Early on in its career, when a certain entity glumly contemplated its future as far as it could see in being forced to serve various evil wizards, psychotic witches, senile sorcerers, and other irrational magic-wielders, every one of them who couldn't locate their sanity if handed a GPS device and a copy of every map in the Library of Congress, it soon came to a simple conclusion:
When you were a Magic Mirror, you had to take your fun where you could find it.
Over the centuries of its existence, it had developed enduring patience, which helped a great deal in waiting for just the perfect moment. Which was….now!
"OH MOST RADIANT OF MISTRESSES, THIS HUMBLE SERVANT HAS NEWS FOR THEE!"
From the oval mirror in an ornate frame mounted on the wall of the witch's chambers, a sonorous voice rumbled at ear-deafening levels, causing various events to happen.
The overpowering noise rattled entire shelves filled with multi-colored potions in their glass phials.
By sheer volume, a nearby dozing raven was blasted off its perch on top of someone's skull resting on a table, making the bird desperately flutter its wings as it struggled to stay in flight and not come crashing down onto the floor, with the evil familiar angrily opening and closing its beak in what would have been heard as irate screeching caws over being disturbed, except nobody could have listened to its complaints over the overwhelming din.
Lastly, the racket disturbed the intent figure leaning over a bubbling cauldron, causing their hands to jerk in surprise while they were in the process of painstakingly scraping an infinitesimal fragment off a small block of an extremely dangerous magical substance held above the roiling surface of the toxic liquid. Hopelessly startled, this person now dropped the entire lethal concoction into the cauldron, to their absolute horror.
The resulting explosion was most impressive.
Later, when the Magic Mirror lovingly went through its memories in slow motion, it watched in absolute glee as the erupting cauldron, blasting off on a comet-trail of sparks and streaks of fire, leapt straight up in the air almost all the way to the ceiling. Just before its collusion, the cauldron then violently burst apart, sending bits of the metal pot flying everywhere, with associated damage to every object inside the room. Including a certain familiar, as one such piece of shrapnel managed a direct hit on the raven flying around the chamber, causing the bird to abruptly depart from this life in a cloud of feathers that was as black as the smoke now filling the entire room.
Actually, the metal fragments zipping throughout the air were the least of the problems for the remaining pair of beings inside the room. Knowing its serious protections laid on it would keep the supernatural construct from any harm, the Magic Mirror cheerfully ignored the pings! of various pieces of the cauldron hitting the surface of the engrossed reflective panel, and instead, it happily watched as the person directly under the ruptured cauldron spraying its released contents everywhere desperately tried to dodge the near-boiling liquid.
Spluttering howls of distress that yelped throughout the room indicated the clear failure of this action, as to the Magic Mirror's intense disappointment, the explosion-created smoke that was now engulfing the entire room hid how several gallons of concentrated Blistering Lava Sludge was directly dumped onto someone.
If the Magic Mirror actually had a physical body, it would now have been rolling around the floor in absolute mirth, clutching its (metaphorical) ribs while sadistically enjoying how its mistress was having a really bad day.
Just barely managing to stifle its giggling, the mirror's mood perked up at seeing how the smoke in the room was now beginning to dissipate, and it cleared up after a few moments, revealing its detested owner in her full glory.
Magica De Spell, the most powerful witch in Italy, stood in her wrecked chambers, her voluptuous duck body shaking with pure wrath, her usual sleek and stylish black dress now covered with numerous smoldering plague-green blotches from the cauldron's nasty brew, her flowing midnight-black locks now frazzled and scorched, and her normal heavy eye-shadow washed off in streaks covering her orange bill and all of her lower face.
The witch's eyes were now also narrowed to the merest slits, showing through this a gleam of pure red that matched the angry scarlet sparks popping from the tip of her drawn wand, with both the homicidal glare and the pointed wand directed straight at the Magic Mirror.
This reflective panel prudently kept quiet as Magica began stalking towards it, composedly watching as the witch kicked out of her way the corpse of her former pet Ratface the raven. Even if she hadn't been in the midst of a towering rage, Magica wouldn't have cared the slightest about the death of her familiar. Another bird would do just as well, right after she had words with that….that….THING!
Stopping right before the mirror, and drawing a deep breath for a wild scream into her reflection, Magica was interrupted at the very last possible second by another sonorous blast from the mirror that sent the singed hair of her wig streaming straight back.
"FAIREST OF THEM ALL, THY ANCIENT ENEMY HATH THE STRANGEST VISITOR--"
Now totally infuriated, the sorceress performed a sweep of her wand that sent a blast of magical energy right at the mirror, burning a diagonal streak inches deep into the very stones of the wall holding the mirror, as Magica shrieked even louder than the mirror, "SILENCE!"
The Magic Mirror promptly shut up, which was the only thing resulting from Magica's actions. While her attack with her wand had damaged the wall at the sides of the mirror, this object itself was totally unharmed, as the energy striking it had dissipated right after the sorceress had sent it in her rage that had made Magica forget her possession had serious protections shielding it, plus the duck also risked serious misfortune if she'd actually managed to break or shatter it.
Destroy a Magic Mirror, and seven years' bad luck would be the least of her troubles.
