By the time Amber was finished, she was more than a little conflicted herself.  She stared at the journal resting beside her and went over the last few entries in her mind.  The first pages had bled away into a stream of thoughts Amber felt a little bad about reading since they detailed Changsun’s journey before he arrived and then well into the years he had been staying with them.  But his last entries had taken on a different tone entirely.

                With a huff, Amber flipped open the book again and swiped through pages to catch glimpses of the words within.  She didn’t know them by heart but there was more than enough to let her know Changsun had been trying to meddle with and alter spells well beyond his abilities at the time.  It wasn’t so bad at first.  Just a couple additions and substitutions of his own crafting to try and ‘improve’ the spell, as he put it, but then he started focusing on the ones her father had let them consider for future casting.  One line in particular had caught her eye and she flipped back towards the end of the entries to find it again.

                “If I can modify the shield to better reflect the energies of the casting, it will keep the power within while also strengthening the additional spells.”

                “Like a Mobian portal acting as a reflective shield,” she murmured darkly, feeling the first real tendrils of helplessness trying to seep into her heart.  Tears burned on her lashes and she wiped them away hastily with an angry growl.  For a moment, the magnitude of what she was beginning to realize they were up against overwhelmed her and she wanted to curl up on the bed and give in right there.  But her mother’s picture was looking over her and-

                Amber stopped mid-thought and frowned.  There was something that Seungho had said that made her pause.  Shutting the book with a loud snap, she jumped off the bed and immediately ran out, fully intent upon finding Seungho.  As soon as she stepped out, she realized she didn’t have to.  He was there already, lying in front of her door like a giant, apologetic cat.  At the sound of her emerging, his ears perked up and he rose halfway to his feet, twisting so that he could see her better.

                “Seungho,” Amber exhaled, fingers tightening on the book.  She was still upset with him for hiding the information from her but… she had a thought about that, now that she’d had a chance to mull things over.

                He looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to continue.  She remembered when they were younger, there had been many times they hadn’t said things to keep each other from being hurt.  More anyway.  Like when she found her writing quill snapped in two…  It was a small thing really, but it was hers and the realization had hurt.  Though one of the boys had to be responsible (her father spent most of his time in the casting hall), neither said anything to keep the other safe.  She’d found a new one on her table not that long after and it wasn’t until months later that she learned they’d both broken it in a silly scuffle she still didn’t know the reason behind, but Seungho had been the one to tell her.  She had the feeling he was doing it again too.

                Nibbling on her lip as he looked at her with unblinking eyes, Amber took a breath and finally whispered, “You were trying to protect me, weren’t you?”  He tilted his head to the side curiously, apparently unsure of what she meant.  “By not telling me about Changsun.  You were trying to protect how I would feel about him.  Right?” she asked hesitantly, shifting in place awkwardly from the topic.

                Seungho looked down and rolled his shoulders as he kneaded the ground, uncomfortable himself.  At last he nodded once and then stepped over to the wall to carve into the stone, Love him.

                Amber’s lips pressed together into a thoughtful frown and she walked over to the beast so she could place a hand on his shoulder since he wasn’t quite looking at her.  The question stirred the last conversation she’d had with Changsun and her mind shied away from the argument and the hurtful words they’d exchanged.  “I do love him,” she agreed, keeping her hand on his shoulder so he wouldn’t pull away.  “But not in the way you think.”  When Seungho looked at her in surprise, she swallowed hard and whispered, “I do not want to be what he wants me to be.  I think that’s part of why I ran away.”  Admitting it certainly didn’t make her feel any better about the argument but it finally brought it clear in her mind, even as she looked down at her feet sadly.  She could change if she tried; she had already, but it wasn’t something she wanted to do.  Not for him and certainly not for herself.

                She was surprised when Seungho shifted and she was suddenly enfolded in long arms, being held against a warm, furry, solid body.  His head pressed against hers and she resisted for a moment before she buried her face in his mane and wrapped her arms around him.  Clawed fingertips gently scratched against her skin through her clothes but Amber didn’t pull away.  She sniffed and turned her head so that she could breathe better and simply continued to hold on, feeling safe in his embrace despite the circumstances.

                “You always did give good hugs,” she finally laughed weakly, curling her fingers into the short hairs of his fur.

