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follows becoming un becoming

Sprinting through the mirror (thankfully intact, blessedly unmarred), Hybris slowed into the cool thickness of air that Mirrorspace granted. Looking around the surrounding darkness, he couldn't pick out any small glowing bodies nearby or on the boy in his arms. Time seemed to speed up and the rapidly brake, along with his thoughts as to what just happened. Not much, but quite a bit all the same.

Hybris let Eles partially drop until he was only holding onto the older boy's arm in support. Free hand reaching up to pat his chest, he heaved a loud sigh. "Thank goodness there was a mirror just behind us. It's such an odd youma, maybe it would have tried for your starseed. Ah..." a soft little moan. "I think I pulled a muscle."

And then, like an afterthought, "Oh...are you okay? It's usually much cuter than that. It's their owner that's scary."

In the distance he picked out the barely there path that would take them to the citadel.

It all had very clearly disturbed, shaken, Eles. Which was always a little fun, to be sure. Especially when the boy remembered to breathe and have an attitude about it. With a little tug, maybe just a tad too hard for the unsteady victim of events, Hybris began to pull him toward an exit only he could see.

"That was a youma. They belong to the other chaos faction. Like little Beau Peep from the other night, but one of the ah...pets, belonging to them." They moved through the darkness until they were suddenly moving through real air one more, light and easy. Everything else was light as well, from the pale off-white of the walls and floors, to the mirrors upon mirrors that reflected it all back. It was a large room, with a pair of massive door to one side, and a series of hallways branching out from the other.

"That youma, though, it a little special. We have similar magic, did you notice? But I'm never really able to have a good talk with it, because its master is always around." He lowered his voice, as if the coming name may summon the spectre of its bearer, "Faustite."

The stumble and resulting glare was undeniably satisfying; Eles was repaying the debt of gravity bit by bit. The compliment didn't hurt either, a balm over missing the voice so completely, knowing his own iteration had strayed so far off as to be a different person. Well, there'd be time to fix it, later.

"He might. He's a sort of...he's powerful. Extremely powerful and an avatar of fire. And rage. And he's mean, he once caught me and bent me over his knee to make me confess to...I'm not sure, I don't think there was any answer he wanted to hear, he just wanted an excuse to kill me. Though in the end he just burned off my hair, but I really liked my hair," Hybris complained, voice soft and almost child-like in its complaint.

Swinging the hands between them, he led Eles to a large mirror with a golden frame, "We're going to my island. My other home." This time, when they stepped through, it was to an expansive view of stars-that-weren't-stars and white, floating islands in the distance. There was a path leading to a huge, ominous structure with a tall spire that stretched up far beyond its surroundings. It was there that Hybris led them, until they were faced with a large circular mirror on the floor.

"I couldn't even keep you here if I wanted to," he sighed, as if that was a terrible wrong to his person. "It kicks us out after a few days." He sent a sulky, perhaps even a little...flirtatious look toward the mirror on the ground. "So stingy."

"Nothing so fun, so I didn't like it at the time. But in retrospect," he game a little hum, "...I think about it sometimes, and I like it." Otherwise he wouldn't think about it, wouldn't allow it to persist in his memory and general reality.

Eles clearly wasn't doing well. Between the youma, the mirrorwalking, and this vista of the mirrorscape, something was absolutely ******** the boy up. So without much delay, Hybris tugged him over to the mirror on the floor, and once again they were whisked away to a new location.

The sky still held its not-stars, but had softened into twilight hues. The edges of the land could be seen, with only air and other floating islands beyond them. The ground was thick with dark, blue green grasses, plush and springy underfoot. Peppered through the landscape were lanterns, their light warm and steady as they picked out a path through a small thicket of rose bushes, they flowers so black as to cut holes through every other color around them. Patches of silvered baby's breath lined the way, and at the brush of a wayward hand, a fine mist sprang up, creating a brief, shimmering mirror in the air above it. Here a small seating area in a copse of trees that looked...different. Felt foreign in the same way the grass did, the flowers too. There were book shelves nestled among the trees, several comfortable chair as well.

Hybris led Eles past this, and the sound of running water grew notable, until they were eventually crossing a small bridge, over a creek that ran across the space and into a pond, a mass of tiny green leaves that floating serenely across its surface. At the end of the path, on a low hill that allowed a view of all the rest, was a large, velvet tent. With its gold embroidered trim and shimmering tassels, its thick mounds of pillows, rugs, and blankets, how could it be anything but a resting place for someone like Malory Medraut and his magical Other?

"Isn't it nice? I made it myself."

The rushed and rhythmic rise and fall of Eles's chest, breath, pallor, and focus were taken in with an increasingly calm and observant Hybris. The question of would this make Eles feel better or worse was answered step by step until the other boy simply fell. Drowned in the tides of his own panic?

When he came to, Hybris was laying across from him, just watching quietly until he too blinked slowly, paced his breath that didn't need it. Mouthed something that could be either expletive or invitation. And then the queer little echo was gone and he was all Malory-but-magic once more. Smiling and reaching out to pinch Eles's chin, making sure to press a little along the stitches. "Were you scared?"

"It's just a little underfed," Hybris began to explain in the Mirror's defense, fingers lightly dancing down the other boy's throat. "It improves the decor when we ask it, but not much can stay permanently, yet."

But clearly he wasn't really up to listening to Hybris proselytize the merit and general cuteness of the Dark Mirror at the moment. Especially if he thought there were explosions going on of all things.

"Nothing exploded. You just had a panic attack and..." Hybris slowed, a thought burbling up then sinking in. "There was no explosion just now," the wording turned very deliberate. "But there might have been. At some other time."

That would explain the rather intense reaction to what Hybris considered a pretty non-aggressive magical space. His fingers tripped and trickled down to Eles's chest, right down the center, stopping to drum a little beat near the heart. "In another life."

Slinging an arm around Eles, Hybris leaned against him, comfortably taking up the negative space around the changeling in his midst. The subject of his past life, or potentially finding some memory here, was firmly swatted away, but not denied. He smiled smugly to himself for a moment until the next series of signs left him stunned. Visibly shocked and even a little confused.

"What do you mean missing?" Like he had escaped from fireboy jail? Like his queen had put his portrait on whatever milk cartons the Negaverse favored? Like he'd gone out to get cigarettes and never came back?

"And where did you hear that?!"

It was really unfair for Eles to know about magical things before Hybris did!

It was becoming something or a rarity to stumble upon something unbelievable anymore. As he'd told Eles, magic is real. But maybe, in the end, magic truly had nothing on people. The story began on a baffling note and kept getting stranger, but Hybris could pick up any sense of bullshit from the other boy.

The flare of irritation forgotten, his shoulders were shaking by the time Eles got to for a good time call. "O...oh," Hybris wheezed out in a tiny voice. "I see?"

The incredibly fearsome, snappish, on-fire, and murdersome General King Faustite. And someone was trying to summon him via dumpster fire. How shitty and amazing for his dignity. What if it worked and he just popped out of one?

Hybris pressed hid face into Eles's side in an attempt to keep it in, but it didn't take long for him to break and burst out into loud, boisterous laughter that rang throughout his small domain. Even if the other boy hadn't gotten a good time out of it, Hybris sure was now.

He should call it some time, actually. To be helpful.