24. Change of Plans
General Summary
Mirage uses her ventriloquism to carry the sound of heavy footsteps approaching to the north door of the adjacent hallway. As soon as it goes off, Cypher grabs her hand and pulls her through a door that's hard to look at, distorted beyond perception's grasp just like he is, like she is.
They move fast, there's not a lot of room between the corner they need to turn and the guards on Amir's office door. They both have to slide on the wall a bit, still close enough to see the whites of their eyes.
They run on soundless feet toward the tower stairs, passing the first landing on a beeline to the top.
The stairs end in kind of service entrance; there's some stairs descending slightly (not a whole floor, just an elevation shift) to the north, and a door dead ahead to the east. Unwilling to leave an unknown behind them, Mirage decides to start with the near door, listening while Nimbus runs visuals.
Going by the contents and the familiarly stoic furnishings, this is probably the chamber of one of his military officers, or maybe his chief of security. There's stairs up, but going from Nimbus' aerial scouting earlier, the only thing higher than here is a half-floor watchtower too small to be Amir's suite.
There's a letter on the desk. Nimbus can't read it completely but he can maybe give you some hint about its contents. still being drafted, unsigned, and its got Mirage's name in it.
"Motherfucker," she spits as she tries the door.
Cypher raises a brow, mistaking her frustration
"Is it trapped?"
“Locked. Letter in there with my name on it.”
He scoffs, "and only a normal lock keeping it in? Cute." Folding his arms, he leans against the wall by the door like 'ok, do your thing i'll watch ur back.'
Slipping her picks out of her pocket, Mirage makes child's play out of the simple lock. The door opens outward, and she moves inside cautiously. It feels too easy. She searches the room carefully, checking floorboards, scanning ceilings, corners, keyholes. there's a hole near the baseboard; mice?
She doesn't notice any traps, but there is something odd about the space. As she searches, the colours seem to become more saturated; vibrant.
FEY.
Cypher has also clocked the shift. He entered behind her but he's no longer moving slow. He grabs the letter off the desk, half-crumpling it in his hand, and then moves to leave with her.
But Mirage is hesitating, she points toward the hole in the baseboard. He follows her indication, but no understanding registers on his face.
"What?"
"Compartment?"
"Oh."
Looking at Nimbus, the elemental responds immidiately to her empathic request, slipping into the hole. He retreats quickly, though. It is indeed a mouse hole, and there is indeed a mouse in there,
a very rude one. Also some small trinkets probably stolen from around the house - rings, pins, a letter-opener, suchlike.
Mirage groans as a dark-grey mouse pokes its whiskered face out.
"EYY where you get off foggin' up my space? Rude, rude rude!"
What IS it with these rodents?
Cypher's looking at the mouse with suspicion and confusion, unsure what's going on and not particularly interested in staying to find out.
Satisfied that there is no further evidence in the mouse-hole, Mirage backs out of the room with him.
"Yeah you better run!" the mouse heckles. She flips it off.
As they close the door, they hear giggles.
High, chiming giggles.
Cypher spins, pulls the door shut behind them and stepping between Mirage and the rest of the room. Over his shoulder, she can see two creatures, tiny ones. Maybe eight inches high if she counted the wings? Their bodies are mostly humanoid, though toothpick-thin. Their eyes are large, compounded, and vibrantly green. Featherlike antennae curl outward from their shaggy, mosslike hair. They're approaching quickly.
Fuck.
Mirages instinct is to bolt, but of the exits, one leads back toward Amir, and the other toward the approaching sprites.
Cypher, on the other hand, is immediately in combat mode. "Oh no you fucking don't," he mutters, eyes flashing white as he hurls his latest trick into their tiny heads.
Both of them dip their altitude, faltering. Tthey press their hands to their weird insectoid heads, giggles ceasing for screams that sound like tea kettles boiling, so high and thin they sound more like faint whistles.
They're wobbly in the air, but it's not enough to drop them, apparently. One of them looks up, still holding its hands over its absurdly long, feathery ears, and says "WOW" (in common), eyes shining.
"Mellie, you felt that, right?"
"Sure did! Hey you, how much you want for that, huh?"
