“Have I finally lost it?” I asked, ready to accept the easiest answer—I’d finally lost my sanity.

Secretary muttered, “I refuse to accept that I’m stuck inside your head, little brute; I see it too.”

“Alls below,” Lupe whispered, “what the fuck are you wearing?”

The three of us, in agreement that someone was physically present, took stock of what stood before us. Sure, the thing looked like me, but in the way that you might call out to someone on the street or in a cafe. You’re sure in the moment they’re your friend or someone else only for them to turn around and prove otherwise. In cataloging the differences, I sought to do just that.

First, there was how she stood. It was a lazy stance, too loose, and inconsiderate of her surroundings. Akin to a fencer who allowed the tip of their blade to roam about the air without care that they might nick someone who happened to walk by. She leaned against the wall of the Staircase, her head turned from Lupe to me to Secretary—smooth as melting ice—then she smiled. A curled thing of predatory self-satisfaction.

“Oh, this,” she said, with my voice, “it’s not really my style. Just some items I happened to pick up on my way out of here.”

Lupe was skeptical, she asked, “Pick up or do you mean looted?”

The woman tilted her head down and to the side, as if embarrassed to answer. Her pupil—singular due to the vertical scar that closed her left eye—peeked out from the corner of the remaining one. On anyone else, the action may have come off as coquettish or demure. A sort of shyness that invited intrigue and suitors. On her, clothes poorly fit—denim shorts that hugged her upper thigh and a baggy t-shirt with a hole over the place her heart would be—and so soaked through with blood that it dripped from her steady as rain, it only served to highlight the metallic jaws of a trap that had already claimed at least one unfortunate soul.

“I mean, picked up,” she said. “Looting implies it was a treasure worth taking.”

Secretary, gesturing at the hole in the shirt, said, “They might not be treasures, but you went to some amount of effort, little brute.”

The woman who wasn’t me rolled her eyes. She held out a bloodied claw, turned it about examining the way the blood looked atop her white scales, and smirked. Her eyes dipped down to Secretary’s chest and back up to their face.

“Hardly,” she said. “Hands like these, well, they’re naturally good at certain tasks. And once you have a hammer…breaking hearts becomes a habit.”

Her gaze fell to me again, but this time her face softened in a way that reminded me of myself the last time I’d looked into a mirror. Sad, bereft of edges, before she drew back her lips showing off the extra set of fangs sitting behind the ones I already possessed, the mien of a predator overshadowing the somber light of the child in her eyes.

“Just ask me,” she told me.

I said, “I know it’s not true, so no need.”

She scoffed, and with both hands twirled them in the air in a, let's get this over with, sort of motion. I glanced back to find Secretary and Lupe seemed less firm than me about who this woman was. Neither of them met eyes but instead offered arguments.

Secretary said, “She moves like you, little brute. Her face it…”

“I can’t even see her face,” Lupe said, “but she talks like you. All slippery and trying too hard to keep a lid on all your, well, everything that’s up with you.”

“Thanks, Lupe,” she said. “You always did see the shape of me. Even when I was too caught up in things to see it myself.”

I turned back to the woman, stared hard at her to see myself in her, but couldn’t, wouldn’t. She looked too…hybridae. A sickle horn shaped from two intertwining strands sprouted from her forehead. Her ears had the shape of a chef’s knife. She even had a tail, thick as the rope in my high school’s gymnasium. It flicked and skewered the air around it with a head shaped like a bident. I still had my human shape, for the most part, and I’d never let it go ergo—

“Sphinx, just come out,” she said. “I’m spiraling.”

For the briefest moment, I convinced myself I’d won. This was a bluff no one could make. Sphinx was mine and no one else’s. It was for this reason, this immutable aspect of the summoner-entity bond, that Sphinx stepped free from my spirit to form in the space between me and this woman…who effortlessly proved she was me.

“No,” I whispered. “Sphinx, you’re mine.”

Sphinx’s head swiveled from the woman to me and back again. A heavy sigh rolled from her throat, and then a more feline chitter followed. She was stressed.

“Yes, but to be technical, Nadia,” Sphinx said, “I belong to Nadia.”

I nodded, “Yes, that’s me.”

