The Mirrored City

by Michael J. Bode

  As if in response, some flickering distorted shade leapt out from a mirror and tried to bite her. The blade answered with a perfunctory decapitation, and the shadowy figure vanished. The shades were a manifestation of sinful thoughts, generally harmless unless in great numbers.

  She strolled through the melted wax of reality surrounding her. “I’ve been gone a day and the whole world has gone to total shit.”

  She wasn’t quite sure which Harrower she was dealing with. It wasn’t Vilos the Devourer—she had killed that one herself in another body long ago. It seemed more like Agnax the Deceiver’s style. It probably didn’t have a name yet. The original thirteen had taken their names from the Archmages they possessed. Like Sword, the Harrowers needed a sentient vessel to act in the world. Tough as fuck to kill but not immortal.

  She continued on for what seemed like a while, the cobbled street always stretching endlessly before her. None of the intersections of side streets matched with the city plan. She caught glimpses of lights and celebrations down one of the streets. Her stomach growled as the scent of cumin-sprinkled pastries wafted toward her in spite of the air being completely still. Obvious trap.

  A stooped figure pushed a cart down the road. “Centipedes! Get your fresh centipedes! Best in the two cities!”

  A middle-aged woman was trudging along with a cart full of writhing insects in various baskets. She was old and encrusted with beetles and centipedes crawling over her clothes, hands, and face. The Incursion had already begun to change the citizens. By the end of it, these streets would be full.

  Sword walked over to the woman. “I’d like a handful of your nastiest centipedes, please.”

  The woman’s eyes lit up as she reached her hand into one of the disgusting baskets and pulled out a live one as thick as a sausage and as long as a snake. It had a black body and large red head like a strawberry. “This one.” She smiled gleefully and shoved it in Sword’s face. “I must warn you—the venom makes it spicy.”

  Yes, Daphne, I’m going to make you eat this. It’s a fraction of what you deserve, and you skipped breakfast. She grabbed it from the centipede lady and bit the head off so it stopped wriggling. Maddox didn’t need food, and Soren could subsist on magic, which took a lot of the irritating biological maintenance out of being embodied. Insects were a delicacy in some cultures—but not this one and for good reason. Still, it was food in a city with no commerce.

  “You like?”

  “Tasty,” Sword said with her mouth still full. It was hard not to gag a little.

  “One ducat please.”

  “Are you fucking serious?”

  “I’m not running a charity.” The woman’s teeth were yellow.

  Sword rolled her eyes and fished a coin out of the pouch. She threw it into a basket of maggots and continued on her way. There were always rules to Incursions, especially early on before the madness infected everyone. The Harrower facilitated, but the worst of it came from the people trapped inside the Cyst.

  Sword continued her trek, taking another mouthful of centipede sausage. The architecture started to change. A building, much taller than anything in the city, stretched up into the fog. Naturally, it was crawling with giant centipedes.

  Sword looked at the thing in her hand and chucked it to the ground. “Damn it! I could’ve saved myself a ducat if I’d just waited.”

  “Hello,” a woman’s voice called from one of the alleys.

  Sword drew her blade. “Hey, friendly voice. Come out where I can see you.”

  Sybil emerged from one of the alleys. She wasn’t burned, and she wore long purple robes. Her shaved black head was bowed. “I am called Sybil.”

  “I know who you are,” Sword said. “And if you had any clue who I am you would have slithered under any rock you could find. I am the Righteous Left hand of Ohan’s Fury. I am the sun that burns in the east and the retribution that comes in the west. I am the Inquisition, and you have violated the All-Father’s Creation. In his glorious name I smite you!”

  “Do it,” Sybil said softly. She knelt on the ground, hands folded across her lap.

  Sword lowered her blade to her side. “Wait. What?”

  Sybil sighed. “It was not supposed to happen like this. The Harrowers promised us a world free from the interference of humanity, where we would have our own bodies. A world where our own evolution could have happened as it did for the humans on their home. We would be the dominant species with our unique art and technology. It should have been as if they had never come here.”

