A Subtle Change
There were seventeen ordinary mirrors in the Carousel Boutique.
Rarity knew this without truly knowing it. That is, she couldn’t have told you out of the blue how many mirrors were in her home, but if she thought about it for a little while – if she closed her eyes and walked through her memories of the boutique, making a tally as she went – she would eventually have found each mirror and enumerated them, one by one. There was nothing special about them.
Starting in the foyer was a tall mirror set in an oak frame, angled to catch visitors as they arrived. To remind them of how they looked and why they needed to shop in her boutique.
In the fitting room there were no less than seven mirrors – three in a broad triptych atop her tiered stage, for ponies to view themselves from all sides as they tried on new dresses; one by the dresser on the west wall, a tiny round thing on a stand for ponies to view while wearing veils and hats; two more flanking the door to the workshop, serving only as wall decorations; and one set into the ceiling, to make the room seem taller and airier than it really was.
The workshop had five mirrors, all plain rectangular things, designed for labor. They were wide and cheap and bound in simple pine frames covered in pins where she stuck her notes.
Upstairs, in her private quarters, were the rest. One in her bedroom, above the dresser. One in her walk-in closet, after she realized one winter that it was too much trouble to haul coats out into the bedroom just to see how they looked. And finally, rounding out the picture, there were two mirrors in her bathroom, one as broad as a sail covering the entire wall above the sink, and a tiny mirror, no wider than her hoof, for putting on makeup.
There was one enchanted mirror in the Carousel Boutique.
She found it in the morning, after her first quick shower of the day. She came down the stairs, her coat still damp, her shoes still leaving little spots of water on the polished wood floor, her mane still bound in a fluffy pima cotton towel the same cornflower shade as her eyes. She walked past the magic mirror into the kitchen, her mind already churning with ideas for the day’s projects and reviews of the new summer line of linen blouses that were all the rage in Fillydelphia. She filled the kettle with water for tea, set it on the stove, stopped, and walked back into the foyer.
Yes, there was a mirror there. It was an old thing, the silver coating on the glass starting to tarnish in dark spots around the margins. An ancient, cracked cypress frame nearly as tall as she was held the mirror on a simple swivel hinge coated in so much rust she doubted it would ever move again. Four clawed feet, like a gryphon’s forelegs, curled into fists that rested on the floor.
It was dirty. Filthy, really, the glass covered in a skim of grease and dust that had merged over years of neglect into a sort of solid film that clouded her reflection. In this coat of ages somepony had written a message with the tip of their hoof.
SET ME FREE
Rarity was a smart pony. She’d had more than one close-call with dark artifacts in the past. She knew exactly what to do.
She walked out the door, still wearing her towel, and went to fetch Twilight Sparkle.
* * *
“It was just like this?” Twilight asked.
“Yes. Somepony snuck it in overnight, I assume.” Rarity said. She had to raise her voice – Twilight was inches away from the mirror, peering at its every crack and crevice, while Rarity kept a safe distance in the next room.
“You didn’t hear anything?”
“No. Not a thing. Certainly not the bell.” There was a small silver chime over the front door, to let her know when customers came calling. It was more than loud enough to wake her at night, if anypony tried to sneak in. And there was no way a mirror like that could have fit through the windows.
“Hm.” Twilight’s horn glowed, and she stared into the mirror for several long seconds. Long enough that Rarity’s heart started to speed up, and she raised a hoof, ready to step into the room and grab her friend. But then Twilight’s horn went out, and she wrote a little note in the journal floating by her side.
“Well?” Rarity asked. “Don’t keep me in suspense, darling.”
“Sorry.” Twilight let out a breath, and her notebook vanished, sent away into some pocket dimension where Twilight kept her writing supplies. “It’s definitely magical—”
“You think?”
“—and probably exactly what it looks like. But as long as we’re careful, there’s not much reason to be worried.” Twilight nodded, as if that concluded matters.
“Forgive me for not being reassured,” Rarity ventured, “because it looks like something from one of those ghastly fairy tales about unicorns who played with magic they didn’t understand, and ended up with their souls trapped in a mirror while their bodies slowly decayed on the other side of the glass.”
