Somewhere in the first Night Layer, a creature awoke covered in sweat.

It shivered in the thin threadbare sheet that was its only clothing, no warmth was to be found in its folds, but it was better than being naked.

The creature sat up, glancing around with its powerful night vision.

Prone forms of a hundred doppelgängers surrounded itself, all completely identical. Four feet tall humanoids with pale skin, black bushy hair, pointy ears and thin stick-like limbs that were long for their size.

The bodies were crammed together in an unconscious jenga to conserve warmth, but at some point the surrounding creatures had separated and moved away from it.

It rubbed its eyes… Something was wrong!

It wasn’t meant to wake up early, and where was the hive mind that gave it every order, so it didn’t need to think. It didn’t like having to think for itself.

Closing its eyes it tried to grasp for its link, reaching for the mental tether that had piloted it.

There… It felt a familiar trace of something and tried to reach across…

SNAP… There was a high pitched whine as the backlash from the broken tether cracked through its mind.

A white hot pain throbbed as a trickle of copper coloured blood spurted from one of its nostrils, tinnitus whining in its ears. It almost screamed as its face contorted in pain, but some small instinct in the back of its mind told it not to.

Eventually the pain faded and it shivered as unbidden thoughts rushed through its mind. It had never been alone with its thoughts like this. It felt wrong. How was it to decide what to do and what not to do?

With a sinking feeling it realised it had a name now as well.

The hive mind had a name, not that it could recall it, but it wasn’t meant to have its own name, only individuals had their own name.

Cixrus was its name, it knew it intuitively somehow.

Its instincts and its thoughts unified for a moment, drawing its focus to another matter.

It… He needed to get out before the hive woke up. He didn’t know what happened when the hive came across isolated individuals, but it wouldn’t be good. The hive only cared for itself, everything else was an enemy.

There was no possibility of hiding until it was gone or moving bodies. This was a being that could see from over a hundred sets of eyes and would completely and immediately wake up at the slightest disturbance, he couldn’t just silence one or two people, the moment one was awake, they all were.

His mind set into motion immediately, considering possible escape options. There was a spur of rock there and there poking from between bodies, several overhanging vines and the river. Maybe that was a good option, after all the hive hated getting wet.

Trimming his plan based on his capabilities he decided on the easiest route. He would have to jump to a sharp rock and then use that momentum to keep him going to a low hanging vine, where he would have to just hope it could hold his weight, then he might be able to jump down from there.

If he made any noise his only escape would be to dive into the river. He had no idea how to swim though, the hive had once tried to cross it… So many had drowned. However he would rather take the river over the hive. It was uncertain death versus certain death.

Gingerly he clambered to his feet and stretched his legs, powerful doppelganger muscles rippling under his skin on his twig like limbs. He had better get started, no point hanging around.

With a deep breath he took a single step and pushed off from the ground, flying through the air with precision onto the top of the sharp spur of rock.

The rock dug into his skin, but he pushed the pain aside and transitioned into his next step, he could not stop here.

He sailed through the air, thinking he wasn’t going to make it for a second, but luckily he was just in reach and caught the vine.

It went taught, holding his weight for a moment before it loudly tore away from the wall.

Cixrus cursed in common as he dropped, desperately pulling himself up.

The vine snagged on a rock and instead of snapping it held, turning his drop into an arc.

In slow motion he watched himself skim the hair of one of the sleeping forms on the periphery.

Its eyes snapped open, making contact with his for the shortest of moments. Then he was beyond it, swinging away… Too fast to stop.

The sudden shifting of the hive suddenly didn’t matter to him anymore as suddenly only water was below him; Dark shimmering death. Then the vine finally broke.

Cixrus plopped into the turbulent water, gasping with cold shock as he sank beneath its hungry surface.

He struggled fruitlessly as the currents pulled him this way and that, spinning him over until he had no idea which way was up.

