The sand clone looked to the side, sensing the arrival of an Underlord back in the portal room.

The clone let go of Lindon, finally relenting in the attack. Lindon’s body lay smoking and limp, his skin charred as his eyes fluttered, barely alive.

The clone raising a hand and Forged a star the size of a small horse. It sparkled like glass, spinning in the air as he released it.

The star never made it far.

The greatest janitor in the world appeared next to the clone, clasping the wrist. The Forged star was immediately shattered by an unsee force, flecks of light falling over the sand clone, illuminating the icy eyes of Eithan Arelius.

Eithan gripped the wrist tightly, his hand tightening until the clone’s wrist cracked.

The clone smiled, unperturbed, as Eithan glared down on him. “How touching. I’m surprised you even care. Wouldn’t you just find another—”

The clone’s face exploded as Eithan’s fist went through it. The clone shot backwards, crashing through the walls into another room.

The Underlord turned to Lindon, his voice catching for a moment as he saw how bad Lindon looked. His eyes softened, and he slowly grabbing Lindon’s arm. “You’ll be fine.”

Lindon pulled his arm away, groaning in pain. His voice cracked when he spoke. “You left me. I told you to help.”

Eithan blinked, unsure how to respond.

“….I’m here now.”

Lindon looked at his master, noticing the sympathy in his eyes. The man genuinely was sorry, unsure of how to proceed. This was the man who had raised Lindon from Copper to where he was now. Without Eithan, Lindon and Yerin would probably have been killed by the Sandvipers.

Slowly, Lindon’s rage cooled. He accepted Eithan’s hand and stood up shakily as he leaned on him. His body was already healing thanks to his overcharged pure core, but he was still badly damaged.

Eithan took Lindon’s void key and used his soulfire to control the wind aura, lifting Wavedancer and the remains of Lindon’s shield into the void key. Finally, Eithan gave the void key back to Lindon.

“I can help you fight.” Lindon mumbled. He was barely standing, but he still had a fire in his eyes. “Just give me a couple minutes, and my body will be healed.”

I am lucky to have you as a student, thought Eithan.

The master smiled sadly at his student. “No, you can’t.”

He stuck a finger into Lindon’s neck, hitting a pressure point. Lindon fainted. Before he hit the ground, Eithan swept his arm up. Soulfire resonated with the wind aura, and it caught Lindon smoothly, carrying him away to the portal.

“Leave now.” Eithan said quietly. “I don’t want company for this.”

[What are you going to do?] Dross asked, still conscious in Lindon’s head.

Eithan’s forced smile dropped. The darkness of the room cast his face in shadow, only his icy blue eyes glinting in the dark.

“There’s some vermin that needs to be exterminated.”

As Lindon vanished into the portal, the sand clone walked back into the room, brushing the dust away from his shoulders. His face had been rebuilt with sand. The clone was smirking now, raising a hand.

“You really do care, you sly fox! Guess I hit a nerve.”

A stream of screaming stars whirled towards Eithan…. and passed through the air where Eithan had once been standing, leaving swirling sand in the spot.

The Underlord now stood to the left of his doppelganger, his blond hair settling behind him. His lavender-and-gold outer robe fluttered. Eithan looked at the clone coldly, his hand grabbing the clone’s entire face.

“Please, can’t you see I’m trying to have a moment with my student?”

He slammed the clone into the floor. “Let’s go somewhere private, just you and me.”

The ground crumbled away from the eruption of pure madra. The room around them collapsed, pure madra destabilizing the whole structure.

Eithan continued his throw, blasting through five sets of floors as the tunnels were flooded with pure madra, sand exploding outwards, collapsing in avalanches.

The clone kicked off from Eithan, landing on the floor of this new hallway. They looped through the maze, passing tombs and underground caverns, trying to cut each other off.

When they reached a tunnel, they ran down the walls and ceiling, spiraling down the hallway, throwing bits of star-stuff at each other. Their Striker techniques hit each other perfectly, canceling each other out.

The end of the hallway was broken by a vast pit of golden water, writhing with golden crocodiles. They were burning on fire, Flowing Flame and burning sand swirling in the air above them. On the other side of the wall, an opening revealed another hallway.

