The Sphinx approached them, walking on quiet paws, smiling as if she were enjoying a joke no one present would understand.
Phantasm
Redmane noticed a change in the air. A stillness. The red glow of the room subtly changed color, became a shade of violet and the shadows deepened and played unnaturally against the walls. The Sphinx walked to the left, and another Sphinx walked to the right. A third came forward, and a fourth sat on her haunches in the spot whence they had all diverged.
[Primordial] marked as Prey
Astral Hunter wouldn’t help him, as it turned out.
According to his higher senses, all four Sphinxes were the genuine article. Either his Skill was reporting true information, or the Sphinx’s Skill was powerful enough to confound his own.
Gale and his two Ice Warg comrades circled out to the left and right, following the movements of her duplicates, their heads held low and their teeth bared, growling. Redmane kept his eyes on the one who remained still, and she smiled back at him.
Riddle
An hourglass appeared in the air above her head, and turned over.
I am the timeless cycle, where opposites hold sway,
One ushers in the dawn, the other bids it away.
In my constant rhythm, light and darkness play,
Marking time in a celestial ballet.
What am I…
Her lips did not move. He heard the riddle inside his mind, spoken in her voice.
Redmane glanced at the hourglass.
What would happen when it turned over?
He decided he’d rather not find out. The Sphinx, meanwhile, made no move to attack him. In his peripheral vision he could see her copies, if indeed that was what they were, holding the attention of the Ice Wargs, circling slowly at a speed matching theirs, answering their threatening posture with an air of smug serenity.
A timeless cycle.
The dawn, and its absence.
Light and darkness.
A celestial ballet.
"Night and day,” said Redmane.
The Sphinx smiled, and the hourglass above her head broke apart before vanishing.
For a moment, Redmane thought this was going to be the most cordial battle he’d ever fought. But then a ray of glowing blue shot from the Sphinx’s third eye without warning, and he slipped to the side of it with less than a heartbeat to spare before it would have pierced him right between the eyes.
The other three Sphinxes used the same attack, and not all of their targets were so quick as he was.
Her eye-beam caught one of Gale’s comrades in the chest, and in an instant, the Ice Warg became a stone statue.
Redmane’s eyes widened. His pulse quickened.
Would Abyssal Resilience protect him from such a fate? Again, he found he’d prefer not to wager on it.
He set his eyes on the seated Sphinx and lunged with as much speed as his muscles would give him.
Lion’s Lunge
Gnosis: 2448
His claw met the Sphinx’s unmoving head, her mysterious smile.
Then it was gone.
She’d moved a few paces backward instantly. Redmane’s swing suddenly felt like the clumsy blow of a drunkard who hadn’t judged the distance properly.
Lion’s Lunge permitted three follow-up attacks, and he took them all.
Once, twice, three times, she shifted around the room, always just out of his reach.
He growled. Two could play at that.
Flicker
Gnosis: 2398
He’d just have to wait for her to go on the offensive.
Riddle
Another hourglass appeared above the head of the Sphinx and turned over.
I am a game of life and death, a cycle in nature's play,
One hunts to survive, the other flees away.
In this eternal chase, both roles I portray,
In this primeval, everlasting fray.
What am I…
To Redmane’s sides, the fight carried on. The frigid air crackled with Gale’s rage as he opened his jaws and blasted the Sphinx with a cone of frost, which she leapt over without so much as a change in facial expression. On her way by she flicked her tail casually and a dozen of her razor sharp quills shot from it and struck deep into Gale’s flank, making the Alpha snarl and whirl around to face her when she landed. He looked badly hurt.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
But Redmane had to focus. The sands of the hourglass would fall whether or not he answered the riddle.
A game of life and death. A cycle.
Hunting and fleeing.
Both roles in an eternal chase.
"Predator and prey,” said Redmane.
The hourglass burst and disappeared, and the Sphinx smiled.
This time, all four of them turned their third eye toward him and shot bright blue rays of petrification.
Flicker discharged when the first touched him, and the Skill translocated him behind the Sphinx engaged with Gale.
Instinct pulled at his arm, but he had to be smarter.
None of his attacks were landing. He had to break the Phantasm, which he presumed was the source of her confounding agility. They may not be attacking her at all, simply projections of her. They may not have seen the true Sphinx yet even.
Perhaps one was real, and the others were fake. If this were the case, they would have to locate the real one.
With something one could not avoid…
The Beast Liberated
Gnosis: 2348
Redmane felt a surge of savage power fly out of his body, The Beast Within, imbued by Gnosis with volition of its own. It jumped into the body of the Sphinx who had injured Gale to tear it asunder from the inside.
The Sphinx burst like a bubble in a bloodless explosion.
He felt the Beast’s frustration as it shot back into his body, unsatisfied.
It was a fake. But the quills sticking out of Gale, the dark blood staining his fur, and the pained snarl on his face all looked quite real.
Redmane turned to center his gaze on the next target.
But now there were six of them.
Flicker
Gnosis: 2298
He used the Skill in the nick of time — nearly too late to be skewered by a confluence of six blue rays promising an eternity in stone. The Ice Wargs leapt away from the aftermath of it, the paths of the beams momentarily threatening the whole arena.
Flicker
Gnosis: 2248
Just in case, he readied another.
This was getting frustrating.
