Mirrorworld

By Daniel Jordan

“Mirrors share a strange quality that is rarely remarked on; they lie. The truth that a mirror shows is never the truth as experienced by the observer. Wink your left eye to your reflection, and it winks its right eye back. In mirrors, we see what we expect to see, a reflection of ourselves and the world around us. But such is the truth; the world the mirror shows is not our own, and this lie that mirrors tell is no less real than that which it reflects.. not from the inside. Here, in that oft-forgotten space on the far side of your reflection, the individual moments of Earth are infinitely captured and recreated. Thus is another world born, one that recreates and yet distorts its benefactor. Thus exists the Mirrorworld.”

When a man who is no-one, but is named Marcus, finds himself snatched from the jaws of death that were quietly closing around the tumultuous drinking session that was to mark the end of his life, he is surprised to find himself in a whole new world, close to but definitely different to the one he was never much of a fan of. But the past is hard to forget, and the future will be tricky, because if he's to carry on then he'll have to contend with the incarnate force of Death, who isn't too happy to have been skipped out on, the vagrancies of life in a whole new world, and most of all with the Viaggiatori, the managers of reality and the space between worlds, who are having a bit of a wizard problem..

'Mirrorworld' is a story of life and death, of monsters and magic, of destiny, dreams and an unhinged fanatic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel Jordan
• Release date: Oct 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311594037

Daniel Jordan

Daniel Jordan lives in Nottingham, UK, where he can be found pulling pints by night and writing books by slightly later at night. His writing career began at a foolishly young age with a series of comics about a terrifyingly anthropomorphic worm, and has come along at least a little bit since then. Daniel uses the knowledge gained from his English Language and Literature degree to bore his friends, snark on the internet, gush about how interesting language is, and, occasionally, to write books. In his free time he enjoys travelling, reading, video games, playing the guitar, and boring his friends by talking about how interesting language is. Daniel's all-time favourite books are Catch-22 and Last Chance to See, both of which he really quite seriously recommends.

Book preview

Prologue

Part 1

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

Part 2

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

Part 3

29

30

31

32

33

34

Epilogue

About the Author

Interview with the Author

For Jen,

without whom there would be no Kendra,

and Samarah,

without whom there would be no Marcus.

Prologue

The idea was simple; any one place at any one given time can either be daylight, or night. Natural light and dark are separate, and do not occupy the same space at the same time. For them to do so would be.. impossible, and so, anyone finding themselves in a situation where this appeared to be happening would note this and decide – what? That they were dreaming, perhaps? Insane? Day and night simply do not intertwine. Yet, in this place, they did.

The impossibility of the situation occurring overhead did nothing to comfort the young man who stood bathed in its glow. He wasn’t dreaming, and he believed as reliably as one man can that he was sane, and yet there it was. It didn’t help that his location was not really a location, but rather the absence of a location, the necessary gap between two very important and very real places.

Other people were around him. There was also equipment; huge walls of technology, towering databanks with countless switches, sensors and displays, monitoring the current state of semi-existence of the world around. Cables spewed forth from these towers like grotesque tentacles, travelling away in all directions till they were lost in the glassy bleakness that extended all around, languid and lazy beneath a sunlit night sky. People ran along the length of these cables, checking that they were all properly attached to the correct piece of nothingness.

All in all, the situation was perfectly surreal. The young man, however, was in no way surprised by the relative loopiness of his surroundings; such was his line of work that he was a frequent visitor to this non-place they called the Mirrorline, a strange world of chaos and confusion that existed purely as a gateway to the space between spaces. Order of a type could be established on it, but never completely, and never permanently. So, whilst he stood on seemingly solid ground and was surrounded by very real people, he stood also under an impossible sky surrounded by swirling nothingness. What you gained on the swings, you lost on the roundabout riptides.

The young man was torn away from a vain search for the horizon as someone cleared their throat. Standing before the largest and most complex of the towers, the owner of the throat looked around, ensuring his action had been noted. As the leader of this expedition, he clearly felt moved to say a few words before beginning.

My dear fellows, he began, and paused as a shooting star shot across the sky and crashed into the sun, which exploded with a blinding flash, reappeared elsewhere in the sky and started the process over again. "My dear fellows... thank you all, for being here today. We are about to undertake an experiment which, if successful, will mark a momentous step forward. If we are able to successfully bridge a connection between the two places we have selected, then theoretically we can make travelling between Earth and our world instantaneous. I know many of us, myself included, have considered the possibility of this for some time. Today, we find out. Today, we make history." The man paused, surveying his audience, a sea of faces lit with excitement and no little trepidation. What they were about to do was, after all, ridiculously risky. The people gathered today were the bravest and the brightest, the foremost experts in Mirrorline manipulation, but all that really meant was that they were slightly less ignorant about what they were doing than most people. But this was the work of the Viaggiatori; pushing the boundaries of knowledge and making fantastic, productive messes out of stuff that they didn’t really understand.

