taejun is sure it's been more than ten minutes now that he's been stuck in the mirror maze. if anything really, he knows he's clumsy enough to probably fall off the walls and his only hope is that none of the sticky charms wear off before he finds the exit. considering that he's also lost in there with kiyoung... it seems like the boys don't have much hope of getting out any time soon.
as he turns to look around again, taejun can't help but sigh at how hopeless it is. everywhere he turns it's just spiderman.
"kiyoung! did you find the exit yet?" taejun decides to shout out loud as he takes a right turn, and then a left and then another right before he's met with a dead end. there's music playing in the area so it makes it a bit hard to communicate, but doesn't stop him from attempting before he beings to climb.
an inaudible sigh escapes his lips as he realizes that maybe the pair having matching costumes for the maze was actually kind of a perfect coincidence. spiderman crawling up the walls... it was definitely bringing out the super in superhero. but he was also sure that on numerous times he was seeing kiyoung's reflections and not his own.
"are you talking or am i hearing things?" taejun shouts again after a moment as he pauses halfway up the wall he's scaling. he's not sure if it's the music in the background or if sir hendrick is trying to add more spook to the challenge... but upon remembering sir hendrick is drifting around the maze somewhere, he accepts that that might be their ticket out.
There was something peaceful and almost meditative about tending to Eve’s garden without the use of any sort of magic. Early-summer sun beat down on her back and shoulders, and sweat beaded on her forehead and the back of her neck as she carefully weeded and planted new things. Magic, a few of Eve’s sweet words, and Washington’s hot, humid weather meant the garden bounced back to its usual, lush state in almost no time, leaving no evidence of their disastrous escape from it a month earlier. She meant this as a surprise for her friend, both in gratitude for taking care of her when she needed it and as an apology for destroying it in the first place, and so she worked with focus, her mind blank except for the awareness of the nagging exhaustion in her muscles from moving dirt and plants and rocks.
A cool breeze drew a content sigh from her lips and she paused to enjoy it, eyes slipping closed as she pulled her hair off her neck and tipped her head to the side. When the temperature drop persisted, Azra sensed something different, something more than the steady press of summer sun on her body. Thinking this new presence must be Eve, she rose, dusting dirt and potting soil from her hands as she did so, and then looked up to discover a woman lounged contentedly on the nearest bench, a woman who was nearly her exact mirror save for the sharp focus she gave everything her eyes landed on. And right now, that was Azra herself.
“Azraaa, come here!” she chirped, “What’s up, girl?”
A familiar pins-and-needles sensation built in her fingertips and toes as a bubble of panic rose from her stomach. She was a perfect duplicate, stunning and magnetic even without speaking. The sun caught her dark hair where it fell from a messy bun and shone more splendidly than Azra could have ever imagined her own looked, and despite the torn jeans and rumpled shirt, she looked utterly put-together, right down to the sharp edge of her eyeliner and soft pink of her lips. She exuded an easy confidence that Azra herself only faked on her best days, and she felt a sad tug in her chest at the idea. She wanted that more than anything.
Even still, the cold kept her present, and the idea that she spoke to her mirror image didn’t sit right. Yes, she was steeped in a world of magic that she barely understood, but never in any of her journals did her past lives recount situations like this. Talking to yourself was never a good thing, magic or otherwise.
“No, absolutely not,” she said after a stiff, uncomfortable silence.
"Relax," she said with a knowing laugh. "You gonna judge a book by its cover? Tsk tsk!" Her words carried no admonishment whatsoever. She was content no matter what Azra said or did. "Should I explain myself, or are you about to bolt?"
Azra sucked in a quick, indignant breath. “Yes, I’m going to judge a book by it’s cover when the cover is me, and you are not me,” she argued. This was nonsensical. Was she high again? Did catnip have a flashback quality like acid? Or was this her--the first. Each option that flitted through her head seemed more impossible than the last, and part of her wanted to laugh at the idea of even entertaining such thoughts. Every part of her screamed this was a dangerous lie and that she needed to get out of there--out of the lair itself--but stubborn curiosity kept her planted to the spot. “...Who are you,” she said slowly.
