"So at last the Mirrorbender shows herself," hissed Vanity's voice. I was still not used to seeing Vanessa's once adorable face on that of a monster like Vanity. The Half-Life's sharp teeth glinted in the light as she spoke.
"Let go of my friend!" I cried from above.
"Or what? You will run away again?" Vanity squeezed Zeno's neck tighter. He tried to push her hand away, but she only increased her grip. Zeno began to choke.
"Stop!" I pleaded. "You're hurting him."
"Stop, you're hurting him," mocked Vanity.
"Stop, or I will destroy this." I held up the mirror.
"So you discovered my little secret, how clever. And to think I figured you had nothing in that empty head of yours." Vanity released Zeno. He fell forward gasping for air.
"Zeno are you alright?" I cried.
"I was just a little choked up after seeing you, that's all. I thought you would never come." He gave me a thumbs up. "How's the ankle?"
"It's good," I replied.
"Hello?" interrupted Vanity. "I'm still here you know."
"I haven't forgotten about you," I said.
"Good." Vanity motioned to one of her Shadows. "Apprehend the tailor." A Shadow came up behind and snatched Zeno's arms.
"Hey watch the coat, buddy," said Zeno to the Shadow. "It's one of a kind." Vanity turned to me.
"Now that you have my attention, I am curious to know what you are planning to do next."
"You are going to let us leave this town. All of us, Zeno, the Portly Brothers, Owen, me, Hijinx, the gargoyles. Everyone that you have trapped here."
"No wonder you were able to get my mirror with all those beasts backing you up. And here I thought you did it all on your lonesome. Pitiful."
"You're the pitiful one here. Stealing girls beauty, trapping and turning innocent people into Shadows, removing precious memories. You should be ashamed."
"But I am not ashamed. So is the nature of a Half-Life."
"Then you leave me with no choice. I will destroy your mirror and you along with it."
"Go ahead," said Vanity calmly. "Break it if you can." I slammed the mirror on the ground. The frame broke but the glass remained unscathed. I tried again, nothing. I picked it up once more and forcefully banged it against the stair's metal railing. The mirror would not break. Vanity's hollering laughter increased at each failed attempt.
"Why isn't it breaking?" I whispered feeling frustrated. I stomped it with my foot. "What am I doing wrong. I've never had this much trouble breaking a mirror."
"Having difficulties?" Vanity appeared beside me. I screamed and jumped back. The woman had moved like smoke, quick and without a sound.
"How did you get up here so fast?"
"For being a Mirrorbender, you certainly know very little about Half-Lives. Such as how you think you can harm me, so naive. Hasn't anyone told you that Half-Lives are immortal meaning we can't be killed." Vanity took a step forward. I held the mirror up in defense. My hands trembled with fright. "Half-Lives have lived for thousands of years. I personally have been stabbed, burned at the stake, drowned, imprisoned without food or water, and still I live, unable to find the sweet embrace of death. We are like mist. Here one moment there another" Vanity pointed towards the mirror. "Why not you take a look in this mirror and see what us, Half-Lives, truly are. You might be surprised."
Hesitant to look I slowly turned my head so I could see Vanity in the mirror. I screamed at the horrifying sight. Vanity appeared like a skeleton with dead leaves covering the bones. Her decaying and balding scalp had wisps of long white hair. If the crypt keeper ever had a wife she would be it. Vanity smiled, her lips long rotted away showed her fangs. A zombie would look more alive than she. The only thing that remained unchanged were the bright glowing purple eyes that sank deep within her skull.
"Impressed," chuckled Vanity. "This mirror reveals my true form. The only object I cannot cover in illusion. It holds all my power. You are right trying to destroy it, but like me it is indestructible."
"No," I whispered.
"Yes," said Vanity. "Now let's pick up where we left off in the town square. Oh, Shadows!" Two Shadows appeared carrying the Portly Brothers by the their legs. The pigs squealed and shook in terror. Vanity leaned down to their faces. "So you're hogs you say. I thought hogs were bigger and tougher. You're nothing but two little scared piglets wishing to be something you are not." Vanity's hand became covered in dark mist. It formed into a long thin blade.
"Please, help us, Mirrorbender!" cried Bran.
"Don't let us die, no!" whimpered Stan.
"Stop! Please, stop!" Tears ran down my cheeks. "They are my friends! They are innocent!"
"They are a nuisance, that is all. A pest, a bug that must be squashed. I have let them live long enough." Vanity raised her blade towards the pigs.
I could not take it any longer. I had to do something.
