"What`s that?"

Edwin inquired and stepped closer after pointlessly gazing around the room hoping to have found something. The presence he had felt was still strong and he wondered whether Ghyreian had felt it, but there was more to this derelict of a room than what it seemed to be. Edwin gazed at the engraving and hmhed.

"Seems that this belonged to the death knight that we just met.... but I think we need more than a mirror to find our way out of here..."

He said before starting look trough the derelict for anything of use, most of the books were already ruined and dirty, years of work destroyed because of the ignorant masses that destroyed the tower once. Edwin sighed as he placed aside the last remaining pieces of a red covered book.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Ghyreian spared the spellbooks Edwin rummaged through a brief glance. The mobs that'd razed the tower had ensured the destruction of the arcane texts as well. They'd been hypocrites, each one who'd participated in the discrimination. They had no tolerance for passion or knowledge, only fear for the unknown.

She turned her attention back to the mirror. Continuing to turn it over in her hands, her brow furrowed in thought. Her fingers experimentally touched the glass.

The effect was monumental. Something jerked her mentally and physically. An image flashed across her mind's eye. A legion of Solamnic Knights, bent low over their steeds, riding relentlessly down a dusty road. Nearly Yuletide. We ride hard for the Tower of Losarcum. The duty of eradicating evil has been placed in my hands. Another flash, this time showing a man crowned by divine light. Second week of Brookgreen. After years of faithful service, the Kingpriest declares me Lord of the Rose. I shall return to you soon, my dearest. One last memory. A black-robed mage, his fury crackling from his fingers. Autumn's end. No curse conceived of darkness can faze me. Remember me well, dearest. I die with honor... in Paladine's name...

The mirror was pulling her in. Desperate now, Ghyreian tugged at her hands, but they remained transfixed to the brass frame. Her world spiraled... faster... out of control...

-----

The mirror dropped to the floor with a metallic clatter. Ghyreian had vanished.

The rune-etched door grated open to admit the Lord of the Rose.

_________________

Edwin gazed towards Ghyreian, for a moment she was there holding the mirror in her hands and then she was gone. Edwin was about to yell something as he rushed towards the mirror that evidently seemed to be the reason behind her disappearance. Yet the opening of the doors made Edwin stop in his tracks, but not too soon that he hadn`t catched the mirror into his grasp. He gazed at the mirror quietly, but decided not to look at it as he wished to avoid the same fate as Ghyreian unless it was a mean to follow her wherever she went.

Edwin grinned at the death knight as he entered the room.

"Bad timing sir knight, I am afraid that the so called evil you are looking for isn`t here unless you have a quarrel with me?"

Edwin said before gazing at the mirror quietly hoping for the same effect that he had witnessed earlier.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

The death knight glared at Edwin with those infernal eyes for what seemed like an eternity. The chill that permeated the room was nearly unbearable. At last the Lord of the Rose placed his gautleted hand upon his breastplate, where the scorched emblem of his order could faintly be discerned.

"All magic-users are servants of darkness. Pity you'll never live to see the glory of the Kingpriest." Raising his sword, the death knight closed in.

_________________

Edwin couldn`t help laughing at the death knights words as he spoke of the Kingpriest and simply stared at the mirror hoping for the effect to come. He felt suddenly dizzy, not good or was it? Edwin looked at the knight as his sight went blur and cursed as he fell. Yet he soon realized that there was reason to curse as he passed out and disappeared, just escaping from the grasp of the death knight.

Edwin lost sense of reality and time, he wasn`t sure where he was headed for or what was even happening to him. The only thing he knew that he was following Ghyreian to whatever fate she had suffered...

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

"Dark elven witch."

The insult tepidly penetrated Ghyreian's subconsciousness. She groaned and rolled over on the hard-packed dirt. She could swear she felt an army of dwarves marching across her forehead. Her entire body felt... loose... as though she had no control over it. To top it off, her arm still stung from that wound the undead had dealt her....

Undead...

