The light burned through Eni as if she had been made of glass. She raised one arm, gasping in shock, and for an instant she could see the bones inside it, the veins and arteries surrounding them like the tubes of a chemistry set. Her blood churned through her body, thrown into sharp relief, and even squeezing her eyes shut did nothing to stop the onslaught. Her entire body burned as though she was being scoured inside and out with steel wool, the pitiless illumination upon her not dimming even slightly.
There were no colors and all colors, and Eni sank to her knees, utterly unable to stand. She could no longer see Tin; everything had been blotted out except what lay ahead, her surroundings washed out by the intensity of the gaze that held her pinned. Eni pulled her power in, desperately trying to throw up walls around her thoughts, but her mind was a grape caught in a vice. The pressure was gentle but remorseless, squeezing until she was sure she would burst. Eni cried out, the sound lost, and her sense of self vanished just as completely. She could no longer feel the ground beneath her or the air around her, and her ears trembled with sound.
Words burned like acid, words that meant nothing and everything, spooling out so quickly they might have been a prayer. Sentences wormed their way through her head, too rapid to grasp, and Eni was sure she would be driven as mad as the mammals they had passed on their way through Invermir. The voice speaking was rough and strange, its pace growing ever faster, and all at once Eni realized it wasn't a sword pressing its tip toward the recesses of her thoughts.
It was a shield.
The light stopped as suddenly as it had appeared, but it took a long moment for Eni to come back to herself. She was sprawled against the ground, her fingers and knees pressed against cold diamond, and tears coursed down her face. She shakily sat up, blinking rapidly, but the darkness around her was so absolute that there was nothing to see.
"Tin!" she croaked, her voice thick and heavy, and after a long pause a shuffling sound came from her side.
She knew it was him, the little noises of his motion as familiar as the look of his face, but she still had to fight back the urge to flinch as his fingers closed around hers. "Eni," he said, the word nearly as hoarse as the ones he had managed against the awful presence.
She could hear his chest heaving for breath, his heart pounding rapidly. Eni filled her lungs, over and over, feeling as though she had come just short of drowning. "Run," he whispered, "Please."
A jolt ran down Eni's spine as a terrible truth came to her. It wasn't exertion that had worn him down, just as it hadn't been solely for her sake that he had wanted to hear a story. His voice had cracked as he spoke, and his paw trembled in hers. "Have to leave," he continued, and Eni doubted anyone else could have heard the waver in his voice.
She squeezed his fingers gently in hers, the simple gesture costing an extraordinary amount of effort. Her entire body felt bruised and well-worn, but she managed to come to her feet, pulling Tin upright. "We… We have to keep going," she said, and no sooner had she spoken than a new pair of lights flared into existence.
She flinched, unable to help herself, but one was quite mundane. It was only her lantern, sitting upright a few paces away from where they stood. Tin looked horribly insubstantial in its glow, the rainbow rays that refracted off the diamond bridge making him look sickly and jaundiced. He swallowed hard, his eyes constricted to mere pinpricks as he looked forward and saw the other new source of light.
Eni almost couldn't bear to look, certain that she would at last see the terrible form of what those two burning eyes were attached to. Instead, all that lay before them was the gateway, its arch as it had been before. It was a mammoth construct of graceful stone, looming as tall and as wide as a building, but at its center there was no longer utter blackness.
Impossibly, Eni's apartment stood before them, bathed in the gentle glow of the afternoon sun in Terregor. Her mouth fell open as she stared, her mind aching as she tried to make sense of it. The archway had none of the wasted space that it should have; her apartment could have neatly fit in one corner of the massive opening with room to spare, but instead it filled it completely. At the same time, her suite of rooms didn't seem to have been enlarged to a gigantic scale; they simply consumed all of an opening much too large for them.
Eni's vision seemed to swim as the possibilities fought for dominance like a fiendish optical illusion before she wrenched her head away and turned to Tin. "Do you see that?" she asked, disbelief filling her tone.
"Your place," Tin said, his brow furrowed as he chewed at his lip.
His ears had flicked flat back against his skull and his tail had curled into a tight spiral, his body as rigid as a statue as he looked at what was before them. He spared a glance over his shoulder and Eni did the same; there was no sign of the way they had come. The glow of her lantern and the light of her apartment before them seemed to simply stop at the point where they stood, everything behind them completely dark. The bridge they stood on could have been floating in a void; there was no sign of anything above them or below.
