Chapter 245 - The Womb and the Grave

Siobhan

Month 9, Day 12, Sunday 3:50 a.m.

On the other side of the strange cloak-window to elsewhere, Siobhan climbed to her feet. Everything was deeply, existentially wrong, and she had opened her mouth to scream out in pain and fear when the thing at her side reached out and took her hand. 

And suddenly, she wasn’t so sure what had been wrong. Somewhat embarrassed, she closed her open mouth and turned her mind to observation. 

Here, the thing was no longer mimicking her, or even wearing her shadow. 

Siobhan looked down quickly, relieved to find that her body was casting its own shadow once more. With an effort of Will that felt…strange, but not as if something were opposing her, she managed to make it wriggle a little. Assured that it was under solely her control, she looked back up. 

The thing was seemingly flesh and blood, and truly androgynous. Though some features reminded her of her own face in the mirror, some were totally different—and yet still strangely familiar. 

Siobhan did her best not to make any mental connections to certain memories. 

It had quicksilver sclera surrounding its golden irises, which, as always, seemed to be lit from within. Its skin was threaded with glowing red veins, as if lava ran under the surface rather than blood. It loomed hungrily over her, staring intently, but as she grew apprehensive, it bared its teeth in frustration and turned to lead the way. 

When she didn’t immediately follow, it tugged impatiently on her hand. 

She considered breaking this physical connection between them, but remembered the feeling of wrongness when she had first fallen into wherever this was, and a sense of foreboding stopped her. Instead, she adjusted her grip so that she could hold on to it in return, no matter how loathsome this mimicry of intimacy was. The solidity of another hand in her own was like a candle against the dark, a small piece of comfort which made no sense based on how she felt about the creature leading her from half a step ahead. 

The creature’s clothes were not quite real, ever-shifting. As Siobhan looked closer, she saw that the swaths and folds kept giving glimpses to elsewhere, but the shape of it somehow created an optical illusion of disconnected limbs, tortured bodies, and doorways. 

Siobhan tore her eyes away. ‘Better not to focus on that. There’s definitely some mind-affecting magic involved.’ “Where are we?” she asked, looking around. They were walking through a starless night, on a path made of huge paving stones and bordered on either side by stones the size of a person. 

“We are outside reality, in a place that is somewhat stable and realer than some, that still bears the marks of a path I left.” 

Siobhan did not understand. ‘Am I…inside the seal that Grandfather made?’ she wondered. But that didn’t seem right. She looked around and realized that the giant stones bordering the path were actually carved. They were walking by the feet of giant, humanoid statues. And the flames she had seen earlier were high above, held in equally giant lanterns. The statues’ faces were hundreds of meters away, too far to see in the darkness. 

As she kept looking, she realized that the flames had a form. She squinted and they seem to grow brighter, or perhaps her eyes were simply adjusting to the lack of light. The edges and color gradients of the flames grew more distinct, and suddenly, it was clear that the flames were each a body. People-shaped. And they had been all along! 

The flame people seemed to notice her attention, and began to bang on the edges of the lanterns they were trapped within, calling soundlessly down at her. As she and the thing walked on, hand in hand, the flame people grew desperate. 

Siobhan caught the faint whooshing and crackle of flames, but almost as if they were molded to be more than meaningless background noise. ‘Is that words? Are they speaking?’ She couldn’t understand it. 

The thing yanked her hand roughly, forcing her attention back to it. 

She suddenly realized that she could see so much better than when she first entered, though it was still just as dark, and her eyes should have already been well adjusted. However, she could tell now that the huge paving stones beneath their feet were edged with blood rather than mortar. And as she and the thing walked along them, the edges sank. 

The thing yanked her hand again, even harder, and squeezed with pent-up anger until Siobhan’s fingers creaked. 

She tried to pull away, but there was no give to its grip.

It turned to her with a snarling mouth suddenly filled with sharp teeth. “Cease, you stupid mortal. Do you have no sense of danger?” It turned back, and they walked in silence for a few moments, before it huffed and turned to look at her again, overflowing with bottled frustration. “Some part of me believes that withholding information is a kind of harm, apparently.” It shuddered, but in a way that no mortal being could. Its body fractured into shards and mist for a fraction of a second, so quick her eyes almost missed it, and then pulled together looking slightly different. Still androgynous, still a little like her, but everything was just faintly off in a way that she struggled to understand, as the new appearance seemed to overwrite the other in her memories. 

“This place eats your thoughts and creates corpses from your memories,” it said. “Its land is shifting like the sea, and all who walk through its borders and breathe its air will be made more like it. Fight to remember yourself, lest you lose yourself.” 

Siobhan belatedly understood. “This is the spirit realm?”

It didn’t answer. 

She was fascinated despite the danger, but did not indulge her curiosity by further paying attention to her surroundings, though it went against her nature to hold back so. Biting her lip for the small spike of pain that would help clear her mind, Siobhan recalled the shamanry exercises she had learned before. Reluctantly, she dropped the shadow-familiar spell so that she would have more mental space to work with. It didn’t seem to have any effect on her, nor on the being. ‘Will it be free, now?’ Judging from its lack of reaction, it hadn’t even noticed. 