Significant pause dealt with, the speaker raised his hands. Let us begin!

The speaker stood at the centre of a line of people, before the largest of the towers, a huge bulging mass that was the centrepiece of the present technology. On either side more towers were lined up, each with a big red lever and someone standing next to it. As the speaker made his declaration, each of them reached up – and pulled. The effect was immediate; the strange sky overhead began to twist and whirl, coalescing from a fan of colours into two solid forms. Glittering and still shifting slightly in the impossible light, they appeared to be two almost identical small rural towns, floating in the sky with an apparent lack of concern for the implausibility of their doing so.

The unsettled young man observing this from beside his very own tower had to balk at the slightly theatrical nature of it all. No doubt Rashalamn was already imagining how this should all sound when it was entered into the Storie. The levers were technically irrelevant anyway; manipulation of the Mirrorline was an entirely mental process, but when it came to bigger tasks most Viaggiatori preferred to use some form of visual aid in order to achieve the right level of concentration. Rashalamn liked big red levers, so big red levers it was.

Two places, Rashalamn boomed – and now he was actually shouting, with no apparent concern for the awe of the moment – "one, a small town from Earth. One, a small town from our world. Different places in different worlds, notable only for the perfection of their reflections. If a permanent connection can be forged between the two worlds anywhere, then this is the place! Hold your strength, my friends, for now, I begin!"

The young man quickly checked the readings on his tower. None of them made any logical sense, but they told him what he needed to know. The tower was his own creation, albeit straight out of the textbook, an extension of his own big red lever that was there only because he willed it to be. He made it so with his mind, and it in turn imposed order enough, when combined with the towers of his comrades, that what was happening above was able to both happen and continue to happen with aplomb. The sheer amount of mental energy required would have boggled the young man’s mind, had he not been determinedly not thinking about it. Concentration was essential, because the amount of towers and big red levers that it had taken to kind of bring two whole towns from their own world to this place in-between, while vast, was nothing compared to what Rashalamn began to do next.

The man stood staring skywards, eyes wide but unseeing, and began to move his hands and arms in a series of gestures somewhere between conducting an orchestra and kneading dough. The chaos all around began to respond to his touch, reluctantly at first but with increasing smoothness as he moulded it into a solid shape, a bridge to place between the two worlds. The young man felt a brief thrill of terror watching the elder at work; though Rashalamn was confident in his theories, no-one knew for sure whether their endeavour would succeed or fail horribly. Were it the latter, then hopefully there were enough people present to prevent any of the many and terrible possibilities for how the Mirrorline might react, but this was uncharted territory, so who could know for sure?

Rashalamn’s bridge initially took the form of an actual bridge, a pleasant white stone affair with an exciting upwards curve that might have otherwise belonged out in the countryside providing passage over a small stream. The design didn’t really matter, as the bridge was in truth only a metaphorical conceit, a verb form masquerading as a noun. It was but another concentration aid, and as Rashalamn’s focus shifted, the bridge began to twist out of shape, morphing into a fairly implausible contorted spiral staircase. Twist though it did, though, it remained yet present and contained, firm in the elder man’s grasp as he continued about his work.

The two towns that floated nearby now began to change, issuing out from their complete form thick cables akin to the ones that adorned the many towers. They snaked out, bleeding with the colours of their origin points in the towns; here a green one distilled from a tree, here one with the red brick of a newly built house, each one reaching out longingly for the colder, grey cables that issued forth from the respective ends of the bridge, curling about each other’s lengths in the manner of lovers, and relaxing about each other in firm knots. Rashalamn’s connecting of the worlds to his bridge was straightforward only in that visual capacity; the strength of his concentration seemed to emanate from the man, who stood now still with his eyes closed. The other people scattered about began to glance about from their towers to each other; the closer that they came to success, the thicker the tension, the stronger the horrible feeling that this could all yet go wrong.

Undaunted, unaware, Rashalamn continued, and, with a final effort, pulled tight the last knot of cables. His bizarre construction floated above them, thrown together into a final form that bore a countenance quite disturbing even to the eyes of seasoned Mirrorline veterans. It is done, he said, quietly, this time with due appreciation for the sheer awe the moment inspired. He released his concentration, and slumped instantly down to what passed for the floor in the world of the Mirrorline.

