The Haunted Mansion. [closed]

[mire]

Rumored haunted mansions were not meant to be visited by proper young ladies. Such a place, with its broken windows, creaking floors, mold-eaten walls, and dust-covered furniture, was the least likely location anyone could imagine a princess and her ladies-in-waiting currently standing outside of. On any other day, such a thing would have never occurred, as the princess that led the way was not interested in the adventures and mysteries of the unknown world. She had been, up to two days ago, completely satisfied with the privileges and responsibilities that came with the blue blood that coursed through her veins.

Up to about two days ago, Princess Elowen had never complained, resented, or cursed the life she had been given. She understood her position as a princess of a relatively small kingdom very well, and had done all that was expected out of her without so much as a pout pulling down on her pretty face. For her kingdom, the one she was one day meant to rule, Elowen would have done just about anything.

Not that anyone cared anymore.

Her mother, the queen that had only successfully birthed a girl fourteen years ago, had been blessed with a second child, this one born a son. The whole kingdom celebrated the birth of the future king, and even Elowen, who understood her status as heir had vanished with the boy’s first cries, welcomed the birth of her baby brother. She expected the fuss over the baby, and most certainly understood the importance of a male born so late into a struggling kingdom. What she did not expect, and had trouble coping with, was the total lack of interest and care she was suddenly under. From one day to the next, she had gone from being the sole receiver of a whole court’s attention to the last thought in anyone’s mind.

Without anyone to notice, Elowen began to wander away from the palace, each day a little more. Her ladies-in-waiting, friends since her earliest of memories, always followed behind and tried as best as they could to deter the princess from going too far off. On this day though, Elowen ignored the soft grumbles of her companions, and continued to press onward until they came across a most peculiar mansion. It looked as if it had been abandoned for many years, yet the structure had a shape not of her kingdom’s design. One of the girls mentioned that she had heard of an old house, by the edge of the kingdom, that was supposedly haunted by wicked demons. Another one of the girls, though she gasped at the notion, quickly surmised they could have not walked to the edge of the kingdom, and thus could not be said location.

Without much care for their discussion, Elowen approached the mansion’s gates, strangely drawn by the barren location.

“Princess Elowen?” One of the girls took a small step forward, as if she meant to join her princess’ side. “Should we not go? They will worry soon for us.” She took a giant step back, and aggregated with the other girls.

“Yes, we ought to go before…who is to know what kind of things live in there!”

Elowen considered the possibility, and though it was too dark to see anything, peered inside one of the dusted windows. “It seems unlikely.” She continued to look in, her ladies-in-waiting anxiously waiting for their princess to satisfy her curiosity so they could return to the safety of the palace’s walls.

Hesitantly, Elowen placed her hand on the door handle, and the girls behind her audibly gasped. She hesitated, and suddenly took her hand off the handle, appalled by her own boldness. It was not like her, she thought with a rapid shake of her head, to do such things! She took a step back, still incredulous over her actions. The girls watched her, sighs of relief pouring out of each of them.

“Princess, we should go.” One of them suggested once again.

“Yes, let’s go. I believe today was…enough. We will—“

Elowen’s words were interrupted by the piercing screams of her ladies, all of them sharing a look of complete terror. Before Elowen had time to turn and see what had frightened them so, she was struck blind by a wave of smoke, and before she could form a scream, her mouth was shut by an unknown pressure. Something grabbed her, dragged her, and threw her deep within the darkest corner of the mansion she had almost willingly entered. The last thing Elowen heard was the retreating steps and screams of her ladies, and just a second before she passed out, there was what could have been a laugh.

[Faustus]

Off topic:
To be clear, the events in this thread are happening two years before Donovan's current timeline. Before any of his time at the Gaian Academy

World traveled fast in the lands of Terrenus.

But the boy traveled faster.

The princess was kidnapped just as the sun began to wink away beneath the horizon, this ghastly event occurring with bitter irony during the witching hour, and the boy arrived on the fringes of the kingdom just as sunlight spilt like a golden sheet across the land. This punctuality in no small part supported by the scrying pool within walking distance to his tree-house.

The boy had ridden all night, whispering love and companionship into the chestnut colored mane of his steed to urge it forward. They arrived on the castle grounds shortly after entering the kingdom and the boy dismounted, handing the reins to a stable-hand with instructions on how to properly feed and care for his horse. A silver coin handed in earnest to the stable-hand would keep him honest.

Donovan's first impression upon the royal family, and upon the scant few other heroes and hired swords populating the bailey that had managed to respond with equal urgency as the boy, was one of doubt and skepticism. Donovan was by far the youngest, no doubt the least experienced, and thus as a matter of course destined to be the least effective in apprehending the young princess and returning her to her rightful place.

Fourteen years of life experience, where a decade of that was spent as an insensible child-thing, was not an impressive track record. Some of these men had been swinging swords longer than Donovan had been alive.

