Page 24 of Off with Her Head
Then Ravenna gasps, her body going rigid as the mirror pulls her forward, drawing her consciousness into its depths. I grab her around the waist, keeping her from collapsing, but the action connects me to the mirror's pull as well. Our combined magic creates a circuit, a pathway that the mirror uses to draw us both into vision.
The room around us fades, replaced by swirling mist that gradually resolves into a vast underground chamber. At its center lies that same pool of liquid we saw in the mirror before.
Around the pool stand figures from an earlier age—three women, sisters by their similar features, each wearing a crown that combines elements of all three kingdoms. Their hands are joined, forming a circle around the pool, and power flows between them in visible currents of magic. Not heart magic or blood magic or iron will, but all three combined. A unified power.
"The founding queens." Ravenna's voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, our consciousnesses merged within the vision. "Before the division, before our kingdoms became separate entities."
The scene shifts, showing conflict erupting between the sisters. Words we cannot hear but whose meaning is clear—disagreement, discord.
The unity shatters. Magic that once flowed in harmony now fragments, splitting into three distinct currents. The sisters pull apart, each taking a portion of the unified power—heart, blood,iron. The pool itself begins to sink deeper underground, its power retreating from those who cannot agree on its purpose.
"The sundering," I understand now.
The vision shifts again, showing the aftermath. Three kingdoms where once there was one. Three magics where once there was unified power. Three queens who were once sisters, now rivals, establishing the borders and limitations we still maintain centuries later.
But beneath it all, the pool remains. Dormant but not destroyed, hidden but not gone. Waiting for the day when unity might be restored, when transformation might flow freely once more.
The scene changes one final time, showing Mara as she is now—corrupted, twisted, her original magic perverted by something darker. She stands at the edge of the pool, but it has changed as well. Where before it was neutral, neither good nor evil but simply power in its purest form, now it pulses with illness. Black veins spread from where Mara touches it, infecting the very source of magic itself.
"She's poisoning it." Horror fills me as I understand what we're seeing. "Not just using its power, but ruining it at its source."
"If she succeeds," Ravenna says, her voice tight with dread, "all magic will eventually be tainted. Heart, blood, even Ironwood's suppression abilities. Everything that flows from the pool—and all magic ultimately does—will carry her corruption."
The vision shows the potential consequences—Underland's chaotic beauty turned dark and twisted, its magical creatures transformed into monstrosities. Darkmore's twilight deepening to absolute darkness, its subtle power becoming cancerous,consuming. Ironwood's suppression magic transformed into something that doesn't just contain power but ruins it.
And at the center of it all, Mara, no longer fully human but a vessel for corrupted magic, a conduit for the tainted pool.
"How do we stop this?" I ask, desperation edging my voice. "How do we counter corruption so fundamental it affects the source of magic itself?"
The mirror pulses, and new images form. Ravenna and I standing together at the edge of the pool, our magic flowing in a pattern of balance and harmony. Where our combined power touches the corrupted pool, change occurs—not purification exactly, but more complex. A restoration, a return to magic that is neither purely destructive nor purely creative but contains the potential for both, leaving choice rather than compulsion.
But the vision also shows the cost. As we channel our combined magic into the pool, the very fabric of our beings begins to change. The boundaries between Scarlett and Ravenna, between heart and blood, between Underland and Darkmore, grow increasingly indistinct. Not two queens working in concert but a unified force, a merged entity, a transformation so complete it can never be undone.
"The price of balance," Ravenna whispers, understanding before I do. "To counter Mara's corruption of the pool, we must offer ourselves for transformation. Not just our magics merging temporarily, but our very essences combining permanently."
The vision fades, the silver mist of the mirror releasing our consciousnesses and returning us to Ravenna’s chambers. We stand before the mirror, both breathing hard, our hands still joined, our magics flowing between us more strongly than ever.
"Did you see?" Ravenna turns to me, her eyes wide with the implications of what the mirror revealed. "Did you understand what it was showing us?"
"I saw." My voice is steadier than I feel. “I understand.”
She searches my face, looking for fear, for hesitation, for the inevitable reluctance to sacrifice individual identity for merged consciousness.
"Perhaps," I say slowly, "this is what was always meant to happen. Perhaps the sundering was a mistake, the separation of our magics an artificial division that has limited what we could become. Perhaps Mara's corruption is forcing us to confront a truth we've been avoiding for generations."
Ravenna's eyes widen slightly, taking in my ideas.
I squeeze her hand, feeling our magics pulse in response. "The founding queens were sisters who allowed discord to divide them. We began as rivals who found harmony despite our differences. Maybe that's why our magics merge rather than conflict. Maybe we're the ones meant to heal the sundering, to restore the balance that was lost."
"It would change everything," she warns, though I can see the idea resonates with her as well. "Our identities, our kingdoms, the way we rule."
"Everything is already changing." I gesture to the smaller mirrors that surround us, their surfaces now showing hybrid roses blooming across both kingdoms, darkening skies over Underland, bright patches of sky in Darkmore. "The transformation has already begun, Ravenna. The only question is whether we fight it or embrace it. Whether we let it happen to us, or actively shape what we become."
She falls silent, considering. I can see the conflict in her eyes.
"There's something else," she says finally. "Something the mirror showed that you might not have understood."
"What?"
