Rieren didn’t understand what was happening. Her mind hadn’t been in the best of states for a while now, and this sudden appearance of someone who looked exactly like her had thrown it even closer to some unprecedented edge had never even seen before.

A precipice borne of despair.

No. No. She would not think about the collapse of the Sect. She would not recall every single disciple who had died, every Elder who had fallen, in the last devastating invasion by the monsters. Monsters who had been aided by people. How dare those Abyss-cursed bastards born from pus-breathing—

Rieren hadn’t realized when she had jumped at the imposter with her sword and her Domain bared.

Her mind and battle-concentration reasserted themselves at that moment. The Domain rose, stormy water thundering upwards in an enormous wave, powered by her sheer rage. It crashed into the imposter, shattering the mountainside and setting off a landslide.

It didn’t matter how much of Lionshard she broke down. It didn’t matter if she tore the whole thing loose. None of it mattered. None!

In fact, those Abyssals wanted this hunk of overgrown rock for their own home, didn’t they? Rieren might as well tear it down, rock by broken rock until all they stood upon was nothing but sand and dirt, until they were crushed beneath all the lives they had torn asunder.

A part of Rieren was aware that her rage was blinding her to the battle, that if her concentration suffered due to her feelings, she would potentially put herself in needless danger. While that part was drowned out by the rest of her, it was still strong enough to chart the course of the encounter, just enough for the instinctive part of Rieren to follow and act decisively.

So it was that while her enormous wave sought to drown her opponent, her body was aware enough that its true function was mostly a distraction. Which was proven to be the right choice when the wave was clearly cut in two.

Rieren growled, pulled out of her annihilating recollections of the last moments of Lionshard. That technique used by the imposter was River Serration.

Where had she learned that?

Not that it mattered. Rieren hadn’t used the rising wave to charge straight at her opponent. Her battle-hardened steps had taken her to one side, out of the imposter’s field of view. The wave had cloaked her footsteps too, letting her get close without allowing her opponent to hear before it was too late.

“Now, die!” Rieren screamed, swinging her sword down with as much vicious strength as she could muster.

Somehow, impossibly, the imposter’s blade was there. The strange sword that seemed to shimmer with its own, faint light blocked Rieren’s cracked one. Tiny splinters of her blade broke and flew off. It wasn’t going to last long at this rate.

With another growl, Rieren kicked her opponent. The imposter slid down the broken mountainside a little, somehow maintaining her footing despite the water and the sliding rocks.

Rieren stared, taken aback for a moment. “How are you doing that?”

“I told you.” The imposter raised a foot with confidence that was bordering on arrogance. “I am you.”

When the foot crashed down, Rieren’s Domain disappeared, only to be replaced with her Domain again. But… stronger. She didn’t know how she knew it. Rieren just did. That was an ocean Domain. That water went up in waves in a very familiar patten.

For a second, shock rooted Rieren in place. Then she lowered her face. Her body went still. “You’re not an imposter, are you?”

“I am not. Now, if you—”

Rieren screamed. “You’re death.” She shot down the mountainside with as much speed and power her battered, bruised, and exhausted form could pull out of herself. “You’re my deliverance. So come and deliver.”

The imposter’s eyes had widened marginally, the first true reaction had seen on this strange creature that was simulating her form. It fed the fire that had gone up all of a sudden within Rieren. A fire that had turned, in that moment of insane epiphany, into a conflagration that would burn the whole world down.

Rieren included.

She charged in, heedless of the imposter’s stronger Domain. Her own water crashed against her opponent’s waves. With the advantage of falling from a greater height, Rieren was able to push through her enemy’s defence. Into the opening, she swung her sword with enough power to tear the muscles in her arm.

As before, the fake Rieren was able to bring her strange weapon into the proper range to block Rieren’s blade. More chips and sparks flew as their swords crashed.

Rieren was relentless. Her sword was a blur, her arms moving so fast that her eyes were having trouble keeping up. Instinct was all that drove her. That, and the maddening realization that she had finally found it. A fitting end. Or a fitting obstacle. One or the other. Either way, this was a moment where she would need to give it her all, holding nothing at all back.

Her broken sword hammered into her opponent’s in a bladed storm. But her enemy kept up.

Somehow, despite the absolute lack of any proper footing at all, and the fact that they were tripping down the mountainside, the blades never hit their target. For all that Rieren was unleashing all her strength, her opponent wasn’t hitting her back. Even when she left clear openings, the fake didn’t take advantage as she should have.

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“Why?” Rieren asked.

Her voice was barely recognizable. In the furious heat of battle, when they were moving so much that Rieren might bite her own tongue off, she couldn’t exactly talk normally. But she didn’t care. Answers. She needed the truth from this strange creature. She would cut them out if she had to.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Rieren screamed out.

And that was when she did tear her arm loose. Something ripped, violent pain seizing along her arm between her elbow and her shoulder. Rieren couldn’t hold back her scream as her swing missed wildly before she ended up striking the broken, waterlogged ground with her blade. It was all she could do to not fall.

A pointless expenditure of effort since her opponent finally decided to lash out. The pommel came flying in too fast. It struck her shoulder and sent her face first into the rocky ground.

The drop loomed with dizzying death. Rieren barely held on with her good hand. Was this going to be it? Was she finally going to die here? Defeated less by this unbeatable imposter and more due to her own reckless, heedless way of conducting this battle that had destroyed the battlefield itself?

“Do you see the futility now?” the imposter asked.

