The Mirrored Universe Part 1

Introduction



Intertwining Paths…



“All roads may lead to Rome, but what if Rome is not your destination?

Or worse, what if your destination has changed?”

Anonymous

The golden plain stretched out below, shrouded in the shadows and darkness of night, the harvest moon peeked out occasionally from behind the sporadic clouds, ghosts of rain that threatened to fall but overall had been nothing but empty promises.  The farmer that tended the maize field of wheat would be happy for the rain, no doubt.  The small group of travelers that were gathered in the camp, however, would undoubtedly prefer the clouds remain silent with their empty threats.

From a rise in the distance a rider sat atop his chestnut stallion, a large horse, obviously intended for battle but still small enough to provide the rider with the necessary mobility and speed.  A cavalry mount, no doubt, the supple muscles moved incessantly betraying the seeming calm of the powerful steed.  The rider sat atop it easily; clothed in shadows he observed the group carefully with a watchful eye.  Few would know where to look for the warrior and fewer still would be able to do anything to stop him.  He sat completely still, gray eyes watched from a hooded shadow, always just out of sight his identity always kept. 

The warrior was not a big man, not the type that would stick out in a crowd, and if you were looking for a blade for hire he would not be your first choice.  He was not that very imposing but he was wiry, fast and tenacious.  What he lacked in brawn he more than compensated for in determination, intelligence and speed.  Gray eyes revealed much about the man depending on the situation.  In battle a surreal rage would take over and the most formidable of enemies could not stand beneath its smoldering flame or the rapid dance of flashing blades.  In moments like this, however, lost in the shadows and in the pain of memories past the warrior’s eyes reflected experience and wisdom beyond his years and borne of pain and loss.

Another dark figure lurked not far away, still and deadly amidst the softly waving fields of grain, also watching the group of travelers with calculated disdain. Though he could not see the warrior, he knew the warrior well enough to know that he was not far away; he seemed to never be far away as the two, on opposite sides of a millennia old conflict, always seemed to be interfering in each other’s business.  Unlike the warrior, this man was built and trained in the arts of stealth and death, an assassin by trade and a rogue by status he was, however, a dark mirror image of the warrior.  The two men, if stood side by side, were, as it were, indistinguishable.  The body build was the same for both, unimposing but wiry, fast and the eyes were also gray as the smoke of a consuming flame.  The similarities ended there.  The rogue, adept at the art of death by means of deception, lived in the shadows, not out of pain or anger or even necessity, but rather because it was where he belonged, his gray eyes were cold as a winter’s eve in the remotest of deserts and just as heartless and uncaring. The scars of the warrior spoke of courageous combat, badges of honor borne with pride.  The scars of the rogue, eerily similar, born in deception and darkness, bespoke of lessons learned that honed his skills to a fine art.

The warrior and rogue watched the small group of travelers. Each knew the other was out there, they had dogged each other’s steps for years; one for revenge, the other to finish a job he had attempted to complete years ago.  Fate, destiny, prophecy, whatever force it was that bent its will on them had deemed it vital that these two dance this dance of death, over and over. 

The group, a small band of likeminded adventurers bound to a common cause gathered around a small camp fire.  The group rested even though they were well aware that the assassin was out there.  They had a purpose and they knew that purpose was guided and protected by a much higher power.  It didn’t hurt that the warrior, a part of their company, was out there as well.  Each member of the group had a purpose, played a specific role in the all important mission they had undertaken.  Each had a tragedy of their own; a path through pain and destruction that had brought them together for the cause they shared.  Guided by destiny, they had somehow found each other as had been predicted centuries before.

On the other side of the mirrored world of Symmetria an identical group travelled with an identical mission and goal.  While the makeup of the group was similar, the attitude was different; more grim and harder. Balance was important, thus both groups mirrored each other in many ways. The destination was prophesied, the players were predicted and the time was foretold but the path meandered, the pages of their journey written as they went.

Destiny is designed by the actions of people, be it the many or the few.  It was this truth that turned out to be the biggest secret and mystery held by these people and it was as the four paths of these participants, the warrior, the assassin, the prey and its mirror begin to intertwine that it became clear that destiny is written on water rather than a stone, and all it takes is a single wave, a single breeze or a stone skipped across the face of the page of destiny that could change its entire direction.