                He pulled away reluctantly, putting enough space between them to see each other.  When he looked at her, all confusion and uncertainty was gone, replaced by tender affection.  Amber summoned a tremulous smile as he placed a palm against her cheek.  But then he moved his hand to tap on her chest with one fingernail and she felt obliged to look down.  He surprised her by raising his hand to brush her nose with his finger and huffing at the reaction when she made a face and groaned.

                “Jerk,” Amber laughed with a more genuine sound.  Her smile broadened and she slapped his shoulder lightly in payment for the silly trick.  He simply appeared to smile at her, the expression crinkling his eyes.  “Alright!  Enough of being sappy,” she announced quickly, swiping her hair back with her free hand and taking a breath.  Seungho nodded at her once and focused, waiting for her to continue.  “I think I better understand what happened but there was something you wrote when I first asked you about it.  You said my father saw something when you were scrying through the portal.  Do you know what he saw?”

                Golden eyes narrowed in obvious thought and Seungho tapped his chin with his finger as he tried to remember.  After a moment though, he shrugged and shook his head in mute apology.

                “I don’t either, but look here,” she pointed out the line in Changsun’s journal, running her finger under it to read it aloud to him herself.  “I think the spell failed in one way, with the shield breaking, but succeeded in another as he intended,” she explained with hesitant excitement.  “There are precious few things that would hold my father’s attention so well when the spell was collapsing around you.”  Seungho’s eyes widened as he ran through the possibilities just as quickly.  “I can’t be sure, but I think he might have-” Amber stopped short, almost afraid to voice her thoughts out loud.  “I think he might have found my mother.”

                Wonderment appeared on Seungho’s face then, easy to read even through the mask of the beast.  But his excitement was almost immediately tempered and he stepped back slightly with a shake of his head, his hackles rising as the glimmer of fear appeared in his eyes.

                Alarmed by the reaction, Amber followed after him with concern on her face.  “What’s wrong?”

                Seungho merely shook his head again and looked around, frustrated he didn’t have something better to write on.  Agitatedly, he waved for Amber to follow and huffed in resignation as he immediately started walking towards the hallway door.  More than a little confused, Amber followed suit.  They bypassed a handful of villagers milling around – the Choi sisters seemed to be rather curious about the tower, as were the Lee family tailors, but no one tried to stop them.  It didn’t help that neither Amber nor Seungho could converse with them directly.  They had other things on their mind anyway.

                As soon as Seungho reached the ground where he could start writing, he fell upon the dirt and made quick scratches that formed fear filled words.  Danger.  Master changd.  Seungho stood up carefully and raised one arm to better show his side and torso to Amber.  His other hand traced a path down his side and she had to lean close to see what he was referring to.  When she saw it, Amber gasped, her hand halfway to in surprise.

                “My father did that?” she asked in horrified wonder as she eyed the long healed scars running from under his arm and down his ribs.  Seungho nodded slowly, sadness in his eyes.  “But why?” she whispered in confusion, stepping forward to trace her fingers down the lines herself.  It was no wonder she hadn’t noticed them before; they were very thin and light but they extended most of the way down his torso.  She got to where they ended on Seungho’s abdomen and realized exactly where she was with a surprised start.  To hide her flush, she kept her head ducked and stood up.  “I’m sorry.”

                For his part, Seungho simply sank back to all fours and started writing again.  Beastman.  No memry.  All anger.

                Amber covered with her hand and took a steadying breath.  “What about his room?”

                Him.  Hurt himself.  Can’t fix.  So angry.

                “But where did he go?” she breathed, placing her hand on his shoulder again.  Seungho didn’t have a chance to answer before Amber snapped her fingers and continued, “He’s in the casting hall isn’t he?!”  The beast nodded slowly after a hesitant moment.  “Through the mirror right?”

                Not safe, he wrote instead, staring at her hard.

                “But he’s my father,” Amber frowned with her hands out as if it was simple.

                Hurt me.

                “And I’m sorry about that, but I have to see him,” she pressed, carefully stepping over the writing so she could face Seungho head on.

                Hurt you.

                “No he won’t,” Amber smiled gently, willing it to be true with all her heart.

                I did, he scribbled furiously before he pointed at her mostly healed back.

                “Because you didn’t know it was me,” she reasoned, her smile slipping just a touch as she made the possible connection.  Seungho gestured at her with both hands as if to point out the obvious.  “We have to try,” she urged, her hands mirroring his as they moved in the space between them.