“Kind of?” Twilight stepped back from the mirror, until she was close enough to talk with Rarity in normal tones. “A few centuries back there was a, well, I guess you could call it a fad among the high practitioners. They realized mirrors could be used to seal spirits or, um, other things away until you needed them. It was dangerous and not very efficient, but remember a lot of these sorcerers weren’t really sane in the way we understand sanity. To them the symbolism of the act, the ability to look into the mirror and see their own reflection laid atop their captive, it was…” Twilight’s voice trailed off, and she stared across the room at the mirror. Her eyes widened in wonder, and she even ceased to breathe. Finally, she shook herself and looked away.
“They said it was exhilarating,” she continued in a soft, almost thoughtful voice.
“Well, that’s lovely.” Rarity cleared her throat and stared out the Boutique’s wide picture window, the one that looked over the road outside. Ponies passed by, their forms rendered gauzy and faded by the sheer curtains. Almost as though she were watching them through a glass dirtied by a skim of dust. In the silence that followed she heard Twilight’s breath, hot and labored, like she’d just trotted up a long flight of stairs.
Enough. She spun back to Twilight fast enough that the other mare flinched. “Why is it here?”
“Oh, um.” Twilight fluttered her wings, settling the feathers back into position. A bead of sweat traced a path down her cheek. It was a hot day already. “Most sorcerers who trapped things in these mirrors weren’t thinking long term, you know? And they were all fairly narcissistic. That is, they weren’t looking years down the road, after their own deaths. As far as they were concerned, everything ended with them and anything afterward didn’t matter. So they didn’t really care how durable these things were.” She tapped the frame of the mirror with her hoof. The entire affair rattled and let out a hollow groan.
Rarity winced. “Could you not touch it?”
“Sorry.” Twilight stepped back further. “Anyway, it’s here because whatever’s inside isn’t really trapped anymore. It’s like… imagine you have a monster in a cage. When the cage was new all the bars were solid, but over the years they’ve rusted and fallen apart, and now it’s able to reach between them. That’s how these mirrors get. Whatever’s inside is looking for a way out, and given your history, it was probably attracted to you.”
“My history?” Incredulity stretched out each syllable into its own word. Hiss-tor-eee? Her eyes bored into Twilight’s until the other mare looked away. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing bad!” Quick, with a strained smile. “But, remember that time you found that book of dark magic in the Castle of the Sisters and enchanted half the town with dark magic? That was a, haha, a fun week.” She licked her lips. “Anyway, when you use dark magic like that, it can mark you—”
“Mark?” Rarity turned to inspect the parts of her coat she could see. Flawless, as always. The urge to bolt toward the nearest mirror – not that one, but any other one – and search her face for some long-overlooked blemish seized her heart like an iron snare. She barely held her hooves in check.
“Not that kind of mark. Deeper. On your soul.”
“If that was meant to reassure me, Twilight, it failed in the most spectacular fashion.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Twilight huffed. “I’m not explaining it well. It’s not, like, a black spot on your soul. But any dark magic will leave something behind. A subtle change. It happened to me, it happened to Celestia, and I couldn’t even tell you how often it’s happened to Luna. And, well,” she made a helpless gesture at Rarity with her hoof. “And you too.”
“What a lovely sorority to have joined,” Rarity muttered. “Not that you aren’t lovely, darling, but I’d have rather gotten wings.”
Twilight just shrugged. “Sorry. Remember, it’s not bad. It’s just a touch on your spirit. A scar, if you prefer.”
Rarity did not prefer. “Indeed. Can you at least get rid of this cursed thing?” The sooner the mirror was gone, the sooner she could try to ignore the oily memories of that book.
Twilight brightened. “That I can do!”
There was a flash, a moment of darkness as Rarity’s eyes adjusted, and when she saw again, both Twilight and the mirror were gone. Rarity let out a deep sigh and went upstairs to draw a hot bath.
* * *
The mirror was back the next morning.
She’d known it would be. Or she’d feared it would be, and she woke hours earlier than normal, when the sun was still a supposition below the eastern horizon and the sky was a dim leaden gray. She crept down the stairs one step at a time, her heart racing, and when she saw the edge of the mirror appear around the railing she froze. The sweat that had tingled beneath her coat became a freezing wash, and she gasped for air. She couldn’t move – her muscles rebelled, spasming so hard her entire body shook, and she had to lean against the wall just to stay upright. For almost an hour she stood there, not daring to move, while the room slowly warmed with the rose glow of the dawn streaming in through the windows.
It was fear that finally gave her the courage to act. It consumed every bit of willpower she had to take that first step, and when nothing happened she took another and another, until she reached the ground floor.
