The tingling feeling came to a stop and Ruuya realized that they were still in the palace. The hall they had appeared in was much like the others she had passed through, save for the large windows with worn maroon curtains. Each one looked out on the white snows of Hebra, draping over the landscape and rising in pillars far below. She still didn't understand how the palace could be so warm, but was grateful for it.

Immediately, Vaati let go of Ruuya's arm as though he had been bitten by a rattlesnake. He shook his hand, stepping back. Ruuya placed her hands on her hips.

"So," she said, feeling both awkward and tired as hell as the adrenaline melted into exhaustion, "where exactly did we end up?"

He glanced around wordlessly instead of answering.

"Vaati?"

"Lord Vaati." Dear gods, really? "If it's all the same to you, you stupid keaton -"

"I'm a Gerudo."

"- I'm trying to think. So be quiet. You're lucky I haven't disposed of you yet."

With what magic? She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. It was surprisingly warm. Maybe the palace had some kind of heating spell intertwined into its brick and mortar. She'd read of such things in some books on magic theory, but had never been able to make heads or tails of it in practice. She…

Ruuya jerked her head up. Was she really that tired? The little voe stood before her, tapping his sandaled foot against the floor, his crimson eyes sparkling violet in the ethereal blue light that lit this part of the palace. Instead of fear, however, Ruuya stared back, smirking slightly.

"So?" she asked. "Done thinking?"

"Why did a keaton rescue me?" he asked. "Of all the scum in this land, you filthy creatures are the absolute worst."

Well. This was going terribly. "I already told you," she said with a sigh, "I'm a Gerudo. I was sent to this world and turned into this...this." She gestured to all of herself.

Vaati sneered. "Alright," he said. "Why did a Gerudo save me? You must want something from me." Ruuya gave him a cursory once-over, but said nothing. What could she even want from a impotent mage? Vaati tapped his sandal again. "Well? Out with it!"

Ruuya smirked instead. Smarmy little bundle of vulture droppings, this one. She waved a paw in front of her face, the sharp claws springing from her middle fingers in a rude gesture.

It didn't make him so much as flinch.

"Your people want you back," she said at last. "They worship you, like some kind of god."

His eyes brightened slightly. Dangerously. She didn't much like that look. "That could be useful…," he said, mostly to himself. "What is your price?"

"Price?" she asked, tilting her head.

"Yes, your price, your recompense. There must be something you're interested in. Otherwise you wouldn't have come up here in the first place."

Ruuya lazily waved a paw. "You have nothing I want," she said. She could feel herself slipping down the heated wall, part of her longing to drift asleep. The wall was beginning to get far too comfortable.

Vaati released a dismissive snort. "I don't believe that. You're a keaton. Using people is in your blood."

Ruuya sputtered, "What - how many times -"

"No." He raised a hand, showing her his palm. A signal that she stop. That gesture seemed to be universal. "This is the Dark World. People who fall into it take forms which reflect their true nature. The wise become owls. Foolishly kind people become bunnies. Manipulative conwomen like you? They turn into foxes and keatons."

She glared. He grinned. Damn. What did it say about Vaati that he still looked so very human? What did it say about humanity itself?

Vaati lowered his hand, then crossed his arms. "You did not come all this way, fox," he said, "just to release me."

"I didn't even know you were here," said Ruuya. "I thought maybe to find some treasure...or a way back… A portal. There were legends about it in the Village of Outcasts."

He laughed. It was a harsh, hollow sound. "There are no portals. There were two, once, a long time ago. But both have been lost since. You are stuck here until the end of your days."

A chill ran through Ruuya's gut, emptiness left in its wake. Her self-imposed quest had been for naught. Bast's death had been for naught. Mind whirling, Ruuya slumped further down the wall, finally hitting the floor. It was warm, too. "So, all I'll bring back is some diminutive, useless mage," she said, leaning her head back and staring up at the ceiling. "Dear Din."

Vaati suddenly straightened his stance. He sputtered, enraged, "Useless?! I am the most powerful being in this realm, fool! You are the insignificant one here! And if you believe I'll be going anywhere with you, you are mistaken!"

"Ha." Ruuya glanced back at him, her eyes half-open, she smirked. "You're going to stay in this palace, with all these monsters that, from what I can tell, want to kill you?" Ruuya paused, letting that sink in. "Without food. Without drink. You'll be dead in three days, tops."

