“Whoa,” Hatra uttered.
“Whoa, indeed.” Chandrika echoed.
Gio held the undulating sigil between his outstretched palms. The glowing symbol resonated with the mana of its creator, casting a scintillating cascade of light that refracted intensely off the surface of water, as if the reflected light was even brighter than the source itself. In fact, with the concept that Gio had just instilled in the sigil, that might even be what was happening.
Gio carefully allowed the symbol to hover in midair. With his hands free, he began the meticulous task of perfectly replicating the finished sigil. He used his memory skill to ensure that every line was an exact clone, in angle, thickness, and placement.
As soon as he finished, the glowing symbol automatically moved, as if pulled by a powerful vacuum, to be absorbed into the cardstock. The ink glowed, lit from within like a pale blue lantern. Gio proudly smiled at his creation, overjoyed.
“Congratulations!” Jean said, clapping Gio on the shoulder.
“I’m so proud of you,” Hatra said, hugging Gio from the side.
Sapphire punched his arm, and Chandrika smiled through her clear fatigue.
“One problem…” Gio said. “This thing is intense.”
The sigil still emitted so much energy and light that he had a hard time imagining just walking around with it on his person. Even folded away in his spellbook it would be like carrying a lit beacon, signifying to the world that he was holding something of immense value.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess that would be a problem, huh? And there’s really nothing to stop people from just copying the sigil now that it’s made, unless you get it to a surveillance-proof location.” Sapphire pondered.
Gio frowned.
“...And every copy that is made will start to divide the power of the sigil.” Gio agreed. “How do other mages stop people from copying their sigils?”
“Threats of violence, warding, or legal action, mostly.” Jean winced.
“...great.” Gio huffed.
“Ah.” Chandrika softly exclaimed. “It seems that we have stumbled upon the reason for my mentor’s ‘homework assignment’ at last. Truly, that woman frightens me with her deductive abilities and natural foresight.”
“Oh?” Gio wondered.
What did the headmaster task her with again? I totally forgot.
Chandrika pulled forth a small spool of midnight-colored thread, whirling it around her fingers with a deft display of magic and skill, and creating… a small satchel. She handed it to Gio, and he noticed that it was luxuriously soft, but that it ate away all traces of light from his hands where he touched it.
“It’s called [Banshee’s Shroud Silk]. Try putting your sigil in that.” Chandrika said.
Gio did, and the second he closed the drawstring, all traces of the prodigious show of mana disappeared from his senses. He opened the bag, and it flowed free once more. He opened and closed it a few more times before Sapphire punched him in the arm once more.
“So the headmaster foresaw the need to hide the sigil… which means that she likely anticipated our success, too.” Gio pondered.
“It’s no wonder that my grandmother respects her so much. Her ability to anticipate the needs and actions of others is nearly a form of magic in and of itself.” Chandrika said.
With his ultimate prize safely in hand, the group descended the dripping towers of the pagoda. They reached the bottom floor, facing the pool that held the necklace.
“So… what now?” Jean asked.
As soon as Gio approached the necklace, the searching red threads grasped toward him once more. His eyes traced through the air to where a spindly wisp connected to something in his pocket. He fished around, pulling out a glass vial that contained the fragment of mirror from the cover of his spellbook. Holding it up to his eye, the shard sparkled with the faintest glimmer of enchantment, the warm orange glow reminding him of where he’d seen it before.
The mirror in the training room.
Images flashed in his mind of fusing with his reflection for the first time, of waking up to a broken mirror, and a vaguely threatening note from Lot.
The mirror…
He had a strange idea.
“I’ll be right back,” Gio said.
“What? Where are you going?!” Hatra yelled.
Gio dove headfirst into the shallow water at the base of the pool. Even in the Between, the red strands reached through the distorted portal of the water’s surface to grasp at Gio, like pleading hands.
Gio cast [Mirrorwalker], melting through the Between and into Reflection. He was met by his reflections, each taking an arm and pulling him up from the water to his feet. Rio’s hands still carried a bit of the faint shimmer of the spellflower, but it seemed like he was keeping it in check for the moment. Trio, for some reason, had pulled out a pair of reading glasses.
“Nice… glasses?” Gio searchingly prodded.
“Thanks. They feel… correct, for some reason.” Trio answered.
“Whatever makes you happy, I guess?” Gio hummed.
“Check it out,” Rio said, pointing to the middle of the room.
They each looked towards the reliquary. Gio was somewhat unsurprised to see that even here, those strange threads had found him.
“Chandrika called the threads ‘the weave of cause and effect’, I believe? How very curious.” Trio said.
Oddly, the threads seemed to be avoiding only one of the three of them. Rio waved his flickering hands around, playing with the threads that seemed to be repelled away from him like the wrong end of a magnet. He lurched forward to yank at one, and it spasmed at his touch, peeling away into thousands of smaller threads before some of them disintegrated. Gio raised an eyebrow, watching them turn to dust.
