1.0 - creating a file in the InterWorld Book Forge.

1.1 - corrections.

1.2 - Added Andy Smiley's story "The Virtues of the Sons" from the collection "Death and Challenge"

1.3 - Minor changes.

1.4 - Added Chris Wright's story "Demonology".

1.5 - Added the stories "A Secluded Place", "Sight", "Brotherhood of the Moon" and the novel "Vulcan Lives" by Nick Kyme. Added "Version History".

1.5.1 - Added John French's micro-story "Tallarn: Eyewitness".

1.6 - Added David Annendale's novel "The Curse of Pythos".

1.6.1 - Added John French's story "The Black Eye".

1.7 - Added John French's story "Eagle's Claw".

THIRD LEGION, CHILDREN OF THE EMPEROR

Fulgrim, Primarch

Lucius, captain

Eidolon, Lord Commander

Julius Kaesoron - first captain

Marius Vairosean - captain of the cacophonists

Chrisander - Captain of the Ninth Company

Kalim - Captain of the Seventeenth Company

Rouen - Captain of the Twenty-first Company

Daimon - captain

Abranks - captain

Geliton - captain

Fabius - Chief Apothecary

He didn't sleep - he never slept - but he dreamed nonetheless. It couldn't be anything else. Access to La Fenice was prohibited, and Lucius had the good sense not to disobey the orders of his primarch. Even before their epiphany, such freedom bordered on reckless risk. Now any disobedience would result in a death sentence.

Yes, this is almost certainly a dream.

At least that's what he hoped.

Lucius was alone, and he did not like loneliness. This warrior craved the admiration of others, but in this place there were no admirers except the dead. Thousands of corpses lay around like gutted fish, mangled by death, and every face was frozen with an expression of brutal pain caused by wounds and desecration.

They died in agony, but with delight they accepted every touch of a blade or a clawed paw that tore out their eyes and tongues. It was the theater of the dead, but the place where he found himself did not give Lucius an unpleasant feeling. La Fenice seemed deserted. The theater was dark and empty, like a mausoleum in the dead of night. Once upon a stage under the high vaults life paraded before the audience, glorifying delightful diversity, praising its heroes and mocking absurdities, now the theater was a bloody reflection of times long past.

The famous fresco of Serena d'Angelo on the ceiling was barely visible, its extravagant pictures of ancient feasts were hidden under a layer of soot and soot. The fire raged here, and the smell of burnt fat and hair still hung in the air, but Lucius was so distracted that he barely paid attention to it .

But he felt the lack of weapons very acutely. Without a sword, the swordsman felt as if he had incomplete limbs. He was not wearing armor either, although his lavishly painted battle armor had already been repainted in colors more pleasing to the eye - discreet shades and discreet ornamentation were supposed to emphasize the skill of the owner and his high position.

He felt almost naked, as naked as a warrior can be.

He shouldn't have been here and so he looked for a way out.

The doors were locked and sealed from the outside. This happened after the primarch last time visited "La Fenice" when the battle against Ferrus Manus and his allies ended. Fulgrim ordered the doors of the theater to be sealed forever, and none of the Emperor's Children dared to contradict him. So why did the sword master dare to look here, even in a dream?

Lucius didn't understand it, but it seemed to him that he was being directed to this place, as if someone's inaudible but persistent voice had brought him here. This voice had been calling him for several weeks, and only now it had become strong enough to attract attention.

But, if he was called, where is the one who called him?

Lucius moved deeper into the room. He never stopped looking for a way out, but at the same time, not without interest, he looked at what the rest of La Fenice had become. On the footlights, at the edge of the orchestra pit, two lights flickered, their faint glow reflected by a mirror in a gilded frame standing in the center of the stage. Until this moment, Lucius had not noticed the mirror, and now he allowed the dream to bring him closer. He walked around the orchestra pit, where creatures woven from scraps of flesh and dark light were having fun with the entrails of the musicians. Scraps of skin, severed heads and arms still clung to the few surviving instruments, as if a terrible ensemble of damned performers had gathered in the pit. Lucius climbed onto the stage with a deft leap. He was a swordsman, not a butcher, and this was confirmed by his physique - broad shoulders, narrow hips and long arms. The mirror beckoned him to it, as if from the silvery depths a strong invisible cord was stretching to his chest.

