139 – Mirror Mirror

Exhaling, raising her gun, and leaning back at the same time, Zefaris set loose a gunshot aimed perfectly at Sigma’s stomach. Or, at least, that was it on the surface. It was no surprise to her that the golem deftly stepped aside just as the blazing spear of lead left her weapon, for she had expected the golem to be this fast.

No, her true intentions laid in hitting that coin just as it flashed the second time. When flaming lead met Fog-coated copper, she felt the world freeze for a split-second. In that moment she could see the golem’s forward posture as it already moved to lunge at her, murder in its eye.

Then, there was a loud clang and a bright flash of light as the bullet bounced right off the coin and into the back of Sigma’s head. A deafening crack there sounded and Sigma stopped dead in place, twitching for a few moments as its eye-light flashed. Its head turned, ever so slowly, to look at Zefaris, and it spoke in the same voice it had used when she first spoke to it, before it had grown unstable.

“You knew I would dodge, so you used a coin as a kinetic mirror,” it said, half disbelieving, half impressed. A laugh rumbled from the golem as it crumbled into pieces, leaving behind only the head.

“I only regret that I’ll be my machine-self by the time you return to conquer this place in its true form,” Sigma added before its eye flickered out and its head too crumbled into black sand.

Holstering her gun, Zefaris cautiously walked over to where the coin had landed. Picking it up showed her that it was utterly unscathed, and she smiled, knowing that she would use this very coin again and again. It was when she stowed the coin away and took a step that the great door’s glyph came alive, and it swung open at little more than her gaze.

Past it, there was not a chamber or a corridor, but another glyph whose many facets lit up from bottom to top, great ropes of Fog pouring forth as the Fog Gate formed. Walking through the gate, Zefaris felt the filth slough off both her clothes and skin, her wounds mended and her exhaustion fading. At the other side was a square chamber with three doors on each wall and a squat altar in the center above which floated a map of the dungeon.

Zefaris cared for none of these things, for her eye immediately found that familiar figure staring up at that map, and she could do nothing but run towards her with tears welling up in her eye.

Up until now, she hadn’t even considered the possibility that they might never see one another again.

She hated this place, that so absurdly defied the laws of the world, that so impossibly shifted around her. The Inquisitor hated and reviled that the very walls that stood between her and the Sea of Fog were being infested by mutant terrorists. With each swing of her flaming sword, every felled drone and cleft-asunder warrior, the scope of her task set in, and she came to terms with the need for more than just her if this extermination were to be completed. But most of all, she hated that face, with those silver eyes. It reminded her of just how doomed this country was, of the reason why she handed over her comrades and deserted to the Grekurian side. The face of that towering, monstrous woman, of that twisted mirror image, reminded the Inquisitor of all the things she thought she would be, of all the failures, it reminded her of her future self that never came.

The Inquisitor cut, and punched, and kicked her path through dozens of locusts, weathering their assaults and dispatching them with the efficiency of the thoroughly and harshly trained operative that she was. Fog-breathing and arcane weapons were tools in her arsenal with no special respect, she didn’t even have her own special brand of techniques - much like the members of old cultivator families, the Inquisitor had co-opted the name of her order: Inquisition Arts.

And yet, beneath all the professionalism and calm, calculated confidence, beneath the ominous veneer of a nameless, faceless, ultimate soldier, she was angry and resentful. When she made her way through this chamber and reached the intermediary one, with its control handle in the wall and its utility glyph, she used it not to check her own attributes, but to try and make it work like a mirror. It took some time to respond, but the glyph’s projection did indeed shift to form a foggy surface that soon faded into a mirrored surface, frayed into silvery threads at the edges.

Then, she reached up and pulled off her mask, staring herself in the eyes. Alcerys hated her face, but not because of the scars that marked her as having endured hardship. Her facial structure was damn-near ideal, her eyes the coveted bright blue that was sometimes the sole deciding factor for an arranged marriage.

In her heart of hearts, Alcerys knew exactly why she hated that face so much. She hated it because merely gazing upon it reminded her of the crippling pain that the so-called “Soul-Splinter Procedure” inflicted. It never went away, not entirely. Even now, it throbbed at the back of her mind. Like the phantom pain in a missing limb.

It pulsed, with every heartbeat, reminding her of that impossible archetype that had the absolute fucking audacity to wear her face. She knew enough about the homunculus project to realize that it wasn’t Zelsys’ choice, that she likely just woke up fully formed in a tube one day. But that didn’t change how she felt. It didn’t change the fact that the Inquisitor hated her twisted doppelganger, that she wanted to kill it just to prove to herself that she still had control over her own life.

“Not yet,” she told herself before she let go of the control handle and strapped her mask back on. There was a job to do, only once the Queen was dead could she carry out her grudge.