//------------------------------//
// Wheels Within Wheels 
// Story: Game of Worlds 
// by DualThrone 
//------------------------------//

After his grandiose announcement about playing god, Moreau had lapsed into the muttering thoughtful silence of the researcher, having an animated conversation with himself under his breath about what he was seeing and what he planned to do with it. For the first hour or so, Spite attempted to keep track of both sides of the conversation--his occasional foray into ‘viability of breeding’ made her tense involuntarily each time--but eventually, the blather about ‘secondary mutation potential’ and ‘post-tertiary derivation of infusion’ faded into the background of her awareness as she attempted to assess her surroundings more thoroughly.

The floors were certainly stone but in the faint light that Moreau used, they gleamed with the dull waxy finish of polished tiles unmarred by the dust and sand that seemed to be around the structure that she and Luna had traversed as they pursued Moreau’s hive mind creation. They also appeared to be in a simple diamond pattern with the lighter stones creating the diamond shape and framed by darker stones.

With the Void bindings she’d been in before gone, she tentatively and carefully reached into herself to see if she could now touch it. The normally constant connection felt dimmed and indistinct, but neither Moreau’s frictionless field nor whatever other measures he’d taken was obscuring it entirely and with a small sigh of relief, she used it to slightly twist her form, enough that she could pierce the darkness outside the light with the washed-out and greyish ‘sight’ of looking through the nothingness of her native realm back into the mortal plane.

A library? She blinked several times and narrowed her eyes, pulling a little harder on the Void to try to make the image more clear. His lair is a library. What kind of bizarre creature is this ‘Moreau’?

“I am a scientist,” Moreau huffed as he flicked one of his wrists, causing Spite to rotate halfway to her left. “Where else would you imagine that I should established a laboratory? And no, I can’t read your mind, I’m reading the bovine expression of surprise on your face.”

Spite treated him to slightly narrowed eyes, getting a condescending smirk in response, before Moreau rotated her to a side and slightly forward, leaning in to examine the joint of her neck and shoulder. “You’ve been staring at different parts of me for hours,” she said as she lay, looking down at the tiled floor. “What is this meant to accomplish, rather than irritating me and giving you more opportunities to be smug?”

“Don’t burden me with your ignorance and I shan’t burden you with the full details of my contemplations on what I see,” he said. “Not every Evil is so limited that all they can see through the lens of the Void is indistinct shadows of a mortal plane.”

“Worked out how to imitate a jei’s second sight, have you?”

“I could not possibly care less about the state of your soul,” he said, rotating her belly-up. “Although this shell is remarkably intricate for a mere temporary abode of a Void dragon. Imitation all the way down to capillaries and individual fibers of muscle, correct placement of neuron fibers, even a very slight and plausible defect of the secondary right bronchial branch. This Mistress of yours has a curious degree of interest in your well-being.”

“It drives Trilychi out of his mind, trying to work out how she can be overflowing with goodwill, and still make examples of whomever tries to challenge her.” Spite smiled a little. “It’is pleasant to watch him try to work it out; so far as I am aware, it’s the only question he’s never been able to answer because he starts from a false premise: that ‘kind’ and ‘dangerous’ are mutually exclusive.”

“Overwhelming fitness permits small quirks of personality.” Moreau rotated her upright with her feet down. “One of the most vastly irritating truths in my work… if you make a creature so fit that it reigns supreme over all others, it begins to have ideas of its own, and becomes dreadfully difficult to control and guide.”

“You seem to have your puppets well in hand.”

He dismissed the observation with a wave of a hand. “Fodder for the claws of their fellows, mere pawns that are easily shackled and used. They can’t even accurately convey what they see, giving no warning that the pet Void dragon of the Sixth was coming to call. That you are in my chains is entirely your own will but you imagined that I didn’t foresee your play and use it to make my own.”

The partly-mutated griffin that Moreau had abandoned earlier when he’d used her pain to taunt Spite slid into view, shivering, half-conscious, clearly in pain, suspended in the wires of Void energy that Moreau had used on her. “I said that I would test what I learned on this one, and so I shall. What do you think, Einspithiana… do you think she’s adequate raw material?”