"No!" I shouted as I lunged forward with the mirror. Pushing Vanity backwards, the two of us tumbled over the railing down to the floor below. I landed in a soft pile of sand, unharmed, but Vanity screamed in pain not from the fall but from the mirror touching her skin. Her skin blistered and boiled at the mirror's touch.
"Get it off me! Get it off me!" she hollered. Vanity whacked the mirror with her hands sending it flying across the room and landing near the unconscious Owen. I watched as Vanity grabbed her blistering arm. "My arm!" she cried. "It's burning!"
I jumped to my feet and tried to run, but Vanity was too quick. The woman grabbed my hurt ankle and yanked me down. I fell to the ground screaming in pain.
"I won't let you go that easy, Mirrorbender." From my pocket I pulled out my small mirror and twisting around pressed its shiny surface onto Vanity's face. The Half-Life screamed again. Her face blistered and began to melt. She let go of me clutching her singed face. "My face! My beautiful face! Damn you, Mirrorbender!"
Zeno cheered. "Whoa! Yeah! Hit her again!" He turned to the Shadow holding him. "That's my new friend over there beating up your boss. Look at her go."
I limped across the room towards Owen ignoring the pain in my ankle. I patted his face.
"Please, wake up, Owen. Please, wake up. I need you." Owen's eyes slowly began to open.
"What...happened?" He stared up at me with a dazed and confused look.
"Vanity knocked you out, but I need your help." He looked passed my shoulder and saw Vanity screaming on the ground and clutching her smoldering face.
"What did you do to her?"
"I touched her with my mirror," I said holding up my small mirror. "It seems to hurt her just like the Shadows back in the forest."
"Well keep doing it!" responded Owen.
"It's not enough. I don't know what else to do!"
"I WILL KILL YOU, MIRRORBENDER!" came the Half-Life's inflamed voice. Owen tried to move. He winced clutching his arm.
"Oh, my arm," he said writhing on the ground. "I think it's broken."
"This is not good," I said holding back cries of panic. "I need your help."
"Calm down," said Owen brushing my hair out of my face. "You're a Mirrorbender. You have to think. You can do this."
"Hope, she is coming back!" yelled Zeno from the sidelines. Sure enough, Vanity was rising to her feet.
"YOU WILL DIE, MIRRORBENDER!"
"Hope," whispered Owen. "You know that thing I stole when we first met, and I couldn't tell you about."
"Yes," I said. "I remember."
"It was part of a mirror. If touching a mirror hurts Half-Lives and they were so eager to keep this one hidden, it must be special. It's in my satchel. Get it!" I looked around. His satchel had fallen open. There were things everywhere.
"Where is it?" I started to feel around, pushing sand out of the way. "What does it look like?"
"It's black and shaped like a triangle. It also glows many colors."
"I don't see it!"
"Hope!" cried Zeno. "Watch out!" I felt a tug on my ponytail. Vanity had snatched it with her claws. She yanked me up to my knees. I screamed as Vanity bent over and pushed her blistered face forward.
"Look what you have done!" she yelled. "This face is ruined now. It won't heal properly. What have you done to me! This is no ordinary Mirrorbender magic! What are you!" Vanity yanked and shook me by my hair. "Answer me!"
I looked down to see Hijinx twirling his tail down by my knees. In his mouth was a glowing mirror shard made of polished obsidian glass. I recognized the glow from the night Owen opened his satchel and I glimpsed something inside. It was the item he stole.
I reached out and took the fragment from Hijinx's mouth. My hand began to bleed as I clutched it's sharp sides. With one swing I jabbed it into Vanity's side. The Half-Life cried out like a wounded animal letting go of my hair. Crawling passed Owen, I rushed to Vanity's round mirror. All the time, Zeno and the injured Owen cheered me on.
"You can do it, Hope!"
"Just a bit further!"
"Stab her mirror," cried Hijinx.
"MIRRORBENDER!" screamed Vanity.
Making it to the mirror, I raised the obsidian shard in the air and with all the force I could wield, brought it down onto the glass.
The moment the black shard made contact with Vanity's mirror, a light burst from it sending cracks along the mirror's surface. The mirror exploded and began sucking air and sand into it's black depths.
"NO!" cried Vanity. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!"
The Shadows around the room changed back into their human forms. They turned their gaze at me and each one began to smile. Suddenly, they burst into waves of sand and disappeared into the opening of the mirror. I screamed. I could feel myself being sucked into the vortex. The wind turned into a tempest creating a swirling tornado of sand and debris. Everything that got sucked into it disappeared. Zeno, now free, rushed over to me pulling Owen and myself to the side. All three of us held on to the rungs of the stairs watching the great scene unfold before us. The mirrors nailed to the wall shattered, their illusion showing nothing but empty frames. All the dresses Zeno had made swished in the air before being sucked down into Vanity's mirror. But the most impressive thing to see by far was Vanity herself. Her face began to change. Hijinx appeared beside me and wrapped himself in my chest.
