The Parting Of The Paths

Faxi was struggling to adjust to the new land he had ventured to. It was his life’s calling to come to this place, establish connection and control, and use that influence to impede the actions of the Gigas and its spawn in order to protect his village and his people. All of the wise folk in his village always told him that he bore blessings that few possessed, that the spirits favoured him. At home he could believe it, but here… no favour could be felt. He was totally alone, and lonely for it.

While he was alone, he was not without company. Faxi did not expect any fellow humans to be living below, let alone thousands of times as many that lived his village all nestled in one settlement, in a forrest of obelisk buildings. Everything felt alien to him, even the air felt dense.

Faxi understood well his calling was a life-long duty. He also understood that he was yet young, and the new temptations and opportunities of this foreign world beneath his own would influence his judgement in time. By his duty’s end Faxi was certain he would have spent many more years in this land than his homeland. How could he ensure his passion to his calling now would stand the test of time?

His answer would not come until some months later. Faxi’s progress had felt marginal; socialising with people was difficult when none shared any common ground in upbringing, culture or worldview with himself. Connecting with them seemed entirely impossible unless Faxi could cast off all relation to his homeland… but that would jeopardise his mission.

Then, as if by a wish granted, the answer came to him in the form of drunken rumours.

“…By the way, tell your kids to keep away from that old dugout down by the railway bridge, in case you haven’t already,” a lanky man spoke to a portly man across his table.

“Nah, they aren’t ones for venturing out that far from home,” The portly one replied, then took a swig of his drink. “Why though, what’s gone on?”

The lanky one leaned over the table to speak in a hushed voice, but Faxi was pretending to look busy close by, focused on them. “…Seems one of those demon things has taken up in there-”

“HAH!” The pot-bellied man’s laughter destroyed any sense of secrecy the lanky one had tried to create. “C’mon, you know I don’t believe in that shite! Go tell the housewife’s tale to *hic* -someone who’d buy it!”

“Gar doesn’t believe in the stuff either Ned, but it was him who passed word on to us! He said he went down to look for something his kid lost n’ said all the walls were…glassy n’ stuff.”

The portly man’s tone softened slightly “Yeah? Well, like I said, my kids don’t go that far out, so we’re fine.” The portly man took one more mellow swig of his drink, “So! How’s other stuff going, eh?”

The conversation trailed off as Faxi left, he might have something useful.

The next day, Faxi descended the slopes of the channel underneath the old railway bridge, equipped only with his knowledge of the Gigas and its many kin. While the Gigas sought only to torment humanity, Faxi understood one could enter into a deal with its kin, supposedly creating some form of symbiosis. Faxi hoped that this rumour of a “demon” taking up in this dugout was real. The description of the walls becoming glassy… if this was an indicator of what Faxi thought, then he had plans for this Gigas spawn.

As Faxi entered the old dugout the walls seemed to shift around him. The surfaces of stone lost the permanence of their rough exterior in place of ghostly reflection. Faxi turned his head and saw glints of light bounce off the walls. Faxi continued into the darkness, well past where any kid would rightly brave. He waited for some time - nothing happened, so Faxi took the initiative.

“Show yourself! I come to bargain.”

His command echoed through the cave until it died in the shadows and silence returned. The silence stayed a little while longer until dismissed by a reply.

“Well, aren’t we a little know-it-all…”

Faxi turned around to witness a rift in the darkness where a cave wall likely stood obscured. Beyond the rift, another dimension revealed itself - white and clouded. The image was crisp and clear, but none of its light poured into the cave, which remained pitch black. Amidst the light and clouds of this dimension beyond the cave wall, the blurred figure of a human stood like a mannequin, refracting prismatic rays of light. “Speak your bargain and be on your way!”

Faxi stood for a moment, observing the being in front of him. “You’re actually here…”

“What?”

“You’re physically here. You aren’t in the underworld, this isn’t a connection ritual, you’ve actually incarnated into this world!”

The hazy silhouette stared at Faxi on the other side of the rift, vacantly.

“…Which means you’re fleeing the Gigas,” Faxi continued.

“Oh! Does it!?” The silhouette replied, if perhaps a little too defensively to disprove Faxi’s belief.

Faxi gestured to the darkness around him where the confines of a small cavern hid from view “This doesn’t strike me as the actions of a vanguard.” Faxi stared back at the ghost, “I’ll make this a part of our deal.”

“What deal?”

“I have connections to those still close to the Gigas, those who can bend its ears, so to say.”

The silhouette gave no reaction.

“Perform for me a service, and I shall withhold your whereabouts from those same ears.”

