The Chimera

Chapter Thirty: Into the Night

The chimera is a monster no one (in this world, at least) has ever seen (yet), leaving items difficult to decipher. With excruciating slowness, though, the seven gifts it had granted nearly two years ago are finally being worked out, with varying degrees of efficacy.

The bird has chased flight and caught it, the dragon is ready to dive in, the painter watches the world turn downward. The key keeper's life is no longer so quiet, the witch will soon never be without his book, the wanderer has started to remember. The arrogant one can welcome who he's waited for, if he lets himself.

Deep into the swirling night, the chimera knows that they're starting to understand, at last.

The dragon gathers the citadel's residents into the parlor. "It can't wait," she insists, when a few complain of the late hour.

She explains about the door, the market, the one who answered their questions. "Jasper was right about most of it. It is like a chessboard, with us on one side and the specters on another. But the chimera isn't a benevolent being guiding us against its opponent. If the gifts and specters are from the same source, then that source is the chimera. We're not fighting its enemy at all."

"So it's not on the board, but above it?" her brother asks (the quiet one, who had been the first to bleed).

"That's right," the dragon says. "It's playing a game against itself."

"But why?" asks the painter, the shield. "Why would it give us gifts for generations upon generations, only to overwhelm us with monsters?"

"Why has it ever done anything? Morbid curiosity, maybe. I'm not sure yet. But all along it's been letting us hone our skills here while the specters manifest in the mountains. It's waiting for both sides to get ready, then we'll have at each other while it watches and laughs."

Clever, clever. The chimera knew it picked its dragon right.

"If that's all true, and every string is pulled by the same source, then it must want us to know about it. It put the door to its world in the citadel, right where it'd be found. It wants us to know we're being toyed with," says the keeper of the skeleton key.

Another clever one, though delicately alone. The chimera will keep a closer eye on her.

"Aren't you all missing something?" the wanderer asks. He sits cross-legged on the ground, back straight like an attentive schoolboy instead of the bearer of one of the chimera's best gifts. "This might actually make it easier to defeat the specters. We learned that they all have the same source. That means that instead of waiting for them to come and attack us, we can get rid of the problem at its root."

He stands, moving to the front of the parlor to better face the group. "It's the chimera that's done all this, right?" He's met with nods, murmurs of assent.

The wanderer spreads his hands, as if coming to an obvious conclusion:

"Then let's hunt it down."