double orf

Then we used Ohr Ein Sof.

It wasn’t the same as before, at least not quite—which was both a good and a bad thing. We were united and divided, at once less than perfect and more than the sum of our parts. Thaumiel was about more than just giving a physical form to my counterpart—it was about giving him true selfhood, life and power. There was a difference between our separated existence and our combined one, odd as it might be; in truth, we were always divided, as we remained two distinct souls that happened to occupy the same body, but when we were like this…we were something else.

Stuff like that mattered to the Light. Apparently, so did the two of us activating the skill twice.

Of course, the other side of that was that there were two of us—meaning we had two shots at Unraveling, coming apart as we boiled ourselves down to the most basic elements. And by the very nature of Thaumiel, if one of us died, we both died.

But this was a chance for us, maybe even for Mankind, and with Thaumiel I was pushing Gilgamesh hard enough to take advantage of it.

Once again, I had a shot and I took it. I came apart—we came apart, connected even when there was nothing left of us but who we truly were. We were light and shadow, motion and stillness, the beginning and the end; a melding of linked concepts that soon lost distinction, our division dissolving into a true unity. A name occurred to me distantly, alongside Metatron, but slipped away from me along with thought and selfhood.

I was. We were. There was nothing else.

And then there was, exploding outwards from the light. Coming back together felt harder now, like I’d frayed a bit at the edges, except the edges were who I was. I checked quickly—pointlessly, even—and my other self was still there as well, panting hard alongside me, our breaths and heartbeats perfectly matched. Only after I’d finished checking up on my other did I turn my attention back to Gilgamesh.

The ancient Grimm had really seen better days. His armor was even more badly cracked now, thanks to our continued assault and the second Ohr Ein Sof—but more notably, he was missing something now, specifically his left arm and a decent chunk of that side of his chest. If he’d been a human, the new hole would have devoured most of his left lung and maybe infringed upon his heart, but as a Grimm, it was hard to say if any of the internal damage mattered.