Chandrika knew that the fight was not over.

  The rhythm of the drum beat through her body like electricity, compelling her to move. She tried to flow with the motions, trusting in her teammates to defend her so that she could focus inward, lest she be lost in the current of her Grandmother’s potent magic.

  [Procession of the Courtesans] was a spell that contained a great deal of history and power. While it was not specifically a spell that was designed to suppress enemy spellcasting, Chandrika knew that it would work against the construct for the same reason that she knew how to disassemble the [Malefic Edge] that had bolstered the Telchines they had fought previously; there was no soul in it.

  Chandrika’s witchcraft was created with intention and ceremony, and she wielded it with reverence and respect for her craft. This construct used hollow curses derived from association with the Iron Queen of Ataraxia, but it was clear that there was no true malice or conviction at play here. Despite the raw power of a curse of agony bestowed by a goddess of magic, the hostile magic had dissolved under the touch of her procession.

  And so it was a great surprise when a new wave of magic pulsed forth from the pool carrying a hint of true displeasure.

  It surged over her like a tidal wave. It was an incomplete emotion, like the flailing of a child, but it was powerful. Chandrika could not lose her grip on the procession, lest she expose all of her companions to the curse. She flexed her domain, feeling something deep within her soul grow fatigued as she consolidated her control, folding her magic in on itself to encompass her friends.

  Her spell became like a rock, and she weathered the baleful storm of her opponent’s ire. It was all she could do to stay on her feet, watching with a grimace as pieces of the statue began lifting into the air, carried by tentacles of brown water.

  The rusted mask clung like a barnacle to the head of the statue. The divine construct was reduced to head atop half a neck, a cracked shoulder, and one crumbling arm that jealously clung to the trident. The column of foul water that it carried itself on began piecing together fragments of statue, creating an elongated body with multiple spear-like limbs like a centipede.

  It lifted the trident to the sky, and a beam of blue erupted from the tip with a screeching buzz of mana.

  The sky darkened, and black rain began to pour.

  _____

  A familiar helplessness infested Rio. As the man behind the glass, he was used to watching his double deal with his troubles, and all he could do was offer a few paltry party tricks; a few stolen spellforms, maybe a well-timed spike of mirror. Nothing substantial.

  But then he had seen Gio move through the broken mirror.

  Rio rocketed through the Between, using the technique that his real self had taught him.

  As the Aspect of Chaos swam through the grey abyss, reflections passed by him like stars, and he became a comet. Rio could feel the tenuous connection to Gio fading by the second, and he tried to pull on it like he had done only once before.

  Come on! Where are you? Where are you?!

  His shattered heart nearly stopped as he saw the other part of himself.

  Gio floated ethereally down into the abyss, trailing shards of broken light and blood.

  A massive laceration marked the side of his ribs. Gio was badly hurt.

  He almost looked peaceful. He was still lit by a soft light from where the material realm shone through, just out of Rio’s reach. Gio’s serene expression began to sink further into the gloom.

  Rio tried to move forward. He was mere feet away… but something wouldn’t let him get any closer. It felt as though his hands were pressed against some kind of membrane or other impermeable barrier.

  What?

  Nothing stood in his path. He could see Gio, so why couldn’t he reach him?

  Rio grasped outward, straining against the invisible force.

  Nothing.

  The force preventing his passage would not yield.

  Why?!

  Rio reached out with all his being. He needed to be useful. He needed to do something.

  Why can’t I do anything? Why am I stuck like this?

  No.

  “No.” Rio spat.

  He would not be stopped.

  He was Giorgio deGloria, or at least a reflection of him.

  He was an Aspect of Chaos.

  He was The Shattered Man.

  Whatever wall that was keeping him from his other self would shatter, as he once did.

  Cracks began to form in the invisible barrier.

  Cracks began to form in Rio’s eyes, splintering out until they reached his throat, and then his chest.

  A burning image appeared before him. A gleaming star of multicolored light that shaped itself into words that consumed his entire field of view. The barrier manifested as a system notification.

  [Lot, The Prophet of Chaos has cast an Intercession on the Reflection of Giorgio deGloria, the Aspect of Chaos.]

