The Mirror Monster (Part Four)
Chandagnac
Broken Robot
- Location
- Nowhere
The Mirror Monster (Part Four)
After much thought, you realise that Professor Elthonar used a fairly simple substitution cipher to encrypt his private notebook: the letters of the alphabet have been replaced with other letters in the same order that they appear in the introduction to Kelamon Dumar's book.
When you have translated it, separated individual words, and replaced the excessive commas with the correct punctuation, the first page of the notebook says, "This is my confession. I never intend to publish it or for anyone other than myself to read it, but I write it nonetheless: for the sake of my own peace of mind, if nothing else. I, Tregard Elthonar, am guilty of terrible evil. I was deceived by a group of wicked men and women, calling themselves 'The Mystic Path', who tricked me into joining in with their vile conspiracies."
It will take you a long time to fully translate the rest of the notebook, but you are confident that you will be able to do so, if you put in enough time and effort. However, one thing that puzzles you is that the late professor didn't use a more complicated and challenging method to encode his writings that were meant to be completely private. Was it laziness or arrogance that compelled him to use a code that you were able to crack in only a few minutes? Or did he subconsciously hope that someone would eventually find his secret diary, decipher what he'd written, and be moved to put an end to 'The Mystic Path' and 'their vile conspiracies'.
'How does that shapeshifting monster fit into this?' you wonder. 'Did someone send it to assassinate him? Did his former accomplices realise how much he regretted his past misdeeds and decide that they had to silence him?' Perhaps you will find out the answers to those questions when you are able to finish reading the notebook. For now, you put it away in your schoolbag.
After some consideration, you put the bunch of not-quite-golden keys and the book of How to Enter the Underworld in there as well. You've visited the Underworld in your nightmares before, back when Panegyrek the demon was eager for revenge against you, and you have no desire to see any part of it for real. However, there must be a reason why Professor Elthonar thought it was so important that he used it as a basis for his secret code. Also, you're curious to know why it continues to look so pristine while all of the other books that were swallowed by the portal appear to be rapidly decaying. What kind of magic infuses its pages? Into your schoolbag it goes, although it's a tight fit; you'd struggle to fit anything more in there.
Satisfied that you must have found some useful clues among the wreckage of the late professor's office, you consider what to do next. You still need to find a way out of here, after all. What to do next? Where should you go from here?
Out of the corner of your eye, you see faint, malformed letters hovering in the air before you. They look as if they have been partially eaten and – before you can make sense of them – they fade away to nothing. Bemused, you turn around, searching for where they came from. Is someone trying to send you a message or are there some very peculiar weather phenomena in this place?
You see what appears to be a doorway hanging in the air. Instead of a doorframe, it has wickedly sharp edges. On the other side, there is a gloomy stone room that seems to have been piled high with crates, disused furniture, and various other odds and ends. There are four young mage apprentices there as well, dressed in wizard robes, staring at you through the portal. You would estimate that they are about the same age as you. They all look somewhat the worse for wear: dusty, bedraggled, and sweat-stained, even if they're not all injured. One of them is a half-elf boy with a bloody nose and red splatters all down his front. Another young lad has a weaselly face, a roguish smile, and a bloody dagger in his hand. There is a green-skinned goblin girl who is anxiously wringing her hands together. Another girl has skin as tanned as yours: she looks at you with an expression of mingled hope, fear, and doubt.
While you're still mulling over what to do next, the weaselly-looking boy picks up a long, thin wooden cylinder – you have no idea what it would originally have been used for – and pokes it through the portal. You see it protruding through to your side, seemingly unharmed. Then, as an experiment, he waves the wooden cylinder so that it collides with one of the sharp-looking outer edges of the portal. Half of it is neatly sliced off and falls to the ground on your side of the portal.
Ashen-faced, the weaselly-looking boy mutters something to his friends. You're not entirely sure what he says, but from his body language you'd guess that he was warning them not to touch the edges of the portal. His friends whisper their replies to him, but you have no idea what they are saying. Lip reading is a skill you haven't mastered.
It occurs to you that if he and his friends are anywhere on the world of Narrath, all you'd need to do would be to step through to the other side: then, you could call Uncle Mishrak, get him to pick you up and take you home. It'd be easy...
However, you think that it would be unwise to rush through the portal without first establishing peaceful diplomatic relations with the four young mage apprentices on the other side: if they panicked and closed the portal, or pushed you into one of the edges, you could be cut in half. You don't want to die like that. Or at all, if you can help it.
What will you do?
[] Wave to them.
[] Smile at them.
[] Speak to them. (Write in: what will you say?)
[] Beg them for help. (Write in: what will you say?)
[] Charge through the portal and try to get past them as quickly as possible.
[] Use your Illusions to send them a message... or show them in detail exactly what happened to you. (Write in: how do you want Elys to use her illusions?)
[] Do something else (write in).
Elys is a much more powerful illusionist than Dorian or any of his friends. She has Illusions as an actual skill, whereas they have to use Ritual Magic for it. She can create much larger and more detailed illusions than they can, almost instantaneously.
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