Asala was startled by the sudden shutting of the door in front of her. She had just been about to cross the threshold behind Cyrus and Zahra before it swung shut, almost catching her foot along with it. She squeaked in surprise for a bit, throwing a blind gaze behind her to the others before finally reaching for the handle. She turned the knob easily and the door glided open, but even in the dark she was able to tell that no one waited for them on the other side. She stood in the doorway dumbfounded before she stuck her head through. In a voice that a mix between a whisper and a shout, she called, "Zee. Cyrus. Are you there?"
Silence. The unease she felt multiplied, and she let the doorknob in her hand fall away. She stepped backward, closer to the others, and determined that she should stay as close to them as possible. "They are not there," she pointed out, "We should... try not to get separated."
“You think?" Khari sighed heavily through her nose, clenching and un-clenching her hands at her sides. She didn't quite seem to know what to do with herself, whether to draw a weapon or not, what the nature of the danger even was. “Shit." Grimacing, she glanced between the other three.
“Never mind the methodical stuff, where would you be if you were a demon living in this house? Or... whatever. It's gotta be a demon, right?" Abandoning the effort to do something with her hands, she crossed her arms over her chest. “If we kill it, whatever it's doing should stop?" It was halfway between question and statement, and she didn't seem sure who it was best directed at.
"I should think so," Asala answered. It stood to reason that Khari was correct, if a demon was indeed in control of the manor. If the demon was defeated, then there would be nothing remaining left to hold dominion over the manor.
Asala tried once more to summon a sphere of magelight, only to be met the same result as last time. She sighed in defeat as she allowed the sphere to fizzle out. "I would suppose the deepest part of the manor?" she posited, "However, with it able to... do that," she added, pointing toward the doorway Cyrus and Zahra had disappeared in, "I am unsure how we are to reach it..." she said. She was worried about the two of them, yes, but she also had faith in them. Wherever they were, undoubtedly they were alright, and would continue to be alright. They were strong.
However, they would still need to either reach them, or the demon.
Estella looked much less certain, for some reason. But with a small shake of her head, she seemed to banish whatever thought was furrowing her brows, and shifted her grip on her saber so she was holding it a little further forward. It was enough to sort of see by, combined with the faint green of the mark on her hand, which didn't seem to have changed much despite the lack of light from other sources.
Quite abruptly, though, she startled, turning herself sharply to the right, glimmering saber and all. The wan pool of light it cast illuminated nothing but more tiles. That seemed to surprise her, though it was hard to say for sure. Her face was lit from beneath, which through heavy shadows over her eyes and made her expression indistinct. After a short sweeping motion revealed nothing to the immediate right or left of the spot, either, she lowered her arm slightly.
"Sorry," she murmured. "I thought I... felt something."
Vesryn had made a subtle motion in response to Estella's, shifting his axe to carry it ready in both hands rather than relaxed in just one, but judging by the lack of other reaction, he hadn't felt anything of the sort just now that she had. He exhaled, the breath coming out halfway as a groan. "Let's just... try not to be too on edge," he suggested gently. "We could run into Cyrus or Zahra again, and we wouldn't want to have any accidents in the dark here."
Despite his words, he didn't look remotely at ease. He visibly buried it down, and opened the door again, keeping his free hand firmly grasping the edge of it. "Let's keep moving. And make sure we're careful with these doorways." He stopped and turned on the other side of the door, holding the out the hand holding his hand in a sort of mock invitation. "Ladies?"
Once all three were through, Vesryn slowly shut the door behind him, keeping an eye peering through the shrinking crack until the door was entirely closed. At that point, he opened it an inch again, only to close it when the room they'd left was still the same. Shaking his head, he led the way through the dark hallway they'd been deposited in, the group keeping close to each other. After they'd made it about twenty paces, he slowed to a stop.
"Stairs on our right here," he pointed out. Indeed, there was a spiral staircase, somewhat narrow and tightly coiled, set into the wall on their right-hand side. "Maybe going up will help us? I don't know, seems as good as any way to go."
Khari angled herself to peer up the staircase, not that she would possibly be able to see much in the dark. Wrinkling her nose, she shrugged. “Yeah, sure. After you." She took a step back, indicating that she'd guard the rear. It made sense to put the other two between the people with armor, after all.
