Becoming Monsters: In The Mirror 2, Chapter 58

This is still a story of the Becoming Monsters universe by Ai Loves, setting used with permission. All canonical and mechanical errors are my own. The yarrb is the exceedingly cute creation of FelisRandomis, used with permission.

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Chapter 58: Black and White

We ended up watching the video four times that evening, pausing frequently and talking while keeping our hands occupied by helping Sarah link chainmail together. I wish I could say that our discussions were fruitful, productive, and developed an actionable plan… but if I did I would be lying. All the analysis and all the cross-referencing and all the public records lookups in the world couldn’t square what a Level 2 Architect was doing battling at that incomprehensible level. It couldn’t explain what the heck had just killed one of the largest Dungeons on Earth and destabilized the economy of an entire region of the US.

Because the one thing we could verify was that it happened. The news was blaring it on half the channels we had access to, as were more and more web sites and social media sites as the night went on. I got alerts from my post to the Major Guild Leaders initially expressing  disbelief, then shock as they confirmed it through their own sources. Calls were made, spells were cast, and eventually they all learned that I don’t lie. Eyewitness accounts were coming out, as were the tolls of those dead and missing.

Night fell, and this time when I settled down in bed I didn’t slip into the onyx plains of my soul. I kicked in the door to my subconscious and stomped in. I could feel the barrier between being awake and asleep this time, so the transition between staring at the back of my eyelids and staring at my Inner Mirror was as sharp as walking between rooms of the apartment.

It was still huge and imposing before me, and even though I could no longer see the red void behind it the surface was still cracked in a spiderweb of trauma. The light from the ground had dimmed, the cracks in the onyx themselves rapidly shrinking, the fires within them cooling. Behind the glass stood the Other Me, arms crossed and looking at me with a look of intrigued fascination. “Quite a day you had.”

“Of course you would have been watching.” I was looking directly at him, not at the rest of this inner universe. “What did you know about the Heralds?”

The man in the mirror shrugged, the first time I’d ever seen him show any uncertainty. “Don’t look at me, all I know is what you got told. Looks and sounds like they’re something way stronger and more fundamental than either of us.”

“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know. I need to figure this out, I need to be ready for it.”

“Kind of hard, Jeremiah. We know the same things. You also know that isn’t how this works. You don’t get to come here and make demands for me to fix things. For what it’s worth, I do agree with your assessment. We were betrayed by that Restitution girl. If Honoka is Instinct, and the rest of what she said was true, though… you probably want to get in contact. It seems like she might know a thing or two you could use.”

“That white realm. That’s probably the best way, it seems to belong to them.” I turned to the side, remembering the door that apparition had called me to come through. I could practically feel the weight of the door, see the dull sheen of the metal frame. Eyes closed and feeling it with my entire being, I reached out. My hand met nothing. I opened my eyes again, and saw nothing but the blackness, of the ground and sky that were only barely distinguishable from each other. Either I wasn’t doing it right, or more likely it wasn’t my power to invoke. If the broadcast was true, there were only two of these Heralds left. Honoka, and whatever Desire was.

“Guess that’s a bust.”

“You know, I’m starting to get really tired of the snark coming from someone who hides in my head all day wearing twice as much armor as I do.” I turned to face him once again.

He grunted a bit of a laugh. “And that’s how everyone else feels about it when you turn your snark on them. Same stuff, remember? And in any case, the armor’s your own imagining.” I looked him over. Doubled Shield Gauntlets, enchanted mail of a material that didn’t look like it was plain steel, my Guild Leader’s Saber, extra armor at the wings, greaves at the legs. All of it conspired to make him look even more imposing, despite being my size. “As long as you can’t grow personally, the only way forward we have is to improve the gear.”

I stretched out a bit. It had been a long day, and whether this was a dream or not that meant I was feeling my muscles as they cooled off. “For someone who has the same info I do, you are unbelievably wrong. I’ve always been more of an anchor and force multiplier than a main combatant. As long as I am helping the seven women of my Guild, as long as I keep figuring out how to boost them better, I am better. Please, change your ways. You can come and help this side of things.”

“Is that why you’re using Sapphire Radiance again? I point out proof that you’re being a hypocrite, and you go and do the opposite just to show yourself what for.”

I closed my eyes again. Trust this thing to be insightful, right? “You pointed out that I’m wasting an ability. And I’ve never had so many slots or so much peace that I could afford that.”

