---Maddy---
Maddy finished her initial preparations and together with James, they snuck out of the building a tense feeling overtaking both of them.
Their clones were stronger than them. Their best chance at overcoming that was an ambush – wait. One of the villagers just smiled at her and waved? The villagers were still here? For some reason, as soon as her clone had appeared, Maddy had wiped all memory of the rest of the dungeon from her mind to focus on the main threat. She tentatively waved back causing the villager to smile and nod before continuing on his way.
Quickly Maddy sunk back into focus. She did the metaphorical equivalent of placing her trigger finger on her spells – directing the barest hint of mana into them.
Her leg began to feel warm. Flickering mana into her mind for a second lit up her runes in her mind's eye – her leg was glowing.
This…this is different.
Maddy had tried to pre-charge a spell before back when she was testing things out however long ago.
It hadn’t worked at the time and so she had stopped trying…but now, maybe because the runes were on her actual body it worked. It felt like if she completely filled the spells she wouldn’t be able to keep them from activating but filling them a little?
That seemed doable?
It would increase the number of spells she could cast after all. Maddy continued dumping mana into her leg a faint strain on her mind beginning to build as she filled spells up then stopped and held them back from completing.
…it was almost dusk. Maddy could see the line of shadow cast from the cliff as it moved down the street once more. It moved so quickly and finally it felt like a sign.
…her clone was probably coming back every dusk now that she thought of it. Harder to do whatever she was doing in the dark.
Motioning James to the side, Maddy found a spot staring at the home she had been held in but mostly hidden from the street.
Thankful for the extra time, Maddy began to draw in the ground – sketching a large arc closed with a straight line in the back. Her mana refilled, her spells charged and she drew.
Laying down the herbs from her bag into the shape completed her preparations and then Maddy was left to wait – patiently staring across at the door.
It wasn’t a moment too soon – with the rapid shift to shade and darkness her future self came walking down the street alone.
Perfect.
Waiting till her clone was near the door, her back to Maddy she called her first spell – using as little mana as she could to finish the pre charged experiment off.
“A curse upon this fake. A confusing attack on mental state.” Maddy called out – the words were simply the vessel for her spell containing her intent. She had designed this based on a theory. An idea that her clone was mentally damaged from the dangers in the lake and also that her clone had probably dumped mental defense.
Maddy had no real mind concepts – she had no real way to direct the spell towards a mind…all she could do was use sound to transfer it to her clones body and shape an idea of attacking the mind into it as well. She had another idea with even less chance of working but that was why she had made so many plans.
“Awake and aware, your mind will be snared. A deadly attack through and too, the part your mind awakes. This makes attack two, the goal your reason to breaks.”
This bad ryhme was also a shot in the dark. Her ‘awake’ concept was limited in many ways. It wasn’t an element – she couldn’t invert it to sleep or anything…but she could use it to try and direct her death mana. If this allowed her to attack some part of her copy's brain that stayed awake that would be perfect.
Might not do anything but that’s fine.
Maddy was only committing a small amount of mana to all these opening attacks. They might do nothing but with any luck they would help even the divide.
Maddy’s clone had whirled at her tone and instantly spotted her. Mirror Maddy spoke her own spell even as Maddy’s two opening shots caused her to blink and shake her head about. Without giving her time to continue, mirror Maddy began to speak her own spell quickly pushing past Maddy’s attacks.
“Delinate –” her clone began – before suddenly, with a surprised cough, blood burst out of her mouth.
It worked!
Maddy’s biggest preparation had worked!
A jagged rip in the world began to streak across the ground towards Maddy before fading away as the mana lacked whatever direction her clone was planning on speaking.
This spell was her delirious hope. A way to remove one of her clone’s biggest tools.
The idea was half baked and yet it had worked nearly as well as Maddy had been imagining. To start, she had finally looked at how concepts worked based on what she had been told. Concepts were how the elemental damage was transferred between her and her target. She spoke and attached the payload to her sound…
There was another method. A method that hadn’t made sense to Maddy until she was left alone with her thoughts for over a day.
That method was using concepts from the other direction. A reverse attack of sorts.
The idea of her opponent speaking and Maddy figuring out how to attack based on their speech instead of her own – despite the sound coming from them to her instead of her to them…
It hadn’t made sense at first. The ‘reverse’ direction did not make intuitive sense to Maddy.
The default? It all felt realistic and clicked into place whenever she thought of it – for using a sound concept to attack for example she was putting her spell inside the sound. She attached it to the sound like a payload – sent it off and then allowed it to activate as a maggot or underected burst of mana on the other side. That made sense.
On the other hand attacking someone who spoke?
That felt fake somehow.
It had taken nearly an entire day alone with her thoughts attempting to explain the magic in her mind before an idea had kindled.