The mirror was where she last saw it, angled away from her. She squeezed against the wall and edged along it toward the front door. When she was a step away she tore it open with her magic and dashed outside, not giving it a second glance.
She didn’t want to know if the writing had changed.
* * *
“I’m sorry about this,” Twilight said. She was back, along with Starlight Glimmer and Rainbow Dash and Applejack. The two unicorns stood in front of the mirror, their horns alight. Rainbow Dash and Applejack sat on either side of Rarity, their shoulders brushing against hers. The warmth of their touch and the beat of their hearts, felt as a rapid tremble on her left and a steady, deep pulse on her right, calmed her as nothing else could.
She took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. “It’s hardly your fault, darling. But I would dearly like to know why it is here and not wherever you took it to.”
“We put it in the isolation vault in the castle,” Starlight Glimmer said. She circled around the mirror as she spoke, her horn casting shadows across the room. “It is sealed and warded and alarmed as well as the best research facilities in the world.”
“How did it get out, then?”
Twilight shrugged. “Even the best wards aren’t perfect. We’ll get it this time, though.”
“Of course.” Rarity swallowed. Her eyes, again, were drawn to the faded surface of the mirror, where the same message as before waited.
SET ME FREE
* * *
The mirror was back the next morning. It didn’t frighten Rarity so much this time as anger her.
She stared at the dim shape from the stairs, her breath building in her chest. She stormed down the rest of the steps and around to view its face. The message was unchanged.
“What do you want from me?” she hissed. “I’m not a sorcerer!”
She stood there, waiting. Half of her expected it to respond. The other half wondered if yelling at mirrors was how ponies started to go insane.
“I used it once!” she shouted now. The glass vibrated in sympathy. “I used that cursed book once, and I learned my lesson, and we put everything back the way it was! I learned! Why are you here!?”
Nothing. Her breath fogged the glass surface and slowly evaporated. Except for its unexplained appearance over the course of the night, it might as well have been an ordinary, aged mirror, so old and broken that only the scrapheap could love it. She snarled at her hazy reflection.
“Well, I know what you want, and you won’t get me!” She stepped away from it on the tips of her hooves. “I’m not going to use you or break you or try to set you free. So find somepony else to be your fool!”
She spun away and went back out into Ponyville.
* * *
Twilight came back, of course. So did Starlight Glimmer. Rarity set out her tea set for her friends while they watched her third guest study the mirror.
Princess Luna showed no fear of it, no hesitation as she touched its glazed surface with the tip of her muzzle. She squinted at the letters traced in the dust, snorted, and obliterated them with a sweep of her hoof.
“Do you know what’s in it?” Twilight asked.
Luna shook her head. “It was created while I was gone. But even a thousand years ago we had such things. Vessels for something evil. We could break it open if you like. Find out for ourselves.”
Rarity swallowed. “I’d rather not.”
“Wise. In this state it is harmless. Unleashed…” Her tongue danced out. The tips of her needle-sharp teeth stood out like little stars against her dark lips. “It might be very different.”
“Right. Then we’re decided.” Would that all of life’s decisions were so easy. “Now, how do we keep it away?”
“I’m not sure we can,” Starlight said. She had some arcane notes spread out on looseleaf pages before her. She studied them as she spoke. “Short of destroying it, I mean.”
“Which might just release it,” Twilight said.
“Exactly.” Starlight nodded. “Safest just to leave it.”
“Leave it.” A chill began to work its way up Rarity’s back, prickling at her spine. “Leave it here, you mean. With me.”
An uneasy silence answered her. Finally, Princess Luna spoke.
“In time, it will cease to frighten you,” she said. She reached out with her wing to trace the tips of her feathers along the mirror’s weathered cypress frame. “It will just become another part of your life. You may even find you miss it when you go about your day. Think of it as a souvenir. A memento of the dark work you once did. And so long as you don’t give into the urge to destroy it, or listen to it, it can never harm you.”
A faint rattling sound filled the room. It was her shoes, she realized, vibrating on the wood floor. Her legs shook like she’d run a marathon. The cold had spread throughout her coat, and when she spoke, it was with a foal’s voice, filled with weakness.
“But I don’t want it,” she said. “Please, just… can’t you get rid of it? I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember any of that, and if I have to see this cursed mirror every day for the rest of my life, how will I ever forget?”
