by Gage Lee
“What are you doing?” Tycho asked.
My heart jumped into my throat. I hadn’t hidden my work well enough. The sage knew I was up to something. I had to think fast.
“Oh,” I said. “The spell I used to heal her core had a loose thread. It was leaking jinsei, but I trimmed it back and tied it off.”
“It appears there’s still a bit of foreign sacred energy trapped,” Tycho said. “I can—”
“No, no,” I said, moving my serpents to surround the construct before he could touch it. I wanted to know what this thing was, and who’d built it. Whoever it was, they knew about threads of fate, and that made them dangerous. “I’ve almost got it. Safer to let me finish.”
Tycho grunted, then motioned for me to continue.
I positioned my serpents on all sides of the strange spell, then gently lifted it free.
The instant it lost contact with Rachel, that loose thread of jinsei from the spell’s center lashed out.
Straight at me.
The Mirror
PANIC BLOOMED AS JINSEI exploded out of the spell I’d liberated. The hair-fine strands swarmed around my Thread and buried hooked tips in its inky length. My head didn’t immediately explode, which was nice, but my serpents didn’t lash out to deal with the threat, which was not so nice.
Even more worrisome, the wiry strands had infiltrated my defenses and woven themselves deep into my thread of fate. It was hard to see where the invasive spell ended and I began. Getting it out would be a challenge, even with the aid of my serpents. Without them...
“Are you all right?” Rachel asked, worry clear in her voice. “Did I do something?”
“No,” I said, raising a hand to ward off her concern. If this was a trap laid by Tycho, I didn’t want him to see that it had affected me. “I’m fine. Working that spell just took more out of me than I’d expected. How do you feel?”
Even as I spoke to Rachel, I watched Tycho for any signs of danger. Though his eyes narrowed in concentration, Tycho focused all his attention on Rachel.
“Good,” Rachel said, and then with some surprise, “Great. There’s no pain when I cycle at all.”
“Very nice work, Jace,” Tycho congratulated me. “Walk me through the procedure you performed.”
“I explained what I was doing,” I started, but the sage wasn’t hearing it.
“Humor me,” he said. “I want to hear the whole procedure, from beginning to end. Including any mistakes you made or improvements you can see for the next time.”
I wondered what he meant by the next time. Rather than waste time asking questions, though, I jumped right into my explanation. The sooner I got Tycho out of here, the sooner I could work on digging that spell out of my Thread.
Unfortunately, Tycho’s constant interruptions made what I thought was a simple explanation drag on for what seemed like hours. While the sage understood the theory of the lies I told about core fractures and delamination, he finally admitted that he couldn’t even see the damage I’d found, much less cure it. For the moment, at least, he explained that I was the only person who could fix problems like Rachel’s.
“How many others have this issue?” I asked, doing my best to hide the alarm in my voice. I was clueless as to what a bunch of people with split threads meant, but it couldn’t be good.
“These problems are becoming more common,” Reyes said, his brow beetled in worry. Or maybe anger. It was hard to tell given how quickly he purged emotions from his aura. “I won’t bore you with statistics, but they are troubling. I’ll have more cases brought in for your attention during our next session. Rachel, you’re free to go. Jace, I have a meeting to attend. Hahen, please make sure he finishes his time here purifying jinsei per our agreement.”
“As you wish,” Hahen said in a brittle voice.
The sage left through the new door at the back of the room, obviously preoccupied by our conversation and what he’d seen. I’d seen the worry in his eyes, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I was the only one who could fix this problem or something else.
“I wish we had more time,” Rachel said with a sigh. “But I have to get back to Dallas for the evening recruiting session at the Annex.”
She looked at me expectantly, her hands clasped behind her. Rachel leaned forward slightly, and I knew she wanted me to kiss her.
Unfortunately, Clem still had a hold on my heart. Whatever had happened in the past hadn’t happened to me, exactly.
I settled on an awkward embrace, and Rachel stiffened in my arms. She returned the hug after a moment, then slipped back out of my grasp. “Okay,” she said. “It was good to see you, Jace.”
“You, too,” I said lamely. “Hopefully we can be together again, soon.”
“Sure,” she said, and gave me a brief wave, then rushed out of the laboratory.
Great, I’d upset her.
“That went well,” the rat spirit said. “Now, do you want to tell me what really happened?”
I glanced around the room, searching for signs of spying scrivenings or even something as simple as a surveillance camera. I saw nothing that would report back to Tycho, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t hidden eavesdroppers around his laboratory. A quick examination showed me the spell attached to my Thread hadn’t done anything yet.
I’d monitor it, but it could wait until we were somewhere more secluded for a closer examination.
“Nothing that I want to discuss here,” I murmured.
“Understood,” Hahen whispered back. “I suppose we should get to work. We have much to do.”
“Good,” I said. As annoying as it was to put money in Tycho’s pockets, at least I could use the raw materials he supplied to push myself toward my next advancement. Maybe reaching a new level would unblock my memories, or show me a way to repair them.