Both Eithan’s jumped over the pit, their Striker creations detonating in the air.

Snapping crocodiles jumped up, their jaws closing on Eithan. A flash of bright light later, the crocodile was falling back down, smoke rising from its mouth. As the crocodiles jumped up, Eithan and the clone jumped on their bodies at the right moments, using them as footholds as they ran across the pit, never stopping their Striker techniques.

A crocodile the size of Xorrus roared as it shot up like a mountain, opening its mouth to breathe out a flood of burning sand, radiating the power of an Underlord.

Eithan and the clone jumped at the same time over it, just out of reach of the sand. Eithan pulled out his Archlord black fabric scissors, stabbing forward. It responded to Enforcement far better than most objects, and it burst into a dark ball of gray light as he flooded it with madra. He used it to pierce through the clone’s bar of pure madra.

As they fell into the jaws of the giant crocodile, Eithan pulled out his broom from his void key, slamming it down on his clone. The clone reached out his hand and a broom of sand formed, meeting Eithan’s broom in a clash.

The clone used the trajectory to shoot sideways, right as another crocodile jumped up. The clone landed on its head, jumping right, but Eithan had predicted that, shooting a lance of light in that direction.

But the clone had predicted this as well, smiling as another crocodile had jumped up at that moment, shielding the clone from the lance as it instead pierced the crocodile’s eye.

The clone grabbed the crocodile’s dead body as they fell, protecting itself from Eithan’s Striker techniques.

Eithan continued to fall into the giant crocodile’s jaws, his Hollow Armor protecting him from the burning sand.

As the crocodile’s jaws shut on him, his broom prevented it from closing its jaws all the way. Inside its mouth, Eithan pointed his finger, predicting where his clone was, and fired a beam of pure madra. It shot through the eye of the giant crocodile on its way out.

The Striker technique clipped the clone’s shoulder, hitting the wall behind it. The beam of madra made the wall began to collapse, and it fell onto the tunnel exit. Blocking it.

Eithan had trapped the clone inside. The clone sneered. He could just cut through wherever he wanted. He turned to the floor as he neared the nest of crocodiles, raising his hands as a ball of pure madra began to form.

A beam of pure madra flickered out for a second, but it was enough to obliterate the floor. The crocodiles roared as they fell, the ground washing away as water, sand, fire, and ancient reptiles fell into the room below.

Meanwhile, the Underlord crocodile growled, not putting up with Eithan having destroyed its eye. It prepared a blast of fire and sand in its throat, about to scour Eithan’s flesh from his bones.

Before it had a chance, its remaining eye widened in surprise. Then its head blew off, Eithan emerging with his scissors spinning in a circle in his hand. It glowed blue-white, letting out smoke.

He jumped off, following his clone into the room below.

It was a large room about 200 feet tall, glowing, and making the falling water and crocodiles sparkle.

Eithan landed on crouched legs, his Hollow Armor shattering the stone under him. He looked around as squirming crocodiles fell all around him, splattering on impact on the ground.

They had fallen into what looked like an ancient golden temple, vines hanging with golden fruits. Or a pyramid, given that the walls seemed to slope upwards into a point.

Stairs in the distance lead to a sacrificial platform, golden statues of gods holding a tray filled with golden hearts. The golden statues wore red masks, in the shape of grinning demons.

The entire room was made of gold, the torches holding Flowing Flame. A small river of liquid gold fed down the pyramid, entering the mouth of a golden dragon face in the wall.

Eithan cracked his neck as his clone was sneaking up on him from behind. He had originally blocked the tunnel exit, knowing his clone would find another way. He had forced the clone to choose the bottom room, wanting this exact room.

It was at the precise distance where the Dragon King would not be paying much attention.

Eithan turned around to face his clone, his broom resting on his shoulder, and spinning his scissors with one finger. “Looks like we no longer have an audience.”

The Dragon King was focusing his attention on the fight between Xorrus and Fury miles above. They fought in a giant room of quicksand, a room where floating fish moaned, and twitching mummies hung from the ceiling.