For a long moment, none dared to breathe. There hung in the air a moment of perfect stillness, tinted with apprehensive amazement. Had they done it? Had their daring, impossibly dangerous plan actually come to fruition? The moment dragged on and on; the strange thing that they had made hung above, pulsing keenly, but holding firm.

Someone began to applaud. The young man, stood still transfixed by their newest conversation piece, didn’t see who, but after a few beats others took it up, and the assembled Viaggiatori snowballed into rapturous applause.

My friends, Rashalamn said, staggering to his feet and turning to beam at his colleagues. We have done it! The applause grew louder. We have.. we’ve changed everything!

And then, with perfectly nurtured dramatic timing, everything flickered.

Alarms began to sound on the towers all around the young man, who was jolted out of his futile attempt to trace the bridge’s path from one end to the next. Startled, he turned to his own tower and was greeted with the news that the two locations they had connected were, under the strain of said connection, beginning to melt into one. That wasn’t exactly supposed to happen.

Abort! he cried, and the cry was taken up all around as panic swept past. Abort! The young man pulled on his own big red lever with the intent to recalibrate his mental energy into neutralising that which was already in use, a standard failsafe designed to instantly undo any concentrated construction and return the Mirrorline to its default state of mostly harmless chaos.

All of the towers exploded instead. Thrown across the area by the blasts, their operators did not see as the essence of the towns floating above began to bleed through into the bridge that connected them. The construct itself quickly began to bulge unhealthily under the sheer weight of existence, and the pulsing quickened drastically. Beams of white-hot light began to shine out from cracks as the construct threatened devastating explosion.

No! Rashalamn cried, either in fear of what would happen or aghast at seeing his life’s work about to blow up before his eyes. Struggling from the energy backlash, he once again threw his mind into the mix, locking horns with the freewheeling energy that now threatened to feed back and tear apart two worlds that had been wrongly connected, allowed to touch in ways that apparently they never should have. With a curse for hindsight, Rashalamn grabbed at the randomly snaking cables of pure energy, attempting to unravel them safely and quickly before they tore themselves apart.

He worked quickly and fiercely, but not swiftly enough. Even as he finally made it to the core knot that would dispel the entire construct and began work on easing it apart, he felt the pure essences of the Earth and the Mirrorworld join him inside its disintegrating form, and gently touch. The Mirrorline began shuddering violently, form disappearing into raging chaos, and Rashalamn himself wobbled as he was bludgeoned by a catastrophic headache and double vision. Thoughts of an easy unwrapping gone, he reached out with the last of his strength and tore the core knot apart. The shuddering stopped instantly, but Rashalamn didn’t notice, as the backdraft from this final act knocked him both unconscious and ten feet into the air.

A few metres away, the young man from the safety tower struggled into a sitting position, patting out the fire in his hair that he was too distracted to simply think away. Above him, the images of the two worlds convalesced back into existence, separate again once more, drifting apart and fading away. But they had touched, if only briefly, and who knew what possible effects that might have had? The young man groaned, feeling aches and pains that felt like they’d never fade, and stared blearily around at his shaken comrades. Some were holding each other up as others ran to where Rashalamn had fallen, but all faces wore the same thought: as a result of this night’s work, they had danced with the possibility of oblivion.

Tomorrow, they’d come back and try it all again.

Part 1

The Mirrorworld

‘Nothing in life became him like the leaving it’

1

In a bar, a man sat staring at a bottle.

The location of the bar didn’t matter. This small, seedy, dusty low room hidden down the wrong street in the wrong part of town existed just to be nowhere, an inn between the worlds of reality’s painful bright lights, and a home for the peaceful dreams of those who drank to forget. Judging by the current state of the bottle in question, much had already been forgotten this night.

The barman found himself somewhat unnerved by the bottle’s studious observer, a man who had so far purchased and slugged his way through almost four bottles of whiskey. The barman was used to heavy drinkers, as people who were sober enough to see where they were walking weren’t the sort of people who came to his bar, but this was far beyond even that. There was a vaguely terrifying intensity to the way this man had been drinking, seemingly so wrapped up in whatever thoughts were occupying his mind that the world around him might as well have not existed. The man didn’t appear drunk; there was never hint of sway nor slur when the man moved to order more, even at this point, when he should surely have been catatonic. That unnerving, far-off gaze never shifted.

