RP:A Hall of Mirrors

Background

This is part of the Kurgan's Run story arc.

The dark priest Leifong is drawn into the illusory world of the Fortress. But illusions are sometimes... not what they seem.

Meanwhile, In The Shadow of the Fortress

Leifong finally abandons his post at the road's edge, for though the monk was patient, this was becoming ridiculous. Perhaps the group had decided to make camp and wait for dawn to proceed. With a sigh, the priest makes his way back up onto the path and embarks at a reasoned pace toward the fortress and it's towering spires, his eyes avoiding the place, despite how it drew them to look. The dusty mixed-dirt-and-gravel road crunches lightly beneath his delicate footfalls, small clouds of the sandy earth picked up by the wind and blown skyward, revealing his location plainly to the group behind him, should they care to look. What was he doing proceeding alone without them? To be honest he didn't know, and though he might try to rationalize his actions with internal dialogue of 'scouting ahead' or 'checking things out', in truth it had much more to do with the pull of the pool itself, as though it were calling him home. And now, as he draws close enough to find himself dwarfed by the peaked archway, the Priest can't help but allow a grin, as he always did when facing a power greater than himself.

Like the open yawn of some vast, slumbering leviathan beast the stony mouth of the dark fortress gaped without impediment to the monk's passage along the black stone ribbon that served it for a tongue. Easy admittance, for such a massively fortified building; the walls had to be at least five feet thick here, and a peep taken inside the abrupt gloom of that archway would reveal some sort of dome-roofed admittance hall, at the murky end of which were three apertures, also arched, also of stone but scaled more to the size of man than god. The floor between was a craze of parqueted stone flags, its pattern linear and regular but somehow deeply disturbing in nature - following the layout of tiles would prove an odd experience, resulting in inexplicable hackles and a sudden bout of vertigo. It walls were bare, but too they were strangely patterned with their many-angled and colossal stone bricks impossibly locked together. Sourceless gusts of breeze would eddy about the monk's ankles, tiny hands of wind taunting him enter, plucking at him as did the fingers of his own curiosity.

Leifong broaches the archway without a moments pause or hesitation, but once inside the entrance hall the priest is forced to halt and take a breath as the reality bending nature of this place hits him full force. He'd almost forgotten that feeling... almost. The man mutters quietly to himself, prayers and praises to his lord, and then continues forward to stand before the triplet portcullis' with a mind bolstered by those familiar chants. He thinks about which way to go for only a moment, letting instinct guide his feet rather than logic, understanding that such things as reason were useless within this place. Choosing the left doorway, Leifong moves at what might seem a leisurely pace, placing his feet carefully one after the other, as though testing the floor before placing his full weight on it.

It was only a stone floor. It did not open up and swallow him, nor tremble underfoot. His journey into that vaulted space, its ceiling almost indiscernible, eaten by darkness at highest point, would prove almost disappointing uneventful. No furnishings existed here, no tapestries nor signs of wear that might suggest the place was ever occupied or owned any purpose than to exist unto itself. To the south, those three smaller arches looked a good deal less intimidating, and a more adequate aperture for a mere mortal to pass through. Nothing could be seen beyond their mouths, passages beyond the left and right doors turning sharply in those respective directions, while the central one led off into an unlit passage that appeared to fade into lightlessness altogether. There would be a sense of import, here - which passage to choose? Those breezy fingers would turn chill when Leifong approached one door, and abated into friendlier gusts upon the approach of another, and ... was that a faint, barely audible whisper, coming from that direction? A song, a poem, a long-ago and half-remembered crooning? Or just the draft of a wind playing its stony songs through chinks in the cyclopean blocks?