 

Part I

Shattered Shards

 

A Single Stone

Chapter 1

“Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice.

It is not a thing to be waited for.  It is a thing to be achieved.”

William Jennings Bryan

The stone began to skip across the page of destiny decades, even centuries before, only nobody realized it at that time.  That is how it often goes, the most momentous events occur when nobody is expecting them, when the world is looking away at other grander and louder events.  A small breeze through the ripples of time make changes that, in their fruition, develop into tidal waves that can change the course of time, change the course of the world, waves that bring down kings and raises orphans.

It started in a time of war and destruction, as is also often the case.  The strongest metals are purified by fire and the unbreakable diamond is formed under the heat of pressure.  The world was in a time of upheaval as petty lords and kings jockeyed about for power and wealth.  The wars and bloodshed of the powerful and wealthy did nothing for those less fortunate as it grinded out the blood, pain and bones of the helpless and poor leaving mothers childless and children orphans and families homeless and destitute.  Amidst such pain, suffering and loss many lost their sanity, their minds lost to the overwhelming pain, joining the insanity of the world around them.

Such a mind was locked away, its victim an elderly man who had lost most of his family to the devastating war surrounding him.  One dark wintry night a band of soldiers marched through his defenseless village burning it to the ground as they ransacked it for whatever supplies they could gather.  The poor villagers of this unnamed hamlet never had a chance as they were trampled underfoot.  The old man lost everything that night his home, his fields but most of all his family, a wife and three children, and when before the night was through, the poor man, buried under grief and desolation crawled into a dark corner of his mind and was lost forever.  After that night he would scavenge through neighboring villages refuse, surviving on the limited charity of people just as desperate and desolate as he.  All avoided him at all costs, for in his vacant eyes they saw the dangerous path their world could lead them down and what men fear they avoid, or destroy.

It was only a matter of time before the inevitable occurred for it is a story that seems to repeat itself over and over in human events.  A terrible crime was committed, a woman, carrying a child was murdered in the night and the villagers consumed by fear and needing answers placed the blame on the obvious target that could not defend itself.  The man lost in his mind was too incoherent and afraid to understand what happened as the villagers gathered and chased him down.  The man died amidst the screams of anger and hate that drowned out his own cries of confusion and pain.

Some villagers, making some token attempt at fairness and justice, determined that it would be necessary to locate the lair of the horrible villain and thus find at least the remains of the woman in order to properly bury them and thus send her soul onto paradise and eternal rest.  After some searching they found the place where the old man slept and sheltered himself from the cold and rain.  There they found no traces of hostility or violence and no blood or remains could be found.  All they found were the tattered remains of cloths the old man used to cover himself on the cold nights and little broken pieces of the refuse that the villagers threw away.  They were stowed in a corner of the cave under a care worn and tenderly, if rudely, drawn portrait of a woman and three kids. 

What the villagers ignored and failed to see was the scribbling on the walls.  Up and down the stone walls of the cave were the scribbling and ramblings of a madman.  They had always known he went around muttering to himself in senseless. Self absorbed conversation, ramblings that did nothing but prove, at least to them, that he was mad.  Scribbled along the wall, they assumed were more of these ramblings so they did not waste their time with the scribbling.  Fortunately, the most important things in life have a way of preserving themselves and these scribbling had been made with natural paints, mostly charcoal and other items that managed to hold up under the ravage of time.

A legend began, as will often happen in these cases, stories of dark happenings and haunting evil spirits; stories whispered by parents to scare their children into obedience, and retold around camp fires in hushed tones to create fear or a chill down the spines of innocent minds.  The story told of a man, violent and mad, that brutally butchered anybody that wandered near his haunted cave, his evil spirit causing bodily harm to almost all, except (of course) a few unlucky souls that were touched by his madness and returned, never to be the same.  Of course, these stories just fuel the courage of young boys eager to prove that they are a man and that they have no lack of courage.

