Mirror

The clip of our shoes against tile again is a surprisingly comforting sound. Even though we're still in a dungeon, it's like a bit of civility has returned to the air around us.

"Thank Essence that's over with," Ayre celebrates, giving a big stretch with his arms fully extended over his head and crossed at the wrists. "Now, we've just got to get the key and get back out of here!"

"Right back through all of the traps we've already cleared all over again," Korrigan points out like she's still trying to figure out if it's okay to contradict her escorts like that.

Guess seeing Ayre treat me so abusively got it in her head that it's okay with me, since she took to whacking me soon after Ayre did. Maybe I should be putting my foot down more about respect … I mean, I don't mind it, as I know Ayre doesn't mean anything by it, and it's funny to see Korrigan acting that way, but it's clearly giving a bad impression.

On the other hand, I could just start acting deserving of respect …

… Nah. Who wants to be an old fogey in a world where everyone's already so uptight? Who knows, maybe I'll even get them to lighten up!

"You said it, yourself," Ayre is telling the oni with the beret covering her horns. Honestly, between that, her pale skin and her small size, Korrigan could pass for a human child. "We've already cleared them. We've either disarmed them or know their tricks and locations. It won't be such a tense affair heading back out as it was coming in!"

"Eh, I didn't think it was that bad," I put in, "but I do think you're getting the cart ahead of the horse."

Ah, that lovely expression on all three of their faces as they have to translate a figure of speech they've never heard before. At least it uses words they're familiar with.

"You mean I'm getting things mixed up?" Ayre tries to translate.

"Close," I commend. "You're planning how you're going to leave before you're all the way through the trial."

Ayre scowls at me like I just took away his cake. "How much more could there possibly be?!"

"Eh, if I had to guess, I'd say we're about halfway through," I answer with a shrug.

"You do have to guess," the elf counters. "You've never been here before!"

Leuke takes the opportunity to step forward, hands raised. "We're never going to find out if we're ten steps from the key or a thousand until we start moving, right? And that number isn't getting any smaller until then, either! So let's just keep moving and find out together and stop talking like this dungeon's already beaten us!"

"Well said, Leuke," I praise. "And well spoken! Are you a secret philosopher?"

He gets bashful at my teasing, rubbing his neck. "Ah, no, I can't take credit for that, I picked it up from Geold."

"No shame in that," I assure him energetically. "It takes a wise man to recognize wisdom in others!" I turn toward further into the temple area. "Now, let's take Geold's advice and keep moving forward! I think I see the next obstacle now!"

The glimmer of light I caught sight of soon resolves itself before us, and I don't fully manage to suppress my excited squeal of glee.

"Oh, oh," I exclaim as I hop from foot to foot. "It's a funhouse mirror maze!"

Little surprise that Ayre's looking at me like I've lost my last screw. "I'm not sure anything in a Silver-rank dungeon should be described as fun."

I jut my bottom lip out at the elf. "Oh, come on! Hitting that flour mill was fun! Beating up all of those goblins was fun! Why can't a mirror maze be fun?"

He turns fully toward me, one hand on his hip and the other pointed at me. "Hitting that flour mill was simulating the destruction of an entire village! Getting ambushed by a swarm of monsters is a major threat! And a mirror maze can't be fun if it's in a place designed to kill us!"

I give a huff of irritation at his stubbornness. "Not with that attitude, it can't!"

Ayre clings to his cheeks dramatically. "It's not about attitude, Remmi! This is a dungeon, not an amusement park!"

"Yeah," I agree, "but if it was an amusement park, it'd be off to a great start!"

"No! It'd be off to a dead start! As in, all of the visitors! Where are you even from that you think death traps sound like fun?!"

"Honestly?" I only give the question a second's thought. "Half of our amusements come from shooting ourselves off at high speeds, dropping ourselves from really high up or scaring ourselves silly."

Ayre's gaze becomes one of someone watching something volatile start to bubble. "... And the other half?"

I turn my grin all the way up to megawatt range. "Roller coasters!"

