5:12 The Mirror Realm

It was finally time.

I had been patient. I had waited. I had respectfully held off from peering too closely, which at this point was almost impossible, and did not set foot in my children’s universes with anything resembling an incarnation. It was finally time to get a tour or two.

And Keilan was first.

My son rose up from the depths of his Mirror Realm universe, having changed some to reflect his new position. His bat-like wings were a touch thinner, muscles denser, his horns more sleek and less angular. He had even changed his clothes, going from his usual black and gold robes to something more akin to a suit, a bit tighter, stretched across his broader shoulders, and frankly a touch more flattering for him.

I pat his shoulders, adjusting the black sports jacket and tie he now wore, smoothing the non-existent wrinkles and giving him a sharp nod. "You look good. That suits you," I told him, meeting his now golden eyes. That, perhaps, was the biggest change of all – his eyes had turned to a solid, molten gold color, and shone with excitement. “And your universe seems to be coming along nicely, too. Exciting stuff!”

"It is very exciting," he agreed. "It's not quite ready for life yet, but you can already see the echoes of it beginning to form. Can I give you the full tour?"

"Please. I would love nothing more." I replied eagerly, bouncing on the balls of my feet, knowing my true mind was likely intentionally suppressing this incarnation’s memories and knowledge of the Mirror Realm and thankful for it. This way, I could actually be surprised…somewhat.

So he led me down into his Mirror Realm, thick with mental energy as it was, stardust filling the spaces like a dense fog. It was so much different than his Karmic Realm, or even the Four Realms as a whole. This, I could see forming something more similar to my old universe, where Earth was; stardust condensing into suns, and galaxies across a vast cosmos.

"Right, so," he said, clapping his hands together. "As you already know, there are two parts to this universe. The physical, and the non-physical, or the Mirror, as we named it. We will start in the material, or physical, world."

I listened with a proud little smile, hands clasped behind my back, as Keilan walked me through his Realm, showing me where suns were forming, swirling stardust condensing. It was a guided process, the mental energy of the universe connecting with his mind to create something based off of his memories. He waved his hand and stardust responded, condensing into the shape of a galaxy before loosening back into stardust. It was interesting, to me, how the physical responded to his will but didn’t immediately change. Instead, it was a gradual process, accepting a shape but wanting to take its own time to form instead of immediately responding to his will.

He was taking a more laid-back approach to creating life than I had, that was for certain.

Then, he walked me through the titular Mirror Realm itself, excitedly chattering about how it distorted things, reflecting emotion as much as the physical. He reached out and touched it with two fingers, sending ripples through reality that shifted the stardust like oil upon water, further distorting the reflection. And sometimes, in some places, for seemingly no reason, the distortion stuck.

"What's interesting," he told me, "is that I'm not quite certain how this Mirror Realm is going to shape up. Every time I think one thing is going to happen, another thing does. For example, I thought about the Karae the other day. My people in the Four Realms and the connection I still hold with them. And do you know what the Mirror Realm showed me in return? It showed me the Asura. But not my Asura. Red-skinned. Twisted by the frustration I had been feeling at that moment. Of course, the memory and reflection didn't last for long but that's beside the point. I have never thought of my Asura that way, yet the Mirror Realm reflected them as such. Then, I noticed even further distortions in some of the pathways that branch off the main area. Those subspaces; one was even an almost perfect replica of the Asura, before fading." He explained, missing bits and pieces of the truth. Vital pieces.

But I could see them, even suppressed by myself as I was. I could see the thing Keilan was missing, no, turning away from…just as I had turned away from Morgan.

It was something so simple, I almost didn’t blame him for missing it. If this entire Mirror Realm was a mimicry of the mind, then the physical parts were the conscious, waking mind and the mirror itself was the subconscious, reflecting what was in the heart and colored by emotions. I got the feeling it would not just reflect Keilan's state of mind, but also that of the mortals, and whatever passed for gods that ended up appearing. That, and the subconscious mind would eventually find places and things that would become closer to eternal, not the transient thoughts of the material realm.

"Which leads me to," Keilan continued, "the first forms of life, barely even able to be called ‘life.’ Look."

Keilan reached out and touched the Mirror Realm once again, focusing, sending pulsing ripples through it as he called something to him. Tiny little spirits, nothing more than thoughts given momentary, fleeting sentience, came rushing out of the gloom, dancing about his fingers, tapping on the, dare I call it as such, glass between the physical and the mirror.

Keilan was grinning like a child, and I put a hand on his shoulder, peering at these things closely, amused at their playfulness. Formless consciousnesses is what they were.

