Book 5: Web of Chaos

FIFTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO

Elend’s feet moved without his permission, carrying his body toward the full-length mirror. A twelve-year-old boy stared back at him in the shiny glass surface, running his hands over the blue fabric of his pajamas.

The boy looked like Elend, with the same pale complexion and close-cropped brown hair. But that grin was far too wide, stretching his lips well beyond their comfort zone. An unfamiliar spark shone in his brown eyes, and his movements looked unnaturally smooth, as if his body were a new toy.

Elend wanted to say something, but his mouth didn’t budge. He could only watch as his right hand rose to touch the mirror, spreading his fingers against the cold surface. The sensation was dull and distant, as if he were dreaming.

Glim? Elend thought. Can you hear me?

The boy in the mirror bobbed his head, but Elend couldn’t tell if it was a deliberate reply. What if Glim couldn’t hear him right now? What if he was trapped like this forever—a prisoner in his own body? Panic threatened to overwhelm him, and he almost wrestled back control in that moment.

But no . . . they’d spent months preparing for this, and barely thirty seconds had passed since she’d had taken control. He’d promised to give her at least five minutes.

Elend drew in a mental breath and projected the thought more loudly this time. ‘Glim?’

Glim made a soft humming sound, and Elend’s throat carried the noise. “Yeah!” She practically shouted the word, and it echoed all around his bedroom.

‘Quiet!’ Elend thought. ‘You want to wake up the whole house?’

“Oops.” She raised Elend’s hands to his mouth, then tried again. “Yeah, I can hear you.” Elend felt his body speaking the words, but the pitch and accent sounded more like Glim.

‘Good,’ he thought. ‘Just try to be quiet, okay?’

“Got it.” She tried to whisper her reply, but it still came out louder than Elend would have liked. What would he tell his caretakers if they barged in right now? They’d think he was possessed by a crazy mana spirit, and they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.

“This is weird.” Glim rolled his shoulders, then poked at his arms “It’s like riding a bike, but . . . squishier.”

‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

“Are you always this squishy?”

Elend couldn’t suppress his mental chuckle, and some of his tension faded away. Glim was wild and unpredictable, but she could always make him laugh. It was one of the reasons he’d created her in the first place.

Glim turned his body sideways, inspecting the reflection with exaggerated curiosity. She poked at Elend’s cheeks, then stuck a finger in his mouth.

“Eww,” she said in a muffled voice. “It’s wet in here.” She pulled out the finger and wiped it dry on Elend’s pajama pants.

‘You’re making this weird.’

“Your face is weird,” Glim shot back. She wrinkled his nose, squinting one eye shut and puffing out his cheeks like a fish.

Elend groaned at the display. ‘You have access to all my memories.’

“Yeah,” Glim said. “But that’s not the same. I always just . . . watch you do stuff, you know? But this is so real!” She drew in a deep breath. “Did you know your body moves when it breathes? Your whole chest gets wider. It’s like it’s making room for all the air.”

‘Of course I knew that.’

“Well, how am I supposed to know? You never mentioned it before!”

‘Quiet’, Elend reminded her.

Glim brought Elend’s hands to his chest and made a cupping motion. The face in the mirror looked confused for a second, then disappointed.

Elend groaned again. You know I’m a boy, right? Boys don’t have . . . those.

“Well, then why don’t you get a girlfriend? I wanna know what they feel like!”

‘Welcome to the club.’

Glim released a snort through Elend’s nose, followed by a short laugh. “You’re so funny when you’re awkward!”

‘You’re the one making this awkward.’

Glim ignored that and pointed at Elend’s face with both index fingers. “Hey, I just laughed! Did you hear that? It was like, in my nose.”

‘My nose,’ he corrected.

Glim paused. “How about . . . our nose?”

Elend didn’t like the sound of that.

