Eni went completely numb, her entire body feeling as though it had been hollowed. If it weren't for the wooden staff she held she would have collapsed, her legs so watery that they could barely support her weight. At her side Tin was visibly trembling, his hackles fully raised and the fur of his bare chest sticking straight out.
She wanted to think what she was seeing was no more real than the copy of her own body Nergorath had used, but she couldn't. The thought refused to take root in her head, overwhelmed by the evidence before her. The dragon's presence was like the press of the ocean, filled with boundless power and stretching against every part of her. Eni could feel her magic, whispering against her ears and filling her lungs with every breath. She could even smell her, as Tin must have, a scent that defied explanation or categorization but was undeniable.
Nergorath loomed in Eni's vision as she stepped down from her awful resting place with sinuous ease, her vast head slowly lowering until she was peering directly into Tin's eyes.
"Come now," she crooned, the air pulsing with the strength behind each word, "Show me."
Tin looked terribly ill in the beautiful light that filled the vast atrium, his mouth working soundlessly. The fingers of his left paw twitched spasmodically, opening and closing, and his pupils had grown so small that his gaze looked blankly white and blue. The wolf had gone entirely rigid, a low and wordless sound escaping his throat, and Eni found her voice.
"You said you wanted to talk!" she cried, the exclamation out before she had the chance to reconsider it, and all at once the dragon's gaze fell to her.
Tin was panting for breath, shivering ferociously, but Eni had Nergorath's full attention. Her eyes swam before her, flashing with colors Eni couldn't possibly describe, and the dragon spoke. "Words," she said, "Misborn are so beholden to their impotent grasp at reality."
The wind in the room sighed around Eni as Nergorath considered her, her focus sharper than a knife. "I remember when Raxa first came to me," she continued, her tone almost wistful, "He was as you would be, given a few more years of wandering. Driven half-mad by the voices that crowded his head, calling out for his power. Always desperately alone, denied the warmth of companionship."
Even as Eni heard the words she could see Abraxas, and the truth she had somehow always known and yet never realized came to her. The Aberrant hare barely resembled the proud and noble figure immortalized by his statue; he was thin and filthy, his body clad only in rags. His fur's vivid patterns of blue and white were dingy, his ribs visible underneath the elegant shapes, and one of his antlers was shorter than the other, marred by the sharp and jagged edge of a break. Snow was falling heavily around him as he feebly made his way up a treacherously slick mountain, the sky above dully gray. The sun brought light but no warmth as he forced his way on, his delicate paws scabbed over with dozens of small bloodless cuts from sharp rocks.
Eni lost all sense of herself as she watched, the old and familiar terror rising up in her stomach as she watched the first mage lose his footing. He collapsed, whispering wordless nonsense to himself in a voice that was rusty with disuse. His tone swung wildly as he evidently argued against something only he could hear, his eyes fever bright. Abraxas managed to drag himself forward with obvious effort, his fingers like claws as he strained his arms, but his mutterings grew fainter until at last they stopped.
The hare lay very still, bitingly cold snow piled up around him as drifts of it began to cover him, and Eni's heart beat wildly. She could feel the chill of the air creeping into her bones and the sharpness of the stones under her feet, her breath coming in uncertain gasps as she watched. She couldn't move, her body feeling rooted in place, and despair filled her. Her own power pulsed and strained, trying to break free, and she squeezed her eyes shut until she could no longer bear the darkness and opened them again, a moan escaping her lips as she tried to force the feeling away.
Always alone.
She might have stood there for minutes or hours, helpless to act as her nightmare played out, before a vast sound filled the air. The faint disc of the sun had been blotted out by Nergorath's wings as she descended with a sound like thunder, swooping low. The dragon's body was whole, unmarked by any of the scars Eni had seen, and her eyes blazed as she took in the pitiful figure beneath her.
"His mind couldn't bear to consider me," she said, and she was looking at Eni.
They were standing in the atrium as though nothing had happened, and Eni's stomach heaved. There had been no transition, no fading in or out like a theater going dim as the curtain was drawn. She was simply standing where she had never left, the entire experience only the work of Derkomai upon her, and she stared back at Nergorath with renewed fear.