Maddy had thought of lightning. Of how it looked like it was coming from the sky down to the ground…but in many cases it was actually going in the opposite direction. A charge reaching up from the earth to strike the sky.
And then she had thought about how her mana didn’t actually need to physically move away from her. Early experiments had it teleporting about as she focused on things. All she really needed was a link and the concept was what made that link…
Cut to her current spell. She knew it was possible, had an idea of the mechanic and just needed a way of implementing the mechanic.
She would preemptively charge her retaliation spell – and then wait for sound to activate it. As soon as the sound from someone else reached her, she would use her concept to follow it back to its source. A tether of concept intent she could pump her payload through.
And this is where her idea became even more untested and had even more of a chance of going wrong.
You see, the elemental part of a spell could be inverted instinctually. Converting the mana in or outside of her life/death pool between its two sides was something she did purposefully…but with the same sort of control as blinking or raising a hand. Something she could do ‘manually’ but was in most cases something she just 'did'.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Inverting a concept…well using a concept involved writing its rune or speaking it. How could she convey she wanted to use it in an inverted way with that?
Reversing the rune – mirroring it and flipping parts inside out left Maddy with what she imagined a inverted rune would look like. No one had told her this would work and she didn’t even fully believe it would be that easy…but she hoped. She hoped and worked based on the assumption it would.
Maybe by tricking herself she could trick her mana. Spells at least partly worked on her understanding after all. An inverted rune was how she would convey an inverted concept.
All of that led to her current situation. She already knew her maggots could be unraveled so she had picked a different image. An image of something bad to eat – of rotting poisonous human flesh appearing and corrupting the tongue that touched it with how vile it was.
Revenge for what her copy had done to her tongue.
The attack had worked better than Maddy had hoped – a link was formed and a massive chunk of Maddy’s dark death mana had rushed into her runwork before jumping into her opponents mouth almost melting mirror Maddy’s tongue with how angry she was.
I’m winning.
Dimly Maddy saw mirror James beating the hell out of her ally. She couldn’t help – her own opponent was already making her next move.
Her copy threw something to the side the spell cracking loudly beside her.
From that sound a wave of sound passed over Maddy and caused several maggots to pull into existence on her skin. Maddy’s retaliation attacked the spot her copy had caused the sound to appear from even as Maddy channeled an anti magot spell. Her shifted spell ripping the foreign magots apart and pulled scraps of mana back into her pool causing her mana to refill ever so slightly.
Furious, crazed eyes looked back at her as mirror Maddy pushed past Maddy’s retaliatory spell. Mirror Maddy’s voice sounded like gravel as mana rolled out of a rotting mouth – even as Maddy’s attack connected once again a second burst rolling through mirror Maddy’s mouth.
“Domain of shattered mirrors” The copy rasped and the world listened. Her spell completed. A lumpy chunk of tongue fell out of the copy's mouth as she completed her activation and went still.
And around the two of them everything seemed to freeze.
Like…like someone had taken a picture of the world and then painted it onto the world once again. Maddy shifted and the world stayed where it had been. The three dimensional reality seemed painted suddenly. The world was fake – the only truth one of mirrors.
The air turned glassy and stiff then shattered with the sound of a thousand breaking mirrors. The broken bits of reality refracted then floated past as chunks that spun and floated outside of reality.
Between the two of them, it looked like countless shards of a broken mirror floated in space. Around them it looked like the world shrunk then repeated. A hall of mirrors copying the street an infinite amount of times in all directions.
It boxed the two in, hiding everyone but them and the immediate houses in this hall of reflections.
Silent at this point, mirror Maddy reached her hand into the air beside her – the reach pushing into a reflective part of reality like she was dunking her hand into a sideways pool of water.
A mirror chunk floated between them briefly hiding mirror Maddy from sight.
When the chunk revealed her once again, mirror Maddy was just finishing pulling her scythe from the world beside her.
Smart. Maddy winced.
Instead of continuing a ranged assault, the mirror copy flourished her scythe and began to run towards Maddy.
The scythe looked different – the blade was a shining mirror following the new theme – the steel reflective and glowing. The handle was dark stained wood almost black with the dark death her copy seemed to be infusing into it.
As the scythe moved through the air the world appeared to be cut. A stream of refraction tailed behind mirror Maddy as she crossed the street – the cut sides of the blade, splitting off like mirrors and leaving a trail of black in its wake. it was like she had created the scythe and the scythe now created destruction...
That’s not fair. I never got my scythe back why does she get it.
Stepping out of this spot wipes one plan. If I can dodge I should, but there’s no point running about if she chases me away from this spot endlessly…Maybe I can invert my idea and try and trap her in the D? No its set to polarize outwards in, the reverse is too hard to switch to now.