Donovan had met with this prejudice before but the steel of his masters, Piercing Genesis, Corban Saezer and Nicodemus Raghnall, armed the boy with a fire none of these people could ever had hoped to experience before this very day. It was their eyes, the collective weight of the experiences of these three mighty warriors, which shone through the golden eyes of this simple child.

When he spoke, it was with the voice of a master swordsman.

"There is skill and there is talent, and I have both. Any that would like to test me, can. I welcome it. But we fight for swords, then, because my time is as valuable as that of any of these men and of the princess I have come here to rescue."

Donovan won the livelihood of three men that day, but returned their swords. The king and queen were impressed by the potent mixture of adroitness and humility in the boy and so chose him to rescue their daughter. Donovan ate for an hour, slept for an hour and a half, spent time with his horse, and was on his way. The sun was now high, but not quite at noon, when the haunted house loomed in sight. He knew better than to attempt the house at night, or near night, because that was when the things in the dark were strongest.

He had some time to burn yet, and the very first thing Donovan did was scout the house. After breaching the property line, he merely walked in circle after circle after circle around the edifice, taking note of every discrepancy he could spot, taking note not only of structural inconsistencies but of anything that might hint at more sinister intentions.

[mire]

From within the mansion, deep in the darkness, Kaleb observed the trespasser. He carried the tools of a warrior, and possessed the somber eyes of a man sent on a mission. Were he not but a boy, not much older than his prisoner, Kaleb would have believed him to be the one sent to rescue the missing princess. He knew the kingdom of his princess was not of great wealth, but could they truly not afford something better than a snot-face little boy with a big sword?

How utterly disappointing. And here he was, hoping to have a little fun before his beautiful princess awoke from her latest fainting spell. For a day now he’d had her as his prisoner, yet he had only managed to give her his name and very briefly explain his intentions. It seemed it was all just too much for her, and as soon as she gained some consciousness, she screamed and cried, her pretty little face distorted by her ugly tears.

Carefully, as to not disturb her sleep, Kaleb traced his finger gently down her wet cheek. Such a shame she slept so long, and kept the strange color of her eyes hidden from his sight. They were of a peculiar color, a soft red that mimicked the beauty of ruby stones. He had never come across such eyes, and had been immediately smitten the moment she’d curiously peered into his home. Her hair was a light sea-green shade, and though it was also peculiar to his eye, he’d seen another with a similar color. That one, he remembered, would have truly been a treasure to hold. If he had half of the power he had now, that girl would have been—

Well, no matter. He had this princess now, and no one would take her away from him. Especially not some little boy, circling his mansion like an idiot dog. If the boy really wanted to play knight, Kaleb was willing to indulge the little fool, at least until he grew bored or—as was more likely to happen—the boy lost his life to one of his creatures.

He’d sent out something weak, Kaleb decided as he gathered the unconscious princess close to his chest, and just see how well the little boy could play.

[Faustus]

The boy took careful survey of the manor, supplementing his observation with a few quickly jotted notes. For all the world, Donovan was but a boy with a curious glint in his eye, an affliction commonly shared by boys his age.

But inside. Inside, oh the terrible intellect. The machinelike precision with which whole scenes were split apart into a nebulae of details; those motes of data quickly sorted, catalogued, referenced or all three. Nimble fingers of expertise skipped merrily along pages and pages of knowing, glancing over the irrelevant but sticking fast to any detail that might ring true.

Donovan bent at the knees into a full squat, sweeping away with his left arm the flowing postern attached at his shoulders, and with a gloved right hand carefully studied two plants that grew from the side of the mansion most often in the shade. He noted, at the same time, that here the foundation suffered most from rot.

"Henbane and twitch weed."

Pressing his lips into a thin line of contemplation, Donovan squinted up at the roof of the house through the stabbing sunlight and rubbed his hand against the ground to free it of any debris left over from the toxic plants.

He often talked aloud because it helped him organize his thoughts.

"What are you? Something dark . . . something bad. A poltergeist? A witch? A necromancer? Something. I'm going to find you out monster. I'm going to root you out and destroy you."

Though he spoke to himself, having no idea that someone watched him from the dank depths of the mansion, it seemed that at that precise moment his golden gaze pierced through the oracular fog and that he stared straight into Kaleb's core. But then in the next moment Donovan erected his posture and began to back-step from the manor, stopping only when the whole south-eastern side was available to him at a glance.

After checking the fit of his boots and gloves Donovan shot toward the house at a glib speed. With one leg he leapt atop a crate and then propelled himself off it, surrounded himself with his cape while tucking his elbows and knees in, and broke through the window leading into the third floor.

Shards of glass shattered into splinters under his boot as, in that same slow and methodical fashion that he rounded the house, Donovan brought himself up to an unimpressive 5'6". The hallway Donovan found himself in seemed impossibly long; in that same instance, he knew it was. Any number of things, from a telepathy hallucination to an illusion to a legitimate spatio-temporal distortion could account for it, but it tipped the boy off. Donovan knew, immediately, that his opposition was not to be trifled with.