Sphinx gestured to the woman with her wing, “And that’s her,” she said. “I am the bondmate of Nadia, every Nadia, no matter where or when they hail.”

“In this case, it's when,” she said. “Congrats, we’ve now discovered that the urban legend of Staircases isn’t that much of a legend.”

I leaned against the wall for support. The woman—who’d proven definitively she was me—raised her hand and wiggled her fingers in mock greeting. A low rumble like the rousing of an engine, emanated from Sphinx. It pulled my attention back to her and brought a smile to my face. She’d positioned herself between us, at first diplomatically, but now decidedly in defense of me. The hair of her fur standing on end in warning.

“Cease your antagonisms, and walk on,” she ordered.

“I would,” Future-Nadia said, “but it looks like they have questions for me.”

Using her tail, she gestured at Secretary and Lupe. They’d been quiet initially, allowing me the space to process this chronological confrontation I’d found myself in, but with evidence now proving that this woman was me from the future you could tell the levee of their grace was falling. Questions percolated behind their eyes, and the anxiety of the unknown—which we often put aside so that we might live—worked itself through their limbs like caffeine.

“Fine,” Sphinx grunted, “but we hold fast to protocol lest we sink into paradoxical mires.”

“You can approve every question,” Future-Nadia said, “just like last time.”

“Last time?” I asked.

Future-Nadia, shook her head, and said, “No cutting the queue. Go on, you first #404.”

“How far in the future are you?” they asked.

Sphinx said, “No.”

“Why?”

Sphinx swiveled her head to face Secretary. “You’re seeking to establish a timeline by which you can work backwards and presume events,” she stated. “This would vacate you of free will.”

“Better luck next time,” Future-Nadia chuckled, bitterly. “What about you Lupe, or are you currently too mad at me?”

Lupe wobbled her hand in the air. “I’m pissed at this one,” she said, thumb shoved in my direction, “but if you’re from the future then I have nothing against you beyond being her in the past. All I want to know is, why’re you alone?”

Future-Nadia’s smile was shoved aside by the question. Replaced with a despondent scowl that, like a drawbridge, was tense when shut. A throbbing at her temple—which is when I noticed the missing black star—before she slammed her fist into the wall. The gong-like bwam echoed up past us and down into the darkness below. It didn’t her hurt, not in the way she maybe wanted it to, so she did it again and again, once more in search of some feeling before she sighed, and held up her blood-soaked hand.

The sudden tantrum—that being the easiest way to refer to it—caused both Secretary and myself to take a step back. Lupe, however, held her ground. When Future-Nadia was finished, Lupe stepped forward and leaned in a space on the wall beside her.

“That painful, huh?” she asked.

Future-Nadia shot back, “When is it not?”

Lupe sighed, “When we make peace with it, I suppose. How we got to this point.”

Sphinx finally spoke, “You can’t answer that question.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Future-Nadia said. “Free will and all. It’s your turn, me. What do you got?”

“It’s not like there’s much you can tell me,” I said. “Sphinx, can I ask for advice?”

“Yes,” Sphinx said to me. She turned to future me and stipulated, “There can be no specifics on events or actions taken. It must be advice given from the standpoint of her present. Not yours.”

“I know,” Future-Nadia said, “so I’ll do what I know protocol allows. Turn back now. Give up and let go of everything you think you’ll accomplish here.”

Secretary asked, “Or what?”

“Don’t answer that,” Sphinx said.

“Alls below, we need intel. Little brute have your bondmate stop obstructing me.”

Sphinx growled, “Such is my purpose, and thus I shan’t abdicate this responsibility. Least of all when you wish to swaddle yourself with the false knowledge of things that may not even come to pass!”

Lupe stepped past Future-Nadia, her hair tossing to the metronomic swivel of her head.

“Thanks,” she said, “but that’s some shit advice.”

Secretary, seeing no avenue in which Sphinx would budge, decided to press on as well passing by this future me. They didn’t share a glance—which now I consider somewhat intentional, but then had marked it down as a distaste for how this encounter had gone. With the two of them now past the bend of the Staircase and Lupe’s light a fading remnant, darkness returned to soak about me and my future double.