“I’m you, and you’re me,” the mirror replied bluntly, as though she described something as mundane as posting something to Instagram or listing items needed in an upcoming grocery trip. She blinked up at Azra innocently with familiar dark eyes before she continued. "Sort of. It's not nearly that simple but, like, it's true. I can't explain everything in perfect detail, unfortunately. There's a cute little magical wall that steals the words right out of my mouth if I try. Still, I have to warn you about what's to come. And to tell you amazing news! I know how you can get magic that isn't dependent on others."
Every word sounded more insane than the last, and it wasn’t long before Azra felt completely overwhelmed by this information. Space-time-magic-bullshit wasn’t exactly her speciality, and she doubted even Dan could explain this sort of thing in a way that would make sense. Not to mention, every time she began to relax, another soft gust of icy air raised goosebumps across her previously overheated skin and unsettled her.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Azra said, then wrapped her arms around her torso in an attempt to ward off the chill as she rocked from foot to foot. Thoughts rolled through her head without any semblance of organization, threatening to unseat her currently tenuous sense of calm. “First, if you’re me, and I don’t trust myself, why should I trust you? And why do you look--” She stopped, her lips forming a line and her eyebrows knitting. Despite the ease of not-her’s posture, the slight dishevelment still caught her eye. “Are you dead? Is this some… weird haunting by… time… something… that Dan could probably explain?”
The reflection shrugged and leaned back on her hands. "You don't have to trust me. I'm just here to give you information and offer you a choice for what to do with it. You're free to ignore me, but I gotta shoot my shot, you know?" She laughed, the sound sweet and patronizing and gentle. Azra didn’t know what to make of it. "I'm not dead! Managed to avoid that pretty narrowly. I mean, goodness, when Nadine goes nuts with black magic... Regardless, I'm not a ghost. See? I'm real." She stretched out her foot to draw a line in the dirt with her toes, and then offered a hand to Azra, palm down. "You can touch me. I'm physical, I'm here."
At the mention of Nadine, Azra’s chest tightened and she clenched her jaw. Black magic? She thought she knew everything about Nadine’s telekinesis having spent a considerable amount of time practicing, both with and without the other’s instruction. Put simply, it was movement--how could such a thing be anything but a neutral variety of magic? She unwound her arms from their folded position to tangle her fingers in her hair, and movement that began as uncomfortable rocking from foot to foot morphed into pacing the small space in front of not-her. The line in the dirt was real, and Azra had no doubt that if she touched her, she’d feel like a person. There’s curiosity in her gaze, too--her powers mimicked by touch, so what would this bring? Even still, she resisted the temptation. Normal people did not see and talk to a version of themselves.
“God, I want a drink,” she mumbled darkly. This was too much. Her double eyed her with a sympathetic expression, one deeply sincere and identical to one Azra herself had used with Dan or Nadine or Rose or Eve on numerous occasions. More questions caught in her throat and on her tongue, and she worried her lip as she studied the other. “Okay… why are you here?” she asked finally as curiosity won over worry.
At the question, mirror-Azra straightened. "The ley lines went haywire recently, right? And magic got loose and started messing up environments. It's because they act like pipelines. When there's a leak in a pipe, water gets everywhere except where it's supposed to go - basically the same thing with magic." She swept her hand around at the garden. "This place sits right on top of one of them. Fei did that so we'd always have the best conditions to learn, I guess. But... shouldn't pipes be accessible somewhere? They're there for a reason, right? To bring magic to the world. And humans are supposed to be able to access it, or we were until The Ancients took that away, anyway. So I started wondering, you know, what if there's a way to access it?" She beamed so brightly she rivaled the sun for a moment. Azra wanted to smile with her. "I found magic, Azra. Like none of us ever even dreamed of. The kind you can do anything with."
