Blood courses and ruptures from the spot that their boss used to stand, spraying like a starburst across the tables, alcohol-glasses, grilled meat, the spoons, the chopsticks, the faces and suits of his Jopok compatriots.
I am holding my silver arm out, my left forearm; my bloodied right hand flat against it, which I used to erase him from existence. I need not look at the reflection myself; as long as the reflection exists, and I can imagine and will my action in my head, the mirror can manifest its prowess.
A lake of squelching and bubbling blood remains on the spot, not even shards of bone; it begins to descend the raised platform in viscous rivulets from where their boss used to dine.
No Jopok can utter a single word. Only raspy breaths, the stutterings of those who witnessed a scene of abject terror above their own.
A hundred pairs of eyes slowly fix upon my bruised, weathered figure, the girl with unkempt hair and bangs covering her eyes, the girl with the cylinder of eyes at her feet.
A corner of my mouth turns up in a subtle smile.
At once the hundred-and-four Jopok men return to their senses.
The cacophony is immediate; the hall is thrown into a firework of noise. A steady heartbeat which only I can hear thrums the hall, thrums like a rhythm and melody of battle.
"SHIBAL-SSAEKKI!" The head Jopok from aboveground hollers at me, coming at me from behind with a wild swing of his metal bat.
I recognize his voice. I block his metal bat with my silver, mirrored arm, turning my body to meet it. The metal bat meets the mirror with a clang, and, like a cannonball to his face, the Jopok's head and chest explodes, exposing the remains of his vertebrae, showering me with a torrent of crimson.
103 left.
His remains collapse to the floor as the others take to me with machetes, knives, chopsticks, forks, in a furious, uncoordinated rhythm, swinging so fast and from all directions that I cannot make out an avenue of escape. But that's alright. I enjoy the challenge. I'm here to avenge all those who had their eyes taken like her, I'm here to avenge Hosu and the dispossessed. I'm here as a force of nature, and I shall will that to happen so their souls can find rest if not to witness their tormentors descend into Hell.
Five of the closest men sprint at me full force. Their blades slice the ends of my hair, but they make a mistake of stumbling just a little too far apart from one another.
I duck and roll from in the gaps between the five of them, and with a single swipe of my nails upon the mirror, I cut them like diced fish and throw them apart, raining chunks of flesh on their compatriots and drenching the tables and floor in guts.
98 left.
My heartbeat grows faster.
I punch a Jopok man in the reflection out of existence, and give another a manhole-sized cavity in his chest like the ones before; yet more still come towards me. I dodge their glancing blows, hair ruffling and catching my teeth; I dig my nails into the mirror, making a wild twirl, cutting anything and everything caught in the path of my fury like a hurricane of invisible knives.
Eleven Jopok men meet their karma. 87 left.
The fluorescent bulbs shatter on the tables around me, extinguishing the underground hall little by little. As the light loses purchase, I slowly become the visage and image of a proverbial witch.
I scrunch up a Jopok man in my grip, ready to squeeze him like a sausage bursting in its seams, but another drives a bat into the back of my knee, and drives it yet again.
Hideous cracks issue from my legs; I feel my bones move against each other, the shards, the fragments. The pain is sharp and intense; I crumple to the floor for just a moment, loosening my grip that was about to pop the man like jelly.
The man in front escapes my grasp, coughs, taken in place by another who swings two machetes at my neck, intending to sever it. The blades sing in the air as they descend.
I have no time to react – my right hand is moving, but at a snail's pace in that mora of time. It still needs time. I will it to move, but it does not move as I intend –
My left arm awakens in place of my right. It moves faster than I could ever hope to imagine, moving with an almost alien strength and dexterity. The mirror pulls my left arm to shield against the blow, compels me to defend, compels me to block, moving so fast that a blast of wind comes to life with the force of my movements.
