LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 30: A Path Forward
The dream started off mostly ordinarily. Drifting half-thoughts, more ideas swirling around my head, until they slowly coalesced. I felt a calling, and I answered, as I always did.
There was a small thing within me that I grasped. I couldn’t quite tell its shape. It was a hand, at first, then a small sphere, then a shifting thing, then a plane. My eyes opened, and I was touching a mirror, my hand laid on it.
It was cracked.
Dozens of little imperfections ran across it, hundreds of gaps and rends and small broken bits. It pulsed in time with my heart. Alive.
I breathed and saw it quiver. My hand was still on it. I withdrew, ever so slowly, looking at the glass.
Where it should have been reflective, it was not. The thing was an inert, opaque silvery surface, lost of luster. Perhaps, it was that I simply didn’t want to see myself. I don’t know, still.
But despite the uncertainty, I felt it was part of me. Slowly, I tore my gaze from it, and looked around. There were other things around, hidden behind a thin veil, a bubble, that were not me.
“Bell?” someone asked me.
I turned around to face the voice, and saw a figure. It was small, about the size of maybe a six-year-old, and floated a few feet off the ground, just enough to be on eye height with me. The figure was almost featureless, being more of a human facsimile made from light.
“Cass?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.
Despite lacking eyes, I could tell the figure blinked, and then beamed. The light became more radiant, and I knew she was happy.
“Bell!” she yelled, suddenly flitting towards me. “You’re here! How? Why? What are you doing here?!”
I blinked as well, and managed a small smile. “You know, maybe I have some questions first. Where is ‘here’, exactly?”
“The gateway world, obviously!” she said. “Your, or, well, our part of it, specifically.”
“Our part?” I looked at the mirror again, watching it pulsate in tune with my heart. I took a deep breath, centered myself.
“Yeah!” Cass pointed to the sky. See the white film? That’s what’s shielding us. I… live here? Well, most keepers would be somewhere within the sphere of influence their gateways give them. I can communicate with the others by poking my head out, but the little film is our protective barrier. Against attacks or influence from the collective, you know?”
I followed her finger to the sky and narrowed my eyes. It took a moment for it to come into focus, but there was a hazy layer around us. It was thin, and wavey, but still somehow felt reliable.
“It grew a bit after you took in that other part. I think it’ll grow more if you eat more of those shards. Eat? Absorb? Whatever, you know what I mean!” she said excitedly.
I gave her a slow nod. “Riiight. So, why am I here?”
“How would I know?” she answered, and somehow I could feel that she would have grinned had she a mouth. “But this is good! Very good!”
“How so?” I asked morosely. My thoughts felt slow, tired. Still dreaming. My heart beat, and the mirror pulsed.
“Well, you’ve seen the gateway world when walking between portals, but this is another perspective. Less infinite fractals, more order. Might help you visualize it better, make a path for it?” she suggested.
I paused for a moment. Looking through the film was easy, it was so thin it fell out of focus fast. The area past it didn’t look that different to me at all, though. There were still thousands of mirrors, thousands of gateways behind and on top of each other. Some of the gateways would occasionally shine with a blinding light, which made me think they might be in use.
“It’s so… empty.” Sure, there were gateways, but nothing else. Just bubbles of mirrors as far as the eye could see. Up and down and to the sides. Everywhere, all just gateways. It made me feel small, insignificant, and yet I was keenly aware that that small mirror behind me was still being coveted by others.
My heart beat. The mirror pulsed again.
Cass’ face fell. Well, she didn’t have a face, but the light coming from her dimmed a little. “Yeah,” she muttered. “It is a bit empty.”
I put a hand on her head. “At least there’s good company?” I suggested, and she brightened a little at that.
“Sure is, Bell,” she said.
Then I looked around again. My heart beat, the mirror pulsed.
It all looked familiar yet alien. When I watched myself move between worlds, the process was disorientating, infinite fractals folding again and again and again. This, on the other hand, was a vast wasteland of nothing. No other me’s walking through other gates, no other Reflectors, either.
I supposed that was the difference between gateways and those who used them. The things themselves were just a tool, forever still, forever locked in place, simply another little bubble in a sea of nothing. Travelling, on the other hand, was much different.
Seeing the folding was a promise of adventure. Other Fios who’d succeed or fail. A promise to myself that I would make it farther. Farther than my copies, farther than the other Reflectors.
And yet it was all just one layer of it. I was now a user and a gateway, a mirror and the reflection all at the same time. Putting these two disjointed bits together was hard and strange and I didn’t quite see how I would.
“That feels lonely,” Cass said from my side.
Had I muttered things out loud?
“You didn’t,” she assured me. “I can’t even quite tell what you’re thinking at all. But this place, it lets me get a glimpse of how you feel, you know?”
I paused, then nodded. “Me too,” I told her. I could tell when she’d been sad before, when she felt lonely, or when she would smile. The same probably went for her.
“You don’t have to be alone, you know that, right Bell?”
The question was so simple. Cass asked it innocently, trying to reassure me, but I felt something at it.
My heart beat, the mirror pulsed.
I had been feeling lonely. Determined, willing to move forward, by myself.
Did it have to be that way though?
This place felt so cold and empty. A stack of bubbles, of mirrors just like mine, all the way up, all the way down. The other version, when travelling, was a host of possibilities, a cacophony of promises and motivations, and a terrifically lonely road that made me feel how small I was.
I wanted to rebel against that. Rebel against my insignificance and the crushing size of it all. To take the people I cared for, my small world, and make it big. Shove it into the faces of the keepers, of the usurpers, of the divines.
Tell them all that I was here. That I existed. To leave a mark that stood out against infinity.
My heart beat, the mirror pulsed.
I felt the desire burning in my chest. To prove that I wasn’t insignificant. That the people I cared for weren’t insignificant. I wanted to make an impact myself, but that wasn’t all. I wanted my world to matter, the people I cared about to matter. Both on Eden, and on Neamhan.
I didn’t want to lose another family, I wasn’t willing to give up a single person in my life. Not here, not on the other side.
They were all my family. I would not let even a single one of them go.
My heart beat, and the mirror pulsed as one.
I felt the change, felt myself rumble, felt my mirror core howl deep in my chest, and I knew what it meant.
[Mirror Core - Path found!]
[Path (Imprint upon infinite Self-Similarity)]
My heart thumped in my chest, and the mirror behind me rumbled. Cass glowed brightly at me.
I smiled.
This was it, then. My own little declaration of war against fate, against being a pawn. A promise to break the pattern, to go one step beyond, and to make sure that my little world would never be forgotten.