“I love mirrors,” he heard Fulgrim say long ago. - They allow you to comprehend inner essence things."

But Lucius did not want to comprehend anything. His perfection was broken by the treacherous blow of Loken's fist, and Lucius continued what he started with his own blade. That scream still sounded in his head, he just had to listen carefully.

Or maybe it was someone else screaming? Now it was difficult to understand.

Lucius had no intention of looking in the mirror, yet with every second he came closer and closer to it.

What can he see in the glass in his dream?

Yourself or, what is much worse, the truth...

It reflected a spot of light, the source of which Lucius could not see. This seemed strange to him until he remembered that he was seeing a dream where one could not rely on logic and it was impossible to believe everything he saw.

Lucius stood in front of the mirror, but instead of the face that he tried his best to forget, he saw the reflection of an attractive warrior with aquiline features, a large thin nose and high cheekbones, above which his own golden-green eyes sparkled. His black hair was combed back, and on his full lips he wore a smile that, if you did not know about his fighting prowess, might seem boastful.

Lucius raised his hand and felt the smoothness of the skin, its unblemished perfection, reminiscent of the perfection of a polished blade.

“I was once very handsome,” he said, and the reflection responded to his vain remark with laughter.

Lucius clenched his fist, ready to smash his mocking reflection into pieces, but his double did not repeat this movement, staring somewhere over his right shoulder. In the depths of the mirror, Lucius noticed the reflection of an amazing portrait of Fulgrim, hanging over the ruins of the destroyed proscenium.

Like his own face, the portrait did not match his memories. If earlier it was the brightest embodiment of incredible power and strength, and its outlandish colors and vibrating texture stimulated strong emotions with its boldness, now it was an ordinary canvas. The colors lost their vivacity, the lines lost their sharpness, and the facial features became small and expressionless, as if it had been created by the careless brushstrokes of an ordinary mortal wandering artist.

But, despite the obvious prosaic nature of the work, Lucius noticed that the eyes in the portrait were made with amazing skill and almost unbearable pain and suffering splashed in their depths. After the dark transformations carried out on his flesh by the Apothecary Fabius, the rare object attracted the attention of Lucius for more than a moment. And now he could not take his eyes off the eyes in the portrait and heard a desperate cry coming from incredible places and times. This wordless cry bordered on the madness generated by the eternity of imprisonment, and the look expressed a silent plea for deliverance and oblivion. Lucius felt the eyes drawing him towards them, and suddenly something stirred within him - some kind of primeval being, just awakened and in some way akin to the reflected image.

Your time has come, Runner. It's time to return to the rooftops White City. Over the years, he has changed, and you are no longer the same as you were before. Much will seem unfamiliar to you, but you will get the hang of it, I’m sure. After all, when the wind whistles in your ears and mirrored stained glass windows rush past in a blur, everything else seems trivial, doesn’t it?

When approaching the new Mirror’s Edge, you need to be clearly aware of one simple thing, but, as practice has shown, it is not obvious to everyone. Catalyst is not a continuation of that excellent game from eight years ago. A prequel - yes, in some way, but even then only partly. First of all, we have a restart of the series, connected with the original by the commonality of the main themes and images. And this, to be honest, leaves you slightly bewildered. It’s not entirely clear who and why didn’t like the first Mirror’s Edge so much that instead of developing it directly, it was decided to start from scratch in an alternative storyline. One way or another, this fact has already happened, and we can only accept it and figure out how it turned out in the end.

