Azure strongly considered diving. She could take a Slowfall potion right before hitting the tangle. But the timing didn’t look great when she spared a glance to take measure. They’d likely catch up to her while she was Slowfalling. At that point, it would be better to land on the tower and defend as she went down.

  Instead of this, though, she reached into her dimensional pocket and called for whatever number she had of a certain potion.

  One came to her hand. Shit! Should’ve made more — why didn’t I-! Bah. It’ll do. It’ll have to. Uh, uh… what else… alright, I got it!

  She pulled one other potion and so she loaded two of them freehand into the gun. With her shield and the harness arms facing behind her to block anything that might come from below — and to slow her down a bit more for a spell — she pointed her weapon diagonally upward and at the tower, as close to where the Cat Heads would traverse as possible. Immediately after, she fired another outward from it to fly through the open air.

  The first potion exploded on the tower and a massive, continually erupting growth of tangled vines and branches pushed outward from it, very much like a miniature version of the tangle of the Wyld below. Various Cat Heads crashed into it and got tangled and wrapped up, their momentum getting spoiled. They screeched in protest.

  A potion was just reaching the end of its upward journey through the air, slowing rapidly as gravity dragged it.

  Close enough — hopefully.

  Azure barked a command word and the potion burst, unleashing a great cloud of apparent floating debris. But when this ‘debris’ coated the Cat Head’s fur and feathers, they began jerking around and clawing at themselves, especially shaking their heads, indignant howls ringing through the sky.

  Hundreds of little spiders crawled all over each of them, biting and trying to get into their eyes — or whatever else presented itself. To the Cat Heads, they were nothing more than an annoyance. But that was true of basically any attack and this was designed to annoy them.

  Every single beastie slowed and most lost concentration on her entirely. Those who dived further only dived thicker into the slowly floating mass, and inevitably pulled up short, fighting with their own skin, essentially, and not at all quick about winning the battle.

  The pursuit was over.

  Damn. If we were stuck here, I’d definitely make more of these. But I’m more than ready to put this fucking place behind me.

  She turned back around and dived a bit the rest of the way to the canopy of the tangled wood below. Despite everything, she smiled. The whole experience had been rather exhilarating.

  The smile was brief, as what she’d crash into was ahead. More than that, something very dark waited below it. She had truly not even started to descend.

  Have I ever? Maybe that’s what keeps me from the true attainment of Heaven. Why I couldn’t go up with her, or even take true mastery of what is Below. Why I have no understanding. Truth. I run from myself — my demons. I walk as a liar trying these steps. Given, given, given, all is given to me, but some things must be seized. Taken and held on to burning in the hand. I tried to, once, but I gave up in failure, and then it beat me — with fear. This time I’ll close my fist around it no matter what…

  “Cleanse me or destroy me,” she said softly, then cast her spell at the moment she felt was precise.

  Oh so slowly she passed back under the cover of the brush, which felt almost refreshing in its coolness. Her feet lightly touched down on a branch and she soon leapt at an angle to reach the staircase, and precisely where she had turned away to follow Samantha. Somehow, she knew even her boots touched down where her prior steps had been.

  She forced herself to look dead into the obsidian mirror of the surface. She hated what stared back at her. She feared it, too. Feared her.

  “I await you,” said the Mirror Monster in a mocking, eerie echo, smiling her wicked smile. “My dear, dear Azure.”

  ??············???···········??

  Samantha-Rallindin came to suddenly, standing before massive double doors cast in glittering silver. It had a central motif as a large circle containing a combination of the sun and a crescent moon. The sun — gleaming gold — was the only vibrant color variation in any direction. Subtle and almost hidden by the grandness of the rest of the design, a single fruit seemed to be carved below, at normal height. A pomegranate.

  Sammy blinked as the doors slowly opened inward and supernatural silver-white moonlight beamed down on her from within — unlike most light, it soon made her squint because it somehow could blind her. She also noticed Rallindin’s body was clothed in strange, red-gold robes made into the semblance of glittering flames. It was rather beautiful and accentuated with copious gold jewelry and rubies contrasting with the stark porcelain of the goddess’s skin.

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  Despite all the grandeur, Sammy’s first thoughts when fully conscious were for Azure. She cast her mind out… but found no location. She lived, though. She was alive. Anything further was blotted out.

  The simulation took control and Sammy was a rider again with Rallindin, as she walked tall and proud through a great and beautiful hall that nonetheless slightly hurt to look at in its brightness. A plethora of heroic scenes made washed-out but colored murals on walls just visible beyond rows of checkered pillars that guided the way. Most, Sammy didn’t specifically recognize. One, however, showed a blatant analog to the Serpent offering the apple to Eve. Only it wasn’t an apple, but a pomegranate.