                Seungho growled and slammed the ground with his fist, teeth bared and tension in his entire posture.  He wasn’t looking at her but it was as clear a no as she had ever seen.  With a pained look at Amber, he got up and quickly stalked off, leaving her to grapple with her own thoughts.

                Dropping the journal and grabbing fistfuls of her hair, Amber bent her head and hissed through her teeth.  She scrunched her eyes tight and tried not to cry, the feeling creeping up on her when it felt like she was being blocked at every turn.  “I just wanted to find them and go home,” she swallowed harshly, prying open her eyelids to stare at the untouched writing on the ground.  It had seemed like such a simple if otherwise impossible task from the outside.  Easy if they could figure out how to undo what was done in the first place.

                Now that she was here, it just kept getting harder and harder.  She couldn’t cast magic.  Seungho could but in his form, he was unable to.  And if he was right, her father was just as bad, if not worse…  At least he was alive.  But that was small consolation when he was just as out of reach to her now as if he was dead.  She slid her fingers the rest of the way through her hair and turned her face up to the perpetually gray sky, taking a long breath as she gripped the back of her neck.

                She couldn’t talk to Seungho right now.  He obviously wasn’t in the mood to listen anyway.  Her only other option remained to be Auntie Park – the mayor counted but she didn’t really want to discuss her current problems with him…  Quickly, she scooped up Changsun’s journal and hurried off to find her long time confidant.  There was little privacy to be had though.  The mortar and pestle villager couldn’t write on anything other than the dirt so their conversation was open to whoever cared to listen.  While she poured her thoughts out, Amber ended up attracting the attention of most of the villagers, to her frustration.

                Focusing her attention on Auntie Park, Amber huffed, “And I just don’t know what to do anymore.  I don’t feel like I ever did.”

                By the nervous moving of the rest of the villagers and the general tension in the air, she knew they were talking but Auntie Park did a wonderful job of ignoring them as she turned her attention to Amber.  Try.  One step at a time.

                “I have been trying!” Amber whined with tears at the corners of her eyes.  “It’s not enough,” she admitted, reaching to wipe them away hastily.

                For a long moment, the other villagers continued to mill and talk and… judge if Amber had to guess, while Auntie Park remained eerily still and silent.  Eventually, the pestle moved again and Amber watched it with rapt attention.  It has to be.  For you.  For them.  For us.

                Amber hid her face behind her fists and sobbed once, feeling the weight of too much pressure and expectation crushing down on her.  Sitting on the ground, she pulled her knees to her chest and just wished she would disappear.  Changsun had lied to her about the spell; Seungho had lied to her by not telling her anything; and her father was apparently a murderous beast incapable of casting magic.  And here she was, magicless and utterly trapped in the one place she had wanted to be before she got there.

                “It really is hopeless,” she whimpered with a shaky breath, closing her eyes tight.

                She flinched when a warning growl startled them all.  Looking up, Amber saw that Seungho had returned but he was baring his fangs at the villagers with his hackles raised.  They backed away quickly, except for Auntie Park who pressed herself hard against Amber’s ankle as if to somehow protect her.  His eyes swung to Amber and the expression immediately softened when he started to come close.  Her chin trembled but she didn’t run and she didn’t flinch as he reached a careful hand out to wipe one tear away with his finger.  He crooked his fingers and motioned towards the tower in a gentle, beckoning gesture.

                “Why should I?” Amber sniffed, swallowing around her tears.  “You won’t help me and I can’t do it myself,” she spit out quickly through her teeth.

                He dropped his gaze but refused to move away.  Instead, he grabbed her hand and started to pull her to her feet.  Amber resisted for a moment but then gave in, just as curious as she was hopeless.  He nodded encouragement when she was standing beside him and then led her back into the tower.  They didn’t go to his room but rather to the study hall where several books and a couple strange pieces of broken furniture were resting on nearby tables.  Amber frowned at the items, trying to figure them out, but Seungho let her hand go and moved to one of the nearest pieces of debris.

                Pausing to make sure she was looking, he picked up the first one and showed her the claw marks on it.  She nodded, unsure, and he placed his own claws along the grooves.  They matched perfectly.  He set it down and then picked up the next piece.  Making sure he still had her attention, he showed her the marks and then put his claws in the grooves.

                Amber’s eyes widened and she inhaled with a small gasp.  The grooves were much larger and deeper than those made by Seungho.  She didn’t need him to spell it out to understand what he was getting it.  “Those are from my father, aren’t they?” she clarified anyway, her heart quailing when Seungho nodded and set the piece down.