Azra’s lips moved soundlessly for a moment as she tried to understand everything. The power to do something on her own was all she’d ever wanted; every mimicry was a lesser version of someone else’s magic. Real, but an imitation. While yes, she could stack them and yield incredible results, but it wasn’t hers. Without someone else, she was useless.
And that smile… it hurt somewhere deep and primal--she wanted that. She wanted to feel at home in her skin like her double before her, radiant in the afternoon sun with confidence that rolled off her in waves. The temptation tugged something in her chest and her jaw tightened. If she could find this and then show them to use it too, maybe they’d see someone aside from the airhead staring at her phone during meetings.This opinion was somewhat her fault, too, but still… And yet, the idea of this happening during Feiyan’s absence, and the fact that their original deaths were on her hands, these were things she couldn’t ignore. And seeing yourself was never a good thing. It was too good to be true.
“Why now? Why would you tell me this now? What’s changed throughout hundreds of years of reincarnation?” she asked carefully, then inhaled deeply to steady herself before she continued. “And doing things outside our… um. Our… roles, I guess. That’s what got us killed. That’s how I got us killed, isn't it? If we do that again, won’t the ancients just permanently end us? How would that serve humanity if there’s no one to… um… keep the balance?”
Though the questions come rapid-fire and jumbled due to a mixture of distrust and anxiety, Azra’s double nodded simply and hopped to her feet, the image of a professor about to begin a lecture. Azra took a nervous step backwards, unsure if she could trust the sudden change in the physical dynamic. Thankfully, her double seemed disinterested in closing the distance between them. “We can learn from them, that’s what’s changed,” she answered simply, then began to pace. Unlike Azra, however, she moves in measured steps, the movement thoughtful and calm in contrast to Azra’s more frantic version. "And because you need to know, before bad things begin to happen. Before the others are at each others' throats. What changed is Feiyan went missing and there is more to that than I can explain, but you need this magic to find her, or else nothing will be right again. The Council falls apart. We did screw up in our first life, it's true. But it wasn't that we used too much magic. It was that we used that magic for bad things when we were supposed to be helping. So The Ancients took that magic away from us, all save one gift. But... They didn't create us, you know? The planet and its magic were here before them, and they were using this magic just like we were. So they might have had the power to take it away, but who gave them the authority? Why should that have been allowed? Humans are naturally supposed to have access to magic, just like all creatures on this planet. And I'm not by any means saying we can give it back to the world now - that just wouldn't work. People would go nuts. But we can be guardians keeping the balance and have more than what we've been rationed, can't we?"
“We need this to find Feiyan,” Azra repeated, tone even. Again, she folded her arms across her torso, hands gripping her upper arms, but this time it was a means to comfort herself rather than to ward off the cooler air that drifted through the garden. That was all she wanted, to find Feiyan, to keep her found-family together, to not die. The lattermost thought presented the problem, however. Even if this mirror was right, that they could maintain a balance and still have more power, what stopped the ancients from killing them all again for this? What if not-her was wrong?
“I…” Azra’s voice trailed off as she watched her mirror amble back and forth as she spoke. “I have a feeling the ability to wipe us out with a wave of their… h… hands? Gives them the authority,” she said finally. “There has to be another way to find Feiyan. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to be the reason the people I love die because I got… I don’t know. Greedy? It sounds way too good to be true--too easy. Why can’t we find Feiyan without it? How would you know this anyway--are you from the future? You never… you never quite explained who you are other than me and I-- um-- it’s… people aren’t supposed to see themselves and h-have conversations.” Azra’s gaze flicked from her mirror image to random points in the garden. This other-self seemed so knowledgeable; Azra couldn’t imagine ever sounding so steady in her thoughts when she spoke, and in her opinion, her words showed it.
