I refuse, the newest incarnation of Vualla said sharply as she stared with a firm gaze toward the frozen figure of Ileot Swacc and the frantic form of Lord Miln surrounded by Nether Heralds. There wasn’t a single tremor of emotion through her heart. At this point, she appeared to have mastered herself well enough to disguise her inner dialogue.

The Vualla who was a lock of darkness sitting over that Vualla’s heart, and in fact was the original, meek Vualla, sighed at this reaction. It was a foolish and pointless show of defiance. We all must play a role in this farce that Eliot has created. It is not a happy thing, but we have no-

I refuse, the stubborn Vualla who had been touched by Randidly Ghosthound repeated. Still not a tremor of emotion. Still no attempt to retake control of her body, should the tendrils of darkness that controlled her force the issue.

The darkness-Vualla hesitated. She knew that without this Vualla existing, without those strong and pure emotions that she had experienced over the past six months, the original Vualla never would have awakened from the sea of despair in which she had been drowning. As for the third of their number…

The darkness manipulated this body to look sideways as Lady Iellaya and her vast, smoggy wings. For all that the Vualla who had been birthed by the same world projection as Ileot Swacc himself was an oppressing and aggressive personality, her single-minded pursuit of power meant that she would never have escaped the trap of her own existence. She needed to be physically carried, like an overburdened satchel, to the destination.

Or more accurate, like a load of dynamite. Once she was there, she could destroy everything in the vicinity. But before reaching a destination… She was content to brood.

Inwardly, the darkness-Vualla was actually quite relieved to be free of that Vualla’s depressing thirst for power. Let Lady Iellaya bear that burden for a while. She had been forced to endure it for long enough.

Ileot was finally forced to tear his gaze away from the three silent Vualla’s because the Nether King surged back forward to lash out at him. Once more, the intense fighting between those two resumed. The Nether King released ominous chimes and Ileot blasted white lightning in every direction. But this time, Ileot gradually sustained worse and worse wounds as he couldn’t help but glance suspiciously over toward the Vuallas, waiting for them to make their inevitable move.

The original-Vualla-turned-body-snatcher used her tendrils to make the possessed body sigh. It matters not which role you take. But if you do not take this role, a harsher role awaits you. It is our karma. We cannot escape our relationship with our brother.

The newest Vualla remained silent, her resolve firm. Even as a pang of guilt shook the original Vualla, she gave a meaningful glance toward Lady Iellaya.

Instantly, a surge of emotions could be seen in Lady Iellaya’s rapidly changing expressions. Her lips and eyebrows arched and quirked, then scrunched themselves together. Finally, the power-obsessed Vualla fed into Lady Iellaya’s desire for power and revenge and overwhelmed whatever else she had been thinking of doing. Her gaze fixated on Lord Miln’s sorry figure across the battlefield. By the end of the mercurial parade of emotions, a crazed grin was painted across Lady Iellaya’s face.

She began to walk forward, dragging those vast wings behind her. They stretched upward and upward, seemingly with their tips dipping into the Great Rift above them. With each step Lady Iellaya took, her body accelerated. As she began to sprint forward across the floating stone island, a terrible cry was ripped from her lips.

“Lord Miln…!”

Lord Miln looked around in shock, but the Nether Heralds reacted faster. One of the two completely healthy Nether Heralds that had been ambushing Ileot split off and rushed to intercept this new threat. Especially because the Nether Heralds had already seen the chaos that Lady Iellaya had caused.

The darkness-Vualla measured this one that moved forward. This was the second strongest of the Nether Heralds and would have been an even foe for her originally. But no longer.

As Lady Iellaya howled, those vast wings stirred. One moment they were so wide that it was impossible to see the distant tips of her feathers, the next those huge wings beat downward in a blur of motion, colliding at their massive tips directly onto the approaching Nether Herald. The concussive force of the abrupt movement created a ten-meter crater that simply seemed to materialize and freeze the Nether Herald for a split second. A strange thump reverberated outward.

Even the flexible Nether Herald yelped from the sudden blunt force. Its legs cracked and began to spurt shimmering black ichor that burned at the orange stones beneath it. Before it could even recover, Lady Iellaya had shifted into the form of her image. The brown-scaled raven-winged serpent slithered rapidly forward, its mouth wide open and revealing row after row of jagged and rotting teeth.

The crimson patterns once more covered its scales, but even though it no longer possessed any wounds, it seemed that those lines were comprised of oozing liquid rather than a sketched pattern. It was like every beat of the serpent’s heart had it shedding drops of precious life-blood that made a maze-like pattern across its scales.

Lightning fast, the wounded Nether Herald spun backward, but Lord Miln belated realized that an ally had arrived. Although he was wounded, he still sharply dodged another Nether Herald and unleashed an attack that forced the Nether Herald that Lady Iellaya was pursing to pause briefly.

Which was all the time she needed.

Crunch.

Lady Iellaya devoured this Nether Herald almost immediately, relying on the horrific power that the Vualla riding her provided. The raven-winged serpent’s throat moved grotesquely as she forced the body down into her stomach. The bulge slid almost tranquilly along the length of her body before vanishing into her stomach. Then she surged forward, making a beeline toward Lord Miln.

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“Was this worth it?” The serpent hissed. Drops of blood began to spatter on the stone ground as they fell off of the crimson patterns on her scales. “Was all of this worth it?”

Lord Miln seemed immensely confused as a huge aura of rage and grief floated outward from someone he had thought to be reinforcements. The darkness-Vualla controlling the most recent Vualla’s body focused its Perception, then released a sigh of relief; the power-obsessed Vualla had understood her intention with the earlier gaze. Hidden within Lady Iellaya’s image was a tangible whiff of another image, one she had internalized not long ago.

