The Magic Mirror

Naros The Bird

"Outrageous!" The shadow of Grave's form was tall against the high walls of his fortress as he paced his quarters. The torches burned red from his fire place and prodding the fire was a bird. "Tell me, Naros.. how do I break this flimsy little changeling?"

"Knives," Naros suggested with a hiss.

"No no.. I don't want to kill him... not yet anyways. I need answers... usually they're not so hard to come by but he seems to have some sort of... hope."

"Sir?"

"You know... a flicker of optimism. It disturbs me. It's like... it's like he knows something that I don't." Graves clutched at the air before him and then flung out his arm in disgust, as if ridding himself of the very idea. As he moved from one end of the room to the other his cape trailed and gathered dust on it's way. "I need to figure it out, Naros. I have left him down there with nothing! He should be getting bored, the hours should be dragging on, and yet-"

"Mince says he sings."

"Mince?" Graves stopped in his very tracks and glared down upon his faceless servant. Shadows crawled into the crags of his face and made his glower all the more menacing. "Who is Mince?"

"The Bird who paces the dungeons," Naros replied, the feathers on his arms raised in disgruntled fear. "He says the changeling sings sometimes.. but not well at all. Sometimes it sounds as if the changeling is dying and sometimes it sounds as if he's just talking and sometimes he doesn't sound like himself at all."

Graves lifted a dark, arched brow and said, "Does any of that sound odd to you, Naros?"

"...I find most humans odd," the bird replied honestly.

As if in answer to this opinion he heard a moan come beyond the door behind Graves. The sorcerer grimaced and looked at it over his shoulder.

"I want you to go down to the dungeons for yourself," he said, as if to distract Naros from the strange noise. "As sly as a fly on the wall, and see what the changeling is doing."

Naros abruptly twisted into a cloud of black smoke and feathers and wafted through the floor.

As he was on his way Naros wondered what strange thing Graves kept hidden from the world in that locked off room. He had heard noises before. They were not human and they were not bird. At times it was as if Graves kept an enormous bear and there would be the sounds of the walls being beaten and chains being pulled. At other times Naros thought he heard the small, fragile sound of crying. Even as a cloud of smoke it made him shudder to think of it.

His cloud seeped many stories down and eventually reached the dungeon levels. His body sprang from the smoke and he lost more feathers with an annoyed sigh, at this rate he wouldn't have any left. He walked over to a wall and pressed himself against it until his body melted into the shadows around him. Then he sidled against it, quietly, until the changeling's dungeon was before him.

The changeling sat below the small window of the dungeon, his chestnut hair had been tousled about and his clothes and face were smudged with a substance that was such a jumble of every foul substance that had ever entered these walls it could only be referenced as dungeon grime. Between his hands he clutched a mirror. Naros recoiled. This would not make the master happy and when Graves wasn't happy... well Naros would be making himself scarce for a week or two. Haviers was always better at handling humans anyways.

"I saw you looking at the dashing Sir Marcos!" the changeling accused the mirror and looked completely ready to toss it. " -don't even hope for it, Audrin! He's only interested in being a knight. He doesn't devote himself to anything else."