Siobhan counted her fingers, wiggled her toes in her shoes, and mentally repeated her name, her current situation, and her purpose. She recalled the shape of her face and the taste of her favorite foods. She clenched her muscles, one by one, and focused on the feel of her clothes across her skin. With two pieces to her Will, it was actually easier to keep some part of her focused on self-stabilization than it might have been. When one would get distracted, the other would draw it back in. 

For someone with so much experience remaining utterly focused while casting spells, the shamanry exercises should have been easy. To the contrary, it was like even existing in this world put her in a half dream-like state. She was a doll made of old, fraying yarn, and the very air was filled with hooks that pulled free strands of her being as it passed. 

The thing tugged her hand again, walking faster with legs that seemed longer than hers, even though they were the same height. She could feel its anger and deep resentment. “Hurry. I do not have the power to remain for long, and without me, you will die.” It sneered at her, leaking disgust mixed with an undefined longing. “Your physical body was never meant to exist here.” 

“Why are you helping?” she asked. 

It didn’t answer, but she could feel a faint fluctuation in its emotions. 

Siobhan went back to putting her full attention toward the self-stabilizing exercises for a moment, and then asked, “Do you think he might have found you while he was wiping my memories? Is that why you’re helping?” 

It prickled with a feeling that she decided was best described as revulsion or aversion, an emotional feeling akin to the goosebumps she had experienced one day when she came upon a dog eating the entrails of another dog. 

“Are you afraid of what might happen to you if my mind were damaged, or I died?”

It turned to snarl at her in a way that reminded her of the daydream-promise it had sent her earlier—a vulnerable, small thing making itself appear more threatening than it felt. And oh, it hated her so for asking. 

That was alright. She hated it, too. Siobhan wondered about the way it had fractured earlier. In a place like this, the appearance something like it showed might be more connected to its true identity than anything else she had seen. She considered asking its name, but she didn’t want to risk that. Instead, she asked, “Have you been absorbing power from my shadow this whole time? I had wondered where the extra might be going, but I just considered it part of the entropic mystery. All magic loses some of the energy in translation from source to effect, and no one knows where it might be going…” She nodded to herself, concluding that the answer was, “Yes,” even though the thing still remained silent. 

There was a certain irony in the fact that she had been drip-feeding the creature even as she kept control of her shadow all the time for the feeling of safety it gave her. 

“How did you know that Thaddeus was about to attack me? Can you sense magic?” She already knew that it couldn’t actually tell what she was thinking or know everything that she experienced. 

“Can you shut up?” it asked. 

“Well, I’m saving your life—maybe life isn’t the right word. Your continued existence—by letting you escape with me, so I think the least you could do is show a little gratitude by answering my questions,” she snapped back with a fake smile. 

Its outrage welled up so strong and fast that it couldn’t keep it all inside. “Saving my life? Letting me escape with you!?”

Before it could continue its rant, she interjected. “So how did you know?”

“You’ve been feeding me all that power, so I had enough to spare to take a peek through the cracks, you horrible, self-centered bitch. What do you think I am? Do you have any idea of the power I could wield, if not for being trapped in the seal? This place speaks plenty about the mortal plane, for those that have eyes to see.” 

Siobhan suddenly noticed that the creature didn’t have a shadow of its own. In a place like this, was that a hint at its nature? It was not a complete being. Could it even survive without her, or someone, to host it? 

Siobhan felt her attention start to slip and focused on stabilizing herself for a while again before she felt safe to talk. “So…you can sense magic?” 

“I can see everything, even the wretched desires at the bottom of your black, putrid heart.” 

That was a lie. It could sense magic, via the spirit world, through the cracks in the seal Grandfather had made. It was a very useful ability, to know what was coming even before the magic was fully cast. Even one second’s lead could give her a huge advantage against an enemy. It might even work as a minor divinatory ability, what with the magical components, artifacts, and concoctions people like her often carried around. 

She frowned suddenly, looking around again. They had been traveling along the paving stone path between giant statues for a long while now. At least she thought it had been a long while. Trying to pull on the memories to check felt…dangerous. “Does distance here correspond to distance and location in the real world? Because if you plan to dump me out of this place at the height of the white cliffs, a thousand meters walk away from where we entered, I warn you that you’d better do it after the sun rises.” 

“Haven’t you heard any of the stories? Neither time nor space are absolute. But I can control the narrative. Close your eyes.” 

Very reluctantly, she did so. Ironically, it made it somewhat easier to keep some part of herself focused on remembering who she was. 

The thing tugged on her arm, jerking her sharply to the left, and they walked into what she was very sure had been a statue before. They met no resistance. She felt a sort of tension release in it, even as its weariness grew, and opened her eyes. 

They were in a wasteland city that somehow reminded her of the fake, miniature city the faculty had built for the first term’s Defense exam. This city, however, was wrong in subtly ways, like some intelligent being had built it while blind, having only ever heard stories about human cities, and humans themselves, but never seen civilization themselves. There were no doors anywhere. How were people supposed to enter the buildings? 

