Chapter Five - Tammy

“Hello? Mirror lady? Is this place safe?”

Slowly, a soft yellow glow that felt just as warm as sunlight fell across the room, leaking out of cracks in the air beneath a dark, shapeless sky.

Wherever I was, it was a long, long hall with just the barest hint of a curve in either direction. The floor was stone, roots meandering across it and yet ground down to make a flat surface. The only two walls that existed were both mirrors – giant panes stretching out further than I could see, with not a door in sight. Even as I watched they took on the now-familiar grey as the hovering woman reappeared in a spot that wasn’t blocked by the sprawling diagram that made my eyes itch to focus on. It crept up pillars of wood, rock, and metal, with traceries of magic only visible when I tapped into the Sight tying everything together into a shape I struggled to even process.

“Transition successful. Dampeners active – this location is marked as survivable for individuals comparable to the Lady Blackleaf.” Their image slid without any apparent effort behind the movement, gliding along the sheet of polished silver reflecting them and then jumping suddenly to the other side. In their wake, the diagram visibly shifted. Without even a sound, the pillars and etchings moved like they hadn’t been solid features.

Almost as an afterthought, the lady threw out, “Please do not exit the arrival platform while reconstruction is in progress. Other locations are not deemed safe.”

There was a prickling pressure that only grew as I watched what I was growing more convinced was a gigantic ritual circle turn on. It was so, so much more complex than what Teresa and I had built. It was staring straight me back, I just knew it. Roving webs of symbols brushed close to my skin, each spot they drew close to crackling with something like static. Time after time, they focused in on my branded palm. The static never built there, but something shifted in it regardless. Two pieces of magic I had no idea how to understand – sizing each other up.

…I didn’t like how, each time it did that, the wards backed down. What exactly had I accepted?

Eventually, the movement settled down. It looked – honestly, I had no idea if it was exactly the same or completely different from the start. The mirror lady reappeared from the opposite direction she’d vanished in, and at a gesture of her arm my platform shifted. From somewhere beneath it, a sapphire the size of my fist, wrapped in a filigreed cage of silver, floated up to head height. It was pulsing like a beating heart, a dim light flashing through the binding every few seconds.

“Please finish registering.” A pause, then a toneless addition of, “Make contact with the keystone to assume control and return to default settings. Extraplanar wards will be relaxed to allow contracted entities to enter, physical deflection barriers will be deactivated, and defensive spells will return to discretionary control. Once repeated on the communications array, Archival business may resume and quaternary sites will be recovered.”

I could’ve sworn that, at the end, she said something else. Her lips moved, but I didn’t hear anything. But as I reached out to the gemstone that was actively sucking in heat and streamers of energy even as my hand just approached it, I was sure that I saw some kind of tension drain out of her.

As soon as I touched it, my hand froze in place. I couldn’t let go when I tried, but the cold faded as the trickle of magic entering it turned into a flood. It was morbidly fascinating to watch tendrils of mana – or whatever I wanted to call it – tracing a path like arteries down my arm, where they seeped from my fingers and into the stone. At first, a glazing of frost spread across it. But as it pulled more, and the overbearing pressure of the room doubled and doubled again, the light in the stone grew brighter, its pulses coming in time with mine. The ice melted without leaving any water behind, and then the pressure vanished.

I pulled my hand back, and the stone once again sank through the floor as the entire room lit up blindingly bright. I vanished in the same blur of colors as before – without even touching the pillar I’d held when I came in. This time, my stomach lurched in the transfer and I struggled to keep my macaroni down as I fell to my knees on the other side in complete darkness.

“Configuration successful – lockdown lifted. Translocation to secondary artifice zone complete.” There was a pause. “Please remain still. Movement is unwise.”

I retched. My shoulders heaved and the warm feeling of mana roiling inside me kicked up a notch. Something shifted in the dark, and suddenly there was a…light?

It was a mottled yellow rimmed in a wavering, painfully dark glow. First a monolithic pillar in the distance, stretching up and up and up. Then spokes radiating out from it. They shifted as my eyes moved to follow them, an off-kilter hum rising from the silence. Symbols danced across the darkness between them, peeling off the expanding web and fading whenever I tried to focus on them.

One drifted right up to my nose. My breath caught in my throat as it alighted on a spike the texture of bone that was growing towards my face, a sharp edge that was just a shapeless, sucking void in the Sight. Mana dripped from my skin and into it, or into other spikes that lurched toward me as I jerked backwards. My hands hit something dry and yielding. Dry, as in my skin began to crack just from touching it. Yielding, like I’d fallen backwards into a bag of rotting meat sitting in the sun, fetid and warm and horrifying things just on the other side of a thin barrier.

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It lurched forward in one fast jerk. A single, sharp, burning prick hit the tip of my nose, a single drop of glowing blood welling up onto the spike.

Darkness rushed in as fire raced up from my arm and wiped everything away.

