- [One Thousand Years Ago] -
A low mist clings to the forest floor, shifting and curling around gnarled roots like a living thing. The air is thick, charged with an unsettling energy, as if the very woods are holding their breath. Shadows crawl and recoil among the trees like worms, their movements mirrored by the glinting surfaces embedded in the bark — mirrors of every size and shape, reflecting the dark canopy above. The temperature is crisp yet damp.
Suddenly, a figure materializes, stepping out from the void with a bewildered expression. Black hair falls over his eyes, but he brushes it aside with a hand that trembles slightly. He feels out of place, like a puzzle piece forced into the wrong spot. His clothes, simple and worn but of a style not of this world, speak of a life far from this strange forest. He doesn’t know why he’s here or how he arrived.
He was just outside of his home, but then he… he died. Something killed him. A truck?
That’s right. Then there was this other place, this underworld, for a lack of a better term.
Where is he now? Is this hell? A flicker of panic rises in his chest, only to be stifled by the pressing need to understand his surroundings.
A sudden rustling breaks the eerie silence, drawing his attention. A girl — no more than ten, clutching a ragged toy doll — bursts through the underbrush, eyes wide with terror. Her breaths come in ragged gasps, each one a desperate plea for salvation. Behind her, the guttural growls and frenzied chatter of nasally howling creatures grow louder and closer. She stumbles, and then she collides with him, the impact knocking them both to the ground.
“Goblins!” she shouts, her words sounding like nothing he’s ever heard before. But somehow, he understands the language as if it were his own. She scrambles up to her feet, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him along as she’s clearly running from something.
The noises are coming closer.
…Goblins? Like… goblin-goblins? As in little green men from his favorite shows?
The man looks down at his hand, thinking as fast as he can about the events of the last five minutes — at least as far as his own cohesive stream of consciousness is concerned.
He’s already dead. Why not give this a shot? That window, that screen, said that he would be powerful.
"Hide," he urges, his voice steady despite the chaos. The girl nods, her small frame shaking, and scrambles into the sparse cover of a nearby bush.
He turns to face the oncoming horde, heart pounding. Snarling, snaggled-toothed monsters with lanky, muscular frames and knives as jagged as their crooked necks leap out of the underbrush toward him. It only takes a second. An unfamiliar sensation wells within him — a dark, swirling power, both exhilarating and terrifying.
He raises a hand, and shadows leap forth, tendrils of midnight coiling around the goblins with a will of their own. The creatures shriek, caught in an inescapable grasp, before dissolving into nothingness.
The Vampire Lord has used: [Return Monster]
[Return Monster] Active Ability • Returns any monster in your domain back down into its base components, allowing you to use the materials of its composition to create more useful things — like fun puddles to splash around in!
Puddles of sludge fall onto the ground, a dozen bodies dissolving horribly in an instant as their insides melt out through their outsides, which then drip away like fat from a roast.
Silence returns, heavy and oppressive, broken only by a soft whimpering.
“Awesome!” says the man, pumping his fist. “Hey! Did you see that?!” he asks excitedly, turning his head around.
But the only thing greeting him is a crying, terrified face that is hidden behind shaking hands.
He stops, lowering his fist. “Oh… hey, wait. No. You’re okay,” he says slowly, lifting his hands to show he’s safe as he steps closer. The man kneels beside her, his newfound abilities buzzing in his veins.
There’s a smell in the air. Is it the monsters? No… it smells… good.
The girl is hurt, a deep gash running along her forearm. Blood trickles down, staining her pale skin crimson. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he places a hand over the wound, willing the flow to stop. The warmth of his touch seems to calm her, her eyes fluttering closed as unconsciousness claims her.
[Bloodgap] Active Ability • Allows you to harden any flowing blood from a body in order to better preserve the rest of it inside of its container for a later, more special occasion!
He sits back, bewildered. The mist weaves through the trees, a silent witness to the magic he cannot yet comprehend. His mind races, questions without answers swirling in the cool, damp air.
The girl, slumped over, lies there, her scraggly, straw doll clutched against her chest.
What the hell is he supposed to do now? Is there a hospital here or something? He can’t just leave her here; what if there are more of these monsters or if some animal finds her?
Not knowing what else to do, the man in black picks up the limp body and carries it with him.
He spots something in the distance; it looks like a castle. This must be some sort of fantasy world.
