Chapter 6: The Hall of the Dined

Olice could not see, she felt weak, drained. She was crumbling apart. She felt something wrap around her neck, She thrashed and clawed at it. She began to draw on her heartflame, but a voice called out.

“Missstresss, sssstop it isss me”

“Gander, why can’t I see, it hurts!” Olice cried.

“Sssssh be at easssse missstresss, we are in the mimic’sss inssside, it naturally devourss what it wishess, but I am sssstrong enough to protect you, ssoon the pain will sssstop and you will ssee, but be careful missstresss, I cannot endure a mimic of thisss level for long”

“What, what do I need to do?” Olice asked aloud, still disturbed.

In the next moment however she was able to answer the question herself.

“The owner of the device!”

“I musssst concentrate on fighting the digesssstive magics, do try to not messs this up”

Slowly Olice’s vision returned, however she was quite surprised and worried, because at first she thought something was wrong with her sight.

Everything was drained of colour or at least that is how it seemed at first glance, but Olice soon made out washed out colours.

She was in a vast dining hall, strange glass cabinets filled with packets with images of food on them lined the walls. Above on the ceiling was a series of crystal rectangles, these gave off a fel flickering light and an incredibly annoying low humming noise.

The tables of the hall were quite spartan, having no ornamentation at all. At the tables were ugly sloped chairs with flimsy legs.

At the back of hall was what could only be described as a kitchen inferno. A mess of pots, pans, knives and other cooking implements floating amid washed out flames. Obscure and fat shapes bounded about in the flames. Olice wrinkled her nose at the smell of the the foul concoctions of the inferno kitchen.

The inhabitants of the grey hall were just as depressing and unnerving as the rest of it. Many were as statues, long since not only dead but drained of all magic, leaving behind a motionless form. Occasionally hunched cloaked beings would drag these less than corpses to the kitchen inferno.

The cloaks of these beings were devoid of colour, but mottled colours of skin and hair could be glimpsed from beneath their cloaks. As to what manner of being they were? Olice could not even begin to guess. It was possible that they had once been something else, all different beings, but that their survival and adaptation to the inside of the mimic had forever changed them.

Others were lurching figures, colour slowly flaking off them. These figures mindlessly ate plates of vile slop handed to them by the cloaked ones. Some other figures sat dazed and stunned, murmuring to each other over mugs of strange fragrant dark brown brew. These mugs were continually filled by the cloaked ones.

The insides of mimics vary but it isn’t uncommon for them to have their own odd ecosystems, and native denizens. Some of the more powerful mimics even have several civilizations within them, indeed while the magic of the dimension that Kigan resides in operates on the basis of magic being motion. The insides of some mimics have their own form of magic.

Thankfully Olice’s magical silvery red ribbon had not been severed, the ribbon led to one of the drinkers. It was a gaunt and haunted man, one who still had a lot of colour, Olice could have connected him to the crimson armour even if the ribbon was not connected to him.

He wore a close-fitting red body-suit with strange sockets all over it. The suit had a hood which the man didn’t have up currently. His skin was kind of bronzed and his hair was green, but it was hard to tell what the original shade of these things were. Apart from that he didn’t seem to have any odd features on his body. To Olice, he seemed to be some manner of hulf, a wolf-descendant human. He looked quite similar to the few alse that she had seen, a kind of hulf from the lost ocean, Yuikna.

This man seemed more drowsy than dazed or stunned. He wasn’t murmuring to the other drinkers and he very reluctantly raised his mug to his lips.

Olice herself had raised her own mug to her lips. Olice stared in confusion at the offending vessel in her hand. When had she been given it? The smell of was crawling into her mind. Well, it’d be wasteful to not drink it, and she was quite thirsty wasn’t she?

Olice threw the mug away in horror.

“What an insidious brew!” She exclaimed, shivering.

Olice in that moment felt pity for the beings ensnared by the brown brew, Spotting one of the cloaked ones carrying a full kettle she stomped over and quite simply kicked the kettle from its hands. Olice hadn’t intended it, but the contents spilt all over the creature. It instantly burst into flame. The cloaked one shrieked and fled back towards the kitchens, flapping around as it burned.

Then Olice tried to knock the mugs away from the drinkers, but they hissed at her and took a frightening countenance, so she retreated. She was however able to send the mug of the red suit man falling to the ground. The man stared forlornly at his spilt drink. He raised his perplexed face to look at Olice. If anything, the confusion on his face became more profound.

“My little Hiko, what are you doing here?” He asked.

Olice knew that her name wasn’t Hiko. Now, though Gander claimed she was pretty stupid, and Olice was but a child, she was fairly sharp and more than that, she had read a lot of the right stories, so she said quite a well thought out response.

“I’ve come to get you papa! You’ve been gone so long, I had to find you, come papa, we need to go home, I don’t like it here!”

Olice then tugged on the arm of the red suited man. The man seemed quite dazed and a little happy, but then a look of fury came across his face.

“Gone so long? THIS PLACE!”

He stood up, colour flashing into vibrancy as his suit lit up with glowing ruby lines. He pulled off what looked like an egg attached to his hip.

“THIS PLACE! I HATE THIS PLACE!” He roared.

Olice was quite shocked by this turn of events.

He twisted the top of the crimson egg and then lobbed it into the kitchens. Then before Olice could object he lifted her up with one hand. The other hand he held out in front of him and it throbbed red.

Meanwhile outside the mimic, in the barrow the three mimics were arguing about something completely unimportant when Shrieker seemed to twist and warp.

“Uh guys. I don’t feel too good”

It was around then that Shrieker exploded.