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It leaned in to take alongsniff.

Taly whimpered as two sickly, milk-white eyes blinked open.

“Knock, knock…”

Fingers dug into her mouth, wrenching her jaw open and closed as it said in a high-pitched imitation, “Who’s there?”

“Grimble.”

“Grimble who?”

“GRIMBLE! GRIMBLE! GRIMBLE!”

It jumped, a tangle of arms crashing down, fists pounding the ground around her. Laughing—Shards, its laugh was awful, like nails on a chalkboard.

“Time mage like joke?” Fingers dug back into her skull to pick through her brain.“I see here like joke. Like when male tell joke.”

Its eyes blinked, and suddenly they were emerald green. A quiet, almost inaudible whine rose from her throat.

“I try over. Knock knock…”It couldn’t wait this time.“GRIMBLE!”

A shrieking laugh tore free as it clapped all its many hands, delighted with its own joke. Then with a single, mighty push, it launched itself into the air, landing in a roll to skitter across the field.

“I know this place. Last snack like this place. Look different now.”It hobbled up to the Gate, each movement of its bony hips jerky and unsettling.“She like you, tasty. She dream of shiny. Show you… grimble show you.”

Rearing back, every arm lifted at once. Hands layered over hands, fingers tangling, clutching, grasping for the sky. Something like power shivered out of it, sweeping across the landscape and making it ripple. Colors swirled like a distorted reflection. And then in that way that only dreams could manage, the world around her changed. Red dirt and bright sunlight gave way to a vast nighttime cityscape bordering a white marble plaza.

Above her, the Aion Gate still loomed.

Same place, different time.

This was still Tempris but before the Schism. Back when the island was a crossroad for the worlds—the jeweled heart of the Fey Imperium.

Next, those countless hands turned inward, clawing at the grimble’s own flesh. They tore through sagging skin, dug into muscle, wrenched at bone. Wet, tearing sounds filled the air.Blood dripped onto the white marble as it remade itself like a potter forming clay.

“The plaza is six miles wide,” the creature said, its voice shifting into something higher, more feminine, more alive. “And there are six city gates.” It pointed a bloody, clumsily transforming hand at the six perfect circles of quartz that bordered the city plaza. “Leading to six avenues named for the six underground cities.”

A teenaged Fey girl with a wild tangle of chestnut curls now stood in place of the grimble. Her face was flawless. Below the neck, everything warped. One arm wrenched backwards like the beast had forgotten the appropriate assembly. The other hung too long. Her legs supported her, but barely—one was too short, the other bent at an odd angle, the joints misaligned like a marionette forced to stand on its own.

“Six for the Sacred Six,”the grimble said through her, using her stolen voice.“Six for the six schools of magic. Six for the number of High Lords and Ladies that must always sit on the Council.”

The grimble’s mouth peeled back into a smile so wide that the girl’s cheeks slashed open. “She loved this place,”it croaked in its own throaty snarl once more.“Begged ‘Momma, Momma, let me see the Gate.’”

Taly wondered what had happened to her—this poor girl. More importantly, was it the same thing that was about to happen to her?

Why couldn’t shemove?

A bony, gray arm punched out of the girl’s chest. “I let her see the Gate.” Skin ripped as the creature clawed its way back out, leaving a sagging pile of flesh on the ground. “I gave her beeeautiful dreams so that when I eated her… No.Ate.” It gave a full-body shiver. “See, grimble already getting smarter. Already finding more words in your head.”

It shuffled across the plaza, dragging the girl’s discarded skin with it.“Grimble nice. Grimble don’t like the taste of fear. Not like others. You lucky. When Iatemy last time mage, I put her right here.”

It slapped the skin down on the Gate interface, a four-foot pedestal that jutted from the ground.

“I put her here, so that she could see…” It turned those green eyes up towards the starry sky, where the smooth crystal panes of the Aion Gate disappeared into dark clouds. “I let her see this thing that she loved so dearly. Other grimbles not so nice. Other grimbles like it when you scream.”

And then that lipless mouth split open. Wider. And wider. Andwider. Until its entire body had almost torn in two—the top half peeling backward, ribs splaying wide like a jaw unhinging.

It dropped the lifeless skin into that maw packed with teeth.