Dark Reflections of the Seventh

It began, as so many calamities do, with something unassuming.

Throughout the closing weeks of spring, the itinerant ‘deliverymen’ known as Mr. Veid and Mr. Isomann trundled their cart across the breadth of Sapience, depositing seven towering mirrors in locales both mundane and remote: a storage room in Saluria, an abandoned aerie above Yuzurai, a smoking patio in Kald, a chiselled storeroom in Nuunva, the Needle of Balance in Huanazedha, the living quarters of the Pleianes Temple, and a hilltop before the mansion of the Atlatl Plantation. Each mirror, framed in elder wood and crawling with circuitous inscriptions, was placed to face one of the unnamed constellations of the Empyreal Vault. The pair claimed to be employed by one Voruzhak “Stareater” Tolance, a Kaldan Troll and Siderealist who had allegedly won the set at an estate auction – a curious claim indeed, given that Esterporean records held the Stareater dead for nigh on a full year, with whispers of foul play besides. Those few who recalled the deliverymen’s previous appearances in Sapience regarded the whole affair with well-earned suspicion, though none could yet say what purpose the mirrors served, nor whose will truly directed them.

The answer to this mystery arrived with a sudden, sharp crack that echoed from the Underhalls, a fracture felt and heard beyond the thin curtains separating Life, Prime, and Death. Long-suffering in its damage, the Soul Mirror – the Simulacrum left behind by fled Varyan Celestine, wounded by the massacre of the Curator’s captured realms and worn thin by thousands of years of ceaseless use – strained beneath its accumulated harm, and its extant cracks began to cast a bloody light that pierced the pale ambience of the Underking’s domain. That crimson radiance found a twin deep within the Azdun dungeon, where the sprawling tunnels’ mysterious mirrors awakened as one. There, upon those tricksome planes, a procession of monstrous souls slavered and sneered from the other side of the reflective surface: spirits of the Seventh World, that twisted planet the learned call the Dark Mirror, each possessed of the same vicious, murderous hunger – to depart their warped world at the far end of the Empyreal Vault and supplant all that exists here, in the original world of the Eschaton’s design.

Chill authority rolled through the Underhalls as Dhar, Lord of the Grave, manifested in full at the heart of His domain. Under the scrutiny of its true Master, the Simulacrum’s extensive damage lay outlined in ghostly mist: the riven scars that damned Sapience’s accursed ‘blind spots’, the hairline fractures left by the crowds of the Curator’s victims, and fresher wounds besides, delivered in secret by unnamed hands. Icy essence spilt from the Underking’s grasp as He set to His labours, knitting glass together even as other sections shivered and splintered in turn. To the realm entire, Inevitable Death’s voice then rang out to warn Sapience’s mortal adventurers: invaders made plans to breach the world, and the interlopers were to be culled, lest they wreak havoc.

Sapience answered as its many disparate peoples do: with violence.

Shades, phantoms, and revenants trickled from the Azdun mirrors and, soon after, from the Stareater’s placements in Saluria and Kald, and vigils were mounted across the realm. Duiran heeded the Underking’s call to hunt, its councillors keeping cold watch over the glass as they put any would-be invader to the sword, claw, or spell. Enorian patrolled in force, cataloguing each mirror’s stirrings and putting down all that came through with zealous precision. The Theocracy of Spinesreach, ever pragmatic, reactivated its Soul Containment Protocols, repurposing Chaos-resonance devices into traps that snapped shut upon the invading spirits for future study and usage to more nefarious ends. In Huanazedha, matters proved thornier still: the Nazetu eusuchians there took up arms in defence of the emerging shades, forcing bloodier work upon those who held the line.

Soon, however, the trickle became a tide. As the week wore on, the invaders came in greater numbers and greater strength, with elite warriors striding through the glass where once only half-formed wraiths had staggered forth. Faced with a siege that outpaced His mending, the Underking lived up to one of His most ancient monikers: the Bringer of Ends. Reaching into the depths of His domain, the God of Death compelled the unruly souls of the damned – perished necromancers and practitioners of dark, defiant rites, one and all earmarked for crushing punishment for their crimes against the Cycle – into focused ranks, their flagging existence unspooled thread by thread to hold the metaphysical line. Even Ewis Bhaq’dal, cast in tomb-forged chains, stepped forth to give Death His due, bemoaning her fate until the final dreg of her being gave way to true naught. Alongside these blackguards laboured souls more virtuous: counselled by heroic mystics such as Ondromikios Ijandrimali, the Underking ushered forth His cherished champions from the Glade of Heroes – renowned mages and brave warriors long past, headed up by the late Sir Everet, so brave for one fallen in battle at so young an age. Each heroic soul, shielded from dissolution by the blessing of the King in Death, gave unto Him all they could spare, uniting under His authority to further mend His ancient charge.

