Infinities Unknown

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Time is a funny thing. It allows us to see things in perspective, which normally only distance allows. It gives us the ability to “see the future”, or how we wish to see it, by the plans we make. Each plan is a prayer, a hope, a wish that what we want to happen will pass. Time is also a great deceiver. It allows us to think we have more of it than we do, always and without fail. It is the one currency, no matter where or who you are, the desire to have more of it makes even the mightiest of beings impatient when it runs out.

For a girl plucked out of time, such conventions did not stick to Orianna anymore. This was the other thing about The Study, perhaps the part that Mister didn’t expect her to realise until it was too late. The work she did on solving the puzzle could be done as quickly or as slowly as she wanted. It got done either way. Progress was made. If that progress was quick or slow it didn’t matter to her because she could not leave, her magic did not work here. The only way she could leave would be if Mister allowed her, or Gerhard found her. She knew the former would kill her before he’d let her go and the latter had not been able to find her yet.

Yet — that was the key. Such a simple word. But when the realisation came to her it broke Orianna from her reverie and she once again found herself sitting at the desk, ready to work.

Yet.

A prayer. A hope. A wish.

If Mister was getting impatient with her progress she didn’t know. Orianna envisioned him being too smug at the fact that his punishment had seemed to make her compliant. But as the puzzle progressed and she slowly began to piece it together, she imagined the Malevolence creeping back in and his Desire to have the answers now would make him impatient.

That’s how she knew when he would come to see her.

As Orianna works studiously on the puzzle set out before her, she begins to realise something: This is not just a diagram for some spell-like ritual. This was more like a machine, similar in theory to the ones artificers build, but this one uses the planets and stars as its interlocking gears with time and space being the mechanisms in between. The one point she couldn’t get her head around was the power source; it just made no sense, as if written by a mad man, like reading a recounting of someone staring into infinity and witnessing it all.

The lack of time in The Study could almost be called a blessing. She found time to move at exactly the pace she wants and needs it to. With no sense of urgency Orianna could sit, reflect, and ponder over each detail of this puzzle. The result was always the same — progress, no matter how long it took.

It was as she was pondering this part of the puzzle she could not comprehend, when a nagging thought began to worm its way into her mind.

Mister has left me alone for… a time. I wonder where-

As if thinking of him, summoned him to her, a familiar silver mist began to form in front of the desk. As Mister’s form took shape, Orianna notices something different about him. He looks happy, very happy. It is a look she does not like at all. She is careful to keep her thoughts quiet. She never did figure out how he got the information from her the last time but Orianna suspects he can read her mind to some degree. She turns her attention back down to the maps in front of her and adds one final notation to the piece of the puzzle she has been working on.

Mister sits down in a chair across the desk from her and smiles — a too wide smile with too many teeth, not full of malice but pure joy.

“Hello there dearie, how are you on this fine day? I hope you are comfortable and relaxed. Is there anything I can make for you? Oh! How can I forget? Let me quickly check your progress and I’ll let you speak to your dear Gerhard.”

Orianna sets her stylus down with a firm clack against the wood before she answers him.

“It progresses,” she says. “I have managed to work out ninety percent of which celestial bodies are the cardinal points. This map,” she pulls out one from near the bottom of the pile, turns it and places it in front of Mister, not once having her eyes leave his face, “has my findings as of this visit. The key is here.” Her ink stained finger taps the top left hand corner twice, like a raptor’s, before she pulls her hand back, reaching for the next piece.

“The whens I mentioned last time have been more difficult to narrow down. Their fixed points of beginning and ending are only seventy five percent complete, but…” Orianna reaches for a pile of papers which she places next to the star map, her neat writings and calculations all precisely done out as only a librarian could — to the point of perfection. “What is in those papers is accurate. I triple checked all my references.”

With her short presentation done, Orianna folds her hands neatly, one on top of another, in her lap and waits to see if Mister will keep his word.

