The blank halls of Emilia’s home made Cary’s fresh new flesh itch. They were smaller than the nasty corridor that Cary had recently left, which only made the feeling of claustrophobia more intense. Any minute now, Cary expected to find herself back in Elelele’s palace, chained to the floor, and flogged for daring to escape his clutches.
Despite her paranoia, Cary’s mind dutifully recorded every passing doorway and scent that crossed her path. Every lingering sound in the place filled her ears and got filed away in her perfect recollection. Only once she found the stairs down, perusing Emilia’s memories to do so, could Cary finally relax. She’d been left derelict in a winding stairway for more than a few decades, so the steps had few bad associations for her.
At the bottom of the stairs, she pushed open a door that hung askew on its frame, which creaked in protest at being moved. Beyond that whining door, Cary found something novel. She stood in a curio shop filled with incense, jeweled baubles, feathered headdresses, and a thousand other bits and bobs. Her brain and eyes needed to actually stand still to record the contents of this place so full were the glass counters and walls.
“Hello, oh. Who are you?” A young woman with short blond hair that reminded Cary of a Valkyrie or Erinyes. Her shoulders were too narrow for the former and her green eyes lacked the usual rage of the latter. She wasn’t quite done surveying the shop — Cary knew what it was from Emilia’s memories — so she didn’t turn to greet the woman. “Excuse me?”
Cary walked on, trying to get a good view of the various curios and other items the shop contained when the women walked up and grabbed Cary by the shoulder. “I don’t know who you are, but…”
Cary whirled on her — Betsy, based on Emilia’s recollections — and said, “I am Emilia’s guest. And I intend to leave. Do not touch me again mortal.” Though Cary couldn’t make her eyes flash with red flames the way Elelele could, she tried to assume the same imperious glare her master would have in this situation. Like everything else in her life, Cary had memorized her master’s every expression and gesture.
Stepping back, Betsy released Cary’s shoulder. “Guest? Oh sweet Goddess, did Emilia finally accept who she is?” Betsy’s gaze started at Cary’s bare feet and worked its way up over Cary’s skirt and the loose blouse she’d taken from her servant. That searching gaze ended at Cary’s face. The woman was brazen and willing to meet Cary’s fierce stare regardless of the threat she tried to instill in it. “Well, I approve. But if Cynthia catches you two together, well I hope you have insurance or know really high quality Judo.” Betsy winked at Cary and swept her arm aside, “speaking of the Wicked Witch of the Wonders, you should escape before she realizes you’re here. No reason to make Emilia’s life any harder.”
Cary decided that nodding at the woman’s impertinent statements and escaping made the best plan. She’d finished memorizing the store’s contents anyway and made for the store’s glass front. As she moved, more and more objects appeared so she catalogued them individually as she walked out. Betsy followed Cary’s movements and flashed her a fist with the thumb extended. It might have been an insult or challenge for all Cary knew, as with the smile accompanying it. Ignoring the gesture, Cary stepped to the door and froze.
Outside the land darkened as night approached. A chill filtered through the poorly mounted glass door and cold air blew through the bottom. Most of the trees retained their leaves, but a few had shed their canopy as if anticipating winter. But neither the time nor season had stopped Cary.
Instead, the incredible density of new objects brought her to an absolute halt. Her mind reeled trying to note and record every passing flash of color in the shaking, roaring, motorized chariots that whizzed by. A thousand people walked about on their business, adorned as if this city were the capital of a great trading nation on the sea where a dozen dozen cultures clashed, mixed, and contended with each other for ascendancy.
Her ears tried to record the passing words, but so many of them in combination with the information from her eyes, nose and mortal skin overwhelmed her. Rather than walk out into the press of humanity, she stepped back into the store and tried to breathe. The lost sensation of air passing into and out of her body calmed Cary in a way that nothing else could have. Technically, she could have reverted to her mostly gelatinous form. That would have eased her discomfort. But to do so would reveal her true nature and could pose a risk to Cary out here.
“Hey, is everything all right?” Betsy, the nosy shopkeeper and one of Emilia’s friends, approached from the back. Cary had dipped further into Emilia’s thoughts as a respite from the daunting threat of a busy, impression-filled world.
“I am fine.” Cary’s voice shook and quivered, but she had other problems to contend with right then. No matter how hard she tried, her brain refused to stop cataloguing the outside. It spun and strained under the weight of the world beyond the thin glass windows of the shop, the Mystical Wonders.
“You look like you’re having a panic attack.” Betsy continued forward, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
This time she didn’t approach Cary to touch her; Betsy kept her distance as if conscious of the fact Cary might bolt at any moment. In all honesty, Cary was more likely to tear Betsy apart than fall into a puddle on the floor. But she wasn’t going to inform the woman of that right then.
“I said I am fine. Thank you.” The words came out a growl. A guttural warning was the best she could manage at the time. After Betsy walked away and Cary could think again, she tried to direct her attention to the fixtures of this flickering, chaotic world.