I think I initially walked down toward the same step that she’d been standing on when darkness fell. Though perhaps she moved by some greater grace than I was capable of, and had taken to the steps above me. In either case, our voices were the same, and with positions occluded I could hardly say who said what to whom. Talking to yourself, even with temporal distance, was still talking to yourself in all ways that mattered.

“Why give advice we’d never take?”

“Why give advice…we’d never take it?”

“But you still gave—”

“No. I did what I wanted to do.”

“Then do something else.”

“I can’t.”

“We always can…so why not see if we could.”

In the frigid dark of the Staircase, there emerged an indignant light. Small as a candle’s flame, it wavered like one. Buffeted by Time’s motionless winds, it wept sparks for actions long past and flickered in the face of fate’s great designs yet to come. Then it winked, darkness fell again, only to be shoved back in a grand resurgence of Revelatory illumination—a star, there was a star in her left eye.

There wasn’t any real distance between us, her hands having intertwined with mine down at my side at some point, while she’d angled her head at an opposite tilt to my own. Anticipating a kiss neither of us could commit to—we loathed ourselves too much for that. My mouth did fall open though; beside her head, sharing her left eye, was a secondary face equally my own yet not. Familiar but ultimately unrecognizable—it winked at me with its own spectral eye.

“Now you see the shape,” we said, three voices echoing into our mouths until the origin point of the statement was indeterminate.

I did see it, the shape, it was all around me. It was me. A staircase forever spiraling in a procession of descents and ascensions. The moebius strip which knew of only one face, but cursed with self-awareness enough that it tried to find another one. The wheel which turned in endless revolutions unable to be anything but a wheel. Nadia, the both of us at this one time and intersection, were an infinite idea played out by the desperation of the one before us. Slaves to the urge—the hope—of change which might arrive before whatever awaited me.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

“What do I do then?” I asked, my voice finally my own.

She answered, “Whatever you want to do, that’s the point of this test.”

“But that’s what you did!”

She deflected, “It’s what we do. What we always do.”

“Is it all that we can do?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, instead, shutting her left eye allowing darkness to edge about the fading brilliance of Revelation’s star. I laid a hand over my own eye—trying, failing, but trying all the same to capture that astral sight within mine. If I could keep it fading maybe I could…but it was already gone. My glimpse at something more had drifted away, and I knew that she’d left. Her time on my stage was done, and Sphinx tugged at my pant leg impressing on me that mine was a clock still ticking. So I set my mind back on the present, had Sphinx return to the inner sanctum of my spirit, and did my best to forget as I jogged after Secretary and Lupe.

When I caught up to them, they were waiting just outside the exit of the Staircase. Secretary’s head was on a swivel, hand-spell in front of their eye as they looked around with the intensity of a sentry. While Lupe grumpily swatted at the growing flock of sea angel-esque entities that surrounded her, spinning like dervishes as they bobbed about her head.

Lupe tilted her head in my direction, a soft acknowledgment of my presence, while Secretary shook out their hand dispersing the spell they’d been casting. Stepping off the Staircase and into the throne proper, I chose not to speak, instead doing my best to take in what I could make out of our surroundings. Courtesy of Lupe’s light—that which came from her eyes and her sky blue Radiant musculature—the Abyssal darkness that oppressed my eyes was pushed back enough to make out the honey-combed obelisks of volcanic rock that clustered together like so many fingers. It was from these obelisks that the entities which crowded about Lupe emerged by the dozens to investigate her.

“You don’t have to worry that much,” I said, “they’re only soldiers.”

Secretary disagreed, “Yes, little brute, but as you’ve commonly proved, a committed soldier can be decidedly dangerous.”

“True,” I said, “but last time I encountered these it was their summoners that made these a danger. Their actual nature seems rather harmless.”

Lupe snorted, “They’re of Abyss. That Court’s anything but harmless. Now stop stalling, what happened to you back there?”

“Did I take that long?” I asked.

“You didn’t,” Secretary said, “but it remains true that you spent time with yourself from an unknown future. This isn’t a phenomenon that the Lodge has much information on that could be considered reliable—”

“Could it help you move up the ranks if I had anything?” I asked.

Secretary glanced to the floor. It was just shy of smooth, made of more volcanic rock, and thus utterly boring yet it held their attention enough as they traced some barely visible crack away from me and off into the darkness. Lupe actually turned toward me, fully incredulous.

