----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
On the ground, on his knees, Yves bent forwards and curled up into a tight ball, pressing his chest and forehead against his knees and his arms around his head. It was a purely instinctive reaction. If you tortured wizards by circulating energy rush, they all did the same thing. In the feeble attempt to preserve itself, the body understood that this pose restricted energy flow as much as possible.
From there, Yves’ training in the duelling arts took over. He took in the pain and countered all instinct to fight the deadly torrent. With all the power he could muster, he used glass magic upon himself. He focused his remaining innate energy to rebuilt and strengthened his fractured physical form. From his core outwards and, simultaneously, inwards from the outermost layer of his body, he weaved the already broken shards of ashen light that built the intricacies of his body back together into a more solid structure. It was brutally painful work, but ever so slightly, he could feel the paths of the stream narrowing. His own energy was not enough, so Yves turned the shards that surrounded and protected his centre inwards. As he did, he heard horrible, long-drawn screeching and realised that he was screaming. It was the first time that he screamed, the first time that his fractured body had ever made a sound. It felt as if he was cutting himself into pieces from within. But with the shards turned just right, Yves could split off and capture and redirect fragments of the rushing energies into the core of his form, ebbing their flow, anchoring them within, using them to further shape and strengthen his own form shard by shard. The fractured shadow silhouette that he had been in the mirror world began to shift, becoming more solid and substantial, until the intrusive torrent subsided and Yves had regained full control over his energy flow.
When Yves got back to his feet, it was as if he had transformed himself from a broken reflection into a being of condensed ashen light, a creature that was too substantial to be penetrated or moved. And while he gained substance, his connection to the mirror world deepened. His core was no longer the essence and energy that he brought with him, no longer a foreign body, but in its origin an essence of the mirror world. This new being was no longer a fractured shadow but a creature of light, with ashen glass skin that caught and reflected the dim glimmers of light from the surrounding structures. Yves had managed to stop the immense flow of energy that was surging through him. He had succeeded in controlling it, and he had emerged from the experience stronger and more powerful than ever before.
He also for the first time realised that he had a shadow; flickering fractures of dark grey that lay at his feet and scattered across the glass. It was an observation that was as odd as it was random, yet it made him pause. Had he always had a shadow? Was he just never able to see it with his old vision? Or did his transformation, the intake of mirror world energies, change how his physical form was affected by this world? The surrounding shard structures emitted distorted, fractured streams of light, which touched upon the eerie grey mist emerging from the towering waves and now also on Yves. At his feet lay the dark overlay that he called shadow, hardly visible amidst all the fractured chaos, and yet more attached to Yves than to this world.
Looking at the tunnel walls now, Yves could see. This was the most overwhelming change for him.
Without touch, he recognised the wave-shards’ structure and pattern of movement. And for the first time since childhood, Yves could see true light fragments. This changed everything. Fixating his vision just right, he recognised their incredibly intricate and dense constellation and further noticed how some of the longest and most complex chain structures were anchored to the wave-shards right and left, some even passing in and out. With that, he understood that not the two walls of shards had clashed against each other, but that Yves, unseeing and unsuspecting, had compressed, pierced and ruptured those anchored light fragments that could not make way. He knew quite too well about the destructive forces of compressed light.
Slowly waving his hand through a chain in front of him, he observed how his shimmering arm passed through the frail bonds, which reformed right after. These light chains were the reason why it had been so difficult to walk through the tunnel passage. Yves absorbed their energy and watched the fragments and bonds dissipate and all surrounding elements stir and swirl. Prior to the explosion, this must have been an intricate, yes, even a perfect net. An incredible rare sight in his dimension, as they only formed where no wizard or other existences had absorbed worldly energies for years.
Yves straightened up, extended his magical energy and grasped both the wave-shards and the chains of light anchored to them. Recognising his new insight into this plane, he knew that he had the strength to hold and shift both structures. It was an incredible feeling. He had become an existence more of this world, which in turn made this world feel much more natural to him. Using magic felt almost familiar. With the never-ending supply of mirror-world energy to replenish his energy supply, Yves did not have to hold back. It still took practice, but he eventually managed to align the tunnel walls without trapping light fragments between the wave-shards. Grasping and pulling the walls left and right, Yves walked backwards, thus literally closing off the whole tunnel step by step.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Despite the incredible effort it took to accomplish this feat, Yves believed that it was only a temporary solution. He had sealed the passage for now, which should hide it from anyone on the other side. However, the mirror world could not be accessed by an inexperienced wizard. With that, Yves could not be sure that a master of the seer spectrum would not be able to spot this feat of manipulation. There was also no guarantee that another wizard from the glass and light spectrum would not find a way to undo his blockage. But for now, Yves felt incredibly powerful, and well ok that’s really all I have hidden.