Asala only nodded in agreement, not wanting to take the lead herself. She waited until Vesryn and Estella began to ascend the stairs before she fell in step behind them. As they began their spiraling climb, Asala kept her eyes on the back of Estella, sticking close enough that she could see the dim light cast off from her saber, while at the same time not kicking her heels each step of the way. It was an eerie ascent, with only their footsteps and breathing breaking the oppressive silence.
So focused she was on Estella, she paid no mind to the steps below until she missed one. Missed perhaps wasn't the best word, as the next step proved to be much taller than the previous, almost as like the one she was aiming for was no longer there. The misstep caused her to lurch forward, her stomach knotting itself out of sudden fear. She came down hard on the staircase, her shins bashing against the steps and the palms of her hands slapping against the next set. Fortunately, she was able to catch herself before her face slammed against the stair case, but by the end she was splayed out across them.
"Ow ow ow," she muttered as she turned over and tried to stand again. "I do not like this house," she muttered--almost in a pouting tone.
It didn't take more than a second before strong hands wrapped around her upper arm, Khari assisting her back to her feet with some degree of care. Probably, in part, because of the dark. “You okay, Asala? What hap—wait a minute." She fell silent. Asala could feel her shift, hear the low exhalation of her breath and the quiet shit she formed it into.
“Stel? Ves? They were right—what the hell?"
"What?" Asala asked, looking forward again. Estella's saber could no longer be seen, nor even Vesryn and her silhouettes. They were just... gone. "Oh no," Asala muttered under her breath. She gripped the handrail and leaned forward as far as she dared, and waved her hand in the empty air, in hopes of maybe brushing against someone's back. With that didn't work, Asala sighed heavily and turned to Khari.
"Any... suggestions?"
“Uh... just one." Khari shuffled around so she was standing in front of Asala, apparently trying the stair before committing to stepping on it. “Hold onto my cloak, and don't let go." Pausing long enough for Asala to do just that, Khari started back up the stairs, which continued to wind, and wind... and wind. The longer the interval, the narrower the staircase seemed to grow, until it was crowding down around them. Khari, being a full foot shorter than Asala, wasn't quite as hemmed in, but if the increasingly-colorful litany of obscenities escaping under her breath were anything to go by, she'd noticed it, at least.
At least until she abruptly stopped, moving a hand backwards to forestall Asala crashing into her. “Shh. Hear that?" At first, it wasn't obvious what she was referring to. But after several heartbeats of silence, there was something. A soft, skittering, scratching noise. Like pine needles on wood, or...
Khari's eyes were wide in the dark. “Fuck no. Shit, shitshitshit. Faster. We're moving faster." She lunged up the stairs, the fabric of her cloak pulling in Asala's hands.
"Agreed," Asala answered breathlessly. "Agreed!" she repeated, far more urgently. The tick-tick-tick behind them sounded like long legs tapping against the tiles of the floor below. Legs belonging to what sounded like rather large spiders. Had Khari been any slower in her ascent, Asala may have actually overtaken her. The woman seemed to be just as fearful of spiders as she was, so Asala was never given the opportunity. Moments after their flight began, they were spit out of the staircase and into a long hallway. A few steps later, Asala gently tugged on Khari's cloak to beckon her to stop for a moment.
"Shh," she cooed, and in the resulting silence, she listened any more skittering noises. They were in luck, it appeared, as it appeared to have died out, replaced by their labored breathing. "I think they are gone," Asala noted, no small amount of relief bleeding into her voice. However, when she turned her head, she was greeted with another sight. The hallway they were in seemed to stretch on forever in the dim light, but that wasn't the issue. On either side of them, a number of mirrors lined the wall and continued into the darkness ahead of them. "Where... are we?" she asked, though she doubted Khari knew the answer either.
She didn't seem inclined to answer, either; her eyes were fixed on the mirrors. Many of them were different sizes, all affixed seamlessly to the wall, except for the ones at the end of the hall, which faced them. Apparently, it turned at a right angle, and the mirrors continued. Some of them were broken, jagged pieces torn from their mountings to rest on the floor, others spiderwebbed in their frames. Thick antique brass, simple wood, patterned and plain—a few didn't have frames at all.
Khari stepped forward, her feet crunching on a broken shard. She glanced down at it, scoffing slightly, but when she lifted her eyes again, she pulled in a sharp gasp. “What the—? Her gaze fixed on one of the mirrors in particular, the one down at the end of the hall. It was full-length, a person-sized strip of reflective glass from floor to ceiling, but the figure it reflected was not either of them.