He stalked forward, with silent and deliberate steps, one hand steadying the scabbard against his hip and the other slightly out in front of him, as if searching, all the while straining his senses to the limit.

[mire]

Kaleb was most displeased. The little boy was scurrying along his home, without so much as one of his useless minions to disrupt his path. It had been a while, he supposed, since they had last had guests; it was not entirely unsurprising some of his pets had yet to awaken from their slumber. Nevertheless, he had called out an order that had gone ignored. Perhaps his creatures had forgotten just who it was that allowed them to live, and needed to be sorely reminded. With a heavy sigh, Kaleb untangled the sleeping princess from his arms, his thin lips placing a small kiss on the tip of her little nose.

“I’ll be back, my sweet.”

As Kaleb disappeared into the darkness, the quiet mansion began to echo the moans and screams of the creatures that were being punished for their transgressions against their master. During that time, Elowen slowly came out of her sleep. There was a dull ache in her head, and she could see or hear nothing in the deep darkness. She tried to sit up before her mind roughly flashed her all the terrible memories of the last few days. She realized the nightmare had not ended, and hopelessly began to whimper and cry. With her head buried beneath a pillow, Elowen started to violently shake as her cries turned into desperate pleas for someone’s help. As the spasm passed, a realization trickled into her mind.
She had been awake for a couple of minutes now, and unlike the last few times, that man had yet to come and try to soothe her. It was usually then, when she was beyond revolted by his presence and apparently intentions that she succumbed to an unconscious state. But…he was not around. Very slowly, Elowen peeked out from underneath the pillow, and though it was dark, she detected no other person with her in the room. Recognizing her opportunity, she instantly shot up from the bed and scrambled to her feet. Functioning on survival instinct alone, she reached for the nearest door and, after a second of looking out, ran out as fast as her feet let her.

“Please, please…!”

Down the hall she went, and was in such a panicked state, did not notice the hall did not seem to have an end. All as well, if she could get away from that man.
In another part of the mansion, Kaleb blissfully scorched the skin of one of his minions. They were such ugly creatures, with their deformed facial features, heavyset bodies and stubby legs. They were a form of goblin Kaleb himself had created out of some of his past victims. There was not much to them in brain power, but each had enough strength to rip a man’s limbs apart with their own disgusting hands.

“Next time I summon you, you obey me, understand? Now go, destroy that little shit and feel free to eat him. Just leave no trace of him in my mansion.”

Five of the creatures made a sort of bow, and headed out through the corridor to do as their master commanded. Kaleb did not feel the need to send out more, and thoroughly satisfied after torturing his creatures, headed back to the room where his beautiful princess slept. The big smile he wore on his lips instantly disappeared, and he let out a roar of maddening anger as he came upon an empty bed.

“That…little BITCH!”

Boiling with rage, he stomped out of the room, just imagining all the things he was going to do to his little princess as punishment.

[Faustus]

The air was thick with ruin. Everything around him seemed either rotten or rotting; what could not rot rusted; what could not rot or rust was nonetheless afflicted with a mottled sight and a rank smell of decay. That a dark, festering presence had made its home in this manor was beyond question in the boy's mind. All the signs were there. The malice extant; the iniquity suffusing the air with ropes so thick it nearly robbed the lungs of precious life.

Only the bright, golden light of the sun girded the boy and made him able to withstand the otherwise intolerable and inhospitable surroundings. That and his machinelike drive to rescue the princess and keep his word. He cared but a pittance for the reward, recognizing on some level subconscious and primal that money meant subsistence, but placing all emphasis and merit merely on the fact that he had promised to do something and so set out to do it. Maybe this made him noble, or maybe it just made him stubborn, but it drove him on regardless.

Those swaths of light revealed spaces choking with dust. The sun revealed large expanses of the manor's interior, for which Donovan was thankful, but made the darkness of corners and hallways deeper and more ominous. He kept his breathing soft, slow and infrequent; he made no sound as he stalked forward. The headband absorbed sweat that might have collected on his brow otherwise, keeping his eyes free of distraction.

If not for the rank infesting every centimeter of the place, and if not for the inches thick layer of dust covering the ground, Donovan might have smelled or heard the goblins before meeting them. As it was he had only turned a corner before beholding a feast of gross anatomy and disfigured flesh in the way of five deformed, vile caricatures of the human form.

There was a moment of that indelible fear of getting caught being realized, the horror of suspense as Donovan recognized recognition in the eyes of his soon-to-be transgressors, and a twang inside of his chest as they mobilized toward him that spoke to him, in the hushed whispers of a lonely, frightened child, that he ought to run before he died.