Fits Xorrus’s personality, Eithan thought personally. Maybe it’s her bedroom.

He immediately flinched, excepting the might of the Dragon King to turn on him and slap him away from oblivion. Lucky, that didn’t happen. Unluckily, strands of his hair were cut as the sand clone threw stars.

The Underlord peered closely into his doppelganger’s face as he dodged.

“So strange. You seem alive. But are you really? Do you have the same interests as me?”

Eithan and his clone immediately jumped back, rolling around and dodging what looked like invisible attacks. They were trying to cut of each other’s escape, shooting techniques seemingly at random.

The clone punched to Eithan’s left as the Underlord stepped right, kicking out where the clone was about to dodge, and then shooting a beam of pure madra where the clone would dodge to next.

Instead of dodging there, the clone ran at Eithan, who stabbed forward with his broom. The clone kicked the broom to the side, aiming a kick at Eithan’s face which he blocked with his scissors, a metal clang ringing out.

Eithan suddenly vanished, but the sand clone had anticipated that. When Eithan appeared on the sacrificial platform, right next to a statue wearing a red mask, his clone appeared with him. The clone caught Eithan’s punch, both facing off as pure madra exploded out, the ceiling above further crumbling.

Eithan shuddered as his clone spoke, the voice like his but totally wrong. “Why are you hiding here? Don’t want anyone to hear your screams?”

Eithan stared into the doppelganger’s eyes. This was the clone that had hurt his students. His. Students.

The clone frowned as he noticed Eithan’s change of expression, the aura around turning dangerous. It grew heavy, matching the new light burning in Eithan’s eyes. It was a look of quiet danger, of a man plotting murder.

“Let’s see how good of a copy you are.”

Eithan’s leg lifted, kicking up, his robes streaming behind it. Sparkles of madra popped into existence around the kick, glowing more blue than white. The clone had already predicted it, lifting a forearm to block.

The clone was about to dodge to the left and push the kick upwards with its arm. That would leave Eithan open, allowing for a counterattack—

The kick smashed into the clone’s face with a wave of pure madra, slamming the clone backwards, skidding across the floor and into the burning molten river of gold. A stream of blue sparkles hung in the air, following the trajectory of the clone.

The clone walked out of the river, his entire body drenched with liquid gold. He wondered how Eithan had connected that kick. That should not have been possible. The clone had seen where the kick would end up. It hadn’t predicted this.

Eithan still had his leg raised, rising it above his head as he closed his eyes.

“Pay attention. There’s something I want to show you.”

He put his broom back in the void key in his pocket, still clutching his Archlord scissors.

The clone snarled, and pure madra blasted behind him as he ran forward, leaving a pure madra print of himself, an outline of Eithan made of pure madra.

The clone rushed up the stars to Eithan in a blur, kicking up debris as he cracked the ground. The clone was exuding the same dangerous aura Eithan was emitting, pure bloodlust in his eyes. The air was so heavy the ground began to crack, the debris being kicked up from the clone’s feet falling slowly through the air as if underwater.

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The clone used the Arelius bloodline ability to see where Eithan would kick. The leg was currently still raised above Eithan, and as the clone reached him, Eithan kicked down. The clone ducked to the side, air streaming from his body at the speed.

The kick landed always, shooting the clone into the ground with a crash that destabilized the stairs, shards flying upwards. As the debris landed, Eithan’s eyes opened, glowing blue.

He activated his Icon and began his advancement.

The clone burst out of the ground as Eithan jumped into the air, Eithan’s hair slipping past his fingers, the Underlord flipping in the air.

A sphere of pure madra surrounded Eithan with a shriek, screaming with fury and light, releasing a wave of energy that pushed the clone back.

The ball of madra spun around Eithan, floating in the air. The blue-white light began to change to bright blue, sparkles glittering around it like snowflakes. A buzzing feeling rose in the air like static electricity, enough to make one’s hair began to rise.

Inside, you could see the outline of Eithan’s body. He was curled up in the fetal position, holding his knees. His body was slowly rotating inside the ball; what looked like lightning was swirling inside, piercing his body as he screamed.

