Seth’s hand moved without command. It rested against the wall and he eased himself against it. It was rough and hard. Its temperature was unknown as his ability to feel had remained an elusive lover since the beginning of the test.
He ran a trepid hand through his groomed, sleek hair as he heard the howl of a particularly pained voice from one of the replicas fighting. When he’d packed his hair back was beyond him. He remembered doing it, but it was as one remembers a particularly morbid dream. It came in bits and pieces with no true respect for chronology, fading slowly into nonexistence with the passage of time.
His memory picked out a hand through hair, a piece of elastic band no longer than his smallest finger wrapping around a lock of hair, perhaps more. It pulled up with a gentle tug and a tap. Then he tossed the fragmented memory aside as it was irrelevant to his current state.
He was groomed and that was that. What was more important was how he’d lost himself in the collectiveness of his fractured minds. He was appalled to think he had for one moment forgotten that he was the original. Regardless, remembering his importance wasn’t as big a deal now as he’d have liked it to be.
More pressing matters happened before him as two of his minds waged a war he could only witness in sound over who would come to face him. He feared the victor would not necessarily be in favor of his leadership.
This had been the test of fear, and he was certain he had failed it.
For the span of more than two days he had succumbed to his fear. He had been lost in the cacophony of his thrice split mind so that they were merely four minds housed in a single body.
When another howl pierced the cave, he forced his eyes to see what was happening and hoped the world would steady itself from the haze the replica that had cuffed him had tossed him into.
It did.
Nigh thirty paces from him, he held himself pinned against the cave wall. Had he truly believed he was all four of them? Had it truly made sense to him that he could believe he held himself away from himself by no other power but himself, pinned against a wall simply because he sought to protect himself from himself?
Had he gone two days with thoughts like this?
The answer was as pathetic as he felt now: Yes.
He shook his very mind. Vertigo came alive from the action and he shook it too. He needed to interpret his world correctly lest he go mad. The Rector had said some of them would come out of this test, but they would not be the same. Seth intended to come out of the test very much the same, if he could not come out better.
He pushed himself from the wall, tested his feet beneath him with easy steps and was glad to find they held beneath him. He slowly carried himself toward the two pieces of his mind that fought, because that was what they were: pieces of his own mind. Quiet not to rouse their attention, he slid in easily behind the one gaining victory.
“I would not do that?” the piece on the precipice of victory said, each word punctuated by a violent shove and a pain filled grunt from the soon to be vanquished. “You help him now and I assure you we both lose.”
“I let you win and I lose,” Seth said.
The victor pulled his arm back and shoved forward again. His opponent roared in pain at the action.
“You’ve won already,” the loser protested. “I don’t see the need for all this.”
The winning mind reached up and took his face in his hand, pressing it to the side and against the wall. Seth shook his mind once again at the thought as his mind cast him into the point of view of the victor, the fragment of his mind that seemed to be gaining dominance. He wondered just how long he’d lost himself to them. How long he had thought he was them.
“You smirked,” the victor spat at the other. “You saw the chaos about to ensue and it pleased you.”
“It pleased all of us,” it returned. “And may I remind you that you struck the first blow.” It cast a quiet glance to the body on the floor with a head still burning blue. “You quite literally killed him.”
The mind didn’t even spare the body a glance. “He’ll be back when all this is over.”
“But he will remember.”
Seth’s mind shook its head as if annoyed. “We,” it corrected. “We will remember.”
“And what about him?” The vanquished mind looked at Seth despite its head being forced against the wall.
“What about him?” the victor asked.
“He’ll remember.”
“Would we rather have him forget?”
“I really would.”
They were conversing as if he wasn’t here, as if Seth was no more than a child whose future they were here to dictate, to decide. It irked Seth to be looked down on by his own minds. And he refused to stand for it.
His hand closed in a tight fist and found a stone in its hold. It had been conjured by no conscious will of his own. A part of him wondered what it was with him and stones when a fragment of his mind had quite literally wielded a burning knife that blazed a bright ocean blue. Another part of him just wanted to bludgeon them both and be done with it.
“Wouldn’t you?” the mind propped up against the wall continued. “Even his thoughts have no place for us now. Imagine if he remembers.”
Holding its opponent in place, the victor turned to afford Seth a calculating look. Its eyes trailed a path down to his armed hand, then back up to his face. It turned to its opponent and sighed.
“We will speak of this later,” it said.
