The light was suddenly so intense I had to shield my eyes.
Above us, below us, all the way to the horizon, it looked like… sky.
Wait, that wasn't right. I blinked a couple of times.
I could see clouds under my shoes, but as soon as I refocused—and felt it seep through my shoes—I noticed a few centimeters of water sitting on top of the flat ground. It reflected the sky so perfectly that for a second I couldn't tell which way was up.
"System," I managed, "equip my Sea-Blessed Boots!"
The boots materialized on my feet and I stopped soaking through immediately.
I mean, that was the most they were going to do here probably, considering it wasn't very deep, but still.
"Good thinking," Llewellyn said, doing the same.
"Where are we anyway?" I asked.
-
[System Notification: Location detected! Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia.
Recommended Action: Proceed with caution.]
-
Well, damn.
First Troy and now this. This was not how I'd imagined seeing tourist sites!
"There are people over there," Llewellyn said, scowling.
I followed his gaze.
Off to our right, near two parked jeeps, a handful of tourists stood in the water, some crouched. However… their demeanor was weird, as if they were engaged in conversation with small creatures on the ground.
Trapped in delusions, it felt like.
"I'll take care of them," Llewellyn said. "Don't do anything weird."
"What would I even do?" I said.
There was nothing happening here.
…Which, now that I thought about it, felt off.
Usually we'd be in the middle of some Elemental tornado by now, trees might be trying to kill us, walkways might be exploding, swords might be attacking us on their own…
But there was absolutely nothing happening here.
"You think it's off too, right?" I told Penguin, looking down at my pocket.
Penguin chirped.
Exactly.
We watched the ray of Llewellyn's Evacuation Skill sweep the area those people were in, and a moment later all the tourists were gone. The jeeps stayed behind, doors open.
I exhaled in relief.
Damn, this place looked incredible.
Still… There was nothing else going on here. Maybe whatever this was, it only affected unawakened people?
I activated Exploratory Analysis.
-
[System Notification: Exploratory Analysis activated!
Analyzing: Distorted Realm
Detected Elements: Water, Earth, Metal
Distortion focus: Reflective Duplication
Threat level: High]
-
Wait.
This was the first time we'd gotten info on the distortion itself. But also—
"Reflective Duplication?" I asked. "What does that—"
Penguin chirped and I looked down.
"…"
My reflection was looking back up at me. Which sounded normal, except that my hands weren't currently in my pockets.
Goosebumps ran up my arms.
"Llewellyn!"
"I see it," Llewellyn said, landing close.
Just in time.
A second later, water pulled itself together and upwards and my reflection stood up out of the ground.
It had my coat, my hair, my face, all of it watery-looking, reflecting the light.
Holy shit.
In front of Llewellyn, a second figure was rising too. His.
Penguin burst out of my pocket with a war chirp and turned into a fire fox mid-jump. A small water fox rose out of the surface to meet him.
Penguin froze, turning back into a penguin out of shock, then chirped, deeply offended.
The copy of me attacked first, casting a jet of Water right at us. I threw up my shield just in time, but the impact sent me skidding back half a meter across the wet salt.
Fuck. It hit like me on a good day.
Penguin and his copy—now a penguin too—were fighting against each other, while Llewellyn's copy had drawn a sword made of Water and was already trading blows with him.
"..."
Damn.
I wished I could just watch. Unfortunately, I had this guy to deal with.
I ducked and tried to hit back, but it wasn't very effective.
Fuck. At least Llewellyn and Penguin could switch Elements and make progress, since the copies could only use the Water Element.
I was fighting Water with Water!
I could technically also grab the tail end of whatever Element Llewellyn and Penguin were using, but the fight was too fast, and I wasn't that practiced at this yet. And besides, whenever Fire turned those things into steam, they just pulled themselves back together out of the ground, even when Llewellyn used Wood to absorb the droplets.
This wasn't going to be easy.
I expanded into the Magic Field, trying to figure out what was going on.
Everything looked the same in every direction—so much so that I got disoriented for a moment.
Shit. What was going on? How did I even—
Penguin chirped angrily, freezing the three Water creatures we were currently fighting, then pecked furiously at my calf, bringing me back to myself.
Damn, that had been close.
"Thank you!" I said, parrying an attack.
The copy came at me again before I'd fully recovered my stance.
Well. My plan had clearly failed and I was now wet everywhere.
My boots slid on the wet salt, and I shot a jet of Water at my copy's chest. The Water went in and… stayed in.
"…"
Was I feeding it?! Was that what I was doing?!
I ducked under the next swing and put some distance between us.
Fuck.
The copy pressed forward. I feinted left but it was already waiting on my right. I dropped low but his arm was already coming down.
What the hell! It knew where I was going to dodge!
…Because I knew where I was going to dodge.
How was I even supposed to fight that?!
Up close, my own face stared back at me, watery and wrong.
…I was going to have nightmares about this.
Besides, this guy didn't seem to be tiring at all, while I was panting and my grip kept slipping on the hilt of my Moonlight Sword!
