T - Bee, Dark, Nako, Vyn

[Vyn]

Javaid's ear twitched when the Morganberry spoke. She was eternally helpful, wasn't she? He stared at her hard from his peripheral but didn't turn away until the Esterberry began to curse in frustration.

Hm? Had he missed something?

So the girl had continued up? Good to know, maybe. The fact that he himself couldn't smell or sense anything was a little disconcerting, but it was vastly better than venturing forth without any information.

"So be it. We go up." He waited briefly while the sugar glider scampered away to poke at thing sticking from the empty frame. How odd... When she rejoined them, he nodded and began climbing the stairs once more.

As the light filtered away and darkness replaced it, he activated his night vision. "Please stay close. The stairway is consistent for now, but I will warn you of changes... or danger." In the meantime, he would keep an eye out for something that could potentially be used as a light source.

(Sorry for the post delay, Vyn is back now.<3)

[Bee]

She could smell those accursed vines all the way up the stairs, which seemed interminable. It was just a magic plant (if "just" were even an appropriate term to apply to it), but she was beginning to hate its stench. She could almost feel it wrapped around her throat. Well, she thought, when they met again, they would be prepared, and she would have the last laugh because her windpipe would not be constricted. Blast, she should have grabbed that ledger. She was so accustomed to always having a book on hand that it did not occur to her that she should be without paper--and the tiny scrap from the frame did not count. What she truly needed in all practical senses was a good book.

Her eyes adjusted little to the dark, and she kept, as was increasingly their wont, close to Javaid, nearly brushing into Suha as they ascended. How wretchedly appropriate that their favorite Morganberry friend should seem to have no trace of Morganberry fire; that of course would have been far too useful. She looked along the walls for possible light sources but the candelabra, where they could be found, were vacant as the picture frames. Nothing changed or mutated into a threat as they went up, which somehow only set her more on edge. She knew something was up there...

At last they hit the landing. She could see well enough to take in the full extent of this new leg of their journey, their quest for the taken girl, and her eyes beheld...

Jack shit.

[Slight edit for continuity!]

[Nathalia]

The bit of paper Phaedra tugged ripped a little in her hand, she could see smeared ink in the tiny corner she tore off.
Wait...
does that mean it was fresh?

Regardless, the landing came into view...and showed them a rather startling sight.
As startling as nothing can be.
This landing seems...
Empty.
No doors, no windows, no picture frames, no tables, no...nothing.
Just one long hallway, extending down about 50 feet to the end.
Where stands a large, full-length mirror.

Nothing more.

[Dark]

Suha was rather delighted when they discovered the stairs led to nothing but an empty hallway--unusual, to have a space with no useful (or decorative) purpose, but Suha didn't care to dwell on the why as long as the chances of being attacked from a darkened room or alcove were so drastically reduced by the lack thereof--and felt quite a bit of the anticipatory dread she'd been experiencing slip away. It looked as if Phaedra had been wrong; there was no where that they could hide a little girl adequately. (Except maybe in pieces?)

They traveled down the hallway to make certain--a waste of time, Suha was sure--and the glint of glass caught her eye. What a stunning mirror.

Suha stepped around Javaid to admire the artfully carved frame--she couldn't quite tell the exact theme in the gloom, but it looked rather sinuous, and there might have been some inlay work; she moved closer to see, feathers reaching out to caress the wood--and, of course, her own reflection.

[Vyn]

Nothing.

The hallway stood long and empty. No adjacent doors, none of the previously shown attempts at creating a sound illusion. Just a long hallway terminating in a large mirror. No empty hallway needed a mirror. It could only reflect that vast emptiness and the individual before it.

Or whatever lay beyond.
(And, on this vastly bizarre evening, that was no stretch of the imagination.)

There were countless tales connected with mirrors -- superstitions, yes, but he knew from personal experience that superstition was not always wrong -- and all of them were made worse when they were connected to not-quite-buildings and mist-consumed cities. Spirits lurked in mirrors, waiting to trap you in your reflection and steal away with your body, or glass boundaries grew thin and swallowed curious individuals into backward worlds.

Ancestors watch over him, Javaid would not go near that mirror.

