Chapter 95
"Why would I —"
"Ah, nevermind. Just look at the bloody thing."
"Fine," Milo said. "Ron, you go first." If the mirror did launch some form of attack, Milo figured that, of the three of them, he would be the best equipped to deal with it and therefore couldn't afford to be neutralized on the first round. That was his story, and he was sticking to it. Eagerly, Ron stepped forwards and stared at the mirror.
Ron gasped, and Milo nearly started raining arcane doom everywhere before he started speaking again.
"Blimey! I'm — I'm head boy!" Ron said, astonished. "And I'm holding the Quidditch Cup! I — wow, it looks like I'm captain of the team!"
"What?" Harry asked. "Let me see that!" Giving Ron a little shove, he positioned himself right in front of the mirror. "No, look, see? It's my mum and dad! They're right there in front of us!"
"Maybe," Ron said slowly, "it's different for everyone?" Then his eyes widened. "Do you reckon it shows the future?"
"How can it?" Harry asked. "All my family are dead, remember?"
"That doesn't really mean anything," Milo said. "There's no reason, beyond the fact that it would be highly improbable, that Ron couldn't become both head boy and Quidditch captain."
"But —"
"And as for your parents, well, there's dozens of ways for my kind of magic to bring back the dead," Milo said slowly.
"Right," Harry said in an odd voice. "I'd forgotten about that." Perhaps it was an unusually high Sense Motive roll for once, or Milo's recent ... confused state, but something told him that Harry was lying and hadn't, in fact, forgotten for a moment that Milo could, one day, Limited Wish Harry's parents back to life.
"Well," Milo said eventually, screwing up his courage. "I think, maybe, I should have a go at the mirror."
With a fair amount of trepidation, Milo stepped up in front of the ornate mirror while trying to avoid thinking of all the various kinds of horrible, trapped mirrors out there. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't recall a single magical mirror that didn't have some form of vicious curse. His eyes were still carefully averted, staring at the toes of his adventurer's boots.
Why, oh why did I use my only Protection From Evil on Harry? Milo berated himself.
Steadying himself with deep, calming breaths, Milo forced his eyes to stare directly at the polished silver surface.
The universe unveiled itself in front of him, and, while, conceptually at least, Milo knew from Wizards experimenting with Divinations and Greater Teleport that the distance between stars was inconceivably far and that the distance between galaxies made even that colossal distance seem completely negligible, Milo could see, clearly, pinpoints of light unfolding before him in numbers so large that they didn't have names. Many of those stars had planets, and many of those planets had moons, and a rare few of those planets and moons had life. Milo saw stout, bearded dwarves bustling about in their mines and forges, not knowing that with every greedy swing of their pick they unwittingly brought themselves one step closer to their own inexorable demise as they approached the horrors which lay beneath their underground cities. Milo saw proud elves, comfortable in the fact that they'd been toying with the very fabric of the universe and living in shining cities and soaring towers while the lesser races had yet to discover fire; blind, in their arrogance, to their ever-waning power, numbers, and relevance to the world outside of their sequestered paradises. Milo saw humans beyond number, living their lives, tilling soil, and always expanding outwards, propelled by their adventurous spirit and search for excitement, not knowing what was in store for them when they found there nowhere else to discover. Milo saw ankhegs, centaurs, chimera, dragons, gnomes, halflings, half-elves, aquatic elves, wood elves, dark elves, high elves, gray elves, wild elves, wood elves, orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, half-orcs, magmin, barghests, blink dogs, dinosaurs, dire animals, ghosts, ghouls, ogres, oozes, mephits, medusae, merfolk, sahuagin, sprites, lamias, wyverns, will-o-wisps, and wraiths. Milo saw the entirety of the Prime Material as if he were examining every object, creature, and wisp of smoke with intense scrutiny. Milo saw the Great Wheel of the Outer Planes, the sixteen infinitely large planes of Celestia, Bytopia, Elysium, the Beastlands, Arborea, Ysgard, Limbo, Pandemonium, the Abyss, Carceri, Hades, Gehenna, Baator, Acheron, Mechanus, and Arcadia arranged clockwise around the barren Outlands, which, from its heart, rose the impossibly tall Spire, ringed at its peak by Sigil, The City of Doors. Milo saw the Lower Planes ripped apart by the never ending Blood War and the uncaring laughter of their thirsting gods. Milo saw the Inner Planes of Air, Fire, Earth, Water, and Positive and Negative energy from which the Multiverse itself was made. Milo saw the Astral, Ethereal, Shadow, and elusive Mirror Transitive planes, and the madness of the Far Realm. Milo saw the Multiverse in its entirety, and it was all his.
Milo saw himself, with an infinitely high level in every Class and Prestige Class, with every feat worth taking and a good many that aren't, with infinite ranks in infinite skills, with infinite ability scores and infinite ability modifiers, with infinite hit points, with infinite spells per day and every spell known, lounging on what, at first glance, appeared to be an intricately carved throne of every precious metal, expensive special material, and gemstone Milo had ever heard of (and several others, as well) but upon closer inspection were, in fact, Epic Magic Items and Artifacts. Milo saw a backrest composed of dozens of Staffs of the Magi sitting on piles of Rings of Universal Energy Immunity and Bracers of Relentless Might. One armrest was simply the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords while the other appeared to be the great battleaxe of Heironeous Himself, sitting on a pile of the six weapons of his archenemy, Hextor. Milo, the most powerful character conceivable, lounged on his terrible throne, staring at His gauntleted hand (in some detached part of his brain, Milo realized it was nothing less than the Iron Gauntlet of War), an expression of detached ennui on his blank face. In his other hand, he idly spun the Gold Dragon Orb around his fingers, one of the most powerful artifacts in creation reduced to a mere stress ball. Who has any need of an Orb of Dragonkind, even the most powerful one, when Milo could simply rewrite reality to create a breed of better dragons, forced to bow to his every will?
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