NOVEL FROG (Vol 5) Chapter 28: The Great Escape
New Quest Unlocked: “The Mirror of a Great Escape” — Escape the Dominion forces and get the captive to safety. ● Rewards: +50-100 FE, 3-9 exp in [Goddess], 2-6 exp credit to most relevant sub-class used during quest, 1-3 exp credit to second most relevant; over 75% reward grade: Mirror Powers +1, with lower reward grades providing a less broad bonus.
Not now, System! Even as the information was injected into her brain, she paid it no mind, focused on the danger staring her in the face.
There was one benefit to the shitbag staring into her mostly hidden mirror, likely seeing some illusory warble or the like that caught his eye — he was a dead ass target for [Mirror Maze]. So she Mazed him before he could react, taking zero chances with the general fragility of her mirror. She utilized [Hoping For Daylight] for a +3 on the contest, just to be safe, and also because she was multitasking at the exact same, simultaneous moment…
She still beat him soundly. She made the Mirror Maze appear like he’d been sucked through a portal by a tentacled monster with tons of eyes and slobbering mouths of sharp teeth, in some evil shadow realm. True to the man’s apparent grit, he fought back fiercely…
But that wasn’t the point, really. She just needed him to believe what he was seeing and then he would be screwed. If he interacted with her realm, it would be over for him all too soon.
A whispering mouth taunted in an inhuman voice, “Your flesh is so tasty… give us a bite, sweet hunter… nyahahaha…long have we waited in the shadows for this, for yoooou…”
“Back, you vile demon!” he cried, snarling as he chopped through tentacles in a flurry of sword swings. “I’ll return with a row of your teeth as a trophy!”
Rolling her eyes internally, Sammy was otherwise busy in the real world.
An illusory doppelganger of the man trapped continued right where the real man left off, glaring at everything. He pulled out a handkerchief to bandage his wound a little better, cursing under his breath.
Sammy meanwhile eyed the others almost frantically, looking for signs of doubt. A couple of them still had their eyes narrowed on the illusory copy, perhaps having seen some abnormality in the transition. But they just shook their heads and kept going about their business, poking around, moving furniture, and stomping on the floor as if looking for hollow portions.
They’re going to find the trapdoor, I suppose.
She activated another use of [Befuddle the Other Side] on one of the mirrors sitting on the table, then cloaked it in illusion and moved it up with her other, back to back, to essentially provide a continuous, 3-dimensional illusion. Enough to levitate her ‘package’ out of there without a chance glance from a bad angle spoiling everything, hopefully.
It wasn’t entirely perfect — she had to multitask two applications, and there was a very thin, thin line split down the middle she could not quite get rid of, but in most situations, it wouldn’t matter. Against a pack of lower-level soldiers, she could just blend it and hopefully escape notice even if the edge passed over people.
She made ‘Hatguy’ — as she began to think of him — walk over to the table and drum his fingers on it, grunting. “Everyone check the walls, for fuck’s sake! No one’s hiding themselves in the damned disguise kit, after all.”
Everyone muttered their assent as they moved to comply.
When no one was much looking, she had Hatguy ‘pick up’ the illusory ‘copy’ of the mirror on the table and pocket it, covering her ass in regards to its disappearance. If anyone noticed at all, that was — quite questionable with the general intellectual power present in the room.
Slowly, she moved her illusion of Hatguy back closer to the exit. Within the room, there was no real chance of the ‘line’ passing over anyone thanks to being able to position one mirror straight down. This way, it could reach up to seven meters and easily encompass ceiling to floor, and almost the whole room itself.
Just as she was getting to the door, a man exclaimed, “Sir! We found a hollow!” He stomped on the floor where the trapdoor was to emphasize, the chair moved aside.
Damn it! Just when they were told to check the walls. Goons have fish brains!
