The Night Train

-Prologue-

Authors note: This story is a collab between a few of my friends and me that has been going on for a few years. We are not done with the book currently and as we started this when we were very bad writers and only picked it back up a few months ago, some parts of the book dont make much sense right now, but I hope you will persist and continue to read anyway! The cover will probably be temporary. Enjoy!

-Prologue-

Maurine stared at the mirror across from her. Her reflection stared back at her, looking scared and anxious. She slowly tied back her bright pink hair. The reflection in the mirror caught her eye. Her brown face was still covered in freckles and acne, despite her mentor's many attempts to "cleanse her of the blight" by crafting at least twenty foul-tasting concoctions for her to consume. Her frizzy dark brown hair was showing at the roots, though the pink was still prominent. Just another thing to worry about, I guess she thought to herself. Smoothing out her dark, dragonfly green dress, she took in a small breath. Nausea overtook her as she began to feel drowsy. She knew it probably was the fact that she hadn't had enough sleep the night before. She had stayed up too late at night, way too scared for her very first official test. Now she was paying for it.

Her cat, Nibbles, was happily sitting across the room, on top of a large stack of spellbooks, contentedly licking himself clean.

"All you have to do is walk through." Her mentor said. Marine took a deep breath and sighed. "Just walk through."She echoed. Though her mind wanted to, her feet were firmly rooted to the ground as if they had been there for a thousand years. "Yeah, that'll be easy". Her mind started to wander to the dream she had. It was so blurry, but she could remember four faces, and a long shadowy figure that seemed to always be trailing behind that other girl with a tattered dress. There had been a strange sort of aura surrounding them and binding her with these people, but not much else.

"Hurry up," snapped her witch teacher. Maurine sighed, her mentor's voice bringing her back to cold reality. Maurine straightened,  put mind over matter, and walked in through the mirror.

A feeling as though she had stepped into an extremely thick vat of maple syrup washed over her. All of a sudden she was swimming in a room filled with what appeared to be liquid glass. Light streamed into the room from countless openings, all of which looked like mirrors. Through each mirror, there was a fuzzy outline of a room. Most looked like an entrance to a bathroom or closet. That reminds me, I probably should have gone to the bathroom before I did this. Urrrg, curse my nervousness! She thought to herself.

She looked around for the mirror that she had come out of, and found that there were way too many mirrors. She looked above her to find that she was in what appeared to be a seemingly endless tower spiraling up into oblivion. It would be impossible to find what mirror she had come from, let alone a single one in this maze of them. It was like walking into a funhouse. Stricken with panic, Maurine frantically scanned as many mirrors as she could. Her eyes landed on a mirror that was about as tall as she was with a glittering black onyx frame. Her memory could scarcely recall that that was the mirror that hung in her mentor's study that she had forever wanted to gaze at her reflection through. Her mentor always kept a heavy cloth over it. One day, when Maurine had asked her if she could please gaze into it, just once. Her mentor had replied: "Only the most desperate gaze into a black onyx mirror"

This had to be her mentor's mirror. She drifted over to it and gazed into its depths, only to see a swirling mass that looked like a cyclone. It was different from the other mirrors. She felt as if her soul was being pulled towards it and was grasping on tight.

Maurine got sucked in and tumbled through the mirror, landing hard on her tailbone. She painfully stood up, rubbing her back as she took in her surroundings. She was in a room that looked like it hadn't been lived in for centuries, with dust coating every surface. The only light that filled the room was from a small window with black-tinted glass, and even with the window, it was very dark. The smell of mold and decay crawled up her nostrils. She squinted, trying to make out the dark shapes. Everything was in a shade of black or grey. A canopied bed in the center of the room had black covers and thick grey velvet curtains with gray tulle on the ends. There was a desk made of dark ebony wood. A bottle of ink and a raven feather quill sat ready next to a black leather-bound book as if it was still waiting for its author to return.

