Piercing the Silver Veil (23/8) - Leonida
Aug 25, 2023 16:42:46 GMT
Velania Kalugina, Andy D, and 1 more like this
Post by Leonida on Aug 25, 2023 16:42:46 GMT
Wall mirror on the first floor hallway — covered with a sheet.
Full-body mirror in Father’s bedroom — covered with a sheet.
Handheld mirrors in the guest bedrooms — locked away in drawers face-down.
Every window in the townhouse — curtains drawn.
Bucket filled with leak-water from the attic — emptied, and the leak plugged.
All that’s left is the silverware. Leonida frowns when she opens the drawer in the kitchen and inspects the various-sized spoons, knives, and forks. They’re blemished, but still somewhat reflective. She’ll have to ask Henricus for ideas on that.
“Whatcha doin’, hun?”
“Don’t you got somewhere better to be?” Leonida says as she pushes the drawer shut. She turns around to face a human woman leaning against the wall with one booted foot planted on it, a plump red apple in hand. Thick, brown curls cascade past her shoulders and frame a pretty, sun-kissed face.
“There a better place to be than with the ‘family’?” A loud crunch as Anissa sinks her teeth into the apple. “You cookin’ dinner for me, hun?”
“I’ve told you to stop calling me that,” Leonida snaps for what must be the six hundredth time. She folds her arms. “I was dealing with any reflective surfaces I could find in this house. Mirrors are a gateway to another world, in which there may be living creatures and from which we could be spied on.”
“Hm. Now, I realise it’d be ironic and hypocritical of me to call you a lunatic, but…”
“Don’t start. I know it sounds crazy, but I was there in the flesh, Anissa, this some kinda…mirror dimension. I wouldn’t be saying shit like that if I wasn’t. There were looking-glasses trained on certain adventurers in the Material Plane, surveilling them.”
“Aaand you got into this mirror dimension, how?”
“A portal created by a mad scientist. A mirror with a liquid silver surface.”
“And there, you can spy on…all the adventurers in the Dawnlands?” Anissa arches an intrigued brow.
“No. Just the ones who were present at the creation of the portal. I was too, which means that it’s possible for someone in there to spy on me here unless we cover up all the reflective surfaces in this house.”
“Did y’all touch weird magic stuff during the experiment? You know you’re not supposed to do that. Your dad’s gonna flip out if he finds out.”
“‘Course not. This is no accident — someone is deliberately doing this.” Leonida takes two steps closer towards Anissa. “We found portals to other places in the dimension. One to a tower belonging to a Red Wizard of Thay, one to a mind flayer ship. All slain. The only connection between them is that they’d managed to create their own mirror portals, and every piece of literature from books to notes had been swiped from each place.”
Anissa’s brown eyes widen. “Well, I’ll be…! I’m gonna let Persie know, we need to double our security. Zariel forbid, but it sounds like someone might just come after you, honey.”
“Already did. Before we could get out of the dimension, we were attacked by doppelgängers of ourselves.”
“Oh, joy. Did you kill yourself?”
“Naturally.”
“Good.” Anissa playfully flicks an invisible speck of dust from Leonida’s shoulder. “‘Cause this world sure ain’t big enough for two of you.”
Leonida grins at her — a rare sight in all its menacing glory. “Damn straight.”
Three days later. Noon.
Leonida sits alone at a table in the Flourished Hook.
She’s sharply aware of how out of place she looks here, dressed in her simple ringfighter garb. The other patrons seated nearby alternate between laughing and glaring at her and the waitstaff sneer at her. But she ignores them all with the discipline that’d been drilled into her head by her father and by the Flaming Fists, staring ahead with only a glass of water on the table.
Bickle Shallot walks in a few minutes late. The fairy scientist is wearing a green party dress and her mechanical wing is covered in glitter that looks like she’s made a vague effort to clean off and then given up. She looks a little bleary-eyed, but in good spirits as she waves off a waiter approaching her and scans the room.