Catalyst again paints before us the City of Mirrors - a collective image of a dystopian state of the future, where all power belongs to a conglomerate of large corporations, and behind an attractive sparkling white screen in a high-tech style hides a tough totalitarian regime based on absolute control over the life of every employee. People who want to maintain at least some confidentiality in communication resort to the services of the Runners - a group of parkour messengers. As long as they take a neutral position and do not openly oppose the regime, the authorities turn a blind eye to their existence, but we are about to witness, perhaps, a turning point in this undeclared confrontation. And our catalyst will be main character- Faith (English: “faith”) Connors.

Movement is the basis of Mirror’s Edge, and in the new part the developers tried to make Faith even faster, more agile and skillful. Her movements are clear, smooth, and precise. You can interact with almost any object in the city in one way or another - grab, pull up, push off, slide, and so on. Except that the brave Runner has not yet learned to crawl along steep walls, like Spider-Man. But this is not a problem either, thanks to the new glove with a grappling hook, on which you can fly across the abyss and climb to heights inaccessible by normal means. However, clinging to everything, imitating Rico Rodriguez from Just Cause, will not work - the cat only works with specially designated points (however, in all in the right places they usually exist). Well, if there is none nearby, it means that there is clearly some other, at first glance, non-obvious approach to the object you need.

The employees of K-Sec, a security service reporting to Kruger, which includes ordinary “cannon fodder” as well as shooters and elite guards, supposedly specially trained to “work” with messengers, are called upon to spoil the lives of honest Runners. Only the corporation’s fighters were not smart enough, which is why all fights in Catalyst without exception are very monotonous and highest degree sad. Having seen enemies in the distance, it’s much easier to run around them or just blatantly rush past without getting involved in a brawl, fortunately, at full speed, all enemy bullets and blows are guaranteed to fly past the target. But sometimes there is simply no such opportunity - for example, when the developers lock Faith in a room and don’t let her out until all the guards fall at the feet of the cute girl. The authors decided to completely abandon weapons, which is very true, and instead taught the Runner to dashingly swing her arms and legs. At the same time, in training they talk long and tediously about the need to push enemies against each other and generally try to diversify their fighting style as much as possible, but in reality the simplest combination of a dash and a backstab solves absolutely all problems. And they don’t give you experience for battles, so there’s no incentive to be creative at all.

By the way, about experience - a very dubious innovation of Catalyst was the leveling system. Yes, this is a fashionable element of modern games, but when applied to Mirror’s Edge it looks wild. Why, pray tell, should Faith, who basically spends her entire life running across the rooftops of the White City, have to learn obvious things like tucking her legs in a jump. Even in the introductory video, it is clear that even while serving her sentence, she tried to keep herself in shape, which means she should be able to do everything anyway. Only one conclusion suggests itself - it was added to somehow justify the need to complete side quests in the open world, which, alas, also turned out to be far from being as good as we wanted it to be.

On the one hand, of course, the transition from a fixed set of levels to a city open to exploration is cool. Freedom is in the blood of every Runner, and now you can revel in it to your heart’s content. The city is divided into several large districts, each with its own style and layout, and is a pleasure to run around. You probably won't want to use the system of fast travel between Runners' shelters. But the problem with the open world here is that you don’t want to do anything else besides story missions. There are only two types of third-party orders - either high-speed delivery of valuable items, or a game of cat and mouse with law enforcement officials. In view of the uselessness of leveling mentioned above, the only truly interesting activity is the search for documents and audio recordings that shed light on the background of the events taking place.

When a person runs, he focuses on his goal. By scattering his attention, he loses his breath, loses momentum, and risks losing. So Catalyst, distracted by various obstacles, stumbles every now and then. But when the wind whistles in your ears, and mirrored stained glass windows rush past in a blur, then yes, everything else really seems like a mere trifle.

Advantages

• everything related to running is implemented to the highest standard - impressive, dynamic and easy to learn;
• stylish surroundings.