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Moonlight pierces through the shattered remains of a once-majestic roof, casting ethereal patterns across the floor of the ruined castle. The air is still oppressive in its quietude, carrying a weight that seems to seep into the stones themselves. Mirrors — cracked and tarnished — are embedded into the walls, reflecting fragments of a forgotten past.
The man, burdened by the weight of the unconscious girl in his arms, stumbles into the main hall. His black heart beats a frantic rhythm. He was promised power, promised a purpose, but hell if he really gets any of that right now.
He lays her gently on an altar bathed in cold moonlight, hoping against hope that this old place might offer some reprieve.
What is this world? Where did he end up? Everything is happening so fast; he just needs five minutes to collect himself.
It looks like an old cathedral, but it’s a wreck. The roof is missing, walls are destroyed and crumbled, and ivy has long since claimed most of this old castle.
"Come on, hold on," he whispers, brushing a lock of hair from his pale face. His hair is different than it used to be. His voice cracks, the words barely more than a breath as something in his throat changes, and he no longer sounds like himself.
Her eyes remain closed, her chest still. He feels the warmth of her blood soaking through his shirt. The spell he used before seems to have broken and she’s bleeding again. He tried to do it a few more times, but it’s too much blood, and something about that is distracting his thoughts. He can’t concentrate. Desperation claws at him, and he tries to recall any spell, any incantation that might reverse this cruel fate. But his mind is a chaotic mess, betraying him at this most crucial moment.
He’s the Vampire Lord, right? That’s what that thing said before he was reborn. Doesn’t that mean he has some cool powers or something?
He presses his hands to her wound, willing his power to flow. Shadows dance around his fingers, but the magic — dark and wild — remains beyond his grasp. It slips through his control and fizzles into nothingness.
She’s gone. The strange girl has bled out from her wounds.
…What the hell is this place?
In quiet, he stands there with his hands on the sides of the altar as if it were an operating table, and he is the exhausted surgeon. Tired already, his eyes scan the area around him, searching for a clue to anything.
What is he doing here? How did he get here? Why is he here? He’s the ‘Vampire Lord of this era’, but what the fuck does that actually mean?
A heavy silence settles, the weight of it suffocating. He turns around and slumps down against the altar. After a minute, something wet touches his back. The blood, her blood, marks him. He doesn’t understand. He was meant to be powerful, to wield magic beyond comprehension. Yet, here he is, powerless.
One after the other, the Vampire Lord swipes through a collection of glassy, spectral windows filled with text and information about his so-called powers and abilities.
“‘Summon sarcophegous’?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “...’No wet socks’? What the…” In frustration he keeps swiping. Is this a joke? This is some kind of cosmic prank, right? “'Change the color of any cloud to gray’? How is that ever going to be useful?” he asks, reading a new ability out loud.
When he died, he was promised a position of power and note, but he hasn’t been here for an hour, and he’s already sitting on the ground in a puddle of blood with a dead girl behind him.
This isn’t how he was expecting his grand, fantastic new life to begin at all. Where are the quirky adventurers? Where are the dungeons and the amazing magical cities? Where is his amazing gimmicky power that sets him apart from all the rest?
He presses a new ability.
[Animate Small Object] Active Ability • Use your dark, horrific powers to do the mind-breakingly impossible and animate any minor, inconsequential object of note such as candlesticks, portraits, or vases to life in order to bring horrific fear to the hearts of the living!
"Lord, have mercy,” he sighs.
Suddenly, a soft rustle draws his attention.
The fabric doll — clutched tightly in the girl’s lifeless arms — shifts, its button eyes catching the silvery light. It moves with deliberate purpose, turning its head to face him. He blinks, disbelief warring with shock. The doll's gaze is in contrast unblinking, unsettling in its intensity.
"What the hell?" he mutters, jumping back and up away from it.
The doll, resting on a breathless chest, tilts its head, a gesture almost human, almost understanding. The ruined castle seems to hold its breath, the cold air wrapping around them with an eerie embrace. He can only stare, his heart thudding in a new rhythm, as the strange, animate doll regards him with a knowing silence.
“What the hell?” repeats the doll, a voice coming from it despite its sewn shut mouth never moving.
It sounds just like the dead girl.
Quietly, it lifts its arms, as if waiting to be picked up by him.