Once she makes eye contact with Leonida, her face lights up and she potters over to take a seat across from her, whereupon she immediately launches into a stream of rapid speech:
“Hey, sorry I’m late — Feywild parties, am I right? You know, I got ‘all work and no play’ from you — hell, I got ‘kinda scary’ vibes — but I’m really glad you invited— Ooh, breadsticks!” She grins as a waiter sets down a basket of breadsticks and hands her the wine list. “So yeah, much better to talk this over in a setting like this. Lovely place. Should we do some shots to get the awkward stage out of the way?”
Leonida stares at Shallot in dead silence for a second. Red mists gather over her face and form the familiar shape of a horned helmet. Bickle leans back in her chair and raises an eyebrow.
Through Astaroth’s well-honed devil eyes, she studies Bickle Shallot’s every tic and movement, mentally comparing them to the unnatural motions of the doppelgängers in the mirror world.
Though Leonida doesn’t know her well, Shallot appears as normal as she can be, and she has expressed knowledge of their prior meetings.
The spectral helmet dissipates into air. Satisfied, Leonida relaxes a little — but only a little. “No shots for me, thanks, but knock yourself out. You might need alcohol for what I’m about to tell you.”
Shallot seems to be struggling to process the last few frames of this interaction for a moment. “In…a good way?”
“Not exactly.”
Leonida pulls out a folded piece of paper from her pocket and slides it across the table to Bickle: a detailed recounting of what the party saw and encountered during the job, with no editorialising, just the facts. She takes the piece of paper with a cheery expression on her face that lights up even more at first, and then slowly drops as her eyes scan the page, her jaw dropping too.
“A Red Wizard? And mind flayers? That’s… So I guess I’m not the first to discover this ‘mirror realm’, then. That kinda sucks.”
“Do you realise what this means?” asks Leonida.
“That I need to publish fast before someone else does!”
Leonida sighs inwardly. Gods-damned eggheads. Supposedly smart but they need everything spelled out to them.
“Read it again,” she commands. “Someone out there has killed a Red Wizard and mind flayers and the only connection between them is this mirror portal. Every single book and research notes from each location had been stolen, meaning that whoever did this, probably did it to keep the knowledge of how to create the mirror portal a secret.”
The tiefling leans forward, shadows falling across her sharp features. “That means they’re probably coming after you next.”
Bickle Shallot shrinks down in her chair as her eyes widen in fear. A long pause hangs tentatively in the air.
“Okay, I need to process a few things. First: this isn’t a date, is it?”
“Why the fuck would you ever think that.”
Shallot looks insulted and makes frantic gestures at the wine and breadsticks, making a noise that sounds like Guuuh? But she waves it off and moves on.
“So… I should destroy the mirror? Or… Shit, should I not go back at all?”
“Hm.” Leonida leans back and folds her arms. “It’s certain that they already know of you. You’re living on borrowed time, Shallot. However… I don’t think it's necessary to destroy it.”
“Wait, what do you mean? I can just…” Bickle glances down at her reflection in her butter knife, grabs it, and hurls it across the room in panic, causing a sommelier to duck. “Maybe I could construct a containment field? Or… Or I could just leave and go somewhere else! Calimport always seemed like it would be nice?”
“What you’ve discovered here is an incredible leap in teleportation technology. I see no reason to squander this. All you need to do is go to the Daring Council with your findings and ask for protection. Whoever’s killed a Red Wizard and a whole ship of mind flayers must be pretty tough, but a town full of heavily-armed mercenaries could give ‘em a run for their money. Think about it, Shallot: if you run, none of us can protect you. I don’t think destroying your own research and swearing never to breathe a word of it to another soul would absolve you here. This person…” Leonida shrugs. “Don’t seem like the merciful type to me.”
Shaking with fear, the fairy eventually replies, “So… So we have to hit them first, right? We find whoever this is and…kill them before they can kill me?”