His fingers tapped nervously against the his staff, the faint click of nail to bone almost reassuring in the emptiness he faced. If Suha was not consumed by the mirror, or something worse, he might approach. For now he simply inquired from his place. "Might the mirror hinge away from the wall to reveal something more?"

[Bee]

Phaedra, in a scant few seconds, had worked herself into a quiet, polite, frothing rage. It was as though this barren hallway existed for the sole purpose of spiting her and she already had one wretched thing existing purely to spite her, thank you very much. She calmed her mannerly wrath a bit when she thought that the mirror, like a picture frame in a rich household, might conceal something worthwhile; she calmed a little further when Javaid gave voice to her thoughts.

She calmed completely when she saw that Suha, perhaps lured by the horrible grotesqueness of her own fanged and fork-tongued face, was the first to haul over and touch the thing. She really was quite a considerate woman when it counted, wasn't she.

She could only hope that Javaid's suggestion was somewhere close to the mark. She could still smell the wretched vines, damn it. Perhaps something had crawled through here.

[Nathalia]

Suha approached the mirror and at the touch, she felt her entire body shiver involuntarily, and heard...voices? Yes, it almost sounded like a stern female voice...commanding, but gentle.
Couldn't hear what was being said, though.
She can see herself in the mirror's surface, covered in jewels and looking as beautiful as she did when she was younger and as lovely as could be! What's going on here?
The other two cannot see anything, nor hear it; the mirror does not reflect any of them...just the empty hallway behind them, as though they weren't there at all.

Should the others try to unhinge the mirror from the wall, they will find that it can easily be taken down...there is only blank wall behind it.

[Dark]

Suha gave a small start, shivering involuntarily, as the most peculiar sensation overtook her person; and then began the voices. A whisper, really, and she couldn’t make out the words. Just gender--female--and overall tone--gentle, but stern. She glanced at the others surreptitiously to see if they heard anything, but their visages remained unchanged.

Turning back to consider the mirror, she experienced another start. Suha leaned closer to the glass, beak almost touching.

How extraordinary. It was not her true reflection on the mirror’s surface--the glass had obviously been bewitched, but to what purpose: to show desire? youth?--but it was very pleasing to look at regardless. Suha tilted her head, marveling at the image. In her day she truly had been a sight to behold; not to say she was not attractive in later life, but she didn’t possess the same vitality and freshness of her younger years. Suha preferred experience over youth, though it was a shame. And such lovely jewels her false reflection wore.

“A lovely mirror, yes?” she slyly asked the others, wondering what was staring back at them.

[Vyn]

Javaid shook his head, a look of dissatisfaction upon his muzzle. Suha seemed enamored with her treasure, but Javaid could see no use in it. Unless she could pick it up and stuff it in a nonexistent pocket, they were at a dead end, and a very suspicious one at that.

From where he stood, he couldn't even be sure he saw the hint of the Morganberry's fiery feathers reflected in the dark glassy surface. No good would come of this.

"Lovely, yes... but if there's nothing more here. We should move on."

He heard no voices, saw no alternatives, and really disliked this mirror stoppered hallway. Perhaps they'd have better luck with the picture-less hallway? It at least had doors. Better yet, they could just leave.

He glanced toward Phaedra, hoping that she would follow his suggestion... Unless she too felt inclined to investigate the mirror. If so, he would sit back and wait.

[Bee]

Phaedra's subdued frustration kicked up a little. She had truly hoped this was the right way; she wanted to find the girl, and nearly as much as that, she loathed being wrong with every fiber of her existence. In the wrong was just not where she lived; it was not where she set up shop; it was not even where she went strolling every once in a while to pick up some home-made falsity fudge from the Little Shoppe of Errors. She gathered her facts and she formed conclusions and they were right.

There was something curious about the mirror, though. Phaedra could not see her own face in it, nor Javaid's. It did not show Suha either, so she had little idea what the Morganberry was so delighted with.

"It is enchantingly disappointing," Phaedra said. She knew Javaid wanted to go back, and she did too, but--my, her pride getting the better of her, how atypical. She walked over to Suha and poked the glass. "What do you see, anyway?" she asked, with slightly angry curiosity. "Merely your own stunning visage? Because I can't see anything."