Disclaimer again - only Jaiyan is mine. And another warning for the fight scenes, just in case.

Chapter Seven – The Broken Mirror

Valen methodically cleaned half-dry blood of the heads of his flail, and eyed his new companions askance. "That was a song?"

Jaiyan exchanged a slightly wicked look with Deekin. "What, didn't you like it?"

He pushed up to his feet and groaned. "It will certainly linger in my head."

"What big tiefling mean by this?"

Jaiyan grinned and yanked her pack straps tighter. "It's a compliment." She settled the weight on her shoulders and eyed the cave dubiously. "Well, here goes nothing."

Inside, the air was still and tasted of dust. A waterfall cascaded over smooth rock, and a single pin-point of light floated just above the arched wings of a tired-looking avariel. Once-lustrous honey-coloured hair was heaped on her head, and her blue eyes were vacant and weary. She stared at the moving water with curiously blank fixation.

Not wanting to startle her, Jaiyan let the light fall across them first. "Are you Queen Shaori?"

The avariel turned slowly. "And if I was?"

"Can I ask you some questions?"

"Questions, questions, questions!" The avariel rolled her eyes. "Always questions. Shaori, tell me this. Shaori, tell me that."

"How did this city come to be here?"

"It is my city. Or it was." Shaori frowned. "I think it was. Before…before the mirror."

Jaiyan shifted uneasily. "What mirror?"

"The mirror…it's broken now." Shaori's empty gaze wandered. "I think it…it shows things. And now it's broken…things are the wrong way round."

Valen frowned. "Like a queen living in a cave?"

Shaori scowled at him. "I am not a queen."

Jaiyan stepped between them, tried to drag the avariel's attention back to her. "So if the mirror's broken, where is it? All its pieces?"

"I don't know. You could look in the palace, I suppose. I had a piece, but I gave it to that drow lady."

Jaiyan groaned. "You gave it to Sabal?"

"Was that her name? She asked very nicely…maybe she needs the mirror." Shaori gave another disinterested shrug. "I don't know why she would. It's not helpful."

Leaving the former queen to her study of the waterfall, Jaiyan led the others back outside. "Why is nothing ever simple?"

"Simple is boring," Deekin offered. "Boss want to start looking for this mirror?"

"I suppose. Here's hoping putting it back together will do something."

Valen crooked his head at her. "Why would you want to put it back together?"

She gaped at him. "Why? What kind of question…? Valen, have you seen these people? It's like something's been sucked out of them. And, Hells, I feel uncomfortable under tons of rock. Gods know what flying elves would feel like."

The smallest hint of a smile touched the corners of his mouth. "I was just asking, my lady."

"Hmmph." Jaiyan strode past him, sword drawn, leading the way back towards the marketplace. An equally dispiriting chat with a hollow-eyed merchant gave them directions to the palace.

Or rather, what had been the palace. Now, the high roofs were muffled with dust; great skeins of cobwebs were strung between the needlepoint spires. No lights burned at the windows, and the open doors were pitted and half-rusting.

With every nerve at full attention, Jaiyan stepped across the threshold, and into darkness that was thick with dust. "Deekin?"

In answer, mage light sputtered above Deekin's outstretched hand. It flared across pillars strung with webs, and the edges of empty tables and chairs. Open doors gaped at the far end of the hall, laced with shimmering webs. Jaiyan advanced carefully across the floor, eyes flickering.

"Boss!"

She spun, sword out, tensed to leap. But nothing erupted out of the shadows on either side. She looked over her shoulder. "Seeing things, Deeks?"

"No, Boss! Up! Up!"

Her gaze traveled upwards, and her stomach constricted. Dropping leisurely down from the high beams was some dark, eight-legged monstrosity. Never entirely fond of spiders in any size or form, Jaiyan felt the skin on the back of her neck go cold. This was no ordinary spider, giant or otherwise; where the head should have been, the flesh changed, rippling up into the lean, dark torso of a drow warrior.

"Driders!" Valen shouted. "Move!"

The creature flung back on four legs and shrieked. With no real room to maneuver, Jaiyan gritted her teeth and slashed at it. The rearing legs writhed, and her blade glanced against one. The drider howled again and shoved forward, crashing into her. The spined ends of its legs scrabbled against her leather armour and she bit back the sudden urge to whimper.