Also, the windows looked a little like eyes. Not in their shape. Just…in their presence, the mood they gave off. 

And the thing was fracturing again. This time, it took a little longer for its form to settle back together, some of the seams taking a while to heal. Its face had grown paler and gained the subtle greenish tint of illness and fatigue. 

The wind blew through the city. They were very high, evidenced by a certain thin quality of the air that she recognized instinctually. 

The creature studiously did not look at the windows that looked increasingly like eyes, and told her to close her own once more. 

They turned another corner, and Siobhan felt the change in the creature that indicated it had done something again. “Go through,” it said. 

Siobhan opened her eyes. There was a doorway in front of them, though the creature was holding its edge with a white-knuckled grip and straining tendons that made it seem as if it had just ripped open the wall and was holding the doorway’s existence in place by force. 

The doorway’s edges looked a little like a cloak, and there was sky beyond it. 

This sprouted a visceral horror in Siobhan, and not because she thought that the creature was about to push her into a very long fall to her death. In fact, she could not remember why she was so horrified, and there was some comfort in that. 

“Go, before you are trapped and we die,” it told her, some honestly leaking through as it grew desperately tired and began to fracture once more. 

Siobhan stepped through. 

As she passed the threshold, gravity spun on its axis, and suddenly she was stepping upward. Reeling with sudden vertigo, Siobhan fell to the ground. The sudden absence of unreality hit her body and mind like an illness hex. She heaved up the remnants of potion liquid as her body shivered with waves of alternating hot and cold and her skin screamed at the sensation of air and clothing and ground as if it had been scraped raw. 

The spirit realm had been affecting her more than she realized. Siobhan hugged herself, and after the overwhelming sensations faded a bit, checked her extremities. She was alright, but suddenly sure that she had been beginning to lose the length of her hair, the tips of her fingers, and the proper, complex movement of a human’s foot. If she had stayed much longer, there might have been permanent effects. Her thoughts were tender. No one she had ever heard of had walked through the spirit realm in their physical body—she hadn’t even known it was possible—so she wasn’t sure if the self-stabilizing exercises had been working as intended, if she just wasn’t skilled enough with them, or if this was simply a measure of how dangerous the spirit realm really was. 

Siobhan took a deep, shuddering breath, and looked around. She was atop the white cliffs, at the edge. It was still closer to Thaddeus than she liked. And unfortunately, the being sealed in her mind hadn’t found fit to leave her somewhere convenient. She was at the northern edge of the cliffs, near the Flats, and looking out over the view of the farmland, roads, and lakes to the north of Gilbratha. 

She wondered where the creature was. Had it gone from the spirit realm back into the seal in her mind? Was it just loose, now, waiting to ambush any shamans whose spectral bodies got too close? She felt for the space in the back of her mind where it lived, like tonguing the gum where a tooth had once been. The seal was still there, she thought. And the creature had felt no overwhelming triumph when they entered the spirit realm. If that had been its key to freedom, she probably would have sensed it. 

Just as she began to consider the best way to get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible, a wave of divination came up through the ground and broke her divination-diverting ward. Thaddeus was becoming wise to her tricks, it seemed, and realized that she needed at least a little time to react. With the lingering rawness from time spent in the spirit realm, there was also an increased sensitivity, and she thought she felt the moment when the divination found what it was looking for—her neck and chest. 

Or rather, Thaddeus’s own blood, spilled at the very beginning of their fight, and now long dried. He’d pulled out some of her hair, too, but if he hadn’t held on to it, then getting clean might buy her some time to gain distance and better wards. 

She was walking quickly along the side of the cliffs and preparing to cast the shedding-disintegration spell when something latched on to her. She tripped, caught herself, and turned to see nothing…except, belatedly, a finger-width sized hole in the cliff stone a few feet behind her. 

She screamed as a horrible pulling and tearing sensation tried to rip her toward the tiny hole.  

Half a second later, Thaddeus was there, floating two feet off the ground. The hole in the stone collapsed from a tunnel back into the smaller size as he released whatever space-warping spell he had cast. 

Siobhan turned and leapt off the side of the cliff.

Author Note: As this book is off with the editor for the first round of external revisions, I'm making a list of things I've realized I want to change. The list keeps growing longer...

I haven't managed to start my re-read of the series yet, as I've realized it's actually quite a daunting task to get through 960 thousand words, but the next book in the series is about 30% plotted.

During my read-through, I want to take the opportunity to note places where bonus content and side stories would naturally fit. I've wanted to offer more of those on the Patreon for a while. Maybe I'll have time this year to write one or two.

Do you guys have any ideas for bonus content (mostly perspectives from side characters, both the normal cast and any extended cast) that you would like to see from the earlier books?

I've made an Alcove thread to compile responses in one place over the next few weeks: https://alcove.azaleaellis.com/t/bonus-content-ideas-requests/594

Latest chapter discussion thread on Azalea's Arcane Alcove: https://alcove.azaleaellis.com/t/chapter-245-discussion-the-womb-and-the-grave/593