Chapter 155: The Reflected Raid

The reflections attacked first, and the first thing they destroyed was the floor.

Reflected Alexander drew a sword of red light and cut the glass in half. A canyon opened beneath the real party, a hundred miles deep, lit from below by the white fire of the ceiling. Reflected Scarlett lifted her blade and set a small sun burning above her head. The heat rolled across the hall like the breath of a dragon.

[FLOOR 2 PHASE TWO: THE REFLECTED RAID]

[GUARDIANS: 11]

[LEVEL: 999 EACH]

[ALL SKILLS ACTIVE]

[HEALTH: 291/520. CHARGE: 97/220. CORRUPTION: 89%]

[SIX SEALED COMBAT SKILLS: REMAIN SEALED]

"This is much worse than the first one," Caleb said.

"The first one was a tutorial," Selene said.

"The first one was a tutorial for this one."

Jace stood at the edge of the canyon with nine fractured weapons behind him and a brand of golden code still glowing on his chest. The party had no blades, no spears, and no plan. Across the gap, their reflections stood in a perfect line, smiling the same smile.

Penelope ran. She dove across the cracked glass, slid through a rain of falling shards, and landed on her knees in front of Jace with her ledger held out.

"Names," she said. "The weapons are fractured, not destroyed. A weapon is a promise somebody made to somebody. Say it, and it comes back."

"Say what?"

"Whatever you promised."

Jace looked at the nine fractured weapons lying in the glass. He knew what they were for. He had seen every one of them used to carry somebody out of a cage.

"Alexander," he said. "Your sword is the one that cut the cages."

Alexander took the hilt of his shattered sword in both hands. "It is the one," he said, "that I will use to cut the rest."

The blade reformed in a column of crimson light, longer than before, with a second edge running down its back like a mirror.

[WEAPON REFORGED: FALLING VERDICT BLADE]

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

[NAMED BY: PROMISE]

One by one the others followed. Scarlett's blade came back white. The lightning girl's chain came back as a river of blue fire. The shield man's wall came back with ten plates instead of nine. Penelope's spear reformed from the sand it had become, and its tip shone like a lantern.

The reflections stopped smiling.

[PARTY WEAPONS REFORGED: 9 OF 9]

[POWER LEVEL: RISING]

"Now we have a fight," Alexander said.

Reflected Alexander raised his own sword and the hall darkened. His aura flared red, then white, then a color with no name. His hair stood on end. The mirrored floor rippled out from his feet in rings. Behind him the glass sky cracked in a spiderweb.

"Falling Verdict," said the reflection. "Eighth Edict."

The cut came faster than sound. It crossed the canyon in a heartbeat and struck the real party, and Alexander raised his own reformed sword to meet it. The two edges collided, and the shockwave blew the floor out from under everyone.

[HEALTH: 291 -> 278]

Jace flew. He hit a mirror wall, went through it, and rolled to a stop among a hundred pieces of himself.

"I have never seen anything like that," said the real Alexander, getting up. His aura had turned red too. It was spreading. "He is using it better than I do."

"Then learn faster," Scarlett said.

"I am trying."

"Try with your whole body."

Alexander closed his eyes. His breathing slowed. A thin crack of white ran across his sword.

"Falling Verdict," he said quietly. "Ninth Edict."

The red aura around him turned gold. The glass floor under his feet melted. A crown of light rose above his head in the shape of a hundred edicts folded into one, and when he opened his eyes, they were the color of the sun.

[ALEXANDER ROOK: NINTH EDICT AWAKENED]

[POWER LEVEL: SURGING]

His cut crossed the canyon in a blur of gold, met his reflection's Eighth Edict head on, and erased it. The reflection staggered. Its aura guttered.

"Scarlett!" Alexander shouted.

"I see it!"

Reflected Scarlett's sun dropped. A roar of fire filled the hall. The real Scarlett planted her blade in the glass, bent her knees, and let her whole body catch fire.

"Ember Rend," she said. "Fifth Form."

The fire changed color. White heat poured out of her blade and her eyes and her mouth. She rose into the air as a pillar of light, and the pillar split the ceiling of the hall and kept going, up through the floors above them, up through the tower, up into the dark where the moon was waiting. The sun above her reflection's head cracked down the middle.

[SCARLETT: DAWN FURNACE]

[EMBER REND FIFTH FORM: AWAKENED]

The two suns met in the center of the canyon.

The hall shook. The reflected Alexander came apart at the shoulders, and his body unspooled into silver thread. The reflected Scarlett burned out. Two reflections vanished at once.

[REFLECTIONS DEFEATED: 2 OF 11]

[HEALTH: 278 -> 266]

Jace took the heat in his lungs. He coughed and tried to stand, and a ninth reflection stepped out of the smoke. It had no face, only a smooth mirror where the face should be, and in its hands it held an enormous ledger.

"Names," said the reflected Penelope, in her real voice. "Erase."

The real Penelope's name vanished off her own tongue.

She opened her mouth and nothing came out. The other champions went silent one by one, their names pulled from their throats like threads. The reformed weapons flickered. The fractured blades began to crack again.

"She is deleting them," Selene said. "She is deleting everyone."

"Jace!" said Zoey's voice, from five hundred miles below. "I can hold the link, but I can't hold all of them."

Jace stood up.

He looked at the eleven mirrors and then at the nine people next to him, and he reached into the place where the sealed doors pulsed beneath his ribs. He could not open them. He could open one thing.

He threw the Gravity Chain around the reflected Penelope's ledger.

[GRAVITY CHAIN: ACTIVATED]

[CHARGE: 97 -> 92]

The ledger came free. He pulled it into his arms and pointed the stabilized pulse at his own chest.

[OVERWRITE PULSE: SURGICAL APPLICATION]

[TARGET: REFLECTION LINK]

[ROUTE: ELEVEN REFLECTIONS -> USER]

[CHARGE COST: 2]

[CHARGE: 92 -> 90]

"Remember your names," Jace said. "All of them. Mine too."

The pulse went out in eleven directions at once. It struck every reflection in the hall, and every one of them screamed. Names rushed back into the real party's throats. The reflected Penelope dropped her book. The air filled with a roar like a thousand voices saying their own names back at the glass.

The pain of eleven reflections hit Jace all at once.

[HEALTH: 266 -> 252]

[CORRUPTION: 89% -> 90%]

[CAUSE: REFLECTION LINK RETAINED]

He fell to his knees. Blood ran from his nose. Behind him, the real party came back to life, weapons blazing.

The surviving reflections were running. They fell toward each other in a river of silver, nine bodies collapsing into one great, glittering shape. The hall shook. The canyon filled. The mirrors along the ceiling began to peel away and fall, one after another, into a sky that was not the sky of the tower anymore.

[REFLECTIONS: MERGING]

[FLOOR 2 FINAL FORM: THE MIRROR COLOSSUS]

[SIZE: PLANETARY]

A shadow fell across the hall. Jace looked up and saw a face as big as a moon, wearing his own smile, and behind it, a whole world made of glass beginning to turn.

Health: 252/520.

Charge: 90/220.