Tina ran down the wide central avenue towards the center of town. Tears flew behind off as they streamed down her face, her breaths alternating between gasps from crying and gasps for air from the unaccustomed exercise. She had been running for what felt like FOREVER. How dare he?! That rotten … no-good, very bad, stinking boy!
She’d poured her heart out to Jerald! She’d thought that he was a good guy. He was a year or two older and fit as they come! And by all the gods, he was a newly minted Bishop! Weren’t they supposed to be known for wise and compassionate leadership or something? Honestly, she’d never paid too much attention to the Priest class and its variants. It seemed like everybody in Veidrodis was a Priests. Her parents were Priests, most of her friends’ parents were Priests, three of her teachers were Priests, Jerald was a damn Priest! All of them insufferable about the rewards of faithfully serving the gods at the Hall of Mirrors.
Jerald, the blackhearted dreamboat, had looked at her like she’d crawled out of a sewer when she’d told him he was cute and asked whether he had a date for the upcoming school function. It hadn’t been enough to just tell her no. Her mind involuntarily flashed back to the sneer on his face. “Of course not! Why would I go with some Classless child? A Bishop of the Shining One can’t be seen deviating. Much less with a child of dirt-grubbing Zole Priests. Now run along. Maybe you’ll be worth something if you break from their path when you grow up enough for your own Class.”
Just because they were all Priests meant that all the gods got along. She hadn’t known he’d chosen Sviecanti, the God of Kings. Her parents served the God of herbs, Zole and some of the more elite gods and their servants looked down on such honest labor – or at least that was how her parents put it. But Jerald needn’t worry about her following in their footsteps. No, she was going to avoid Priests altogether. The service and squabbles of the gods held less than no interest for her. She wanted out of this town of temples!
The main thoroughfare of town went – where else – the largest temple in the city: the Hall of Mirrors. Tina’s headlong dash down the road brought the crying, gasping girl steps closer. Her breath was much more ragged now than it had been when she’d started. After Jerald’s mean words, she’d just taken off running from the school, which was just under two miles from the town center. She had never run for two miles before. Physical education requirements at school were built around one mile runs, but she had always enjoyed those. Maybe that’s why she had lasted for the entire run. As she dashed up the steps to the Hall though, the burning in her legs threatened to cause her legs to give out. She refused to give up. Refused to be a child who stopped when things were hard. The tears coming now were as much physical as emotional at this point, but she had made up her mind when Jerald had tossed her aside like that, and she wouldn’t be turned away from it.
The first room of the Hall of Mirrors wasn’t the room that gave the temple its name, but just an antechamber. A large one, full of mirrors and open spaces where various priests moved about. While each god had its own temple or shrine in the rest of the city, all the orders shared the responsibility of caring for the Hall of Mirrors. It was relatively empty. The Hall of Mirrors was busiest around the culmination of school terms, when sixteen-year-olds were given their first shot at the Mirrors that gave the temple is name. Then this space would be full of people who were meditating, preparing themselves to enter the sacred Hall. The mirrors in this room were simple ones, meant to reflect the person who looked into them and help them understand themselves. This wasn’t then, but there were always a few adults who needed to come to the Hall. Some wanted to reverse poor choices in their Classes, some high leveled people wanted to evolve their Classes. Since it was in the middle of a term now, that was all of who was in here.
The attendants were not ready for a fifteen-year-old girl to burst through the open doors and run – although her run looked a little more like a swift stagger at this point – for the entry to the Hall proper. On the far side of the antechamber was a doorway to a staircase going down. Because of course there was a staircase going down after the temple itself was a staircase coming up! Tina’s pain-addled mind was not exactly charitable towards the architects who had decided to do that!
By the time they had realized what was going on, Tina was already across the room. A few shouts of “stop” and “wait” followed her down the stairs but she didn’t pause. One of her teachers had let slip that the purification ceremony wasn’t actually necessary. It didn’t actually do anything to reveal your path to you, it just helped to calm your mind before you entered the Hall itself. So she was fine just racing past that part and heading for the Hall.
She had never been to the Hall of Mirrors before – school field trips ended in the antechamber – but she had heard it described. Even in her haste and anguish, there was still something about the space that caused her to briefly halt at the bottom of the stairs. It really was a divine space, although that was more to do with how the space felt than how it looked.
Not to say that the Hall of Mirrors wasn’t an astonishing sight physically. Azure marble made the walls, and after a few feet of tiled entrance, the floor as well. Despite that, it looked rough-hewn, almost as if this were a natural cavern of marble that stretched off beyond easy sight. The only light in the room came from the Mirrors that gave the space its name, shining with brilliant, coruscating color that bathed the entire Hall in white light. The Mirrors were placed a few feet apart next to each other, with ranks going down both sides of the Hall. Around the Mirrors, often next to but sometimes above or even in front of them, were various statues. The statues depicted people in various outfits, in various poses frozen in time. There was the Dancer, the Warrior, the Priest, the Hunter, the Scout, the Soldier, the Judge, the Craftsman and many more. Each of the statues stood before their own Mirror but Tina didn’t take time to analyze them. She knew what she wanted, and she imagined the priests would be chasing after her to stop her.