Glim spun his body away from the mirror and took a few steps toward the bed. The wooden floors creaked beneath his bare feet, but the sensations felt more like a memory. “Left foot, right foot, keep a steady pace. Left foot, right foot, don’t fall on your face!”

Elend’s mind tensed as they moved through the room. Everything happened so fast, and it felt like riding a rollercoaster through the night. His eyes swiveled this way and that, and he barely had time to take in the furniture

“Walking is weird,” Glim said. “It’s like, you fall, then you catch yourself before you hit the floor. And why does everything feel so much?”

‘That question doesn’t make sense.’

Glim considered that as she took another step. “Like, my feet are touching the floor, but the floor touches back. Does it always do that?”

‘They’re still my feet,’ Elend reminded her. ‘And I think your five minutes are almost up.’

“What?” Glim spun around, facing the alarm clock on the nightstand. They’d been working on this project for hours, and it was well past midnight now. “I only get five minutes?”

‘That’s what we agreed.’

She pouted and kept walking around the room. Her movements gradually turned to skipping, then dancing. “But I need longer to get used to all this squishiness.”

‘Tomorrow’s a school day.’ he said. ‘I’ll fall asleep in class at this rate.”

“That’s okay,” Glim said as she danced. “I’ll drive your body while you sleep. No one will ever know!”

‘It doesn’t work that way, and you know it.’ Besides, Elend had no intention of letting Glim control his body in public. Or even outside this room.

“Wait.” Glim stopped dancing. “What?”

Oops. He’d meant to keep that last thought to himself, but he’d forgotten to maintain the mental shield between them.

Glim turned his body back to the mirror, looking suddenly worried. “You just mean today, right? Not forever?”

Elend gave a mental sigh as he reconstructed his shield. Glim clearly had no respect for his boundaries. He’d asked her to be quiet, but she kept shouting and dancing around the room like a hyperactive toddler. He’d given into her requests, and she demanded even more.

What if this whole thing had been a mistake?

“But I wanna try eating food,” Glim said. “And swimming, and mana arts!” She threw a punch at the air, and a pure Missile flew out from Elend’s palm. It soared toward the dresser before she could stop it, and it crashed into a framed photograph of Elend’s parents.

Elend was still just a Novice, but the Missile smashed through the glass, crumbled the picture, and left a shallow dent in the drywall behind it. Several more items fell off the dresser, clattering on the wooden floor.

‘That’s it!’ Elend pressed down with all his mental might, seizing control from Glim. The sensation of weight returned to him, and his body obeyed his commands once again. He took a good long breath, and all the sensations came back to him: the cool winter air on his skin, and the floor beneath his feet. The sweet mineral scent of pure mana reached his nose, and he even tasted some on his tongue.

He stood there for several long heartbeats, straining to listen for footsteps outside his bedroom. Fortunately, the impact hadn’t been as loud as it looked, and no one came.

Elend took a few steps toward the dresser, treading carefully to avoid any shards of broken glass.

“I’m sorry,” Glim said from across the room. All the excitement had faded from her voice, and she sounded genuinely sincere.

“It’s fine,” Elend said after a short pause. “I have other pictures of them.” He briefly considered grabbing a broom to sweep up the glass, but decided against it. The security cameras would catch him downstairs after midnight, and it would be less suspicious if he let the staff clean up the mess tomorrow morning.

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He stepped back toward the mirror where Glim waited in her regular form. She looked like a young girl, about his age, made entirely of pale blue mana. The detail was fuzzy right now, but he planned to improve her form as he increased his mana supply. He would also build her a proper brain, so she didn’t have to share his.

Glim hung her head as he approached. “I was just pretending to shoot a Missile. I didn’t think it would happen for real.”

“I’m not mad about that.” Elend grabbed a spare pillow and plopped down in front of the full-length mirror. He also cycled some dream mana to his head, hiding his own reflection.

Glim spread out her dress and sat down opposite him on the floor. “And . . . I’m sorry I got excited. I’ll do better next time, I promise.”

