Dusty shelves overflowing with ancient and yellowed papyrus loomed over Autumn as she and the others stepped into the trial of magic. While the chamber wasn’t as sprawling as the last, it was still fairly expansive. Perhaps as large, if not larger, than the entry hall they’d camped in to wait out the sandstorm.

A sandstorm that still raged outside.

Soft amber light played across the rows and walls, shining down from drifting mage lights as they bobbed about in an unfelt breeze.

Elven statue-like pillar stood at the ends of each row of packed shelves, their outstretched hands holding up the balcony floor above. A set of spiraling stone staircases led up to the second floor that was filled with more rows of dusty shelves, along with a few small tables and reading nooks.

A glance towards the center of the mystic library showed a collection of various magical workstations, each dedicated to a different school of magic. Altars to the dark art of Necromancy stood beside crystal-laden tables and shining alchemical stands.

While Autumn felt curious about them herself, Pyre and Edwyn’s excitement eclipsed hers. As soon as Liddie had given them the all clear, they poured over the chests and cabinets that shone with magic in her Witchsight. She shook her head as they excitedly pulled magical ingredients and reagents from the seemingly endless chests.

Turning away, Autumn glanced around the rest of the room.

Across from her, at the far end of the room, a curious mirror bordered by silver and strange scripts hung on the wall facing the library. It was taller than any door and made of some other metal besides the polished bronze, unlike all the other mirrors she’d seen so far in this world. A strange liquid-like surface offered an almost unparalleled reflection of the library.

Almost, but not quite.

The reflection in the mirror wasn’t right. Autumn could see that much, even from across the room. Gone were the rows of dusty parchments, replaced instead by rows upon rows of mummified corpses stacked atop each other like firewood.

And it wasn’t just the room that was strange in the mirror. Something about her own reflection and those of her friends was different too. But as far away as she was, Autumn couldn’t tell what that was unless she got closer.

As she moved towards it to investigate, she looked around the room some more.

Along the northern wall sat another doorway. Other than the way back, it was the only other obvious exit to the library. Unfortunately, it lay locked behind a gigantic, ominously glowing sigil. Glancing above the door, hieroglyphics told the dark-haired witch that it led to the pharaoh’s tomb.

Clearly, this was both the way forward and part of the test of magic.

Now that she’d spotted one mural, the rest seemed to call out to her to read them.

Thankfully, they’d not been written in blood this time.

Autumn gave them a quick perusal, reading pieces of the pharaoh’s arcane accomplishments. In between the retelling of the pharaoh’s later life, there were some interesting tidbits of information. For example, according to the painted tale, while the wandering wise woman — the hag — had given the ruler of sand eternal life, she’d not given him eternal youth.

Even as one of the long-lived races, Suthirmesses III eventually succumbed to the rigors of time. Before his first millennium had even passed, strength had fled his ailing body, and he’d degraded to the point of near infirmity.

So, he’d turned to magic in a desperate search to shore up his weakening self, and in the process, turned himself into a pseudo lich. Not undead, but barely living.

Autumn shook her head.

The more she read of this foolish pharaoh, the more pity she felt. Although it was mixed with a healthy amount of disdain.

Even she, someone who’d only heard about hags and other such dealmakers in fables, knew they’d not offer such a fine gift if they didn’t gain thrice its cost in return.

After all, immortality didn’t mean invincibility — there were fates worse than death out there.

Just look at what’d happened to the pharaoh if you wanted a prime example. His people had imprisoned him in a coffin alive, buried in a tomb beneath the sands for untold millennia. Forever alone. Forever undying.

A shiver rolled down Autumn's spine.

She couldn’t imagine a much worse fate…well, she could, but it wasn’t healthy to think about that sort of thing.

Perhaps she ought to send the poor fool to meet the ferryman as a gift once she was done with him. It’d be a kindness.

She refused to believe the hag’s curse was inviolable — there had to be a way to break it.

If only she had her Tome, then she’d know for sure.

As she wandered towards the mystery mirror, Autumn stopped beside a shelf full of papyrus at random. She’d been an avid reader back home, and the scrolls had piqued her curiosity. A few of them even glowed faintly with magic.

Carefully, she plucked a non-magical scroll off the shelf and tried her best not to damage them in their advanced age as she gingerly unrolled it.

It was blank.