He laughed at me. I’ve always heard that it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself, but the reverse didn’t seem quite as healthy. “You’ve always been able to afford that, Jeremiah. The only thing keeping you from peace is you. It’s always about duty, never about accepting what you’ve got and making a life somewhere else, where people’s lives aren’t on the line.”

My vision immediately skewed, and the memories started once more. An old vision, over four years old. Lucy and I arrived in Seattle to start a new life, saw what the streets were like, and dropped our plans for a traditional life to go hunt monsters in the streets. I joined a newly-formed Guild, Raiders, though Lucy abstained. As a result, I ended up on those front lines time and again.

When Raiders died off and I was the last one standing, I could have chosen to walk away. I’d done my part and more. Heck, I could have leveraged the name I’d made for myself to go to a traditional guild and easily made it onto a primary Delve team. Instead, as I saw myself standing at the gravestone of my last guild mate of that time, Lucy had helped me form Shield Against Shadows. About fifteen folks at any given time who decided to keep up the street hunts as other Surface Hunter guilds died off one by one.

When it was finally Shield’s turn to start shedding members, I made the choice to stay right where I was and keep doing what I did. I could waffle here and say that Lucy and I made the choice, but I wasn’t going to kid myself there. Lucy would have supported me either way. We could have left that life behind us and just dealt with the realities of our new situation to build on the nest egg. No more combat, just pick up some things that might be useful in my day to day life and stick to coding. Even a month and a half ago, I could have just… not intervened when a demon appeared at the hospital playground. I wouldn’t have gained Concubal Acquisition, Whitney wouldn’t have joined the team, and I wouldn’t have gone down the chain of events that led me to my present shattered being. To unleashing the power that broke up the onyx ground and lit it in purple flame. To breaking my Inner Mirror into thousands of pieces. To flaying my own skin to banish the curse I’d spread.

Why did I keep doing this? What kind of person keeps jumping into harm’s way, keeps getting themselves wrecked to the degree I had, with only the promise that one of these times I wouldn’t make it through? I had a loving wife to come home to, at least half-decent job prospects outside of Delving, and nowadays I didn’t even need to Feed myself from outside of our little ring. Why did I seem to feel the need to suffer and expose myself to harm like that? When I didn’t have to, when I had every reason not to.

Why, indeed. It wasn’t a question with a good answer. Was I being punished? Punished for the choices I’d made and what I’d forced others to do? Punished for leaving behind family at the start of it all, punished for every failure? And if so, the person doing the punishing was me. I could stop. I could just not do this. I had a daughter on the way, I needed to be there for her even if she was going to have an amazing mother and six aunts. And yet, that would mean people died.

It all boiled down to that. I was able to face those horrors when others couldn’t or wouldn’t. If I got stung by a scorpion the size of a large dog, I’d have a day or two of rest needed to get back on my feet. If Jack the optometrist got stung, he’d be getting buried in short order. Assuming there was anything left to bury, anyway. That had always been enough to keep me going out there, even at the lowest times of my life, but that couldn’t be all.

I don’t like looking at this part of my soul, never have. I don’t like saying that I must do it because I can do it. I don’t like saying that even if the task of making the surface safe would never be done in my life, I could not let myself set it down. And yet the task remained. As long as the task remained, every time I set out on a mission to put myself between the defenseless people of this city and the monsters that threatened them, I saved at least one life. Usually dozens. That wasn’t a choice. That was an obligation. I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror, ANY mirror, if I knowingly and willingly did that. It would shatter me worse than what I was here repairing. So, as I swore in my oath, “until the day the shadows no longer threaten, may the Shield stand.”

I was myself again, looking at myself in the Mirror. “I have to live. It’s the only way to know that this great work was still being done. I can’t let it kill me. Neither can I stop so long as I am able to stand up, see lightning, and hear thunder. Choosing to not participate is itself a choice, and not one I will ever make. People are complicated, and given that I am still a person, so am I.”

The version of me in the mirror nodded. “I figured that you would say that, but it needed saying.”

From my shoulders floated a fine, glittery powder. Like nights before, it floated to my Inner Mirror and smoothly integrated, but this time was different. As I watched the spider web of cracks in the surface began to seal. It was as if the surface was no longer glass, but mercury. Mercury that was finally settling into smoothness for the first time in far too long. It flowed together, wavered, and stilled. Suddenly, it was glass once more, and as I looked into it I could see something new.

I saw as I dropped out of the skies to slay a Warg that was threatening the people of my city.