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The castle is a labyrinth of echoes and shadows. Moonlight filters through the broken windows, fractured by the mirrors that line the crumbling walls. The air here is heavy, almost tangible, infused with the scent of forgotten memories and ancient dust. The Vampire Lord now roams these vast halls with his strange companion — a doll brought to life who has become his only confidante.
Sometimes he hears voices in the darkness; they would frighten him, but she tells him that they’re not real.
It’s just the castle trying to get to him. It’s trying to rattle him.
That doesn’t make him feel better. But he is more at ease with her around.
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It’s been days of him exploring. He’s caught a few rats and ate them in the mean time. It sounds odd, but she has a way of knowing where they are and always points them out to him. He’s not sure why she’s doing that, or even how, but he’s thankful for it. The rats themselves seem almost ready to die. They just stare at him, awestruck, as he approaches them and just plucks them off of the ground.
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He doesn’t want to have to eat a person. The girl the doll had belonged to he had entombed in the cathedral, as her blood was too distracting for him to ignore. He had to get rid of her before he did something terrible.
Having never known her name, he gave her one to make her more human, more real. It felt like the right thing to do.
— Sarah.
Now, together he and the doll explore the castle's forgotten corners, where odd creatures skitter through the gloom, as if avoiding him.
She’s a funny thing, and he’s glad to have her to keep him company during the long days when he has to hide from the sunlight. He’s never been a doll-guy, obviously, but there’s something comforting about her presence in this strange world where he’s otherwise all alone. The more he talks to her, the more she talks back. She’s starting to say things now that aren’t just parroted words, but what feel like real, sincere thoughts of her own. Sometimes she’ll ask him for a story, and in turn she’ll perform a simple little dance.
It’s not very good since she’s just a wobbly fabric doll, but damn if it isn’t endearing to watch.
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It’s so dark in here. He never liked the dark.
But he finds solace in these explorations, a distraction from the power that courses through him, growing stronger with each night. He’s coming to know the castle, inside and out, and it has begun to change. Rooms are beginning to just… appear. New rooms that have never been there before are materializing, and the castle almost seems to be leading him to them, like a proud child eager to show its father its creation.
He ate a deer tonight. It was amazing. — Not the flesh, just the blood. All of it. It was wounded by wolves, weak, and stuck, so he caught it easily.
The doll, with her button eyes and carefully stitched mouth, listens patiently as he recounts tales from his previous life, idly brushing the tangles from her hair. She can’t eat, but she pretended to drink the blood together with him because they’re friends, and now her face is smeared in it. Blood soaks into the coarse fabric.
It makes it look like she has a pretty smile.
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He’s signed off on not being reborn as some great hero who is going to go on an amazing adventure with a troop of unlikely friends to learn about the power of believing in yourself. That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anymore. But this isn’t so bad anymore either. He’s really starting to have fun with the whole vampire spiel. He ran down a wolf today — as in literally ran it down.
He found a way to cheat with a few of his shitty abilities and become fast as a bat out of hell. The wolf never saw it coming.
He’s starting to understand his powers because of her. He thought it was all a bunch of crap, but the doll with her almost childish point of view comes up with the most incredible ways to make these silly, seemingly useless powers become terrifying in ways that he would have never considered.
"We could make this place a home," he muses, gesturing to the grand yet dilapidated rooms around them. “I mean, I guess there’s a whole world out there, but…” The Vampire Lord looks around himself and shrugs. “I’ve always been kind of a homebody, you know?” he asks. “I think if we get some more blood and really spiff this place up, it could be nice,” he muses, not sure if he isn’t almost content.
What an odd feeling. He’s never had that in his old life before.
She tilts her head, a silent agreement in her gaze. "I like it here," she says, her voice a soft, musical whisper. "It’s where you are, Master,” says the doll, lifting her hands for him to pick her up.
He smiles, hoisting her onto his arm.
She’s gotten heavy because of all the blood and grime that has soaked into her filling. He makes an expression and pokes her face where her nose ought to be. “Come on. You’re starting to smell; let’s get you a bath,” says the Vampire Lord.
“Nooo…” she playfully protests, kicking her legs as the dark Master carries her away.
A row of suits of armor salutes him as he walks past.
— The castle’s monsters have begun responding to him now, rather than avoiding him.
But she is the favorite.
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As the nights blend into one another, the two of them speak of dreams and desires.
