Milius wandered around the cavernous room, his grey eyes sweeping the shelves for anything that he thought would be worth bringing on his journey, anything that gripped his interest as fiercely as the jewel-studded sword resting in the sheath upon his back, or the glittering pearl tucked under his arm. He saw a small, golden dagger with a jagged edge glinting along the shelf to his right and, intrigued, he moved over to it. He peered down at the smooth surface, careful not to touch it, and saw an inscription carved into the hilt: “Morosmidia.”

The word had barely left his lips when the surface of the blade suddenly rippled; grey smoke billowed upon it — no, within it — as though the surface were some sort of window, overlooking a deep chamber in which the smoke began to coil and undulate, pressing hard upon the gleaming metal as though trying to escape.

But slowly, steadily, the smoke began to take shape, forming a crude image of a human head. The smoky face leered up at Milius, who was now feeling slightly disturbed. Shaking his head, he quickly retreated from the shelf and turned away. On his far left, his blond hair gleaming in the light of the enormous, candle-filled crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, stood Sirius.

He was fiddling with a large, skull-shaped ring that he had slid onto one of his thick fingers. Milius saw him mutter something, looking slightly bemused, and without warning, the skull’s empty eye sockets flared with a poison-green light and its skeletal jaws clacked open — with an unpleasant squelching noise, a small wooden box resting on the shelf ahead of him flew off its perch and (though it was much too large to do so) disappeared into the skull’s mouth, which closed slowly, the light of the eye sockets now fading.

Sirius glanced up at him, looking both awed and horrified; he gave an apologetic sort of grimace and hastily removed the ring. Milius moved deeper into the room, keen to put as much distance between himself and his cousin as possible now until they were done examining the magical instruments, and found Ariana surveying a large, ornate, crystalline spray bottle with a golden tap, her eyebrows raised. The liquid inside it was milky-white and rose little higher than the half-line.

“What is that?” Milius asked her.

She looked up at him, turned away again, and, apparently in response, sprayed a huge, bronze key nestled between a winged crimson ball and a large, gilded fang: it vanished from sight a split second later. “Invisibility spray,” she said, turning back to him and looking deeply impressed.

“That's . . . actually pretty cool,” Milius said grudgingly. He had not found anything that interesting so far.

“Isn't it?” she said brightly, and she swept away, pocketing the bottle as she did so. Milius proceeded forward again, feeling rather envious now, and he found Shakil a little further on jangling a small brown bag.

“Oh, hi,” he said distractedly, when he saw Milius approaching.

“Coins?” Milius asked, though the clattering inside the bag sounded more earthen than metallic.

“Seeds, actually.”

“What do they do?”

“I don't know . . . but I doubt it'd be here if it wasn't something impressive, right?”

Milius moved closer as Shakil pulled out and started examining one of the seeds, a large, dark brown pod like an oddly-shaped stone with a single hole near the top, but he stopped walking very abruptly. Something had just caught his eye. It was a long diamond-paned mirror standing on a shelf nearby; as Milius looked at his own reflection in the gleaming surface, the memory came crashing back into his mind.

“Ariana?” he called suddenly, making Shakil jump.

There was a cry in response from somewhere behind them and she appeared several moments later, a golden, metallic-looking rope coiled around her arm, looking confused. Sirius was trailing behind her as well. He was still wearing the skull ring. Milius glanced at it and took a step back almost instinctively.

“I forgot to ask,” he said. “That mirror, the one we found in the chamber —”

“Ah,” Ariana said, and her plump face darkened. “I was wondering when you'd ask.” She set her sword and the crystal spray bottle down and reached into her pocket, then brought out the gleaming half a mirror. It looked exactly as it did when Milius had first seen it: a sparkling sheet of silver that cast no reflections.

“Did you find out what it is? Did the Elders —?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “None of them could figure out what it is or what it's supposed to do, and they were astounded when we told them about the underground chamber.”

“I'll bet they were,” Milius said bitterly, remembering Calder’s reaction when he had mentioned it to him. “You'd think they would know, though, wouldn't you, if a picture of one of their dragons was carved into the walls of the place?”

“That's the thing, though,” she said, looking troubled, “what if it wasn't Vrydius?”

“What do you mean?”

“One of the first things I did when we got back was show it to him — obviously, I wasn't expecting him to start telling us whether he knew what it was or not, but maybe — maybe some sign of recognition? But he seemed to know as much about the mirror as we do. What if it just . . . wasn't him? What if the mosaic was of something else and we mistook it for Vrydius? What if it had nothing to do with him at all?”

Milius looked at her in disbelief. “Really? The place is lined with emeralds, your sword started reacting to something as soon as we landed, you managed to touch the ball of energy when we couldn't even get near it, and then all that talk about the wind, and you think it's coincidence?”

“Well, what else could it be?” said Shakil, who was absentmindedly fiddling with a pair of burnished brass scales. “The Elders don't know about it, neither does the dragon, and there's no record of anything like it in the library either.”

“We have a library?” Milius and Sirius said in unison.

“The point is,” Ariana said, sounding slightly exasperated, “that, regardless of whatever may or may not have happened down there, it doesn't seem as though any Knight we know of has any knowledge of the chamber. The Elders even went back to check for themselves and they couldn't find it.”

“What?” Sirius said, looking astonished. “But, how could they not, when we saw it ourselves? When we’ve been in there?”

Shakil shook his head, his light brown hair glimmering in the ghastly green light of the flames now dancing on one of the scales. “That's the thing, we just don't know….”

“Can I see it?” Milius said suddenly, holding out his arm for the mirror. Ariana handed it to him. He peered into it, trying to will his reflection to appear upon it, but the surface remained resolutely blank. And then, as Milius turned it over to scrutinize the back, another thought hit him: “What if it's not just half the size of a regular mirror? What if it actually is half of a mirror — a magical one?”

“We thought of that,” Ariana said. “But even if it does exist, where would we find the other half? The chamber has disappeared, and even if we could find it again, it seemed … I don't know … empty the last time. I could feel the presence of the first ball of energy, but nothing else like it after it faded. If anything like that exists, I don't think it would be there….”

Unfortunately, the conversation had ventured too deep into the realm of the unknown. Milius could think of nothing more pertaining to the mirror or the chamber, and knew that even if he did, that it would most likely amount to nothing more than that. So, remembering that the Elders were still waiting for them, they returned to the task of finding new weapons.

After nearly an hour had passed, they met at the door of the Armoury, Shakil with his bag of seeds and the brass scales; Sirius with the skull ring and a small, rather sinister-looking figurine that made Milius think of Parluck, the goblin that they had met in the forest; Ariana with her crystal bottle containing the invisibility potion and the golden rope around her arm; and Milius, a wreath of braided gold and a snowy-white coin with a pair of golden wings printed on its surface.

He had spent the better part of the past hour sweeping around shelves, examining and disregarding objects, until finally he laid eyes on the two instruments and scooped them up at once, excitement boiling within him at the sight of them.

“So, what do we do now?” Sirius asked.

“Meet the Elders?” Ariana suggested.

“Might as well,” Shakil said, shrugging. He turned to Milius. “Where is the Courtyard, anyway?”

Milius thought for a moment, then, deciding that it could be nowhere else, said, “I think I know, follow me,” and together they filed out of the Armoury.