Rising Shards

The void blob hadn’t fully formed into anything in particular yet. We all got out our bloodsabers. I felt the familiar pinprick on my pointer finger as I ignited it, drawing a small bit of blood to light up the veins inside the blade.

“OK, so Lillia, please advise.” Kalei said.

“Well, it’s not really doing anything yet.” Lillia said as we circled the blob. “I’d advise to…not really do anything yet either until it does something.”

The void monster blob gurgled but remained in position, looking like a tidal wave of sludge frozen in position.

“Maybe it’s not a real void monster,” Aira suggested. “And we just need to cast it away like our childhood desires. Or something?”

“Oh, this isn’t going to turn into what we just cast away is it?” I asked. “They’re not gonna make us fight our…they’re not gonna make me fight Raina Starlight, are they?”

“I’m not fighting Trian the Train.” Oka said.

“Stop preemptively guessing,” Lillia said. “First off, we don’t know if it’ll transform like the last room at all. Secondly, I’m not fighting a purebred Jecruible stallion.”

“Guys…it’s doing something,” Laenie said.

The blob split into six smaller blobs, and each rumbled in front of us as they took form.

“If it’s Raina, I’m gonna let her win, alright?” I said.

I was prepared to sheathe my bloodsaber and let Raina Starlight beat me up, but the blob in front of me took a different form. It looked like I was now staring at myself in the mirror, but if the mirror showed me covered in void monster goop.

“It’s…us?” I said, before the shadow blob version of me slapped me in the face. “Hey, OW!”

I instinctively put my hands on my face, dropping my bloodsaber with a clang to the ground. The blood collector thing on my finger popped off as well. I could immediately feel the goop residue left from the slap on my face. Shadow Me raised her hand again, and I ducked down to grab my bloodsaber again. After a moment of fumbling to get the blood collector back on my pointer finger, I ignited the blade and slashed at Shadow Me, who leapt backwards, flipping in the air before landing.

“Alright, there’s no way our Zeta can do that,” Kalei said.

“Shut up!” I said. “Focus on your own stupid monster.”

“Yours is the only one that’s done anything,” Kalei said. “Mine’s just sitting–"

Kalei’s shadow self punched her in the stomach. “Ouch! Not fair!”

“Oh, it feels really gross,” I said, smearing the goop from my hands onto the ground.

“So it’s our shadow selves,” Oka said. “That’s really cool!”

"Is it?" I asked.

“The others are getting ready,” Lillia said. “Everyone, prepare for battle!”

I slashed wildly at Shadow Me. Whenever I landed a hit, it just whizzed through. It was like fighting mud.

“Alright, Shadow Me, if that doesn’t work, how about this?” I said as I pointed my bloodsaber at her. My blade lit up, and a storm blast fired at Shadow Me. It was pretty disturbing to see the reaction as it caved a hole into the center of my shadow self. It reformed quickly though and started attacking again. My shadow seemed to have a slap heavy offense. Kalei’s was a puncher. Oka’s made vines like Oka’s Cani ability and was whipping in her direction. Aira was caught in a teleporting duel with her shadow, while Lillia looked like she was in a pro fencing duel with hers.

“Oh…” Laenie said, as her void monster shadow suddenly grew, imitating her Exa Cani wolfish monster form. “That’s not fair…”

Shadow Me got another slap in, and I was getting really tired of these slaps. Worse yet, this slap hit me a bit in the center of my face, causing a classic to me geyser nosebleed.

“Oh, come on,” I said, grabbing my nose. “I don’t wanna fight one handed again!’

“Ahhh, that’s kind of a relief though.” Kalei said, trying to block punches from her shadow. “It’s been a bit since you’ve had one.”

“She got one yesterday,” Oka said, trying to catching her shadow’s whip but only catching goop. “In class, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” Kalei said.

My sword fighting form was already pretty mediocre, but the combo of slaps, nosebleed, and Oka and Kalei tracking my nosebleeds turned it even more into wild flailing. At least I could still generate my powers as I peppered Shadow Me with small lightning strikes.

“Hey, do you think this is some kind of thing where we have to accept our shadows or something?” I asked. “Like the opposite of the last room?”

“I dunno!” Kalei said.

“Lillia?” Oka asked.

Lillia finished a set of symmetrical sword fighting spars with her shadow self. “It could work?” She said, catching her breath.

“You try it, I don’t want to get punched anymore!” Kalei said.

I deactivated my bloodsaber. My shadow self stopped fighting for a moment.

“OK, shadow me,” I said. “I accept that you are a part of me? And that AUGH–" My shadow just slapped me again, which hurt because she slapped my face and my hand holding my nose, which was still bleeding.

“Hey! Ow!” I said. “I was trying to reach out to you and you slapped me!”

Shadow Me just shrugged, which was probably the most communication I’d gotten from her so far outside of getting slapped across the face.

“Maybe nobody else try reaching out to their shadows!” Oka said.

“This challenge is stupid!” I said. “We’re getting nowhere fighting these dumb things!”