“A pointless question,” Spite said. “Either she is and you further twist her, or she’s not and you find another use for her. In either case, answering you is a waste of time.”

“Answering that question was, yes,” he agreed. “But your answer was useful nonetheless. Now then,” he continued, looking at the trapped griffiness. “You really ought to feel honored, Einspithiana… I have never permitted observation of my work in progress, even with that glorious bitch Nachtmiri Mein breathing down my neck by proxy. Her vessel then was a prime specimen of equine, prime breeding years, distinguished herself with a reverse genius loci connection to the lunar body of this world. Can’t imagine how Mein cajoled her into it.”

Spite blinked at him. “You’ve met Princess Luna? And she didn’t obliterate you on general principle?”

“So she was royalty.” Moreau paused, looking thoughtful. “Fascinating. I take it that this world’s queen has a similar connection to the sun?”

Spite narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re suddenly very chatty.”

“You are suddenly very useful.” Threads of Void snaked out of his hands and slithered up the veritable cables that held the griffin in place, becoming finer and finer as they went until Spite lost track. “Knowing the approximate characteristics of the challenge I need to overcome will shift the odds of success heavily in my favor.” His face stretched in a small tight-lipped smirk. “Or, more accurately, I will know how to stay ahead of the forces gathering to crush my employers.”

“You don’t seem to have good judgement about who you ally yourself with if you’re so certain they’ll  be crushed,” Spite said.

Moreau snorted. “They are feebleminded, arrogant, and entirely unfit; of course they’ll be crushed. But you err in thinking they are anything more than marks to be bilked of the things they have that I want.” He turned his face back to the griffin and began making deft and curious gestures with his many hands, some of them reminding Spite of a person molding clay, othes of someone sewing cloth with needle and thread. Curious, she reached for her crude version of the jei ‘second sight’ and looked again at the griffin.

Several times, she’d been to the massive foundries that constituted the homes of the gremlins of the closest thing she had to an actual home world. Watching the clever machines of the diminutive artisans take ore by the hundred ton, shatter it, grind it, water it, sluice it, run the slurry through filters, pressurize it, and finally bake it into ‘flakes’ that could be smelted into molten metal for use had always struck her as the concept of genius, somehow converted into physicality and put into motion. Watching the movement of the Void energies as Moreau manipulated and guided them reminded her strongly of watching those immense and incomprehensible machines. Genius in motion, she said to herself, feeling vaguely uneasy at the sight. He is actually as cunning as he thinks he is, or at least as capable at his art as his ego suggests.

Void energy slipped into flesh, melting it as it normally did, but then then melded with it, turning flesh into some manner of twisted putty in the hands of the emaciated creature that called himself ‘Moreau’. A dozen exquisitely tiny ‘needles’ pulling gossamer thread spun of the essence of the Void sailed through the air at a casual motion and began stitching yet more forms into place the melding so fluid as to be invisible to her.

“Master?” Spite jumped a little and turned to look towards Grimfeathers with the magical effect over her eyes still running, finding herself looking admiringly over the amazingly tight workmanship of the alterations Moreau had made to the creature’s formerly griffin body. She’d seen the exterior, of course, but the intricate weaving of living flesh with killing Void was masterful.

“Chain the new subjects down at the left end,” he instructed, not even missing a beat.

“There are none.” Spite blinked and dissipated the spell to look harder at Grimfeathers, whose voice was now smooth, cultured, and had a strong touch of refinement rather than  the casual and loose way she’d spoken in before leaving. ‘Ein here came in with another pony, an alicorn.”

“So? He has no concept of where to…” He stopped and turned his head to Grimfeathers. “Alicorn?”

“Term used for a pony that has unicorn magic and pegaus wings with the physical hardiness of what’re called ‘earth ponies’.”

He frowned as his hands kept moving and weaving with sharp and precise movements, as if proceeding without any conscious control. “Name?”

“Luna.”

Moreau stopped in place for several moments, his expression contemplative. “Gather everything in that case and move it deeper. Is that all?”

“The Smilin’ shit is missing from her cage.”