“They don’t like me,” Rio said, faking a pout.
“If I were a gambler, I'd wager that it’s because you're an aspect of Chaos,” Gio said.
“Obviously,” Rio said.
“That would seem like the likeliest reason, wouldn’t it?” Trio pondered.
“But then… why aren’t they avoiding you?” Rio asked, pointing a finger toward Trio.
“Me? Because, like our original, I gave back all of my chaos to you. If I’m going to be the rational reflection, I need to be able to think clearly- and when the two of you fused, it was like you were both intoxicated.” Trio answered.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Gio said. “I almost wonder if… being my reflection is having a balancing effect and offsetting the influence of Rio’s class? Before we fused, there was no problem. You had some… interesting ideas about legality, but ultimately stuck to the baseline I set. But when we fused… ” Gio said.
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“...there was no longer any balancing effect. Chaos was free to bleed over the barrier that Lot placed between us, which was why we lost control together. As an additional piece of data, I feel perfectly stable now… despite this. ” Rio finished, waving his chromatic spellflower-stained hand.
“Interesting.” Trio hummed.
Weirdly, the glasses do make him seem more scholar-like.
“So, not that it isn’t lovely talking to myself in three directions now… but what brings you to the flipside?” Rio asked.
“Oh, right. I had an idea.” Gio said, pulling out the shard.
“This shard is connected to that necklace, somehow. This is a shard of the mirror at the school… I think it got stuck in our spellbook when Rio and I fused for the first time, back when Lot left us the note. I was wondering if, maybe, it’s responsible for you both being able to move around as you do.” Gio said.
Rio and Trio both stared wide-eyed at the shard.
“The enchantment that originally made me.” Rio quietly noted.
“An interesting thought… and one that we should probably explore further, once the mirror in the training room is fixed… but why is that relevant now?” Trio asked.
“Because of what the original purpose of that mirror was, before it got turned into a training tool. Remember, Jean said it was originally a trap designed to protect the Crystal Ring from intruders. A dungeon trap.” Gio said.
Trio furrowed his brow in thought.
“...you want one of us to become the new guardian.” He uttered.
Gio smiled.
“If we replace the guardian of the necklace, the dungeon won’t disappear or fall back into Cybele’s hands.” Rio said, tapping his chin with several glowing fingers.
“I’d bet that the spirits would consider that ‘claiming’ the treasure, to boot. If my logic is correct, it might make a portal out of here, which would save the group from having to spend a whole day backtracking out of the dungeon, or even having to fight our way out.” Gio nodded.
“I don’t even know if the spirits would-”
“I’ll do it.” Trio interrupted.
“What?” Gio and Rio blinked.
“I said I'd do it. I’m perfect for the job. Rio is a bad fit because he’s all full of chaos juice, and all I really want to do is sit and study for a few months to digest everything that we’ve learned. So, I’ll do it. I have a few demands, though.” Trio answered.
“What kind of demands?” Rio squinted.
“Well, if I’m going to be chained to this sanctuary for the foreseeable future, I want creature comforts. I’m talking about a bed, chairs, an office set, the whole deal. We’re gonna turn this pagoda into a home-away-from-dorm. Secondly, I want research materials- and that’s where Rio comes in. You’re going to be my gopher and fetch me the reflections of whatever books I need.” Trio demanded.
Rio scowled. “Not even two hours old and you’re already the neediest of the three of us.”
“Hey, do you want to be chained to a weird puddle out in the middle of nowhere? I’m taking one for the team.” Trio said.
“Practically a vacation. I could just place a fragment here like I used to do with the training room.” Rio guffawed.
“You might still have to do that if Gio leaves the mirror shard here,” Trio said.
Rio blinked in surprise yet again.
“... Because we’re still not sure what is letting us operate outside of the mirror room,” Rio concluded.
“Bingo. I’m betting that once you get far enough away from the shard, you’re gonna go into ‘reflection sleep mode’ until we figure out how to reverse-engineer the mirror’s magic.” Trio said.
“...which is a problem, because I really shouldn’t be using [Fragmented Persona] right now.” Rio added.
“We haven’t even started studying enchantments. I can’t even cast [Scrying Glass] yet, and we’ve had the spell for a while. There’s no chance that I’ll be able to study that mirror yet.” Gio frowned.
“All the more reason for Rio not to have to further split himself. He can handle what, like four copies without weakening?” Trio asked.
“Probably closer to three, right now. I still feel like I’m missing a bit of myself since you… became your own being.” Rio answered, waving in Trio’s direction.
“So… I’m staying in the dungeon.” Trio concluded.
“Okay. I’ll work on figuring out how to… furnish this dungeon…” Gio sighed.
