It doesn’t take us long to make it to the battlefield, and the sight is far more grim than the low quality and partially scrambled camera on the drone that found them. What’s left of them, anyway. The 3-Stars are ground meat. Ripped apart.

  Morgan goes pale at the sight.

  “What did this to them?”

  Pyro points off to the side, a streak of blood leading behind a building sized pedestal.

  “Look, someone got away.”

  Duelliste briefly surveys the fallen members.

  “It must be their healer, Grace. Everyone else is here.”

  Guérir sprints over, following the blood trail, but Chevalier catches up and stops her.

  “Me first,” he rumbles out.

  I join him, and we carefully move around the pedestal.

  Huddled against one side is a blonde woman, blood covering her loose clothing. Her blonde hair is matted to her clammy, pale face, and she looks at us with fear.

  A little bit of blood trickles out from a deep gash in her chest. An inch higher and she’d have lost her heart. As it is, every breath is a gurgling cough with one lung filled with blood.

  “Can’t… stop… the… bleeding,” she wheezes out.

  A weak pulse of magic ripples over her. She looks better for a moment but the relief quickly passes.

  Guérir rushes forward, placing her hands on Grace, cursing wildly.

  “Merde!”

  Healing magic washes over Grace, closing the terrible wound. She breathes easily, finally able to pull in a shuddering breath. Tears of relief drip down her face.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she mumbles.

  Duelliste kneels down next to her while Chevalier and Morgan keep an eye out. My drones are quickly returning. I send the one I have here on a short range patrol.

  “What did this to you? Was it the boss?”

  She weakly shakes her head.

  “No, no. We did. We did it to ourselves.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Grace starts to nod off, finally able to rest after who knows how much time of constant agony.

  “Copies. Of us,” she murmurs before finally falling asleep.

  Duelliste looks to Guérir, who shakes her head.

  “I won’t wake her. She needs sleep. She’s in really bad shape, ’Liste. I have no idea what did it to her.”

  His gaze flickers between us and Grace.

  “Okay. We’re retreating. Once she wakes up, she can tell us what happened, and that’s critical information.”

  Guérir gently picks up the sleeping woman in a careful princess carry.

  “Machina, lead the way—”

  Morgan interrupts us. At the same time I get an alert from one of the drones.

  “Guys! I got movement!”

  The drone moves in for a closer look. A bright flash of light, and the drone cuts out.

  “Something destroyed the drone.”

  Rewinding the footage, I look back at the last thing it saw.

  “Oh, fuck. That’s not good.”

  Duelliste gives me a hard look.

  “What?”

  “I’m pretty sure a copy of Pyro just vaporized the drone.”

  We hide Grace, and Morgan casts a camouflaging spell, optimized for a single stationary person. She’ll stay hidden and as safe as possible while we deal with the threat of the doppelgangers.

  They’re the Luminaries joined by two from the slain group of 3-Stars. One of the 3-Stars is a lightning sorcerer, monochrome lighting crackling over its grayscale body. The other is a warrior, wielding a massive warhammer.

  We’re lucky that my own and Morgan’s doppelgangers are missing. I might be terrifyingly strong, but Morgan has enough firepower to level a city if she wanted to, I’m sure.

  There’s something eerie about the doppelgangers, more than just their existence. There’s something deeply inhuman about them that sets off alarm bells in my head. Maybe it’s the way they move, maybe it’s their matte grayscale complexion. It’s hard to pin down exactly what’s wrong with them.

  A brief silence fills the air. It’s broken by the shockwave of magic and thunderous charges.

  I rocket forward, shattering the marble floor beneath me and shot-gunning shrapnel behind me in a wave. Some of it catches Guérir and Duelliste, and they hastily duck away.

  Looking for an easy first kill, I slam into the 3-Star mage clone at just below the speed of sound, shoulder leading the way. I leave a massive dent in its chest, and it flies across the hallway before hammering into the wall. It bursts into black ash, instantly slain.

  First blood.

  My mistake is costly, marble shrapnel forcing Guérir and Duelliste to take cover or dodge. Duelliste’s clone takes advantage of the opening, and races for Guérir.

  Chevalier and Pyro are occupied dealing with their own doubles. Chevalier and his copy exchange a dozen blows in a single burst of rolling metallic thunder. Pyro and his double wield fire in a rapid fire dance of incendiary magic.

