It was strange, needing to sleep in Yensere, but then again, Nick also needed to eat and drink. After they’d spent all of Nick’s reserve of mana, as well as run him ragged with sword drills, they’d spent the rest of the day following the tree line instead of continuing toward Greenborough. Frost had not explained much beyond that they were headed somewhere she thought her sister might have gone. Come nightfall, Frost lay down on her comfortable bedroll while he made do with the blanket she’d taken for him upon their departure from Baron Hulh’s manse.

  “This thing really doesn’t smooth out the ground all that much,” he muttered, shifting atop the fabric.

  “Whining won’t help you sleep,” Frost said from the opposite side of the dwindling campfire.

  “Yeah, but it might make me feel better.”

  “Will it, though?”

  Nick sighed and rolled his eyes. “No.”

  Is there anything I can do to help facilitate slumber?

  Can you, I don’t know, flick a switch to knock me out?

  I cannot affect the material world—that includes your conscious state

  You could just say no.

  Your attitude worsens when I give unexplained answers in the negative

  Nick groaned and shifted in an attempt to get more comfortable. Ending up on his back, he stared at the stars, sharp and bright in the clear night sky. He hadn’t given too much thought to those distant twinkling lights, but now he couldn’t stop staring at them. The constellations were distinctly familiar, something he hadn’t quite realized before—Yensere had the same sky as Majus. Did that mean they were the same planet? How? Majus was a barren world devoid of life, all cold rock without a hint of atmosphere despite the extreme-distance scans suggesting otherwise that had led the OPC to open a world gate there.

  Simon had theorized that the Artifact might be a form of time capsule. If it was, then the time it remembered must be a frightening distance in the past…

  A grating sound stole his thoughts. He glanced across the fire, his brow furrowing.

  Frost was snoring.

  “Wish I could fall asleep that fast,” he grumbled. Well, he could in the outside world. Apparently not on Yensere. Nick tossed and turned a bit more, his frustration growing, until at last he pushed himself to his feet. To piss was his internal excuse, but that wasn’t true. He walked into the forest, past several trees, so the crackling fire and snoring woman were far behind him, until he felt alone.

  Only then did he withdraw the Mirror of Theft from his pocket. He stared at its surface, wishing he knew more about how it worked.

  Item: Mirror of Theft

  Quality: Tier 14 (Pristine)

  Classification—

  “Cataloger,” he said, closing his eyes and fighting for calm. “I wish to be left alone.”

  I do not possess a physical space, and therefore cannot leave, nor go anywhere

  “Cataloger.”

  Yes, visitor?

  “I am begging you. Give me a moment’s privacy.”

  A long pause.

  I shall cease informative functions for one Yensere hour and provide no communication or feedback during that time

  “That’ll be fine,” he said, staring into the mirror’s surface, suspecting that would be the best he would get. “Just fine.”

  Fog swirled within the mirror, thick and gray. Nick waited, trying not to be nervous and failing miserably. It was a trick. An illusion. A cruel game played by a server somewhere. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

  But the face of the man who suddenly appeared matched so perfectly Nick’s memories, who else could it be? He bore the same neatly cut brown hair, the same hazel eyes, the same dusting of white hairs across the dark goatee he kept carefully groomed.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Hello, son,” said his father, Lucien. “I was beginning to wonder if you would ever return.”

  Nick clutched the mirror’s handle hard enough to whiten his knuckles.

  “How?” he asked. “How can this be?”

  His father crossed his arms as the fog rolled across him. He looked nothing like a reflection anymore, but more like a figure in a window into a different world, like a pocket dimension trapped within the mirror’s confines.

  “You ask for explanations I cannot be expected to give,” Lucien said. “I am here. I am lucid. Perhaps you should answer that same question for me. Or perhaps you should acknowledge your lack of understanding as a boon.”

  “A boon?” Nick asked the mirror. “How?”

  “Wonder remains only in the unknown.”

  The visage of his father grew larger, while at the same time, the mirror grew heavier in his grip. Its handle warmed, and he struggled until the burn was too great and he dropped it. The mirror landed on the grass with an audible thud. Above it, just as tall and intimidating as he’d been in real life, appeared his father. He wore his OPC uniform, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The faint moonlight shone upon him, adding an ethereal glow appropriate to one who was, as far as Nick was concerned, a ghost.

  “See?” Lucien said. “I may have spent my life battling ignorance, but it was because in learning and discovery there are such wonderful surprises.”