“I just want to take things slow,” Elend said.

“Okay.” Glim bit her lip. “So . . . can we try again tomorrow?” Clearly, she couldn’t take a hint. “Can we go outside after school? In the forest behind the house? No one will see us back there.”

“I agreed to try this once,” he replied. “As an experiment.”

“But I waited for so long!” Glim said. “I wanna know what the sun feels like. And the wind, and the snow!”

“You’ve only been alive for six months.”

“Yeah, and I spent all that time watching you do cool stuff.” She glanced down at her own hands. “This isn’t the same. It feels like I’m pretending.”

“That’s not my fault,” Elend said.

She gave him a frank look. “I mean, it kind of is your fault. You made me, didn’t you?”

“You agreed to this,” he replied. Elend’s technique manuals had been vague at times, but this part had been clear as glass. You couldn’t force imaginary friends to exist if they didn’t want to exist.

“But you promised we’d share,” Glim said. “This doesn’t feel like sharing.”

“It’s my body,” Elend snapped in a harsh whisper.

Glim winced at that. “Shouldn’t it be our body?”

Elend didn’t reply to that. He understood Glim’s reasoning. She was a person like anyone else, and she just happened to be trapped in his head. But she’d known that limitation from the start. How could she not understand that?

“This is dangerous,” he said after a long pause. “This”—he gestured a finger between them—“is supposed to be impossible. People will think I’m crazy if they find out.”

“Right.” Glim nodded along. “But I could learn to act more like you. With practice, I mean. No one will ever know who’s behind the wheel. We’ll just tell people we trust, and no one else.”

Elend closed his eyes and fought down another wave of annoyance. He’d told Glim he wanted to take things slow, and here she was, planning for this hypothetical future. A future where they took turns controlling Elend’s body, and living out his life. A future where he spent half his time living as a prisoner in his own skin.

He’d tried that for five minutes tonight, and five minutes had been more than enough.

Elend didn’t have any friends or family—not since his parents died—so he’d poured all his free time into this technique. He’d created Glim as a friend, someone to talk to when he felt lonely. At first, she’d existed as a faint glimmer of light in his mirror and windows, floating back and forth like an ordinary Missile. He'd spoken with her for months, treating her like a person, and envisioning her physical form.

And then Glim started talking back, changing her own appearance, and shaping her own personality.

Elend could have been imagining their conversations, putting words in her mouth, or puppeteering her movements. But he’d never truly doubted himself; he was too young and foolish for that. And then Glim had started disagreeing with him over time, expressing her own wants and needs. She’d started dressing like the girls at school, and noticing details that Elend would have overlooked.

And she always wanted more.

The technique manuals had warned him about this part, but he hadn’t listened. He hadn’t even understood those warnings until it was too late.