                He straightened and made clawing motions at his body before he mimed attacking the table and then pointing at the piece her father had marred.  To add emphasis, he crooked his claws and bared his fangs at her, the action surprisingly nonaggressive, if still intimidating.

                “I understand.  He’s dangerous,” Amber murmured, her lips as she tried to figure out what his point was otherwise.  “But staying here isn’t going to help anybody,” she explained with a frown.  “And whatever else is in the casting hall, magic or not, I might be able to figure something out.  I won’t know until we try,” she implored him, fingertips resting on the table as she carefully avoided the broken pieces of wood.

                Seungho looked at her with a slightly pained expression and then nodded with a sigh.  Reaching over, he grabbed the stack of books he must have gathered, Amber certainly hadn’t, and pushed them to her.  With a glance up, he looked at her expectantly and then tapped the top book with a hesitantly encouraging nod.

                Some of them were familiar to Amber and she frowned.  “I’ve gone over these already,” she explained in confusion.  Seungho mimed opening one and reading it before raising a brow.  When she continued to eye him, he gestured towards the rest of the tower and then crossed his arms over his chest, tilting his head to the side.  “Fine,” she huffed, throwing her hands into the air in acceptance.  “It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do,” she grumbled, glaring at him once before she took the first book and opened it resolutely.

                Though Amber was right about having read the books before, she quickly realized that they now held new importance since she better understood what had happened.  She’d never considered the Mobian portal effect and how it would strengthen the spells within while also making it nearly impossible to find from the outside.  Nor had she considered what the tranation magic would do to the people inside and how it would affect the entire pocket universe as it were.

                Across from her, Seungho did his best to carefully flip through pages as well, trying hard not to rip or tear them more than they already were.  His eyesight in his current form was hardly conducive to reading though, and she caught him squinting more than once from what was likely a headache or just plain frustration.  She struggled with that herself when she read for what felt like long stretches of time.  The inevitable break was necessary and when she took one, she found herself in her room, resting her eyes with Seungho keeping watch outside her door, or in her father’s room.

                Amber didn’t try to fix or organize anything while she was there, but she did want to understand him more.  Like Seungho said, there was such anger in the destruction of his room and she had to wonder where it came from.  Had her father known then what Seungho knew now?  Or was he merely angry at being trapped in a beast’s body with no way to get home?  Blood from his claws had been ingrained into the broken furniture and stones of his walls.  His books and collections of things were utterly decimated and nothing much remained of the Jongwoon she knew.  It was a frightening thought that often enough sent her to confide in Seungho for some sort of comfort.

                His usual response was, You made me remember you.

                Pressed against his warm, supportive side, it was some small consolation indeed.  There was hope, even if it was small and flickering at almost all times.  She would have been annoyed with him for not trying to read harder when she needed time away from it, but Seungho was very good about picking out tomes that might hold information for her.  Based on a stronger understanding of the magics used, he could find the various sections that would be most helpful.

                With his subtle guidance, she was better able to infer how the magic that had gotten out of control had infused the entire pocket of space that had been pulled from her realm.  The tranation magic affected not only those immediately changed, but also living creatures like her and Seungho.  It was the naturally repairing magic of that spell that allowed for them to heal over time despite the fact that time itself did not touch them.  The magic would simply try to fix what was broken, except for the regular rooms in the tower.

                As best she could understand, they had been spatially displaced in such a way that the magic did not recognize them past the doorway, which was why the rooms continued to remain broken.  That didn’t explain the casting hall mirror though, unless it was a byproduct of being magical itself.  Or, more probably, Amber suspected it currently had additional portal tendencies that had likely bled over from the original casting.  At the least, she was nearly certain it was some kind of doorway, but unlocking it would be the question.

                And that certainly didn’t help her understand why her father and Seungho had been transformed too, though he tried to give her what information he could to help her figure it out.  They had been at the heart of the breakdown which could have been part of the issue; the shield failure that didn’t keep any of them safe.  But why turn them into monstrous creatures instead of objects like the other villagers?  Then again, the nature of the spell itself had been changed to suit a very unusual purpose which might have also accounted for the irregularity.  Perhaps by the time it reached the villagers, the strength of the rampant energy had simply been reduced.  It was always harder to change an object – or people – into a different living thing after all.

