At first it seems as if the mirror path will be nothing more than another clever, cruel trick of the maze. The way turns in upon itself over and over again. For a while there are only left turns to take, and then just as suddenly there are only right turns to take.
On and on and goes like this, aimless circles where the only companions to be found are reflections, glass-song and between that strange periods of a silence thick enough to drown.
In one area there are crooked, waving mirrors in every direction but left. They make the body appear look and short, stooped and crippled. Another place has mirrors that reflect back strange things: dragons and birds float and fly where horse legs should move.
Finally though the pathway straightens out and then divides into a forked ended. There is left and right and nothing else.
To the right the mirrors are swallowed up by a darkness so thick that nothing shines. And at first it might look as if this pathway is nothing more than a way back to the beginning. But! Further down something starts to glow blue and when that glowing orb travels up the wall and spins around and around and around a trail of light follows it like a the tail of a comet.
At first the left path is nothing but light, bright enough to blind. It looks like the center of the sun. But, this path changes too. The light dims to something soft and almost sweet and grass starts to grow thick and bright where the glass ends. Down the path mushrooms start to bloom in the grass. Each is larger than the last (and more brightly colored) and it's easy to wonder how large these mushrooms might grow as the path travels deeper into the maze.
@Shrike @Toulouse
RULES
This part of the maze will break off into two choices. The first is comet and galaxy path. The second path is full of mushrooms. Please pick one and post it at the end of your reply. Replies are due by 1/12
For this path I've send each participant 20 signos since it's still continuing.
Shrike has never been vain. Now, as she winds down the twisting pathways with a thousand copies of her reflection watching her like ripples going out and out on a pond, she looks at none of them. She keeps her eyes cast on the ground, scenting the difference between the glass and the dark dirt below her feet, her ears easing occasionally back at the stallion who walks behind her.
She has not yet said a word to him, nor has he offered any in return; this suits her just fine.
Always, always, she is looking for signs of a different kind of magic. A feral, more ancient kind, one that not even a unicorn could tame (not even a queen). But there are no traces of the rift, here, and no traces of Ravos. There is only the clean, smooth smell of glass. Only when she passes the dragons and the birds does she pause (perhaps letting the other horse pass her), and think solemnly of a fallen-kingdom world where griffins and dragons were thick as crows in the air and stone steps led down and down and down to darkness.
When she continues on, without a last glance back at the lie in those mirrors, it is with both unease and determination.
Then comes the divide. Here again she pauses, considering her left, regarding her right. It is beautiful, the way the right path darkens before bursting with starlight, colored like a sky with a cleft of brilliant light, a distant galaxy.
But Shrike has never been a horse to consider the sky, or to dream big dreams. She has ever only concerned herself with the stone and dirt at her feet and the work to be done.
She takes the left turn, and squints into the light until it fades away, and inhales the scent of mushrooms. This is like something else from the Rift, and Shrike is cautious as she goes, wondering if Isra might have monsters in her heart.
When Toulouse first starts down the path, he cannot help but admire his endless reflections in the many mirrors.
Vanity comes naturally to him, and the palomino tosses his head and snakes his neck, putting on a show for his silent audience. Every reflection moves as he does, parading along beside him down the path.
But the deeper he goes into the maze, the more distorted his reflections become.
At first, it’s still his own reflection, albeit warped: it’s as if he’s looking upon himself in a hundred different dimensions. They all show himself as a stranger, some not-quite-Toulouse. It captivates his attention, and he amuses himself by coming up with alter-egos and alter-lives for himself.
In one life he’s short and stooped, walking with a limp from some great, historic battle in which he came out a hero. In another he’s tall and thin, a shadow that stalks others through their dreams. In yet another he’s a nobleman, with flawless looks and flawless carriage, looking down upon his lesser peers.
The farther he walks, the more distorted the reflections become. And eventually he reaches a point where the reflections are no longer of himself, but of strange beasts and fairytales.
This section is far less interesting than before, where he had been treated to a hundred different views of himself. Toulouse strides along with a purpose in his step, determined to get to the end of this path (or at least back to a place where the mirrors showed himself again.)
The twisting pathway begins to straighten, and he is faced again with a choice. And this time, it’s a more natural decision than either of the previous two.
After all, he never had been afraid of the dark, nor what hid within it.
Toulouse chooses the comet and galaxy path.
home is behind the world ahead
there are many paths to tread
I totally thought I had already done this, since the night account hasn’t posted again I assume it’s okay that I’m late??