The pure madra ball slowly transformed, gaining an aspect. In seconds, it was a sputtering ball of lightning, crackling bolts streaking out and hitting the room all around in thunderous claps. The debris from the shattering room began to lift, floating into the air as Eithan’s power swelled.

The clone Forged millions of stars, covering the entire room in a blanket. They sparkled in the glow of the lightning as they rushed like shooting stars to the ball of madra. At the same time, the clone Forged a ball of pure madra that surrounded Eithan’s lightning ball. The clone’s pure madra began to spin around the lightning sphere, about to washing the lightning madra away in a whirlpool.

Then the lightning ball began to spin in reverse, opposite of the pure madra ball. Its power became too much for the clone’s pure madra to cancel out, and the pure madra ball washed away as lightning cracked through its surface, shattering it like glass.

What! Thought the clone. That wasn’t possible. I know Eithan has the same amount of madra as me, so I guess he could match my strength. But for him to have negated the effects….. that’s impossible.

The sphere continued to spin, the clone feeling his body start to shake.

It’s like a giant core, realized the clone.

Eithan’s screams grew in strength, louder than the scream of the lightning and the incoming stars. His screams became high-pitched, a roar of agony and anger that bellowed through the room and made chills run down the clone’s spine.

“aaaaaaaaaAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

The clone stared at him a horrified expression, his limbs trembling from the power he was sensing. He had no idea Eithan was this strong. A crazy smile grew on the clone’s face as his eyes shone with delight.

“Yes, yes! Show me everything!”

The stars hit the lightning core, and the walls of the room were shattered to pieces as a giant shockwave ring decimated the room. Dust flew everywhere, and the sand clone used his bloodline ability to dodge the debris flying everywhere, the force of it strong enough to destroy an Underlord’s body.

The sand clone jumped onto the sacrificial platform, his eyes scanning for Eithan. The lightning core was gone, only specks of sparkling blue light crackling in the air before fading away.

“Ahem.” Said a voice from behind.

The clone stopped, his body freezing up. He sensed the power burning behind, like a galaxy waiting to expand. The clone looked back slowly, trembling.

There, among the crumbling room, the Arelius Overlord stood on top of a golden statue of a god, crouching on its dragon head.

He had taken off the red mask of the statue, wearing it instead over his face. The mask grinned down on the clone, a demonic face with sharp teeth and bulging eyes. That didn’t surprise the clone as much as how the rest of Eithan’s appearance had changed.

The janitor wore a robe made of bright blue lightning. It was skintight from the waist up to his neck, his lean muscles showing through. From the waist down it flowed loosely like a dress, reaching his knees.

He wore black lightning boots, sending up sparks on the gold statue head. His hands were also gloved in black lightning and edged at the fingertips like claws, also skintight and sparkling with a white tinge to its edge. Pants made of white lightning glittered, looking like a shimmering wall of electricity pounded into clothing, complete with its own folds and wrinkles. His entire lightning clothes twinkled; blue, white, and black sparkles rained down from his body.

His Archlord scissors had transformed into a long katana sword. Its single-edged blade was black metal, resting on his shoulder with a slightly curved edge. The hilt was a stark white.

The clone tried to speak, but the awe of this power was too much.

Is this the power of a god?

The clone shook himself. Eithan was no god. He wasn’t even a Monarch. And besides, the clone was Eithan also.

He poured soulfire into a long pure madra spear, lifting one leg as he hurled the spear with such strength that the wind pushed the clone back a step.

The spear hit Eithan’s face, and Eithan’s head recoiled back.

He stayed crouched the statue, the golden statue head cracking as pieces of it fell to the ground. Eithan’s body was arched backwards, his neck veins popping out. Slowly, he lifted his body up, revealing where the spear had hit.

The spear had hit his mouth, but he had caught it with his teeth. As he looked down on his clone, his red mask began to split away to reveal his face, steam flowing from his mouth as if he were smoking.