“‘Smiling shit’?” Both Grimfeathers and Moreau looked at her. “Terribly sorry,” she continued, making sure her tone reflected that she was anything but, “but did she just say that you’re caging a zambet?”

“I am a genius,” he scoffed. “Of course I devised a way to confine a zambet. It’s really not so difficult… obscure all the reflective surfaces, layer thousands of recurring preservation and concealment runescripts on the surrounding structure…”

“What could possibly possess you to bearbait a world-destroyer?”

Moreau smirked at her before turning back to Grimfeathers. “The zambet will be sorely weakened from slipping the bonds I placed on her. See to it.”

Grimfeathers gaped at him. “Have you spit yer bit?”

“Spit my…?”

“Have you succumbed to madness?” Grimfeathers amended, still looking utterly gobsmacked. “I can’t just slip this vessel to outmanuever her, and this form is mortal. You’re slathering me in meat sauce and throwing me to a shark!”

“Think of it as a pleasant intellectual diversion,” Moreau seemed to enjoy the mutated griffin’s distress. “Just do it.”

Grimfeathers snorted. “This is a fine work of art you house me in, but no vessel buys the risk you demand. It takes but…”

“Stop taxing me with your imbecile chatter, Grymmilnia.” He growled. “I am a master. I designed the vessel to account for all eventualities, including this one. Obey your agreements and retrieve my prize.”

“You are so fortunate that you’re important to this entire endeavor, vorka,” Grymmilnia growled back. “I’ll retrieve your little toy, scientist, but we will have words afterwards.”

Moreau smirked again and made a ‘run along’ gesture with one of his hands. The void-shaped griffin growled and turned, disappearing back into the darkness as he watched, before he turned back to his work.

“You cannot possibly have shielded that vessel from a zambet’s touch,” Spite said.

“Of course I could have, and I did,” he responded, using the wires of Void to move the griffin he was still working on higher into the air. “I admit to being somewhat irritated, however.”

“What, that your vaunted containment measures didn’t work?”

“No, that she didn’t wait until I told her the time was appropriate.” He shook his head. “To lose your hole card before you need to play it is… vastly irritating.”

“I admit that irritating is by far one of my lesser talents.” Spite cringed a little at the discordant sound of the vaguely feminine voice that drifted from the darkness, seeming to be just barely a step behind her. Still in the fictionless field, she couldn’t turn her head around very quickly and was in the middle of doing so when something she’d never seen before crossed her peripheral view and sautered over to a thoroughly nonplussed Moreau.

It looked like a burlap sack pulled and twisted and bent into the vague shape of a stalking cat, motes of violet and pink light flaring up randomly within the roiling construct, causing it to bulge slightly in the direction of the flare before settling back down and disappearing. Sulphurous smoke curled out from the inherent gaps in the rough ‘stitching’ and the simulated burlap itself and Spite found herself trying not to breathe through her nose as the oddly metallic smell hit her, accompanied by a tingling sensation in her mouth and nose. Moreau seemed entirely unaffected by the smoke as he turned and frowned down at the strange construct with an expression of exasperated annoyance.

“The time was appropriate, Vorka,” she hissed at him, the accent of her words tinged with some strange mix of a serpent-like hissing and cultured twang. In any other circumstance, Spite would find it intriguing and attractive; coming in a voice that she could best compare to snakeskin grinding against the strings of a violin, she couldn't help but try to block it out by covering her ears. “You lost control of the webweaver vermin. You know that nothing can be gained by this enterprise, but through that sniveling mortal’s creation, and it is now outside your direct hand. What do you propose to do to ameliorate this?”

“There is nothing to ameliorate,” Moreau said. “She is outside my direct hand, but she will act as if she was being instructed. She has no choice but to do as I bid, and go where I would have her go, and do what I would have her do while there.”

“You are not as brilliant as you think you are,” the zambet hissed. “This game is beyond you, the wagers too high, the risks too great, and yet you insist on throwing all the pot in on the gamble that your strings are everywhere and that with but a tug, you can direct a puppet to do your bidding unknowingly.”

