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During his student life, the events from the enigmatic encounter with the witch mother to the discovery of this first hidden room within the academy had set the path for Yves’ artefact hunter future. From an early age, the trajectory of Yves’ life had irrevocably shifted. Beyond the rigors of his standard curriculum, he had learned to translate arcane languages, decipher long-lost sigils and decode riddled spells. Most of all, he had learned what power may lay infused in artefacts. He learned that there were dark forces in the world, entities driven by avarice that coveted these relics for the supremacy they bestowed – without ever considering himself as such a force.
Would others? Yves considered the possibility that the mirror world stalker saw him as a threat. But who would go through the effort of hunting him in the mirror world instead of in their dimensional reality?
He discussed this thought with Midnight, but could not come to an obvious conclusion. When they talk, it is usually Yves who speaks his mind and Midnight who listens. She does not talk back, but Yves likes to imagine that she listens a bit more intently whenever she agrees with him.
More horrifying would be the possibility that the presence he felt was not another wizard, but a mirror world existence, one of the many moving, shattered entities that Yves had encountered while exploring the equally fractured plane. But they had never emitted any noticeable presence, let alone intentions to communicate. Yves traversed the confines of the lighthouse’s chamber, his vivid memory recreating the malicious presence standing right in front of him, in its intensity to be felt even across planes. What if his use of the crystal half ball and his frequent travels through the ethereal mirrors had somehow caught the attention of something dangerous. He couldn’t ignore the possibility that his presence had disturbed and caused an unknown entity to consciously seek out him, his mirror and, with that, the dimensional barrier between their planes.
He paced, his steps echoing his mounting anxiety, each stride propelling him deeper into the heart of uncertainty while his much too rich imagination painted unsettling scenarios of their next encounter. The contemplation swirled in his mind, a vortex of questions, doubt, and the frisson of fear.
As the minutes bled into each other, Yves’ restlessness found him drawn before the witch mother crystal half ball. He settled at the timeworn wooden table, his eyes locked onto the reflective surface. His own image looked back at him, the hollow stare of a non-Transcender ensnared by the tendrils of instinctual foreboding. It was a phantom whisper. Was he, to the dimension of shards, not a spectator but an intruder, an anomaly disturbing and disrupting sentient existences in that world?
Yves looked away from the crystal half ball.
No.
He covered the crystal half ball with a piece of cloth.
Clearly, it was a wizard who had addressed him.
He turned the first of his mirrors face-down on the table.
That was the only logical explanation.
He turned the second mirror face-down.
It was obviously a wizard who had spoken to him.
He placed his cloak atop all three artefacts.
The voice he had heard was not some supernatural echo, nor a stray entity. No, it had been that of a wizard. Very unmistakably.
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He moved away from the table.
If indeed someone else had mastered the art of crafting ethereal mirrors, it had to be a wizard with intimate access to the academy’s safeguarded underground troves of arcane wisdom, most likely a tutor or erudite sage of the most exalted order. For Yves to create and achieve control over the ethereal mirrors just a few years after nearly completing his academy curriculum was a triumph, but it also signalled the potential for more seasoned wizard to achieve an even grander mastery. If Yves could collect all components to craft the mirrors within a few years, so could a multitude of tutors and scholars who had access to all of the academy’s vast collection of artefacts and resources. If he managed to create the ethereal mirrors at the mere age of twenty-one, so could those wizards who had mastered their skills long before he was even born. And if he had learned to traverse the mirror plane consciously in just three years of unguided practice and exploration, there was no telling what a luminary could do after thirty.
Yves’ second sight was incredibly poor. Both in the real world and in the realm of shards, experienced illusionists, shrouded by skill and knowledge, could surely conceal themselves from his limited perception. The presence had appeared right in front of the mirror, right on the other side of the barrier, which meant that the wizard must have drawn near undetected while Yves had performed the ritual to return to his own plane. A chilling realisation. Even with the barrier between them, the tremendous resonance of the wizard’s power had reverberated across dimensions, a power imbued with an unmistakable undercurrent of malice. In the depths of his being, Yves felt he had stood in the overwhelming presence of an unparalleled master.
One question hung heavy: why did this wizard not seize him immediately? Why announce his presence instead?
I see you, the voice had said. Well, Yves needed to make sure that those words would become an empty declaration.
To be cautious, Yves needed to believe that a wizard who understood the intricacies of the mirror plane would sooner or later be able to identify and track him in both dimensions. He would be extremely powerful and skilled, which his presence had attested. If he was sent by the academy, he already knew who Yves was. The lighthouse, desolate, secluded and warded in this plane and blocked off in the mirror dimension, was the safest place to be.
Signalling Midnight to rest, Yves walked back to the table and looked down at his mirrors through second sight, which made their strong energies visible below the coat. The ethereal mirrors were a creation of intricate artistry, with a diameter of roughly 40 centimetres each. Yves moved the coat aside and turned his favourite of the two mirrors back up. Its frame, a dark crystal of unparalleled craftsmanship, pulsed with an inner radiance, giving off an almost iridescent glow under the light of the two floating orbs that illuminated the underground chamber. Engraved onto the crystal were ornate sigils, an enchanting display of shifting symbols that seemed to morph and transform with each subtle change of illumination. The centre of the mirror held a delicate socket, meticulously fashioned for the witch mother crystal half ball that was the key to activate the mirror’s magical properties. Crafted from the same enigmatic dark crystal as the frame, the socket bore minute, delicate etchings that were infused with an inner light. It was a fusion of artistry and enchantment that bespoke his mastery, a vessel poised to bridge the gap between dimensions.
As Yves carefully placed the mirror on the floor and then the crystal half ball into the socket, the surface of the mirror rippled, showing but a distorted, fractured reflection of Yves looking down onto the glass. The warm light of the two orbs casted ephemeral patterns upon the dark crystal. Within this interplay of radiance and reflection, the mirror’s surface remained opaque, concealing the ethereal realm that lay beyond. There was always a sense of dread lurking just beneath the surface. This was a realm where the boundaries of reality bent, where the laws of the known world held little dominion. In this dimension, Yves was both corporeal and insubstantial. He existed as an enigma, where his identity teetered between tangible form and ethereal abstraction, where he was never fully real.
Despite the vulnerability that came with submitting himself to a realm that he just began to understand, despite the terror of being deprived of his physical form, there was an undeniable undercurrent of anticipation that surged within through Yves whenever he dared to transgress dimensions once more. In the past three years, he had painstakingly honed his ability to navigate this mysterious plane of shards, which meant that he had learned to walk and see in the most literal sense of the words, to roam an uncharted domain teeming with potent magical energies. But now, as he stood before the mirror, dread gripped him.
Taking a steady breath, Yves initiated his ritualistic spells, a cascade of his own magic surging through him. He stepped onto the mirror and, with an orchestrated release of energy, vanished from this dimension.
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