savewell | Questlevania | GIRL IN THE TOOOOOOOOOOOWER

[The townsfolk in the village nearest by all tell stories about the man who lives alone within the castle in the dark woods.

It's not as though such stories are unfamiliar. There are always dark woods, and always something to be found in the middle of them. Sometimes there are terrible trees that reach out and grab any traveler foolish enough to enter without an axe; other times its simply the much more mundane threat of bandits about, ready with clubs and daggers to lighten any hapless travelers of their possessions. Rosella knows how such things go. She's walked her fair share of dark woods herself.

(Sometimes a beast lives in the castle in the dark woods. She's beauty enough to know how those stories go, as well.)

The problem is, right now she doesn't have very many options. For the second time in her life, she's been whisked away to a strange land through forces beyond her ken, and for the second time in her life there's been no immediate path home through the magics from whence she came. It's been days, now, since her abduction — at least she thinks so, judging by the sunrise and sunset, and the number of times she's had to scrounge for a dry place to scratch out a few hours' sleep. She'd been lucky enough that her scullery maid's dress had come rife with little pockets, and doubly so that ever since her previous journey to Tamir, there are still a few odds and ends that she never goes anywhere without.

The people in town say that the man who lives in the woods knows magic, and magic is what's needed to send her home again.

And that means there's nothing to do but to follow the dirt path through the woods as best she can, feet aching in the tattered boots she'd traded an old stone mask for, looking for the way that will take her to the mysterious woodsman's door.

She sees the castle's spires rising up in the distance long before she ever gets close. It's an ugly, sinister sort of structure that reminds her of nothing so much as Lolotte's wicked castle or Mordack's twisted island. As she draws closer, two wooden pikes come into view, adorned with bones; for a second, she thinks of taking one with her, but the prospect of reaching for the displayed skeletons makes her shudder, and she walks past.

The doors are shut. There doesn't seem to be any sort of bell or signal.

But there's no place to go but forward, and she's got to get home one way or another, so she squares her shoulders, musters her will, and bangs on the doors themselves with a fist-sized stone she'd found somewhere in the woods, hoping that someone might just be inside to hear — and hoping doubly so that she's not making a terrible mistake.]

[There's a story that speaks of a set of twelve princesses who spent their every night spiriting away to a castle on the far side of a subterranean lake, passing by through forests of gold and silver and diamond on their way to meet the enchanted princes waiting to be their partners. They get caught, of course — as such princesses often do — as a result of being careless with their shoes, and thus attracting the attention of their father the king and the royal shoemaker alike, from having to replace so many soles that had been danced full of holes.

A cleverer princess, Rosella thinks sometimes, would have thought to take her shoes off. It's such a simple solution to an otherwise tedious problem — but of course, if it were that easy, then it wouldn't be much of a story to begin with.

Still, it's the tale that always tends to come to mind on nights like this one, when she naps in the afternoon in preparation to be up until dawn, and rouses herself from her slumber once the stars have come out. It's far, far easier to pass silently across the stone floors of Castle Daventry than it ever was stalking through Lolotte's more odious halls; the price of discovery is far less dear, and the way much more familiar even in the dark, and it's much less of a distance to travel, besides.

On nights like this one, she slips out from her room with a pair of glass slippers in one hand, tiptoeing on stocking feet down to the throne room where Merlin's Mirror hangs. Even now it's still a little strange to see its face unclouded, after growing accustomed to seeing it grayed over and useless for the majority of her formative years. But now it works, and it takes only three things to work the one enchantment she's long since mastered from the repetition: a fingertip's touch, a kiss to the glass, and the press of a paper page with some spell or another inscribed on it, taken from a place her soon-to-be host has always simply referred to as "the Hold".

Quiet as a whisper, she goes through the motions, and within moments the face of Merlin's Mirror has begun to shine with pink and green light, the glass seeming to liquefy as the spell causes it to connect to Adrian's Infinite Corridor.

She passes through one limb at a time, drawn in by the pull of the spell as much as through her own efforts, and by now she's learned to close her eyes against the sensation of tumbling and falling through a place of unending potential, a hundred thousand adventures all scattered around her and left wanting as she's reeled in by the spell's sticky tendrils to the only passage out that really matters.

And then it ends, and she's left standing in her stocking feet in the room they'd long since set aside as a receiving chamber for visits precisely such as these: a plain little bedroom tidied up and freed of dust, heated by the great iron aqueduct pipes that run hidden behind the stone walls and beneath the smooth floors. As the last of the pink light fades away, a trio of enchanted bells chime to herald her arrival, and let the castle's master know a guest has arrived.

To her knowledge, she's the only guest who ever arrives like this. The only princess to ever come passing through a forest of magenta and lime and flashing white, to spend a night in the enchanted castle waiting for her on the other side of the journey.

It's been a while since she's had the chance to steal away and come to visit Adrian.

Too eager to wait even a second longer, she tugs the door open and pads softly into the corridor, intent on making a game of trying to find him — though she already knows all too well that he always, always manages to find her first.]

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★ corridor? i hardly know 'er ★