I saw as I intercepted demon after demon, ending the threats and saving the women trapped in those cursed forms.

I saw as I showed compassion to a little brown yarrb, possibly the first person to do so in the city, leading to him having a happy and healthy home.

I saw a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times that I had intervened. When I had been the one to step up and be the one to do something. Every time, big or small, I changed the course of my corner of the world for the better. The good deeds that begat more good deeds from those I’d saved, or whose days were just that marginal bit better than before. A spreading wave of them, reaching well beyond my grasp. My city was safe because I made it so. I, and the people inspired by my actions.

With a gasp, I felt a change in my body and soul. Like a dislocated joint finally popped back into place, the pain I had been holding in my head and my heart evaporated. A tension I hadn’t known I was holding suddenly found itself with nothing to hold against, and it felt like every muscle of my body was suddenly trying to remember what it was like to not have to hold in the agony. I fell to the ground, body twitching and overcorrecting as I had to get used to things trying to work properly once more. People are amazing, really. You never really feel the whole of the pain you’re in until you aren’t feeling it anymore.

Also, one bit of pain reminded me I was still me. That ground was still unbelievably hard.

Ringing from the starless heavens of this place came a sound I had not heard in a while. An overwhelmingly loud PING sounded out, signifying that I had finally leveled up once more. Though I could not call my Status here to check, I knew what this had to mean. I was no longer Shattered. I could once again move forward. A column of light descended on me, white and pure, but it stayed that way for only a moment. It split into every color of the rainbow, the lights dancing on me until one word filled my head.

REFRACT

I stood once more, staggering forward. My hand landed on the smooth surface of the Mirror’s face, and when I looked up I was once again staring into the face of the Other Me. Ever so slowly, he was changing. He was growing, though slowly. Both taller and broader, his features showing the telltale signs of rapidly increasing ability scores. He looked back at me and nodded. “Looks like your time here is done for now. We can move on. You know that our truce is over, right?”

“I figured it would be. You’re going to keep whispering suggestions to me in the back of my head in the dead of night, I’m going to keep evaluating them, then discarding almost every one. We talked about this before, and that time around you didn’t think I’d have it in me to suffer what it took to avoid becoming you.” The light was dimming, the cracks in the floor rapidly sealing. With it, the lights were being snuffed out. “I should hope you’ve learned better.”

“Of course. The direct approach was not the one to take, but in my defense I really did think I was inevitable last time. You thought so, too, until that last burst of inspiration.” He was still growing, but from how it looked he wasn’t going to become the ten-foot monster he had been the first time. No, the course had changed, and with it what he represented. “I do need to tell you this upfront. We are not strong enough for the stakes we are playing for. We are not in the league of any of our opponents.”

“Yeah, I saw that on the broadcast.” I was making sure to move my limbs, getting used to myself again.

The Other Me shook his head. “That isn’t it and you know it. How long do you think you’ll survive being the weakest one at the table when all of the other Major Guild leaders hate your gray guts? What if the Gates keep getting stronger? Heck, what about that freaking key you found yesterday? You think the Level… huh, two Levels… you just gained are going to be enough to handle all of that?”

“Absolutely not.” I was pacing now. “One of them, need I remind you the one who LOST, casually murdered someone in the recent past who is the equal in power to someone I know could reduce me to atoms. There isn’t anything I can do to equal that with Levels alone.”

“Then you had best think quickly. We know the stakes, and those tables never wait.” The light was dim enough now that I could barely see him. “Fare well, and may we rise to the challenges before us.”

The light finally went out, and I felt myself drifting. Drifting away from the worries and strife, into a place where I had not been in ages. I dreamed the dreams of those whose minds and souls weren’t broken, who could actually rest. When I opened my eyes some time later, my real ones, I felt whole. Complete in a way that I hadn’t in forever. I gently moved my wife’s arm from across my chest, then two of Amber’s since she had needed the comfort of cuddles last night and we’d passed out before she went back to her own bed. When I stood, the two reflexively cuddled closer together to fill the gap I had just left.

It was adorable, and made me regret getting up from the bed, but I had heavy thoughts in my head and a need to have some sky above me. Nibbles padded up to me as I stepped out, begging for pets which I happily gave him. “Want to join me on the roof, boy?” Nibbles nodded, then immediately walked over to the fire escape to be let out. Still not one to want to be carried in the air, he padded up the stairs before I could offer. I got to the roof a bit faster than he did as a result, but found once there that I wasn’t alone despite the fact that stars were still visible in the skies.

