Mirrorworld

by Daniel Jordan

  “Whoa,” Marcus said, holding up his hands, then putting them down again when he realised that this drew attention to the scythe that he was holding. “I’m not Death! We just.. time shared.. for a while, that’s all. I’m just a man, now.”

  “Liar,” Dream sneered. “You should not have come here, Death. I can destroy you, here. Yes- I will! That is it! You were there at the beginning, and you have been here again, constant since my work began, bringing the wretched stink of death to everything – that must be it! That’s why it’s not working. I see it now. In order to win, you must be destroyed!” With a victorious smirk, Dream raised Keithus’s arms, and a flaming suit of ethereal armour exploded into existence around him, expanding his shape beyond mortality and into the terrible, unearthly form that had been Marcus’s first vision of Keithus, the awful ghost he had inherited from Eira’s dreams, now wearing the form that had inspired it. And then, for good measure, it split, as four spirit copies escaped from the wizard’s shadow and stepped forwards to block Dream from view. Each one stood twice as tall as Marcus, and they melted a path through the aisles of the theatre as they moved towards him, flaming swords springing to life in their hands and illuminating grim expressions that spoke of a determined desire to disembowel.

  “Eira!” Marcus called out, backing up.

  He’s too powerful, here.. it’s taking most of what I’ve got to go against him. But I can help you indirectly. Fight them!

  “What?” Marcus yelled. “Some help you - oh!” The blade of his scythe had begun to glow blue, and as he gave it a few experimental swings, it felt faster, sharper and more natural than ever before. He swung the blade through a nearby aisle seat, and it was cleanly sliced in two. “Got it.”

  Dream’s creatures were upon him, swinging their weapons, but Marcus moved through them fluidly, as if he himself were in a dream. Dodging the strokes of their swords, he slipped in under their weak points and sliced at them. The first one vanished with a shriek and a puff of smoke as he struck, and he slid out of the way of his next attacker’s strike in order to counter, and defeat that one as well. Dream sent more and more ghosts at him as he continued to work his way through them, dancing past with unconscious abandon, sending his foes back to dust with a sense of weighted reality that the most fearsome of illusions could do nothing to dispel. He could feel exhaustion clawing at the back of his mind, the many pains of a long day determined to have their due, but he left them there, tried not to let them slow him. And though he could feel himself weakening, he could feel also a corresponding diminution of strength in the other side; the more spectres Dream threw at him, the weaker they themselves became, their fire dimming and fading until his final two opponents were naught but shadow. He deflected a misaimed swing from one, sending it straight through the neck of the other, and stepped around to face his last foe, aware of Dream shrieking in fury behind them. The final creature raised its sword, and then its features contorted, and once again Marcus found himself facing a form he knew, as it now wore his own face.

  “I’m not falling for that again,” he informed the fake, and scythed it in two with a quick swing of his blade. The two halves exploded into nothingness, and then Marcus was alone among the debris, free to walk through the burning wreckage and climb up onto the stage, where Dream stood facing him, colourful tears flowing from his face like handkerchiefs from a magician’s sleeve.

  “Why?” Dream asked. “Why can’t I fool you?”

  “Because,” Marcus said, and paused. “Ha. I guess it’s because of this stupid Talent of mine. I thought it was just an inability to get drunk, at first, but it’s more than that. It’s an unshakeable state of mind, and it’s about time it came in useful for something. Now that I know everything.. you can’t get me with cheap parlour tricks. Well, for the most part,” he added, remembering Kendra’s face on the stairs. “Also, I had a bit of help.”

  “The dreamer.. She is strong. Wise. Your combined strengths.. I am almost overcome..” Dream took a step back. “But I will not – GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” Dream’s eyes widened as Keithus’s voice broke through from wherever it had been hidden, and the sparkling colours faded for a moment. “Damn you!” the wizard roared, as broken tears flickered away into nothingness. “Hiding in my head all this time! Part of me or not, you bow to me! This is my mind! How dare you try to usurp me? How dare you?! Stay back! You can’t come back now! The world isn’t ready for you yet! I need to help you! I don’t need your help! Look where your help has led me! Your honeyed words, your madness, you led us here! Damn you! Damn you!”

  Marcus took a step back as Keithus’s two selves continued arguing, suddenly aware that the theatre was beginning to collapse around them, and that the ground was shaking dangerously.