The creature giggles like a child having just been given the exact present they had asked for. He gets up and runs around the desk very excitedly, pulling the map and papers back to him as he stands right next to Orianna, a little too close for comfort. Mister proceeds to look over her work, letting out several small impressed and happy statements as he does.

“Oh fantastic…

“Simply amazing…

“Yes, yes, most excellent…

“Ah, better than I could have imagined…”

After a short period of looking over her notes, Mister turns to Orianna.

“Oh I knew I made the right decision choosing you to be the one to unlock this puzzle. You have proven yourself more capable than even I could have imagined. Simply wonderful!” Mister chuckles and runs to the other side of the desk once again.

Orianna lets out the breath she had been holding, her hands shaking.

“Well come on then it’s time for your reward.” This time when Mister says it, it’s light and airy, like an adult about to give a child permission to have their favourite sweet.

A familiar mirror begins to take shape next to him, its surface opaque with swirling silver mist. However, this time, once it is fully formed, Mister takes several steps back, giving the impression of space for Orianna to come over without fear.

This was the part that she had been dreading. She still could not say with absolute certainty that Mister wouldn’t do something horrible to her. Trying to stop him on her own did not work, so Orianna had to try something else. Something probably more risky than what she did the last time. Risky, for what it could mean, if it worked.

With hands still shaking, Orianna slowly gets up from her chair and steps around the desk. Her gaze lingers on Mister, but all he does is continue to gesture encouragingly towards the mist filled mirror. Gone is any form of grounded steadiness. Instead it has become a nervousness that shakes her very core. She tries to breathe deeply, hungry to see him, desperate to hear his voice, to return to his earthen embrace as the light of a young star burns overhead. Hands knotted together and arms pressed close to her sides, Orianna holds herself steady even as her heart ticks away like a bomb in a birdcage.

“I’ll leave you two to it then,” Mister says respectfully as he bows and disappears from The Study. Orianna barely registers his departure.

“Gerhard…” Orianna quietly says his name — a call, a plea, a prayer.

As she speaks Gerhard’s name, she sees his form quickly come into focus. From this perspective she seems to be looking at him through another mirror that Gerhard is near.

“Gerhard. Can you hear me? Gerhard!” She tries to keep the desperation from her voice but a little of it leaks in. Tears have sprung to her eyes as she sees his familiar profile. “Please, hear me…”

The hair on Gerhard’s neck stands up straight as the voice reaches him, the pure notes of her voice casting across space and time to come home. The quill in his hand, moments before scratching out a phrase, clatters to the table where he is sat, the nib breaking as it bounces off of the small table, coming to a rest by his trembling hand in a splatter of ink and feather.

He spins, searching for the source of her. Is it in his head? Has the wait proven too long? Has he fallen asleep, ink seeping into his hair, mind exposed to another of Mister’s cruel tricks? It does not matter.

“Orianna? ORIANNA?”

He scrambles out of the chair, trying to find his legs under him and nearly failing. His movements are wild as he stands in the middle of the room, eyes furiously checking anywhere, everywhere.

It is a small movement that catches his vision, that pulls him towards an ornate mirror of Orianna’s hanging upon the wall. A figure, slowly coming into focus as the room within the mirror becomes obscured with silver mist before burning away like fog on the water.

Orianna, home once more.

As she becomes clearer, as more and more of the silver obscuring her form winks out of existence, Gerhard’s becomes hazier, slowly becoming enveloped in a silver fog of his own making.

His eyes are set, his will focused, and as he grabs the Call with an outstretched hand, he disappears.

SMACK

The apartment shakes with the force of Gerhard hitting the wall, his rapidly re-appearing form flailing as he holds an arm out to steady himself. The mirror shakes on its nail, trembling under the weight of the impact, and with a hand he drops the Call to hold the mirror in his hands, falling to his knees.

