D&D 5E Tap Tap Tap

In the blink of an eye, a hawk had snatched Clotbert tightly in its talons and begun to soar aloft. It all happened so fast that, by the time Rylnethaz could shout a warning, it was already too late. But the hawk was quickly aware that not all was as it should be; it was accustomed to prey that was soft and furry, not hard and covered in chainmail. It supposed that its toes must be doing something wrong and glanced down to see what was amiss. That glance was its undoing, for it was momentarily blinded by a flash of holy light from Clotbert's hand. It instinctively loosed its grip and Clotbert fell to earth, his arms windmilling frantically. He fell in a heap with a sickening thud and was still. It would be a long time before he stood on his feet again.

Meanwhile, the other hawk had made a grab at Rylnethaz. That brave knight's upraised sword was knocked aside by a gigantic claw and it fell from his grasp, point-first into the soft ground tantalisingly out of his reach. He pulled a dagger from his belt and stabbed deep between the feathers into the fleshy part of the foot, between the toes. He must have struck true, for the foot was instantly snatched back, in a reflex action. Rylnethaz fell flat on his back as the momentum of its dive carried the bird over him and up again into the air. One razor-sharp claw glanced off the elf's shield and raked his scalp. The hawk was quick and agile; it twisted in mid-flight to strike at him again while he was down. Rylnethaz was buffeted by wild gusts of wind as the bird's wings tortured the air. "NOW!" he cried to Fingers, "JUMP NOW!"

Fingers leapt from his branch onto the bird's neck, just behind a ruff of black feathers, and began to slash with a knife in one hand whilst clinging on with the other. Under the feathers was a thick and leathery skin that lay in great wrinkles and his knife had little effect, other than to enrage the bird. With mighty wing beats, it rose skywards, twisting and rolling upside down to try to dislodge him. It was only then that Fingers realized the folly of trying to disable or kill the very thing that was keeping him from crashing to the ground, and he changed his tactics to save himself. He grasped a mass of black feathers in one arm and sawed them free from their roots with his knife. He floated gently to the ground, buoyed up by the giant feathers, while the hawk rolled free and soared aloft to the safety of its eyrie high in the tree.

All this while, BoldItalic had been reciting one of his most potent spells. He pointed up at the tree to where the nest lay in the fork, spoke the final word and the nest errupted into sheets of flame. In truth, the flames were but an illusion but the chicks did not know that and began a frantic screeching that the parents could not ignore. They both flew up to the nest to rescue their precious chicks and lift them away to safety. "Quickly!" cried BoldItalic, "We must get under cover! It will not distract them for long!"

Rylnethaz retrieved his sword and, ignoring the blood pouring from his scalp wound, ran to where Clotbert lay on the ground. He would not leave him behind. "He lives," he said as Fingers and BoldItalic joined him. Between them, they carried the unconscious priest to a place where a hollow between the gigantic tree roots would give them some protection from renewed aerial attack and set about trying to revive him. After a while, he groaned and began to rave and cry out incoherently. Alas! The fall had knocked him crazy.

"Help me dig into the earth here," commanded Rylnethaz. "We will burrow like rabbits to make a chamber safe from hawks, then wait for nightfall and make a break for it. They will not hunt at night. Perhaps by then our friend Clotbert will have recovered his wits."

"A good plan," agreed BoldItalic. "Can we use your shield as a shovel? We otherwise have none. But you are losing too much blood. Allow us to bind your head wound, and please take a draught of this elixir. It will not heal you, but it may stop the bleeding and numb the pain a little."

Rylnethaz drank gratefully, whilst trying to restrain the wildly-thrashing Clotbert.

"Now what?" demanded Fingers.

"I need your mirror," said BoldItalic. "I have an idea."

They dug themselves a hidey-hole in the soft earth and made an improvised rampart with the spoil, then they carefully positioned Clotbert under the tree root, which was about a yard thick, so that his wildly thrashing arms would not bring down the roof of their chamber. As they dug, Fingers asked BoldItalic why he needed the mirror. "All will become clear," was his enigmatic answer.

When they finished digging, BoldItalic took the mirror and embedded it in the earth rampart at a sloping angle, so that they could look out from the safety of their chamber and see the reflection of the sky straight above them from whence the hawks, if they attacked again, would come.

