by Ian Rodgers
I let out a grunt that was heavy with nostalgia and experience. “Thus was the start of my journey. I got into some fights, learned plenty of interesting things, met lots of people – most were nice, some were scum – and pretended to be a human adventurer. Still, I can’t help but long for the days when I was just a simple Ooze, getting headpats and being fed food scraps under the table…”
I sighed dreamily, remembering the good old times, only to flinch as Dora’s fingers suddenly started to gouge into my ‘back’ as she held onto me tighter. Normally that wouldn’t have hurt me at all. Heck, I likely wouldn’t have even felt it! But there was magic sparking around the half-orc, and her unstable emotions were causing her mana to leak into her hands, causing me intense pain as she gripped harder and dug her fingers in deeper into my gelatinous body.
“So, you had a chance to leave… to be free of your ‘owner,’” here Dora practically spat the word out, “and you didn’t want to take it the moment the opportunity arose?!”
“Nooo?” I replied drawing the word out in my confusion. “Why would I? I had a good life. I loved my owner and she loved me. Why would I want to leave?”
“Because some people don’t get chances like that! Many people aren’t able to escape their owners!” Dora shouted angrily. “Because a sane person wouldn’t want to have an ‘owner!’”
“I think I figured out one of the criteria for becoming a Chosen One!” the half-orc sneered. “We’re both freaking broken in some way! Damaged goods, that’s what we are!”
Dora spat off to the side, the gob of spit and phlegm plummeting like a rock through the endless sky of Luminoth. “How much gold do you want to bet that our lost little third member is as broken and messed up as we are?”
“I’m not broken or messed up!” I protested. For some reason after declaring that, I thought I heard an awkward cough and mumbled apology come out of my soul. I ignored it in favor of twisting my ‘head’ around to give the impression I was glaring at my rider.
However, instead of accepting my perfectly reasonable statement for the truth it was, she leaned in and bopped me where a nose would be had I actually bothered to make one appear on my ‘face.’
“That right there is what I’m talking about! Who in their right mind would think it was normal and not messed up to twist their head around a full hundred and eighty degrees just to pretend-glare at someone!” Dora shouted. “It’s sickening, and horrific, and proves my point!”
“Then what about you, huh? What makes you an expert on being ‘broken?’” I asked, a tinge of frustration worming into my words. She snorted at my attempt at being pushy, and shook her head.
“I’m as messed up as they come! I was born a half-orc in southern Partaevia, which meant from the moment I was born I’ve been subjected to bigotry and belittlement! And then, when I turned fifteen, nobles killed my mother, and I was forced to run away from my home and join a band of slave merchants!”
Dora scoffed in disgust. “Three years I spent in the Cracked Land! Three years I’ve seen the worst of what society has to offer! I’ve treated slaves who’ve nearly been whipped to death! I’ve cured people who were kidnapped from their homes and forced into servitude! And I’ve also had to heal the very monsters who hurt and control the lives of the former!”
She glared hotly at me. “No one wants to be a slave, Jellik! No one! And yet here you are, gleefully reminiscing about your happy and jolly past as a ‘pet!’ Despite being a sapient creature! You sicken me! And you dare consider yourself to be unbroken?!”
I recoiled physically from the sheer venom and hatred in her voice as she angrily spilled her guts to me. But what was clear to me was that a great deal of the loathing and disgust in her words was aimed at herself.
My sudden jerking motion interrupted her furious tirade, and for a brief second she wobbled dangerously back and forth. Perched awkwardly on my ‘back’ as she already was, she was in real danger of falling off!
Thankfully I’d thought of this problem ahead of time, and layered a thin film of super sticky goo onto my ‘back’ when she’d climbed aboard. Thanks to my magical adhesive secretions, Dora jerked to a stop, no longer in danger of plummeting off of me like her spitball from earlier.
“Wuh?” she uttered dumbly, shaking her head as if coming out of trance. Dora’s disturbed mana settled down and she slumped, all tension drained from her.
“Are you alright? Do you feel sick, or possessed by evil spirits?” I asked cautiously, wanting to cover all my bases.
