Chapter 193 - Skyreach Spire V

When Claire finally went to bed, it was in the middle of the sky. The sun was already looming, and the red and yellow sea had turned a shade of bright blue. Entertained but exhausted, the halfbred pair had simply laid down where they were with no regard for gravity or its woes. At first, Claire had tried to curl up inside one of the clouds that had come with the early morning breeze, but the large cotton balls were quickly deported, whisked off to lands unknown by the very same winds that had brought them out to sea.

Still, even with her bed playing the part of a runaway teen and the sun goddess flashing her blinding rays in her face, Claire had no trouble falling asleep. Her eyelids were heavy from her midnight adventure and the fox napping in her arms provided all the softness and comfort that the clouds could not. Burying her face in the not-so-stuffed animal’s fur provided her with a ticket that took her straight to the land of dreams.

When her consciousness returned, she found herself standing in the middle of a familiar dreamscape, the strange house with the man and his ghost. She greeted each of them in turn, but shook her head when the man pointed at his artifacts. She walked away from his living room and placed a hand on the nearest closed door, opening it only as she focused her mind on the manor.

Surely enough, a twist of the handle revealed the destination she had in mind. Albeit the wrong version.

What she had hoped to see, upon stepping through the door, was a glimpse into the manor’s current state, but even with her divine spark alight, she was unable to break through. What she arrived at instead was a convoluted, warped interpretation. The scale of each object laid out in the hallway was seemingly random. The bits and pieces were of haphazard sizes. None seemed to match any other, with even the corridor shrinking in places to a mere tenth of its original height.

When she reached for another door and tried again, she found herself in a forest of mushrooms. Halfling-sized bipedal bears walked around the town, greeting her and each other with tips of the felted, beavertail fedoras. Those that she failed to greet back would pout, but she ignored them and continued along her way. Finding a door inside of a particularly lanky mushroom, she envisioned her destination for a third time and gave its knob a crank.

But again, she failed. The next world she entered was one where everything was made of poorly-coloured, misshapen triangles, put together to form larger wholes. Its residents, strange cubes, were not as welcoming as the others and moved to attack her on sight, but she was taken away before any of them could make contact. An arm of a seemingly infinite length grabbed her by the cloak and reeled her through another door.

When she spun around to meet her captor, she found the ghost, or at least what she assumed to be him. His face was obscured by a large rectangular mask made of a refined, light brown paper. There were holes in the face protector for his eyes, tiny round knobs that were sure to obstruct his field of view. His head was the only part of him that was covered in any which way. The rest of his body was stripped bare; adorned with nothing but a string necklace with an absurdly large green gem. Such appeared to be the norm for the realm that they had entered. They stood within a desert with great pyramids and sandy dunes in equal quantity. Its residents were almost buck naked. Their tanned bodies were exposed beneath the seven scorching suns, with their faces the sole exception; each wore the very same headdress that the phantom had donned.

Bringing a hand to her face, she found that she was no different. Her own body had been forced into a tailless, bipedal form, and her head guarded with the very same paper covering. She reached to take it off, but he raised his hands in panic and shook his head as quickly as he could.

He calmed and produced a key out of thin air when she complied. Spinning it around and grabbing it by the teeth, he handed it to her and pointed at the locket that accompanied his naked body.

The spirit kept his chest held forward until she entered the golden object into his gem. The emerald behaved as if it were incorporeal and allowed the key to melt right in. Turning it, however, was nowhere near as easy. It refused to budge no matter how much strength she used. Not even putting her whole weight behind it could get the key to twist. When she looked at him again, he smiled, raised one of his hands, and produced the faintest of red and black flickers.

Nodding, she began channeling her divinity. It started out as golden, but its pure light warped as her focus grew. The key began to turn, slightly, but each degree required an increase in her output. She was unable to put out all of the energy required; the key was stopped in its tracks a quarter of the way through its rotation. No pulling or turning could move it any further and her fingers were stuck to its handle. Her only choices were to finish it or remain stuck in a stalemate.

So she opened her eyes.

All of them.