Sammy made Hatguy turn and growl, tossing his hand angrily as he commanded, “So open the damn thing up, then! Can’t you see I’m still bleeding, you imbeciles?! I need to get this taken care of.”
Multiple men blinked in confusion. One raised his hand. “I could bandage it properly, sir! I am something of a healer.”
Hatguy sneered in disdain at him. “You? Don’t make me laugh, pup. I wouldn’t trust you with tying my fucking bootstrings correctly, much less a delicate matter of medical treatment. Just do your damn jobs, meatheads! I’ll be back.”
They soon moved to comply, frowning, muttering to themselves, and — when Hatguy’s back was turned — glaring at it hatefully. The trap door was not easy to pry open from the outside, so they began arguing about the best method.
As soon as her mirrors began toward the door, Sammy nearly jumped out of her skin, as a huge figure ducked under it and almost ended up ‘bumping’ Hatguy.
He was — thankfully — just a human, albeit one seven feet tall or close to it, and rippling with muscle. He was bald and had a face like a well-shaven caveman. He was almost certainly the one who’d put his foot through the door.
“Watch it, you oaf!” Hatguy said in annoyance as he backed away to give the giant entrance.
The giant just grinned, showing a few missing teeth. “You got anything else needin’ smashin’, Boss?”
“Go help the others — if their meager intellect can’t get into the hollow, raw force will have to do. Give them a couple of minutes to combine their pea brains for a subtler solution, though.”
The giant just nodded and made his way over, as Sammy breathed a sigh of relief.
Now, if I can just get through this fucking door without further interruption…
Moving quickly, she levitated the mirrors under and up into another room. It was loaded with boxes and filled sacks, obviously some sort of storage area, likely of a large house. Two men were hauling away the corpse of a woman with multiple stab wounds, a bloody knife still lying on the floor. In the corner, a woman dressed as a servant was on her knees, crying into her hands. One man was keeping an eye on her.
Damn. We’ll say a prayer for your sacrifices. Perhaps one day you and many others will know just what a hero she was for making this escape possible. Assuming of course I pull this shit off.
One of the men hauling the corpse looked at Hatguy, but Sammy had him just nod curtly and ignore him. The other soldier in the room eyed him too, and expectantly. Hatguy instead took a few steps toward the maid, who slowly pulled her hands from her face to look at him in fear.
Hatguy pointed his finger dead at her. “Sober the fuck up, girl. There are so many questions you’re going to answer.”
Her lips just quivered in terror.
I’m sorry! Just keeping up appearances. I don’t need questions, I need them to keep fearing to bother him. Ugh! I feel ichy.
Hatguy turned to follow the men hauling the corpse, ignoring anything else while holding his injured hand. Sammy made sure the bandages appeared bled through. She kept the mirrors up high, once again focusing mostly on one mirror pointing downward from a height near the ceiling.
Sadly, it was a corridor, and she wanted their distance kept from those ahead, so the speed was… not what she wanted it to be.
Meanwhile, the actual Hatguy had his resistance come up again, which he failed utterly, still wrestling with tentacles, tossing out one-liners, and slicing and dicing on the run, with a few flesh wound cuts on his personage from near-miss nips of sharp teeth. He was in his element. Absorbed.
You’re mine, now, you rat bastard. Enjoy yourself while you can.
She also assured her other captive, the young woman and Fate’s Daughter. A voice spoke softly from all around the room. “I’m getting the mirror out of the house. Then I’m going to need to, um… float for a while. I don’t suppose the Eleks are close?”
The young woman, still sitting on the floor, shook her head. “The Everwood is reasonably close. Southeast.”
“Okay. I’ll fly it high out of this town, city, whatever, and then to the forest. I can get a ride that’s faster somewhere secluded there, and then begin flying you further south.”
“If you can get past the wall’s significant protections, an object levitating through the air perhaps could escape notice if well-hidden. But a strange creature will trigger spell detections likely to reveal abnormalities. At least, when passing through areas not secluded. I’d call it risky. This includes the zone between the Everwood and the Eleks and significant portions of the Everwood.”
