***Perry***

Perry and Abun’zaul both put their foot on the coffee table and shoved, each causing the other to stumble backwards.

“You gotta stop doing copying me, dude,” Abun’zaul said, the light from the windows behind him casting his face in shadow, bringing out his vibrant green eyes. Perry’s eyes.

Perry had been about to say that, but he didn’t deign to complain about it.

“I mean, by definition, you’re the one copying me-ack!” Perry squawked as Abun’zaul leapt over the table with a snarl, seizing a nearby oil lamp and attempting to smash it over his face.

Perry was just fast enough to snag the flaming wick on the way by, causing the lamp to do little more than douse him in shards of glass and flammable liquids.

Not a great start to a fight, though, Perry thought, scrambling out of the way as Abun’zaul wrenched a heavy oak chair leg off his seat and came at him, leaving just enough time for Perry to do the same.

Clack!

Treated hardwood impacted against treated hardwood as Perry blocked a violent swing.

“So what is this, one of those ‘defeat yourself’ tropes where you have to improve mid-fight or die?” Perry asked, glancing around for a weapon better than a heavy hardwood club. Not much available in a library.

There’s still a chance this is just a mental prison. It’s not above lying to me to convince me this is real. That wasn’t really the immediate concern, though.

“I’m surprised you would know about those,” Abun’zaul said, grunting as he shoved Perry backwards, shifting seamlessly from an overhead strike into a front-kick, catching Perry in the diaphragm. He was every bit as fluid in his combat as Perry. I kinda wish I hadn’t practiced so much with Chemestro.

“I read,” Perry grumbled, glancing at the library shelves behind him. He jumped up and over a low swing, grabbed the shelf behind him and kicked Abun’zaul in the face.

The monster blocked with his upraised arms, but stumbled backwards, giving Perry a moment to enact his plan.

The library shelf rocked backward, giving Perry the momentum he needed to fling himself backwards, tugging the wobbling shelf forward. He tucked in his arms and legs in and plowed through a stack of books to the other side of the shelf moments before landing and immediately shoving the bookshelf forward.

Abun’zaul cursed and rolled to the side while the shelf came crashing down, shattering the coffee table and chairs set up in the front of the library.

Perry snagged up his club and leapt over the corner of the fallen bookshelf, ready to bash the mimic in the brainpan. Maybe it wouldn’t work given that the mimic likely had a decentralized nervous system, but it was worth a shot. If it didn’t work, Perry would have to consider more drastic actions.

The club whistled down toward the mimic’s skull stopping dead as a massive tome was interposed between them like a shield.

Essence Theory

Buckham.

“Oh my god, don’t block with that!” Perry said, pointing at the cover of the priceless book with his club. Abun’zaul frowned glancing at the book in his hands, his eyes widening.

“Oh, oh, shit, you’re right, one second,” Abun’zaul said, gingerly setting the book of magical theory aside in the window.

Perry took the opportunity to remove his oil-soaked shirt and scrub what remained out of his hair so he couldn’t get set on fire. Once the tome was safe, they both breathed a sigh of relief, shortly before coming on guard again.

“You look like an oiled-up Chippendales dancer,” Abun’zaul commented as he came back, picking up his own club.

“Thanks. I’ve been working out,” Perry admitted.

Abun’zaul rolled his eyes and leapt at Perry, resuming their furious exchange of blows, the sheer strength behind each strike rattling his wrists and making his hands buzz.

But he couldn’t stop. One slip up and the monster would bite his face off. Didn’t matter how similar he behaved. Underneath the façade was a creature of pure hunger that would do anything to consume him.

Abun’zaul chased him around the library, both of them daintily stepping around Imaginary Sexy Librarian Natalie, who looked up from her cart of books to shush them as the battle raged past her.

“This would be a nice place to visit if it wasn’t a death trap,” Perry muttered, glancing around during a spare moment while the two of them caught their breath.

“It exists in Manita, you know.” Abun’zaul said.

“I know, but the Royal Library’s all overgrown and torn up,” Perry muttered, panting as he heaved back for another swing. “Been over forty years.”

Clack.

“I’m sure I could fix it up when I get there,” Abun’zaul said, catching the strike and delivering a brutal shoulder check, crushing Perry into a nearby desk.

“SHHHH!” Sexy Librarian Natalie shushed them again as a massive stack of books fell off the desk along with an oil lamp, setting them on fire.

“Hold up, any important ones in there?” Abun’zaul called a time-out, making a T with his hands.

