He'd been here before; too many times, in fact. The first time he'd seen it, it had been filtered through Kelfir's golden selfhood; but now, with Yariel shunted off into his own little complex plane of irrelevance for the moment, the only one here was himself. The shimmering, infinitely deep walls were a clear hue of diamond, shot through with the red-and-black veins of his self-loathing and contempt; but the person facing him was all too familiar. "Me, me, me," he muttered sourly. "I'm so fucking sick of myself."

"That's a Matthew Sweet song," the man in front of him commented distractedly. The other Topher which faced him was exactly like him in every way, right down to his clothes; but he bore an infuriating expression of contentment which Topher was pretty sure he'd never had.

"You're the voice in my head," he plowed on, trying desperately to get this all over with. "You've been with me since the beginning. Who the fuck are you? I know you're me, but..."

"We are us," the other Topher clarified. "Parts of a whole. I'm the you that observes; you're the me that experiences. But you already know this; 'internal monologue isn't schizophrenia', remember?"

"Right," Topher muttered. "Leaving aside the whole question of why you never really intruded before we got Summoned, what the fuck is Arrested Development Teenage God Boy all scared of? Our Skill is a shitty Jedi Force Pull; it can pull off some cool stuff, but it's not exactly threatening to somebody who can throw around Edicts and blow up the planet."

"You need to think a little more abstractly," the other Topher admonished. "Did you think it was a coincidence that you, and everybody with you, Leveled up so fast? Or that you lucked into winning every fight, finding all the right things at just the right time? Or, even more incredibly, that basically every person you ran into wanted to be your friend, despite what might be magnanimously termed your disposition?"

Topher covered his face with his hands. "I cannot fucking believe my own consciousness is condescending to me. I am going to invent a therapy spell."

"Your Skill," the other Topher continued, "Attracts the Object of your desire -- the natural outgrowth of your childhood traumas regarding the frustration of your ambitions and your unmet needs for affection and validation. It's not rocket surgery; you probably could have figured it out several months ago if you ever stopped to think about it." Topher scowled, but the other Topher rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on. You figured out that Hana's Skill was more than growing alchemy components in less than four weeks, and acted like a smug asshole about it every time she expressed the tiniest bit of self-doubt; if you want to be a non-shitty husband, you'll really need to do some introspection, and probably soon."

"Let's worry about everyone surviving first," Topher dismissed himself brusquely. "But how does that help us here? Are you seriously suggesting I just hope to find a way to kill the Infinite King, and it'll happen?"

"You're missing the forest for the trees," the other Topher disagreed. "Remember that Hana's Skill didn't do anything on its own; it fit together with all the other factors to make something transcendental, greater than the sum of its parts. And you should probably also remember," he continued, raising a finger histrionically, "that the Infinite King is definitely smart enough to mislead us while being entirely truthful. You really think he's worried about your ability to make friends and gain bonus XP?"

Topher sighed. "I don't know. I'm so scared that I'll fumble the ball at the two-yard-line here that I don't know how to do anything other than bluster and mock." He sat down, glaring down at his own shoes; despite all his trials and travels, they were still unscuffed and perfectly clean -- even the purple wall that had destroyed all his magic jewelry hadn't harmed them, though they seemed not to be enchanted any longer. "Because even after everything, I'm still just a bully." He wrapped his arms around himself and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will himself away.

"That's funny," the other Topher observed. "I could have sworn your Class was something other than Bully."

There was a long, pregnant pause. Then, slowly, Topher raised his head.

The eyes that met his were at once intimately familiar and yet profoundly alien; stripped of illusions, he saw himself as others saw him, and was dismayed. But the sight no longer disgusted or horrified him; he had met and embraced the worst parts of himself, and the sharpest edges of his most torn and truncated pieces were no longer abhorrent. Reaching up, he extended his hand, palm-out, and the other Topher did the same; reaching infinitely across the ceaseless continuum that separated them, fingertips met and bridged an abstruse abyss of subjectivity.

He blinked, but the other Topher only smiled; in response, Topher felt his own face settle into a grimace. "You've got a plan."

"No." His other self reached out and tapped him patronizingly on the forehead. "You've got a plan; all the pieces are in here, but you're ignoring them because you don't know how they fit together. But that's where I come in." Simultaneously, they both let their hands drop; Topher faced himself, barely daring to hope. "When I point it out to you, you'll feel really dumb, but you'll put it all together."

