The crimson pulse on the projected map flickered under Tavira’s hovering palm, radiating greasy heat against her skin. This was it. The core. The place Lennis would conduct her soul-siphoning ritual. And the place Tavira would have to walk into, not as a victim, but as a saboteur. “So, this is the Heart of the Sun vault,” Rhydar murmured, his gaze fixed on the map. He kept the Oath-Collar’s leash coiled around his knuckles. “Only accessible during the Convergence of Foci. Guarded by the Sun-Blessed Watch, Lennis’s personal cohort.” “Watchers,” Tavira echoed, wrinkling her nose. She knew those pristine, pearl-white tunics and stiff collars. The same patrol who had sneered at her reeking pelt just yesterday. Now, they stood directly in her path. Brimby, burrowed deep in the greasy yeti fur, let out a soft wheeze. Tavira scratched his ears, breathing in the sour stench of cured mountain pelt. A truly awful, glorious scheme bloomed in her thoughts. “Rhydar,” she said, turning to him, a wild glint in her eyes. “Get ready to bark.” He blinked, his brow furrowing. “Bark, master?” “Yes! And bite, if you must! We’re going to throw a tea party.” Minutes later, the grand gallery leading to the Heart of the Sun vault looked like an open sewer trough. Tavira had ‘liberated’ a cart meant for polishing light-wells, then piled it high with an assortment of scavenged, questionable items. A cracked porcelain teapot overflowed with a murky, green liquid that smelled suspiciously like fermented cabbage. Several ornate, but chipped, crystal goblets were arranged haphazardly, each holding a clump of something stringy and unidentifiable. She wore her tattered yeti pelt, of course, but had added several discarded light-scourer brushes to her hair, making it stand out in stiff, grotesque spikes. Brimby, perched on her shoulder, wore a tiny, lopsided hat made from a crumpled sweet-tart wrapper. Three sun-blessed guards stood before the vault's massive sunstone door. The officer, a woman with cropped black hair and silver badges at her throat, narrowed her gaze at the approaching cart. “Novice Tavira,” the officer enunciated, clipping each consonant short. “What in the blazing realms is the meaning of this filthy display?” “Tea party!” Tavira brayed, her voice bouncing shrilly off the crystal walls. She shoved a goblet of the cabbage-sludge forward. “Care for a sip of my exquisite, aged Gloom-Brew? It’s fermented to perfection.” She rattled the goblet, splashing green brine over the stone. The officer stepped back, tucking her immaculate sleeve against her chest. The two flankers stepped aside with sharp, disgusted coughs. “You violate seventeen decorum statutes,” the officer snapped, snapping a disciplinary slate from her belt. “And the stench! It is an insult to the entire court!” “Oh, you mean my perfume?” Tavira sniffed her yeti pelt with exaggerated pride. “It’s bespoke! Very… *natural*.” She then turned to Rhydar, who stood beside her, Oath-Collar glinting, a perfectly blank expression on his face. “Rhydar, darling, these lovely guards seem distressed. Perhaps a little demonstration?” Rhydar dropped onto all fours without hesitation. A low rumble rattled in his ribs, and then he let out a sharp, reverberating bark. The noise startled the guards into reaching for their batons. Rhydar zeroed in on the officer’s polished leather boot, lunged forward, and clamped his jaw over the leather cuff of her ankle. No broken skin, just a blunt, wet clamp. The officer yelped, losing her rigid posture entirely. “He bit me! The top scholar of Yal-Vara just bit my foot!” She hopped backward, kicking wildly. The other guards fumbled with their staves, horrified at striking the prize student. Rhydar released the leather and looked up at Tavira, sitting patiently on his haunches. “Was that satisfactory, master?” “Splendid hound!” Tavira squealed. She yanked the leash, pulling him past the cart toward the faceted pylon framing the sunstone slab. The guards were too busy scrubbing cabbage juice off their sashes to block the doorway. As Tavira brushed past the pylon, her knuckles scraped its cut edges. The faceted glass dragged a sudden resonance through her marrow, tearing away the present corridor. Shouts and fracturing beams erupted into her ears, identical to the collapse she kept reliving in her sleep. She saw herself kneeling beneath a cracked skylight while the ceiling trusses buckled. Rhydar lunged into view, shouting her name as he threw both arms over her neck to take the falling beams. He had never laughed at her in that collapsing gallery; he had taken the brunt of the falling masonry until the white fire swallowed them both. He died shielding her. The vision broke. Cold glass bit into her fingers, the guards still bickered around the puddle, and Rhydar stood beside her with steady, questioning eyes. The assumption she had nurtured since waking in this second life crumbled away: Rhydar was never her murderer. She gripped the chain tighter, checking the lock around his throat. She was no longer running from a killer; she had to keep him from dying under the beams a second time. “The door,” she whispered to Rhydar, her voice devoid of its previous theatricality. “We need to get through.” They reached the bronze threshold when porcelain shattered behind them. Brimby, clambering off her collar, had swatted an ornamental amphora off its display pedestal. Consecrated brine flooded the tiles, triggering a strident brass siren that shrieked from the ceiling vents. The guards stiffened, instantly drawing their formal daggers. Rhydar spun, planting himself between Tavira and the corridor. Then, from the far end of the hallway, a figure emerged. Lennis. Her sweet, grandmotherly smile was gone, replaced by an expression of cold, unwavering power. Her eyes, usually a soft, warm hazel, now burned with a terrifying, pitch-black intensity. The light in the hall seemed to dim around her, as if her presence alone could consume it. “Oh, Tavira, my dear,” Lennis’s voice drifted down the hall, no longer warm, but sharp, like shards of ice. “Playtime is over.”

Madness and Memories