They continue flying toward them, alight with excitement.
“What the fuck”
"The DRIVE" one exclaims,
"The desperation" sighs the other
Cypher's backing up, trying to get a read on what went wrong.
"Really, what do you want, We'll buy it off you - name a price!"
"I'm not selling you anything," he says, "you better back off if you don't want to feel that again"
Behind him, Mirage is just as confused.
“You want to buy…pain?”
"Oh heavens no, you can take those bits out," the fey shakes its head.
"Winter court nonsense" the other nods.
"The drive though, the passion, the momentum!"
The two sigh in unison, ecstatic.
It clicks. “Oh like a high?”
"Hey lemme just take a quick peek won't feel a thing-" one of the pair tries to rush in close, but Mirage's dagger was already in hand. She slashes, but cuts its wing only after it's touched down on Cypher's wrist, which was raised to swat it away.
The sprite lands on the floor, unable to fly. It looks up at her, cocking its head "That was rude." it says. Then to the warlock. "Damn, you don't have much other than fear in there, do you?"
"So is touching someone without their consent. Try it again and I’ll take the other wing."
"I think you'll find there's a fair bit of FUCK YOU in there, too," adds the warlock, seething.
It waves a hand dismissively "I didn't hurt him, that's uneven. And you can keep the fuckyou, there's a decent flavour of ambition in there, but not worth the resentment. I'm not interested."
"You hurt his sense of safety and autonomy," Mirage counters, "go fuck yourself."
It considers this, briefly.
"Is that so?"
“Indeed. Mellie.” Mirage emphasizes the name, recalling tales of its power.
"In that case, I'll double my offer." It redirects its compound-eyes to Cypher, who's still torn between modes of 'what the fuck' and 'fuck you' and 'how do I get rid of these fucking things'
“You’ve yet to make one, by the way,” Mirage points out, stalling.
"Well he's gotta tell me what he wants! Besides the obvious, I mean."
"I'm not trading with you." Cypher says, suddenly calm. "I'm not giving or selling you anything. Neither is she."
"Well she gets to decide that herself surel-"
He cuts it off. "Mirage I could try that again but I'm really not a fan of how that went. They seem to bleed like anything else, if you'd be so kind."
Mirage dives forward with her daggers bared.
"Hey!"
One swipe and the other sprite is on the ground, gossamer wings fluttering uselessly - no running now. Finishing off the creatures after that is easy.
As she stands over their corpses, Cypher nudges them with the toe of his boot, making sure.
"Creepy fuckers. We should finish up fast, I can't think of any benign reason for those cancerous shitstains to be here"
Mirage nods. “He’d have his main bodyguard on the floor where he sleeps. Let’s go.”
They take a moment to stuff the bodies in one of the rolled-up banners against the wall.
"The imp thing had the courtesy to return to hell. Clean up after itself," Mirage gripes, wiping her hands off on the tassels.
They head down the short steps to a wide landing with two doors: one's metal and closes with a turning handle, it's clearly a vault of some kind. The other is a polished mahogany door that still smells like furniture polish.
Bingo.
Mirage runs a careful inspection of the bedhamber door. No sound from within, and Nimbus confirms the room beyond is empty. She moves her focus to the doorway itself. No mechanisms present, construction solid and quality, but simple, but something magical buzzes like static over her senses. The door is enchanted.
Focusing, she makes a face. Amir has enchanted his personal chambers to automatically disallow entry to anything that is not air elemental. She and Nimbus will be fine, but her human cohort, notsomuch.
“Racist fuck," she mutters. Breaks down what's going on to Cypher.
He processes the problem, then scoffs. "His loss, I guess."
“Watch my back?” She asks.
He frowns, "I don't love the idea of splitting up."
She doesn't, either. Mirage revisits her inspection of the doorframe. Is there a rune she can disrupt, like Cobbles' binding? Or maybe an anchor she can remove. Is it physical presence in the doorway that triggers it?
"Can you teleport past?"
He grimaces, "It's... not really a teleport."
No, then.
The stonework around the doorframe is well done. Neither of them have the tools or the power to pull it apart, if that would even work. She can't tell if it's even anchored on the bricks or just situated in the same space.