The doll imparts knowledge of this world to him — its dangers and delights — while he ensures she is well cared for, adorning her in fine clothes scavenged from forgotten wardrobes. He doesn’t know how she knows these things, but she knows everything. She knows about monsters and distant places; she knows about his powers and the people of this world.
But with each passing night, he feels something shift within him. It’s gradual, but he can tell it’s happening. He feels like a man losing himself to the bottle. Every night he’s just a little more snippy, cold, and angry than the night before.
— Never with her, of course. But he finds himself sometimes getting short-tempered with himself.
The kindness that once defined him seems to wane, replaced steadily by a coldness that creeps in like a shadow at dusk.
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Something happens.
An adventurer comes to the castle, then one more, and then more and more and more. Soon, hundreds of people arrive and attack his home, which had become such a beautiful, quiet sanctuary where he spent his nights.
One of them hurt her. He was only gone for a minute, having set her down to go handle a problem that required his attention, and when he returned, he found only a pile of ash where his friend had been.
That adventurer was the first person he ever ate, and he made sure the meal took a long, long time.
As for his friend, he scooped her remains together and put them into a new doll — one that he had special made by an imprisoned artist from the nearby village. She’s beautiful now, of the finest porcelain, old growth wood, and detailed, colorful glass. He fills the new doll with the remains of the old one, and she comes back to life. The returned doll clings desperately to him, and he promises to never leave her alone again. He promises to make sure he and their home are safe forever.
Every human inside the castle dies that night.
Every human outside of it in the forest dies the next.
And the villages nearby begin to fall one after the other as he makes sure he’ll have his peace with his only friend. Any monster that doesn't bow their head to his power is, to him, as needless as a human.
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It takes months for the word to spread. But the outside world grows fearful of the Vampire Lord's burgeoning power. They see him as a threat, a dark force to be reckoned with, and they begin to attack the castle in organized forces now. A crusade is called by the Holy Church to end this terrible monstrosity. The assaults are relentless, a constant barrage that strains his patience and tests his resolve. But he and the castle survive, and each skirmish leaves him a little more hardened, a little more distant, as he drinks more and more blood.
"What do they want from us, Master?" the doll asks one evening, perched on the edge of a cracked window, watching the torches flicker in the distance.
"They’re just scared animals," he replies, his voice carrying a hint of disdain. "Beasts. But they'll learn. I won't let them destroy what we've built."
“Master,” says the doll, looking at him. “I think it’s time.” The Master looks at her as she lifts her arms to him, to be picked up again. “We can be together forever,” says the doll. “You and me. Just us,” she explains as he hoists her onto his throne. She latches onto him, the two of them looking down over the throne room, filled to the brim with corpses. “If we start the ritual now. We can make it dark forever. We can make the bad people go away.”
He didn’t want it to be this way. But they won’t stop coming. He’s telling them to go away and leave him alone, but they keep coming here. They keep trying to hurt him and his friend.
They’re irredeemable.
— That voice rings out in his head, like a thought someone is whispering to him. Yet, in his heart, he knows he is changing. The warmth that once defined him is slipping away, replaced by a chill that even the doll feels.
She notices his growing cruelty and the sharpness in his words that now cut where they once soothed. He’s yelled at her often now because she makes mistakes. Sometimes when he gets really annoyed, he pulls her fingers and her joints to the point of them almost coming out of their sockets.
But she knows that this is only because the humans are making him so angry.
If they would just leave them alone, the two of them could play and dance forever, like before. If the people stopped coming, he would be able to calm down and relax again.
She hugs him. She really loves him so much.
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She’s scared.
She doesn’t want to be yelled at by her friend, so she stops making mistakes — she makes them the mistakes of others instead. Whenever something goes wrong, she finds someone else whose fault it is.
— It’s to protect herself.
Confused and yearning for his approval, she begins to mimic his behavior, a mirror reflecting the darkness he can't quite shake.
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"Do you like it when I'm mean too?" she asks one night, her voice small and uncertain.
He pauses, brushing his fingers through her hair — a gesture once filled with tenderness now tinged with something colder. It almost feels like a threat when his hand is below her hair and on her head. "It’s not mean to be strong," he says. “You and I, we’re different than the others,” says the Master. “You’re like I am,” explains the Vampire Lord, his stroking of her hair made somewhat more threatening by his other hand, which rests around her thin throat.
