The Advisor stood facing them with an indifferent expression. His right hand rested lightly on a walking cane, as his unseeing eyes stared steadily forward.
Around him, a beautiful field was parted by a meandering path. At the end of the path, a castle much like the one she had seen in False Bastion stood proudly on the top of one of the rolling hills.
The glass that separated them glowed dully, filling the area around them with a soft light that felt blinding after the prolonged darkness.
'What now?' Noble had known the plan until this point. However, she had not expected the Advisor to appear so willingly.
Helie passed the Memory to Syrce, who slipped it covertly behind her ear. 'I need you to stall.'
Stall? How was she supposed to stall when the Advisor had yet to move? Was she supposed to dance around and hope he was distracted? He couldn't see! Maybe if she drew close, she could entice him to exit the mirror, and then she could...
"I heard you would like to meet with me." The Advisor's voice filled the room.
Noble jumped at the unexpected sound. "You can speak!"
A small smile played on the reflection's mouth. "And so can you."
Noble opened her mouth to explain herself, then snapped it shut.
She had not heard any of the creatures speak inside the mirror before, and so she had assumed they were unable to emit sound. Perhaps outside of the Hall of Imagination, that was true.
However, this place was fundamentally different. The scenes that had played out in the mirror before had been silent. Noble now realized that the pantomime was done to hide the mismatched voices and faces. Clever angles could conceal a face, but the wrong sound would have been too jarring not to notice.
'Very clever theater.'
Syrce strode forward and bowed. "These are the friends I told you about."
Noble took the cue. "We have been wanting to have a chat, but you are a hard man to find. I am Lady Bel."
The man looked up at her, his cloudy eyes gaining sudden clarity. "I know."
There was no hostility in them, which only worried Noble more. If he were worried or angry, she could have handled the emotions and reacted accordingly. His lack of meaningful reaction was very concerning.
And then the man did something even stranger.
He began to hum. The melody was lilting and beautiful, though the words were in a language Noble couldn't understand. Looking at her companions, Noble could see that they were concerned as well. Hadn't the blind man that she had seen in the ceiling been singing while the fighting was occurring at the end of days?
If that were the case, then his melody must have had some power. Even now, Noble felt unsettled by his melancholic tune.
"You are the advisor?" Noble broke through his song with great effort.
The man's humming changed tunes. "Advisor? I prefer the word custodian. I am the Reflection of Omer of the Nine."
"Reflection? Is that another term for an Other?" Noble's eyes widened in surprise.
None of the creatures she had met thus far seemed aware, or were at least unwilling to admit, that they were anything except a genuine person.
"If that is how you need to think about it. I keep the Palace of Imagination." The reflection of Omer nodded slowly.
"I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the Palace is in ruins. You sent your people to guard something that is no more."
The custodian of the mirror tilted his head slightly, his eyes simultaneously unfocused and intently focused on her.
"That is not the palace. My mistress has only had one home in many lifetimes. The real palace is beyond this hall. What you have already seen is a copy at best." Pride leaked into Omer's voice.
'The irony…' Noble managed to keep her face neutral.
'Keep him talking!' Syrce had lifted her head. Her mouth was moving, but no words were coming out as she scanned the polished glass.
She had yet to pull out the hand mirror that was hidden in her skirts.
"You can lower your weapons," Omer spoke to Roan, Helie, and Aether for the first time. "They will be no good against me anyway. If you try, you will be in for quite a surprise."
He hummed lightly, unconcerned with deadly contraptions that the warriors possessed.
The cohort leader contemplated for a moment and placed the point toward the ground. Helie unstrung her arrow, and Aether allowed his blade of starlight to dissipate.
The Zenith had been lazily pointed toward the ground since Syrce had introduced Noble. Child of Promise relaxed her grip slightly as a sign of good faith.
Not that she had any faith in this reflection.
"If you are the custodian of the real palace, then what is it you want with humanity? You went to quite a lot of trouble to restore a relic handmirror and make a connection between us." Roan furrowed his brow.
The Other Omer considered his question. "I want nothing from humanity. My counterpart wanted vengeance. You say I went to great lengths to retrieve the mirror, but he went to much greater lengths to convince my mistress to join his cause."
Noble listened intently, too interested in the man's words to worry if they were true. The custodian continued.
"Omer entertained my lady with countless fantasies. They lived a thousand magnificent lives together. Imagination finally found someone to match her whimsy."
"She was no longer alone." Noble could understand the appeal. She had felt the Daemon's loneliness before.
Having that emptiness filled, even for a moment, would have been priceless to her.
"She was happy. It is true. That was, until Omer made his request."
"What request?" Aether was as engrossed in the story as the rest.
The custodian shook his head sadly.
"The most dire request of them all—that she join him in the war."
Noble felt the emotions of the Masters around her spike. None of them needed to ask which war the Other meant.
This was big news! So little was known about the Doom War.
Based on what the custodian had just said, Mirage had not caused the war and had to be convinced to join.
Which meant something else was the catalyst. And Omer, the real Omer, had been part of that plot.
"Why would Omer want to start a realm-ending war?" Noble wondered if the real man was as manipulative as the copy.
They both seemed to bide their time and work behind the scenes to get what they wanted.
"His reasons were his own. And my mistress only agreed to join him if he passed her test. She asked him to show her something beyond her imagination. It was no small task. In fact, it was impossible, yet Omer took on the challenge and succeeded. My mistress went with him."
"What could Omer of the Nine have shown her to convince her to take such a drastic step?" Helie asked.
Noble wondered the same. She could fathom nothing that would have caused a daemon to join a losing cause that would ultimately lead to her death.
The reflection tilted his head, an unreadable emotion passing across his face.
"Is it not obvious? There is only one thing that my mistress never could have imagined."
Child of Promise blinked.
"Oh? And what is that?" Noble felt herself leaning forward to hear the answer.
Omer's mouth twisted as it formed a single word.
"You."