The forest was dying beneath the weight of the flood.
What once had been a cathedral of green, now lay drowned beneath a restless tide. The water surged through the trees, black and cold, swallowing roots and branches, dragging the air itself into silence.
Only the tallest crowns still broke the surface, trembling like the last breaths of a suffocating world.
That too... barely.
And in that half-drowned graveyard, two figures faced one another... identical.
Both bore the Nameless Sun.
Both carried the same impossible radiance.
Both were immune of the Nameless Sun.
Both were tired, but one was half dead too.
And then they moved... when they did, it seemed like the world itself fractured.
Their blows collided in midair, and the forest burned. Water flashed into steam, then into light, then into nothing.
Bolts of lightning flew out of both their bodies, attempting to subdue the other, but neither's reached the other properly as it dispersed over the surface of the flooded area.
Feeling like he would run out of essence soon, Caster dismissed Aquifer's gift and Vivienna's armor, wearing only Evermelt for protection.
Still, neither could outshine the other. Their strikes wove together like they were mirrored.
Caster used one of the tree's nearby as a foothold and jumped up. The reflection followed.
Lightning erupted from their feet as they met again and again, the water around them twisting upward in liquid spirals, freezing, then evaporating under the heat of their light.
The Namless Suns couldn't seem to deter the other's soul, so they affected them with warmth, with heat.
For a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath.
Two suns, one real and the other reflected, stood locked in each other's gaze.
The flood was being boiled to mist, the few trees around them that were tall enough to not be fully submerged, were turning grey.
The reflection used the aspect again at full throttle, axe kicking Caster on the left shoulder, slamming him down, back into the flood.
The flood had seemed to turn black.
The flood water seemed to be going down by the second, but Caster still couldn't see the depths of it after being submerged into it.
Caster was loosing strength in his body, essence exhaustion would hit him any second.
Above the water, the last tongues of light flickered out, leaving only the groaning silence of a dying storm.
Beneath that silence, Caster sank.
The Nameless Sun in his grasp had dimmed, its radiance bleeding away into the flood like the final rays of dusk.
The devil followed its pursuit and swam rapidly towards Caster, using the aspect.
'Fuck me...'
It seemed to say something, but he couldn't hear it. Maybe because of the water, maybe because of the injuries, maybe because the reflection could noto mimick speech...
But he read the lips.
"You're not meant to survive."
Seeing that, Caster smiled.
He wasn't meant to survive anything anyways, not in his previous life, not in this one.
Yet he did.
Always.
Nothing can kill him.
Caster's smile, soft... soft smile turned into something sinister.
Evermelt had taken too much damage, the reflection was deadly.
In the last moment, Caster summoned the Book of Books to deal a massive surge of lightning attack to the reflection.
But the reflection seemed to have the same idea.
They locked eyes through the water.
Then both raised their hands.
Both of them used lightning strike at the same time.
The lightning first formed at the tips of their fingers before shooting out in a terrific blow.
From each palm, lightning was born. The storm answered their call with a roar that split the depths. Two bolts, white and blue, tore through the flood, spiraling toward each other like dueling comets.
When they met, the world convulsed.
The collision birthed a sphere of blinding brilliance.
The flood boiled, surged upward, and the entire island seemed to rise with it.
Then a vortex of plasma and storm appeared that devoured all sense of direction.
The two figures vanished within the storm they had made.
It was too dangerous for either of them.
For a moment, the world resembled the birth of a star.
Then came the silence...
The only sound that could be heard was a silence hiss coming from water becoming steam rapidly.
Caster had used up every single ascended shard he had left in the book of books, which numbered to be over two hundred of them.
It was a devastating blow.
The two bolts of lightning had collided with catastrophic force.
It seemed like the reflection had used up nearly all of its essence in that attack.
Caster wondered where it went.
Looking around he noticed that the water level had steadily been decreasing.
The water was almost entirely gone.
Caster could stand on his two feet again... if he had the strength to.
