Zombie 2.0--Revelations...Part 3

I fell for what seemed to be several minutes, but was probably only a few moments. The foot I led with was the first thing to touch ground, but I still stumbled and came to a rest on one knee, I had to catch my balance by throwing both hands out to stop my forward momentum.

Once I was sure that I was on stable ground, I quickly looked up and around to try and catch my bearings...I found that I was in a mist shrouded hallway that was lined with mirrors of nearly every shape and size imaginable. I saw my own confused, and pretty damn scary face looking back at me from literally hundreds of reflective mirrors. Just as I started to process that info, Zulu stepped into the hall from the mirror immediately behind me, so his reflections joined mine.

“Holy shit, what is this place?”

He grinned at me and offered a hand to help me. I took it and stood up. His grip was surprisingly strong, but not in any unnatural way like Drake’s, more like the firm grip of a former athlete. I couldn’t help but think of how this guy must have had it all as a youngster...good looks, strong body, I knew he came from Old Money if the news was to be believed, and he had charisma oozing from his pours, and too top it all off, he was clearly a powerful Caster. Some guys get all the luck.

“I don’t know the true name of this place, but I call it the Hall of Mirrors.”

“Wow, that’s...uh...imaginative.”

“Yes, well, I don’t spend that much time here, I don’t travel by this method very often. As with anything magickal, there are perils to relying on it very often. I guess the best way to describe this place is that it is another dimension, a dimension that is accessible through mirrors both ways. I use it as a shortcut when I must, but I must admit, I find it disconcerting.”

“Why not use another method to travel then?”

“My talents just happen to lie in accessing this place more easily than some others. But it has its uses, even if I do have to look at my own reflection much more than I ever care to.”

“Come on, you’re telling me this? I’m a damn walking corpse! If anyone should be afraid to see themselves in a mirror, it’s me!”

“I can’t argue with you on that front Rusty, but this place has a way of pinpointing and hilighting each and every flaw one has. In any event, we must not tarry here, let me slip past you here and I’ll lead you to where we need to go.”

With that, he slid past me. Remembering his previous instructions, I put a hand on his shoulder as he began slowly walking forward.

This place was extremely disorienting, quite similar to many of the funhouse Halls of Mirror rides I had been in at various carnivals and amusement parks during my youth. It was exceptionally hard to tell where the path went, since the mirrors cast so many reflections. Even Zulu had to go slowly, reaching out a hand to feel his way through the maze.

After we had been moving for a while, Zulu stopped at an intersection, apparently trying to puzzle out which to go. While he was busy mumbling to himself, I took a chance to look at my own reflection more carefully in the mirror to my right.

The face staring back at me seemed more like some Halloween mask meant to scare small children than that of my own face. Even from behind the dark sunglasses, I could catch the glimmer of red that were my eyes. The play of the flickering shadows created by my own glowing eye sockets only served to further define my face as the gruesome mask of a dead killer. But the barest hint of something else caught my eye...there were other images in the mirror behind my ugly mug.

I stared hard at it before the ghostly image of a room beyond the mirror crystallized. It was a bedroom of some sort. I could see two shadowy forms groping and clasping at each other on a large canopy-covered bed. They were making love, I think.

“Whoah, I can see stuff through this mirror here!”

Zulu took a moment from trying to decipher which way to go and responded, “Yes, each and every mirror in this place corresponds to a mirror elsewhere. If you look hard enough, you will be able to see something of the place where the mirror exists elsewhere in many of them.”

“You mean this mirror here is actually in someone’s bedroom?”

He glanced at the mirror I was looking at, “Yes, it appears to be so. This is precisely the reason I don’t keep mirrors in my own bedroom. It also the reason most Casters don’t keep mirrors around, especially in rooms they wish to keep private.”

“Shit, no wonder. I’ll never look at a mirror in quite the same way again.”

“Indeed. Before I learned to use my Talents, I often felt at unease around mirrors and more than once felt as if I was being watched. As I later learned, it was entirely possbile that I was being watched. Oh yes, we need to go this way.”

I looked away from the couple as he started to move forward again and concentrated on not looking past my own reflection in any of the other mirrors.

We travelled in silence for what seemed like an hour. We had made dozens of turns and even gone up one flight of stairs and down two more before we arrived in front of the strangest mirror we come across yet. Instead of being made of metal or glass, it was a shimmering, flat, rock wall that...gurgled. As we got closer, I saw that the reason the wall shimmered was a thin sheen of water that was flowing across its face. The water had no visible source at the top of the wall, and disappeared beneath the floor without pooling up in any way. Our reflections were still there, but they were constantly shifting in small, almost imperceptible ways.

“What’s this?” I asked my guide.

He turnedas he answered. “This, my friend, is our destination.”

“It’s different than the others. It looks like a cave wall of some sort.”

“Very good observation. It is indeed different. This is the only mirror I know of that was created specifically by the owner to be a portal to this place. He created it for me when he showed me how to utilize this Talent.”

“So who is this teacher of yours?”

“He has been known by many names over the years. You will probably know him as Merlin.”

“Merlin?!? As in Merlin of the King Arthur and the Knights of the fucking Round Table Merlin?”

He sighed. “Yes, he is that Merlin. However, as he told me hundreds of times throughout our time together, those stories have changed significantly over time, and many authors have used their own imaginations to embellish the tales a bit. He is both more normal and even more remarkbale than those tales imply.”

“Damn, this shit just keeps getting weirder and weirder. OK, why not meet Merlin too?”

“Very well. Just like the time we came here, you’ll need to step through this mirror in order to come to the other side. This time, however, I cannot come with you. I will activate the portal, you will have to move through on your own.”

“Why aren’t you coming too?”

“There are other matters that I must attend to at the moment, very urgent matters that I have ingnored in order to get you here, but which I can no longer delay.”

“Great, so does this Merlin even know I am coming?”

“He is expecting you, yes.”