Flaws

• bland script and flat characters;
• monotonous battles that cannot always be avoided;
• boring open world with far-fetched side quests.

Will you be playing Mirror's Edge Catalyst?

He caught her exactly at the moment when she, wiping sweat from her forehead, was shaking off her hands. Judging by her hair gathered into a sloppy bun and her dusty shirt, it was easy to guess that he had caught her cleaning. Judging by the huge, almost filled, canvas bag behind the general office.

What are you doing? - he asked, trying to make his voice as soft as possible. He knew her well and even from the sounds coming from her room, it was clear what mood she was in.
- ABOUT! - She suddenly lit up with enthusiasm. - It's great that you came! Can you help me?
- What? “He asked, smiling kindly.
- Yes, that's it. - She pointed to the almost completely stuffed trunk. - It needs to be taken to a landfill.
She looked at the bag with such disgust, as if it was filled with maggots and other rubbish that she could not stand.
- Should I take it to the trash heap? - He asked carefully.
- Oh no, no, no! - She exclaimed with terrible enthusiasm. - We'll take it to the landfill!
He was a little scared by her manic expression on her face;
- As you say, dear. “He agreed cordially, thinking along the way: “Whatever the child enjoys, as long as he doesn’t get poisoned again with pills and potions.” ;

He took the bale, wondering how he would place it in the car without dirtying the interior. While they went down and sat down, she was in unusually high spirits: she smiled at her reflection in the mirror, humming something under her breath. The more she rejoiced, the more he wondered what was happening to her. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy with the situation, quite the contrary, but the unknown source of joy made him wary. ;When they arrived at what she thought was a landfill, she ran out into the street faster than he did. While he was pulling the bale of God into the light, she had already managed to get a can of gasoline from the trunk. The bale was carefully doused with fuel on all sides and she pulled out a match, slowly lit it, raised the burning match in a vertical position before her eyes, and looked at the flame with incredible satisfaction shining in her eyes. As if in a slow motion shoot, a burning match floated up to the bag and it was immediately engulfed in flames. For about five minutes they sat on the hood of the car, looking at the burning bag.

Now let me ask you what you were so happy to set on fire? - he looked at her.
- I thought you would ask earlier. - she answered with a smile.
- Judging by your appearance, it was clearly unsafe to ask.
“I never thought that something could scare you.”
- And all this is mainly connected with you. But this time you looked such that it was impossible to be scared for you or happy. What was in the bag? - He asked insistently.
;She took a deep breath:;
- All the empty words and unfulfilled promises that I became the owner of, not entirely thanks to honest people that were in my life. Some of them were able to linger for quite a long time, which is why the bag was so stuffed and heavy. ;
He looked at her with confusion and wariness. After thinking for a minute, he asked:
- Feel better?
- You won't believe it, but yes. These words constantly sounded in my head, reminding me of those who uttered them, who have not been in my life for a long time. These words, emerging in my memory, sometimes simply made me angry and irritated, sometimes they inflicted wounds in new ways. At such moments, pictures of that unfulfilled thing that was so desired arose before my eyes. The realization that these visions were caused by empty words brought even more pain. After all, for you these promises are the future. This is what you lived for and live for every second. But for some it’s a momentary emotion, just a shock of air. And now, in the end, it’s just old trash that should have been thrown away long ago.
- All the most valuable things that one person can give to another are intangible and sometimes these are also words. How do you determine what is empty words and what is a valuable and unforgettable intangible gift?;
- Words that give support and happiness at the moment, without promises and advances, or any endless plans for the future - this is value. And on the contrary, constant references to the future, requests to wait, global plans are garbage. If you want to make a person happy, do it in the present tense. There is no need for the eternal “NeDo”, because you are not a politician, and few people are interested in semi-finished products now.
The two looked at the ashes of pain remaining from what is one of the most useless and unpleasant things in the world.
“Otherwise, all that’s left behind you are empty words and a reflection split in two.”