One such boy, Deitrych by name, or Deet to his friends, challenged by his peers, approached the cave, to find it not dissimilar to how the villagers had left it that day long ago.  He, unlike them, was fascinated by the scribbling that covered the walls.  Deet was one of the few boys in the small village that had taken an interest in reading and learning how to write.  Fate, it seems, has a sense of intelligence about it and directed the right person to the abandoned and rejected cave.  Having never met the madman who wrote them, to him they were a story to be told, rather than senseless ramblings.  When he returned to his friends unscathed, they claimed he never went into the cave but he never forgot the cave.  As he grew older he would often go back to the cave, drawn to it by some invisible force, the forces of fate at work, the stone still skipping the motions of time and the actions of individuals shaping destiny as this little boy, grown to be a man, would play his part in the play of history, whether a tragedy or a comedy, was yet to be seen.

With time, Deet began to write down the scribbling, as they were, transferring them to a more readable and mobile medium.  He was, for some reason that he could not explain, convinced that there was some mystery locked in them and he could not get away from the feeling that it was important. As he wrote down the words he began to make a pattern of them even though there was no discernible pattern to the gibberish.  He began to realize with an eerie understanding that this was a tale of things to come as some of the things had actually occurred after the death of the mad man. Not big significant things but things that had happened, and somehow, the mad man had known of it before it happened.          

It was the accuracy of the small events that began to bring fear in the heart of the Deet.  If the mad prophet had been correct on the little, insignificant things than did one dare ignore the bigger, more monumental things that were beginning to shape together?  To do so would seem fool hardy and reckless.  One statement in particular seemed to keep drawing his worried attention:

“A ripple across the waves, and a choice made in a moment of time

The mirrored child’s path will save or make an end of all mankind.

The mirrored blades shall skip across the child’s page

And as three paths intertwine, the fate of all they will decide.

A group of mystery shall the mirrored child’s path guard and guide

But in the end the mirrored child, alone in darkness, shall decide.”

The ominous words echoed in the young Deet’s mind.  What may have been confused for senseless ramblings of a disturbed man took on a more serious tone when considered that other events predicted, though seemingly harmless, had in actuality occurred as predicted.  Furthermore, even those seemingly innocuous events now took on a more important note of interest. What if they too were part of the river of time and each event played a part in the preparation for far more reaching events of the future?

The situation was even more problematic because the cave was just outside of a meaningless village, a miniscule hamlet barely even recognized by the king’s high court and to draw attention to such a small place out in the middle of nowhere when the villagers themselves treated him as though he were mad too for taking the ravening madness of an ostensibly violent lunatic serious.

As fate would have it, a man travelled through the village.  He was an unassuming and friendly man.  He did not draw much attention to himself but he was looking for something.  His name was Methrian and he was a travelling mystic and at the School of Mystics in the capital city of Thyral he was known as the Ancient One.  He had been sent by his High School because a dispute about the signs in the stars had led some of the mystics to believe that there was a secret of great importance to be discovered but they did not know what it was.  As is often the case in the schools of the learned, other factions mocked the possibility that such a small village could have anything momentous about it or that it could have anything to do with the affairs of men.  Unfortunately for those that were convinced that the village was important those in charge of the School of Mystics leaned more to the side of those who thought it to be highly unlikely and therefore they sent an unofficial representative of the school, thus they gave some passive attention to the insistence of the alarmists while not wasting any significant resources.  There was much more, however, to this simple man and his part was crucial, and he had waited centuries for his part to play out.

The Eternal Mirror

“Before man is life and death, good and evil; that which he shall choose shall be given him.”

The Holy Bible

Long before the raving madman had begun his carvings, and long before he had become a scapegoat for frustrated justice, the wheels of time had set the world on a collision course.  The thing about a collision course is that it often starts subtle; sometimes the change in direction is so slight that nobody can even tell the difference, see the change or see the disaster they are headed for.  Time, it has been said, is a river.  A river will always take the path of least resistance and a single rock, tossed into the midst of it, can change the entire course of time.

A basic law of nature that affects everything its inhabitants do is that for every action there is a reaction.  There is a positive for every negative.  Eons ago, as the legend of the gods goes, a star exploded in the unending and eternal darkness of the universe. As the bright light filled the darkness, its gravity drawing in on itself somewhere else within the galaxy a dark hole was formed, its hunger unmatched it sucked everything around it.  The event horizon, however, did more than just consume everything around it; for from the consuming hunger an evil emerged, an evil dark and just as hungry.  It’s power was vast and it had consumed the energies from countless worlds over the eons.  Patience was its greatest asset.  The legend says that this world eater would slowly consume the will of inhabitants and enslave them, feeding off of their life forces till they could offer no more.  Once the last of the life force was sucked from it the hungering maw of the dark hole would consume the empty husk as complete destruction and annihilation was completed.