He grimaced as though he had been forced to eat something bitter. His arm shook briefly, and with a forced calm, he replied, "Fine. We'll travel together to this...Village of Outcasts. However, don't mistake this for anything other than a truce."

Ruuya nodded. That had been too easy. He's a slippery one, Veil's voice crept forward from the back of her mind. You need to watch him. He's using you.

"I will have to gather some things from my chambers," he began, walking slowly down towards a set of double doors, a large eye carved into their wooden surface. It looked like the same symbol as the golden eye on his sock cap. "I would tell you to stand watch, but unfortunately, I can't trust you."

Because she was a keaton. Not only was the old man magic-less, but he seemed paranoid, too. Ruuya rolled her eyes. She had a feeling she would come to do that a lot in the near future.

Vaati pushed open one of the doors, and Ruuya followed after him. Her eyes flickered from the back of his hole-riddled cape to the room beyond, and she slowed, coming to a halt in the entryway. She gawked, jaw slack.

It was a library. A small one, but no less wondrous for its size. Filled with shelves that topped out just below the vaulted ceiling, each one filled with cloth- or leather-bound books or old, glowing scrolls with slightly yellowed pages. Beautiful tomes covered in dust, turned a rich amber by age and frayed at the edges. Time had taken its toll on these magnificent pieces of art but they were still...so...beautiful. Ruuya reached up to take a brown book with golden leathers from its shelf, slipping it into her hands. It looked like it was in ancient Hylian, so old she couldn't begin to understand, but it was priceless. A treasure.

Ruuya stuffed it into her satchel.

Vaati didn't notice. A grin spread across her face. Perhaps if she was lucky, the old bat wouldn't realize what she had done. Despite finding that she couldn't read most of the titles - the books were all vastly outdated, many in some form of ancient Hylian or other ancient languages - she became immersed in the task, plucking any book that looked interesting from the shelves and stuffing it into the bag. Thankfully, like most sacks made by Hylians, it could fit far more than its size suggested. She grinned like a child who had stolen sweetcakes before dinner, reaching up for a green tome that was nearly as large as her head.

Something solid slammed against the side of the bookcase. "What are you doing?" Vaati spat.

Shit. Ruuya stumbled backwards and slipped, dragging the heavy book with her to the floor. She landed on her rear, the fall cushioned by fur. The book followed, landing with a thump right next to her foot.

He sighed, picking up the tome she had dropped. While he was gone, he'd donned far less ragged clothing. Gone was the homeless vagabond she had rescued, and in his place stood a king. Or, she thought, perhaps, the long lost emperor in the painting in the rotunda.

Even his hair shimmered slightly, dripping with water as though he'd just taken a bath and had time to dry it some. Had she really been distracted that long? Ruuya blinked and glanced at his hair again. It was definitely a light lilac, she decided, not white.

"You're a book thief?" Vaati asked, raising an eyebrow.

Ruuya nodded, staring up at him blankly. Cleaned up as he was, he almost bordered on pretty. If a man nearing forty dressed like an extravagant grape could be called that. The hell, Ruu? she asked, disgusted by that thought. He's like thousands of years old. That's - no, it's merely stating facts: a voe can be both handsome and deplorably ancient.

"Ha. That's almost admirable," he said wryly. He opened the book with one hand, smirking to himself as he read aloud its context. It sounded like gibberish to her. "This is in Ancient Labrynnan."

She tilted her pointed ears towards him. It must have indicated her confusion as clearly as raising an eyebrow would have if she had still held human form.

Vaati stared at her. "You have heard of Labrynna, right?" he asked.

"No," she answered. Ruuya frowned, searching her memories for any mention of the land. The silence stretched. Vaati replaced the tome. Then: "Wait. Yeah, but it...it's only a legend. Even the Hylians said so."

In their books, of course. They were far too dangerous to approach personally.

Somehow, the sorcerer's face paled further, becoming as white as the snow outside. "I…," he began after a moment, placing a hand on one of the book shelves to steady himself. He swallowed. "I have been away longer than I first thought."

How old was this voe?

It would have been so easy to bring it up. The things he had seen, the things he had lived through. The one called Usurper, and all of Flow's claims of his fate. But instead, she asked, "Are you going to help me up?"

Vaati turned, staring back at her over his shoulder. "Do you take me as a gentleman, keaton?" he said. This time, she noted that he had grabbed an ornate staff from...wherever he'd been while she'd stolen his books. Probably his bedroom. Given his weaken state, he probably couldn't help her up even if he'd wanted to. Pity flashed across her face. "Girl...we don't have all day. There's something we need to check before we go."