“Really Nadia?” Lupe asked.

“What?” I asked, “It’s a fair question.”

Lupe said, “But not at all where Secretary was going…if they were willing to be real with you.”

I waved off Lupe’s statement without trying to understand it; convinced that Lupe didn’t understand the asset-handler relationship I had with Secretary. We didn’t do “real” in the way she implied. There were only our missions, and any care we had for the other was that of someone keeping their tools in pristine condition. It was what worked for us. It worked for us.

“Let it go, Lupe,” Secretary said. “Little brute, provided you were given nothing that could aid or jeopardize this mission, you don’t have to say anything. I have enough headaches about our secondary objective as it is.”

“Then don’t worry,” I said, “she just did whatever she wanted. Such an asshole.”

Lupe chuckled, “I’ll agree to that one. You are an asshole.”

“Wait. I didn’t mean—

Secretary covered their mouth with their hand. “It seems encountering yourself provided you some measure of insight,” they said. “Now, let’s move, you can lead, little brute.”

“Assholes first,” Lupe said.

Groaning, I gave up on trying to defend myself—though I indulged in flipping off the two of them—then blinked on the Omensight. It was, loathe as I am at reductive statements, still dark. The adumbral blue of Abyss had painted over my normally lilac hued vision. Not so dissimilar as it looked when I first saw Sinaya’s field-spell in action—to think, he nearly killed me then—but this was something on another level. The tapestry of the world was Abyss in every direction, and even Lupe’s light, born of Morning, could only at best lighten the heavy hue as opposed to having true representation in the fabric of our immediate space.

However, what the omnipresence of Abyss couldn’t counter were the ties fate that connected me, Lupe, Secretary, and yes, Sinaya. They were all there and then some, lurking in the dark, but my eyes found them. I settled my attention on the thickest one that bound me to Sinaya—I’d recognized it because when we fought I tried to burn it—and interestingly shared the same magenta hue as one of the many ties between Secretary and myself.

“Cover me,” I said, then sank my perception into the connection between me and Sinaya.

I nearly lost myself at first. Our tie was one of many, maybe too many, currents that threatened to pull me into scenes of the past—a few shared and those in isolate. My heart rate quickened when I considered peeking into what Sinaya had done by himself when he thought about me. Though I organized myself with the reminder that there’d be plenty for us to catch up on once we were free from this place. It was that idea, freedom, which conjured to mind Sinaya on our call, curled up and voice soft, and doused the heat of my arousal whilst stoking the indignation I felt at his condition. I’d free my gallant butch, on that I was sure, and on that, I swam the current of our present.

My sight carried up through a multitude of floors. Past arrays of guards spanning soldiers, Barons, and even a few Viscounts. It went up until it pierced the floor of Sinaya’s room. He was in his armor, bereft the helm I’d destroyed, and paced about—my handsome tiger in too small an enclosure. I could’ve watched him forever, even as the image it presented pressed sharp fingers into my heart, but then he turned around…to me. His eyes wide as the ocean on the horizon, crinkling at the corners from the smile which found his face. He looked hopeful.

“I’ll be there soon,” I said, only to be reminded that he couldn’t hear me. Then he mouthed words, a reminder that I couldn’t hear him.

I pulled from our connection and turned toward Secretary and Lupe. Their expressions shaded with concern and distaste, respectively. Before I said anything, I noticed a gorey carmine tie connecting Lupe to something off in the shaded distance. What was Bloodlust doing here? I thought, and then recalled the way entities of Abyss had attempted to mob me during my last “visit.” The entities of Abyss abhorred light and here Lupe was, a walking reminder of light itself. I hurriedly shaped the seal for Godtime, dragging Secretary into it with me. With time dripping slow as syrup, Secretary made sure not to waste it. They swung their hands up into firing position—a new gun conjured into them in mid-motion—and swiveled about in search of the enemy. While I yanked Lupe into my arms, briefly breaking the connection between her and whatever was coming for her. It was because of that repositioning that we discovered the attacker in mid-lunge.