Within Lady Iellaya’s image was a distinct trace of the Nether Prince, proving she had a hand in its death.

OOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG.

The Nether King’s terrible fury was a physical force, hitting the entire area and creating a huge fissure that ran directly through the center of the stone island. Gradually, those two halves began to slowly drift apart from each other.

Ileot had born the brunt of the Nether King’s attack and stumbled backward while hissing in pain. But the Nether Kind didn’t follow up on him. Instead, it surged forward past Ileot and leaped across the one-meter gap between the two halves of the island and to rush forward to Lady Iellaya.

Very quickly the confusion on Lord Miln’s face left as absolute panic took its place. Without much choice, the confrontation between Lady Iellaya and Lord Miln was tabled as even a Lady Iellaya apoplectic with rage had to admit that the Nether King was the more pressing foe. She quickly used her vast wings again to smash back the Nether Heralds and turned to face the charging Nether King with Lord Miln at her side.

And what poison it must have been to Lady Iellaya to be so near to the foe that had orchestrated placing them all in such danger and needing to work with him to survive. Another bleeding wound in her heart that the power-obsessed Vualla would use as leverage to manipulate her.

Ileot was torn, looking from the Nether King to Vualla. At this point, only Ileot Swacc and Vualla stood on this half of the sundered stone island, while all the others were all fighting on the other half. The distance between the two islands widened to two meters. When the darkness manipulated Vualla’s body to walk to the edge of the fissure, Ileot cautiously joined her.

For a few seconds, the two were silent, watching the fight. Honestly, it couldn’t even be called a fight. Although Lady Iellaya and Lord Miln were talented individuals, they were simply too young for their images to withstand the fury of a Nether King. Its every attack reverberated with that destructive emotion, forcing both of the Aether warriors to bleed from their eyes and mouth even with they dodged the attacks.

And when the attacks landed...

They could only give ground, helpless before the Nether King.

Ileot’s face slowly transformed into fury. “...you truly wish to create the same circumstances as the past? Even though I somehow missed the fact that you yet lived… it will not be enough. That Vualla, her life threatened by a Nether King. Do you expect me to be overwhelmed with emotion and help her like I did in the past? The reverence you give to karma is laughable. I will not follow your wishes. I will watch her die. I am not bound by the past. Your precious karma… doesn’t exist.”

Ignoring the most recent Vualla’s duplications subtle agreement with Ileot, the original Vualla manipulated this body to turn and regard Ileot solemnly. “So you will run away once more?”

Ileot’s face twisted immediately with hatred, but he was able to suppress that emotion. “Pah. Childish tricks are just as useless as karma. I will not intervene.”

“You don’t need to.” Vualla turned back to look toward the fight. Inside of her, the possessed Vualla released a wave of horror as she finally understood what was about to happen. Both watched as the Nether King swung its arm and shattered Lady Iellaya’s right arm from the elbow down.

“Do you truly think karma will compel me to act?” Ileot laughed derisively.

The original Vualla ignored him. Then she hopped across the fissure that had widened to three meters and crossed over the widening gulf that revealed the Great Rift waiting below them. When she landed, she ripped off the powerful veil that she had carefully woven on the walk over here to hide the object she held in her right hand. With a casual flick, she threw that object toward the Nether King’s back.

Immediately, Ileot was confused. This his expression transformed into bewilderment and then apprehension. “What…. Why…. That’s impossible! I specifically chose a life-core moment from Vualla after I had been at the war for years! My entire childhood was spent locked up in the library, we barely interacted. Then, with me fighting at the frontline for eight years…”

He truly is so tied up in his own little worlds that he misses so much… The darkness-Vualla said for the benefit of the most recent duplication. This is the cost of ignoring karma and believing you know better; you are so sure of yourself you overlook your own presence in your projection because you assumed you knew how important you were to the individual you used as a base for your projected world...

Meanwhile, Ileot began to pant. His voice was high and squeaky. “I wasn’t important enough to be included in that projection world! It was only when I went back and lived my life differently that I mattered to you!”

The original Vualla used this new body to smile sadly back at Ileot. “I was… never brave enough to write to you. Just like I was too cowardly to visit father before he died. But do you know how much it changed my life when you came back for Dalus’ funeral… and you brought me orange juice to try. A gift, just for me. At the time when father was withdrawing into the war effort, Mother locked herself in her room, and our third brother in had died… you gave me hope.

“Did you know, the reason I was driven to run away from home and go to the frontlines… was the letter that informed us you had been crippled in the fighting and were reassigned to the supply contingent. The day mother truly broke and refused to eat any longer. The day I couldn’t stand it anymore. Eliot… you always mattered to me.”

The recent duplication of Eliot, still unconscious, thrown by the original-Vualla controlling the most recently duplicated Vualla, collided with the Nether King’s back. The Nether King paused in its attack of Lady Iellaya long enough to twist and smack away the limp body with the respect as if it was swatting away a buzzing fly.

Eliot was smashed into the stone ground, immediately poised so directly on the boundary of life and death that even Vualla’s sharp senses couldn't determine his fate. And his intervention gave Lady Iellaya a desperately needed moment to open up some space and lash out at one of the harrying Nether Heralds, wounding it deeply and greatly lowering the pressure she faced.

For a split second, both sides gathered themselves. There was a strange fuzzy static in the air. Images of another time, another place, began to flicker over their current situation. The air was heavy with Nether, and the Nether remembered the distant past where this same situation had occurred.

This is karma, the original Vualla said again, more to herself than to anyone else. Then her focus went to the Vualla she was manipulating. And now… it’s time for a role that you cannot avoid. If you will not be the one that he saves… you will take my role. And I will overpower you so you finally take your brother’s life and drink it for strength.