Mirror Mage

Quick note: Murder In Ras Andis  has been taken down from Patreon, since it's now at the end of book 4. Whenever I publish a volume of my short stories, I'll be taking down those stories as well- though I will make sure to give you all plenty of forewarning about that.

Edit: Oh, also, you can totally buy a copy of the map of Ithos now!

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The events of this story take place three years after The Third Known Death of Ephesia of Skoura, and around five and a half decades before Mage Errant. Since Boots got second place in the poll, I'll be doing that one next month. 

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The iron lich Essem did not give his workers sick days. He did not give them days off for mourning dead relatives. There were, in fact, vanishingly few reasons that the citizens of Skoura could have have a day off. 

 Waking up with a second sun in the sky was a decent reason for most of the workers to skip work in the smelters, mines, and forges of Skoura. Those workers coming off the night shift made their way home as fast as possible.

There was plenty of speculation why there was a sun rising to the west along with the normal one in the east. There was no speculation about the how, though. 

Another great power was making their move on Skoura.

And when great powers clashed, all the average person could do was hide in their homes, and hope they weren’t crushed beneath the spells— or sometimes literal feet— of one of the warring powers.

  ---------------------------------  

Molla was the bravest orphan working in the foundry, so it was no surprise that she was the first one to climb up to the roof to watch the battle.

Their overseers had all fled the instant the second sun had risen, and the second shift hadn’t arrived, so the orphans were the only ones at the foundry. It wasn’t long before the other orphans followed Molla up onto the roof.

“It’s not really a sun,” Molla said, gazing to the west.

“It’s just as bright as one,” Herris said, squinting.

Molla shook her head. “Look below the new sun.”

The orphans turned their gazes down, and, sitting below the sun, was a city that hadn’t been there yesterday.

“It’s a mirror!” someone blurted out.

If they blocked the new sun from their eyes with their hands, the orphans could see reflected Skoura’s ramshackle slums, the great palaces of Essem’s chosen few, and the luxurious inns where visiting merchants stayed. They could see reflected the dozens of great iron towers known as Essem’s Ribs, which were the protruding segments of Essem’s demesne, the immeasurably vast construct below the ground that contained the lich’s mind. They could see reflected the blocky, rust-stained iron behemoth of a palace, the largest part of Essem’s body aboveground. 

The great iron statue in the plaza in front of the palace, Essem’s immense war avatar, seventy feet tall if it was an inch, turned its head towards the mirror with a horrible screech. It was sculpted in the shape of one of the robed justices of Alikea, among whose number Essem had counted before his exile for taking bribes. Great flakes of rust rained down from the statue to the streets below.

“It has to be a league across,” someone said quietly.

Even as the orphans watched, a ripple passed through the mirror facing the city, and the reflection began to warp and distort as the mirror began to twist. The upper edges and corners began to pull inwards.

“What is it doing, Molla?” one of the others asked.

She just shook her head, unsure. 

Essem’s Ribs were turning and shifting, letting out horrendous squeals as the iron towers rotated to bring their great defensive constructs to bear on the mirror. The great iron wards at the edges of Skoura began rising from the soil, heedless of the ramshackle hovels they tore through. The palace itself was shifting, great iron plates closing off doors and mirrors.

The mirror’s movements came to a halt, and for a moment, nothing seemed to happen. 

Then, near the palace, a flight of birds was startled into flight by the movement of the iron palace. The orphans gasped as the birds simply ignited in midair, vaporizing in a flash of flame.

“It’s focusing the sunlight!” Molla said, pointing to the side of Essem’s palace, where a patch of iron was starting to turn a dull orange.

Faint ripples could be seen in the air where the focused sunlight passed through the wards, but if Molla had to guess, the light wasn’t concentrated enough at the wards to register as an attack.

Whoever was attacking had done their research.

It was then that the defensive constructs atop Essem’s Ribs began firing. A half dozen great spears, four times the height of a man, shot out towards the mirror, trailing immense chains behind them.

They pierced through the mirror as though it weren’t even there. Immense ripples wobbled out from the impact sites, but were rapidly quelled.

