Halloween 2020: Choose Your Spooky Outcome: Chapter 10
For those who’ve missed it: here’s a link to the Choose Your Spooky Outcome Discord
Thad can pretty much handle anything, but you’re worried seeing Jim and Victoria off their game. Close a call as it is, given that you were just warned by a terrifying being not to let Victoria down, you find your feet racing down the middle hallway. The images of Victoria surround you, as do the shadowed reflections around her.
Running ahead, you start to hear voices; whispers like hisses. The words themselves are hard to make out, but they’re all coming with the same venom and vitriol. As you move, the shapes come into focus, twisted horns, hideous fangs, savage claws, save only for the reflection in the center. That one sharpens to reveal a young girl clutching a small stuffed bird, eyes forcefully shut as she rocks back-and-forth. Although you take a few extra steps to be certain, there’s no denying it. The young girl in the reflection is, or rather was, Victoria.
Twisting a reflective corner, you find yourself staring at the real deal, finally. Adult Victoria, clad in her seer costume, except she’s hunkered down in the same position as Little Victoria. Stepping closer, the voices suddenly rise in clarity and volume, all of them slithering into your ear.
-doesn’t belong here-
-pathetic little thing-
-yet another of Willowbrook’s bastards-
-stinks of human-
-nothing but a worthless half-breed-
“Victoria!” You scream her name, snapping your fingers in front of her face. Trying to drown out the noise of the voices. She stirs, slightly, but her gaze remains lost in the land of reflections.
Stepping back, you force yourself to focus through the noise. It seems like this is some sort of peek into Victoria’s inner demons, maybe a piece of her past? You knew she had a human mother and needed to earn her way into a position of power with the Willowbrooks, but you had no idea she’d faced this kind of resistance. Then again, you’ve only seen the strength of Victoria, never wondering about what challenges she’d faced to forge such power.
“Are these your insecurities? Inner doubts?” You scratch at your skull, wracking your brain to shake loose all the potential explanations for such a display. “How do I help you?”
Staring at the mirrored image, your eyes hone in on the stuffed animal in Little Victoria’s hand. Not merely a bird, as you’d thought at first. A raven. The toy stirs a recent memory of your own, offering a moment of much needed clarity. “Whatever these things are, there’s a reason it’s the younger Victoria who fears them, because you’ve already conquered all this once. Maybe I don’t need to help you. I just need to help you remember how you already won.”
Sitting down across from her, you reach out gently, laying a hand on top of her shoulder. “Victoria, all those horrible voices, what would your Mimi say to them?”
For a second, you think it doesn’t work, not until you see the first breaks appear. Slowly at first, then spider-webbing out like cracks on glass, the image on the mirrors changes. The shadows are pushed back out, relegated to outside a window of the small garden now being reflected back. Little Victoria sat in a chair, no longer appearing tormented, while an older woman tended to a bush with purple roses.
“You’re lovely, like your mother. In many realms, that would be a boon, however among us, it will be more burden than blessing. It reminds them of your connection to humanity. Those who consort with the power of All Hallows Eve are rarely comely, unless they are enticing prey. A fearful visage is more immediately respected.”
Something about the voice, like you’ve heard it before, or at least an empowered version of it. Watching, you notice Victoria’s eyes fall. “I… I can change. I could try to be ug-.”
The sharp sound of shear snipping cut her off as the older woman pulled free a single purple rose. “Nonsense. Never try to be what they want, that gives others far too much control. It’s more freeing to become a version of yourself so powerful, it cannot be denied.”
Leaning down, the older woman offers the rose to Little Victoria. “Lovely things have their place as well.”
Little Victoria’s hand reaches out, clutching the stem, only to jerk back an instant later. “Ow!”
“What’s wrong, my restless raven? You didn’t see the thorns lying in wait?” The older woman asks.
Little Victoria shakes her head. “I was looking at the pretty flower.”
“Precisely.” As the older woman smiles, you realize that the watcher was right. Victoria and her Mimi do bear quite a resemblance when they bare their teeth.
Just as fast as it came, the indoor garden is gone, replaced once more by the whispering shadows. Thankfully, Victoria is stirring now, lifting her head from her knees and blinking. “Merlin? When did you… how lost did I become in here?”
“More lost than we want the others to be,” you say. Leaning down to help Victoria to her feet, something heavy bangs against your leg. Pulling the object from your pocket, you find the metal jack-o-lantern grinning back, only something is different.
You’re pretty sure last time you saw this object, there weren’t flames flickering inside. Has something changed since the candy cottage? When you stare at the mirrors, your mind really does a somersault, because the jack-o-lantern isn’t being reflected. Instead, what appears to be a circular hole manifests on the mirror where the metal orb should be.
Moving up to the glass, the hole shrinks down as the jack-o-lantern shifts, until it’s roughly the same size as the protrusion out of the pumpkin’s back. Working more on instinct than anything else, you push the dull metal spike into the hole, where it slots in with an audible click.
A doorknob. That’s what the orange candy turned into, a jack-o-lantern doorknob that you’ve just set in a mirror. Tempting as it is to pause and think things through, there are two more friends who need your help, and this has to be quicker than navigating the mirror maze. With a twist you turn the knob.
The world around you shatters, every mirror collapsing to pieces, save only for the one with the knob. Instead, that one has opened, revealing the unexpectedly welcoming sight of non-reflective walls. It looks like stone, maybe some sort of cave if you were guessing. A noise too, but not one louder than the shrieks of Jim echoing from nearby.
“Wooo! Take that fucker! Better luck next time, you antlered bastard.”
Jim is swaggering over, looking triumphant, if a bit winded. Thad is a few steps behind, clearly shaking off his own ordeal, but recovering fast.
“It seems Merlin has found a way forward,” Victoria surmises. “Strange that the candy opened our path, I wonder what methods… oh dear.”
Following her eyes, you too look at the shattered remains of mirrors all around you, a seemingly endless sea of broken glass. Except the shadows are moving strangely across the reflections, like they’re bubbling up, clawing their way forth from… oh damn.
“Ummm, I think all that shit that was mentally tormenting you guys might be stepping up its game,” you announce. Given the way their shadowy limbs are moving the mirror remains, definitely appears that they’ve got physical presence.
Thad swings around, fists at the ready. “I’m sure we can take- oh wow, that is a lot of them.”
“More than it is prudent to merely fight,” Victoria assesses. “It’s a battle outside our capacity to win. We should hold the line while Merlin presses on. Perhaps upon completing his task as a traveler, the defense will falter, or we’ll be whisked to safety.”
“Or we could all run through the door real fast and slam it shut,” Jim suggests. “Looks magical, maybe they won’t be able to follow.”
Fight, flight, or try to hold a door closed: the standard human responses to danger. The longer you wait, the more shadowy reflections crawl free, so probably best to pick a course of action soon.