  On a simple white-stone throne, exceptionally high up a pyramid-like dais, sat the obvious queen of the realm. Despite that she wore a mask half ivory, half obsidian, she effortlessly oozed regal femininity in a way that made Sammy feel awkward in comparison. Her robes were like blue-white flowing water, her jewelry sparse but accentuating, with perfect but unpolished nails seen from one silvery hand peeking out. Her other hand was obscured in the shadow of strangely cast light, as if a tempting secret that was withheld.

  Atop her head was the same symbol as the door, the sun and the moon, but made simpler. Her eyes were the light casting throughout the room, and gazing into them seemed to reveal nothing of her intentions or who she really was, but all of her presence — all that she could change and reveal before her. It was wonderful and glorious just to be there with her. Peace and warmth radiated, somehow between them, or in interaction. A dichotomy meant to be, meant to pair, meant to align.

  It took quite a bit for Sammy to find her wits amidst all the wonder she had tugging at her, but find it she did, with a tremendous and fierce struggle. She grappled it back.

  As Rallindin opened her mouth, something Sammy knew would be very saucy somehow, Sammy seized control by the effort of iron will, in a way she didn’t fully understand the mechanism of, but bore similarity to her ‘time control’ aspects in the Hall of Reflections.

  Reality shook. Warbled. At first, it didn’t seem like it would do anything but grind things to a halt, or perhaps abort it. But then the one on the throne did something too, aligning their wills, and reality decided to conform.

  With a shimmer, Rallindin’s skin and form became Samantha. She found herself even moving the same as she took a corrective, shaky step. Nothing else changed despite the depth of that ‘wrinkle’ throughout reality. Understandably, Sammy was a bit stunned.

  “What is for Rallindin is for Rallindin, then?” the queen asked casually, her voice sweetness and bitterness combined. Even casual, it was a decree from on high. “So be it, Samantha of Earth — speak.” Her way of speaking had a strange emotive continuity to it, a maintenance of rhythm even between sentences, though changing cadence.

  “I-” Samantha cleared her throat, took a deep breath, and gathered herself up. “You. You promised to help Azure. I don’t see her.”

  “Yet see her you will, after I facilitate what she desires and mostly certain requires. Her state may vary depending on success or failure.”

  “Hey,” Sammy pointed her finger in accusation. “Hey, I don’t like the sound of that! What the hell do you mean?! If you aren’t helping her, you lied to me!”

  “The deception is all within you, not me. That is what you are good at because the light you cast is cheery and optimistic. Easy to overpower, easy to overcompensate — fry. Truth does not overpower but strikes the perfect balance. So powerful is that balance that it transcends either side. Sadly, your side’s nature cannot harness this correctly.”

  Her hand slowly raised and turned flat, as if to shrug. “But that is my purpose and why you are here. A missing ingredient to your little stew. Do you know what I am in that regard?”

  Sammy didn’t answer, just felt her fists clench as she scowled. Something about her certainly stirred emotions.

  The queen did not wait long. “A second spoon in a second hand. Hahaha…” She laughed long and hard as if she’d made an old joke. Cackled — perhaps a bit mad.

  More like a monkey wrench. Not her thought.

  The laughter was another mixed thing — it was like the first dive of a ghostly rollercoaster of bygone youth, the release of some tremendous anticipation she didn’t know she had, and a thrill, yet scary. Perhaps dangerous. It could go off the rails, after all.

  But they’d done this before. Would again, if the purpose failed. She was a pragmatist with her own power always in hand. She’d do what she felt was best, sometimes at odds, but this one could not betray the purpose, as she suspected Glae might. She always held to her principles, warped as they were.

  I’d really like to see what she’d do in Ralli’s world. Or maybe I don’t…

  Sammy tried to maintain her wits and stick to the pertinent. Calmly, she asked, “What is it that you think Azure needs? What are you doing with her? What do you know?”

  Bordering on poetry, she replied long in cadence, “You should focus on yourself, Samantha — you’re before an oracle and time is limited. This is the last I’ll say on her, and for your and her benefit both: she suffers to walk the Path of Truth, but the greater suffering lies without it. You must let her walk it and trust her, but you would be right to ensure she walks instead of sprints. She will hit the rock-hard wall of it and shatter in her beautiful fragility. If she walks instead, the mountain can be climbed to reach a proper summit, her form made smoother for the grit and the grind.

  “She goes to face herself. Pray she wins the battle, for that is all you are sanctioned to do. So is the curse of Others. It is the same for the peasant and the king, and even for the cosmic deity. The grandest joke we’ve ever told; the grandest joke that we are, for we are never free of it.”

  A second spoon? There is no spoon. Spoooooon!

  Next Chapter...

  Azure descends.

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