His body was still, lips blue, eyes open but unfocused.
Almost at the verge of death.
The Nameless Sun rested beside him, its shape was fractured, but it wasn't anything that the soul sea couldn't fix.
The trees in the immediate vicinity of the collision of lightning had charred up, despite being underwater.
The many trees farther away had fallen to the ground as well.
It was devastating.
Everything in the immediate vicinity had been almost completely destroyed.
He then turned over and looked far into the distance.
There was the reflection. Completely still.
'Essence exhaustion perhaps...'
Or perhaps the reason Mirror Beast was hit harder by the blast was because he was closer to the surface of the water. Lightning wishes to disperse towards the surface, instead of go in every direction randomly.
Caster got up, used the Nameless Sun as support and slowly walked towards it.
It lay on the ground almost lifelessly.
With that, Caster lifted his hand holding the Nameless Sun and cleanly swung the bright silver blade swiftly across its neck.
The blade was the brightest thing in the vicinity.
Its blade trembled as drops of crimson blood fell from it into the watery surface of the island.
The young man didn't move, but his pupils widened. A few moments later, blood flowed from between his lips, painting his pale skin red.
Caster looked at the dying apparition, deeply disturbed by the visage in front of him.
…It was not every day that one got to see himself die.
He paled slightly, but did not look away.
In front of him, a person who looked exactly like himself was slowly drowning in blood, a crimson torrent flowing from his cut throat.
A few moments later, when the creature was on the death's doorstep, its body suddenly trembled, and then shifted slightly. A tortured smile appeared on its face.
The apparition's lips moved, but just as before, no sound escaped from them. However, Caster thought that he had managed to read a few words:
"…we… never… searching."
That was what the apparition had tried to say.
Then, the light in its eyes extinguished. A strange ripple spread over the young man's body, and a moment later, thin cracks appeared on his skin.
After a second or two, the creature shattered into a rain of silver glass, which then turned into a stream of light and disappeared.
Only one jagged mirror shard remained laying in the grass, reflecting nothing but cold darkness.
As Caster stared at all this in bewilderment, the Spell whispered:
[You have slain an Ascended Reflection, Mirror Beast.]
The Spell wasn't done speaking.
[...You have received a Memory.]
The Spell had not said that his soul had grown stronger, as it did while killing the other nightmare creatures.
Caster breathed once more, water and blood mingling on his lips, and whispered something only the dead would hear.
"I killed myself."
With that, he turned around.
The world was unrecognizable.
The flood had receded, but the wetness remained.
What little water remained clung stubbornly to the earth in pools of dull gold.
The air around was covered with steam and smoke.
This was a fight beyond even the Masters.
***
With a deep frown on his face, Caster bent down and cautiously picked up the jagged mirror shard that the apparition had left behind. No matter how he looked at it, the shard resembled a perfectly mundane piece of glass, with a thin layer of silver painted over its reverse side.
The only strange thing about it was that no matter how Sunny turned the shard, it refused to reflect anything except for an impenetrable veil of darkness.
There was also an inscription on its reverse.
Caster's frown deepened when he realized that the inscription was not made with runes… instead, what he saw were the familiar letters of the human alphabet. They were clumsy and awkward, as if written by a child's hand.
There was only one word written on the mirror shard:
"Beastie"
'Oh Mordret... sorry for killing this thing, but I had to. Can't let you have any chance at escaping.'
He was about to summon the runes, but a sudden pulse of pain reminded him that he was, in fact, still wounded. With a hiss, Caster clutched at his side and looked around, searching for shelter.
He was going to have to tend to his wounds... and rest after the fight with Mirror Beast. The Memory could wait until after he wasn't bleeding so much…
Wrapping the strange mirror shard in a piece of fabric and putting it inside the Starhoarder, his storage memory that he got from Song, Caster used his last remaining essence to use his aspect and reach the rocky hill in the center of the island fast. He had noticed a shallow cave there, which was situated — obviously — behind the foaming wall of the picturesque waterfall.