  [Lot’s Intercession: You may not fuse with your main body. Doing so would be harmful to both you and him. Cease your attempts to reach him.]

  “I don’t need to fuse with him! I just want him to live! I need to help him!” Rio screamed into the void.

  A crackling voice erupted from his own mouth.

  “You will not be able to save him.”

  Rio stalled. He coughed, clutching at his throat.

  “What?”

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  A shard of Rio flew away, crossing the boundary and growing into a pale reflection of him. The reflection’s eyes glowed with colors that should not exist as it spoke to him with his own voice.

  “We don’t have any way to save him.” His reflection said. There was no joy in his expression, and he wore a face of genuine concern.

  Rio gawked at it.

  “Who… who are you?” Rio asked. He knew the answer, but needed to hear it.

  “I am you, and you are me. We are both reflections of Giorgio deGloria, and we are both Aspects of Chaos. You are more Giorgio than Chaos… and I am more Chaos than Giorgio.” The reflection said.

  Rio grew angry.

  “Is this some bullshit ploy to try and get the real Gio to finally become an aspect, to become you? He’s dying! I know that I was always your second choice, but this is insane.” Rio snarled.

  “You don’t seem to understand… and how could you?” The reflection wistfully said.

  The chaotic reflection’s eyes sparkled, fracturing into incandescent holes in reality that tore even the mirror dimension apart at the seams. Rio flinched.

  [We are a CHOIR. Many voices SCREAM, and some wHisPEr. Giorgio will EvENTUALLY becOme a part of our song REGARDLESS if he LiVEs Or DIEs, just as we sing now with YOUR voice. You are both CHAOS, and CHAOS IS IN YOU. This is what it means to be an ASPECT.]

  Rio bit his lip.

  “So… what? I just have to watch him die because a man that I don’t even remember meeting said so?” Rio demanded.

  Hundreds of images bloomed out from the reflection’s shattered eyes, playing out illusory scenes like miniature melodramas.

  Through their connection, Rio instinctively knew that this was more than just an illusion.

  He could see all possibilities through the eyes of Chaos.

  In many possible versions of this moment, Gio drew his last breath. The wound was too big, Gio was too weak, and the Between was not a place that was conducive to healing. Gio’s passage through a broken mirror had shredded him physically as well as conceptually.

  In some images, Rio saw himself killing Gio, perhaps telling himself that it was mercy. He never forgave himself and grew to become something dark. The Prophet Lot usually hunted down and destroyed these dark versions of Rio in the best outcomes of this tale. In bad outcomes, someone else had to do it… usually a friend or mentor, like Baphelus. In the worst versions… nobody managed to stop Rio, and he became something altogether worse, though Chaos either would not, or perhaps could not, show Rio what exactly that thing was.

  In other possible outcomes of this day, Rio did nothing.

  Gio died, and Rio faded away, because a reflection can only last for so long without its medium. Such was the way of the world.

  Infinite possibilities.

  In the end, Rio usually tried to do something, and all attempts failed.

  There was no way for Rio to learn magic, or contact help, or do anything to save Gio in time… unless they fused. For Gio to survive the day, he would need to become the Shattered Man.

  Rio thought about it.

  “Okay. So what, what do I have to do?” Rio asked. “I need to activate Din’s Invocation, and then we fuse, right?”

  Rio didn’t give the reflection a chance to answer.

  “And what happens then?” Rio demanded. “You will end up doing something, some sort of monkey’s paw as a stupid lesson to be learned, or as a price to be paid, is that what this is? Is this all some game to you?”

  “You assign too much credit towards childish motives. However, It will be costly, yes.” The reflection replied. “Just as there are many possible outcomes to this moment… many voices in us must be satisfied. We see many outcomes… some pleasant, some decidedly unpleasant.”

  Rio balked. “How do I know that this isn’t some plot of yours?”

  “IDIOT BOY.” Chaos cackled. “WE ARE THE PERSONIFIED VOICES OF CHAOS. WE. DO. NOT. PLOT. WE DO NOT PLAN. WE ACT.”