Then pretense and prejudice vanished. There was no more boy. No more goblins. No more house. There was the chessboard, the enemy pawns, the king chuckling to himself in the filth of his own creation and the queen locked away in a dark tower. There was no fear, no remorse, no hesitation. Only logic and strategy.

They waged war against him and so he levied violence. In a single motion of unsheathing, Donovan liberated one of the goblins from his arm; in the other divorced his head from his shoulders and moved on. The next was met with a boot to the face. This was more than just a kick. Donovan led with his whole body; he planted that foot in the goblin's face, and visibly exerted himself in pushing hard enough to topple the goblin on his back. And then kept going, until he had effectively stamped the goblin's skull through the floorboards.

His face vapid all the while.

A flourish of his blade across the ground and upward first cut a groove along the floor and then sliced a goblin in half about midway up his torso. A fanning of his blade diverted the spillage of blood away from him and towards the remaining two goblins, easily blinding them. While they moaned and wailed, Donovan ended their lives at nearly the same instant by once again brandishing his blade. While blood sluiced from his blade, leaving it clean, Donovan surveyed the grim remainders of the battle field.

Now regret. Now pity. Now the trembling of the hands and the cognizance of a fluttering heart.

Donovan began to rifle through the corpses, searching for any clue or hint as to where they may have originated.

~~~~~~~~~~

Elsewhere.

Elowen had tripped through the looking glass, now navigated this maddening maze, and did not think to leave a trail of breadcrumbs or golden thread to find her way. Kaleb's sickness had twisted this place beyond even his own control. He ruled only a few of the rooms and the adjourning hallways, but anything else and the house had a mind of its own.

Elowen's straight and narrow path soon became a twisting labyrinth. The shadows bore faces and the echoes of her footsteps seemed to carry foreign voices back at her. When she stood still, she heard nothing; when she strained her sight, she saw nothing. Only when she hurried along, desperate for freedom and compelled by fear, did the voices and the faces in the darkness trail after her.

[mire]

Elowen’s body had not been conditioned for the situation she was in. As a daughter of nobility, born into a peaceful kingdom, Elowen’s muscles had never known the strain of continuous work. She was a delicate girl, easily fatigued and accustomed to being under the protection of others. As she navigating through the hallway—and just how far and deep did it go?—most of her tears dried, and she focused what was left of her strength on maintaining at least a slight jog. She could not allow that horrible man to get his disgusting hands on her again; she just couldn’t let it happen. If she heard little sounds here and there as she moved, she did not dare look back, and for the sake of her sanity completely ignored them.

The hallway continued on and on, and slowly Elowen began to recognize the passage as repeating itself in structure the further she went. With her body unable to cope with the stress any longer, she leaned heavily on a nearby hallway table, where a vase with a bouquet full of spring flowers mismatched all of the decay and dust found everywhere else. She gulped for air, with the permanent stench of the mansion no longer disturbing her nostrils due to her long-term exposure. Elowen, for the first time since she had escaped, looked back into the darkness of the hallway and was relieved to see nothing. As her legs recovered, Elowen had time to admire the peculiar vase with the lively flowers, all the petals the color of the summer sun.

They did not belong in such a place, she thought as she reached out to gently caress a petal, so what were they doing in the middle of a seemingly endless hallway? An endless hallway, she realized, that she was trapped in, with no escape no matter where she looked. Defeated by what she considered to be the end of it all, she brought the flowers closer to her chest, and slowly sank to her knees. If she had any tears left, this is when they could have fallen.


~~

Elsewhere, Kaleb fumed. His princess was lost in the depths of mansion he did not control, and he half feared she had been eaten alive by whatever else lived in there. Stupid little bitch. If and when he found her, he was going to teach her a severe lesson in staying put. Distracted by his dark thoughts, and a little bit aroused by them, Kaleb barely registered the cries of his creatures being slaughtered. It seemed that the little snot boy was not as incapable as he imagined. When otherwise he might’ve been impressed and pleased to have a challenge, Kaleb was in no kind of mood to deal with the boy knight. It was time to put an end to that kid’s heroics. With his arms raised, Kaleb summoned one of his favorite monsters. While it awoke, Kaleb figured he'd keep the boy occupied, and so he sent out more useless goblins towards the boy's way.


~~~

Rip the human apart.

The creature jolted awake at the sound of his master’s command. It stood up tall, a beast of immersed proportions with the body of a bull, and the arms and head of a human. As it moved, everything around it shook, and it sniffed the air for the smell of something small, human, and tasty to eat. He caught the smell of the petite human, not too far off away. It headed over to that direction, and because it had not been made to think, did not wonder why he also caught the scent of flowers.

[Faustus]

There was nothing of value to be found on the corpses of the disfigured goblins. They carried no coin, likely did not know what the word 'economy' meant or entailed, they carried no weapons, as their heavy, stubby hands were designed in lieu of carried armory, and they wore no clothes. No shoes that the boy might be able to pry off, study the sole and deduce a point of origin; no pockets that may have carried an item of telling detail.