Cypher reads the 'no' in her face.
"Can we at least test if I can cast through it?"
“Yeah go ahead”
She picks the lock easily, pushing the door open. She was looking for the master suite, and she has certainly found it. It's a pretty tasteful bedroom all things considered. Borderline minimalist. There's some kind of cabinet or dresser in view from the doorway, with a large mirror on it.
She turns to ask how he wants to test his magic, and decides to stay silent when she sees his eyes faded, neck tense. She follows his eyeline into the room.
The mirror on the dresser seems absent; it flickers in and out of focus, her gaze keeps slipping off it, she struggles to remember whether there was something on that dresser a minute ago.
"Okay," he straightens as the mirror returns to percpetion. "There's that, at least."
He looks over the doorframe. "I can't talk you out of going in, can I?"
“It’s gonna be okay. This is why we’re here.”
This does little to appease him.
Nimbus, get us some more details, won't you?
The little cloud drifts back into the room, investigating behind furniture, between floorboards.
"I'd say be careful, but you already know that. Especially of that mirror though; it's weird. It's got like, another layer to it or something. Don't touch it"
Nimbus has found a rune circle under the bed. The letters look like the journals - infernal. In the interest of transparency, she relays this.
"Don't touch that, either. I wonder if I could distort past the filter?" He looks doubtful. Mirage shakes her head.
“I’m sorry, I don’t like it either, but I don’t know how to disable the trap.”
"It's- well, it's not fine, but," Stressful exhale, "Hey, it's you, snooping around places you're not supposed to be, snagging things you're not supposed to have. Is there a surer bet in the world?"
He attempts a smile, transparently still worried and stressing in advance over the idea something happens to you in there and he can't reach you, but trying to push it aside.
She reaches forward and grabs his hand, gives it a squeeze as he looks down at it, startled.
“I know I choked a couple times back there,"
He looks at her face again, frowning. Listens.
"-but I need you to have faith in me, because I’m having a hard time having enough in myself right now.”
"Okay, woah, no, listen. This is not about faith in you. If it's you against all nine levels of Baator, my money's on you every time. This is just me being.... selfish, I guess."
He squeezes her hand back, brief. Reattempts the smile.
"You've got this, and I've got your back."
He steps back, brushing his thumb over the back of her hand as he releases it.
Goosebumps running up her forearm, Mirage steps through the door.
The room is pretty well-lit from the large windows. She's careful to avoid the mirror as she moves, keeping her reflection clear.
Okay, if I'm Amir, where do I hide my shit.
A king-size bed covered in way too many cushions and blankets piled on it dominates the east wall, canopied by a Muqarna that arches behind and above the head of the bed. There are a couple of nightstands, but they contain normal shit. Silk pyjamas, a jewelery box with rings, chains, pins.
Boring.
Searching the wall geometry, Mirage finds a hidden button. Debates for a moment, then presses it.
There's a sound like whirling wind; a faint howling from an unclear direction, like air released from a sealed space. She pans her gaze around the muqarna, looking for an opened compartment or maybe a tunnel.
From the doorway, a whisper.
"Oh, shit."
The warlock hasn't even finished pronouncing the expletive when a voice fades in from behind her, turning her gaze toward the mirror, though she keeps her eyes trained on the wall beside it, only processing the reflection in her peripheral. Colour, movement, and fading in, a voice, screaming, but muffled, as if from far away.
"LET ME OUT! YOU CAN'T KEEP ME HERE! I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING! PLEASE!"
The litany is a less-vulgar echo of the threats that wore her own throat raw barely a week ago. The button seems to have activated some kind of scrying function on the mirror, looking in on her cell. Well, someone else's cell now.
Fuck.
She lets her rage clear her mind, focusing on it.
It’s a fucking jailbreak now bitch.
She grits her teeth, pressing the button again to end the connection and turning her attention to the dresser that the mirror sits on, still avoiding its reflection.
From the doorway,
"Mirage?"
"Yea."
"We're not just leaving after this anymore, are we?"
"Nope."
"Figured. Jesus christ."
Report Date
15 Mar 2025
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