First were its teeth, serrated and the length of my hand. Then came its snout and chin, elongated yet also bifurcated opening up like a starfish. Followed by its body, which like the rest of it, was made visible due to the shifted position of Lupe’s light which bounced off the curve of its flank foiling its natural method of obfuscation and ambush. A method I’d liken to a glass of water placed inside a pool of water—useful when you didn’t expect to find a glass, but worthless once shards of it dug into your feet.

The comparison to glass proved apt when Secretary squeezed the trigger of their gun. Three snaps of military thunder. Three holes punched into the side of this thing that was ambitious enough to attempt to consume Lupe. Its lunge faltered as the bullets pushed it further astray from its intended course. Then it fell to the rocky floor; briefly made a show of force by wiggling its head in our direction and splaying open its mouth showing off the Abyssal dark interior of its throat. I dropped the Godtime, it wasn’t a threat anymore. A position agreed upon by the sea angels that hovered over its body and began to spin becoming a flock of drills, and dove into the entity’s glass-like carcass, goring into its body as they fed.

“#404, I thought your gun was Real,” I said.

“I like to keep people guessing, little brute, whether something is real or not,” they stated. “In this case, it was the memory of the gun your future-self stole from me.”

I muttered, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Lupe said, “if they’d fired a real one it wouldn’t have done anything to this thing. Which speaking of, why did it go for me?”

“Your light,” I answered. “Entities of Abyss seem to frenzy when they notice any kind of sorcerous illumination. Those little guys might have done something earlier to you if they were ambush predators instead of scavengers.”

“Harmless my ass,” Lupe said. “Fine, but the light was for your benefit, not mine.”

They closed their eyes, and like a needy lover, the darkness hurried to embrace us. Lupe shifted the dominance of who-held-whom so that I clung to her arm. I heard Secretary’s feet shuffle in probing steps until they reached Lupe’s other arm. After which, I pointed out the direction of my tie to Sinaya, and together we walked.

“How do the Lurkers even see in this place?” I asked, my eyes sore from the endless repetitive void that surrounded us.

Lupe said, “They don’t. Well, not really. Remember what I said on the roof? Most of the children of Sunken Valley have grown up without vision at all. Some get by with other senses—I knew a guy growing up who swore he could feel electricity, the Storms, in everything—but most just used the classic methods of canes, pets, or mortal tier Sorcery to make devices like mine. There was a bit of a veiled market for them. The small number that still have vision probably can’t handle going outside during the day.”

“They always did seem most active at night,” Secretary mused. “Any other traits that the children of your valley developed?”

“Translucent or outright transparent skin is one,” Lupe listed. “Though that’s something I’ve obviously never seen.”

“I can,” I said. “The Angler Knight’s skin is translucent.”

“Well there you go,” Lupe said, “but if I get my way, we won’t be seeing any new developments. Marduk’s going down in my generation.”

The conversation died again after that. I really wished it didn’t; walking and walking without anything to mark the time was…probably how Lupe lived. How everyone in the Sunken Valley lived. It made me appreciate where I grew up—it had so many lights most days, even more on festival days, and I don’t think I ever once feared the dark. Maybe sleep, during my “nightmare” period—which now I question about calling it that as they seem more like memories half-buried, but never the dark. Dad picked a good place to settle down, huh? There weren’t any despots, or weird sorcerous experiments being done on people. We didn’t even have criminals really. When I’d left, the town felt fake, a trick or delusion we all bought into, but is that so bad? Whether we were all battle-hardened or not, five people able to kill a godtender are still five people capable of killing one. That detail doesn’t change whether the town charges and dies together, or opts to let the whole thing pass them by.

I ended up voicing the thought by accident. “I wonder if they’d let me back?”

“What?” Lupe asked.

“Nothing, I was just thinking,” I said. “About how different the Sunken Valley is to my home.”

Lupe laughed, “Alls below, the pit that birthed you had to be one fucked up place I bet.”

“Hey, at least we had the sun,” I protested.

“Little brute, that’s a rather low bar for most of the world,” Secretary countered, “but as the classic saying goes, ‘you can never go home.’”

“You totally can,” Lupe said. “That’s why it’s home. Sure, you might feel too big for it sometimes, maybe you grow to hate it, but it’ll always be there for you if you want to go back.”

“Lupe, no, the phrase is about how your home will be different,” I said.

