//------------------------------//
// Prologue: Ripples on a Mirror 
// Story: A Mirror of Stars 
// by Cyberdutchman 
//------------------------------//


A Mirror of Stars


“Imagine you’re a fish, swimming in a pond. You can move forward and back, side to side, but never up out of the water. If someone were standing beside the pond, watching you, you’d have no idea they were there. To you, that little pond is an entire universe. Now imagine that someone reaches down and lifts you out of the pond. You see that what you thought was the entire world is only a small pool. You see other ponds. Trees. The sky above. You realize you’re a part of a much larger and more mysterious reality than you had ever dreamed of.”






In silence and darkness it stirred, finally strong enough to once more sense the prison around it. It began reaching out weakly with what power it still had, touching walls and borders none could see and slipping through the cracks. Its senses passed through realities one after the next. Seeking. Searching. It needed a key, but nothing so mundane as ordinary matter or energy or knowledge would free it from its entombment. It needed a mindset, it needed an emotion, it needed- THERE. 

It felt the smallest vibrations in the veil between worlds as strains of power and sensation filtered through, just as it had felt them countless times before over the centuries. Once more it gathered that power but it did not consume it as it yearned to. Its prison was well made despite its flaws and would never allow it to become strong enough to break free. Instead it condensed that power, molded it, and refined it to the basest form possible. It added in a tiny drop of its own power and essence and thrust it back against the universe it seeped from. The fabric of reality twisted and rippled as the focused energy pushed against it before the barrier gave way with a dimensional *snap* that could not be physically perceived.

Breaking down the space between spaces was torturous and left it feeling like an empty shell and it now withdrew in on itself, drained after another attempt.  It again fell back into its long slumber to wait until enough power seeped in to let it try once more. It never contemplated stopping though. It was patient and driven by fury and rage, and would suffer its malaise and decay until one day it succeeded and could take its vengeance on the ones that had imprisoned it. As its awareness faded it began to dream again of the end of harmony.





Oct, 2008

Liam Harcourt's eyes fluttered as he hazily tried to collect his thoughts and stave off unconciousness. It was like trying to hold back the tide with a wall of sand.

"-get him to room four. Make a note, patient is awake but unresponsive and unaware. BVM applied at scene of... whatever the hell that was- God no, don't write that! Okay, start over... BVM applied, ECG shows faint arrhythmia, BP is hovering around 95/75, temperature is 103 degrees-"

The voice was unfamiliar and sounded strange; it seemed muffled in his ears, like it was coming from far away but at the same time spiked as though it was right next to him. A new fragment of memory condensed out of the fog in his mind and he examined it. He'd been... at school. He'd been walking alone between buildings after fourth period like usual when he'd heard a shout from ahead of him. A guy he faintly recognized, maybe a band member, was pointing at something behind him along with a dozen or so others who also happened to be facing the same way. He'd turned around to find a point of light arcing with electricity hovering about twenty feet away rapidly approaching him. His eyes widened as it passed directly through a street light between them without any apparent effect. He'd barely had time to begin to recoil away from it before the thing blossomed into an explosion of white and violet tinged light that washed over him. He remembered feeling that weird sensation of cold you got from touching something painfully hot over most of his body followed by the intense scratching of pins and needles everywhere else before falling down and blacking out.

He tried to lift his arm again only to find he couldn't. A second attempt revealed that he was tied down to something. He tried to flex his hand to reach his bonds when the sensation of pins and needles returned along with a dull heat. He blearily opened an eye to look at his hand. 

Just beyond his fingertips a mote of red light flickered in and out as he clenched his fingers, small static pops arcing between them. His open eye blinked once before closing again. Oh... shoot. Coach is going to kill me if I miss today's run for this, he thought dreamily before slipping back into his incoherent daze.