Generally, the barman was content to give the man whatever he asked for, leave him to it and hope that he either went home or died soon. There were only two other people in the bar, and though natural light seldom pierced through to the dim basement room, the barman was sure that it must have been getting light outside. The barman was looking forward to shutting up shop and going to bed, but his patrons didn’t seem inclined to contribute to the execution of this idea anytime soon.

A few minutes passed. The man with the whiskeys poured out the final glass’s worth from his latest bottle. In the corner, an old jukebox was trying in vain to enthusiastically play old ‘30’s music. The years had not, however, been kind to it; it coughed and whirred frequently, creating a schizophrenic musical effect. With volume turned to full, the noise was still pitiful. Nonetheless, it struggled its way valiantly to the end of the song, and summoning new energy from somewhere, embarked upon a new one. A few beginning acoustic notes fought their way out into a brave new world. Someone began to laugh quietly.

At this point, there began the ritualistic series of loudening clonks that meant that someone was coming down the ancient wooden stairway, into the bar. Scowling, the barman reached down to take a hold of the cricket bat he kept stashed behind the bar for such situations; he had little enough inclination to serve new customers at this time, and few enough morals to be okay with the idea of giving whoever was descending a quick rap about the skull and dropping them in the street outside.

As the descending figure came into view, however, the barman hesitated. Tall, tall enough that by all rights it should need to stoop to dodge the low ceiling, and yet somehow did not, it was wreathed in the folds of a black cloak and robe, the raised hood casting its face into blackness, and held a sleek staff that matched its height in length, and looked more weapon than walking aid. The barman fought the urge to shrink bank and hide as the figure strode towards him purposefully.

Double vodka, please, the apparition said, in a voice like a distant avalanche. I’ll be over there. It pointed towards the man with the whiskey. The barman almost asked the figure if he was sure that was a good idea, but then swallowed his tongue, unsure that he wanted to know what such a menacing figure might consider a good idea to be. Instead, he practically ran off towards his optics as the black figure slid along the bar to stand beside the whiskey drinker.

Hello Marcus, it said.

The man with the whiskey didn’t look up from his apparently highly interesting perusal of the label on his most recent bottle.

Oi, the figure said, poking him on the shoulder. This time the man looked up.

Hello, he said after a moment. Fancy meeting you at the bottom of this glass.

The dark figure appeared to hesitate. Do you know me, Marcus? it asked after a moment.

The man addressed as Marcus regarded his new conversational partner. Let me see. Dramatic dress sense. Very tall. Very pale. Skull for a face. Rings a faint bell. Maybe I know you, maybe I don’t. Can’t be sure at this point. What brings you here, friend? Me, I came for the drink, but stayed for the sterling conversation. He punctuated his words with a hiccough that prompted the momentary focus to fade from his eyes, and resumed his distant observation of his bottle.

The dark figure frowned, or rather a set of shadows passed over its pearly white face in such a manner that might be taken for a frown in a face capable of expression. Few can truly say they have known me, Marcus, it said after a moment, "but I certainly know you. Look, you’re in my book. A bony hand retrieved from somewhere within the depths of the figure’s cloak a small address book, and delicately flicked through it to a certain page, holding it up in the bar’s dim light. Marcus Lathir Chiallion, the figure intoned. Twenty-nine years, three days, twelve hours and fourteen minutes living out of twenty-nine years, three days, twelve hours and eighteen minutes total. Six feet tall, raggedy brown hair, sense of perpetual loss. Oh yes, that’s definitely you. You see me well, as I see you. That is interesting, but only for a little while. Thank you, it added grievously, to the barman, who had finally worked up the courage to approach with the figure’s drink, put it on his tab."

There was silence as the dark figure idly chased the ice cubes around his glass, while the man named Marcus, piqued by the figure’s words, studied him intensely. You know, I’m not actually drunk, he confided after a few moments. I’m just practising how to pretend to be.

Pretending by drinking heavily isn’t really pretending, the dark figure replied absently.

No, listen, Marcus said, waving his hands about. The sixth sheik’s sixth sheep is asleep. Wait, was that right?

That is a remarkable impression, the dark figure intoned soberly. I could almost believe you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Listen, Marcus said again, then decided to give up. You’re the Grim Reaper, aren’t you?

Yes, said Death.

So you’ve come to kill me?

What? Of course not, Death said, a particular cast of shadow adding an offended tint to his skull. People always get that wrong. Death doesn’t kill people. Life kills people. My job is to pick people up after they’ve died, and point them in the right direction. It’s important work.