“And I will reluctantly agree to fetch you things occasionally.” Rio huffed.
“Perfect! In which case, uh, hold on. Let me do this right. ” Trio said.
The bespectacled copy of Gio coughed once, straightening out his clothes. He took the shard from Gio and held it in his hands.
“Spirits of the dungeon, I offer myself in service as a guardian of this sacred space.” Trio intoned.
Trio dropped the shard into the basin, to sit in the center of the necklace’s coils. The necklace began to glow, both in the mirror dimension and in the real world. The rest of Gio’s group gasped, both they and their reflections taking steps away. Many voices rang out, echoing across the water and bellowing with a coastal wind.
Red strings braided into a glowing rope, circling Trio, before vanishing from Gio’s sight.
“Almost anticlimactic. No sparks or anything, just a new occupation.” Trio shrugged.
He shared a status update with the other two.
Occupation Skills: [Guardian of Telchine’s Garden]
[Arbiter] - With delegated authority from the spirits of Telchine’s Garden, you shall enact the will of the dungeon. So long as you serve to protect the interests of Telchine’s Garden, you have limited control of certain features. This skill attains functionality as the trust of the spirits grows in you.
“Oh, wow. Can you make us a portal?” Gio asked.
“Hold on… let me check,” Trio said. He closed his eyes for a moment before a shimmering archway appeared in the doorway at the far end of the room. Hatra nearly fell over in surprise, and Sapphire immediately began to gather the small pile of potions into her bag.
“Yes, it turns out that I can. You guys should pack up and go, though. I don’t think it will last very long.”
Nodding, Gio fist-bumped his second reflection.
“Will do. Uh… thanks for… saving us, and doing this?” Gio awkwardly said,
“Dude… It’s not like you’re never going to see me again. In fact, you’re probably going to be able to teleport here as soon as like… tomorrow.” Trio answered anticlimactically.
Gio blinked. Oh right, he could do that. He looked down at the targeting circle that Trio had scribed on the floor.
“Is that… going to be okay?” Gio asked.
“I don’t see why not? I’m your reflection, which basically makes you at least a co-owner, right? It’s not like I’m going to attack you. I’ll let you know if the spirits suddenly decide to give me any ground rules- so far, it seems like the only thing that wouldn’t be good is removing the necklace- that would be a bad idea.” Trio answered.
“Oh… okay.” Gio baulked.
Waving to his reflections once more, Gio dove through the glistening pool, casting Mirrorwalker and feeling a sharp drop in his mirror mana reserves, now that Sapphire’s alchemical assistance had begun to wear off.
“So… care to explain how you pulled that off?” Jean asked, helping Gio up as he pulled himself from the Between.
“Trio is the new guardian. He says that we should probably get out of here, because he’s not sure how long the portal will last. First day on the job, and all that.” Gio said.
“... you keep pulling out surprises.” Chandrika grunted.
“...ahaha…” Gio nervously laughed, scratching at his neck.
“Well!” Sapphire chirped. “I, for one, will not be missing the opportunity to sleep in my own bed tonight! Shall we depart, ladies and gentlemen?”
“With glee. The fatigue is really starting to set in, and I am soggy in new and unusual ways. Ugh… we still have to walk back to the city gate, don’t we?” Hatra sighed.
With a collective groan, the group walked toward the portal.
Gio took one last look at the strange paradise around him. Even though he knew that he’d probably be back soon, there was a strange kind of melancholy that struck him as he listened to the trickle of water, and felt the faint breeze against his skin. With the sigil practically burning a hole in his pocket, he knew that this adventure was going to mark some major changes for him.
He thought of his grandfather.
“Today, I will finally challenge the guardian of this place. Some part of me wishes that I would emerge victorious, a changed man with a restored class. I would claim the prize at the core, and return to my son… be a good father to you… and know peace.” Francisco had written.
Gio, in some ways, had certainly emerged from Telchine’s Garden as a changed man.
I… don’t know if you’re at peace, Grandpa. I hope that you are. I know that I won’t make the same mistakes that you did. If any part of you is still watching, I guess that a small part of me is proud to have avenged you… even if we never met.
Gio ran his thumb over Francisco’s signet ring. It was a thin golden band that signified membership to the pathfinder’s guild, and had a simple identity enchantment- likely worth nothing more than sentiment.
I’ll return your ring to dad… but I’m not going to tell him about the necklace. Whatever remains of his memory of you shouldn’t be further polluted with… that.
And so Gio and his friends stepped through the shimmering gateway and into the cold water of a small pond out in the coastal wetlands of the Ringed City periphery, in the middle of the night.
The stark contrast from perpetual daylight to midnight left each of them blinking away stars, but Jean was quick to throw an arm out, alerting the group without making a sound.
In the tall beach grass ahead of them, something was moving.