Not being able to see is not something I would recommend to anyone that could help it.

My hands had shot up and began untying the cloth over my eyes before Mother Nani’s hand had ever left my back.

They had not been quick enough however and I crashed to the ground of wherever was on the other side of the black gate in a heap.

I rolled onto my back and wrenched the cloth from over my eyes and immediately wished I hadn’t.

Light, painfully bright and blinding, forced me to recover my eyes with my hands until they adjusted.

Something sharp pricked my side and I jumped to my feet, still struggling to see fully. “Hey!”

“Refrain from repeating your action and I will have no need to repeat mine.” Sam said, staring up at me with his blue eye lights.

“Next time I’m blinded and pushed through a portal, I will make sure to look out for you before I fall.” I said, balling my fists and placing them on my hips. I wasn’t actually annoyed, not completely. Seeing Sam had actually made me smile, just a bit.

“Thank you, my lady.” My familiar answered in his deep voice.

The gate that I had been pushed through had disappeared and I had fallen into an ornate hallway and onto Sam. We were the only two souls in the hall that was all white marble and stone. The ceiling was low and small and bright lanterns hung from it every few steps.

“Where are we?” I asked.

My skeletal familiar stood and circled once around my feet before beginning to walk towards the end of the hall to my right. “I do not know, but I am to take you to your mother.”

I took up beside him. Still finding it strange that he had been barely as tall as my ankle only days before. I found it easier to focus on what was in front of my face instead of engaging with the vortex of unknowns my meeting with the Mothers had left, so I asked. “Why have you started calling me that sometimes?”

“I have never called you that.” He stated flatly

“You know what I mean! “My lady”,” I dropped my voice as low as it could go to mimic how he sounded. “Is it one of the things about being a familiar that you are not allowed to know, or another of your compulsions?”

Sam was silent for a time, which meant he was taking time to think or he was flat out ignoring my question, there was no in between.

We reached the end of the hall and I followed Sam through several turns and archways that all matched the grandeur of where I had landed. After the last left turn, I saw my Mother engaged in conversation with a man I didn’t recognize.

I didn’t realize until I had taken several steps past him, but Sam had stopped walking as soon as we had turned the corner.

“Come on, you haven’t taken me to my Mother yet.” I turned and said to him.

I received nothing but silence, stillness, and the unwavering gaze of his two blue eye lights.

“Are you petrified again? Let’s go.”

“I will not move any closer to that man.” Sam growled.

I looked at the man, only the second man I had ever seen in Zenithcidel, and could find nothing off putting about him.

Tall, long white hair tied tight off the back of his head, and a wolfish face gave him a dangerous look but it seemed to only be skin deep. My mother seemed utterly relaxed standing just a hand’s breadth away from him. Even the two hilts, one gold and the other black as night, that I could see peeking out from his left hip did not give me pause.

“Why?”

Sam flinched. “I cannot know. Please do not ask me again.”

Understanding that there were parts of Sam’s mind that would hurt him if he tried to reach them, I wondered what the wolfish looking man could have done to Sam in his past life, whoever he had been, to leave a negative impression so large that it transcended my familiars death and rebirth. “I get it, I’ll come back for you in a minute.”

I started towards my mother, but Sam spoke before I took a step.

“I am bound to you Autumn Aubrey. I call you my lady because that is precisely what you are.” My familiar said in his low voice.

“So it is because you are my familiar then,” I sighed, actually feeling somewhat disappointed. “I thought you had begun to grow fond of me.”

“A truth is capable of being rendered true for more than one reason.” Sam said and promptly turned his attention to pretending to lick the bones of his paw.

Wait, had he just said what I thought he said?

I opened my mouth to try and find out, but fell short of words when a hand cupped my shoulder.

"Come my little Delpha, it is time for us to go home." My mother said, her sweet voice immediately calming the spike of fear that came with being touched unsuspectedly.

"Who was that you were talking to?" The man was no longer in the hall, which allowed Sam to walk beside my mother and I.

"Some form of guard or retainer, I believe. We struck up an idle conversation while I was waiting for you," I saw her look at me out of the corner of her eye. "You look well, better than I understand you have been since you left."

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She must have been talking to the Lao's, asking questions as to what my time away had been like. I didn't disagree, I hadn't realized how many small pains and aches I had accumulated until they had been washed away. Through only being able to move through the boarding house at night and then being unable to get restful sleep due to the fact that every time I closed my eyes I was pulled into a memory, I had been worn out to my bones. The restoration that had happened when I had entered the space I had met the mothers in had been utterly thorough and complete.

Which, absolutely did not make any fucking sense.

We reached the end of the ornate hallway and my mother stopped us in front of the first door I had seen in whatever building I had been dropped into. "Stay by my side, Autumn. This may be overwhelming for you."

What? I thought, not understanding what she meant. She put her arm over my shoulders, pulled me close, and took me through the open door.