There was another quiet moment whilst Marcus digested this. In the corner, the jukebox stuttered and made a noise very much like a female voice saying hello?.

So I’m dead? Marcus asked.

Not yet. In about two minutes you are going to fall off that bar stool, and you won’t be standing up again. It’s really going to be quite undignified, though I’ve seen worse.

Well, Marcus said blankly, I’m not sure I believe that. For starters, I’m not even drunk! Also, if that were the case, shouldn’t you be here in two minutes and not right now?

I’m ahead of schedule, Death said. And I like to take an interest. But believe me, while I can’t comment on your internal state of mind, you are definitely going to die. I’m kind of the expert when it comes to that. Even if you can’t feel it, you’ve drank four whole bottles of sketchily sourced whiskey, and that never goes down well.

Actually, Marcus said cheerfully, they went down very well.

In the corner, the jukebox made a sound very much like a female voice saying I can’t make contact, just bring him in. Amidst the bongo bongo noises it was already making, the effect was jarring enough to make the barman look around from where he had been eavesdropping on the conversation at the end of the bar.

In the meantime, Death was drumming his fingers on the bar, in itself a rather jarring sound. You’re taking this very well, he said.

That’s because I don’t believe you, Marcus said flatly. Any hobo can dress up in black and paint his face and tell people that they’re going to die. You don’t even have a scythe. You’re the worst death I’ve ever seen, and you can trust my word that I’ve seen his work before. Now leave me alone. He moved to turn away from the dark figure, but found himself incapable as their eyes met.

Trust and belief are not necessary, Death thundered, rising from his seat to tower over Marcus. "I am Death, and you have seen me before, reflected in the eyes of your nearest and dearest as they pass. Do not doubt me, Marcus, for I am your salvation as your life ends. You see it, do you not? Deep within my eyes.."

Marcus did see it. Transfixed by the gaze of the Grim Reaper, he stared into the infinite chasms of those eye sockets, and saw the tiny blue supernovas that lay within, destroying and recreating themselves endlessly in a single instant of annihilation repeated for as long as there was life in the world. And after all existence was finished, those eyes would flare one final time, and all would come to a close. In one horrible moment all of this flashed through the mind of the man named Marcus, and then it was gone as he sat before Death and the final seconds leaked out of his life. He twisted on his bar stool, futilely considering an attempt to run for it. Death, for his part, reached for his staff and assumed a ready position. Both paused in a frozen moment, waiting for the inevitable, and it was right then that the jukebox made a sound very much like a female voice saying no! Don’t do that!, and exploded.

The ridiculously disproportionate explosion took out most of the bar and the building it was based in. Debris was flung outwards from the centre of the blast, one swinging piece of detritus cleanly decapitating the barman, whose body was buried beneath a shower of rubble before it could even fall limply to the floor. Another hit the Grim Reaper, who exploded in a shower of bones. Marcus reached out for the nearest solid object as the world lurched around him, and found Death’s staff. Hugging it tightly, he felt himself toppling from his seat as everything exploded into pretty lights, and was aware of a strange sensation of being lifted through a tunnel of searing heat. He heard more explosions, and screaming, and then everything began to go dark, but not before he had thrown up approximately four bottles worth of barely-digested whiskey.

2

By the time full dawn had broken over the shattered ruins that had so recently encompassed a dingy basement bar, the devastation had acquired quite a crowd. Where once wall-to-wall buildings had closed off the claustrophobic streets in this quarter of the city, the force of destruction had shattered the tall building that the bar had lurked beneath, and the collapse of this structure had taken with it the majority of the two buildings that flanked it. Cobblestones that had lain hidden in shadow for decades rolled over in dusty embarrassment as the sun hit them, rising gently from beyond the far side of the river that lay just past the detritus. For the people of this quarter, it was quite the spectacle, and they stood with bemused interest behind the hastily erected barriers that the emergency services had constructed around the broken husks of human construction. Appreciative of the spectacle even at such an early hour, the observers were ready with oohs and aahs every time another piece of what was left standing gave up the ghost, scattering panicked rescuers, or quick with a shriek or gasp every time another mangled body was dug out of the wreckage.

Despite this willingness to be entertained, however, the crowd remained somewhat subdued. Those who had arrived on scene early enough had quickly spread word of the scattered bones they had seen, dragging themselves along the ground to a central point. A certain few even claimed to have seen the bones reformulate themselves into a skeletal figure, whom had glared at his observers with unparalleled menace before disappearing mysteriously, though few were foolish enough to believe that particular story. Somehow, though, they couldn’t bring themselves to dismiss it, and a certain dark mood had infected everyone present. No-one voiced it, but everyone felt it; somehow, this was wrong.