What the hell. When had I (he) gotten this hard to kill?!
The copy feinted high and kicked at my shin. I avoided it but—that was my move!
It kicked again.
Fine! No mercy for either of us, then!
Maybe planning was the problem. Every idea I came up with, it came up with too. Llewellyn's entire training philosophy boiled down to acting before thinking. I hadn't really needed it so far, but maybe it was time to brush up on it again now?
"…"
Trying it on purpose turned out to be its own problem.
I let the copy come to me, telling myself to stop deciding things—which… apparently counted as deciding how to stop deciding.
The copy-me's next jet caught my shield edge-on and spun me half around.
He grinned. Okay, what the hell.
"Hey!" I said.
That guy didn't leave me room to work it out at all.
Could I use Crisis Management like I'd done against the Celestial Hydra in the Mondwyn Harbor Dungeon?
But what— Was I going to make bubbles burst inside myself and smash my head onto the ground?
…Okay, maybe I'd actually enjoy doing that.
Or maybe… If this was water, maybe I could use my Authority here?
I focused on the diamond-point in my chest and pushed my mind at the water around us.
"Down."
The water seeped into the ground underneath, leaving crust and a circle of dry, blinding salt, maybe fifty meters across, with all of us in the middle of it.
The copies inside the circle sagged, lost their faces, and fell apart into puddles that drained away.
…I couldn't believe that worked!
Also fuck, that had been creepy.
Penguin checked his double at the last second, purely out of spite, then kicked its puddle with his little feet.
He chirped, victorious.
"That worked," Llewellyn said, breathing hard.
Wait, apparently I'd managed to get rid of all of them?! What the hell.
Still, I could see why Llewellyn looked so tired. He'd had to fight himself—that couldn't have been easy.
"Partially," I said.
The Water was emerging again, with more figures rising. Dozens. Me, Llewellyn, and Penguin, repeated over and over across the flat, all standing in the water, all watching us.
Shit.
It was the single creepiest thing I'd ever seen, and I'd died once! I'd even seen a giant flying key decapitate someone!
They all attacked at once.
Fuck, fuck.
We ducked and rolled.
I tried to use my Authority again, but it only worked in patches. There were too many of them!
"This is just draining our energy!" Llewellyn yelled, as he and Penguin either froze the copies or turned them into steam. "We need to find the Knot!"
He was right.
[System Notification: Elemental Insight is active!]
I knew that!
But where the hell was the Knot?!
This couldn't be like that time in Iceland. We weren't standing on a proper lake, so it wasn't deep enough for an underwater Knot.
Then?
I dove, avoiding an attack, and scanned the reflection, in case the Knot was hidden there somehow or there was some other reflective fuckery going on, but… nothing.
The itch had not activated either. Which, by now, I knew meant that we were probably too far from the Knot.
"I can't feel it anywhere!" I called, ducking another copy of myself. "I think we're too far! This place is massive!"
Llewellyn dispatched two of himself and looked around, bracing for three more.
"..."
Damn. Even though they were watery that fight had looked—
No, wait. Focus! I parried a blow and tried to scan the environment too.
There was nothing out there except salt and water, identical in every direction.
"Then we move," Llewellyn said. "Standing here fighting these things gets us nothing."
"Move where?!"
"Anywhere. We search until you feel it."
Well. It wasn't like I had a better plan. And if we kept this up I was going to get myself killed. My copy was good.
I used my Authority again, watching several copies melt into the ground, and Llewellyn wrapped an arm around my waist. I caught Penguin, sliding him into my pocket, and Llewellyn took us up on a burst of wind.
Penguin chirped. After a few moments, he activated his feather artifact and lifted himself out of my pocket, flippers going hard, clearly delighted with himself.
"Look at you," I yelled. "You're definitely better than Gilded!"
Penguin chirped happily, then flapped harder, panicking a bit when he realized he couldn't move forward, and landed back in my pocket, already tired.
I wanted to pat him, but coordination mid-air was difficult.
Damn, I didn't envy Gilded at all.
"Don't worry!" I yelled. "You're already so good, you'll get better in no time!"
Penguin chirped again, sounding a bit comforted.
That said, the copies had not taken our move well.
As soon as we landed, they rose ahead of us in twos and threes again. We cut through, took off again, and kept going.
My eyes ached from the glare and I'd lost any sense of how far we'd come.
There were no landmarks out here at all, nothing to measure by, and the horizon looked the same in every direction. If Llewellyn hadn't been keeping our line straight, I'd have sworn we were flying in circles.
"Anything?" he called.
But there was literally nothing. Except for more copies of us, that is.
Every time we touched down, a bigger cluster attacked and we had our work cut out for us.
Then the itch exploded in my chest.
Shit. What? Where the hell was it?!
I'd also just realized something else.
This was the first time we'd had actual targets to fight before I'd flagged a Thread. Usually we'd only be dealing with the raw Elements raging around us before my flagging—nothing we could actually fight directly.
Why was this one different?!