Morgan throws up a bubble made of orange hexagonal plates in an instant. Raw magic fired from the doppelganger washes over the bubble shield, blinding in its brightness.

  Morgan drops the shield, and quickly retaliates with a flurry of magic orbs, penciled in with a few quick motions. They explode as the doppelganger blasts them apart with more displays of raw magic.

  Morgan grits her teeth.

  “Duelliste, you gotta go! I got this!”

  A quick sketch fires a spear at the copy. Both of them fly around each other, dodging and weaving between spells. Strangely enough, the doppelganger only uses raw magic. It never attempts to draw or paint like Morgan.

  Duelliste and the rest of them sprint past her. Before I can follow them, she calls me back. I send a drone off to lead the team instead of myself.

  “Mach, I’m gonna need your help!”

  She jukes to the side, a gray blast of energy racing past her head. The air crackles with spent magic, the very atmosphere charged by the immense energy being thrown around.

  “There’s no way I can wear myself down! Especially not here!” She yells.

  The spent magic slowly coalesces around both of them, like water down a drain.

  I look up at both of them, nearly forty feet in the air. Both of them are surrounded by magical shields so intense the air warps and ripples around them.

  “I don’t know what you expect me to do!” I yell back.

  She drops to the ground, landing lightly on the marble floor.

  “Get ready!”

  Quick hand movements carve lines into the marble floor.

  I briefly remember what Morgan told me that night, after the brutal defense of New York.

  ‘So, I became an artist. I sculpt, paint, and draw.’

  The clone clearly understands what Morgan is trying to do, and unleashes an arcane barrage like never before. Enough fire to rival a wildfire roars from its hands.

  I twist to cover Morgan with my body. She keeps sculpting, even as the gray flames lick at her coat and boots. The marble floor begins to glow and soften under the magical inferno.

  My boots start to sink into the slowly melting rock.

  “Morgan.”

  “Almost done!”

  The flames don’t abate. If anything, they increase in ferocity. I double over her, my gauntlets sinking into the melting rock. She hisses in pain, the rock hot enough to injure her, despite her immense toughness as an Ascended.

  “Morgan!”

  “Just a little bit longer!”

  I sink up to my wrists, ankles, and knees. The flames continue, the marble around me now bubbling. Only the sculpted lines hold firm, reinforced by Morgan’s incredible magic.

  The very air ignites, overloaded by pure Potentia. It becomes an arcane plasma, and lightning arcs from my armor. Despite shielding Morgan from the worst of it, she’s still being hurt by the terrifying display of power.

  “Morgan!”

  “Done!” she screams, slamming her hands down on the molten rock. She cries out in pain as the lava burns her hands.

  A purple blast echoes out, and the fire cuts out. The doppelganger is slammed to the ground with a thump.

  “It can’t fly! Get it!”

  I rip away from the marble as it rapidly cools, globs of magma slinging away. The entire floor for a hundred yards in every direction is a pool of lava. A pedestal collapses, and the vase slowly melts into the boiling marble.

  The clone hops along the lava, its light weight and quick steps preventing it from sinking in. I charge through the calf-deep molten rock, throwing magma aside like a snow plow.

  I swing my sword in a wide sweep. The copy knocks it aside just barely with a blast of magic. It sways just barely out of reach. I keep advancing, and it scrambles backwards.

  Like all the doppelgangers, it’s expressionless, and its Aura is equally as blank. None of the flamboyant energy and unrepentant sense of self that fills Morgan’s Aura is there.

  Nothing but a poor copy.

  It continually gives ground, barely able to weave around each strike. Frustration grows in my chest, the fire burning hotter. Despite my strength, I’ve been able to do very little.

  Duelliste was faster and more nimble, and his copy was able to dance around me. Morgan’s clone was able to fly high above, and only with the real one’s help was it forced to the ground.

  Now my lack of skill with my sword is only driven in further. It uses raw fire to nudge my sword out the way, and dips around each strike. If I were better at this, such small adjustments wouldn’t save it.

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  I growl, and let loose with the fire inside. Blue fire mixed with actinide white lightning roars down my blade and explodes out in a fan in front of me. The doppelganger tries to counter it with gray fire of its own, but the raw magic is devoured by my own overwhelming power.

  It hops into the air, just barely over most of the thin fan of fire. It loses one leg, and the other is removed below the knee. The sculpted ritual circle flashes purple again, and the copy is slammed into the lava.

  A stomp only hammers it in deeper, the clone more durable than the lava beneath.

  I thrust a hand out, and blue fire roars out like a flamethrower. It consumes the still struggling doppelganger.

  Morgan hovers over the lava, and looks down at the crater where the copy was. She lets out a sigh of relief.

  “Whew. Thanks, Mach. Couldn’t have done it with you.”

  She looks around at the devastation it caused before we were able to put it down.

  “Fuck. Am I really that powerful?”

  “More, really. That was just raw power, brute force. I wonder why it didn’t paint like you?”

  Morgan droops, clearly tired. She looks around the melted hallway before glancing at me. She gently lands on my shoulder, looking for a reaction. When I don’t shrug her off, she sits down.

