Chapter 58: Chapter 58 – The Mirror

Chapter 58 - The Mirror

“Shh…” I whispered into her ear, stroking her hair consolingly as she wretchedly sobbed into my shoulder. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

“It ain’t me,” she choked out, for perhaps the twentieth time. “That were never me. W-were never…” She broke down again, squeezing me ever tighter to herself. In a very real way, I was the life-line mooring her to the shores of her existence. To let go of me was to let go of herself.

I was not at all sure what the Dungeon, or the Queen who ran it, was trying to pull, but this was in severely poor taste. Jax was just beginning to take a little pride in the person she was becoming. To show her such a thing was beyond cruel.

“You know…” Arx murmured from over by the mirror, “maybe you won’t appreciate my saying so, but on the other side, looking at the two of you right now is a little strange.”

I did not look to see what she was referring to. I knew. I was faced right towards it, after all.

Generally speaking, I was not given toward homophobia. In my view, every individual had the right to find their happiness as best they could, and as long as doing so brought no harm to anyone else, no one should interfere with that pursuit. But that did not mean that I was comfortable looking at an image of myself holding a weeping naked man in my arms.

On the other hand, Jax had fellated me several times before she had fully transitioned, so at the very least, my straight card had been severely tarnished.

Oy… Does that mean that I’m bi? I had no idea. And really, I did not want to think about it. All I needed, right then, was to undergo some sort of sexuality crisis.

Jax’s sobbing redoubled. Grimacing, I reached up and very gently took the tip of her horn between my fingers. She jerked at the contact, but after a moment, her breathing began to settle. And as she started to relax into me, I smiled in relief, glad that I had found a way to help, however small.

“I notice that you’re not so comfortable looking at yourself, either,” I remarked.

Though she was standing right next to her reflection, she was still studiously averting her gaze, only occasionally giving it a bit of a side-eye. And it was her. Or a version of her, anyway. But not one that I had ever seen.

It looked like the Keltha that she had been, but… significantly younger. Shorter. Less muscular. Much like she was now, save for the obvious changes becoming a lilim had wrought in her. In fact, I would say… “You look sort of like a teenager.”

“I do?” she replied, glancing at the image briefly before jerking her eyes away. “’Snails… tell me I don’t look like that?”

“A little,” I answered truthfully. “There are differences, of course. Your hair, your eyes, and the rest. But the basic physique is pretty close. Though the version in the mirror looks pretty scrawny. Less… healthy maybe? Less fit?”

“Then that must have been when I was first Classed, I think. I was… hmm… I can’t seem to recall. Somewhere in my adolescence, I guess. As you said,” she nodded to herself, taking one last uneasy look before turning to face me fully. “I have better attributes now, though. So that would account for some of it.”

My eyebrows furrowed at her words, and thinking back, a phrase that I had read floated back to me. It had not made much sense at the time, but now? Softly, I recited it once more, mostly for her benefit “Lilim complete as base from former Core initiation.”

Nodding thoughtfully, I took in my own form. As far as I could tell, it was just the same old me. Same pudgy cheeks. Same jelly roll. Same everything. But then, I had not seen my own reflection since I had come to this place, so I did not have any frame of reference. One obvious difference, though, was that this version was still clean-shaven, so I knew that something had to be off.

“How old are you, anyway?” I asked, addressing Arx once more. “If you don’t mind saying, of course.”

She snorted, “Would I mind? What kind of question is that? And besides, you were there. I was born just last… night…”

As she drifted off, frowning, I shook my head. Was it really necessary to change her memory that way? It seemed to me that it only caused a lot of needless confusion. We both knew that was wrong.

“I… suppose you could say that you were reborn, in a manner of speaking,” I allowed. “But like this? I’m just glad that you didn’t de-age any more than you did.”