“Ori- Orianna…”

“Gerhard!” Her voice breaks then. Seeing him, the warm brown of his eyes, the ink on his strong hands, the way his hair falls down to his shoulders, his attempt to get to her, blocked — all of it tears at her heart, making it screech a piercing call, wanting to be free. Orianna rushes at her side of the mirror, pressing her hands on it, wishing to push through, wanting to break through, but all she feels is cold, hard, silver glass.

The cool light of the blue star overhead bathes Orianna in a brilliant spotlight. As Gerhard focuses again, he sees how ethereal she looks, which makes it seem like she is not entirely there. The array of shelves, the desk with its myriad of papers and half drunk cup of still warm peppermint tea would all tell the story of what she has been up to, but he sees none of it. They are all shrouded in silver mist, which only serves to add to the effect seeing her does to him.

But for her, it is like looking through a window. Her apartment, everything where she last had it — all of it perfectly preserved. How much time has passed? With him there, as if their life together, which had only just begun, is something she could step back into. If only she could find a way to-

“I’m sorry. I- I can’t-” Her right hand bangs on the mirror gently. She doesn’t want to risk breaking it. Every word, everything she has wanted to say is gone from her mind. Held back, like she is being held back from him by this ‘gift’. “I’m here. I’m right here. I’m sorry. I can’t, my magic doesn’t work. I’m-”

Powerless. Like a princess locked away in a tower, a million lightyears away…

Gerhard, collapsed onto the floor of her apartment, raises a hand to the mirror, slowly placing his fingers over where Orianna’s hand presses against the glass. The mirror is cool and cruel and nothing like her touch, but his eyes do their best to convince him that she is here, that he is there, that they are together.

“Y-you’re here. It’s okay, you’re here, you’re safe, you’re home.”

His eyes dance over her, trying to find any secrets that will tell him where to open a Door, where to walk the Infinite Staircase to her, but there is nothing. She is unchanged from that fateful day that feels so long ago, save for the pale blue glow that shimmers off of the brilliant patterns of scales that decorate her shoulders and chest.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

“I know you do, imi-ib.” Orianna smiles despite the trails of starlight running down her cheeks. She kneels down, tucking her cloven legs underneath her summer dress, pressing both hands to the cold, hard unrelenting surface as she keeps her right hand on the mirror, not letting it move from where Gerhard has reached for her. She forces herself to hold on, wills him to believe her own conviction as she says, “I know you will find me…”

Now that she takes a moment to really look at him, she sees that he is much the same as the day she departed. His cotton shirt, arms rolled up to the elbows, sits comfortably on his shoulders. His hair is tied back, the chestnut locks disappearing behind his ears. He looks… clean, a feeling that he tries his best to exude with a sad smile that matches hers.

As he shifts, crossing his legs to find a way to sit and to hold the world in his arms, there is a glint of silver beneath his shirt, a shine of something resting beneath the unclasped buttons. A faint blue glow, too, a reflection of the light that highlights his love.

“Where he brought me, I… I don’t know how long it has been. But you look… well.” Her gaze dips down. “What is that?” Orianna asks, indicating the blue glow.

Gerhard’s hand moves to grasp the small locket, a motion practised often in the last few days. It is barely warm to the touch, and with a thumb, he opens the clasp. His face glows with brilliant blue starlight, the mote of stardust dancing in the reflection of his eyes. He turns it to face the mirror, his small memento pale in comparison to the star that lights Orianna’s work.

“I-It’s a gift. A reminder. My North Star.”

He closes the locket in a quick motion, his fist closing over it, giving it a squeeze.

Orianna wipes her eyes. “A reminder?”

Gerhard rubs a thumb on the metal before slipping it back beneath his shirt. Close to his skin. Close to his heart.

“A reminder that soon you’ll be home. And look!” He chuckles, holding back tears as he looks at her. “Here you are.”

Home. A place that calls to her. A person she longs to return to.

“Gerhard, I…” The consequences of her choice finally wash over her. The information she gave to Mister so willingly just so she could see him, makes her stomach twist into knots.