  Sword rested the tip of her blade on the ground and looked up at the massive tower. “Let me tell you a story. Before Baash and Dessim, this city was the Capitol of the Sarn empire. It was literally called Capitol, and they lived in soaring towers much like this one here. Their vision of an ideal world was one ungoverned by the petty selfishness of humankind.

  “To that end, they created the Suzerains, jeweled masks imbued with the wisdom and knowledge to effectively run a society, but none of the greed or ambition to destroy it. They were incapable of lying and fair to a fault; they did a decent job at first. But over the centuries, each one, based on their jurisdiction, had a slightly different, infallibly reasoned idea about what made a perfect society.”

  Sybil nodded. “I think I see where this path leads. But they were creations of the humans—”

  “Interrupt me again, and I’ll slice that lovely bald head of yours off before you hear the end of this story.” Sword raised her blade and pointed it at the woman’s throat. “Ahem, anyway. They were created to be better than humans at resolving conflicts. However, as it turns out, humans have pretty well mastered the techniques—war for instance, is a great way to settle disagreements.

  “Same case with deception. Humans saw this as a flaw, but when falsifying information advanced an agenda, the Suzerains saw this as an obvious advantage; the humans were mistaken about their own strengths. So the Suzerains built a blueprint for world domination and started wars that lasted centuries. They wiped out everything. I mean, they were unstoppable until they hit Patrea, which had its own ideas about humanity’s future.”

  Sword sighed heavily and sat down next to Sybil. “The point I’m getting to, in my long-winded manner, is that everyone’s a shithead. It’s easy to look at the human condition and think you could do better by slapping an ideology on it or killing everyone who disagrees with you. But it’s not. Even if the Harrowers did give your people the world they would have inherited, it would suck just as much. Look around you—your people were willing to start all this over a fucking idea.”

  “The Harrowers were just supposed to change one instant in history. It would be as if all the killing had never happened.”

  Sword shook her head. “The Harrowers are cosmic powers without any sense of causality or conventional reason manifesting as the worst aspects of ourselves. To assume that they are ‘supposed’ to do anything is fucking insane.”

  “So what’s the answer?” Sybil asked. “How do you heal a world that’s sick? Just let it die?”

  “Maybe instead of seeing people as sick and trying to fix them, you see them as they are and try to help them live with their shortcomings.” Sword shrugged and got off the ground. “Look, I really need to find my friends. I’d ask you to come help, but I still kind of hate you. Before I go—do you still want me to kill you?”

  “You’d let me live?”

  “Hey,” she put her hand to her chest, “every fiber of this body is screaming for your blood, but in another way that I can’t really get into, I’m a lot like you. Maybe a first step for your people is being grateful for the things you have rather than what you might have lost.”

  Sybil smiled. “I will consider this lesson. Thank you. You are… extremely wise.”

  “I used to be a preacher,” she smiled to herself, “and a believer.”

  Sword continued down the street. Conspicuously missing from the bizarre scenery were the shrines to the various gods of the Host. Mirrored wal
ls and strange symbols covered the buildings, but she noticed older echoes of the Capitol. I’m getting closer.

  She saw a group of people approaching, soldiers by the look of their silhouettes. She counted six. As they approached, she noticed weapons and the unmistakable silhouette of Patreans. Good, they should be immune to the Harrower’s control.

  Sword sheathed her blade and approached, arms extended at her side, showing her empty hands. She began to identify herself and start barking out orders but froze when she saw Titus the bartender in front of them. Jada, the archaeologist, stood just behind his shoulder. Their eyes were pure white. In unison all six chanted, “Merge with us…”

  Sword stepped back. “What in Ohan’s name is going on?”

  “You,” they raised their hands and pointed. “You took my brother, you witch.”

  Sword drew her steel. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her mind raced back through all of the most recent murders and abductions Daphne had committed in the Mirrored City. This morning alone there had been three mages from the Magesterium and—it clicked into place.