Topher nodded, reluctantly; he closed his eyes, swallowed nervously, and opened them again. "Okay. Let's do this."

"Here we go." The other Topher smiled, leaned in close, and recited, "'The Tower is now sealed to outsiders.'" He stepped back, looking unbearably smug.

Topher frowned; angrily, he opened his mouth to protest.

And then he got it.

"Oh, fuck me," he snarled.

----------------------------------------

As the Metaphrastic realm dissolved, Yariel Arce regained his focus and awareness; the physical injuries which had maimed and disfigured him vanished like dreams, and he shook himself lightly in an attempt to process what he had just experienced. "I will admit," he murmured with impressive restraint, "that that was illuminating. But I think you missed your chance to kill me; or maybe it's just not possible in these circumstances." He turned, stiffly and with evident difficulty, towards where he could sense Topher standing behind him.

Topher was ignoring him; he was gazing out at the portal mesh, watching the ground below slowly grow larger as the moon accelerated towards devastation. His posture bespoke weariness, with one hand resting on one of the great runed plates which migrated slowly through the space. "Look at it," he commented tiredly. "Thousands of years of history. Millions of lives. More beauty than our world ever had." He turned back to Yariel, his gaze supplicatory. "You really want to destroy it all? Butcher everyone, just so you can preserve the imaginary fiction of your own safety?"

"'Want' is a strong word," Yariel responded morosely. "I told you. My options are limited; it's not as simple as you probably think." He walked up next to Topher, staring down with pain-wracked eyes at the landscape below. "Knowledge is a curse. And I know everything, Topher, or as close as a human being can get. The math only works out one way."

Silently, they both stared at the engorging vista for a few seconds; finally, Yariel grunted. "Seeing is new. It's pretty. A terrible shame, really."

"Yeah." Topher nodded. "Well, I guess we shouldn't let it be destroyed, then."

He gestured; there was a slow, gentle sense of oblique motion. Then, incredibly, the vista began to recede; Yariel frowned, muttered a few runes, then blinked in consternation when nothing happened. "This is very confusing." He muttered something Topher was pretty sure was "status open" and scanned the results grimly. "What have you done?"

"How," Topher asked airily, ignoring the other man's question, "did you read your Status when you were blind? Everything else makes sense but that."

"I could hear it in my mind," Yariel mumbled. "Like a screen-reader." He turned to face Topher, his eyes blanker and more uncomprehending than when he had been sightless. "What have you done, Topher?"

"First," began Topher, nodding to the other man, "I beat the crap out of you. Very cathartic; five stars, would buy again. Then, while you were doing the spiritual equivalent of swallowing teeth and wetting yourself, I ditched you and left the Metaphrastic space; this bought me a handful of seconds in which you were still there, but I was here."

Yariel frowned. "I fail to see how that could be important. The Metaphrastic realm overlaps this one; in essence, both of us were present and spanning the mixed continua. And even if it were true, it would only have been for a few instants."

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Right," Topher agreed, "but there were two times during everything when you didn't know what I was up to. One was when Kelfir sealed the Tower of Kal'Pandu against you; the other was when I fought Suzume in the Sanctum. And, as a result, I'm betting that you didn't know what was in Irineth's spellbook."

Yariel's breath caught; his head cocked over to one side, incredulous. "Tempus Thumos."

"Right again; you're two for two." Topher grinned at him, enjoying the irony; smartest guy in the fucking universe, and I get to monologue at him. "So I cast that, which gave me something closer to a minute rather than a few seconds. Now, normally, this wouldn't do me any good; with Infinite Dexterity, you'd be faster than me even when I'm Hasted. But your consciousness was off fucking around in the transcendent realms, rediscovering pain after ten decades of endogenous heroin, so you didn't notice what I did then."