“There is no roll of the dice in this,” he said. “Plaguing the griffons threatened our purpose. It might have drawn the gaze of Ambassador das Pupa, and Chrysalis might have moved early.”

The zambet snorted contemptuously. “Mere mortals.”

Moreau turned and looked at her, and Spite could see a thin eyebrow raised curiously. “Like the mere mortals that chastised you, I take it?”

The zambet’s shape rippled and pulsated as the creature growled. “You try my patience, scientist. Sore tempted am I to see what plan might be made if you were made my meal.”

“Tempted, but you’ll do no such thing,” Moreau said calmly as he turned back to his work and began manipulating energies again. “Everything is proceeding according to the ultimate design. Chrysalis will not move for some time yet. I have secured the first point of the lei and the Voice has secured another. The third is beyond their reach and knowledge, and your way is being prepared. As to the other two points, those are not my concern and I was not permitted to know enough to intelligently advise how they might be taken.”

“Why care about some mewling mortal wretch?” The zambet demanded.

“Because that mewling mortal wretch commands the adoring loyalty of a desert nation under arms,” Moreau said. There was a small lilt in his nasally voice that gave Spite the impression that the description was more meaningful than it sounded. Apparently, the zambet heard the same thing because the undulating motion of her shape stilled as she studied him.

“We are much better prepared this time,” she said, her tone much more subdued.

“You are too ancient to truly believe that one can prepare for something they barely understand.” Moreau’s voice became tinged with disgust. “Entrusting the observation and suppression of the changelings to a brute fool was a crippling error. There is but one bright spot to Tharalax, but it is one that may yet let us retrieve the mistake.”

“There is naught bright about void dragons,” the zambet snorted.

“I’m hurt.” Spite barely spoke the words when her vision was filled by a pair of glrowing violet holes in a virtually shapeless mass that pulsated with a foulness that she could feel hammering against her senses like a driving rain.

“You… captured the Handmaiden,” the zambet hissed, her smouldering eyes retreating as suddenly as they’d appeared, and the mass settled again to the floor in the shape of the burlap cat.

“She deliberately walked into the trap knowing what it was,” Moreau said. “She came by her free will, and lingers by mine. I’ve no illusions that I’ve confined her any more effectively than she wishes to be confined, and will fulfill her purpose at a time of her choosing.”

“So you have lit the fuse and cradle the bomb in your bosom.” The zambet hissed amusedly. “To what end?”

“Refining my work, naturally.” His hands stopped moving and the form of the no-longer-griffin melted bonelessly to the ground. Her breath rasped softly against the floor, but she seemed otherwise senseless. A mercy, Spite thought. I doubt he would have any reason to be gentle.

“By which you mean, creating something so strong that it can and will kill you.”

“Yes,” he said. “Now, matters must continue forward, and your part is yet to come. If Grymmilnia’s report is accurate, and she has never failed to report accurately, there is a meal wandering in search of you. No need to keep her waiting.”

The zambet’s burlap head split apart at the vague suggestion of a muzzle, a grin stretching almost halfway around her head. “I’ve never supped on a demigoddess before.”

“Then I look forward to the results of your attempt,” Moreau said. “You are supreme among predators, but she is unusually strong for a mortal. Take care; I shouldn’t want to have to replace you.”

The zambet snorted. “Replace me. What an absurd notion.” Her ‘tail’ twitched once and it was like watching a balloon burst: the Void energy woven around the zambet exploded into a mist and the overwhelmingly nauseating presence disappeared.

“She’s going to be very angry when she returns,” Moreau said a moment later.

“Zambet are reputedly of extremely uneven temperament,” Spite said. “I take it that it will be very angry because it’ll find Luna to be beyond its power.”

“No, feasting on the royalty will be child’s play for a zambet as ancient as her,” Moreau extended a thread of Void energy from a finger and caused the limp and senseless griffin mutate to rise into the air to his face level. “And the use of a generic genderless term is highly improper when you’re aware of a definite gender.”

Spite furrowed her brow at him. “Why do you care?”

“Science is all about very precise communication of information.” He lightly touched the griffin with a hand it she began to rotate slowly in midair. “Genetic genderless is precise when gender is not known or of no consequential meaning. It is imprecise when gender is known and of consequence. Your impropriety implies ignorance, or a puerile fiddling with semantics to deny fact.”