The darkness made it hard to say for sure, but it appeared to be an elf, dark hair spilling forward over her shoulders. Her face was decorated with vallaslin, but the patterns were different from Khari's, three bluish arrows fanned out over her brow. There was, Asala could tell, an irregularity below one of her knees, but since she wore breeches and leather-looking boots, it was impossible to say exactly what it was, except that the angle seemed off somehow.
“...Mom?" Khari took a few steps closer, but the figure in the mirror held up a hand, as if to halt her progress. As soon as Khari stopped, she brought a finger to her lips, stern eyes dark in the poorly-lit hall.
As though something to her right had drawn her attention down the hall, the figure's head abruptly turned sideways. After one more brief glance in their direction, she disappeared, reappearing in the mirror to their left a moment later, clearly in motion until she vanished around the corner where they could not see.
“Hey, wait—come back!" Khari launched into a run after the figure, not stopping for Asala's input on the matter.
Asala was unable to even call Khari's name before she was being dragged along with her. She still held tight to her cloak, unwilling to let her grip loosen even for a moment, lest risking losing her as well. Asala did not want to tackle the manor on her own. "Khari, wait--" she called in step. She could only imagine that they were playing into the hand of demon or whatever held dominion over the manor.
If Khari so much as heard her, she gave no sign of it, still sprinting. She rounded the corner, which revealed another passage just like the first. This time, the corridor split at the end, and the figure did, too, a distinguished-looking elf with hair the same color as Khari's taking the left fork while the woman took the right. Khari plainly hesitated, but only for a moment, bolting again to the left.
More figures ran ahead of them now. The first one Asala actually recognized was Vareth, but then Ser Durand appeared, too, and Khari broke away from the rest of the cluster to pursue him next. “Dammit, get back here! Get back—" Her pace slowed considerably, though it didn't seem to be because she was out of energy. Rather, all of the figures had come back together in the same place, slowing themselves and stopping, four pairs of eyes fixed on Khari: two different shades of brown, a green, and a light blue-grey.
Though she'd sprinted quite a distance, neither their speed nor the duration of their dash could have justified the harsh, jagged sound of Khari's breath. “Wait... wait for me..."
As one, they vanished, something like a plume of smoke roiling and coalescing in the mirror where they had been. In their place stood a much more familiar figure. Asala knew the patterns on his dark face well, if probably not quite so well as Khari did. The image of Romulus touched a hand to the glass from the other side, flattening his palm against it for a moment. But then he used it to push away, heading down the next hallway.
“Oh no you don't—" Khari jumped back into her mad dash, glass crunching heavily under her boots and shards of it flying back where she kicked it up as she ran, falling back to the ground with light tinkling sounds that echoed strangely in the hall. This time, when they rounded the corner, there was a door sitting ajar; Khari crashed bodily into it, apparently without a thought for the proven danger of thresholds in this place. It slammed back into one of the mirrors, cracking it where the knob was; several chunks broke off and hit the floor below.
By the time Asala could catch up, Khari had stopped again, this time for a very obvious reason: the door had led to a dead end. All the figures were gone, but the mirrors were not: this room seemed to be roughly octagonal in shape, all sides of it seamless mirror from floor to ceiling. With a noise caught somewhere between frustration and anger, Khari threw herself at the mirror, but even under the impact of her bodyweight, it didn't shatter. She left a long scratch in it where her shoulder armor caught, but nothing else.
"Khari..." Asala said quietly, though she added nothing to it. She did not wish to admonish her, clearly whatever she saw in the mirrors affected her and she doubted anything she could say would make it better. Truly, the only thing that may make it all better was to defeat the demon and leave the manor in one piece. She stepped forward slowly and gently laid a hand on Khari's shoulder, hoping its weight would be enough to reassure her. She glanced down at her, but when she looked back up to the mirror, she found it had changed once more.
Instead of either of their reflections, it showed a small child, about half the size that Asala stood now. It was a... familiar child, with long stark white hair, and a pair of nubs that would soon grow into horns protruding from her forehead. Golden eyes stared at them in shock, and then mild panic was beginning to crease her features. Asala sighed deeply to collect herself and then shook her head, the child on the other side mimicking her. Both Asala and the reflection took a step forward toward the mirror, stopped, both staring at each other-- studying one another. Soon, Asala's eyes fell to the child's neck, where an iron collar lay.