Glim was still his best friend, but this wasn’t fair. It was his body, and he shouldn’t have to share it.

~~~

Days passed, and Glim kept pestering him for more time. Elend deflected the questions for now, but his friend was relentless. She appeared every night in his bedroom mirror, her transparent form brimming with energy.

“So?” she always asked. “Did you think about it?”

Elend was usually too tired to argue at this point. Koreldon Prep had a heavier workload than most schools, and he had several hours of homework each night. He tried to tell her as much, but she dug in, throwing out new ideas each time.

On Kelsday night, Glim didn’t even wait for him for settle into his bedroom. She appeared right in the bathroom mirror as he stepped out of the shower.

“Tomorrow’s Talekday, right?” She bounced up and down in the mist. “What if we go somewhere quiet? No people. Just us.”

Elend used his towel to rub at his face. “Tomorrow’s not a good day.”

“Why not? Your homework is all done.”

“Yeah, but I still have to meet with Master Parson for dream mana lessons.”

“So? That only takes a few hours. What about the rest of the day?”

“That’s my only time off.” Elend ran the towel through his hair. “I need to go to the library, then work on—”

“What about me?” Glim broke in.

“I’m just not ready.”

“But I am. I know you’re scared, but I promise I’ll be good. Don’t you trust me?”

Elend paused, squeezing the towel between his hands. Did he trust her? Sort of. Glim might be wild and unpredictable, but she wasn’t malicious. She would never hurt him, or intentionally put him in danger.

But one one more session wouldn’t satisfy her curiosity. And the more Elend gave in, the easier it would be for her to take control. All mana techniques worked that way; they took conscious effort at first, and then they became effortless over time.

“I’ll think about it,” Elend finally said.

Glim leaned closer to the mirror. “Promise?”

He nodded. “I promise.”

Another week went by, and things finally went back to normal between them. At least Elend thought things were normal, until he woke up in the kitchen after midnight.

He sat on a barstool with an open carton of chocolate ice cream on the counter. His right hand plunged a spoon into the carton, then he brought it to his open mouth. He grinned at the sweet taste, and his whole body squirmed with delight.

The sensations felt dull and distant, almost like a dream. But no . . . he’d been dreaming a few seconds ago, but this was different. It felt more like . . .

‘Glim!’

His body froze for a second, then it plunged the spoon back into the carton. Elend wrestled for control, but Glim fought back, and the spoon sank deeper into the ice cream.

‘Glim!’ he shouted through his own mind. ‘This isn’t funny. Get out!”

‘Just one more bite,’ she thought back. ‘Please.’

The hand moved closer to his face, shaking with the force of their struggle.

Then Glim overpowered Elend and brought the spoon all the way into his mouth. His body tasted the ice cream for several long heartbeats before he finally swallowed it.

‘Now!’ Elend pushed down harder, and the world snapped back into control.

He immediately grabbed the carton, closed the lid, and tossed it back into the freezer. Then he washed off the bowl and spoon before slamming them both into the dishwasher. His hands shook as he worked, and his mind raced to process what just happened.

This had to be a dream, right? Glim couldn’t just take control of his body while he slept. They’d only done this technique one time. It should be impossible.

Then again, most experts agreed that Glim shouldn’t exist in the first place. What if this knowledge had been intentionally lost? What if mana spirits were even more dangerous than he’d imagined?

Glim remained silent in the back of his mind, and he felt her guilt bubbling to the surface. She probably heard his thoughts right now, but he was too angry to construct his mental shields.

Finally, Elend trudged up the stairs, closed his bedroom door, and paced in front of the mirror.

Glim appeared in the reflective surface, wringing her hand, not meeting his eyes.

“What were you thinking?” Elend asked in a harsh whisper. “How did you even do that?”

Glim hesitated. “I—I don’t know. I just . . . slipped in? I didn’t mean to! You were asleep, and I was awake, and I was thinking about food.”

Elend kept pacing, and his voice came out low and furious. “You can’t do this without permission. You know that.”

Glim shrank back, becoming smaller and more transparent. “I’m sorry, it was an accident.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Elend said.

She spent several seconds gathering her courage. “I thought you’d never let me out again.”

Elend fought down a surge of conflicting emotions. He wanted to stay angry, but her voice sounded so fragile, and it made him feel like a monster. But that wasn’t fair; he shouldn’t feel this guilty for protecting his own body. “That doesn’t make it okay.”

Glim’s form rippled like a reflection in a pond. “I just wanted to be real.”