He wanted to remain and further explore his new form, but he was also greatly shaken from the experience. Attentive for all changes in his physical form and, most noteworthy, his sight, Yves returned to find the ethereal mirror that would lead him out of the mirror plane and back into the lighthouse.
As he walked, he kept his eyes peeled for any signs of a pursuer. Yves was no stranger to having a stalker, and he was quite familiar with believing to have a stalker. He actually felt stalked and watched more often than not, especially when Midnight was not around to reassure him with her senses that there was no beast, or rival, or witch. Or elf. If you must know, he was currently stalked by a quite horrible witch curse; in his dimension, that is. But all of that paled in comparison to this moment right now. This now was simply horrible, even for the experienced stalkee.
With his surroundings more refined, the distinction of grey shapes was much clearer, but he kept seeing nothing out of the unordinary. This did not put him at ease. It just raised his anxiety. And the fact that he really needed a distraction to calm down while he should not leave his guard down raised it even more. But there was nothing except the fractured shadow beings. They seemed to avoid him and flock to the closed path. With his improved sight, Yves could recognise their movement several steps in the distance and their shapes more distinguished. He could also see, for some reason, that they were engulfed by countless layers of nets of light. It appeared as if the nets were not breaking as they passed, but remained attached to the creatures like harnesses. It was an eerie sight to behold, and an equally disturbing explanation for their sluggish, heavy gait.
Yves looked from them back to his imminent surroundings. The world was full of extensive, perfect nets of light fragments. In contrast to the creatures, he could pass through them. They opened and closed around him as he walked. This is how light behaved in his world, too, though you would have to travel to the rarest of unspoilt places to find it in such elaborate and natural structures. The nets were countless, spanning the clearing from end to end and reaching far off into the sky. Yves needed to regulate and limit his second sight to not get lost in the sheer geometrical beauty they brought to the fractured formations they framed and adorned.
His mirror, too, stood out more. Yves saw it in the distance, shimmering ever so slightly amidst the overwhelming towers of impenetrable ashen waves, its smooth surface a wondrous drop of clear light in this fractured world.
What slowed Yves’s step was the singular straight path of broken nets that led directly from the mirror past him and further along to the tunnel entry. With no fractured creature in sight, Yves wondered if he had been equally restricted in his old form as these creatures were. Was this why moving had been so strenuous before and now, after his transformation, felt so light? Did his pursuer simply stalk him by following the obvious broken nets of light that Yves had left behind? Also, if Yves could pass through the light nets after absorbing mirror world energy but not with the outerdimensional energies from his own plane that had comprised his first original form, what did that make the fractured creatures?
Reaching his mirror, Yves focused on the here and now. He had sealed off the tunnel and only left traces within the clearing. With that, it should not be able to track him. Stepping onto the mirror, he placed the crystal half ball in the socket at the centre and began the ritual to exit the mirror world. However, he stopped abruptly and stared.
Now close to the all-encompassing wave-barrier, he recognised distinct patterns in the dark grey surfaces that were, in his plane, the ocean. There was no passage like the one he just closed and in all the times when he had entered the mirror plane from the lighthouse, he had never seen anything but the impenetrable grey matter. But, straining his second sight, Yves now recognised lighter patches that hinted at passages or even an open clearing amidst the barrier, far, far away and then again much further in the distance, where there should be nothing but ocean in his reality. Yves looked around, but the patches seemed to be distinctly concentrated in one area only.
He was intrigued, but he did not dare to dwell on this observation. He had already placed his crystal half ball on the mirror, which put him in a most vulnerable position. He was too cautious to delay his departure any further and began his incantation anew. The mirror’s light began to fade, losing its soft white light, and Yves felt a tingling sensation in his feet.
And then his mirror cracked.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------