Spite gave him a very level look. “Zambets are one of the great unknowns of the Void. Do I need to elaborate?”

He considered the griffin, attaching another thread to rotate her in midair so he could look over her belly. “Ignorance then,” he said definitively. “Although you’re correct in an important respect: zambets are essentially unknown.”

She waited several moments for him to elaborate, but acknowledging that zambets were a great unknown seemed to be all he intended to say on the subject as he continued to examine the griffin mutate with a critical eye. “Is that all?” she finally asked.

“Educating your ignorance confers me no advantage and so wastes my time.” Moreau lowered the still-senseless mutate to the ground. “And so we come to the nadir of our interaction, Einspithiana. We have made a bargain and both sides have kept their word. I have no need of you any longer, and the time for my assassination is not yet. If feeding you to the zambet would have a point, it would be ideal, but she requires a whole body and whole mind, and you have neither.”

“And Amarra would run you through then set her on fire to warm her greatroom,” Spite pointed out.

Moreau smirked. “While I prefer that she reverse that order, neither result is desirable. But we find ourselves at an impasse, Handmaiden, for neither of us gain advantage by confrontation, and neither of us gain advantage by continuing the stalemate. You would be underfoot if released, and likely inclined towards silly heroics, such as rescuing this subject of my work.”

Spite looked at him for a moment. Whatever his grandiose announcements as the troubles he’s inflicted on the Provinces, he seems much more fixated on pet projects that mean very little than acting as the arm of whatever plan the Void is hatching. If only there was some way to bind and interrogate him! He clearly understands most of what’s going on, and shows a strange respect for the powers of a mortal, this ‘Queen Chrysalis’. Perhaps I can do more damage if I stay my hand than I would if I slew him. “I would give my oath to remain out of your way and neither assault you nor impede you.”

“And you would keep that oath,” he said. “Yet I see no reason that I’d want you unshackled and nearby, even if you’d decided to do me no injury. Just in the conversation between myself and the zambet, you’ve become very well-educated and releasing you would educate you further. Tell me, Einspithiana… what do I gain by educating your ignorance?”

“What do you gain by educating my ignorance?” Spite fixed him with a very level look. “Or was blathering on about important points of this grand design with me to listen sheer carelessness?”

Moreau smirked at her. “Oh, is that what you think. Tell me, Einspithiana… what have you learned that you’re certain that your allies don’t know, mmm? That Queen Chrysalis exists? I would be astonished if this Princess Luna had no idea. That I’ve a zambet? Grymmilnia has, by now, told Princess Luna this and Luna herself has met her. That this place is a library? I’ve left the front door open and would he highly disappointed if Luna couldn’t work out how to walk through it. That I regard my puppets as disposable? All who travel with you saw the suffering plaything I sent your way, and have certainly worked out that I care nothing for my experiments’ well-being. That I have contempt for my nominal allies? Even they realize this, for genius has no reason to pretend humility. Beyond this, all that you know is known by others or I have offered to them by implication.” He turned his head fully to her, grinning widely. “You are as ignorant as you started.”

Spite was about to bring up his casual mention of a mortal creation that needed to be secured and something seized by others, but she stopped. If he doesn’t think I noticed. why disabuse him of the notion? “Asking for your leave is more of a courtesy anyway, as you said to the zambet.”

He grinned widely at that. “So it is. Which makes me wonder what purpose there is to your even wasting my time by offering an agreement.”

“Gestures of good faith are how peaceful stalemates are built,” Spite said. “I’m sure you realize why I’ve decided that you’re more useful alive and doing whatever you want than dead.”

“I am a splinter in the the nether regions of your enemies.” His grin widened. “Then again, I’m…”

“FOUL AND DECEPTIVE BEYOND ANY MEAN BEAST IN ALL THE VOID!” The frictionless spell matrix keeping her floating in midair burst like a soap bubble in a hurricane as the snakeskin-upon-violin-strings voice of the zambet howled around her, but Spite was barely aware of it as physical waves of borderline-incoherent rage crashed against her, sending her tumbling head over tail.

