What is this? It's a Wish-Mirror. It shows you the hard, cold, truth to what will happen if you make your wish. It does not sugar coat anything. If you can live with what you see, then I will grant you a wish. But remember, you saw the consequences for yourself, so it's not like you have not been forewarned. -- Anon Guest
If you have a wish, and want it guaranteed, there is only one way to get it. It is part of the treasure belonging to Sylvarill and a direct line of her descendants that adopted her name.
Make the journey, bring an offering for her hoard, and express your wish as clearly as possible to the current Sylvarill.
Only then, if you are polite about it, will she let you see The Mirror. There is only one, made out of a scale from the original Great Silver Dragon that helped make the world. It is just as eternal. Unbreakable, and so very many had tried to break it.
Some call it The Mirror of Wishes. Some call it The Mirror of Truth. Many have other words for it, but, 'The' and 'Mirror' are always in there somewhere. It is best just to refer to it as The Mirror. With your wish in mind, you face it, and see the full effects of your wish.
No matter how small it is, one wish can change the entire world.
If you can live with what you see in its reflective pane, then the current Sylvarill shall grant your wish.
There are only two kinds of people who go to these lengths. The extremely beneficial, and the extremely malevolent. One of the latter has made it to the sanctum where the mirror rests.
"Say it again to the frame," Sylvarill, currently shape-changed into the form of an Arch Elf.
Schorsch Roughsun glowered at the opalescent silver. "I would wish that Hellkin never became part of this world."
Ze saw devastation. A world torn asunder by the continuing escalations of what should have been the long-gone Xenophobia Wars. Ze saw humanity in chains, still under the thumb of Elven warlords. Ze saw struggling hamlets in little places where Hellkin should have been eking out an existence.
Ze saw the Humans as being one of the Unwelcome Peoples.
Worse than that, over half the magic, medicines, and inventions ze knew and held familiar were simply not there.
"Do you truly wish for this world?" asked Sylvarill.
"This is horseshit," Schorsch. "The world's clearly got to be better without those stains on our bloodlines! Why's nobody riding in carriages?"
As if in answer, the mirror showed a Hellkin forging the springs that made comfortable carriage rides possible. Then to hammer the point, showed hir all the rest. Hellkin making new magic. Hellkin inspiring those who loved them. Hellkin inventing out of necessity. Hellkin making the world that Schorsch knew, and making lives possible.
"I ask you again, do you truly wish for the world you would make?"
"Others would have done the same," argued Schorsch.
"They would have been too busy trying to survive a world in which Hellkin were never summoned as an extra weapon in the Xenophobia Wars," said Sylvarill. "Hellkin are necessary for the world you know to exist. I ask you and expect an answer... do you wish for the world you would make?"
Facing the vision of a ruined world, where war and devastation raged unchecked, where evil was done in the name of balancing other evils... Schorsch Roughsun tried to shape hir lips into the word 'yes'.
Hir tongue, far wiser than hir prejudice, made hir say, "No."
[Photo by Habila Mazawaje on Unsplash]
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