                From what she knew and what Seungho was able to tell her, the tranation spell had been performed on one of the glass bowls her father kept for scrying purposes.  They’d filled it with water and then turned it into another magical mirror for added potency in the original casting.  Amber believed that because of the surge in power and the resultant backlash, the transformed mirror had taken on new life, giving birth to the energy entity that had nearly grabbed her when she had entered the room.  And she was almost certain one of the mirrors was responsible for the self-contained reflective properties of the pocket space they currently existed in.

                It was no wonder she and Changsun hadn’t been able to locate them at all.  Or anyone for that matter.  Without a crack in the ‘mirror’ and no ability to recognize it for what it was, none of them would have realized what they were looking for.  While that discovery didn’t help her exactly, it did give Amber hope.  She laughed breathlessly and then glanced at Seungho who was essentially staring at her while she studied.  “Even if we can’t cast magic, if we can disrupt the spell even a little bit, we can create a crack in the casting.  It won’t be much but if anyone is still looking for us, they should be able to find it.  They could find us,” she beamed, reaching across the table to grab Seungho’s hand in hers.

                There was such content pride in his eyes when he met her gaze that Amber flushed under his approval.  Her smile widened even more until her cheeks hurt from the expression, and she laughed again, grabbing his hand with both of hers.  He mirrored her response and nodded in understanding.

                “Thank you,” she murmured, searching his face as he looked back at her in such a way that made Amber feel special and warm.  After the up and down adventure they’d been on recently, she could have stayed in the moment of warmth and security for a lifetime.  But…

                Seungho’s ears suddenly twitched and a look Amber could only describe as sheer panic flashed across his face.  She felt it almost as soon as he pulled away: the buzzing of magic crawling over her skin, making her hair stand on end.  Her necklace warmed to an uncomfortable degree and she flinched.

                “The mirror!” Amber gasped as she immediately jumped up from her seat to follow after him.  Seungho was already across the study hall and to the door before she had taken more than two steps.  “Wait!” she cried out, torn between fear and excitement.  Even though he had warned her about what was on the other side, it was also exactly who and what she wanted to see.  Never mind how he might have changed, Jongwoon in any form was still her father.

                Pounding hard over the wooden floor, Amber launched herself through the doorway and ran into the door on the other side.  The impact nearly knocked her breath away but she shoved off with a determined grunt and pelted after Seungho who had already disappeared around the corner.  She only managed to catch a glimpse of his tail before it too disappeared.  Claws scrabbled on the floor when he continued sprinting and Amber growled under her breath to try and keep up.

                Cutting the corner too close, she jarred her shoulder and slammed the other into the opposite wall but was able to keep her momentum going.  There was no sign of Seungho this time and she tried the next corner, passing by the door to her room without a second glance.  She heard Seungho growl around the corner and Amber hurled herself ahead again, blinking in confused surprise when the wrong door was open.  Pelting along, she turned right into the inner set of hallways and stopped when Seungho yowled in pain before he was silenced with a heavy thud.

                Amber stared at the corner with wide eyes, feeling every part of her body hum in response to some sort of building power.  “Go,” she gasped, lurching forward through her fear to check around the bend.  “Seungho!” Amber cried, immediately noticing him crumpled on the ground just across from the doorway to the trapdoor room.  He was unconscious but he seemed otherwise unharmed.  Amber ran up to check for herself but just as she knelt to make sure, a flash of light in the corner of her eye caught her attention, drawing her gaze into the center room.

                The casting hall mirror was flush against the left wall as if it belonged with the other two doors present.  It glowed brilliantly for a few beats more and then subsided, taking with it the overwhelming sense of magic that threatened to drown her.  Amber’s necklace fell dormant and she took a trembling breath as she watched to see if something else was going to happen.  When nothing did, she her lips, glanced back at Seungho to confirm he was still breathing, and stood up.

                While Amber didn’t know what had changed about it, she knew it was time to find out.

(a/n: This is not exactly where I wanted to end it but going on would have added a fair bit more to an already long chapter but I will do my best to get the next update out as soon as I can.  This one should have an abundance of answers and I do hope you've enjoyed how things are continuing to develop between Amber and Seungho.  ^_^  They are certainly interesting to play off each other.  And personally I'm excited for the next update.  ;)  Woohoo!  But thank you to all my readers and especially my commenters.  You all make my day!  Just sit tight for the next chapter and we'll see where this goes!)