Rennala floated thoughtlessly through the formless void. She hummed a lullaby, the same one as always. The Amber Egg in her arms was warm and comforting, and her body rocked as she cradled it.

She wasn't… happy. But she was warm and comfortable. And that was enough for anyone, wasn't it?

Her hazy mind vaguely registered the floor below, that hard stone where the empty darkness stopped. Her sweetings, her precious children, frolicked below… as best they were able. Some were slowing down already. So soon! Always so soon! They were getting sleepy, and soon they would sleep forever. She would have to rebirth them again. She always did. After all, what were mothers for?

Ah, they were so precious! Innocent and pure, with nary a trace of deceit. They all looked so much like their mother and not… someone else.

Suddenly, a creak broke the silence. A faint light broke the darkness. Rennala stirred slightly. With a yawn, she rolled her hand and shut the door behind the intruder. Far below, some of her sweetings approached the stranger, to see who had come.

Most peculiarly, it was a Carian marionette. It had surprising sophistication, clearly the work of an obsessive hand. It resembled a lady page, only this one wore no shirt under its padded vest and had lost its boots somewhere.

The nearest sweeting almost clung to the strange doll right away. It was dangerous. Rennala did not approve, but still, their innocence and trust was so precious. At least the "page" did not seem to bear the weapons it should. Perhaps lost along with the boots. Only, a marionette must serve a master to perform sophisticated actions. One could not have come here without orders. Rennala tried to think of who–

Other sweetings had gathered what candles and lamps they could find, lighting the way for the doll. How darling of them!

Even the doll seemed to notice. It brushed off her culver's hat, clumsy thing that it was, then pat her head. Rennala felt the warmth flow over her again.

Then her sweeting's head popped like a grape. Silver blood coated the scattered books.

There was a moment of sheer panic. The clock ticked. The Amber Egg in her arms. The warmth again.

Nothing was wrong. Nothing could be wrong. Body and blood alike disintegrated into runes and rejoined the egg.

She descended closer to the floor in a stream of moonlight, lighting up the Library so her sweetings could see and avoid the bad dolly.

"Don't cry my dears," she said, even as their empty gazes were unaffected by the death. "Your sister has had a bad dream. She'll be born anew on the morn."

Her eyes blinked with sleep for a moment, then she turned to face the intruder.

"You…"

Something was… wrong… about this marionette. Still, she had nothing to fear. She heard the faint song of her sweetings. Oh, how it filled her with warmth! So too, a golden barrier shrouded her from harm.

As she tried to make sense of the situation, the doll slipped past her sweetings. Oh, they were only trying to play! Surely, this marionette's master didn't have such urgent business! It was only right for children to play with dolls.

It reached a singer. Oh dear. Another poor culver to be reborn. What a naughty dolly. Ah, and the barrier had cracked too.

Then another. Then another. What…?

Rennala shook her head from vertigo. She'd drifted too low. The barrier shattered as it touched the floor, and the flash of golden light almost blinded her. The egg?! Where was the egg?!

The doll was here now. It removed her crown, setting it beside her. The weight of the original metal circlet kept it upright in spite of the ceremonial crescent hat within. Long, shimmering black hair she almost didn't remember unfurled and fell over the scattered books. The doll gently set one hand on her head.

Ah, well, this was an interesting dream. Could she be her own mother?

Would she be reborn a sweeting, fresh and pure?

Would she forget? This time, truly?

She looked up at the marionette. Such a strange creation, this one. So much detail. So much obsession. Where would one even find the energy?

Then she met its eyes, cold and unblinking. She felt it in her bones, felt more than she wanted to remember. This would be the end of the dream… but wasn't that fine? The brightness of the Full Moon had kept her awake overlong anyway. Maybe she should finally rest.

Ah. Ah!

A tear came unbidden. Was this fear? Her eyes itched, then burned, then became intolerable. What was happening? Why had her sweetings not begun singing again?

She recognized the light behind the doll's eyes. That red gold she had seen only once, as a girl. Her breath seized. The clock ticked.

The whole room seemed to vibrate. Then she noticed it was her. She was shaking.

A rush of air and motion. She had risen. She was going to be sick.

With both hands, a scream, and a perfect crescent motion, she hurled the doll across the room. It exploded through a pile of ancient tomes and broke a bookshelf in half before being crushed beneath the splintered frame and falling contents.

Panting, hands on her knees, Rennala looked toward where it had fallen.

"H–hide," she wheezed to her sweetings.

They only turned hither and thither, bobbing their heads as they couldn't decide which was more interesting between their mother and her attacker.

Rennala grimaced and reached for her crown. Picking it up, she almost growled. After a moment's hesitation, she ripped the ceremonial headdress away, leaving only the original coronet.

For the first time in centuries, she straightened her back and rose to her full deific height. The air flashed azure as she summoned her ancestral scepter, a coiled rod of silver and sapphire.

"Have I not given enough?" Her voice is acid. "That you would take even this shell of a life from me…"

The Library slips away, and the pair fall into a space between spaces. Rennala rises above a silver sea. The Full Moon looms impossibly large.

"Know this. I am Rennala. Last Queen of Caria. Scion of the Full Moon. Keeper of that which was drowned by Rot; preserver of its last fruit! And I am tired of being trampled upon!"

The marionette rose from the water as if pulled by some unseen force. A trick, a performance. All her weight was upon one leg. An impressive feat of balance and nothing more. Stage magic.