His eyes were Forged white lightning, streams of jagged light shooting out of the corners of his eyes, sputtering and popping. Smoke poured from his mouth where he had caught the spear, his teeth flashing as he smiled.

The clone took a healthy step back, a strand of sand hair falling to his eyes. There was something wrong about this man. Something not right. For one, no one could just change their core aspect like that. And secondly, how had Eithan negated the effect of pure madra if he no longer had pure madra?

“Guess your creator didn’t know I could do this,” said Eithan out of the corner of his mouth.

Eithan bit down on the pure madra spear, and it shattered into fragments and soulfire. He breathed it in, as it was his own madra and soulfire after all. It joined his lightning core, changing to a lightning aspect.

Only a shard of pure madra remained in his teeth. He spat it out, the shard shooting towards the clone and trailing sparkling lights. The shard reached the spot where the clone had dodged to, inches from his face.

The shard of madra sparkled, changing to a lightning aspect. The clone shouted out as the shard exploded in his face, sending the clone flying backwards from the crackling lightning.

What is going on, he thought. I should have been able to predict where the attack would have come.

Eithan watched, a tendril of smoke from his mouth looping around his face. Then Eithan vanished from his perch on the statue, swirling smoke remaining where he had been standing.

The clone skidded on his knee and fist, releasing a pulse of madra. Eithan appeared in front of him, seemingly unaffected.

The doppelganger stood up and punched out, preparing a pure madra blast from his fist to cancel out Eithan’s lightning clothes technique.

Eithan raised a hand slowly, his black-clad fingers flickering with lightning that shot out. As if in slow motion, the clone watched as the pure madra reached the lighting, watching in his head how his pure madra would cancel out Eithan’s madra. His bloodline ability would not lie.

Yet, the black lightning flickered away the second before it met the pure madra. It reappeared just as fast, hitting the clone in the face. The clone sprang the Hollow Armor at the last second, and the lightning washed away in tiny waves.

Eithan stepped forward, blocking the clone’s kick with his knee, blocking another blast of pure madra with the flat of his sword, and moving his head side to side to avoid the madra lance.

The Underlord kicked the clone’s spear away, leaving the clone open. Eithan’s hand flowed upwards, his wrist rising first, black lightning streaming from his fingers as he knocked the clone’s hand away with his wrist. He caught the clone’s hand with the same hand he had just used, his other hand stabbing the katana sword through the clone’s Hollow Armor.

The black blade sliced into the clone’s chest. Blue lightning flickered down the metal and into the clone’s chest. Sand blew away from its chest as the clone flew backwards. Whatever Eithan was doing, the Overlord was too fast.

“My fine gentleman,” Eithan said as he glared at his clone, the sparkling white lightning in his eyes increasing in intensity with its sputtering, “Here, this place right here, is a tomb…. our tomb.”

Before becoming an Underlord, Eithan had followed a lightning path. He had always told Lindon that he could not teach him pure madra techniques until he was an Underlord and able to handle it. Because of that, Eithan had never used pure madra until reaching Underlord, for he too would not have been able to handle its power as a mere Gold. It was a secret not many knew save for the royal family of the Arelius clan.

After the Monarch Tiberian Arelius’s death, Eithan had diluted his path down to pure after advancing to Underlord. Pure madra had many uses, more powerful than most people realized. Now an Underlord, he could handle the big attacks pure madra required. Eithan knew he would lose his original lightning path, but he knew it wouldn’t be permanent.

He still had his Time Icon.

The Time Icon allowed him to reverse his core back to his lightning aspect and improved his bloodline ability. Now, not only would he see the present, he would be able see a few seconds into the future. And his attacks would travel through time, appearing in the future.

It allowed Eithan to avoid his clone’s pure madra attacks, simply willing his techniques to go forward in time past the pure madra blasts.

As the clone blasted away, Eithan stabbed his sword into the ground, blue lightning shooting up from the contact and streaming to the ceiling.

Eithan ran forward, the same blue lightning shooting from his back. Black lightning sparkled on the ground from his boots, blinking. As he ran, he focused on his Enforcer technique.