Her body shrank, her silhouette becoming like that of a child’s. She could feel that her skin was still present, but it was completely invisible beneath the wriggling darkness that her body had become. Oculi sprouted from all over her frame, different shapes and sizes, accompanied in kind with mouths filled with sharp teeth. Her divinity began to obey her more readily as her form solidified, turning from golden to black and red with no further resistance, just like the key.

The glowing object clicked into place as she looked around the world and attempted to understand all the layers she saw, to little avail. It didn’t help that everything she gazed upon changed—froze in place—as she processed the complex structures and systems that made it as functional as it was. And with the click went her perspective. Everything returned to the way that it was. She was left with only a sense of unease, a strange primal fear, and the taste of green lingering in the back of her throat.

When she next blinked, she found herself sitting in front of the mirror in her room. Beatrice was standing behind her, brushing her hair. The various combs, clips, and ties sitting in front of the drawer suggested that she was being prepared for an event. By the look of it, it would take thirty minutes for the process to complete, but she had no such time to waste. Her divinity was all that kept her anchored to the other fake’s body and it would drain before she could accomplish her goals if she did nothing but sit around.

“I have to go, Bea.”

Having been caught off guard by the halfbreed’s speech, Beatrice could only blink as the less-than-presentable lady stood up out of her chair and made for the nearest exit.

“Wait, Claire! We’re not done! You have to hold it in! At least for five more minutes!” She tried chasing after her, but the runaway had already leapt out the window and climbed up onto the roof. Dashing along the tiles, Claire continued sprinting even as she reached the end of the building’s right wing, and with her arms spread, flung herself straight off the floating island’s far edge.

Though her vector magic was lacking all its usual potency, and her tail was only a fraction of its rightful size, she was able to steer herself straight towards the castle that was her destination. The guards were thrown into a panic, at first because they thought that an intruder had breached the barrier, and then because they realised her identity. Many began shouting for someone to catch her or break her fall, but she paralyzed the winged centaurs that rose to receive her the moment before they made contact and twisted out of their grasps.

Upon closing in on the ground, she slowed just enough not to transform into a splatter of blood and greeted the palace’s guards with a curtsy. When the confused men stepped away, she kicked herself back into high gear and ran through the halls at her less-than-impressive top speed, flabbergasting all the maids and soldiers that she encountered. Still, they moved out of her way and allowed her to pass. All of them knew of her supposed plight; none expected her to voice any words of justification, and some even looked on with pity.

The halfbreed was completely out of breath by the time she reached the halfway mark, but continued pumping her legs until she finally stopped in front of her second cousin’s room. Greeting the maids outside with a brief nod, she pushed open the doors, rushed to the bed, and threw the toilet-drinker’s sheets out the window.

“The holy grail…” Princess Octavia did not so much as curl up in an attempt to stay warm. “It’s so yellow…” She continued to snore and sleep talk in blissful ignorance, completely unaware that she would soon catch a cold.

A very annoyed Claire grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to shake her awake, but the beautiful white cervitaur showed no signs of stirring. She only mumbled nonsense in her sleep, completely unintelligible without the context of her dreams.

Sighing, the lyrkress placed a hand over the other noble lady’s mouth and pinched her nose shut, but not even that was anywhere near as effective as she would have liked. The dysfunctional princess almost appeared perfectly content to suffocate. It took coating her tail in bee venom and prodding her in the side to finally wake her.

And even then, she did not react in any obvious way. Her eyes half open, she sat up, as if she had awoken from her slumber of her own accord.

“Good morning, Claire.” She greeted her cousin with a yawn, her head still wobbling back and forth. She looked ready to collapse on top of her bed and return to the land of dreams.

“Good morning, Octavia.”

The pureblooded cervitaur did not react for the better part of ten seconds. Her silly moose brain had only ever been half functional to begin with, and her drowsy state left it with an excess of fog. “You can speak again!?”

“Not important. I require an audience with the eleven horned king.”

“You want to see Ferdy? Why not just send him a letter?”

“There is no time.”