Rylnethaz approved. "This idea has wider applications, perhaps to the defence of castles," he mused, "But the glass needs a good polish." And so saying, he began to rub the mirror with a scarf. "I look a bit of a mess, don't I?" he commented ruefully as he saw his own scarred and blood-smeared face reflected in the glass. Then he cried out in astonishment for suddenly, as he rubbed, the face in the mirror changed and became that of someone else entirely.

Rylnethaz beheld the face of the fairest elf maiden he had ever seen, looking straight back at him out of the mirror. She too seemed astonished. Her mouth went Ö and her eyes went ÔÔ then the daintiest pair of hands appeared and covered her face as if in embarassment. She peeped out saucily between her fingers, though. Then the eyes closed and the face slid slowly down out of sight. Rylnethaz rubbed frantically at the glass, but he could not bring her back. All he could see was the interior of a richly-furnished bedchamber with a distinctly feminine look and a crown motif on the wallpaper. Then that too faded until only the sky above him remained.

Rylnethaz was suddenly a changed man elf. "Why are we skulking down here?" he demanded, "I'm going to shin up the tree and take on those hawks myself. It will be hawk cutlets for dinner tonight! Who's with me?" and he started climbing the tree, hand over hand with his sword clenched between his teeth, at an astonishing turn of speed.

"Did you see what I saw?" asked Fingers. "I fear so," replied BoldItalic. "It may be that conquering armies will not be needed and princesses will feature after all." Fingers nodded towards the still-raving Clotbert. "Best not to move him, isn't it? And it might take both of us to hold him down, mightn't it?" BoldItalic agreed and they settled down to wait, sharing a venison sandwich that Fingers seemed to have found somewhere.

In a remote citadel high in the Twisty Mountains, Rumblebuff the court glazier answered a knock at his door. A rather haughty elf girl stood there, looking disdainful. She held a note elegantly between her fingertips and waited silently for him to take it. It was written on palace notepaper. "My mistress commands me to say that one is unhappy about the magic mirror you supplied last week," the note said. "You will attend immediately."

"Was the enchantment flawed?" asked the gnome, as he hastily collected his coat and outdoor boots. "Did the princess not behold the face of her one true love?" His professional reputation could be on the line, here, he thought. Not to mention his neck.

The girl replied, in the kind of aristocratic voice that can freeze a peasant at twenty paces, "My mistress is enamoured of a ruffian. It is quite unsuitable."

Meanwhile, far away in a giant forest, two hawks made up their minds.

<I have made up my mind, we attack at dawn! They tried to burn us.>

<But we survived!>

<Yes, even fire could not defeat us, we attack at dawn and we will kill the interlopers! That is the way of the sky hunters. We will take turns making sure they do not escape their hole and we attack at dawn!>

<Don’t we usually attack at nightfall?>

<Yes, but now we are going to surprise them, we attack at dawn!>

“So, a princess it is, eh,” asked Fingers, “no more armies and great battles and no more conquering your own kingdom?”

“If that suits our Coronal,” came the answer as BoldItalic adjusted the mirror a bit.

“Not quite my Vizier, not quite. I have a slight feeling that this fair maiden is not quite happy in her present arrangements. So, we will have both options, I will free the princess from her unhappy fate by conquering the kingdom. What is more, if we play our cards right, we might even be able to do it without having to raise an army, at least not a large one. A few dedicated companions will do just fine.”

“So, our plan has just been adjusted to: escape the hawks, destroy the abyssal machine and escape the abyss, thus becoming a hero able to raise a dedicated band of followers from the disillusioned subject of a possible oppressive monarch, storming the castle and freeing the princess who will finally fall in love with you even though she has only seen your reflection once in a mirror. Covered in blood and mud,” said BoldItalic in one long-winded phrase.

“Yes! Although we have to fill in some final details on the way of course.”

“Of course,” said Fingers as he chewed on his last piece of meat, “let’s not worry about a few details right now,” then he turned to BoldItalic for help but found none when BoldItalic replied, “don’t look at me, I was not the one getting the supplies. We wouldn't be here if you had bought that bow.”

“All right, one step at a time,” said Rylnethaz, “First we have to get some rest and escape or defeat the hawks. Then, find a way to restore our friend back to his usual self.”

BoldItalic poked Fingers, “see, a plan, we are filling the details already.”

Fingers rolled his eyes and groaned, “not you too!”

After a few hours, it was dawn! Well, not dawn exactly but more like what little change of ambient light passes for dawn in extra-dimensional planar conduits like the Infinite Staircase.