Eni reached out one hesitant paw and the oppressive nothingness seemed to swallow it as though she was reaching into tar; she pulled her arm back with a cry of alarm. Tin looked stricken, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her arm close to his chest. They were so close that even through her glove she could feel his pulse, his eyes scrutinizing her fingers closely. "It's fine," Eni said, and although she tried to sound as calm and as sure of herself as she possibly could she was sure she had failed, "It didn't hurt; it just surprised me."
"Good," he said at last, letting go, but his features hadn't relaxed even slightly.
His every movement was filled with tension, and when he looked back to the bizarre sight ahead of them she could see the unease in his eyes. "We have to keep going," Eni said softly, and he nodded slowly.
"Three spots," he said, and at first Eni had no idea what he meant.
She stared at the replica of her apartment, searching for an answer, and at last she saw it. There was a table set among her collection of books, a table that was itself usually completely covered with her work. It had been cleared off and neatly covered with a gleaming tablecloth, a sprig of flowers standing at a jaunty angle in an exquisite vase. Three chairs had been set around the table, and at each a mug waited.
Eni's mouth was instantly dry, the wordless message before them perfectly clear. The owner of the lair they had entered wished to speak with them, and the place of her choosing was obvious. She retrieved her lamp with fingers that felt numb and glanced at Tin. He hadn't moved from where he stood; he appeared rooted in place, his eyes staring ahead dully before he took a single timid step.
His reluctance to go on boiled off him and Eni searched desperately for anything to fill the dreadful silence, words eventually passing her lips before she was aware of them. "What were you saying?" she asked softly.
The air around them was cold and still, the awful strength that had pushed against them seemingly gone, but Eni still didn't think it wise to speak up. "I…" Tin began, his steps lacking all of his normal grace as he slowly caught up to her, "Don't know."
His gaze was distant, not quite meeting hers, and the hesitance in his voice was mixed with something else. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, pausing before he could continue. "Saw things," he whispered, "Things I…"
His paw went to his whip-sword, grasping the hilt and squeezing it tight. "Can't call on anymore," he finished, and the words were filled with self-loathing.
Eni reached out, brushing his arm before closing her fingers around his bicep as gently as she could manage. "I understand," she said, hoping that he could hear the sympathy in the words for what it was, "I'll do it."
His head jerked up as she spoke, his reverie split by a look of absolute horror. "No," he said, "You—"
"If one of us has to use our power…" Eni interrupted, "It'll be me."
Tin considered her in silence for a long moment as they kept walking forward, the end of the bridge and the strange transition to the replica of Eni's apartment coming ever closer. His heart still beat furiously in his chest, and Eni knew hers was hardly any slower. Terror filled her like a poison; each step seemed to be nothing more than utter foolishness. What they were attempting was madness, pure and simple, but it had to be done. Certainty didn't wash away Eni's fear; her legs still trembled and she would have given almost anything to be actually stepping into her apartment, the city and the Circle itself safe and sound.
But her actual set of rooms were on the bottom of Lake Linra as nothing more than rubble, and someone she would never give up was at her side. Their enemy was ahead, and all she could do was continue on, no matter what it was that awaited them.
"Thank you," Tin said at last, his tone shameful, and Eni interlaced her fingers with his.
They were at last before the enormous archway, no more than a step separating them from the polished wooden floor of her suite. The sense of wrongness that hung about the transition had only grown as they got closer; Eni felt nauseous as her mind tried to make sense of how something could be so small and so large at the same time. She took a deep breath, giving Tin's paw an encouraging squeeze, and crossed the threshold.
Eni realized, once she was across, that she had been expecting something terrible to happen the instant she set foot in the duplicate apartment. Perhaps she would have felt herself stretched like taffy in the grip of a candy maker, pulled thin until something felt ready to give way. Perhaps she would have been compressed like a lump of iron on an anvil, beat mercilessly flat by a hammer.
She had been so unconsciously sure that some new terror had awaited her that it took her a moment to draw a breath once she was inside, glancing about. The apartment was an eerily precise replica of the one she had left behind, down to the same familiar smell that hung in the air. It wasn't just the scent of a library but of her library, so wonderfully pleasant that Eni felt a pang of sorrow. The floorboards under her feet were scuffed and scratched exactly as they had been when Eni first moved in, the shadows of the former tenant's furniture always faintly visible no matter how she had shined and polished.