“Deceptive, madame?” Spite looked up from the floor, seeing Moreau standing there calmly looking as if he hadn’t even been touched by the anger of the zambet given physical force. “Was there something I said…”

“YOU KNOW WELL THAT IT WAS NOT A THING YOU SAID, BUT WHAT YOU DID NOT,” the zambet roared back, her nauseating presence battering once again at Spite’s senses as she stalked into view range. So she took the form of Twilight to do her work, Spite noted, looking over the disturbingly precise facsimile of the bookish princess, although the burning violet eyes and impossibly high corners of the mouth ruined the illusion. “THE ROYAL, THIS PRINCESS YOU OFFERED TO ME AS PLEASURE AND MEAL, WAS IMPERVIOUS TO ME! YOU COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN IGNORANT OF THIS PERFIDY, VORKA! YOU WILL EXPLAIN THIS, OR I WILL HAVE YOU AS MY  MEAL THIS VERY INSTANT!”

“You will do no such thing,” Moreau replied calmly, crossing all of his arms in a stance of amused unconcern. “In the first place, you cannot. In the second place, I bear no responsibility for this unfortunate eventuality, nor could a complete explanation of the matter have ameliorated your misfortune.”

The zambet laughed scornfully. “WERE YOU NOT SUCH AN INSUFFERABLY CUR, I WOULD BE AMUSED BY YOUR ARROGANCE. BEFORE ONE SUCH AS I, VORKA, YOU ARE BUT AN INSECT, AND YOU KNOW IT.”

“I know no such thing,” Moreau replied. “Feel free to take your meal, if you can; I won’t resist.”

The glowing eyes narrowed and the zambet’s head tilted. “NOT EVEN YOU ARE THAT MUCH A FOOL, TO THINK YOU HAVE A DEFENSE AGAINST ME.”

“I got yer number, precious, and I ain’t even the boss.” The zambet turned to look as Grymmilnia entered and with her regard shifted, Spite was able to push herself back to her feet and look as the griffin mutate flowed out of the shadows. “Hope there ain’t hard feelings.”

The zambet snorted at this. “You made no attempt to harm, just to distract,” she said, the roar dropping into a resonant rumble. “‘Hard feelings’ are too weighty a thing to waste on anything that does no injury. Your form’s rut toy, on the other hand… she did injury and I have a quarrel with her, however futile.”

“Good luck snackin’ on one of the Elements.” Grymmilnia’s eyes narrowed. “And I’ll thank you not to be crude. Though it is this form that desires her, the bond is far beyond mere sexual satiation.”

“Pointless perversion, nothing more.”

“No wonder the lot of you get crushed all the time: you’re narrow-minded.”

“An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.” The zambet returned. “There is naught purpose to it but empty pleasure, a dead end of the eternal race to survive. It is an error, a malfunction of the flesh. That you think it any more is clear evidence that your sojourn has bent you more than it has bent the soul with which you are entwined.”

“The heart desires what it does, and that Gilda found Rainbow Dash to be a meet partner proves that, at the risk of feeding his substantial ego, that Vorka chose wisely in weaving me with this particular mortal,” Grymmilnia said. “Her judgement is clearly excellent, as her desire shows. You could do naught but be struck and wounded by her dear one, although Rainbow is still a crude instrument in her youth. Besides all that, you assume that this place’s laws conform to those with which you are most familiar. A foolish presumption, and fully as arrogant as anything spoken by the self-named ‘Master’.”

The zambet growled lowly but instead of retorting, turned back to Moreau, who was looking thoroughly amused. “Restrain the tongue of your plaything, Vorka. It wags too freely and tempts me to destroy it. Surely you don’t delude yourself into thinking that her defense is any real obstacle to me.”

“You might find that breaching it is far more difficult than you think.” Moreau sighed. “So, how much more time are you planning to wait before doing anything more than dribble idle threats at me?”

“Until it became clear why you were being so arrogant.” The zambet snorted. “A projection of yourself. Of course you’d be cowardly, taunting in the secure knowledge that you cannot be retaliated against.”