  Sword stared Titus in his whitened eyes—it was impossible to read his emotions. “Shannon Ibazz? You’re Soren’s sister, the succubus, right? I’m trying to find Soren and my friends. We need to put a stop to this, okay? I have something they need—a Sword.” She held it out for the Patreans to examine.

  “Give it to us.”

  “I can’t. It’s a part of me now. You can kill me and take it from me when this is all over.”

  They said nothing.

  “Follow us,” they said. “Your friends are in trouble.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  New Fathers

  MADDOX

  Nature only cares about your survival up to the point when you have children. After that, everything is about the survival of those children to make more. Everything that happens to our bodies after fertility is a direct result of nature’s willful negligence.

  —THE DOULA, TRAVELER’S PROVERBS

  THE SHADOWY CREATURES were pouring out from mirrors that had grown like cancers in the stone walls on either side of the narrow alley. They flickered like shadows cast by a sputtering candle, and they were fast.

  Shannon was crouched behind Maddox, as Soren, Heath, and Lyta fought off the creatures. Maddox hurled them away from Shannon if they slipped through or climbed up the walls. Although easy to dispatch and each one disintegrated into black smoke, they kept coming, with more and more arriving each moment.

  Heath blasted them with lightning, Lyta punched them, and Soren used fire, which seemed really effective. Maddox had to give Soren credit, for someone with no training and borrowed magic, he was doing pretty well. Maddox couldn’t help wishing he still had his own Fire Seal, however.

  “I’m almost out of fire,” Soren said.

  “I still have fists,” Lyta grunted, thrashing into the thick of them. The creatures piled on top of her, shredding at her skin, but they were wasting their time. If she was like the Proteans in the Palace, she felt no pain, healed nearly instantaneously, and packed a massive punch.

  Maddox looked down at Shannon. “If you have anything to contribute to this fight, now would be the time to do it.”

  “I have to keep my baby safe.” She glared at him.

  “You can make more spawn later,” Maddox snapped.

  “I hope you never have children.”

  Maddox grabbed a shade and hurled it against the wall, pulverizing it. “Never. But I’d say the decision was already made for me on that one.”

  “It’s protective instinct,” Soren explained, burning a shade to vapor. He was using more fire than he needed to. The things went up like paper soaked in firebrandy.

  “Use less flame,” Maddox said. “They burn up quickly with just a little bit.”

  Soren nodded as he burned another of the creatures.

  “Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Maddox said, glancing up.

  “What’s the matter, Maddox?” Heath blasted the alley clear as more continued to spill out from the mirrors, climbing the walls into shadow.

  Maddox looked up and saw hundreds of shades spilling down toward them from the roofs above the narrow street. One by one, they dropped and piled onto Heath, ignoring everyone else. His body exploded with electricity, frying them, but each one left a scratch. And then they came down in a flood. He was being ripped to pieces. Divide and conquer. Cut off the head. They’re getting smarter.

  Lyta waded into the mass of forms. She was powerful, but even Maddox could tell she hadn’t been in many fights. She relied on her phenomenal strength rather than any sort of finesse. For every few Maddox lifted off, several more came to take their place.

  Lacerations formed over Heath’s body as the shades piled on him so thick he looked like he was being swallowed in a cloud of black smoke. Soren’s flame sputtered out in his hand, that ability spent.

  “We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Soren’s blue eyes were nearly swallowed by his pupils.

  Maddox sighed. “The lucky ones.” He wasn’t too sure about his immortality. After all, the Second Era had been chock full of undead, deathless, ageless, and eternally young people. After the Long Night, the only ones left were the batty Travelers and artifacts like Sword.

  “I’m getting help,” Shannon said.

  “I don’t have any magic that will work!” Soren yelled. They had discovered early on that Soren could absorb Heath’s Light but couldn’t access his Stormlord abilities. It was probably a higher tier of magic, like whatever Maddox’s vexingly nebulous gift as an Architect granted him.

  “Touch my hand!”