The mirror blocks the two machetes, but instead of clanging them back in a clarion cry, a glow of wound-red oozes and emanates. The tip of the machetes begin to disappear into the mirror, then their edges, the entire length of the blades, and at once, it begins to swallow the hands of the man with the machetes. The man lets go of the machetes, but it's too late: the mirror yanks upon his helpless arms, swallowing it beyond the mirror-screen. His hands disappear, followed by his forearms, then by his biceps, then up to his shoulder. The mirror is too small for a full-grown man to fit of course, given it's a sheet the area that circles my forearm, but it pulls the man in without relent. His shoulder dislocates and rips into unnatural angles, his waist and hips which were unfortunate to contact the mirror is yanked in before his head, severing and crushing his spine in a cacophony of crunches; like a crab being forced into a jar by a hydraulic press, the man's body is crushed into the mirror without rest or mercy. His horrifying screams of agony reverberate through the hall and are cut short; his neck is snapped and his head devoured by the mirror.
At once, time seems to stop. A litany of grisly images play like a reel through my head, flashing so fast that I cannot keep up with them: images of dead men and women, the screams of children as they are yanked away from their parents, the screams of the innocent under instruments of torture, the sensation on my fingers of warm livers and cold scalpels, and more and more and more until the final moment where an unknown girl appears in the image amidst a celebratory banquet underground, the lights are cut, the machetes are eaten, and his crimes are returned to him in the most karmic way possible –
The thought flashes. These are the memories of the man that this mirror – and by extension I, had just eaten.
More memories that aren't mine flash through my liminal consciousness. A mountain in the desert, the cry of a warlord, the trampling of horses, the exactitude of kings, liars, medicine-men, the struggle of mortal beings, blood that drenches a city knee-deep, the wails of children, a dying man's wish, and with those I am gripped by an anger primordial to my senses, alien to my understanding. It's an anger so deep that I am all but blinded by it; it's a rage that compounds the anger I feel and the snapping of my heartstrings a thousandfold, and all I hear from my heartbeat and all that thrums in the world is a singular word: KILL.
KpOK!
A bullet from an unmistakable sound of a rifle drives into my chest – and the mirror awakens.
A singular, side-facing eye, triangular, slanted, less like a real thing but more like a drawing, appears with a puff of black shadow upon the surface of my silver-mirrored forearm, accompanied by an array of sharpened teeth that too looks to exist within the mirror. The mirror-creature darts its eyes to the source of the bullet-fire, and yanks me forward and turns me around to absorb the next rounds of bullets; it swallows it, and as it does so, golf-ball sized holes tear through the Jopok some twenty meters away.
A fire from a handgun behind me – the mirror instantly slides off my forearm and merges with the soles of my bare feet. My legs do not feel like they belong to me as they kick the ground from under, leaving a crater in its wake, careening towards the Jopok with the gun. I brace for impact but the mirror slides up again, up my legs, up my waist and shoulders, down my arms, until it covers the palms of my hands; the Jopok is devoured, crushed, and minced upon contact, even faster.
Once again, a reel of grisly images play through my head, this time with hatred so intense that my head feels like it'll explode.
A smoking grenade rolls to my feet, but I kick it away; and in an instant, the mirror commands me to launch towards the Jopok taking cover with his ears shut, appearing on his head, and devouring him from his face down to his feet.
Yet again, a reel of grisly images, but this time, I feel a sense of consciousness arise from within me, a different being. My entire body feels different, refreshed, new; I feel ice in my veins and fire in my blood.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
A forklift drives into me and nearly severs me in half, if not for the mirror. I chop at the hurtling forklift in the mirror as I am raced headfirst into a wall; the metal of the forklift is sliced with a spark into two, and so does its inhabitant from the crown of his head to his groin. He falls apart; the mirror devours it too without pause. New power. I feel new power.
I see a dozen Jopok desperately kicking open the metal lockers on a corner of those industrial pallets, equipping themselves with rifles and pistols, aiming down their sights towards my figure. Without thinking, without knowing why or how, I utter.
Devantaka Mirror Art...