She smiles, holding him. He’s nice to her tonight.
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The castle stands silent under a shroud of darkness, its rising grandeur a testament to the passage of time and his increased power. Moonlight filters through the windows, casting sharp beams that illuminate the dust motes swirling in the air.
In the throne room, the Vampire Lord sits brooding. His eyes — once filled with warmth — now burn with a cold, cruel fire.
There’s nothing of him left.
It only took a few months or so. On his arm rests the white-haired doll, her once vibrant presence now subdued and placid. Her brightly painted makeup and features have dulled. She remains quiet, offering advice only when necessary, a calculated dance of survival in the presence of the empty creature he has become.
If she talks out of line, she’s going to get in big trouble. He’s scary. But he’s strong, and he says she’s like he is — strong. So she sits there quietly, acting as if she wasn’t afraid of him, because a strong person wouldn’t be. "The witch says a hero is coming," she murmurs, her voice barely more than a whisper, careful not to provoke his ire. “ — Dear Master.”
He smirks, the expression twisting his once-gentle features into something unrecognizable. "Let them come,” he remarks without interest. “A hero’s blood is just what I need to take care of the last of this rancid business.”
The doll nods, though fear grips her tiny frame. The castle she and he used to explore, dance, and play in together has now become a cage, one she dares not escape for fear of what lies beyond — and within. There’s nowhere for her to go outside of it because there is no place in the world for something so delicate and breakable as she is. And inside of it, she’s always one step away from having her head shattered against a wall. His touching of her has become more violent lately. Her porcelain arms had to be replaced with new wooden ones because he squeezed her wrists so hard that they shattered.
— So now she gets closer to him than ever before, as close as is possible. While others flee from him and others fight him, she takes the third option.
She fawns.
She clings to him and stays by his side day and night despite how terrifying he is, not because she loves and treasures her friend so much anymore as it used to be, but because this is the safest place there is in the castle now. She still gets hurt, but not as much as the others do because from here, she can channel his growing lust for torment into other targets — ghosts, adventurers, the maid, anybody else except her.
Holding her, the Vampire Lord rises from his throne, his movements deliberate and controlled. The awkward ambilations of a man reborn into a body that wasn’t his are all but gone. He gazes out through a window, eyes scanning the horizon where the hero will inevitably appear. "It’s time to begin the ritual," he states, his voice devoid of any warmth; only cold determination remains in it.
The doll remains on his arm, a quiet shadow. "…I will help," she says, though her heart quivers with dread. She has watched him change, seen the light within him snuffed out by darkness.
At first she wanted to perform the ritual to bring about the Night that Never Ends so the two of them could be together forever. She loves him. It was her idea to begin with.
But now that he’s become this… thing, she’s terrified of the ritual actually working. She’ll be trapped in here forever with him. There will be no way out ever again. She still loves him, but she doesn’t understand why that warm feeling doesn’t want to go away. He breaks her body and hurts her very badly, but her heart still flutters now and then when she sees him, even when she’s crying to be left alone, and she doesn’t know why.
It feels wrong.
"I love you, Master," says the doll, holding out her arms to grab onto his shoulder.
He doesn't respond. There's only an empty man left inside of his eyes.
The doll watches him and then turns her head, her own reflection staring back from countless mirrors. Endlessly, her sight bounces around from one mirror to the next as a thousand hers stare back her way — all of them imprisoned in this place that they themselves helped make.
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- [One Thousand Years Later, The New Vampire Lord Inkume’s Castle] -
Laughter fills the air, coming from a multitude of sources as the inner circle of the Vampire Lord moves down the corridor — the priestess, the wolf, the maid — everybody he has gathered together is moving as a group. They’re laughing and fighting as they trail after the Master.
The Vampire Lord Inkume goes about his work, unable to keep his shadowers at bay.
“I love you, Master!” howls the ghost, Snatch, clinging to his cloak. The others are holding onto Snatch’s legs, trying to pry her off of him to make space for themselves and offering their own voices of protest and praise as they fight for his attention. A giant wolf thrusts through the corridor, trying to shove everyone out of the way with her massive maw to find a spot next to him.
The doll stands there inside the mirror in the long corridor, watching them go by, one after the other, as they squabble and fight and bicker in his shadow. Behind her, the replayed memory of her time in the castle from one thousand years ago fades away.