Vaguely he felt the darkness pull at the corner of his vision.

Then his hand hit something, the pain filling him with adrenaline and sharpening his senses. He didn’t want to die. He would not die.

With every ounce of strength he fought his way to the surface, pushing through the water until finally his head broke through the surface, oxygen entering his lungs as he gasped.

Soon he realised he didn’t need quite so much power to keep himself afloat, he could keep himself up with some kicking and splashing.

As the current swept him away into the darkness he looked back.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Two hundred eyes filled with rage met his.

The other doppelgangers didn’t dare to enter the water, but they all watched him, letting out a screech of rage in perfect unison.

He continued paddling and coughing out water, soon he was too far away for them to reach him.

He breathed a sigh of relief.

Suddenly, before he could turn back around the gravity vanished and he dropped.

He had, unbeknownst to himself, gone over a waterfall.

As he fell through the air he saw a great pool of water far below, rushing up.

When Cixrus hit the water this time, he did not stay conscious.

⟣⟡⟢

For the second time that day, Cixrus awoke.

Water lapped at his sides and he was lying on his front, cold and wet.

He had been washed up on a little beach in the bend of an underground river. There was no trace of the massive column of water and its roar that he remembered before losing consciousness.

Cixrus dragged himself up the bank and out of the water, choking water out of his system and wincing as the gritty sand disturbed the scab on his foot. Then he rolled over and looked up at the dark roof of the cave.

“I… Escaped. But now what?”

He was free, but that didn’t mean anything to him, he had no concept of it until today. He was suddenly very scared, how was he meant to decide what to do? He started hyperventilating.

After an unknown amount of time the fit passed and he shook his head, sitting up.

“I needed to get moving, find food and shelter.” he told himself. That’s what the hive would have done.

After a few moments he stood up, uncomfortably shifting his weight onto his unwounded foot. A few specks of glowing ore in the sand provided the faint illumination that his hypersensitive eyes needed to see by. He was in a barren cavern, other than the sandy river bank and the damp cave lichen that covered the walls there was nothing. No plants, no animals, no insects, not even river fish. The only exits were the tunnel that the river entered and exited the cave.

Limping closer Cixrus saw the tunnel had a little lip that hugged the wall, allowing the passage of someone without getting more wet. He examined the river, determining which way it was flowing, then went in the direction of downstream, he could not risk bumping into the hive again. Not in this state.

Taking a last look back in the direction he had come from, he clambered onto the lip, hugging the wall.

The tunnel continued for several miles, which was weird as normally the caverns Cixrus roamed were dotted through the ground like holes in cheese, far more regular in appearance.

‘I must be very deep down, further than I have been before’ he thought.

Goosebumps ran down his back, from the memories stolen from the hive mind he remembered grimm stories about the unspeakable horrors said to lurk in the deeper layers of the earth.

Apparently there was an entire civilisation of evil warlocks down here somewhere. Warlocks were known for their ability to bend magic into unparalleled destruction. Although such destruction was said to come at a great cost, twisting its users into withered abominations.

‘I hope I never encounter the warlocks, the lunatic survivors that escaped them told many nasty stories.’ The poor souls who escaped the deeper layers never came back whole. Sometimes they were just missing limbs, but usually it was their very minds that were gone.

The hive minds met every few years, to showcase their command skills, reproduce and share knowledge and stories, doppels themselves were unageing and asexual, so he had no idea how they made more hives, only that it involved a powerful and secret blood ritual. Knowledge of its details were never stored in his head though.

Eventually he reached the end of the tunnel. It opened up into a vast cavern.

In the distance something strange was happening, an army of thin wight like figures appeared to be trying to advance towards a stout but menacing dark fortress built into the side of the cavern. However no matter how much the army pushed forwards, they were being kept at bay by thunderous strikes of white energy that illuminated the entire cavern in bright flashes.