Both winced at the sight of it, and her hand floated up to her neck. While the child wore the collar, Asala felt nothing but the neckline of her cloak at her own. "It is... me," Asala stated. She had not seen herself then but... she remembered the collar. When her magic had manifested, she fainted, and did not remember what happened, only what came after. Darkness in a cold room. Tammy, distress and disappointment written on her face. And then she was alone for what felt like an eternity-- until Tammy returned. Asala swallowed thickly, feeling the memory weigh heavily on her shoulders.
She hadn't noticed at the time, but she was clenching her fist. She glanced down at it and brought it up to to look at it, the reflection doing the same. As she opened her hand, she could see the indentations where her nails had dug into her palm. Then she turned it over, so that the palm faced the mirror. She called upon the fade, and wreathed her hand in a warm pink light, that of the spirit of compassion. While her hand glowed, the Asala's in the mirror did not. She then shook her head and turned toward Khari, and away from the mirror. "No. It is not," she stated firmly. Not any more. She had only seen nine summers then, and it had felt like a lifetime since. She had grown since then, and she was no longer alone.
"We should try to find the demon, quickly. It has no right to play with our memories like this."
It took Khari several moments to respond in any recognizable way. When she did, it was to shake her whole body fiercely, almost like a dog shaking off water. Heaving a breath at the end of it, she nodded firmly, then reached up and back, her hand closing over the sword hilt just behind her shoulder. “Gonna see how dead the end is." The blade hissed free with a rasp, and Khari bounded forward. This time, her motion wasn't at all frantic; rather, it was controlled, deliberate, and perhaps more effectively forceful.
She swung the sword into the mirror, and it cracked, spiderwebbing almost all the way to the ceiling. A second blow created more cracks and a dull screech, and the third one shattered the mirror, the pieces in front of Khari falling in a cascade that forced her to step back. She was breathing quite heavily, but like her motions, her breaths were controlled now.
The wall she'd exposed looked bare, without a door or anything of the kind, and Khari made a disgruntled noise, grimacing and narrowing her eyes. “How 'bout it, then? You're a mage, anything weird going on magically here?" Her tone had a bit of an edge to it, but it was easy to tell that the sharpness wasn't meant for Asala.
Asala nodded and raised her hand again, this time calling upon a dispel. Soon, a wave of green light materialized and washed over the now bare wall, though it did not do anything noticeable. It was a faint hope that something would have happened, but it did not hurt to at least try it in her eyes. Still, while she reached into the fade to cast the spell, something had felt off. While the entire manor was off, this had been a more focused feeling, like there was something different around them. Asala's eyes fell from the wall to the ground, and the many shards of glass Khari had created. She then knelt, careful not to kneel into any of the glass and passed a hand over the glass.
She was right, something was different. On the second pass, she felt it again and began to carefully brush away the pieces of mirror with a barrier, so as not to accidentally cut herself. However, it soon touched something, and Asala could feel the magic emanating from it through the barrier. She glanced up at Khari for a moment, letting the barrier vanish before she reached down to find whatever it was she had felt. After flicking away some of the shards of mirror, she found what she'd been feeling. It was glass, but not a piece of the mirror Khari had broken. She picked it up and held it so that Khari could see it too. It was almost like a lens, perfectly circular, and holding a sort of magical air about it.
It was doubtful Khari would be able to sense the last part, but she at least seemed to recognize that this was a strange find. “I definitely didn't break anything into a perfect circle." She blinked at it, tilting her head. “Is it magic or something? Can you make it work?"
Asala nodded and attempted to do as she was asked. A funneled a bit of magic into the lens, and the effect was immediately apparent. The lens lit up as it activated, and their surroundings took on a hazy appearance. Fear of the unknown gripped her for a moment, but she continued to feed the lens magic, until the room around them soon bled away until they were left standing in what appeared to be an ordinary room. Asala glanced from side to side, surprised at the sudden and abrupt change. The mirrors on the walls were now gone, and in fact, a few of the walls were gone as well, leaving them in a rather nondescript room, or would be if it would not be for the dust.
While she gawked for a second or two, Asala quickly reached out for another magelight spell, and unlike her last few attempts, this one actually cast light. "Oh, thank goodness," she said, relief dripping from her voice. Finally, she stood and took in their new surroundings. Now with light, Asala could see a door on the far wall. she gestured in its direction and spoke, "There's a door."