With a despondent sigh Donovan rose to his full height, as unimpressive as it had been the first time when breaking through the manor's window more than three stories in the air, but anybody that had seen the past few minutes roll out in their entirety would see in that stance a deadly warrior.

Donovan looked around with cold, gold eyes. The seconds ticked away, beading against his skin like water against a duck's oiled feathers and sliding off of him with the same illimitable grace. The princess could, at this very second, be suffering the most wicked kind of torture, tearing to shreds the purity of her body, the serenity of her mind and the sanctity of her spirit and Donovan took every second as if he had days and days to waste in pursuit.

Panic would do him no good here, in this place, against an enemy he had never seen before but that he was sure was watching every step he took. It would only bring ruin, and bring it faster than he cared to think of. Only a steady hand and a calm eye would bring him, and the princess, out of this alive.

Once he accepted, point-blank, that this day may be the last to his name, rushing headlong into a trap didn't seem so appetizing.

With slow, deliberate motions Donovan continued to peruse the manor's interior. He found nothing on the third floor. Nothing but dust, musk, and rot. Oh there were all kinds of flotsam. Dilapidated dressers; pictures and paintings hanging on walls so old that they were nearly dust in and of themselves; tarnished brass bedposts and chamber pots, wizened dolls and the husks of long dead plants.

The second floor was much of the same but there were vermin. A lot of vermin. Donovan saw the occasional shadow as it flicked from one hole in the wall to the other. He could hear them scurrying about in the walls, in the panels of the ceiling, and felt them shifting like a great mass of furry flesh beneath the floorboards underfoot.

The first floor held nothing special either. Just a few more goblins. A few more monstrosities turned into quivering cubes of flesh, bleeding all over the place like it was their job to do it. Donovan left a trail of sticky footprints after he passed over the puddle of blood.

He saw a basement door, chains festooned all across it like party streamers, locked at the joints by padlocks and at the center by a lock the size of Donovan's head. Donovan blinked, stroked his chin, and then looked again.

This time closer, and with his other senses. The chains drifted away like smoke, and all that stood before him was a door. Donovan took a step back and lunged forward with his leg parallel to the floor. With a crack like thunder, the door frame splintered and the door in its entirety fell forward. He looked around, lips pursed tightly, eyes half-lidded and suspicious, but said nothing.

Merely stepped forward and descended into the depths of the basement.