The enemy’s true face revealed itself soon after, however. Beneath Death’s convalescent rime lurked a twisted figure: the unholy reflection of Dhar Himself, a regal Usurper wielding vast flows of profane power, Who brought the hammer of His judgement against the other side of the Soul Mirror and undid much of the True God’s labours in short order. Wielding the might of a landmark within the Seventh World, False Death forged a vast bridge of souls to enable the world’s encroachment, his determined fury enhanced by the essence of an awakened site of power. All throughout Sapience, common mirrors in shops, homes, and boutiques became as jagged portals unto the breach between worlds, and the Stareater’s seven mirrors yawned wide, throwing open the gates for the distant Seventh World to heighten its bitter siege. With hoarfrost spiralling from a single darklight digit, the Underking turned aside His imposter’s greatest efforts – for the time being – and, with a singular nod, dispatched the soul of Sir Everet into the unknown, tasked with delivering an important message to Someone.

When the little knight returned, saluting smartly and whispering his answer into the unfathomable darkness beneath his Liege’s hood, the Underking wasted no further moment on half-measures. Plunging His ghostly hand through the broken Simulacrum as if it were air, Immortal Death seized His imposter’s robe and locked the two of Them in a duel of warring essence, played out across every cracked shard of the Soul Mirror in a war of white and black mist. With every twisted soul thrown His way, the Aetolian Dhar grew in strength, unravelling each spirit into shimmering gossamer and compressing it, link by link, into a gelid chain dragged behind Him – a testament to the inevitability of True Death.

With the Bringer of Ends thus occupied, the Seventh World brought forth its furious dead. Twisted souls poured from the seven mirrors in an endless tide of violence, desperate to assume life once more, and the adventurers of Sapience met them blade to blade, bolstered by rallying cries from the Underhalls – brave Sir Everet lifted the spirits of Enorian’s Faithful, and resolute Segiae unleashed an ancestral ululation for the Heartwood.

Even as Sapience struggled against this far-flung foe from beyond the stars, however, other forces toiled in defence of Aetolia entire: Heiress Rashemi of the Guiding Light Council unveiled her sorcerous might in full from her place within the Vashnars, the staff of Averroes held aloft. The Wise One’s chosen sorceress stirred the Pool of Stars into a raging whirlpool, tearing power from the crystalline caverns beneath ravaged Tasur’ke until the leylines between the two points flared like a second sun, carving an iridescent swathe across the continent. It was then that her voice rang out to the beleaguered realm: the Council would not abandon Sapience – the gates would be closed, but only if the realm could buy her the time needed to do so.

It became evident, however, that the Seventh World would not allow Sapience such time freely.

One by one, the warped visages upon six of the seven accursed mirrors left by Mr. Veid and Mr. Isomann distended and flickered out, leaving dark voids behind. The final mirror, set there before the Atlatl Plantation’s mansion, answered the Heiress’s interference with apocalyptic spite. A pair of cobalt eyes, possessed of vast, immeasurable hatred, flickered to life within the mirror’s magical depths, and an incandescent essence exploded outward in a fusillade of pyroclastic vengeance. The plantation became as cinders upon the wind; the mansion collapsed into smoking rubble; and its fires leapt forth in a strangely organised path, carving a seven-pointed star into the rainforest earth, to which the remaining six mirrors were summoned by the warp and weft of unknown magics. Desperate to deter interference with its final ingress, the Dark Mirror mustered one last agent to the field: Hamalis, the Tidebearer – a twisted reflection of a familiar face long defeated, powerful yet expendable.

