Tristan and Sam find themselves nearly smothered in darkness (or devoured by pudding). They're jerked along for an unknown amount of time. All either can hear are the cackles and jeering of a myriad of voices as they head towards their unknown destination. Thankfully, they are released from the shadow's embrace and are deposited on a hard, stone, floor. All around them are walls made of glass. No, not entirely glass ... mirrors. A maze of mirrors. "Tell me, tell me, little knight. Are you brave enough to face the greatest monster of them all?" the annoying cackle asks.
Sam yelps. "Hands off, that may be old meat but it's still my meat!" He fishes out a tiny bronze dragon with red ruby eyes and flicks the head, which lets loose a tiny gout of fire to ignite the torch he's holding in the other hand.
"What, myself?" Tristan looks around the two of them, letting anger and annoyance rise to smother fear. He smashes the pommel of his sword against the nearest mirror, and bellows out, "HANNAH!" Then he listens.
"Tristan?!" comes a faint reply from the distance. The mirror in front of the knight shows him the size of a child, while Sam looks like a towering warrior next to him.
The old minstrel raises his torch overhead to illuminate their surroundings. "Easy, easy, milord. Looks like whomever runs this place has decided to try a little mind game on us."
The mirror Tristan strikes vibrates violently, but does not break. To Tristan's call, well, there comes no answer. At least not at first. "Can't hold on to your little girl, knight? You aren't quite man enough for her, are you? Haven't done much of note, now have you?" the voice cackles.
"Hannah! Where are you? We're in a hall of mirrors! Sam's with me!" Tristay shouts back.
Sam grins and quips to Sir Tristan, "I guess I don't have enough of a mind for them to want to play games with, so they're just focusing on you."
"I've fought the armies of the Destroyer. Your tricks don't impress me," Tristan snarls at the voice. He steadies his swordhand, and takes out the charcoal in his left. "Hah. More likely they're picking on the easy target," he answers Sam. "Sitting still wasn't particularly successful. I suppose we may as well try walking." He picks a direction at random.
"Why do you even bother, little knight? She'll forget you soon enough. She has far more impressive people in her life than you. Surely even you realize that," the voice prods at Tristan. "and dear me, fought the armies of the destroyer? You served him without question for a time. But then I suppose your excuse is you were just following orders..."
The minstrel follows Sir Tristan obligingly, but not before tapping him on toe shoulder and handing him one end of a cord. He holds onto the other end.
Tristan nods, and wraps the cord around his left wrist. "Does the trap read minds, do you think? Strange that it would know these things." His jaw clenches and unclenches, but he doesn't rise to its bait again.
"It's a simple matter to read a simple mind," the voice comments.
The knight also draws a line along the mirrors as he walks, even if there's no reason to think the mark will last. He doesn't have any useful ideas, after all.
Another mirror they pass swaps heads, so that Sam has Tristan's body (and hair) while Tristan ends up with shaggy ears and a belly.
Sam shrugs. "Or, whomever's set up this dungeon is someone who knows these things. How many people knew about that?"
"Quite a few. That'd make the trap more recent, though, not a relic of the Bandit Queen's earlier days." Tristan talks to keep his mind off the barbs and their predicament. "And it would mean they were expecting me. And not you?"
"Or it's magic that doesn't actually know anything, just projects 'whatever is your worst fear' into your head," Sam suggests. "Scarecrows work like that."
The minstrel adds, "Though following a knight around in a maze of mirrors is hardly my worst fear, so there you are."
"As a certain well known man might say, following orders blindly is both stupid and an excuse. Its easy to hide from your mistakes when you can blame others, isn't it? Oh sure, the lord's fault, not the knight's. Much easier to never think about your orders and just follow them, isn't it?" the voice asks simply as the pair continue along through a series of rooms that look alike. "You must sleep very well at night without a conscience."
Another mirror shows Sam waking in bed next to.. well, it couldn't be a troll..
"Except you're not hearing your 'worst fears', you're hearing mine. Or what the hall thinks is my worst fears, anyhow," Tristan says. "Or perhaps I should verify that -- what did you just hear?"
Sam says obligingly, "It's criticizing you for following orders and calling you conscience-less."
"Oh, really?" Tristan feigns surprise. "You didn't hear 'To liken your singing to the croaking of frogs is an insult to frogs everywhere. Strong men would rip out their own ears to escape hearing your playing'?"
"Nope, didn't hear anything like that," Sam says cheerily. "Not recently anyway!"
"That goes without saying," the voice says, sounding bored. "He's heard that all his life already. No point in beating a dead horse."
Another mirror near Sam shows a beer-hall waitress bending over to wipe up spilled ale. She's got a fox tail, close enough to nearly touch.
"I quite like your playing." Tristan draws little squiggles in the wall as he walks. "Even the 'doom da doom doom da' song' was catchy, after a fashion."
Tristan stops, and tries yelling again. "HANNAH!"
The minstrel glances over at the mirror, then pauses. "Will you look at that," he says approvingly. "I do believe our friend thinks I actually have a libido and I'm not just running on reflex."
"Aww, it's so cute when try try to ignore their own failings. So typical. Head inserted into its comfy little spot. Nice, warm, and dark. Pity the smell is terrible," the voice cackles.
"Hannah, Hannah!" the voice continues to cackle, "So cute. So desperate."
Sam says thoughtfully, "I do think our friend wants us to touch a mirror. Punch one, touch one trying to get at what's behind it, all the same."
"And it's so cute when the death trap thinks we should take its criticisms seriously! Why, I know that when I need help with my problems, the first place I turn is to homicidal enchantments. Don't you?" Tristan says to Sam. "Oh. Hmm. Maybe I should stop drawing on it?"