Of course the maze is a wicked, tangled thing. Each pathway is already curling back up on itself. Some are turned to ash and dust, others smoke, others flowers and wheat-grass that has shed all its magic. Soon there is nothing left but a flowered, circle of hedge.
The mushrooms dissolve under-hoof and turn back to grass. The stars fall like snow and melt down to water. Neither path was the right one, but neither where they the wrong one either. A maze is tricky like that. And it's easy to see now that the maze was nothing but a grand-trick, a flare of beauty that is already aging and dying as the Benevolent start gathering back their magic and their wonder.
Isra waits inside that circle of hedge, swaying gently to a song that's playing from no visible source. Her eyes are heavy with salt and sweat and exhaustion. At her hooves the last of the magic remains, coral bright stones with strange pits full of emeralds. The two colors clash horribly and it seems almost as if her magic is too dead to create anything lovely.
But then eyes might catch on the maypole at her back and think there is some beauty left in the maze after all.
The pole spirals out from the coral base, as twisted and sharp as a unicorn's horn. The sharp point of it towers over the hedges. From that point four ribbons of the same gray color flow in the breeze and whisper another language when the fabric meets horseflesh.
“I heard a story once,” Isra whispers in between the language of the ribbons. Her eyes flutter wildly behind her eye lids. In that darkness she can see another world and each tree and stone and sky is made of layers and layers of ink.
“That the world wasn't made out of rocks and loam, but flesh and bone. Each blade of grass under our hooves was once a single hair. Each mountain was a rib-bone and each ocean a drop of blood.” She pauses and opens her eyes. Sorrow briefly takes her to see none of her own standing before her in the center of the dying maze. She blinks quickly and the sorrow is gone, replaced by wonder and something stranger than that.
“I heard once that our world was made from a creature not unlike us and it had upon its brow a horn not unlike mine.” Her lips arc in a smile like a church-tower, bright like marble and ivory. “They told me that each of our Courts came from that single horn upon his brown and he broke it up like a clay cup so that we might grow and thrive. And I couldn't help but wonder how four pieces that could easily be put back together with mortar and water could be so divided.” A breeze lurches through the hedges and the ribbons each touch against her flesh, one at a time.
The first ribbon to hit her turns black, blacker than black and it's dark enough that it seems to hum with shadows and absence.
The second turns the color of twilight and each layer of color is darker than the last. The layers pile upon each other until the very end of the ribbon turns black and fades into the shadows cast by that towering, spiraling horn.
The third ribbon tuns the color of sand shot through with bits of mica. It glitters like gold and silver and the two previous ribbons pale in comparison to the brightness of the third.
The final ribbon to touch her turns green. It flutters like a leaves on a spring breeze and small flowers bloom in the places where the threads of the fabric are not tightly woven together.
“But then someone told me the end of that story and I understood. My heart broke but I understood.” Isra looks to be full of woe and heartbreak when she looks at the two horses before her, both made of harsher stuff than she. Already she's walking back towards the shadows pooling in the corners. Each step she takes covers the ground in more coral and emeralds. Each step brings a little of the magic of the maze back. It's less grand than the Benevolent's magic, but at its core it's still magic.
“The last test of the maze is simply to pick a ribbon.” And if she didn't chose that moment to close her eyes and turn away they might have seen the answer in her eyes.
@Shrike @Toulouse
RULES
This is the end of the maze and both paths led to this point. Before them is a maypole that looks like a massive unicorn horn. Their task is to simply pick one of the ribbons (black, purple, orange-brown, green). There are four options and only one correct one, they may not pick the same one. Please reply by February 2nd if possible.
For this path I've sent each one of you 100 signos for reaching the end. <3
(sorry I was so slow on this one, life sucked the past two weeks).
If she was looking for some sign of Ravos, or of the Rift - feral magic, the kind with teeth, the kind with sickness on its breath, the kind that needed killing - there was no sign of it here.
There was something like disappointment that flickered in her dark eyes as the mushrooms and moss faded away to nothing, leaving not even their pungent scent behind. Still she walked on as the walls crumbled back to nothing but leaves and twisting branches, as overhead the bewitched sky gave way to the real one. The true stars seemed dimmer by comparison.
When the path led her to the center, when in the center waited Isra, there was no surprise to show across the paint’s expression. She said nothing, only leveled her gaze at the unicorn. Only when the horned stallion arrived did she shift her attention, passing a cursory glance over him before looking back to the Night Queen.