Edited by Christian Dunn

Graham McNeill

SHARED REFLECTION

Characters

THIRD LEGION, CHILDREN OF THE EMPEROR

Fulgrim, Primarch

Lucius, captain

Eidolon, Lord Commander

Julius Kaesoron - first captain

Marius Vairosean - captain of the cacophonists

Chrisander - Captain of the Ninth Company

Kalim - Captain of the Seventeenth Company

Rouen - Captain of the Twenty-first Company

Daimon - captain

Abranks - captain

Geliton - captain

Fabius - Chief Apothecary

1

He didn't sleep - he never slept - but he dreamed nonetheless. It couldn't be anything else. Access to La Fenice was prohibited, and Lucius had the good sense not to disobey the orders of his primarch. Even before their epiphany, such freedom bordered on reckless risk. Now any disobedience would result in a death sentence.

Yes, this is almost certainly a dream.

At least that's what he hoped.

Lucius was alone, and he did not like loneliness. This warrior craved the admiration of others, but in this place there were no admirers except the dead. Thousands of corpses lay around like gutted fish, mangled by death, and every face was frozen with an expression of brutal pain caused by wounds and desecration.

They died in agony, but with delight they accepted every touch of a blade or a clawed paw that tore out their eyes and tongues. It was the theater of the dead, but the place where he found himself did not give Lucius an unpleasant feeling. La Fenice seemed deserted. The theater was dark and empty, like a mausoleum in the dead of night. Once upon a stage under the high vaults life paraded before the audience, glorifying delightful diversity, praising its heroes and mocking absurdities, now the theater was a bloody reflection of times long past.

The famous fresco of Serena d'Angelo on the ceiling was barely visible, its extravagant pictures of ancient feasts were hidden under a layer of soot and soot. The fire raged here, and the smell of burnt fat and hair still hung in the air, but Lucius was so distracted that he barely paid attention to it .

But he felt the lack of weapons very acutely. Without a sword, the swordsman felt as if he had incomplete limbs. He was not wearing armor either, although his lavishly painted battle armor had already been repainted in colors more pleasing to the eye - discreet shades and discreet ornamentation were supposed to emphasize the skill of the owner and his high position.

He felt almost naked, as naked as a warrior can be.

He shouldn't have been here and so he looked for a way out.

The doors were locked and sealed from the outside. This happened after the Primarch last visited La Fenice, when the battle against Ferrus Manus and his allies ended. Fulgrim ordered the doors of the theater to be sealed forever, and none of the Emperor's Children dared to contradict him. So why did the sword master dare to look here, even in a dream?

Lucius didn't understand it, but it seemed to him that he was being directed to this place, as if someone's inaudible but persistent voice had brought him here. This voice had been calling him for several weeks, and only now it had become strong enough to attract attention.

But, if he was called, where is the one who called him?

Lucius moved deeper into the room. He never stopped looking for a way out, but at the same time, not without interest, he looked at what the rest of La Fenice had become. On the footlights, at the edge of the orchestra pit, two lights flickered, their faint glow reflected by a mirror in a gilded frame standing in the center of the stage. Until this moment, Lucius had not noticed the mirror, and now he allowed the dream to bring him closer. He walked around the orchestra pit, where creatures woven from scraps of flesh and dark light were having fun with the entrails of the musicians. Scraps of skin, severed heads and arms still clung to the few surviving instruments, as if a terrible ensemble of damned performers had gathered in the pit. Lucius climbed onto the stage with a deft leap. He was a swordsman, not a butcher, and this was confirmed by his physique - broad shoulders, narrow hips and long arms. The mirror beckoned him to it, as if from the silvery depths a strong invisible cord was stretching to his chest.

“I love mirrors,” he heard Fulgrim say long ago. “They allow us to comprehend the inner essence of things.”

But Lucius did not want to comprehend anything. His perfection was broken by the treacherous blow of Loken's fist, and Lucius continued what he started with his own blade. That scream still sounded in his head, he just had to listen carefully.

