[The House of Broken Mirrors] Hello again, my old friend...

[Rian Vale]

Hello again, my old friend… The first of winter, five-hundred and eleven years after the Valterrian… From the streets of Alvadas into the House of Broken Mirrors… *** “In my years here, in Alvadas, oh city of secrets, only once had I seen the inside of that complex. A rite of passage indeed, it is, one I feel I have yet to overcome. It was perhaps a decade ago, I decided to settle myself down and enjoy life a while. I remember – I remember crossing the maw, you could imagine the teeth of the world then gapping up at you, as if to swallow you up. It was a fascinating thing, really, I-I think they had a wider boundary then. I’m truly unaware. And across the bridge I went, seeing not too far off a plaza of some several hundred feet wide. To the north there was catastrophe and to the south calamity, again, simply magnificent. There was the spice right there, ah yes, Alvadas…city of illusion. “I crossed the way, over there, you see, an came to the front. They call it the ‘Sanity Center’, you know? I said I would like to settle here in Alvadas. I was truly calm about it too, not overly worrisome or such and such. The woman there, Ms. Berel, bless her heart… She has the sweetest voice I’ve heard in many years. I went in and she smiled, I smiled back, and we talked some. She asked, ‘What brings you to Alvadas?’ and I answered, ‘I am tired and need to rest.’ She laughed, you see, I am an old man, very old, and –ah – I was old then too. My beard was not quite so powdery, but you knew from the look of me I had seen my years. She was a young thing, truly a belle. And she smiled warmly and showed me some pictures or something, out the window, you know, and I found a lovely little cottage somewhere around here, and she sold it to me. She had me the moment I set my eyes on the place, I assure you, and it’s quite suiting. A lovely old thing, sometimes, and you can always expect some surprise when you get in. You know how close it is, to that place? I almost always find it with ease, and then the inside seems all ship-shape, but that corner. You never know what lurks in that corner. “And on my way to my new home, key in hand, I saw it. It was strangely seductive. You knew there was someone inside, watching you with a sweet smile hiding bloodied fangs. I was a bit more adventurous I admit, naïve is a better choice of words to be truly honest. I dared toward it, receiving stares along my path, thinking nothing of them. I’d stare too with some new man walking my street, sword at his side. I read the sign at the front, right over there. See it? I laughed, and checked my back as people kept walking forward. I took my hand, just like this, and I latched hold of the handle. I then turned it… I turned it… Pardon my manners, it just… I grabbed the knob, and when I turned it, it did turn with such ease. Like, like someone was behind it turning it for me. I pushed forward with my head, a stubborn old rock I tell ye’, and let the door loose. “Inside, there is a hall, and down that hall you will find more halls, and doors. And down that hall that goes onto a hall and those doors that lead to more halls and doors you will find the root of its name, that House of Mirrors, many mirrors. Broken mirrors, indeed, for when you look into them… You see things, you see. I walked down the main hall; glancing to my side I saw the infinite reflections making a hall of themselves. Like this, when I cross my fingers, and it would go on and on into the world beyond ours. I saw myself walk by each time to the next set of mirrors, and I would stop to gaze at myself. I looked a bit better than this I can tell you. But I looked, and somewhere down that reflective hall I heard some faint echoing, and I… I saw things move in darkness. I was terrified, truth be told, and I had jumped when I first caught sight. I looked back and saw the hall empty, and dark. “I turned around to the other mirror, and saw nothing reflecting back, but myself that is and the reflection of a reflection of a reflection… Infinity, I saw infinity. I wish I would be able to grasp something like that, place my palm like so and leach forth the power of that world so alike mine. But I didn’t and looked down the hall where I was going, or at least the way I thought I was, and saw an end that had not been there. It was quiet, my own heart was pulsing into my throat by now, I am honest to this. Men get scared, and do not let them tell you otherwise. I saw myself standing there, at the far end. I was smiling then, with my sword at my side, hand fastened on the hilt ready to take the life of anything that should leap out for me. I thought bandits might dwell there, with trickery beyond our knowing. I adjusted myself so and with my stare looked back into my eyes in some finite reflection, the door behind me. I was smiling. “I was smiling with my old teeth and lips at a slant, and gazing bad with that mad look. It was something which always made me smile more, and I did smile, and in that mirror my smile faded. I looked on smiling a moment before I realized I had stopped smiling. And as then my smile faded, mine had also dared to bare my teeth once more. I felt my skin go cold, and my lips loosen from such a thing. I stared gravely to my reflection who smiled to fiercely at me. He had some extreme voracity about him. I stared more, lost for thought or words. He stared back, his eyes looking into mine and mine into his. He smiled, and went blank, and smiled again. He let loose his smile once more, and then smiled again. I stared back. He didn’t smile after that, but rather looked back to me as