There was a grey robe in front of him, almost like a monk's. He could see no face inside it, in fact there was no sign of anything inside it, anything at all.
'Will you come to find me?' said a voice from the robe. 'You have been asked that already. Someone tried to warn you. You did not listen, did you?'
'What do you mean?' he asked.
'Babylon Four. Before the fire, before the fury, the calm before the storm. Someone tried to warn you of what would come, dressing up the warning in dreams and whispers and premonitions. You did not listen. Will you come to find me?'
Understanding dawned. 'I did go to find her. I went to Z'ha'dum. I....'
'Left her there? How can you blame her for what happened?'
'I don't know. I shouldn't, but....'
'Emotions. Irrational little things, aren't they? Or so I'm told. You should have listened to the warning, but it was just one more door you closed behind you without really looking at what was beyond it. How many of those have there been?'
'I don't know what you mean.'
'Who are you trying to convince? Me — or yourself?'
'I don't even know who you are.'
'Do you even know who
'I....'
'Don't answer that. You can't. Ask yourself this, though. What other warnings have you ignored? What other doors have you slammed shut and lost the key for? What else have you forgotten or lost or simply not understood?'
He looked down. There was a dagger in his hands. Blood was dripping from it.
'We all sacrifice a great deal on the altar of victory. When does the time come when the sacrifice becomes more than the God is worth?'
'I don't know.'
'No, you don't. Think on that, for a while.'
The man in the monk's robe was gone. The dagger was gone. The window was gone. The light was gone.
John Sheridan reached one trembling hand to the mirror and looked at his reflection. It had returned, and for the first time in his life he seemed to be looking at a stranger staring back at him.
Galen was precisely an inch and a half taller than he was. That was such a tiny thing to harbour so much envy over, but there it was. Emotions were rarely rational, and jealousy even less so. Galen's magic came from the cold, the sterile, the scientific. Vejar's came from the imaginative, the fantastic, the spiritual.
He didn't need to watch Galen perform more parlour tricks to know that his magic had grown stronger. Something had freed it, while he had been left to wither. Left here in the dark.
'How are the others?' he asked bitterly, trying to make conversation, however futile or pointless. As if he really cared. The technomages had abandoned him just as much as Delenn and Lethke had.
'That's not what I came here to talk about, cousin.'
A mission of some kind. Yet another tempting and honourable and glorious opportunity to be killed or mutilated or generally to suffer for the good of someone else.
'I'm not listening,' Vejar snapped. He turned back to his mirror and looked at himself. For now, the mirror was just that — a mirror. There was no magic in it, but then there never had been.
Or that was what people would think. The first lesson Vejar had ever learned was that there was magic in everything. A sunrise, a morning breath, the touch of a lover, the opening and closing of a fist.
Someone had once asked Elric if he could make the dead live. Elric had smiled that curious, thin smile of his and stretched out his hand, spreading his fingers wide and then clenching them together so tightly that the veins on his wrist bulged.
'Life begins with death,' he had intoned. 'Just as all things are born, so do they die. All flesh is dead, and look!' He opened his fist again. 'Dead flesh obeys my command. Yes, I can make the dead move.'
Vejar always remembered that. There was magic everywhere.
And a mirror was one of the most magical artefacts ever forged. It destroyed illusions, saw through to the soul, pierced masks and glamours and enchantments. It was brutally honest and callously genuine.
He did not like what he saw there. He saw a man old before his time, staring with deep-set eyes back at his own. A man with clammy skin and a sickly pallor.
Behind him stood someone who seemed twenty years his junior, tall and vibrant and determined.
'You have changed, cousin,' the young man said to him.
'So have you,' Vejar replied bitterly. There was a month difference in their ages. 'Have you fallen in love at last?'
'No, although not for lack of trying. I have a mission, cousin. A purpose.'
'Good for you.'
The old man, whom Vejar could not in any way identify as himself, raised a hand and another ball of fire formed around it. He held it there for long seconds. There was no pain. There was not even any sensation. He could feel nothing.
'You have changed,' Galen said again. 'I remember when you chose to remain behind. I remember seeing the fire in your eyes, the conviction that you were right and damn all the consequences.' The young man looked at him sadly. 'What has happened to you, cousin?'
'I did not choose to stay. I was asked to stay. Elric.... he wanted me to observe her, to be ready when the time of her choice came, to ensure that she reached it.'
'Ah,' Galen replied, a faint smile playing over his face. 'That explains a lot. I assume all went according to plan?'
'You know the answer to that. She chose. It damned her and me and it cost her more than either of us can imagine, but she chose.'
'She was the salvation of an entire race. In a hundred years, will it matter what it cost her?'
Vejar rose slowly. 'How dare you?' he hissed, still looking at the mirror. He could see a flame beginning to rise in the old man's sunken eyes, a flame to match the one in his fist. 'How dare you? What do either of us care what will happen in a hundred years?'
'Why did you not go to Babylon Five?'
'What.... What do you mean?'
'I cannot believe you were not invited.'
'You know why.'
'Assume I do not. Tell me.'
Vejar closed his eyes, not wanting to see either person looking at him. He saw the vision, as he had so many times before. 'Death,' he whispered. 'Death will come to Babylon Five. Everyone there will die. Everyone! He will spare no one, not a single soul.'
'You could try to warn them.'
'And would they listen?' The rage in his voice surprised him, and for a moment he thought someone else had spoken. 'That station is cursed, and has been since the idea was conceived. It will bring nothing but pain and destruction and death, and they all know it! I've done enough for these people. I won't be a part of their doom!'
'No,' Galen said quietly. 'But you can be a part of their salvation. There is something I need your help with.'
'I have helped you enough already. I knew once that you would get me killed. Are you trying to prove me right?'
'You can remain here until the end of time while the galaxy collapses around your ears and not raise a single finger to stop it, if you like. Or you can do something. You can help. You can raise arms against a sea of troubles and scream defiance at the tempest.'
'How did you get here?'