As is always the case, where there is darkness, there will always be light.  The ancients told the tale of the two forces light and darkness fight for possession of worlds across the dark skies of a galaxy full of worlds.  This battle had raged over eons and over infinite swaths of space and it seemed as though the battle would rage on forever and would tear the very fabric of the Universe apart.  A truce must be made and the war, like any other war, had to have an end or it would be the end of all things.

So a plan was set into motion, strict rules were set between the two powers and a destination in time was selected, a point of collision where the river of time, separated by the disruption in space brought about by the dark hole would be sealed or it would devour all that is and was and ever would be, for time is more than the present, it is the future and the past as well.

It is important to understand that these two powers, light and darkness, are considered such because of physical reasons rather than moral reasons.  Morality is a thing of finite beings; it is a construct of finite minds that have an eye set to post mortem happiness.  The infinite and eternal have no need or use for morality.  Morality is a form of keeping score a means of being at peace with oneself.  A being that has infinite power and infinite existence has no need of keeping scores or preparing for a death that will never happen.  No, these two powers merely represented opposite sides of nature.  Nature is a nurturer and a killer, a mother and a murderer; it is tender and brutal, compassionate and heartless.  In nature, both in the world and in the galaxy, for every beauty there is an ugly underside and indeed, the most beautiful things in the universe are often the most deadly.  These two are parts of the same.  What the explosion in time did was not to create evil but rather separate the two and make good and evil opposing and competing powers.  The universe craves order, but nature is chaos.  The explosion in time created a rift, a division; it created chaos.  In the end, chaos must end in either a restoral of order or complete destruction.

The order and the chaos were bound by mutual agreements and rules; failure to follow the rules would result in complete destruction of both and the end of all things.  Adherence would result in both paths of time merging and the choice would determine the direction of the universe.  The two powers chose a world, a small insignificant speck in the cosmos on which the decision would be made.  On this world the inhabitants would be used to influence the direction of the choice but no direct involvement was permitted.  The forces involved were just too great, too powerful and their mere presence would rage such havoc that the small world would collapse upon itself.

Some might confuse these two powers to be gods, others might think of them as the proverbial ying and yang.  While these characteristics might apply they are not quite accurate.  These two entities are the fabric of all that exists, the force of the original explosion tore that fabric apart and as the two parts pulled apart the edges of that fabric of the very universe became frayed and began to unravel.  The tear must be healed, for better or for worse.

So it was decided.  A choice would be made. Simple as that.  A choice. And that choice must be made by a child.  But if for every reaction there is a reaction and if the mirror has to sides, then, why should this choice be any different?  This child must be unique, must be different and must reflect the mirrored world in which it lives and which these two immense forces had created for this moment of choice.

The Mirrored Child.

One Choice.

One Chance.



 

A Child Shall Lead Them

Chapter 2

“And the wolf will live with the lamb…and a little child shall lead them.”

The Holy Bible

 

The Words of the Wise

Chapter

“To understand a proverb, the words of the wise and their dark sayings”

The Holy Bible

The changes that make a difference in the direction of the history of a world are often small and slow.  It is the monumental ones, an earthquake here, a volcano there, a storm over an island that while they do cause change, in the end more often than not prove to be inconsequential in the history of the human race.  Sometimes a chance meeting between two individuals, forming an instant bond that lasts a lifetime and produces a child, the process repeating itself over generations, over decades and over centuries are the changes that in the end dictate the direction of the entire race.

One such small and seemingly insignificant change was the birth of a child named Methrian which in the ancient, dead language of his people meant “wanderer.”  It would appear that even that early on his father knew what would end up happening to him and the direction his life would take.  While Methrian could not remember much of that ancient small town he was born in and it had long been taken by time and decay he never would forget the rolling green hills and fields of different crops that sprung up around the dirt roads.

Methrian’s father was a liked man in the village, considered one of the leaders of the town and the child was expected to follow in his path.  But early on there was a hunger in Methrian to find out what was over the next hill, a wander lust that burned in him, a desire to know and to learn.  Methrian’s father tried to get him to pay closer attention to the world around him and the town and to be ready to receive what he wanted to pass down to his eldest son, but he always knew that that would not happen; Methrian’s father always knew he would find his way out of the town, even though it was unheard of at that time.

