Valid Clay

The meeting room was loud, crowded, and smelled heavily of ozone.

Black Queen Yetta hated all of it. Especially the smell.

Unfortunately, she also had to be here, unless she wanted to miss out on a year's worth of news and plans from her little sisters. The combined knowledge of hundreds of Alison Chao was a force to be reckoned with, one that was decidedly enhanced by the Library they met in. Their plans were unstoppable, and the energy present electrified the meeting.

Didn't make the smell any more tolerable though.

"Gods, why can't it ever smell pleasant in here?" she asked to Black Queen Lynks, lounging on top of a bookshelf besides her.

"The effects of the Ways, sister. Can't be helped."

"Still, couldn't this place use some magical air freshener?"

A door opened, embedded some thirty feet up in a vertical wall. An arrow loosed through it, and smashed into one of the marble pillars stretching to the ceiling, raining rubble on the crowd. Yetta pulled up her hood to protect her, but Lynks simply sat and let the rubble fall.

"You really would think so" Lynks said. "And I saw that, River!"

Lynks righted herself, feet flat to the wall, and stood up, striding upwards toward the door the arrow had come from, shooing Yetta away with an end of her scarf. Yetta just pulled the hood tighter and headed out over the carpeted floor, to the table where she was supposed to meet the others in her little group.

"…Gecko is really annoying, but seems to be a constant. I found around 4 or 5 more timelines he's in, local cluster, and none of them involve him ever dying."

"Ah, hello there sister!" Black Queen Delta swung around with dizzying quickness to face Yetta.

The smell of coffee breezed past her, combining with the ozone into something sickening. "Splendid timing, Yetta! I was just finishing up my report. What have you been up to this past year?"

Yetta shifted around as the expectant faces of her sisters bored into her.

"I didn't do too much. Spent most of my time in TFT-3838, scamming a few documents out of Foundation hands. Ran into the Jarfly Priest as well, got copies of everything involving that here." A thin sheaf of papers landed on the table with a light thud, sending dust and flakes of something unpleasant into the air.

"Anything else?" The question came from the back of the table, but Yetta couldn't see its source. "You had to have done more than that in a year."

"Not really, no. I just kind of hid out and waited."

A groan came from the back of the table, the same person that had asked earlier. "Coward." She went on. "Foundation was on its last legs where you went, we needed all the help we could get. Do you know what state we are in, Yetta? Things we could use, and you let them burn in their boxes, you goddamn feckless-

"Cut it out!" A fist was raised at the back of the table and immediately came down, shutting up the speaker. Delta began pushing their way over to see what had happened, but Yetta just turned and walked off, heading in no specific direction.

Up the wall she walked, pausing on her trip to nowhere to note the creshendo of conversation that seemed to be mounting below her. She waved her hand, and the Black Queens were too busy to notice.

The acoustics of the Hall were strange from up here. Sound bouncing from one wall to the other, voices from the other side of the room often sounded as if they were whispered in her ear.

"Pardon, Yetta?" was one such sound, which surprised her a bit, because it seemed to have come from the entirely wrong direction.

“That is your name, yes?” came the sound.

The source of the voice was in fact just beneath her, a windowsill protruding from the stained wooden walls.

“Yeah?” she called out, bewildered, to the dizzying heights below.

“Come here, sister. Your assistance is required.”

Yetta stepped forward, and ducked into the windowsill, catching hold of the drapery with one hand to right herself. A tearing sound barked above her, cutting through the silence, and she glanced upward at the damaged curtain. Where the window once stood, a blank wall now took up the space, inset with drab wooden panels that felt solid to the touch.

Poised in front of her were nine more Alison Chao, glaring pointedly. Several more were seated in chairs, behind which a tall semicircular table stood, covered in maps. An air of authority and command was held about them, and their clothes, Yetta noted, were not those of wanderers. One of them, in fact, had symbol sewn into her blazer. Three grey arrows piercing inward, framed by a crennelated circle of black.

“Why do you have…their logo on your clothes?”

There was silence for a brief second, and then quiet laughter. “Do not worry, little sister. The Foundation has no power here. However, the one from the place I represent needs our help, and us theirs.”

Yetta slowly pulled her hood down, but still refused to look them directly in the eyes. “What do you mean?”