“No, I-I just feel tired,” Dora replied, massaging her head. “Other than that, I feel fine. Maybe all I needed was to get my thoughts out of my head.”
She looked down over the side, peering into the luminous depths of the Elemental Plane of Light. “I’ve been keeping a lot of things – unpleasant thoughts and feelings – locked away for a while. Perhaps letting the bile out was necessary. If lancing an infected wound can help a patient heal physically, maybe expelling some of my negative emotions helped balance my mental state.”
“Your mana was going wild back there for a while,” I pointed out. “I’m not an expert or anything, but perhaps unbottling your, uh, ‘personal opinions,’ is a side effect from being here in Luminoth? I know this plane of reality is full of positive energy. It might have reacted badly to the pent-up anxiety in your head.”
“Possible,” she muttered. She remained silent for a couple of minutes, and I felt the need to add,
“Well, if you need to talk some more, I’m always willing to lend an ear.” To prove my point, I grew an ear-shaped protrusion on my body in front of Dora, and she stifled a giggle.
“I see,” she said demurely after overcoming her mirth.
“Seriously, though, I’m here if you want to vent more,” I said. “I won’t look down on you or anything because of your past. Come on, look at me! Who am I to judge?”
“Maybe later,” she said, though she did manage to give me a weak, yet thankful, smile.
With matters settled down for the moment, we continued the flight in silence. I had no idea what was running through Dora’s head, but I for one was currently processing what I’d just learned.
‘Okay, what do I know about my new friend?’ I thought to myself. ‘Well, to start, calling her ‘friend’ might be a bit premature. I get the feeling she’s a very wary woman. Given the life she’s had, I can understand her hesitation to trust anyone.’
I felt sympathy well up inside my core. ‘If not for Rosa and Tara, and of course knowing that Liliana, Kine, and the rest wouldn’t turn away from me, I don’t think I could have handled the aftermath of Norhelm as well as I did.’
Bitterness surged within me as I thought of that tiny little village on Varia’s outskirts. It’d been the first time I’d encountered pure loathing and disgust for being what I was. The first time I realized I wasn’t a human, no matter how smart I was, but a monster, and would never be accepted by the average person.
I was fresh from having dealt with some crazy problems at the Royal Varian Mage’s Academy, and I’d just discovered I was a Chosen One. Add in the fact that I’d only just started to venture out on my own for the first time and was getting used to doing things on my own, rather than letting someone else take care of it, and Norhelm had ended up being one mistake after another.
Thinking about that cursed village made me wonder just how bad Dora had had it. Partaevia was a human supremist nation, and even if they didn’t outright expel non-humans from their borders, they did make it hard for them to live or do business in that militaristic empire. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what a half-orc like Dora had been put through.
Sure, she’d eventually gotten away from Partaevia and the mistreatment, but at what cost? A dead mother and a life living as a slave merchant in the most inhospitable region in the Dreadlands, a place infamously known for its all-around harshness!
I shivered at the thought of the person on my back being a slave trader. Slavery was illegal acro
ss Orria and Par-Orria, but not in the Dreadlands, which included Saluda. The flesh markets of the southern sub-continent were an open secret, and human trafficking was still a major criminal enterprise in the dark, scummy corners of ‘civilized’ society. The black chains I’d seen on her soul finally made sense.
Still, despite her profession, she seemed genuinely regretful about it all. She clearly hated herself for having to do such things to other people, and for consorting with cruel, ruthless slave owners. But, in the end, if she was truly, irredeemably evil, the light of Luminoth would have seared her flesh from her bones and rent her soul asunder. Stained she might have been, but she was trying to cleanse herself of her sins. Dora repented.
‘There might be hope for her yet,’ I thought, coming up with ways to talk with the half-orc about her past in more depth. I was going to help her through this if it was the last thing I’d do! Because like it or not, she and I were destined to fight the Void together, and we couldn’t do that if she was still doubting herself.