“I’ve done something terrible,” she mutters so softly, the words slipping out as tears come back in a rush. “The only reason I’m here is-” Orianna stops herself, quickly looking over her shoulder. There doesn’t seem to be any lingering silver mist, no indication that Mister is present, but Orianna knows he must be watching, listening to their conversation. What if she says the wrong thing? What punishments would he exact on her in order to hurt Gerhard?

Orianna shudders and tries to push those thoughts away.

“I, ah…” She looks around trying to find something on her side that will help her but comes up short. All of these books, though treasures troves of incredible knowledge, are none he would be able to get a hold of.

There is one book though, unique and well known to only her…

“My journal. There’s something I need to read to you from it. Can you get it?”

With a hand, Gerhard wipes his face, and Orianna can see his form shift and change as he stands, bringing the mirror with him to the small desk he had sat at moments before. He leans the mirror up against the wall, careful to make sure it is stable, bracing it with a book and a pot of ink.

His hands in the air, ready, he looks around until he sees the journal, tucked away atop some of her other books, untouched. While he has cleared a small space to write, he has left as much as he can where it was, still horrified at the idea of erasing her touch from his space.

I’ve done something terrible.

He puts the thought aside — so has he.

“I have it.”

Orianna nods. “B-bring it here. A-and turn to the last journal entry,” she instructs him.

He nods, untying the handmade leather straps of snake skin. As he opens the journal there is the smallest puff of a dark vanilla scent that instantly makes it feel like Orianna is standing right next to him. Gerhard looks over at her, but Orianna is looking down at her shaking hands, murmuring softly to herself in a tongue that sounds like water rapidly passing over stones.

The sight of her trembles makes his heart pound in his chest — so quickly he forgets, now that he can see her, that it has been almost two tendays she has been gone.

“Ori- Orianna? A- Are you okay? Has he hurt you?” The last few words are a whisper, carrying his fear across space and time for her to hear. “Talk to me… it’s alright, I’m here, it will be okay, I promise.”

“P-Please, don’t-” She half nods, half shakes her head, making herself look up, making herself face this truth as this may be the last chance she has to tell him.

And the only chance she has to warn him.

“You make so many promises, imi-ib,” Orianna says, the smallest of smiles brightening her eyes. The blue starlight over her head catches her face and though she shakes, it’s a little less now. The smile fades and Orianna looks down at her hands before reaching out to him — only to touch glass. Her eyes linger where the mirror has stopped her hand for a beat before finally rising up to look at Gerhard again.

“I don’t know how much time we have and I need to say this to you. Will you listen? Listen closely and-… and hear what I have I have to say?”

Gerhard’s eyes follow hers, coming to rest on her hand, so close to his. At her request, though, he meets her gaze, his mind and eyes both swimming as he sees her, really sees her, truly listens to her plea.

His breath catches, but he nods vigorously. “I’m listening.”

Orianna breathes out, then gestures for Gerhard to open her journal. A small blue feather tied to the end of a strip of leather flutters over the spine as he flips to the page that starts her last journal entry. His eyes catch on the one phrase he can read in Common and he frowns. But, not saying anything, he turns the book towards her. Orianna is confronted by the words she had written — their stark, black inky shapes immaculate whereas the words they make that contain her thoughts pinch and poke at her, daring her to lose her nerve. She remembers the feelings she had as she wrote it the night before Gerhard knocked on her door. That uncertain state envelopes her all over again.

This was it. Her moment of truth. She has no fear of Mister figuring out what she is about to do. Her fear is entirely for herself, for Gerhard, and what this confession would mean.

Cosmos, please, let him hear me…

“Why did he walk onto the Staircase in the first place?” Orianna begins to read. “What was in his heart when he left? Was it for a selfish reason?” Her eyes flicker up to Gerhard’s on the word ‘a’ but quickly fall back down to the page again. “Some misplaced desire to do something deadly-” Again, her eyes come up, finding his earthen embrace before falling away, “-to risk everything, to prove himself? Was what he had not enough?