"How interesting," I said honestly.

They reminded me in some ways of spirits. But their function was to be so different as the very nature of them was so different. Spirits in the Four Realms had a truesoul and chose not to become physical, electing to stay only spirits. Whereas these things were slowly building their own truesoul. And I sensed that becoming physical would be very, very difficult for them because of it. In fact, peering a little closer, I wasn't even sure if they would make truesouls in the way I understood and had created them. In some ways, that could be a boon for their particular brand of existence; after all, Keilan himself was building a new archives to remember everything about the Mirror Realm for them.

I watched as one bumped into another and they exploded into individual pieces, then reformed, sucking back together without mixing anything up. They were slightly smaller from the effort, having expended bits of themselves to reform, but not by much.

"My first thought is to call them thought bubbles," Keilan said with a chuckle, and I laughed. Considering these thought creatures did look like little bubbles, translucent and oddly shaped as they were, I could definitely see it. "However, I think something like spirits is closer. I'm gonna play with them a little bit before coming to a decision, honestly. See what we can do about what they are. If I get it right, they may be able to help me build the Material Realm a little bit faster. I don't think I can call it the Physical Realm, do you? That'd feel too much like copying Reika," he joked.

"That might be so! But all this is…excellent, Keilan. I cannot tell you how proud of you I am," I praised.

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And he beamed, and continued to show me around.

A ping caught my attention, then, and my greater mind left that incarnation with Keilan to look at what was trying to bug me.

Mr. Boxes had finished building the flow between universes. The sudden realization sent a jolt through me, of excitement and worry both. Now, I was finally getting a feel for where all the other universes were in relation to me. It was no longer just us, and the Void.

The Emperor's was at a middle distance. I could already feel his attention turning toward me with intent, the offer of a steady trade open and ready to go. Then there was Reilly's Seven Heavens above me, relative to my current perspective. MR-10 and Sylphina were farthest away. No, they were closer. No, they were far. I frowned, then cursed when I realized what was happening.

That accursed fucking Void. There's no sense of distance in the Void, technically no direction; those things only appearing because of the flow. Sylphina and MR-10 were out there, but they were not reaching for me like I was looking at them and the distance between us flickering because I was paying attention to them and they were not paying attention to me. I rolled my eyes. That was going to make talking to people or keeping them at a distance annoying.

Speaking of which, then there was the twelfth universe. The corpse universe, for lack of a better name. It was off to the side, doing its own thing, a place I still had not physically seen. Sylphina and MR-10 were relatively close to it, circling it, like hummingbirds, or bees about a flower.

I frowned, but did not pay it much more heed, besides making a mental note. They needed to just…leave that one alone.

And that was when the energy hit.

It was a slight thing. A trickle at first, coming through that stream of connection and colored with the flavor of each Origin Deity’s domain. MR-10's order, Rising Wind, Crashing Waves' wisdom, the Progenitor’s creation, so on and so forth. I watched as it reached out and touched the One World, flowing around it like a little stream, a fair portion soaking into it, then sinking deeper down, through the hole I had made in the One World to find Sehuyun's body — which drank the energy up, sucking it in and eating it, for lack of a better word, converting it into draconic energy that then bled out into the false void. But it didn't catch all of it. Reilly's luck, the Emperor's grandness, pushed in through cracks in the One World, sinking down into the false void, into the gut system Bashikhan and Boitata were struggling to make. Into the Four Realms, which soaked it in without any visible change, dense as it was. And into my children's realms.

At first, it didn't seem to be doing anything malicious. It certainly wasn't intended to be. Keilan, Elvira, Alexander, and Reika all perked up, sensing the energy, reaching out toward it, and the minute they did panic surged through me, warning bells ringing in my head as I focused all of my mind on the future, on probable outcomes. Only in one time out of the endless possibilities — say, one in a hundred thousand — was this a good thing for them. The energy was too developed compared to their budding universes. I could see it already sinking in, starting to taint their realms and color them in flavors not their own.

That, was unacceptable.

A steel wall of intent and energy and purpose slammed down around the universes, blocking off that energetic flow, redirecting it exclusively toward the draconic cycle. The lungs could grind the intent within that inter-universal energy down into something more useful for my children. But it could only take so much, so the excess I directed toward the Four Realms, which could take it without even blinking. Then it hit me what I had just made, the parallel between what I just did, and what Mr. Boxes had done for us.

Barriers. I built barriers upon barriers around them.

The Big Four frowned as they suddenly felt themselves being cut off. Keilan asked me what that was and why it stopped, already reaching out to find that connection again, so dangerously addictive to one with a domain such as his.