“Well then what are we standing around for? Let's take it." Khari, apparently now able to see as well, eyed the shelving unit she'd inadvertently destroyed—probably where the lens had come from. Shaking her head a bit, she grabbed the door handle. pausing for only a moment when it opened to total darkness again. “C'mon, or we'll get separated again."
"Right," Asala nodded, pushing the ball magelight through the door before following soon after.
Silence. The unease she felt multiplied, and she let the doorknob in her hand fall away. She stepped backward, closer to the others, and determined that she should stay as close to them as possible. "They are not there," she pointed out, "We should... try not to get separated."
“You think?" Khari sighed heavily through her nose, clenching and un-clenching her hands at her sides. She didn't quite seem to know what to do with herself, whether to draw a weapon or not, what the nature of the danger even was. “Shit." Grimacing, she glanced between the other three.
“Never mind the methodical stuff, where would you be if you were a demon living in this house? Or... whatever. It's gotta be a demon, right?" Abandoning the effort to do something with her hands, she crossed her arms over her chest. “If we kill it, whatever it's doing should stop?" It was halfway between question and statement, and she didn't seem sure who it was best directed at.
"I should think so," Asala answered. It stood to reason that Khari was correct, if a demon was indeed in control of the manor. If the demon was defeated, then there would be nothing remaining left to hold dominion over the manor.
Asala tried once more to summon a sphere of magelight, only to be met the same result as last time. She sighed in defeat as she allowed the sphere to fizzle out. "I would suppose the deepest part of the manor?" she posited, "However, with it able to... do that," she added, pointing toward the doorway Cyrus and Zahra had disappeared in, "I am unsure how we are to reach it..." she said. She was worried about the two of them, yes, but she also had faith in them. Wherever they were, undoubtedly they were alright, and would continue to be alright. They were strong.
However, they would still need to either reach them, or the demon.
Estella looked much less certain, for some reason. But with a small shake of her head, she seemed to banish whatever thought was furrowing her brows, and shifted her grip on her saber so she was holding it a little further forward. It was enough to sort of see by, combined with the faint green of the mark on her hand, which didn't seem to have changed much despite the lack of light from other sources.
Quite abruptly, though, she startled, turning herself sharply to the right, glimmering saber and all. The wan pool of light it cast illuminated nothing but more tiles. That seemed to surprise her, though it was hard to say for sure. Her face was lit from beneath, which through heavy shadows over her eyes and made her expression indistinct. After a short sweeping motion revealed nothing to the immediate right or left of the spot, either, she lowered her arm slightly.
"Sorry," she murmured. "I thought I... felt something."
Vesryn had made a subtle motion in response to Estella's, shifting his axe to carry it ready in both hands rather than relaxed in just one, but judging by the lack of other reaction, he hadn't felt anything of the sort just now that she had. He exhaled, the breath coming out halfway as a groan. "Let's just... try not to be too on edge," he suggested gently. "We could run into Cyrus or Zahra again, and we wouldn't want to have any accidents in the dark here."
Despite his words, he didn't look remotely at ease. He visibly buried it down, and opened the door again, keeping his free hand firmly grasping the edge of it. "Let's keep moving. And make sure we're careful with these doorways." He stopped and turned on the other side of the door, holding the out the hand holding his hand in a sort of mock invitation. "Ladies?"
Once all three were through, Vesryn slowly shut the door behind him, keeping an eye peering through the shrinking crack until the door was entirely closed. At that point, he opened it an inch again, only to close it when the room they'd left was still the same. Shaking his head, he led the way through the dark hallway they'd been deposited in, the group keeping close to each other. After they'd made it about twenty paces, he slowed to a stop.
"Stairs on our right here," he pointed out. Indeed, there was a spiral staircase, somewhat narrow and tightly coiled, set into the wall on their right-hand side. "Maybe going up will help us? I don't know, seems as good as any way to go."
Khari angled herself to peer up the staircase, not that she would possibly be able to see much in the dark. Wrinkling her nose, she shrugged. “Yeah, sure. After you." She took a step back, indicating that she'd guard the rear. It made sense to put the other two between the people with armor, after all.
Asala only nodded in agreement, not wanting to take the lead herself. She waited until Vesryn and Estella began to ascend the stairs before she fell in step behind them. As they began their spiraling climb, Asala kept her eyes on the back of Estella, sticking close enough that she could see the dim light cast off from her saber, while at the same time not kicking her heels each step of the way. It was an eerie ascent, with only their footsteps and breathing breaking the oppressive silence.