“Does Gerhard puzzle over these questions and more every night like I am now?”

Another flight up, to fall back down.

“Do I distract him from finding the answers? From finding what he truly desires?”

Her expression becomes momentarily pained as she reads, “‘Or maybe by your hand, instead…’ Seeing those words… They strike at me like a comet obliterating planets.”

The violet nebula of her gaze pierces into him as she rises and falls once more.

“I should have told him. I should have been honest with him about the vision before he left… The man I Saw. The letter written by his beautiful hands and given to me… by him. The way the stars screamed his name-

“Henri.”

Slowly, she looks up to see Gerhard, his eyes fixed on hers, steady as their focus flits and dances over her face.

His own words spill from her mouth, each cutting through to his core. The butterfly wings of his uncertainty, of his fear of moving too far, too fast, too soon, became hurricanes in the heart of another. His words, like daggers in his own chest, did the same to her. His heart stops, and starts, the unending percussion pounding in his ears, in his palms, as he holds the tool of his own dismay in both hands.

Then, the words change. A confession, a vision, a name, a letter. His mind wavers, and in it he hears her, when things were different.

What I Saw wasn’t about this time.

The next time approaches, and he steels himself for what more she has to say.

“As if demanding, I face the cardinal truth. As if the points of what was and what is, could never meet. That we were only meant to have one night and the rest is left to time and memory.

“Time only offers us perspectives we wish to see and deceives us into thinking they are truths. Whilst space allows us to feel what we have missed when it is too late. When our chance is gone. When we have no more time.”

Orianna takes a shaky breath.

“Henri. A name as long as the River itself, fixed in my mind by the anchor of unwanted ire. The mutable nature of desire is such that it can change at the first sign of something familiar.

“Is that all this has been? What does it mean to be seen, to be known? All Gerhard told me, have I ever understood it? Did Henri?” Orianna shakes her head. “Henri left. Henri turned away. Henri was never satisfied and that is why, when he looked at me with eyes of pure silver, he smiled. He knew. He had found what he sought.

“How can I let him be the person that holds me back, when Gerhard is right here…”

Gerhard does his best to pay attention, to hold tight to the mast in the midst of this white squall. Each word she speaks burns into his memory, each glance an underline that he tucks away for later.

He holds on, tight. His heart, torn asunder, is pieced back in her words: two halves meet and are joined in brilliant silver, a scar that he will never be able to shake.

There is not time to interpret, nor time to let the words settle. As she said: they have no more time.

Her whole body trembles in the storm, but Orianna keeps her hand pressed firmly to the mirror and wills herself to keep going. Just a little bit more before the end.

“One final truth,” she says, shakily. “I am scared to put it into words. I fear naming the unknown. But once something is named it loses its power, its hold over you.”

This time when she looks up she stays looking at Gerhard, her prince of riches under the earth. This part of her journal she knows off by heart.

“What will that do to me?” Her index finger lifts from the mirror on the word ‘that’. “What will that mean for us?” Again, on ‘will’. “Will it open me up or will the truth reveal a heart too heavy for the feather and scales before the stars of the Final Gate?”

Orianna steps right up to the mirror and rests her horned head against its chilling glass, just like she would if she was right there with him. As hot tears cascade down her face she softly closes her eyes.

“Imi-ib… Even though I despise Henri for the choices he has made, and even though I loathe what he has done to you… I know you would not be the man I have grown to love without him. I don’t like the ties he has to you. I wish there was something I could do to help you, to free you from him and the Staircase. But all I can do is tell all of this to you… and hope that you see that I love you… from now into eternity, no matter what.”

Gerhard’s forehead leans in to meet hers, the journal placed gently down now that its reader has no need of it any longer. Tears, a River of his own making, flow freely down his cheeks, collecting in the soft depths of his beard before trickling down his neck. The locket, his North Star, collects his pent up grief, the days of unending waiting by the door, waiting for the bell to ring.

