shadow clones broke

Gilgamesh twitched once, perhaps grimacing as he was caught between us, but hardly slowed down. He knew that even if there were two of us now, he had the advantage of being vastly superior to us in a physical confrontation, and even with our Auras raging into a storm around him, he didn’t back off. And generally speaking, that would have been the right move—I had no trouble believing he was twice as strong as I was if it came down to an arm-wrestling contest or something. But…that was the thing about teams.

We were more than the sum of our parts.

As Gilgamesh’s bone-like sword cleaved towards my head, I snapped a hand up, not to block it but to guide it. I caught the side of the blade with the tip of my left hand’s fingers, running the numbers in my head in an instant, and pushed upwards even as I lowered my own body. As his bladed whipped above my head, mere centimeters from driving into my skull, my other self stepped forward, knuckles cracking as he curled his metallic hands into fists. A foot came down, shattering the ground as he stepped forward into Gilgamesh, and his power shifted around him, momentarily receding into his flesh. Steel cords of muscle groaned as a network of patterns appeared on both his skin and my own, looking like nothing more than luminous circuitry—the power of Qigong and a half-dozen other skills, bolstering our strength in an instant. The blow he slammed into Gilgamesh’s gut was simple, choosing overwhelming power over any kind of finesse.

But sometimes, overwhelming power was all you really needed.

The air rippled and exploded outwards, pushed away from us by the force of the blow and creating a short-lived vacuum that pulled out our flesh, eyes, hair, and clothes. It disrupted the flames around me for a moment, carving a small and empty sphere out of my Aurora before collapsing and strengthening the flames yet further. The ground didn’t shatter, simply because it couldn’t anymore, reduced as it was to a field of molten earth, but it rippled violently, calling up a massive wave of lava that expanded outwards from us. And Gilgamesh…

On unsteady footing and overextended as he was, there was only so much he could do. There was a sharp crack and then he was blown perhaps twenty meters backwards, feet skimming the surface of the lava as he tried to halt himself but couldn’t.

Needless to say, we followed, this time relying on pure speed. We kicked off, layering our skills in an instant to create a sudden burst of acceleration that cleared the lava back down to solid earth, sending it up in a rain of fire. My counterpart moved just a moment before I did, timing it meticulously, and aimed another strike at Gilgamesh, this time targeting his face.

Knowing better than to ignore such a blow now, Gilgamesh’s free hand snapped up, catching the blow moments before it connected—and though he was driven back even further by it, even unsteady as he was, he held my counterpart back easily, sword wavering for only a moment as it traced a path up to his throat.

Before the edge hit home, however, I stepped into my counterpart, shifting into his physical space—and then forced out something more than physical. As I seized control of our bodies, he Projected himself forwards, spiritual presence gathering power even as he flipped over Gilgamesh’s oncoming blow. Landing on three limbs, he flickered once and materialized as Bai Hu, lashing out with his free leg the moment he regained solidity. My hands had begun moving even before we occupied the same volume, bringing them up not to protect against Gilgamesh’s strike but instead to catch my own kick, letting the force push me back just outside Gilgamesh’s swing before pushing back, providing the impulse to push my other self back to his feet and giving him an opening.

Gilgamesh didn’t even have a chance to pull back his sword before the fist connected with his chin, lifting him fully from his feet once more and leaving him—from my admittedly warped perspective of time—momentarily suspended in midair.

I stepped forward, feet slipping through my other’s Projected form and drawing it back into me as a matter of course. As I did, I felt something shift in the power I gathered—the power we gathered.

Like I said, we were more than the sum of our parts.

The hand I slammed into Gilgamesh’s gut was secondary to the ten Lux Aeterna’s that came with it.

For a moment, the image of Gilgamesh being struck was all I could see as all the light around us was drawn into my hand. It didn’t happen the way it usually did, darkening the world but for Lux Aeterna’s own light—instead, my view of the world rippled and writhed oddly, twisting and fluctuating as it seemed to be pulled into the palm of my hand like water down a drain. The world faded away in stages, though the process was literally blindingly fast, with more distant objects fading first until only Gilgamesh and I seemed to remain. My body pulsated, flesh giving way to Sahasrara even as the flames of Agni, Surya, and my Aurora were devoured by the almost crystalline sphere. After a moment, even my body started to get pulled towards it, my fingers elongating and twisting as they were drawing painfully in—

And then the sphere fractured, losing shape—and a thin line of light split the darkness. Everything that had been devoured by the sphere seemed to pour forth in the violent onslaught of twisted light and images, and at the very center of it was a narrow beam of focused power that struck Gilgamesh in the center of his chest. I could feel my other self working to keep the light coherent and intense, and it struck Gilgamesh with an inhuman amount of force, instantly accelerating the legenary Grimm to absurd speeds as it blew him away from us and back until his back struck the rising edge of the massive crater I’d made earlier and light played across it, melting everything that was illuminated by Lux Aeterna until a massive oblong shape was burnt into the earth around him.

Gilgamesh let out a low, restrained hiss as he bounced back to his feet, a hand over the bullet sized hole in his chest and eyes focusing intently on us. I looked back at him evenly, my other self literally running out of the space we’d occupied and gathering power in his hands, shaping it into the massive shape of Gungnir as he leapt up to eye level with the Grimm. Gilgamesh was already moving, a blur of dark motion who’s passage left a trail of broken earth and quickly expanding fire, blowing a wide hemisphere in the slag around him. In a matter of moments, he’d closed the distance between us, clawed hands reaching towards me—

I Fluctuated, willing myself into the space my other self occupied even as I formed a Gungnir of my own. As we came to occupy the same place, our weapons came into alignment, the power within them resonating and growing. The light of Gungnir seemed to skyrocket to an even greater intensity, and when we threw it, it almost immediately lost shape, the spear changing direction almost mid-shaft. Gilgamesh dodged, blurring and racing away from the attack, zigzagging as he went—but Gungnir matched every shift with a similar change of course, lagging just behind.

Even so, the fact that he remained ahead spoke of Gilgamesh’s speed.

But I wouldn’t be defeated by speed alone.

I focused my gaze on Gilgamesh and power gathered behind my eyes as I activated Gorgon.

The ancient Grimm hesitated for barely a fraction of a second before breaking free of the effect—and a fraction of a second was enough. Gungnir hit home and exploded with a sound like the crash of thunder—and we Fluctuated, coming apart to target Gilgamesh within the smoke, pressing the assault.