^Is this the place, brother?^
^It would appear to be so, brother. It’s the only place here that has these strange glass orchids.^
^Of course.^
Several feet outside of the [Garden of Reflective Orchids], a pair of warriors that looked strikingly similar to one another had just arrived to its entrance.
Dressed in matching outfits of pink and black, these two were known as the Peony Brothers, and they had a...certain reputation.
A reputation that led them to be banished from the Umbral Spider Contient, and was too grueso to describe but could be sumd up in a single word: perfu.
^Well I’ll be blessed. It’s a garden of flowers and a whole bunch of orchids. I wonder how sweet they’ll sll when I pluck them?,^ one of the Peony Brothers asked the other.
^Never as sweet until we process them, brother.^
^Of course, of course...now, should we try to ambush them to have their scent be filled with dread, or hostage one of them to have their scent be filled with fear and a touch of hope?^
^Well, seeing as there is a pretty little flower from our holand, I say we do the latter. It has been quite so ti since we made it the old-fashioned way.^
^Indeed, brother.^
...Now inside of the garden...
"Huh...is it just , or does this thing look and feel really weird?" Alice asked her friends.
"Nope. It’s not just you," Alicia answered.
"It’s clearly powerful," Bellona noted. "But I can’t for the life of figure out the why and what."
"Mister Zako, are you okay?" Harriet asked the wooden zako who was plucking glass shards from his exterior.
"Grrr."
"Of course! Let grab so tweezers first..."
When the girls of Rainbow Phoenix decided to send the wooden zako to open the treasure chest, they had assud one of three things were going to happen.
The first possibility was that the chest was actually a monster of so kind, and the mont anyone tried to open it, it would suddenly transform and try to eat whover was dumb enough to open its maw. They figured sending the zako would be enough for the beast to break its jaw trying to eat him.
The second possibility was that the chest was incredibly booby trapped. While they weren’t sure of the nature of the trap, they figured that the zako would be able to tank it.
It’s innate [Chaos] would cancel out any aether-related issues, while the fact that he was mostly made of wood and would be able to handle any physically damaging traps.
The last possibility was that there was nothing wrong with the chest and they were overthinking the danger due to hanging around Zhen Liu so often. However, it was always better to be safe than sorry.
Thus, when the mont of truth ca and the zako opened the chest, the girls felt mildly vindicated as they watched the zako get perforated with a whole ss of aether-empowered glass shards.
If any of them had opened it instead, they wouldn’t have died thanks to their cultivation, but they would definitely be left bleeding on the ground and in pain.
After all of that trouble though, the girls managed to extract from the strange obsidian chest a nice and shiny mirror.
It was a very strange-looking mirror, though.
It was a rectangular piece of glass, as was the style of the Dozing Salamander continent, but the decorations around it and the glass itself were... odd.
The fra itself was made of a mix of silver and gold; it was decorated in such a way that it resembled flowers being placed against pockmarked skin. As for the glass itself, it was a strangely red color. Not enough to make it unreflective, but red enough that it added this strange tint to everything reflected on its surface.
On top of all that, though, was this strange aether surrounding it.
It didn’t feel like a curse, but it didn’t feel like it was a good thing either.
Whatever energy was concentrated inside this mirror, Alice, Alicia, Bellona, and Harriet had the feeling that they wouldn’t be able to get any clear-cut information about it unless they took it to an appraiser... or borrowed the brain power of a certain shared individual of interest.
Speaking of...
"Hey, Alice?"
"What’s up, Alicia?"
"I didn’t get a chance to actually ask about this because things have been rather hectic. But what do you actually think about Xiao Liu, now that you actually t him?," Alicia asked.
Bellona would’ve chid in on this question as well, but she was busy looking over the weird mirror that was releasing a potent aura before...and also spinning her chakram for so reason.
Evidently, this question threw Alice for a bit of a loop, but she was still able to retort with her own question.
"Is this from a place of being worried about stealing his heart or sothing else entirely?" Alice reversed in a cheeky tone, only to get caught off guard with a surprisingly level-headed response.
"If I was worried about that kind of thing, I’d have broken off my engagent with him after learning he had a childhood sweetheart turned lost royal, the mont Bellona showed up or around the ti Jinju Ren declared he was to be her husband," Alicia answered.
"Who?"
"Oh, you’ll get along great with her, but that’s a future discussion," Alicia moved along. "Right now, we’re talking about you."
"Ah, well...you know how when arranged marriages are done and they usually send portraits to try and give a clear idea on how the other looks, but when the eting finally happens, you get mildly disappointed that they’re not as good as their picture?"
"Yeah."
"eting Zhen Liu was kind of like that," Alice honestly answered. "When I heard he was the creator of a whole army of monstrous warriors, I imagined him a bit taller and the warriors to be more-"
"Oof!"
"Sorry!" Harriet apologized as she pulled out a piece of glass the size of a salmon fillet from the zako’s chest.
"-more ruthless and less codic."
"Ah, I get that, but I think that’s part of the charm," Alicia responded while channeling into a pouch full of screws on her hip. "Imagine if that power was being used by soone even more ruthless and hateful. Like, say...a bastard trying to take my friend hostage! [Screw Shot!]"
BAM!
^Gah!^
"Mon deux!"
"What the fuck?!"
Before Alice could fully process Alicia’s words, Alicia had suddenly acted and launched an aether-empowered screw towards Harriet and the zako’s direction.
In the seconds before she would actually impale the forr’s head, the zako suddenly grabbed Harriet and dove to the ground in order to give Alicia a clear shot at an invisible pink bastard that was about to take Harriet hostage.
Her screw didn’t piece due to the warrior managing to pull off a last-minute barrier, but he did get a bloody nose for his trouble.
And she wasn’t the only one to notice that there were hostiles in the area.
[Dream Cutter!]
^Bitch!^
While Bellona was in the middle of examining the mirror, another invisible warrior that looked similar to the one that just got nailed with a screw attempted to sneak up behind her.
Unfortunately for him, Bellona had noticed his approach and struck out with her chakram before he could get close.
The price for this failure was a long and bloody gash that appears across this chest.
After this exchange of blows, the twin warriors that had failed their sneak attack have moved over to one side, while the girls who had just foiled this aforentioned attack have moved to the other.
Things were starting to look like a proper showdown now.
^How the hell did you notice ?", the warrior with the bloody nose asked.
^How the hell did you notice the both of us?^ the other warrior added while using a bit of aether to seal up his wound. ^Our stealth skills are flawless!^
In response to these questions, Alicia and Bellona both let out puffs of air in disgust.
^Like we’d tell you,^ Alicia retorted in perfect Scorch Talk.
^Indeed,^ Bellona added. ^You want to know, you can pry it from our cold dead mouths.^
In response to this obvious provocation, the twin warriors looked at each other for a brief mont before bringing their attention back to the won in front of them.
^Gladly! [Regalia, on!]^ the twins said in unison.
As their auras collided and rged with one another, giant peonies manifested around the duo before turning into armor.
Once fully equipped, the twins decided to identify themselves.
^We are the Peony Brothers!^
^And we’re going to enjoy turning you all into our latest scents.^
...anwhile...
As blood pooled on the ground beneath the glass orchids, sothing strange began to occur.
The earth began to swallow the blood greedily, like a dehydrated man before an oasis.
And the flower roots beneath began to shift in weird ways...
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