“Of course. It was always easier for him to get violent than do the right thing, but he only ever picked a fight that he knew he could win. But he was scared that if I could weave, he wouldn’t be able to pick on me. Wasn’t wrong, either. Once I came into my power, I made all his fears come true.”
On cue, the little hut went up in flames like dry kindling. Her father screamed in abject terror, the way he did in Laruna’s more satisfying memories, and scrambled for the door.
“And you know he was afraid of you?” the spirit said again.
“See for yourself.” Laruna gave a contemptuous snort as her father’s specter stumbled from the shack and fled into the darkness of the dreamscape. “He never spoke to me again after that night.”
“Fine. Hold that thought. Next!” The young Laruna snapped her fingers. The house melted away, and Laruna was in the Tower of the Sun, in the ivory and gold Chamber of the Proctor, crimson and orange banners hanging from every vaulted window. The younger Laruna was a bit older now, her shoulders hunched and her faced pocked by an awkward adolescence. She slouched in front an old man wearing heavily decorated robes and the potent scowl that teachers reserve for their least favorite students.
“Proctor Tightwort,” glowered the adult Laruna.
The vision of the teacher didn’t seem to notice the solamancer. “You will not advance in classes,” he said to her younger self, his white beard trembling as he shook with anger. “Not casting as you do! If you can’t learn to weave properly, you will fail, I assure you!”
“Oh, no, you can’t fail me,” the teenage Laruna deadpanned. “But I can magic so good. Magic, magic, magic.” The teenager waved her hands and flames swirled up around her like a rising tide.
“You shall not pass!” shouted the proctor, slamming his staff down on the marble floor.
“And freeze!” said the child mage again. “Now, look at his face. See it?”
“Yeah, he’s scared too,” said Laruna, examining the proctor’s frozen visage. The fear was evident in his watery old eyes. “They’re threatened by my power.”
“Is that it?” asked her younger self. “Well, let’s go see who else felt that way.” She snapped her fingers, and they were off again. They leapt through her classes, to her early adventures in professional heroics, to her days struggling in the Academy. Each memory flitting by brought a new frozen face from her past. Some were angry, some defiant, some even tried to look friendly, but every visage revealed a spark of fear or a wary unease. By the time they reached Laruna’s time with Hogarth the Barbarian, she was growing impatient.
“Yes, I know Hogarth was scared of me,” she growled at her double, now an adult as well. “They were all scared of me. People fear what they don’t understand. What they can’t control.”
“Sometimes,” said the spirit with a shrug. “But sometimes, they understand what they fear very well. These aren’t strangers to you, are they?”
Laruna scowled at the question. “Well… no, I mean… yes, I knew some of them very well, but…”
“Why do you suppose the people who know you best are frightened of you?” asked the spirit.
“Well, I wouldn’t say those are the people who know me best,” Laruna began.
“Oh?” asked the other Laruna. “Have it your way, then.”
And with the words, they were back on the Plains of Aberreth, looking up into a starry sky. And the other Laruna was lying on the ground, staring up into Jynn’s eyes. “Oh, here we are—” the spirit began in singsong pantomime.
“Don’t,” growled Laruna, the gorge rising in her throat. This was hallowed ground. This was a sacred place, a rare memory of real happiness, and the spirit’s mockery felt like a desecration. “Don’t ruin this.”
The vision of a past Laruna and Jynn froze. “But look,” said the spirit out of the corner of her mouth.
Laruna looked. This was the night Jynn had professed his feelings, that he’d opened up as much as he ever had. Everything had felt perfect. And yet, now that she’d studied it on so many faces, she could spot a familiar spark in Jynn’s eye.
“Why?” she asked, drawing closer to the frozen memory of the noctomancer. Her stomach dropped and her head swirled. “Why here? Why now, when we were so happy? Why would he—”
“Now!” shouted the other Laruna. “She’s distracted!”
There was a sound like chimes in a hurricane. The dream world bubbled and puckered and then bled away in a rush as the spirits fled. Laruna tried to correct the spell, but she had lost her balance and she couldn’t stay lucid enough to correct the weave. With a frustrated cry, she plunged into blackness.
And then she pushed herself into a sitting position, draped in a night slip and covered in a cold sweat. She sat on the bare floor of her apartment at the center of a circle she had drawn in chalk and salt. The arcane incense had nearly burned out, but its prickling scent filled her nostrils with every breath she heaved.
“Why?” she whispered. “What was there to be afraid of?”
“If you’re not afraid right now, you’re a fool,” Heraldin hissed. He hovered at the doorway to a nondescript office building on the Ridgeward side of the Third Tier. “Keep your guard up. We’re entering the domain of one of the most insidiously evil forces the world has ever known.”
Gorm peered past the bard through the doorway. The office beyond was aggressively taupe and harshly lit by blue-white glowstones hanging from the ceiling. A few clerks in starched suits were scattered amidst seemingly endless rows of nondescript desks, like lonely buoys in a foggy harbor. Their expressions were dull and joyless as they wordlessly shuffled and shifted papers from inbox to blotter, blotter to outbox. Occasionally, one of them would pound a page with a large stamp.
The Dwarf turned back to Heraldin with a skeptical grimace. “Afraid of what? Looks like any other office,” he said.
Gaist nodded.
“Don’t be fooled by its commonplace appearance,” said Heraldin. “This is no ordinary workplace.”
“Where are we, anyhow?” Gorm asked.
“The Thieves’ Guild.” The bard’s voice trembled with trepidation and perhaps a hint of sorrow.
Gorm’s face screwed up in confusion as he looked back at the clerks shuffling their papers. One of them appeared to be sleeping. “What? Really?” he asked. Memories of the Thieves’ Guild surfaced from the dark corners of his mind. A raucous bunch of hooligans and cutthroats swashbuckled and caroused through his memories, stealing and extorting and sowing chaos across the Andarun of yesteryear. Yet that had been in the days when the Jade Wind was at the peak of her career and the Pyrebeard was just an up-and-coming Dwarven warrior. “I ain’t heard nothin’ of them in years.”
“Decades,” said Heraldin.
“What happened to ’em?” Gorm asked, watching the waxen husks of employees stamping their documents.
The bard glanced about, his eyes wide and cautious. He leaned in close to whisper to Gorm and Gaist. “Private equity.”
“Private equity?” said Gorm.