Magica's furious mood lessened a bit as she remembered this, and she was also distracted from her temper tantrum at suddenly remembering what exactly the mirror had just said. Glaring at her angry reflection, Magica demanded, "What, you mean Scrooge McDuck? What visitor? What are you talking about?"
Not a single word was uttered by the Magic Mirror.
Magica's eyes bulged, as her blood pressure soared to extreme levels, and as she gritted her teeth, the witch snarled, "You can speak now! More quietly, you hear, you talking glass?!"
Waiting for a few seconds as the Magic Mirror contemplated for the dozenth time how exactly the duck's teeth could appear out of thin air, plus also to increase the chances of his owner actually having a stroke, the magical object which for centuries had learned to find the loopholes and the letter of the law in obeying its disliked orders and commands, now said in an equally snotty tone, if with lower volume, "A mage of great power hath appeared in that elderly avian's place of wealth."
"WHAT?!" shrieked Magica in disbelief, who then demanded, "Show me!"
Looking at the surface of the mirror, the now-worried witch watched as her reflection shimmered, and then vanished as another picture formed on the mirror, that of an overhead view of Scrooge McDuck's money bin. Magica's bill dropped open in utter amazement as her sorcerous senses saw what was now covering that entire building. It would have been invisible to any non-magical being, but the witch was now staring at a dome of pure magical energy arcing over the money bin. Right now, Magica uneasily doubted that with all her own power she would have been capable of creating this incredible dome.
Sputtering in shock, Magica ordered, "Show me more! Let me look inside the money bin!"
"Thou knowest this lowly servant may not carry out thy command, oh glorious flower of womanhood, and why this is so," said the Magic Mirror, totally enjoying the glare sent its way for both its archaic speech with the added fulsome compliments. Not to mention that Magica uncomfortably knew exactly why the mirror couldn't peer inside the money bin.
As an unsettled look came over Magica's features, and she began to pace back and forth before the mirror, her possession watched the witch in bubbling delight that was only heightened by the mirror's inward smirking over the fact that it could have provided more information in the clearer vernacular of the present day, and it could still do so, if only Magica De Spell would do one simple thing:
Be polite.
Since the Magic Mirror considered the extremely remote chances of this taking place to be equal to the witch suddenly deciding to join a convent and then being voted "Most Pleasant Nun" by the other members of the women's religious community, it patiently waited for the next order that was sure to come.
"Show me the outside of the money bin over the last few minutes! I want to see this mage when they entered that building!"
The Magic Mirror was about to answer, when its attention was caught by a thin trail of smoke coming over Magica's left shoulder. After a moment of puzzlement at seeing this, the mirror decided to ignore this distraction, to then answer the impatient witch with something that could only increase her anxiety.
"Alas, thy will may not be done, thou magnificent mistress. The mage appeared, from where I know not, directly inside the place of thy concern."
"Ahh….ahh….," choked out Magica, her expression totally thunderstruck, until she finally said something more coherent. "That's impossible! Not even I can do that anymore! And…there has to be only one reason for that mage to do that!"
Since that wasn't a direct question or command, the Magic Mirror refrained from saying anything more for now, just content at seeing the varied emotions of worry, fear, doubt, rage and others chase themselves over Magica's face. When at last her features firmed in the clear signs of a decision finally being made, and the duck shifted to begin a turn to go around in her business, the mirror, with exquisite timing, slipped in the knife.
"My lady, she who hath control of the mightiest powers of the air and--"
"WHAT?!" shouted Magica.
With a now clearly-offended tone, the Magic Mirror murmured, "As one who hath sworn to obey and protect, prithee, this humble servant must point out, as thee surely hath already considered, that mage now with thy adversary may not have come to take what is truly yours. Nay, one of such power -- though it surely doth not compare to thy own -- may have been summoned by Scrooge McDuck to help him guard and defend the prize that all wish to possess."
The Magical Mirror had never before seen a duck about to faint.
After a few moments on her unsteady feet, Magica De Spell, who'd clearly never considered this, dazedly shook her head, and showed signs of a rapid recovery from this horrible suggestion by her growing irritation, as she growled at the mirror. "We'll see about that, when I get there! Now, listen--" The duck pointed her wand at the mirror, and snappishly continued, "--I want you to keep a close eye around all that place. Warn me at once if that mage leaves the money bin or does anything else that you can learn about! Understand?"
Deadpan, the Magic Mirror answered, "I live but to serve."
"That's the way things should be," snorted the duck. As Magica De Spell turned to stalk off towards the center of the room, her back now to the reflective panel, the Magic Mirror began to speak, and then it thought better, instead watching with silent fascination as the very tip of Magica's tail feathers stopped smoldering, and burst into a tiny flame.
Unconscious of this, the sorceress stopped in the middle of the spell circle, and she gracefully waved her wand in starting the casting that would transport her to the location she wished to go, and Magica now spoke the name of that specific place.
"Duckburg---YEOW!!"
In a puff of mystical smoke, the female duck disappeared in the middle of an agonized shriek and a frantic swat at her posterior.
In the now-empty room, the mirror started whooping with laughter, as it hadn't done since the Middle Ages.