The air whistled though the hawk's wings. It twisted its flight feathers so and trimmed its tail feathers so as it plunged down in a steep dive, talons outstretched. It braked fiercely and hovered in the air within claws' reach of the grinning face of the smallest human-ish thing immediately below. It noted the hairy eyebrows and the tiniest detail of the face, so keen was its eyesight. It struck with great precision, estimating the distance to the pair of ears to a fraction of a hair's breadth. There was a brief sensation in its toes, accompanied by a shattering sound. The face vanished, broken into a myriad pieces. It grasped a talonfull of earth, some parts of which were sharp. This was not what talons were supposed to do. They should have been holding prey. It felt betrayed.

"No!" cried Rylnethaz, "Not the mirror!" and a great surge of emotion filled him with rage and grief and grief and rage, approximately in that order. He didn't stop to think but leapt up and and swung his sword in a mighty two-handed sweep that took the offending foot clean off the hawk. "Quite right too," said the hawk, "that foot failed in its duty. It deserved to die. Ow!"

The hawk flew back up into the sky, leaking blood from its severed limb. Its mate clacked her beak in disapproval. "Mother always said you were useless," she scolded. "Now go back and do it properly. You're supposed to bring me breakfast."

As the hawk prepared to dive again, it felt slightly unbalanced because of the now-missing weight but it knew it had to do it. Female hawks are larger than males, and there is never any doubt about who wears the feathers in the nest, so to speak.

At that moment, as Rylnethaz was gazing distraught at the shattered mirror leaving only BoldItalic and Fingers to give their undivided attention to the sky, Clotbert was forgotten. He suddenly gave an incoherent shriek, stood woodenly up and lurched past them out of the burrow and into the open. "Get back!" shouted BoldItalic frantically and tried to grab him, but Clotbert was heedless; he raised both hands aloft and declaimed in a great voice "You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the shadow! You cannot pass." then screeched like a banshee. Fingers instinctively covered his ears and BoldItalic blanched. "May Myrristra protect her servant in his madness," said BoldItalic, "for I cannot. He thinks he is Gandalf."

Perhaps Myrristra did intervene. We will never really know. But strange to relate, Clotbert's wild screech translated itself into meaning in the hawk's ears. It became the screech of the hawk god Yrrik Yrrik, uttering the doom of the world on the last day when all nests will be broken and the spirits of all the ancestors of hawks shall rise featherless and naked into a black sky. It was terrified. It forgot to fold its wings and swooped out of control to collide with the tree trunk, where it perched, shaking, on its one foot looking round wild-eyed and wishing it had been a better hawk when it was younger.

Rumblebuff tapped the princess' mirror experimentally. It did nothing. He recited some words under his breath that were not suitable for well-brought up young ladies to overhear, although well-brought up young ladies are known use language in private that would make a sergeant-major blush. The mirror still did nothing. He pointed a curious device at the base of the mirror and pressed various studs in a seemingly random fashion. The mirror did nothing. The princess tapped her foot impatiently. "It could be the wiffy," ventured Rumblebuff. "I'll need to take it back to the workshop. All under guarantee, of course."

"It's not leaving my sight," said the princess firmly. "He might …, that is, someone might, … wanttocallmeagain." She looked carefully nonchalant and studied her fingernails as she said this and her lady-in-waiting, the one who had fetched the gnome, sighed inwardly because she knew the difference between looking carefuly nonchalant and really not caring a bit. One false step now and it would be tantrums. Her mistress wasn't called Princess Infantile for nothing. (It's pronounced in-fan-till-lay, by the way, not what you were thinking.)

The injured and terrified hawk did what all sick, injured or startled birds do, which is to hide in a tree and keep very still until it stops being sick, injured or frightened. Meanwhile, up in the emergency fallback nest high aloft, the larger chick, under the approving eye of its mother, dealt simultaneously with the lack of breakfast and the annoying presence of its younger sibling, by eating the latter in lieu of the former. The mother hawk was a Neo-Darwinist and was pleased to see natural selection in action. There would be no weaklings in her nest.

"We must get away from here, before the hawks come back," declared Rynethaz as he cleaned the earth from his shield and picked up what fragments of mirror could be saved. "We should head north."

"What about the priest?" asked Fingers. "He seems to be able to stand up now, but he's as mad as a moorhen."

BoldItalic took Clotbert firmly by the elbow and spoke slowly. "Gandalf, Gandalf, listen to me. We must follow Aragorn to Rivendell. Éowyn is waiting for him. Do you understand?"