“You always were the better fighter,” came the response. “I still don’t understand why you don’t want to lead.”
Seth felt annoyance build in his mind before the victor answered. “Because alone, we are not complete.”
With that, it firmed its hold on the other’s face, fingers traced along strong jawlines Seth didn’t know he had, and twisted.
It released its hold, and its opponent fell to the ground without protest, its neck cleanly broken.
………………………..
The cave seemed darker now despite the blue light. There was a silence as well. And while Seth knew the silence to be real, he felt the darkness more a figment of his imagination.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“It is,” his mind said, standing before him.
“What is?”
It gestured around them, the action seeming to encompass everything within and outside the cave. “All of this,” it said. “Everything here is a figment of your imagination. A world created from nothing but your fear. Or to be more precise, the real Seth.” he turned and looked down the path they had been heading once. "The one you represent."
"So you're saying I'm not real either?"
"Not entirely. We are all in your head. And since it is your head, you'll need to be represented. So," the mind gestured at Seth, "you're the representation. A microcosm of the macrocosm."
“And why should I believe you?” Seth asked, knowing his mind spoke true. How it had taken him this long to realize it brought him a modicum of shame. Regardless, what it meant was that he was real.
“Have you heard of this thing called shadow boxing?” his mind asked, ignoring his question.
Seth was about to answer when it continued.
“It’s an interesting thing men used to do in the old world. They still do it now, but the term itself is not as dominant.” It walked away from where it had been standing, where the body of a different fragment now lay motionless, and came to stand in a place filled with space and enough freedom to swing a ten-foot pole.
Instinct guided Seth and his muscles tightened from a dangerous sense of attention. Whatever was about to happen next was something he was fairly certain he would rather avoid.
“The concept of shadow boxing is to conjure the image of your enemy in your mind,” the fragment continued. “To stand against it. To fight. It was the boxer’s way of pitting his skill against his mind, sharpening both mind and body. If done right, this boxer would always be a winner and a loser… all in one match. But you already know this, don’t you? After all, how else would we know it if you didn’t?”
The fragment was right. Seth knew this, found it in one of Jonathan’s book about the life of some boxer in the old world who’d been very fast on his feet. He’d been famous during his time, a time before reia. Even now he couldn’t remember the man’s name, all he knew was the man had an Arabic name… or perhaps it was a Muslim name. He sighed, knowing he had never been able to tell the difference between both; never been able to tell if there even was a difference. But that was all he could remember of the boxer, and he wasn’t sure if he was even correct.
Still, he found himself reminded of how right the fragment was. Perhaps it deserved a reward. Perhaps not.
It did not matter.
“If I did not,” Seth said finally. “How would you?”
The fragment of his mind nodded solemnly. “Why we wanted us to rule was always anathema to us. Perhaps I will come to understand why after this.” It stretched its arms, shook them loose, then held them out before it. Its elbows were bent slightly and its hands were splayed open before it, one ahead of the other. “Think of what is about to happen as shadow boxing and remember to do it right.”
Seth leaned into an offensive stance without a word of disagreement. If his own mind wanted to fight him, then he would put it in its place. He felt the rock in his hand and tightened his fist around it. He would win, that much was inevitable. But the process of it was what he found daunting.
He fixed his eyes on his opponent and found his line of thought wavered. He experienced how much of a difference existed between their sizes. It had been obvious in the beginning, forgotten at some point, ignore entirely into nonexistence. But it was back now. And his mind towered over him like Goliath over David in the myths of the Christians.
Perhaps victory wasn’t so inevitable. It was shadow boxing, after all. If done properly, he would win and lose. But there were two of him here. And no one said he was the boxer’s body that would win.
The fragment of his mind had no expression. Its face was a hollow mask that could’ve well been fashioned from bone. Then it brought dread to the cave with a single word.
“Begin.”
Seth moved with the precision of a lunging mamba, initiative his best bet at victory. He hoped to take his opponent by surprise, so he did the one thing all his instructors in the seminary always taught them not to; he discarded his weapon.
He threw the piece of rock and it scaled the distance between him and his mind as he closed it, following quickly behind it so that he came immediately after the rock had hit its mark.
His mind barely paid any attention to the rock. It hit the mind in the face, somewhere between his cheek and jawline, and bounced away, but its gaze never left Seth.
