Die. Respawn. Repeat.-Chapter 252: Book 4: Collapse

Premonition as a skill has saved my life countless times. I've never seen it react like this—the thing is in near-panic, to the point where it's almost difficult for me to think through the level of danger it's pouring into my skull. I have to strangle the amount of Firmament I'm feeding to the skill just to reduce its screams, although I can't afford to turn it off entirely.

Not with who we're fighting.

"Get back," I say to the others. I crush my building panic ruthlessly—there's no time for panic. No time for anything except razor-sharp focus. With all the ways we've grown, fighting ourselves is quite nearly the worst-case scenario. Part of it depends on how complete these clones are, of course, but if they weren't complete enough to be dangerous, Premonition wouldn't be nearly so loud.

Fortunately for me, the other Ethan is almost certainly experiencing the same from his own version of Premonition, judging by its hesitation.

Thankfully, Adeya and the others don't need my warning to understand what's happening. They've already moved back to stand warily behind my Spectral Guardian, which is probably the safest place for them in this chamber. The next best option is for them to just leave, but with the stakes at hand, no one seems willing.

I can't spare the focus to convince them.

The other Ethan and I both vanish.

I can feel the skill it's trying to activate—a Warpstep to take it straight to the Seed—and while it's tempting to let it sacrifice itself and take it out of the fight entirely, this thing is composed of a hundred Root Acolytes. It's not going to increase saturation by a mere four percent.

Our paths intersect. The other Ethan staggers out of Warpstep, thrown by the Firmament cost of the skill caused by my own Warpstep distorting the space in front of it; I'm equally disoriented, but apparently more prepared for it. It doesn't have the same experience as I do, then.

Good.

I'm still in my Generator Form, so I'm just that little bit faster. I take advantage of the momentary lapse in its concentration by coalescing another Amplified Gauntlet around my fist and swinging it, pouring all my Firmament into its thrusters; it whips forward fast enough to ignite the air in front of it, creating a brief impression of a falling star.

At the last second, I feel it using a skill—Eternal Moment. It uses that brief gap of time to cross its arms in front of the blow, then creates three angled Force Construct and finishes off by manifesting a vibrant Verdant Armor.

Three Force Constructs shatter like glass beneath the Gauntlet, and then I make contact with its forearms. The resulting blow rings out with a shockwave that cracks the stone beneath us, but to my surprise, the Verdant Armor holds; not only that, but the other Ethan actually resists for a second before being blown back and smashing into the wall of the chamber.

I shoot after it, Generator Form cranked up as high as it can go. I can't afford to give even an inch here—with the amount of power it has and the kind of skills it can use, I can't let up for even a second. The moment I slam a fist into its still-crossed arms, I follow up with a crackle of Concentrated Power I've been holding for the last six minutes.

This time, I crack the armor. The chamber's walls rattle, the stone exploding around us with a dull roar as the force of my blow creates a vertical crater. Plant-Ethan looks up at me, neon-green blood trickling down from its nose. It's grinning at me.

Temporal Link. I realize it the same instant Premonition screams a warning and I feel a powerful blow slam into my back, knocking me into the crater with enough force to crush its duplicated self and make the entire chamber shake. A wave of pain cracks through me, more than I've felt in a while.

All this power I've gained, only to have it used against me. I smile a grim, bloody smile and force myself to turn. The other Ethan looks like a mirror image of me. It wears the same bloody smile, and there's a spark in its eyes...

"You want to fight, huh?" I mutter. I activate a skill, moving as little as possible to try to hide it from my doppelganger's notice. "You could've gone for the Seed while I was stunned, but you didn't. You actually want to test yourself against me."

It cocks its head, then grins again, this time a little wider. I snort.

All my bloodthirst, it seems, and none of my compassion. Or maybe this is its version of compassion—to focus on me when it could end this here and now.

"Alright," I say. "I guess we're letting loose."

It's been a while since I've had to do this.

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I call on Temporal Link, summoning remnants of myself through time. Echoes of myself from just a few seconds ago, in fact, stacking the speed of my Generator Form with Amplified Gauntlet and six minutes of Concentrated Power. I angle them at the other Ethan, and it uses Distorted Crux to defend, throwing off my temporal clones with careful kicks and well-placed Force Constructs.

It's all just a distraction, though, because while it defends, I'm building my own stack of skills.

Concentrated Power. Amplified Gauntlet. Accelerate.