Motes of dust swam dreamily through the air, making the beams of light that illuminated the space seem vibrantly alive, although it was much too quiet. There were none of the sounds Eni would have expected from her apartment building itself or from Terregor beyond it; everything was silent except for her and Tin. As she turned slowly, drinking in surroundings she thought she would never see again except in her dreams, she saw that even the way they had come was gone. The replica apartment should have been like a dollhouse or a stage set, missing a wall so that the contents could be peered at, but there was no sign of a passage. All that met her eyes were the bookshelves lining a resolutely sold-looking wall, and on it were the only obvious features out of place.
Bookshelves still lined the walls, as they always had in her actual suite of rooms, but the volumes that filled them weren’t hers. Their spines weren't the familiar dull browns and reds and blues of old leather; they were gleaming Aurum Regis, inscribed with strange symbols. Eni started to reach for one at random but froze as she caught sight of her arm outstretched before her.
Her jacket of tough sharkskin, a little worse for the wear in spots but still intact, was gone. In its place she saw a sleeve of vividly blue silk, ornamented with feathers of beaten silver so incredibly thin that they couldn't have weighed more than real ones. They whispered and sighed against each other with every little motion of her arm, and Eni looked down at herself.
The sleeve was connected to a peculiar sort of dress with a long skirt that covered her feet, the front folded over itself with a collar like the northern Nihian style. She wore it under a magnificent cloak, fastened with a beautiful brooch from which more silver feather emerged in an elegant spray, and although the hood was down Eni could tell it was richly embroidered. Her lantern and trident had vanished; all she held was a staff that could only be the Archivist's own, the wood spiraling at its tip.
She turned to Tin in utter bewilderment and saw that his clothes had changed as well; he was no longer dressed in nothing more than his trousers but was instead wearing what was almost the outfit she had made him. It was more elaborate, ornamented with metal decorations that ran strange and sinuous paths, but it was unmistakable even mostly hidden as it was by a cloak in a black so dark that it seemed to absorb all light. His eyes were uncertain as they met hers, his hackles raised and his face grim.
"A pleasant fantasy," Eni's voice came, and she whirled around, dread filling her heart as she saw who she knew would be waiting.
The table with its three settings was no longer empty; at the head sat a familiar figure, lounging in her chair as she sipped from an elegantly faceted chalice too brilliant to be anything but diamond. For the first time she had clothed herself, but in a peculiar fashion; all she wore was what could have been the jacket Eni had abandoned at the hot spring. Only the absence of the holes the Lotophagi had torn through it made that impossible, the garment neatly pressed and clean although it couldn't be buttoned over her pregnant form. Nergorath's eyes met Eni's as she continued.
"The Slayer's own sorceress, stopping briefly in her home before venturing forth once more," she said, "I am charmed."
Her words made Eni's skin crawl under the elegant clothes she had been dressed in as she took in the sight of her duplicate. The strange being allowed one paw to rest against her gravid belly before she used the other to set down her glass, making a single beckoning gesture. "Sit," she said calmly, "Let us converse."
"We're not your puppets," Tin snarled, and although his voice was thick with unease he didn't hesitate.
His fingers curled and he tore at the finery he had been dressed in, his claws ripping through the material and leaving it to flutter to the floor until he was clad only in the tatters of his trousers, his whip-sword clutched in one paw. His chest heaved with emotion, his eyes seeming to burn, but the strange being only turned her gaze to his.
"Sit," she said again.
She hadn't raised her voice even slightly. The calculating expression on her face hadn't changed whatsoever. But there was steel in her voice, and although it was Eni's own it still made her legs feel liquid. She all but collapsed into the nearest chair, unable to stand, and Tin did the same. "I’ve procured your favorite drinks," Nergorath said, gesturing at the beverages in front of them, her tone suddenly completely different.
It was as warm and friendly as an ideal host, and despite herself Eni stared at what was on the table before her. The crisp and tangy scent of a fine cider reached her nose from the mug in front of her, and a teacup in front of Tin gave off the powerful aroma of a honeyed brew. Neither Eni nor Tin made a motion for their drinks, but Nergorath didn't seem to mind, taking another swallow from her own.
"It pleases me to have you share my table once more," Nergorath said smoothly, a faint smile coming to her face, "There—"
Tin lunged so rapidly that Eni saw only a blur of motion, his paw holding his whip-sword flicking to lash it directly at the awful being's heart. Before the links could even move, Nergorath's paw had pinned Tin's to the table. The wolf had been fast, but the creature wearing a copy of Eni's own form had been even faster; she accomplished the feat with no visible effort.