"What is happening to her?" I cried out.
"She is digressing!" said Hijinx. "All the faces she has stolen throughout her lifetime are leaving her. Every Shadow she has created is dying." I watched as Vanessa's face turned into an old woman. The old woman slowly became younger until it too changed to another person's face. It was like watching time slip backwards. I witnessed face after face go by. Vanity screamed in terror. She tried covering her changing faces to hold on to them, but they just slipped through her fingers and into the swirling wind.
"MY BEAUTIFUL FACES!" she cried. "DON'T LEAVE ME! NO!"
At last the final face ripped away leaving the skeleton I had seen in the mirror. It was her true form. Her original face had rotted after all those years wearing the disguise of others. Nothing was left of her former beauty. Not even a hint of who she originally was. I watched as Vanity's last ounce of life left her and her purple eyes began to fade. A faint twinkle of light exited her fading sight like a remorseful tear. Finally her skin and bones brushed away into the wind becoming dust. Nothing was left but a memory.
The wind dissipated and the room grew still. The sky outside faded in and out of night and day as the mist surrounding the town receded. The illusion was over. It's queen defeated.
"Is it over?" asked Zeno as the sky settled to the early morning. He stood up and brushed sand off his clothes.
"It is," said Hijinx. "For the first time in the history of Tartarus, a Half-Life has been killed."
"That's impossible," said Owen in disbelief. "I thought they were immortal."
"Immortality," said Hijinx, "is nothing more than a vain illusion."
"So it's possible, but how?" Owen looked at me. "It's that shard I stole. Wasn't it?"
I opened up my hand, blood oozed out onto the shard. I was too shaken up to feel any pain.
"Let me wrap that up for you, dear," said Zeno quickly bolting into action. After I was patched up, he went to work on making a sling for Owen. I had not said a word. I only stared at the black shard in my hand. It's glow was gone. Owen moved close to me. His wrapped up arm hugged his chest.
"You alright, Hope?"
"Yeah," I said. "I just can't believe what just happened. I killed her."
"She wasn't human," he responded. "If that makes you feel any better."
"I guess." I handed the shard back to him. "Here put this back in your sachael. I don't want to see it again."
"I'm sorry I wasn't much help to you," said Owen looking down at his feet. "I'm ashamed to be your protector when clearly you are much stronger than me." I chuckled and shook my head.
"That's not true. I couldn't have done it if I hadn't had you and Zeno cheering me on. It gave me strength I didn't know I had. Thank you." I sighed in relief and looked out of one of the mansion's broken windows. The blue sky and orange sand fell upon the horizon. "I think it's time we get out of here."
"Yes, yes," said Portly Stan. "Before them Half-Lives catch word of what happened here. Out, out!"
"Angry they will be, yes," said Portly Bran.
"Swift be our feet," agreed Hijinx. "Though I could you a nap."
"Yes," I said. "Off to Vetra."
Without further delay, our group of six exited the mansion wounded but alive. The Portly Brothers said their farewells and departed for their caravan near the edge of town. I begged for them to stay and travel with us to Vetra, but the pigs said they had enough adventure for one day. They promised in their own Portly way that someday our paths would cross again. I waved a bandaged hand to the dancing pigs as they waddled down the street.
Glancing back at the mansion and the town, I could see the true extent of Vanity's illusion. The town appeared to have been abandoned years ago. It's residents turned into Shadows and forced to play dress up for centuries. The nightmare had lifted. The town could go back to the workings of time. No magic remained to hold it up, not anymore.
Atop the roof-line of the mansion sat many stone gargoyles. They were free. Free to watch the sunrise without worry of being pulled down into the earth. Free to fly should their wings catch the wind. In the front of the building sat the largest gargoyle. He had an underbite and two fangs just like the one I made a promise to back in Vanity's chambers. As I passed him by, I could almost see a smile form on his stony face.
We walked through the garden. Once vibrant and green was now weed infested and dead. The rose bushes that once burst with blossoms, held no splendor. All expect for one. A single green stem struggling to bloom amongst all the decay.
Soon our small group reached the edge of town. Hijinx had made his home on my shoulder. He purred when I petted his little head. Zeno whistled with delight as it was his first time in ten years to step beyond the city limits. Owen walked beside me. He gave me a gentle pat on the back as the sun peeked over the desert landscape. It was a new dawn, and this time, the sunlight was warm and bright.