An acid spell spluttered over her head and exploded against the drider's bare chest. The drider's legs bunched up, and it screeched horribly. Shamelessly half-closing her eyes, Jaiyan hacked past its flailing arms and into the solid muscle of its abdomen. Another spell arrowed in and burrowed into the drider's throat. Choking on melting flesh, the drider crashed down to the floor. She turned, chest heaving, fully expecting to meet another attack.

Behind her, Valen stood braced over three dead driders, while another was curled against a pillar, peppered with crossbow bolts.

Jaiyan shuddered. "What are those things?"

"Driders, Boss," Deekin cheerfully informed her. "Part drow, part spider. Deekin thinks drow do that to other drow when they think other drow be traitors to Lolth."

She stared at the dead driders, sickened. "I don't like drow. I don't like spiders."

"Boss not like spiders?"

"No. Don't you remember? The huge spiders in the tomb in the desert?"

"Oh…yes. Boss screamed like a little girl."

She snorted. "There's nothing wrong with not liking spiders."

Valen shrugged. "I don't mind spiders. They go down as easily as anything else after a flail to the head."

Jaiyan found herself smiling, despite her crawling skin, and the dead driders, and the liberal gouts of blood on the floor. Suppressing an inappropriate giggle, she just shook her head and pressed on into the palace, the other two trailing her. The corridor opened up, was hung with tarnished old portraits and dangling chandeliers, the crystal in them mostly cracked and reflecting odd patterns from Deekin's mage light.

She edged through a last pair of open doors, and looked up into a ceiling that was high and arched. Thick curtains of cobwebs hung between tall black columns, trembling slightly. Wary of more driders, she kept to the middle of the floor, while Valen and Deekin scanned the cobwebs.

A dais rose at the far end of the chamber, with a marble throne that may once have been beautiful. Sprawled on the throne was another avariel, this one small and scrawny. His eyes were huge in a pale, angled face, but he seemed different; the gaze he turned on Jaiyan was gently amicable rather than blank, and he smiled. "Welcome, friends."

Jaiyan regarded him suspiciously, saw that he wore patched motley clothes. "You're a jester?"

"I was," the avariel said. "A fool I was, and empty-minded."

"And the mirror turned everything upside down."

"Yes." The jester nodded sadly. "And so a queen lurks in a cave, and a feeble-brained palace fool becomes the wisest man in the city." In spare, unadorned words, the jester explained that the mirror, when whole, was known as All-Seeing, and granted the ability to look at anything. "And so the queen looked upon a wizard, by name of Halaster, in Undermountain."

Jaiyan nodded tiredly. "Oh, yes. I know him."

"He was not pleased."

"So as punishment, he did this to you all? And to the mirror?"

The jester nodded. Sudden desperation showed in his eyes. "To restore this, the pieces must all be found, and put within the frame again."

Jaiyan searched his face. "If the mirror is put back together, and everything goes back to normal…won't you, as well?"

A tiny smile curled one end of his mouth. "Yes, I will. But come. There is little time, and I must tell you where to find the mirror shards."

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Several exhausting hours later, Jaiyan traipsed across the marketplace again, the other two in tow. She was drenched in drider blood, her elbow felt numb from a fall against marble, her hair was a disgrace, and her feet ached. To her utter disgust, Valen seemed little affected; he walked with his flail braced across one shoulder, and while his armour was blood-splashed, she suspected it did not quite reek of dead driders the same way hers did.

"Deekin?"

"Yes, Boss?"

"Got those mirror pieces safe? Because so help me, I will kill you if you lose them."

Deekin yipped disapprovingly. "Boss. When Deekin ever lost or broken anything valuable?"

"That tower statue you were meant to give to Tymofarrar springs to mind."

Unearthing the missing shards had proved punishing and irritating in equal measure. First there had been the merchant who demanded something utterly worthless in exchange for a compass that could lead the way to the first shard. Jaiyan had been tempted to ask if her fist in his teeth would count, but she eventually pried the compass from him after passing off a copper coin as worthlessly cursed. Next had been the library, where they had encountered a harmless medusa – a nice change, according to Deekin. Then the wizard's apprentice, in a tower filled with vrocks and a balor, and finally the temple. Where the avariel priest had required a challenge taken in return for his mirror shard – a challenge that involved her stumbling and half-sick with poison, while she fought off spiders.

And Valen screamed at the priest that he was stronger, that he should have been given the challenge.

Jaiyan shook herself free of recollection as the palace loomed ahead of them again. Despite a brief stop for a hurried cold meal, she felt hungry and weary, and wanting nothing more than warm blankets. Oh, some adventurer you are, her thoughts scoffed at her. Aren't we supposed to like the same boring food day after day and bedding down on stone floors?

