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

I, according to the eldest son of The Mother in Blue herself, was clever.

Dressing Anna up in one of my uniforms had been one of the few good ideas I could ever really remember having.

I could not have picked a better day either. Her nightmares had been bad the night before, and I was glad to have something to brighten her morning with. Everything except my black laced boots had been just a little too big for her, but once my cloak was fastened around her neck and my grey stockings were pulled up high on her thighs, she looked just like me from the back.

The little moons hanging from our ears matched, but I had not bothered with my vial necklace. If Alexei had gotten close enough to her to notice, we would have already lost.

Early that morning, I had sent the Ire cloaked Anna into the hall and she had taken off running towards the library to draw my guard's attention. When I could no longer hear the sound of her steps, I peeked out of our door to look for any sign of the white haired man.

My idea had worked, and I had been free to run towards Precept Zetta's classroom in the joyous swell of my victory.

But then I found him leaning against the wall of Precept Zetta's hall like he almost always was, and felt like the stones underneath my feet had been suddenly taken out from under me.

It had been my sandals. He had actually said that it was many things, but he had named two things specifically. One, Anna had only made it to the end of the hall before she was out of breath, and two, she had not been wearing my sandals.

Alexei paid far more attention to me than I would have once thought he did.

Then he had called me clever and I had gone into the classroom in the grips of a much different kind of joy.

But that was not all I was.

According to Precept Zetta, I was also strong.

She thought I was strong enough to duel older underwitches and be made a half moon even though the back of my cloak had never held any moon at all.

I did not disagree with her. There were very few ways that I could imagine myself losing a duel to any of the other new moons. The ways that I could think of them defeat me was less about what they were able to do and more about where my mind was in that particular vision.

Clever and strong, but still, that was not all.

I was also beautiful.

There was nothing I trusted more than Anna.

After too long spent listening to her tell me that I was beautiful, cute, attractive, and every other word that meant pretty, I had given in and started believing her.

I had spent so many days of the short part of my life that I could remember not knowing what I was. I knew there would be more days like that to come, but what those three people thought about me carried far more weight than what I thought about myself.

I was clever, strong, and beautiful.

But at the end of the final week of my Conflict and Resolution class, when Ire's day had finally arrived, I knew I had never felt quite as dumb, weak, and ugly.

"You can't run forever, Ire!" Precept Zetta called out as I ducked under the sapphire arm of my enemy.

All I managed to do by avoiding the strike was to put myself in between two more workings that Zetta had waiting for me.

For the first time ever, my clumsiness worked in my favor and I tripped just before I would have been crushed within the crystalline embrace of the two gemman.

They collided over the top of me before falling straight back to the floor and cracking like a dropped bottle of wine.

"I know." I panted as I climbed up to my hands and knees.

Sweat dripped from my face, and my heart pounded in my chest so hard that I thought it would burst. Every part of me shook from the weakness that my efforts had brought me, but I knew I was not done.

At least there had been trees when I was running from Mother Gwyn's beasts. I thought to myself between my failed attempts to catch my breath. From wall to wall, corner to corner, and every stone in between, I had been hunted by so many gemman that I had lost count of how many there were.

I had grown so much since The Mother in Green had stolen me out of my bed. I not only had power, I knew how to use it too, but none of that mattered then.

Ire's day was not about me shattering gemman after gemman with my fireworks or using my whip to break them apart piece by piece. Ire's day was about opening the channel in my right palm.

Or least, that is what Precept Zetta thought it was about.

If she had known she was actually trying to get me to break the seal that The Circle of The Nine Mothers had bound me with, I did not think she would be so determined to help me do it.

My left hand was useless. She had made me make a fist before wrapping my hand tightly in white bandages and encasing it in her the same sapphire working that the gemmans were made of.

In truth, it was worse than useless because it made doing anything harder. It was heavy, and made keeping my balance while I was being assaulted nearly impossible.

My right hand was in a state of constant pain. The dull spike she had used several times before to try to force my channel open had been fastened to my palm and the top of my hand. Even something as small as twitching my fingers was enough to make it feel like my bones were going to crack from the pressure, but that was the point.

Ire's day would end when my need to use my power and stop the pain became necessary enough for me to break The Mother's seal and manifest my aura.

That had not happened yet.

All I had done for most of the day was run for my life.

"I know that you know you can't, but you better keep trying." Prefer Zetta shouted again as I felt a cold hand wrap its fingers around my ankle.

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I kicked my free leg out blindly behind me and felt the pain hitting something hard through the thin bottom of my sandal. Having to pick up my encased hand with the other, I climbed to my feet and somehow managed to scrape both my knees on the floor as I stood.

"Come on, Ire! Don't let your leader down!" Mallory shouted from where she and all the others sat against the wall.

My eyes darted over to her just long enough for it to put me in danger once again.

Two gemman lunged at me from the front.

I jumped back to try and avoid them and slammed my back into a third.

Its crystalline arms tried to close around me, but I bent at my knees and slipped out of its cold embrace before it could.

"Hold your focus, Ire! Even if you haven't been caught, if you aren't trying to open your channel, you are losing!" Precept Zetta reminded me as I stumbled towards the back wall of the classroom.

I was doing what she asked me to, there was more aura built beneath her spike than I knew what to do with, but it was doing me no good.

A glance back over my shoulder only confirmed what I already knew.