“It would be irrational to forswear basic laboratory precautions, such as physically segregating myself from my experiments,” Moreau said placidly. “Now with that matter disposed of, you appeared to have something other than eating me on your mind. Grymmilnia, you were instructed to see to the movement of the experiments out of the reach of the alicorn Luna, and it’s time that you obeyed.”

“Ya can’t bar the door?”

“Only from one end, and that’s the end with the least dangerous adversaries in wait. Obey, Grimfeathers.”

“Heh.” Grymmilnia grinned at him. “Sad that thrashin’ a zambet was the easier thing ya told me ta do today.” The zambet growled lowly, evoking a mocking smirk from Grymmilnia as she vanished into the shadows. The similicon of Twilight Sparkle then turned her attention to Moreau.

“She is insufferable, but has a point,” she said, her voice back to its disturbing snakeskin-on-strings vibrato. “What was to be gained from having her waylay me? Further, what was to be gained from serving me a meal you knew I could not consume?”

“Her mind could not be permitted to wander in directions I did not choose,” Moreau said. “You have focused her mind on you as the great danger in the shadows and while she thinks of the zambet stalking her niece and her people, she does not think of the entire scope of the game.”

“Again with this concern for the actions of mortals.” The zambet shook her head. “You are an enigma, Vorka, and an irritatingly inexplicable one at that.”

“Your experience of mortals is as narrow as your focus, and your mind,” Moreau retorted. “You go a great distance for that focus and narrowness, but it blinds you the same way it blinded Quazelzege, the same way it blinded Rejnu, and Rijii, and Phylaxis, and all the mighty Evils that have continued on as if no mewling mayfly of a creature could break them. And then they fell into the hands of mortals that did not fear them, and then ground them into dust. Whethey they were cleaved in two by the master they betrayed, their soul was burned from their husk by the Light, or the jeikitsu drove a meat hook into their back and took their head, they have all been broken by mortals. Some of them very strong mortals, some of them eternally living mortals, but all died because they could not see that as limited as mortals are, they are unfathomably dangerous when lightly watched. You are ancient, zambet; it would be a pity if you fell on this world due to your own small mind.”

“You seem to fear mortals.”

“I do no such thing,” he retorted. “But I keep a close eye on them and factor them in. This Luna must now become a factor in my calculations. Rainbow Dash and the other one entwined with a portion of the artifact, called Fluttershy, were already part of them.”

“I take it that my actions were part of your calculations as well?”

“I needed an guage of the danger from one with sufficient intellect to recognize a dangerous position and leave to wait for an advantage,” he said. “Now, what are your intentions?”

“Retrieve your error,” she said. “Collect the webweaver and make sure she doesn’t wander again. We can’t risk her being removed.”

“Just don’t try to snack on her puppet,” Moreau said, turning away from the zambet. “I realize that despair is sweetest to you…”

“I am ancient, Vorka,” she said. “She will be useful to us and when that use has passed, then will I sup. Her puppet’s despair has not yet reached full flower, and her pain is but a tickle to what she will endure. Her heart is not yet broken and tender, but it will be.” Her gaze turned to Spite. “And you cannot stop it, Handmaiden, for you know not what you attempt. In one blow, we will break all those that defend this world, and have its riches for our own.”

Moreau sighed and shook his head. “Boasting before doing is poor preparation for success.”

The zambet’s grin became wider and toothier. “What is true is not a boast. I shall return soon.” As she had before, the zambet disintegrated into black mist and dissipated into the darkness. Moreau snorted and shook his head again.

“And now you see why I have no special fear of you,” he said. “To kill, you must be able to touch and you cannot touch me.”

“It’s quite the projection,” Spite admitted, and it was: there was no detail to suggest that the floating entity was not solid. Its clothing ruffled and flowed from movement, it avoided physical obstacles as if it could touch them, and projected all the sensory input of being real when it got close. It had even shown that it could touch physical things and affect them as if it was real, its sullen kicking of the griffin earlier inflicting actual wounds. “Costly as well.”