Inside the throne room, they found the jester still slumped idly on the throne. He was twirling an empty frame between his hands, and his face brightened as he saw them. "My friends, you return. With the pieces..?"

Jaiyan nodded slowly. "All we could find. But the last piece – Shaori's piece…"

"Was given to Sabal," the jester finished. He looked past Jaiyan, and a smile creased his lips. "Who has brought it with her, and so the mirror can be made whole again."

She turned, and her heart sank as she saw Sabal herself, moving wraith-quiet between the pillars, half a dozen drow warriors flanking her. "Oh, a surprise," she muttered. "I love surprises."

Sabal smiled thinly. "Jester…you have the frame?"

The fool nodded innocently.

"Give it to me."

Jaiyan's sword rang from its sheath. "Don't give it to her."

"But the mirror must be made whole…" Not understanding, the jester's gaze flickered from human to drow and back again.

"You give her that frame, she'll take it from you and you'll never return home," Jaiyan said.

Behind her, the air hummed as Deekin sang softly to himself. Sabal, noticing, raised one hand, already enveloped in a corona of white light. "Give me the frame, fool," she hissed. "Or don't, and I'll take it, and the other shards, from your lifeless corpses."

"Oh, a morbid threat. That's original." Jaiyan edged forward. Her throat was dry, and her heartbeat galloped. The drow woman was lean, built for lethal speed. Magic whined around one clenched fist, while in the other she held a flail. "Anything else you want to say?"

Sabal smiled again. "Only this," she said, silken. A lightning bolt shot out from her palm, searing over Jaiyan's head. Behind her, Deekin yelped and flung himself sideways.

"You missed," Jaiyan grated. Closer, closer, closer…just one more step closer, she thought desperately. She needed to breach the distance between them; she did not fancy her chances against both flail and magic.

"I wasn't aiming at you." Another bolt cracked from the drow's hand, and Deekin cried out as his half-prepared spell sputtered into nothing.

Jaiyan did not turn her head. "Deeks? You alright?"

"Singed tail!" came the plaintive reply.

Jaiyan smothered a grin. On her other side, she could half-see Valen stalking purposefully towards Sabal's soldiers.

The air roared and shimmered around Sabal's tightened fist. Before she could rattle off another spell, Jaiyan launched at her, crashing bodily into her and driving her back a pace. She swept the flat of her blade against Sabal's free hand and slammed her elbow into the other woman's stomach.

Sabal growled something in drow and melted away from her. Jaiyan followed, desperately trying to keep her away from the others.

On her other side, Valen ploughed into the drow soldiers. He landed a hard kick on the first's chest, sending him spinning away, and his flail crunched into the second before he was moving again.

Jaiyan threw herself at Sabal again, but the drow flung up a hand and snapped out a quick word. Crimson light erupted from her fingers, slamming into Jaiyan's chest, leaving her breathless and in pain. She pushed on, teeth clenched, and dodged another bright red spray of light. Some part of her registered screaming as Valen chopped down two more drow soldiers, and the crank and twang of Deekin firing his crossbow.

Red light seared out from Sabal's free hand and lanced across her shoulder. She cried out, stumbled. Jerked away as the drow's flail spun towards her head. Raggedly, she brought her sword up, and the flail chain wrapped around the blade.

Sabal smiled again. "Impasse, little human?"

Jaiyan spat out an obscenity and wrenched at her sword.

The drow tightened her grip on the flail haft, and gestured with her free hand.

Jaiyan kicked frantically at Sabal's ankles, not wanting to lose her sword. The drow's palm flared, and then needles of pain dug into her flesh. White light cracked off her armour, and the skin inside felt blistered. She sank her teeth into the inside of her cheek and held on as the spell crackled over her.

A crossbow bolt blurred past Jaiyan's face, close enough that she could have counted the fletching.

Sabal screamed and lurched away, blood showering from her wrist, impaled with the bolt.

Jaiyan moved after her, kicked aside the clumsily-swung flail. With her ruined hand hanging, Sabal jumped back, tried to counter. The flail snagged against the sword, tangled against the hilt. Jaiyan drove her knee into Sabal's side, and the drow's knees buckled. Still clutching at the flail with one hand, the drow stared up at her, her face taut with pain.

Never a supporter of long or melodramatic pre-death speeches, Jaiyan saw her open her mouth as if to speak, and rammed her sword into Sabal's chest, pinning her to the floor.