"You may call me Neira, as he did," the dragon said, and the word was an unexpected relief.
The strange syllables still burned themselves into Eni's head, its glittering angles and smooth curves tracing a sigil of beautiful complexity, but they were easier to grasp. Her full name was almost too much, as though it strained to fill every space within Eni's mind, but her chosen appellation was simple enough.
The Lonely One.
Eni shivered, the dragon's face before her enigmatic as her piercing gaze refused to leave her. "He was my pupil," Neira said, "Perhaps I could teach you as I taught him."
The words were solemn, filled with careful consideration, and Eni swallowed hard. For the briefest of moments she had seen Abraxas as though he was standing there with them, his formerly thin face fuller and his clothes much finer, his features alert and attentive. "Perhaps," she managed, her voice a croaky whisper.
"Yes," Neira murmured, the word soft and sibilant, "There is much for you to learn, beginning with who you truly are and what you most desire."
Eni felt herself buckling under the force of the attention, her every instinct urging her to turn and flee even as she knew it was hopeless. The space she had found herself in was vast, but there were no exits she could see, just endless rows of shelves stuffed with glittering tomes. Her heart pounded furiously, her nose twitching as she groped for anything she could possibly do.
"I… I'm just…" Eni stammered, and Neira chuckled.
The sound was rich and vibrant, free of the slightest sign of contempt. The dragon sounded genuinely amused, and Eni quivered, feeling as though her lungs couldn't possibly hold enough air. Neira's power was too much and far too close, brushing against hers and threatening to blot it out without even trying. She felt like less than the smallest insect by comparison, her words of protest dying in her throat.
"Hungry for strength?" Neira asked, her massive head slowly coming closer, "For certainty?"
She was close enough that her slow and even breathing made Eni's fur flutter, strands of it pushed away from her face. "Raxa sought nothing less," she whispered, her eyes as vast and as endless as though they held all the secrets of the universe, "And feared nothing less. Curious, is it not, how history repeats itself? A hare before oneself again."
A slow and terrible realization struck Eni, one that burned its way slowly down her body as though she had swallowed liquid fire. "Or perhaps it does not repeat," Neira mused, "Perhaps there is only the siren call of magic that defies control, holding you spellbound in its grasp. The shadow of chaos makes for dark roads, leveret; do you trust yourself to have truly found your way back to the dying light?"
Eni couldn't protest, even as she knew the worst was yet to come. Neira's voice was mild but relentless, each word like the blow of a hammer against an anvil. They struck at her, the persistent force urging her to crumble. "How fragile your reality is," she whispered, "You doubt it, even now, no matter how you deny it. You will never be free of the Lotophagi, leveret. Assuming, of course, that there ever was one."
"Enough."
Tin's voice was harsh and uneven, barely more than a snarl, but it cut through the dragon's vicious assault. Eni's cheeks were wet and she realized she was sprawled across the floor, her legs having given way at some point. She hadn't noticed her fall; her thoughts were dim and sluggish. Her paw was clenched painfully tight around the staff she held, her blunt claws poking through the tips of the fine silken gloves she had been clothed in and digging into the shaft.
Tin was standing before her, but his body was stooped and he was panting for breath, the effort it cost him to keep speaking obvious. "We'll talk," he said, and Neira's massive head dipped in a nod.
"And so we shall," she agreed, "You needn't be afraid; would I ever harm you?"
Tin shuddered, and Eni could almost feel his terror. There was a nuance of meaning to Neira's words that could never be conveyed in any other language, her question referring to the wolf and yet somehow not. "You'll recall your previous visits, in time," Neira said smoothly, "Welcome home."
The dragon stepped forward, coming entirely off her grisly pile of bones. "Come along," she commanded, "There is something you must see."
Eni found herself standing, her limbs clumsy and barely feeling under her control. She had been utterly unable to deny the dragon's order; she was already following the tip of Neira's tail before she even realized it. Neira's footsteps made no noise against the floor, her gigantic body graceful as she led them past rows of bookshelves lined with glittering golden tomes. The atrium was shaped like a snowflake, radially symmetrical with half a dozen wings, and Neira clearly knew where she was going. "This is only a portion of my collection," she said, as proud as the docent of a museum, "Perhaps later you would care to browse?"