The chains cut through the mirrors as they dropped through the ground, but the mirror quickly sealed itself up behind them. 

“It’s made of quicksilver!” another orphan, one of the eldest, said.

Molla said nothing.

As the chains began to retract, hauling back the spears, Molla couldn’t help but notice that there were streaks of silvery liquid spattered across the links of the chain.

Streaks that vanished into the metal before it was a third of the way back to the towers.

As the spears returned to the towers, smashing their way through even more hovels on the way back, Molla just glared.

That’s how her own home had been destroyed, her family killed, defending against a flight of dragons that had attacked two years ago. 

Essem’s minions hadn’t even offered a token apology as they took her to the foundry. After all, according to Essem’s own edicts, it was their fault they’d chosen to live there.

Molla’s parents hadn’t been poor by any means. Her fathers had been accountants, and their home was a sturdy, well-built one, inside the innermost ring of Essem’s Ribs, where it should have been safe.

Only the manors of the well-to-do and Essem’s palace itself were truly safe from the chains, though.

The chain-spears kept firing at the mirror, again and again, but none seemed to have any permanent effect on it. 

Molla felt certain, however, that the edges of the mirror were a little smaller now.

The glowing patch on the side of the palace was growing, and its center was now cherry red, and rivulets of molten iron were beginning to drip down the palace wall.

Essem was not lying still, however. Metal screamed as Essem’s war avatar stepped off its pedestal, unsheathing its massive, club-like iron sword. Great spellforms lit across the surface of the dour statue as it stomped down a major boulevard on its way to the mirror, crushing abandoned carts as it went, and only kicking in the occasional home or storefront. 

“They’re going to fail,” the eldest orphan said. “They’ve hardly done any damage to the palace, besides a single hole, and the sun will rise too high eventually. Besides, Essem’s only getting started.”

Molla said nothing, only watched. 

Essem’s warbody passed across the edge of the city, taking care where it stepped only twice— once to avoid damaging the main ward, and a second time to avoid damaging the defensive ring that kept citizens from leaving Skoura without Essem’s permission. It was also, Molla noticed, careful not to walk in front of the mirror’s focus.

It said something, Molla thought, that the main ward was well inside the defenses that kept people in, and that there were so many homes in between. Nothing good, of course.

A booming voice echoed out from Essem’s massive avatar, but none of them could make out the words at this distance. The statue waited for a response, but none was forthcoming. 

The hole in the side of the palace had grown twice the size of a man, at least, and a significant chunk of the wall around it was glowing.

Essem snarled something else out, and the chain-spears ceased firing, leaving only those still returning. The avatar raised its immense sword up to the sky.

Molla could feel the hair on the back of her neck rising, and she prepared to shield her eyes, knowing what was next.

Lightning began to crackle between Essem’s Ribs, growing more and more powerful with each strike. Soon there was a great web of lightning over the city. Molla could taste it in the air and feel it in her teeth, and even blocking her eyes with her arms, she could see the painful glow.

A few bolts missed, starting fires in the city below.

Molla cracked her arms apart just in time to see the lightning began flowing into the statue’s sword.

With a tortured scream of metal audible even from here, Essem swung his building-sized sword in the direction of the mirror. Lightning exploded from it in a single, massive bolt.

Essem bragged about his lightning bolts. Gloated about it. He’d never even had a lightning affinity in his pre-lich life, yet he’d somehow built enchantments into his demesne that let him throw lightning bolts far greater than even the Kaen Das Stormwardens. There was, he claimed, nothing alive that could take a direct hit from his lightning and survive, not even the sphinx Kanderon Crux or the dragon Heliothrax.

It always killed in a single hit, and it never missed.

Except this time.

Halfway to the mirror, the lightning changed paths in midair, slamming straight into the ground, as though it had been pulled. 

The whole city seemed to freeze, for a moment. Essem’s avatar didn’t move, his iron ribs didn’t move, no one in the city moved. The only movement Molla could see, as she blinked the after-images out of her eyes, was the slow dripping of molten iron down the side of the palace.

Essem’s avatar screamed, louder and more horrible than any sound Molla had heard before, and raised its sword into the sky again, and the towers began to crackle once more.