Maurine looked behind her and saw a black vanity. Beside it, she saw the body-length black onyx mirror that she had come out of. Something on the vanity caught her eye. It was shrouded by a vail but she could see it just fine. It appeared to be a crown of some sort. Maurine carefully lifted off the vail. It was indeed a crown. It was made of black onyx, just like the mirrors. It had long spindly fingers reaching up and a singular onyx gem, red as blood set into the center. It gave off a creepy essence that made her shudder. She abandoned the crown, went over to the only door, and turned the handle,  opened the very creaky door, and stepped out of the room.

Maurine was in a hallway. It turned sharply about ten yards to her left. She started walking towards the turn. As she rounded the bend, she saw a sign of life. And, it wasn't what she had wanted.

She was staring at the backs of two creatures that looked a lot like devils. They were wearing red leather jackets and black breeches that were tucked into bulky combat boots. They both had golden hair that was cut short. Perched on top of each of their heads was a blood-red beret. They also had a forked tail peeking out of their breeches. Their skin was charred and burnt.

The two devil-creatures grunting and muttering to each other in a language that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. They were bumping and nudging each other playfully.

Her heart was a brass band in her chest. Suddenly Maurine, who had been stealthily sneaking up behind one of the demons, preparing to give him a nice little scare with a shock wave spell, tripped on the untied shoelace of her boot. She thudded to the floor, losing concentration of her spell orb. Both Devils turned at the same time, Eyeing her with an identical look of surprise. Little horns peeked out of their berets and their eyes were red. They both had fangs and sharp claws jutting from hairy fingers.

For a second the three just stared at each other. Then the awkward silence was broken by one of the devils nudging his friend. He muttered something to his friend, "Creechmedooomeegg mmuubbbllliiifffuusss" Then both devils sprang up, and without warning, charged.

Maurine fumbled herself to her feet and took off running down the hallway that she came from. She could hear the devil's bulky boots thudding on the floor and knew that they were coming for her. She dared to glance back, and saw that the devils were a dangerous three yards away from her.

Two.

Two and a half.

One.

She couldn't watch it. Maurine darted through an open door along the corridor. And she was surprised to see that it was the door to the creepy black room that she had fled only minutes ago.

She darted around the bed, rising dust as she went. Floorboards creaked as she raced to the other end of the room where the mirror stood tall against the wall. Her hand out of instinct shot out and grabbed the black onyx crown and it's a veil. She took a running head start in the mirror. But, just as she felt her toes enter the mirror, a furry claw grabbed onto her midnight blue cotton cape and snatched a chunk out of it.

Maurine fought her way through the mirror and plunged into the strange mirror dimension. Suddenly, her eyes caught another black onyx mirror tucked in between a shiny golden framed mirror and a bronze framed mirror. Maurine dove towards it.

After so many steps and countless leaps, she reached the black onyx frame of the mirror. Her mirror. And grasped the delicate framework. Holding tight she pulled herself out of the room. The next thing she knew, she fell out of the mirror and landed flat on her stomach. Freezing air hit her hard and she realized that she couldn't breathe. She saw her mentor's hand in front of her face. She saw was her mentor fumbling around in the messy cabinets bolted to the wall, looking for a potion. Then the wall exploded. As the explosion happened she heard an almost inaudible voice screech from the shadows. "Shhheeee who ssstrealsss from meeee wiiill payyyyy." That was the last she saw of her mentor. Probably because her mentor was dead. So Maurine ran. Because getting framed for murder was not in her daily plan. All that was left was her mentor's spellbook until Maurine took it.

End of prologue.

Authors Note: Thank you so much for reading the prologue to The Night Train! Im going to upload the first chapter within the next few days and after that, I will be uploading around once a week until I catch up to where the story has been written. This chapter was mostly written by RBG but Icb also took part and I edited it like I do all the chapters. I hope you enjoyed it and can't wait for more!