But as visually impressive as it was, it was the power that thrummed in the air itself that stole what remained of her breath, leaving her panting at the base of the stairs. Infinity stretched between each particle of dust that floated in the air. Power made light more brilliant, dampened it, and made it more brilliant again in the span of a thought. Each of the statues was carved with an energy beyond human capacity, life and meaning distilled into a single image. The Warrior was not just a warrior, he was The Warrior, the very essence of warrior distilled into a single image, frozen in gold and stone on a plinth next to the Warrior’s Mirror.
The Mirrors were the gifts of the gods, meant to uplift the people by granting them powers associated with each god’s domain. They were not true mirrors like those above. The first one in line belonged to the Judge, and as Tina dashed past it, she saw herself reflected. Not as she was, but as she would be if she entered the Judge’s Mirror: donning a flowing robe and holding a tome of law in one hand, a scepter in the other. She did not stop at the Judge’s Mirror though. Her legs and lungs screamed at her as she forced them to dash past the first rank and into the second, heading for the Dancer. Once she entered the Dancer’s Mirror, she would be guided to a variant of the Dancer class based on her character. Once she was a Dancer, or Acrobat, or Dervish, or whatever else awaited her, she could begin her real life. Not that of a child stuck in Veidrodis but a Dancer who could travel the world! She could join a traveling troupe, or possibly even one of the famed houses of the centers of arts and culture in any of several Kingdoms. She would earn her way to greatness and leave this stuffy city and its arrogant priests far behind!
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“Stop her!” She heard bouncing down the stairwell as the attendants finally reacted to her entrance. The first footfalls could be heard on the stairs. But they were too late, she had reached the Dancer’s Mirror. The Dancer was frozen in the motion of a twisting leap, only the smallest part of her toe still touching the surface of her plinth, the graceful golden figure curved around the pane of glass. Tina saw herself as a Dancer, a tight outfit with curls of ribbon and silk waving about her, ready to be stirred into life by skilled movement. She threw herself at the Mirror.
And bounced off. A few hasty steps helped her avoid falling on her rear but she looked at the Mirror with confusion. She had never heard of this. The Mirrors didn’t stop anybody from entering the divine space. She walked up and touched the surface. Others had described it as rippling, flowing away from the person as they walked through it. But her hand just pressed up against it like it would any other mirror. She backed up a step. Alright, I don’t … Her mind stuttered to a halt, unable to process it. Until she heard what sounded like metal start jangling down the stairs and realized some kind of guard had been called. Just try a different Mirror …
She looked around for something around her that looked acceptable. While the Dancer had been her dream, it wasn’t the only thing that could get her out of here. Hunters spent a lot of time in the wilderness, that could work. She ran over to the Hunter’s Mirror, running past a man crouched with bow drawn. But that Mirror was also hard and unyielding.
The tears started to come back as she remembered something. Entrants to the Hall of Mirrors were called supplicants. She hadn’t really understood what that word meant when her teachers had tried to tell her in class. Now she did. There were no guarantees: they were asking the Mirrors to grant them strength. Apparently, the gods were telling her no. It had all been for nothing! She had ran here, embarrassing herself again in the streets to anybody who saw a crying, hysterical, girl running! And they weren’t even going to do anything.
She didn’t even recognize the statue of the next Mirror she approached as she yelled in frustration and angst, kicking it. Which only served to hurt her toe. And now the priests and their guards would come, and she would be carted back to that same miserable school, with those same miserable people. With Jerald. They’d all laugh at her and treat her like a silly little girl! Which maybe she had been, but ARGGGHH!
“THEY WON’T TAKE YOU.” A strange voice echoed in the Hall of Mirrors. The sounds and shouts of pursuits in the stairwell faded from Tina’s awareness. The voice was soft and breathy, as if it were being sighed out. It filled the space around her, wrapping the air itself so that it could echo in a small space that it formed around Tina.
She looked around in confusion. “What…”
“THE OTHERS. THESE GODS. THESE RITUALISTIC PRETENDERS. THEY WON’T TAKE YOU.” The voice repeated, its soft tones creating an eddying breeze. The breeze gently guided Tina deeper into the Hall of Mirrors.
“What do you mean? The Mirrors are rejecting me?” Tina asked with a plaintive tone.
“THEY GAVE THEMSELVES NO CHOICE. THEY BOUND THEMSELVES WITH ANCIENT RITUALS TO CREATE THIS SPACE. IT RESTRICTS WHO THEY CAN GIVE ACCESS TO. BUT I AM NOT BOUND. I CAN GIVE YOU THE POWER YOU SEEK.”