The left-hand path would suddenly turn right, leading to a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

Leifong picks one of the endless seeming twisted passageways at random, knowing that which one he walked down would matter little. The fortress would lead him where it desired, no matter which path he took to get there. The randomly timed currents whipping through those hallways whistling menacingly every so often as they cause the heavy robe he wears to flutter this way and that. "So it begins" the priest thinks to himself, and then begins to chant his mantra's more swiftly with a certain amount of desperation, though for the time being at least he maintains a firm grasp over his mind. Every little thought he experiences is carefully examined, dissected to ascertain whether it is genuine or insidiously warped by the chaos of this place. Yet despite all his mental discipline and training, Leifong knows that it is only a matter of time, and perhaps.... perhaps he was already in it's throes. That was a disconcerting thought, and so he pushes it from the forefront of his consciousness and instead focuses on the sound of his footsteps, the sound of his breathing, and the gentle thumping of his heart as he follows the passageway wherever it might lead.

His heart. His heart. His heart. It beat like the echo of a flesh hammer hitting a meaty anvil. Like an echo, repeating, only it would not fade with repetition, unlike the echo of his every footstep. Footstep. On and on he'd walk, allowing his feet to take him where he may. The wind became impish, ducking away to offer him an ounce of peace, only to return with a pound of torment; not for its blustering nor chills, but the way it plucked at his garments, and somehow to the skin underneath.. to the muscle and nerves and bone underlying even that.. to the core of the man's mind and soul. Yes, he was being led - by his own lack of intuition, his own mental scrutiny of self and thought, his inability to access the quiet space where faith lies in a man like a bright and lovely butterfly suspended mid-air, in the abyssal dark of some deep, cavernous den unlit by any eye, unstirred by any voice. Leifong was being led, by his own resistance to the fortress, into an eternal path of twisty passages, all alike, that would continue to allow him to wander even after his bones lay on the paving of a passage floor, ever lonely for the spirit that once had animated them.

Leifong stumbles slightly, catching himself without effort, but it was that simple act which made him realize just how long he must have been walking. His mind was wandering strangely, and his mind was growing tired, the strain of keeping himself in check wearing the human down more than one might guess. Finally Leifong pauses, reaching an intersection of three paths and turning round to examine them all carefully. Each one looked identical, and after a moment he had to seriously question which way he'd even come from, the fortress was toying with him. "I do not fear you!" he cries out defiantly, seeming almost stronger now than he had upon entering, but the fact he was shouting at all serves as a clear sign that the wind, the isolation, and the eery whispers carried through the halls were starting to get to him. "I am a servant of a power greater than you!" he continues to rant at the top of his lungs, "And he shall lead me safely, wrapped tightly in his embrace!" Seeming self assured by his own statement the monk picks a passageway almost at random and takes off a much faster pace, rage at being toyed with propelling swiftly toward wherever the Fortress chose to lead, with a confidence that he would easily topple this challenge the same as any other. Yet woe... for his discipline was slipping, and his thoughts flew through his mind unregulated.

The fortress had no ears. It had no eyes, and no heart to break. It did not weep, it did not cringe or rage to be thus refuted. It was a thing of stone, inert and unresponsive as the great, primal void of Nothingness into which Creation had been first been sneezed in a spray of glowing, star-spattered cosmic phlegm. The fortress sighed, a sough of air that soothed with a subtle melancholy the fires of the unholy priest's ire, and carried on being a building, full of passages, never-ending passages in which a man had nothing to do but walk or not walk, think or not-think. As the hours.. days.. years.. passed unnoticed, unmarked by any tick but the sound of soles on stone, the vast and abiding loneliness of the Void would seep, slowly, into the man in the way water seeps - not down, this inky liquid, but -outward from his heart of hearts, where a single, bright butterfly did not flap its wings but hung, inert, mid-air, poised in the terrible, incredible gravity of the pendulum of time as it reaches the nadir of its arcing swing between one split second and the next. There were no gods here, in the dark fortress. Because gods do not exist beyond the human desire to be eternally parented, like ridiculous overgrown infants, wrapped for eternity in the comfort of some larger being's embrace.

Suddenly, the present passage Leifong was walking would empty him out into a flare of space, walled and wide, a room... a large, round room. The walls were covered, floor to ceiling, in empty frames, gilt frames, carven frames, simple ones and garishly elaborate, every one of them miraculously crafted to fit against the curve of those encompassing walls. There was no longer a way in. There was no longer a way out. And most unusually, as the priest would wander past those frames, an image of himself would appear in each, the very mirror of his passing, a series that rendered his every motion a gallery of sequential still-life moments.

