From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison) Date: 9 Jul 93 18:24:56 GMT Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [MG] Things Seen in a Mirror [ADMIN] This is a joint post, written by me from plot and idea given by Penny Hutchison. She also did editorial comments. I began to collect Power over ten years ago, repeating this short, looped month of time across a hundred twenty different timetracks, building truth, reality, into the shaping of the Silver Warrior which I have made myself. No longer can I choose my roles, for I am in a Place where only Hope dwells, and there are none here but myself and my reflection. The Beacon I lit has been burning for all this time, and I know it has reached the Keeper by now. I am no longer what I was, and I wonder if I can return to that self. All my aspects bind into this one truth. My mate does not come here, though he knows that I have made this choice; he has taken the knowledge from his mind so that our strategy will work. The ReaversChild will not know of me, and therefore he will be unprepared. Four minutes from now the Time will come around again, and I will no longer dwell in this same cycle of days. My Power is sufficient now, I will not return to my past again. I will return to Life. I hear the cry, my name called in fear and loss, and I step across the Worldlines, knowing that my otherself also heard, and that she is gathering the other kinds of Power I will need for this task, beyond that which I have been collecting; I quietly send thanks along the lines of gestalt. She is close to frantic; my own fear and anger has been growing since my return to the Places of Life. I am there at the ambush site. <> -- my cry goes unheard, the wall is between us. I am joined in the same instant, by the Seeker Dariel who has learned to be a Warrior, and we find that between us the wall is still impervious. My mate has twisted the War inside, and I cannot enter because I have taken on the aspect of Hope and their battle is in Creation. Dariel speaks with the mages as they come running up to us, and the woman, Coral, feels fear and devastation at what her mages' vision is showing her: the infestation of her husband by the entity spawned by Mar. I reflect the Light into her, strengthening the Hope she feels, so that she can join in the battle. Four seconds from now, the wall will be struck down. I extend silver wings, moving into the place between Places, and when the echoes of my mate strike down the walls from the inside, I move. His strategy is insanely risky, and my heart breaks for him even as I focus the Light upon the body he now shares. Light bursts from inside in answer to Light and the fragment of Mar screams its pain. A thread leads to its place of refuge, it dives into the thread. I follow, by the Roads Beyond, and enter into the Place before Mar is able to fully go inside. The walls and curves are constructed to constrain Dariel. Mar never expected _me_ and so I extend my Light to fill the darkness, I seize the lines of time inside the small pocket of attempted reality. They appear, entering via the death of another innocent. In my future timeline I see myself step back through time to slice the razor edge of my wing down between R and the innocent waiter, stopping the wave of utter destruction before it can send the man spinning off to the nothingness that never was. The woman of the ankh takes him aside gently, showing him his broken body on the floor, and in my future past, I have already gone backwards, to free my mate from the avatar's chains. I return my attention to Now. Darkness twists around and through this Place. The dark twisting is Mar. He has Jameson Walker - a guest of my House, and he has impaled her in his needles. Dariel is here, trying to fit his Seeker's wings into the tight curves of this space. Coral has come riding in his Light, but this is a place of Darkness... Again I fill the space with my own Light, standing between Mar and Coral. Joy comes in a rush of thunder as the flickering of a thousand butterfly wings, and Mar strikes her to wound. My light blunts his claws, and his first strike does not kill. The darkness hungers - Dariel is trying the futures, looking for a way to heal. (I see Mar throw off splinters, as he was once thrown off himself. I catch them and twist, filling them with light, and all but one of them dissolve to dust and never-was; the last one turns to Flame and Light, and I hold it, a seed of something new to plant in the Beacon of Hope.) But while I was catching splinters, the ReaversChild has again struck at the goddess of Joy, and she is injured unto dissolution. Time - my mate has somehow seized the threads of time and holds their battle, long enough to unwind the avatar of Mar from Dieter's body, healing the holes left by the threading of his shards. <=Mar tries once again to strike Joy into the Dust but this time I am between them, and I turn his blow back upon itself; he tries to send the shock into his host, but my Light follows the blow, and it dissipates. He cannot turn his attention to me, Dariel assails his power, he must keep his victims held up as shields.=> I turn - my mate has consumed most of his own essence to build a body for the avatar, and Coral and Dieter are trying to leave. I Light the way for them, a connection into the place upside-top from where we are, and they arrive out-above. My mate casts loose the threads of time, no longer strong enough to hold them, and Joy begins to dissipate. In his fear and hope the avatar of Mar chooses a name, he is become Raphael the Healer, and his touch knits up the rents and makes whole the broken wings of butterflies and moths. An infinity away and two steps from where I stand guard, Mar is being defeated. His gambit with the Walker of the Onari has failed: Dariel has made the choice that Mar could never understand, and has stepped _through_ her, and consumes the threads of the Dark in his own Light. I grieve at their suffering, holding my own Light as a shield around them, keeping this Place from popping like a bubble and destroying us all. There is more of Dariel than there ever was of Mar, but when he has burned away the blackness, there is only enough left to weave a sending the size of a bird. I extend my pinions, cutting the braces that hold this Place in its odd turning, and the reality implodes, sending us out along the lines of being into the squalor of a bar in the Low City.