Tina hesitated. “Why aren’t you bound?”
“BECAUSE I AM THE FIRST. THEY PUT THEIR PRECIOUS MIRRORS HERE TO DISTRACT FROM MY GLORY!” The voice’s tone grew harder and angrier, resentful at its treatment by the other gods. “THEY COULD ONLY DO THAT WITH THIS RITUAL. THEY DISTRACT, THEY OBSCURE, THEY HIDE! BUT THEY CANNOT DESTROY!” The wind from the voice grew stronger, Tina’s school dress whipping about her in its force. Tina could hear the shouts of her pursuers grow even fainter, not just drowned out by the wind but as if they were being drawn further away from her. Or perhaps, the space between them was being expanded by the divine pressure around her.
Even as the wind drew her deeper, Tina still hesitated. She had never been particularly religious, but voices shouting about the injustice of the gods couldn’t be good, could they? “Why would they do that?”
“JEALOUSY. I WAS THE FIRST TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GRANT HUMANS POWERS. THE FIRST TO MIRROR MYSELF IN YOUR KIND. MY FOLLOWERS WERE LEGION AND ROSE UP TO OVERTHROW THOSE WHO THOUGHT THEM OUR BETTERS.” Scorn filled the voice. “WHO THINK THEMSELVES YOUR BETTERS. YOU WOULD NOT HAVE COME HERE IF YOU HAD NOT EXPERIENCED THEIR INJUSTICE. THEIR RIGHTEOUS EVIL.”
“Who are you?” Tina asked nervously as she saw where the wind was leading her. At the end of the Hall of Mirrors there was one final Mirror. It was set aside from all the others, hidden in a corner which shone with no light. It was as if the light from the other mirrors was actively suppressing the light this one was putting out. A moat sat before it, although the water sat still. A broken path of paving stones formed the only way across the moat. The Mirror at the far end was the same pane of glass/energy that the rest were. But there was no heroic statue anywhere near it. Stalactites and stalagmites grew up around it, closing in from above and below, almost like teeth of a giant mouth. The ridges around the recessed Mirror could almost be taken to be lips.
“YOU WILL SEE,” was the only response.
Tina drew up to the Mirror and paused once more. The reflection looking back at her looked … normal. It was just her. There was no special costume showing what an elite … whatever this was, would look like. She wasn’t moving differently. Tina spoke up to ask about it, but the voice pre-empted her. “WHAT YOU WILL BECOME WILL BE UP TO YOU. HOW YOU WILL LOOK WILL BE UP TO YOU.” The image of Tina in the Mirror gave her a wide smile and beckoned her forward, reaching a hand out towards her.
Without thinking about it, Tina reached out and touched her reflection’s hand. The glassy surface of the Mirror rippled and Tina pushed into it. The hand of her reflection turned solid enough for her to grip and then with a combination of a step from her and a pull from her reflection, Tina was sucked into the Mirror, the ripples expanding outwards. What she could not see after she did this was the stony outcroppings that had surrounded the Mirror widening into a earthen smile before the teeth closed in on each other, darkness falling over this far corner of the Hall of Mirrors.
Tina suddenly became very familiar with darkness of her own though. The space she entered was entirely dark, a void that stretched off beyond what the eye could fathom. Or perhaps it was just a wall painted in deepest black that made it seem like an infinite void. Tina had eyes only for the floor in front of her, marbled in tile like the entrance to the Hall of Mirrors proper. Five paces away was a single marble plinth. Tina’s reflection from the Mirror climbed up onto the plinth and struck a triumphant pose.
Tina was frozen. Her legs ached, her lungs burned from the exertion, muscles that were not used to being stiff were cramping. Her emotions were a tangled snarl of residual embarrassment, anger at Jerald and now the gods of the various Mirrors that had rejected her, anxiety over that rejection, and still the ache of heartbreak from being rejected by her crush. It didn’t matter that he was an ass, being cruelly cast aside was not a pleasant feeling. Her eyes were crusty from tears and her face was raw from the wind of her passage whipping those tears over it. Lastly, confusion pressed around the rest of her tangled snarl of emotions and kept them stirred up, unable to fully process the whole thing.
A face materialized out of the darkness. It was not a human face. Tina didn’t know how to simply describe the face that it was. She supposed that it was divine, as nothing else made much sense. The first impression was of a giant mouth, easily the same size as her whole body. Set above it was a single eye almost as large again. Strands of the darkness from the void separated and seemed to float around the head like tentacles.
“HELLO TINA.” If there had been any doubt that this was the being who had spoken to her before, it was gone now. The voice wasn’t any more powerful in its own domain, but it was definitely different when you could see the giant mouth moving.