Leifong was not one to abandon his faith so easily, for gods -did- exist within this place, if only in the heart of a single wretched man who was too stubborn or too stupid to allow any thought to the contrary. Yet... he did begin to wonder why the shadows no longer spoke to him, why the constant flow of energy which sustained his existence seemed.... strained. Turn after turn he made in the labyrinthine passages, mile after physics defying mile he walked, never fully aware of how much time had elapsed since he'd foolishly entered the fortress alone. Eventually he began to grow tired, and he stopped to rest for a time in the middle of an empty passageway, his robe serving as blanket and his own arm as pillow. When he awoke, bleary eyed and suddenly unsure of where he even was, the Priest found himself in an intersection of five halls, and it became the first moment where any true worry or doubt crossed his mind. Perhaps his usefulness had run out, perhaps his lord had abandoned him and he would walk in this never ending cold and darkness until the day he died. However Leifong was far from defeated, and even as such thoughts cross his mind, the shadows whisper silently in that familiar way. The priest drops to a low crouch and listens intently, turning this way and that, trying to discern which path the whispers were coming from. After an indistinguishable yet sizable amount of time, he seems to make a decision, and takes off down the path which he was -certain- would lead to his salvation. Yet after what felt like hours of wandering, Leifong was once again questioning everything, even down to why he'd come here in the first place. He knew why, and he knew that he knew but just.... for some reason he couldn't quite recall. And it is then, right at that juncture of uncertainty, the Leifong seems to explode, for he'd broken into a run without rightly noticing, into that room, utterly massive in comparison to the cramped, tunnel-like hallways through which he'd been scurrying for Sven knows how long. Sweating and panting from the lengthy sprint he'd just undergone, Leifong takes a moment to catch his breath before making a slow circuit of the room, tossing his hood back and letting his eyes carefully scan each and every one of those frames, trying to discern some meaning from them. Yet for all his careful examination, the only meaning he could find was that the fortress was laughing at him, playing more sadistic jokes. A burst of anger rises to the surface, completely shattering his internal discipline and flaring up like a volcano erupting. He roars brutally at a volume which will later strike him hoarse, and releases blast after blast of unholy power from his fingertips, blowing more than a few of those frames into smithereens before finally tiring himself out and moving to the center of the room, exhausted and lost.

By the time Leifong had reached that point of wearied and despondent wretchedness, and had come to stand, by some chance or fell design, in the precise center of that strange room, a good number of the pictures were shattered entirely, or blasted with gaping holes, bits of frame hanging loose, swinging, vague wisps of smoke rising from their edges. The pictures which had not suffered such ruin would depict figures identical to the centrally placed priest, all precise records of those scant moments of his life most recently passed. And, as one, they would all turn to face him, gaping back with wide-eyed disapproval but otherwise mirroring exactly his own mien, aside from a solitary figure depicted at a different angle, sitting cross-legged on the floor where Leifong now stood. This picture happened to be facing him from the point directly opposite and parallel to the bit of wall upon which his gaze had come to rest. It was barely scuffed. Only one corner bore a scorch-mark, and there was a faint smudge upon its nose. The figure raised Leifong's own hand in replica, and in opposite as a mirror-image would do, and waved to him with a waggle of fingers. Its painted lips opened in an officiously cheerful sort of manner. "Hello," it said. "Not to be a fuss-bucket or anything, but do you really think all that was.. you know.. quite necessary?"

Leifong was losing it now, his patience run thin, and very rapidly he is advancing on the portrait of himself which is currently, chiding him. "I'll show you necessary." the priest mutters, holding a hand out and releasing yet another, although more powerful this time, blast of dark energy powerful enough to blow a hole straight through any normal wall. However, as these were no normal walls, the priest would not be the least bit surprised to find it perfectly unscathed. "How's that for necessary!?" he bellows, turning about swiftly with his chest heaving, a look of pure malice rising to his fair features which was undoubtedly being reciprocated from the other portraits hanging about. "I am a servant of Vakmatharas, the -supreme- god of death! And I demand you respect that authority, lest you be torn asunder by his power!" Leifong had, undeniably now, gone off the deep end.