Truth be told, I was less than happy with this revelation. That she had physically reverted into the body of a teenager was disturbing to my sensibilities, and if it were not for the fact that she was still mentally an adult woman, I would have needed to cut her off entirely. In fact, if she had reverted into an actual child, I would have done regardless. Mentally mature or not, some things you just cannot rationalize your way out of.

Ugh… I felt like a pedophile just having to consider it.

“Master,” Jax whimpered into my ear, drawing my attention back to her. “Please. Tell me that ain’t me.”

“Of course, it isn’t,” I reassured her. “You have come a long way since then.”

“No,” she said, pulling back and frowning. “That man were never me! I were never… I be yer lilim! I… I always…” Her voice drifted away as her face began to crumple up once more.

I sighed. There was a degree of truth to what she was saying. In many ways, the man that she had been no longer existed, though bits and pieces of him still survived in her personality. So, from a certain point of view, she was a wholly new person. But the past was the past, incontrovertible. I could not lie to her, no matter how much she might want me to. She would know.

“What exactly do you want me to say?” I asked her, finally. “That you have always been a lilim? That we have always been bound? That I have no memory of what was or the steps that led us to where we are now? Because I cannot do that. It is our history together that gives the now any meaning. If any of those things were true, then you would not now be crying in my arms. Because being reflected as something that you are not would be a mild curiosity. Not a thing that makes you break down and weep.”

She looked at me searchingly for a moment, carefully considering my words before nodding solemnly, “Master is wise.” Then, roughly scrubbing at her face, she stood, “I be being silly.” There was a long moment of hesitation as she wrestled with herself, but eventually she turned to face the mirror and announced, “That man ain’t me nor never was. I ain’t…” She stopped again and jerked her eyes away, clearly still uncomfortable with looking at the reflection, “I ain’t gonna be a’feared of no huddy mirror.”

My mouth twisted to the side at her pronouncement. I was not sure that denying the past like that, even metaphorically, was the healthiest path to take, but if that was what it took to help her come to terms with it, then so be it. It was not as if I had any better ideas. I would just have to be there for her to lean on if she broke down again.

Coming to my feet once more, I stepped up behind her, rubbing the sides of her arms comfortingly before glancing back to Arx, “So what now? You said this was the exit, right?”

“Probably. We just have to figure out how to open it,” she explained, tapping at the glass with the back of her knuckle. “There’s always some final puzzle or mechanism, but once we figure it out, we should be able to get through here.”

“I don’t see how,” I returned. “There’s no key holes or anything like that. No crystal hanging around to give us a hint, and I don’t see any writing. Unless those marks along the frame mean anything to you?”

She shook her head, “Not a thing. It’s just a big mirror that seems to reflect… irrelevant things from long ago. Or so I’m assuming. I’ve never seen you without that hair on your face.”

“It’s called a beard,” I explained. “I usually shave it off. It gets in the way when you eat, and it’s itchy.”

“I like it,” Jax said quietly, reaching up to run her claws through it. “It makes ye unique. A thing that only me Master can do.”

“I agree,” Arx smiled, exposing one of her fangs.

“Hmph. You just haven’t seen any other humans before,” I said, dismissing their complements self-consciously. “So what do we do then? Figure out some clue? What are we supposed to get from a mirror that reflects the past?”

“It be a mirror what reflects lies,” Jax growled. “Deserves a good smashing for it, too.”

That was out of the question, unfortunately. She had spent some minutes vigorously trying to do just that before she had broken down but to no avail. For all that it looked like an ordinary mirror, it might as well have been made of tank armor.

“Lies, is it?” I repeated, smirking a bit, but then I had a funny little thought, “I wonder if we could make it reflect the ‘truth’ somehow? Or at least the present.”

“How do you mean?” Arx asked.

“Well… I don’t know exactly,” I admitted. “But one thing we can say is that the people in the mirror are not the ones out here. Not anymore. We can do things they couldn’t.”

“There isn’t much that I can do differently than that other me,” Arx said. “All I’ve really got is an arrow and the singular inability to control it.”