I'm coming

~~~~~~~~~~

Elowen sat in the darkness. Alone. Surrounded by threads of isolation and solitude. Forever. The only thing to comfort her, the dark; the only companionship, the echo of her own voice; the only release, death. But as she sat, or stood, or cried or whined or groveled, a door appeared in the hallway. No knob. Featureless. And it opened at the slightest touch. This led down a much shorter hallway, and lines of smoke threaded through the air.

Further investigation reveals to Elowen that she is now inside of a funhouse, and mirrors besiege her from all around, each with its own warped, twisting, but not entirely untruthful image to reflect back to the princess.

And the minotaur gained on her with every second wasted.

[mire]

Exhausted by her capture, subsequent escape, and unlikely rescue, Elowen slowly succumbed to a dreamless sleep. She resurfaced to the world of consciousness every so often, shaken awake by the distinctive feeling she was being watched, sometimes even lightly touched. For the few seconds she could keep her eyes open, she’d glance around in search of whatever was causing her discomfort, and when she found nothing she slipped back into unconsciousness. The cycle repeated itself for a good while until the faint sound of her name jolted her awake. A little disoriented from being shoved out of one realm of darkness to another, it took her a minute to realize the sunflowers she’d clutched during her sleep had all dried up. As she looked around, trying to understand what had happened, her eyes settled on the new development in the hallway.

With great effort, Elowen stood up, the dead flowers falling from her lap. She walked forward, her body aching with every step she took toward the strange door that had appeared out of nowhere. Elowen, half certain she was dreaming, boldly pushed the door open to reveal a path out of the endless hallway. There was a hint of light inside, and without waiting for her reason to argue otherwise, she quickly passed through the door. Once inside, the door behind her disappeared, preventing her from changing her mind. When she’d just been trapped in a hallway surrounded by darkness, she was not trapped in a funhouse with a glaring light blinding her eyes. Desperate for something—anything that could respond—she softly called out a word.

“Hello?”

Not even an echo answered her back. Very carefully, she began to move forward, the many mirrors around her reflecting her sad image. Some of the projected her as she looked; tired, red-eyed from her crying, her teal tresses frizzing out in every direction. Some of the other ones showed her as she’d once been, when she was just a princess with a myriad of servants to care for her. And others yet projected her features on the body of a woman. They were all beautiful, with big ruby eyes and a long cascade of blue-green hair, each with the built of a slender figure. All of them had a different expression on their face—her face—and seemed to be mouthing out a phrase. Enchanted by her own future face, Elowen stepped forward, mindlessly unaware and indifferent to any danger.

[Faustus]

It did not take the boy long to find himself on the path of the Minotaur. The great, unwashed beast brought with its ferocity a barbaric smell, as potent in being as the beast was strong. Donovan took wide nostril-fulls of breath, accustoming himself to the acrid odor as best he could, so that it would not overpower him once he was within striking range to the beast.

Donovan had identified it as bipedal bovinae by the cloven hoofprints he left behind, had identified it as male because only the male's had tails, and had taken an approximate measure of height by the size of its prints and the spacing between them.

These hallways, this whole house, was run by fear; feasted and gorged itself and made itself fat on the dismay of sentient beings. Donovan had no fear. With stolid eyes, he pierced through the veil and saw all as it truly was. The house had, over the course of many long years, perverted the house's actual and physical being, twisting it in odd angles that bent and repeated into themselves ad infinitum, but he heard no voices and saw no odd sights. Though the hallways twisted in directions insensible, it was well lit and nothing haunted him.

He came upon the beast just as it rounded the corner, one hand reaching laboriously through the threshold of a door. By the wedges of light that came back against the boy's eyes, Donovan deduced there were mirrors inside. Odd, but little was straightforward in this perverted playground. The beast's face held such a fixed grimace of murderous intent that Donovan did not doubt for a moment he came upon prey. The prey did not necessarily have to be the princess. He only knew that whatever the Minotaur was interested in having, it was his duty as a knight of good to prevent him from having it.

The boy thought quick, even though he moved slow. Progress was made a step at a time, no rush, smooth as silk. One hand dropped to his side and he removed a red cartridge, reflecting iridescent in the light. His other hand drew the sword and propelled it forward with a shunt of the arm and a flick of the wrist, so that it spun like a propeller blade on a vertical axis. The Minotaur turned to face the boy, eyed the weapon, and steeled its hide against intrusion.

Then Donovan chucked the cartridge directly at the sword. Just a few revolutions before the blade might strike the Minotaur, the cartridge met the sword's edge and split it in half. It ruptured the spell crystal nestled within the cartridge's core and unleashed the readymade Inferno by way of conical explosion. With a sound like a thunderclap it slammed the Minotaur back, tossing it along the endless hallway, melting stone and terribly singing the Minotaur's tough hide.

The Minotaur stood, its deformed face still smoking from the flames, muscle rippling across its entire frame. Donovan had in his hand another cartridge, this one blue, and then he sprang into action.

The boy was fast, flickering with furious speed. He was upon the beast before it had regained full control of its senses, the boy lofted mid-air with his legs tucked into his chest, his face alive with the bitter ecstasy of combat and he brought the sword down with a mighty cleave. It dug halfway through the Minotaur's thick arm before frost blossomed from the cut and the sword, enveloping the Minotaur in ice with a desolate howl.

Donovan's feet touched ground but he never once let go of his sword's handle, even if it was fixed fast to the Minotaur's arm. He brought his feet up and pushed hard, wrenching his sword free from the block of ice, and pushing off the frozen Minotaur hard enough to launch into a backflip and then a drop-kick against the Minotaur's grotesque visage. The force of the kick cracked the Minotaur's face and sent the beast in whole sliding back.

