To the Shadowsinger | Azriel

Chapter 61: To the Queen

"Please don't let the door close behind me," Wylla said to Harani. She hadn't thought about being trapped in the room until Harani mentioned it, but now she couldn't stop thinking about it. An eternity of her, a broken mirror, and rats for food and company. She would have to take up a hobby in singing to pass the time and she hated singing.

Harani's smile was sad, "It'll be okay, honey."

What a vague phrase. What will be okay? Wylla? The situation? The world? Wylla let her hostility towards that statement distract her from her fear as she walked through the dark room. She could barely make out anything so she held out her bloody palm and let fire rise until she could see her surroundings. In front of her were two lamps hanging on the wall, she shot her flames out and let them ignite the wicks.

She wasn't impressed by the room but she figured that was a good thing. It was an old and dusty cell with chains hanging from the ceiling. She utilized her peripheral vision to see the room wasn't that big and it was empty. There was one thing she didn't see- the mirror. She refused to turn around, had purposely kept her back that way because she could feel its presence like a second heartbeat.

Wylla was terrified that her own heart would beat itself out of her chest. She pressed her hand against it and urged it to settle down and then she took a step backwards.

"What if this was all a dream?" Wylla found herself wondering out loud. That would be funny, this was such a realistic yet odd scenario. "I got hit in the head and now I'm dreaming of another world," she took two more steps back. Talking to herself made her feel better so she continued with each step backwards, "And one day I'll wake up, I'll be at home, and I'll know this never really happened."

Her fingertips tingled with the sensation of something near. She pushed back further until her palms pressed against something cold and sharp.

"Maybe this is the only way out," she slid her fingers over the sharp edges. The pain almost felt good.

"Hello, Oreoboso," she greeted the mirror, trying to gain its favor. "My friend Bryaxis made you. Maybe we can be friends too?" She used her foot to test the ground behind her and learn there was glass on the floor. Knowing this, she sat down with her back to the wall and cringed at the pain of glass cutting through her dress and bottom. This pain didn't matter though, it was nothing to her as she reached behind and picked up a large shard of glass.

This is it, she closed her eyes and brought the broken piece in front of her. "I can do this," she opened her eyes.

Her blue eyes stared back at her. She looked... tired. Her curly brown hair looked a mess, coils bounced in all directions, and her eyelids were pink from crying. Besides that, the broken piece of mirror was just a broken piece of mirror. There was nothing special about it.

She knew the mirror behind her was the mirror, but why was nothing happening when she looked into it? Did this piece lose its magic? She set it down and picked up another piece off the ground, not even hesitating to look into it.

Still, nothing.

"No, no, no," she tried again and again. Setting the broken pieces she had looked into in a pile at her side. This had to work. She knew the mirror was broken but it still, in a sense, worked. They knew this because Rai's mind was still going in and out of it.

"Everything okay?" Harani called out from the hall.

Wylla wiped her bloody hands on her dress. "Yeah," she called out. She was alive, so she figured that was okay. What she needed was to get inside the mirror.

When one thing fails, move onto the next, don't sulk about the failure. She pushed up off the ground and pressed her back against the mirror, feeling the hum of its power. The magic touched her like raindrops, each shard of glass produced its own drop. The glass on the floor had been stagnant, maybe that's why it didn't work.