“I want to see them,” Benjamin said finally, after glaring daggers at the man that had once been his friend, “Proof of life. That’s the first step in these sorts of things, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” he said, standing up and tossing a few Polaroids on the table. “Knock yourself out, but we aren’t going in there until it’s time, I—”

“The fuck we aren’t,” Matt said as he walked toward the backdoor. “We aren’t playing by your rules here, Ethan. The only reason you’re still breathing is that—”

Matt’s words were interrupted as he bounced off an invisible wall that rippled briefly before it vanished again. Benjamin recognized the spell. Curtail wall, or at least it was something like it. Arden’s walls had been enchanted with it. It was basically a giant-scale version of his arcane armor. Benjamin had thought about making an army-sized version to deal with larger monsters, but due to the large amounts of mana it took to fuel it, it hadn’t been a priority yet.

Matt pummeled it several times to test its strength and see if it might shatter beneath a few powerful blows, but Benjamin found that unlikely. With a large enough mana battery, it could last until Ethan, who was presumably the caster, canceled it.

Each blow caused the runes of the barrier to ignite briefly until they were glowing bright green. However, in the end, all Matt had really done was work up a sweat and waste a few of Ethan’s mana.

“What if I just rip your head off and drop your little shield that way?” Matt asked, his chest heaving.

Benjamin recognized the signs of his friend’s growing rage and, at this moment, sympathized more than he ever had before. That still didn’t mean this was the right way to go about this.

Ethan, for his part, just shrugged and stood up, walking a few steps closer to Matt and practically daring him to strike. “You should know that if my heart stops, theirs will too, and you should know it won’t be pretty. So—”

Matt had already had enough and called the other man’s bluff. He took one step forward and grabbed Ethan by the throat with both hands. Even as he started to squeeze, Ethan managed to gasp, “That includes the other Emmas, you know…”

“Other Emmas?” Matt growled, starting to lose control. “What the fuck do you mean, other Emmas? There are no other— Get off me, Benji! He deserves this!”

Benjamin was wrestling with Matt now as he struggled to save Ethan. He wanted to know what he was talking about, but even more than that, if the bastard really had his family here, he didn’t want to see them die because Matt couldn’t keep his shit together.

“Other worlds… Multiverse… many Earths... many Emmas,” was all Ethan managed to croak as his eyes bulged and his face purpled.

That was enough, though. Something about what he said got through to Matt, and the idea that he really might be putting some version of the woman he loved in danger was enough to make him let go. Ethan didn’t even slump to the ground. He just stood there taking deep breaths as he smiled that cocky smile.

Either he’s changed a lot, or one of the Summoner Lords is wearing him as a skinsuit, Benjamin thought. The Ethan he knew would not have handled that half so well. He was proud and prickly and would have taken a swing at Matt. Now, though, he seemed content to simply act like he was better than them.

“Come on,” Ethan smiled. “I’ll introduce you.”

Benjamin spent their walk looking closely at Ethan’s system. It certainly seemed to be their friend, but without a password, there wasn’t an easy way to pry into his system, so he only saw the broadest of details. The status effects certainly didn’t sound very healthy, and Benjamin did a quick search for both of them in the data he’d collected so far but didn’t find a reference to either one.

NAME: Ethan Ralphs

RACE: Human

CLASS: Summoner

LVL: 5

RESOLVE: High

HEALTH: High

MANA: High

STATUS EFFECTS:

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Lifebound: ???

Mutilated: ???

Diabolic: ???

Riftwalker: ???

Ethan led the three of them to the cluster of buildings further down the house. They weren’t quite arrayed like they were on the street, but they were close enough that it mimicked that sort of feel, and all that was left was the asphalt road to connect them.

The first place he took them to was the shabby-looking sandwich shop. “Can you believe this is where Benji took Emma on their first and only date?” he laughed.

Benjamin hadn’t remembered that, but now that Ethan said it, the faintest recollections stirred in his mind. “They tore that place down,” Benjamin managed to say as he picked at the fading memory. “I’m sure of it.”

“On your Earth, they did,” Ethan smiled, “But there’s a lot of Earths, and sometimes they’re more than a little similar, you know? This one… well, I think you’re going to like it.”

Inside, there were people working the counter, and besides the fact that there weren’t any customers or even a city where customers might come from, the thing that struck Benjamin immediately was that all three of the employees were Emma.

“Welcome to Sammie’s Subs; what would you like to order,” she said cheerily.”

“What. The. Fuck.” Benjamin said, looking from the three of them to Ethan and back. “This can’t be… Tell me this is illusion magic, please… this is insane.”

