Page 131 of The Eternal Mirror
I take a look around. The walls are gray stone, worn with age and neglect. Selene has been gone for thousands of years, and peoplewill only pray for so long before they turn to other gods. Overgrown vegetation crawls up the walls, covering the faded murals of stories long forgotten. Vines creep up the columns. In the middle of the temple is a giant plinth that used to hold the statue of Selene. It’s empty now, and the statue lies prostrate before the pedestal.
I run my hands along the stone at the base of the plinth. Amber once told me about this place, where she first briefly met the goddess. It’s what made me think to come here.
I see the engraving: an alicorn carved into the stone, wings spread.
I reach out to touch it, and a spark of electricity shoots up my arm, filling my body and piercing my heart.
I crash to the ground, and everything goes dark around me.
No sound, no light, no pain.
Am I dead?
But the darkness feels...comfortable, enveloping. Maybe that’s what death feels like.
It doesn’t last. There’s a blaze of silver light that flares blindingly bright, burning away the darkness. It dissipates into silver mist and swirling constellations. I’m still lying on the ground next to the statue in the temple of Selene, though it’s changed; there’s an ethereal quality about the place now. It reminds me a little of Lucifer’s lands back on Astrali: neither real nor a dream.
I get to my feet at the same moment I realize I’m no longer alone.
Hope flares to life inside me. She’s come. And I realize I really didn’t expect a result; maybe I just needed to feel I was doingsomething. Or I needed some space while I try to decide what to do next.
The hope is quickly followed by despair.
Because if she’s here, then it’s a good chance she heralds the end of all my hopes and dreams.
A silver alicorn emerges from the mist, long silver mane rippling like liquid starlight. So beautiful, I catch my breath. She tosses her head once, the spiral horn glowing silver, and then the alicorn is gone. A woman, tall and beautiful, stands in her place, cloaked in hair of shimmering silver, stars glimmering in her dark eyes.
But she seems tired, somehow diminished, her light dimmed. She glances around, her gaze lingering on the fallen statue. The similarities are actually amazing. How must it feel to be worshiped as a god for thousands of years and then forgotten?
She gives a rueful shrug and then walks toward me, coming to a halt about a foot away. As she studies me, a flash of sadness crosses her exquisite face. “You remind me so much of him,” she says.
I frown. “My father?”
She snorts in a very ungodlike way. “No. Vortex.”
Well, that’s not good. So, I remind her of the man she killed. Great way to start a conversation. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s what attracted me to you in the first place. And you were a good choice. The only choice. I balked at first, because of who your father is. But maybe he made you the man you are.”
“The monster.”
“You’re no monster. You’ve done what you had to do to survive when you were too young to know better. And as soon as you got the opportunity to change, you grasped it with all your heart.”
“And look how well that turned out.”
“Would you rather have stayed a monster?” she asks.
I think back to what I was, the countless lives I destroyed, most of whom I knew nothing about except they were my father’s enemies. Of Hella, the witch I delivered into his hands. So many others with no names.
Khendril’s message had been the catalyst that pulled me from my old life. But I also realize, looking back, that I’d been searching for a way out, a path forward that would allow me to live with myself.
“No,” I reply. “I’d rather be dead than go back to what I was before Amber.”
“Probably just as well,” she mutters.
My turn to snort. It’s strange, but I like her; she seems very human, and I never expected to feel this way. I’ve been holding her responsible for everything that happened, but maybe that was Vortex, and she’d had no choice but to do what she did.
“Did you ever consider going through the Eternal Mirror with him? Ending this world, starting afresh?”