So focused she was on Estella, she paid no mind to the steps below until she missed one. Missed perhaps wasn't the best word, as the next step proved to be much taller than the previous, almost as like the one she was aiming for was no longer there. The misstep caused her to lurch forward, her stomach knotting itself out of sudden fear. She came down hard on the staircase, her shins bashing against the steps and the palms of her hands slapping against the next set. Fortunately, she was able to catch herself before her face slammed against the stair case, but by the end she was splayed out across them.
"Ow ow ow," she muttered as she turned over and tried to stand again. "I do not like this house," she muttered--almost in a pouting tone.
It didn't take more than a second before strong hands wrapped around her upper arm, Khari assisting her back to her feet with some degree of care. Probably, in part, because of the dark. “You okay, Asala? What hap—wait a minute." She fell silent. Asala could feel her shift, hear the low exhalation of her breath and the quiet shit she formed it into.
“Stel? Ves? They were right—what the hell?"
"What?" Asala asked, looking forward again. Estella's saber could no longer be seen, nor even Vesryn and her silhouettes. They were just... gone. "Oh no," Asala muttered under her breath. She gripped the handrail and leaned forward as far as she dared, and waved her hand in the empty air, in hopes of maybe brushing against someone's back. With that didn't work, Asala sighed heavily and turned to Khari.
"Any... suggestions?"
“Uh... just one." Khari shuffled around so she was standing in front of Asala, apparently trying the stair before committing to stepping on it. “Hold onto my cloak, and don't let go." Pausing long enough for Asala to do just that, Khari started back up the stairs, which continued to wind, and wind... and wind. The longer the interval, the narrower the staircase seemed to grow, until it was crowding down around them. Khari, being a full foot shorter than Asala, wasn't quite as hemmed in, but if the increasingly-colorful litany of obscenities escaping under her breath were anything to go by, she'd noticed it, at least.
At least until she abruptly stopped, moving a hand backwards to forestall Asala crashing into her. “Shh. Hear that?" At first, it wasn't obvious what she was referring to. But after several heartbeats of silence, there was something. A soft, skittering, scratching noise. Like pine needles on wood, or...
Khari's eyes were wide in the dark. “Fuck no. Shit, shitshitshit. Faster. We're moving faster." She lunged up the stairs, the fabric of her cloak pulling in Asala's hands.
"Agreed," Asala answered breathlessly. "Agreed!" she repeated, far more urgently. The tick-tick-tick behind them sounded like long legs tapping against the tiles of the floor below. Legs belonging to what sounded like rather large spiders. Had Khari been any slower in her ascent, Asala may have actually overtaken her. The woman seemed to be just as fearful of spiders as she was, so Asala was never given the opportunity. Moments after their flight began, they were spit out of the staircase and into a long hallway. A few steps later, Asala gently tugged on Khari's cloak to beckon her to stop for a moment.
"Shh," she cooed, and in the resulting silence, she listened any more skittering noises. They were in luck, it appeared, as it appeared to have died out, replaced by their labored breathing. "I think they are gone," Asala noted, no small amount of relief bleeding into her voice. However, when she turned her head, she was greeted with another sight. The hallway they were in seemed to stretch on forever in the dim light, but that wasn't the issue. On either side of them, a number of mirrors lined the wall and continued into the darkness ahead of them. "Where... are we?" she asked, though she doubted Khari knew the answer either.
She didn't seem inclined to answer, either; her eyes were fixed on the mirrors. Many of them were different sizes, all affixed seamlessly to the wall, except for the ones at the end of the hall, which faced them. Apparently, it turned at a right angle, and the mirrors continued. Some of them were broken, jagged pieces torn from their mountings to rest on the floor, others spiderwebbed in their frames. Thick antique brass, simple wood, patterned and plain—a few didn't have frames at all.
Khari stepped forward, her feet crunching on a broken shard. She glanced down at it, scoffing slightly, but when she lifted her eyes again, she pulled in a sharp gasp. “What the—? Her gaze fixed on one of the mirrors in particular, the one down at the end of the hall. It was full-length, a person-sized strip of reflective glass from floor to ceiling, but the figure it reflected was not either of them.
The darkness made it hard to say for sure, but it appeared to be an elf, dark hair spilling forward over her shoulders. Her face was decorated with vallaslin, but the patterns were different from Khari's, three bluish arrows fanned out over her brow. There was, Asala could tell, an irregularity below one of her knees, but since she wore breeches and leather-looking boots, it was impossible to say exactly what it was, except that the angle seemed off somehow.
