The Monster in the Mirrors

Castelilise had a fairly typical morning for the nereid. She woke up, got breakfast, masturbated like crazy because even she could see that Felix needed a break, at least before his big night, and otherwise swam around, spying on people. The knowledge she had about the master made her want to know as much as she could about the rest of the harem, and the canal system in the bunker gave her a way of doing so that most wouldn't notice. After all, she could be very sneaky when she wanted to be underwater, and could peak out of water, or dive back into it, before anyone could notice she was there.

It was during that time, before lunch while she was swimming around, that Castelilise was contacted by the demon. The nereid was underwater when she saw the demon teleport to the edge of the canal, and look down into the water at her.

"So, Castelilise, I was planning to have a BP event later today, however," The demon said while crouching down to talk to Castelilise in the canal. "I wasn't able to modify the room it starts in for you properly. This was a major error on my part, so besides pleading for your forgiveness, I must ask you to meet up with someone who acts as an occasional assistant to help setup something for later today."

"Wait, who is this person?" Castelilise asked, her voice filled with suspicion. "Why haven't I seen them around?"

"You wouldn't be able to," The demon said. "Unless they want to be seen, they are invisible, silent, and in general impossible to perceive. I wouldn't worry about it, they can't really affect the world when they're invisible like that, only observe it."

It was with that answer Castelilise for the first time understood again what it was like to be scared to be naked. To be exposed to the eyes of a stranger. She wasn't terrified, but it did bother her to know that someone had been watching that she couldn't see, and that experience was oddly educational now. It made her realize how much her transformation had radically altered her sense of shame, decency, and all the rest. That realization crushed any rising fear she had, and reminded her of why she loved being a nereid so much.

"Alright, where I do I meet them?" Castelilise asked, her usual carefree attitude having returned. She wasn't going to let this assistant, whoever they were, get under her skin...

Felix lazed around, and eventually fell into a nap, although he didn't realize he had drifted off until Cammy woke him up for lunch. He felt better, but still, the double whammy of anal sex, weights, and other exhausting things that happened the prior night had all come to a head. Vizrokoth's intervention hadn't failed, but he still put an arm around Cammy as she lead him to the mess hall.

On the way there, Felix filled her in on everything that had happened last night. All the anal sex that had happened, the way he had been **** to cum multiple times, how much he enjoyed every second of it, and all the while, how Nox had been **** to watch masturbating. It was when they got to the mess hall, he asked for Cammy's forgiveness, and got a double meat cheeseburger. He assumed various energy consuming shenanigans were going to be on the way soon, and wanted to be ready for that.

It was while eating and settling in, with Cammy's gentle teasing about him having rough sex, that the demon teleported in. She was there to make an announcement, and it was then that Felix remembered Wednesday was the day they had BP competitions. Judging by how intense the last one was, this was going to be a long, stressful day for everyone involved.

"With all of you here, an announcement," Vizrokoth said to everyone assembled in the mess hall. "For those who want additional BP, there will be a game of hide and seek in the Mirror Maze. Nox will be very familiar with this room for how they showed up here, as will Z given they once had all of Nox's memories."

That caused Z roll her eyes while Nox got a scared look on her face. Most of the time when Felix had seen the goblin, she looked humiliated or otherwise distressed because of how much her life had been systematically taken over by Z, and by how much they had been emasculated by their transformation. But other than the fear of angering the oni, he hadn't seen the goblin scared before.

"Whoever lasts the longest wins, and goes home with a suitable BP prize," Vizrokoth continued. "Everyone who is caught before them will be sent to one of two BP challenges, depending on whether they are more scared of **** or more scared of doing a show of sexual nature. Do note that dyads will both need to attend the same BP event, and the dominant one in the dyad determines which one they do. Finally, all of this starts at 1:00 sharp. Any questions?"

"Whose chasing us?" Jamina asked. "Is it... you?"

The demon smiled before saying, "Yes, but I won't cheat. I'll be in a form that doesn't have access to the knowledge I have as a host, and one that Nox in particular has a lot of experience with."

That caused Nox to look terrified than at any point Felix had seen her, either as a goblin or as a human. What had happened? Felix was often out of the loop, but whatever had happened seemed rather important. Before he could ask about it though, Vizrokoth ended the time for questions.

"Alright, Z, why don't you lead the group there?" Vizrokoth asked. "You'll remember, and unlike Nox, you won't try to avoid it out of cowardice."