His lightning clothes was his Forger technique, clothes of lightning madra that increased his speed. The problem was the intense speeds he was able to reach would peel his skin off from the friction.

Instead, he had to combine his Enforcer technique to withstand the speed. But using both techniques required massive stores of madra. Well, Eithan hadn’t been practicing the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel for nothing, his core deep enough to withstand the drain.

His Enforcer technique activated, and sparkling blue lightning covered his skin like in a blue coating. It caused his hair to rise, the blond hair clumping together and shaping into jagged lines. His hair looked like lightning bolts, swaying above him as they sparkled in blue light.

Then Eithan rushed forward in a sonic boom, ripping the tile around him and shooting away in a long line as he blasted to his clone, the air screaming from him and causing thunder and shockwaves that obliterated the falling debris into dust.

He raised his hands and Forged a black lightning scythe as he reached his clone at the speed of lightning.

The clone made a swirling dome of pure madra as protection. Eithan used his Time Icon to cut through time, his scythe and hands vanishing and reappearing inside the barrier. Eithan cut the clone’s hand off, reversing it to cut off the other hand.

In order to do this, Eithan also had to cut through time to go past the clone’s Hollow Armor, requiring intense control. Still, a speck of pure madra hit the scythe and the scythe vanished into sparks, canceling out.

The clone regrew his hands, but Eithan flicked his finger. Blue and white lightning flashed once and blew the clone’s fingers apart. The clone canceled his technique and jumped back, a flow of pure madra shooting from his body and forming a vast storm cloud above.

At the same time the clone released all his madra.

The room filled with pure madra, gathering behind the sand clone into a mass of power that ran like water. It rushed down in a tsunami wave, the soulfire it held strong enough to kill a Truegold on contact. Before hitting Eithan, the wave separated into separate attacks. Stars, spears, Forged hands, beams, and balls of power, all rushed towards Eithan.

His echo flickered as he zipped around the room, dodging through the spaces, using his Time Icon to travel into the future when he needed to.

The Eithan clone began to spam the pulses of madra, trying to cancel out Eithan’s lightning. The clone shot beams of his own, attacking the echo imprints left behind of Eithan; they glared at the clone before vanishing away like a hologram.

The pure madra attacks destroyed the room, the temple coming down. In seconds, this entire room would be covered in sand forever.

The storm cloud of pure madra above finished gathering into a point, glowing beautifully like a newborn star. Eithan skidded to a stop in front of his clone as the madra above shot down to Eithan, about to pierce his core and obliterate his Overlord spirit.

Eithan’s raised his hand, forming a disc of white lightning madra. With the Time Icon he momentarily reverted the disc to pure madra. When the beam of pure madra shot down, it hit the disc and reflected to the clone, piercing the core.

The clone stepped back, holding his stomach. All around, his pure madra blew away, fading before it hit Eithan.

From above, the sand madra was rushing in, about to bury them.

Eithan stood breathing heavily, his body steaming and shooting lightning. One white eye was closed, blood leaking from his mouth as he felt motion sickness from the high speeds he was undertaking.

But Eithan wasn’t done yet.

The clone felt his body break away as Eithan tore into it, streaming lightning behind his fists. As the clone’s face moved back and forth from the punches, lightning flashed out in a constant display, shooting out and hitting the room around them.

Eithan grabbed his shoulders, kneeing him the chest. The clone gasped, and Eithan uppercutted it, black lightning streaming behind the punch in waves. A bolt of blue lightning appeared in his other hand, stabbing the clone, and sending it shooting back.

The clone flew past the sword Eithan had planted in the ground earlier. Eithan was already there as the clone passed, his hair and lightning robes fluttering as he dashed forward and picked up the sword from the ground, never slowing down. The clone saw the sword shimmer once before it hit his body, and then the clone crashed into a collapsing pillar.

Eithan reappeared behind the pillar with lightning swirling around him. His katana sword changed, his Archlord weapon turning into golden chains. Blue lightning covered the chains as they wrapped around the clone’s throat, pinning him against the pillar.

Eithan strained, pulling back, choking the clone. The pillar broke apart and the clone fell to Eithan.