Rennala scowled. If she wanted an unseen force–

The queen thrust her staff forward, then sharply up. The marionette was catapulted into the air, drawn toward the all-seeing moon. The staff slammed down, and gravity turned back toward the sea. The marionette fell with limb-shattering speed. As it was about to impact, it roared with enough force to break the surface tension and cushion itself. The doll landed on all fours like a beast as the water burst around her. Without missing a beat, she dashed toward Rennala, body low over the water.

The queen took one step forward, taking her staff in both hands and holding it flat in front of her. She let go, spinning both her hands through the air, and the scepter whirled into a vortex, spitting countless glintstones ahead of her. The doll juked one way and the other before throwing her hands to the ground and swinging her hips into an apish leap.

As the marionette soared over the projectile spray, Rennala reached for her staff as if it weren't spinning fast enough to snap her wrist. She pulled it with a full-body motion, and a gravitic shockwave pulled with her. Instead of striking the queen, the doll orbited her and crashed into the receding tide. Still, the monster was only steps away from her now, a grave situation for a sorcerer.

Rennala raised her scepter to the looming moon. It glowed unbearably bright, intolerably pure. The stones set in her staff burned blue, and a constellation formed around it. A moon-tinged blade of featureless night which embodied the void within the Queen of the Full Moon. She swung it down with all her might, and the sea parted, creating an abyss without end.

A moment too late. The marionette's bestial instincts had served her well. Nearly touching the rippling surface of the blade, the doll raced forward. She dipped back into the sea, clawing the surface into blades of razor pressure that tore through Rennala's robes. The doll skipped like a stone, then flashed with the red gold of the Crucible.

Rennala swept her lunar blade back toward her, pulling the sea like the tide. Great horns grew from the doll's head. She crashed into the queen and then the waters crashed into them both. They washed over the vast empty surface together. Rennala could no longer sustain her weapon in the tumbling wake, but the doll had no such issue. As the water receded, she immediately reared up and bucked the queen across the solid surface.

The queen hardly had the training to land properly from a throw. She hit the "ground" hard and crumpled instead of rolling. The shock of the impact jarred the staff from her hand. Still, the marionette came. There was no hesitation, no opening. She never had.

Gritting her teeth, Rennala grabbed crown and threw it side-armed. It burned moon-blue and cut through the night, but for all its speed, her foe was simply faster. The doll lunged forward again, sweeping Rennala up before she could reach her staff. The monster held her up by her skull, sustained by a bestial grip strength.

Again their eyes met, and Rennala saw the hunger of a surrogate beast, the churning life of the Crucible. The queen grimaced and took a breath.

She spat in the red gold.

The clock ticked. The moon may disappear, but it always returns.

Her crown bashed the marionette in the back of the head. In the moment where her grip loosened, Rennala pulled her staff to her, clubbing the doll a second time. As the bitch fell back to defend herself, Rennala vanished into the night.

She appeared again beneath the all-imposing Full Moon and churned its light with her scepter. A vortex formed, then grew into a single great orb. Glintstone comets orbited around it as it revolved. With a punch, it shifted and began to fall with all the weight of a forgotten god. The marionette tried to run, but the gravity pulled her from the surface of the sea.

The light of the Crucible shone again, and–

"No."

A reflection of Rennala pointed her staff toward the water's surface. The star-tinged dark of Comet Azur blasted at an angle away from the falling moon. The marionette twisted her body, but the instant shot couldn't be avoided. A crater was carved through her side even as the main attack continued its descent. The marionette, in madness or bestial desperation, tore off her own arm.

The moon crashed into the sea.

The clock ticked. Rennala's shoulders loosened. Perhaps she should have done this all along. Was it always so easy?

The clock ticked. Red gold lightning flashed over the false moon like fractures across a crystal. The orb ruptured with a shockwave that sent the sorcerer spiralling. The doll curled her whole body like a spring and hurled something skyward. The crescent projectile straightened as Rennala did, and the doll's fist clocked her in the ticker.

The blow knocked the wind out of her, and her fingers all tingled with panic as she tumbled through the air. She felt like she couldn't move, and golden stars danced across her vision. As soon as she was able, the queen grit her teeth and turned down to her enemy. Yet the severed arm caught her skull with crawling fingers and pulled her eyelids back. Almost before she had time to react, she was eye to eye with the marionette again.

She swung her scepter, but the doll caught it this time. She let the monster have it, twirling her finger and letting her staff follow. As it whirled, it launched the doll again. A temporary measure. Rennala could hardly think while the severed arm pressed on her skull and threatened to put out her eyes. Another finger twirl, and her crown struck it in the wrist. Its sophisticated artificial tendons slipped, and the whole thing fell away.

The marionette to catch her missing limb. Rennala began to conjure the lunar blade again, but the doll sprung back and swatted the scepter down, wielding her own arm as a weapon. The queen spun her crown around to strike the doll's exposed side, but the power of the Crucible flashed again. Wood poured from the empty shoulder socket, twisting and gnarling into a burly ape's arm of red gold.

The ominous arm swatted away the Carian Crown with a trivial motion. Rennala tried to retreat, but the gnarled branch unfolded. The massive fist clawed wide and plucked her from the sky. She was slammed into the sea's surface with such force that reality reasserted itself. They were back in the Library, and her sweetings… her victims… watched on with blank, happy expressions.

The doll dropped her lost arm again. Pressed against the stone floor with bestial strength, there was little she could do. No leverage to free herself or her scepter. Her crown would not break the grip of such a primeval hand.

The doll knelt and grabbed her skull again, lowering her own face. The two stared at one another, unblinking.