Wordsworth – Chapter 11

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"

It is an old question. The words fall from lips wise in magic and poison, lips that should know better than to ask, and the mirror listens.

The mirror only shows another image, though. Shows the one who asked, distorted and twisted around, an image that she recognizes as her own even as it isn't.

The mirror lies.

Because that's what the mirror does, all it can do: it shows a world that isn't, that never was. A world whose only merit is to shine a new light on the one that is.

But that lie has enough truth to be dangerous, and those are the worst lies.

"Tay? Are you there?" Lisa asks, her voice a familiar enough whisper through my headset. So familiar that I know she's not the Lisa from the other side of the mirror, that she's the real Lisa.

My Lisa.

The one that's been threatened.

"Yes," I answer.

There's a pause. A deep breath. An aborted sigh.

"I don't want you to do this," she tells me, her voice not trembling even as the emotion it carries does.

I close my eyes. Open them.

"You can't stop me."

And she laughs.

"Of course I can, Tay. I can give you fake information, direct you to other targets. I can tie you up being the kind of hero you want to be and not… this." Her voice starts light, almost mocking. And then it ends almost pleading.

He hurt my Lisa.

"You won't," I tell her as carefully and tenderly as I wish I could rub the back of her neck in reassurance, my fingers tangling through golden tresses that befriended the Sun…

"No. No, I won't," she breathes out. And then her voice hardens. "But I wish I could."

I smile. Not the sharp thing, the one that wishes it could bite and tear, but the gentle, soft one.

"You are too good for that, Liz. You know how it would hurt me to be manipulated, so you won't do it. You know how it would hurt me to have me be tied down, so you'll set me free. You know how I…"

"I know how much you want to be a hero. And I know this isn't the kind of hero you want to be."

I close my eyes, and allow soothing darkness to remain.

Then I let the words flow out.

"I… I want it, Liz. I want it so much, to live up to that shining ideal, to have a part of me, a pure part, roaming the world, unfettered by all that came after, all that was soured, defiled, and taken away. I want to be the hero I dreamed about, the hero from storytime, the hero who may lose, who may not always win, but that will always, [always] do the right thing…"

Darkness shifts, a caress in the dark, a comforting hand upon a restless brow.

"Then… Then don't do this. Let me fight my own fight, Tay."

There is cold in the darkness. Fear. Uncertainty.

But… But sometimes, it's the darkness beneath warm sheets, and there's safety and assurance.

And warmth.

The warmth of hair that befriended the Sun framing a foxy, cunning smile.

"You're afraid. Afraid that I'll lose a part of me, that I won't come out of this being able to be the kind of hero I dreamed about, that I'll be… tainted. Marred. But you're wrong, Lisa, because if I didn't do this, if I stood aside… Then I wouldn't be saving an innocent. I would be abandoning the maiden in the dragon's clutches. And that's not what heroes do."

The silence stretches, and I can almost feel her fingers interlaced between mine, clutching my hand tightly enough it could've hurt once upon a time.

"Not a dragon. A snake."

I feel my lips curl up into a soft smile, and my eyes open to watch a night sky, clouds whitened by Moon and streetlights drifting above me.

"Many dragons are just big snakes."

She chuckles, and my smile widens.

"All right, you win. You always win. That's what heroes do, isn't it?"

"No, Liz. Heroes fight. Heroes struggle. Heroes, sometimes, lose. But they do it meaningfully."

There's a sharp breath that crackles through my headset.

"Tay… please, don't lose."

A cloud moves just enough that I can see Moon shyly peeking out at me, almost winking in her thin profile.

"I won't."

And I look down.

There's a squat building, an abandoned one atop a hill sectioned by wooden fences that hide away construction equipment. In the municipal registry, it's a stalled project, one of many in Brockton Bay, just another investment that didn't pay off, a dream that soured.

But I followed Javert here two hours ago, the mad, relentless investigator chasing down the prey I gave him, and I know what lies beneath. No, this isn't a dream that soured.

It's a nightmare wearing a mask.

And I feel the temptation once again. I feel each and every tale at my disposal, the ways I could turn this nightmare against its master.

A Cask of Amontillado, promised beneath buried rubble, walls closing in, entombing those below me to fester in their offense against my loved one till their bones became brittle with age and darkness.

A Telltale Heart, calling out the crimes committed by their master until each and every one of the mercenaries below him knew what it is that the snake does on the other side of the mirror, until their hearts were filled with the same song for vengeance that becomes deafening clarion call in mine. Until the lair of the snake became his restless, bloodied tomb.

Or maybe something fanciful, something Through the Looking Glass as I turned the twisting corridors into something removed from any logic that isn't dreamlike, teasing with an upside-down world that twirled, and danced, and carried away into madness.

I could even sing about Asterion. Poor, crazed Asterion, buried alive in a house with too many corners by a king who feared the spawn of his wife. Turned into a monster by a birth orchestrated by a spurned god, a man with the head of a bull hunting down the others in the labyrinth as the hunger for the flesh of men grew with every year of captivity.