Surprise had failed Seth, and he had lost his weapon, but he did not cow away from the fight. Seth struck out at his opponent with a quick jab, a boxer’s attack in something he had been asked to consider shadow boxing.
He only thought it fitting.
His mind did not bother to lean away from it. Instead, it struck his hand away, sweeping it far from its trajectory with an open hand, eyes watching, waiting, perhaps even judging.
It stepped in quickly and struck downwards, compensating for the difference in size between them both. Seth was low enough that he didn’t have to struggle against the attack, so he pushed on, wishing to strike again before the blow met him. It was a moment before he thought better of it. Low as he was, he ducked even lower to avoid the open-handed blow, recognizing one of Domitia’s favorite fighting technique in the single strike.
The slap took Seth against the side of the head just above the ear and swayed him away from his path. Rather than fight it, Seth threw himself into the sway, tossed himself to the side so that momentum carried him away. But he did not move away from his mind. Distance would not favor him in a battle against an opponent with a longer reach than him. Instead, he tossed himself so that he curved his trajectory and swerved around his opponent. He found success in the action as he flew around his mind like a curved ball and landed behind it.
He rolled once, then twice, and shot off the ground.
He primed his own attack, a second attack in barely five seconds, and chose his point of violence. In return, his mind turned, leg swinging as if powered by the force of a hurricane.
Seth was too late to change his trajectory or his attack, and the force of the blow that caught him in the jaw rocked more than just his body.
Seth wasn’t sure what had struck him for the first two breaths succeeding the attack. All he knew was he was attacking and found himself soaring through the air a good distance from where he had been. His brain was a jumbled mess of empty thoughts, pain a toxic companion in a violent relationship.
His path came to an abrupt halt against the cave wall. He struck it with his back and his head and sparks of pain came in the brightest white as he rebounded off it and fell to the ground. Darkness clawed at the edge of his vision, blotting out the light of blue. His first thought was to shake them away, but he thought better of it. He kept his head still and blinked fiercely, painfully. If his head was ringing now, he could only imagine what would happen if he shook it. Perhaps he would single-handedly bring the fight to a close.
“Not so single-handedly,” his mind said.
It sounded so close that Seth started for the tiniest moment. His head shot up from its place on his knees in anticipation only to find his opponent standing where it had always stood. Tall. Regal. Overpowering. He felt almost as if he were fighting Reverend Domitia.
Could he win?
“You can,” his mind nodded. “There is no fight that a person cannot win.” It eased itself back into its stance, a martial mage sparring against a wooden dummy with all the time in the world. “The issue is in the will. You must ask yourself: Will you win?”
“I’m being lectured by my own brain,” Seth grumbled as he came to his feet. Standing, and certain he would not fall over, he took his own stance again. “How about you come over this time?”
His mind cocked a brow at him and he recognized the action as one of confusion. “Are you certain of that?” it asked.
Seth nodded. “I think I’ll do better if you attacked.”
He had watched every version and technique that came with the mind’s choice of fighting stance having trained under Domitia and was certain he could predict them to an extent. His mind might be fast, but it was not Domitia.
With a single nod and what seemed like a faint smile, his mind moved. It was precise. It was fast. Seth knew in that very moment that he had miscalculated. It was no Domitia, but it did not have to be to crush him.
Seth’s mind ran wild as it moved. Seth stepped forward as his mind attacked. He ducked the first blow, telegraphing its path easily. But this was a fight, not a spar. His opponent was out for blood. When the second strike came, Seth was already evading again.
He pivoted on a three-step technique Domitia had taught them. It was quick and efficient, designed to carry him around his opponent almost immediately. As effective and easy as it was, he found it a difficult move to execute as close to the ground as he was in his evasion.
His mind turned to him, predicting the move perfectly, and struck out with an open hand. The blow grazed Seth’s jaw as he leaned away from it. His legs carried him farther away, and he staggered as he gained distance from his deadly opponent before righting himself.
Seth solidified his stance once more and his mind darted after him again. He parried one strike, ducked another, took a blow to the rib, and cross countered a straight strike. Through it all, his opponent’s expression remained passive as it threw a feint he fell for. When the true attack came, it was a kick to the liver that would’ve brought Seth down with all certainty.
Unwilling to lose so easily, Seth took the kick with a raised leg. His defense was successful, however, success came with the force of a battering ram. The blow sent pain through him as he staggered away.
Victory was becoming bleak as defeat towered over him.
A single question swayed in Seth's head: Was he really going to lose?