The Third Power: TTS AU

Chapter Thirty-Three

Rapunzel pressed herself further into the corner she'd chosen. Despite the warm blue light that filled the room, she felt cold both inside and out.

She ran through her thoughts again, trying to seek some sort of answer as to what could have caused Varian to willingly join Cassandra, if the mind control theory didn't hold up.

So far, she'd only found one possible answer: the blizzard and the amber.

But they'd made up! They'd made up and put it behind them; no way Varian could have been tempted back down the dark path by an incident from months ago.

Or was this her being naive?

She didn't want to believe so. Varian and she had had a much better relationship since she'd freed Quirin from the amber. She'd never technically broken her promise - she had helped. What could Varian possibly be clinging to to pull up past resentment?

She pressed her forehead to her knees as she pulled them closer to her chest. It didn't help her think.

—————

Varian stared at the sight before him.

Whatever he'd expected to find down here, it hadn't been a cave.

The cave was round but huge - the ceiling towering at at least twelve feet. The ceiling and floor both had glowing plants (coral was it?) growing from them. The walls were covered in mirrors for some reason and, sitting in the palms of a statue of a mermaid against the far wall, was a glowing blue pearl.

"The Seastone," Varian breathed as he took a step forward. This was it - he'd found it.

He stopped walking.

"Demanitus, it's actually real." He huffed a disbelieving laugh. Even after the taster he'd gotten of the gem's powers, even after meeting mermaids, the reality hadn't truly hit. But here it was, the full truth pressing down on him. A third power. And it was his.

If only his dad could be here for this. Wonder what he'd think, Varian mused, finally finding it within himself to proceed further.

He made it three steps into the cave proper before he felt an odd sensation in his chest - a tugging, but not towards the stone. To a mirror on his left.

Surprised, Varian tried to resist, tried to go on to the stone. But his body worked against his mind until he stood in front of the mirror.

Confused but knowing better than to question anything to do with magic too deeply, he resigned himself to what was happening and examined the mirror.

There was nothing special about it. It wasn't much bigger than his hand and it was oval shaped. It had a frame of black rock.

"Huh. Like Cassandra's?" Varian wondered, remembering the time he'd spent in his little rock cage and then the actual fortress Cassandra had built.

Not letting himself dwell on the less pleasant of those memories, Varian focused his attention on the actual mirror itself. He stood by his deduction that there wasn't anything special about it. But there had to be something. Why else would his body drag itself to it?

Time to run through some hypotheses, he thought, excitement growing.

—————

After ten minutes, not a lot had happened.

Varian had first examined the mirror for a third time (you never knew what you might accidentally miss) but was confident that it's appearance was just that - an appearance.

He then tried moving it from its spot on the wall, but found that he couldn't. It was as if the mirror was part of the cave, despite the fact that it did not look as if it was actually in the wall around it.