Seasons of War Episode 7-the Mirrored Princess

Episode 7: the Mirrored Princess

16th of Eluviesta

It was nearly an hour to midnight when Milly finished drawing her glyph. She placed her catalyst stone in the center, and she began to meditate. Slowly, she entered the Ethereal Ghost stage of her ritual. It was a nonmagical technique that required intense focus and would partially send her consciousness into the Beyond. Most of her awareness, however, remained in the mortal realm, and she was able to project her mind across a wide area. She'd honed it over the years, and her dedication to the practice allowed her to move so far away as the gates to Arlathan. But the farthest she needed to go tonight was the palace.

Milly opened her eyes. Her body looked strange in this form, her hair a wild curly mess that connected back to the catalyst stone. Her eyes glowed ever so faintly with a fire behind the hazel. She willed her body, or what constituted it, out of the glyph.

The runaway phased through the window and looked at Capital Lyoko at night. It was truly serene. But she was on a mission. Milly floated towards the castle. She ignored drunken brutes wandering home through alleyways; they could not see her and this form was incapable of manipulating the physical world.

Milly found her way into the castle and started at the very bottom-the dungeons. She highly doubted Maya was capable of such evil that the Empress herself would detain her, but she was an elf, and the Gauthier reign had been hard on the Elvhen. The runaway found no trace of her sister but did discover a mirror twice her size with no reflection. The mirror called out to her, begged her forward.

It was distressing. The mirror was speaking without a voice, without words even. The feeling was foreign, like a primal urge. It drew her closer, and yet... The words were not sinister. Not the ramblings of a trapped demon. Milly had been trained to sense them in this form, as her body lay empty and open to malicious spirits.

It was the mirror's own voice speaking to her. But she left it, afraid of its meaning.

Milly searched every room until she found a couple sleeping soundly. At first she thought nothing of it. 'Just a married couple,' she thought until a pink fluff appeared. The runaway floated in for a better view.

She nearly started crying when she recognized her. Maya was older, thinner, and obviously more experienced. Her hair was short and messy and presumably very soft. Milly reached out, and for a moment, it felt real. In fact, Maya even woke up.

Though, "woke up" might have been putting it gently. Maya shot up and started panting heavily, as if she'd been woken from a nightmare. She looked right at Milly, and for a moment the younger sister's heart felt like it stopped beating. Then she remembered that she was invisible and it sank.

Maya looked back at the man Milly assumed was her husband. She kissed him and snuggled close to him before falling back asleep. He hadn't even stirred, but judging by how silly his sleeping face looked, he had probably had a long night.

Milly sighed. At least she knew where Maya was. She looked up when the door opened to see the man that she had danced with several months ago. Yet he looked different.

He watched the couple for a moment before he looked up at the window. For a moment Milly stared at him before looking out the window herself. There was nothing abnormal outside. She looked back and saw that he was still staring. "What are you doing, you creep?" She mumbled.

"I'm the creep?" He asked, offended.

"Yes, you're the creep. You just barge into-okay, I guess I'm a creep too." Milly sighed. It took her a moment to realize he'd responded to a statement he shouldn't have heard. She froze in place.

The man's body and face changed. The whites of his eyes became blood red, and glass shards appeared all over him. He was bloodied, bruised and ready to attack as he drew a sword. In an ominous voice he said, "You aren't supposed to be in here, Amelia." He lunged at her, but she didn't move. He couldn't hurt her.

His blade glanced her cheek, and surprisingly, it filled with pain. Her hand grabbed her face and she looked at her palm, which was covered in blood. Milly was so shocked that he'd cut her that she fled back to her body almost instantaneously.

Her spirit returned with such force that she was knocked back a few feet. She jumped up and rushed for a mirror. The cut wasn't visible but the pain lingered. Milly began to hyperventilate, wondering why he's been able to see her, let alone attack her.

She thought back to the mirror. Why had it called her name?

It didn't matter. She had found Maya, and that was the purpose of her mission.


---


17th of Eluviesta

Milly marched up to the castle gates and took a deep breath. She had prepared herself all morning. The guard, a woman about forty, her salt and pepper hair styled more nicely than a guard's hair should have been, stopped her. This was expected. "Let me pass. I must speak with Maya Tyron."

"There is no one here by that name." The guard said. "Besides, the Empress is preparing to host a small, private party. She is seeing no one who isn't on her guest list."

