"You want me to come inside? Why? There's nothing in these things."
"Meow!"
"Fine! I'm coming!"
Linnie awkwardly crawled through the tight opening. Defying all laws of nature, he squeezed into the hat, falling through and into the inner space.
Which was immediately strange.
Because, when he crawled into Alwyn's hat, there was no 'falling.' There was no surface to fall onto, neither was there even gravity to cause such falling. The inside of Alwyn's hat was a black void, filled with his stuff. There was no ground.
Yet, what Linnie felt beneath him was most certainly hardwood.
His eyes cracked open to a glow he didn't expect.
He'd braced himself for the usual wizard's-hat nothingness. Instead, he was met with warmth and solid ground. He blinked a few times, sitting up slowly, almost expecting it to be a hallucination. But it wasn't.
A small, circular red rug sat a few feet ahead of him, soft-looking—its color rich against the wood boards. Just behind it, a fireplace crackled quietly. The flames were low and steady.
The shadows from the fire danced against the walls comfortingly.
Bookshelves lined the room—only a few, since the space wasn't all that big—each crowded with old books that somehow weren't dusty at all. Their spines looked hand-stitched, frayed, and uneven, as if they were collectors items.
Not like Linnie would know the difference, though.
Across the room from the fireplace, and behind the boy, was a door. Plain and wooden. Closed. A little strange, considering there was nowhere it could possibly lead to.
Perhaps behind it lay the void that he had expected.
There were no windows to see outside, and only paintings decorated the walls. There weren't many, but they were big, and took up most of the empty space.
And right in front of the rug stood a full, body-length mirror. It was polished and taller than Linnie, and was framed in simple dark metal. If he stood at the center of the carpet, he'd see himself perfectly.
Like Lady was doing. And for some reason, she was meowing and scratching at the glass.
"What the hell is this place?" he mumbled to himself.
He stood up and walked over to Lady.
"What're you doing, girl? Why're you scratching the mirror like a psycho?"
"Meow!"
He looked to the side—in the mirror—and froze.
First, he saw Lady. Of course he did, it was a mirror, after all. But that wasn't the strange part, obviously.
No, he froze when he saw himself. Or, what was supposed to be himself. But standing there on the other end of the mirror wasn't the boy he expected.
He felt the warm fibers of the red rug on his bare feet. Lady had stopped the meowing and scratching, and now he could only hear the sounds of the fire to the left of him.
The figure staring back wasn't him.
It wasn't even... close.
Where his reflection should have been, something taller, broader, and indescribably disgusting stood in the exact same posture he held—as if it were curious to see what was on the other side of the mirror, too.
Its shape was uncanny and revolting, made up from dozens of creatures melded together.
A wolf's muzzle jutted forward, lined with serrated teeth way too long to fit comfortably in its raw and bloody mouth. Above that, he saw the beady eyes of an insect—their surfaces reflecting the firelight.
Antlers branched from its skull, uneven, with one side being longer and more jagged than the other.
Its malformed torso jerked and wriggled, clearly outside the creature's control. Patches of rough fur interrupted scales, which blended into patches of leathery hide, which also gave way to exposed muscles and flesh.
Even its arms didn't look right. One ended in talons, while the other was something more akin to a hoof.
The creature's outline wasn't... stable. It was as if it couldn't decide on a set form or shape. Parts changed and shifted around. In a few moments, it surely wouldn't even be recognizable as the same 'creature' that he had seen at the start.
But the most frightening part wasn't how it looked. Not just its posture, but even its expression—which, despite not having a single human characteristic—mimicked Linnie's.
It mirrored him exactly—the way its head was tilted, and the way its chest rose when he breathed. It was him, undoubtably.
It was Linnie.
The boy yelped in terror, stumbling and falling back onto the ground. He scurried away from the mirror, out of its sight. He felt the warmth of the fire on his back battle the chill that ran down his spine, and tried to steady his breath.
Lady, too, was shocked at the sight, and was petrified on the rug like a sculpture. She slowly turned to face Linnie, who barely acknowledged her.
His throat was dry, and he licked his lips.
"What the fuck?" he cursed.
And he cursed again, and again, and again, until it was all out.
Slowly, he crawled back to the rug, just to make sure what he had seen was real. Once he entered the mirror's sight, it again showed him the same monster.
"Haaah... that's one weird enchantment, right, Lady?"
"Meow?"
Even he didn't sound convinced.
Right then, he considered smashing the mirror. A broken mirror couldn't bring him any harm, right? But he decided against it.
Because, he had an idea of what that probably was. The mirror was magic, for sure. No mirror had ever showed such an image in Linnie's place. So he came to a conclusion.
'This thing, it probably shows something like the user's soul, right? Then my soul is that monster. Because... I'm not a human. Those must be all the creatures I was before this life. It's so damn disgusting, I wanna puke!'
Despite his hatred for the image, he couldn't peel his eyes away from it. It took Lady pawing at him for Linnie to remember why he'd come inside in the first place.
In his hand, he gripped three sardines tightly. So tight that they were squished a little, leaving smelly fish juice on his hand.
"Oh, right. Here you go, fresh sardines."
"Meow!"
For a long while after that, Linnie sat there on the rug, staring endlessly into his reflection. He completely lost track of time, and before long, it was already the evening.
"Meow." Lady scratched at him, trying to remind him he had things to do.
"Shoot, Liora and I are supposed to go out with those two for the festival tonight!"
He jumped off the ground, and then realized he didn't see any way out. Usually, you could just reach up and pull yourself out of the void. But this wasn't a void.
His eyes landed on the door, and he swiftly walked over and grabbed the doorknob.
'I'm kind of nervous to see what's on the other end, now...'
Linnie swung it open, revealing the empty darkness he'd expected when he first crawled inside.
'So this room really is just inside of the void... weird.'
He called Lady over, picked her up, and then jumped into the space. He simply pulled them out from inside the hat, and rolled onto the soft bed.
The transition from being inside that room so long back into his bedroom was a little jarring. Especially since, when he'd entered his hat, it was still bright out.
Now, it was completely dark.
And someone was banging on his door.