Autumn frowned as she looked it over front and back. The yellowed parchment was more than just blank — it was untouched by ink. Not even an indelible groove left by a quill adorned it. Another scroll plucked at random revealed the same. And another. And another.

Were they all blank? Autumn wondered as she glanced around the towering stacks. Who in their right mind would pack a library full of blank scrolls?

A creeping suspicion filled the witch’s mind.

Reaching out, she gingerly plucked another scroll from the stacks — a magical one this time. She carefully unrolled it only until she saw the barest hint of a magical sigil on the page. While not as well-versed in enchantments as compared to her other magics, Autumn had learnt enough from Edwyn to know a trap spell when she saw it.

“Rude.”

Autumn carefully placed the scroll back on to the shelf and backed off quickly, inadvertently stumbling into Nethlia in doing so. The demoness had stopped behind her as she’d been examining the scrolls.

“You found something?” Nethlia asked as she caught Autumn.

Steadying herself with an embarrassed blush, Autumn gestured back to the shelves. “Yeah, the scrolls are trapped. There are a few magical wards mixed amongst the blank scrolls. Oh, yeah, all the scrolls are fake too — there’s nothing in them,” she scowled. “Likely, as soon as you unroll one of the trap ones, it’ll detonate. I haven’t checked, obviously, but it makes sense given how rude these tomb builders were.”

Nethlia smiled slightly as Autumn ranted. “Yes, they were very rude.” Glancing over the scrolls, she hummed. “It’s a remarkably simple trap for how dangerous it is.”

“Yeah,” Autumn scowled. “If I hadn’t already been suspicious of everything, I might’ve fallen for it,” she admitted reluctantly.

“Still, I’d have preferred it if you’d told Edwyn or even Liddie and let them deal with it,” Nethlia rebuked Autumn gently. “That is their role, after all. They know how to deal with traps like this. For all you know, it might’ve triggered just by touching it.”

Autumn blushed at the admonishment. It was a fair point, but in her excitement at discovering something, she’d forgotten all about telling the others about it.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright. A lesson learned, and all that. Pity there wasn’t anything you could use,” Nethlia said.

An idea bloomed in Autumn’s mind. “Uh, well, that’s not entirely true,” she said cautiously.

“How so?”

Autumn gestured to the traps again. “Well, they’re still spell-scrolls, right? Just with, uh, tighter triggers than preferable. But I’m sure that between Edwyn and myself, we could figure something out with them. Or we could just use them as intended. You know, like magical mines or something.”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” Nethlia said, glancing skeptically at the ancient scrolls. “They look pretty old. Would that make them more or less unstable?”

“Uhh.”

Nethlia rolled her eyes as Autumn floundered. “Let Edwyn deal with it. They’ve got decades of experience over you with this sort of thing.”

“I’m not useless, you know?” Autumn pouted. “I’m pretty good with magic too!”

“You picked up magic only around a month ago, by your own admission,” Nethlia said flatly. “And while what you’ve accomplished so far is really impressive, I don’t want to see you get hurt or killed by overestimating yourself. No matter how well you can heal yourself afterwards.”

The raw emotion in Nethlia’s voice deflated Autumn. She didn’t think she’d been overestimating herself, but perhaps that was the point?

“To be honest, that I don’t think dying would stop you from healing yourself should worry me, but it doesn’t. I guess traveling with a witch studying necromancy changes your priorities, huh?” Nethlia joked.

Autumn smiled. “Possibly, but I blame the locals. Do you, um, want to check out that creepy mirror with me?” she asked, blushing slightly.

“Sure, sounds fun,” Nethlia grinned as she slipped her hand into Autumn’s own. “But I must warn you, I’m not very good with all this magic stuff.”

“That’s okay. I’ll do the magic and you can hit stuff.”

“Perfect.”

With hands entwined, the pair made their way towards the mirror.

First, they stopped in the center, where Edwyn and Pyre were busy rummaging through the workshops methodically and haphazardly, respectively, to tell them about the trapped scrolls.

Edwyn scowled at the news. “Ack, a classic wizard trap. Those booknosers wouldn’t think someone would trap their precious scrolls like that. Idiots, the lot of ‘em,” they scoffed. “Lost a few in the ruins ‘neath like that. Aye, I’ll look over ‘em later, but I doubt they’ll be o’ much use. These ol’ papers degraded fast outa the tombs, even those inscribed wit’ magic.”

