Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Autumn had gone to Chaos as soon as she’d gotten up that morning.
Leaving the bastion to call for the Elder, and watching the air split in front of her face to reveal Chaos who was standing there, but the Elder was standing on the ceiling like it was the floor.
Or maybe it was the floor? There was a rug hanging on for dear life by one corner.
Anchored by a chair that looked afraid for its life.
“Elder?” Autumn hesitated. “Are we on the ceiling today?”
Chaos looked around. “If you can get here.”
Autumn nodded; this was some sort of test, even though Chaos wouldn’t be able to tell her what she was being tested on. “I will do my best.”
Chaos looked hard at her, nodding. “The ring is improving; the Song sings your name as a friend.”
Autumn took a step into Chaos’ domain, half braced to land on the floor, which was the ceiling, and stepped onto one of the wooden braces that held it up, or down currently.
“Elder, I have a question,” Autumn looked up at Chaos. “Two questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Questions?” Chaos tilted his head at her. “Sing the song, little pomegranate, and we will see this thing. Ask the second first; most of the light comes from the second window.”
“Why did you tip the domain upside down?” Autumn asked.
“Is it?” Chaos asked. “Or is the rest of it upside down?”
Autumn smiled, “I think it’s just you, Elder. The rest of the Mountain being upside down would fling the residents into a panic.”
“Silly creatures,” Chaos giggled. “Perspective, little pomegranate, is a funny thing. When you see it properly, it looks skewed.”
“So the only way to see it properly is to look at it improperly?” Autumn knew that didn’t really make sense, but Chaos was nodding as though she’d said something profound.
“His perspective is upside down.” Chaos said, and Autumn didn’t have to ask to know he meant Auster. “It is seeing through itself, so it will never see true.”
“Can I reverse the ascendancy?” She asked, looking carefully at Chaos. “I think if Eleni could tell him she agreed to this, he might be able to move forward.”
Chaos went silent, and he turned away from her. Autumn just waited; he was sorting through the fractured memories that he still bore, and he would turn back once he had an answer.
Autumn looked at the walls of the Domain. If she were going to have to wait, she was going to try to get off the ceiling and up to the floor. She knew that was the actual test here, and the sooner she figured out how to reverse her own polarity, the sooner the Elder would let her go.
She put a hand on the wall, balancing across the ceiling beam until she felt the rough texture of it against her fingertips.
There was no way to actually climb the wall, there were no footholds that she could see and she wasn’t about to put holes in the domain so she could climb the walls like a goat.
Or stand on her head and jump.
So there had to be another way. Was Chaos asking her to turn the domain back to true?
That could be the answer. His words about Auster said that he was looking at things through his own lens, so that could be the case here, the domain was Chaos’, he’d created it and was the master and commander of everything that it did.
But Autumn had spent enough time here that she might be able to tease it into listening to her slightly, maybe enough that she could turn it the right way up.
Autumn reached for the substance of the domain and tried to insert herself into the mesh. It didn’t work, violently, and Autumn found herself in a heap on the opposite side of the room. She climbed back to her feet and tried again.
It kept not working, and she was getting dizzy from being tossed into the opposite wall.
Not only that, but the domain was slightly sentient and it was getting angry with her.
Autumn stopped, looking around and sighed.
She would think on it a little more, while Chaos was thinking and maybe she would come up with something else.
* * *
Days went by, Chaos was silent, and Autumn struggled with the domain. She’s given up on trying to mesh with the magic there; it was too strange, refracting across her nerves in a way that meant she had a near-constant headache.
Autumn was sitting across the room from Chaos’ back, forcing her eyes out of focus so that she could see the magic of the Domain. She’d been watching it for two days, nursing the headache the entire time, looking for a pattern in the magic.
But there wasn’t one. At least not one she could see.
But the first words from him had been about perspective, so maybe she needed to change that about herself. Luckily, she knew exactly where to get a different perspective.
Eleni.
They had meshed, braided, and Autumn drew on that experience, pulling it up and into her thoughts.
She hadn’t asked. Autumn hadn’t simply asked the domain what it wanted to do. If it were slightly sentient, then it had an opinion, and she should have asked it.
Autumn leaned her head back against the wall and looked back into the magic of the domain. The threads were still there; they still moved in a way that was completely incomprehensible to her. Ranks and lines and a flicker at the edge of her sight that was the thing driving the headache.
“I don’t suppose you’d let the floor be the floor again?” She asked timidly. “I’m sorry I tried to force it instead of just asking.”
Autumn felt the domain shift, looking squarely at her as though it was expecting something. Autumn didn’t know what it wanted, but she knew what she could offer that the domain might accept.
She sang the domain a quiet little song, trying to express her regret for trying to make the domain do something that it didn’t want to do, and then singing how happy she was that it hadn’t taken more offense to her.
It shuddered, shaking under her and then it closed its eyes and rotated. Slowly, allowing her to climb the walls as they became something that she could walk up. Autumn kept the song going, singing to the domain in the same rhythm of the ever changing magic that made it up.
And then the ceiling was back where it was supposed to be and she was standing next to Chaos who had turned back to her with a grin on his face. “No,” he said, gesturing to her. “A ring has no beginning and no end, to turn it makes no difference.”
“Oh,” Autumn closed her eyes and nodded. “I guess there’s only one other thing I can do then, and I can’t right now. I will have to wait until Light agrees that it’s safe.”
“Wise,” Chaos said, smile falling from his face. “Meshed but not one.” He mused the words. “Ascendancy means one.”
Autumn shook her head, knowing what Chaos meant. “When Skirion is free, then I will do as you say.”
Chaos gestured to the wall, and Autumn watched it open. “Lesson learned, return to them.”
“Thank you, Elder.” Autumn smiled at Chaos and stepped out of the domain and right onto the little rise where they would build their home. It was the dead of night, and she wasn’t alone.