Then as I swing my fist forward, I capture all that energy in a Compressive Pulse.

And I do that again.

And again.

Until the other me finally notices what I'm doing.

Ahkelios was getting sick of having to fight himself.

He was disgusted the first time, when he ended up facing a monstrous, grotesque version of his body and injury down to the scar over his eye. He was irritated the second time, when they fought the Remnant inside Isthanok's laboratories. By the third time, when they faced his final Remnant in the Empty City, he was well and truly done with it.

That was supposed to be the last time he fought himself. Yet here he was, with a clone made out of plant matter, and the worst part of it all was that the clone was definitely better dressed than he was. Those flowers growing on it were exotic, one-in-a-lifetime specimens. Ahkelios wanted them, and he wanted them bad.

He had more pressing things to worry about, of course, but the flower thing was a lot more of a manageable problem.

His clone struck with a Blade Infusion cast on one of the Sewers' loose "blessed bricks," creating a sword that could cut Firmament apart. Ahkelios cursed himself for not thinking of that earlier even as he scrambled to grab a sword of his own—his last one had shattered under his clone's last onslaught.

His fingers closed around a weird ball of plant matter. Ahkelios stared at it for a moment. Was this one of...

"Hurry up and use it before it explodes!" Ethan shouted at him, and Ahkelios immediately forced a Blade Infusion into it.

It was one of the Compressive Pulses Ethan had been forming and throwing around during the main fight, tossing them like they were grenades. He'd noticed, at the time, that Ethan had stored a few of them in his Soul Space. He hadn't known why, but this?

This was pretty clever.

The blade that formed was a mutinous thing, a sword of grass and vine infused with a skill that made the air around it sing. Ahkelios had no idea what it did, and he didn't have the time to check, either—his clone was already attacking, swinging its sword at him.

Ahkelios blocked, praying this one wouldn't shatter.

It didn't.

The two blades slammed into one another, sending out an array of sparks. He could feel the strike from the other version of him like a tiny, Firmament-disrupting shockwave, but he prepared himself for it, clenching his mandibles against the force that threatened to disrupt his control.

The shockwave from his own blade was far more deadly. An invisible, disintegrating shockwave of three or more skills that Ahkelios couldn't identify. It was cut in half by the other him's sword, but that didn't matter at the ranges they were fighting in. The bisected shockwave hit—

—and cleaved into the other version of him, creating two massive, jagged wounds that bled with a neon green.

Ahkelios would have cheered if his clone hadn't immediately followed up with the Swordpit skill. He tried to dodge, but with his sword locked with the other Ahkelios's, there wasn't that much he could do against the metal blades that shot out of the ground.

Blade Control helped. It diverted some of them away from his vitals. He was still impaled in three different, non-vital locations, and he held back the scream of pain that threatened to emerge.

Time for one of his newer skills.

Role Reversal.

Ahkelios grinned with dark satisfaction as he swapped places with his clone, then activated a second Bladepit.

—

Adeya, Taylor, and Dhruv all looked at one another, then at Gheraa's side of the battlefield.

"You know what's happening, don't you?" Adeya asked Taylor. Taylor nodded emphatically.

"It's one of his skills. I think he called it The Show Must Go On? The first person to make a mistake takes damage proportional to the severity of the mistake."

"And that's why they're having a dance battle." Dhruv stared at that side of the chamber skeptically. "I know we should be scared out of our minds right now, but it's really hard to be scared out of our minds when they're doing... that."

"It's actually really hard to stay in tune," Taylor offered.

Dhruv gave him a flat look. "Do you think that helps?"

"A little?"

"Guys," Adeya interrupted. She was, despite the circumstances, actually glad for Gheraa's rather unorthodox methods of fighting—morale would have been a lot worse if all three of them were as critically dangerous as one another. She knew intellectually that Gheraa was just as if not more capable of destroying everything in his vicinity, but the fact that a third of the chamber wasn't being repeatedly blown up helped quite a bit in ignoring that fact.

Which was good, considering what she intended her team to do.

"They're equally matched," she said. "We can't make enough of a difference as we are now. But I know you've all collected enough Firmament to push to the next phase shift, and we have Ethan's information to act on. We need to act on it. Now."

Taylor and Dhruv exchanged glances. She almost expected them to argue. She could hear it in her mind—You expect us to phase shift? Now?

But to her surprise, they didn't. They knew the stakes as well as Adeya did.

They closed their eyes, Firmament building within them, and after a moment, so did she.