It took a long time to burn. She hovered until there was no trace of purple glow in the room, until even seared and searching senses could not discern a trace of the unnerving hum. Shaking with fatigue, she sank, to the now empty, quiet, tower room.
After weeks of sustained hum, the crackle of eldritch fire, it almost felt...too quiet. She knew the room felt darker, now--not emotionally, per se, but simply no longer lit to a frenzied, virulent glow. She waited to make sure, but finally, she inhaled a slow, shuddering breath, and left the tower room.
She paused, just below the short set of stairs up to the room. Something...wasn't right. She shifted, and it was a slow, discomfiting process, bones grating against bones as her will reassembled her flesh.
Something was wrong. The world...glittered, oddly. She extended a hand, slipped it into n-space, fingers wrapping around a handle, ending up with a mirror she had not set eyes on in over a decade.
She heard Lokii Violet as if it were yesterday. "You are proclaimed Malkavian. There is no hope for the mirror-breakers."
And perhaps no hope for her, as well, each glittering shard of the broken mirror reflecting back eyes that were gleaming, starstruck, solid black pools.
Oh.
She took a port to the sky temple, sitting in the porter's chair, somehow unsurprised to see twin black skulls rise to top the arms. No, though. No. This would work out.
The important part, she thought, was that the rift was gone now. She spoke a minor word of power in a shaking, broken voice, and watched a silver chalice materialize. Another whispered word filled it with wine.
She took a sip and smiled. Nothing of the grape in the cup, after all. It contained a radically different vintage. But that...was just...fine.
Everything...was just...fine.
(Continued in part LXXVII.)
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