Gifts of the Shattered World
Grazim’s head rested in Kaylor’s hands.
The treasure surrounding them had stopped moving.
Coins lay across the mirrored floor in uneven drifts. Gems caught the light. The staff and the gleaming longsword rested among them, no longer parts of the creature that had wielded both.
The great beanstalk still rose through the shattered ceiling.
Nothing else moved.
Kaylor lowered Grazim’s head beside the body.
The war-priest’s expression appeared almost peaceful.
It did not belong upon a face separated from the man who had carried it.
Nethnarel approached slowly.
“Can he be restored?”
No one answered immediately.
Grazim had restored Krill.
He had returned the rightful leader of the Sanctum after Craven had kept him dead for years.
Now the cleric who had called others back could not call himself.
Hexen knelt beside the body.
“I have one way.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“Do it.”
“You should understand what it means.”
“He returns.”
“Yes.”
“Then do it.”
“He may not return as the same person.”
Kaylor’s eyes hardened.
“His soul?”
“The same.”
“His memories?”
“The same.”
“His power?”
“Yes.”
“Then what changes?”
Hexen looked at Grazim’s body.
“Everything carrying them.”
Reincarnation did not repair flesh.
It replaced it.
The magic would call Grazim’s spirit back and shape a new body capable of receiving it. Race, size and form would be left partly to forces none of them controlled.
Fendor picked up the longsword that had killed Grazim.
Its blade remained perfectly clean.
“Better an unfamiliar face than no Grazim.”
Isamu looked toward the corpse.
“He will complain.”
“That would confirm the spell worked,” Nethnarel said.
Hexen gathered what the ritual required.
The mirror realm offered no earth, living wood or open sky. Nature existed there only in stolen fragments—the impossible beanstalk, the thorns the treasure creature had summoned and the magic Hexen had carried inside himself.
It would have to be enough.
The others stood watch while Hexen began.
No new creature rose from beneath the floor.
No hostile voice entered their minds.
Perhaps the ruler of the mirror believed the treasure construct would finish them.
Perhaps it had already turned its attention elsewhere.
Green light gathered around Grazim’s remains.
The body changed.
At first Kaylor believed the spell was repairing what the sword had severed. The head and torso drew together beneath the light.
Then the armor collapsed inward.
Grazim’s limbs shortened.
His broad shoulders narrowed. His hands became smaller. The proportions of his face changed while retaining enough of the man they knew to remain unmistakably his.
The divine presence surrounding him did not diminish.
It compressed.
The same strength, will and stubborn certainty settled inside a body scarcely half its former height.
Grazim inhaled.
His eyes opened.
He sat upright.
For several moments, he looked at the companions standing over him.
Then he looked down.
His armor had reshaped itself around the new body. The warhammer beside him remained substantial, but its enchanted haft had adjusted enough for his hand to close around it.
Grazim stood.
Or tried to.
He rose much less far than expected.
Isamu studied him.
“You are considerably shorter.”
Grazim looked up at him.
“I noticed.”
“You were decapitated.”
“I remember.”
“You are now a halfling.”
Grazim examined his hands.
“That is new.”
Kaylor released a breath that had remained trapped inside him since the sword fell.
“You are alive.”
Grazim looked at the blood still covering Kaylor’s armor.
“Yes.”
Then he looked toward the treasure.
“What killed me?”
Fendor raised the gleaming longsword.
“This.”
Grazim regarded it.
The weapon had severed his head with one stroke. Magic remained along its edge, waiting for another perfect opening.
“Destroy it.”
Fendor considered the blade.
“No.”
Grazim looked at him.
“It killed me.”
“Which demonstrates its effectiveness.”
“It removed my head.”
“And now it will remove the heads of our enemies.”
Grazim continued staring.
Fendor lowered the weapon slightly.
“I will not use it upon you.”
“That assurance is less comforting than you believe.”
The sword was a Vorpal Longsword, enhanced beyond any ordinary enchanted blade. Its edge carried the possibility of ending a fight in a single perfect stroke.
Fendor accepted it.
No one else expressed interest.
The remaining items emerged as the treasure was searched.
A gray cloak rested beneath several layers of coins. Its fabric seemed incapable of remaining entirely still. Even while Kaylor held it, the cloth shifted slightly out of alignment with the hand supporting it.
Nethnarel studied the enchantment.
“It displaces the wearer’s image. Enemies will strike where you appear to be rather than where you are.”