I nodded slowly, thinking over the situation. Most of our abilities created external effects, summoning shadows or clones and whatnot. And we had seen that it was perfectly capable of duplicating objects even though our past selves would have had no access to some of them. Jax’s axe was a prime example.

No, what we needed was something that was completely impossible. To create a contradiction, somehow.

Idly, I began running my fingers through my beard, just looking to see how it would interpret the action. Of course, it was not particularly long. A single month was not enough for me achieve much growth, so all I saw was myself scratching at my chin. Frowning at the lack of input, I glanced down at Jax. Of the three of us, she was the most markedly different.

And she had quite the shock of hair now. Especially when compared to the bald man in the mirror.

Hmm… Grabbing up a few strands, I held them aloft and began letting them cascade back. The mirror showed nothing of this. Only my fingers holding empty air.

For a moment, anyway.

Just as I was about to discard the idea, the mirror gave a slight pip! The three of us jumped at the sudden noise, and as one, we stared. It was difficult to see, and had it not been for the sound of it breaking, we would have never noticed. However, a hairline fracture had distorted its once flawless surface right where my fingers where.

“Oh, did nay like that did ye, fannybaws,” Jax chirped delightedly, as if the mirror could hear her. “Gone gammie now have ye? Let’s see how ye like this!”

So saying, she began shaking her chest back and forth, causing her modest bosom to do… wondrous… wondrous things. However, despite how spellbound I was, the mirror did not seem to care. It merely showed the man imitating her, shaking his own chest in apparent mockery.

Growling now, she shouted, “Yeah? So how about this then?”

Spreading her legs, she held aloft the first two fingers of her right hand and slowly dipped them down, “Uh oh. How are ye going to handle this? Where they gonna go, eh? W-where…” The moment her fingers made contact, a shiver ran the way down the back of her spine, and she looked over her shoulder at me.

She had felt it. Instantly. There is only so much provocation a man can take, after all, even if it had not precisely been directed at me. And as she moistened her lips, her eyes trailed down to where I was… shall we say, applauding her efforts. Smiling now, she very deliberately began to slide her fingers the rest of the way in.

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And the second she did, a hole the size of a baseball exploded away from the shining surface of the mirror. I had not even seen what had been reflected there. I was too distracted.

“’S-stits…” Arx grunted from the side, causing me to quickly shift my attention to her. The moment our eyes met, she gasped, and her legs quivering, she dropped to her knees.

“Yes…” Jax drawled, sliding her own gaze over to where Arx was hunched over. “Ye’ve not felt him afore. Have ye? To have his gaze upon ye? When he’s at full mast?”

She did not reply. It was all she could do to breathe right then.

Jax smiled in self-satisfaction as she watched her writhe on the ground. Then, after a moment, she glanced at the mirror consideringly before turning back to me. Stepping forward, she reached up to trail her now glistening fingers down the center of my chest, “Come, Master. Let us feed your new lilim. And show this… horrid mirror… exactly what we be.”

---

The next few minutes of my life really should not have been particularly memorable. Jax and I had engaged in many sexual acts up to that point and would many times in the future. However, this time, she had something to prove. This was a statement. Of who she was. What she was. And a vigorous denial of what she was not.

Jax sashayed over to the mirror, her movements liquid in their opposition to everything that was male. And the one time I bothered to look at her reflection, the Jax-that-was had been helplessly twisted into a parody of the man he had been. He would never have walked that way. There had always been an aggressive purpose to his step.

And true, Jax was still aggressive. Aggressively feminine.

As she arrived at the mirror, right next to Arx’s quivering form, she pressed her chest to its surface and extended the smooth mounds of her backside toward me. Giving it a bit of a shake, she crooned, “Come, Master. Take me. Take what be yer own.”

So saying, her sex opened fully and a milky white fluid began to run down the inside of her leg.

That was the last straw for me. All thoughts of anything besides fulfilling every one of Jax’s desires fled from my mind, and I put away any need to compare our actions with those of the mirror.