“...Mom?" Khari took a few steps closer, but the figure in the mirror held up a hand, as if to halt her progress. As soon as Khari stopped, she brought a finger to her lips, stern eyes dark in the poorly-lit hall.
As though something to her right had drawn her attention down the hall, the figure's head abruptly turned sideways. After one more brief glance in their direction, she disappeared, reappearing in the mirror to their left a moment later, clearly in motion until she vanished around the corner where they could not see.
“Hey, wait—come back!" Khari launched into a run after the figure, not stopping for Asala's input on the matter.
Asala was unable to even call Khari's name before she was being dragged along with her. She still held tight to her cloak, unwilling to let her grip loosen even for a moment, lest risking losing her as well. Asala did not want to tackle the manor on her own. "Khari, wait--" she called in step. She could only imagine that they were playing into the hand of demon or whatever held dominion over the manor.
If Khari so much as heard her, she gave no sign of it, still sprinting. She rounded the corner, which revealed another passage just like the first. This time, the corridor split at the end, and the figure did, too, a distinguished-looking elf with hair the same color as Khari's taking the left fork while the woman took the right. Khari plainly hesitated, but only for a moment, bolting again to the left.
More figures ran ahead of them now. The first one Asala actually recognized was Vareth, but then Ser Durand appeared, too, and Khari broke away from the rest of the cluster to pursue him next. “Dammit, get back here! Get back—" Her pace slowed considerably, though it didn't seem to be because she was out of energy. Rather, all of the figures had come back together in the same place, slowing themselves and stopping, four pairs of eyes fixed on Khari: two different shades of brown, a green, and a light blue-grey.
Though she'd sprinted quite a distance, neither their speed nor the duration of their dash could have justified the harsh, jagged sound of Khari's breath. “Wait... wait for me..."
As one, they vanished, something like a plume of smoke roiling and coalescing in the mirror where they had been. In their place stood a much more familiar figure. Asala knew the patterns on his dark face well, if probably not quite so well as Khari did. The image of Romulus touched a hand to the glass from the other side, flattening his palm against it for a moment. But then he used it to push away, heading down the next hallway.
“Oh no you don't—" Khari jumped back into her mad dash, glass crunching heavily under her boots and shards of it flying back where she kicked it up as she ran, falling back to the ground with light tinkling sounds that echoed strangely in the hall. This time, when they rounded the corner, there was a door sitting ajar; Khari crashed bodily into it, apparently without a thought for the proven danger of thresholds in this place. It slammed back into one of the mirrors, cracking it where the knob was; several chunks broke off and hit the floor below.
By the time Asala could catch up, Khari had stopped again, this time for a very obvious reason: the door had led to a dead end. All the figures were gone, but the mirrors were not: this room seemed to be roughly octagonal in shape, all sides of it seamless mirror from floor to ceiling. With a noise caught somewhere between frustration and anger, Khari threw herself at the mirror, but even under the impact of her bodyweight, it didn't shatter. She left a long scratch in it where her shoulder armor caught, but nothing else.
"Khari..." Asala said quietly, though she added nothing to it. She did not wish to admonish her, clearly whatever she saw in the mirrors affected her and she doubted anything she could say would make it better. Truly, the only thing that may make it all better was to defeat the demon and leave the manor in one piece. She stepped forward slowly and gently laid a hand on Khari's shoulder, hoping its weight would be enough to reassure her. She glanced down at her, but when she looked back up to the mirror, she found it had changed once more.
Instead of either of their reflections, it showed a small child, about half the size that Asala stood now. It was a... familiar child, with long stark white hair, and a pair of nubs that would soon grow into horns protruding from her forehead. Golden eyes stared at them in shock, and then mild panic was beginning to crease her features. Asala sighed deeply to collect herself and then shook her head, the child on the other side mimicking her. Both Asala and the reflection took a step forward toward the mirror, stopped, both staring at each other-- studying one another. Soon, Asala's eyes fell to the child's neck, where an iron collar lay.
Both winced at the sight of it, and her hand floated up to her neck. While the child wore the collar, Asala felt nothing but the neckline of her cloak at her own. "It is... me," Asala stated. She had not seen herself then but... she remembered the collar. When her magic had manifested, she fainted, and did not remember what happened, only what came after. Darkness in a cold room. Tammy, distress and disappointment written on her face. And then she was alone for what felt like an eternity-- until Tammy returned. Asala swallowed thickly, feeling the memory weigh heavily on her shoulders.