Molla fled off the roof down into the relative safety of the foundry below.

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Most of the orphans huddled in a cluster below, listening in terror to the repeated cracks of thunder and screams of metal, but Molla eventually staggered away from them, crossing the foundry. She worked her way through the largely abandoned building, then out one of the doors, covering her head with her shirt as she carefully picked her way across the scrap-filled yard behind the foundry. 

It felt like an eternity, but she eventually managed to cross and enter the thick, stone-walled warehouse, halfway between the foundry and the smelters. She climbed up onto the scaffolding, and looked down into the great clay vats that should be so full of the byproduct of the smelting of Skoura’s iron ore— fool’s silver.

The vats were, each and every one of them, empty.

Molla began to laugh.

She suspected, that if she were to brave the streets to visit every other smelter along the filthy, smoke-stained streets of Skoura, that she’d find the fool’s silver vats in each and every one of them empty as well.

The mirror was fashioned of Essem’s own fool’s silver. Whoever was attacking had already been in the city— and, if Molla had to guess, was in the city right now. The mirror was just a distraction, to keep Essem’s attention away from whatever the real target was.

Someone was pulling a con on the mightiest lich on the continent of Ithos.

For the first time in her short life, Molla seriously contemplated someone defeating Essem, conquering the city from him. 

She didn’t hold out too much hope that things would get better, though. No matter how well-intentioned the attacker was, they had to have known how many lives would be lost in the attack, and what decent mage would be willing to pay that price?

No, they wanted Skoura’s iron, Essem’s wealth, and power over the city’s inhabitants. 

It was two more hours before the battle fell silent. 

Molla worked her way back into the foundry, where the other orphans still huddled in fear. She barely spared them a glance, heading straight for the stairs to the roof. She could hear them working up their nerve to follow, but paid them no mind. 

When she got to the roof, she saw that Essem’s Ribs still stood. The iron statue still stood, though it seemed to slump a bit. The palace still stood, though one of its walls was half-melted, the inside of the palace partially exposed.

And the mirror still stood, though it seemed to have lost its focus, and no longer concentrated the light against the palace.

As she watched, and the other orphans filed onto the roof, the mirror collapsed in a shower of liquid metal, pooling up outside the city.

Then, slowly at first, then faster and faster, a river began running out one side of the immense silver lake. It slowly began picking up speed as it flowed up and down shallow hills towards Skoura, always taking the gentlest path it could. 

The river of fool’s silver tore through the outer defensive ring, ripping a great hole in its side.

Then, to Molla’s shock, it slowed, and gently entered the city. It split apart, slowly twining its way through alleys and streets, avoiding any damage to houses. 

Molla felt a little hope at that. Not much, but it was there.

The lake hadn’t even finished draining yet when the leading edge of the river arrived at Essem’s palace, and forced its way inside through the hole melted in its side. It was half an hour before the last of the river of fool’s silver flowed through the palace wall.

Long before that, Molla swore that she could hear a terrified, tortured scream of metal coming from deep below the ground.

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There was panic, at first, with Essem dead. Despite his monstrous tyranny, many in the city feared someone worse, feared what the city’s new ruler might do instead.

But the new ruler never showed their face. Not once. The people took to calling them the Mirror Mage, but no-one ever saw hide nor hair of them. Some people were convinced that they had died killing Essem. Others were sure that both still lived, and fought below the surface. Others still believed that Essem had won, and was merely repairing the damage to his demesne.

The Mirror Mage hadn’t been quite as merciful as Molla had first thought— the manors and villas of the wealthy were each and every one empty, not a single soul remaining save the servants, some of whom spoke of grasping tendrils of liquid silver engulfing their employers.

Molla couldn’t say she felt too badly about that.

In the days following the battle, countless people flooded out of the city through the great gap torn in its defenses by the river of fool’s silver. 

Molla stayed put, scrounging for food in the chaos, and helping to keep the other orphans together and safe. When the other orphans asked her why she stayed, she told them it was because she didn’t know where else to go, and would end up just being a beggar anywhere else she went.

