precept Zetta helped me onto my feet and let me use her half cloak to dry my eyes. "Yes, but the result was not the point. It was what you did before the loss that mattered."

"Oh." I said through a heavy sniffle.

"Listen. We will talk after. Let's go see your lady and get you something to eat. Ailin is going to be a bit rougher than Yume if I had to guess." My teacher continued as she turned me towards where Anna was waiting on me.

It was good that she was there because if she hadn't been, Zetta would have had to carry me again.