A voice sounded from behind him, "I say.. steady on. No need for violence. You are after all..." the picture, the same mimicked figure, with the same animated and officious tone, was frowning faintly from another frame. The others seemed abandoned now, hollow squares containing on the fortress’ dark stone. "... only hurting yourself." The figure turned aside and began to move off, in a casual stroll, hands folded behind its back. It passed from its current frame and vanished, only to appear in the next, as though it was travelling behind a line of windows. Except, of course, that windows do not usually look out from rooms that enable upward and diagonal pacing, as well. "Not so centered now, are we?" It said. "How easily the apples of faith are shaken from the tree." It raised its hand, which contained an example of that very fruit. "Your Vakmatharas is being a bit.. remiss.. in his replies, generally speaking, is he not?" An eyebrow hitched up. The figure took a bite from the apple, chewed, swallowed. "A lifetime of service, and where is he when you need him, hm? Lounging about in some dank and imaginary cellar, plotting to take over a world to which he does not belong?" The mimic glanced about. "He’s not here, anyway. No, no, my friend. Here, there's only you. And of course, I." Its stroll continued for a time in a linear fashion, around the circular space. "The greatest trick ever played by a mortal mind was to convince another that his power and the course of his destiny came from a source somewhere beyond himself. That, dear Leifong, is how slavery started. That..." it paused, and looked at the priest directly. "Is how we all forgot that we, ourselves are gods, that is we who are the Creators."

Leifong scowls, his eyes burning with rage as he is lectured by none other than himself. Yet even now, in such a fully illogical state, the priest had enough sense about him to realize that whatever the thing in the picture frame -was-, it was not him. "Enough of your talk oh stealer-of-faces, oh pitiful thing of incorporeal filth. You shall not shake me from the path, or my mission." However even as the words are spat from Leifong's lips, he realizes that he can no longer remember what his mission had been, or even where he was. The fortress had become his whole world, his entire reality, and he could no longer remember a time before it, only repeat fruitlessly those facts which he assured himself were true. "I am Leifong Soong, eternal servant of Vakmatharas! And you shall suffer a thousand lifetimes of torture for your slanderous -lies-!" with that, the priest lets loose another blast, only to destroy the picture frame that his fake self had already left.

"Only a thousand? Why not a million?" The face - his own face - was peering down at him from a curved rectangle of wood, high above. "You may as well at least be generous, while you're hurling threats. Only.." the face smiled, "It's not really a threat... is it?" It spread its hands a reasonable gesture. "Vakmatharas can harm me no more than he can get you out of here." In all the remaining frames, Leifong nodded in agreement with himself, only in those frames he was a skeleton and it was a bleached and empty skull tipping its chin up and down. "The God of Death. Of worms and maggots and decay. How.. terrifying, to hold the power of a good, fertile loam. What a great service you do, too feed the god who nourishes all of life, as no other can?" It chuckled. "And what is your god but some meek little priest who studied hard, and rose in power, and finally came to remember what a man could truly be.. But for all that, dear me, dear Leifong, he... is, after all, only a superior kind of .. man."

Leifong seems at wit's end. The sheer lunacy of arguing with himself is readily apparent to the priest, and yet here he stands, engaged in that very same lunacy. "What is this blasphemy which you speak!? What is this madness!? You utter words only a fool could believe, and you speak them through -my- lips, with -my- face!" at the word 'face' Leifong reaches up to his, clawing at it viciously as though he truly intended to rip it off as he tears long gouges from his forehead to his cheeks, only missing his eyes by chance. "Give it back! It's mine!" With no more sense than an enraged child Leifong lunges for the apparition of himself, which had now moved to a frame just above chest level. "Give me back my face!"

Leifong , is officially, completely insane.

"Goodness, you only had to ask..." said the mimic, and reached through the frame, grasping the priest by his forearms and dragging him bodily through to... who knew where? In the empty room, frames gaped. No wind blew.