The two of them glanced over the covers, confirming nothing important was burning before shrugging and resuming their battle to the death, dancing around the open flames.

It was a brutal fight, but Perry was able to get the upper hand by spitting some bloody broken glass in Abun’zaul’s eyes and going for a checkmate to the side of his skull.

A shimmering shield of silvery light interposed itself between the makeshift club and the monster’s skull.

“Oh right. The System,” Abun’zaul muttered, rolling away and shaking the blood and glass away from his face. He gave Perry a cocky grin. “I guess I’m not in as much trouble as I thought. It knows who’s wh-.”

Perry’s eye twitched, even as his adrenaline skyrocketed. Did he manage to trick The System into thinking he was me? He thought, ice flooding his veins.

Talk about a no-win scenario. Well, we’ve tackled those before.

Speaking of tackling…Perry lunged forward and tackled the smug, yet incredibly handsome prick to the ground while he was distracted by gloating, getting into a mount position and raining a series of devastating punches down on his own face.

Lets see if The System can block my fists.

The first two got blocked by the silvery shield, which seemed to flicker indecisively under his fists, but the third got through and broke Abun’zaul’s finely chiseled nose, spraying blood everywhere.

Abun’zaul copied Chemestro and slipped around Perry’s fourth punch, grabbing his arm and twisting violently beneath him, his legs angling for his neck as he went for an arm-bar.

“Bastard!” Perry muttered, wrenching his back and straining his flexibility to knee Abun’zaul in the spine, dealing some damage and forcing the headlock to whiff over Perry’s head.

“Bastard!” Abun’zaul growled as Perry kicked him away.

Perry scrambled to get to his feet, but Abun’zaul got there first, tackling him to the ground in an effort to return the broken nose with his own mount.

Perry tried to slip around the strike, but it was a feint, and Abun’zaul used the opportunity to get Perry in a chokehold, wrapping his legs around Perry’s neck.

Perry let out a strangled breath, struggling to dislodge the legs around his neck. The blood started to pound in Perry’s ears as his vision dimmed.

In a fit of desperation, Perry bit Abun’zaul.

“Agh!” Abun’zaul cried out in pain and kicked himself away from Perry, who gasped in relief as his vision slowly came back.

Perry was still on his hands and knees, gasping desperately for oxygen as Abun’zaul grabbed the nearby club and whipped it around towards Perry’s head.

The System flared into place, shielding him from the sudden attack.

Perry didn’t stop to gloat at Abun’zaul’s gobsmacked expression. He leapt onto the stunned mimic and pinned his arms to the ground.

He ran his tongue over the blood between his teeth as electric pleasure spread through all his nerves. He wants to eat me, huh? What if I did it first?

“Hello Hunger, I’m Paradox,” Perry said, grinning down at the terrified mimic. He opened his mouth and leaned down to tear out the pretender’s jugular, a burning need rising inside him.

Just beneath Abun’zaul’s neck was a piece of the broken lamp’s base, the polished copper acting as a mirror.

What Perry saw in the mirror had too many teeth.

Perry, being a genius, didn’t take long to put two and two together.

***Perry, for real this time***

“Fuck that.” Abun’zaul muttered, freeing Perry’s arms, grabbing a fist-sized chunk of the glass strewn across the ruined library and sawing through his own jugular, spraying Perry with arterial blood before collapsing on top of him.

Perry’s eyes popped open, his heart slamming violently in his chest. He was back in the containment room for the void-egg thingy.

“Oh my god, that was fucked up,” Perry muttered, shivering as his body flushed the adrenaline from his system, squirming backwards to rest his back against the wall, trying to control his breathing. He could feel his bloody nose dripping across his upper lip, and what was sure to be a bruise forming on his thigh where Abun’zaul had bit him.

Adregarde’s Mental Prison was cold, the red lines demarcating the edge of the spell trapping him in a nightmare were dormant. The egg was gone, leaving behind nothing but weird interdimensional eggshell on the ground where it used to be.

Perry exhaled a shuddering breath, putting his hand to his mouth, the armor clicking against his helmet.

He’d read his fair share on Abun’zaul, both before and especially after he’d learned what exactly was inside him. The creature’s only weakness was hinted at in the banned tale of Amek Okran, the first Zauberer, that hypothesized the ancient progenitor of the Zauberer line had been one of the creature’s mouthpieces.

It never broke character.

Perry had then mused on what he might do if he discovered he was Abun’zaul, and the only reasonable answer was always to kill himself as swiftly as possible.