ARBOREAN CLAW.
A blazing talon of flaming green issues forth from the mirror at the reflections of the men, and extends across the hall with the force of a gale, tearing everything in its path. It grips the dozen Jopok with the guns, crushes them, smothers them whole, and retracts back towards me with a speed that blows my hair back.
The Jopok are devoured by the mirror, chewed up, swallowed into a dimension I know not where.
The mirror makes a loud belch.
It begins to expand in size across not just my arm, but across my shoulders, my back, everywhere else, opening several more pairs of eldritch eyes. And with it I cannot see but sense a totality of the directions around me: the presence of figures, the challenges of obstacles, the motions of various men, even the ants on the wall and a single drop of condensation upon the vent forty meters above where I stand.
A rocket-propelled grenade blasts from a railing above and strikes my feet. The explosion pummels the air, hurls shrapnels, contorts my eyes in its passage of shock, but the mirror surrounds me, absorbs it, and returns a restored projectile towards the railing above, knocking out the last fluorescent bulbs of the table next to me, shredding the Jopok on the railing above with his own returned rocket grenade.
The hall falls into pitch black darkness, and instantly, the mirror loses its reflections, returning me to my senses.
I shake my head; I wobble, and I could have been killed right then and there if not for the Jopok that makes a mistake: a crackle of a muzzle-flash lights up the darkness in brief illumination, searching for me, and also to light his way towards an escape above.
"JEOGI-YA!" ("THERE!")
Bellows the Jopok, and as the brief light from the muzzle and gilded traces of the bullet's path light up the pitch darkness, the dormant eyes on my mirror dart to his direction, gripping me once again in its otherworldly wrath.
The Jopok is pummeled by invisible bullets, and falls off the railing to his demise.
More fire, more bullets. The hall is punctuated by muzzle fire as if illuminated by strobing lights.
I advance on the Jopok men on the floor, firing at me. I hold out my hand to eat, then return their bullets, shredding them one by one.
Lights flash on and off and off and on in confusion and futility as the remaining Jopok men desperately unload their magazines at me, but I kill them all, the strobing shadows on the walls revealing the figures of suited men being devoured by the maws of a snake, a wolf, a pelagic squid, growing more monstrous each time with added nutrition, eventually becoming a creature unfathomable to human understanding. Echoes of screams bounce off the halls, return in confused arrays as the Jopok men fire and fire to no avail and in futility at my advancing figure, impervious, immortal, invincible: I am become Death.
One by one, their screams and shouts and groans cease, flames of life extinguished, their karma returned to rightful personage, the cries and restless ghosts of their victims avenged and finding rest.
I slaughter and slaughter until not even bones remain.
I slaughter and slaughter, slaughter and slaughter.
...
......
.........
Until the muzzle-flashes light up the hall no longer.
A darkness absolute – and for the first time upon this hall, peaceful – descends over the walls. There is no living thing in the hall bigger than an ant. The fragrance of iron and mists of blood descend like a haze upon me, drenching me, enveloping me.
My rage and anger steadily subsides.
The mirror that covers my body finds no more bodies to eat. And with nothing more to fuel its growth, finding its task finished, it closes shut its eyes, its lids becoming thin lines that dissipate into the surface of the mirror, communicating its intent to leave the rest to me. I can no longer sense the entirety of the hall with my intuition the moments before.
The mirror retreats from its extended form back to my left arm, covering only my forearm once more. And to my astonishment, I find my left hand restored. I look upon it, feel it, taste it – it's real flesh, my flesh.
A spark of gratitude lights up my thoughts. The mirror seems to croon in my head.
One-hundred-and-four Jopok now no longer exist. But as I stand there, pondering the thought, a faint, distant whimper sounds from among the hall.
A sob. It continues – it's the cry of a small child.
A chill races up and down my spine. You know in horror movies how the protagonist is trying to escape a house, a forest, a hospital – and then a small child's cry pierces the silence? It's eerie, to say the least.