"I'd call that power, not authority, but I see why you're nervous about it,” not-her countered, then shrugged. "They also have to come back to do any of that to us, so... I did run the risk, I guess. You certainly don't have to. It worked out for me, though, which is why I'm here to tell you. There are probably lots of ways to find Feiyan, but we weren't getting close to any of them, that much I can say for sure. The longer everyone fought, the longer she hurt. Even when we did figure out this new magic, at first all they did was continue to fight over it. It requires a decisive hand wielding it. I wasn't really that, at first. I mean, we both know how hard it is to make a choice sometimes. Everything and anything could go wrong. And what right do we have to make those decisions? But... Nobody else was doing it, at least not well. Eventually I just got fed up with them." Azra’s eyebrows arched and she shook her head sympathetically. That feeling she knew. Every time an argument sparked in the middle of a meeting, her skin crawled and she wanted to scream. Fighting got them nowhere, and thus far, it had only managed to drive a wedge between certain members of the council. Feiyan brought them together for a reason and worked for her entire, lengthy life to maintain that bond. Splitting now when the stakes were so high would have severe consequences. Azra simply didn’t know how to bring them together. Movement caught her eye and she returned her attention to her double, who waved her hand and offered a sheepish smile. "Sorry, I got lost there for a second. None of that is really helpful, huh? Umm, what's the important thing to say... Well, I'm not really from the future, exactly, but I know you better than anyone because I am you, except I'm not like... The exact same you. I'm a slightly different you. That's the best explanation I can offer? I know it's not very helpful."
While the mirror of herself spoke, Azra craned her face towards the sky, wincing slightly at the bright, white light of the sun as it hit her face. She’d been almost too hot earlier given the combination of early-summer sunshine on her back and shoulders as well as the physical labor involved in tending a garden without the use of magic. Wrong, wrong, wrong. All of this was wrong. Her attention swung to not-her again, brows knitted as she only half-listened to her words.
“So you’re…” She trailed off and frowned deeply, thoughtfully. Azra knew she wouldn’t understand the complicated magic or physics or whatever involved in talking to another version of herself, and so she didn’t try. That didn’t make this all true, however. While still maintaining what she considered a safe distance, Azra skirted around her double until she could sit on the bench the mirror previously occupied. This conversation was far too long to remain on her feet, especially considering the gravity of what her double explained, if any of it could be believed. And… Azra had her doubts.
“It’s cold for the end of June, don’t you think?” The words came after a lengthy pause, and Azra studied the other for some sort of reaction or tell. Despite the fact that she taught herself to be adept at hiding what she felt, Azra liked to think she was good at reading people, annoyingly so if her fellow councilors were to be believed. Trying to read herself would be a challenge, and to her disappointment, her double showed no signs of faltering at her words. “...I don’t think I can do this,” she said finally. Her jaw tightened and she exhaled a breath. “Trying to take an easy way out of a difficult situation almost got us--me--killed ten years ago. I don’t… I can’t do that to myself or them or… I won’t do that. I don’t trust myself, so I can’t trust you.” She learned so many lessons the hard way during her most formative years, and this was perhaps the most important. Nothing worth fighting for or having was ever easy, and the idea of simply tapping into vast power that had always existed below her feet to solve all their problems practically screamed this lesson in her head.
The double offered Azra a sympathetic smile, and she couldn’t help but return it. Now with their positions reversed, the mirror looked down at her as she spoke, her voice almost gentle. You don't have to decide now," she offers. "I'll come back. I need a bit to get you real proof, anyway. To get past these magical barriers. You can decide then if you need." She stepped closer, standing right in front of Azra now. The nearness would have made her more uncomfortable if not for the way she looked at her. "Would that help? More time?"
God, that was the last thing she wanted. “No,” she shot back almost immediately, then winced at the sharp notes of fear in that single word. This reflection’s easy charm kept her calm and relatively comfortable, but she would rather not repeat an insane conversation with a version of herself at a later date. She didn’t want to live with a constant sense of dread over whether or not this ghost would reappear in her life with more reality-shattering information. “I… don’t… want to…” She hugged herself, arms across her torso, and canted forwards slightly without meeting her double’s gaze. “More time won’t make me trust you.”