  Soren reached out to Maddox, but a mass of shades cut them off and scratched at Soren’s arms and face. The claws left wounds like paper cuts, but they passed through clothing. The shades left Lyta and Shannon alone completely. They couldn’t kill Lyta, and Shannon wasn’t fighting. They’d probably save her for last.

  Heath had vanished under a turbulent horde of ravenous shadows. The only evidence he was still alive came from the flicker of lightning in the shadows, lighting up like a small thunderhead. Lyta dove into the mass and vanished into the darkness. More and more shades spilled out from mirrors in every direction.

  Maddox used his seal to lift Soren, bringing him closer. Soren’s hand clamped around Maddox’s, and he felt… aroused? Really? He flung the hand off and wiped his hand on his tunic. The shades were coming for both of them now. “Don’t aim, just push!”

  Soren nodded and began flinging back the shades, but more kept coming with no end in sight. The entire street had become darkened with humanoid forms, piled on top of each other, clawing and grasping toward them.

  Shannon shrieked. They were going after her now. Maddox crouched down to shield her with his body. The scratches stung and the shades weighed as much as a feather each, but he felt himself getting smothered, like he’d had a pallet of heavy quilts dropped on him.

  A blazing light burst from one end of the alley, like a lantern but nearly as bright as the sun. It cut through the darkness, turning it to smoke. The shades screamed and hissed, not the feral noise they had made while attacking but a susurrus of pure terror. The light blinded Maddox and colored spots danced across his vision, making it hard to see anything.

  He heard a voice that gave him chills. “Heath! Use your Light.”

  “Daphne?” Maddox said, never imagining he’d be thankful to hear her voice again.

  Soren’s hands flared with Light, and Maddox felt the weight lift instantly. The pile of shadows erupted in pinpricks of light at first but swelled to a glowing conflagration, revealing Heath lying wounded in Lyta’s arms.

  A few shadows scuttled into the mirrors, but most were gone in an instant.

  When the shades were fully gone, Heath collapsed. He looked like shit. His hand rested on his stomach as he lay there coughing. Blood came from his mouth.

  Soren placed his hands on Maddox’s shoulder, sending the warm balm of healing ene
rgy to kill the pain of a thousand tiny scratches.

  “What’s wrong with Heath?” Soren asked, rushing to his side.

  “Cancer,” Maddox said, scanning the dark alleyway for Daphne.

  The Sword began to glow, and Maddox’s heart skipped.

  “Hello, Maddox. I’d hug you but…” Daphne emerged from the end of the alley with a small company of alabaster-eyed Patrean soldiers. He looked at Shannon, who offered him an I told you so smile.

  “The fuck?”

  Lyta stepped forward and stood over Heath’s body, ready to fight. “Don’t go near him, you hag.”

  “Daphne is a hag, but it’s not really her. It’s Sword,” Maddox assured her. “How the hells did you end up in her hands?”

  “She needed my expertise.” Sword smiled. “And it turns out she knows a lot more than any of us suspected. What happened here?”

  Maddox told her the entire story from his side from the circle up to everything that had happened until the ambush of shades.

  Sword listened and nodded as Maddox recounted his tale. He hated Daphne with the fire of a towering inferno in the middle of summer, but he hated the idea of Sword being bonded to her even more. He knew it wasn’t Sword’s choice, but it still felt awful.

  “What about Heath?” Lyta asked, cradling him. “Can you heal him?”

  “Light is the worst thing for him,” Shannon said. “It causes cancer to grow faster; just like it grows back healthy organs, it does the same for unhealthy ones. Every time he uses it on himself, he could make it worse.”

  “She’s right,” Soren said. “The Patrean Fathers had a lot of knowledge about these kinds of illnesses.”

  “You have racial memory now?” Sword asked.

  Soren nodded. “When we touched, it was an immediate connection, like how when I touch people it makes them want to have sex. So we had sex, and we remembered things from our Fathers and our Originals.”

  Sword shook her head. “Those devious bastards. They gave you blueprints to rebuild their empire, didn’t they? That’s why you’re so powerful.”