  I clumsily lunge towards Duelliste’s charging copy, my greatsword leading the way. It’s forced to abandon its attack to face me instead. Guérir’s doppelganger fires magic at Morgan, who flicks it away dismissively.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Duelliste’s mimic slips under a wide swing from my greatsword, getting inside of my reach. It stabs at where a mortal set of armor would have weak points. It attacks the gaps in the armor plates at my joints, jabbing with the speed and accuracy of a sewing machine.

  Whatever the chainmail-like material under my armor is made of must be equally durable as the rest of me, and the rapier slides off. I snap out, the air screaming in pain as I attempt to grab its arm. It’s already moving, rolling underneath me. I catch nothing but air. By the time I turn around, it’s sprinting for Guérir again.

  Duelliste intercepts it, and they clash in a flurry of blades, steel singing a duet of skill and murderous intent.

  Morgan darts into the air, and plucks a paint brush from a pocket. Paint flows from the brush tip. The beginnings of an intricate piece of both spell and artwork slowly takes shape.

  The 3-Star warrior duplicate charges me, and lands a solid strike against my side. I don’t even budge. An errant punch sends it flying into the wall, and it bursts into ash.

  After failing to do much more than annoy Morgan, Guérir’s clone switches targets, and a sickly gray bolt crashes into Duelliste, who staggers and goes pale. Only a quick shield from Guérir and another clumsy lunge from me saves his life.

  Duelliste, pale and clammy, stumbles away and I’m forced to take his place. His copy once again works to get inside the reach of my sword, and I barely manage to shove it back.

  For a fighter or a monster with muscles, I might be able to predict what someone was going to do as their muscles and tendons flexed in certain ways. Despite the existence of magic in this world, the laws of physics still exact their toll. But the doppelgangers have none of that. They move and flow like a liquid, in ways I don’t understand and can’t predict.

  It lunges with its blade, aiming straight for my face. The strike is lighting quick, but I can be quicker as long as I don’t have to move somewhere else. I don’t want to hit the Luminaries with a spray of debris again.

  I turn my head to the side, and the blade scrapes along my helmet. I snap out again, and I get a grip on its outstretched arm. Before I can pull it in to crush it, it uses its long parrying dagger to cut off its own arm. It hits the ground and bursts into ash. I stomp on the dropped rapier, shattering it and driving the fragments into the now cracked marble floor.

  Behind me, Guérir hits Duelliste with a burst of powerful healing, who shakes himself off. He looks at the reeling doppelganger before charging off at the grayscale Guérir.

  “Keep it locked down,” he yells at me.

  “Easier said than done,” I grumble to myself. Despite lacking a limb, the clone is just as nimble as before.

  Before Duelliste can reach the mimic, it fires another gray bolt, this time at Chevalier. Though we can’t see him under his heavy plate armor, he staggers and slows too. The opening is tiny, less than just a second. But at the speeds 4-Stars operate, that’s all it takes. The mimic drives its blade into his neck.

  Pyro reacts instantly, and throws a jet of fire at Chevalier’s copy, forcing it to back away as the real one chokes on blood. Guérir is just behind him, and a vibrant, emerald beam connects her out-stretched hands and him for a brief moment.

  Healed and rejuvenated, he charges off at his duplicate, though his once silver armor is stained crimson.

  Duelliste finally reaches Guérir’s duplicate, and it can barely stay ahead of his unrelenting flurry of blows. It thrusts a hand out and a disk of black energy forms in front it, barely held under control. I can taste the rot and decay.

  Morgan snaps her fingers while still painting with the other, and the black disk shatters like glass.

  “None of that, thank you very much. Have some class, will you?”

  With its plan shattered as completely as its spell, the doppelganger is left exposed. Duelliste doesn’t give it a second chance. Combat at the 4-Star level dances along a knife edge. A single mistake can cost everything.

  An elegant rapier pins the doppelganger’s free hand to its chest, and a parrying dagger slams into its head. It twitches once, twice, and then falls into a pile of black ash.

  Both myself and Duelliste’s copy have given up trying to kill each other. I’m too durable for it to do anything but waste time, and it moves too unpredictably and quickly for me to land solid hits on it. It has Duelliste’s combat skills, and clearly outclasses me when it comes to dueling.

  I’ve been relying on my raw strength too much. A mistake.

