The trees and brambles quickly faltered into a very, very large clearing of waist high grass as they approached. Ilari, impatient with being carried, jumped down into the grass with a thud while Kiah was too busy craning her neck upward to see as much of the faded ivory walls as she could- and there was a lot to see. The round stone temple stretched up and up, narrowing as it went and ending in the spire that Ilari had seen before. Thin ribbons of gold and black stone swirled oddly sinister patterns all over the walls, weaving around hundreds of tiny round mirrors no bigger than a silver dollar set into the rock. They glittered in the sunlight, their flawed reflections showing that every single one of them was covered in spidery cracks. Choking vines of something like ivy spidered up from the grass and wrestled for dominion with the other decorations. The clearing was eerily absent of any signs of animal life, save for a large raven that sat in a tree at the very edge. It's black feathers shone coldly, like obsidian, and it's eyes glittered as it stared at them with it's head tilted almost mockingly.
Kiah shuddered, thinking that maybe it was a mistake to come storming angrily in on the temple of a deity of who knew what, especially when she seemed to have upset it's owner somehow. It had seemed like such a good idea before, when they'd first set out, but spending a couple of days hiking tends to take the edge off of a good wrathful tirade. She forced herself to draw closer for a better look, ignoring the grass clinging at her legs, and shuddered again as she saw a thousand tiny broken reflections of herself in a dozen of the little mirrors.
Do I really look that bad? The girl looked closely into the least broken of the mirrors she could find and examined herself. Dirty, scraggly-haired, with rings around her tired eyes.... Yep. That bad. Ugh. My eyes look... weird. I must really not be sleeping well or something.
Gee, imagine that.
Ilari, fighting his way through the thick grass on the ground, chirped loudly to get Kiah's attention. *Woo! Found the door! Um, maybe!* A long, loud sniffing could be heard, a strangely squashed noise as if he had his snout pressed up against something. *There's fresh air, but it smells weird inside.*
"Weird how?"
*Like funny kinds of people or animals that I've never smelled before.* He snuffled again, then sneezed.
Kiah warily made her way over to the rustling spot in the grass that was Ilari. Sure enough there were smooth cracks in the stone that she would say formed two halves of a tall, rounded double door, except for the fact that she couldn't see how they could possibly open, perfectly flush with the wall as they were. Plus they were way too big for comfort, a good eight feet wide at the base and at least twelve tall. But the vines were all cleared away from them, which made it likely that they were in use.
She gulped.
Ilari saw her expression and prodded at her ankle demandingly. *Well?*
"Well what?"
*Aren' we gonna try to go in?*
"...."
*But Kiiiiiah!* He drew himself up as much as he could, being a small and somewhat fluffy thing. *Retreating is for cowards!*
Kiah groaned. Why did she and Zeke have to teach him that? She'd bop him for his half of the blame, if she ever found him again. She prodded at her internal sense of reason, hoping it would give her a good excuse to back out of this, but it seemed too busy being awed by the temple and it's ominous atmosphere.
"Yeah, okay. Lets try."
They examined the doors for a handle, for writing, for odd little mechanisms hidden in the decorations, and found none. They poked, prodded, pushed, pulled, sweated and strained for a good half hour, Kiah getting progressively more grouchy in the face of Ilari's youthful enthusiasm and the rising heat. Finally she leaned her back against the stone and slumped to the ground. The creepy silence here had led her through fear, dragged her past anxiety, and finally dropped her in a heap at the doorstep of annoyed. Plus her earlier anger at her apparent hexing was coming back.
"Either this place is empty, it doesn't want visitors, or these aren't doors." She thought a curse word to herself and whacked the doors absently with a fist, startling when the impact made a loud but muffled resonant sound rather than the flat 'smack' she'd been expecting. She pressed her ear against the wall and tapped the doors again, quietly. Through the stone she could just barely hear a dull ringing like a very small gong might make. She groaned and facepalmed with one hand while with the other she knocked as she might on any normal door.
Duh, Kiah.
Hey, I didn't hear you before when I needed your help, so now you can just....