It was a lovely story, well told - as all the unicorn’s were. But Shrike was a thing of deeds, not words, and the tension does not leave her shoulders as Isra turns each ribbon to colors. She is glad the maze is nearly done; already her mind is wandering the plains, thinking of another unicorn, one she better understood.
She only hesitated a moment when Isra bid them choose, and waited until she turned away to step forward.
It is a black creature she thought of, and a black magic she hunted, and a black ribbon she chose.
The lights are dazzling, explosions of color against the darkened maze path. Everywhere he looks is a new galaxy, a new constellation, a new light show. If he wasn’t careful, he could easily lose himself and forget his purpose there. The lights called to him, like moths to a flame, their song eerie but strangely captivating. A lesser horse might have succumbed — but Toulouse was not one to lose sight of his goal.
After some time this path, too, proved itself to be another illusion. The stars fell from the sky, melting into the ground so that for one brilliant second, he was walking down a path of starlight and rainbows. But that too faded, and he found himself within a circle of hedge with Isra at its bow.
All the paths converged here — but it would seem that he and one other were the only two to make it this far. The other mare was a brilliant clash of red on black, but Toulouse has eyes only for Isra.
And the ribbons she manifested.
Her words filter in one ear and out the other, heard only in part, like a far off dream. He’s processing the choice in front of him — but really, did he need to deliberate much?
He steps forward alongside the other contestant, the wolf in him determined to choose first. He’s a pace behind her, his hesitation a second longer than her’s — but it doesn’t matter, for she chooses a different one, one blacker than his soul.
Toulouse chooses quite the opposite, one brilliantly bright and shimmering, two colors woven together.
It’s the gold he’s after, his greatest weakness, but he’ll take the silver alongside it.
Toulouse chooses the third ribbon.
home is behind the world ahead
there are many paths to tread
The maze perhaps was too clever a beast for this mortal coil.
Perhaps it was born in dreams too surreal for a place with walls and magic that was long since tamed by gods and horses. The hedges are already turning back into wheat and flowers and other fragile things that bend and sway in the gentlest of breezes. Already the maze rejects the only two horses left to try to win its favor.
Maybe it is just the nature of things born from tricksters and dreamers and horses that turned to flowers and fires to balk at being tamed.
Isra, as she watches them from the shadows, reminds herself that she never said the maze was a gentle thing. She should have told them it was a beast, a thing born from the court that once always hid itself in the night behind a shroud of mountains.
(and when she thinks of what monsters horses can be she's almost glad that she helped create such a wild thing as this maze)
When the golden and the black ribbonss are pulled nothing happens at first. In fact the entire maze seems to hold its breath. Even the night insects quiet their songs to nothing more than whispers that could be nothing more than the soft hush of Isra's breaths in the shadows. The wind stops. The ribbons stop waiving like flags.
It's almost as it time stops.
But then---
Then all but one of the ribbons turn back to burlap that looks like it's been dragged up from a sunken ship's sails.
The only ribbon that remains is the twilight one. That ribbon alone dances in wind that starts once more to whip through the night. It's almost teasing, the way that it dances more gracefully that any night moth could dream of dancing. Everything about it seems to say, You should have chosen me, I am what dreams and magic are made of.
But neither of them chose correctly and they are left with only burlap and brine on their tongues.
Isra sighs and turns away.
The maze starts to collapse just as the sun promises to rise and even that too seems surreal.
@Shrike @Toulouse
THE END
I am so sorry that the roll gods hated this maze so much D: Thank you so much for participating in it <3 I had a blast writing it.
I've sent you both another 100 signos for making it all the way to the final part of the maze that refused to be won.
02-11-2019, 10:34 PM - This post was last modified: 02-11-2019, 10:35 PM by Official Night Account
It was all a trick, a play of shadows and fabrications. He should have known, but oh - the promise of magic and excitement had been so unbearably tempting.
He watches as the third ribbon, the ribbon of gold and silver and hope, the ribbon he had chose, crumbles into burlap. It, too, was a lie, and he had failed to detect it.
His eyes shift to the twilight ribbon as it dances in the wind. You should have chosen me, it sings to him with a voice of honey and laughter, then you would have won. Perhaps the twilight is what dreams and magic were made of after all; but if that were so, they were all in the wrong Court.
Slowly, a smile splits the wolf’s lips apart. Was it all a play, a false face of bravery and graceful defeat, or was he really that good of a sport?
“Next time,” he promises the ribbon that twists and turns in the air. Then he turns, and as the maze begins to collapse around him, he weaves his own way out.
I couldn’t resist adding one last post to close this up.
home is behind the world ahead
there are many paths to tread