Neira's elegant neck twisted and she caught Eni in her gaze. "There are books here no mortal eyes have touched since the world was young," she said, and despite her fear a powerful longing seemed to grab ahold of Eni from her very core, "It seems only fitting that I offer the ultimate Archivist the opportunity."
There was no mockery in her voice, but Eni still found them almost unbearably cruel, a taunt at the expense of her old mentor. She wanted to say something but nothing left her mouth, her tongue a uselessly heavy weight. At her side Tin was clasping her paw in his, the hammering of his pulse ringing through her entire body. She could tell that his urge to flee was no less than her own, but she was sure the wolf felt as locked onto their path as she did.
"There will be another chance, I'm sure," Neira mused when Eni remained silent, "In the meantime, would you care to explain to Vanargand what a palimpsest is?"
The beautifully even light filling the corridor seemed to fade, the air suddenly thick, and Eni thought she must have misheard everything but the terrible name. The question was bizarrely out of place and when she didn't immediately answer, the dragon prompted her. "I suspect he prefers your voice," she said, a faint smile touching her face, "If not something else."
Eni's tongue seemed to come unglued at once, an explanation bursting forth as she glanced up at Tin to escape Neira's knowing gaze. "It's a piece of parchment," Eni said, her voice as even as if she had been asked the question while lecturing at the university, "One that had writing on it before being scrubbed clean and new text added in its place."
Neira seemed pleased in her own inscrutable way, bowing her vast head. "A relic of a time when your kind valued parchment more than the words written upon them," she said, "But of a particular use to historians, are they not?"
The dragon sounded for all the world like a colleague having a friendly discussion, and even though Eni's stomach remained tightly knotted she nodded. "Some texts only survive as palimpsests," Eni said slowly, and she felt dimly aware of some larger point Neira was driving at, hanging just out of her reach.
"But survive they do," Neira said quietly, "Still readable, if only you know how to look."
She fell silent, her long tail slowly swinging from side to side. Its end was like a battering ram, its momentum surely enough to take down a castle, and yet it never came close enough to pose any threat to Eni or Tin. The dragon's peculiar attempts at conversation had been unsettling, but her quietness was almost worse, allowing something dark and gloomy to settle over Eni.
The corridor they were walking through ought to have been beautiful, glowing with light and filled with books too numerous to count, but all Eni cared about was Tin. The wolf was still moving stiffly, as though he had not recovered from whatever Neira had done when she had fixed him in her terrible stare, and despair boiled off of him in waves. She gave his paw a gentle squeeze and he almost jumped, looking up and then at her, licking his lips before opening his mouth to speak.
"It has been many years since a visitor arrived by the same entrance you did," Neira said with her head still forward, somehow managing to interrupt before the wolf could say a single syllable.
The dragon's words were silky and conversational, but there was a horrible undercurrent Eni had no desire to dwell upon. "My most recent guest came through the Mother's Wound," she said, as though it was a trivial matter, but Eni nearly staggered.
The extinct volcano was nearly two thousand miles away, its sullen caldera overlooking the ocean, but the way the dragon spoke it might have been no more than two yards. "But the path used matters not," Neira said, "Everything that touches my domain is mine to see. To hear. To feel."
The whisper of her magic seemed to tug at Eni, swirling about her in the fitful wind the dragon's breath produced. "My presence is all-encompassing," Neira went on, "The veins of the world are as my own. Every fire that burns in this land is a window I may peer through, every tremble upon the soil an echo that carries the voices of the mortal realm."
Eni was filled with the sudden terrible certainty that the walls around them were shifting, somehow, the atrium reordering itself without seeming to change. There could be no other way for them to walk for as long as they had and yet not moved a foot forward, and Eni could almost feel the floor heaving under her as her mind tried to make sense of the power that pulled at her. Neira's face was filled with rapturous pride as she glanced back, her features almost unspeakably beautiful as she ignored her guests' discomfort. "Such secrets are whispered to me!" she boasted, "The true Omustarcon, greater than any feeble construct of a child of the sun."