Silence, then, broken only by the pattering of small claws. Deekin's hand touched her arm, and he pressed a healing potion into her hands. "Drink this, Boss."

Jaiyan complied without arguing. Her entire body throbbed, and her head pounded. "How's the tail?"

"Still elegant."

She laughed, and turned in time to see Valen approaching. "How are you?"

He nodded briskly. "Fine."

"You don't even look like you've broken into a sweat. And how many drow was that? Five?"

"Six," he said.

She knelt beside Sabal's still form, quickly rifled through the drow's packs. She found three jewels, which she shamelessly tossed to Deekin, two healing potions that she passed to Valen, and the mirror shard.

"Thank you, my friends." The jester smiled sadly. "I am sorry there had to be so much death for this."

Jaiyan was tempted to snap something about treacherous drow, but then she remembered her own allies in Lith My'athar, and decided against it. "Yes."

The jester held the last piece over the frame. "Are you ready?"

Jaiyan looked at him, suddenly touched. "Are you?"

He shrugged lightly. "What else can I do?"

The jester slipped the last shard into place. For a long moment, the silence hung breathlessly. A heartbeat later, and the frame glowed in his hands. Pale light raced along the shattered mirror, and the world lurched, upended, and went dark.

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Jaiyan blinked. Her pulse gradually slowed, and her vision cleared. She shook her head hard, saw that they still stood in the throne room. Valen stood to her left, a thunderous scowl on his angular face, while Deekin looked around, bewildered. "What…just happened?" she asked out loud.

"The restoring of things," answered Queen Shaori.

Jaiyan squinted, saw the avariel queen standing beside the throne. Her face seemed softer, her eyes and smile kind. "Your Majesty."

Shaori laughed gently. "Yes. I must apologise for my behaviour when you arrived. It seems I was…not myself."

"Not a problem, your Majesty. Curses do strange things."

"They do indeed." Shaori's gaze shifted to the jester, sitting slouched on the throne. His face was vacant, and his large eyes were foggy beneath tangled brows. "He will be cared for, I assure you of that. He will never know what he did."

Jaiyan swallowed uncomfortably. She had long ago accepted the unpredictable malice of the world, but down here in the darkness, such truths seemed all the more cruel. "So," she said, forcing her voice light. "What happens now?"

"If it please you, you will leave these caverns, and when you do, we shall return to our mountains." Shaori lifted the mirror, flawless and gleaming. "I…would like you to have this. Perhaps you can do more good with it than I."

She took the mirror, felt the coldness of it against her fingers. It unnerved her, with its black, limitless depths, but she did not care for the thought of the Valsharess' drow discovering its uses. "As you wish it, your Majesty."

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Jaiyan sat at the prow of the boat, gazing out at the blank darkness of the caverns. Pale lanterns hung over the water, sending white reflections rippling across the surface. A large shadow swung over her, and she smiled tiredly up at Valen.

He crouched beside her. "What will you do with the mirror?"

"Give it to the Seer. I don't want it, but I don't want the Valsharess to get it." She stared out at the river. "Besides, I wouldn't know what to do with it. Use it to spy on people I grew up with, maybe. See if that really pretty girl I was jealous of is married, more than moderately stout, and has twelve terrible children, like I always hoped."

Valen watched her sidelong for a long moment. "You fought well today."

"You don't sound as surprised as I thought you'd be."

"I'm not." His eyebrows lifted. "Well, maybe a little." He hesitated, looked as if he wanted to say more. Instead, he inclined his head. "I'll leave you to your thoughts."

She glanced past him, saw Deekin tearing down the deck. "Not a chance, it seems."

Valen laughed – briefly, more a bark than anything else – but it was a laugh, and Jaiyan grinned. She watched him stride away, stepping around the charging kobold, his tail swaying gently.

"Deeks. How are you this fine Underdark evening?"

Deekin dropped down beside her, a jumble of legs and arms and parchment. "Can Boss check Deekin's spelling? Not sure how to write 'Avariel'….or 'implacable'."

She accepted the unfurled parchment, and squinted at the spidery writing. "Course I can. Let's have a look. And who's implacable?"

"Big tiefling."

"Yes. He is, isn't he?" She tugged the parchment straighter. "What's this word?"

"Scrappy."

"Is that even a word?"

"Deekin be using it to describe."

She frowned at the offending word. "It's not really a proper word, though, is it? Unless you're talking about someone's fighting style or something. Or just someone…Deekin, who are you describing here?"

He stared studiously at the river roiling past. "You, Boss."

She sighed and kept reading. "Thought so."