Jolted to vigilance, she bolted upright and dropped a hand to her spell components. She glimpsed a myriad of faces, before a backhand blow cross the face had her flat on her back again. "The tower..." she managed.

"The tower is o'er there. We did a goodly deed by burning it, we did," spat someone else. Closer inspection revealed them all to be common villagers.

What in the Abyss was going on?

_________________

Edwin awoke with a burning headache as he leaned against a tree, the world was a dark blur with figures staying still before him. Nothing seemed to move, but there was a voice talking nearby as he stumbled to the next tree to examine the sight. It was Ghyreian surrounded by a number of villagers, how the villagers had gotten there was a mystery to him and also their location was a mystery for now.

Edwin tried to clear his head, but suddenly he felt a stinging pain in his neck as someone jumped on him and soon he found himself being dragged to Ghyreian. He was tossed beside her and he muttered a curse.

"We got another one"

A villager reported.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

"So I'm not dreaming," Ghyreian muttered, catching sight of Edwin. With tremendous effort she managed to raise her head. Her eyes widened. There it was. The Tower of Losarcum - or what remained of it. Ruins, charred and blackened. Exactly how she remembered it. Then how had she and Edwin gotten out of the dungeons? And the villagers...?

A terrible notion struck her. She flashed back on the death's knights words, the memories stored in that uncanny mirror. She swallowed. "So how is... how is the Kingpriest?"

The commoners exchanged bemused looks. "'De Kingpriest? O'er in Istar, o'course." The man's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What 'bout him?"

Ghyreian bit off a curse in the name of the Dark Queen. Heart pounding, she met Edwin's eyes.

_________________

"Sh*t"

Edwin was able to mutter as an answer because he couldn`t believe that it was true, had he gone mad? Ghyreian was there, the only reason why he wouldn`t believe such an option. Was this some kind of pocket plane, doomed to show the events of the past or was this the actual past? Edwin blinked his eyes for certainty and looked at Ghyreian.

"Not good"

Edwin pondered out loud as their eyes met.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

The gathered crowd muttered angrily among themselves. Somewhere in the back came the exclamation, "Burn them!" An uproar of approval ensued.

"This is pleasant," Ghyreian noted as the villagers hauled them to their feet. Beyond the tower's ruins was a pile of wood, conveniently ready for the burning. Scorch marks on the grass marked all too clearly the deaths of many a previous mage. Magic has no place in this parochial world, she realized. Fear and rejection she was accustomed to. But this? Open hatred and disrespect for the gods?

She and Edwin had never surrendered a battle before, and she saw no reason to now. She glanced askance at him, waiting for the moment.

_________________

Edwin knew that these people were afraid of them and that they had been taught to hate mages at all costs, but he was not willing to let Ghyreian kill them. Not that he wouldn`t have wanted revenge for what had happened to the towers of magic, but because they could avoid battle by fleeing. Edwin whispered few words and grabbed Ghyreian suddenly by the wrist.

In a bright flash they were gone, leaving the peasants stunned by the sudden light for a while as Edwin pulled Ghyreian along by her sleeve. They could see each others, but no one else could see them as he had completed a somewhat simple illusion upon them.

"Come, we can`t linger around here. We have to find some place where to rest and to plan on what to do, if we can even do anything.... still it amazes me how a piece of mirror could have brought us here, if here is indeed many years in the past..."

Edwin muttered and had forgotten his hand that was still squeezing tightly around the wrist of Ghyreian, making sure that she didn`t turn around to kill the peasants that had began a pointless search for the mages.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Admittedly Ghyreian was disappointed - she'd been looking forward to blasting these ignorant peasants to the Abyss. However Edwin's simple pragmatism won over. An illusion was quiet, more effective. They ascended a small hill and ducked into the forest's shadow.

Ghyreian looked at her wrist for a moment before tugging it free. She glanced back at the cursing villagers. Righteousness would keep them searching, but fear would restrain them from searching too hard. "This was more than we bargained for," she murmured, slumping wearily against a tree. They'd come to the Ruins seeking knowledge and power. They'd exited the experience to find themselves a few hundred years in the past, an era where magic-users had no place.

