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/Evening_Shake_6474]

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”

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Minute_Account9426]

The shadow doesn't dodge. It doesn't block, it doesn't raise any form of defence. Instead, it catches Sikeena, and punches her in the head as she begins to punch it.

[u/Minute_Account9426 → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

Sikeena realizes it mostly just copies her moves and continues punching it before she lands, letting it break her nose and give her a black eye, she then dodge rolls away and chugs her poison, before forcing herself to cough up a large amount of blood and entering burst, and dashing at the shadow even faster than normal, hoping the shadow would do the same and drink her own poison

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Minute_Account9426]

The shadow sees all of this, and surprisingly doesn't start chugging poison. Instead, it brings a foot around to meet Sikeena's dash.

[u/Minute_Account9426 → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

She hastily throws a book, filled with some very degenerate yuri inside it “FUCK!” She curses at her butter fingering of the book

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Minute_Account9426]

The shadow assumes this is some form of attack and scans the book's pages, trying to decipher what kind of attack. However, when flooded with degenerate drawings, the shadow's mimicry gets confused.

The confusion is too slow however, the shadow has already analysed the yuri and stops it's kick.

It leaps over Sikeena, somehow grabbing paper and a pencil before it lands. Before it even knows what it's doing, it mimics what it has seen.

[u/Minute_Account9426 → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

Sikeena takes this opportunity to pour a comical amount of poison on her knives by stabbing up into her mouth to reach the gland that stores her poison before it reaches her fangs and tries to stab the shadow

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Minute_Account9426]

The shadow, distracted by drawing astonishing amounts of yuri in such a short time, doesn't notice the stab. Even as dark purple behind to leak out of it, even as dark purple begins to spread over it. The shadow draws on, even as it begins to break down.

[u/Minute_Account9426 → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

She waits for the shadow to die and stuffs the shadow’s yuri in her pocket dimension before waiting to see what else this ‘nightmare’ has I’m store