Midday came, and since it had long been apparent that the excitement was over, people began to drift off in search of food. News bulletins spread word of the disaster, with blame being appropriated to terrorism, the government or God depending on the individual’s choice of news channel, whilst in the background a large clean-up operation began. By midevening, the streets were clear, and the story had been relegated to a human interest report about an ingenious old lady who had escaped the devastation with a bit of quick thinking, a coat hanger and a washing line. Sunset bought an eerie glow to the reduced pile of rubble and those still busily working to clear it, and the cobblestones sighed in relief as the shadows reclaimed what was rightfully theirs. Night fell, and those few who had been there from the start whispered that the Grim Reaper had claimed all but one of his would-be victims, and that this would all be over soon enough.

It was around this time that the man called Marcus finally woke up.

It was not a pleasant wakening. As consciousness returned, his eyes blinked open in shock at the remembrance of pain, and he was instantly blinded by the aggressive light of a noonday sun. Rolling over, groaning and blinking spots of colour out of his eyes, he was surprised to discover that although the memory of powerful aches remained, he wasn’t actively hurting. A quick check of his various extremities revealed that they were all belligerently present, and so he made use of some of them to pull himself to a sitting position, regarding the cold sunlight balefully.

He checked his watch. It said 00:17. He shook it a few times, and it changed to say 00:18. Frowning, he looked again at the sun. Though low overhead, it was at the height of its power, bathing him in selflessly-given light that soothed but did not warm. Marcus disregarded it and set about staggering to his feet, which took a couple of attempts.

The sun moved incrementally across the sky as Marcus attempted to gather the scattered remains of his wits. Memories of the previous night passed in and out of focus as he wandered around, trying to figure out where he had ended up. There had been a poker game, which he had won. It had been easy enough to drag out the game until the other players were too drunk to bluff. He’d taken his winnings in pursuit of more drinks. He’d found more drinks. His last memory was of a conversation with some stranger, whose face he could not quite recall. Shortly after that, nothing.

And now he was, apparently, on a roof. It was a large roof of various levels, sloping tiles giving way to small plateaus that were decorated with half-constructed chimneys and abandoned building materials. Someone was having work done, someone who owned a very big house.

Marcus felt funny. Over many years and many hangovers, he’d never once failed to find his way home. Waking up on the roof of strange mansions was simply not in his repertoire. Perhaps he had finally succeeded in getting drunk last night. Vague memories of a resolution to drink as he had never drank before floated through his mind, seemingly supplanting this success.

Wrapped up in his thoughts, Marcus failed to notice at first that he had come to the building’s edge, and that an impressive view now unfolded before him. In his immediate vicinity, the grounds of the mansion on which he found himself stretched languidly ahead awhile, coming to an end before a pointed, angry-looking fence that divided the greenery from the paved square that lay on its far side. People milled through this square, all of them somehow managing to avoid looking at the strange statue that dominated it. From this distance, Marcus couldn’t figure out what it was meant to be.

Past the square, the land sloped downwards, taking the incline of the city with it. The relative workmanship of the buildings diminished along the same sliding scale until it reached the city’s end, a tangled array of ship masts that appeared to mark an industrial harbour. To Marcus’s left, a river cut through the city, briefly touching against the harbour before opening up into a wide bay, the far headlands of which were visible in the clear weather. Beyond them lay only open ocean.

Marcus stood and took it all in, feeling slightly bemused. His city, the one in which he had been drinking the previous night, was built along a river too, but some distance inland. Unless there had been some serious changes overnight, this was not that city.

In the opposite direction, the geography of the area peaked not too far away, where there stood some large, impressive looking buildings that seemed to be arranged in a circle around another square. Most striking of these buildings was the impossibly tall, crooked tower that rose and rose until it ended in battered battlements several hundred feet above ground level. It had the air of a greatly elongated pyramid, and served as a notable landmark that definitely didn’t exist in Marcus’s city.

Must have been a good night, he thought, that I ended up so far away from home. Patting down his pockets in search of his cigarettes, he suddenly became aware that his clothing was torn and singed all over. Pausing, he raised his hands, which were unmarked, and memory sparked. He had been in that bar, drinking like a champion – he shuddered in remembrance – for hours. Then he’d spoken with that stranger awhile, and then… Chaos. Noises. Destruction. That had been the end of it.