I reactivated my bloodsaber, feeling like I’d need a bandage for my poor finger for all the pinpricks it was getting today. I slashed away at Shadow Me, but my attacks had little effect.

“Maybe we should try something else?” Aira suggested between teleports.

“No more ideas from Zeta,” Kalei said.

“Hey!”

Aira had another quick flurry of teleports with her shadow matching it. She stopped as she caught her shadow in a bearhug. “Got you!” she said. “Huh?”

Aira’s shadow self turned formless again and fell to the ground in a splat. Aira poked at the puddle with her foot.

“Wait, what did you do that we aren’t doing?” I asked.

“The hug, maybe?” Oka suggested, then quickly wrapped her shadow self in a vine and pulled towards herself. I was glad I had a hand near my mouth already because I had to physically restrain myself from saying “I wish that were me” out loud. Oka hugged her, and her shadow self also returned to its goopy form, zipping over to Aira and merging with the puddle.

I saw Shadow Me rearing up for another slap, so I preemptively blocked it and hugged her. There was a moment of hesitation, then Shadow Me hugged me back. I felt her melt to the floor almost immediately.

By the time my shadow self was merging its puddle with Oka and Aira’s, the others had finished hugging and melting their shadow selves. All of them merged into one big void monster puddle, and everything was quiet. The next door opened, and bright light beamed in from it.

“Hey wait, so I was right? I was!” I said. “HA! AH-HA!”

“Calm down,” Kalei said.

“It is a bit much,” Laenie said.

“You already know where I stand on Zeta’s intermittent loudness,” Aira said. “I don’t want to have this debate again.”

“You have debates about me?” I said.

“Hey, maybe we can all go easy on Zeta here?” Oka said. “We won, didn’t we?”

“That’s true,” Lillia said. “Another door has opened as well. Is everyone ready? There could be another battle ahead.”

“I’m good,” Kalei said. “A little beat up.”

“I’d like a bath to get all this nosebleed off me, but what else is new?” I said. In addition to my nosebleed, which was mercifully wrapping up, I still had some leftover void monster sludge on me from fighting and hugging my shadow.

“Yeah, we are all a bit…” Oka said, trying and failing to get some of the slime off herself. “Goopy.”

“Let’s at least check the next room,” Lillia said. “We can decide our next move from there.”

The remnants of our shadow selves started to bubble and gurgle again.

“Hold on, everyone!” Lillia said.

The puddle of void ooze grew into a huge bubble. I was prepared for it to form into a monster that was like all of us mushed together, but it just popped and splashed all over us. We all groaned at the grossness.

We took a few minutes to try and wipe ourselves down as best we could. Our void exploration adaptive gear uniforms had a clean mode feature that pretty much just shook our clothes for a few seconds to fling any fluids off of us, but even that didn’t get us completely clean.

We headed on to the next room, with Aira taking the lead over Lillia. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was pretty worn out from the last fight.

“So this is…different.” Aira said.

“Yeah,” I said, looking around. “The walls are kind of leaking…pants.”

There were pants of all kinds seeping through the walls, for lack of a better term. There must have been hundreds that all landed with plops onto the ground. In the center of the room were six boxes. The door into the next room was also already open, and it looked like it led outdoors.

“I think this room is a reward room of sorts?” Lillia said, poking at one of the boxes with her foot. “For defeating the ‘boss,’ so to speak.”

“I’d say that was more of a miniboss myself,” Kalei said.

“They’re talking in video games again,” I said to Oka.

“We need our own geeky thing to speak in so they don’t understand,” Oka said. “Alternatively I guess we could just learn video game lingo, but I don’t really want to.”

“Hey, these each have our names!” Laenie said, rushing over to one Aira was poking at. “Aira, that one’s mine, don’t take it!”

We each found the box that had our name on it, and cautiously opened ours. I was honestly expecting pants to be inside, but it was a chunk of something that looked like a bigger version of the void rosin we used to scrape our fangs.

“OK, but are we gonna pick up as many pants as we can?” Kalei said. “We could make a killing selling these! Infinite pants! We could run the pants black market!”

“I assume they wouldn’t last too long outside the void,” Lillia said, but Kalei was already sifting through them, having lost interest in the chunk of whatever that was in the boxes. “But don’t let that stop you, I suppose.”

“These sizes aren’t even…real?” Kalei said. “Size alpha Q? Do you think we could have a business selling pants from another dimension that actually seem like pants from another dimension?”

“I don’t know, I’m not buying alpha Q sized pants.” I said.

“Well, what if this is your size?” Kalei said, holding up the pants.

“Those have three legs.” I said.

“Ah,” Kalei said. She chucked the pants back onto the pile. “I’m coming back into this room. I’m going to make the idea work."

With our treasures in hand, we went into the next room, which was a hallway that had a bright light at the end of it. The walls were white and wavy. Touching them felt like touching a plastic tarp stretched out underwater. We continued on, not seeing anything of note outside of the walls being really fun to touch and poke.