"Eh?" said Clotbert. He looked around wildly and, seeing Fingers, bent down to embrace him crying "Frodo, lad! I though we had lost you in Mordor! Still wearing Bilbo's mithril shirt, I see? Did you bring the ring?"

Fingers looked helplessly at BoldItalic, who winked and said in a loud voice "Frodo is keeping the ring hidden. The Nazgûl are on our trail. We must make haste."

"Yes, yes, of course. I should like to see Elrond again," said Clotbert, "But remind me, I see by your staff that you are one of the five wizards but I seem to have forgotten your face. You are not Saruman, are you?"

"I am Italic the Blue. I have returned from the east to aid you in your quest."

That seemed to satisfy Clotbert and he lapsed into silence. Noticing that he was still somewhat unsteady on his feet, Rylnethaz picked up a long straight branch that had fallen from the tree and gave it to him as a walking stick. To Clotbert it was a magic staff, but that didn't matter; it was something for him to lean on, anyway.

They set off through the forest and soon picked up a trail. One way led eastwards, towards a range of snow-capped mountains many day's march away; the other led westwards, down through fertile plains towards a mighty ocean.

"Ah, I see we are in Forlindon," remarked Clotbert suddenly, "This was the realm of Gil-Galad in the Second Age. I remember him as if it were yesterday."

"Would you like to talk about him?" asked Fingers. It seemed best to humour Clotbert. He was living in a fantasy world, but as long as he kept walking and didn't start hitting anybody, it seemed harmless enough. What they really needed was a temple where he could be properly attended to, but there was no sign of habitation for miles around.

"Gil-Galad was high king of the elves, who came from the west at the end of the first age and made his citadel at Forlond, south of here on the Gulf of Lune," began 'Gandalf'. "He fought alongside Elendil in the great alliance of elves and men; that very Elendil who was your ancestor, Aragorn," and here he nodded to Rylnethaz before continuing "Few save I now remember that Gil-Galad had a daughter, who was wondrous fair. Her name was Infántilë, which means 'Goldenhair' in the Sindarin tongue."

At this point, Rylnethaz began to pay closer attention to the ramblings. "Can you describe her features?" he asked, casually. "Was she by any chance about so tall, with eyes of a golden hue flecked with hazel, finely arched eyebrows, and a small mole on her left cheek just about here?" and here he pointed to a spot on his own face.

"Why yes, you have described her perfectly. Where did you read about her? I was not aware that any of the histories mentioned her, and certainly she is not in the traditional tales of the bards."

"We are going the wrong way," announced Rylnethaz. "We should be heading south, not north."

They camped that night in a hollow beside a babbling brook that was good to drink from, and Rylnethaz surprised everyone, not least himself, by improvising a bivouac from little more than a coil of rope and some ration bags, and by catching a rabbit for the stew pot. Clotbert seemed to drift off quietly into sleep, giving the others a chance to talk.

"What's all this about me being someone called Frodo?" asked Fingers. "Where does that come from?"

"Frodo Baggins in a character in a story book," explained BoldItalic. "He was a halfling, like you, supposedly from a place called "The Shire" but not the real Shire, obviously. His main claim to fame was that he had a magic ring that allowed him to turn himself invisible whenever he liked. It turned out, though, that the ring had side effects and anyone who wore it long enough would become evil and try to dominate the world. So, of course, there is a bad guy in the book who tries to hunt him down to grab the ring for himself. In the end, Frodo throws the ring into a volcano to stop the bad guy getting it."

"Seems daft to me," said Fingers, "He should have just sold it to the bad guy for a lot of gold. Anyway, where does this 'Gandalf' fit in?"

"He spends the entire book trying to straighten out the mess. It was all his fault in the first place."

"Figures."

"Who am I supposed to be?" asked Rylnethaz. "An elf called Paragon, or something?"

"Aragorn. That's a tricky one, because he wasn't an elf in the story, although his father-in-law was a half-elf. Also, he spent most of the story as a ranger in leather armour, so you don't even look the part. By the end, though, he did become king so perhaps it's not so far wrong.

"Do I get to marry the princess?"

"No, he marries an elf girl but she outlives him because he's only a human. She's a grieving widow for about five hundred years and then turns into a small flower, I think. I don't remember that part very well," admitted BoldItalic.

"Any idea how we can bring Clotbert back to his senses?" wondered Fingers.

"Kingsfoil!" said Rylnethaz suddenly in a strange voice, then looked confused.

"What did you just say?"

"I have no idea."

