“It’s empty! Who locks up an empty room so well?” Nyx had taken two steps into the room that the group of coursers had taken so long breaking into before she topped and exclaimed in fury and disbelief. The other three coursers stuck their heads in after the blue spotted courser and saw that she was right. Three heavy sighs brushed over Nyx’s rump and stirred her tail hairs as the others saw that she was right. Bare walls, bare floor, just dust, spider webs, and, for some reason, a mirror. Nyx stepped forward to let the others into the room anyway. “I can’t believe we spent all that time poking at locks with various things for this.” She fumed.

“At least they left this mirror. Maybe it’s a magic mirror that will lead us to unimaginable riches.” Gordon pranced up to the mirror and fished in his pack for something to clear the dust off with. After extracting a rag that had seen plenty of better days he nosed it around the mirror and let it drop to the ground. Then he stopped, confused yet mesmerised by what he saw.

What should have been in the mirror was a stocky weld dun courser wearing restored light armour and a selection of packs. A little sweaty, a little dusty, somewhat road worn, but, he felt, a little rugged too, still handsome, even in better shape than when he’d left the bard’s college to start his journey. There should have been three others in the background, his companions in this adventuring, and an empty room otherwise.

Instead he saw his own brown eye, his golden hide shining as if freshly groomed, before him, a great harp, an instrument finer than anything an adventuring bard could afford to keep on the road. Beyond him a full hall of coursers and a few other species come to see the performance. There was no sound, Gordon couldn’t tell what he was singing or playing, but the audience appeared to be focused on him. His reflection was the star of this performance and no one was shuffling or talking, or stepping out to buy refreshments or visit the lavatories. That kind of thing rarely happened, even for master bards. The short courser stepped back and away, looking around quickly to see if anything had changed in the room. It hadn’t, save for his companions putting down some of their packs and spreading out. “I think you should check this mirror.” He told them. “It seems to be magical at least, but… I don’t know. It was lock up really well, maybe it was to stop it getting out.” Gordon’s tail lashed once in agitation.

Rigel drifted over, an ancient servant of some forgotten god or demon, it was the logical choice to check if something was cursed. Gordon stepped aside and Rigel stepped up and focused its bright eye on the mirror. The reflection distorted and wavered as if underwater. Rigel’s courser shape broke up in the reflection to be replaced by an amorphous being of swirling black shadow and reaching, grasping tentacles. Burning eyes flickered in and out of existence in the mass. Beyond lay black sand and grey rocks, odd creatures swam, or flew, or scuttled in the distance, moving in organic, but not quite right ways.

The heraldic courser turned to Gordon. “It shows my true form, or lack of it, the abyssal plain of my home realm. What did it show you?”

As Gordon described what he’d seen to Rigel Nyx decided to take a peek in the mirror for herself. She’d spent so long fiddling with her lifting spell to help Rigel’s thinnest and most delicate tentacle open the locks that had to operated in perfect unison, that she was buggered if she wasn’t going to look at the only thing in this stupid room.

For Nyx the mirror showed the same location, or a very similar one, hewn stone in light grey, massive blocks, an angular room, pillars holding up the ceiling. It was only her that had changed, still a tall, spotted courser, recognisably Nyx, but her equipment had changed to something still in the ancient style, but the best restoration of such she’d ever seen. She knew without being able to look at these carved and dyed leather plates that they hadn’t been backed onto modern materials as the ones she wore had. The colours were bright as the day they came out the vat and the whole ensembled fairly radiated magic, with gems inset and charged with spells, and protective amulets made a part and parcel of it. It was surely a once in several lifetimes find, as was the book that floated before her reflection’s eyes. No title, and she could see the text was handwritten, but she could only see the edge of the page no matter how she twisted her head. It must have been some powerful mage’s personal journal and spellbook and her reflection had it!

Nyx reared and balanced on her hind legs, trying to get a better look at the text, willing her reflected self to move round so she could get a better look. In the next moment she was hopping and stumbling sideways, trying regain her balance. Vashti had barged into her side and pushed her away from the mirror. She bared her teeth at the black courser who didn’t react.

“You were staring into that mirror for an hour or more. All the time Gordon was talking, all the time we set up camp. Rigel said it wasn’t harming you, but you’ve been balanced on your back legs for five minutes with your neck all bent up. I thought it was time you left it and you wouldn’t respond to anything else.” Vashti explained, appearing earnest as ever.

“Gordon wasn’t there long, and Rigel barely looked in, why have I been there so long?” Nyx’s legs and neck were stiff as if she’d been contorted into odd postures, trying to read a tome someone else was holding up without them noticing, for far too long.

“I don’t know. It’s gaining power from being looked in so much? Or it’s because you’re dungeon born and come with magic in your blood? It might even just like you. But I think we should all stay away from it now. I’m not even sure we should camp here.” Vashti deliberately kept their gaze averted from the mirror, they were burning with curiosity, but having seen how it kept Nyx trapped they weren’t willing to risk a look, maybe they’d be fine, and maybe they’d get their soul sucked out through their eyeballs.

“We already set up the camp Vashti, and it’s easily defended at least.” Gordon pointed out, looking a little defiant since he’d done most of the things Nyx usually just used her spell to do, without even being asked. “Can’t we just hang a blanket over it, or turn it fully to the wall? It didn’t show anything before I wiped the dirt off.”

“I don’t feel anything for it now I’m not looking at it.” Nyx added. “It was my own hubris that led me to look in it. I wanted something out of opening up those locks, then my reflection had a book that I just knew was magical and I tried to read it.”

“Alright, but we keep watch in pairs. I don’t want anyone getting trapped by that thing if it suddenly gets stronger, and I don’t want our only lookout missing.” Vashti agreed reluctantly. It was true, the mirror tickled their natural curiosity, but it didn’t whisper dark secrets to them or try and pull them toward it. “Rigel, help me cover it over. Nyx, don’t look in it again please.”

Rigel brought over a blanket and manifested a few tentacles to hang and arrange it over the mirror so the surface was almost entirely hidden. Vashti dragged over some equipment to fill in the space at the bottom where the blanket didn’t quite reach the floor. Nyx, meanwhile, walked over to Gordon and started working on preparing a meal out of the rations everyone was carrying. In this bare area of the dungeon it would be nourishing, but not exciting by any stretch of the imagination.