Perched on the corner of our building, looking out over the street we had once chased a demon across, was Whitney. She had pajamas on, but her pose was tense. Her wings were out and back, not held close like she normally does. The feathers of her head were similarly ruffled. More importantly, she hadn’t noticed me coming at all. That wasn’t like her, and I wasn’t sure how I wanted to proceed. Nibbles, thankfully, didn’t seem so conflicted when he got up to the roof. He walked on over to her without hesitation and asked her for pets with the same little “yarrb” sound. It seemed to shake her out of her reverie, if only a bit. She looked down at him with a bit of surprise as she petted him. “Nibbles? I’m sorry, little guy, thought I’d closed the fire escape door.”

I felt it was as good an opportunity as any I was likely to get. “Oh, you did, don’t worry.”

Whitney jumped. Given that this involved a wingbeat and over 30 Strength, that was a lot more of a motion than you might otherwise expect. By the time she landed back on the corner of the roof, she was facing me. Her feathers were still ruffled, notably. “You couldn’t sleep, either?”

“Just the opposite. I don’t need as much sleep anymore, so I’m actually feeling pretty good. Just needed some open air.”

Whitney’s head tilted to the side, an oddly hawk-like gesture from the vulture demoness. “Since when are you the kind of person to say they’re feeling good? Especially after yesterday?”

“I am doing better, Whitney. Last night kind of cemented it. Got too many things to do and too high stakes to settle. I’ll tell you more over breakfast. This one’s going to take a bit, and we don’t have time for me to repeat it seven times.”

Her eyebrows flew upwards as quickly as if she’d jumped again. “Oh, now I KNOW it’s gonna be a good one. It’s four in the morning, Jay. The only people up are bakers, insomniacs, and people with System shenanigans helping them along, and even then you don’t have time?”

“Let’s just say my evening didn’t stop being busy even after I got to sleep. Enough about me, though. How are you doing? I know you were holding it down at the Hospital solo yesterday then got to find out that the world changed twice for us while you were gone.” I walked up beside her, standing at the corner of the building’s roof.

She turned back out towards the street, and we both stood silently for a moment to listen to quiet sounds of the sleepy city. I didn’t have to rush her response, like Whitney said we had some time for that. It didn’t take all that long for her to say it, either. “Jay, when I joined the group and kicked off this entire adventure, you and Lucy were doing alright. Maybe not by much, but you were. Now… we’re not in the little leagues anymore. And the thing is, I wasn’t there to see any of it yesterday. I wasn’t there to help defend Emily and her mom. I wasn’t there for the broadcast. What am I doing?”

“Everything you can, which is a lot more than most people. And a lot more than most people can claim they’re even trying to do. Whitney, none of us can be everywhere. Even Paige and I can only be in two places at once.”

She smacked my arm at that last quip. She held back a lot, but I still definitely had to flare my wings for balance. You know, making sure I didn’t fall off the roof of the building. It would be a bit anticlimactic to follow that conversation overnight with that particular way to go out. Whitney affixed me with her avian gaze. “And yet that’s never enough, is it? I can’t ever do enough.”

“Whoo, man, is there an echo around here or what? I was just saying that last month, and Emily had to point out that it was… call it counterproductive. You and I both Regenerate our Stamina, we can get away with almost no sleep, but even then going all-out all day would just make us crash and burn. Badly. And the thing is, I know the team relies on me, but we rely on you, too.”

“Really? I hit things with a sword. That’s not a rare skillset, Jay.”

“Sure, but then you also make the training plans. You know how much I hated writing those? And I know Lucy appreciates you grabbing me to fly me home when I over do it. Twice so far, I think, and I know there’s going to be more. Doesn’t even count the Hospital work or the Delve teams. You do a lot, Whitney. We all know it.”

She looked back out at the streets, then chuckled a bit. “You know Gloria makes specific dishes to cheer us up when we’re feeling down, right? You think she’s going to do mac and cheese for you or sweet potato biscuits for me tonight?”

“No bet. She’s focusing on the pregnancy nutrients for Lucy right now, so I have no clue what she’s up to.” I stepped back to head to the other side of the roof, towards the fire escape. “Now come on, let’s get back inside. We don’t have all that much longer until the others start waking up, and if I can have the coffee waiting it makes the morning go smoother.”

“Sure, but given that we’re the only two awake right now and I’m horny, you’re going to be delayed a few minutes.”