“Yeah, that’d be my take on the situation. But we can’t do that if you destroy the portal and fuck off to Calimport.”
Having the beginning of a plan seems to settle her down. “Okay, but first…containment field. That should slow them down, at least, and buy me some more time… Gah! I can’t go back there alone though!” She looks up pleadingly at Leonida. “I guess… time to put up some more flyers.”
Leonida rolls her eyes. “Fine. I’ll be there,” she promises her. “Leif was pretty keen on sending word to the Council. I’ll let him know he can do that. Understood?”
“What are the Council even going to do? Put me in a box without any reflective surfaces?” Bickle lowers her voice to a whisper and leans across the table. “And need I remind you that I’ve broken a bunch of laws doing this and your friend Vox didn’t leave me any contact information! If I get arrested I’m a sitting duck, and you know it!”
“They could send a research team to help you study this more. Harness this power, like I’m guessing the killer has done. The killer obviously knows more about the mirror dimension than we do. They were fifty years ahead of us. We’ll be fighting them in their terrain and it’d be helpful if we learn more.”
“Look, just… I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to go to jail either. Can we hold off on telling the Council just for a little bit? Just…give me a chance to fix this myself, I’m begging you!”
Leonida sighs, outwardly this time. “Fine. It’s your life on the line.”
Shallot summons a mage hand to snatch a cocktail from a neighbouring table. The patrons sitting there are deep in conversation and don’t seem to notice. She downs the whole glass in one go. “I… Ooh, brain freeze, one second. Thank you, Leonida. You’re a good friend.”
“We’re not friends.”
“Okay, rude, but I guess you’ve earned it. I’ll pay for your…umm…water.”
Leonida stands up. “I’ll see you next time, Shallot. Hope you got deep pockets.”
She smiles brightly and stands up to show off that her dress does indeed have pockets. So many pockets. She’s added like twenty pockets.
“It was a metaphor.”
“Oh, okay. Sure, that…shouldn’t be a problem. You, umm…have a nice day!”
Midway through her sentence, Leonida has already walked past her, headed for the exit.
Co-written with tomdm as Bickle Shallot 🧅
Full-body mirror in Father’s bedroom — covered with a sheet.
Handheld mirrors in the guest bedrooms — locked away in drawers face-down.
Every window in the townhouse — curtains drawn.
Bucket filled with leak-water from the attic — emptied, and the leak plugged.
All that’s left is the silverware. Leonida frowns when she opens the drawer in the kitchen and inspects the various-sized spoons, knives, and forks. They’re blemished, but still somewhat reflective. She’ll have to ask Henricus for ideas on that.
“Whatcha doin’, hun?”
“Don’t you got somewhere better to be?” Leonida says as she pushes the drawer shut. She turns around to face a human woman leaning against the wall with one booted foot planted on it, a plump red apple in hand. Thick, brown curls cascade past her shoulders and frame a pretty, sun-kissed face.
“There a better place to be than with the ‘family’?” A loud crunch as Anissa sinks her teeth into the apple. “You cookin’ dinner for me, hun?”
“I’ve told you to stop calling me that,” Leonida snaps for what must be the six hundredth time. She folds her arms. “I was dealing with any reflective surfaces I could find in this house. Mirrors are a gateway to another world, in which there may be living creatures and from which we could be spied on.”
“Hm. Now, I realise it’d be ironic and hypocritical of me to call you a lunatic, but…”
“Don’t start. I know it sounds crazy, but I was there in the flesh, Anissa, this some kinda…mirror dimension. I wouldn’t be saying shit like that if I wasn’t. There were looking-glasses trained on certain adventurers in the Material Plane, surveilling them.”
“Aaand you got into this mirror dimension, how?”
“A portal created by a mad scientist. A mirror with a liquid silver surface.”
“And there, you can spy on…all the adventurers in the Dawnlands?” Anissa arches an intrigued brow.