The blonde woman gave a little sigh. “And have you cast spells? Every city has a Spell Registry. Unusual ones will be investigated. Right now, they will be watching it like hawks, ready to swoop in at a moment’s notice. That is why I was trying to hide. They had me pinned in the city, unable to utilize spells or… the like, to get out. I tried to- bah. It doesn’t matter now.”
“I… can avoid spells. In fact, I doubt I can do useful spells through a mirror. What I’m doing now are deific abilities.”
“That would avoid the Spell Registry, but it will be worse if seriously investigated. They’ll know a para-... a spirit or deity has been here and interfered in Dominion affairs.”
“Oh, well, actually, depending on the comparisons, my abilities actually don’t detect as Divine, by default. I configured them all to appear as arcane, spell-like abilities of an unknown, unique class via [False Auras].”
“I see. Then they will suspect an illusionist based on what you’ve done, correct? It could very well confuse them. But-...” She cut herself off abruptly.
Sammy winced. An illusionist would be known in the Southlands and likely Caneboro. It would get their back up to have wormed so deep into their territory. And with a missing agent, they were extra likely to investigate.
I could let him go. Hmm. Would it confuse the trail more? Weird shadow monsters as the culprit? Eh. Nah. Too complicated, too risky. He’s tied to the same mirror, for one thing.
In the natural, the hallway spilled into a wider room that was supremely ransacked, with a few men standing around chatting. When they noticed Hatguy, they began the telltale obvious motions of ‘looking busy,’ proceeding to sift back through things as though keenly interested in ‘clues.’
When her view caught sight of a door that almost certainly led to a vestibule and outside, she angled around the slow-movers… and then stopped herself. The door was closed, and she could not perform any form of telekinesis or ‘phantasmalness’ to open it through mirrors.
Fuck! Someone else needs to open it. Can I ask? Because of the hand? No. Like this guy would care about getting blood on the handle…
She had Hatguy stop and pretend to glare at the men around, then bark at the two carrying the body, “Hurry it up! I’m tired of looking at her.”
“Yessir,” they both muttered as they picked up the pace.
Within the Maze Realm, Sammy asked the woman, “What is your name, by the way? Why are they so hot to take you?”
“I don’t have a name,” she replied evenly. “The last alias is trash, now. Call me… Ash. I recall it suddenly… an old nickname. Hm.”
“Because of your hair?” She was a bit of a dirty blonde, or ash blonde as some might say.
Her head shifted up slightly. “Yes. I should dye it now. Brown would be easy.”
“No.” A bit of her ‘other selves’ filtered into the emphasis.
This oddly passionate reply made her head come up fully, eyes squinting, perhaps in puzzlement. But she said, “As for your other question, I’d like to discuss it in person, honestly.”
“Alright.” More like she doesn’t want to say while trapped in a Maze Realm by someone she still has mixed feelings about. “Let me get out of this house. We’ll chat again.”
One of the men carrying the body twisted to nod at a fellow and ask them to get the door. The soldier moved to do so, then went ahead to open the actual door to outside. Sammy hung behind, then followed them out into the night air.
Finally, we’re bloody out!
It was a typical muddy medieval street with close-packed housing in every direction. The house she came from was rather large but hardly a manor just considering the location. It could’ve been an inn if not for her seeing the contrary evidence inside. Soldiers with muddy boots were outside, all with weapons out, on guard and alert. Several horses were tied to a post nearby.
Sammy kept the mirror up high, beaming down the illusion of Hatguy, strolling away down the street at the fastest she could while still being a walk. Someone called, “Sir, your horse?” but she ignored it and kept going with a waved hand and grumpy muttering.
A ways down the street, someone else behind her shouted, “Sir! Beltrand! We found an alcove! Spell materials, but no girl! Sir?!”
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Nice.