He continued to walk around the hanging plates, now stepping nonchalantly between them; each moment, it looked as though he'd be struck by one, but his aimless stroll somehow carried him through and around each movement like a dance. "The thing is, pal, that I'm not a hero, or an Archmage, or any other kind of superguy; I'm a Clerk. A guy who just wants to organize and file information, probably out of a neurotic self-protective compulsion to control my environment. And yet, you've been fixated on me since I showed up; I wasn't even breathing the air here for two hours before you had Kalphegor -- Demon Archduke and direct relative of Kholoth -- personally up in my shit, because he was the one pretending to be a centaur and trying to cap off both Cailu and me with one swing. And there's only one other person I've seen you be that worried about, through all of this; we both know who I'm talking about, so this is the part where you confirm it."

Yariel blinked; his gaze dropped, his hands twitching impulsively. "Silveril Leafwind."

"Exactly." Topher kept moving, now pacing back and forth between the shifting, swinging obstacles that moved through the room on unknowable trajectories. "You had to be cautious of anyone who had Metaphrasty; but luckily for you, it's only available to classes that have both MP and persistent equipment." He summoned his Ledger, twirling it lightly, and then banished it again. "Because persistent equipment can't be destroyed; it's metaphysical in nature. And a Clerk's Ledger is literally an Akashic Record; it exists outside of physical reality, which is why Clerk is the only F-Rank Class capable of Metaphrasty." He turned back to Yariel again. "Kelfir was already the biggest threat to you out of everyone -- not because he was strong or knew bullshit lore, but because creating a Wyrd kills part of your soul -- and that can be used to weaponize the parts of yourself that make you vulnerable. He was constantly running circles around you entirely by accident, because he'd fuck himself up for an extra magic laser and suddenly not dance to your tune anymore. So when you threw us at each other, you got exactly what you wanted: a geas that would let you manipulate him much more reliably. You set up the plan; you used me and Hana and Rudo as bait, and you wound up Sahlerra and let her go spiraling off into a Very Smart Plan that was 3D Chess to us but Tic-Tac-Toe to you. And you damn near got away with it."

Yariel nodded, very modestly; his eyes searched Topher's wearily. "Yes. I admit to being a little surprised that you won anyway, but that's what the backup plans were for."

"Yeah," Topher agreed. "Even before Kalphegor's body was cold, you were already moving Varissian into place to take out Okano and the others, then make another play to take out Kelfir in the same move. Kelfir almost saw it, but he missed it; he thought you were trying to stop him from translating Archmage Venvaris's notes on a Level 500 Spell you knew would get everybody excited while not actually helping us at all." Yariel sighed, and Topher nodded again grimly. "But in order for that feint to work, you needed me to be Level 500; and Venvaris only got me to 279. So you gambled, bringing me here and letting me fight my way through your Overtuned Moon Robots to get up to that magic Level 500 number where I might try to figure out the spell."

"But you fucked up," he continued, pointing his left hand in a finger-gun gesture at Yariel. "You overshot it; you jacked my Level to 9999 in an attempt to convince me no Level would be high enough, but you probably forgot -- or didn't think it mattered -- that my Ledger's pages increase as a function of my Level. After all, I had thousands and thousands of blank pages even before I fought Kalphegor; it wasn't like I could beat you to death with the sheer weight of the paper, or anything. But the second thing you didn't know was that when Kelfir and I were at Kal'Pandu, unhinging our jaws and swallowing the bait of Irineth's Soulstone, I discovered something you didn't know I knew."

Topher summoned his Ledger again, then held it up like a bible. "I used Amanuensis to copy Irineth's spellbook into my Ledger, then used Validate Document to see if it did anything. And I got lucky: Validating your own Class feature dumps it into your Status, which is harmless for everybody but a Metaphrast. For us, you're aware of the composition of your Status, so all that information has to go somewhere -- and your brain is the closest shark to the boat." He tapped his own bald head meaningfully. "At that point, one minute was all the time in the world; all I had to do was use Amanuensis to copy the entirety of the moon-engine's data into my Ledger, then Validate it to understand everything. And that let me see all the exploits and flaws in the system -- including the ones you knew about but couldn't patch because previous Edicts prevented you -- and also taught me every spell simultaneously. Changed my Class, too, but that's not as important as the bullshit I now had access to."