Marcus studied his surroundings again with an increasing sense of bafflement, noting the absence of any nearby smoking craters strewn with the remains of a seedy basement bar. Somehow, he had gone from point A to point B to come out unscathed in a place that he had no memory of. Or did he? Looking at that tower, swaying slightly in the crisp, wintery wind, it almost seemed familiar..

Marcus sagged back into a sitting position, legs dangling off the edge of the roof. Something clattered beneath him as he did, and he turned to regard what he had taken to be a piece of roof debris, but what instead appeared to be a tall walking staff of some description. Focusing on it, he almost recoiled, as it seemed to exude an almost tangible sense of menace and gloom, augmented by a slight tint of whiskey. Marcus pushed through it to pick up the staff, and at once the aura of menace faded to a muted buzz in the back of his brain, the sort of sensation that made his more lizardly instincts want to freak out. He didn’t notice this, however, because the sensation of the staff in his hand had bought back the last of his missing memories, and the clouded face of the stranger he had spoken with the previous night cleared to take the form of a pearly white skull that beheld infinite eons of destruction in its deep eye sockets.

I met the Grim Reaper, Marcus said aloud, wondrously. "I met Death."

He came to kill me, and I escaped, he continued inwardly. No, that’s not right. He came to watch me die.. so did I? Is this the afterlife? Marcus stared blankly out at the city again. Somehow, it didn’t seem like it was any less than completely real. If not, then where? He lowered his gaze to Death’s staff. It had a slightly crooked curve, and was lighter than it looked. He remembered reaching out for something, anything to hold on to as he’d been thrown from his perch by… whatever had happened. He remembered his skeletal nemesis being shattered by a stray piece of debris. I did escape him, he thought. But how? And to where?

I should really throw you away, he told the staff severely. No good can come of this.

The staff did not respond.

"Bah, fine," Marcus said acidly, and took it with him to search for a way off the roof.

As it turned out, the owners of the house Marcus had landed on, or rather their guard dogs, were not particularly thrilled by his visitation. Death’s staff had served him well as an impromptu pole with which to vault the fence, and he now dropped unnoticed into the crowds of people milling about the square. A large amount of them appeared to be listening to the various speakers who were jostling for position beneath the central statue, orating to the masses by committee. The current speaker seemed to be winding up for a big speech, and so, with a head full of fluff and no pressing calls on his time, Marcus decided to stop moving for a moment and listen to him.

"You cannot deny the evidence of your own eyes, my friends! Parliament has not opened its doors to us for over a week now. They say they are closeted, discussing ‘courses of action’, but they are not! They have no idea what to do! They are unfit to rule us! Months have passed, and the threat posed by the wizard has only grown greater and greater, while our grand and glorious leaders have sat on their heels, pushing forward this bloody war with the south, wilfully ignorant of the greater threat gathering to the north! Mark my words – the wizard will come. The Viaggiatori will not surrender to him – they too are fools! These people have all the power, and politician or Linewalker alike, they would lead us to our doom!"

What would you have us do? called a voice from the crowd.

March on the Parliament of Rooks! the speaker cried back. "The power of the people far outweighs that of our glorious leaders! In one fell swoop we could take back the power – make our own decisions! Make better decisions! Move to counter the Keithus threat before it is too late! And then we’ll march on the Viaggiatori, who caused all this in the first place! And then the Bedlam Palace – let us remove all of these oppressive systems of governance! Let us-"

You fool, cried an older speaker, stepping up to push the first speaker off the podium at the statue’s base. You would deny the will of the gods beneath their very vision? You would spit in the eye of the Goddess of Destruction and Chaos? Tell me, who would rule your new world? Would it be you, sir? Would you pull this statue down and face off in defiance against Java herself?

The first speaker began to splutter a response, but Marcus stopped listening, focusing instead on the statue. Even this close, he hadn’t been able to identify it at first, but now he saw that it for the most part took the form of a barely-robed young woman, with the head of a squid. Long tentacles dangled like dreadlocks, some styled to fly free and others wrapped around her limbs, holding them as if the body were but a puppet. Sucker marks decorated her exposed flesh. It was a rather disturbing image, and Marcus could understand why people would want to consciously avoid looking at it, especially if this creature were also a harbinger of destruction and chaos. He couldn’t understand why anyone would have built such a statue in the first place, though.

Religion is the empty sound of drums for those who fail to make their own peace with the world, cackled a voice from the past in his mind, and Marcus put his head in his hands. Thinking in straight lines was becoming difficult. In his entire life so far he had never had a problem thinking through a hangover, but right now he felt caught inside his own mind, his concentration waxing and waning with the spark and fade of memory. It was alien, and unnerving.

