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Hector hesitated. “But what if... what if it gives me, like, a crazy vision or something when I touch it?”

‘Why would it do that?’

“I don’t know. Why did it fuse with the rock?”

‘Fair point.’ Garovel allowed a beat to pass. ‘Eh, but I’m sure it’ll be fine! Go on! Touch it! See if it does anything!’

“Garovel...”

‘What? Don’t chicken out on me now. Where are those massive iron balls of yours, all of a sudden?’

Hector sighed and chuckled at the same time. “You’re such an idiot, sometimes...”

‘Like reaper, like servant, my friend.’

“Fuuuck you...” Hector did lift his hand, though, readying himself to grab the edge of the mirror. It was probably safe enough, he figured.

He touched the golden paneling.

Nothing happened.

He gave it a second, just in case, but still nothing. So he grasped the edge of the mirror more firmly and gave it a tug.

It didn’t budge. Not even a little.

‘Put some elbow grease into it.’

“What if I break it?”

‘Eh, I’m sure it’ll be fine.’

“The more you say that, the less convinced I become.”

‘Alright, I’m mostly kidding this time. Don’t break it yet.’

“‘Yet?’”

‘Let’s just have a little look-see here...’ The reaper hovered nearer to it, looking at it from directly above now, straight into the reflection. ‘Hmm. Y’know what would’ve been a cool power for this thing to have? If it let me see myself in it.’

“Cool and useless.”

‘C’mon. Being cool is its own use.’

Hector decided to raise his iron platform a bit higher in order to join the reaper in looking into it. As one might’ve expected, he could indeed see himself in it.

Huh. So that was what his helmet and pauldrons looked like from the outside. Despite how much effort he’d put into making it, he hadn’t actually bothered to check what this new dark armor looked like in a mirror yet.

Pauline had mentioned that it looked scary, and... now he could see why she thought that. He hadn’t bothered to add any ornamentation to the helmet, because the material had simply been too difficult to work with, but it had still ended up with a T-shaped eye slit, thanks to the faceguard, and a smooth overall profile that fully concealed his neck, thanks to the way it interlocked seamlessly with the gorget.

And because of how dark it was, it made him look less like a person and more like a shadow.

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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.’

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‘I mean, the guy was brilliant. I’m not contesting that. Even if he didn’t actually create these things, he’s still the only person in history who’s ever been able to affect them in any way. And my interest in his Materials definitely stems from that fact, at least in part. I just feel it in my non-existent bones that these things must harbor some kind of incredible power or secret.’

“Well, this one was secretly a teleporter, so I guess your bones were right.”

‘Indeed.’

Hector circled around the base of the Gate, inspecting it. The formation was simple enough at a glance. Two big rocks, one almost twice the size of the other, similar in overall scale to a small office building. There hadn’t been much opportunity to examine the Gate before, so Hector wanted to take his time now.

He recalled Garovel mentioning that Rathmore had marked all of his works with a certain type of etching. Hector had seen it firsthand back in Himmekel, during the treasure hunt that ultimately led them to Malast. The etching had been quite hard to spot, though, nearly invisible to the naked eye.

He looked for it now on the Gate, getting up close to the rock and squinting. He was a little afraid of touching it with his bare hands, even though it was almost certainly fine to do so. There was just a slight fear in the back of his mind that it might suddenly teleport him back down to the Undercrust--or to some totally random place, maybe.

He was fairly sure it didn’t work like that, but still. A bit of caution wouldn’t hurt, he figured.

If there were any etchings on these rocks, then he wasn’t seeing them yet. It was quite hard to tell, though. He tried looking even closer.

‘Hector,’ came Garovel’s voice. ‘Over here.’

Hector ventured to where the reaper was pointing and found something entirely unexpected.

There was a flat object jutting out of the larger rock formation, about two-thirds of the way up to its peak. It had a golden sheen to it.

“What is that?”

Garovel was already up there, investigating. ‘Um... hmm. Wait a second. This is... a mirror.’

Hector raised an iron platform for himself to join the reaper. Indeed, it was a moderately large mirror with a golden, jewel-encrusted panel. “What the heck? Why would Rathmore stick a random mirror into his Gate?”

‘He didn’t,’ said Garovel. ‘This wasn’t here before.’