She was, to a degree, worried about the dangers of a trip to another city and the likelihood of ending up a beggar somewhere else. If she were to be honest with herself, however, she would have to admit that wasn’t the real reason.

She was just curious. She wanted to know what would happen, who the Mirror Mage really was. She remained convinced that they had been successful in slaying Essem, but everything else was still a question, itching away at the back of her mind.

All her questions were answered a week later, when a voice boomed out from Essem’s Ribs, from his great palace, and from his great iron avatar.

“I am the one you call the Mirror Mage,” the voice called out. It paused, then to let the ringing, clangorous echoes of the city’s iron die down. 

“I have slain Essem the iron-lich, tyrant of Skoura.”

“I have torn open the barrier, so that you might freely leave the city if you so choose.”

Long gaps lingered between each sentence, so that the echoes and vibrations of the towers wouldn’t overwhelm the words.

“I was one of you, once.”

“I was born in Skoura.”

“I was made an orphan in Skoura.”

“I was put to work in the smelters of Skoura as a child.”

“And, eventually, I was rescued from Skoura.”

“Taken somewhere I could learn, could master my magic.”

“My name is… was, Ephesia.”

“You will never hear from me again.”

“I’ll never interfere in your lives.”

“Your destiny is your own.”

“But know this.”

“I won’t allow anyone else to interfere, either.”

“Skoura will never again be ruled by a great power.”

And when the echoes from that last statement ended, Ephesia’s voice was never heard again.

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Great powers came to test Skoura’s new guardian, of course. It would have been shocking if they hadn’t.

Whatever Ephesia had done, however, hadn’t cost her Skoura’s great defenses. The wards still worked, as did the lightning. The chain-spears were gone, replaced by immense living whips of fool’s silver.

And, curiously enough, many claimed to see minor illusions aiding in Skoura’s defense against probing dragons and archmages leading mercenary companies. 

The first years following the fall of Essem were difficult. Many wild, revolutionary ideas were put forth, but, rather ironically, the city turned straight back to iron. When the merchants arrived, the new elected council honored their orders, and somehow, the city managed to scrape by, purchasing enough food for the winter. It helped that nearly a fifth of the population had fled in the chaos.

They might have gone back to iron, but they didn’t go back to Essem’s cruelties. The mines, foundries, forges, and smelters were all slowly rebuilt safer, workers were paid better, and the cities’ streets were cleaned up. Parks were planted, and the coal furnaces were slowly replaced by more expensive but cleaner enchantments to heat the ore and metal. 

Most people weren’t mages, but everyone had mana reservoirs, so everyone took their turns helping to power the furnace enchantments. It was worth it to be done with the soot.

As for Molla and the orphans, they were taken out of the foundries, the smelters, and the mines. Many of the empty manors in the heart of the city were turned into orphanages for them. It wasn’t quite as grand as it sounded— the expensive furnishings had long since been looted and sold, and there were entirely too many orphans crammed into each room, but it was unquestionably an improvement, for they got enough food each day, and no one was crippled or killed by molten metal.

When Molla was old enough, she returned to the foundry. By choice, this time. She quickly found herself rising through the ranks, and was the youngest foundry supervisor in the city by the time she was thirty.

And in all those years, as Molla worked the foundry and started a family of her own, not once was anything heard of from the Mirror Mage. There were no messages, no signs, no mysterious changes below-ground. Every now and then, someone would report a mysterious noise from the depths of the old palace, which still lay abandoned. The council had left it to rust, and planted a city park around it, with plants that could tolerate the rust.

The only way in or out was that single, large hole melted halfway up the wall. The council had it warded so no-one could enter, but Molla always doubted anyone would try.

For all of Ephesia’s silence, however, part of Molla always doubted that she was truly gone. Part of her always suspected that the transfer of power had been too peaceful, that tensions in those early years smoothed over too soon. If Molla’s life were at stake, perhaps she might have admitted that she thought Ephesia was still helping, offering just a little bit of a guiding hand here and there.

But perhaps she might not have. There were days where her cynicism faded a bit, and she wondered whether, just maybe, Ephesia might have been telling the truth. That she really was content to be simply a silent guardian of the city.

Skoura never became a paradise. There was still crime, and people were still injured in accidents, and there was still corruption.

