[“Mot retaoiwe”]
[“Nott yery”]
[“Yeer”]
Back pressed against the stone shelter, I stared at Aine’s response, head tipping to one side. I’d asked if she was on her way. Was this some kind of…colonist dialect? No…more likely she’d never learned how to type. I smiled and shook my head, the act intensifying my nausea.
Letting out a groan, I slid against the wall to my side, crawling a meter towards the spot I’d chosen to deposit the bile. My arm ached horribly, a reminder of the bug bite responsible for my present state. What was I thinking coming here? Had I finished my training—become a saint, I might not be so pathetic. But I hadn’t, and here I was, relying on the mercy of a complete stranger to keep me alive.
At least it was a cute stranger.
My back bowed as I wretched a steady stream of liquid from my mouth. I raked my teeth over my tongue, trying to scrape away the taste. So disgusting. Beyond that even. I rolled away from the puddle, using my wrist to wipe my mouth and feeling a thin metal strand brush across my lips. My emergency beacon, tempting me to activate it and be done with this place. I was tempted.
But Mena. If she was alive—if it really was her calling out to me…
It’d been ten years since father sent her to the games. A twelve-year-old girl and her family, thrust into a tower like this. All for the crime of being my friend.
Her face came to me now, unbidden. A child's face, eyes full of fear and hurt, and something else. Resentment. I hated that the one memory that stuck with me, the vision of her face that came easiest, was of that day.
I told myself the look was for my father, but her eyes never left mine.
“Look,” my father said.
I was made to watch as the inquisitors placed her in suspended animation.
“See how she regards you? Scorns you?” He asked, as if some lesson might be gleaned.
But she was right to blame me. She had known, even at twelve, that nothing good would come from getting close. I had known too, yet I insisted that we be friends.
Inside Mena’s tank, a silver ring lowered to rest atop her head. A halo. I swallowed, knowing what came next. Threads would worm into her mind–scanning every corner for some plot–some explanation for why a commoner would seek to cozy up to the emperor’s daughter. I tried to look away, closing my eyes when he held my head in place.
“She would never have hurt me.”
“She already has.” he smiled as if there were something only he knew, “you will see.”
There was, of course, no conspiracy. Afterall, it was my father that’d put poor Mena in my service. A fact I hadn’t discovered until later, but one he had meant for me to know. He arranged all of it, a year to the day my mother died.
I tried to shake the thought away, searching for a happier one to occupy my mind. There weren’t many, but sometimes picturing my mother helped.
Cherry blossoms, painting the sky above her as my head rested on her lap. I was six then. Too small to understand the changes in her smile, the lines forming on her face. Things any commoner could tell you were signs of age. She was over three hundred by then, and had refused any more treatments. Not out of some conscientious objection for the sake of livestock–but because it was the only way to escape my father.
Years later, I stood next to him for the ceremony, wanting nothing more than to hold his hand as they fired my mother’s casket into the sun. He seemed so tall in that memory, so far from me as he slapped my wrist away.
“Aurelians do not mourn, least of all saints.”
I saw no reason why I shouldn’t. I did not want to be a saint. To have my mind twisted into some instrument of cruelty. And with mother gone, there was nothing he could take. Nothing he could do to make me.
I managed to defy him for a year, then one day I returned to my room to find my maid missing. Waiting to brush my hair instead was a red-haired girl near my own age.
Even to the child I was, the trap was plain. I was alone, and he gave me a friend. A way to win my compliance.
I resisted for a time. Refused to acknowledge her. But I was lonely, and before long I looked forward to speaking to her each day. She was the one person I could speak to. The one person I could trust with all my hopes and fears–the one person who, as a commoner, understood the grief of my mother’s death.
Terrified of losing her, I did all I could to appease my father. I’d returned to my training, tolerated the maesters prodding. My mistake was believing it was a trade…that he’d bought my submission with the threat of taking her from me.
It was not that he could take Mena away, the real parable my father meant to impart was that anytime he wanted, he could give me something I could not bear to lose. That even if I had nothing, there was always more he could take.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
I swallowed, my tear ducts stinging as I let my arm fall to my side, no longer interested in staring at the bracelet.
If there was even a small chance that Mena was alive, no matter how remote, I owed it to her and her family to find her.
╔═════════════════╗
NEW QUEST!
A member of your party drew the attention of a sixty-foot-tall spider we've aptly named Swarm Mother. We're not sure what you did to piss it off, but Aurix Incorporated appreciates your sacrifice either way.
Mission:
Distract the swarm mother and her minions long enough for our staff to evacuate the third floor and you get a prize.
Bonus mission:
Slay the swarm mother for an even better prize.
Already accepted by a member of your party.
╚══════════════════╝
How…why would she? I stared at the glittering yellow window, then looked out in the direction Aine had gone.
[“Is everything okay? I just got a weird quest.”]
I frowned at the blinking cursor when no reply came.
[“Aine?”]