The word meant nothing to Eni, and yet because it was spoken in Derkomai she still caught a glimpse of understanding, a vision of a tree that stood like a negative space counterpart to Neira's tunnels and wreathed by flaming wings. The image was gone in an instant, and what Neira meant them to see was suddenly obvious.
The rows upon rows of bookshelves had given way to another beautiful chamber, one that was perfectly circular. Eni knew they must have entered it through a hallway, but when she risked a glance over her shoulder there was nothing, just the smoothly sweeping curve of an unbroken wall. There were no lamps or lanterns, nor even an unnatural glow filling the air itself, but the room was still as bright as midday.
The lofty ceiling, elegantly domed and formed of swirling shapes that flowed and shifted into each other in a way both undeniably organic and obviously unnatural, reflected the light of what filled the vast space.
There were eight alcoves, each one a massive depression in the floor so deep it looked like cannon shells had struck the gold-laced marble. It rippled and flowed, carved into expanding and overlapping concentric rings as though eight stones had been simultaneously dropped in a lake, and in midair there were the most dazzling objects Eni had ever seen.
Eni thought she had never seen anything so beautiful or strange; there were eight glimmering crystals that burned like miniature suns. They seemed more real than any object could ever be, banishing shadows as they threw off shimmering rainbows that refracted off each other and formed colors that existed nowhere else. It was as though they had more of some intrinsic quality Eni could not name, something beyond height or width or length. They were each about the size of Eni's head and yet felt much larger, as though the orbs were keyholes in reality through which something grand and vast could be glimpsed.
They pulsed as if they were breathing, the light brightening and dimming. The orbs weren't quite in sync with each other; all eight weren't at their most brilliant at the same time, but as Eni stood watching a pattern occurred to her. There were four groups of two and each pair was in harmony, reflecting its partner with a perfection beyond even the most well-crafted machine.
"What are they?" Eni gasped breathlessly, feeling their power against her.
They were like Neira but gentler and softer, serene and without her hard edges. The dragon didn't answer; she curled herself around the edge of the room, her long body circling it almost completely, and fixed her gaze upon Tin.
"Dracrysts," he said, his eyes going wide, and although Neira's expression didn't change Eni would swear something about her body did.
For the briefest of moments, her air of unconcerned curiosity gave way to something sharper and hungrier, but it was gone almost before Eni could recognize it for what it was. "They're…" Tin continued, but the light of recognition had left his eyes to be replaced with bewilderment.
"My brothers and sisters," Neira said, although her words carried far more weight than Eni would have thought possible.
She could have said aunts and uncles, or cousins, or comrades. The terms carried all of those meanings and none of them, the realities of draconic relations refusing to be broken down into anything as simple as could be expressed in Circi. "Sometimes you are tempted to try striking me, before I show you this chamber," Neira said slowly, the air between her and Tin quivering with tension, "You see the scars I bear and are bold enough to think you may add more. Perhaps even to end me."
Her massive fingers ran along her body, her talons scraping against the blemishes that marred her otherwise smooth scales. "I show you now why you cannot," she continued, and there was no boastful tone to her words, just a tired despondency.
"Once, long before the first mammal was born or even had the spark of thought, there were ten dragons," she said, "Five pairs, each of us a consummate fit with our partner."
An image formed in Eni's head, ten magnificent archdragons swirling through dazzling patterns as they drifted through the air, their thoughts a steady stream that would put the finest orchestra to shame. Eni watched in awe, feeling almost as though she could join them, leaving the bounds of gravity behind, and she was overcome with the powerful memory of the time she had nearly done so herself. It was beautiful beyond description, and yet Eni found tears forming in her eyes because she knew what would come next.
"Mine was Kidu, and I was his," Neira continued, longing etched into every syllable.
He was a creature of incredible beauty and grace, his eyes filled with kindness and gentle wisdom. When he circled Neira, Eni could feel how well they fit, how each was like two halves of one whole. "In the making of paradise, he was devoured," Neira said, and Eni's head suddenly emptied.