  “Whew.”

  She leans against my head and gestures vaguely towards the exit.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  I chuckle, and set off. My long loping strides and immense strength lets me ignore the lava, and it’s not long before we catch up with the French team.

  I give them a quizzical tip of my head while Morgan lounges on my shoulder, recuperating from the insane battle.

  “Why did you slow down? You should have made it to the exit already.”

  Duelliste looks equally as confused.

  “We didn’t. We’ve been sprinting as fast as we can.”

  A quick review of the drone that was leading them proves his words to be true. The exit isn’t where it’s supposed to be.

  “The layout is changing. Has changed.”

  Duelliste narrows his eyes, scanning the hallway. It looks exactly the same as the miles of hallways we’ve run through already. It’s the same quarter mile repeated over and over.

  “I didn’t notice it at all. It all looks the same. Well, now what?”

  I only have a few drones left. Most of them have been lost over the last couple of minutes while I was distracted with Morgan’s duplicate. Whether destroyed by something, or just shifted out of range, I don’t know. The only one that’s usable is the one here with us. The other two I’m still connected to are lost somewhere in this endlessly shifting maze.

  A presence brushes across my senses. The French Empowered recoil as if punched in the nose, and they go pale. Even Morgan shifts. The presence vanishes a moment later.

  “What?”

  She looks down at me.

  “It felt like you. Except… emptier. Colder.”

  We all pause at that for a moment.

  “We need to find the exit.” I order without hesitation, and everyone nods.

  With those words, the entire Fracture rumbles and shakes. A hum comes from behind us, and we all watch as the hallway folds into itself. For the first time, a dead-end presents itself. It slowly advances on us, the entire hallway collapsing.

  “Run!”

  We sprint down the hallway, and coming across a three way junction, we see one of the other passages collapsing as well.

  We take the only path forward, diving deeper into the labyrinth. Again and again we come across junctions with only one path ahead. It’s not long before the presence—my doppelganger—returns, stronger than ever.

  “We’re being herded!” I call out.

  “I know!” Duelliste snaps. “I’m open to ideas!”

  The mind-bending sight of the Fracture slowly closing behind us unnerves me.

  “Keep running!”

  The presence of my duplicate only strengths with every step. It’s almost suffocating by the time we finally come to a set of huge double doors, hundreds of feet tall.

  With a shuddering rumble, the path behind us disappears. The Fracture returns to its eerily silent nature.

  Guérir places Grace down out of the way, behind a building-sized pedestal. She, along with the rest of her team, have grim looks on their faces.

  Chevalier rolls his shoulders and draws his sword.

  “Duelliste, please tell me you’re not going to fight my clone.”

  He gives me a lopsided grin.

  “What, you want me to lie to you?”

  I round on him, and I can feel my own presence, my Aura, fight my duplicate’s.

  “You don’t have to fight! I can do this. Just wait!” I beg him.

  “Machina, we aren’t going to let you fight yourself alone. We’re Empowered, and that means something. We’re heroes. We’re the Luminaries, we light the path forward. It’s in the darkest times our light must shine the brightest. I know you want to take this burden on yourself. You’re like me, like us,” he says, gesturing to his team.

  “You want to take on the fights others cannot. I know we won’t be able to do much,” he admits. “But we can do something. Of that, I’m sure. So we must. This must be done, and we are the only ones who can do it, and because it must be done it can be done—will be done.”

  His eyes blaze with fury and determination.

  “If that means walking to our deaths, then I will do so with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. I will light the way, even if I must burn to do it. I will not give in. I will not stop. Not while there is a breath in my body and a soul to save.”

  He points towards the doors.

  “We fight together, as one. No matter who we are, what we look like or where we come from. We do this together. Come, Machina. Let us face impossible odds together.”

  He looks at his team, and they all have smiles on their faces. Even the Reaper would flinch when faced against these heroes—no, Heroes.

  They’ve earned that title. Paragons, all of them. To the bone and beyond.

  Morgan kicks off my shoulder and into the air.

  Potentia ripples over her, the arcane version of a cat stretch.

  “Let’s get this show on the road, Mach.”

  As I step forward to push open the heavy doors, they explode outwards. A blast of wooden shrapnel flies out, some of them the size of trees. Many of them shatter on my armor, and the sheer force sends me sliding back.

  Chevalier cuts one down the middle, and it flies apart. Guérir hides behind his bulk, while Pyro vaporizes anything that comes close to him with a bubble of fire. Duelliste dodges around them, even running up one mid flight before jumping off it. His leap throws it to the side, knocking it away from Chevalier’s exposed flank. With a thought and a twitch of a finger, Morgan slams clouds of debris against the wall.

  Before us all stands myself, the only difference between us is the fire in my—its—faceplate. Instead of the vibrant blue fire, boiling with only barely contained power, it has a thin, wispy gold flame. The weakly flickering ember reminds me of a Fracture, only in miniature.

  It cocks its head at me. A discordant voice whispers out from it, echoing and warped.

  “There’s something wrong with me.”