I spent the next few hours transforming putrid waste into vials of precious jinsei and vessels filled with many aspects. I guzzled garbage and created purified sacred energy, pushing myself to work harder, faster, until my core ached.
“Slow down,” Hahen cautioned me. “You’re reaching a level of mastery that requires great care. If you advance your core before your body is ready, the results could be catastrophic.”
That was the first I’d heard of that nonsense. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Uncontrolled jinsei destroys your body,” Hahen said. “This happened to many of the most powerful in the earliest days of cultivation mastery. Surely you’ve heard the legends of Syr Lohanza, who disappeared in a ball of flame upon reaching the level of sage?”
“Sure, sure,” I lied. “In that case, I’ll just push more of the jinsei into my channels to strengthen my body. That should work, right?”
“Perhaps, but it is not without risks,” Hahen said with a frown. “You have great power, Jace, but there is more to the highest levels of advancement than mere power. Your core is stronger than your channels. You could damage them permanently by forcing too much jinsei through them.”
“That’s annoying,” I muttered. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“You weren’t strong enough to hurt yourself before,” he said with a shrug. “Now you are.”
“There should be a manual or something,” I grumbled.
“Very few have ever been in your position before,” Hahen said. “You should be grateful you have me at hand to help you through these trying times.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said. “Let’s just get this over with.”
When I’d finally completed my shift, Hahen and I stowed the treasures I’d created in a small vault built into the back wall of the laboratory. I tested the door on that wall, but it was sealed up tight. A physical lock held it closed, and a powerful scrivening added mystical security. I wouldn’t get through that without a battering ram. Weary and worried about what had happened that day, I headed back to the dorms with Hahen in tow.
Despite having no memory of the room assigned to me, I had no trouble finding the way
to my quarters. These turned out to be far nicer than I’d had at the School so far, with a separate bedroom, personal office, and a combination common room and dining area. Images of the Shadow Phoenix rising into stormy skies adorned my walls. The pictures all seemed to move when I wasn’t looking at them, a disconcerting touch that I didn’t approve of, at all. It was hard enough to relax with the holes in my memory. Shifting images on the walls didn’t help anything.
“Enough waiting,” Hahen said. “Tell me what happened to you.”
“In a minute,” I said, paranoia in full effect.
I scanned the walls of my room, searching for any jinsei constructs that didn’t belong. I found a few scrivenings, but they came from the shifting images on the walls. Satisfied there weren’t any tattletales hidden in my room, I took a seat at the small table in the common area and rested my chin in my hands.
“There was a spell attached to Rachel,” I explained. “Now it’s attached to me.”
“What?” Hahen said, peering carefully at my core. “I don’t see anything.”
“That’s because it’s latched on to my thread of fate,” I said.
“What is it doing?” Hahen asked, peering more intently, then blowing out a frustrated sigh.
I peered at the tiny shard of the jinsei construct. Only a handful of threads held it together, and only a few barbed cords kept it in place. “The central construct is a triangle of jinsei threads surrounded by a circle of sacred energy.”
“Interesting,” Hahen said. “That sounds like the basics of image sorcery.”
“Like a picture?” I asked.
“More like a farcaster’s display. The image could move and have sound,” Hahen said. “There’s nothing else to the construct?”
“It has barbed threads attached to my Thread,” I said.
“Those probably sustain it,” Hahen mused.
“Sounds about right,” I agreed. “It drew jinsei from Rachel’s Thread while it was attached to her.”
“Who would do such a thing?” Hahen asked. “And who would know how to do this?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” I said. “I’ll take the stupid thing apart and see if there are any clues hidden inside.”
“Be careful,” Hahen cautioned me. “There could be other threats hidden within this one that you cannot see.”
“Yeah,” I said, “maybe. But I can’t leave this thing attached to me, either. It’s time for it to come off.”
My nerves tingled with dread and anticipation as I summoned my serpents and went to work. The spell was a tiny little thing, hardly visible nestled in the truncated tip of my thread of fate. The cords that held it in place had vanished, though I sensed them lurking just beneath the Thread’s dark surface.
I guided my serpents so that four of their bladed tips surrounded the little bead of sorcerous jinsei. I drew in a slow breath and eased the appendages forward until they touched the foreign sorcery. A faint, familiar presence surrounded me at the contact. It was comforting, and strange.
“Maps?” I asked.
There was no answer. Fine. The time for playing games was over. My serpents shifted position around the spell, slicing through the jinsei holding it in place. With its support system stripped away, the construct broke loose from my Thread and drifted a few feet .
Then it exploded.
Shards of jinsei burst away from the detonated spell. The blizzard of sorcerous splinters filled the surrounding air. They snapped into place, like a mirror shattering in reverse. In the blink of an eye, I was locked in a reflective prison. Everywhere I looked, my face stared back at me.
“Hey, me,” a slightly deeper, slightly rougher version of my voice came from an imperfect reflection just ahead of me. The mirror me had a pair of jagged scars across his forehead, and the left side of his head was shaved. “Try not to freak out. This was the only way I could reach you.”
“Talk fast,” I said. “Because I’ll tear this prison down in about three seconds.”