Anger and grief that were not her own poured over her and through her, filling her heart and her thoughts. Everything she had ever loved was torn away, cruelly vanishing before she could even say goodbye. Eni screamed until her throat was raw, a high and piercing note that was nothing more than an echo of how Neira had cried out. Pain pervaded every fiber of her being, her eyes boiling with tears that she couldn't shed, and when she tried to breathe her chest was being crushed.
Misery beyond anything she would have thought possible coursed along her veins, far too strong and refusing to lift. Centuries might have passed and still the feeling would not diminish, and it all might have ended were it not for something flickering within her that refused to be extinguished.
It might have been hope, but it was almost too cruel to bear, too horrible to have when everything that mattered was gone. Eni groped for her sense of self, trying to pull herself away from Neira's despair, but it held her in her grasp. She was a fly caught in a spider's web, insignificant and helpless no matter how she strained, and all her senses were gone.
There was nothing but what Neira felt, cutting and fiery, and Eni was sinking deeper with no end in sight. Her voice was not her own but she called out anyway, desperate for the one who surely must be trapped as she was. "Tin!" she cried, and all at once she was pressed flat against the floor.
She felt hopelessly weak, every ounce of strength ground out of her body, but she was once more in the strange chamber with its beautiful Dracrysts, each of which still floated serenely in their own alcoves. Tin was sprawled before her, his eyes slack and unfocused, but he was still breathing, almost wheezing with effort. Her fingers twitched for him and he slowly came back to himself until they could pull each other up.
Neira watched them, silent and unreadable, and she did not speak again until they were standing. Eni had to lean against Tin and her staff, but she managed it; Tin looked as though he might have fallen over if it hadn't been for his tail's support. "I could not give up on Kidu," the dragon continued, and mercifully the words were in Circi.
They were still filled with awful power, the emotion not smoothed out by what must have been uncountable eons, but they didn't drive Eni half-mad with their strength. "And yet, in my hour of need, did they come to my aid?" Neira asked scornfully, gesturing venomously at the Dracrysts, "They, who were each still whole?"
"No," Eni whispered, her voice cracking, and an awful empathy filled her.
"No," Neira agreed, "It was the leveret who gave me succor. Abraxas, the mortal."
Her fingers moved absent-mindedly, the shapes they traced somehow familiar. "I slayed them all," Neira said, and her voice was brittle with barely-restrained anger, "I, who had always been the strongest of our number, took what they would not freely give. I will have what is mine, Sincarn. You will return my beloved to me."
Her eyes burned hatefully at Tin, but they were tempered with something softer and kinder, the contrast making it all the more awful. The strength of command in her voice rattled the walls, making Eni's lungs quiver as the sound washed over her. It was undeniable, and yet Eni knew Tin had no choice but to deny her; surely there was nothing he could do. "Each time you have visited, All-King, you have brought a gift," Neira continued, "Allow me to show you the last."
The dragon's wings fluttered, and Eni could almost hear her power reaching out without even a word to command it, raw strength gripping at one of the walls. The smooth stone twisted and came apart, an opening appearing where there had not been even the faintest sign of one. A small and limp form tumbled to the floor, tiny and insignificant compared to Neira's graceful bulk.
The figure twitched feebly and rose to his knees, facing Tin and Eni. He was a wolf, lean almost to the point of emaciation and dressed in rotting robes that might have once been black. His face was a mess of scars too perfect to be anything but deliberate, curving lines stretching around his eyes and down the length of his muzzle. The white marks stood out sharply against the pinkish hues of his skin, all his fur shorn off. He looked dazed, his gaunt features oddly slack, and Eni was horrified to realize she knew who he was.
If it weren't for his scarification, he would have barely resembled the wolf Eni had seen only once before, but his voice sounded exactly as it had in Tin's memory as he spoke. "My lord!" he cried, falling down in a clumsy bow as he prostrated himself, "I knew you would not fail; I have kept my faith in you!"
Behind him, Neira made a contemptuous noise he did not appear to hear as he babbled on, his words colored with fanatical devotion as he went on. "It is promised, my lord. It is promised!"
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