"You're wondering whether I might have a Mirror Person of my own?"
"I'm not entirely certain," Bernadette said, "but I have entered Trier's underground on multiple occasions — trying to follow traces of Father. Except for the deepest levels, though, I found nothing useful."
"What's wrong with the deepest levels?"
"They involve the real Fourth Epoch Trier. Far too dangerous. No matter how much I want to find Father, I won't risk my life without definitive proof that he's actually there."
"So there's a reasonable possibility that your Mirror Person was born long ago — but has simply never had the opportunity to take your place?"
"Perhaps."
"Actually — if we went down into Trier's underground right now and somehow generated a Mirror Person, what would happen? Would it be based on just one of us, or would two Mirror People appear at once?"
"You seem very interested. Shall I take you down and find out?"
"Er — let's pass on that."
Half an hour later, Bernadette returned to their hotel. After a quick wash, she turned off the gas lamp, lay down on the soft mattress, and found she couldn't sleep.
Eventually she said, "Tell me another bedtime story."
"How about The Princess and the Pea?"
"Mm."
Vincent gathered his thoughts and began, in a measured voice: "Once upon a time, there was a prince who wished to marry a princess — but she had to be a true princess. He had no way of telling which girls were real, and so..."
He had just gotten to the part where the old queen tests the princess with a pea under the mattresses, when Bernadette said, mildly, "If I hadn't actually been a princess myself, I might have been taken in by this story."
"Well — you're a real princess, so you'd know best."
Vincent gave an automatic compliment, then a thought struck him. "But hold on — Mystic Recasting draws power from real mystical knowledge, things that actually occurred in history. If the source material has to be real, then 'The Princess and the Pea' must have genuinely happened."
"Which means the same is probably true of Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid..." He trailed off, struck by something. "So reality is frequently even more outlandish than the stories."
Bernadette sat up abruptly. "You're right."
"What?"
"Mystic Recasting draws from real events — genuine mystical knowledge. But these fairy tales..." Her expression shifted into something caught between startlement and confusion. "...were pilfered from your world by Father and brought here. That creates a massive contradiction. Why can I draw on these 'stories' to create Mystic Recasting magic?"
She pressed her fingers together. "That's a glaring inconsistency I should have noticed long ago."
"Er—"
"Either it's because the Nation of Disorder connects our two worlds. Or there's some unknown relationship between the worlds beyond that. Or..."
Bernadette thought back to Father's diary entry from after his lunar ascent: he had said he never really left.
But his transmigration was a fact — he hadn't originally belonged to this world, and he wasn't Roselle Gustav by birth. So what did "never left" mean?
There's something in this chain I haven't figured out yet.
After a long silence, she spoke again. "Vincent. Help me with something."
"Your wish is my command."
"Recall as many stories from your world as you can — fairy tales, legends, myths. Things Father never told me."
She said seriously, "I want to try whether I can Mystic Recast more spells using those stories."
If it worked, it would further confirm that some special connection existed between the two worlds. And more importantly — the greatest gift the body swap might be offering her was no longer just the magic itself, but these stories — sources of mystical knowledge she'd never had access to before.
After a moment's thought, Vincent asked, "Have you heard the story of the Trojan Horse?"
"No."
"The Sword of Damocles?"
"No."
"Ragnarök? The Twilight of the Gods?"
"No."
"Then I assume you also haven't heard of Moses parting the Red Sea, or the Last Supper?"
"Correct."
Had Roselle not known these myths? And yet the Spear of Longinus was drawn from myth and legend. Odd.
It didn't matter — his job was to tell the stories. The rest he left to Bernadette.
"Then we'll start with... the parting of the Red Sea."
Since the Spear of Longinus — rooted in Christian tradition — could already be used for Mystic Recasting, perhaps the parting of the Red Sea, from the same tradition, could work as well. After all, in the world of Lord of the Mysteries, God was a genuine and documented reality.
The parting of the Red Sea seemed miraculous enough: Moses raised his staff and pointed it at the sea, and the waters split, opening a dry path for the people to pass through — a feat that even many angels probably couldn't manage.
But the story itself, honestly, wasn't all that exciting to narrate — particularly given that it contained a fair amount of historical and cultural context that Vincent could only reconstruct in rough fragments. In essence: Moses led his people to the edge of the Red Sea, sea ahead and an army closing in behind. Moses raised his staff and parted the waters, leading his people safely across and then letting the sea close again, swallowing their pursuers.
Bernadette listened, thought for a moment, and said: "Continue to the next one."
"The Last Supper, then."
The Last Supper: Jesus gathered his twelve disciples for a final meal, then suddenly announced that one of them — Judas — had betrayed him. Jesus was ultimately crucified because of Judas's betrayal.
"Continue."
And so they went — Vincent telling stories, Bernadette quietly listening, asking nothing.
Time slid past.
When midnight came, Bernadette was about to ask for another, when she suddenly raised her hand and produced the Mystic Order badge.
It lay in her palm, vibrating faintly.
"The gathering is starting now?" Vincent asked in surprise.
"I don't know — but it's sending me some kind of signal."
She closed her fingers around the badge, her silhouette blurring as she shifted into the form of the "Clown" from Tingen. "Let's go and see."
Bernadette climbed out of the hotel window without concealment and followed the badge's pull through the darkened streets.
She walked south, leaving the Opera District behind, cutting through the middle zones to the Observatory District, until she arrived at a vast open square.
Scattered across it were a few horse lanterns and candle lights, and the coming and going of young people — remarkably lively for the small hours of the morning. Some were emerging from a dark opening at the far end of the square; others were going in. In the blood-red dimness of the moon, that opening gaped like the mouth of some great beast.
Bernadette approached and looked more carefully. It was an entrance descending into the earth, framed by stone columns supporting a vaulted ceiling above — carved with skull reliefs, skeletal arms, sunflowers, and steam symbols. At the very top of the arch, an inscription in Intisian read:
HALT. THE EMPIRE OF DEATH LIES AHEAD.
To be continued…
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