And I could make it terribly, dreadfully personal, Coil standing In the Desert, watching as a twisted, pitiful, naked creature wearing his face devours its bitter heart.

I could. I feel the words thrumming on my fingertips, ready to be unleashed, to be sung, to be brought into a world eager to listen to them. I could make this whole place become the nightmare its master deserves.

I could free Lisa, my Lisa, protect her and keep her away from a darkness that isn't warm nor safe.

I could… But Lisa's right. Because that would be vengeance, it would be cruelty, it would be…

Not what heroes do.

So, I won't be cruel, I won't be petty, I won't be the cat playfully batting at its terrified prey.

But I won't be merciful. I won't be as soft as I would be with someone deserving of kindness.

I will be… just.

And that can also be terrible.

"He just called," Lisa says.

I close my eyes tightly, trying to focus despite the rush of anxiety and anticipation the three words bring me.

Because Coil just called Lisa to give her the go-ahead, the signal for the Undersiders to proceed in their hit and run.

The signal that they are under the protection of his power.

That he just split the timelines.

My fingers tightly clasp Lisa's tablet in my messenger bag.

I open my eyes, my vision clearer than perhaps I would prefer.

"Understood."

"You do realize you're just letting me get away with another crime, don't you?" she teases me.

And I smile. Not softly, not quite, but still not as harshly as the monster in its lair deserves.

"Who said I wouldn't punish you afterward?" I answer.

And there's strangled laughter on the other end of the line.

"Tay… I'm pretty sure my karma will be in the clear after helping you bag one of the city's top villains."

"We shall see. So, the audio's hacked?"

"Yes, you can give them your poetry recital or whatever it is that your too literally Quixotic mind can come up with this time around," she tries to lightly banter, but the tone just isn't right.

"Something like that, yes. And… Liz?"

"Yes?"

"Good luck committing crimes."

There's a pause.

"I swear, if you pull some bullshit Robin Hood reading to make me give up my well-earned loot…"

I laugh.

"Thanks for giving me [ideas]."

"Oh, as if you ever lacked any of [those]."

We share a quiet chuckle, and then I look down.

And sigh.

"Liz… This will be the last time he can force you to do anything. I swear."

"I… I know. Thank you, Tay."

I hang up.

"No. Thank you, Liz."

And I take out her tablet.

Once again, it's easy to browse through the hacked security cameras, to see everything going on in the underground lair. There are sections of it that haven't been finished, particularly a big vault that remains open and empty whose purpose I can only guess at, but no construction workers are there at this time, and I can only see uniformed mercenaries going around, enough of them to provide me with a substantial audience.

And, of course, sitting in his office, there's Coil.

A tall, thin man. Almost skeletal, his silhouette disturbing even without the black body glove adorned with the twisting white snake that brings his name to mind.

Well, one of his names. The one that matters.

I contemplate him, trying to divine a hint of the true horrors Lisa's only vaguely alluded to, trying to see the monster that haunts her, but he's well disguised, and I can barely glimpse at what he intends to show. At the calm, efficient mastermind rather than the deranged, violent monster that he becomes when he's safe in the other side of the lying mirror.

Though, at this moment, so soon after he split the timelines, I know the Taylor on the other side won't differ too much from me.

I look at the tablet's clock and wait until Lisa's timer goes off, the one she remotely set so that it would warn me when precisely six minutes since Coil gave her the go-ahead had passed.

Enough time to allow some divergence, but not enough that he has reached any safe place—not even if he suspected that his lair no longer is such a place.

And so I tap another icon, one with a microphone that connects me to his base.

And I speak.

I speak of two men in a bedroom, one of them scared, terrified, and the other trying to calm him down by reading from an old book, a medieval romance, the kind of fanciful tale I would love to have between my pages if it was real, if it existed beyond being a book inside another book.

And my words align with those of the reader, with those of the man following along a knight who would come upon a palace of gold.

And, like all knights who came upon unexpected treasure, he would see a dragon guarding it.

My words rush out, more plentiful than ever before as they crawl out of the speakers in Coil's base. His mercenaries panic, turning around and going for their sidearms, some of the brightest among them trying to shoot at where the speakers are receded into the concrete walls, but they aren't quick enough to stop my words from transforming the corridors into rich mahogany covered in lush carpet, to have the sickening light of fluorescent tubes become flickering gaslight covered by ground glass.

And everything's rendered in black, white, and gray, but the effect's still that of a rich mansion that can only hint at past splendor.

And Coil's frozen, the sliding door of his escape passage suddenly covered by ancient tapestry behind which there's only a solid wall.

And there are two men beside him, one of them shivering in horror as the other reads, as he desperately tries to calm his friend down in the only way he has. As he lets the story of knight Ethelred unfold.

"Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin; Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;" he says, reading the inscription written upon the bronze shield as he beheld the guardian of the palace.

And so the knight Ethelred raised his mace to strike down the monster, and I can see Coil shy away from the reader as the mace descends in the story within my story, my voice coming out of the man holding a book I can't devour, and thunder sounds.