Donovan landed hard on his back but picked himself up again. He sheathed his sword, dusted himself off, and looked around the mirror room before daring to step foot into it.

"Princess Elowen? Your parents have sent me to find you and to bring you back. My name's Don –"

Donovan didn't get to finish. The Minotaur had managed to free himself from the icy cage, rushed the boy with a speed that belied its massive size, and rammed its concrete hard head against the boy's torso. It sent him flying, then skidding, then sliding back and unconscious against the far end of the hallway.

Then the Minotaur straightened to its full height, hot air venting from its nostrils as it turned wicked eyes on the princess and stepped forward with heavy, thudding footfalls.

[mire]

Elowen stared at the image of her apparent future self, hypnotized by the image’s beauty. She studied the sleek, slender bone structure, the long slim hands, the bright ruby eyes, the classic line of nose and chin. The mirror image stared back at Elowen, a quizzical smile on her red lips.

Come here.

The words drifted out of the mirror, and beckoned the girl forward. The strange enchantment imposed by the woman’s beauty struck Elowen blind and deaf to her surroundings, and the dreadful growls of a beast being slaughtered went unnoticed by the young princess. With a haze over her eyes, Elowen reached her arms out, the tips of her fingers touching the cold glass. The woman in the mirror repeated Elowen’s movements, her smile widening into a grin that threatened to split her face open. Void of her ability to reason, the princess did not notice that her fingertips began to push into the other side of the mirror, and that the beautiful woman had begun to sprout scales along her skin, and her eyes—those big, red eyes—held a wicked gleam to them.

That’s right. Come join me.

“Yes…”

Elowen’s arms disappeared into the mirror, and likely the rest of her would have as well, had she not been snapped out of her trance by the sound of her name on the tongue of a man. Startled, and completely out of natural reflex, she pulled her arms toward her chest and mouth and turned around, half-expecting that frightening man to have found her. The woman in the mirror sneered, and angrily disappeared. Elowen turned enough to catch a glimpse of a boy, carrying the weapons of a warrior. He looked, from what she could tell, normal—he was like her! A sudden burst of hope exploded in her chest, and she opened her mouth to form a greeting that instead ended on a scream.

Out of nowhere, a hideous monster rammed into the boy, sending him flying away to the opposite wall. Elowen watched as the beast locked its eyes on her, and saw in those black orbs a fate worse than death. Paralyzed by fear, she could only think to slowly retreat back, until the cold surface of the mirror touched her back.

“P-please…”

She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to bear witness to her own demise. From behind her, the scaled arms of a creature began to creep out and ever so gently wrapped around the girl’s waist. Elowen did not notice, her small body having gone numb all over.

[Faustus]

The very first hints of awakening entered into the black, dreamless void of unconsciousness. A slit of light appeared before him, halving the black abyss deep inside where he currently resided. Donovan became aware of a dull but terribly acute and equally persistent pain in his chest whenever he took a deep breath. He squinted against the soft light in the corridor because pain highlighted all the edges and made them sharp and glaring. When the vision before him finally resolved, Donovan realized he was standing and leaning against the wall with one arm.

He tasted copper. Blood. Donovan touched his lips with a gloved hand and pain screamed through the raw nerves laid between his lips and his brain. He looked at the fingertips and saw stains of red. Donovan shook his head but made sure to do it gingerly; jerking one's head side to side was not recommended in cases where one might have a concussion. But eventually the pain subsisted and his head cleared and his vision was keen again.

But when he moved he moved slow. A different kind of slow than before. Less deliberate and more beleaguered; less cautious and more staggering. Every fifth or sixth step his vision blurred for a moment before rectifying and black and silver motes of dust swam in and out of his vision.

His hands fumbled at his side, one struggling to keep a warrior's grip on the handle of his sword while the other fished out another spell shell from his pouch. He inserted the shell into the sword's pommel, the blade taking on a crimson hue for a moment, transiently hinting at its adopted majesty. With that done, and now rounding on the threshold between the corridor and the hall of mirrors, Donovan touched a sore spot on the side of his head and let his fingers stray across the surface of his blade.

The Minotaur's stench was almost over-powering at this distance from the delicate princess, a potent mixture of utter hate and arousal, pheromones that nearly dripped from its coarse, fur covered fingertips as it reached out to envelop the princess's head in its giant hand and crush it like a grape.

The palm of its hand actually brushed against the princess's face, actually pressed her head back against the mirror, before Donovan sprang into action. He shot forward with a speed and vigor that his debile condition should not have allowed, but the spirit of the Templar was strong. He vaulted into the air, so high that his hair actually brushed against the ceiling, and brought the point of his sword to bear upon the beast stalking its prey beneath him.

Donovan concentrated; the sword activated; the spell crystal inside of the shell shattered, releasing the magical inferno it struggled to contain inside of a crystalline cage. But rather than blossom from the blade as it had before, the odd symbols that Donovan had drawn across the blade's surface in blood chained the influence within its steel.

You see, Donovan came to realize that the Minotaur's hide was tough and its bones more dense than cement. If he wanted to do damage, he was going to have to focus, and so focus he did. Focused the full brunt of an explosion into the fine point of his sword tip so that when he brought it down on the spot where the Minotaur's head met its shoulders, it punched clean through to the other side. Upon detonation the Minotaur's head completely separated, splattered against the ceiling actually, and its behemoth body fell to the ground hard enough to make the mirrors wobble.

With a heaving effort, Donovan pulled himself away from the still squirming headless Minotaur body and slumped against the wall. He sucked in breath hard and looked at her with one eye, as the other was covered by a curtain of hair matted to his face by blood.

"We need to leave before sundown."

[mire]