But wait, what am I getting those chills for? I admonish myself. There's no ghost or stranger danger here. Hell, I am the danger. I just annihilated this entire hall.
And that's when the thought strikes me: that I hadn't come here to kill or remove these Jopok men from existence – I came here to save old man Hosu's daughter. I came here to save someone. I didn't start out wanting my legacy to only be that of carnage and blood!
And so I lean in my ear, shuffling across the various pallets and containers. The sobs grow closer.
It seems to emanate from a cargo container next to me. It's locked. I couldn't break it open without a light with which I could slice its reflection with my mirror.
I fumble in the dark for a matchstick, but find none. But in my search, I do find bottles of half-full soju, and the handle of a pistol. I tear my fraying uniformed shirt, wrap it to the muzzle of the gun, and wet its tip with alcohol.
Click.
I shoot; with a crack and a bang the bullet issues forth, tearing a hole through the rags on its way out. In its path of sparks the rag catches fire, becoming a makeshift torch.
I find my way back to the cargo-container. I hold the makeshift gun-torch with my left hand now restored, tweaking the position of my forearm to see the reflection of the lock – and with a flick of my nail upon it, I slash it loose with a spark.
I cautiously open the container door, bracing myself for perhaps something unholy or eldritch as I am – but it reveals nothing more than a little boy in pajamas holding a teddy bear.
He screams in terror and crawls further into the container at my blood-soaked visage. I must've looked like a ghost. In fact, I wasn't as harmless as a ghost moments before: I was a reaving Death-god.
I carefully lay the torch down and hold my hands up.
It feels strange. Just the moment before, I delivered every Jopok in this hall to the judgement of whichever deity took care of the afterlife. Buddha, maybe. But now I'm trying to rescue someone... save someone.
Was I a hypocrite? The bloodthirst with which my mirror accompanied my fury gives me momentary pause. Both the little boy and I say nothing.
Then I close my eyes and shake my head.
"Guenchanah, guenchanah," ("Easy, easy.") "Nunayah, nunayah. Nuna-gah goohyejuruh watsuh." ("I'm not here to hurt you. Big sis is here to save you. Save you from the bad guys.")
The little boy reminds me of my little brother. He's five, maybe six. If I had been just a few moments late, perhaps he would have met the same fate as old man Hosu's daughter. Relief washes over me, mixing with a tinge of guilt.
The little boy hugs his teddy closer, wary, eyes glinting with moisture. It takes about ten minutes of cajoling and convincing, but I manage to coax him out.
The mirror on my forearm is silent. I'm more than a little relieved, because I had no way to know how it would react to someone I didn't know, especially after all the monstrous things it did and helped me do.
"Guhreulsu it-suh?" ("Can you walk?") I ask, patting the creases away from his pajamas.
The little boy nods.
I explain to him in metaphors that we are far underground; we were going to go up the elevator, and I was going to bring him back to his parents. How utterly incongruous I am to the me of half an hour ago.
I shield his eyes from the blood and other sights with my body, avoiding the paths with more questionable debris as we make our way towards the elevator, holding his hand with my right, the gun-torch in my left.
Surprisingly, the elevator still works. I fumble a little for the industrial-sized button that needs pressing, but we begin to ascend, and leave the shadows to feast.
"Yireum-eun moyah?" ("What's your name?") I ask the little boy to keep his mind off of his destitute environment.
"...Iseul." ("Iseul").
It meant 'dew'.
"Yeppeun yireumyineh," ("That's a pretty name,") I remark, as the elevator emerges up to the ground floor. The plain hallway of blue feels at once familiar and alien. It was at most a single hour since I sauntered through this corridor, ready to save or kill. I now walk out with something precious – not the person I was looking for, but precious nevertheless.
I walk with the little boy named Iseul past the dilapidated entrance, the abandoned reception table, and open the door out of the dingy warehouse.
An entire police division's worth of officers and cruisers greet my eyes, guns trained on the both of us.
The mirror growls.