  Marcus, Eira said urgently in his head. Keithus is trying to take his mind back, and it’s upsetting Dream’s control! His power is the only thing holding the Mirrorline away from total destruction at this point. I can’t hold it together if Dream loses it!

  “Get out of here, Eira,” Marcus said. “Get out of here, and get everyone back to where they need to be. You can’t do any more for me.”

  What? What are you going to do?

  “Try my best to stop them both. Just go! No point you dying too, if I fail!”

  I’m still asleep!

  “Well, dream yourself awake, then! How hard can it be?”

  Oh yeah, that might work. Okay. I’m going. Against my better judgement. I’d better be seeing you later, Marcus bloody hero Chiallion. A cessation in the atmosphere told him that she’d gone, and he turned back to Keithus, or Dream, or whoever it was at the moment.

  “Raarrrghhhaahhhhrrrhhh!” The wizard fell to his knees, clutching his head in his hands. “Why did you do this, Dream? I only did my best. The Death creature tells me it was impossible. Impossible? No, it could have worked! Why did the Viaggiatori have to be right? I could have convinced them otherwise.. Why bother? The world would still end. It’s my fault. It’s my fault. It’s OUR fault.”

  “I’m not Death,” Marcus said weakly. The last of the theatre vanished, and now there was only their stage, floating though an angry abyss that was attempting to reclaim its natural chaos.

  CERTAINLY HE IS NOT, came Death’s voice. HE’D MAKE A TERRIBLE JOB OF IT. MUCK IT UP COMPLETELY. NO SENSE OF ORDER, LIKE ALL MESSY HUMANS. AND YOU, DREAM. The Reaper span into existence next to Marcus, holding a new, wicked-looking scythe. I GIVE YOU THE HONOUR OF THE TITLE YOU CLAIM, THOUGH YOU SCARCELY DESERVE IT. THESE HUMANS HAVE MATCHED, DRAINED AND DEFIED YOUR POWER. YOU HAVE LOST AT YOUR OWN GAME – SEE HOW YOU CANNOT EVEN CONTROL YOUR HOST ANYMORE. YOUR NAIVETY HAS RUINED YOU, AND JEOPARDISED THE EXISTENCE OF BOTH EARTH AND THE MIRRORWORLD. YOU ARE AN UNTEMPERED SPIRIT, NOT APPLICABLE TO TRUE REALITY, AND YOU MUST COME TO AN END.

  “NO!” Dream shrieked. “Yes! Take him!” Keithus roared.

  IF I DO, I MUST TAKE YOU, WIZARD. NOT ONLY IS IT PART OF MY AGREEMENT, BUT YOU TWO HAVE GROWN TOGETHER TO THIS END. THE HUBRIS OF POWER, AND THE MADNESS OF IMPOSSIBILITY.. NEITHER OF YOU STOOD A CHANCE. BUT IN THE END, YOU ARE EACH OTHER. YOU ARE TOO CLOSELY INTERTWINED. NEITHER OF YOU CAN EXIST ALONE.

  “NO!” Dream cried again, and tried to run, but Keithus overruled him, and took control back over his body. “Be quiet, Dream,” the wizard said, holding them in place. “Fool though I may be, this is my head before it is yours, and I can make myself listen to reason.” He stood still for a moment, and a sequence of shadows appeared to pass over his face. “I am not so insane as I would have myself believe,” he said eventually. “And I know I have done ill. I was too consumed, by anger, by vengeance, by a terrible desire to right wrongs, no matter what the cost. It was easy, when I could, to package clarity away. And, though in the end it has amounted to the same, I am myself, and if I am to end, then I will do it on my own terms. So keep quiet, Dream, and let us be.”

  JOLLY GOOD, Death said. ANY LAST WORDS?

  “Yes,” Keithus said, “but non
e for you.” He turned to Marcus. “Marcus.. my parents. What were they like?”

  Marcus hesitated. “They were good people, Keithus. I’m sure they would have loved you very much. Though I’m sure they always had their suspicions, they did their best with me. I’m sure they would have been wonderful with you.”

  Keithus smiled.

  ARE YOU READY? Death asked.

  “Almost. What happens now? Do I get to go around again?”

  IF YOU LIKE.

