Handbook of Erotic Fantasy: The Hall of Ultracosmic Mirrors (Patreon)

Excerpt from Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park: “The Hall of Ultracosmic Mirrors is an elevated, complicated maze of mirrors on articulated, moving arms. They reveal versions of you from other realms or dimensions, generally twisted or purely evil ones. Should a mirror reflecting such a person be broken, they might escape, or switch places with the viewer.”

                                                                                       *****

There had been a great deal of drinking. Fighter was certain of that much. The headache (now mercifully faded) attested to the fact. There were vague memories as well, filled with half-recollected snatches of confused conversation.

“May I help you into the cloak?” was clear enough. So was ‘the Unraveling’ (or possibly ‘the Unscrambling.’ Gods he could go for a plate of eggs and a black coffee). There had been a voice saying these things: a hollow metallic monotone out of an too-big helmet. Warforged were like that, though. All reverb and flat affect. This one had been impeccably dressed for some reason, wearing an oversized sari and flourishing every other word with its designer pallu. Hangover or no, it was hard to forget a thing like that.

“Hello?” he called. “Wizard, you in here?” So did the busty blonde chick in the mirror. She’d been following him ever since he woke up.

Fighter glared about the left-and-right of yet another intersection. So did the blonde. This maze of mirrors was like a gnome’s fever dream. Every surface was covered with heavy gilt frames, and every frame was attached to a spidery, articulated arm. These dodged and bobbed, following him like the eyes of some homebrewed beholder. It was as if the whole hall itself were watching him pass, facing Fighter with reflections and refractions, and nearly all of them showing the blonde.

Sometimes she strutted through the halls of a shining silver ship. Sometimes she fought side by side those bounty hunter chicks. Once or twice she was replaced with a mustachioed Fighter or a bright yellow aarakocra. And once she walked hand in hand with an oddly familiar, ashen-skinned man with raven hair and blood-red eyes. But for the most part….

“You are a huge slut,” he told the reflection. She said the same to him. But then again, Fighter wasn’t the one making friends with black tentacles, writhing at the bottom of an orgy pile, or getting felt up in half a dozen different mirrors.

“Too bad you’re just an illusion,” they said to one another, turning back-to-back and each biting their lip. “That ass though! What I wouldn’t give to get in those pants!”

Elsewhere in the maze, the rest of the Heroes wandered. They reassured one another (and themselves) that no, the eidolon what's-her-name was not especially attractive; that Warlock had far too many muscles for any girl’s taste; that vows of celibacy were sacrosanct.

And somewhere in the depths of the Ultracosm, the goddess of dramatic irony mopped her brow, took a sip from her divine Nalgene, and continued pedaling her stationary bike like mad.