Betrothal's Price

Chapter 32: No Escape From It

Isla awoke in a labyrinth. She stood up from laying on the ground, and looked around for an inkling of where she was. She’d heard of these kinds of labyrinths before, but only in stories. She’d never been given any reason to believe them to be real.

It was dark, with very little light coming from a nonexistent source. This must’ve been huge, because with every step she took and every sound she made, it echoed for what sounded like miles.

She tried to remember what had happened before she woke, but everything was fuzzy. She couldn’t make heads or tails of anything. So she just looked around for a way out. Oddly in any direction she walked in, she seemed to be walking further into the labyrinth even though she'd turned around to exit. When she reached a certain point, she realized the walls of the labyrinth had become mirrors. Mirrors right beside more mirrors. In fact, the walls were solely mirrors.

Had they just started being there? Or had they always been there?  She couldn’t remember. Maybe she just didn’t notice. Well, whether or not she did, they were here now. It was a good thing she wasn’t afraid of her own reflection or she’d be in trouble.

She didn’t pay the mirrors much mind, deciding to just look ahead, even if she couldn’t see much of what was in front of her. She had no business, vainly looking at herself in a mirror. Though a single glance in a mirror’s reflection and she noticed a small smudge on the frame. It was just a smudge, so she decided to fix it. It wouldn’t hurt. She oddly felt no rush to get anywhere, she wasn’t getting anywhere very fast, anyway.

She licked her thumb and cleaned the smudge in under a minute. There. Now, she could be on her way. She nearly turned away, but stopped and took a moment just looking at her reflection. Maybe she wasn’t as ugly as she’d thought. She was kinda pretty, if it wasn’t vain to think.

She didn’t stand still for long. She soon readied to turn around, but something else caught her attention. The reflection began to morph. She once again stopped and watched as the reflection changed to a scenery.

It was the secret Breach between Littus and the EverGreen Forest. Isla wasn’t sure how she knew that. She’d barely seen much of it, much less heard about it.

The Breach was crowded with warriors fighting. Two people were in the center of it all, fighting everyone else off. Their chances of survival in this were slim but they fought like they’d trained for it their whole lives. Isla struggled to get a good look at them. They seemed to be a man and a woman, elves for sure.

Then finally, she got a good look at the woman and instantly knew who she and the man were. The woman had medium length, straight bright scarlet hair, her bangs sharing the same length and pulled back in a messy top bun, piercing blue eyes much like Everett's. She was slimmer than Isla, but that hardly mattered; She was filled with rage. Her elven markings were indigo were underneath her eyes, unlike Isla's whose crept above her eyelids. This was Isla’s mother.

The two people fighting were her parents, Erin and Finlay.

“Mum? Dad?” She wished she could walk through the mirror and help them, but she couldn't. The mirror was merely a window in which to see through. Then it occurred to her. They were presently gone. They had been for about 3 and a half months. Either this was fake or this was a window to the day they died.

How was this even happening? How was it possible?

Not a moment passed when Isla saw a corrupted Silvestrian soldier creep up behind her father, Finlay. “No.” Isla mumbled, but she couldn’t warn him. He couldn’t hear her. This was the past, it was something she couldn’t change. In a split second the Silvestrian soldier stabbed Finlay’s blade into his back, killing him instantly.