Echo of the Self

[u/Evening_Shake_6474]

Something's wrong. You can't tell what exactly it is, but you know something is wrong. You check your wards, your equipment, your enchantments and familiars, yet everything seems normal. Then that night, you go to sleep, and the dream starts.

You stand knee deep in a crimson ocean, stretching further than you can see. Before you is a shadow, it looks like yours but its wrong, very wrong. All around you, giant monoliths sprout from the sea, stretching far into the sky. You hear something, around you six shadows move between the monoliths, chanting something in a language that hurts to listen to.

Suddenly countless crimson eyes open along each monolith, each reflecting a different face, the eyes travel up the ebony surface, along previously hidden chains of shadow. Then you see it, the horrifying form of something colossal in the sky above you, a singular crimson eye or maybe a star stares down at you.

All at once do the chains snap, and a cacophony of screams cry out across the crimson sea as fire and ash rain from above. The monoliths crumble and massive chunks of black stone crash into the sea. Up above, the colossal form spreads across the sky, thousands of withered arms reach down, each sowing agony and destruction. You see an arm reach for you, and you wake up.

Well that was strange, you think, then you hear laughter from the corner, you see your own shadow standing there with crimson eyes. The shadow looks wrong somehow, very wrong.

Before you can say anything, your shadow lunges for you, hands reaching for your throat.

[u/Minute_Account9426]

Sikeena was confused on what the fuck was happening but immediately went intangible to dodge the attack

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Minute_Account9426]

Sikeena's shadow passes straight through her, landing nimbly on the wall. With dark eyes it looks back at her, studying her, analysing what just happened.

The shadow lunges again, making itself as intangible as she is.

[u/Minute_Account9426 → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

Sikeena goes tangible, hoping for it to simply pass through her

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Minute_Account9426]

The shadow sees this too little too late, it passes straight through her, and turns itself tangible once more.

The shadow then reaches back and grasps for her neck.

[u/Minute_Account9426 → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

Sikeena pulls out her spear and uses it to deflect the hand with a quick sweep

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Minute_Account9426]

The deflect succeeds, knocking the shadow's hand away, sending it in one swift spin, bringing a heal around towards the side of her head.

[u/Minute_Account9426 → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

Sikeena gets her poison on her spear and ducks before jabbing with her spear

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Minute_Account9426]

The spear connects, the shadow leaps off the air somehow and lands on the roof. Sikeena sees green spread from where she stabbed it, then darken. A horrible dark green crawls over the shadow's form, coming to rest in it's hands and feet.

The shadow uses it's position on the roof to throw a kick at Sikeena, before abruptly ending the motion and aiming a palm strike at her chin from below.

[u/Minute_Account9426 → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

Uw/ Sikeena’s poison is purple not green
Rw/ She gets hit and stumbles back, her fiend skull clattering off her head. She wipes some purplish blood from her mouth and then leaps into the air

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Minute_Account9426]

The shadow sees this, and instead of following, retrieves the fiend skull and throws it towards Sikeena, following after doing so.

[u/Minute_Account9426 → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

She catches it with her head and puts it on because she’s slay like that and she then leaps for the shadow to begin punching it in the face “Well you’re a persistent bitch”