Mythatorium

CLANG

The tip of Salphon’s spear clashed with resounding force and energy echoing against the matching weapon of his doppelganger. Standing amidst an expanse of the edges of eternity, a space in which matter and antimatter contested to be ruled into a place in creation, they stood alone in the definition of true existence amidst a sea of impermanence. When their weapons met fiercely, the cascade of the hard counter echoed against billions of implausible surfaces that bent, broke, and at times simply disappeared. Therefore, the sound that returned to them echoed thousands of times on each syllable, sounding instead more like:

CCCCCLLLLLAAAAANNNNNGGGGG

He grit his teeth as he tested the metal of his starsteel against the mettle of its imitation, pressing the weapon’s thin flats against one another testily against one another. He found his motions followed, his pressure similarly copied, a milisecondary reaction time distinct to him making it seem almost as if it were a mirror.

CLINK

Salphon was forced to respond to a version of his own attack in response, their speartips meeting high instead of low. The mirror-image had twisted handle around handle just as he intended to, twirling to strike at right instead of left, and high instead of low. This thing knew him too well, and he couldn’t tell how.

CLINK-CLANG

Inches of his motions were replicated in specificity, yet he watched as its gelatinous muscles stretched to compensate for the imperfections. Globules of gray slime stretching over bent body parts, pushing or pulling to ensure a stride was kept, making up for an in-progress understanding of his biology. 

SHINK

He managed to slice at a stringy section of that connective tissue in the making, seeing that it was protective of the core biology it was copying. Salphon’s defenses were precise, cutthroat, and meant to divert blows by the skin of his teeth. The excessive amount of flesh attempting to grow off of itself then, if it were truly copying his processes, could not appropriately account for its offshoots the  same way. It attempted to, curving its whole body to protect itself along the arm, only to be forced to account for their differences. The mimic had no mouth to shriek in pain, if it felt any, only a smooth slate of a face blotted by two sharp, sunken eyes. However, in fairness, Salphon wouldn’t have made a sound either.

He saw no alarm in the creature’s notice of its imperfection, but Salphon saw it . He would press the attack, for even a small misstep could become a dramatic cost with enough exploitation. 

SHICK/SHICK

Salphon went high again, into the imitation’s shoulder. He had to dedicate both of his own shoulders to the strike, twisting his body to follow the creature’s retreating stance. Such a reckless attack wasn’t parryable at their distance, at least without a follow-up that he could guarantee. However, it didn’t copy his attack to parry himself.

“Gahahk—“

He sputtered a noise as he glanced down, realizing the twist they made at each other was copied horizontally, and saw its fleshy spear twisting into his loose arm. He began to twist his spear tip into its flesh, and it began to twist its spear tip into his flesh. He growled at such a deep level of mockery, feeling his hot, orange blood drip onto the sharp edge chipped in him. He watched as the creature’s own splinter did not draw anything, as instead its flesh began to morph and grow onto his spear.

He gasped, realizing what it attempted, pulling his spear back, finding it stuck, as the monster only pulled its spear to pull him closer.

“Ack-!”

Its dark flesh crawled up his weapon, further past the blade, creeping up the shaft, as it began to grow its seedy spear into his opened wound, feeling more personally as tiny, fleshy tendrils spread through him in overlap of his nerves and blood vessels. 

It’s trying to absorb me.

That’s what it was. That’s why it was copying…

Salphon realized now. He was the only thing real in this area of existence. It wanted to understand him, to comprehend him,

To surpass him.

No–

| |

He saw no alarm in the creature’s notice of its imperfection, but Salphon saw it. He slapped the core of his staff into his offhand, bridging his weapon in front of him, offering the whole blunt side of the weapon in front of him. He shoved it forward, intending to bash against one another, in order to push himself back with that clash.

But instead of hearing the hard columns of their staves clack, he only heard one of them tensing: his own.

Crrrrk…

The creature had reached out with its sludged grasp, clasping around his offered weapon shaft firmly, collecting the force he had tried to force into it by clenching on tightly. 

He could not shake the creature off while it was attached, not easily, and its wrest allowed it to predict exactly how he would try to swing his spear, even if it wasn’t in his head. Salphon grit his teeth in frustration; so it can do more than just copy everything I do?

Though, he had to amount: this is exactly how he would’ve countered his own move too.

It pulled him in by the spear handle, its flat white irises that cut through its gray discolorations coming closer into his vision, before they contacted on the headbutt it slammed against him. 

“Agh!”

He got what he wanted as he was let go of. Unfortunately, it was because he was sent hurtling, and not hurtling himself, backwards. He tumbled more than a couple times, his senses disoriented by spinning head trauma and an already swirling mass of incomprehensible images blurring past his vision. He shut his eyes to hone his overwhelmed senses, tensing his muscles, and flapping the wings on his back to re-center himself. There was no gravity here but the kind that he created, stabilizing on solid ground, twisting his neck until he was certain he was even again. Even, at least, with the creature that had not moved from where it had struck him.

He still handled his weapon, he had not been disarmed when there was a chance to. He held his spear casted down his side, pointing into the void, watching as it copied that stance from afar. It really was doing more than just copying what he did, it was copying what he could do. It copied his form, physically and intuitively. It downloaded his pose, his poise, his predications on what to do next. He couldn’t ask what this creature could do anymore, he had to ask what he couldn’t do.