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Autumn sighed. There goes that idea.

“You two find anything here we could use?” Nethlia asked.

At her question, Edwyn’s face twisted in a strange combination of elation and annoyance, settling on frustration after a moment. “Ay‘n’nae,” they scowled.

Nethlia rolled her eyes. “Could you elaborate? And in a language we can understand, please?”

Autumn choked back a laugh as the grumpy Manus snorted.

Beside her, Nethlia winked playfully.

“Well, it looks some gobshite sympathetically bound these ‘ere arcane matrice boxes,” Edwyn kicked a chest beside them, “wit’ hex-thread loops to the chamber’s causal loop rather than wit’ base penta-cords. Which would’ve been insanely stupid ifin they hadn’t also woven the runic temporal threads intae the leylines runnin’ ‘neath the tomb tae power it. Honestly, judgin’ by the state o’ the rondel sigils an’ base-seven psalms, this place oughta been shuntit across several dimensions by naw. And nae in one piece, neither. Conceptual or otherwise.”

Both Autumn and Nethlia blinked slowly as they tried to parse the runemaster’s words.

“Uh, didn’t I say to tell us in a language we could understand?” Nethlia asked.

Pyre piped up from where she was digging through the alchemical workshop, not even looking over at them. “What they said was that the reagents aren’t real and we might die any second in an implosion that’d make space and time its bitch.”

“Aren’t real?” Autumn asked while Nethlia asked “die?” with some alarm.

Pyre shrugged. “Not much we could do about it. But yeah, all these rare reagents you see,” she held up a strange orange root with some annoyed awe to Autumn, “are just condensed magic tied to the room. So if you try to take them with you, they’ll just dissipate, even as a potion or other stuff. Same with any effects if you drank one.”

“That’s…”

“Strange? Annoying? Near worthless for us?” Pyre asked. “Yeah, but guilds would still kill for this kind of setup — they’d save a fortune on training or just be able to play—er, I mean—experiment with rare or legendary ingredients to their heart’s content.”

“Or kill tae keep it tae themselves ifin they already have somethin’ similar,” Edwyn grumbled from the side.

“You’re a real ray of sunshine, aren’t ya?” Pyre rolled her eyes at them.

Before Edwyn could reply, not that she expected the taciturn Manus to snap back Pyre, Autumn interjected. “Any chance you can copy it for Pyre? Or to sell?”

Edwyn rolled their jaw and idly smoothed out their scruffy beard as they thought.

Off to the side, Pyre tried to look disinterested in the prospect of having an endless supply of rare reagents to experiment with. She failed, obviously.

“Possibly,” they eventually said. “But naw like this setup ‘ere — I doubt the council back home would let our firestarter tie her upcomin’ shop intae the leylines ‘neath the city. Still, some o’ it could be useful. I’ll sketch out what I can later. Now git! I’ve got work tae be doin’.”

Amused, Autumn shuffled away from the grouch with Nethlia, but Pyre waved her over before she could make it far.

“Problem?” she asked.

Pyre shook her head. “Nah, I just found what looks like some old recipes. The paper they’re written on is almost dust and they’re in a language I don’t know. Could you translate them for me?”

“Sure. I’ll get to it after I check out that mirror.”

“Good luck with that — it gives me the creeps,” Pyre shuddered.

With nothing left to distract her, Autumn made her way over to the tall mirror with Nethlia in tow.

She didn’t even look at the Necromancy altar as she passed it by now that she knew it was all fake stuff on it.

Autumn stood before the mirror and gazed curiously at her reflection. “Wow, we really let ourselves go, huh?” she joked.

Now that she was closer to the strange mirror that reflected not the room they were in but a changed one full of mummified corpses, she could see just what’d bothered her about it before. Rather, it reflecting a witch and demoness as they stood before it, instead they saw zombified versions of themselves on its liquid-like metallic surface.

Above the mirror lay the words — Mortuary Temple.

Nethlia didn’t seem to share Autumn’s humor as she stared disgusted at her undead self, shifting nervously as it matched her movements.

Did it say something about herself that Autumn thought she still looked good as an undead?

“What does it say?” Nethlia asked.

“Only the dead may pass beyond the veil. Only the living may return,” Autumn translated the words engraved along the mirror’s silver border for her. “I’m assuming the ‘veil’ is the mirror. Do you think it’s a doorway? Would the key be in there?”

