Path of the Pioneers

Grymgate was a city on the border, within the territory of House Nelhier. It served two functions.

First, it acted as the entrance to the Vein, a wasteland where dungeon monsters seemed to roam freely. Or at least, that’s how people usually described it. A portion of the land of the Vein was controlled by House Pyre. The entrance proper was a pair of gates on either side of the mountain range between Pyre and Nelhier.

Second, the mountain peak acted as a home to a fair few dwarves. These dwarves occupied nearly all of the caverns beneath the mountains. They were incredible artisans, particularly skilled in masonry. They were the ones commissioned by Nelhier and Pyre to oversee the gates’ maintenance.

If my guess was correct, Adeline wanted us to visit some dwarven artisans to acquire new equipment. As they were more or less an independent body from the kingdom of Hyperion, there was a good chance that they wouldn’t recognize us or have any of our bounty posters hung up.

Still..

“How many days of travel are we away from Grymgate?” I said, slightly exasperated at the prospect of half a month or so of walking.

“At our usual pace? Sixteen or seventeen days. Not that bad of a trip, all things considered.”

I couldn’t object to her plan, with nothing better to offer myself. So, the two of us began walking, making for north-northeast. We wouldn’t make it far, though. Our only true goal was to find a place to camp for the night, a good distance from the town.

I staggered after the first few dozen steps, legs threatening to give way underneath me. “W-woah..” I stuck my hands out, trying to regain my balance lest I collapse and make an embarrassment of myself.

Adeline turned back. Without a word, she walked over to me. “Don’t mind me..” With surprising speed and smoothness, Adeline scooped me up into her arms. “W-wait..!” She began walking quicker, “No arguments! You’re on the mend. For now, I’ll be your legs, too.”

I bit down on the inside of my mouth, warmth spreading all over my face as I began blushing more madly than I ever have before. I prayed to whatever gods could hear me that the moonlight wasn’t enough to illuminate the shame painted on my cheeks.

“Do you..” I was careful with my words, trying not to stumble over them. “Suppose that they’ll recognize us within the mountain?”

“The dwarves are a special folk. They let people in freely, but they don’t particularly mingle. We probably have a few months at least before the dwarves even receive word of a pair like us.”

She stopped walking for a second, looking up at the sky, and then back down to me. “I guess we are sort of a unique duo, though..” She pointed at her head. “Red hair.” And then to my head. “Green hair.” She sighed, and then began walking once again. “Well, we’ll just have to pray that they haven’t heard of us.”

Time passed in a blur. I was still aching from the minotaur’s vicious assault, not to mention returning from the brink of death. My mana reserves were emptied out, as well. This had been one of the busiest days of my life, and the steady rocking of Adeline walking surely would’ve had anyone’s eyelids falling.

Suffice to say, when I felt myself being set down on the ground, I wasn’t all there. I had no bearing on how much time had passed since my eyes closed. Barely half-conscious, I felt the grass beneath me. Adeline’s voice was dampened by the cotton filling my mind. “Rest up, you did well today.” I think that was what I heard. Had she actually said that, or was I already halfway into a self-indulgent dream?

My eyes opened sluggishly. I was standing in my home again, my childhood home.

In front of me was a mirror. An ornate, gilded, full-body mirror stood up within my bedroom. A luxury good that I never had, especially not as a child. Not just because I wouldn’t have been able to afford it in a thousand years.

When I was a child, I stayed far away from reflections. Bodies of water, like ponds, the window panes of a house when up close. The worst of all: mirrors. Seeing myself captured there, the visage I considered so unsightly, wracked my soul with an anguish I have not seen elsewhere. Some may consider such a thing vanity, but I think that it was something deeper. Something that dwelled within the core of my being.

Every blemish on my skin, the way my hair rested on my face on a particular morning. Most people would view those things as unfortunate, a day or week wherein your appearance is less-than-ideal. To me, they were an indelible stain on my fate. A curse to warn me that I could never, ever be the person I wanted to be.

Every time I looked at myself, I felt strange. As if, in that moment, I was caught outside of time itself. In a state of limbo, peering into a different world. The one beyond the veil of the reflection was someone else. It was never me who dwelled within that space. As if I were a puppeteer moving around the thing that I saw.

The feeling of recollection, of remembrance that came afterwards. The “Ah.. That’s ‘me.’” that always came. The one that I saw within a reflection was what others saw me as. That feeling is an indescribable thing. I wanted to weep, to sob, to claw away and destroy every single part of ‘me.’

Within the mirror, smoke began to coil and roil, taking upon a silhouette. The figure of a person stood there blankly, staring back at me through the mirror. Soon, it shifted, tendrils of smoke extending out as its form became more refined. Color started to fill the silhouette, definition, too. From the feet up, the identity of the figure became clear to me.

It was me. Or, who I had been. No older than my thirteenth birthday.

Green hair, extending down no further than his ears. Combed neatly to keep out of his eyes. His jawline was just beginning to show the slightest indication of sharpening. Just as before, he stood staring at me, blankly.

This was what I was confronted with, every time I saw myself caught in a reflection. Not always this exact image, but..

The boy began to grow taller suddenly, features growing sharp, his hair shortening until it barely reached his ears at all. I felt unsteady on my feet. My master wasted her efforts on me, after all.

I couldn’t help but remember her words. Ones that changed the course of my life.

“You don’t want to be a boy? What’s so wrong about that?”