‘I wonder if Lady Shyla would have any helpful hints for Dora? I mean, she’s also a Healer, and she was close friends with Barron, who by all accounts had been a thief and assassin before becoming a Chosen One and saving Erafore from the World Rebellion during the War of Fallen Gods,’ I mused to myself as I floated along.
However, my daydreaming soon came to an end as I narrowly managed to evade a fiery hot beam of light that came blasting out of nowhere.
“Okay, what in the Six Hellish Planes of Pluton was that?!” Dora screeched, ducking low as the beam had narrowly missed taking off her head. As it was, it’d ended up singing her ponytail.
“I don’t… oooohhh,” I drawled, staring out into the distance.
“What are…? No, wait, I get it now,” the half-orc sighed, having also noticed what I’d just spotted.
There, littering the sky like an endlessly vast jagged and reflective coral reef were countless shards of floating mirrored glass. Some chunks were huge, easily the size of buildings. Others were mere splinters of sharpened shards and therefore deadlier if run into while unaware.
As some of the larger pieces of mirrors rotated and drifted through Luminoth, they caught the light that was ever pervasive in such a way that it was reflected onto and bounced off of other giant shard. The whole process of reflecting and refining turned ordinary light into magnified rays of fiery death!
“This has got to be the Mirror Field,” I muttered in awe.
“What gave it away?” Dora snarked, her attitude returning. “Was it all the mirrors? Or perhaps the millions of reflections of us inside of said mirrors?”
She gestured towards the barrier of shattered glass, and I peered closer. She was right! You could indeed she the reflections of Dora and myself in the bigger, more intact pieces that were floating about.
“Do I really look that, uh, deformed?” I asked, seeing for the first time what my experimental equine shaped body really looked like.
“Pretty much, yeah,” Dora agreed without hesitation. I winced at the blow to my pride and skills.
“Ugh, thank you,” I grunted.
“You look like a kelpie that got trapped in a tar pit that was dyed purple,” Dora continued, a smirk on her face. “Or like an Undead horse that decided it wanted to become a ghost and so wore a purple bedsheet over its body.”
“That’s enough, thanks,” I said, growing annoyed now. But the Healer didn’t stop.
“You look like the offspring of a donkey that mated with a purple colored ice sculpture of a horse!”
“OI!” I shouted. She grinned devilishly, and delivered one final barb.
“You’re very ugly.”
“I’ll remember this,” I hissed. “My revenge will be as swift as it will be painful and humiliating. This, I swear!”
“Uh-huh, I’m sure it will,” Dora said, rolling her eyes at my warning. I couldn’t help but snort in amusement at her, before turning my attention back to the sea of glass before us.
During our little comedy routine, I’d drifted slightly closer to the Field of Mirrors, the better to observe the way the place worked. Every so often a laser made from reflected light would lash out randomly. Trying to predict where a beam would appear was futile due to the sheer number of crazily spinning shards. Some moved about aimlessly, others had a pattern to their flight paths. Regardless, there was no other way forward, though Dora looked hesitant to venture any nearer.
“Are you sure we have to go straight through it?” she asked, warily eyeing large spinning shards as we approached.
“The Archon said we had to go through the Field of Mirrors, so that’s what we’re doing,” I replied. She scoffed at my answer.
“Yeah, but he’s a higher lifeform than we are! I bet glass shards don’t even hurt him!” Dora said in rebuttal. I thought her words over, and found them to contain a good point.
“…Now that you mention it, I can’t help but think that maybe the Archon who gave us these directions is not too familiar with the frailty of mortal bodies,” I mused aloud. Dora nodded triumphantly.
“Exactly! The best option for us is to fly over, under, or around this place. Little risk of being sliced to shred that way.”
“However, your idea has one tiny problem,” I claimed, and she looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“And that would be?”
“That this is an Elemental Plane, not some locale in the mortal realms. For all we know, the Field of Mirrors extends infinitely in one direction, or all of them! And even if it doesn’t, it might still take days, if not weeks, of travel time to circumnavigate the area,” I explained, and she sagged in defeat.