The crushing weight of an epiphany dawned. She'd come to the Ruins seeking knowledge and power. Edwin had followed her, not for material gain, but for - what? Friendship? It amazed her that he trusted her still.

"We have to find the knight," she said at length. "A certain Wylliam Hammerhand. Solamnia?"

_________________

"Most presumably..."

Edwin muttered with a grin as she mentioned Solamnia, the land by the time was filled with knights and fanatics ready to burn mages for their `crimes`. Their robes would be more than enough to give them away in the open view as mages and some sort of mischief was in order, if they were to travel trough Solamnia unidentified as mages. Edwin wasn`t sure what Ghyreian might have thought about the idea, but at the moment it seemed most reasonable to act unlike a mage.

Edwin guessed they had to adapt, but adapting to two hundred years in the past seemed hard. In a way Edwin was glad that he had come, she might have turned out dead, if he hadn`t accompanied her or might have been left alone to struggle in the past. He wanted to believe that he could trust her after what they had been trough, but he kept also convincing himself that their friendship was built on lies.

"If we are indeed going to meet this knight and ecspecially in Solamnia in an age when magic users are considered as demons it means we should do something about the robes. Kind of a give away don`t you think?"

Edwin asked with a clever smile on his face as he wanted to see Ghyreians reaction to his proposition. She had more than enough harmful pride about her and might refuse to hide away like that.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Funnily enough, Edwin knew Ghyreian too well. Refuse to hide away like that were the exact words passing through her mind. In the space of five seconds her face morphed from anger to resignation. She had only to recall the baleful demeanor of the villagers. They would not be encountering in Solamnia, but formidable knights at the height of their influence.

"Very well," she sighed, though she detested the idea. If they were to travel incognito, they might as well begin now. "We'll need horses. How long will this illusion hold?"

_________________

Edwin was amused by her question and answered with careless face.

"That depends entirely on how long I last dear Ghyreian"

He said before starting to cast the illusion, the illusion would last closer examination and actual contact, but furthermore it might shatter depending on Edwin`s skill to keep channeling the spell. With some words of magic and hand movements Edwin changed their clothes or their appearance at least. Underneath they would have their own robes that they preferred, but the illusion would change their appearance to the bare eye. Edwin`s red robes were seen as simple clothes of a moderate citizen, a merchant most probably. It consisted of a simple brown jacket, a vest, a dark shirt, pants and a pair of boots. Ghyreian`s black robes had were now seen as a simple dark dress, dark, but not quite black.

"I hope you don`t mind the clothes I chose for you?"

Edwin asked with an amused smirk, he had to admit that it was strange to see Ghyreian in other clothes than her dark robes, but judging by the look in her eyes an illusion wasn`t going to change the way she acted. For once Edwin could enjoy the fact that he was the one naming the terms, but didn`t show it yet it was quite obvious that there was somethings in, which Edwin surpassed Ghyreian that she needed him. It was indeed a comforting thought for Edwin, for once he was actually needed.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Ghyreian took one glance at her... her dress and received the vaguest impression that Edwin was enjoying this. She glanced over at his equally humbling merchant attire. "A pity Par-Salian can't see us now," she muttered caustically, drawing her wimple over her head in case the villagers had adept memories.

The village was still in disarray when they descended the hillock. Upon sighting them, a few commoners started towards them. One of them, a husky man bearing a blunt club, rumbled, "We're lookin' fer a few troublemakers. A red guy and his witch friend. Ye wouldn't 'appen to have seen 'em, eh?"

"We know nothing," Ghyreian replied, disguising her Silvanesti accent behind a harsh cough. "My friend here is a traveling merchant. We lost our horses to marauders and were hoping you have a few to sell us."

The man slapped his club against the palm of his hand and scrutinized them both. "Aye. Brom the stablemaster lives down yonder by the creek." He waved in that general direction. "If ye see the troublemakers, tip us off."

_________________