Arthur Otley and the Order of the Arthropods

174
Mirror mirror on the walls
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You and Aaron decide to investigate the nearest stone staircase. From the bottom all you can see is that it winds up to some shadowy and little visited part of the school.

At the top of the stone stairs, you encounter a passageway lined with suits of armour. The empty helmets are turned in your direction and twist to follow you and Aaron as you walk past. Even though you know they are just regular suits of enchanted magical armour the effect is rather creepy.

At the end of the corridor there is a single door which swings open on silent hinges at your touch.

The room inside is small, dark and bare - but not quite empty.

Next to one wall there is a mirror, with the words above it 'Look at me if you dare, you will see your soul laid bare'.

Opposite, against another wall there's another mirror. Above this one it says 'Stare at me and you will see, what you want to come to be.'

Aaron relaxes. "I know what these are! They're mirrors of desire. They show you what you most want in your whole life, maybe even something you didn't even realise. My mum's got one of those in the downstairs toilet."

"That's amazing!" you breathe, and step up in front of one of the mirrors nervously.

You look at your reflection in the mirror and see...

...a taller, more handsome version of yourself. You are festooned with gold medals from the Olympics, and people keep approaching you from the side of the mirror to take your photo. Your hair is styled into a quiff and you are grinning with a fine set of bright white teeth.

"Wow look at me, I look so cool!"

Then you catch the reflection of the mirror behind you in the mirror in front of you - the reflection of the reflection.

In that reflection you are quietly reading a book sitting on a comfortable armchair with a fluffy dog at your feet.

"That's funny," you say. "The reflection of my reflection in the mirror behind me doesn't look cool at all..."

Then it dawns on you.

That gold medal champion version of yourself doesn't want all that fame and attention, he's tired of it - I would be tired of it. What you are seeing is the cool version of you's most earnest desire - which is for a quiet life, reading a book, with just a faithful dog as a companion.

You angle your head to catch more reflections of reflections and see the images of yourself curve away into infinity.

With each reflection's reflection the cool version of yourself is just that little bit less cool and the quiet version of yourself becomes a little bit less quiet. Far into the depths of the mirrors you can just make out an Arthur just like yourself, waving back at you.

You shake your head, confused, and tell Aaron what you saw.

"That's it!" he says. "Don't you see? The person you really want to be, when you get right down to it, is yourself."

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1. Pondering the profound implications of this idea, you and Aaron leave the room of the mirrors, walk back along the corridor past the suits of armour, down the winding stone staircase to end up back where you started, at the centre of the school ~ Go to number 76