The Uninvited Guest [Unknown | Antarctica]

[Thalia]

[[continued from Dream Memory, and Blood]]

---

**Lemosyne**

Consciousness seeped in slowly. Her hands ached, the tips of her fingers stinging sharp and sore when she twitched them, as though she’d been clawing at rock. Around her the darkness was thick and heavy. Thalia shifted her protective curl of limbs, cautious and afraid. She was bone-dry, not soaked through as she remembered. From the fleeting drift of her thoughts, she realised she must have been sleeping – or unconscious. Who knew for how long or how many times she’d roused before now. Which explained the terrible pain in her hands. She pressed her palms against her face, ran them gingerly over the fluffy curls of her wild hair, like it would somehow settle the feeling that she might float away and disperse into nothing.

“Tristan?”

There wasn’t even an echo, let alone an answer. She swallowed, found her mouth dry and parched as sand. Guilt crushed cold in her chest as she folded in on herself in distress. She recalled light so strong it had hurt. Her grip slipping away, though she tried desperately to hold on. Thalia squeezed her eyes shut, and they burned, but no tears seeped their dry edges. For a while she panicked and acclimated. Alone was nothing new. Strange places, impossible places. Just a normal day, right? In the silence she heard a shifting drag of metal. Something heavy slithered a hair’s breadth away, and it feathered a chill that made her want to jump. Instead she made herself peek into the dark.

When she opened her eyes she did not see what made the noise, but a small red light blossomed like unfurling petals in the shadows. As it drew closer, the Nemesyne’s big eyes stared up at her through its low luminescence. It blinked. Sat.

And hacked a barking cough.

Arms folded around her knees, and feeling quite miserable, Thalia watched as objects pinged against the floor, just outlines and shadows in the red glow. A shard of metal that tickled a memory, a ring, and various other indistinguishable things, one of which bounced right off her bare foot and skittered beyond sight into the dark. She stared back at Neme in confusion, but it only shook itself all the way to a wiggle of its forked tail, and then folded its ears down.

After a moment Thalia shifted to get a better look at what it had dropped, poking first with a sore finger to make sure none of the things were coated in anything gross, and then running a curious examination over the rest. It had stolen the shard the guardian had laid reverently at the side of the pool, she realised (though where it had been keeping it she really had no idea). So filled up with the wonder of what they had witnessed and accomplished in reuniting mother and child, she had not given it a second thought at the time.

My duty is yours, the guardian had said. The last thing she said, before she disappeared with her kin.

“-- NEVER listen to the Nemesyne, big stupid humans. And now we here! Mother will be mad. The Nemesyne is mad!--”

“Where are we now? What happened?” Thalia interrupted, glancing up from the ring she currently twisted between her fingers when she realised, with somewhere between excitement and concern for her own sanity, that words which weren’t really words at all were bouncing around in her skull. Maybe her mind just cracked a little further open. No point imagining a crazy-looking cat if you couldn’t communicate with it when you needed to.

“Home,” it said immediately. Then, “You smell different, sister. You hear different. And you–”

It wasn’t any kind of answer, but it unfurled in Thalia an amazing relief; just that one simple connection, like a touchstone of normal in the void. Or her version of normal at least. The rest of Neme’s words spiralled away unheeded while she processed. Tristan had to be here somewhere, and this had to be just another room in the labyrinth of them. Though when she glanced up with the thought, no stars glittered overhead. There was nothing at all, just the press of the dark. Though her heart was shuddering on the edge of fear, she’d be lying if she didn’t admit it also felt familiar.

“I’m sorry I called you ugly,” she added into the creature’s monologue. The ring in her palm was all swirly, but there was a gem buried within which glistened a matching hue to the winking ruby above the Nemesyne’s eyes. She slipped it on a finger without thinking.

“Knew it was somewhere,” it said in satisfaction. “Just all look the same to the Nemesyne.” It stretched and began pouncing across the shadows, and where it landed it fizzed a little. The objects disappeared, shard included, and Neme licked its lips when it was done. Meanwhile (no point trying to understand what she saw), Thalia took a breath, settled herself, and after a time the gentle glow of power finally came to her call. The last time she’d threaded it into a ball of light had not exactly gone well, but she could barely see her own hand let alone anything else around her. As the fresh light cast, she looked around immediately. The black walls were coiled close, moving gently, and for once Thalia was reticent to touch. Mostly because she didn’t want to lose the hand. Not so far away, a giant eyeball stared back at her unblinking, with one great slit for a pupil almost as tall as she was standing. She could see her own horrified expression in the reflection.

“Give it,” Neme demanded, perhaps repeated a couple of times before Thalia found the sense to respond. It took her a moment to realise it meant the ball of light, and longer to consider that she could literally tie a little knot and actually pass it to the creature. Neme snatched it easily into the curve of its tail and began to trot forward. Since it seemed so unconcerned she decided to follow suit, though as she clumsily pushed to her feet she wondered where it was even going.

“Do you know where Tristan is?”

“She will forgive you, Lethe. But Mother does NOT like uninvited guests.”

Thalia ignored the things she did not understand, including the name not her own. It seemed she was collecting them. “Is that a yes or a no?” She plodded a little after, but couldn’t take her eyes off the enormous coiled body looped all around them. Curiosity soon got the better of her, and she pressed a tentative hand out to touch. A single scale was bigger than her entire hand, and it was warm like heated metal. It flickered half a smile to her lips. She could feel the rise and fall of its breath, slow and steady. The creature made a noise, like a great contented sigh.

“Bad blood,” Neme said. “Punished. Forget the Tristan, done now.”

“Bad blood?”

That captured her attention. She looked over at the cat and its bobbing light, and whatever sense of wonder she’d manage to unearth in their terrifying surroundings drained away. My fate will be worse than the trolls, he’d told her. They’d spoken about blood and prisons; it felt an uncomfortable prescience now, and she thought about how Neme had reacted to Tristan slicing open his palm in that chaotic moment before the study had begun to shake and groan. She hadn’t even understood why he’d done it.

She moved without thinking, filled with a cold sort of urgency. The scaled body around them began to roll and twist, and Thalia ducked under the arch it made with a pat of thanks.

“Hey! No!” the Nemesyne protested. There was a literal yowl as it hopped after her.

“The gods are wrong, Neme,” was all she said. Beyond the giant creature’s embrace, the walls just seemed simple rock. She could feel it uneven underneath her toes, and scraping against her shoulder as she walked. She called Tristan’s names out into the darkness ahead; all of the ones she knew.