I approached slowly, my own sex fairly throbbing with anticipation, and Arx’s moans only increased with my encroaching proximity.

“Yes…” Jax whispered down to her, her own hips beginning to gyrate in her want, “He comes now. Feel him. Ah~ Yes…! Taste his need.”

I grinned at her words. It was like she was some sort of temptress, coaching her ward, and perhaps she was, for all that the woman that Arx had been was vastly more experienced than Jax could ever be. However, Arx was not a ‘woman’ anymore. She was lilim. Other, in some as yet undefined way. And in that, Jax was the superior. Regardless, seeing and hearing the two of them in such a state was precisely my own kryptonite.

Coming up behind her, I reached out and gently took hold of the softness that had been presented to me, enjoying the feel of her flesh in my hand. Her backside was not quite the thing of perfection that Arx’s had once been, but it was lovely in it’s own right. Smooth and round, with a lush bit of padding riding over the hard muscle underneath, and with her bent over like this, it was as if her hips had subtly widened themselves. Enticing me forward.

“Gah~! Oh, Master, I can feel every flick of yer eyes on me,” she moaned. “I can feel yer approval and yer judgments. All of it. Mmm… It stirs me so. Every time, I feel it. And every day, the the judgments lessen and yer approval grows. Oh, Master! I can nay wait fer the day that there be naught but passion in yer eyes. I hunger fer it. The thought of… of… hah~” She broke off panting for a moment before saying, “I’ll be yer perfect lilim, Master. I promise ye. I yearn for that day.”

The perfect lilim, eh? The thought was enticing. Seductive. In a way, it was a thing that was too good to be true. Not something that a person could realistically hope for, for fear of inevitable disappointment. It was a child-like dream. A thing that one sets aside as merest fantasy. Like… becoming an astronaut. Or Batman. One does not just go out and date a supermodel. And even then, everyone has flaws. Everyone. Physical, emotional, or personal. Usually a little of all three. It is a part of what it is to be human.

However, with the way things were progressing, there was a real possibility that something like that might happen, at least on the physical side of things. After all, to their eyes, I already was some measure of perfect, and while I was aware that there was an unfairness to the one-sidedness of that, no way of rectifying the situation had yet presented itself.

“Well, then,” I said gruffly, mostly teasing her, “Since you’re promising, I’ll look forward to it.”

With that, there was nothing more to say, and I gently introduced myself to her entrance, allowing the ever-present suction there to draw me to my hilt. It was as simultaneously a beautiful sensation as it was a terrifying concept. After all, once I was within her, she did not have to let me escape again.

I stood, languishing in the wonderful feeling of that pull for a moment before I slowly drew myself away from it and thrust home. Once.

Jax’s breath caught, and with a squeak, she began to quiver, her walls quaking about me.

Arx gasped again from beneath us, and she rolled herself into a ball with her hands between her legs, “By all… Ah~ Hall the… t-too much!”

Jax just laughed, though her own voice was no less shaky, “Too much, she s-says. Ah, ye l-light-weight. He ain’t even betwixt yer le-hegs.”

“Go easy, Jax,” I admonished her playfully, even as I watched Arx slowly losing her mind underneath our feet. “It’s her first day.”

“Nnn~ Please!” she wheezed out from between her teeth. “Don’t l-look at me! I c-can’t…!”

“Aye, right ye are, Master,” Jax murmured sympathetically, despite her already starting to push against me, encouraging me to continue, “Don’t ye worry, hen. We’ll have ye taking it like a champion in no time!”

Deciding to put action to words, I began to take up a rhythm, slowly at first, just enjoying myself. It was entrancing to watch the waves that my ministrations were causing in my lilim’s backside.

“Ah, look at ye, ye little slut,” Jax whispered, and I looked up. She was talking to her other self, in the mirror, almost lovingly tracing her claws along her old face. “Look at how hard ye are, taking him. Letting him pound himself into ye. Look at the ecstasy in yer eyes. Ah~ If only ye knew what’s to come. The pleasure. Pure and unfettered.”