Large glass structures, holy buildings or the works of ancient civilizations surely, loomed over the rest of the architecture. And those megastructures didn’t move, except to sway in the Autumn breeze. With her attention devoted to them, as if she worshiped at their pagan altars, Cary began to find a sense of balance. Shifting her focus from building to building, she found herself better able to cope with the rest of the impressions. After enough time, she’d carefully recorded the background and could start to shift to the foreground.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The motorized chariots, “cars” according to Emilia’s memories, flew by too quickly for Cary to do more than note their color, the number of occupants, and a few other sparse details. Metal plates on the back of those cars served some essential purpose, so Cary focused on them and fixed the random assortment of numbers and letters into her head.
“Excuse us.” A trio of people, one rail thin man who’s physique reminded Cary of Emilia, another man who’s belly peeked through the gap between his fake leather pants and his black lace shirt, and a girl, the speaker, who wore a black frilled dress, lace gloves, heavy black boots, and a black parasol stood in the doorway. They waited for Cary to move until the fat man put his hand on Cary’s shoulder.
His mistake.
Cary roared with an inhuman voice and punched the fat man in the chest hard enough to send him flying back over the sidewalk and nearly into the paths of the passing cars. The rail thin man shouted something like a battle cry and brought his fist up into Cary’s gut. Her flesh gave way only so far and the thin man had tucked his thumb under his fingers. The crack of his breaking thumb bones rattled through Carry’s jaw. She savored it as if she’d snapped the bones with her teeth. The girl screamed at Cary, who decided that she’d only draw the lonely and nosy Betsy back to her.
Closing her eyes against the crush of sensation, Cary shoved past the moaning black-clad youths and into the crowd outside. Her hearing was sensitive enough to note which steps would bring her into contact with the humans, and the herd parted before her mad dash anyway. Cars honked at her in protest when she charged ahead of them dodging their metal armor with skill she’d not used in almost nine thousand years. A silent statue had few reasons to dodge chariots.
When she finally stopped, Cary had reached a strip of river with a large swath of woodlands on the other side. Sanctuary. There wrapped amongst the trees, Cary could relax and avoid the impossible crowds of this inhumanly populous city. She pressed her legs forward, noting as much as she could as she jogged ahead. The water bit as she dove into its surface, giving her a taste of its cool embrace for the first time in those nine thousand years. Temptation urged Cary to revert to her stone form and sink down into the depths of the river, there to avoid the press of life for a few centuries while this city wore itself into ruins like all of the other great edifices of mankind.
But then the river would just become another prison. Nothing would let Cary imprison herself again. Nothing.
With great strokes of her arms and legs, she swam beneath the surface of the river onto the opposite bank. She ignored the noisy commotion on the other side of the river, it did not concern her. Dripping wet, Cary sprinted into the mass of vegetation along the river and found a verdant sanctuary for herself.
She hadn’t moved far enough to avoid the sounds at the borders of the woodlands, but those she could collate without devoting much of her focus. Wiggling her butt down into the dirt and matted leaves, Cary drove her hands into the earth. Almost nine millennia. She shook from the weight of time on her shoulders. The Earth had changed, transformed more even than she had in the same time. Based on Emilia’s memories, the great beasts were gone from the face of the planet, remembered only as fossils and in the scrawling of primitive man. Elelele possessed his own collection of those great beasts, and until that very moment, Cary had not understood why he’d considered them so precious.
Strange chemicals filled the soil and air, causing the plants nearby to warp and twist in their development. Cary felt a kind of kinship with them there. Her own master had warped and twisted her to his purposes deliberately, against their wishes. These trees and shrubs had been subjected to the same malicious treatment.
Once she’d sunk far enough into the soil, Cary shook herself and took on her natural, gelatinous form. And failed.
Panic set in. The curses inflicted by her master should have faded when she’d been summoned. What few might have lingered should definitely have faded when Cary took Emilia on as a servant. Though her time in various libraries had not been as extensive as her time in empty halls, the grimoires Cary had vicariously read made this extremely clear. All of her former debts and curses should have been released the moment Cary sealed her deal with Emilia.
Gathering her resolve, Cary took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Obviously, this busy, insane new world had affected her. She was able to take on an improvised shape while standing with Emilia. Therefore, Cary could shift, she just had to find the right amount of concentration to do it. Over an agonizing hour, Cary tried and failed to assume her natural form dozens of times. Fearing that she’d somehow become trapped in a pathetic human form, she shifted back to her stone body. It came as naturally to her as snuggling into the Earth. Reverting back to her chosen human form was just as simple, almost a reflex.
Like it or not, Cary was trapped in only two bodies. Two was twice as many as she’d been stuck in for the last eight-plus thousand years, but that was a thin comfort. Night had come on with surprising quickness, surprising because of how well lit the world remained despite the hour. In addition to the rest of the conditioning her master had inflicted on her, Cary could tell the time instinctively.
She stood and considered her situation. Freedom didn’t feel quite so free now that she knew she was stuck in only two bodies. Though she could plumb the depths of Emilia’s memories to find out where she was, Cary resisted that impulse. Freedom meant she was free to explore, to discover this place for herself. If she ever got in some form of trouble, she could always consult the map now branded into her mind by her connection to Emilia.
A scream in the distance broke Cary out of her reveries. Not knowing the significance — perhaps this was a violent, debauched world so the scream was normal — Cary ran toward it. At the very least, she could learn something new. Standing there quivering in the midst of greenery felt too much like being trapped in a stranger’s wall, holding up their ceiling.