Reconstruction had started in Helbert’s Bend before even Lord’s Knuckle, which had suffered worse. For whatever reason, Mud Lane had been prioritised, and while I was hardly going to complain it did make me wonder. Perhaps Henthae or Timesnatcher or even Ciraya had pulled some strings somewhere. Who did I have to thank?
But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the skeletons of buildings were already there opposite my apartment block – that the people in the tents below could look up and know, really know, that their homes were going to be returned to them.
Hope. I’d have bet that Yune got a serious injection of power when the wizards started moving the wood into place.
And I’d have bet the goddess lost almost the same amount when I told my brother and sister where I was going.
Jaroan had taken the news well, on the surface, but Jaid let her true feelings be known in every facet of her existence. If she walked across the room, she flopped and floundered like a fish out of water. If she drew a picture, it was a sun weeping or a coffin. If she wrote a story, the pegasus lost all her feathers and could no longer fly.
It was with a certain degree of trepidation that I woke her, leaving Jaroan sleeping.
“Jaid,” I whispered, lifting her flaccid hand. “Jaid!”
“She’s having such lovely dreams,” came a soft voice from behind me.
“Shh!” I blurted.
It took a minute but my sister finally started to stir, her eyes rolling as she blinked…
She came fully alert as Gilaela dipped her horned head.
“Hello, young human woman,” the unicorn whispered. It was so weird, watching the equine lips move in pace with her words. “How are your dreams? I hope they are pleasant; they looked pleasant. May I say, your hair smells lovely. Far nicer than your brother’s.” She bared her teeth at me in a, well, horsey grin.
Jaid leapt out of bed, squealing a little – Jaroan opened his bleary eyes for a few seconds, took in the unicorn, then rolled over and went back to sleep.
I helped my sister into place on Gilaela’s back, and she wrapped her arms around the horse’s neck, burying her head in the gorgeous white mane.
“Oh, you smell lovely too, Princess! Can we keep her? Please, Kas, can we –“
“We’ve got no choice, I’m afraid.” I spread my hands helplessly, grinning. “She’s inextricably bound to me now. Once I’m back, we’ll go out of the city for a ride…”
I watched the expression on her face, the change come over her instantly when I mentioned leaving.
“Can’t – can’t you leave her here? Kas, please! Pleaaase!” Jaid growled. She didn’t sound as upset as she looked – she sounded angry, if anything. “You can leave her here, and I can feed her, and look after her –“
“I beg to differ, nice-smelling young human woman,” Gilaela cut her off, “I don’t really need much by way of feeding, or ‘looking after’, for that matter – you could bathe me in mud, I would still come out looking like this, you know.”
“You… you really haven’t seen where we live, have you?” Jaid asked, her lips that had been curled downwards in a frown now twisting upwards in the ghost of a smile.
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It warmed my heart to see the way her mood had already lifted, even though she was clearly fighting it. But I couldn’t leave Gilaela here, could I? If I came close to death or even just drew on too much of my power while in the undead-infested city, the unicorn would flicker away and disappear, which would surely only cause Jaid to lose her mind, make them grieve me unnecessarily.
The shields I’d put in place around the apartment would disappear too.
“She’s bound to me, like I said,” I apologised. “Where I go, she goes – and I’m sure as hell not taking you!”
I reached up to lift her down, then held onto her, forcing her to accept my hug.
“I’ll be fine, Jaid. I promise. I came through the Incursion, and it won’t be worse than that. I’ll make sure Princess is kept safe,” I cast a gloating look at the unicorn over Jaid’s shoulder and I could’ve sworn the horse stuck her tongue out at me, “and I can send you a message, if you like, once we’re there? It’ll be an ugly little imp creature – I can’t send Princess, she’d be too obvious moving through the undead city –“
“Don’t be so sure,” Gilaela said in Etheric, and snorted softly.
“What, you’re a chronomancer?” I asked eagerly in the same tongue, borrowing from the official terminology. “You bend time? Or just turn invisible, or something?”
“I… can destroy the things that see me?” the unicorn replied, with a note of confusion. “You are proposing a trip to some realm of evil beings, no?”
Never mind, I thought. I’ll have to test it in the field.
I was only hours away from embarking on my fool’s errand, now. My newly-bought demiskin – my most expensive purchase by far – was already packed and waiting for me under my bed…
My sister had made up her mind. “You can… se-send an imp. I don’t want Princess to get hurt. I… Look after my brother, Princess.” Jaid suddenly turned and threw her arms around the unicorn’s foreleg.
After the shock faded from her posture, her ears and eyelids lowering again, Gilaela seemed to relent and lowered her head to nestle against my sister.
I didn’t dismiss the unicorn and bid Zel goodnight till Jaid was fast asleep again, then I quietly lowered myself onto my bed and struggled to join her in dream-land.
And I failed, tripping through the cracks between the clouds, into the dark recesses where falling forever is a mercy.
“You cannot let us go on,” Jaid and Jaroan say in unison, eyes empty.
“Hush,” I hear myself whisper, and I glance between them, frantic. I can’t feel my lips moving. “I’ll hear us.”
“But we didn’t say anything,” their voices echo again; they glance at each other, empty eyes worried.
“By Kultemeren!” I hear myself cry, “you are not my brother and sister!” Then I catch the sound of myself sniggering, and when my voice comes next it is not my own: “They would never have begged for death so quickly.”
Then I see it – their hands are full of beetles.
They must be dead inside already.
I burn it all.
I hear my fist hammering on the door; I cringe on the other side of the room, longing for an avenue of escape to reveal itself.
The tarot card turns before my eyes… and the only way out is the Tower.
The moat of blackness. The slimy slithering ink I can’t grasp at even though I’ve seen it, I have seen it.
No, there is no escape in that monolith – only the Shadow awaits me, whatever I do. I can’t run. I have to wait, have to face it, as the blows continue to rain down.
I look, and I know that the door is a huge slab of metal and magic, a foot thick – it could withstand a thousand fireballs a minute for a thousand years.
I know it is about to split asunder. I’m knocking. On the outside.
I turn back, casting my gaze across the great hall of black stone with its gleaming table, seeing it all for the first time. The vast spiral of marble. Its flickering orange hearths. Its thirty-three huge seats.
I am outside knocking on the door and I can hear the thunderous blows from inside and they terrify me.
Which one is me? Which am I?
I try to tell them the thoughts aren’t my own but I won’t let me. Below the rim of my grinning mask my matching smile terrifies me and now I’m elsewhere, pursuing myself through the Incursion.
The Incursion I only recently survived. It is the same. Everything is the same, reborn in nightmare form. A clarity only Infernum might achieve.
I clamber across the head resting upon the clay, the rust-red plates lit from beneath by golden flame, the veins of fire-mountains. I hesitantly peel open the flesh and hide myself inside.
They are in here with me. The other twins. All eight of them. They still trust me.
They even look like children.
I try to soothe them, calm them as I slay them, but they won’t shut up so in the end I just do it as quickly, efficiently as I can. They’re strong, but not strong enough.
Not strong enough to face me.
Not yet.
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