Chapter 49
Chapter Forty-Nine
Autumn could breathe, she hadn't known how badly whatever had been in her head had been pushing on her until it was gone and she felt like she could breathe again. She dragged her eyes open, to come face to face with Light, who was looking down at her with something approaching fascination.
"Highest?" Autumn tried to sit up, but there was something wrong with her body, and she just ended up slumped oddly in the bed.
"Be easy, Autumn," Light said kindly. "There was a tiny remnant of memory in your head. Intellect is working on how it was able to gain purchase on the inside of your mind. You did very well to resist it for so long."
"It lied," Autumn said as Light helped her lay back down, covering her with the blankets. "I love them and they love me. Nothing changes that."
"Correct," Light nodded. "Now, you should rest again and I will send them to you."
Autumn nodded, closing her eyes but before she could fall asleep, she heard the door open.
She pried her eyes open, looking at where Chaos stood just inside the door.
He looked even more exhausted than she'd ever seen him and she tried to get up and go to him, but only ended up sprawled on the floor.
He walked over, looking down at her with a profound sorrow. Autumn just looked back, trying to get up again.
"You aren't Chaos," she said firmly, getting to her knees and breathing hard with the effort it had taken. "Whoever you are, you aren't the Elder."
The thing's face shifted, going from sorrow to fury in half an instant. It grew claws, the same ones that the greasy thing in her head had grown to try and harm Auster, they shone in the light, but refracted it utterly wrong, like a shattered mirror, backwards and strange.
"You—" she tried to bend her mind around the light and failed. "You're the shattered mirror that Chaos warned us about."
The thing snarled, losing form for a bare instant, until it was something that she almost knew the shape of.
It lunged, going for her heart, for her lungs, but Autumn knew the Song of the Mountain. Knew the magic that laid beyond and inside of everything on the Mountain.
And in that moment, she knew how to use it.
Autumn screamed, but the scream was all the shades of hurt that the Song had ever sung in. Terror and pain and sorrow so black that there was no way up and no way out.
Autumn used the sorrow, the pain, and the fear to draw a cage around the thing wearing Chaos' face drawing it tight, like a string bag, until the thing couldn't move and could only barely draw breath.
The door crashed open, Boreus and Auster rushing in with the Highest hot on their heels and crashing to their knees as the storm of sorrow that Autumn was screaming in hit their ears.
Autumn couldn't let it stop, couldn't let the thing wearing Chaos' face go, but also couldn't hurt the ones that she loved. And they were no more proof against the Song than any other resident of the Mountain.
But the Highest were only mildly affected, forging through the black pain in the air, to the side of the thing wearing Chaos' face and looking at Autumn with horror.
Autumn stopped singing, moving to explain herself, but the thing wearing Chaos like a coat immediately shattered the cage Autumn had built around it and flew for her, claws extended.
And then everything froze. Chaos stepped through a sudden division in the air and looked at Autumn. "Silver throat, golden tone, a dance in the void."
"That's the shattered mirror." Autumn pointed to the thing with a shaking hand. "You warned us about that, it put something in my head."
Chaos nodded, stepping to the thing, which was frozen in the air with a look of abject terror on its face.
"No hiding now," Chaos said in a sing song voice before giggling and reaching out to poke the thing in the head.
It popped, like a soap bubble, leaving behind a golden something that might have been a piece of a malevolent…Autumn didn't know, her eyes didn't want to focus on it.
Chaos giggled, reaching out to grip the golden thing and crush it in a grip that seemed far too strong for him.
And then the world unfroze, leaving the Highest and her loves all looking at her with varying degrees of horror.
"A broken mirror," Chaos said. "Those that sing, can also see."
Light sputtered, not very dignified for the Highest of the High and stared at Chaos like the Elder had grown a second head. "You might have said something, father."
Chaos nodded, tapping his forehead. "Still a shattered plate, daughter."
Autumn might have said something about that, but the world suddenly went faint and strange and she felt herself falling.
* * *
It was night when she managed to pull her eyes open again; it was night and there were familiar arms around her. Beloved arms, ones that would hold her safe until the Mountain crumbled to the sea.
She nearly went back to sleep from the comfort of it, relaxing utterly into the bed and the warm blankets.
"Autumn?" Boreus' voice came from the dark. "Are you alright?"
She nodded, and then remembered that the dark was too dark for him to see her. "I'm alright," she said in a scratchy voice. "My throat's a little sore, but I think I deserve that."
"Do you know what that was?" Auster asked. "It looked exactly like him, but you knew."
"Whatever it was, it didn't feel like him." Autumn yawned hugely. "Would it be alright if we talked about it in the morning?"
"Rest," Boreus said as a soft hand stroked itself over her head. "We can talk about it in the morning."
Autumn nodded, remembering again that it was too dark for them to see it, before she faded back into sleep.
"Autumn," a quiet voice echoed through her mind and Autumn turned to face Eleni. "Are you alright?"
"I'm alright," she smiled at the other half of her soul. "I think I figured it out fast enough that no one got hurt."
"You did," Eleni smiled at her. "Rest now, dear heart. Sleep and wake and find the sun again."