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“How could that be?” said Hector. “And how do you know?”

‘How do I know? Because I was paying close attention, that’s how. Rathmore’s Materials are always of interest to me.’ The reaper hovered around the mirror, inspecting the different sides of it. ‘As for how it could be possible, well... the only explanation that I can think of is that the properties of the mirror interacted with the properties of the Gate, creating an unexpected result.’

Hmm. “But where did the mirror come from?”

‘You don’t recognize it? This is the same mirror that I had you grab during the middle of that worm fight, remember?’

Oh shit. Hector looked at it anew. The reaper was right.

‘You thought you’d dropped it at some point during all the confusion, didn’t you? You were quite bummed about it.’

“Yeah... I thought I’d lost another artifact of power, like with the Moon’s Wrath. Or if not an artifact, then something that we probably could’ve sold for a lot of money, at least.”

‘Right. We never did figure out what kind of power it harbored, if any. But I think we can safely say now that there was indeed something more to it. Otherwise, it never would’ve gotten stuck on the Gate like this.’

“Huh...”

‘In fact, this is... entirely unprecedented. In all the time I’ve been studying Rathmore’s Materials, never have I seen anything or anyone modify one of them in any way, apart from Rathmore himself.’

Dang. “When you put it like that, this, uh... this seems like kind of a big deal.”

‘It is.’ Garovel eyed Hector for a moment. ‘Wow, buddy. All this time, I had no idea you were the most powerful integrator since Rathmore. Talk about impressive.’

“I--?” Hector’s expression flattened. “Okay. First of all, I definitely didn’t do this. And second--”

‘You don’t know that. Maybe it was your aura playing havoc with things.’

“No. I don’t accept that. That’s bullshit, Garovel.”

The reaper laughed. ‘You seem surprisingly confident about that.’

“I’m confident that you’re trying to fuck with me.”

‘Heh, maybe. But we genuinely don’t know what caused this. I’m just having fun speculating, right now.’

“Uh-huh. Anyway, how do get it out of there?”

‘Good question. I suspect that we simply can’t. It looks like it’s fused with the stone. But go ahead and try pulling on it, if you want. Maybe looks are deceiving. Maybe it’ll slide free, easy as can be.’