Watching Abun’zaul kill itself strongly suggested three things:

1: Abun’zaul could indeed create such a perfect copy that those with the intelligence to notice, and the will to snuff themselves out rather than live on as a monster were an inherent weakness.

2: Perry had just witnessed his own reaction to being consumed by the mimic, the moment of horrifying realization in his own eyes, and the determination not to let it win. The swift brutality of witnessing his own suicide had shaken him to his core. Perry had seen the line he would not cross.

And finally, point number three: If point one was true, the ancient story held a lot more weight, and Abun’zaul might actually be Perry’s umpteenth great-great grandaddy, as suggested in Legends of Manita.

“My family is so fucked up,” Perry muttered, shivering against the wall, his body cold despite the climate control inside his armor. He wasn’t naïve enough to think the mimic problem was settled. All Abun’zaul had to do was tweak a few tiny facets of the doppelganger’s personality, and it wouldn’t kill itself.

Hell, if Abun’zaul hadn’t seen that copper under his neck, Perry would already be dead, and Abun’zaul would be running around in his meat-suit until ‘Perry’ figured it out.

How do you know he’s not?

I don’t have time for this, Perry groused, shaking the intrusive thought off as he muscled himself to his feet, armor scraping against the steel walls.

But before he got back to the mission, Perry lifted his faceplate and checked his teeth.

As far as Perry could tell as he limped through the Replicator’s underground lair, the time dilation was gone. Perry couldn’t say for sure how much time he had lost; whether or not the Replicators had kept him pinned in place for long enough to crush humanity and were in the ‘mopping up’ phase, or if it was just a couple days.

All possible.

The only choice was to keep pressing forward.

Of course, there was no requirement that he follow the steel halls that the replicators had laid out for him.

Perry oriented on the sensation of mom’s tracking spell, aimed MELT.EXE just off center – Didn’t wanna melt the Digitizer – and pulled the trigger.

Perry shook off the last of the shivers and existential dread as he blasted down the rapidly forming tunnel spilling out onto the floor. It was only a couple hundred feet before Perry slid to a halt in the center of a…Giger-inspired throne room.

Steel ribs arched overhead, connected to a mechanical spine that spanned the ceiling, dipping down to form a raised throne, upon which rested a single wounded man, sporting heavy bandages, blood oozing through the gauze. The man was slender, with dirty blond hair and blue eyes.

Huh. I think that’s Professor Replica.

Shit.

Perry frowned, studying the man’s wounds.

90 seconds to a week meant 78 minutes to the year.

The climactic battle where Professor Replica was ‘killed’ was in 1987, creating thirty-six years of radio silence.

36 Times 78/60 = 46.8 hours.

Judging by the man’s wounds, and Perry’s estimate of the flow of time, he’d been here for two days of subjective time, recouperating from the final battle in 1987.

Why would you convalesce in a time field that makes it take longer…unless he’s dying, and trying to delay it as long as possible. Perry’s gaze lowered to the chunk of scrap metal sticking out of the man’s shirt, keeping him plugged like a cork.

“I thought…” Professor Replica panted. “You’d come…a lot sooner.”

“Everybody thinks you’re dead,” Perry said, stepping around the Digitizer that dominated the center of the room, taking care not to completely turn his back to it.

“Close enough, I guess,” Professor Replica said with a pained smile before devolving into a coughing fit that dripped blood down his lips. “My decoy got vaporized by Solaris like I was hoping, but I caught a bit of shrapnel during the escape. Just random bad luck.”

“That sucks, hey, do you think you could call off the Replicators?” Perry asked, keeping on the point.

Professor Replica shook his head, the grease-matted hair hanging in front of his eyes.

“I have to replace humanity’s corporeal flesh. I have to. It’s the only way to survive The Tide. Its influence slithers into the gap between consciousness and flesh and takes up residence. We have to give up either our bodies or our minds, or humanity will be destroyed. I’m trying to SAVE our minds.”

“Gotcha, gotcha,” Perry said, stepping closer. “Just one question,” He glanced over his shoulder and motioned to the Digitizer. “Why haven’t you done it to yourself yet then? You’re obviously dying.”

Professor Replica let out a pained whimper, shrinking into his massive biomechanical throne. “I’m scared,” the boogeyman Perry had been raised to fear all his life said, his voice trembling in pain. “I know I need to do it I just…” He gave a helpless shrug and a pale smile. “Can’t.”

“Okay, well, good luck with that, I’mma just borrow this, then,” Perry motioned to the Digitizer floating in the center of the room.

“NO!” Professor Replica shouted, clenching his remaining hand into a fist.

The facility’s defenses woke up.