Antitheater

This is the Greatest and Best story in the world.....
Tribute.
Really, this is the first story I heard from Talking Crazy's player in game about his Elder Challenge. Read the translation.
If you don't You're missing out.

Antitheater: The Looking-Glass Law

The twelfth week of my journey took me to a strange and tiny realm whose father is the Battleground and whose mother is the Mirror Zone.
It is called the Antitheater, or the Looking-Glass Stage.

This realm appears in many ways in many stories: in mine, it appeared as a large half-circle of benches around a sunken center stage.
At the back of the stage was a tall mirror.

I was sniffing around the mirror when I caught a familiar scent and heard a familiar voice.
I did not see him arrive, but he is good at being hidden when he likes.

I looked out from the stage and saw my own face.

The other Talking Crazy loped onto the stage, grinning a crooked grin, a glint of madness in his eyes.
We circled each other. His fur was dyed blacker: there was a chemical smell.
We shifted through our forms.
He had a bow of Bat's blessing to match my bow of Duck's.
Instead of Raven on his chest, I saw Whippoorwill.

“I have dreamed of you,” I said. “You are the one who commands legions of the Wyrm.”

He laughed. “You are the soft Gaian clown, commander of cubs.”

We regarded one another from lupus to homid, and then settled back into our war shapes, for there was only one way this kind of story could go.

From the corner of my eye I saw the benches fill with all manner of evil spirits: his legions.

“This is the part where I tempt you to join us,” he said.

“What an army that would be!” I replied. “The Garou Nation can barely tolerate one of me on its own side. Two of me against it would bring it to its knees.”

“You accept, then?”

I grinned back. I knew him, and he knew me, and neither of us could trick the other.

We circled. The Wyrm-legions hooted and jeered me, cheering on their commander.

When I had my back to the tall mirror, he lunged.
He tackled me and would have thrown me into the glass if I had not twisted sideways at the last moment.
We crashed to the stage beside the mirror.

I deduced that the mirror could end this fight.

We bit and feinted, kicked and clawed.
I was about to gamble on pulling my klaive when I thought – why not pull his?
I let him close. He bit deep into my throat but I reached around him and drew his blade.
I drove the silver deep into his side.

He howled and fell off me.
With my other hand I drew my own klaive, expecting a renewed attack, but the other Talking Crazy lay dead on the stage.

“Nice try,” I said, advancing. “I used that trick to teach a lesson.”

I struck with both blades, but dead Crazy rolled aside, and the klaives were stuck in the stage. He swept my feet from beneath me. “I used that trick to kill a rival,” he grinned, pinning me down.

But what need have I to keep my feet beneath me?
I flew, hurling him off.
He flew as well.
The other Crazy's legions craned their necks from the benches to watch us fight in the skies.

He drew his bow and loosed a barrage of arrows.
Drawing my own bow, I dodged and twisted but was struck in the chest.
I fired back, but my fingers were starting to shake.
I felt weak.

“My arrow gorges on your blood, clown,” boasted the other Crazy as I fell from the sky. But before I struck the stage, I shrouded it in darkness to hide in.

The audience roared in hungry anticipation.
Their leader descended, tuning his senses to find me.
But before he reached my shroud, I summoned my strength and fired back.
The arrow found his eye.

He howled and tried to pull it loose, but Duck's blessing made it too slippery to dislodge.
Then dizziness washed over him, and weak, he sank to the stage near the mirror.

“You used my own arrow,” he snarled, staggering as his paws slipped over the bloodthirsty shaft – blessed by both Duck and Bat.

I banished the darkness and advanced on him as he fell to his knees. “The Wyrm devours its own,” I observed. “And so my path is of Gaia.”

I raised my foot to kick him into the mirror, but he kicked first – at the mirror. It shattered like spring ice, littering the stage with a thousand gleaming fragments.

“Now there is no escape for either of us,” the fallen Uktena laughed weakly. “And I have a weapon you do not: legions.”

His Wyrm-legions stormed the stage in defense of their commander. I fought fiercely, slaying dozens, but there were more.
They overwhelmed me.

The evil spirits stripped and tortured me while the other Crazy worked on the mirror.
He tried to puzzle out if it could be fixed, but the shards of glass had all gone dark, reflecting nothing.
Eventually he gave up.

“I cannot send you through the mirror,” he said, piercing my body with shard after shard of glass. “But maybe I can send the mirror through you!” He laughed.

In Battleground when you die, you escape the realm.
I didn't know if this realm was the same.
I was not about to try!

One of the spirits holding me was a long-fingered specter of greed.
He had stripped me of my medicine bags and hung them around his neck.
I spent the last of my strength to shift in an instant to human shape, slipping from their grasp.
I plucked the bag from the spirit's neck, but there were too many and I was weak – they beat me down again and took back the bag.

They held me up to face my double. “It has been fun,” he sneered, “But I think I will end this before you try any more tricks–”

His eyes widened as he realized what he and I kept in that bag, but it was too late.
I struck him with my pocket mirror.
I carry one to get in and out of the Umbra, and I had palmed it when I took the bag.
A flick of my wrist bounced the mirror against his chest.
With a howl he was pulled inside it, his screeching armies with him.

He is still trapped in that mirror; you can see him behind your reflection, puzzling out a way to escape. I don't think there is a way, but I keep the mirror well-hidden so nobody breaks it.

Talking Crazy is Copyrighted to his player. Glyphs and elements of Werewolf the Apocalypse are copyrighted to White Wolf.