Suddenly, he became aware that he was being watched. It wasn’t a creeping feeling; he had just looked up and accidentally met the eyes of someone across the square. Amidst the crowd, a man in long, purplish robes, unremarkable barring his questionable dress sense, was staring right at him. He continued to do so for a few seconds as Marcus looked back, before abruptly spinning on the spot in a whirl of cloth, and disappearing into the swarm of people passing through.

Marcus quickly ran his eyes over the rest of the crowd. No-one else was watching him, so he disregarded it, and turned back to the statue, beneath which a new speaker was just stepping forward. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of purple, and looked around again. Two more people in similar robes had appeared, and were casually making their way through the crowds towards him, their eyes pointed his way with an unsettling intensity.

Do you see beyond this day, my friends?

Marcus decided to start walking in the other direction.

Today we have heard many discussions of the same issue, but so many fail to account for the bigger picture. What of the work that the Viaggiatori do?

Marcus glanced back over his shoulder; the men in purple had quickened their step. They were still staring right at him. He dived into a thicker group of people, prodding his way clear with the staff, scattering a circle of elder gentlemen dressed in robes and pointed hats.

"Our world lies in precious tandem with another world, and were it not for the careful work of the Viaggiatori, all might be lost at any time. How could they help the wizard? To do so is to doom us all."

Unfortunately, the length of the staff, an item designed for the use of a seven foot tall unearthly being, surpassed the height of most of the crowd, and was clearly visible bobbing above them as Marcus ran for it. The men in purple robes transferred their gazes to that instead.

"And yet in saving us, they doom us still. But that is what we must face! For the sake of more than just ourselves, we must deny the wizard, stare him down and tell him that he shall not pass!"

The crowd did not seem to be reacting well to this new speaker; boos and jeers were erupting throughout, and their attention was beginning to wane. This suited Marcus, who busily continued to not listen as he battled his way through the dispersing crowd. He briefly considered again throwing away the staff, but it felt comfortable in his hands and might make for a decent weapon should his pursuers manage to catch up, so he kept a firm hold and kept going.

Are we really more important – wait! Are we really more important than the whole? The speaker’s voice had taken on an edge of desperation. Will you stand by to live for a month? A year? Where will it end? Come back!

With a final heave there came a sudden lessening of pressure, and Marcus found himself clear of the crowd. Unfortunately, coming up the street towards him were three more people in purple robes who instantly adjusted their general direction at the sight of him. Brilliant. Panicking slightly, he looked around for any other direction that he might be able to escape in, and found an alleyway to his left. It twisted and turned awhile before being consumed by shadows, and looked positively murderous, but since it was the only option that lacked purple-robed pursuers, he went for it.

As the hubbub of the crowd faded into the general background murmur of the city, Marcus was left alone, with neither preachers nor pursuers to provide company for his thoughts. And his thoughts were very grim, when they still managed to arrive in straight lines; he was constantly gripped by the feeling that although everything was as it seemed, it was all also something it shouldn’t be. The people he had heard spoke in a familiar accent, but everything they said was foreign. They spoke of wars and death and riots and insurrections and horrible, betentacled gods, and if that was what he was to now be surrounded by then he was far less inclined to look favourably on his explosive escape, especially if he was then going to be chased by well-dressed people with determined expressions.

He paused, briefly considering the implications of what the alternative to escaping would have been, before laughing bitterly and continuing on until the far end of his alleyway twisted into view. Hidden in shadow, he sighed, for two well-dressed, determined-looking people were waiting around at the alley’s mouth, quite visibly waiting for someone to pop out.

Marcus turned around to go back the way he’d come, and saw two of the men from the square making their way towards him from the other direction. Once again bereft of a way out, he tried looking up. There was a window above him, with an invitingly wide-looking window ledge and what looked like loose brickwork, which was immensely promising. It’d be fantastic, really, to just get one’s foot into the most useful available orifice, launch one’s self up, get to roof level and continue in the vein of a dramatic rooftop chase of sorts. The situation spiralled through Marcus’s mind, and he was enthralled with the raw heroic beauty of it, until it faded into fluff and he realised that in his current state of mind, he was far more likely to jump up, miss his handhold, twist his ankle, fall back down, break a couple of bones and then get caught by his pursuers anyway. Weighing his options, he decided to just get caught.

So Marcus stepped out of the shadows, threw down Death’s staff and put his hands up. Alright, he wearily addressed the closest of his