Silence began to creep back into the darkness until the ghost dismissed it again. “What service?”

Faxi had what he wanted at last, and so he allowed a slight smile. “Judging from your new home, you possess a dominion over mirrors, do you not? I would ask you to create a copy of all I am now - my body, my mentality, my motivations - and store that copy within a mirror. Could you do this?”

The deliberation the ghost gave to Faxi’s request set his nerves alight with excitement and dread. The silhouette craned its head in thought, “That’s…certainly a unique request. A first for me, to be sure.”

“But?” Faxi continued, impatiently.

The silhouette corrected its stance, “I think I could do it.”

The time that followed immediately after is a blur of excitement in Faxi’s memory. He only remembers that when he finally got to meet the copied version of himself inside the mirror, they both bowed the same way and laughed afterwards. Faxi left the Gigas kin alone in the cave as it requested, walking with a new confidence in his mission and a copy of himself in a pocket mirror.

Before Faxi knew it, years had passed. He had made connections with those who also wished to move against the Gigas; connections with those who did not; connections with those who drew power from it similar to how he had himself. He found himself leading a growing group of powerful people who supported his cause and, most importantly, believed in him. What he had speculated those many years ago had grown true, the influences of this world he now called his own had greatly changed him over the years. Aware of this, he knew he owed a incalculable debt to the him in the mirror. 

While his body had grown older now, his mirror doppelgänger was still as youthful as the day he made the deal with that being in the dugout, wearing the same clothes as the day too. While he loathed to admit it, Faxi’s passion and commitment to his cause had succumbed to the erosion of time. While still wholly committed to the cause, he found he had developed other commitments along the way. Not his mirrored self though; his passion burnt as bright and fierce as it did back in those early days. The counsel his younger self had given him, requested or not, had often righted Faxi’s path on his mission when otherwise he may have strayed or wavered. He was right to have created him back then.

Faxi supposed he owed the ghost back in the old cave as well, but he had no idea where it was now. The dugout had long since caved in now.

At some point in Faxi’s company, a chain reaction of disagreement and difference must have occurred without his notice. This discord came to a critical point on a monumental day for the company. A small team, Faxi included, were to survey a small area of the underworld. A rift had been found, one that threatened to unleash an influx of Gigas spawn upon the world if left to grow larger. Faxi meant to fix this, but also saw the occasion as a potentially invaluable chance to scout the invisible enemy they had been working against for years now.

Faxi did not bring along his doppelgänger in a pocket mirror that day. If something happened to him, he had to be left to guide the company. In his hands Faxi knew the mission would never be lead astray. Yet later some part of him wishes he had brought him along, to see what he saw that day.

The differing of ideals and how best to proceed climaxed in the worst possible way as the small group perched above the underworld. By the end of the day, all but Faxi and two others of the ten-man team perished after drawing attention of Gigas spawn to their position. The rift they had hoped to fix shattered open like glass against the cascade of hate and torment spewing from the underworld. What Faxi saw that day was the number and power of his enemy. He saw it clearly, and understood that they had been fighting a hopeless fight.

A lot of the powerful connections he had made over the last decade pulled support of his cause due to the catastrophe caused under his management. Faxi had been set many steps back, but he saw the silver lining in this. He knew now that all he had been working for, to sabotage or destroy the Gigas and its kin, had been misinformed in its motivation and effort. But now he had the chance to change the direction of his effort from the very foundations. Faxi now felt that the victory of the Gigas was inevitable, so his best option was to use his remaining connections to gain leverage over his former enemies; to offer a service they absolutely need in return for the salvation of humanity. Faxi only needed to find what this service was.

In the greatest loss Faxi had ever received, he reforged his mission for the best possible chance of success. He was ready to move forward with his renewed resolution, a shame the same could not be said of his mirrored self.

That was the first time the two selves ever had an explosive argument. Faxi had seen what occurred at the rift, the forces he once meant to contest with. He knew he had to make compromise if he still meant to protect his people. The mirrored Faxi had not seen what his older self had, but it mattered little to him - claiming he knew what he was up against since the beginning. To him, the Gigas and its kin were the enemies of all that was good, and compromising with them meant a hollow victory, if any at all. He would not hear it. He would not tolerate it.

Before the argument reached its end, Faxi asked his mirrored self for a favour: to continue advising him no matter what happens. Even in his anger for his aged self, the mirrored Faxi agreed. It was the purpose for his creation, after all. However, being confined to a mirror meant his only influence on the real world was through his words. If they fell on deaf ears, his advising meant nothing. And so, the direction of the company skewed in favour of gaining diplomatic leverage over the Gigas, against the mirrored one’s advice.

