Seized by despair, Myrkas screamed at his other selves. He tried his hardest to get them to hear reason, to cease this doomed brawl. Myrkas pleaded, cajoled, and threatened, to no avail. His versions were blind and deaf to him, too intent on annihilating the threat in front of their eyes.

Myrkas stopped fighting. It was pointless. The other two ignored him as long as he left them to their battle. They were stuck, headed towards a pyrrhic victory at best, and mutual destruction at worst. There had to be a way. If his copies were too stubborn to listen to reason, Myrkas would force them to fall in rank. This was his body, his soul they were threatening. Whatever concept they represented, he had to bring them to heel, to show them who was boss here.

A plan quickly formed in his mind. Myrkas needed to restrain them first, to stop the ongoing damage. He gathered part of the ambient energy. Motes of lights and some of the "purple stuff" coalesced in his hands. He was following his instinct and intuition. And a bunch of literary ramblings he recalled from cultivation novels.

Myrkas held a maelstrom of light between his cupped palms. It was warm and tingly, sending light sparks up his arms randomly. The energy spun between his hands, soon becoming thread-like. Myrkas attempted to pinch a strand away, without success. The substance slipped through his fingers, refusing to be used by such a common method as simple physical manipulation.

Myrkas could still hold the ball of light-like material. But doing anything with it was another story. He didn't have time to experiment endlessly. He had to fix this and fast. No help was coming. Guesstimate had to do.

Myrkas closed his eyes, taking deep breaths. He concentrated on the feel of the energy in his hands. The warmth, the physical sensation, the way he kept it there, willed it into stability. A thread formed, then chains. That's what Myrkas needed: restrictive bindings. With his fingers and his mind, he combined the energy, shaping it into meters and meters of thick, solid, metal-like chains.

On a bout of inspiration, he weaved images into them: spider silk imprisoning living flies, death-row shackles on both wrists and feet, Qi-restricting ropes as used on criminal cultivators, and seringes filled with anaesthetics and paralytics. Again and again, Myrkas folded these concepts in, molding the chains with his will, strenthening them.

When he next opened his eyes, Myrkas held those links. The metal bindings were dark and heavy, a gray hue with traces of purple.

Somehow, they felt more than solid, almost immutable.

With his implement ready, Myrkas prepared his trap. He had to hurry. Too much time had passed. More and more motes of light and memory-frames leaked out. He was loosing parts of his soul, parts of himself, his core being. No time left to dally.

He baited the other two, going to stand between them. As Myrkas foresaw, his alternates charged in unison, blinded by their desire for total domination. Faster than sound, they approached from opposite sides. A fraction of a second before they all collided, Myrkas dodged. He lassoed the two, thightening the first loop around their arms and torsos. Quickly, Myrkas then used his will to bind them tighter. He knotted the chains in complex loops. The two still squirmed, resisting Myrkas effort. Myrkas flexed his will further, sending it down the metal-links.

The fighters finally bonded and immobilized, the shockwaves ceased. Their surroundings calmed, the sudden silence jarring. The walls were still fractured though, with the purple substance getting ever thinner. Pieces of Myrkas kept on escaping to the void.

The work wasn't over. The misbehaving children strained against their restraints. Myrkas spent most of his focus to keep them within bonds. He strained as his other selves did.

They had reached a new stalemate.

At his wits' end, Myrkas resolved to bet on an ancient mystical power. A type of strenght celebrated in most heroic stories. The ultimate power up in dire times: the power of friendship. Friendship under duress still had to count. It was totally possible to become friends with oneself. Even easier to do so with some alternate metaphysical representations of himself. Myrkas suspected they each represented one of his past lives. The exact concept didn't matter as long as they all started to work together.

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Myrkas needed to figure out how to–forcefully–befriend himself (himselves?) sooner than later. All while actively restraining his representations. An uncomfortable and possibly painful situation. Obviously, they were in the best circumstances to build a long lasting, healthy three-way relationship here.