Nethlia hummed, glancing beyond her reflection into the changed room beyond.

“Possibly.”

Autumn examined the mirror surface, almost reaching out to touch it before pulling back. “What do you think happens to something living if it tries to pass through? Think it’ll just impact a solid mirror or be killed?”

“One way to find out.” From her pack, Nethlia removed a small piece of dried meat and tossed it at the mirror. They watched fascinated as it passed through the reflective plane before withering to dust on the other side. “There, now we know.”

“How are we meant to pass through, then? You think we could trick it? Make it think we’re dead or something?” Autumn asked. She looked a little green from seeing what’d happened to the meat.

Nethlia shrugged. “Don’t ask me — I’m not really a riddle person.”

“Oh! I’ve got an idea—”

“If it involves any of us dying, then I’m preemptively saying no.”

Autumn playfully snapped her fingers in dismay. “Drat, there goes my masterful plan of strapping a healing potion to a zombie and having it pour it on one of us on the other side.”

Nethlia shook her head. “That wouldn’t have worked. You’d need something a little stronger than a healing potion to cure death, and where are you going to get a zombie? All the materials here will vanish once they leave the room, remember?”

“I was joking,” Autumn drawled.

Mulling over what to do, Autumn couldn’t seem to come up with any ideas. Not even looking at the mirror’s back revealed any clues, as it was firmly stuck to a solid wall. So even if they could remove it, there wasn’t likely a way through without the mirror.

“I could smash it?” Nethlia offered.

Autumn smiled. “Let’s leave that as a Plan B or C. Maybe Pyre or Edwyn have a solution for us?”

“It’s worth asking.”

Making their way back to the pair, Autumn recounted what she’d learned to them.

Pyre tapped her fingers on a tabletop as she thought about the problem. “Hmm, I’ve read about a potion that could mimic the effects of undeath — make it seem like you were an undead to other undead. That sort of thing. False life, I think it was called.”

“That’s great,” Autumn cheered. “Can you make it?”

“Nope,” Pyre popped the P, “never bothered to learn it. It wasn’t really a profitable potion in a city like Duskfields and required rather expensive ingredients to make. Maybe if I traveled to Oldgrave, they’d have sold well, what with their undead problems and all, but it was still an esoteric potion to learn for no good reason.”

Autumn slumped. “Great, so back to square one.”

Pyre shrugged. “Maybe there is a recipe in these old scrolls,” she said pointedly. “It is a trial, right? So there has to be a solution. That just makes sense, even if they’re trying to kill us.”

“Fair.”

Moving to Pyre’s side, Autumn fished out her notebook, inkwell, and quill. For the next hour, she dutifully translated the faded potion recipes from the ancient script into common for the younger girl.

Autumn still found it strange that she could write in a language she had no business knowing.

About halfway through her transcribing, they discovered a recipe that was close enough in effect to the False Life potion Pyre had described to Autumn that they were willing to try it. Pyre had then split off to make a batch for them using the endless chest of ingredients and reagents while she continued scribing the recipes over.

With a moment to breathe, the others set up a small camp in the center of the room and made a small lunch for themselves and those working.

Within the ending of the second hour, Autumn had transcribed all the remaining potion recipes the best she could, given their degraded state, and Pyre had completed the potions.

Autumn stood now before the mirror with a False Life potion in hand. She toasted to the others. “Well, bottoms up!”

She drank the potion.

A deep chill rolled through Autumn’s body as the potion took effect. Starting from her core, a wave of ice traveled to the top of her head and down to the tips of her fingers and toes. The blood in her veins froze over as her skin became pale and clammy.

She felt cold. Almost colder than she’d ever felt before. Only the River Styx possessed a more profound chill. Thankfully, she didn’t hear the crash of its waters upon a rocky shore.

The Autumn in the mirror now looked living rather than undead.

“How are you feeling?” Pyre asked nervously as the others watched on. “Any numbness?”

It took an effort of will on Autumn’s behalf to remember to blink. Facing Pyre, she tried to respond, but her tongue felt like a lead weight in her mouth. “Yyyesss?” she slurred. Her words came out more like a drawn out zombie-moan than anything articulate. “Woaaaah, frrrreakyyy. Braaaaiinsssss!” she moaned, shambling towards the others with outstretched arms.

Nethlia rolled her eyes as she caught Autumn’s wrists. A small smile tugged at her lips all the same.