"What in the world is a roller coaster?"

"All three!"

Korrigan watches this back and forth with her eyes, like one might watch a tennis match. "Maybe Hero Remmi is part ogre …?"

"That would explain why she's enjoying all of their stuff so much," Leuke muses, "but I think she might just be winding Ayre up. I hope."

"Anyway!" I thrust my arms up into the air. "Let's get on with the mirror maze!" I grab Ayre's arm and drag him behind me to the entrance.

The mirrors are the bendy sort, too. As we're passing through the entrance, I'm momentarily as short and curvy as Seina, and Korrigan stretches as tall as Leuke. I pause and wave my hand back and forth, watching the distortion shift and bend.

Ayre comes up behind me with an absolutely massive head. "Okay, we're in the maze. Do you have any brilliant idea on how to solve it, or are we just going to run around until we find the exit by chance?"

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"Oh, that's simple!" I hold up an index finger. "Since this is a single-floor maze with the entrance on one exterior wall and the exit on the opposite exterior wall, then regardless of any internal features the maze's layout might possess, following the exterior wall must inevitably lead to the exit!"

Leuke is already holding the side of his head, looking tiny on super-broad shoulders. "Simple, she says …"

"It's a piece of cake, really," I assure my friends as I move to the wall to the left of the entrance and place my hand against it. "Just keep your hand to the wall so you're not fooled by any optical illusions produced by the mirrors! And since it's so easy, that probably means there's going to be traps in here, too, so watch out for any slightly raised tiles or extra lines that may be trip wires."

Korrigan holds her staff closer to her chest. "What if there are monsters in here?"

"I doubt there are," I reply, "it'd be like putting a bull in a glass house. But there might still be illusions in the mirrors, so check your fire before you go off in a panic."

Sure enough, we proceed fairly easily. I'm humming and maybe even skipping a little, enjoying all of the funny distortions of me and my friends as I keep one hand to the wall. Ayre doesn't bother, just following me, and Leuke stops after we find out his gauntlet makes the most ear-splitting noise pulling along the mirrors, but Korrigan is keeping her hand to the smooth surface just like I am.

It isn't long before we see the first trap, a tile just a little higher than the surrounding ones. It would have been easy to miss if we were distracted with all of the mirrors and bumbling around lost, but since we're not having to concentrate on anything else, it's fairly easy to spot. I want to push it with a pole just to see what happens, but Korrigan begs me off, so we pass it by without incident.

This sets us into a pattern. I'm sure the maze is absolutely loaded with traps, but they're spread out across the entire layout, and our strategy only sees one narrow strip of it. Still, there's more pressure plates I'm not allowed to press, some tripwires I'm not allowed to snip, and even the occasional illusion. The first time a mirror's surface suddenly changed into what looked like a doorway goblins were pouring out of, Korrigan screamed, but I got her by the shoulder before she reflexively fireballed it.

All in all, it's a pretty chill time, and we make it out of the other side without incident.

Beyond the mirror maze, our end goal is in sight. On an adorned dais, underneath a dramatic column of light, the Key of Guile sits upright, perched in its stand.

Before it is a wide chasm, stretching from wall to wall with only an ancient-looking stone bridge passing over it. One section of the bridge has even collapsed, though the gap is small enough that it wouldn't be difficult to jump over.

"Really?" Ayre asks. "A pit with a bridge over it? Isn't this awfully low-key for a final trap?"

"Sure is," I chipperly agree. "Which means we can bet it's not what it seems. Any guesses on what it is?"

"A bridge where it breaks in the middle," the grumpy elf guesses.

I flick his nose. "Lazy guess!" Instead, I look around for a moment, spy a large piece of collapsed rubble, and make my way over to it. "Hey, Leuke, can you pick this up?"

"Huh?" he asks, surprised at being included. "Uh, sure." He comes over and hefts it up over his head easily enough.

I lead him back over to the bridge. "Now, toss it just past the hole we need to jump over."