The adventurers of Sapience proved the latter quality true, and the doppelganger fell, though not without a struggle. Believing that he could use the ensuing chaos of the mirrors, the invasion, and the Tidebearer’s arrival to fulfil his vendetta against the Underking, Edhain de Verdigris, once the Knight of Death, leapt into the fray to waylay Sapience’s defenders. The interference proved an obstacle unto itself, forcing the city-state’s most dogged warriors to peel off and attempt to do battle with him. Heedless of the accusations of treachery and wrathful outcry, the renegade Sylvan let his fists fly in a show of martial zeal that would later earn him the scorn of Accordant Righteousness.

What followed was a feat of sorcery on a scale seldom witnessed. Fifteen points of light flickered to life across Sapience as Rashemi’s trusted Siderealists, wielding the relics of the blessed Mejevsavelnel, united across the realm to lend their aid. Vast aurorae of prismatic sidereal energy exploded across the horizon, and a haunting hymn echoed from the depths of the Fractal Bloom as vast tracts of crystalline matter shifted beneath the earth, racing toward the Itzatl. Thundering downward like a violent tsunami, the brilliant wave of starlight collided with the seven mirrors, forcing space and matter to furl and overlap thousandfold until each was condensed into a lodestone of baleful magic and twinkling crystalline matter. Howls of outrage and screams of despair drifted from one end of the Empyreal Vault to the other – a dirge mourning the denied ambitions of an entire world – as the seven once-mirrors, now no more than compressed gemstone discs, clattered to the earth, sealing shut the way between worlds.

Where once a mansion burned, a celestial serenade sang a new structure into being: a tremendous tower wrought from Astronomia’s deepest secrets, its jagged crystal facets scraping the sky above the Itzatl. The crystalline discs now rest in the custody of the Guiding Light Council, which intends in time to entrust one seal to each of the great city-states, so that the barriers between worlds remain intact. Denied by the pluck and bravery of Sapience’s finest, the Dark Mirror once again retreated into its dark corner of the cosmos to lick its collective wounds, hellbent yet still upon supplanting the Eschaton’s first world.

In the Underhalls, the Underking strode forward to meet His cornered imposter and was joined by an Immortal of peculiar provenance: Varo, Keeper of the Close, Elder Death of a world long ended, manifesting shoulder to shoulder with the Underking as an august complement to His ineffable regality.

“It seems We are just in time,” Elder Death remarked through a myriad of discordant voices, and set to work upon the Simulacrum with vast wellsprings of Elder magic, braiding excess spiritual threads into ropes that bound the relic’s superficial wounds while His host dispensed with the falseness before Him.

Cast in chains that strangled essence and smothered will, False Death of the Seventh World knelt beneath the authority of a true ruler. “A spirit, powered by faith. A begging pauper, playacting as a King,” was all the Lord of the Grave, the true Dhar of Aetolia proper, had to say as He examined His defeated doppelganger before unravelling the imposter in a show of supremacy, His tone frigid with disappointment.

Together, Dhar and Varo mended the final fractures, decorating the Soul Mirror with a new spiderweb of argent seams, as if molten anaxagorite had run through the damage and cooled, preserving the relic’s integrity. Moments before the work truly concluded, however, the Elder God’s mask began to slip, and the Indelible’s mauve features peeked out from behind Her mythical guise. Soon, She departed to the unknown on the heels of a laugh as cold as the grave, leaving only Her parting words to linger where once Immortal Memory did stand:

“I have already taken the liberty of collecting My payment. I am sure it shall prove interesting in the times to come.”

~~~~~

Summary: Seven mirrors delivered by Veid and Isomann on behalf of the allegedly deceased Voruzhak “Stareater” Tolance became invasion gateways for the Seventh World, the Dark Mirror, just as the damaged Soul Mirror catastrophically strained. While Sapience culled the invading souls, Dhar conscripted the damned and the Heroes of the Glade to hold the line against a false Underking intent on undoing His repairs. Heiress Rashemi and her Siderealists collapsed the gateways, compressing the mirrors into crystalline seals and raising a crystal tower where the Atlatl Plantation burned, while Dhar – aided by Lexadhra in the guise of Varo, Elder Death – destroyed His imposter and mended the Soul Mirror. The Indelible departed with an undisclosed payment: a price woven into the mirror’s magic itself.

Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 20th of Severin, in the year 20 AC.