Through memories that were not my own, I had seen glimpses of cities, schools, and towns but they had not prepared me for the bustling streets I walked into within the embrace of my mother.

More people that I had ever seen in my life, combined, streamed through the spaces between buildings both short and tall. The noise, I couldn't believe the noise. Murmurs, conversations, yells and shouts, all blended together with the dull percussion of thousands of footsteps landing on the cobblestone streets.

I was too busy trying to take it all in to resist my mother pulling me into movement. She moved quickly, effortlessly weaving us through aurament clad soldiers, a group of short purple skinned traders who were locked in a vicious argument about some object I could not see, and white aproned men that stood just off the street around a pot bigger than the tub in my bathroom at the boarding house.

Whatever they were cooking filled the city air with a heavy smoke that smelled of spices.

Everything I managed to see and smell and hear from beyond the cover of my mothers arm was all new to me. "Where are we?"

I felt my mother sigh. "We are within the first plane of Zenithcidel," She turned us off the busy street. We came to a large white bricked building that stood separate from any others. A black metal fence surrounded the massive building and when we came to the gate, it parted in its middle on its own. My mother walked us through it and it swung closed. Still moving at a speed that kept me from seeing anything for more than a moment, she wrapped us around the side of the building, through a nondescript door, and down several flights of stairs. Then and only then, did she release me and take a breadth. "Just beyond that door lies the black gate that you escaped to earth through."

Standing in the stairwell of what I realized was the place I had lived for literally as long as I could remember, I realized that there had been nothing but walls and a gate separating me from a massive city. "We are underground? There were clouds and a sky? I saw the sun."

"The Mothers are truly great, let that be a lesson to you." My Mother answered.

The mention of the Mothers brought all of the unknowns I had been left with back to my mind. "Why am I with you? Nothing happened to me. I don't want to hear the shit about how the Mothers are merciful. It doesn't make sense! I thought I was gonna die or get thrown into chains, " I didn't mean to, but my voice gradually rose until I was yelling and I could not stop the flow of words coming from me. " For fucks sake, I deserve it. . . Why didn't they punish me? I put everything at risk and nearly lost it, but they reward me? I don't understand!"

A great pain and sadness appeared on my mother's face. She put her hands on my arms and squared me straight to her. "My child, you have not been punished yet. I have been tasked with delivering your sentence."

It seemed to cost her greatly to say the words she was being forced to. "Tell me. I need to know what's going to happen to me Mom."

"What will happen to you will come in time. Each of the nine Mothers will come for you when they chose to. When that happens, each of them will punish you in the way they see fit."

"But," I started, trying to wrap my mind around what my mother was saying. Nine punishments, when they chose, how they see fit. "What does that mean?"

She hugged me then, but my mind was too occupied to find any comfort in it. "I do not have the knowledge necessary to know what the nature of their punishments will be, and I know how terrifying this must be for you but," She squeezed me harder. "It means that you are alive, it means that you are with me, and it means that they have given you mercy."

Normally, understanding something makes it easier to contend with the reality of it. I understood completely what my mother was saying. I didn't know when, but I would have to pay for what I had done nine separate times.

I let her hold me. What else was there for me to do?

My stomach groaned audibly.

"Mom?" I said.

"I believe that you need something to eat." She answered.

"I believe that you are right." I said over another of my stomach's ravenous growls.

We took the last flight of stairs to the floor that I had lived most of my remembered life on and stopped in front of the door I had left through when I had made my escape. "Where is the guard?"

"They didn't think it necessary. You have returned by your own free will." She paused and the look of sadness returned to her face.

I didn't like that one bit. "What? What is it?"

"The mortals that accompanied you. . .I'm sorry, but. . .They have been returned to where they came from." My mother said, pain evident in her words.

Sam spoke. I had forgotten he was with us. "I would not have told her that Lady Idensyn."

I was suddenly out of breath and I could not catch it.

Anna? Gone. Arthur? Gone. Ms. Lao? Gone. All of them gone home.

I growled. "You swore. You swore that I would see her again."

A dark and terrible desire rose within me. Could I make it to the gates before I was stopped? The only one around to stop me was my mother. Would I resist? Did I really have it in me to fight the woman who birthed me?

My mother, Idensyn Aubrey, Sorceress of the Second Circle, laughed. "I didn't want to do it, but Anna insisted."

She opened the door and gently pushed me into the first home I had ever known. Through the small entryway that led to the kitchen I had eaten most of my meals in, I saw something that I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams.

The kitchen had people in it that were not my mother and I.

My mother had not broken her word.

They Lao’s were in the kitchen, my kitchen, each of them busy cooking and making food.

Anna looked down from the pot whose contents she was stirring and saw Sam's skeletal walk into view. She stopped stirring, let her spoon fall into the pot, and bolted to where my mother and I stood.

"Did you do it? Did she believe you?" She asked my mother hurriedly, throwing her arms around me.

"I don't think," I said, hugging my friend back. "I've never been happier that I was lied to"