Paint it Another Colour

Chapter 24

(Sorry for not continuing this sooner. Have a recap coz you've probably forgotten what the hell happened XD)

"Eh?" Arthur sat up, rubbing the back of his head. "Emil, what are you doing here?"

Emil stared at him as though it was obvious. "I've come to help."

"You know we only accept people who can do magic right?" Vladimir grumbled. "If you have any ideas, we'd love to hear them. Your brother was the one with the ideas."

"I know" Emil muttered. "And I know you only accept people who have magic. That's why I've come to help."

"What do you mean?" Arthur frowned.

Emil sighed and closed the door behind him. "I mean, Lukas taught me a few things. Not that much, but a couple of things and so..."

"How do we know you're not pretending?" Vladimir put his head on the table.

"He's in a bad mood" Peter smiled.

"I'm not" Vladimir shouted, aiming a fist at him but obviously missing and collapsing back onto the table.

"He is" Peter whispered and hopped down from his chair, going to stand next to Arthur, clutching at his hand. "Show us."

Emil blinked. "Sh... show?"

"Yeah" Peter said. "Show us some magic."

Emil blinked again, slower this time as though he was trying to get over what had just been requested of him. "Oh... okay." He put out one hand and flicked a couple of his fingers. A stream of green and pink light flew out of his hand, hovering just above his palm as it swarmed together into a glowing ball which he held still for a second before putting it out by closing his hand.

Arthur laughed. "You said Lukas had only taught you a little bit! That was his favourite spell. And the hardest in the book."

"Really?" Emil's eyebrows shot up and he looked around for a second. "Oh."

"So anyway" Vladimir shoved back his chair, ignoring the look of disgust he got from Arthur as it grinded along the floor leaving skid marks in the stone. "You said you had come to help? Do you have any ideas? Any at all? We have none what-so-ever between us, apart from Peter, who suggested removing their memories. It was a good idea, but..."

"We've classed it as Plan B" Arthur interrupted. "There's too much that could go wrong with it, so if nothing works, or we have no other ideas, that's the one we go for."

Emil hesitated and then rummaged around in his pocket for a scrap of paper. It was torn in many places and had a hole through the middle, scribbles in various languages covering the entire piece. "You see... Lukas used to tell me this story... ages ago like, when I was tiny. It was about this mirror that could trap anything inside it. At first it was just a story, then Matthias just happened to accidentally bring it home once. It was at Lukas'. He didn't trust any of us with anything like it, and he used to say he could hear voices whispering from it." Emil stopped for a second and frowned at his paper, crumpling it up again and stuffing it back into his pocket.

"You said it 'was' at Lukas'" Vladimir peered at him. "So... what's happened to it?"

Emil shrugged. "I don't know. Last I knew it was still there, but it might've been lost somewhere. It was never at the Nordic house though, so I don't think it's been destroyed at all."

"So you're saying" Arthur said slowly. "That we should basically trap them in mirrors?"

Emil nodded. "They would still be alive. They'd be locked on the other side of the mirror, maybe still able to talk to us, but unable to do anything apart from that. It shouldn't effect anything now because they'd still technically be here."

"It's like a super-protected dungeon then" Vladimir cried, leaping up from his chair, eyes shining.

"Yeah" Emil said. "I mean... obviously they'd be able to get out if their counterpart touched the mirror on the other side, but other than that, I don't think there's any other way to get out of it."

"And then when they're inside, we can smash it" Peter shouted, miming it out on the wall and then whimpering and rubbing his hand. "Ow!"

"Um... maybe not smash it" Arthur said. "That might either kill them or let them out again, but certainly put it away so no one could get to it."

"Give it it's own cell at the top of the tower" Vladimir shouted, getting way to into the whole topic. "Then it'd have to grow its hair really long and wait for a handsome prince to come along and save it!"

"This is a mirror we're talking about idiot" Arthur snapped, hitting him lightly. "Mirror's can't have hair."

Vladimir pulled a face. "Spoil sport."

***

Footsteps pounded down the hall. Egil laughed to himself inwardly at his genius, clutching his package close to his chest. How had he not thought of this before? It was as simple as anything, but he hadn't had the idea before! For a second, he stopped. What if they'd already had the idea? No. They couldn't have done. It was his idea. His alone and there was no one who would be able to think of it now. He got to a door and kicked it open violently, walking in and sitting down, grinning at the four people around the table.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Loki took his feet off the table and leaned across to glare at him, flicking his lighter. "You're not meant to be here. And what the hell is that?" he gestured to the package, now cluttering up the table.

"I've had an idea about them" Egil laughed.

"That so?" Oliver passed him a cupcake. "Tell us poppet. What's this 'idea' of yours?"

"Don't eat it" Merlin grunted. "It's poisonous."

Oliver laughed. "He's catching on well isn't he."

"Uh... yeah" Egil gently put the cupcake down from nearly taking a bite from it.

"Well are you going to tell us or what?" Vasska snapped. "We don't have all day you know."

"Oh yeah!" Egil laughed and picked up the package. "So basically, long story short, this'll get rid of them forever,  but without doing anything to damage the country itself. They can only be freed by their counterpart touching it, or the person who put them in touching it. I've already got Allen, but obviously he's out again... and also out to kill me." He laughed nervously and scratched the back of his head before continuing to unwrap the package. "I stole this from the house where Lukas lived."

He finished unwrapping it and placed the mirror on the table.