“Don’t do that,” he said. “I went to a lot of trouble to build the spell. If you break it, you won’t get to hear about the third part of the Flame’s quest.”
“Great,” I grumbled. Another quest. These kept getting harder, and if my friends weren’t around, that meant I’d have to tackle this one on my own. “I take it you’re future me. Why can’t you, me, we, I be straight me?”
Mirror me frowned and scratched the shaved side of his head. “Because I’m not future you. I’m like, I dunno, alternate destiny you. Time travel doesn’t work, except it sort of does where you’re concerned because the sages caused a fork in the Grand Design. I’m from a future, not your future. At least I hope that’s the case. Otherwise you’ve failed and we’re all doomed.”
For once in my life, I wished I was a little more serious. “Let me get this straight. The sages did something to the Grand Design, so now there are two of them?”
“Not exactly.” Mirror me blew out an exasperated breath. “Let me see how far off the path we are. Here’s what I know—”
The rest of mirror me’s words were a burst of gibberish. The syllables sounded backward, then twisted around upside down, and finally devolved into a series of beeps and burbles that would have been more at home in a retro video game than a human mouth.
“I didn’t understand a word of that,” I said. “You want to try again in English?”
Mirror me threw his hands up in exasperation. “They’ve made more changes than I thought. Unless you anchor the end of the Grand Design like you did at the beginning, this will only get worse. The more changes they force, the harder it is to fix them all without causing another fork.”
The reflected me went on a tear for a minute or more, but his words were even more mangled than the first sentences I hadn’t understood. Whatever message I desperately needed to deliver to myself was utterly incomprehensible.
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “You’re gibbering again. Let’s try this another way. I’ll ask a question, and you answer. I’ve got a hunch.”
It was more like a wild guess, but hunch sounded more intuitive and less desperate.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s a good idea.”
The mirrors wobbled around me for a moment. Hair-fine cracks appeared across my reflected face. The spell was failing. We didn’t have long before this conversation came to a sudden end.
“What is a fork in the Grand Design?” I asked, hoping that a theoretical, general question’s answer would get through the distortion field that separated my two selves.
“Excellent question,” he said. “When you freed Tycho—”
“Stop!” I shouted over another blast of nonsense syllables. “More generally. When you get into specifics, everything falls apart.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Okay. The Grand Design is difficult to manipulate directly. But clever humans have learned how to change it. Usually it takes a lot of people bucking their destiny to effect any change. That’s what forced the need for a new Design: A concerted effort by powerful creatures distorted the destinies of enough mortals to alter the pattern laid out by the Flame.”
“Okay,” I said, “I got all that. Go on. What’s the other way to change the Design, because no one’s had enough time to mess things up that badly since I put the first fix in.”
My mirror self seemed relieved. “You’re right. It’s not possible to cause those tidal shifts in public opinion that can alter thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of destinies. But sometimes you can do as much with a long lever as brute strength. If the sages knew of someone intimately tied to the Design, then they could push that person’s destiny around. The ripples from that could have significant consequences for the rest of reality.”
“I’m the lever,” I said. Because, of course the mortal who’d helped lay the foundation of a new Grand Design was a powerful tool to use against it. “But I cut my thread of fate. I don’t have a destiny to mess up.”
“If you can’t reach a
lever, sometimes you can move it by yanking on those closest to it,” mirror me said. He gave me a smug little smile when he realized his words had been intelligible.
His victory celebration was cut short as several reflective shards crackled into dust, leaving black holes in the prison that surrounded me. Time was almost up. I tried to make sense of mirror me’s words, because I didn’t think he could get any more specific than he already had. Then it hit me.
“My friends,” I said. “That’s how the sages are changing the Design?”
A garbled blast of static was my only answer. Mirror me stopped when he saw the look on my face. He took a deep breath and then launched into another explanation. “Let’s say you have three magnets positioned around a steel ball on a table covered in sand. If you move one magnet...”
“You move the ball, and it drags lines in the sand,” I said. “The sages pushed my friends’ destinies around, hoping that would change mine, too. But Clem and the others aren’t even at the School this year. You’d think that distance would make them less useful as levers.”
“Space isn’t really relevant in this case. Here’s another clue I hope you can hear. A mirror with a divot in its face shows a distorted image,” reflected me said. “Patch the flaw, fix the reflection. But if the mirror breaks in half, sometimes you can glue the pieces back together. That carries a risk of breaking it even further, understand?”
The sages had changed my friends’ destinies to affect me, and through me, the Grand Design. If I could figure out what happened to them to drive us apart, maybe...
The largest piece of mirror cracked in half. The bottom chunk of the shard cracked again, then again, and again. All the smaller pieces crumbled to dust, which floated into the air like motes of stardust.
“The spell’s crumbling,” mirror me said. “I really hope you know what I’m saying here. This is one thing I can absolutely tell you. You must anchor the other end of the Design.”
“Why can’t you just lay it all out?” I asked, getting grumpier and more anxious by the second. “All these word games are driving me nuts.”