  “Okay. Marcus. I’m counting on you. You.. you suffered just as I did, but yet you’re here, standing against me. I couldn’t understand it before, and I still don’t, really, but you’ve proved yourself the better man. So if you would, I would ask that you honour the request of a dying madman.. don’t let anything like what happened to us happen again. The Viaggiatori.. they need to learn..”

  “I think they have,” Marcus said sadly. “But I’ll do my best. I promise.”

  “Thank you,” Keithus said, the ghost of a second smile flitting across his face.

  “Okay,” Keithus and Dream said together, “do it.”

  Death swung his scythe. The blade passed through Keithus’s body as it had before, but this time it had an effect. The wizard’s body slumped to the floor, and two spirits appeared in the air above it. One was a straight copy of Keithus’s earthly form, his spirit released from its container. The other was just a shadow, flashing through an infinite strand of colours but still recognisably Keithus’s own. Both were connected to Keithus’s body by the same thing grey cord, and though it split halfway along its length, it found its reconnection in the end, as the wizard’s spirit reached out, and his shade returned to him. A pulse of light came from them both, echoing down the grey cord, disintegrating it as Marcus watched. And, with a final smile, Keithus and his Dream faded away.

  On Earth and on the Mirrorworld, the swirling cacophony of disasters that had befallen both planets abated, vanishing with the same unexpected veracity that had marked their beginning. They left behind a damaged, shell-shocked but very definitely still standing pair of planets, linked tenuously across the swathe of dimensions. Across both worlds, sentient creatures crawled out from their hiding places, offering each other a helping hand and surveying the extent of the damage as they realised that somehow, in ways that they couldn’t fully understand, they had been spared. Of course, there would be a cost; times would be hard, and there would be no more easy dreaming, no more wonderful, inexplicable strokes of luck for those in need. All creatures would, of course, still dream, in accordance with the intrinsically infinite natural power of the imagination. But for now, they would remain confined to the world of the night, to the place where minds went when they slept.

  All around, two worlds turned towards the future.

  Epilogue

  It was a quiet day in the House of Viaggiatori. There had been a lot of quiet days lately. In some ways, it was as if the worlds and the Mirrorline had overexerted themselves with the threat of complete destruction, and so were taking some well-earned time off. No random portals had opened anywhere in the two weeks since what was rapidly becoming known as the Keithus Event, which was just as well, really. Even if the Mirrorline in general was quiet, there were still a lot of things to do.

  Eira stood staring out of her study window, whilst the kettle quietly boiled. Her view over the city was not quite as dramatic as once it had been; now, for every intact spire or impressive piece of architecture, there was a ruined, crumbling building breaking up the effect. All of these buildings were already covered in scaffold, though, and work was being done to restore them. The prevailing sound of the city over these last two weeks had been that of things being hammered. The people of Portruss weren’t about to let a small thing such as an invasion force damage their reputation of being the most cosmopolitan city in the Mirrorworld. Hell no.

  Amongst the crowds, Eira, on occasion, spotted a troll, shouldering a heavy load of wood as it moved towards a construction site. The people of the city were still wary of the stone creatures, but they understood that it had been thanks to the swift actions of the trolls, under their queen’s direction, that Portruss had gotten off relatively lightly, considering. Most of the Northlands creatures were gone; Kimberlite and her people had rounded up all of the orcs and vampires, pacified them, and marched off back to their homeland. There was talk of union between the races. It was a very exciting time. Most of the Jabberwocks had been either killed or chased away as well, although it was known that a few were still lurking in the nearby forest. The wizards were in the process of planning a series of expeditions that would serve to take care of this threat once and for all, whereas Kimberlite had volunteered some of her subjects to remain in the city, to protect and help rebuild it as a gesture of good faith. It had only gone some of the way to pacifying people’s attitudes to the creatures of the Northlands, but it was a start. Eira had high hopes for their future dealings. With a bit of work, maybe Portruss could become truly cosmopolitan, a city where any creature could make a home. Trolls bought a new, powerful workforce to the table, their natural strength and resilience allowing them to take on the most dangerous and exhausting of jobs without flinching. People had already begun to complain about the immigrants taking all the jobs, of course, but that was always going to happen.