The truth of his life, of a love that drove him across Toril, of a love so fiercely coveted, lies bare on the cool glass of the mirror. He had spent these days, writing in the book that lies on the table behind the mirror, reflecting. Staring forward, and facing the mortifying ordeal of becoming known.

Now, as the rewards of being loved sit across from him, across the universe, his heart breaks. Breaks for the moments that he was not fully honest. Breaks for the glimpse of another life he stole from her violet nebulae. Breaks for the cruel irony of his situation: that for when his mind was torn, she was whole; when his mind is clear, now, for the first time in a lifetime, she is torn from him.

If he makes a promise that would tie their souls together for eternity, will it all slip through his fingers? Will it all turn to silver in his hands and ash in his mouth?

He breathes, gasping and gnashing at the overwhelming tide of his emotions, of her gift to him, of the choice that she made: him, above all others, forever.

He’s at the cliff’s edge, the open Cosmos beneath his feet, and in a whisper, barely audible, he takes a Step.

“I love you too, imi-ib.”

His declaration Calls to her, opening her eyes, and freeing her heart. Her slow, growing, loving smile is made all the more lovelier for the starlight she radiates. Gerhard’s words grab her, tethering her soul to his, and for the first time since Mister brought her to The Study, Orianna feels connected to something real, constant. The scales across her body shimmer and ripple, absorbing the light shining down on her to project it across to him.

“Remember my words,” she whispers softly. “Stop him. I tried to before and he-” She stops, sucking in air, the rippling light across her scales stuttering.

Gerhard’s smile matches his beloved, the crushing weight of uncertainty, the thick iron chain of anxiety, lifted from his shoulders. He laughs, briefly, a low chuckle that he interrupts to wipe his face on his sleeve.

“I’ll remember,” comes his whispered reply, the words spoken as soon as they are requested. “I’ll stop him. I’ll-”

His mind catches up with what his ears are hearing; his tongue refuses to go any further.

“W- What did… did he… did he hurt you?”

Orianna quickly checks behind her, the stuttering light steadying to a constant glow when she doesn’t see anything or anyone else in The Study with her.

“He did. Or tried to? I’m not-” She shakes her head. “I tried to not tell him everything, or just enough so I could see you, but not give him what he wanted. But he saw right through me. He grabbed me and then… he…”

She looks up to the open ceiling. Gerhard sees the young star reflected in her eyes, making them glow brighter, making her shine.

“It was cold. So cold… I thought I was going to die, that I wouldn’t get a chance to see you, to tell you everything.” As Orianna looks back at Gerhard it is with love and joy but there is also pain, guilt, and shame. “He’s only let me see you because I-… Because I’ve- h-helped him.” The words fumble from her mouth as she sobs. “I’ve betrayed everything — my people, my beliefs, you… all because I was scared I’d miss this chance to see you, imi-ib. I needed to see you. I-… I’m a coward. I’m-” She buries her face in her hands, weeping.

Gerhard’s mended heart breaks anew, distraught that he cannot hold her, reassure her that it is okay.

“It’s okay, imi-ib. It’s alright. I’m here.”

He keeps his forehead pressed to the glass, his knuckles white from gripping the mirror that he has picked up off of the desk in a loose embrace.

“I- I see no cowards here, Orianna. You fought back against an… an Infinite. Y- You survived!”

The rage will come later, as his mind accepts what Mister has done. What he continues to do. Now, though, he yearns only to reach through the glass.

“Y- You are needed. Here. Your people need you, here. Your work is not done. And if you have to help Mister, if it means that you can come home…

“That is all that matters.”

She leans against the glass of the mirror, longing to fall into his arms. She imagines it shattering into a million tiny stars that form a bridge that allows her to cross the distance. In one breath she would be with him, flying into Gerhard’s arms, and when they met, Orianna would never let him go, ever again. She would tie herself to the earth, bury herself deep into his embrace, and turn a blind eye to the stars if they called to her again.

