Week 18

  The world folded around them like paper.

  Callie's stomach lurched as the portal spat them out onto smooth stone.

  The chamber resolved itself slowly: first the walls of pale granite veined with silver; then the floor, inlaid with concentric circles of darker stone; finally the portals themselves, three massive archways arranged in a perfect triangle, each glowing with runes.

  Briar landed more gracefully, dropping into a crouch beside her with Ember at her heels. The warg's fur sparked with residual energy, tiny embers drifting from his coat as he shook himself.

  Behind them, the portal they'd come through flared once more, and Morthaen emerged; or rather, poured through, her massive form compressing impossibly to fit the archway before expanding again in the chamber. Eugene followed at a more sedate pace, his shell scraping softly against the stone threshold.

  The nexus was smaller than Callie had expected. Each archway pulsed with its own distinct light: the one they'd emerged from shone deep amber, while the others glowed jade-green and arctic blue.

  She pressed a hand to her temple, trying to shake off the disorientation of the crossing. Travel by portal was nothing like the smooth transition of Eugene's shell or even the nauseating bounce of a sand drake. This had felt like being turned inside out, briefly unmade and reassembled from memory.

  "Well," Briar said, straightening and dusting off her hands, "that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." She pulled out the Blue Ledger, already flipping to a fresh page. "What language were you speaking back there, by the way? With Morthaen. I think you spoke it back at the village as well."

  Callie blinked. "What do you mean? I was speaking Common Esharran."

  Briar's eyebrows rose. "No, you definitely weren't. It was all liquid sounds, like water running over rocks. Pretty, but I didn't understand a word."

  Callie replayed the conversation in her mind. She remembered what she'd said, the meaning of it, but now that she tried to recall the actual sounds...nothing.

  "I don't… " she started, then stopped.

  Eugene, who had been surveying the chamber with the critical eye of someone evaluating real estate, turned his ancient gaze upon her. "Of course you did not realize, Lady Calanthe. One does not notice the language of one's birth any more than one notices breathing."

  "But Common is my… " She paused. Was it? She'd been speaking Common since she arrived in Esharra, or at least she thought she had. But before that, in the Library, what had she spoken? Mandarin, when frustrated; English, when taking notes sometimes; both mainly out of nostalgia for her past lives. And there was the formal script the souls were catalogued in, that strange amalgam of cuneiform and something older.

  "You were speaking the tongue of those born of Abyssa," Eugene continued, settling his weight with a scrape of shell on stone. "It is not a language one learns, Lady Calanthe. It is inherent to those who carry her essence, passed down through blood and water and the deep places of the world."

  He blinked slowly, deliberately. "Surely you must have suspected by now? The Oracle recognized you. Nüba called you familiarly, though she stubbornly refuses the speech for obvious reasons."

  Callie thought of the Library, of the way some texts had seemed to whisper their contents before she'd opened them. Of the way Abyssa had touched her face, casually and familiarly, as if they'd known each other for centuries.

  "Of course I knew,” she said quietly.

  Morthaen shifted, her scales catching the portal-light and scattering it in fragments across the walls. "She has chosen to forget; and the spell, as it unwinds, still obscures." She lifted a claw in the direction of Briar. “The fidgety one suspected though she wishes it wasn’t true. The warg knew it the moment he smelled her.”

  Morthaen moved to the open archway on the far side of the chamber, a simple opening that led the way to the Axiomatic Kernel. "I will remain here," she announced. "When the World Tortoise arrives, I will meet her. Until then, this place will do."

  Her claws tapped against the floor, a rhythmic sound like distant thunder. The implications were clear: she would not enter the Kernel. Whatever lay beyond the archway that led to the Academy, Morthaen wanted no part of it.

  Eugene inclined his head in agreement. "Eugene concurs. Lady Calanthe may proceed to the Kernel if she so wishes. We still have some time before my mother arrives." He settled more firmly onto the stone. "Besides, Eugene finds academic institutions tedious in the extreme. All those rules and regulations, the endless debates about metaphysical minutiae. The nattering of insects."

  Briar had been quiet during the exchange, her quill moving steadily across the page of her ledger. Now she looked up, eyes moving between the dragon and the tortoise. "You're both scared of something in there," she said bluntly. "What is it?"

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Eugene's expression turned slightly sour. "Eugene is not scared. Eugene is simply... judicious in his choice of destinations. The Axiomatic Kernel is a place of learning, yes, but also of scrutiny. They study the very fabric of narrative causality. They would find both myself and Lady Morthaen to be fascinating subjects of research."

  "Have no fear," Morthaen added flatly. "We will be here for you."

  Callie felt the weight of it then, the reality of stepping forward alone. Yet she was not truly alone; Briar would be with her, and Ember.

  Morthaen's head dipped low, bringing her massive eye level with Callie's face. "We are all precisely where the story expects, Sister. The trick is learning to expect different pathways." She pulled back, settling into her chosen spot with an air of finality.

  ***

  The air tasted different beyond the simple archway.

