Emergency Shift by Daniel Potter

Author:Daniel Potter [Potter, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fallen Kitten Productions
Published: 2021-04-07T22:00:00+00:00

19

“We need to get out of here.” I looked around the bar. “Is there another exit?”

“I wouldn’t be very clever if there wasn’t.” Rey’s tails fanned out. “Hide behind me,” she told Secret, “And put your glamour back on Lady Abby.”

Secret’s eyes shone momentarily, and then she wiped a dark drip from beneath her nose with a small sniff. Worry panged in my chest; she’d gotten a boost from her mother, but she still looked haggard, with deep circles beneath her eyes. Reminding me I wasn’t the only one pressing against limits. She nodded to herself and then stood behind Rey. The tails fell on top of her, draping across her back and sides, nearly concealing her entirely.

Rey waved and the entire room slid away, replaced by a white stone path. Two marble statues guarded a downward stairway. One depicted a fox the size of a man, with a sword at his hip, and a triangular cap. The other depicted a maiden with a thin lipped smirk, bearing nine fox tails fanning out behind her. The positions and poses mirrored the stained glass window back at the Court of Cats. “Take my arm,” Rey whispered from within the shadow of the deep hood of a tattered brown robe. Rounded spectacles covered her eyes, their lenses black.

I took her offered arm, and she leaned her weight against me. Together we walked forward. “So, were these your parents?” I heard myself ask in the silence.

She laughed, “Inari and Reynard. One ate the other, but who can tell which wound up in the belly? Rey is the result, who has no legends of her own but the one now in your head. A fox god without a story to call her own. So she claims every prayer to a fox. It’s a strain to be all the foxes. To constantly twist to fit whatever stories I gather.”

“I don’t really understand,” I said truthfully as I stepped down into the stairway. Lit by the glowing eyes of abstract fox masks that hung on the walls.

“You are from the Crossing. Where chaos gives birth to order, which yields to decay, to birth chaos once again. Here in the Dream, there is no death, only chaos and order in a constant back and forth. To become stone is to be locked in order, while to be undone is to devolve back to chaos. Limitless possibility and comforting patterns. Once we traded the Crossings for what we lack. This place was a bright reflection of your world. Humans could visit us with but a knock and name. We bled into each other, fostering children and sheltering our favorites from the decay and corruption that sup at your souls and body. A foxhole like this could lead anywhere in my world or yours. Then the Seal came.”

“The Seal?” I asked. That seemed familiar somehow.

“The Seal of the Nine. Four Fey, Four from the Decay. Together they chose Sol as their leader and sealed away the invasion of the corruption.

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