"What is it with the Gauthier line and parties?" Milly asked. "Doesn't the Empress know there's a war going on?"

The guard became angry. "Listen, pipsqueak. The Empress is more aware than anyone in this damn country the stakes of this war. So you'll forgive her if she throws a small party to celebrate the name day of an important ally. She has done more for the war effort in her short reign than the King could have done in ten." She muttered something else that Milly didn't quite catch. "You will respect the crown or I'll haul you into the dungeon myself."

Milly at first refused to move, but the guard threatened to poke her with the spear she carried, and she was forced to walk away and reconsider her entry plan.

As she walked along the castle wall the young runaway considered scaling it, but then considered the mirror. She had no way of accessing it, but she wanted to see it up close and in person, which meant she needed a way inside the dungeon. The guard's threat suddenly looked less intimidating and she stopped.

Just as she was considering walking back and actually letting the guard arrest her, she heard a loud crash behind her, followed by a long string of curse words. Milly turned to see an Elvhen girl from the South sitting in a bush, a large round scooter-like device spinning next to her.

The two met eyes and remained silent. "Look, as much as I appreciate the comedic value of this moment, it doesn't really suit the theme I'm going for." Milly said flatly.

"Sorry," the girl apologized. "I just really have to speak to my former clan mate Aelita." She pushed herself out of the bush. "My name is Tamiya Diop of Clan Aloten, born to Sabrae."

"Long name. Milly Tyron," she started, stopping at the muffled sounds of alarmed shouting that made it over the palace walls. Her voice turned urgent, "Listen, I'd love to stay and chat and I'd love to ask you about that thing," Here she pointed at the scooter. "But unless all we want to see is the dungeon, we need to get out of here."

Tamiya nodded and hurriedly gathered her belongings while Milly looked nervously in the direction she had come, waiting for the armored footsteps that were surely coming. "Hurry up," she urged the elven girl who was just righting the hovering scooter thing.

"Hop on," Taniya said after stepping onto the device. She pushed the Overwing forward and squeezed a lever under one of the handlebars then angled the nose up, beginning to climb skyward.

"What are you doing!" Milly cried, "Archers man the towers, they'll shoot us down."

She shoved the nose back down, giving up the little altitude she had gained. "That would explain why I fell out of the sky."

Milly could do little more than shake her head at that. Tamiya flew on through the silence, looking back to ensure that they weren't being chased, not that foot soldiers had a chance of keeping up. Once she was certain they were far enough she set the craft down in a deserted city square. As both girls disembarked Tamiya turned towards Milly and offered her hand. "Thanks for the help back there. Sorry to interrupt whatever business you had though."

Milly shook the elf's outstretched hand and replied, "not a problem. But now I need a way into the castle to meet with my sister. I've been looking for her for years."

"Oh, wait! A friend of Aelita has a brother... or maybe a son? I don't really know but maybe if we could contact him he could bring us in as his friends!" Tamiya suggested.

"How would we do that?"

"I have a portable Eluvian that can contact the larger one that the Empress has." Tamiya said, pulling her backpack off.

Milly had only met a few of the wilder elves during her travels and they were always reluctant to speak to humans. She had once believed that Maya had joined a different clan after the one near Falcon's Bridge had been destroyed. But obviously she was wrong about that, if she was in a human city married to a human man.

Tamiya let out a disgruntled sigh that brought Milly back to reality. "What's wrong?" She asked.

"It's broken." She said, showing the small hand mirror to the runaway. "It must have been damaged when I fell... I guess I'm just lucky that didn't kill us all." The mirror was whispering, as if it were in pain. Milly felt her fingers twitch. She asked to hold it, but the Elvhen girl rejected her request politely. "Humans don't know how to operate such advanced magic."

Tamiya was right, of course. Milly had never seen an Eluvian before. She couldn't know how to operate one. The Elvhen girl began weaving a spell to repair it, but still it called out her name... Milly gently touched Tamiya's shoulder. The magic surged, and the crack in the mirror shrank. The mage was startled and confused, but Milly smiled briefly. "Let's go to my apartment. We probably shouldn't do this out in the open." Tamiya agreed and gathered her things.

As Tamiya tried to create the surge to completely repair the mirror, Milly pulled the mirror out of the bedroom and brought it into the common area. She placed it in the glyph, and then subtly tried to convince Tamiya to enter it as well.

Milly focused on the catalyst stone as the oblivious mage continued her work. The runaway closed her eyes and tried to focus on the whimpering of the mirror. It begged her for something, and she mentally reached out.