There were too many of them, and I was running out of room to run.

"Don't go to the wall, they are going to catch you!" Plia cried with nothing but her eyes peeking out from behind her hands.

Zetta's glowing fingers moved in a wild series of motions as I ran past her. "It's too late for that now! No reset, you're cornered, what will you do now, Ire?"

"Die!" I shouted at my teacher as I threw my back into the corner and saw any hope of escape be closed off by a wall of glimmering blue.

Five, I counted five of the faceless gemman, but that could not be right.

How could there only be five?

I had spent the morning feeling like I had been running for an entire army, and there were only five?

If Ire's day had been about defeating them, and I was allowed to do the things that I had learned I could do, I could have turned five to none with one bright blue lash of my whip. I could have turned them all to dust with a single firework without needing to think about it very hard at all.

But I couldn't do that.

That wasn't the point, and that made me angry.

I had spent most of a day hiding behind one of Plia's arms of aura. Tana had been allowed to use her puddles to try and snatch us by the ankles. I didn't know if Mallory could do anything besides be impossibly fast, but even if she could, her day had been about control, controlling her speed.

It was me and me alone that had been tasked with doing something that Precept Zetta thought I had never done before.

How was that fair?

It wasn't, but my teacher had told me things wouldn't be fair for me so that shouldn't have surprised me.

More was to be asked of me because I was stronger, but in that moment, I did not know if I was strong enough to break the seal and all of Zetta's workings at once.

I wiped the sweat from my eyes and brushed the black hair away from my face as I tried to find a way out.

The gemman grew closer with every ragged breath I took, and I knew my teacher had slowed their pace to give me the opportunity to suffer just a little longer.

I had broken the seals before.

The very first time I used my red had been because the red ring around my navel had sprung a leak. But there really had not been anything else I could have done, Anna had been in danger and I would have struck down The Mothers themselves to save her.

Maybe I should have told Precept Zetta that.

She could have had the gemman chasing after my beloved instead of me and I would have left what was left of the classroom with my arms around Anna long ago.

It might have been nice, the cold from outside coming in through where all the walls used to be.

Fresh air was good, and everyone could have enjoyed all the pretty white snow outside while we were having class.

The gemman closest to me swung its sapphire hand towards me, and I barely manage to lean out of the way.

"Something has to happen, Ire! If this were a real battle, no one would ever see that pretty azure of yours again!" Zetta shouted from behind her workings.

All the others, even Tana, had left the wall and were watching me through the gaps between my enemies.

"I know!" I growled back.

Anna being carried off by one of the lich's hand horrors, the night sky over Erosette exploding with rose red light, all nine of The Mothers standing around me in the ruins of a colosseum, I forced myself to think of it all as I avoided getting another strike.

Desperation.

I had to have no other choice.

I wanted to break the seal. I wanted to open my channel and prove Precept Zetta right about my strength. I wanted to shatter all five of the gemman in front of Tana just so she had to see me do it.

But wanting was not enough.

I needed to need it.

Anna is in danger. They are going to take her away from you. Arthur is going to die and Opa can't save him. As soon as they take you into their hands, they are going to take you to Azza. She's gonna put you back in that glass pyramid and bury you again if you don't do something.

Two more strikes were sent my way.

I bent around one of them.

The other hit my side in the very same place that Mother Ali had once left black and blue.

"You have to do something, Ire!" Zetta shouted again as I slid down the wall and lost sight of everything that was not sapphire.

All the aura beneath my right hand fled from the pain of my teachers working.

"I know!" I screamed and threw my encased hand out in a rage.

Crystal struck crystal, and my aura found a way out just like it had with my whip the week before.

Right in the place where its legs met, my left hand broke through the sapphire working's crotch and I blew it away.

Azure light blinded me.

My whole body felt like it had been struck all at once by one big hand, and the prickling sound of countless shards falling all around me filled my ears.

I did not know what was worse, that I had blown myself up again or that I thought I was getting used to it happening.

"Look what you did! It's like a desert in here!" I heard Mallory cheer just before she wrapped her arm over my shoulders and sat down beside me.

Precept Zetta was kneeling down in front of me when I finally opened my eyes. She took my left hand off my lap and her spike turned to dust off my right.

"That was not really what we were going for, but I will take it," She chuckled. Turning it over, squeezing it, making my fingers curl and uncurl, she kept her eyes on mine the whole time she was checking me for injury. "The good news is that you still have a hand. You are still doing damage to yourself, but it seems to be lessening. The better news is that if you ever come face to face with a real sorcerer, that little technique will be quite effective. I can't believe you actually broke my working. What do you think about it, Puddles?"

My eyes went to where the honey haired underwitch stood amongst the desert of blue dust that Mallory had described. She was alone, none of the five gemman had survived my desperate attack.

"I think that she could have hurt one of us. She is reckless." Tana huffed as she crossed her arms over her chest.

Precept Zetta snapped her fingers and shook her head without turning around. "No. Try again."

Tana spun away from us on the heels of her black laced boots before she answered. "I think that of all the ways she could have done that, the way she did was not the absolute worst one."

"That is better I suppose," My teacher said as she rolled her eyes. "And you, Plia?"

The little underwitch was still brushing the remnants of my firework off her uniform, but she looked up at the sound of her name.

"Did someone say something about dessert?"