Light... and something else

Your eyes turn to the crystal ball, and a lump rises in your throat at the thought that maybe, just perhaps, there IS a power here of which the practical, scholarly Lord Duncan knew not; that to look upon the crystal may be your final act of free will. A sunbeam strikes the sphere and seems to set it aflame with a white glow, refracting in strange ripples of light across the room. A painfully bright flash momentarily strikes your eyes, forcing you to flinch away.

"Do not fear, my love," Corinne says in a lilting, singsong voice. "Do not resist... let the power enter into you, let it set free your heart so that it may be bound to me forever!"

You open your eyes and find a dark purple-blue bruise obscuring the center of your vision, an after-shadow from that momentary burst of Sun. It begins to recede even as Corinne draws closer, and soon the crystal is held only inches before your eyes. You look deep into its center, willing the darkened blob which blocks your sight to fade.

"I see you," she whispers. "I see you now, within the heart of the crystal! See me now, one who is my destiny!"

The dark spot begins to dissolve away at last, and there is the crystal before you... and within it, you do see the image of Corinne! But at once, you perceive that it is only a reflection. She appears in the crystal as she is before you in the flesh, turned head-down and distorted by the curved surface. It is nothing more than a trick of the light; her image is flipped and sent into your eyes by the sphere just as the beam of sunlight was a moment ago. You have seen this before, as Duncan showed you with the clear and clean ice from the high mountain streams, that light may be caught and twisted in this way... Corinne must have seen this same strange illusion, and in her madness thought it was magic.

"Yes..." Corinne moans, "I see it in your eyes, in the crystal... you can feel the power now, it penetrates to your heart, and from this moment on your heart shall belong to me - to Corinne le Fay!"