The minstrel shrugs. "I think poking it with an object doesn't do it. Do you want to get it over with and pick a mirror?"
"I was thinking of using the flamethrower on them, but now that you say it's trying to provoke me, I'd rather spite it." He pauses, considering what the nearest mirror is showing.
"Heheheh. Listen to that anger, so cute. I bet Lord Eion enjoyed messing with this one. He dances so well," the voice giggles. "The knights of April have become such a sorry lot. Not like Randall was so long ago. Now he was one with conviction and the common sense to be willing to question. Of course, he died and had his soul enslaved. Yes, yes, but this one is already enslaved."
The mirror is showing ... Hannnah?!? No, not just Hannah. Someone else is with her.
Sam shrugs. "In that case, how about a little marching song while we try to find our way through the maze? Here's the chorus, o Where it's dark as a dungeon, damp as the dew, danger is double and the pleasures are few... o"
Tristan sticks his tongue at the corner of his mouth. "Hmm ... I think it could do a better job of this ... " He draws a goofy little mustache on the image of the Lord Explorer, and then a matching one on the image of Hannah. "There, that helps." He takes up the chorus of Sam's song. "oDanger is double and the pleasures are few ... o" and continues to put silly mustaches on all the reflections. His own, Sam's, the vixen-woman's -- whoever.
Of course when Tristan draws a picture on an image of himself ... he suddenly grows a mustache. So does Sam, for tha matter.
o/ Oh come all ye young fellers, young and so fine / Seek not your fortune in the dark dreary mine / It'll form as a habit and seep in your soul / 'Til the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal, o/ sings Sam, mustachio'd in a most silly fashion, a capella since his hands are occupied. He doesn't seem to particularly mind the mustache.
Tristan blinks at that. He tugs on his new mustache, and twirls the edge. "Now, do you suppose that trick works for anything else?" He tries drawing a glass cutter in his hand at the next image of himself.
It doesn't quite work as planned. Tristan ends up with a banana.
From around a corner, a young girl's voice calls out, "Tristan!"
"Apparently, amongst my other failings, I'm no good as an artist." Tristan offers Sam the banana, then frowns at the new voice. "Hello? Who's there?"
"Where are you? Where did you go?" the voice cries out, sounding panicked now.
Between verses of the Dark Dreary Dungeon song, Sam explains, "We've got a practical joker who's very good at glamours and who wants nothing so much as to see us get very angry and upset at what he does. He can do auditory illusions too."
Tristan nods to Sam. He calls back with an explanation anyway. "We were swept away by some force. We're in a maze of mirrors. Where are you?" He advances on the corner where the voice is coming from cautiously.
Sam pauses in singing for now, since it would interfere with trying to find the source of the voice. "Didn't you say something about seeing hands?" he asks.
One of the mirrors shows a field of snow in the dead of night. A figure stands knee deep in it and shivering; a teenaged girl with freckles and red hair, and dressed for much warmer weather. Just beyond the range of clarity, dark shapes shamble closer. "Why did you leave me here?" Agatha Cunningham cries out, her skin looking blue from the cold. "You promised to protect me! I want to go home!"
"Yes. Large, nebulous hands," Tristan replies.
"I wonder if it could be..." Sam ruminates.
Tristan stops dead, staring at the vision. Then he shakes himself out of it. "No. No way could that be Miss Cunningham."
The knight turns back to Sam, focusing on something other than the things that are trying to rattle him. "Could be what?"
"I can't feel my toes," Agatha cries, tears freezing to her cheeks. One of the dark shapes comes closer, it's outline that of a giant scorpion with a human torso on the front.
"Nnnng. If you still want me to smash one, I know which one now." Tristan's hand clenches around the hilt of his sword.
"What's that?" the girl cries out. "Tristan! There's a mon-" The words are cut off by a short scream which also ends abruptly.
"Djinns are wind spirits," Sam says professorially. "Said to grant wishes to those who free them. In the wild though, they can be mischevious... Even cruel." He shrugs. "Sir Lefallon was befriended by a djinn a while ago, of the nice sort."
Tristan controls a flinch as the scream cuts off. "Our joker here might be a djinn, then. Do they have any weaknesses that you've heard of?"
"What was her name? Natalie... No, Nashee... Ah! Nashita." Sam shakes his head as he refocuses on the more imminent question. "It depends on what sort of djinn we're dealing with. Many of them were imprisoned by King Solomon a long time ago, and his name and seal still hold power over them." He adds, "If these are just some djinns trying to get a yuk or two out of us, they're being unusualy persistent."
"Perhaps the Bandit Queen or some other witch has bound it to this?" Tristan continues onwards, not having any other ideas at the moment.
Sam mms thoughtfully. "They can be enslaved and bound to objects, as Nashita was. Then whomever knows about it can invoke them to serve their will. If that's the case, breaking the object may work to release them."
Tristan ahs. "Which could even explain why it wants us to break the mirrors."
Tristan unships the flamethrower. "I don't have any better ideas, and wandering lost doesn't seem to be doing any good. If you'll stand back, Minstrel Sam?"
Sam stands back. Way back.
Tristan points the nozzle at the mirror where Agatha had appeared earlier, and -- standing well back and down the corridor himself -- opens fire.
From the nearest mirror, a pair of pale green eyes stare lifelessly from a blood-soaked snowdrift. Even the mirror seems to be frosting over from the cold.
When the flames hit the frozen mirror, it cracks and melts. A blizzard of snow blasts in through it, blinding Tristan and Sam both in a freezing cloud of white.