The Sphinx remained completely unharmed, whereas he was down one Ice Warg, and while Gale didn’t appear to be critically injured, he wasn’t happy either. Redmane hadn’t yet been hurt but that gaze attack might as well have been the touch of death, and he was quite certain he did not want to know what happened when the sands of Riddle’s hourglass ran out.
Six Sphinxes pounced after them, swiping with the claws of a lynx, shooting quills from their tails, sweeping out their silent owl wings to sail over the arena and fire rays of petrification down at Redmane, Gale and his one remaining pack mate who wasn’t petrified. Now they were all on the defensive, their attention devoted to nothing but evasion.
The real Sphinx was somewhere in here. She had to be.
The roiling ball of power in the center of this arena was real enough, so too should its guardian be physically present.
He hoped.
Riddle
Again, the hourglass appeared and turned.
I am the tale of greed's display,
From bountiful harvests, my appetites outweighed.
From excess born, waste finds its way
To rot prosperity and plenty all away
What am I...
This time the aggression didn’t stop.
A Sphinx swooped down on him with her forepaws and a tail swipe, and Redmane slid to the right, countering with an overhand claw that raked down the left side of her body. She vanished.
Greed…
Two Sphinxes turned and shot quills at him with identical flicks of their tails, and he leapt straight up to let the cloud of spear-like projectiles sweep through the space his body occupied a heartbeat ago.
Bounty. Appetites outweighed…
Three Sphinxes appeared in front of him and flanking him, his position the center of an equilateral triangle. Their eye rays struck each other as he dropped to the ground on his face, growled, and hosed two of them down with Flame Breath when he could rise to a crouch.
Gnosis: 2223
Excess, waste, and rot…
The previous two answers were a pair of opposites which rhymed. Night and day. Predator and Prey.
He saw Gale leaping to the defense of the last Ice Warg as two Sphinxes bore down on her with rays and quills. The Alpha shoulder-rammed his pack mate away from the first, but the second caught her full on the face and she went down.
He had to figure this riddle out.
The sands kept flowing…
Greed. Bounty. Excess. Rot. An answer that rhymed with, ‘Night and day, predator and prey.’
Redmane dove backward as another trio of Sphinxes pounced at him from all sides, and his lip curled in a growl, revealing his canines.
He roared in frustration. And this time he gave it his all.
Roar of the Beastlord
Gnosis: 2193
In an instant, everything changed.
The swirling shadows on the walls went still. The violet tinge became crimson again. Gale and all the Sphinxes cried out in pain, their eyes tightly shut, teeth gritted.
There was a momentary flicker. Barely longer than the blink of an eye, during which all the Sphinxes in the room became jagged projections.
And one appeared.
The real Sphinx sat at the very edge of the arena, her four legs curled under her in the manner of a cat relaxing. She winced in pain like all her phantasmal duplicates, having hidden herself by the power of the Skill she employed to form her zone of illusion.
The distortion lingered a moment longer, and then the true Sphinx returned to invisibility and her fakes returned to their normal forms.
But he’d seen her.
Sphinxes came at him and Gale, and he fought back, but this time he casually worked his way in that direction as he dodged and countered, ducked and lunged, struck phantasmal Sphinxes out of existence with the sweep of his claws, with a diving bite, with limbs that could flow into the form of any weapon he chose.
He wanted to signal to Gale somehow, but he didn’t want to risk revealing what he knew.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a group of Sphinxes converge on him, one threatening him with claws to the face, a quartet in the back showering his flanks with quills. This time Gale’s back legs gave out and he fell to the ground, growling his defiance even as they all closed in on him.
And the hourglass kept going…
Perhaps he could be the one to provide her with a surprise, this time.
There were shadows all over the ground and the walls.
He stepped into one. Skirting the surface before the deep plunge into the Abyss. Here he could walk to another shadow nearby and step out of it as if it were a door.
And there just so happened to be one beside the place he’d seen the true Sphinx.
As he moved toward it, his mind felt clearer. The effect of the Abyss, perhaps, or simply the clarity which came from solving a problem. One solution often led right to the next one.
Greed and excess. Waste and rot. Night and day. Predator and Prey.
Redmane slid out of the shadow and grasped an invisible pair of shoulders.
He grinned.
“Abundance and decay.”
The hourglass shattered.
And a smiling Sphinx appeared in his hands.
Redmane expected her to look at least a little surprised, but she didn’t.
Her fingers, soft as petals, traced the outline of his cheek. She looked deep into his eyes, in the way of someone so profoundly in love they recognized their own soul in the eyes of their counterpart.
Riddle
The hourglass appeared and turned.
A shadow in the heart, a whisper that rings true,
Born from slights and bitter ends, I linger close to you.
In the cycle of retribution, my path you will pursue,
When you have consumed me, then I shall consume you.
What am I…
Redmane froze, and not from petrification.
He too gazed deep into her three eyes. Those pits of Abyssal black, with points of glowing red for pupils.
Those were his eyes.
This was his mind.
They had taken these things from him. And now that he stood to reclaim them, the answer to the riddle appeared in his mind. It was obvious. It was something he thought of often. Daily. And not just recently, throughout all the life he remembered.
"Revenge."
The hourglass broke, and again the Sphinx smiled.
And she continued to smile. Even at the sickening crunch and tear of her throat being torn out by Redmane’s jaws, and the wet gurgle of air escaping her open windpipe mixed with the blood flowing down her chest in a curtain of glistening red.
As Redmane feasted, her smile never wavered.
Level Up!
PATREON