Fendor looked toward Kaylor.
“You stand in front.”
“Yes.”
“You are attacked most often.”
“Yes.”
“Take it.”
Kaylor fastened the Cloak of Displacement over his armor.
The effect began immediately.
His body appeared to shift several inches to one side, then back again. The movement was subtle until someone tried to focus directly upon him.
Isamu narrowed his eyes.
“That is irritating.”
“Good,” Kaylor said.
Kaylor removed the older Cloak of Protection he had been wearing.
He held it toward Isamu.
The monk looked at the cloak.
“Why?”
“The new one replaces it.”
“That explains why you do not need it.”
“You are often struck while running ahead of us.”
“I am rarely struck.”
“You were struck repeatedly inside the mirror.”
“That was an unusual floor.”
Kaylor continued holding out the cloak.
Isamu accepted it.
The protection settled around him, strengthening both his defenses and his resistance to hostile magic.
Nethnarel found a small leather bag near the place where the treasure creature’s torso had collapsed.
It appeared ordinary.
The contents did not.
Several large beans rolled inside it.
She remembered the single bean the construct had thrown.
The seed had become the enormous stalk now growing through the chamber roof.
“What else can they create?” she asked.
Hexen examined the bag.
“Plants.”
“Only plants?”
“No.”
“What else?”
“Creatures. Structures. Fire. Perhaps something helpful.”
“Perhaps?”
“Perhaps something that tries to kill us.”
Nethnarel smiled.
Isamu watched her accept the Bag of Beans.
“That object appears well suited to you.”
“I agree.”
“That was not praise.”
“I know.”
A suit of enchanted plate armor lay partly buried beneath the coin.
The metal was stronger than ordinary plate and carried magic allowing its wearer to step briefly into the Ethereal Plane.
Kaylor examined it.
His own armor protected him from fire—an advantage that had saved him repeatedly in the mirror realm and before it.
He looked from one suit to the other.
“Not yet.”
They retained the ethereal plate among the party’s treasure without assigning it permanently.
The staff lay near the base of the beanstalk.
It had been carried by the treasure creature and had created the Wall of Thorns that divided the chamber.
Leaves had been carved along its length, but the patterns were not merely decorative. They shifted when Hexen touched them, responding to the druid’s presence.
“A Staff of the Woodlands,” he said.
Grazim looked toward the scorched remains of the thorn wall.
“So that is what trapped me beside the sword.”
Hexen took the staff.
“I will use it more responsibly.”
Isamu looked at the beanstalk.
“Your definition of responsibility concerns me.”
The final object was a narrow bottle containing liquid that moved faster than the hand holding it. The potion seemed to circle endlessly inside the glass.
Nethnarel identified it.
“Speed.”
Isamu accepted the Potion of Speed.
Kaylor looked at him.
“You already move faster than the rest of us.”
“Yes.”
“This will make you faster.”
“Yes.”
“Why do you need that?”
Isamu placed the bottle securely among his equipment.
“I do not understand the question.”
The magical objects accounted for only part of the treasure.
The chamber contained wealth worth approximately thirty-five thousand gold pieces, though much of it existed as silver and copper coin. Gemstones accounted for only a small portion—perhaps three hundred fifty gold pieces in portable value.
The coins created a more difficult problem.
The Bag of Holding had disappeared with Leonidas.
The Bag of Beans would not carry anything except beans.
The treasure room contained one enormous chest, large enough to hold most of the wealth if the heroes could move it.
They filled it.
The work took considerable time.
Gold and silver vanished beneath less valuable copper. Gems were wrapped and stored separately. The unclaimed plate armor rested across the top.
When the lid finally closed, the chest weighed more than any ordinary person could drag.
Hexen summoned his wolves.
Then he became an earth elemental.
Stone expanded around him until his head nearly reached the shattered ceiling. He wrapped both massive hands around the chest.
It moved.
Barely.
Isamu looked at the furrows the chest cut across the mirrored floor.
“Subtle.”
Hexen dragged it again.
The floor screamed beneath the weight.
“We are beyond subtlety.”
The heroes returned through the opened passages toward Abaddon’s chamber.
Grazim walked beside Kaylor.
The cleric’s stride had changed. His legs were shorter, forcing him to move more quickly to maintain the same pace.
After several moments, Kaylor slowed.
Grazim noticed.
“Do not.”
“Do not what?”
“Walk slowly because I am smaller.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
Kaylor resumed his normal pace.