Walking on a narrow stone ledge that led behind the waterfall, Caster checked that the cave was empty, and then entered its cool shade.
The cave wasn't very big, but due to its location and hidden nature, there was no better shelter on the entire island. Rather happy with this discovery, Caster groaned and lowered himself to the ground.
He had let evermelt turn into a hardened figure of armor and made it take watch as he rested.
He dismissed his Hourglass Charm and summoned the Spark of light charm to start healing him, even if it would be slow.
The effects of Spark of Light had diminished a lot after becoming an awakened, so he could probably only get slightly healed with it.
It sucks, but even a little bit of healing is better than nothing.
He took in a bit of the healing water from Aquifer's gift, it didn't do anything substantial, only slightly diminished the already diminished pain from the fourth wall.
Before going to sleep though, Caster decided to take a light bath, to freshen him up, and possibly provide for better sleep.
The water hurt him whenever it touched the injured parts, causing him to grimace and looked around.
Now that he had time to take a better look at the cave, he noticed that it had, apparently, been used as shelter by another human at some point in the past. There was a circle of stones built to contain a fire, with a bunch of firewood arranged neatly by its side. By now, the wood had long rotted, letting Caster know that the cave remained empty for many years.
There was a pack much like his own laying on the cold stones near the firepit. He limped toward it and took a look inside.
There was nothing of particular interest there — just the usual supplies a traveling Awakened would take with them on a long expedition, most of them ruined by the humidity inside the cave and the passage of time. He did, however, retrieve a rolled-up map and studied it for some time.
It didn't have anything particularly useful on it, the only legible word he could easily read was written near the edge of the Tear. It read:
"...Hope?"
After a pause it clicked to him.
"This... its Mordret's map!"
However, he didn't care all that much. After all, he knew what Mordret was after. And he knew how to stop it as well.
With that, he hesitated for a few moments, and then finally summoned the runes.
It was time to take a look at the Memory he had received for slaying the Mirror Beast.
He knew what it was, he'd read about it before after all.
Memory: [Cruel Sight].
Memory Rank: Ascended.
Memory Tier: IV.
Memory Type: Weapon.
Memory Description: [...Full of pride, the noble knight made a deal with the Dreamspawn. Years later, the knight had defeated all his enemies and became a mighty king. On the day that his son uttered the first word, the Dreamspawn came to the king and demanded his pay. He left the kingdom with the child and disappeared, never to be seen again.
Much later, the young prince returned and stood beneath his father's throne. He expected to be met with joy and warmth, but was met with fear and suspicion instead.]
'Cool but I don't care.'
Memory Enchantments: [Shapeshifter], [Light Eater], [Ghost Blade], [Dark Mirror].
[Shapeshifter]
Description: "This weapon can shift form between a sword and a spear."
[Light Eater]
Description: "The blade of this weapon can reflect, absorb, and expel light."
[Ghost Blade]
Description: "This weapon can strike at incorporeal targets."
[Dark Mirror]
Description: "Each attack of this weapon can be augmented with elemental damage. It can be charged with any element the wielder has been damaged by."
"Current Charge: None."
Caster sighed.
This was one mighty fine memory he had gotten.
It only sucks that Caster had to give this back to Sunny.
He couldn't risk letting Sunny get weaker.
He also has to give the Nameless Sun to Nephis, he couldn't afford her to get any weaker either.
It sucked but Caster needs to find, either a memory to replace these for them, or give these to them and find memories to replace them for him.
It is hard maintaining a balance of taking only what's necessary.
Because he doesn't know if small changes will make big impacts.
He couldn't risk it.
Not with the fate restoration phenomena on his back.
Though, he couldn't care less about it right now.
He had seen the runes now, causing exhaustion to hit him hard.
He abruptly fell asleep on the rocky ground there, getting some much needed rest from the insane battle he just went through.
His eyes flickered for a bit, before they calmed down and closed themselves.
Still, the sleep wasn't so bad.