“Good,” she said, “looks like it works. You said the effects will wear off once we’re through?”

“Should do,” Pyre shrugged as she poked Autumn. The witch blinked slowly as she barely felt it. “As long as we leave the room, it will. I don’t know if the other side of the mirror counts, but the potions wear off after roughly an hour if it doesn’t.”

“Right, drink up,” Nethlia ordered as she let Autumn go.

As the rest of the party downed their potions, they too took on deathly pale visages like Autumn had. Pyre’s flame winked out and both Liddie and Nethlia’s red skin turned an almost ivory pink. Before too long, a party of zombie-like adventurers shuffled their way slowly through the mirror, passing through their healthier-looking reflections as they did.

On the other side of the mirror, the potion’s effects wore off almost instantly, causing each adventurer to stumble slightly as they regained their bearings.

Glancing around, Autumn took in the new chamber.

Sickly green light from dancing will-o’-wisps shone down on a hall packed full of piles upon piles of mummified corpses, coffins, and canopic jars. Jackal-headed statues had replaced the elven ones of the other room, however they were no longer holding up an upper floor as this one had collapsed into rubble and dust. Gone were the magical workshops in the center of the room, replaced instead by massive stone embalming slabs stained by centuries of bloody work.

Perhaps the most shocking change from the other room was that they weren’t alone in this one.

A tall, thin man dressed in frayed and blood-stained linen robes hunched over a stone slab with his back to the party. His attire bespoke of a once religious significance degraded by age. Yellowed bones wrapped around his neck and hung off his shoulders and back like chimes.

Upon hearing them stumble over the uneven and worn stones, he turned.

Milky white eyes took in the party. Decayed flesh clung stubbornly to an elvish skull devoid of either a nose or lips. The lack of lips bared his teeth back in a permanent rictus grin. Wispy hair clung to the sides of his bald pate beneath a crown of bones.

“My, my,” the Lich rasped, his voice harsher than the desert they’d fled. “More bodies…to add…to my collection, kekekeke!”

The sinister laughter echoed through the hall, sending shivers down the adventurer’s spines. The others clutched their weapons tight as they looked to Autumn to speak with the maddened undead.

Stepping forward, she did so. “Who are you?” she asked. “And what are you doing here?”

For a moment, the Lich looked genuinely surprised. “The bodies speak? They ask…questions? Ha. HA. HAHAHA. KEKEKE,” the Lich boomed with crazed laughter. Calming, he spoke with a confused tinge to his voice. “Me? Body, you…ask who am I? Who am I? I am…I am…the Embalmer. Loyal to the pharaoh. Kekeke. For such a crime…I was…was…imprisoned. They locked me up…here…forever! Kekeke!!!”

Autumn shared a nervous glance with the others as he continued to laugh.

“How long have you been here?” she asked.

“How long, it asks? Kekeke! How long?! Kekekeke! Forever and ever and ever and ever and ever!” The Mad Embalmer broke out into a fit of giggles raspier than sandpaper. “The door…you see…I cannot pass. It only allows…the living to return…and I left that weakness behind…a long, long time ago. So…I…am…trapped. Trapped…trapped…trappedtrappedtrappedtrapped!”

“We seek a key!” Autumn yelled, interrupting the Lich’s rant. “Tell us and we’ll be out of your hair…we’ll leave you to your work in peace.”

The Lich blinked — only one of his eyelids working. “Key?” He asked, confused. “The key! You stole it from me! Took it from me! Thieves!”

Roaring in fury, the Lich stumbled away from his bloody altar and grasped a wicked-looking staff adorned with bones and humanoid skulls.

“You’ve come again to steal my bones! Steal my bodies!”

Green tendrils spilled free from the end of the Lich’s staff as he whirled it about himself. The sickly energy soaked into the piles of mummified corpses. Another tendril conjured forth, interposed itself between the party and the mirror before they could retreat, sealing them from the exit with a sickly forcefield.

Around the room, dozens of mummies staggered to their feet with green magic glowing in their eyes.

“Arise my minions! Arise and bring me their bodies! Bring me their hearts!”

Autumn turned back to her party. “I think we’re about to fight,” she offered helpfully.

“Gee, thanks Autumn. I wouldn’t have known without your input,” Liddie snarked as she unsheathed her blade.

“Enough!” Nethlia barked. “Form up and kill the necromancer.”