And Coil's base shakes.

He franticly looks for an escape, but the windows pointing outside what had been his office are just words upon concrete, and they show a glowing lake and lightning, but they don't budge at his frantic beating.

The mercenaries keep trying to find a door that will open, and some do when my words align with the doors that were in the world before the story, but they only find rooms with wooden panels and ancient furniture that once was luxurious in the now ruined House of Usher.

And I try not to delight in their panic, in Coil's frantic beating on the door to his office until he remembers why it won't open during this part of the story, and he takes a staggering step back that ends with him slumped on the bed, his head on his hands, his elbows on his knees.

And he sobs.

There's a hint of a cruel smile that I try to smother before it becomes something worse. Because he hurt Lisa, my Lisa, and he would've kept hurting her, but that's no excuse to… to become what a hero should never be.

I have no right to punish him. But I have a duty to stop him.

So I keep reading.

The dragon's slain, the knight victorious.

And a shield falls.

Solid bronze thunders on silver pavement, and the door to Coil's office shakes.

And the thunder in the knight's tale becomes wood giving way as a bloodied women steps into the room, the falsely dead coming back to life, the twin, buried sister emerging to take her vengeance.

The frightened man shudders and dies as his sister falls upon him, victim not of violence, but of fright. And the reader flees.

And Coil jumps to his feet, some hope, some energy to his movements as he runs after the reader.

But words are swift. Swifter than any man.

And so the reader runs through mahogany corridors that shudder under terrible strain, runs past doors that open for him and only him, past the architecture of a tale that has little to do with that of drab concrete.

He flees, flees from the ancient mansion with no heirs.

And Coil, master of his lair, remains behind.

From where I'm standing, atop one of the very few buildings that can look down upon the fake construction site above the too real construction below, I see a man run out of a door that wasn't there before he burst out of it, and, for just a terrible, glorious moment, the image is complete.

There's no construction equipment, no wooden fence, no squat building.

There's a mansion. Old. Ancient. Terrible.

Beautiful.

My words bring detail to it I never dreamed when I was a young child sneaking some forbidden books out of their shelves, when I had my first taste of horror, of the delightful thrill that had very little to do with the gray reality that true horror would bring me not so long after.

I remember. I remember telling Emma about the blood and dark, about dead men speaking and demanding they be let go, about crimes that baffled the greatest detective before the greatest detective.

I remember gossiping, sharing the stories as if a naughty secret even as they enthralled and captured me beneath bedcovers with a secreted flashlight, my eyes heavy with tiredness held at bay by sheer fascination and thrill.

I remember long nights having trouble falling asleep, and the stories being worth every single second of distress.

And I remember an old mansion falling apart, cracking down the middle to show a crimson moon behind it. I remember the end of the line of the Ushers, the thunder from the storm above meeting the one from the building sinking below.

It was beautiful.

It was beautiful then, and it is now.

So I watch as the detailed, precious words fall apart, as sections of intricate façade crumble under gargoyles with stone wings that won't slow their fall.

And I watch as the waters of a lake of words rush in, carrying Coil's men in white, rushing, foaming rivers.

And I watch Coil struggle among them.

And I strain.

My power's still under my control, but barely, because some speakers have been destroyed as the base sustaining them is crushed by the story. The magnitude is fading, and that is good, as I don't need as much strength to hold its reins, but my control's also fading, and…

I close my eyes, feel my words.

I… I'm not always able to, not when they're away, acting on their own, but the connection's still there, still solid enough.

And I guide them.

I guide every piece of ceiling to fall on empty water and not struggling men. I guide cracking timber to hold the shape of concrete as pockets of safety and air are established.

And I guide rushing waters to carry struggling men.

And, when I'm done, each and every one of them is a prisoner, safe beneath groaning rubble.

None of them are bleeding or moaning in pain, holding a crushed limb.

But they are all disarmed, disoriented.

Alone.

And I feel Coil strike at walls holding him and any mirrors he cares to bring with him.

And I feel my words rush back to me as my mind fades, as the effort finally takes its toll.

My eyes swim as I contemplate the fall of the House of Coil.

And then I see the crackling lightning of Dauntless stepping across the sky, rushing to the greatest display of parahuman might Brockton Bay has seen since Lung's first rampage.

And now I know I can close my eyes and rest, because they will find them. Each and every one of them. They will find them safe and helpless, and they will dig them out and bring them to judgment and justice.

Because that's what heroes do.

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This work is a repost of one of my first commissions, and one that I'm both grateful for and proud of. It can be found on QQ, SV, and AO3, and, of course, on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true), where the latest chapter will show up a week before it comes out for everyone else. It is currently 33 chapters and 94k words long and approaching its final arc at a good pace, so I hope you'll look forward to learning about Wordsworth's ending.

As I don't have access to Webnovel's "premium" features, the original italics in the text will be conveyed through the use of square brackets. I'm sorry about the inconvenience.

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