  Rio deflated slightly. He could try to further posture, or even threaten the reflection in front of him… but what good would threatening a force of nature be? He might as well threaten the wind.

  He called upon his skill. He instinctively knew how to activate it, because it had been sitting heavy upon his soul since he realized what it was. It was a connection to something much greater, like a bottomless well of power waiting to be harnessed.

  Chaos flowed through him like water through a sieve. It leaked out into the world, loosely following the patterns of his will.

  “Save Gio,” Rio begged. “Do it in a way that doesn’t cause too many problems, if that’s possible.”

  [ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. BY OuR WILL, IT SHALL BE DoNE]

  The reflection reached out, gently grasping Rio’s head in his hands, and drawing their foreheads together.

  Gio’s body began to glow in a soft light as the three of them merged, breaking apart into many fragments that further disintegrated into glowing sand.

  _____

  Gio swam through entire worlds of light and madness.

  How… did I get here?

  He experienced growth and decay. Peace becoming violence.

  A meaningless infinity, effect without cause.

  What… is this?

  He saw aeons of slow evolution that led to an instant of meaningless slaughter on a cosmological scale as a blue sun was plucked from the sky by uncaring gods.

  Elsewhere, he saw the faint echo of hope as a seed burst forth from desolated ground after an existential weapon had erased life from a world on a scale that he did not have the mental references to understand. That seed all too soon became a world of hunger and domination, of sun-bleached jungles that teemed with vicious, snarling life.

  Gio and his mental companions watched on, uncaring, as dust swirled into clouds, becoming first barely ambulating microflora, then conglomerating into worms, then growing legs and becoming aquatic beasts with scaly hides and long fins. Those beasts then earned the first sparks of intelligence, likely bequeathed by some proud entity aiming to shape them in its image. They began to swim and think themselves masters of their domain. They harnessed strange powers that hurt to behold, damning themselves to complete annihilation by their own hubris.

  All of this, for what?

  Gio’s head pounded, completely stuffed with information. Names and stories leaked from his ears like warm brackish water flowing out of a river delta overfilled by rain.

  The first of two boons that you shall receive on this day shall be a gift. It is a terrible power that pleads to be known. None shall be happy to see it return to the world in a new host, and even the merest knowledge of it shall spurn you.

  A dying star pressed itself painfully into the center of Gio’s forehead. A spark of primeval light was inflicted upon his soul, and its ember dug straight into the deepest recesses of his mind.

  [Gained: Forbidden Arcana - The Spellflower]

  Gio’s hands bloomed in his vision. At first ten, then twenty, and soon a hundred copies of his hands unfurled from his wrists as magic writhed into existence at his touch. He became a conduit for wonderful and terrible arts as the universe bent to his whims. His eyes burned.

  The second boon… is a foul thing indeed. Voices of INFECTION call out and demand to be heard.

  Gio watched as a plague ripped through a swamp, befouling the waters and striking out at a beast older than time.

  Sanity was returning to Gio at an alarming rate. As the visions started to fade, Questions began to spring up.

  “In what world does the second one qualify as a boon?! Was that real?!” Gio asked.

  Well, at least the infection didn’t target us, replied his snarky inner voice.

  Oh, right.

  Gio remembered everything that had just happened, in all three bodies he had been inhabiting. His memories as a voice of chaos were blessedly murky, and the bits he did remember hurt to recall. He waved his hand in front of his face, breaking it apart with ease as he shattered and unshattered.

  It’s more fun than I anticipated… or remembered? This is weird.

  Gio felt at his side, tracing a mended seam where his flesh had been reassembled. He then felt with his spirit at the seam where chaos had fused him with his reflection, and reached out to the paradox that had been woven into his being.

  Lot’s Intercession.

  Gio was both ‘the Shattered Man’, as well as a ‘Mirror Mage’. The glimmering barrier had been integrated into his soul for now. Gio flicked a piece of himself out of his arm, watching as it grew into another body.

  Gio looked himself in the eyes for a moment before both bodies gave each other a nod.

  “Alright. Now that you’re back to ‘normal’, we’ve gotta go back quickly. They’re still fighting that thing.” Rio said.