“Not to one such as I.” Moreau smirked over his shoulder. “Now we part ways, Einspithiana. You have had an advantage in this encounter because zambets are fearful braggarts, but to know what Lashaal is for is beyond your understanding, and it always shall be. Do give my regards to the ambassador when you meet her; she has been the most singularly irritating burden that I was forced to leave well alone.”

Spite blinked. “You’re going, just like that?”

“What do I gain by lingering?” He gestured at the unconscious griffin mutate with his head. “You may keep it, by the by… I have enough raw muscle and will shortly make it all the stronger for what I’ve learned by the procedure.”

“You’re being… generous.”

“I am intensely practical,” he snorted. “I have no need of a prototype. What will I do with it, breed it and wait twenty years to have a useful soldier? It will just burden me for now and as such, it is far better to pile it with the rest of the waste and let you do with it what you will.”

Spite considered him. “So that’s it? No more bargains, no attempt to silence me?”

“Why waste the match to burn an empty book? There is even a chance that your information will mislead your allies for its incompleteness, and there is no better way to spread inadequate information than to permit the enthusiasm of a courier who’s convinced of its usefulness.” Moreau bowed in her direction, a small mocking smirk. “I hope never to be burdened with you again, Handmaiden, nor to burden you with myself.”





“And then he just booked it?” Rainbow crossed her forehooves  and gave Spite a skeptical look.

“Pretty much,” Spite said as she tapped at the stone with a claw. “The moment he vanished, the artificial darkness he’d generated around his experiment area disappeared with him and pretty much showed this library how it looks. I dragged his prototype to what appeared to be the softest surface, a large circular area with a rug and let her rest; she seems traumatized enough that I dare not try to wake her.”

“I doubt she’d be able to help anyway,” Kyra said. “Meddling with the memory seems to be part and parcel of how ‘Master’ works and your story makes it sound like he’s both disinterested in current events and has planned quite thoroughly. The out-of-order and distorted timeline you describe sounds as if he discovered some way to meddle with the flow of time in and out of the Archive.”

“Badly,” Luna said. “The compression sounds like his control was poor so time had fits and starts, making things that happened several minutes to an hour apart from one another happen in less than a quarter-hour’s span.”

“Or maybe he had a motive for it,” Spite said. “It’s hard to say what he plans to do, because what he hopes to gain is unclear.”

“Perhaps it’s what he claims to want,” Kyra said. “If he’s as calculating as you say, it’s plausible that he’d reason that knowing what he wants won’t help you foil him. ‘Doing science’ and ‘stroking ego’ are such general objectives that it could mean anything.”

“Well, he’s helping these ‘Evil’ jerks do something and that zambet thing seems ta think that if they get Lashaal, they’ve got it nailed,” Rainbow said. “So… maybe we grab her first? Doesn’t seem like they can do anything if they don’t got the faker.”

“Wonderful idea,” Kyra said, “but for one small problem: where do we find her?”

Rainbow shrugged. “Dunno. She seemed to be able to carry off the ‘mysterious stranger here to help’ schtick once. Maybe she tries it again somewhere that also ain’t grabbed by ‘Master’, figuring he can’t get her there.”

“The zambet can,” Spite said. “It seems like she could do little to nothing to Luna and got a good solid thrashing at your hooves and at the hands of Grymilinia, but Luna was the vessel of Nachtmiri Mein, you’re an Element, and Moreau devised some kind of protection for Grymmilinia. I can’t imagine what he did--protecting against zambets normally requires the kind of immense power that only the most ancient of beings has--but I doubt he did it to Lashaal. When she is found, the zambet won’t hesitate a moment to simply consume a city to seize her prize.”

“Let’s assume she went to a city then,” Luna said. “Spite, you seem able to move large distances effortlessly. Can you bear all of us, and the changelings as well?”

“Things like size and weight impose no limitation,” Spite said. “but to be sure that I bring us to the city we visited safely, we’d have to arrive in midair where the likelihood of interference is small.”

“So, wings will be required,” Kyra grinned and extended the delicate-looking anisoptic wings from her barrel, followed by the changeling soldiers that had come with her. “I think we can arrange that.”

“Problem solved then,” Spite grinned back.