"It sounded like 'kingsfoil'. In the story, there is a plant called kingsfoil that is supposed to cure all ills," said BoldItalic. "How could you possibly have known that?"

"Again, I have no idea. This madness isn't catching, is it?" asked Rylnethaz anxiously.

"I wonder if this is it?" asked Fingers, producing a small bunch of strange flowers from somewhere. "It's growing just up the bank, there. The inside of the flower looks like a crown, doesn't it?"

"We could boil some up in a cup of water and get Clotbert to drink it," suggested Rylnethaz. "It's worth a try."

"You should drink some too, it might heal up that scalp wound."

"Good idea. I'll get some fresh water from the stream."

Some way to the south, in the citadel of Forlond, King Gil-Galad received a visitation from his daughter. Well, perhaps 'visitation' is too formal a word. She stomped into his throne room in a flustle of skirts and shook her dainty fists in a non-dainty way that caused various servants to have not seen it happen. Definitely. Never happened.

Gil-Galad sighed. "What is it now, my poppet?"

"Don't 'poppet' me!" she cried, "I want cable in the west turret, and I want it now!"

The king turned to his court gnome and raised an enquiring eyebrow. The gnome consulted a large tome. "The team is on-schedule, sire ... allowing for contingencies ... factoring in the masonry coefficient ... server-side bandwidth ..."

The princess stuck her tongue out at the gnome and said two words that the servants definitely didn't hear. Being a royal servant was a good job, but sometimes there was such a lot to forget about, that headaches were something of an occupational hazard.

Back in her bedroom, the princess sat before the inert mirror with tears streaming down her face. Then she threw a hairbrush across the room and felt better.

Somewhere to the south, at the base of a west turret a gang of gnomes worked furiously to get cable in said turret, in order to avoid further non-dainty insults by their dainty princess.

Meanwhile, back to our heroes on a platform on the Infinite Staircase, in a more leisurely manner, a fire was lit and water was boiled.

When the water started boiling, Fingers dropped a few pedals of the strange flower in the kettle and let it boil for a while. “I think we all need a cup of this after this ordeal,” Fingers suggested and everyone agreed.

After they finally managed to convince Clotbert not to stand watch with his ‘magical staff’ over them and that the Nazgûl had lost their trail, Rylnethaz approached BoldItalic. They stepped a little further from the others.

“I'm already feeling better and the wound doesn't hurt that much any more but what about him? We have a priest who thinks he is a thousand years old wizard on a quest for a ring.”

BoldItalic was lost in thought for a while and then replied, “It will have to pass through his system. For you it was easy, as yours was a light wound. For him however, it is not that easy, his mind is shaken. If I had to make a guess, I would say that he would come back to his senses after he wakes up. If not immediately, then probably at some time between morning and noon.”

Rylnethaz took a look at their surroundings and then said, “That is comforting. Regarding our present situation now, while Fingers and I were out for water and food, we scouted further south. Although this is admittedly an unusually large platform, it comes to an end after one hundred or so meters. There is another set of steps there. The wood seems to give way to grey stone or marble and a few fires could be seen in the distant steps, possibly torches but we cannot be sure unless we get closer. Since this platform seems clear for now and the hawks are gone, I think we should wait until Clotbert is healed. We need access to his healing magic. Who knows what we will find next, we can’t fight while watching over ‘Gandalf’ at the same time.”

“Agreed. So we are heading south? Do you think the next set of steps on the Infinite Staircase to take us to our destination is there?”

“I am not really sure about it myself to tell you the truth my friend but this seems to be like an event attributed to fate. Just like us finding the tomb of my ancestors in the forest near your shelter,” said Rylnethaz as he looked south and absent mindedly but gently rubbed the surface of a mirror piece. “You are my High Vizier. Give me an advice, what do you think of all this?”

BoldItalic borrowed the shard of mirror and contemplated it for a short while. "Some of the enchantment still attaches to it," he said. "It may be possible for you to use it still, to communicate with your princess, albeit in a limited way. Assuming that her father is a king, and if we can work out how to reach them, he may be persuaded to lend us aid to overcome the demons. I believe this is our best hope.

Rylnethaz' face lit up at the prospect of seeing again the girl who was his heart's desire. "And if he does not, I shall conquer him and take his kingdom and his daughter," he declared haughtily. "My head awaits its crown."

"Speaking of your head, I think you should wash your face in the stream and smarten yourself up generally. Your wound may be less painful now but you still look terrible. Your princess is not going to be overly impressed with your appearance if we do manage to use the shard again."