Although her arms were no thicker than Eni's, she didn't strain at all as she held Tin in place, her expression disappointed. "A feeble effort," she said, "One I would advise you not to attempt again."
Her words were mild, without even the slightest edge of a threat to them, but Eni's stomach still heaved as cold prickles of dread filled her. Nergorath released Tin, pointedly allowing him to keep his weapon, and turned her attention back to Eni. "Does it trouble you that he showed no hesitation?" she asked curiously, touching the bare fur over her heart with one paw, stroking her swollen breast under her jacket.
"N—No," Eni managed to say, not wanting to look her double in the eye but unable to look anywhere else.
Nergorath didn't speak immediately, but her gaze felt almost as powerful as the one that had filled the archway as she considered her a moment longer. "A most interesting pair that makes you. More intriguing by far than the last companion the All-King brought," she continued after a moment, and Eni felt a flicker of fury blot out her fear.
"You killed Zathos," she said, her voice tight, and the strange being didn't even have the good grace to look apologetic.
Her face was casually arrogant as she waved one paw dismissively. "The Construct is little more than clockwork," she said, "Its master set it about the task of bringing you here. Now that you sit in front of me, what further purpose might it serve?"
Eni was too stunned to formulate a response and Nergorath's mouth pulled up into a slight smile. "A question you cannot answer," she mused, "No matter; it is of little importance."
"What is important to you, then?" Eni asked, her voice a fierce whisper.
Her lips felt numb and Tin gave her a warning glance, silently begging her not to say more, but she pressed on. "You don't care if cities are torn apart by monsters. You don't care if the Circle collapses. You don't even care if the Scourge ends and all thinking life is wiped from the world," Eni said, her voice growing louder the longer she went on, and Nergorath cut her off with a laugh.
It was Eni's, but somehow stripped of every ounce of goodwill until it was dark and mocking. "I've missed the unseemly arrogance of a leveret," Nergorath said, her voice filled with amusement, "But I shall ask you the same question I first posed to him. Why do you presume Aerodan was devoid of conscious life before the First Scourge?"
The ensuing silence was horribly oppressive, Eni feeling as though the weight of millennia were on her shoulders. The mysterious being was undeniably right, her insight clear and to the heart of an assumption Eni hadn't realized she had been making. "You are not ul-Sai'ee," Tin said harshly, his words buzzing with mingled anger and fright.
"What are you?" Eni asked, the words falling out of her mouth before she could stop them.
Nergorath's only answer was an enigmatic smile from behind the rim of the chalice she drank from, and Eni spoke a single word.
"Enough."
The strange being cocked an eyebrow at her and Eni went on, half-expecting her next sentence to be her last. The atmosphere in the simulacra of her apartment had grown charged so slowly that she hadn't even noticed it changing, but waves of strength seemed to emanate from Nergorath like heat off a stove. She was so powerful that Eni wasn't sure she could have stood upright before her, her strength hanging over her like an invisible shroud. "No more games," Eni said, "No more disguises. Show us your true shape."
"My true shape?" Nergorath repeated, cocking her head to the side, "A most dissatisfying question, Shiwere Tsuku ne Eni-zhen."
She spoke her name in Nihian with the liquid smoothness of a local, her pronunciation of what the natives called Siverets utterly perfect. "You passed through my lesson without absorbing it, I see," she continued, "Is the true shape of water the ocean or the iceberg? The raindrop…"
Nergorath paused briefly, her eyes narrowing maliciously as they bored through Eni. "Or the snowflake?" she asked, and a chill seemed to radiate from Eni's core, a horrible freezing sensation that Eni's fine robes did nothing to stop.
They might as well have been rags, cast-offs from years of wandering in desperate solitude, and Eni's heart pounded in her ears. Alone, her own voice whispered, Always alone.
She shuddered, tearing her gaze away from the strange being until they fell on her chalice. It was full of something that was neither liquid nor gas, alive and roiling with possibilities, and when Eni spoke her voice was small and weak. "Water is water," she said, "It… It takes the shape of its vessel, but it has a form of its own."
"Better," she allowed, smiling, "Precision of words, my dear leveret. You've caught a mere glimpse of the possibilities of Derkomai, but surely you understand what Nergorath means?"
Eni strained for the memory of what she had seen, the first time she had heard the name, but it eluded her grasp, leaving her with nothing but an impression of majesty and power. Tin stiffened at his seat, his eyes almost bulging, and Nergorath's smile widened a degree. "Vanargand remembers," she said.