The potent stench of the beast nearly rendered Elowen unconscious. With the last of her surviving strength, she placed a hand over her mouth and nose, and could do little else but watch through narrow eyes as the last minutes of her life passed her by. The monster seemed to thoroughly enjoy her misery; he said something vulgar about her developing body, and with an unbearable slowness touched his palm to her soft face. With her eyes firmly shut, Elowen barely realized her head had passed through the mirror, and the scale-covered arms of some creature were now securely wrapped around her waist. What exactly the creature from the mirror intended to do—hold her in place, or pull her to safety—never became clear. Before the Minotaur could follow through with his dark threats, Donovan leaped into the air and sliced off the beast’s head right off its shoulders. Blood spewed from the Minotaur’s body, with a great deal of it covering Elowen’s face and hair. The creature from the mirror was also touched by the blood, and hissed out in agony. It treated back into the darkness of the mirror, freeing Elowen from its grasp.

Elowen did not witness the demise of her predator, and was so detached from her body, it took her a while to feel and smell the blood that smeared her face. With great difficulty, she fluttered open her eyes, and saw the headless body of the Minotaur twitching before her, a river of blood flowing out of where his head had once been attached. In disbelief, Elowen touched a hand to her cheek while her eyes remained locked on the dark crimson liquid that was beginning to cover the whole floor. At the sound of a voice—the voice of that boy—she looked up, and locked her eyes to his. Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes filled with tears she thought had been exhausted. Elowen scrambled to her feet, and forgetting all about proper etiquette and the obviously weakened state of the boy, wrapped her arms around him. In between sobs, she tried to properly express her gratitude.

“You…thank you…I’m so…I was afraid…thank you, please take me…I don’t…I cant….I’m so…”

Unable to form coherent sentences, Elowen raised her eyes to him, and silently pleaded he returned her home.

[Faustus]

Donovan found comfort in Elowen's arms.

No, more than comfort. He found security there; warmth that welcomed him without requisite. If he wanted to, he could find more than security there. He could find oblivion in her arms. He could so easily allow all of this pain and all of his troubles to melt away; the core of conflict that drove him since he woke in the grave to be effaced in this comfort, as his blood continued to trickle away through the open wounds the Minotaur gifted him.

He could die here, in her arms, without a care in the world.

Then he opened his eyes. The lids peeled away gently, but the gold beneath them was livid; ravenous for life. Donovan pulled away from her. Not coarsely, and not in offense, but out of necessity. The boy fumbled some at his hip pouch, identifying by touch the various potions and tinctures, until he found the one he was looking for.

A thin vial, no longer than his forefinger and just as slim, with a watery draft contained therein. He pulled the cork out with his teeth and downed the liquid in one shot. The grimace on his face bespoke a volume of bitterness and nothing at all seemed to have changed, but after the acrid taste left him Donovan looked visibly relieved.

He replaced the cork, dropped the vial into his pouch, and looked at Elowen.

"It'll help me heal faster than I would usually, but it won't reach its full effect for hours. All it can do for me now is stop me from bleeding. Which is great, really it is, but if we don't get out of here by the time the sun tucks itself in then we're pretty much dead."

Donovan, who had let his eyes wander about in the desolate remnants of the funhouse mirrors after the storm of the Boy and the Minotaur, let his eyes light back upon the princess's fair face and he blinked as if in surprise.

"I hope I didn't scare you or anything. I don't think we're going to die. We just have to get out of here quick as we can. I know the way out but you have to help carry me until I can get some blood pumping again."

[mire]

With her head firmly pressed to Donovan’s chest, Elowen squeezed out the last of her tears and watched them dry on her savior’s shirt. She remained silent throughout the embrace, as her voice, much too bruised after all of that screaming and crying, remained a useless instrument of communication. All Elowen could do was glance up every once in a while, each time comforted to see the boy’s face remained his own and not that of some vicious monster. However, with each of her glances, Elowen became increasingly aware of their position, and her cheeks brightened visibly. Still, his presence was so comforting, Elowen could not bring herself to tear away from the boy, despite her growing embarrassment.


By the time Donovan ended their contact, Elowen ‘s blush had lessen to a faint flush, and she had regained most of her composure. Nevertheless, she was acutely aware of their dire situation, and dared not step too far away from the young hero. Silently, she watched as he fumbled through his pouch, bringing out a slim vial to his mouth for a drink. She watched his face distort as the liquid in the vial passed down his throat, and she could not help a moment’s fear that he would pass out from whatever he had consumed. Her fears were laid to rest by his slightly revitalized appearance, and his explanation.

“Oh, I feared—“ Elowen cleared her throat, her voice still a little weak. “I was concerned you had consumed something poisonous and…”

The rest of his words caught up to her jumbled brain, and all of the pretty color her cheeks had gained was instantly lost. Elowen had accepted—even welcomed—death when it appeared to be inevitable; in all instances she had thought her end had come, she had been alone and frightened out of her mind, but somehow had managed to survive. But now, she was with him, the one that had been sent to save her! She was going to be saved, wasn’t she? How could they die?

“We are…” Her voice, a weak whisper, echoed in the empty hall. “…are going to die?”

Suddenly aware of the wrong impression his words had left in the princess’ mind, Donovan corrected his earlier statement. His words, so simple yet possessing the ring of truth, restored Elowen’s faith in their joint survival. He asked of her help, and though she found the idea slightly daunting, the princess did not think to hesitate. For the first time since her capture, her lips broaden into a smile that touched and brightened her ruby eyes. Her young heart pumped the healthy glow of a blush back into her cheeks, and she timidly took a step closer to her hero.

“I…am not very strong, but I owe you my life. I will do the best I can.”

She touched her shoulder to his, inviting him to rest his weight on her.