The oni almost rolled her eyes as she grabbed Nox, and dragged the goblin out of the room. She was soon followed by almost everyone else except Cammy who looked suspiciously at Vizrokoth.

"You should follow them, as you won't get to be in the popularity poll... well, not until more people graduate anyway," Vizrokoth said while she put an arm around Felix. "Don't worry, I'm just going to take your boyfriend to a place that will allow him to better judge a contest that we'll be holding quite soon..."

Z wasn't looking forward to this. Her memory of Nox's memory of the mirror maze was a confusing mess, but what she did know was that she preferred not to be the one in charge of navigation on missions. In her time as a mercenary, she always made sure that on any mission requiring recon, someone else took point, and she would just escort them. In rescue missions or **** missions, either someone else knew where the VIP to be taken was, and it was her role to be a big violent distraction for everyone else. Regardless, navigating an environment she hadn't been before was often difficult. She could thrive out in the wilderness, but knowing the land was a different process than knowing how to use a map, or knowing geography. One only required the oni to embrace the **** she was so innately good at, the other required patience...

The last thought entered her mind as she lead all the others to the mirror maze, with Cammy catching up behind them in a hurry. As much as Z hated to admit it, there were areas she was undisciplined like the foolish boy that goblin used to be. Unlike him she could withstand pain, and that was often the main requirement to learning ****, but boredom? That was something neither of them could deal with. And as she prepared to enter a maze, she recalled all the times she had to blow her way out of building in a unplanned for way because she had gotten separated from her guide, so became lost in maze of hallways, rooms full of electronics she didn't understand the purpose of, and so on. It made her employers furious, but the oni had never been penalized because she was just too valuable of an asset, and she could always claim it was someone else's fault.

Once in the mirror maze, Z focused back on the present. She was with the others in front of a mirror maze, and one that already looked headache inducing. The other contestants formed around her, and waited for the demon, or someone to show up to give instructions. Were they just meant to get through the mirror maze? Or was there something else?

The demon then teleported in. "Excellent, you're all here. Well, everyone that can walk on land anyway."

The group didn't respond to that, other than an acknowledgement of why the nereid wouldn't be with them. They were all here to get BP, which Z especially needed because the goblin's training was taking too long. If this goblin was going to graduate in the time they had left, then Nox needed to make progress much, much faster. She could fight, but the lack of formal training wasn't something she could alleviate in the space of a couple of weeks, no matter how much the oni's pedagogy had improved.

"We're going to be playing a childhood favorite game: Hide and Seek," the demon announced. "I will be changing into a form that only Z and Nox know about. Once I have done so, I will look for all of you in this room. You cannot leave this room until I have caught you, however, the longer you can prevent me from catching you, the more BP you will get in this initial competition."

"Initial competition?" Cammy asked.

"There are two additional competitions, but you can only go to one of them," the demon said. "Which one you go to is dependent on your attributes. One is a contest of nerves, the other is a contest of... other things."

Z got the distinct impression the demon was covering up for something she didn't know. The oni recognized the evasiveness of someone who lacked knowledge of something but wanted to pretend they had it. She had seen it many times in handlers who sent them out on missions without critical information.

"Now, any other questions?" The demon asked.

"How long do we have before you start going after us?" Noah asked. "Hide and seek, after all, usually has a countdown."

"I will start transforming," the demon said. "I suggest you all scurry away when that happens."

After waiting a moment for additional questions that never came, the demon suddenly started to grow taller and thinner. When that happened, the door to the mirror maze slammed shut, and everyone knew it was time to scurry off to hide...

Kei Winters and Jamina were not the best at hiding, or at least, not from eyesight. One of them knew quite about hiding other things of course. They both stood out, and crawling into tight spaces to hide from the space of others wasn't exactly an effective strategy when you were as stacked as Kei. Besides, neither were ready for the mirror maze. They knew nothing about the monster chasing them, had no time to ask anyone about it, and while both were fortunate to be in athletic gear, this was not a contest that could be won through mere speed.

Still, they ran as far as they could, looking for a corner to hide in, or just some place that wasn't surrounded by mirrors. Before she knew it, Kei Winters had been separated from Jamina, because one of them took a wrong turn, and got lost in the mind boggling number of turns, double backs, and just confusing layout of this gigantic mirror maze. She couldn't get her bearings, and worried about what that meant for the competition, although to be fair, the knowledge that she was going to be chased at some point complicated things a bit. It prevented her from stopping and thinking through where she was, or doing things to mark where she had been.

