The passage past the colossus's chamber narrowed, then narrowed again, until it opened without warning into a room that made Xavier's stomach lurch simply from looking at it — walls, ceiling, and floor alike paneled entirely in old, tarnished mirrors, every surface throwing back some warped, doubled version of the two of them standing in the doorway.
"Oh, I hate this already," Stephan said, turning slowly in place, watching a dozen reflected versions of himself do the same thing a half-second out of sync.
"It's a maze," Xavier said, stepping in carefully, one hand tracing the nearest mirrored wall. Beyond the first few panels, the reflections multiplied into corridors that shouldn't have existed in a room this size, hallways folding back on themselves in ways that made his eyes hurt if he looked too long. "A real one. Bruce would know how to read this in about five seconds. We have considerably less than five seconds of relevant expertise between the two of us."
"Then we wing it," Stephan said, already striding toward the nearest reflected corridor, only to walk face-first into solid glass a step later. He staggered back, rubbing his nose, deeply offended. "Okay. New plan. We wing it, but carefully."
They tried the maze properly for a while after that — real corridors versus mirrored dead ends, indistinguishable from more than a few feet away, doubling back twice into rooms they were fairly sure they'd already been in, though neither of them could say for certain given that every room looked exactly like the last one from six different angles at once. Xavier's frustration mounted with every wrong turn, thoughts circling uselessly back to Bruce, to how much time they were burning wandering in circles while their friend was somewhere in the dark being dragged further from any hope of rescue.
"There has to be a trick to this," he muttered, pressing a hand flat against a mirror that looked, infuriatingly, identical to the one beside it. "Some pattern. Something."
He thought, with a flash of sudden inspiration he couldn't entirely explain, of the flame that lived under his skin these days. It wasn't the kind he threw at things or defended himself with. It was something quieter. A warmth he'd never quite tried to shape into anything before. It came from somewhere he didn't have a name for yet, and reaching for it now felt less like casting a spell and more like manifesting an emotion
And manifest it did.
A small ball of flame bloomed to life in the cup of his palm, no bigger than an apple, and instead of behaving like any fire he'd ever summoned before, it rounded itself into something almost bashful — two flickering points that might have been eyes, a little crackling wobble to its shape that read, unmistakably, as a shy sort of curiosity. It bobbed once, drifted an inch off his palm, and let out a soft, popping chirp that wasn't quite a word but wasn't quite nothing either.
[New Summon Unlocked: a small flame spirit has answered your call for the first time!]
"...Did you just create a friend?" Stephan said, staring.
"I have no idea what I just did," Xavier admitted, watching the little flame drift in a slow, curious circle around his head, casting warm, dancing light across the endless mirrored walls. It didn't seem inclined to go anywhere without him, orbiting close, occasionally bumping gently against his shoulder like it was checking he was still there.
"He needs a name," Stephan said immediately, with the tone of a man who had already decided this was the single most important development of the entire evening.
"We do not have time for..."
"Jeremy," Stephan said, ignoring him completely. "He's a Jeremy. Look at him. That is a Jeremy if I have ever seen one."
The little flame bobbed once, as if considering the name, and let out another small, satisfied crackle that Xavier chose to interpret as approval, mostly because arguing about it felt like a worse use of time than the maze itself. "Fine. Jeremy. Can Jeremy find us a way out of here is the actual question."
As if in answer, Jeremy drifted away from his shoulder and out toward the nearest wall — not toward the mirror directly ahead of them, but at an angle, nosing along the glass like a dog following a scent, small and bright and utterly unbothered by the dizzying repetitions surrounding him. He paused at one panel, bumped it twice, and simply passed through, the glass rippling around him like water instead of shattering.
"That's a real corridor..." Xavier said, understanding all at once. "He can feel it. I guess temperatures and atmosphere don't lie the way mirrors and reflections do."
They followed Jeremy's bobbing, cheerful light through turn after turn that would have taken them hours to solve by trial and error alone, the little wisp seeming to grow more confident with every correct choice, looping back once or twice just to nose at a dead end and confirm it was, in fact, a dead end, before continuing on with what Xavier could have sworn was smug satisfaction radiating off something that had no face to smirk with.
"I like him," Stephan announced, somewhere around the sixth turn. "Best thing that's happened to us all week."
"Low bar, currently," Xavier said, though he privately agreed, watching Jeremy chirp happily at a wall before leading them around it.
The maze spat them out, at last, into a short, unmirrored passage that ended in a set of tall double doors, ancient bronze gone green with centuries of tarnish, carved with a single sprawling motif of wings and old, looping script neither of them could read. Cold air seeped out from beneath them, carrying with it the faint, unmistakable hum of old, patient magic.
Jeremy drifted to a stop in front of the doors and went very still, flame guttering low and cautious, the first time all night he'd shown anything other than cheerful curiosity.
"Yeah," Stephan said quietly, drawing Ember. "I feel that too."
Xavier put a hand flat against the cold bronze, took one steadying breath, and pushed.
Behind him, Jeremy pressed close against his shoulder, small flame drawn in tight and low, the cheerful bobbing warmth of the last several minutes replaced by something far more watchful. Whatever instinct had guided him so easily through the maze seemed to have nothing useful to offer now, no scent of true paths or hollow reflections to follow.
The same wary stillness settled over all three of them the moment that cold, ancient air first curled out from beneath the bronze doors.