Mirror Maddy jumped sideways – passing into a floating mirror and disappearing even as she appeared behind the real Maddy. Her copy flew out of the mirror behind her, eyes glowing as the reflection attacked with purpose.
The scythe was swung like the farming implement it was – straight for Maddy’s runned legs, twin trails of ripped space cracking behind it.
A burning hollow sensation filled Maddy’s chest as her legs were severed from her torso faster than she could dodge. Jagged rips from the swipe struck upwards and ran groves along Maddy's body continuing the assault.
A gleeful look crossed her copy's face, even as Maddy found her body begin to fall and twist towards her copy. Her copy's gleeful look rapidly twisted into surprise as she fell as well.
Maddy desperately chased the shock from her body with life mana even as she watched her copy's legs crumple and twist into nothing.
An angry coughing guttural sound shot out of her copy's partly healed mouth…even as the copy fell onto her back and failed to catch herself.
“…DAMMIT, is the fake still linked to me?” Her copy screamed and Maddy understood.
That was how this fight was balanced. How the dungeon matched them. Her future self was stronger than her – had more stats, more concepts, more experience…and yet she couldn’t kill Maddy. Killing Maddy would be killing herself.
Maddy had no such weakness. It was like the dungeon was on her side – nerfing her opponent and holding her down so Maddy could finish the demon off.
Hoping desperately her early attacks had done something, Maddy felt her severed leg. A majority of her spells were broken – only two sections near her thigh still in play.
“Nightmare,” Maddy spat activating one of the undamaged spells.
This spell used a guess – a guess over what had happened to her copy in the story she had given. A potential trigger based off the way she had treated her. ‘You’re not her’ her copy had yelled seeming hypnotised by nudity – that was the hint.
In the air above them an illusion formed. A floating flicker of light mana. The siren who had hypnotized her.
“You’re dead!” Mirror Maddy immediately shrieked.
“I killed you, I won!” Her copy twisted and began to attack the illusion with her scythe, the air above turning into a storm of ripped air.
Maddy continued channelling the last drops of her light pool into the illusion even as she reached for her second spell.
A retaliation based on her opponent's scythe. An attack that sent death to ‘her’ scythe and then attacked ‘her’ with it. All her remaining death mana as fuel.
The copy continued to swing madly at the air even as her scythe began to fight back.
Seeming to corrupt the dark-death in the handle, Maddy’s spell caused vines of darkness to travel down her copy's arms and into them. It took several seconds for mirror Maddy to even notice – her eyes gaining the barest flicker of recognition just before the vines melted through her neck and dug up through her brain.
In front of her everything began to break apart.
The mirror world melted taking the copy's scythe with it. As her copy’s body was ravaged by necrosis, it quickly ripped apart – ripped till nothing but a wooden slate covered in a broken eyeball was left.
The last scraps of her copy's body melted puffing into smoke that twisted into the street around them.
Maddy looked at the item her future self had modified. Looked at it properly in hindsight seeing the twisted backwards words that spoke of bringing her to her past self. That spoke of reflecting her through the link Maddy had made, strengthening her each time Maddy used the altered spell.
Maddy reached out and snapped the slate just in case then crawled over to her legs.
She had done it.
She had won.
Maddy grabbed bloody legs and began carefully trying to heal them back onto her body.
The fight had happened so fast and yet it felt too close.
She hadn’t used even half her preparations – the drawn D hadn’t even come into play for example – and yet…it had been too close. She should have done better.
Floor one clear
Description: Triumphed over a Twisted Twin. Time a Tale as old as sin.
Feat: Beat Root C using Choice K while under-levelled.
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Stat: +3 Soul defense
Stat: +9 Mental defense
Stat: +27 Mental planning power
Stat: +27 Mental reaction speed
Stat: +27 Free stats
Bonus reward Evolved Psudo Concept gained: Observation of reality. You have proved yourself the real you. You have proved the reality of yourself – this is me – and have crystalized that meaning into permanence.
That…that was part of the dungeon? Maddy thought even as a second box slid into view.
You who have beaten great odds rejoice. You have surpassed your own future.
You who have struck down your future despair. You have set your own fate.
Your actions have set a tale into motion. An unavoidable truth has just been witnessed. Maddison graves, you are not free from fates clutches. As a final gift for clearing the first floor, this witness is conveyed to you in full.
A minor favour that need not be repaid.
You are destined to die by your own hand within twenty-seven days. No matter where you travel, no matter what you do, this fact is known. It's inescapable. The seed of this truth is scarred directly onto your soul.
It already happened after all. I just watched it happen.
And the truth of what you have just done, will be a curse that cuts your future short.