It was with that thought Kei Winters tried to slow down, and really think about where she was trying to go. Everything around her was either a concrete floor, or a mirrored wall. Looking up didn't help, that was just a concrete ceiling with electrical lighting. She could at least see Janessa, but that wasn't very helpful to figuring where she was in relationship to... anything. Where did this maze go?

Before she could think further on that, a scream erupted that Kei Winters knew came from Jamina. Rather than bolting, she tried to listen, and think about where it came from. When she heard Cammy scream, she realized that however sound traveled in this room made it difficult at best to determine even the direction the sound came from, much less where the sound originated. Before could think further on any of this, she felt a glass hand touch her shoulder, and before she could react, another clutched over her mouth, then dragged her into the mirror...

Janessa's first instinct as an angel was to fly, and did so once she had gotten into the maze with any significant depth. However, she soon realized her error, which was that there wasn't much to hide behind, between, or otherwise with up there. Most of it was lighting built into the ceiling, or just more reinforced concrete. Looking down, she saw the mirror maze was... a mess. She couldn't even figure out how one was supposed to exit the mirror maze once they were in it, and the angel had the advantage of looking down on it from above, how was anyone supposed to navigate it at the ground level?

It was hovering above it all that the angel caught glimpses of the monster that was searching for them. When Janessa realized it was a figure in the mirrors, such as when it grabbed Jamina, and then shortly afterwards Cammy, she had an idea. What if instead of trying to hide from the gaze of whatever was chasing them, she just stayed out of its reach? There were no reflective surfaces up here, so if she could just glide around above the mess below her, she could potentially outlast whatever was chasing them.

That logic worked at first. Janessa watched as Noah, who had tried oozing her on top of the maze to escape the demon's gaze, got caught. What a foolish slime girl to keep trying the strategy when she should've realized much quicker that her slime was running all over the mirrors below her. A similar fate befell the oni, who had tried using **** to create her own path through the maze, but it ultimately only made her easier to find for the mirror monster looking for her. The angel felt confident, as she was one of the only two contestants left.

But then the monster came out of the mirrors, and revealed itself to be very tall. The angel estimated it was at least ten feet tall, and to Janessa's horror, could run. As the figure made of reflective surfaces ran towards where the angel was, more details about it came into view. It was shaped like a figurine from an art class, with no clear eyes, ears, or similar. This made it very hard to determine when it was looking at someone, or something, at any particular point. However, it still wasn't tall enough to reach someone flying near the ceiling, given the height of the room.

However, the creature stuck its hand through a nearby mirror, and then Janessa felt that hand grab one of her legs. Turning around, the angel saw that there were also mirrors wedged between the ceiling lights, but that she hadn't seen before because of how bright those lights were. She thought about trying to use a hammer that she been training with recently, but before she could try to deploy any of her angelic weapons, Janessa was pulled into the mirror...

Nox and Z early on realized what the problem was. When everything was surrounded by reflective surfaces, in the form of mirrors, there nowhere to hide. Worse, the maze was designed to confuse and cause panic because everywhere looked the same. How they chose to respond to that problem though was rather different for each of them.

The oni chose to smash the nearest mirror, and try to create her own path. Unlike when Nox tried it as a human, she was able to get it to work, but it didn't do much to reduce the confusion of the maze. It was then that the goblin tried her own strategy by sneaking behind the oni's warpath. The giant holes in the mirror walls were the only places that didn't have a bunch of reflections, and it was enough that when the terrifying figure made of reflective surfaces came back... it didn't see her. It couldn't see her wedged in the space where mirror walls used to reside, and that Z had created by smashing them apart.

Then the creature got distracted by something above it, and ran off. Nox realized she might just do well, but when she saw the mirrors reforming themselves, knew she had to change position. It was too likely she could get crushed between the walls, and while she doubted Harem Hotel would let her die, she didn't want to know what would happen here if she almost died.

Once out of the walls, Nox was back in the position that everyone else had been in. How do you hide in a room full of reflective surfaces, and where trying to even figure out where you were in relation to anything else was often a nightmare? Still, the goblin tried her best by sneaking through the maze, looking for an alternative to her current position. Perhaps someone else had damaged a mirror in a way it hadn't fixed itself from, or there was an end to this accursed maze somewhere. But then she felt a glass hand on her shoulder, and knew it was all over...