But even if it wasn’t a perfect place to live, one day Molla realized that it had become a good place to live.

And not once in the decades that Molla ran her foundry did she ever allow a single child inside its doors.

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Mirror Mage incident follow-up report, eighteen years later:

With as many powerful magics as I provide my librarians errant access to, it is somewhat unsurprising that Ephesia managed to overthrow Essem the iron lich. It is rather more surprising that she did so without me ever suspecting her plot beforehand.

So much of Ephesia’s plan remains obscure, even to this day. I still have no idea how she gathered enough mana to build her great mirror— artificial mana reservoirs? Enchantments to help govern the mirror? Nor do I know how she smuggled that much fool’s silver out of the city. Illusions? Underground tunnels? I have no idea, and that’s not the sort of thing I like to be ignorant about.

Some of what happened, however, is clearer. She had used Gantzen Friss’ notes to construct a series of immensely powerful galvanic beacons, more efficient than any ever built before. Those were what protected her mirror from Essem’s unparalleled lightning.

Essem’s reported chain-spear strikes were not what got fool’s silver working into the metal of his demesne— at least not solely. It seems probable he had countermeasures against fool’s silver permeating his demesne. Instead, it was more fool’s silver, left hidden in the city by Ephesia, which burrowed into the iron and severed Essem’s connections with his aboveground defenses. 

Most importantly, Essem was not killed in the fashion that most stories claim. Instead, the theory that has become widely accepted among scholars and great powers is that Ephesia somehow subverted Essem’s enchantments, hijacking his demesne to take his place as its lich, and somehow adding her fool’s silver affinity into the demesne as well. I’ve heard a lot of arguments as to whether Essem is still alive, chained beneath Ephesia’s mind, or whether she snuffed him out, or even digested him. Many have taken to calling her the parasite lich, and quite a few liches on the continent nearly turned on me, convinced I had taught her the technique, before I was able to convince them otherwise. Many still harbor doubts, I’m sure, but I only had to annihilate three of them to convince the rest I had easier, more direct ways to dispose of a lich that displeased me. Besides, few of them, after all, are as powerful as Essem, Keayda, Zophor, or one of the other truly great liches.

I knew Ephesia as well as any— though clearly not as well as I thought I had. If I were to place a bet on it, I would wager that she simply snuffed out his mind. She despised the wealthy and tyrants, but had no interest in making them suffer, save for a few taunts, merely in killing them. 

The overwhelming majority of theorists believe, of course, that Ephesia’s supposed silence is anything but, and that she remains the secret ruler of Skoura. There are a few who dispute that, believing she really is leaving Skoura’s rule to its people, but they are far outnumbered.

I have a different idea entirely. Most assume that, like the vast majority of liches, Ephesia either preserved her body for eternity or discarded it entirely. It’s a note worthy of interest to most only as an insight into the way she thinks.

I don’t think she died at all. I don’t think she cast aside her human body.

I’ve not told this theory to anyone— I’m sure it would sound mad to most. But I have, again and again, heard rumors of illusions during her rare battles against intruding great powers. Weak illusions, small illusions, but they’re there, and often play a small but key role in the battle. Most importantly, they tend to be illusions projected onto Ephesia’s fool’s silver.

Perhaps it is just a coincidence, just another illusionist helping defend the city. The few others who have mentioned those illusions are convinced it is another mage, because no lich has ever successfully incorporated a light affinity into their demesne. But I don’t think it is another mage. I think Ephesia still lives, still partially embedded in not only Essem’s demesne, but in her own body as well, in a way that a traditional lich cannot.

And I think that she has exerted her power in Skoura, but not as the mighty Mirror Mage, the terrifying parasite lich— but instead, just as a woman. Just as a resident of her city, no more important than any other.

I think that, somewhere in Skoura, if I looked at enough faces, I’d see one I recognized. Older, now, with more lines on her face. 

For all my anger at her betrayal of me, for all the diplomatic costs she incurred upon me with her actions, I can only hope they’re laugh lines, from a life well-lived.

—From the private journals of Kanderon Crux, High Librarian of Skyhold