That ancient little town was nestled between the mountains that are now the gateway to what is now known as the country of Rholastia.  Methrian grew up in what is now Napulon and back then travel was difficult and dangerous and the few that had left the village had never returned.  Dark stories were told, to scare children at night, of evil beings in the forests surrounding them that were told and retold so as to keep the children from wandering off and when they got older it kept them from leaving the town as well.  They were a superstitious lot and it was considered dangerous talk to even speak of leaving the town for fear that something terrible would come down from the mountain and destroy the town. 

“Meth you must pay attention to where you are and what you are doing here, stop spending your time thinking about other places and worlds when you have everything you need here,”

“But Papa there is more out there than this and I want to see it, experience it.”

 

The Mirrored Blades

“The mirrored blades shall skip across the child’s page.”

The Raving Prophecies

The sun rose over the plains, the riders stopped in awe as the beautiful city came into view.  The City of the Horse Lord was bathed in red, the Citak Sente’Leur, or Citadel of the Horse Lords, stood proud and tall in the center of this, the one and only city of the Vidhori.  Across the vast plains the Vidhori maintained a nomadic tradition, preferring to move the horses where there was grass and where there were open spaces for them to train to fight.  Should the Horse Lord send out a call, the massive mounted armies of the Vidhori could gather and organize in a quick precise and impressive display of power.

The one exception of this was the gathering for review that occurred once every twelve lunar cycles. At this time the finest of the Horse Lord’s men would come together on the plains outside of the Capital and marshal their forces and be reviewed by the Horse Lord.  The complex maneuverings of the forces as they gathered was phenomenal and the untrained eye would see chaos but those maneuvers had made the Vidhori a force to be reckoned with.  Many an enemy had thought they had won against the Vidhori only to realize that the apparent chaos was merely a ruse to maneuver them into a place of defeat.

The Vidhori nation was massive, its plains were vast and the people mostly lived in tents and traded with outsiders.  Any towns that had sprung up were towns that had been established by entrepreneuring outsiders that had seen the potential of having centralized trading places to provide the needed goods for the traveling horse herders, or any other slur the haughty townspeople chose to use in referring to the people that ruled the vast plains.

And rule them they did.  There was no question as to who were the high lords and owners of the plains of Vidhori, and the Vidhori were anything but an ambiguous or passive people. The outsiders were allowed to stay and to build their towns with the permission of the Horse Lord’s Crown but they were taxed, sometimes heavily, and fell under the authority of the Citak Sente’Leur regardless of what country they hailed from.  Justice was always harsh in the code of the Vidhori and outsiders did not catch a break.  If a town got too troublesome the Vidhori would gather and wipe it out, completely, without remorse and without hesitation.

One of the downfalls of a loosely controlled nation, such as the Vidhori, is that you cannot always count on the good will and best behavior of human beings.  At some point without law there will be lawlessness. Rumors of violence, sacrilegious brutality and unbridled atrocities began to surface.  The Sente’Leur did his best to stamp out the trending malevolence but due to the very nature of the Vidhori nation, its government and the nomadic culture of the people such an effort was doomed to fail from the start.

The roaming bands of Vidhori began fabricating lies to destroy these merchant towns and loot the belongings.  As the displaced survivors began trickling back to their homelands the true horror of the crimes began to surface.  Mutilated bodies, barred from the afterlife due to the desecration, loss of life and property, and tales of rape and murder began to surface.  Much of the behavior was against the code of honor of the Vidhori but either that did not keep them from committing such atrocities or the stories were believable due to the extreme lack of social interaction of the Vidhori.  Either way a general sense of unease settled across the land of the Vidhori as rumors began to spread of anger in neighboring nations and rumors of gathering troops began to surface.  There were also whispered reports of a dark hand fanning the flames, a mastermind of sorts that conspired against the Horse Lord and his people.

In reply to the rumors and in an attempt to show the might of the Vidhori, the Horse Lord ordered the annual mustering of the troops at the Citadel of the Sente’Leur, the seat of power of the Vidhori.  It would be a day of pomp and circumstance, a day of power of ceremony…and a day of blood and death.