gravely. I saw his eyes receded into darkness as harmful thoughts entered his mind. I gripped my hilt tighter, and so did he. “ With sword in hand, I stepped back, and he stood there, gravely gazing at me. I must have taken many steps to reach that point, but fewer to escape. I reached back for the handle where I had left it, and far into the hall, I still saw him looking back at me. I opened the door, no, flung it forth, and stepped back where I fell. I fell back the few steps that it took to enter the home and on my back looked into the house still. It was too dark to see inside. The door was pulled shut in front of me as well, and slid shut as I fell. it must have loose hinges, for it did slam, I swear it. “I sat up and then stood, key in my pocket I was sure. No one in the street looked at me oddly or asked of my well being. My face was shot blank with astonishment. As I got back on my feet I saw her look over from the Sanity Center, Ms. Berel, through one of those large, moss framed windows. She looked sad, somewhat disappointed. I had the nerve to shut my jaw which hung so loose at the time, to some respect. With a nod, and tip of my hat, I kept walking, looking for the image I had seen to find my new home, my new humble abode. It was down past the corner of a corner or some corner, its dark, brick structure with a firm door and door handle! I twisted the key after I did insert it and entered that house where I have lived in for some many years. “I never really understood why she had given me that look, but now I think I do. I had wondered why she did not come across as concerned, but rather filled with sadness, and perhaps a bit of resentment. Do you believe in secrets? I do, and I believe we need to find them, find answers… You see secrets in that house, secrets of us more than any. Perhaps the stalwart can find greater treasures within. There was a secret I had seen when I entered that house years ago, and I’ll be damned if I do not find it now.”

[Rian Vale]

The old man had been babbling rapidly to himself in a darker street in the deep of the phantom city, its form so undefined. It had been nearly a decade that he lived in the city, remaining as mysterious to the population as the truth behind the city’s ever shifting streets. He kept to himself, though it was for the better, surely. His past was a long story to tell, and even then not always the most appropriate. He wasn’t necessarily a good man either. Not many good men live so long in this age. It’s too much to speak poorly of him as well, though he deserved it all the same. The reasoning for such repayment, the absolute facts that made him what he is, is buried deep within. Somewhere off in the Chavena, a strand lingers in a dark swirl as its fantastic aura bleeds into the infinite world beyond Mizahar, forever wounded and slowly dying. He was without his sword. Sometime ago he had been asked to leave it at home, and was fairly compliant in that respect. Some nights, strange things could be heard in the streets regardless. They might echo from his home or just outside, and the clashing of metal and stone rang clear. No one asked; it was easier that way. He was however equipped with his hat, cloak, and pants – thank all the stars that he had his pants. The old, worn clothing was good to keep him warm for brief strides through the city, even this late in the year. Today he had striven across some number of blocks from his home, perhaps in circles, in search of something. He felt it always, and when he was close, and then felt it slip away each time. He would dare forth into the House of Broken Mirrors again, and again, and again if he could help it. And by all that is good he could. He would. Old, stubborn pride and ambition drove him towards the next hurtle in his life. He hadn’t much a life left to live, and to leave the one he had lived as it was would be unsatisfactory. All his mistakes and regrets, none could be satisfied now. All who he sought to cut down had been, no amount of blood spared to quench his thirsting for vengeance. But what vengeance was there ever to be had? Somewhere along the way he had lost himself that was certain. And what red rivers flowed were let loose from the vulnerable flesh dams in vain. Now he was left with nothing but the very same weapon of massacre and his guilty conscious. His superego struggled desperately to make right and sense of his actions, but it had become all but just. Vengeance had never been attainable. What bloodshed had been was result of skewed perceptions and no he suffered for it. He needed to be honest now, more than ever, but was such a thing possible? Had he gone too far? He would chase deep into the darkness of the soul to find the truth to be told, by some sweet whisper or violent hand, he would have it. Relentless ambition might finally drive himself to his goals, though it would certainly mean the end of him. He gazed at the door to the house now. He had been looking into its darkened windows for hours now while he talked to his invisible companion. Alas the time had come to seek what it was that he came for. He sought truth, certainly, of what it was that he had become, what he had done, and much more. The one thing to take head on would not. He would hide in some piece of mind where peace still lingered. Years of magical abuse had sent him into this darkness and recovery was an unnatural thing. He took the first step, a step up from the bench he had sat on for those hours in contemplation. Then forward right one foot, and again, until soon enough his old hobbling steps brought him closer to the door. He reached slowly for the knob, and swore it to have shifted. He