I'm going to stop talking to myself now.
Slowly, with the expected stone on stone griding noise, the doors swung inward. Cool air rushed out, charged with unexplained tension.
"CAAWK! CAW CAWK!" barked the raven in the tree as it took to the air, making both Kiah and Ilari startle. They watched it nervously as it flew high up through the dead silent air, circled the tower once, and then disappeared inside through a window.
Kiah could feel Ilari cringing close to her leg in fear. She scooped him up carefully and gave him a stroke before settling him on top of her backpack. "Hey, it's allright," she encouraged with warmth she didn't feel. "We're brave, remember? You can sit up there and watch my back, and I'll keep my dagger loose."
*That bird....* He was still staring up after it.
"Yeah?"
*It was laughing at us.*
"It only sounds that way, hun. That's just the noise crows make."
*No.*
Kiah glared angrily into the large white stone hallway that stretched ahead. Throw an earthquake at me, drop things on my head, make it rain on me, and now you're upsetting my dragon. Yes, I need to talk with the head of the house.
Be. Diplomatic.
She marched in, expression firm. Her steps echoed on the cold stone floor. At least, she noted with relief, the door didn't slam shut behind her. The decorations continued seamlessly across the walls, floors, and ceilings. The only difference from the wall outside was that instead of tiny mirrors there were now dozens of larger ones in different shapes, from round ones like dinner plates to squares the sizes of vanities. All where shattered and cracked without missing any pieces. Broken light illuminated the hallway as if reflected off of them, but she couldn't see anything casting it in the first place. The lack of ordered cause and effect made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. The hallway began to turn to the left, making even less sense, as the place hadn't looked this large from the outside. Kiah paused at the curve, hesitant to loose sight of the doors.
*Um.... Kiah....* The little dragon's voice wavered with alarm and fear, fighting not to break into a squeak. *Look!*
So much for the doors. They had closed after all, leaving only the broken mirrors to light the way. And sliding through the fragments of light with the easy strides of a predator came a bigger cat than Kiah had ever hoped to see, black as night, at least nine feet long without the tail and almost as tall as she was. Nevermind wondering how it had ended up behind them. They froze in place, absolutely still, both grabbed by a primal kind of deep doom. There was no way was either one of them going anywhere if it decided otherwise, but as it came closer and closer it seemed decidedly uninterested in violence. It snuffed at them boredly- Kiah trying simultaneously not to flinch or look it in the eye and thinking a rapid fire litany of don't move don't upset it don't look afraid don't challenge it just DON'T! Ilari stared at it at it with wide, impressed eyes, all naive innocence. She could just make out a faint tiger stripe pattern to it's coat, although being able to make out black stripes on a black field didn't make any logical sense.
As the longest minutes ever in Kiah's personal history trickled past and the cat just stood there staring at them, both girl and dragon started to calm down. It seemed to be slouching somewhat lazily, and although it was definitely the source of a cloud of foreboding Kiah began to wonder why. It's huge face seemed almost friendly with it's long black whiskers. It was the oddest feeling she'd ever known, like looking through a veil of something unfathomable and terrifying to see something cute on the other side.
"Y-you okay back there, Ilari?"
*Yis,* squeaked the dragon, timid but likewise relaxing. *I don't think it's... bad. It just... seems that way.*
"I think you're right." Slowly, refusing to allow herself to tremble, Kiah extended an open hand palm up toward the tiger.
Oh, that's good. What do you expect it to do, sniff your hand and then rub against your leg like a house cat?
The tiger grumbled with seeming approval but ignored Kiah's hand, instead making eye contact with her and jerking it's head in a disturbingly humanlike gesture for 'follow me' before leading ahead down the hallway. Looking ahead the hallway seemed to continue unreasonably, branching off into dozens of shadowy doors lit only by the eerie glow of the broken glass, so despite the feeling of deep misgiving Kiah obliged the tiger and followed it- and quickly got lost in the twist of going through seemingly random different doorways. She and Ilari both murbled instinctive displeasure at not knowing the terrain well enough themselves to fight back if they had to. Every now and then they shared a quick mental flicker of "we could duck behind that corner if we had to", or "That mirror was missing a big shard; landmark!"