The magic within the glass spiraled around her fingers. It looked like stars, but they wiggled and jumped like small children. She saw Tamiya panic as she looked at the magicless mirror, and Milly pointed at the one from the bedroom.

The magic flew away, colliding with the glass. The stars spread out, spiraling around and creating beautiful music. It whispered a song to her. She finally understood.

"Fen'harel enansal," She said proudly. The stars still sparkled, but the transfer was complete. They parted, releasing an ethereal wind. Milly opened her eyes to reality.

"What did you do?!" Tamiya demanded, but she sounded more impressed than angry. They stared at the mirror.

"I don't know. It was in pain so I found it a new home." Milly murmured.

"What?" She was silent for a long time after that. "I've heard of this... Mari'linen..."

"It called me Princess..."

"That's not fair! You're not even elven!" Tamiya said with her arms folded across her chest. "If anyone should have been the next Bloody Mari, it should have been m-Mamae. My mother." Both girls knew that she was jealous, but at this point Milly couldn't care less about ancient Elvhen prophecy.

She touched the mirror. It felt like the mirror was trying to hug her, like a long lost friend. "Andaran atish'an," She muttered. The Eluvian rejoiced at her voice. "Show me Maya Tyron." But the Eluvian, desperate to please, begged her to enter, to experience the memories of the mirrors and not just see them. So she struck a deal; the mirror would show the memories and lead the girls to the palace.

The gates of the Eluvian were thrown open. "Are you still jealous or do you want to go on an adventure?"

Tamiya looked at the human girl. She looked beautiful, her black hair and dark skin intensely highlighted by the magic. Her mouth twisted from a pout to a cautious smile as she offered her hand. Milly took it graciously.


---


The first memory was Maya's bedroom. It was snowing outside, and the changeling, only about three or four, watched it fall. Judging by the broom at her feet, Maya was supposed to be cleaning. Instead, she looked at the mirror. She looked sad and excited at the same time.

The bedroom door opened. "Maya, come here." Her father said sternly. Maya rushed toward him. "There's a baby in the house now. You can't slack off on your cleaning or Amelia might get sick. You don't want that now, do you?"

"No, sir." Maya said quietly.

The second memory began with Maya cleaning the mirrors in the house. Her parents were gone and they wouldn't be back for a long time. A crack of thunder came from outside and Milly started crying, scared of the sound. Maya dropped her cleaning supplies, and the memory became fuzzy until the young girl reentered the room. She paced with the child, trying to calm her down.

Maya looked at the front door. She pushed Milly's red locks underneath the bonnet and started to sing. It was a song she had heard in her dreams, reminiscent of one she had heard long ago.

"I hear your voice on the wind.

And I hear you call out my name.

Listen my child, you say to me.

I am the voice of your history.

Be not afraid, come follow me.

Answer my call and I'll set you

Free!"

Milly quieted, and Maya smiled. She heard her parents approaching and quickly ran to put the baby back in the crib.

The third memory was much farther into the future. The changeling lay restlessly in her bed, unable to get comfortable. She jolted when the thunder cracked and rain pounded against her window.

As the storm raged on, Milly pushed open the door to Maya's bedroom. "Maya? I can't sleep. Can I lay down with you?" The two-year-old asked.

Maya was quiet for a long time. "Yes, Milly. Come here." The toddler ran towards Maya's bed and crawled under the covers.

After that, Milly remembered the scenes. Yet in her mind they were different. Milly had never thought Maya had changed until after the elves came to Falcon's Bridge, but subtlety she had changed before that. She was quieter, sadder, and questions Milly remembered being given sad but honest answers to were in reality met with cutting criticism and annoyance.

Of course, knowing now what her sister had gone through it made sense that Maya was sullen and jaded. But it made Milly question her intentions. Was she seeking Maya to find her sister and be reunited with her, or was she seeking resolution?

Many memories passed before one Milly could not place was shown. Maya entered an aravel with Edna, the Hahren of the Aloten. "My time in the Garden has reached its end. Carry my staff now, Aelita Durgenbora, for you will take my place as Hahren." She offered the staff on her back the changeling.

Aelita? That was who Tamiya was looking for! Maya and Aelita were the same person? She refused. "No! You will survive! I am not ready!"

Edna took her tiny hands and placed them on the staff. "Take Erahalam. The bond is yours now. Be wise, da'len, and do whatever it takes to survive."

