Chapter Text
Artifact: Mirror of the Past
Artifact Activation:
- Blood of The Chosen One
- Proximity of the Devil God
- Near-Death Experience
He’s after the Mirror of the Past was always the warning. The world stands no chance at fighting back if He gets His hands on it was the explanation for that warning. The world will end and everybody I know and love will perish at His hand.
This story and others like it have been shared with me at every one of my birthdays. I would receive blessings, presents, anecdotes, well-wishes, and then the warnings would start and by the time my day ended, I would be thoroughly reminded to keep the mirror from ever falling into His hands.
At my first century, I hit a period of rebellion and buried the mirror in the core of our world, so tired of the stories and pending doom of the end times. At my second century, I decided to mortalize myself and walk the earth as a human. That period was interesting and will be another story for another time. My third century was spent in the upper echelons of the Divine Sect – studying the artifacts, getting a better understanding of my role with the mirror and why it had to be protected the way it did. My fourth century, I decided to be a ghost and explore the underworld – a place few immortals dared to visit. I was able to hang out relatively unbothered for about 75 years, before my immortal essence started to seep through. At the fifth century, I went to go un-bury the mirror and that’s when all hell broke loose.
It’s not like I was actively engaging in seeking trouble or creating it out of nothing. The damn mirror had been buried for 400 years – how was I to know that half a millennium triggers the call to the mirror’s past? There was no mention of this type of activity in all the stories passed down through the generations; nor was their any information in the divine sects.
The call to the mirror’s past isn’t a traditional one-way call – the beacon in the center of the mirror creates a shroud for both bearer and presence to encounter each other. I am the bearer of the mirror; I have never been made aware of who the presence is; and none of the stories passed down through the generations has made mention of who or what the presence is.
Imagine my surprise and horror when who steps through the shroud is none other than the Devil God himself. As both the bearer and the presence are now inside the shroud, we are automatically pulled together and then tossed into a galactic wormhole. He has no choice but to hold onto me, and I onto him as we are thrown about inside the tunnel. Our journey is filled with so much sensations; I feel cold, then hot, then tingly, then frozen, then hollow, then full, pressed flat, then expanded. I hear whispers, shouting, distorted voices. I see images flashing by at such a rapid rate of speed, I can only pick out small frames and that which I’m able to see in a split second makes no sense to me. My head is starting to hurt with the pressure; apparently this is enough feeling that the Devil God turns my head towards his chest to shield me from the imagery and covers my ear to drown out the sounds.
These motions are astonishing to me – why would the Devil God care about my faculties?
Is he reacting to my pressure? I have no time to give these questions thought as in the next second, we come to a bone-jarring stop and are dropped from the tunnel into a seamless area that comprises no solidity. It’s as if we are suspended in the in-between; and where that is, I have no idea.
“We’re in the beacon”, the Devil God explains; “We had to go through the channels”, he continues.
Beacon? Channels? What is he talking about?
“I have to let you go now”, he says to me.
“NO!”, I exclaim.
“No?”, he questions me.
“No, do not let me go – I do not know where we’re at, and I do not want to get separated from you”, I explain to him.
“Have you not been here before”?
“Where exactly is here”?
He hesitates a second before saying, “time suspension”.
At this point, anything I learned in the third century is nullified as none of this was included in my education about this divine artifact; which means it calls into question all other information surrounding the other divine artifacts.
I weigh the words in my head and then carefully articulate my question to the Devil God, “What is a time suspension and how does it relate to me as the bearer and you as the presence inside the beacon of the Mirror of the Past”?
This is where the story does not follow the warnings of birthdays past.
The beacon calls to the bearer and the presence every 500 years through the shroud. A time suspension works in alignment with karma and destiny per the channels set by both the bearer and the presence. The bearer is The Chosen One, the presence is the Devil God. This is the way it’s always been. Markers are set in the tunnels when karma and destiny get out of alignment.
“What was I looking at in the split-second images I was able to view”? I ask the Devil God.
“They were karma and destiny intertwining”, he tells me.
“Were you seeing the same thing I was”?
“Yes, which means we’ve been here before and karma and destiny are both out of alignment”, he explains to me.
“Out of alignment? How does that happen”? I incredulously look at him.
“I’m going to let you go and you’re going to trust me to catch you when we hit the bottom of the beacon”, he peels my arms out from around him and goes to hold my hands.
“Didn’t we talk about this? I shouted at you to not let me go”, I clutch his hands.
“To get karma and destiny working together again, we have to un-suspend ourselves, to do that, I have to let you go”.
“What happens if you don’t catch me”?
“Trust me, I will catch you”. He gently pulls his right hand from mine, before he lets go of my left hand, he turns my face towards his with his right hand and looks at me in such a way as to send shivers down my back. It’s a familiar gesture, one I’ve seen before but can’t recall the time or place. He then let’s go of my left hand.
I feel myself falling, not in a rapid way, more in a directed chute. I look up and see him falling in a similar way, parallel to my fall. I can see the bottom rising up to meet me and in that small moment, the Devil God redirects his falling towards my chute and clutches me from behind. We land together on the bottom floor of the beacon.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it”? He whispers behind me.
“Why did we have to separate to fall”?
“Because karma and destiny sometimes have to take separate paths before meeting up again” he explains to me.
“Do we have time to talk at length about this”? I ask him.