With that, Vaati strode away. Ruuya stood and caught up to him, then coughed, catching his attention. "Why hasn't anything come through the door?" she asked. "A darknut was after us, and we've been here awhile now."

"Thirty minutes, more or less," he said as they walked, pointing towards a large clock that rested over a red brick fireplace that hadn't bore flames in centuries. "These rooms are warded. The things in them protected by spells I worked long ago."

"But your magic's dead," she said, frowning. "How'd we -"

Immediately, Vaati rounded on her, the top of his staff in her face. "My magic is not dead, you foolish girl!" he growled, sneering at her. "Do you always ask this many questions, thief?"

"Yes," she said, keeping her voice purposefully solemn. "It's part of the job description."

"Sounds like the perfect way to get caught," he replied, reaching for a door handle. They stepped into his study. "The wards are linked to my residue. It's the magical marker which signifies that a spell or ward belongs to you."

"But…"

"Bah! Talking about the intricacies of magic with an uneducated simpleton is pointless," he said. "Simply put, the spell recognizes me." As if it were an afterthought, he muttered, "No matter how much time has passed."

Ruuya idly looked around the room. The study was grand, though not as remarkable as his personal library. There were so few shelves filled with books and paper.

The rest of the study was richly adorned in faded reds and purples and yellows. They draped over the tables and drawers in cloths, and rolled across the floor in the same designs as the tapestries she had seen everywhere else. Shoddy paintings hung on the wall, roughly depicting the outside world. Squat buildings, long brown strokes ending in fuzzy greens, and blue. Blue rivers, blue waterfalls, blue skies. With a start, Ruuya realized that they were all drawings of the Light World. With as long as she had spent stalking through this realm and wandering the endless halls of the palace, she had almost forgotten what that world looked like. Golden sunlight, blue skies, moonlit nights. Those things nearly seemed like myths now, though she hadn't been here too long.

"Don't touch anything," Vaati said, a practiced edge to his voice. "I'll know if you do."

Vaati crossed the room, walking over to the large desk and opening one of its bottom drawers. From it, he withdrew a small disc-like object with a small protrusion on one side. He glanced at it, and sighed. "Still," he whispered. With her keaton-enhanced ears, however, she found she didn't have to strain to listen. "Useless…"

He glanced back at her, then frowned. Before he could put it back, though, she joined him, receiving a glare from the former sorcerer.

Whatever she had been expecting, it certainly wasn't this. "A mirror…?" she asked, tilting her head. There was something odd about it, in the way it shimmered. She couldn't quite place her finger on it... Damn, her hair was a mess.

Vaati spoke up. "Once it allowed for travel between this world and the World of Light. But I could never get the accursed thing to work." He tapped the glass, underlining the crack in its surface with a long, slender finger. "Or fix it."

"Did it always do that?" she asked, finally realizing what was so weird about the mirror. It didn't reflect the face of a keaton. Instead, staring back was her old face, that of a Gerudo. A very worn and tired Gerudo who could use a week off to sleep. The old man next to her could probably use a good meal to help fill out his cheeks.

"Your true form," he said, nodding his head. "It appears you weren't lying."

There was something off about the whole situation, but Ruuya didn't have the energy to fathom it. She stowed the idea in the back of her head, and rolled her eyes. "I thought you knew that," she said.

"One can never be so certain when dealing with keatons," he replied. Was it...his reflection? No. That, at least, made sense. "Let's be off, girl. There's a teleporter in the back. It should take us to the secret entrance near the colosseum."

He deposited the mirror on the surface of the desk, grabbed a garish violet bag from the plush chair, and headed towards yet another door. She frowned, looking at the mirror, then back at him, then once more at the mirror in bewilderment.

He's just going to leave it here? she thought, frowning. Staring at her true image, she unconsciously began reaching for its reflective surface, pawing it softly.

"Vaa-"

A sudden jolt. Her hands tingled. The world went black. What had she done?

Ruuya gasped, choking on darkness. The air was stiff, dry, cold. The soft fibers of the violet fabric beneath her feet had turned to cold, damp stone. The distant sound of twinkling water filled the chamber, unheard by human ears for hundreds of years. But most important of all, she felt no tails, no fur, and no claws.

Ruuya was Gerudo again.

I'm back, she thought, grinning. I'm back!

