Sunless Ezthamic's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

Ezthamic followed the gold disc out of the tower and into a wide, suspended ruin. Shattered mirrors ringed a cracked floor above a bottomless drop. His own name caught in every broken shard, repeated in a hundred colors. A dead body lay across the room's only exit. Its chest bore his symbol, carved deep. Beside it, scratched in stone: SEVEN ALREADY DIED. The door past it led north, to the broken quarter. He could not reach it without stepping over proof that he was supposed to be a corpse. A voice came from the mirrors. "Number Seven is dead. I buried him an hour ago." His own face stepped out from behind the broken telescope. Same jaw. Same dreadlocks. But this man's hair hung longer and wild. His skin was pale, split with red cracks instead of gold. Two red eyes burned where Ezthamic had one black. The copy looked starved and scarred, and he gripped a long black sword with a glowing crimson edge. Ezthamic knew that blade. Its markings matched the ones inside the engine that made them both. "You can't be here," the copy said. "You're a thing wearing a dead man's face." "I'm not Seven," Ezthamic said. He raised his open hands. "We came from the same place. The engine made us together. There was never one real version of us." The copy's face twisted. "Lies. I saw the grave." He lunged. The crimson blade whistled past Ezthamic's throat. He twisted away. Bone and black plate closed over his left arm. The heavy clawed gauntlet formed, gold cracks burning along its surface. He caught the next swing on the armored forearm. Sparks flew. The two men circled on the cracked floor, mirrored a hundred times in the glass around them. The copy swung for his heart. Ezthamic trapped the blade against his gauntlet and drove his claws into the man's chest plate. Metal cracked. The copy staggered back, red eyes wide. Ezthamic did not strike again. He stepped back and lowered the clawed arm. "I'm not here to kill you," he said. "I came to ask which of us is real. The answer is neither. We're copies. All of us." The copy pressed a hand to his broken chest. He looked at the dead body, then at Ezthamic's unraised hands. Slowly, the crimson blade dipped. "Then the grave was never Seven," he said. "It was a warning. For whichever of us came last." He reached into his torn armor and drew out a small coin. One face showed a dead sun. The other showed their shared symbol. He tossed it across the broken floor. Ezthamic caught it. "The others are north," the copy said. "Six graves. One empty. If you want the truth, go find it." He turned and walked through the door, over the body, into the dark toward the broken quarter. Ezthamic looked at the coin, then at the open door. For the first time, no one blocked it.