I picked up the tempo, slightly disturbed by her words yet encouraged by her tone. There was something creeping into her voice, here and there. Highlighting certain words over others. A vibration that I could feel in my chest. And somehow, something dislodged in my Core, and the flow between us intensified.

Through it, I faintly began to feel some of what she was feeling. It was rather like being caught out at sea in a dingy and watching a hurricane tearing a desert island from its moorings in the far distance.

“Yes!” she shouted, throwing her head back, “Master, yes! More! Feel me more! Feel us!”

Encouraged, I began riding the waves coming from her, edging my way closer to that terrifying storm, and for a few moments, she met me, thrust for thrust.

“But look ye,” she said, addressing the mirror once more, her words broken by the continued rhythm of our joining, “Look at that useless thing flapping about. What good is it? Ye don’t want it do ye? He don’t want it. Ye should trade it in fer something useful. Something ye want. Something ye need. Ye yearn for it. To feel him true. Like I can. Like I do. Right now…”

Her breathing intensified, and for a few seconds, she trailed off, too caught up by the encroaching inevitability of our act to speak. However, as it began to crest, she looked up at her reflection again, her eyes blazing, “Look ye. Look at what be true.”

With that, she pushed away, trailing smoke as she arched her back against me, light as a feather. And as I began to empty myself within her, my lilim began to howl, and the mirror had no choice but to reflect our joining.

And it shattered.

---

“Do ye know, Master,” Jax muttered from where she was squatting next to Arx’s unconscious form, “Perhaps we was a touch hasty picking this one’s skill.” Gently flicking her nose a few more times, she looked up at me, “She don’t have any defenses against ye, if ye take me meaning. Nor, now I think on it, any means of releasing the build of yer aura.”

I bobbed my head a few times in acknowledgment, not really paying too much attention. I was mostly focused on the giant void that had just opened before us. “You’re right. She’ll need several skills before she’s up to speed. Hopefully, we won’t run into anything that would force me to remove a status effect until then. That might be… unfortunate.”

“But fun,” she added, a slow grin beginning to spread across her face.

I grunted, “Not during a fight.”

I knew exactly what the Lust ailment was like. It would be close to suicidal to inflict that on yourself while something was trying to kill you.

“No,” she acknowledged, “Not a serious one, anyhow.”

Coming to her feet and stretching with one arm over her head, she glanced at me. Smiling contentedly, she padded over to wrap her arms around my waist. “Thank you,” she murmured quietly. “Fer seeing me.”

I took a breath. I would never know exactly what the truth of things was, had I not bound her. I did not know whether she would have ever enjoyed the company of men, nor whether she would have come to love me. I did not even know whether she had been… well, I did not know what the proper word for it would be. Something like… ‘trans’, maybe. But that did not quite track. Trapped in a man’s body, anyway.

Really, I had no idea what all the binding was responsible for. It had turned her into a lilim and bound us together. That was about it. The rest was speculation.

All I knew for certain was that if I had never landed in that forest and been taken to that camp, Jax would now be dead. And that was a fact. Perhaps a jury of my peers would not see it that way, but I felt that I had done alright by her. Or as best as I could, given the circumstances. At the very least, she seemed happy, and in a very real way, that made me happy as well.

Rubbing my hand along the small of her back, I kissed the top of her head, “I only do what I can. But you’re welcome.”

Right about then, Arx rolled over onto her back. Her hands were still wedged rather firmly between her legs, and giving no other sign that she might be waking up, she squeaked and began to quiver for a moment.

“Did she just…?”

“Aye,” Jax affirmed softly, stroking the hair on my belly. I was not quite sure, but I thought that I detected some faint ab ridges starting to appear.

I made a face, somewhere between impressed and simple appreciation for the moment, “Nice.”

“Aye,” she said again.

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