However, despite the blasts of energy digging up swathes of earth and rock, the blasts seemed to pass straight through the army. Most of the army seemed to be ghosts of some sort, the blasts knocking them around but not actually damaging them. There were a few individuals who were not ghosts, some thin dark figures. Though not many and they stayed near the back. Cixrus wagered they were controlling the ghosts.

The attacking force seemed to decide they had had enough and one of the dark figures ran forward all of a sudden.

Just before the figure reached the white wall of lightning, it unleashed a sudden ball of purple energy which expanded around itself in a spherical shield. When the first white energy hit the purple shield, it was caught and seemed to start orbiting the purple shield, picking up speed until it was a spinning white ring.

Cixrus watched the figure advance with fear, trembling at the intensity of the magic being exchanged and thanking his lucky stars that there was an entire cavern between him and the battle.

There was a great rumble and he saw the stone wall beside him slowly slide up, revealing a dark tunnel.

He froze. His fight or flight instincts went into overdrive like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

Out of the dark hole in the wall stalked a long limbed spindly figure. It looked like a human, but it was all wrong. The limbs were far longer than they should be, the fingers too, one of its hands was withered and twisted.

Gilver frowned in confusion as he looked down at the childlike being before him. It stood about 4 feet high, barely reaching his waist. It had pale skin and thin limbs that rippled with disguised muscles, a faint tremble gave away its fear. Long ears pointed out of a messy bush of hair and green eyes stared at him unwaveringly. Unlike Goblins none of its features were comically oversized, they all looked like a miniaturised human. Doppelgängers were descendents from humans like him.

The warlock slowly smiled, its too long smile stretched over its many sharp canines.

“Hello little doppelgänger, where’s your hive?”

He had escaped the frying pan, but now came the fire.

⟣⟡⟢

“Do you speak Common, À̶̛̭͈͉̫͍͊͊́̅̉̉̒͘͝n̵̡̲̺͔̥̰̼̟̖͓̼̖̅̊̚͝c̷̬͐̆̇̎͒̋̈̈́̐̊͘ỉ̸̝̣̤̑̈͊̃̐̓͠e̸̝͓͛̇̋̈́̕n̷̛͕͑͗͗́̒̊̿̌̌̕͘͝t̵̡̢͕̙̮̬̪̪͍̋͒̑͐̿̂̚̕͜͝ or Trrlįńmæ little creature? Are you even capable of speech?”

“I left them” Cixrus said in common.

Many millennia ago the ancients had created a perfect race, by modifying human genes, the race were short beings called homunculi. Sadly despite their perfection, they were entirely incapable of magic, which eventually led to them being dominated by hive minds due to the lack of magical protection in their cores.

Under the influence of the hive minds the race had devolved into what was now called doppelgängers and stopped being able to have independent minds.

“But you are a doppelgänger, you do not have your own mind, how is it possible for you to just leave—Unless you are possessed?”

Fearing the possibility, he raised his hands. Possessive beings were dangerous, but he had the perfect spell to combat the situation.

Not daring to close his eyes, he let his mind space open up around him. Quickly with a practised ease he sifted through the swirling spells in his repertoire and pulled a rarely used one closer.

This was a projectile spell, designed to seal the core of a being, it would temporarily lock away any possessive beings, eliminating the risk of it jumping to him, the clearly superior vessel.

Not taking any risks he poured magic into the spell, quickly shooting an almost transparent shimmering beam at the creature.

Seeing his eyes glow, the doppel tried to leap out of the way, but got hit before it could.

Then he doublecast, pulling his well used sword transformation spell into his mind before he had completely finished casting the other.

It was potentially dangerous to use it twice in a day, but he would just have to take that risk.

Like before his fingers melded together and shot out into the shape of a sword, the transformation accelerated by the torrent of magic.

“What are you? I have bound your soul so you cannot possess me, if you lie or try to cast I will run you through with my blade immediately!” he yelled at the cowering creature.

⟣⟡⟢