Grazim increased his own and kept up.
His power had not changed.
The man who had awakened beneath the monument remained present behind the unfamiliar face. He still carried the same warhammer, shield and certainty.
But Craven’s arc had changed more than Kaylor.
The false temple had taken his oath.
The mirror had taken Grazim’s body.
Neither man had emerged as he entered.
The last mirror waited inside Abaddon’s chamber.
No image appeared upon its surface.
Only darkness.
Every earlier portal had vanished after the heroes crossed it. None permitted them to return to the chamber they had left.
This one offered the same choice.
Forward.
Or remain forever among the ruins of the shattered world.
Nethnarel examined the mirror.
“No destination.”
“None of the others showed the truth,” Fendor said.
“This may lead deeper.”
“Or out,” Grazim replied.
Isamu looked behind them.
Abaddon was dead.
The treasure guardian was destroyed.
The mirror realm had no food, sky or ordinary road.
“Remaining here seems less promising.”
Kaylor approached the surface.
He had entered the first mirror expecting a road to a village.
Instead, the realm had stripped away every path behind them and punished the magic upon which they depended. It had imprisoned them, separated them and delivered them to a creature that believed they were already defeated.
It had failed.
“Hexen goes last,” Kaylor said. “The chest follows him.”
The earth elemental rumbled his agreement.
One by one, they entered.
Fendor crossed with the Oathbow ready and the Vorpal Longsword secured at his side.
Isamu followed, the new cloak settling around his shoulders.
Nethnarel carried the Bag of Beans as carefully as she carried Gygax.
Grazim entered next.
For an instant, the mirror contained the reflection of a human war-priest.
Then it shifted.
The reflection became the halfling he now was.
Grazim passed through both images.
Kaylor followed.
Hexen dragged the chest into the darkness behind him.
The mirror released them into daylight.
Kaylor emerged upon the edge of a mountain.
Open land extended below.
Green plains reached toward the horizon, crossed by narrow rivers, roads and scattered patches of forest. A modest city stood in the valley, smoke rising peacefully from its chimneys.
No mirrored floor waited beneath their boots.
No reflection moved independently of its owner.
Wind touched Kaylor’s face.
Real wind.
Hexen emerged last in his earth-elemental shape, dragging the chest through the portal. His summoned wolves followed around him.
The mirror closed.
It did not become an ordinary pane of glass.
It vanished.
Only bare stone remained behind them.
Nethnarel searched for the magic.
Nothing answered.
“No return,” she said.
“There never was,” Kaylor replied.
Hexen released his elemental form.
He stood upon the mountain slope and looked toward the sky.
The light was right.
The wind carried scents he recognized.
The living pattern of the land felt familiar in a way the past, the Vault and the mirror realm never had.
“We are home.”
Isamu looked toward the city.
“Where?”
They studied the valley.
None of them had stood upon that particular slope before, but enough geography remained in recovered memory to give the place a name.
Oxland.
A small but busy city near the center of the continent from which much of their first journey had begun.
Hexen’s original village lay somewhere to the north beyond the hills.
Other roads led toward lands the heroes had crossed before they died and awakened again upon the mountain monument.
They had returned to their own plane.
Not their own time in every sense.
Not the lives they had once possessed.
But the world beneath the sky was theirs.
Grazim stood at the mountain’s edge.
The wind caught his cloak.
At his new height, the grass rose almost to his knees.
Isamu looked down at him.
“You remain short.”
Grazim looked toward the distant city.
“You remain irritating.”
“Then we are both ourselves.”
Kaylor watched the plains.
Craven was dead.
The rightful leader had returned to the Sanctum.
Krinrith was free of the man who had poisoned Kaylor’s faith and rewritten the history of his order.
The mirror realm was behind them.
They had survived.
But survival had not returned them unchanged.
Kaylor carried no oath.
Grazim carried a new body.
Fendor carried the sword that had killed his friend.
Nethnarel carried a bag capable of producing almost anything.
Hexen carried a staff drawn from a false world.
Isamu wore Kaylor’s discarded protection and held speed beyond what any of them required.
Below them, Oxland waited.
Beyond it stretched the continent they had once failed to save.
The heroes started down the mountain.
Behind them stood no mirror.
Ahead of them lay more than one road.
For the first time in a very long while, the choice belonged to them.
END OF PART SIX
THE SHATTERED MIRROR
END OF BOOK TWO
THE FALSE TEMPLE