  It keeps trying to get around me, and I’m forced to continually back up just to keep it in front of me. I’ve long had to abandon using my sword, it’s too unwieldy and the mimic is too fast and skilled for it to be useful.

  “Morgan? A little help please! I just need a moment!”

  I see her eyes flicker towards me. She considers the situation for a moment before a pencil appears in her hand. A quick sketch and a snap of her fingers later, the duplicate stumbles as a two dimensional sketch of a cat bolts in front of it. It races off and vanishes an instant later, but the damage is done.

  I snap forward, grabbing the copy by the shoulder. Before it can wriggle free, my other hammers into its head hard enough to send an echoing boom throughout the hallway. The doppelganger explodes into a cloud of black ash.

  The last two duplicates, Pyro’s and Chevalier’s, are looking more and more strained. The armor of Chevalier’s doppelganger is battered, scorched, and dented. Pyro’s copy is surrounded in a bubble of fire that absorbs everything the real one throws at it, though the flames are weakening.

  Finally, Morgan finishes her work of art, a piece of barely contained power and promised violence. She casts the massive spell with a clench of her fist. A thunderous, silent echo of power rumbles over and through us all.

  RIONNAG GAMHLAIS!

  Dozens of deep red-purple spikes fire out from a roiling blood-red ball. Each spike gives off a deep sense of malice and spite. The very magic that makes them up, transformed into paint, hates the doppelgangers with an inhuman intensity. They cut through the duplicates’ armor and shields, ignoring them as if they weren’t even there. Each spike gouges a jagged, cruel crater into each copy, not content with a clean through-and-through.

  It needs them to suffer.

  A vile spell, one born of fury and a deep need to not just destroy the enemy but to break them.

  Art comes from the soul.

  The doppelgangers twitch for a few seconds before crumpling into piles of ash.

  Chevalier leans heavily on his sword. His armor and shield is battered, dents cover nearly every part of him. Blood coats his chestplate, flash dried by the rage-fueled flames of Pyro.

  He pulls his helmet off, revealing a handsome, chiseled face. Short, brown hair reaches just above his eyes. He looks like a fantasy hero, his hair without any of the messiness wearing a helmet would cause. He spits out a glob of blood.

  “What was that?” he croaks.

  The wine-colored plush carpet is ripped apart and burned. Each attack ripped up huge chunks of cloth, exposing the marble floor beneath. The stone is covered in soot, but mostly undamaged.

  Only myself and Morgan were able to damage the glimmering white marble. My blade remains embedded in the stone, and my flames left a shallow crater. Morgan’s spell chipped and shattered where it blew through the doppelgangers.

  Morgan flies lower, hovering at my head height.

  “Everyone alright?” she asks.

  The French team is exhausted and injured. Pyro is covered in burns, the faint smell of burning hair lingering around him. Duelliste has recovered a little bit, but his skin is still an unhealthy gray. Sweat pours down his face.

  Guérir, the least exhausted of them, shoots myself and Morgan a fearful look. What would have been a slow battle of attrition turned into a one-sided execution.

  If 3-Stars are durable enough to rival a tank, 4-Stars are closer to battleships. Even being stabbed through the throating and choking on five feet of steel wouldn’t have been enough to kill someone like Chevalier, despite the gruesome nature of the injury.

  It also goes to show just how powerful Morgan is, being able to drop monsters with similar durability nearly instantly. I’m sure the final spell Morgan casted was intimidating at the very least.

  We return to where we hid Grace, sleeping out of sight. Not even the battle woke her from her slumber. Guérir examines her with a spell before grimacing.

  “She’s getting worse. We need to get her out of here”

  Duelliste looks at me.

  “Lead us out, Machina. Grace will live to fight another day.”

  We sprint for the exit. Every second counts, and Guérir keeps feeding magic into the blonde woman.

  “She’s still getting worse! I don’t know what’s wrong with her!”

  We accelerate, footsteps hammering down hallway after hallway, back the way we came. Plush carpet dampens the sound and slows us in equal measure.

  Unfortunately, we’re too slow. We turn the final corner only to come face-to-face with Morgan’s twin in grayscale. It floats in the air, a dark mirror image of Morgan. It raises a hand, power enveloping its hand.

  “I hate plagiarists,” the real Morgan mutters. “Would it kill you to learn to draw on your own?”