“Stupid Aether and its stupid, messed up rules…” she grumbled petulantly before sighing. “Fine, then. Your point’s been made. But my comment about not wanting to be cut apart by whirling shards of glass still stands. How are we going to make it through?”
“To that end, I have an idea,” I replied, thinking back to a spell Philia had taught me while traveling together. She’d shown it to me back when we’d had to cross a vast canyon in the Elemental Plane of Fire, and imparted the incantation while we’d swam through the Elemental Plane of Water together.
I began to concentrate intensely on the area in front of me, and began to silently chant the words necessary to summon the construct that would take us safely through the Field of Mirrors. I felt the magic swell within me, and I let it out.
“Come forth, Wanderer’s Bridge! I pay the toll with soul and sin, give unto me the path to traverse the mire of reality!” I incanted, my voice ringing through the plane with almighty authority.
Before our eyes, a thin, wispy streak of gold manifested in front of me, and extended deep into the depths of the shard-filled terrain. It was surrounded by a vibrant golden aura that filled our souls with a sense of protection. The pieces of glass that constantly and endlessly drifted around bounced off of the bridge’s glow, ensuring that the way forward was nice and safe.
“Whoa,” Dora muttered in awe. “That is one way to get through a hazardous path.”
“Yup, the Wanderer’s Bridge sure is neat,” I agreed, and stepped onto the yellow road. After confirming it was safe to tread on, I turned my ‘head’ to look at Dora. “Do you mind if you get off and walk while we’re on the bridge?”
“Sure, no problem, might as well stretch my legs,” the Healer agreed, dismounting with practiced ease. She then spent a few moments rubbing life back into her lower extremities. “Agh, forgot how numb you can get after riding for hours!”
She then blinked in confusion. “Huh. Odd that I actually am feeling the pain this time. I didn’t have any aches when we landed at the Tower of Light.”
“That’s because the Light magic in the area was probably healing you, or at the very least keeping your mind off of the pain,” I replied as I shrunk back down to my preferred shape and form. “Here, the Wanderer’s Bridge acts like a completely separate and isolated region, so the effects of the Elementa
l Plane can’t reach or affect us while we’re on it.”
Dora nodded at my explanation. In the meantime, I sighed happily after reverting back to my comfortable spherical form. I still wasn’t totally used to the feeling I got when I had to grow and use my limbs. I had no idea how humans could do it all the time! At least while flying and shaped like a horse I didn’t have to actually use them. Not like when I was an adventurer. Pretending to be human and walking on limbs that don’t actually have bones or muscles is a unique experience.
“The Wanderer’s Bridge should lead us all the way to the other side of the Mirror Field,” I stated, looking around as I rolled forward. “Furthermore, it’ll protect us from the shards as well as any problematic creatures.”
“Very impressive,” Dora complimented. “Does it also bend space so that we don’t have to walk days or weeks to get to the other side?”
“Without a doubt,” I assured the half-orc. “Now come on! The Hospice is only a little bit further away now!”
Travelling along the Wanderer’s Bridge was a nice change of pace. Sure, the bridge I’d summoned wasn’t as impressive as the one Philia could call forth. After all, hers had statues and fancy decorations! Mine was like walking on a solid gold cloud. But it got the job done, and that was good enough for me!
Dora appreciated it as well, from the way she happily hummed as she walked along the bridge. She spent a lot of time early on warily watching out and flinching whenever a shard got too close to the bridge, but after seeing the hazy golden aura reflect the debris away, she became less twitchy and instead began acting like a tourist, oohing and ahhing at the surroundings.
Which were, to be fair, quite impressive. The reflections we could see in the mirrors around us were astounding!
Many of the images didn’t show the Wanderer’s Bridge, so it looked surreal seeing me rolling on empty air and Dora walking by shards of glassy death without a care or worry.
Other reflections depicted very odd scenes. In one, I was a gargantuan Pond Ooze. Another showed me as a tiny Berry Ooze! I appeared as a Healing Ooze in one, and a regular Ooze in another! Though in that latter reflection, my core was still golden and rune covered.