  No doubt, there was a lot of work to be done, which was the reason why Eira was avoiding looking at her desk. In the wake of Keithus’s attack, the fragile balance of power in Portruss had been disrupted. Most of the high priests were dead, since they’d been in the Bedlam Palace when Keithus had attacked it, and most of the senior politicians had hidden when things had turned bad, and when this had come out the faith that the public had placed in them had waned somewhat. Then there were the wizards and the Viaggiatori, both of whom were shy to make any major moves, since they’d both been in some part responsible for what had happened. Somehow, though, a lot of the important work of the city had ended up on Eira’s desk, and as a result she was getting less sleep than ever. Personally, she suspected Eustace, since that was always a pretty safe bet.

  All in all, things had turned out quite well. On that fateful day, she’d stepped out of the Mirrorline at Marcus’s request, and returned to a scene of destruction that had simply.. stopped, only a few minutes later. One minute, unnatural phenomena had been laying waste to two worlds, and the next, nothing at all was happening. The damage was done, of course, but life went on. It had been a simple matter to gather up the last of Keithus’s defeated orcs and shove them back over the now-calm Mirrorline to Earth, but, try as she might, and she had tried, even in her dreams, Eira hadn’t been able to reopen a portal to where she’d been with Marcus when they’d taken on Dream. That had been a fight that Marcus hadn’t come back from. They’d succeeded in defeating their enemy; that much was clear. But what had happened to Marcus, afterwards? He was still out there, somewhere, rewarded for his hard work with the awful gift of being stuck in the Mirrorline for the rest of eternity.

  He’d go down in history, of course. Marcus Chiallion, saviour of two worlds. Until the day came when the Earth could be introduced to the concept of their twin world as a whole, only one of the worlds that he had saved would ever know, but Eira had made sure that it was known, and that he got the appreciation he deserved. The Storie had vanished from its heavily-guarded pedestal in the Viaggiatori archives; even now, someone was writing this tale into it, ensuring that future generations would always know Marcus’s story. Eira just wished that he’d been here to see it. She felt particularly guilty for having left him when he’d asked her to, because if she hadn’t, then maybe she could have bought him back. But, well, somewhere along the line Marcus had grown into the role of a hero, and he’d made it his business to ensure that she was safe before going on to save the day. What a guy.

  Eira had expected Kendra to take it pretty badly when she’d found out what had happened, especially given how broken up she’d gotten about Lit Kai, for
whom she had cared at least as much as she had for Marcus. When Eira had told her what had happened to Marcus, though, she’d simply nodded as if to say, ‘that’s fine’, and returned to her daily life, feeding the ducks in the gardens. Confused, Eira had quizzed her about it, and she’d simply said that “he’ll find a way back. I believe in him”. There wasn’t much by way of an argument to make about that, and the thought did ease Eira’s guilt somewhat, so she’d let it be, and returned to the ten thousand million things that needed doing.

  Foremost in those jobs was the reformation of the Viaggiatori. Recent events had served to spell out to the organisation at large what Eira had thought for a very long time; that they’d been doing it wrong. As it turned out, half of the council had been killed in Keithus’s attack, and so Eira had made it her business to ensure that bright-minded officials were elected to the vacant positions. Fervesce was now an official member of the council and her personal consort between herself and them, and they’d actually had several meetings over the last two weeks that hadn’t ended in shouting matches. New safety protocols were needed, she’d argued. We need to innovate. We need to share our technology. Most importantly, we need a better understanding of exactly what we’re doing. More funding to the research department was needed. Bring it out of the basement! Give them prominence! Incredibly, the council had agreed to almost everything she’d said, and Tec was already working on his new toy, a mechanised version of Lilac’s ability to identify people who had walked the Mirrorline. If recent events had taught Eira anything, it was that there was no way that she could ever account for everyone who had ever been tossed around by the Viaggiatori’s work, or by the Mirrorline’s own inherent jerkishness when it came to randomly opening portals and dumping people in the wrong worlds. Keithus had been one such soul, and that had come back to bite them. Well, maybe, with this technology, she could find and help these people, before it was too late. And that too would be easier, thanks to the new fast-travel technology that Lit Kai had pioneered, and managed to bring back to them in the end after all. That in itself would change the whole shape of the Mirrorworld.. well, once they got it working consistently, at least. It was truly a foolishly exciting time to be alive.