“Sometimes it feels like fate is never on our side,” Orianna says softly, turning her face up to his. The mirror no longer feels cold. It feels thin, warm, as if it’s more like a veil between them. “I want to have you there with me — when you find me, and bring me home.”

She couldn’t be sure, but Orianna swears she hears a sound, like waves. If light could have sound, she thinks the young, newborn star witnessing them sings for their love, for their fight to be together.

“Then we will make our own Fate.” Gerhard’s hand, fingers outstretched, presses onto the glass. “We will carve our own space in the stars to call home. And when this is over, when I find you, I will carry you over the threshold myself.”

“Oh how cute. Truly a pair of star-crossed lovers.”

Mister’s distinctive laugh can be heard but when both look around he can’t be seen. It isn’t until they look back at the mirror that Gerhard and Orianna see a reflection of Mister staring back at them, a wide cheeky grin spreading across his face.

“I do believe you two are now all caught up. I’m going to have to cut this little heartwarming chat off. Say your goodbyes.”

Silver mist begins to spread from the edges of the mirror heading for the centre. Orianna only has seconds to say something before Gerhard will disappear behind the veil, leaving her alone and out of time.

The anger, the hate rises in Gerhard’s throat as he stares at Mister’s smug grin, the building desire to break through the barrier, to take as much as has been taken. But as soon as Mister appears, and the silver mist begins to close in, as his beloved begins to disappear, he knows that time has finally run out.

“I- Imi-ib, I will find you, I promise, just stay alive, that is enough. Please. I will see you soon.”

The fear, the dread rises up Orianna’s throat and she flinches at Mister’s smug grin, the instant reaction to recoil back from him overwhelming her. But she is unable to move. She is frozen, her tongue an ingot of cold, heavy lead. But when her beloved speaks, it somehow breaks the spell.

“I know you will, imi-ib, promise me you’ll be safe too, I love-”

The silver mist fully envelopes the mirror, cutting off her words.

For Gerhard, after a moment of watching this, the mist simply fades away, the mirror now only showing his reflection and Orianna’s room.

For Orianna however, the mist swirls, swallowing the window to her life and her love until the only face looking back at her is Mister’s. It ripples across the glass surface before coalescing into something more solid. Then Mister steps out from the mirror itself and Orianna scrambles to get out of the way even as he carefully walks past her sitting on the floor. He stops just behind her and smiles down at her.

“You are a clever girl aren’t you,” he titters. “That little code was very well thought out. Though there is one problem with your plan. You have to count on the fact that dear old Gerhard is actually smart enough to figure it out.”

Mister starts to laugh wholeheartedly as Orianna stands, relying on the desk to help her up. Of course he saw her trick. She looks around wondering if there is anything she could do to help protect herself from whatever punishment he has-

“Oh don’t you worry,” he continues, his laughter subsiding. “I’m not going to punish you for that. It’s too late now anyway! With any luck my sister detected that little chat of yours and is working on triangulating your position. It won’t be too long now till Gerhard sets out on his little quest to rescue you.”

Orianna freezes, her blood thickening into ice as she realises what his words actually mean.

“That was your intention all along… Seeing Gerhard was not a reward for me… it was part of your plan… You cannot do this-” she gestures to the piles of work she has done on the Infinite Puzzle, “-without him. You used my desire against me…”

Anger begins to rise up to equal her fear, but is cut short by Mister’s cruel laughter.

“Think of it! The valiant hero sets out on a quest to rescue the damsel in distress from the clutches of the evil villain.”

His laughter crawls across her skin even as it reverberates deeper into his chest. She feels sick. Worse, she has been used all over again.

In a blink Mister is right in front of Orianna, leaning in close, towering over her, stretching up even as she is shrinking down.

“Sounds like cheap storytelling if you ask me,” he growls, grinning too wide, eyes full of maniacal mirth.

Then, in a flash of silver Mister vanishes, leaving Orianna all alone in The Study with only the primordial light of the newborn star to keep her company.

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