“No. Just the ones who were present at the creation of the portal. I was too, which means that it’s possible for someone in there to spy on me here unless we cover up all the reflective surfaces in this house.”
“Did y’all touch weird magic stuff during the experiment? You know you’re not supposed to do that. Your dad’s gonna flip out if he finds out.”
“‘Course not. This is no accident — someone is deliberately doing this.” Leonida takes two steps closer towards Anissa. “We found portals to other places in the dimension. One to a tower belonging to a Red Wizard of Thay, one to a mind flayer ship. All slain. The only connection between them is that they’d managed to create their own mirror portals, and every piece of literature from books to notes had been swiped from each place.”
Anissa’s brown eyes widen. “Well, I’ll be…! I’m gonna let Persie know, we need to double our security. Zariel forbid, but it sounds like someone might just come after you, honey.”
“Already did. Before we could get out of the dimension, we were attacked by doppelgängers of ourselves.”
“Oh, joy. Did you kill yourself?”
“Naturally.”
“Good.” Anissa playfully flicks an invisible speck of dust from Leonida’s shoulder. “‘Cause this world sure ain’t big enough for two of you.”
Leonida grins at her — a rare sight in all its menacing glory. “Damn straight.”
Three days later. Noon.
Leonida sits alone at a table in the Flourished Hook.
She’s sharply aware of how out of place she looks here, dressed in her simple ringfighter garb. The other patrons seated nearby alternate between laughing and glaring at her and the waitstaff sneer at her. But she ignores them all with the discipline that’d been drilled into her head by her father and by the Flaming Fists, staring ahead with only a glass of water on the table.
Bickle Shallot walks in a few minutes late. The fairy scientist is wearing a green party dress and her mechanical wing is covered in glitter that looks like she’s made a vague effort to clean off and then given up. She looks a little bleary-eyed, but in good spirits as she waves off a waiter approaching her and scans the room.
Once she makes eye contact with Leonida, her face lights up and she potters over to take a seat across from her, whereupon she immediately launches into a stream of rapid speech:
“Hey, sorry I’m late — Feywild parties, am I right? You know, I got ‘all work and no play’ from you — hell, I got ‘kinda scary’ vibes — but I’m really glad you invited— Ooh, breadsticks!” She grins as a waiter sets down a basket of breadsticks and hands her the wine list. “So yeah, much better to talk this over in a setting like this. Lovely place. Should we do some shots to get the awkward stage out of the way?”
Leonida stares at Shallot in dead silence for a second. Red mists gather over her face and form the familiar shape of a horned helmet. Bickle leans back in her chair and raises an eyebrow.
Through Astaroth’s well-honed devil eyes, she studies Bickle Shallot’s every tic and movement, mentally comparing them to the unnatural motions of the doppelgängers in the mirror world.
Though Leonida doesn’t know her well, Shallot appears as normal as she can be, and she has expressed knowledge of their prior meetings.
The spectral helmet dissipates into air. Satisfied, Leonida relaxes a little — but only a little. “No shots for me, thanks, but knock yourself out. You might need alcohol for what I’m about to tell you.”
Shallot seems to be struggling to process the last few frames of this interaction for a moment. “In…a good way?”
“Not exactly.”
Leonida pulls out a folded piece of paper from her pocket and slides it across the table to Bickle: a detailed recounting of what the party saw and encountered during the job, with no editorialising, just the facts. She takes the piece of paper with a cheery expression on her face that lights up even more at first, and then slowly drops as her eyes scan the page, her jaw dropping too.
“A Red Wizard? And mind flayers? That’s… So I guess I’m not the first to discover this ‘mirror realm’, then. That kinda sucks.”
“Do you realise what this means?” asks Leonida.
“That I need to publish fast before someone else does!”
Leonida sighs inwardly. Gods-damned eggheads. Supposedly smart but they need everything spelled out to them.
