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The aura was like nothing Astrophyllite had ever felt before, and it hit her like a ton of bricks. She dropped the energy sphere she was collecting in shock, and turned to scramble after it, her prey abandoned. Recapturing it, the captain tucked it into her pocket for safe keeping and then got to her feet. She focused on the strange signature, trying to feel it out and determine its origin, its nature, its anything.

Glitter and lace and smoke, movement in the mirror when you look at it out of the corner of your eye and you're not sure if it's actually there or not. Magic. Silk. A whiff of perfume - something musky and herbal and hard to place. Thick, soft fur, vanishing into nothing and bleach-white bone, and it's bright but it's strange and it's dark all at once and-

and-

and-

If she were a better captain, she would have reported this to Natron at once and awaited his instructions. If she were better, she would not have approached such a massive signature on her own.

Curiosity got the better of her, as always. Calling her club to hand, Astrophyllite began her approach. It was easy to get a lock on the signature, easier to determine its source - the woman certainly looked the part. She did not look like a senshi, but she did not look like an officer or a knight, either. And - she had pointy ears! Like an elf! She'd never seen anyone like her before.

When she was a few meters away, Astrophyllite bit her lip and considered how to proceed. Then, she stepped out of the alleyway and anxiously cleared her throat. She lowered her club so that it was held loosely at her side - not an attack position at all. She came in peace.

"Excuse me," she asked. "Are you a good witch? Or a bad witch?"

Astrophyllite let her club slip from her fingers, vanishing it into subspace before it could hit the ground. She wrung her hands together in front of her, sub-consciously imitating the woman's gesture. "Captain Astrophyllite," she said, and then, in case she was a newly-arrived alien with no knowledge of Earth or how things worked in Destiny City, she added, "Officer of the Negaverse."

But I want to be good, too, she thought, taking a step closer. "You have light and dark in you," she said, "But you shine like a spotlight on a mirror." She thought for a moment longer, trying to decide what she thought that meant. It was such a strange signature for someone to have! She'd never, ever felt anything like it!

Finally, she pronounced, "I think you are good. You're bright like Order." No, correction. "You are Order."

She took a step closer, raising her hands tentatively to about chest height and clenching it to fight the urge to reach out. "Why are your ears like that?" Astrophyllite asked. "I've met lots of aliens, but none of them... none of them have ears like yours."

Astrophyllite watched the woman carefully - she was not a knight. She was not a senshi. She did not deny being an alien, but there was something weird about how she phrased her reply that made her sound like she didn't consider herself one. She nodded, and the question of where the woman had come from was on the tip of her tongue, but -

She gasped. Magic! But not - not the way senshi had it, where they had to use it all at once and speak its name first. Not - not the way knights had it, either, she didn't think, based on what she'd seen, but she knew very few knights. "How?" she asked, voice scarcely above a whisper. "How do you do that?"

She had to be an alien. She had to be! But she was good. She wasn't an invader. She was just... she was just... words failed her. "Where are you from?" she asked. What were people, when they weren't knights or senshi or some permutation thereof? Officers were just knights that didn't know their places, or had lost them.

"Are you really an alien?" she asked, reaching out to very carefully touch the floating pebble. "Not the way senshi are aliens. Not - um - um. You're - I've never seen anything like you before. Or heard of anything like you. Are you - are you a witch?"

She'd meant it as a joke. She hadn't expected to be right. But the universe had a way of surprising her, of unfolding like a cootie-catcher and revealing newer and stranger levels within itself.

The pebble was firm and cold and real underneath her fingers, and Astrophyllite thought, as she was wont to do, we are stones waiting to be carved. She picked it up and closed her fist around it, then opened her fingers again and tried to repeat the trick. It was fruitless, of course, but that didn't stop her from wanting to try. "My magic is small," she said. "It's... it's all bound up in Chaos. I think there used to be some in my board, but... Chaos took my board away."

There was no magic in her club. It made her sad. Maybe someday, she would have something like Avalon's sword, some magic all her own.

Zirconia's story struck her as very much like Through the Looking Glass, although Astrophyllite didn't think she was making it up. The world was strange, but she could accept that. It just made life more exciting. Besides, she should be honored to be speaking to someone so powerful! Hvergelmir had told her to look for a royal - but maybe a sorceress could help just as well?

"Can you," she ventured, clenching her fists nervously. "Can you purify me? Like a princess? I don't want to work for the Negaverse anymore. I thought that if I told myself I was perfect and pure in Metallia's service enough times it would be true, it's true for everyone else, but - it's bad. I don't like doing bad things."

Astrophyllite's heart sank. "You feel so strong, though," she said, quieted. Zirconia wasn't - she wasn't the sun. But she was a reflection. A mirror. She could be the moon. How could something that bright not be able to chase away the darkness that had wrapped itself around her soul? She'd have to take her word for it... but she wasn't pleased to.

"I'll have to keep looking, I guess," she said, pressing her lips into a tight line. She hadn't thought it would be so easy, anyway. Maybe for Camlann, princes just appeared out of thin air and carried them away to the right path - but Astrophyllite was never so lucky.

But there were other things that she ought to ask this mysterious woman about, things that might buy her a week's favor from her superiors if they asked.

"If your king is on the other side of the mirror," she asked (and it made sense to her, that if this world had had a moon queen, then its reflection should have a king, "Then what are you doing here?"

"I know their names, too," replied Astrophyllite. "Hvergelmir told me." She'd repeated them in litany to herself ever since - but some complex combination of fears had kept her from directly seeking any of them. Camlann made it seem to easy! And thinking of Camlann only made her mad, so she resolved not to.

Instead, she focused on Zirconia's story, and she couldn't help but feel tremendously sad inside for the sorceress. Just because she was order and she had tremendous power didn't mean that everything was happy for her - did that mean that purifying wouldn't fix all of Astrophyllite's problems, either? Should she just tough it out with the hand she was given?

No. She was going to do something to help herself, for the first time in her life. She had to. The time just had to be right, first. What if she purified, and there was no one around to help her afterward? That would be bad, right? She'd just get right back into danger... She would find out what had happened to Hvergelmir, she decided, and then, if she was okay, she'd make more of a plan.

Gently, she reached out and traced her fingers along the side of Zirconia's face. "I'm sorry," whispered Astrophyllite. "I - I hope you find a new home. It won't ever replace the old one, but maybe- maybe you'll be happy there." She bit her lip. "I have a Wonder somewhere. It's waiting for me. But I don't know where it is and I can't get to it and even if I could, it wouldn't recognize me. But someday it will."

Astrophyllite smiled, tight-lipped, and carefully withdrew her hand. Zirconia was right - it would be so much easier to live the life that Beatrice had laid out for her, to go to Boston and enroll in finishing school and let herself be pampered. It would be easier to serve the Negaverse for the rest of her life, to cling to whatever power Trixilite saw fit to give her and nothing more. She would want for nothing...

...And she would want for everything. The Astrophyllite who chose that path would be content, but she would not be truly happy. She had a Wonder. She had a place that was hers and hers alone and she was promised to it and it was promised to her, and that alone would make purification worth it. It was the harder path, certainly, but if Zirconia said it was the path worth taking (and Zirconia was so old and so wise, Astrophyllite could feel it in her aura, in her soul), then it was worth the pain.

"Thank you," she said, curtseying slightly. "I - I'll find you, once I'm good, if I remember. If I don't - will you find me? And remind me? That it's worth it?"