Mt. Sensan-Ghi

Act Three - Maze Of Mirrors

He woke up where he had fallen asleep, in front of the glowing gates, the word gone, and in its place, the same food and water that had occupied the kitchen the morning before at the temple. He was neither hungry nor thirsty but he ate and drank to his body's content.

He got up and immediately walked on through the triple gate and continued his climb up the mountain. The path made wild bends left and right, slowly inclining till he reached a much tougher terrain. The trees were now more sparsely divided and were growing at wild angles out of the ground, the ground beneath his feet became loose and rocky. The path abruptly widened severely and gave into a far more open area of mountainous terrain. Though not quite dangerous yet, Estavir would have to start actually climbing now.

So he started to climb hunched towards the ground, eventually reaching a mouth in the mountainside that was deep enough to be a cave and while he couldn't distinguish any features in the dark, certainly it was deep and somewhere in the distance it was lit.

Being the only solid ground he was bound to have for a while, he sat down and looked around the visible face of the mountain and he was certain he could spot at least two more similar opening further ahead. It was then he noticed the rough tree line he had traversed to get here, and no path was visible from here, he couldn't even be sure of where he started the journey. He did notice, as he his gaze skimmed over from side to side that a rock to his right side seemed unusually flattened and he inspected it. It had carvings that made up the phrase " Knowing _______ is half the battle."

There was a space between 'knowing' and 'is' which felt deeper and smoother than the rest of the rock, so he assumed someone deliberately erased the most important word. He was feeling a mix of emotions; he wanted to remain sitting where he was, but he also wanted to reach the top of the mountain, because his nightmares told him doing so would help. It was an odd moment, then and there, he felt content, though only ever so slightly and for so short a moment, only to be wheeled back into chaos, back into line, back on the path to the top of Sensan-Ghi.

He wanted to keep climbing but could find no good rocks to grab onto. He looked down and though not deadly, falling certainly would injure him greatly; he decided to try the cave instead.

He walked for a few hundred meters in obscurity before reaching a 90 degree turn that seemed to be where the cast light he saw earlier came from. He walked around the corner and to his surprise the cave stopped looking like a cave all-together. The corridor in front of him was covered on all four sides by a dark though very reflective stone, all sides evenly measured, floating orbs of lights every few meters as far as he could see. He walked down the corridor, impressed, stunned, perplexed also, by the way the stone seemed to cast a reflection of himself ever so slightly. The oddity of his reflections were not noticeable at first, but it seemed the opacity of his reflections increased as he went further down the corridor, eventually reaching a mirror in his path that served as a dead end, no where to travel but back. The mirror, upon closer inspection, was partially see-through and when Estavir put his finger against the what he thought was glass seemed to be rather gelatinous in nature rather than hard. He put his hand through the mirror, slightly recoiling. It felt cold and wet but actually didn't hurt despite his initial reaction, so he put his head through the mirror as well and saw a big red arrow pointing directly at a circle on the ground a few meters ahead. He made his way all the way through and approached the circle.

"You are here" it said in smeared letters. Where is here, he thought, before looking up. The ground seemed to trip out from under him as he was unable to explain what he saw. It was as if he was walking the inner surface of a sphere, whose surface was entirely covered in a maze. This, in every significant way, failed to be as noticeable to him as the fact he saw several of himself, at different points in the mazed sky all around him, also looking back at him.