All for jumped at the sudden crash from the bathroom. The sound of breaking glass startling all of them more than it should have after the unsettling diary.
John was the first to recover and take point, moving up to the door as quietly as he could manage in his armor. The others followed, each moving as quietly as possible. Tabatha went first, creeping up to the door and opening it slowly to pear inside. At first nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but then she spotted the mirror that had been over the sink. Or rather what remained of it. Shattered into hundreds of pieces the reflective surface now lay scattered across the floor.
"Such a shame," she muttered after they'd checked the room and confirmed there was no one else inside, "You rarely see such good quality work like this these days."
"I'm more concerned about how it broke," John muttered as he carefully picked up a shard of the mirror, "Glass just doesn't break on it's own. And there's nothing in here to indicate what broke it."
A search of the room revealed no other indication of what might have broken the mirror.
As John bent down to examine the shards again though he was met with a sudden shock. All the reflections of him in every tiny piece of the mirror suddenly leapt up and out out of the glass. In moments there were easily two dozen miniature versions of John standing among them.
"Great, as if one wasn't bad enough..." Tabitha muttered seeing the numerous tiny dragons look up at the four adventurers. "What are they anyway?"
Mark grabbed one of the smaller doubles of John and held it close as the tiny dragon wiggled in his hand, "I'm not sure. They;'re definitely magical in nature..."
"No, really?" Tabitha replied laying on the sarcasm by the bucket.
"...but the magic in them is fractured," Marty continued unhindered, "Like they were supposed to be part of something bigger, but when the mirror broke the spell was shattered as well."
"What does that mean?" Cassy asked curiously as she examined the tiny doubles of John.
"Magic can only function when the spell is fully formed, that's why most spells have a beginning command and an end command phrase. Without those the energy accumulated dissipates harmlessly. Some wizards have found workarounds for that, combining both the opening and closing phrase into the start of a spell so the energy cannot be dissipated and the spell might be continued. The danger with that though is a spell that cannot be dissipated is incredibly unstable if incomplete. Anything that activates the magic could do any number of things that were not intended but could be derived from the original spell.
"Imagine it like this," Marty mused, "Say I wanted to turn a feral cat into a feral horse. I need to establish in the spell every part of the cats body and every part of the horses body and link them via the change in the spell. If the spell was shattered with the combination command phrase at the beginning, then the spell would effect everything it touched in pieces. So a passer by might suddenly have his legs shift to those of a cat, or grow horses ears. A really bad fracture might even do worse by having things like the cats tail replace his arm or swap his tongue with the horses di-"
"THANK YOU!" John growled, "We get the idea!"
"Sorry," Marty apologized, "My point is that these little copies are all fragmented pieces of the spell. They're incomplete, only parts of it. The effect of the spell must have been centered on johns reflection when he was in here earlier, but before it could fully activate the mirror broke. Now the pieces of the spell have formed as best they could into him."
"So what do we do with them?" Cassy asked, as she looked over the tiny doubles simply standing around looking confused.
"We'll have to take them with us," Marty sighed, "It's too dangerous leaving fractured spells like this lying around." Selecting a handful of Johns doubles Marty slipped them into his bag. "Everyone take a few of them, we can't risk putting them all in the same bag or they might recombine in such a small place."
"And what would that do?" Tabitha asked as she scooped up a couple fist sized dragons.
"I'm not certain," Marty replied as John and Carry split the remainder, "But as long as they're kept apart for now any dangers should be minimal dealing with them.
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