The shift began then, with Azra’s gaze averted. The reflection’s smile gained an edge, and she leaned down towards her, her shadow falling over Azra as her head blocked the sun. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as the tone shifted suddenly, and she refused to look at the other for fear of what she might see. Her skin crawled and the cold intensified. Run. Get out. She remained planted to her spot on the bench, eyes wide with shock as her double continued. "Do you feel alone, Azra? Helpless and powerless? Poor, poor thing. Can't even rely on yourself." The other laughed, and where earlier it had been a warm, welcome sound, it turned bitter as it clawed its way out of her throat. "Look at me. Look at what you could be if you weren't intent on being pathetic."
Azra’s gaze finally snapped to her double and she leaned away. This thing turned insidious in the blink of an eye, and it knew just how to cut her. “I’m not… alone…” she argued weakly. Doubt threaded through memories of happy times spent with Nadine or Dan or Rose or Eve and she worried her lip. Tears burned in her eyes as she tried to steady herself. That patronizing voice of her own-self hatred, the one that usually lived in her head, now spoke to her through a vessel identical to her in appearance. It was the voice that always sent her into a destructive tailspin, and now Azra white-knuckled her sense of reality in order to keep from dissolving on the spot. “I’m not you, y-you’re not me,” she whined, then hummed a terrified note as she stood quickly and took a few steps away.
“Are you sure?” Not-her is upon her with inhuman speed, the distance between them closed faster than Azra could blink and it took her breath away. She didn’t touch her, but Azra flinched all the same. Her double now dominated her presence, and Azra was powerless to run or hide from whatever it was that wore her face. The temperature dropped until each of her double’s words came with a small cloud of white vapor. "How do you know I'm not the better version of you? What proof do you have that I'm wrong here? You're weak, tamed by your time here, and when offered everything you've ever wanted with just a little effort, you fold. What a shame. And here I thought you had potential." The words dripped with venom, and a familiar, agonizing fear bubbled to the surface. It was a different person, a different voice, but the switch flipped all the same. In an instant, she was a shaking mess whose only thought centered on making it through the next five minutes.
Survive. Survive. Survive. Keep your head down and brace yourself.
“Not weak,” she choked out. Tears blurred her vision and she curled in on herself, as though to protect from a blow she expected to arrive at any moment. Insults, pain, in that order always. The cold needled and bit as it crawled across her skin. “I’m not you, I d-don’t want to… they love m-me, won’t…” She ached to argue, to tell whatever this was—because not-her definitely deserved the description now—that she wouldn’t do this and risk her family in the process. Her teeth chattered against the cold and a hiccuped, terrified sob pushed past her lips. At the way Azra bent and cowered, her double smiled triumphantly, the look monstrous on her sharp, stunning features.
"You poor thing. Maybe all this magic is too much responsibility for you." She stepped away, looking to the plants in the garden, smug like a cat sitting on a trapped mouse. "It's okay, Azra. It'll be over soon." She laughed and the timbre of her voice is too pretty, too sweet. "Be afraid now, and you won't be for much longer."
The blows she anticipated never arrived, and Azra peeked at her double now. The cold wrath seemed to recede, but her mirror image remained. There’s something in her chest that ignites at the reflection’s words, something angry and righteous, but it’s too smothered by fear and self-doubt to manifest in any way other than the shake in her hands. She wanted to argue that this was her responsibility, to make sure she didn’t repeat her first life’s mistakes and to keep herself and the other councilors from digging too deeply and too greedily. Instead, she clenched her jaw to keep it from chattering further and watched the reflection smugly idle around the garden. The threats cut too keenly for her to recover now. “Fuck you,” she says softly, and it’s the bravest thing she can manage. “I won’t do what you want.”
"You can't fight what's coming, Azra, without making hard choices," she said in eerie singsong. "All I want is to see you prosper, but that's your choice... I can't make it for you. The others might. Watch out for Nadine, and Marcella too." She laughed again. "Power goes so easily to their heads, you know. They've never had to rely on others for their strength. Just to be noticed. Do you think Nadine cares about you at all when she could toss you aside at any moment? Do you think Dan won't cut you out the moment his calculations deem you irrelevant?" She closed in on Azra again, slowly this time, savoring her fear with a smirk. "You won't matter unless you make yourself seen, or you can stand here trembling like a useless little girl. Can't be both."