“How indeed?” Luna stared at the mirror for a long moment, snorted and turned, storming out the door without any further farewell. The room seemed to lighten in her absence, filled again with the warmth of the morning sun.
“How indeed?” Starlight echoed. She stared down at her notes, but her eyes were watching something far away. Eventually she blinked and shook her head.
Twilight opened her mouth, but whatever she planned to say got stuck. She looked down at her hooves, then swallowed.
“Sorry,” she said. “We’ll keep working on it. Just remember, it’s not… using dark magic doesn’t make you a bad pony. It just changes you. Marks you. That’s all.”
Nopony else had anything to say. Starlight gathered her notes, and she left without meeting Rarity’s gaze. Twilight brushed her cheek against Rarity’s, and for a moment her nose was filled with the reassuring, familiar scent of the sweetpea and lavender bodywash Twilight had used for all they years they’d known each other. And then Twilight turned and left, and Rarity was alone with the mirror again.
* * *
There are eighteen mirrors in the Carousel Boutique. Seventeen of them are as ordinary as you please.
She keeps the magic mirror in her room, where they can watch each other at night.
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Think of it as a conversation piece.
"I personally feel that eldritch gibbering scarcely counts as a conversation."
Well, that's your opinion.
In any case, wonderful bit of understated creepiness. Thank you for it. And there's really no shame in it, Rarity. Half of the students at CSGU graduate with blemishes on their souls.
Oof, that "How indeed?" really touched a nerve.
Rarity is kinda getting boned here, but I suppose there's not much to be done about the mirror in the end. Unless launching it into the sun is somehow on the table. Still, cool and creepy fic.
Well, dark magic often is the fastest means to an end, even if there may be... side effects.
For me this story was the definite highlight of the contest, thanks for writing!
9820047
Same for me.
If there's one thing I've really enjoyed from Gardez's past two contest entries, it's the character monologues that are filled with raw emotion (Rarity's "I've used it once" and Starlight's "I did hurt ponies") -- those brief moments are what has kept both stories memorable.
If my memory is correct, the expansion increased the word count by about 1.5-fold, and I can see why -- loose ends were tied up nicely and the ending feels much more like an ending. The original had it's own kind of charm, too; I enjoyed reading between the lines and coming up with my own inferences.
I absolutely love reading about dark magic and I absolutely enjoyed this fic. Thanks for writing it! And it still should've won!
As always a treat and a pleasure.
I enjoyed this quite a bit! Atmospheric and haunting, as a spooky mirror should be, and that there is no solution but to live with it makes for a nice moral and yet a bit of nightmare as well.
Although if something horrible would happen should I ever break something as fragile as a mirror, I’d probably keep it protected in bubble wrap or blankets or boarded up or something.
...if it let me.
9820245
But then how would you look at it?
You write some of the best eerie magic-themed pony stories on this site, CiG.
And now I'm imagining Rarity fretting over Sweetie Belle interacting with the mirror...
Darling, I know an idiot ball when one rolls up to me, and I'm most certainly not going to pick it up, thank you very much.
Why, Princess. What a pleasant smile you have.
Good instincts. 'tis distressing how few people have them.
9820260
Ha... I was 100% with her when she refused to see if the writing had changed. I just need confirmation that demonic entities can be waiting in mirrors to never look in one again.
I guess it's dark enough for the dark shelf? Maybe? It's on there, anyway. It's a pity there's no way to find out what's inside so they can make an educated guess as to whether freeing it is a good idea or not; as likely to be a Captain of the Royal Guard as some flesh-eating demon from Tartarus, I reckon. Might even be some foal who kicked their ball through a sorcerer's window one day. But I guess if they just have a look at whatever's reflected in it underneath the dirt, they won't be able to trust it even if it did look like a foal who'd kicked their ball through a window. Flesh-eating demons from Tartarus tend to be tricksy things.
Is it bad that if I was in Rarity's place I might break or otherwise use the mirror out of sheer curiosity? What is this artefact's story?
oh man.
while not the optimal ending, that part when twi held her breath and thought of the chance for "research" made my stomach clench.
9820034
I can see the commercial now.
Dark Magic, an easy way to fix all your problems!
Do other ponies tell you that it's not a good idea? What would they know? They've never tried dark magic, the close-minded fools!
Do you fear for your own safety? Well, jist use dark magic to make yourself immortal!
Do you want revenge on that one guy that humiliated you all that time ago
even though you were the bad oneso selfishly? Use dark magic to gain the power needed!There's no problem that can't be fixed with dark magic! Try it now, and we'll guarantee that you have 100% satisfaction.