But finally they found themselves approaching a tall, wide and rounded doorway that actually had heavy doors in it rather than just being an opening like the rest had been. If the size of these doors was any indication it was a very, very large room on the other side. Tiny silver markings were etched in a semicircle around the edge of the stone frame, further marking the room as an important one. The tiger passed by in front of them and just pushed the left half of the doors inward with it's nose and let itself in, leaving girl and dragon standing tensely outside.
"...Well Ilari?" Kiah found her voice hushed in cold and causeless fear. She studied the silver etchings up close now, and found them to be two lines connected by hundreds of tiny ones in between- as if the whole door were framed by a tiny, artfully done ladder. "I have a terrible feeling about this, and I don't know why. You?"
*It feels... scary,* he squeaked in agreement, only his head poking out of her backpack now. *But we need to go in, don't we?*
"I guess we-" But whatever Kiah guessed was cut off by a pained yelping shout from inside, in a voice they both knew instantly- Zeke! Kiah drew her dagger with one hand and threw the other shoulder against the right half of the door, bruising it on the heavy wood but pressing through to come out on the other side, knife at the ready and-
The room was huge and round, with a high ceiling, and brightly lit by nearly continuous glowing broken mirrors on the walls. In the center of the room, in a throne on a dias at the top of many steps, slouched a lovely brunette woman. She was leaning over the arm on one side of her throne so she could reach the chessboard-table next to her, on the opposite side of which sat Zeke. He tossed his arms up in exasperation, waving a white chess piece around. "I won again!" He sounded rather disappointed with this.
"There's no point in trying to loose against me, you little tyrant, I told you. We can play as many games as you want, but nobody can- oh!" The black on black tiger had climbed the steps and nudged the woman's bare and un-shoed leg that stuck out of her long and slinky dark green cocktail dress, drawing her attention to their visitors. Kiah, boggled into stillness and looking completely disarmed despite her unsheathed weapon, only stood there. A black house cat began to walk around her in circles, rubbing against her ankles, but she took no notice.
"Look, Zeke, we have visitors," the woman announced calmly. "I'll have you know that you are most un-welcome, young lady. And mind that you don't step on the cat."
"Kiah!" Zeke jumped up from his chair and ran down the stairs and across the room to greet her with a hug, looking completely delighted to see her. "I'm so glad you ended up here! Put the knife away, put it away, you don't need it here." Blinking stupidly, she did as he asked.
"This is where you've been? What is all this?" Kiah finally took a look around at the rest of the room, shock wearing off. It had couches, arm chairs, tables, book shelves, and a good deal more doors leading out, all wallpapered by endless broken reflections of themselves in the walls.
*Is it clear?* squeaked Ilari's mind voice from deep in the backpack, having hidden when Kiah rammed into the door.
"It seems safe, Ilari."
The little dragon nosed his way out from under the pack's top flap, black eyes going wide at his first actual sight of Zeke, who figured out who Ilari was immediately.
"Little eggy! Heey! I missed you buddy!"
*It's oldzeke!* He leaped as if spring loaded at Zeke, who laughed happily and deftly caught Ilari without hurting himself on the wyrm's spines.
"Look at you all moving and breathing air like a big boy. Nice spines, man, must give you a heckova defense mod." Zeke whistled at the sight of the thin scar on his cheek. "Been busy already huh?"
Kiah, though, was busy looking over Zeke's shoulder at the woman. Tall, with long but very frizzy and ringlet-curled brown hair, and just on the border between beautiful and goregous in her knee length slinky dress and bare feet, she was hopping down the stairs from the dais in a youthful and sprightly way that clashed horribly with her regal bearing. "Who is, um... did she say that I was unwelcome?"
"Calm down, young lady. You are indeed unwelcome, and I hope your stay here will be most uncomfortable." Close enough to reach now she extended a hand for Kiah to shake. "My name is Lady Misfortune. It's most regrettable to meet you; please, come in and sit down. There's explaining to be done. There always is."