Something about Dan and Nadine’s names on not-her’s tongue snapped something in Azra’s mind. It was a thing less akin to bravery or strength and instead more feral, like a cornered animal lashing out with violence as a means of self-preservation. “Get aw--” she started, then cut herself off as she moved. Without thinking, she swung twice, the first blow an unaimed, weak backhand--a warning shot--and the second a rough shove with one hand on the mirror’s upper chest and the other on her arm, palm flat against exposed skin there. The force of the push sent her back a couple of steps. Despite the strong physical reaction, tears still began to stream down her cheeks as broken, half-stifled sobs burst through her lips. “You’re not me, you’re not--” she insisted brokenly. Nadine, Dan, and Marcella were her friends, they wouldn’t hurt her, they couldn’t.
She didn’t move when Azra struck, though she is not unaffected. She raised her arm after the first blow as if to retaliate, but Azra's shove, or more specifically the hand on her arm, caught her by surprise. Her pupils blew wide, nearly engulfing her irises. "How could you?" she whispered as if Azra betrayed her trust. Her voice is pitched higher now, with - distress? Fright? The cold around them worsened, leaving the air sharp on ever inhale. "Give it back," she said in a guttural growl that no longer sounded like Azra's voice at all. "I can show you your own magic, you don't need to take mine."
The shock caught her off guard, enough to stop the tears and even her heart for a moment. The magic she mimicked pulsed wildly in her veins and she stared at her hands, then back at the impostor, who looked equally shocked. It was unlike anything she’d ever felt, but if she had to, she would liken it to the ocean. Vast, foreign, unwavering, wild. The voice that demanded she return what she took mutated to something deeply unfamiliar, especially given the reflection of herself from which it sounded. A terrified cry left Azra’s lips as she immediately turned and bolted, though clumsily. Not three steps into her retreat, she tripped and landed heavily on the grass with a force that knocked the air from her lungs and made her see stars. Close behind, her duplicate lunged with that same unnatural speed she displayed minutes earlier. Without thinking, she rolled and flicked her hand, summoning whatever magic she’d mimicked moments earlier. Rock, barrier, wall, giant lizard, anything-- The magic reacted easily despite it’s utterly foreign nature, a jagged wall of rock and earth erupted from the ground, forming a barrier six feet at its tallest between herself and her duplicate. Her duplicate shrieked, a ragged, surprised sound. It would do as a decent obstacle, but it was low enough to step over in places and not extensive, even though it did a fine job uprooting some of Eve’s newly grown gargantuan trees. It created enough of a wall to keep the monster at bay. Frost crawled across the peaks and spines of the tiny mountain range she created, and from the other side, her duplicate howled, thread of Azra's voice mixed into her now throatier, harsher cadence.
“Run, then!” Azra didn’t need to be told twice. After she stared dumbly at her hands for a moment, she scrambled to her feet with a terrified whimper and sprinted towards the house. The last thing she wanted was to see what this thing would do to remove the magic she’d accidentally borrowed. From behind the wall, the reflection breathed heavily, her hands curling and uncurling. She tilted her head, cracked her neck, and then loosed another crackling shriek before she sprinted towards the edge of the garden and faded directly into the shadows of newly-disrupted trees.
Azra would hear that shriek in her dreams for months.
Strykarious RingMarc: The oldest brother. (slightly darker shade of blonde, Silver/pewter eyes.) (Age 35)
Striker RingMarc. The Second oldest, Serpentine lizard like face, with a large gold tooth in his sharp toothed mouth. Pale red skin. Bright yellow eyes with green rings. A small black mustache. Ivory white hair. A pair of black and white stripped horns. age 25-26
Horus RingMarc. Middle child. (Deceased) black hair, coal black eyes.( age 19-21)
Remington RingMarc youngest child Ivory white hair, garnet red eyes. (Age 17-22