She hadn't noticed at the time, but she was clenching her fist. She glanced down at it and brought it up to to look at it, the reflection doing the same. As she opened her hand, she could see the indentations where her nails had dug into her palm. Then she turned it over, so that the palm faced the mirror. She called upon the fade, and wreathed her hand in a warm pink light, that of the spirit of compassion. While her hand glowed, the Asala's in the mirror did not. She then shook her head and turned toward Khari, and away from the mirror. "No. It is not," she stated firmly. Not any more. She had only seen nine summers then, and it had felt like a lifetime since. She had grown since then, and she was no longer alone.
"We should try to find the demon, quickly. It has no right to play with our memories like this."
It took Khari several moments to respond in any recognizable way. When she did, it was to shake her whole body fiercely, almost like a dog shaking off water. Heaving a breath at the end of it, she nodded firmly, then reached up and back, her hand closing over the sword hilt just behind her shoulder. “Gonna see how dead the end is." The blade hissed free with a rasp, and Khari bounded forward. This time, her motion wasn't at all frantic; rather, it was controlled, deliberate, and perhaps more effectively forceful.
She swung the sword into the mirror, and it cracked, spiderwebbing almost all the way to the ceiling. A second blow created more cracks and a dull screech, and the third one shattered the mirror, the pieces in front of Khari falling in a cascade that forced her to step back. She was breathing quite heavily, but like her motions, her breaths were controlled now.
The wall she'd exposed looked bare, without a door or anything of the kind, and Khari made a disgruntled noise, grimacing and narrowing her eyes. “How 'bout it, then? You're a mage, anything weird going on magically here?" Her tone had a bit of an edge to it, but it was easy to tell that the sharpness wasn't meant for Asala.
Asala nodded and raised her hand again, this time calling upon a dispel. Soon, a wave of green light materialized and washed over the now bare wall, though it did not do anything noticeable. It was a faint hope that something would have happened, but it did not hurt to at least try it in her eyes. Still, while she reached into the fade to cast the spell, something had felt off. While the entire manor was off, this had been a more focused feeling, like there was something different around them. Asala's eyes fell from the wall to the ground, and the many shards of glass Khari had created. She then knelt, careful not to kneel into any of the glass and passed a hand over the glass.
She was right, something was different. On the second pass, she felt it again and began to carefully brush away the pieces of mirror with a barrier, so as not to accidentally cut herself. However, it soon touched something, and Asala could feel the magic emanating from it through the barrier. She glanced up at Khari for a moment, letting the barrier vanish before she reached down to find whatever it was she had felt. After flicking away some of the shards of mirror, she found what she'd been feeling. It was glass, but not a piece of the mirror Khari had broken. She picked it up and held it so that Khari could see it too. It was almost like a lens, perfectly circular, and holding a sort of magical air about it.
It was doubtful Khari would be able to sense the last part, but she at least seemed to recognize that this was a strange find. “I definitely didn't break anything into a perfect circle." She blinked at it, tilting her head. “Is it magic or something? Can you make it work?"
Asala nodded and attempted to do as she was asked. A funneled a bit of magic into the lens, and the effect was immediately apparent. The lens lit up as it activated, and their surroundings took on a hazy appearance. Fear of the unknown gripped her for a moment, but she continued to feed the lens magic, until the room around them soon bled away until they were left standing in what appeared to be an ordinary room. Asala glanced from side to side, surprised at the sudden and abrupt change. The mirrors on the walls were now gone, and in fact, a few of the walls were gone as well, leaving them in a rather nondescript room, or would be if it would not be for the dust.
While she gawked for a second or two, Asala quickly reached out for another magelight spell, and unlike her last few attempts, this one actually cast light. "Oh, thank goodness," she said, relief dripping from her voice. Finally, she stood and took in their new surroundings. Now with light, Asala could see a door on the far wall. she gestured in its direction and spoke, "There's a door."
“Well then what are we standing around for? Let's take it." Khari, apparently now able to see as well, eyed the shelving unit she'd inadvertently destroyed—probably where the lens had come from. Shaking her head a bit, she grabbed the door handle. pausing for only a moment when it opened to total darkness again. “C'mon, or we'll get separated again."
"Right," Asala nodded, pushing the ball magelight through the door before following soon after.