Octavia’s grandfather was a difficult man to get a hold of. His schedule was always flooded, and he had less free time than most. Requesting an audience was a process that would take weeks if not months, depending on the size of the queue. Whatever the case, it was far too long of a wait. There was no telling when her father would catch on and her own availability was similarly up in the air. Going through one of the royal’s favourites was the only way to assure that she would be seen.

“Oh, fine… You always have been a pushy one, and I suppose you would revert to your ways immediately upon regaining your voice.” Sighing, the older noble lady climbed out of her bed and looked towards the maid that had silently stepped inside the room. “Balbina, could you please take Claire to my grandfather and tell him that I asked him to see her.”

“Unfortunately, I cannot,” said the maid. “If you recall, my lady, King Ferdinand is currently away and will not be back for another two weeks.”

“Ah, yes! The countryside tour that he refused to take me on!”

“Precisely.”

“Useless ditz.” Sighing, Claire walked over to the desk by the window, grabbed a piece of parchment and wrote a note. Because it was addressed to the king, she paid extra care to the neatness of her handwriting and kept its message as clear and concise as she could without dropping any of the necessary formalities. A full, fancily worded letter was a waste of his time; he had enough pointless prose to deal with already. “Give this to him when you see him again.”

After signing her name, she handed the page to her cousin, cut her consciousness, and returned to the body she owned.

The homunculus that had taken her place was unlikely to possess the instruction set required to navigate the castle, just as it lacked the instruction set for formal speech, but the lyrkress cared little. Its breakdown and collapse would only add authenticity to her claims.

___

Half the morning hours had gone and went by the time Claire returned to Pollux Manor. Many of the guests were already awake, gathered in the training grounds where they sparred to pass the time. The Marquis had, of course, offered various pieces of entertainment. The bards that had performed the previous night were still present, and there were fields set up for various other pastimes aplenty, but only a few of the sellswords allowed themselves to leverage the distractions.

Song and dance were best served alongside drink, and most veterans knew better than to enter the line of duty intoxicated. Such was how many of their allies, perhaps impressive in life, had eventually met their ends. Of course, that was not to say that there were no adventurers participating in the festivities. The giants claimed that they operated best with their blood pumped full of liquor, while those that had lost their consciousness to vekratt’s venomous blade were catching up on all the fun they had missed.

Breakfast was served in the same manner as the previous night’s dinner. There were two large tables set up in the training grounds, free for any of the guests to pick and choose. And while her companions, new and old, joined the others in eating their breakfasts in the manor’s courtyards, the long-tailed moose was stuck consuming hers in the dining room with the manor’s lord.

The room itself was amicable. Its wallpapers were of a warm, bright colour, and it had many windows through which the beautiful morning sun could stream. Likewise, the dishes laid out on the table were lovely—open top pastries smothered with fresh fruit and baked to perfection, delightful sausages seasoned with the sauces from the south, and cuts of cheese made of milk harvested from a selectively bred Cadrian cow—but the atmosphere was too tense for the lyrkress to enjoy them. Their seasonings were dulled by the marquis sitting opposite her; his presence forced her to split her attention away from all the intricate flavours. He clearly had something to say, and was waiting for her to finish to finally raise his voice.

Joining them in the dining hall, Sylvia and Boris both sat at the table with cloth bibs wrapped around their necks. While Sylvia was given a booster seat, the same type that would allow infants and young children to be in attendance, Boris was positioned with his limbs splayed like the spatchcocked bird that was the breakfast’s centerpiece. Both had been offered meals of kibble, and Boris had heartily dug in, but the fox had refused on the grounds that she would only eat people food.

“The butterfly blooms beneath the moon.” Timaios broke the silence once Claire put down her fork.

Holding back a sigh, Claire lifted Sylvia away from her meal, pressed a crystal into her hand, and asked her to speak the second half of the key. “From within his breast, a crimson lotus.” Evidence that she was not a fake.

“Enough of that ruse. I know you can speak.” The man leaned forward in his seat, hands clasped and elbows resting on the table. “How did you survive the lost library?”