“I think you’ll find that even if you dissect them, they are, in fact, the girl you’ve been crushing on since forever, Benji,” Ethan said smugly. Just that tone was enough to make Benjamin want to punch him in the mouth, but even as he turned angrily to do just that, he was stopped in his tracks as Emma, his Emma, the real one, burst into tears and went right back outside, with Matt following closely behind her.

“What the fuck is going on here!?” Benjamin asked as he turned his gaze from the three copies of Emma in their little subway shop uniforms to Ethan and back again.

“Well, some people take a look in the mirror in moments like this and realize they don’t like who they’ve become,” Ethan opined as he reached into the cooler and pulled out a couple cans of soda. “Obviously she—”

“Not with Emma, with you, with this, you prick. It’s insane,” Benjamin said, taking the can from his friend and throwing it as hard as he could through one of the plate glass windows,sending glass clattering the ground. “You can’t seriously be fishing through different versions of Earth just to steal more copies of our friend!”

“I think I’ve proved that I can, actually,” Ethan said, opening his drink as he sat down at a booth. There was no electricity, so it was warm, but even so, the sound of carbonation was enough to make him miss the life he’d had once upon a time. “It’s easy. The Rhulvin rarely do this sort of thing because, to them, one human is the same as another. We’re all outsiders. But to you… well, there’s no more valuable hostage in the world than your lady love, now is there?”

Benjamin chuckled at that. “Me and Emma are old news man; I’m far more concerned about what a freak like you is doing with these girls than—”

“You could have them all, you know,” Ethan whispered, leaning forward like it was some kind of secret. “A whole harem filled with the one that got away; all you have to do is lay down your arms.”

“Tell me how you survived the arrow that the centaurs put in your side,” Benjamin said to switch topics. He wasn’t even willing to dignify what the man was saying with a response. “Matt said you’d bleed out from that wound.”

“Did he?” Ethan said as his smile soured slightly. “Well, maybe he would have lacked the will to cauterize the wound, but me, a little fire, and a little healing when I get to Plantation 131 and traded the information on who you were for safe harbor and the rest, well, the rest was history.”

“I find that difficult to believe,” Benjamin answered as Ethan raised his shirt to show a small, puckered scar.

“Believe what you want,” Ethan shrugged, “But I’m here, and with the help of my… Let’s call them employers; I have an offer you can’t refuse.”

“So you think that just because you have my family and some weird clones of my one-time crush, I’ll just surrender?” Benjamin asked, trying to regain some kind of control over this surreal situation. “Even if I do… Even if you kill me, the rest of my men will keep on fighting. The only way to stop us is on the battlefield, and if the Rhulvinarians thought that they could do that, you wouldn’t be here, would you?”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” he smiled, taking another sip. “Most of them would just be happy if I killed you, but a few… including an old friend of yours, they want to know how this happened.”

“If you want to kill me, you’re welcome to try, but I guarantee you won’t survive the attempt,” Benjamin said, turning away to look for where his friends had gotten to.

He’d already pinged the systems of the Emma clones and was not surprised to find that they were all named ‘Emma Jones.’ He was a little appalled to see that they were all level two and three-bed servants, though. Even if everything else hadn’t made him want to reduce Ethan to a bloody smear, that would have been enough all on its own.

“Well, if this isn’t enough, Benji, then tell me what is?” Ethan said with a wide gesture. “You want to go home? You want your own country here? If you were to give up the prince’s phylactery, then I could probably—”

“If you want to talk about a trade between these prisoners of yours and some of those soul amulets I’ve picked up along the way, then that might be doable,” Benjamin said warily, not wanting to give up too much information, “But if you expect us to surrender just because—”

“Without your surrender, everything else is meaningless,” Ethan said, pounding the table.

The argument continued in circles like that for several minutes, but it didn’t take long for Benjamin to start to lose interest. Instead, he was more concerned with the teary-eyed conversation that Emma and Matt were having outside and the way that the strange Emmas looked at him with lust in their eyes.

Nothing was right here, but before he got the chance to figure out what exactly he was supposed to do about any of that, an alarm went off on Ethan’s cellphone. “Ah,” he said, getting up. “It’s dinner time. Come on, we don’t want to be late. Mrs. Newsome will be very upset if you don’t wash up and get to the table before 5:30.”

Of all the things that the man who had once been his friend might have said, that was the one he expected at least. One second, he’d been arguing about how the Rhulvin weren’t really monsters, and the next, he was standing up and talking about Benjamin’s mother like she really had been brought to this world.

He had no idea what he was supposed to do about any of this.