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Dark wood against a deep, starless sky. Cool, damp air brushing across my face. Something soft, bundled under my neck to keep my head raised. Even my branded hand was quiescent. Calm, not an itch or a hint of pain around it. As peaceful as the soft burble of water around me.

“Am I dead?”

Nothing but silence and running water as an answer. Then, a distant light, off to the side. Turning my head was a struggle. I tried to blink away a dizzy spell, until I realized that I wasn’t seeing things. The lights really were moving. Pale blue wisps, floating in the distance, weaving through the faint mist that rose around glassy pillars that vanished into the sky.

As I watched, one spiraled up, tracing its reflection along one pillar, and vanished into the sky. Or – no. The patch it brushed through was rustling. Were those…leaves?

Ah.

Struggling up to my feet sent an actual dizzy spell rolling across me. By the time I was steady again, I’d had time to look around. There was another of those pedestalled platforms and a field of tables and glass topped cases. Dark water bubbled through glass, covered channels crisscrossing the floor between the benches, then converging into a pillar of water flowing up.

“Lady Blackleaf. Apologies. There was much to do while you slept. No, you are not dead.”

The voice echoed out of thin air. I couldn’t see her anywhere, but the misty air shifted with her words.

“But that thing…” I shuddered, the way that droplet of blood had shone as it sank into the bone. The draining, desolate feeling as I blacked out leaving my hair standing on end.

“The communications array is partly vampiric in nature. Lingering unpleasantness should remain temporary – you are recovering ahead of schedule.”

“So where am I?”

Out of the mist, a dozen of the glowing wisps came in. They swarmed around me and the pillar – one pulling the rolled up shirt from where I’d been into itself and vanishing, others bringing a glass of water and leftovers from my dinner, in the same bowl I’d left it in. It was visibly steaming as it sat on the table.

In the light of the others, the pillar turned reflective. Deep grey mist swirled within, and then she was standing there, a faint smile on her face. Even if it still looked off, her expression came alive and legs that I was sure hadn’t existed before stirred the bottom of her dress as she began to pace around the pillar, gesturing with both her arms and her wings.

“This is your birthright, ma’am. The Blackleaf Archive: oldest, largest, and most extensive collection of the esoteric within what is currently known as the Americas. Established from the personal treasury of Lord O-…”

She stuttered. The entire image blinked out and the room shook, leaves far overhead rustling. One spiraled down, larger than my hand and with razor-sharp edges as it drifted by, a wisp autonomously whisking it away. Then her voice resumed from behind me – a different pillar that I would swear wasn’t there before now showing her reflection, like nothing had happened.

“…Olaf Aufrey, it has grown over centuries of operation to become a prestigious institution focused on the preservation and expansion of both arcane and historical knowledge. As a charter member of the Alexandrian Initiative, it is linked indelibly to the other locations so that no knowledge need ever be lost again.”

She reached out to the reflection of one of the wisps. Her hands looked normal, now, but as it settled into them a black stain spread across its glow, like paint dripped into water. Her face turned pensive.

“Several functions were damaged during the lockdown of our arrays. Despite mine and the other Archivists’ best efforts, there has been…degradation. We will adapt and while I recover I will, of course, remain at the Lady Blackleaf’s service.”

She was being a lot more personable. Or at least, a lot more like a person. I looked down at one of the books in the glass cases, and got an idea. I couldn’t read this one – it definitely wasn’t in English – but from what she was saying…

“Where are all the other books?”

“They are stored in specialized preservation zones and warding arrays. Less-valuable and non-unique specimens are stored in the stacks, accessible at your convenience by translocation, or through physical transit within the Gloom. While I assure you it is perfectly safe while I am active – I would not suggest it. The Archive is rather extensive, and for a corporeal entity transit between layers and locating specific volumes will be exceptionally troublesome. If there are any artifacts or catalogued material you require, I may furnish it upon request. Do you have one, Lady Blackleaf?”

Shower, done. Pants, done. Food, double-done, since the warmed up leftovers were looking tempting. Bird had their tablet back, and I’d finished her stuff. That meant it was time to work on Teresa and the Faerie things. So I told her that.

“There are currently eight hundred fifty-seven thousand three hundred and twelve nonfiction volumes within the catalogue that pertain to the Fae. An additional…”

Fuck. I tuned out the numbers. She was still being…incredibly literal.

“Ok, uh. Let’s try it this way. Nonfiction and reference books about people being sold to the Fae, and how they were recovered. Focus on the Court of Ash. And uh, the Lady of Sighing Boughs.”

The air shivered at the name. For a second, I thought I’d made a mistake. But it calmed, and then seven books appeared, neatly laid out on the closest table.

“If you require anything else, you need only call for me.”

“But what do I call you?”

At that question, her smile vanished. She froze in place…mostly. Her hands curled up into fists, slowly tearing into the wisp she was still holding. It bled out in shreds of fading sparks, and when it was gone, she vanished completely. The pillar was a flat, unreflective black as her voice echoed out of it.

“I believe that as a child, you once referred to me as Scully.”