“So will you,” she said, “so why worry about it? Just be happy if it’s a place worth going back to.”

Because what if they don’t want me anymore? I thought. That place of peace nestled in the hills…I’d just make it dirty.

“What about you, Secretary?” Lupe asked. “What’s your place like?”

I couldn’t see the face #404 made, but I was familiar with their silence—it was so like mine. A chair you could lean back in and examine a question at your leisure. They cleared their throat after forty seconds. I counted.

“I don’t know,” they said.

“You don’t look that old,” I said. “To forget, you know.”

“But I did, little brute, all us secretaries do,” they hummed. “You asked why I loved the ocean, and I don’t know. To serve the Lodge we ‘forget’ our names, our homes, all the little memories that would be extraneous to our purpose.”

“Fuck,” Lupe said. “They have us beat, Nadia. That’s the worst deal.”

Secretary shrugged, “We get them back when our contract ends. I’ll remember one day.”

“But how do most end—” I said, being cut off by a squeeze of Lupe’s hand on my arm.

She whispered, “Two lurkers. Both soldiers. They entered my bracelet’s range. They’ll reach us in twenty.”

“Disposition?” Secretary asked.

Lupe answered, “Curious.”

“Is that bad?” I asked.

“It’s worse than neutral,” Secretary explained, “since it means they picked up on something to make them or their superiors interested enough to investigate. Though we can walk this back easily enough.”

Then, soft as fleece and smooth as silk, Secretary’s field-spell bloomed. Passing over our minds so subtly that even watching as it painted over the tapestry of the world—from Abyssal blue to the chroma-teasing grey of Remembrance—I’d barely noticed the change; the two Lurkers, luckless as they were, didn’t spot it before they stepped into Secretary’s psychic trap. When Secretary bid Lupe to continue on, we found them frozen in mid-step, and Secretary took the time to rifle through their brains—literally, Secretary used a spell to make their arms things of pure thought and shoved them inside the two Lurkers’ heads.

“Is this really necessary?” Lupe asked.

“I remember you did your whole memory removal thing using just your field-spell,” I said.

Lupe asked, “When’d they do that?”

“Our first mission together,” Secretary answered. “And I’m still employing that method, these two won’t remember anything, but I want to know what they know.”

“And what do they know?” I asked.

Secretary removed two faintly glowing orbs from the Lurkers’ skulls. Popped one in their mouth, and chewed thoughtfully as they ‘digested’ the information. From the groans and retching it must have been horrible. Standing back up, they groped for Lupe’s arm and on rediscovery pulled themselves in close.

“For one, they know what part of Marduk’s throne this is,” Secretary said.

Lupe asked, “Where are we?”

“It’s a place called the Menagerie,” they answered.

“Isn’t that just a fancy name for the zoos back in the Old World?” I asked. “There’s no animals here.”

“Correct, little brute,” Secretary said, “at least on the matter of the term’s original usage. As it seems Marduk’s intention, and the office which these two work for within the cult, is to consider this place a spawning ground for entities. If you don’t believe me, I also took a memory of how those two perceive this place—”

“Show me,” I whispered.

Secretary worked a quick spell and pulled the small thought bubble in two. They popped one into their mouth, and I opened wide for them to push the other into my own. We chewed, and as we did so I felt the memory work itself through the roof of my palate. Where it then seeped into my brain, and with it the world fell into a clarifying grayscale that overwrote my Omensight in the process—I was seeing the space as those two did, and very soon I wished I didn’t.

In every direction was an Abyssal horror. Great angler-eels like Sinaya’s arced through the air disappearing and reappearing through holes in the floor. Vampiric squid mermaids bobbed past us, their tendrils hooked and dripping mystic neurotoxins. Crablike imps reminiscent of shadow puppets scuttled over the Lurkers bodies. Ogres the size of apartments wearing cloud-armor spawned from hydrothermal vents in their bodies stepped over us, barely crushing us. The ceiling, which I’d presumed lost to darkness, was instead occluded by the churning mass of leviathans caught in an orgiastic cycle of fucking and consumption—their blood falling in waterfalls of molten sulfur. We’d been lucky, and we’d been surrounded the entire time.

“So, how bad is it?” Lupe asked.