“Read it again,” she commands. “Someone out there has killed a Red Wizard and mind flayers and the only connection between them is this mirror portal. Every single book and research notes from each location had been stolen, meaning that whoever did this, probably did it to keep the knowledge of how to create the mirror portal a secret.”
The tiefling leans forward, shadows falling across her sharp features. “That means they’re probably coming after you next.”
Bickle Shallot shrinks down in her chair as her eyes widen in fear. A long pause hangs tentatively in the air.
“Okay, I need to process a few things. First: this isn’t a date, is it?”
“Why the fuck would you ever think that.”
Shallot looks insulted and makes frantic gestures at the wine and breadsticks, making a noise that sounds like Guuuh? But she waves it off and moves on.
“So… I should destroy the mirror? Or… Shit, should I not go back at all?”
“Hm.” Leonida leans back and folds her arms. “It’s certain that they already know of you. You’re living on borrowed time, Shallot. However… I don’t think it's necessary to destroy it.”
“Wait, what do you mean? I can just…” Bickle glances down at her reflection in her butter knife, grabs it, and hurls it across the room in panic, causing a sommelier to duck. “Maybe I could construct a containment field? Or… Or I could just leave and go somewhere else! Calimport always seemed like it would be nice?”
“What you’ve discovered here is an incredible leap in teleportation technology. I see no reason to squander this. All you need to do is go to the Daring Council with your findings and ask for protection. Whoever’s killed a Red Wizard and a whole ship of mind flayers must be pretty tough, but a town full of heavily-armed mercenaries could give ‘em a run for their money. Think about it, Shallot: if you run, none of us can protect you. I don’t think destroying your own research and swearing never to breathe a word of it to another soul would absolve you here. This person…” Leonida shrugs. “Don’t seem like the merciful type to me.”
Shaking with fear, the fairy eventually replies, “So… So we have to hit them first, right? We find whoever this is and…kill them before they can kill me?”
“Yeah, that’d be my take on the situation. But we can’t do that if you destroy the portal and fuck off to Calimport.”
Having the beginning of a plan seems to settle her down. “Okay, but first…containment field. That should slow them down, at least, and buy me some more time… Gah! I can’t go back there alone though!” She looks up pleadingly at Leonida. “I guess… time to put up some more flyers.”
Leonida rolls her eyes. “Fine. I’ll be there,” she promises her. “Leif was pretty keen on sending word to the Council. I’ll let him know he can do that. Understood?”
“What are the Council even going to do? Put me in a box without any reflective surfaces?” Bickle lowers her voice to a whisper and leans across the table. “And need I remind you that I’ve broken a bunch of laws doing this and your friend Vox didn’t leave me any contact information! If I get arrested I’m a sitting duck, and you know it!”
“They could send a research team to help you study this more. Harness this power, like I’m guessing the killer has done. The killer obviously knows more about the mirror dimension than we do. They were fifty years ahead of us. We’ll be fighting them in their terrain and it’d be helpful if we learn more.”
“Look, just… I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to go to jail either. Can we hold off on telling the Council just for a little bit? Just…give me a chance to fix this myself, I’m begging you!”
Leonida sighs, outwardly this time. “Fine. It’s your life on the line.”
Shallot summons a mage hand to snatch a cocktail from a neighbouring table. The patrons sitting there are deep in conversation and don’t seem to notice. She downs the whole glass in one go. “I… Ooh, brain freeze, one second. Thank you, Leonida. You’re a good friend.”
“We’re not friends.”
“Okay, rude, but I guess you’ve earned it. I’ll pay for your…umm…water.”
Leonida stands up. “I’ll see you next time, Shallot. Hope you got deep pockets.”
She smiles brightly and stands up to show off that her dress does indeed have pockets. So many pockets. She’s added like twenty pockets.
“It was a metaphor.”
“Oh, okay. Sure, that…shouldn’t be a problem. You, umm…have a nice day!”
Midway through her sentence, Leonida has already walked past her, headed for the exit.
Co-written with tomdm as Bickle Shallot 🧅