hesitated. No one treaded the same street he was on. He took the knob firmly. Again he turned with his weary hand powered by the same worn conscious that turned the gears of his mind forward and commanded he enter this house! The knob turned with ease again, as if pushed by the demons within, if not more than he had ever felt. He was older, weaker, and more then vulnerable. His slightly hunched form stepped forward with the door as his free hand trembled with utter resentment for this structure. He stepped through, and closed the door behind him, daring not to look back to the light he was leaving. He continued forward, quietly, daring not to peer into the mirrors which lined that front hall. Gazing steadily ahead toward the end he had once left without good-bye. His patient steps made the old, wood floor creek with each step. The thrown carpeting did little to muffle such noises. For Rian the house was quiet, and quite empty. He was nearing that mirror that lied to him so. Feet away now, he came to the mirror in its full length. The closer he came the bigger it seemed, and angled too as if to look down upon its viewer, to look down upon their inferior souls and devour them like the feeble prey they were. He at last stood his ground and looked firmly at the image. It reflected back precisely as any good mirror should. His eye twitched, or did the reflection’s, he knew not. Ultimately the reflection looked back with wide, stern eyes that said clear as a summer’s day, “I will not falter.” Something in the background of the mirror moved, Rian quickly turning to look back. The door had gone, and then a shattering smash, he would turn again. The full length of the mirror shatted down the center of his face into three, the vertices joint at the heart. Across his face the abysmal crack reached, and separated his right arm as well from his lower body. Those eyes remained as crazed as ever, fixed back on their viewer with indescribable yearning for things unspoken. And in that mirror he smiled wide, equally as crazed. The old man was stern in his own appearance, now locked in a labyrinth of the mind, heart, and soul. What trials he would face were unsung. His body violently shook, his hands above all. He let out a scream louder than any, its deep enraged echo reaching the furthest recesses of the building, a war cry. And staring back as his pain and mindless sense of courage was that horrible image with its mouth wide and dark, a void all consuming. The shout had vibrated the loose glass of the broken mirror and inside the image seemed to laugh. Rian had stopped, his lungs emptied, but still it smiled back. Filling them once more he screamed. Immediately he was overpowered by the blasting roar of greater demons from within. All around him, ever image reflected his sound tenfold and that of many others, male, female, old, young, just and unjust. Great horror filled him, and he gazed then all around to find mirrors tilted at him from all angles, and that terrible image reflected. There was no escape. Left of the grand mirror there was a hall, and to the right of a similar length. He walked the left path inward, and rounded yet another corner, and out the other side found himself in a grand hall without any glass. It was grand, for Alvadas. More like a sizable lobby to a manor of any sort, if such a thing existed in this era. He looked around at three exits symmetrically placed around, much like the one through which he had entered. He thought he heard something, and turned back. That same shattered image stood there in the darkness, turned around like he was, looking on with a smile. The intent to torment was blatant. He looked away and dared not look back. The left path called to him. Despite all learned sense to not go forward, he did, he needed to. This was his purpose in coming here and he’d be damned were he to leave now. He couldn’t leave as it was; he was entrapped in this house of mirrors more broken than ever. Exiting the lobby he entered another hall, narrowed than when he had entered. Alternating mirrors provided unique perspectives to their facing walls, but little to behold. They lacked thee grandness of the infinite illusion if paired against each other. Down the hall he felt the walls grow larger, or the space come closer together. His left hand was grazing against the wall as if to stop it should the house decide to push together and devour him. His feeble steps quickened to reach the end. He had passed many doors on his way through that hall, but there was one final door at the end. Tall and thin, it was made of glass outlined in a dark wood which matched the floors, too old and worn. At the closest point where he grabbed the knob to enter the room he saw in the glass his faint reflection. He did not think to look at it, but entered the room. He shut the door behind him again. It slammed itself shut. As he let go of the knob, he tried to turn it but fell short. It was locked inside, it appeared. He leaned over and gazed through the lock. A reflection against the gleaming bronze which made up the knob sent Rian into a state of panic. Something was behind him and he spun back wildly to face it. He was met by nothing. The room had halls of its own, narrow as well, mirrored all around. He continued through. The winding hall seemed to take him in circles, smaller and smaller until he came to an end. A room, some oval shape, mirrors all around. The room was dimly lit by some windows from above. They were dreadfully dirty, considering the condition of the house. Rian found himself in the center soon. He felt compelled to rest, so he took a seat on the floor and rested his mind.