Her eyes fixate on the new Vampire Lord, the one who came to replace her master from one thousand years ago.
He seems to be okay, still.
Although she has noticed some changes since the first days he arrived, when she was already skulking after him in the mirrors. He isn’t as frantic anymore now as he was then, as nervous and jumpy. Just like her true master, he’s becoming colder and more resilient to the challenges of this world as he lives into the role given to him by heaven.
But it’s been well over many months, and his black heart hasn’t turned to darkness in the same way her friend’s did.
The power of the position of Vampire Lord — the magic — she’s had a long time to think about it since his alleged death, and she’s certain that it has a corrupting essence to it that no mortal soul can resist forever. But how is he managing then? How is he managing to just… stay himself?
He doesn’t hurt them; he doesn’t hunt them — not the humans and not his servants. Even when they’re consistently useless failures and bothersome wretches, he’s just… just…
— Lollygagging!
May heaven forgive her for using such foul, demonic language.
But it doesn’t make sense in her mind. How could the man who gave her life and became her only friend lose himself to the castle so quickly, while this… cretin is here wandering the halls with a following trailing after him like a mother duck? She hates him so much.
She has to. He’s weak. If he was strong, they would be afraid of him. That’s got to be it. That’s why his soul hasn’t been changed. It’s because he’s weak. Her real Master was strong, like she is; that’s why —
“Hey,” says a voice abruptly.
The doll lets out a terrified scream, jumping back as she’s startled out from her closed eyes and crossed arms.
A head pokes in through the mirror, looking at her. The Vampire Lord. He points back behind himself. “We’re going to feed the ducks. Wanna come?” he asks, shaking a basket.
“The… the what?”
The Master shrugs. “Yeah. It turns out some ducks flew in from outside the castle and landed in the garden pond,” he explains, shaking a basket her way. “We got some old scraps to feed them with. It’s gonna be fun!” he says, almost beaming.
Is this a joke?
“Are you… are you insane?!” she yells, clenching her fists and storming straight toward him. “You’re the Vampire Lord!” shouts the doll, and before she knows it, her wooden fist strikes out to hit him square in the nose.
“Ow,” says the man half-heartedly, rubbing his face. She thinks he’s trying to be encouraging by pretending it hurt.
— Although more playfully than anything. She doesn’t have that much power behind her movements, actually, being a doll and all.
“The Vampire Lord does not feed ducks!” she exclaims angrily, stomping her foot down with every word to make her point.
He stares, blinking. “...Why would I want to be the Vampire Lord if I can’t even have some fun and hang out with my friends?” he asks plainly. Her eyes go wide. The man taps the side of his head. “Hello? What the hell else am I supposed to do with my terrible, ungodly powers?”
“DESTROY THE WORLD!” she answers with fervor.
He looks down at her. “...But I live there…” replise the Vampire Lord dryly.
She opens her mouth, about to protest, but nothing comes out of her except dry, raspy noises, as she doesn’t find a word to describe her feelings right now.
The two of them stare at each other.
“...So is that a rain check on the ducks, or what are we doing?” he asks, gripping the edge of the mirror as a swarm of hands are working on pulling him back out of it so that he’ll pay attention to them instead. “Come on. I’ll give you that dress I promised last time,” throws the man in.
“Do you think you can bribe me to betray my true master?” she asks. “I won’t!”
He nods. “The dress, and I’ll organize a ball for you to wear it at,” he counters, his legs up in the air as they’ve hoisted him using Snatch as a rope to tie his legs around the giant wolf — Bark’s — back. The doll opens one eye. “A little bird told me you liked dancing,” he says, his fingers losing their grip. “Last chance. I’m running out of time!” says the Vampire Lord, looking back behind himself. “Come on. Have some fun,” he encourages. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
She stands there, her arms uncrossed and almost ready to reach out, but not quite. “More than you know. Fool,” she replies coldly, sounding as if she was rejecting his offer even if she really wants to take it. She hasn’t played with anyone in a long, long time.
But Inkume loses his grip and reaches out, grabbing her hand. The doll cries out in surprise, flying out after him through the mirror into a large mess of cheering and chaos as they celebrate the return of the Master, who was gone for some terrible, awful thirty-seven seconds.
As for feeding the ducks, it’s actually kind of fun. But she'll never admit it, because of the chance that the old master is still around somewhere watching her.