“You know nothing of futility,” Rieren spat.

“I know more than you could ever imagine. As will you.”

The imposter offered a hand. Rieren stared. The sheer audacity of this creature to offer this mercy, to grant help, was so maddening, Rieren’s mind went blank. All a part of her saw was white.

When Rieren refused to take it, the proffered hand came closer. Maybe this imposter thought she didn’t have the strength to raise her arm high enough to accept the help.

Whatever the case, the hand was close enough. Well, close enough for Rieren to use the last bit of her strength to pull herself upwards with a scream. She rose just high enough to chomp down on the fingers viciously with her mouth.

That startled the imposter. The hand was jerked back with such force, Rieren almost felt as though her jaw would be pulled free from her mouth. She let go before that happened, spitting out the blood as the momentum hauled her back onto solid ground. Growling, grunting out heavy breaths, but grinning all the same, Rieren pushed herself back up and raised her sword.

And froze. She’d been intent on taking advantage of the surprise attack. The cursed imposter had fallen. Now she could end that monster’s life.

Except, the monster’s pet was between Rieren and her target.

The cat. That damnable little cat with those strange, batlike wings was staring placidly up at Rieren as though she was some curiosity it couldn’t fathom.

“Wha… get out of my way!” Rieren shouted.

The cat’s head rotated a little to the left as though it was pondering her command.

The imposter laughed. “You truly me.”

Rieren focused on her target. A blurring motion caught her, and she found herself on the ground, her shattered sword lying in pieces on the ground. So that was it. She’d finally fallen.

Blood was pouring out of the gaping wound the imposter had finally dealt her. It ran from her waist, up her chest, all the way to her neck. Apparently, the fake Rieren could be fatal when she chose to be. Rieren’s senses hadn’t been able to catch the attack, much less let her block it with her own sword. It had almost looked like Gale Blade.

Maybe it was the exhaustion that had finally let itself be felt. Or perhaps it was the despair that had caught up with her, the realization that where she had lost everything she had once again, this… this fake still had this weird little pet protecting it.

Maybe it was the realization that this imposter had more of a life than she ever could.

“You have done well,” the imposter said, voice soft and kind.

“How would you know?” Rieren asked. Her words were coming out slurred, and even frowning up at that expressionless face was difficult now.

No. That neutral mask had finally broken. It had given way to something akin to sadness.

“Because I lived through this,” the fake said.

Rieren opened her mouth to refute that statement. How in the world could she live through this in any form when a future version of herself arrived to kill her off? It made no sense at all. But then, this imposter had said this wasn’t real. No, that couldn’t be… Her head began hurting along with the overwhelming wound to her torso.

When the words finally did come out from her mouth, they weren’t what she had originally intended. “Why do this? Why come back and kill your past self?”

The imposter had knelt next to Rieren’s bed. It was… monkey’s balls, this position was almost motherly. “I am coming back nowhere, as I said.”

“I know. But why do all this?”

“Because I was mistaken.”

“About what? Speak… speak plainly. It’s the least you can do after killing me.”

“Because I believed I had won. I—you—we—lived through everything. We found a goal, eventually, and made that a reality. We won.” The imposter’s expression tightened. All of a sudden, Rieren could actually see the decades reflected in this fake’s eyes. A depthless age that Rieren couldn’t even begin to fathom. “But it was not to be. We have to do it all again.”

“What do you mean? What did you do? Is… is that what my life would have been like?”

“Yes.” The imposter’s smile was gentle. “This was not our last defeat. But it was not a life full of loss, either. We won as well, as I said. Victory seized from the jaws of defeat. Friendships and alliances forged in the fires of war and despair. Things we would go on to lose again. And again. But our goal kept us alive, kept us walking when the rest of the world fell.”

Rieren’s sight was finally beginning to fade. The blood loss had been too much. “A goal… of vengeance?”

“Yes. A life built on one purpose. An arrow that could never fly off the mark. We sacrificed everything for it.”

“Everything… like the world?”

“Yes.”

Rieren didn’t know whether it was the onrushing death that had made her imposter’s words turn faint or the fact that she could barely hear anything at the moment. Even her eyes were refusing to blink. She was rapidly losing strength.

“I have a question for you,” the imposter said. “If you can answer.”

“I might be able to… for a little while longer.”

“What would you have done?”

“What… do you me—”

“When everything you set out for had been accomplished. When you had fixed the world, removed the influence of the gods, and set it all on the right path once more, what would you have done with your life?”

Rieren was taken aback by the question. She would have been truly stumped, but the blood loss and her fading life was slowly pulling away her ability to even feel properly.

But it hadn’t stolen her mind yet. She could still think. At the imposter’s surprising question, the images of possibilities popped up into her head without even needing any real thought. Pictures of what Lionshard mountain had once been, of the people she had cared about and the lives they had led, of her youth when things had been right, even if it hadn’t been ideal.

She still bubbled out a little laugh. “I think… I would have enjoyed… rebuilding the world to what it used to be. There is much that I would have liked seeing again, and making an… an honest eff…”

Her mouth wouldn’t speak any more. Forget her ability to form coherent words, even her consciousness was slowly pulling free from her corporeal body.

The imposter rose above her. A few teardrops fell upon Rieren’s face. “Thank you.”

Rieren didn’t feel the sword sinking into her chest. All she left with before the world disappeared completely from her senses was the look of sorrow mixed with fierce determination on her enemy’s face. A look of unshakeable resolve.

If only she had been capable of something like that while she had lived.