The Man of Glass: A Silvered Dream

The void felt like ink, dancing and swirling into black nothingness. Henri was the pen, thrust into the inkwell with no sense of direction, but every sense of purpose.

He remained in that limbo for what seemed an age until his bare feet descended upon what felt like cool, smooth stone. His eyes could barely see the surface upon which he walked, except for that it glistened like polished jet. His wet footsteps echoed through the void as he walked forwards, cold and alone, casting wary eyes at the swirling black. He could feel it watching – he could feel it breathing.

“Ah!” It sighed, it’s casual relief chilling Henri to the bone. “Another! And so soon after the last...”

Its voice was breathy, and uncomfortably close.

“Who are you?” Henri asked.

“Oh! A riddle! How I adore riddles,” it hissed in a wispy, sing-song voice. “Games and riddles, riddles and games! A better question to ask is who I am not.”

Henri felt frozen to the bone. He could smell iron on its breath.

“I am everything you fear, everything you hate,” the source of the voice said, slowly moving all around Henri until it came from everywhere at once. “I am everything you desire but cannot have, and I am everything you have but cannot desire. I lie dormant in every waking heart – especially yours.”

Henri opened his mouth to speak but found no breath. It hovered inches from his face, its presence unseen but most certainly felt. The young man could hear his heart pounding in his ears.

It continued with a slight chuckle. “Nobody knows my name, but everybody knows who I am – and they welcome me just the same. Do you know me, yet?”

Henri remained silent. He held his arms across his chest in a shiver.

“I am your guide,” it crooned, “an ancient friend. I am your willing servant. All you need to do is let me in. All you need to do is answer with just a simple word. What do you say?”

In that moment, Henri felt a sudden burst of courage. “No.”

Just then, a silhouette of sanguineous red swam within the inky darkness. The formless thing looked down on Henri and grinned an impossible grin. “No matter, we will meet again soon. Farewell, Friend.”

The thing dove below the surface of the stone and swam in circles below Henri. Amidst its dreadful laughter, the young man woke up in a sweat.

He was in a bed surrounded by four shattered standing mirrors, each positioned at the cardinal points of the room. Dozens of shards of silvered glass littered the marble tile floor around him. Beneath them appeared to be concentric rings drawn of chalk inscribed with various sigils of power with the bed at their center. Henri could only discern what a few of the symbols meant: chief among them bind, repel, and dream. He tried to sit up but could not, as each of his four limbs were tied to the posts of the bed by four heavy hempen ropes.

“The boy wakes,” Henri heard from an elderly voice behind the mirrors.

“The boy survives,” said another.

The ropes binding his arms and legs silently undid themselves and fell to the floor. Henri bolted upright, only to find the sheets underneath him were completely soaked through with black ichor. Henri rubbed his now free wrists and wiped the sweat from his forehead, only to see too that his sweat had come away black.

A man in elegant black robes, the Master Sorcerer, walked out from behind the mirror.

“What did you see?” he asked.

Henri shivered. “I saw the face of it – our adversary.”

The sorcerer smiled as the rest of the senior sorcerers, various elderly men and women in black robes, came out from behind the mirror to join the Master Sorcerer.

“Then welcome to the Brotherhood, acolyte. Stand and be embraced.”

Henri stood up from the bed – ignoring the cold, drenched fabric plied to his skin – and paid careful attention to step between the shards of glass. The Master Sorcerer approached and wrapped his arms around him.

Henri could not help but look down and hold his breath as he thought he caught a momentary glimpse of a crimson shadow in one of the mirror’s fallen shards.