All the color seemed to have drained from the insides of the wolf's ears; his fingers were splayed, his claws embedded through the tablecloth and into the dense wood below. His eyes appeared entirely white and blue, his pupils so constricted that they were barely visible. His bare chest trembled and his arms shook, all signs of comprehension having left him. "That's not his name," Eni said fiercely, and Nergora chuckled.
"How droll," she said, "But perhaps your hypocrisy will bear fruit. Very well, then."
Nergorath stood, easily getting out of her seat despite her heavy belly. She clapped her paws together and vanished, disappearing with a faint rush of air. Before the sound had even stopped ringing, their surroundings changed; Eni's apartment gave way to a library that put any other to shame.
It was larger even than the Terraces of Gorin had been, a vast and open space plunging through the center of the room. Wings radiated off the circular middle like the spokes of a wheel, and it was at the end of one of these that they were suddenly sitting. The table and chairs were completely unchanged, and even the books around them were the same. There were, however, more than Eni could have imagined in her wildest dreams, more than it seemed possible to exist.
The shelves stretched impossibly high, glowing with light they reflected from the air itself. Hundreds of thousands of volumes stretched off into the distance on Eni's left and right; ahead was the atrium, supporting the roof with pillars all wider and broader than any tower built by mammals. They were carved to look like trees, the detailing so exquisite that had they not been made of gleaming metal Eni would have been completely convinced. Their branches were even lined with leaves that swayed in a gentle breeze, and for a moment Eni lost herself to her wonder.
In the next, she realized where the wind was coming from and turned to Tin. She was still wearing the fine clothes Nergorath had dressed her in, but his expression of contempt for the mysterious creature had carried over. "Tin," she said urgently, but he sat motionless, not responding until she seized his head between her paws and pulled it toward her.
"We have to keep moving," she said, and it was the horrible truth.
The wing of the vast library they had found themselves in had no exit; there was nothing around them but dizzying rows of bookshelves. The only direction open to them was ahead, where the vast atrium and the source of the gentle breeze was, and after a moment Tin swallowed hard. He seemed to come back to himself by degrees, his pupils slowly relaxing as he stood, igniting his whip-sword.
Eni wished she still had her trident, but it was gone, replaced with a staff, and the presence of her satchel on her back was of little comfort. They crept timidly along, their footsteps not echoing despite the vast walls on either side, and as they got closer to the center Eni saw that the sculpted trees supporting the roof were not set into gentle hillocks as it had appeared from a distance.
They were rooted in bones.
Thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands, of bodies were shot through with the metallic protrusions of the enormous pillars, the flesh long since gone to reveal nothing but glittering bones. Skulls of all sorts stared with empty eye sockets, from mammals to Avians to what could only be lizards, mingled with ones too bizarre to name.
"The time has come," a voice called, and while it was feminine it was no longer a copy of Eni's.
It was rich and throaty, powerful even though it spoke at a conversational volume. Nergorath's words were as pleasant as music, tinged with sorrow and hope; Eni realized that she was speaking Derkomai.
Utter surety crept across her; there was no doubt that the mysterious being was right. The reckoning was upon them, and Eni was powerless to stop what had been set in motion. "Step forth and be judged," Nergorath ordered, and as she spoke, she appeared from behind one of the pillars.
Eni's heart stopped in her chest for a single beat before pounding furiously back into motion. She froze where she stood, gaping up at the creature that loomed above them. Nergorath was as beautiful as she was terrible; her darkly iridescent coloration was shot through with ancient scars, the marks of some awful battle still upon her. She was vast, almost beyond measure, her head larger than Tin, and her eyes were shimmering pools of wisdom and sadness.
Nergorath spiraled her body around the pillar, her enormous forearms easily finding purchase in the bones of her victims with such delicacy that not a single one broke under her weight. Her claws were longer than sabers, a wickedly sharp counterpoint to fingers that looked as graceful as those of a calligrapher. Horns flowed smoothly from her forehead, swept elegantly back and aligned with the spines that ran down her long and flexible neck and stopped just short of where her wings joined her torso.
"You have seen me," she continued with her eyes upon Tin, and with every word Eni caught a glimpse of gleaming teeth the size of her arms, "Now let us see you."
Despair and disbelief warred in Eni's heart as she stared up at Nergorath, and at last she understood Tin's fear. The powerful being wasn't a mage from Abraxas's time, kept alive with powerful magic but still ultimately mortal. She wasn't a mammal, her flesh enfeebled by age even as her mind and her magic remained as sharp as ever.
She was a dragon.
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