"For example," he went on, opening his Ledger and pointing at a particular passage meaningfully as he strode back towards Yariel, "the Infinite King is immune to any effects which might alter his Status, and cannot have the Infinite Kingship stolen by force or other means while he lives. But," he commented, tapping a different passage on the page, "there's no Edict against altering your own Status, and there's a very obscure Alchemist spell -- Simulacrum -- that duplicates a target in a peculiar way that gives them a Status very close to that of the original. By itself, neither of these does anything -- but used together, I had a way to Metaphrastically alter the Simulacrum's Status to make it identical to yours, especially the hidden value that points to your quintessential identity." He grinned evilly. "And now I had a back door into your Status."

"At first," Topher elaborated, watching Yariel's look of horror with something akin to satisfaction, "I tried to set your HP to zero, and other stuff like that. But the Infinite King's Aspects and Attributes can't be altered, even if he wishes it; I couldn't reduce your HP, drain your MP, delete your Skills, or anything else like that. I couldn't change your Class, either, since the Infinite King Class can only be transferred upon the death of the holder, and you'd still be alive even if I killed the Simulacrum. But the Status contains more than just Stats and Skills."

He jammed his finger down hard against another diagram on the page, his voice becoming strident as he neared the end of his explanation. "Rudo's Innkeeper Class had a Skill that let him perceive your problems -- stuff like unrequited love, personal doubts, and shit like that. And that was unprotected, because everybody thinks of that sort of thing as circumstantial rather than personal; but under the hood, everything in the Status is a number, or can be coerced to one. And that was game over, because at that point, I could Metaphrastically swap those around with other values -- including protected values -- as long as those values weren't specified by name in any individual Edict. So I couldn't reduce your HP, but I could set one of those values to something equivalent to zero, then swap that value with your HP. And that point, your max HP would be zero, too; you die, and no other effect or protection can save you." With grim indignation, he snapped his Ledger shut; the sound was abnormally loud in the stillness, and it echoed throughout the room like a gunshot long after he'd banished it. "And that means your ass is mine, bitch."

There was a long silence; then, slowly but with finality, Yariel slumped down to the floor and gazed at nothing. "You can kill me now," he commented dully. "What are you waiting for?" Topher, who had been expecting rage or violence, shot a quick look at the smaller man; but what he saw made him flinch. Yariel looked like a puppet with his strings cut; his limbs flopped listlessly, and his expression was as slack as a corpse. Only the occasional blinking of his eyes betrayed that he was even still alive.

"Motherfucker," sighed Topher, "I'm not going to kill you -- death's too good for you, you fucked-up man-baby. I zeroed out all your XP; you're Level 1 now, with all your stats busted back down to F-Rank, and I made sure you can never gain another Level or raise another Attribute again. But your Class is still Infinite King; you're still immortal, still the only one capable of creating Edicts, except now you can't because your max MP is now zero and thus you don't meet the prerequisites." He loomed over Yariel, hands on his hips as he glared down at the wreckage of the other man. "I split the power up; only you can use it, and only I can craft an Edict you can apply -- because I know how Edicts are formed, courtesy of what I learned from Irineth's Soulstone. Checks and balances, dipshit."

"The irony," Yariel mumbled, "of a mainlander quoting American political philosophy to a Puerto Rican is quite rich." He sagged backwards, stretching out completely upon the floor; his eyes, no longer blind but still unseeing, gazed up at the blackness overhead. "So where does that leave us?"

"I don't know," Topher admitted. "But we're gonna have to figure it out."

There was a moment of silence, then the Infinite King sighed. "You realize that we have returned to a stalemate," he observed.

Topher nodded. "Yeah. I can't kill you, because then the Infinite Kingship would transfer to me -- which, by the way, was your plan all along if you couldn't actually beat me, because at least then you'd have the satisfaction that I'd be shackled by the same restrictions you chafed under -- and I can't swear to obey you, because then you'd just order me to give you the power to crash the moon into the surface again. And, spoiler alert, I'm not gonna do that."

"Then your wife," Yariel sighed, "will never be returned to you."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Topher disagreed. "Never is a long time, pal. And, to be perfectly honest, she'd kick my ass for even contemplating sacrificing the whole world for her." He looked over at her, frozen in a jubilant splinter of time; his heart ached, but he knew he'd have time to get used to that. A whole lot of time, probably. "But even a dumbass like me knows the difference between what I want and what's right."

There was another long pause; then, tiredly, Topher pushed himself away from the apparatus and stretched. "Come on. Let's go find the real hero in all this."