He dragged a hand down his face. “You are real. But you can’t do this again. If you ever do . . .” Elend trailed off. He’d been about to threaten her—to deny her access to his body—but could he really enforce that? She’d seized control while he slept tonight, and he’d been helpless to stop her. Then she’d almost won their struggle for control.

What if Glim became even more powerful? What if she turned the tables and made him beg for time in his own body?

“I’d never do that!” Glim appeared in the glass window opposite the mirror, and her form shone bright against the snowy night sky.

Elend stared into her eyes, reading her surface thoughts. She believed her own words; she had no intention of stealing Elend’s entire life. But things could change. A month ago, she hadn’t even wanted to control his body in the first place.

Angels above. How had he gotten himself into this mess? How had he ignored all the warnings from those manuals? He’d craved this novel experience, but a small part of him hadn’t truly believed it would go so far. Even Masters had failed to create true mana spirits, after all. What were the odds that a twelve-year-old would succeed?

Elend had been a fool. He’d wanted a best friend, not a parasite. What if other mana spirits had broken free over the centuries, causing untold destruction in their makers’ names? What if they threatened all of humanity?

“I’d never do that!” Glim repeated. Tears clouded her eyes, and she clutched the hem of her blue dress. Elend pulled his gaze away from the mirror, feeling a sudden tightness in his chest.

For the second time that night, he felt like a monster. How could he do this do his best friend? How could he let his fear get the best of him? He was a dream artist; he should have more control than this.

Elend paused, following the emotions to their source. There was guilt there, mingled with a strong desire to forgive Glim. To make her happy again—to give her everything she wanted.

“Dream mana?” He whirled back toward the mirror. “You’re using dream mana on me?”

“I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “Maybe?”

Another lie.

“I can’t help it!” She stared down at her hands. “I have all this power, but no one taught me how to use it!”

Elend tried to rebuild his mental shields, but he failed. Glim’s emotions and techniques poured through like water rushing from a dam, and he couldn’t keep the current at bay. She was stronger than him—maybe all mana spirits were stronger than humans—and this was just the beginning.

He still had time to stop things from escalating. Any mana spirit could be dissipated. He could reabsorb her into his soul, and start over. He could—

“No!” Glim’s voice rose, and her face hardened with sudden anger. He’d created her to be unnaturally beautiful, but now those same features turned into something terrifying. “That’s not fair! She hurled more techniques into his mind, flooding him with waves of guilt and disgust. “I messed up, but it was just one mistake!”

Elend pushed back with his own techniques, rebuilding his mental barriers.

“That’s murder!” she shouted at him, and the voice echoed over and over in his mind. “You’d never do that if I were flesh and blood!”

He flinched back in sudden realization. She was right, of course; humans weren’t executed for potential crimes. But Glim had still taken control of his body against his will, and she’d almost overpowered him with her dream techniques.

She had to be restrained before it was too late.

“Swear an oath to me,” Elend said. “Swear that you’ll stay in the mirror from now on.”

She blinked at him, and all the wind seemed to leave her sails. “W-what? But then I can’t leave this room!”

“You’ll still be inside my head.”

“But what about when you grow up? Or when you travel? Or when—”

“Okay, okay.” Elend raised a hand. “All mirrors, then. All reflective surfaces.” Glim still couldn’t make herself known without his permission, so she couldn’t cause any real damage that way. And if she did, well . . . he’d deal with that later.

Glim took several deep breaths, and her body shook as hard as his. “For how long?”

“Forever,” Elend said. “Until I die.”

“What?”

“It’s the only way I can trust you,” he explained. “I’ll have nothing you want. That means you’ll have no reason to use your techniques on me.” He wanted to stop Glim from using those techniques altogether, but that might doom her to a lifetime of agony. This was the best compromise he could think of.

Her eyes widened in sudden horror. “Can we sleep on this first?”

Elend shook his head. “You lost my trust when you stole my body. And when you used your dream mana on me.”

“Please,” Glim said. “I want to be free.”

“That’s my offer.” Elend stepped forward and placed his hand on the mirror’s cold surface. “Take it or leave it.”

Several seconds passed, and Glim glanced back and forth. Elend kept his expression firm, and his mental barriers in place. If she wanted to strike back at him, then this would be the time.

Finally, she hung her head and pressed her hand against his. Mana flowed between them, and they spoke the words of their oath.