Another moment passed before she responded with a jumble of letters, then a message that made me knit my brow.
[“Can you message her for me?”] Aine asked.
[“What? Message who?”] I sent back, bewildered.
It was only the two of us, and Waffle…at least as far as I knew. Was she asking someone else to message me? Maybe that defective AI of hers? Also, hadn’t she been struggling to type?
[“To my fairest Lucia,
I find myself engaged in battle wherein mine survival is most uncertain, yet it is in this very moment of peril that I find myself longing most for your presence. Forsooth, even as death marches in my shadow, it is thy face that fills my thoughts. I pray I am victorious. For all that I should perish between the fiendish jaws of this creature, be it known that even the ruined pulp I shall become will pine for thee.
Love you XOXO”]
I choked, blinking rapidly at the words. Aine wrote this?
[“Who is this?”]
The message window filled with another wall of text, all of which read as if it’d been penned by some knight of fable. I hadn’t known her long, but poetic confessions of love didn’t exactly seem on brand for her.
[“Aine doesn’t talk like this.”] I replied, then narrowing my eyes,
[“Am I addressing the defective AI?”]
[“I AM NOT DEFECTIVE.”]
Well, that answered that.
[“What’s going on? Is Aine okay?”]
[“As I said, she is presently engaged in battle.”]
I sighed, about to ask why on earth she accepted the quest when I caught movement at the edge of my vision. A flash of black and green. Too fast moving to be wind scraping the trees. One of those spiders? No. The nest Aine described was all the way at the base of the mountain.
Blinking the windows closed, I lifted my head to look around, then realized I was unarmed. The crossbow was propped against the stone wall where I’d been laying, nearly three meters behind me. Swallowing, I rolled onto my wrists, keeping my eyes on the treeline as I shuffled backwards.
I made it beneath the flat stone shelter when pebbles sprinkled the ground in front of my face. Above me. Hunger radiated, then hardened into focus. I could feel its predatory calm, coiling like a spring. Then something else. Something that had no place among the instincts of a killer. Yet there it was, a thread of gray, clashing against its bloodlust.
Regret.
I knew the feeling well. It was, after all, the first thread the maesters taught me to spin into dreams. Not because it was simple, but because everyone carried it to a degree. Giving up on the the bow, I closed my eyes, following the thread.
On either side were memories--experiences I lacked the talent to see. That wasn’t unusual. Even a saint would struggle to place themselves inside another’s mind--and fewer of those would endeavor to try, for fear of losing their way.
A mind was like a patchwork of events, layers of fabric held taut by feelings and intent. Were I a reader, I might trace my fingers over the cloth. I never cared much for reading. Memory seldom matched the truth.
To spin a dream, I need only mind the stitching.
A loose thread could be used to pull one memory into another. Do this enough, and the being was changed. Sometimes irreparably. Often, it was easier to take part of the present and stitch it to the past. If you folded the section over that’d seen you, they might forget that you were there. Or they might know you exist but lose the ability to perceive you. That trick was a personal favorite. But it seldom worked on anything with heightened senses, something I was sure this creature had.
No. Dealing with this thing would require me to warp far more sections of its mind. But the further I traced the thread, the more tangled the fabric was. Anger and fear wove through every square, knotting every inch of the tapestry into something unnatural. Even working for days, it would’ve been difficult for me to inflict this much damage. There was nothing left to spin. How could I clutter a mess?
The answer was I couldn’t…but maybe I could put it back to how it was.
I grasped the first thread with my mind and opened my eyes as I felt the creature lunge. It had been a spider, though it seemed a great deal hairier than the ones Aine had described. It hung upside down over the ledge, its chelicera spreading open as the first thread snapped. It reeled back, then eyed me reflexively, as if I’d slapped it in the face. It seemed to compose itself and was coiling to lunge again when I tore away the next strand. The severed ends slipped free as the tapestry unfurled, no longer a wadded mess.
My furry assailant lost its grip, tumbling from the ledge onto its back. I made a move for the bow while it struggled to right itself, but before I could shoulder it, the spider had scrambled away. That didn’t surprise me. It was no doubt unsure what it was experiencing, or what it even was. I could only imagine what it was feeling as every memory it held was rearranged–restored to what they were.
I backed against the stone wall, scanning the opening of the almost-cave. When its mind finished unfurling, it would no doubt return, still intent on making me its prey. I doubt it had much choice, being a spider as it was. Even with its mind put right, it had to kill to survive.
At least I’d bought myself time. I let out the breath I’d been holding, sensing its presence was gone. Maybe it would move on to easier game.
Hope you guys liked the chapter! We unfortunately need to vote on Lucia's real name again, as I just found out Aurelia is taken by like 30 other stories...also Aurelia Aurelius sounds a little silly, I now realize. Going to post some options in a poll but feel free to throw out some of your own recs.
Checkout my friend Nycto's story:
What should Lucia's real name be?