"But-" Maya argued.

"Hush! Don't disobey me, da'len." The Hahren hissed. Maya grew nervous. "Bad things are coming. Have courage." She said more gently.

Milly frowned deeply. "Maya is Aelita? She... changed her name? She didn't tell me that..."

"Maybe it was too dangerous for her to tell anyone." Tamiya offered. The novelist agreed silently. After all, Maya's connections to the Aloten had been what sparked what she'd dubbed the Falcon's Descent.


---


A man dressed in intimidating leather armor pushed Maya into a tiny hut where a tall woman who was dressed beautifully waited. She rather roughly removed Maya's dirty, ragged clothes and pushed her into the stool. The woman played with Maya's hair, bouncing it in her hands, ignoring the sticks and twigs. "You have beautiful hair," The woman said flatly.

"Thank you," Maya replied weakly, her voice shaky. The woman moved behind her, and she held Maya's long hair over her head. She took a pair of scissors to it, and the changeling watched in horror as her hair fell, now not even reaching her ears. Her hands jumped up to her mouth, and the woman began to shave what little remained of her hair off with a razor. It fell in clumps to the floor, and when the woman finally finished, the elf rubbed her now bare scalp.

The woman pushed Maya off of the stool and threw a dirty tunic into her hands. "Go on. Get to work."

Maya looked up at her in confusion. "I don't know where I'm supposed to go." She pulled the dirty tunic over her head.

The woman rolled her eyes. "Go find Mirianye! Go on!"


---


An elven woman called Maya into a hut. She seemed sad, but after the last memory, Milly didn't find this very strange. She took Maya's shoulders and spoke carefully. "Aelita… you know as well as I do that you will not survive much longer if you stay here." She tried to protest, but the woman quieted her. "I don't want you to die, sweet thing. It's always sad when a young person like you dies in a place like this. Please, child, don't fight me on this. You do not want to die."

Maya hung her head. The woman handed Aelita clothes, a bikini-like shirt, a long blue glove to cover her vallaslin, and a skirt that wrapped around her legs. Then she slid a gold bracelet onto her arm and wrist, tied a black choker around her neck and pulled a necklace made of red and blue beads over her head.

She grabbed the paint off of the desk next to the stool Maya sat on. She spun her brush in the stuff and painted her eyes and lips. Finally she dabbed a bit of perfume under her chin and held her chin in her hand. "You look beautiful."

She helped Maya up, and she turned her around so she could look at herself in the mirror. Milly started to shake when she watched the wave of realization hit her. She looked up at the woman and asked with desperation in her voice, "Mamae Asha, what do I do?"

"Just be nice to the gentlemen, 'Lita. They'll be nice to you."

There was a lapse in the memory, as if it was responding to Milly's sadness and shame. "Oh, gods! Maya... Poor Maya!" She sobbed.

Tamiya took her shoulders. "Oh, Milly, don't cry." The next memory was already prepared. Maya was smiling. She was running her fingers through the hair that was growing back, slowly but surely. "Look, she's happy now!"

Milly looked up. It was true, her sister looked happy. As happy as she could, at least. Sadness still lingered in her eyes. The door opened and she turned. Milly actually recognized the man who entered-James Finson. They'd met in a town about two hundred kilometers north of where this memory took place, and about the same timeframe, but Milly couldn't have known that.

Maya's happy expression vanished. She stood and backed against the wall. "Please, no." The novelist could feel her heart breaking, and yet she couldn't stop. It was as if she had stomped on the pieces of her own heart.

The changeling danced around him for a while, trying to get him to lose interest, or perhaps trying to gain the upper hand. She squirmed away from him every chance that she got. But unfortunately Finson eventually grew tired of it, grabbed her and forced her into the bed.

Milly grabbed her head and fell to her knees once more. "NO!" She screamed, and the memory fractured. "I don't want to see this! I DON'T WANT TO SEE THIS!" She was sobbing uncontrollably as she wondered if knowing was worth the suffering.

The memory faded again. Maya was now pushing her hair into a wig cap and fixing a red wig to her head, her breasts bound. A human woman with long blonde hair tied back into a low ponytail hugged her from the side. "What's cooking, good looking?" The human asked with a light kiss on the cheek.

"Creator's blood, Anaïs, but you are terrible!" Maya laughed. She looked at the human, gently touching their hands. It was a loving gesture, but something about it felt reserved. "What manner of unspeakable evil have you got planned for us today?"