He gives a heave, and the rubble comes down on the stone … but the stone doesn't break. Instead, the entire section swings down, dropping the rubble into the abyss before its counterbalance pulls it back up again, returning it to a seamless bridge.

"Oh," Ayre intones. "That's diabolical … How did you notice?"

I pull him off to the side to point at the supports for the bridge. "Check it. The supports are doubled up near either side, but there's a gap in the middle where there are no supports. Now, could the bridge support its weight over that gap? Probably, but it still meant there was a section that couldn't be trusted in a bridge that's already obviously a trap. That the hole is just big enough to encourage a leap of faith made me doubly suspicious of it."

And yet Ayre looks at me like I'm the crazy one. "And your people do this kind of thing to yourselves for fun?!"

I just give a dopey grin and shrug. What can I say? No, we totally don't?

Korrigan steps up to the bridge, too. "But how do we get across, then? We can't brace the bridge without getting over to it, but getting over to it causes it to dump us."

"Well, there are two ways around the obstacle that stick out to me," I offer. "One, we find a way to minimize the weight we place on the bridge. Two, we find a way to increase the counter ballast to counteract our weight."

The party begins mulling the problem over.

"My arrows might be able to support some additional weight, but I'd have to be able to see the mechanism and it would have to be made of something my arrows could penetrate," Ayre offers.

"I'm heavier than any of you," Leuke mentions. "If I could land on this side of the pillar, it'd be enough weight to let the rest of you cross. And then I could … I dunno, jump again, maybe?"

Korrigan is rubbing her chin. "I might be able to heat the stone enough to fuse it in place and disable the trap altogether, but that much heat might weaken it, too, and just cause it to collapse."

Suddenly, a pop up appears in front of me.

Feeling burdened by silly little things like entropy? Wanting to save something before it drops yet can't get your meat puppet hands to cooperate?

Introducing for a limited time only: Heavenly TimeTM EzStop Bullets! So you can hold Entropy at gunpoint and say, "Get bent," to the laws of time!

Available at any Essence Shop near you! Messaging and Data rates may apply! Heavenly TimeTM EzStop Bullets may not work on particularly massive objects. Always test in a safe area first!

The oversized buy button is flashing and has a ton of cartoon arrows pointing to it.

My face splits into a grin.

Ayre immediately notices and gives me that suspicious look. "... Remmi? What are you thinking?"

"Nothing!" And for once, it's even true! "It's just, turns out, the Essence System wants in on this, too! It's got its own solution!"

"... Essence is actively monitoring you and offering solutions in real time?"

I rub the back of my head with a laugh. "Yeah, Yorin's not going to like that, either, is she?"

"Either?" Ayre raises an eyebrow as he repeats the key word. "Remmi, what else are you hiding?"

"Nothing big, nothing big," I assure my friend. "Just sales personality stuff!"

"Didn't she already tell you to stop breaking things related to the Essence System?"

"I didn't do it," I insist, motioning to the screen in front of me that's invisible to them. "This was its own idea!"

Ayre just sighs, rubbing his forehead. "Just do it. I'm not going to get into an argument with the System."

I mentally select Buy, and a box of cheap panel wood appears before me. Inside is a magazine with a golden line and matching-tipped bullets.

"Okay, everybody, get ready. I don't know how long these will last, so we're going to need to run it. Leuke, carry Korrigan."

Thankfully, the girl doesn't give any protests, and soon, everyone's ready to bolt. I load the magazine into my gun and take aim at the bridge. "Alright, as soon as I fire, start running!"

The bullet goes off, the bridge is engulfed in golden light, and Leuke and Ayre take off. The bridge holds under their feet, and I get running after them, having waited in case I needed to shoot it again.

I'm halfway across the bridge before the glow fades and it starts to tip, but I activate Empower and make a leap for it, getting to see the chasm underneath me before I'm landing on solid stone again.

Ayre's next to me in an instant. "That was too close! Are you alright, Remmi?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I assure him. "Come on. Let's get the key, trigger the big final trap, and get out of here."

"Stop promising more traps!"

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