  They'd emerged onto a low hill overlooking a vast plain where three rivers met in a complex braid of silver water. The land between the rivers formed a near-perfect triangle, and even from this distance she could see how the grass grew in subtly different shades, responding to something other than sunlight and soil.

  "Well," Briar said softly, "that's certainly not Sarapis."

  Ember whined, low in his throat. His ears were flat against his skull, and the embers that usually drifted lazily from his coat were noticeably absent. He pressed closer to Callie's leg, seeking reassurance.

  Callie knelt and ran her hand through his fur, feeling the tension in his muscles. "I know," she murmured. "Too much magic, too many strange scents. We'll be careful."

  The Axiomatic Kernel sprawled before them like something from a fever dream or a particularly ambitious architectural treatise. Seven towers rose from the plain in perfect geometric arrangement, each one pale as bone and graceful as a needle. They weren't quite white on closer inspection. Callie could see that the ivory surfaces held subtle imperfections; colors shifting across the stone like oil on water.

  The towers were arranged in a heptagram, seven points of a star connected by walkways that didn't quite touch the ground. The walkways floated perhaps two feet above the grass, their undersides glowing faintly with sustained levitation magic. Students moved along them in small groups, visible even at this distance as dark figures against the pale stone.

  "Seven towers," Briar said, already pulling out the Blue Ledger. "One for each... what? Magical discipline? Day of the week? Gods of Esharra?"

  “All of the above and more,” a faint voice called out. It was Eugene from his nesting place inside the portal nexus. “The three rivers are the Axiomis, the Veridion, and the Coheisa. The mountain ranges in the four cardinal directions are the Apophenion, Sa?sāra, Al-?aqq, and Jiān ài (兼爱).

  Briar turned back and called out, “Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome!”

  ***

  They descended the hill and walked across the plain, following what appeared to be a well-worn path toward the nearest river. The grass whispered as they passed, and Callie had the distinct impression that it was taking notes. Everything here seemed calibrated, measured, arranged with purpose.

  Briar kept glancing around, her hand never far from her bow. "Is it just me, or does it feel like we're being watched?"

  "We definitely are," Callie said. She could feel it; the steady regard of people who made their living studying unusual phenomena.

  They passed smaller buildings as they approached the central area: dormitories, perhaps, or research facilities. Each one was built in the same pale stone as the towers, but lower, more intimate in scale. Through the windows, Callie caught glimpses of bookshelves, worktables, what might have been an alchemical lab with glass tubing snaking between burners.

  Students watched them from doorways and windows, their gazes assessing rather than hostile. Most wore simple robes in various colors. A few carried staffs or wore obvious signs of magical specialization. No one approached them, though. It was as if they were specimens in a display case; interesting to observe, but not yet ready for interaction.

  The path led them to the central courtyard, and there Callie stopped.

  The Axiom Garden spread before them. At first glance it appeared to be simply a well-maintained garden: flowering shrubs, fruit trees, neat gravel paths winding between beds of herbs and ornamental plants. But as Callie watched, a rosebush in the far corner suddenly sprouted twice as many blooms, while a nearby lavender plant withered slightly before recovering.

  "Did you see that?" Briar whispered.

  Callie nodded. The garden was responding to something, shifting its appearance based on—what had Eugene said?—narrative potential.

  "Yes."

  They skirted the garden, neither of them willing to walk directly through it. The main path led them around the perimeter toward what appeared to be the primary entrance to the Academy grounds; a wide plaza of pale flagstone with a shallow fountain at its center. Beyond the plaza, a bridge spanned the crystal-clear lake that encircled the entire complex.

  The lake was perhaps fifty feet across, its water so transparent that Callie could see every stone on the bottom, every waving strand of aquatic plant. It would have been beautiful if she hadn't recognized it for what it was.

  "Scrying medium," she said quietly. "The whole thing. Anyone with the right skills could look through this water and see... basically everything."

  The bridge was short, and then they were across, standing on the main campus proper. Here the buildings were larger, more imposing, arranged with clear intentionality around open spaces meant for study or gathering. Students clustered in groups on stone benches, in the shade of carefully placed trees, along the edges of smaller reflecting pools.

  The main entrance was obvious, a wide set of stairs leading up to an archway twice the height of any doorway Callie had seen since arriving in Esharra.

  And standing at the base of the stairs, arms crossed and expression carefully neutral, was Tanith; flanked by six other mages of a presumably similar station.

  She looked exactly as she had in Sarapis; tall and willowy, dark skin marked with shimmering runes, wire-rimmed spectacles catching the light. But something about her bearing was different here.

  Callie stopped a few paces away. Ember positioned himself between her and Tanith, not quite growling but making his presence clear. Briar had gone still, one hand resting on her bow.

  "I warned you," Tanith said simply, her voice carrying the same measured precision it always did. But there was something else beneath it.

  Resignation, perhaps, or menace. Maybe both.

  Callie met her gaze and saw something she hadn't seen before. Not quite regret, but its cousin. A recognition of consequences already in motion.