I slapped his attention down firmly, but not unkindly.

"You're not ready for that yet," I told him softly. "Put it out of your mind."

Keilan frowned harder. I could see him rising up to try and reject that, curiosity getting the better of him, his universe responding to him, the chaos of Sylphina’s universe egging him on -

And then Morgan spoke.

[CLEANSE]

My power latched onto Morgan's word and amplified it, chasing out the taint that had been soaking into the realms of the Big Four. Luck, from Elvira's bones. The majesty of the Emperor trying to infect Alexander's heart. Order seeking out the ever-changing Reika's universe. Chaos in Keilan's Mirror. All chased away, pushed back up and out, expelled through the shell of the One World — which continued to reflect most of it, but not all.

Keilan blinked, furrowed his brows, and looked at where Sylphina's chaos had touched his universe, that part having withered, and now being rebuilt. "I see," he said, and I could tell he did. “Thank you, for protecting us.”

“Of course I will protect you,” I said mildly, as he resumed his tour.

My greater mind sat back and looked at it all. By itself, the energy from the other universes was not malicious. But for things so young, not quite set yet, it was too potent. Too full of intent. Too rich for young stomachs, as it were.

I looked at Morgan and bowed my head in thanks. Not that it seemed to care, huffing and puffing as the wolf spider usually was, furious at anything that dared try to color what it saw as mine. What a foolish, but helpful child it was.

Now there were barriers around the Big Four, but that was only a stopgap. Now I needed to build systems within the existing universes to help turn the energy from the flow into something useful. Because it was just a trickle now, but it would be more later. I could already feel it coming. Maybe I could help the One World funnel it toward the lungs, so the draconic cycle could continue to do what it was best at…despite still being in the process of solidifying its shape. Who knew Sehuyun’s refusal to be anything other than herself would come in handy at such an odd time?

I chewed my lip. More work to be done. I needed to make sure that the top of the One World wasn't getting irradiated or anything by this stuff, too.

Well, damn. At least it showed me the cracks, I guess.

*

Amari Ren felt itchy.

Their skin prickled like pine needles were poking it, making them wriggle and squirm even harder while Dad tickled them.

"Itchy!" they cried between breathless giggles, squirming on the ground.

"Itchy?" Dad mused, pausing His relentless assault to watch as they rolled over and wriggled against the ground, rubbing their skin against the dirt. He made a noise deep in His chest. The kind of noise that told Amari Ren He was thinking really hard, and now would be a really good time to try and sneak up on Him, like Auntie K said.

But the itchiness was more concerning than being sneaky.

They puffed out their little cheeks and scratched their arm as hard as they could. And when that didn't work, they grabbed hold of that deep bubble in their belly and pushed, like they were trying to pop their ears after swimming, puffing out their cheeks and screwing their eyes shut. Dad ran His hands down Amari Ren's arms, soothing some of the itchiness. But it only helped so much. And Amari Ren continued to push, scrunching up their nose, making a face.

"Your connection to the One World is deeper than I thought," Dad muttered. Not that they knew what He was talking about. "It's okay, kiddo. I'll get it sorted out…how much power is making a barrier around the One World going to take? Probably more than I’d like, but oh well."

And then, with a pop, the bubble inside Amari Ren burst, pushing out through their skin to make a bubble around them and taking the itchiness with it.

Amari Ren opened their eyes and squirmed at the odd feeling of the bubble being outside their chest, looking up at Dad, who watched with an amused expression, His green eyes meeting their own. And they burbled happily, sticking out their tongue and blowing a raspberry.

"Better," they said sagely, bobbing their head like they'd seen Sequoia do when she thought she'd made a really good point.

"You’re too smart for your own good, you know that?" Dad said, ruffling their hair, and they puffed up proudly, wiggling in place.

And then they stood up and went running across the ground at top speed.

"Oh no. Escape of the turbo toddler," Dad said dryly as they ran.

They risked a glance back to see Dad running behind them with short stomping steps, hands outstretched and claw-like, as if to get them. They squealed happily and kicked on more speed, pumping their little arms and legs to escape Dad.

"Oh no, I'm gonna get you. I'm gonna getcha," Dad said, earning another squeal of happiness. When He eventually caught them, scooping them up and subjecting them to another round of tickle torture, they squealed and squirmed and slapped their chubby arms against Dad's own, and His face.

And they looked up at the sky, which was a little bluer. They felt good about life.

If only Mom was here still…but she was sick and needed to rest, and at least they had plenty of friends to play with until she got back.

And Dad.

And puppy! Puppy was fun.