The Mirror’s Truth (Manifest Delusions, #2)

by Michael R. Fletcher

Flush fading, Morgen examined him with nervous eyes. The boy looked like maybe Wichtig brushed against an uncomfortable truth. Wichtig tried to remember what he said, but he hadn’t been listening to himself. He shrugged the thought away. No surprise the boy finds wisdom in my words

From the first time you see your Reflection fail to mimic your actions to the moment you are dragged screaming into the mirror, you shall know no moment of peace. —Im Spiegel, Mirrorist

Not once in all the decades since had he felt an ounce of guilt over his first kill. If anything, Bedeckt decided he should be grateful. That first kill taught him how easy it was. It taught him violence wasn’t the final refuge of the stupid, but rather the final refuge of a man unwilling to lose.

The day I am nothing is the day I die.

“I am backed by the faith of the people. I am backed by my faith in myself. I am backed by the very god you worship. What is skill in the face of all this? Fool.”

he’s just like me

A thousand times the city-states came against us, and a thousand times we threw them back. They say this like it was our great victory. It was not. We now speak their harsh tongue, our own long forgotten. Our children run away, seeking adventure in stone cities. Where once we chose the sane to lead us, we now mimic the madness of the city-states. They won this war a thousand years ago.

Self-loathing is the natural state for humanity. We know there is something wrong with us. We are at war with ourselves, and it’s a war we are doomed to lose.

War isn’t insanity, it’s the base state for all reality. Plants war for sunlight. Animals war for food and water. Wolves battle to decide who leads the pack. All life is struggle. Peace, now that is insanity.

“Decisions are pointless because you never know when you’ll need to change your mind and if you’ve already decided something, you’ll make a liar of yourself.”

We are each living a story. What many of us are too afraid to admit is that we are the authors of our story. You are living the life you chose for yourself. You are living the result of each and every one of your choices. If you are letting others make decisions for you, you are allowing them to write your story. Do they have your best interests at heart? If you are unhappy, whose fault is that? Don’t like your life, go write yourself a better one.

I can no longer pretend the future doesn’t terrify me. The philosophers say that, in this responsive reality, we are the authors of our own fate. Could there be a more damning curse? I look at the choices I have made and I see that I have carefully constructed my own failure.

“Your love is an anchor,” Bedeckt told her. “Wichtig is right: Emotion is manipulation.” “Even I don’t believe that,” said Wichtig in the other ear. “Emotion is a strength I never dared.”

“The facts don’t matter. Facts are a hindrance. Unless they support whatever it is you’re saying, in which case they are the most important thing in the world and anyone who says otherwise is an idiot.”

Only fools worship gods. There is nothing out there that man did not make. —Anonymous