While thinking, Myrkas tightened the chains further, lest they escape and restart the hostilities. This place, their communal soul plane Myrkas guessed, could not bear any more strain. Memories, energies, and what else leaked evermore. Too soon, they would have nothing left to loose, their core being an empty husk. Time to take the Kids' gloves off. Ruthlessness was on the menu. If reason and metaphysical attacks did not work, Myrkas would harden his heart and appeal straight to their instinct and emotions.

The one floating free boy frowned. His eyes became cold, his body still, his shoulders straight. Resolute, Myrkas moved the last loop higher on his bound copies. Following a quickly passed flinch, Myrkas rounded the chain around his versions' necks, keeping control of the shared pressure on their airways with the lenght he kept in hands.

The other two immediately glared at him with hatred. They now stood perfectly immobile, focused on the threat to their respective breath.

Myrkas swallowed back his bile but kept his hold on the chain. He knew how the other two Myrkas felt. He acutely remembered both their deaths, and their appearances didn't let him forget. The burns, the coughs, the wheezes, and rattles all reminded him of what he had endured. Myrkas did not wish to strangle them, as he was filled with sympathy. But they had left him no choice. He, too, wanted to lie. Not just survive but live, and thrive. And his past selves' fighting threathened that simple dream. They needed to listen. Myrkas would force them to understand.

Myrkas held their stare. He would not falter. They all had to live. The unbound boy scoured his remaining memories. He found all the similar ones between his past lives and battered the chained Myrkases with them. With their airway threathened and their limbs entangled in energy bindings, his two versions had no choice but to suffer the onslaught.

In addition, Myrkas bombarded the two belligerents with how dire the state of their soul was. He showed them in full the damage their battle had wrecked. All that they had lost and were still losing.

Myrkas' willpower was stretched beyond its limits. The boy tasted blood in his mouth. He felt his pulse beating up to his gingiva. His throat was dry, his mouth stuck in a rictus as he pushed through with effort. Myrkas would have screamed if all his energy wasn't already taken by his task. He held on. To the chains, the binding, and the volley of images and emotions directed at his past selves.

The war of wills lasted an eternity. A relative one, for Myrkas had no clue how time worked where they were. Then, the balance shifted. His mirror images relaxed together. They stopped fighting. The chains loosened on their own and fell, floating back towards the Myrkas who held their ends.

The burned boy and the sick one stood back-to-back. They had reached a common conclusion, accepting to co-exist in order to survive. They would fuse, both getting to live fully through their altered selves. It happened within the blink of an eye. One second two stood, and the next, only one was left.

Myrkas stared at his new reflection. The entity's appearance kept shifting, alternating between different mixes of the previous fighters. The effect was eerie. Myrkas and his image took a moment to observe each other, both relieved in the newfound peace.

They did not rejoice for long. They still had a soul to fix. With a concerted nod, Myrkas and his shifting version each took a half-lenght of the remaining chain. The links dissolved back into lights, though uniform and even in color now. The Myrkases condensed this energy, using the infused binding principles to create a plaster-like substance. With it, they patched the sphere's walls, going as fast as they could.

The dark-gray mixture held well. It mixed with the purple energy left and closed most flaws. In the end, some fissures were left, although they were superficial ones. No leak remained. A soft purple glow emanated from the repaired walls, basking the space in a soothing light. It would have to do.

Satisfied, Myrkas glanced at his other self one last time. His image smiled for once and gave him a thumbs up. That one would stay in this space, his rightful place, and keep an eye and a hand on things.

Reassured, Myrkas closed his eyes. It was time to go back. Instincts let him know this event would fade from his memory. Myrkas had traveled too deep within his consciousness, his mind was not ready to fully process what had happened.

No matter. Myrkas–all versions–had done the job. He wasn't dead. Surviving in okay shape had been his main goal.

All considered, a solid performance. Myrkas thought, then scattered away.