Or maybe it was someone else screaming? Now it was difficult to understand.

Lucius had no intention of looking in the mirror, yet with every second he came closer and closer to it.

What can he see in the glass in his dream?

Yourself or, what is much worse, the truth...

It reflected a spot of light, the source of which Lucius could not see. This seemed strange to him until he remembered that he was seeing a dream where one could not rely on logic and it was impossible to believe everything he saw.

Lucius stood in front of the mirror, but instead of the face that he tried his best to forget, he saw the reflection of an attractive warrior with aquiline features, a large thin nose and high cheekbones, above which his own golden-green eyes sparkled. His black hair was combed back, and on his full lips he wore a smile that, if you did not know about his fighting prowess, might seem boastful.

Lucius raised his hand and felt the smoothness of the skin, its unblemished perfection, reminiscent of the perfection of a polished blade.

“I was once very handsome,” he said, and the reflection responded to his vain remark with laughter.

Lucius clenched his fist, ready to smash his mocking reflection into pieces, but his double did not repeat this movement, staring somewhere over his right shoulder. In the depths of the mirror, Lucius noticed the reflection of an amazing portrait of Fulgrim, hanging over the ruins of the destroyed proscenium.

Like his own face, the portrait did not match his memories. If earlier it was the brightest embodiment of incredible power and strength, and its outlandish colors and vibrating texture stimulated strong emotions with its boldness, now it was an ordinary canvas. The colors lost their vivacity, the lines lost their sharpness, and the facial features became small and expressionless, as if it had been created by the careless brushstrokes of an ordinary mortal wandering artist.

But, despite the obvious prosaic nature of the work, Lucius noticed that the eyes in the portrait were made with amazing skill and almost unbearable pain and suffering splashed in their depths. After the dark transformations carried out on his flesh by the Apothecary Fabius, the rare object attracted the attention of Lucius for more than a moment. And now he could not take his eyes off the eyes in the portrait and heard a desperate cry coming from incredible places and times. This wordless cry bordered on the madness generated by the eternity of imprisonment, and the look expressed a silent plea for deliverance and oblivion. Lucius felt the eyes drawing him towards them, and suddenly something stirred within him - some kind of primeval being, just awakened and in some way akin to the reflected image.

The smooth surface of the mirror, like the surface of a pond, began to ripple, as if the glass also felt this kinship. Tremors rose to the surface from incomprehensible depths. Lucius, not wanting to face what might appear in the mirror, reached for his swords and was not at all surprised to realize that the weapon was clipped to a penny, and he himself was fully clad in battle armor.

The blades instantly shot up in his hands, and he struck the mirror crosswise. Thousands of sharp fragments flew straight at him, disfiguring his near-perfect face, cutting through flesh and bone, and Lucius screamed.

But his cry was drowned out by someone's cry of disappointment.

So shouted the one who understood that there would be no end to their torment.

Lucius awoke instantly, his enhanced body immediately transitioning from sleep to wakefulness. The next second, he grabbed the swords lying next to the cot and jumped to his feet. A bright light had been constantly burning in his room for a long time, and Lucius spun his swords, trying to find any changes that could portend danger.

The room was filled with bright sights, discordant sounds and grim trophies from the black sands of Isstvan V. Next to the large-headed statue taken from the Gallery of Swords stood the femur of a stranger he had killed at Twenty-Eight-Two. The long, incredibly sharp blade of an Eldar screaming sword hung on the wall next to the claw-blade, cut off from the enemy's body on the Slayer.

Yes, everything remained in place, and Lucius relaxed a little.

Not noticing anything unusual, he twirled the swords once more, unconsciously demonstrating his skill, and then sheathed them in the gilded sheath, decorated with onyx, which hung at the head of the bed. His breathing quickened, his muscles burned, and his heart beat against his chest as if Lucius was exhausted after a training duel with the primarch himself.