The clone groaned as he fell in front of Eithan, watching as the Overlord swung the chains. Before it hit the clone, the chains morphed back into his black katana. His sword let out a wave of lightning slashing the room in half and cutting into the clone’s body, shooting him back into the remains of a wall, his mouth open in shock.

Then his eyes widened as Eithan threw the sword like a spear, pinning his throat to the wall. His body recoiled backwards, his screams gurgling.

Eithan walked up to his clone as the sand madra collapsed around them, about to hit them. It was a mass of destruction that would swallow the room whole.

The Overlord continued to look into his clone’s eyes as he raised his hand, forming a shield of lightning. With the Time Icon it turned to pure madra, and it held off the sand like an umbrella. Eithan reached over with one hand, grabbing the white hilt, and pulling the blade out of the clone slowly.

Eithan’s face was painted in a heroic expression, anger in his eyes. He wanted to advance in a team, ascending past this world to greater heights. The sacred arts didn’t have to be lonely. But this clone had hurt his students. It had killed Mercy, and almost killed Yerin.

It had tortured Lindon.

And Eithan had almost been alone again.

Eithan pulled the sword out, the black blade buzzing with lightning. As Eithan looked down at his clone, the clone saw Eithan for who he was.

“What… are …. You…?” The clone croaked.

Eithan stared down, his pure shield holding off the sand as it flowed all around him. His white eyes had no mercy left.

“Absolutely nobody.”

The sword transformed into chains that wrapped it around the clone. Eithan let a trickle of lightning madra flow into the metal chains. They lit up with blue light, and so did the clone, screaming as his body beginning to melt away.

“No, no! NO! STOP! STOP!”

The clone tried to heal himself with sand, but with his shattered core, he could no longer rebuild himself.

Eithan stared coldly down, watching the mirror copy of himself spasm, the golden liquid that covered the body evaporating away, its sand blackening. All that was left was a charred skeleton of sand.

The clone wasn’t dead yet as it shot out of the chains, his hands reaching for Eithan.

The simple janitor stepped aside, grabbing its ruined face.

“You thought just because you were me, you could defeat me?”

Eithan’s fingers conducted black electricity, and it ran in a current down the clone’s body. The bones of the skeleton cracked open, letting out a squeal as the air escaped. Eithan squeezed the skull until it cracked, crushing it in with his palm.

He slammed the smoking body into the ground. The screams became high-pitched, the bony fingers scratching at Eithan’s arms helplessly.

“You fool, I’m the original.”

Finally, the clone quieted, its body hissing as it melted away into the sand.

Eithan stood up, looking up at the sand he was holding back with pure madra. He was surprised the Dragon King and Xorrus had been able to model his abilities this well. But they weren’t as well informed as they thought.

Using the Time Icon, he reverted his core back to pure. His lightning madra vanished, his Enforcer and lightning clothes fading. Pocketing his Archlord scissors, Eithan blasted out of his tomb.

***

When Eithan made it back to the portal, Fury was already waiting for him.

“I take it you won?” Asked Fury.

“Who? Me? Oh no, I lost.”

“I see. I guess you can’t technically win when you’re fighting yourself.”

Eithan smiled over brightly, looking over at Xorrus’s expression. Her head lay next to Fury, her eyes still wide in shock and her mouth open. The rest of her body was still up where the Heralds had been fighting.

Eithan began to follow Fury into the portal.

“Wait.”

A smooth, overwhelming voice wrapped around the room. The voice of the Dragon King.

Fury looked up in defiance. “You made a gamble, and you paid the price for it. If you don’t let us leave… well Akura Malice is watching. And she is not happy with you abducting her daughter.”

The presence of Akura Malice filled the room, and the aura of the two Monarchs made Fury and Eithan shake. The voice stayed quiet, its frustration making the room shake. Finally, it relented, the Dragon King leaving.

Eithan looked up. “If you’ll excuse me, my students are waiting for me.”

He turned back, and stepped into the portal, vanishing. Fury followed him.

As they left, the rooms collapsed away, burying everything in sand forever.

THE END

(The next chapter is an alternative ending).