And now here's the chapter that was supposed to tie up everything and also make this something more than fan fiction. I really did have fun with this.

Before Ajax stood a woman about his own age, dressed in ordinary Earthly clothes. It was still quite clear that she was a double to Cerasa. "Well?" she said. "Are you going to stand there or come help?"

Already, a prompt was rising in his mind. "Sa… Sara," he said. He set down the Hammer without letting it go. "I… was seeing if it still worked."

"Of course it works, it's a hammer," she said. "Now come and help…"

He set down the hammer and followed the woman his mind told him was his wife of seven years into a dining room. Hector was at the table. He was shocked to see him with a double of Daffodil, whom he knew was named Daphne but would answer to Daffy, with little Robert dozing in her lap. They were sorting through boxes of old papers. "Hey, Alex," his brother said, "we just found your old notebook." He held out a three-ring binder with a partly detached cover and a bottom ring that no longer shut properly. He sat down and took the binder.

"What's this?" Sara asked.

"My bro used to want to be an artist," Hector said. "That's the notebook he wouldn't show to anyone."

"I… I had forgotten this," Ajax said. He opened the notebook and found it full of drawings. Some brought recognition, too many to doubt that it was indeed the same as the one he could just remember leaving on Earth.

"This is interesting," Sara said. She pointed to a drawing that was a double of the Amphion. A second matched Amyclas' Gemini fighter. An additional sketch showed both ships from the rear, approaching a vast globe covered in spires and pits.

"That was his space phase," Hector said. "He copied them from video games and movies, of course."

"Still, they look good," Daffy said. She had turned to another page, with drawings that matched the Ataraxes and Halcyon Dawn.

"He got better when he started doing fantasy," his brother said. Ajax was past being surprised to see drawings of Sky Islands, the skyships, Mushroom Men, Flower Maidens, the varied forms of the Lindorms, and even the Sky Palace. He still stiffened when they came to a drawing he had done on a full sheet, in pen and colored pencils.

It showed Meliboia, in her inner mail. Her skin was even darker than it usually looked in normal light. Her hair was shaded silver with streaks of gold and green. The mesh of the Cingulum over her midriff was shaded nearly black. The angle showed two diamond-shaped gaps formed by the lacing at the sides. She held her leaf-shaped sword, pointed awkwardly upward. Robert opened his eyes, and promptly sucked his thumb. "Wow," Sara said, "should I be jealous?"

"Don't worry," Hector said. "It's just the chick from Heavy Metal."

"It is not exactly the same," Ajax said instinctively. "The skin is different. And the armor is much better."

"`Just?'" Daffy said. She shifted Robert over her shoulder. "You showed me that movie, and you had to talk your way out of a night on the couch."

"Oh, the women in that movie are nothing like you," Hector said. "Well, except maybe her…"

"That's because she's the only one with a chest smaller than an actual trunk," Daffy countered.

"Did you ever try to get this published?" Sara asked, evidently bemused.

"He did get a few things out there," Hector said. "It never went anywhere. He had to keep helping Dad to make ends meet. Finally, he ended up taking over."

Memories formed in Ajax's mind, going back to well before he had come to the Mushroom Realm. "It wasn't like people think," he said. "Most of the work out there is other people's ideas. A lot of it isn't even drawing, just laying stuff out to look good on a page. I made some good money, but it wasn't for me." He ventured to say what came to his mind. "So, is Mom moved in?"

"Yeah," Hector said. "I carried in everything she could really keep. This box is the last of the stuff from the old place." He looked up at Ajax. "You should show this to her. She still asks if you're ever going to try art again."

"That's a good idea," Ajax said.

"Oh, sure," Sara said. "Just don't expect me to pull your weight if you quit the day job."

"Let me go look for something," Ajax said. He rose, and Sara followed.

"What is it?" she said.

"Have you ever thought any more," he said, "about whether you want kids?"

"What the Hell are you talking about?" Sara said. "I mean, I get it, you're getting older and you just lost someone. But the last time we even talked about that was 5 years ago. When you wanted me to get the operation."

"I suppose you are right," Ajax said. "Why don't you go back to Hector? I will come in a moment."

"Fine," Sara said. As she departed, Hector stepped in front of the closet and picked up the Hammer. For a moment, the Mirror seemed to shift between a tall, narrow rectangle and an ovoid frame.

"If there is an intellect here that would oppose me," he said, "then speak for yourself. Why do you show me this vision? Did you think it would tempt me? Or did you hope that I would believe this was reality if you made me doubt the World I left?"

His own Image spoke, this time audibly. "You project the ways of man onto the Mirror," the Image said. The voice was the same as if he talked to himself, not at all like the times he had heard his voice recorded. "It is not in the nature of the Mirror to deceive. The purpose of its magic was always to bring wisdom, so that those who use it might improve themselves. It only seems treacherous to those who do not want to learn or believe."

"Fair enough," Ajax said, twirling the Hammer. "Still, your magic has caused much trouble to me and to others. Again I ask, what is this vision? Is what you show me truth? Is the notebook, especially, what I truly made?"

"You know it is," said the Image. "It is a reminder of what you once desired, and a lesson on the World where you rule."

"I already knew that that World and Earth are intertwined," he said. "Who is to say that I did not see it in my imagination because I was destined to come?"

"It is like Ultra and Infra," the Image countered. "The words are your own, and subject to your own limitations. What you use them to describe simply is."

"Then is this what I am offered to spare the Mirror?" Ajax said. "To live in a world where the beauty and terrors that I lived are only dreams, in exchange for having a woman who tormented me as a wife?"

"It is more than that," the Image said. "You see a potential reality. Accept it, and this world will take the place of the one you know- and in another way, merge with it. It will be as if you never left this world, and the potentiality that became the World Island never was. Consider with care before you choose. There are many things you have missed, for ill and for good."

"Mom. Dad." He pressed his hand to the glass. "Oh God, Mom and Dad, it's been so long since I even thought about them… Is what you show what has happened?" He leaned his head against the glass, tears on his cheeks. "I cannot wish away an entire world, but…" He raised his head. "Wishing Mirror, if you have a wish left to give, I wish to see- No, if you have that power, I wish my mother to see that I live! That she has grandchildren by Hector!"

"You will receive what can be given," the Image said. The Mirror shimmered, and the image was replaced by a woman really not far into old age. The view shifted to a scrap book open before her. It showed newspaper clippings, clearly enough to read the headlines:

Local brothers missing after university lab explosion… Investigators report no remains found at scene of explosion… Church to hold funeral service for missing men… Scientist theorizes mystery blast evidence of interdimensional travel…

The woman shut the book and placed it in a box, on top of his notebook. She turned her head, as if looking into a mirror. Ajax remembered a heavy, oval mirror his mother had always kept near her bed. She smiled… and he swung.

For a moment, the world seemed to dissolve into shifting fragments like a kaleidoscope. When it came back into focus, he found himself again a groom, with Hector at his side. But he was young and handsome, and his brother still looked like a kid. Before him stood Pruna. As he looked at her, she seemed to glow, so brightly it blinded him. He closed his eyes and took her hand. She guided his to the handle of the Hammer. He turned his head, and saw they were before the Mirror.

"Set me free," the Princess said.

And one last time, he swung, so hard that the Hammer flew from his hands straight into the Mirror.