Disclaimer: The use of Dark Magic may result in punishment by law, lapses of judgement, loss of morals and conscience, permanent warping of personality, corruption of self, megalomania, desire to conquer the world, insanity, death, and fates worse than death.
Um, these:
Seem to be contradicted by:
How are Twilight, Starlight, and Luna so confident that the "bars," won't just fall the rest of the way apart on their own given enough time?
I give it a week until Dash, Derpy or Pinkie accidentally break it.
A nice bit of spookery, and I am amused by the implication that Twilight is a recovering Dark Magic addict
(There was a story a few years back where Twilight got literally addicted to being magically "powered up" after the Tirek incident: anyone recall what it was called?).
One problem I did have was that Luna, Twilight, and Starlight are all incapable of keeping the mirror under control. For a Scary Magical Artifact story to work, the McGuffin has to be something of an out of context problem for the characters, something there are no easy solutions for or no known or knowable answers at all. For, say, the SCP series stories, it works because the whole universe runs on WTF horror rules, and reality is very thin and patchy most of the time. Artifacts may be the creations of unknown mad science, evil god-like beings, originate in other universes, or just are. And nobody really understands how most of these things work: the SCP foundation doesn't have any on-staff wizards, with the possible exception of Dr. Bright.
Equestria, OTOH, has magic as a fairly organized, understandable thing, and the mirror is supposed to have been created by Pony wizards during Luna's absence. The notion that these crazy but not history-influencing wizards could either create a magical artifact to utterly baffle the Evening-Night Trio or contain within it an entity powerful enough to baffle them even while it stays stuck in the mirror just strains my suspension of belief. I'd be OK if it were an artifact of unknown origin or pre-Princess origins, but it's hard to believe they were more knowledgeable than Luna, or more talented than Twilight or Starlight - Celestia, after all, made it through those years without being overthrown or turned into a horrible half-Pony, half-teacup.
It's an interesting story to read, but I can't help but believe that the correct answer is to get the alicorns (and Starlight) together, invite Discord to watch, and then kick whatever is in that mirror in the head until it cries for mercy.
Sealed Evil in a Can always gets out eventually, so you may as well let it out on your schedule and not its.
This would make a fine Halloween story. But I really enjoyed how both Luna and Starlight both know there Dark deeds and know they cannot forget, Twilight knows and accepts them. And Rarity is in denial for her one small act of dipping her hoof into dark magic.
Makes you wonder if she was ever Nightmare Rarity in this universe.
9820857
Withdrawal? https://www.fimfiction.net/story/190641/withdrawal
9823811
Yep, that's the one! Good catch,
You might wanna look into revising that section, possibly to through with or through using or possibly a comma so its through, through her
9824562
Actually, that's just an erroneous double word. Thanks!
I just assume based on the ending she fully embraces it, and uses dark magic to do "mundane" things like drawing or scooping ice cream.
There's something about this story that's very, very dark.
Something, no one knows what, came to Rarity asking for help. No one even considered helping it.
Something is being left in, presumably, solitary confinement in perpetuity. No one cares what it did or did not do to warrant this punishment.
Something is presumed evil in spite of there being zero evidence, no one challenges this presumption.
The ponies of Equestria will be safe if things remain as they are, so no pony cares whether things are good or bad, just or unjust, kind or cruel.
Something came to ponies for help. Perhaps it should have come to a different species.
Heh, interesting. And I can also see exactly why the mirror keeps coming back to Rarity... she's the only one (in the mirror's reach?) who wants to forget badly enough that she might just do what it wants to be rid of it.
Trying to figure out if I prefer the haunted mirror and dark magic scarring as an allegory for guilt, or PTSD. Rarity's physiological and emotional responses are that of the latter, but Starlight and Twilight's appear to be the former. I think I prefer PTSD, especially with how resonant Rarity's pleading is that she doesn't want it, doesn't want the reminder, and is horrified at the thought of scarring itself, be it on her soul or her person. PTSD can really hit hard when you when you have done all the emotional labor you are supposed to, and it still affects your life.
Plus, Rarity didn't see the book as dark magic. Spike was the one that encountered all the blantant signs that it was dark magic, but Rarity just thought a friend was helping her out. She was definitely not a fully informed, consenting participant to the warping of her mind. PTSD seems to fit.