CHAPTER 11: THE MIRROR AT DUSKMIRE CROSS
The contract looked harmless on paper.
Contract 17-D-22
Task: Retrieve stolen guild mirror from hedge-mage "Red Hollis." Return intact or destroy.
Location: Duskmire Cross, abandoned waystation.
Threat: D (mage, fire affinity)
Reward: 350 silver + hazard
[Note: Do not look into the glass.]
They took it because the pay was good and the travel short, three days south along the trade road, then half a day into the fen. Torven grumbled about wet boots. Lysa bought extra bowstring. Dren just smiled like he'd already counted the coin.
Kael read the note twice and felt the old itch between his shoulder blades.
They reached Duskmire Cross at twilight.
The waystation was a husk, three walls, no roof, chimney collapsed into itself. Fog rolled off the fen like milk boiling over. The air smelled of peat and old blood.
Red Hollis waited in the open doorway, barefoot, red robes hanging off him like wet banners. His hair was the color of fresh rust, eyes the color of banked coals. In one hand he held a guild mirror the size of a dinner plate, frame carved with runes that hurt to follow. In the other hand he held fire.
Not a torch. Not a spell circle. Just fire raw, living, dancing between his fingers like a pet.
"Guild dogs," he called, voice soft, almost kind. "Come to fetch your toy?"
Torven stepped forward, shield up. "Hand it over, Hollis. No need for anyone to burn."
Hollis smiled. The fire in his hand doubled in size, tripled, became a whip that cracked the air and left a line of glass in the mud.
"Need is a funny word," he said.
Then he looked straight at Kael.
"You're the one they're whispering about. Cragmere's End. The man who eats nightmares."
Kael said nothing.
Hollis's smile widened. "Let's see how you like flames for breakfast."
He snapped the fire whip.
It came faster than sound, faster than sight, a white-hot line that turned the fog to steam and the ground to slag.
Kael didn't dodge.
He stepped into it.
The flame wrapped his chest, his arms, his face. Skin blistered, peeled, blackened. The pain was immediate and absolute, like being dipped in molten glass.
He stood in it for four full seconds.
Then the fire started to gutter.
The heat that should have cooked his lungs became warm breath. The blisters stopped spreading. The pain dialed down from scream to sting to memory.
Hollis's eyes went wide.
Kael walked forward, clothes smoldering, skin already pink and new.
The mage panicked. He hurled a ball of fire the size of a wagon wheel.
Kael did something unorthodox, he caught it.
Not with his hands, with his chest. The impact drove him back one step, boots carving furrows in the mud. The fireball flattened against him, spread, tried to eat him alive.
He let it try for six heartbeats.
Then he exhaled.
The fire reversed sucked back into the shape of a sphere, then smaller, then a marble, then nothing.
Hollis stumbled back, mouth working soundlessly.
Kael kept walking.
The mage raised the mirror like a shield.
"Don't come closer," he warned. "Look in the glass and you'll see how you die. It's already started."
Kael looked.
The surface rippled like black water. Inside it he saw himself, older, scarred, standing on a battlefield of broken swords.
A blade came out of nowhere and took his head clean off.
The body stood for a second, then fell.
The vision felt real. The air smelled of blood and smoke. He could taste the iron.
He felt the hook try to set behind his eyes again, different from the name-eater, subtler. This one didn't want his voice. It wanted his certainty.
Kael smiled.
"Seen it," he said. "Didn't like the haircut."
He reached for the mirror.
Hollis screamed and smashed it against the doorframe.
Glass exploded outward in a thousand black shards.
Each shard hung in the air, spinning, reflecting a different death, drowning, burning, bleeding out, old age, poison, a thousand more.
The shards flew at Kael like hornets.
He let the first dozen hit him.
One sliced his cheek, death by hanging.
One pierced his shoulder, death by wolves.
One went through his hand, death by plague.
Each cut carried the weight of the vision. He felt ropes around his neck, teeth in his throat, fever in his bones.
He stood in the storm of deaths and counted heartbeats.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
The cuts stopped bleeding. The visions started to fade. The hook slipped.
The shards fell to the mud like dead insects.
Hollis was on his knees, hands bleeding from the broken frame.
Kael crouched in front of him.
"You stole the wrong toy," he said quietly.
Hollis looked up, eyes wild. "It's not a toy. It's a key. The reflections are real. They're coming for you now. All of them."
Kael considered this.
Then he picked up the largest remaining shard, still reflecting the battlefield death and pressed it to his own throat.
The edge bit. Blood welled.
He held it there until the cut closed around the glass.
The reflection flickered, confused, then went dark.
Kael dropped the shard.
"Maybe," he said. "But they'll have to catch me first."
He stood.
Hollis tried to crawl away.
Torven's axe took him between the shoulder blades before he made three paces.
The fire in the mage's hands went out like a snuffed candle.
Silence rushed back in.
Lysa lowered her bow, arrow still nocked but unneeded.
Dren was already gathering the mirror shards into a leather sack, careful not to look too long.
Torven wiped his axe on Hollis's robe. "So. Fireproof now?"
Kael looked at his hands. The skin was smooth, unburned, but he could still feel the memory of heat like a sunburn under the surface.
"Haha, I wish. Not proof," he said. "Just… a little more fluent."
He picked up the broken frame. The runes were dead now, but he could still taste the shape of the magic that had lived in them.
Something to learn later.
They burned the body, salted the ashes, and left before moonrise.
On the ride back, Kael sat in the wagon with the sack of shards between his feet.
Every now and then one would catch the light and try to show him a new death.
He'd look, nod, and move it to the bottom of the pile.
By the time they reached Branch 17 he'd seen himself die 247 different ways.
It was quite jarring to say the least. But fortunately... none of them stuck.
Captain Rhen met them at the gate, took one look at the sack, and didn't ask questions.
"Mirror's destroyed," Kael said. "Mage's dead. Contract's closed."
Rhen handed over the reward without counting.
"Guild's putting a hold on any more mirror jobs," she said. "Until we figure out what the hell they actually do."
Kael nodded.
That night he sat on the dormitory roof again, sack open beside him.
He took out the battlefield shard, the first one, the one that started it all and held it to the moonlight.
The reflection showed the same scene: older Kael, battlefield, decapitation.
He watched it play out three times.
On the fourth loop he reached into the glass.
His fingers passed through like water. He felt the edge of the blade, the weight of the armor, the smell of the blood.
He pulled his hand back.
The reflection wavered, then showed something new: the same battlefield, but now the headless body stood up, picked up its own head, and kept walking.
The glass cracked down the middle.
Kael smiled into the dark.