Decades passed. The absence of his powerful sponsors alleviated a lot of pressure off of Faxi’s now weary shoulders, but it made his objectives into much more tedious tasks without the manpower or financial backing. Still, this just made him appreciate the aid that came to him all the more. Faxi had not cared to count the years, but he estimated he must’ve reached about fifty years of age. Of course, his mirrored self showed no signs of age, still eternally youthful. While they stayed on talking terms, they still had never seen eye to eye on the direction old Faxi took the company, neglecting his younger self’s judgement. Sometimes, just once or twice in his long years, Faxi wondered if he regretted creating him at all, stuck in such a limited space of thinking…

But he was a kid, and none of that mattered now - the fated hour was at hand. In those fast-gone decades, Faxi found the service which he could hold over the Gigas as leverage. Faxi had happened on an ancient tome of the families of demonology, written centuries ago. The ledger contained the records of the most powerful families working with the Gigas; their cultures, whereabouts and the names of kin. Most of this was unimportant or already known to Faxi, except for the chronicle of one particular family. A clan whose name was lost to history, but whose power should ordinarily have made it echo in fear across the world: The clan that made a deal with the Gigas itself - for it to only incarnate through one of its members.

The inner working of incarnation were foggy and complex, but Faxi understood that it was no simple procedure. For this manner of incarnation to work, Faxi estimated many eligible members of the clan would need to gather in close proximity for the Gigas to incarnate. However, the tome taught also why their name had been lost to history. The clan had been slaughtered, and any remaining progeny would likely have no clue as to their true heritage.

By all measure, rounding up the remaining descendants of this ancient clan seemed impossible. Faxi knew otherwise; he knew this was the only chance he was going to get. And, against the cosmically small odds, he had them now, some six people in all. Tonight, the Gigas itself would incarnate and begin its war, but Faxi had earned its word in a deal to spare human casualties. Now, he sat across from the wall-mounted mirror his other self had been confined to, readying himself to finalise the deed.

“You mean to tell me you aren’t remotely concerned with who the Gigas is going to war with,” his mirror provoked him.

“It isn’t us. That is the important thing.” Faxi felt he had done all he could for those his mission was for.

Mirror Faxi turned his head dismissively, and the two sat in a silence neither had felt since the old dugout. “So… it’s really come to this?”

“Aye, it has.” The greying, old Faxi stood. The question had seemed to unintentionally ready him for what he had to do. He began to leave for the ritual place, pausing for some last words.

“I never regretted creating you, even when you opposed me these long years,” he spoke solemnly. “I feel in my bones that this is our best option, for prosperity! And now, it's our only option. When the dust settles, I can only pray that the scenery I see is the one I predicted. And I hope you will see it with me.” With that, he left.

Mirrored Faxi hung from the wall, staring at the ground on the other side of the glass with an intense expression. “fuck…” he muttered. “Fuck!!” The young Faxi swung his arm around, connecting with nothing. In the mirror dimension, there was only him. With his purpose failed, what use was he or his empty dimension worth now?

“My, quite the outburst,” an unfamiliar voice spoke. Faxi took a moment to process the tone he had just heard - it was too clear to have come from the other side of the mirror. He turned and saw a figure he did not recognise but understood it could only be one person.

Faxi replied, “The hell are you doing here?”

The hazy silhouette craned its neck, “You’re just as rude as you were back then,” it chastised. “This is my dimension, can I not visit?”

Faxi stared at it, almost uninterested. “So why now? What is it you want?”

The ghost straightened. “In truth I’ve been watching you for some time. I’ve grown fond of your cause.” A toothy grin spread across its blank face.

Faxi looked out of the mirror, at the doorway his other self had left through. The ghost matched his gaze.

“Have you ever tried breaking out?”

“Of course I have,” Faxi responded.

“Try again,” the ghost urged.

Faxi’s face turned to surprise. This ghost had the power to do that?

“Why? Why now would you-”

“I told you already! I’ve decided to support the cause. Your cause.”

The meaning of the ghost’s words rattled in Faxi’s head. There were still many questions he had about the ghost’s motivations, but right now he didn’t have the time. His anger raised again, his fist connected with the mirror.

The young Faxi stepped into the world for the first time since his creation. He looked down at the shattered glass surrounding his feet and picked up a peculiar dagger-like shard.

“He has strayed from the cause,” a voice echoed in his head. Whose, he was uncertain. “You know what must be done.” Faxi knew well, and he knew his time was limited. Faxi made for the doorway, glass shard in hand.