"Oh, Tathas! You are such a tease!" The woman, Anaïs, laughed. Tathas now, was it? She walked over to the door. "You know very well that I love to speak of it!" The two girls laughed as Maya grabbed a large brown backpack. "Come now. Nobles won't rob themselves."

"But they will rob us!" Maya called out as the memory faded again.


---


Maya caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she entered the room of a noblewoman in the next memory. "Miss Elisabeth?" She called out.

A dark haired noble in her undergarments appeared from behind a Nihonjin style screen. "Oh, are you a new slave? Thank the gods. Tell me, I'm to meet my future husband today and I need to know which of these goes better with my eyes!" She pulled out three pretentious dresses, one violet, one pink and one yellow.

Maya looked confused for a moment. "Pink never goes out of style." She reasoned.

Miss Elisabeth smiled. "You are absolutely right."

And it faded. Now no one could be seen, but voices could be heard, though she could only barely make it out. "So, when do we find this treasure you promised, and how do you know that it is still here?" A young man's voice asked.

"Well, the door was shut, there's that," Maya said, "Although the treasure can't be too much farther, I doubt it has any real value to anyone other than the People."

"Still, this is a good chance to learn something." The young man said. A secret wall opened. The young man, whom Milly recognized as Maya's husband, spotted the mirror that held the memory. His eyes moved to the skeleton of a person who had died in his armor and with his blade. "Gods above. This man died to protect these things," He said as he approached it.

Maya nodded sadly. "Many died here, in case the shemlen broke our defenses and tried to steal our artifacts. The ultimate humiliation would have been to have died at the hands of something you created." She explained. She approached the skeleton and sang a song to it.

The young man stood and searched the room. "Do you know what any of these things are?" He asked.

"Some of them, yes. The mirror is called an Eluvian. Every clan has one, and a person who maintains it." She cringed. "You don't want to be around a broken Eluvian. Actually, you'd better avoid that one, just in case it's passed its use-by date. Everything else here, I don't know. I've never heard of these things. Well, except the coins, but those are self-explanatory."

The couple rummaged through the old items. Maya's husband found a gauntlet that opened into a sword, which he slid on his arm. "The elves seemed really advanced, contrary to our stories. The humans say that your people were savages."

"They still say that." She said flatly.

And as it faded for the last time, Milly could feel her heart aching still. She couldn't take much more. Maya brushed her hair, and she pushed it out of her face. She was dressed in finery, much too fancy for the rags she'd been shown in earlier memories. "Don't freak out," Her husband said as he approached her from behind. She smiled as he tied a necklace around her. They were small beads of jade, and she obviously loved it.

"I must have done something good to meet you, ma vhenan." She turned so she could kiss him. It lacked the reservation that the kiss she'd given Anaïs had. He wrapped his arms around her, and they were still for a while.

Maya looked at his hand, and Milly saw how much it looked like tree roots. "Does it trouble you?" She asked.

"Not so much anymore. It's useful too." He said. "Besides, it reminds me of you."

"Jeremie, stop. You're making me blush." She teased him.

He offered her his arm. "Let's get a move on. Laura won't hold the party until we get there."

"Believe me when I say that the only thing we've missed out on is Emily's pre-drinking." Maya joked.

Party? Maya realized that what they were seeing was a recent memory. Maya had been in front of a mirror only hours ago, at the castle! She was in too much of a hurry for proper emotions to spread on her face. She severed the memories and demanded the Eluvian take them to the castle. She dragged Tamiya through the glass, ignoring her pleas for a moment to rest.

The castle Eluvian was locked in a cell, but Milly always carried a full set of lock picks. Her arms and hands were small, so she easily reached through the bars. While not being able to see what she was doing was a hindrance, she opened it with little trouble, and forced the gate open. Tamiya, panicking, chased after her.

"Maya! Maya!" Milly called through the halls. She attracted the attention of many guards, who all tried to capture her. She punched one in the face and ignored the others.

Eventually she came to the ballroom. There actually weren't many people inside, only about thirty or so. The guard wasn't lying when she said it was a small party. She scanned the faces in the crowd.

Maya stood across the room with her husband. They laughed with their friends. "Maya!" Milly shouted for the last time.

The changeling, confusion written on her face, looked over at her sister. Shock spread across her face, and she dropped the glass she held.

"Milly?" She asked.