  Nick’s throat tightened and his hands shook. This wasn’t him. This wasn’t him. This wasn’t his father. He took a careful step closer. There was no haze to Lucien. No glow, no flicker. He wasn’t a hologram or a projection. He was there. Right there. To reach out. To touch.

  “Dad…” he said, at a loss for words. Lucien tilted his head to one side and smiled.

  “I know what you want,” he said, and extended his arms. “Come here.”

  Nick cautiously stepped into his father’s arms. Although Nick expected him to be ephemeral, the body was solid. Tangible. Real and warm.

  Something deep inside Nick cracked.

  “I missed you,” he whispered. “It…I’ve…”

  No words. He pressed his face into the vest of his father’s uniform and wept. He’d not even wept like this at the funeral, for there’d been no body to recover, nothing salvageable from the fires of a destroyed research station and the cold vacuum of space that stole him away. Nick had only stared vacantly at the oversize portrait they’d hung in front of an empty casket wreathed with synthetic flowers.

  Lucien patted his back, then pushed him away.

  “That’s enough,” his father said. “You need to be stronger. I did not raise someone as weak as this.”

  Nick wiped at his eyes while frowning.

  “Weak?” he said. “You’ve been dead. I haven’t seen you in two years. I don’t know who or what you are, but whatever it is, it’s close enough to hurt.”

  Lucien dug his hands into his trouser pockets and shook his head. The faint hint of a frown tugged at the left corner of his mouth.

  “I don’t know what nonsense you’ve been told, but I’m here before you, aren’t I?”

  Whatever warmth Nick felt started to seep out like water leaking from a hung towel.

  “Is that the way you’ve been programmed?” he asked, refusing to entertain this delusion further. He felt stupid and silly, to become so emotional embracing what was nothing more than a well-made doll. “To pretend to be alive? How does Yensere make you? Does it take from my memories? Is that it? Re-create you how I would imagine you to be?”

  The light in Lucien’s eyes darkened.

  “You spit hypotheses at me like accusations. I am before you, Nick, and I am real. It is insulting to have my son pretend the evidence of his senses is false, all because he is scared of what it might mean.”

  “Scared?” Nick asked. “Scared of what?”

  Lucien shrugged. “I can practically smell the urine on you from here, my son. As for the why? They would only be guesses. I would rather you save us both the humiliation and simply answer.”

  The casual cruelty left Nick feeling unmoored. To hear those words from the mouth of his father…

  “I’m not scared of you,” he said. “I’m disappointed. You’re not my father. You’re nothing like him.”

  “Yes, because you know me so well,” Lucien said, and crossed his arms. “Though I guess it’s my own fault. I tried to help you understand me. The dinner table was just as often a classroom, but you, well…you were never the student Simon was.” The visage of his father smirked. “Where is he, anyway? I suspect he would be a far better explorer of these strange environs than you. He actually took well to new topics and ideas, whereas you…”

  “Enough!”

  Nick dropped to his knees and grabbed the mirror. The moment his fingers touched it, his father blinked out and returned to isolation within the clouded mirror. Lucien’s face smiled up at him, pleasant. Nick shoved the mirror into his pocket, and though it burned his thigh, he felt immediately better with the contact broken.

  “Cataloger,” he whispered.

  Yes, Nick?

  “My father. I didn’t see a level or any statistics when I looked at him. Why?”

  Because he is a nonphysical re-creation incapable of directly affecting the material world and therefore without need of such classifications

  Nick rubbed at his eyes, feeling even more foolish for the tears he had shed.

  “So he isn’t real.”

  Clarify

  “Real. As in walking, talking, breathing. He’s not my father. He’s just a fake.”

  Unable to answer

  That lack of certainty would have to be enough. It didn’t matter if that Lucien looked like his father, sounded like him, even smelled like him. It wasn’t him.

  It wasn’t.

  Nick returned to his uncomfortable bed. Frost had rolled onto her side, and thankfully her snoring had ceased. Nick scavenged a few twigs to toss onto the fire, lay on his own side facing the fire, and let the light fall across him. The warmth was comforting. His memories were not.

  “Not real,” he whispered.

  The Lucien in the mirror was false. It was a worthless re-creation, one that would only cause him pain. He told himself this again and again as his eyelids grew heavy and the crackling of the fire lulled him to sleep.

  Told himself this, even as he lacked the strength to remove the mirror from his pocket and throw it into the fire, where it belonged.