Salphon swished and twirled his spear in practice in front of him, watching the mirror image copy his dance down to the hand movements, arm over arm. He looked again. It understood where its hands needed to go, and how its arms needed to move, but not precisely. He saw its arms subdividing and subsecting into one another instead of crossing appropriately, wrapping through itself as its flesh simply replaced itself, wrists passing through one another until flash could swab back into place wherever it needed to be.

SHING

Salphon stopped his showing with a thrust of his spear forward, both their points centered between them, aimed perfectly at one another. It was precise, very precise, but he had already established that it was not perfect. Exceptional, perhaps. But it was not as exceptional as he was.

FLAP

He pounded force into his wings, feeling his feathers ruffle against one another as they fueled themselves with their own grace of wind. He did not need them to fly here, but they would help steer him, guide him as they were meant to. His eyelids locked open, refusing to shut on him now, feeling the sights of his peripheries expand to include the warping space around the speck of an opponent across from him. He had only small words of prayer to offer from his addled heart. 

“May God have mercy on you.”

SWOOSH

He sped forward now, his missile form and dexterity matched, tucking their bodies in as if they intended to collide like two brazen bullets. He knew, or now they of him knew, how to ride his own momentum to kite into a safe range, arming his spear under his arm in their flying joust.

CLANG

He tested again the integrity of their weapons, how his opponent’s congenial flesh could muster itself against his own. He confirmed again, through how he felt the armaments reverberate back through him, that they were well-matched on a material level, being structurally, even texturally, replicative, remaining intact despite a total blobby appearance. He could not deride such a disparity, despite the difference in its  “biological” makeup. He was, by now, used to seeing a living spirit in all non-living things. 

TING-TANG

Though, the “life” in this replica was oppositional to that understanding, reversing that understanding that he had: seeing something moving, alive, in front of him that might as well not matter at all.

TWANG

Salphon swooped in and out by incremental distances, assured of his position as he pressed his spear in and out, here and there, picking and prodding at every point he could. He had already tried some major weak points, but now he just needed points.

SHICK

He turned his body to stab at the skin of the creature’s side, skinning a slip of its sludge coming loose as his own body curved appropriately to avoid its thrust, suffering only skid-marks against his ragged clothes. If it wanted to make its entire body out of his spear’s nigh indestructible material it might have been able to, but it seemed even this senseless creature had some sense of sensibility, or rather a rule of unknown law to follow. 

TTTTT-

That was why he wouldn’t slow now, he needed to press and press and press. Several times, dozens of times, hundreds of times, blurrily blinding swift strikes picked at it. They clashed, over and over and over again, almost all of his attacks deflected, diverted, matched. But not all of them.

SHINK

Imperfection. A chip over the creature’s shoulder, slinging the string past it, tearing off more of its attached skin, before it betrayed its behavior to attempt behavior of its own, swinging the bottom of its staff towards him.

SHANK

Imprecision. A slice up its arms, the deepest wound he’d made, taking advantage of its impromptu reaction to get a real hit. It had measured him to exacting degrees, but he was exposing its misunderstandings now. As exacting as its behavior could be, it could not truly understand who he was.

WHIII-

Indiscretion. As the leadup of his spear continued up its arms, up and over, towards the thing’s head with a dedicated strike, it explicated its insistence, its ability to learn; its own missed movements could not lead it to strike so high in the same way, but it could strike a lower vital. He looked down as his spear poked at its neck, and its own spear carved towards his heart. That is what he would have done, after all, were he so disadvantaged, to try to trade just as heavy as a blow with his opponent if he could not win outright. This thing had taken more than a few lessons from him on a deeper level…

| | |

…But not all of them.

SHINK

Imper-

SHANK

Impre-

KHRRK

…Indiscretion. He moved just bit too fast his last move, let his casual recklessness get to him for a moment. He had to remember how to be precise himself, perhaps he should be thankful. His spear tip sunk into the creature’s neck, propping it out of appropriate reach, leveling its spear arm away from him. He had milliseconds to admire his handiwork, to see it squirm and reach to swap its armed arm, before he swiped his spear through the rest of its neck, cleaving the front of it in half.

Insistent. He swiped down the carve of its body, slicing an open maw down the whole length of its chest to its pelvis, before slicing back up, splicing its flat face in two as well. He smiled to himself. How cute, he could think, to cut a cross onto it.

It tried to spear him now, given enough time to respond, but Salphon had more than enough opportunity to step past it, step to step with it. He reached an empty hand inside its carved body, clenching faux flesh with a full hand as it tried to crowd and generate around him. It hissed, one of the first proper noises he had heard distinct to it, howling like a mishmash of rodent and pack animal. Light glowed into his fist, seemingly stilling the dark flesh as it desired to close around him. It scratched and clawed desperately, its sniveling coalescence crawling on his skin, only without its ability to grow. His light began perforating its form, cracking into its flesh until he began to prickle and poke through its skin.

Pure, radiant light, basking in the glowering glory of an all-powerful deity, consumed the tumultuous beast piece by piece, as if its sludged form were being evaporated by that immutable heat. Salphon closed his eyes confidently, irreverently, as he heard the creature wail helplessly, ceaselessly held onto its form…

Until his fingers closed upon themselves, and he was left alone in the noise.

He felt ashamed at the rust he had to shake off several times, but to his mind a mantra applied, ringing reminding words in a voice that was not his own.

“Third time’s the charm, Saint Salphon.”