Rylnethaz was somewhat taken aback at the directness of BoldItalic's reproof but he was too polite to say so. "If we do make contact, should I wear my crown, do you think? Not too ostentatious?"

"By all means. It will do no harm. Now, I need to think for a while. We have a piece of one half of a pair of magic mirrors and I need to divine where in the entire multiverse its partner can be found. For it most surely is not in this plane of existence, which seems to be entirely uninhabited wilderness as far as the eye can see."

Rylnethaz took the hint and went off to wash in the stream. Afterwards, he rejoined Fingers and Clotbert who were playing a game of scissors, paper, stone. They seemed to be evenly matched. Fingers gave Rylnethaz a wink and urged Clotbert to talk to him.

"Young Frodo here, sorry Fingers," began Clotbert, "has been telling me that you are travelling in disguise as an elven knight called Sir Rylnethaz, of the line of King Orfindel the Blue. Have I got that right?"

"Quite right," confirmed Rylnethaz. "And you are disguised as a priest of the goddess Myrristra called Brother Clotbert The Pathetic. It is a good disguise, is it not?"

"Oh yes, very clever. No-one would suspect me of being me. Blessings upon you, good sir knight." chortled Clotbert.

"We must be very careful to maintain our disguises at all times," said Fingers looking around furtively, "You never know who might be listening."

"Yes, that is very important," agreed Rylnethaz who was beginning to appreciate the cunning of Fingers' stratagem.

"And what quest are we pretending to be on?" asked Clotbert, "I haven't quite grasped that aspect of the subterfuge."

Rylnethaz showed Clotbert the mirror shard. "We are on the quest of the Fair Princess. We have to find the pair of this mirror. Also, we have to destroy a demonic machine and restore me, that is Sir Rylnethaz, to his rightful kingdom."

"That's not too complicated, is it? Quests are usually simpler and undertaken one at a time," thought Clotbert.

"That's the cleverness of it," put in Fingers, "If you were going to invent a phoney quest to cover up your real one, you wouldn't make it so obviously made up, would you?"

Clotbert considered this, and felt bound to agree. "Show me the shard," he said. "I may be able to divine something from it, with Myrristra's aid."

So Clotbert said a prayer to Myrristra and pretended to divine something from the broken piece of glass as if he were a real priest. Which, of course, he was except he thought he wasn't. Suddenly, and to everyone's astonishment, the mirror shone with a fiery light and letters formed in the air above it. "GO SOUTH AND ASCEND THE STAIRCASE THREE TIMES" they said and beneath them was a sign formed of three triangles within a square, that represented the goddess herself.

After a while, Clotbert was fast asleep. “Apparently the exhaustion of the day has overcome him,” said Fingers.

“Not to mention that our fake wizard, who thinks he is a fake priest, actually managed to divine our direction, using the supposedly fake information that we provided.” BoldItalic was dumbfounded.

“Suddenly our friend’s plan does not sound so crazy after all. Who would know? We are actually filling in the details. Next thing you know he is actually the Coronal for real. Speaking of whom, where is he? I thought he was just going to get some water.”

“Just give him some time Fingers, he will be back soon, he just needs to sort his thoughts out.”

A few meters further from the camp, Rylnethaz sat at the river bank, the waterskins full. His hair brushed back and the face clear from the mud and grime, he seemed like a noble elven lord again. Without him even realizing, it, the mirror was in his hand. As he rubbed a finger across it, a silver tint flashed across the glossy surface and a semi blurred chamber came into view.

Princess Infántilë could not find any rest in her room. The damned gnomes were always noisy. She tried to read a book but could not keep her mind still. She always looked at the mirror, its surface, mockingly remaining the surface of a mirror. Until at some moment late in the night, what seemed like the reflection of the flickering of the candle became a lamp in a riverbank next to a face that was somehow familiar. She run to the mirror and took a better look. ‘It is him, but he looks different now,’ she thought, ‘how can it be, one moment he seems like a barbarian and the next he could easily march into the court and be right at home there.’ Without even thinking of doing it, she touched the mirror.

The girl came closer, she was even more beautiful in the candle light, she almost reached out to him and Rylnethaz touched his fingers to hers and for the briefest of moments they almost touched each other’s fingertips. Then the mirror returned to its usual mundane nature. “Damn!” muttered Rylnethaz under his breath and sighed. “Well, I should be getting back to the camp anyway. The others will be getting thirsty. Still, it is a pity the moment was so brief.”