She nearly bounced for joy, uncaring of how small the cave could be. But then she felt something odd; a sort of tugging sensation from within. A second jolt rocked her, a prickling sensation spreading everywhere, her vision swam, the world spun, her fur regrew. Ruuya staggered back, tripped over her own feet, and slammed hard against the side of Vaati's desk.

She blinked, slumping against the hardwood, the wind knocked out of her lungs. She gasped for breath, tasting nausea in the back of her throat.

"By Din's Flames, girl!" Vaati exclaimed, leaning over her. Shock was written plainly on his pale face, his eyes widened, brow knitted. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

"I touched the mirror," Ruuya croaked. Gods. Her stomach...

He picked up the mirror from the desk, showing it to her. The glass, which merely had a large crack in it before, was now completely shattered into thousands of pieces. All it seemed to reflect now was a blue sky, without a cloud to be found. A small part of her found it amazing that all the pieces had stayed in the frame.

The rest of her, however, was too sick to care.

"You broke it," he said, then added after a moment: "more."

"It spat me out into the World of Light," she said, then coughed, noting that the world still spun slightly. "Is it supposed to leave me this winded?"

He said nothing for a few moments. Frowning deeply, he poked gingerly at the mirror. "Odd."

It did nothing, of course. It didn't even sparkle like it had before.

"I need to examine this," he decided, his gaze returning to her. There was no concern in his crimson eyes, not even the smallest drop of compassion. "Get some rest, the bed's behind that door."

It didn't matter that, most likely, he just wanted to get rid of her. Ruuya was too sick, tired, and exhausted to care. She nodded and crawled past him, entering the room beyond. She barely registered making it to something plush before falling into a dreamless sleep.

/-/

Vaati was not sure what, exactly, to make of this thief-girl.

That puzzle was now curled up in a ball on the floor of his bedroom, right next to the bed. The silly thing hadn't even laid on it. Instead, she had cuddled up with the edge of the red and violet quilt which draped over the side of the feather mattress. Considering she was Gerudo and used to sleeping on sand, she'd probably never seen a real bed before and just didn't know what to do with it.

That was magic exhaustion, he thought, sitting at his desk, his gaze returning to the shattered mirror. Its surface only reflected the pale blue light of the Light World now, more useless than a fairy without wings. And she did disappear…

Why had this happened? He rested his head in his hands, rubbing his temples.

"The pathway magic of old didn't tax the user," he said, though he didn't expect a reply. The palace walls couldn't talk back, no matter how much magic had been woven into them. Still, he'd always found it more productive to talk to himself, rather than let his thoughts linger inside his skull. "The spell was self-containing, I do remember that."

He sighed, frustrated. He had found since waking up that the memories of the hundred or so years before his imprisonment were fragmented at best. He knew he had gathered forces in the Dark World to prepare an army to fight against the Forces of Light and that he had looked for some way to create a path between this realm and that one.

And then the Pig had foiled all his plans. Vaati slammed the side of his staff against the desk in anger, causing the mirror on top to jiggle slightly, a few of its pieces coming loose. He grumbled, frustrated that he had let his anger get the best of him. The glass was an important, intricate part of this magical object, he couldn't - Vaati frowned.

The missing pieces had revealed something beneath. Letters. Words. A spell carved into its frame?

"No," he said, "you - no, everyone had always made that assumption, Vaati. We all thought its maker had infused the glass with magic, but it is older than even you, fool. No one recalls how it was even made or why it broke. Why it became so hard to make portals afterwards... There are no books or scrolls on its creation, that's why you spent so long trying to open that damn pathway. Perhaps..."

He picked up the mirror, and tapped it gingerly against the desk. More pieces came loose until the remnants of the old mirror were a pile of glass shards on his desk.

"Yes!" he said, running a finger over the spell carved into the ancient frame. It was amazingly legible, even though the words were faded and some of its letters had been worn away. It was as though someone had removed the glass and purposefully scratched the letters off with a file. The magic used to originally power the object had disappeared as a result, and… "Ah, it was done on purpose."

Vaati laughed, stuck a hand in his drawer, and withdrew a sheet of magically preserved parchment, a plugged bottle of ink, and a quill. The inscription may not have survived the centuries, but whomever had attempted the sabotage hadn't tried nearly hard enough. He would copy it, make note of it, and rework it. Perfect it.

Then find someone who could power his spell.

Smiling, Vaati worked, until the first ray of red sunlight dispensed the night.

SmashQ: Veil is dead, Ruu.

(Kidding.)