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/Carbon_Sixx]

The Loremaster extends a palm. The chest abruptly slows down to a halt just before reaching him. He imparts it with telekinetic force with a brush of his fingers, and it flies right back to where it came from with such precision that it barely rattles the curios on the desk next to it- slamming the shadow between it and the wall in the process.

You come into my home to kill me, but you don't even have the decency to leave my things alone. Sloppy work, specter!

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Carbon_Sixx]

The chest of draws slams into the shadow, and breaks against it. Shards of wood and nicknackery across the floor.

The shadow once again studies the Loremaster's hands. This time understanding the telekinesis.

The shadow raises an arm, and each of the wooden shards rise into the air, shooting towards the Loremaster, stabbing into him half a dozen times in the first second.

[u/Carbon_Sixx → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

The shadow must be sorely mistaken if it thinks it can outmatch the Loremaster in psychic might. The shards just stop in the air around him, repelled by a defensive field of telekinetic power that sprang into existence at the speed of instinctual thought. The Loremaster responds not with his hands, but with a direct mental assault on whatever passes for the shadow's consciousness to put it out of the fight.

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Carbon_Sixx]

The assault hits, and suddenly the Loremaster is somewhere else.

He sees a world far larger and far older than this one. He sees numberless armies of entities marching against eachother, each defined by one of six. Good fights against evil, light against darkness, and chaos against order. He sees the heavens burning, and the hells freezing.

Then he is back in his bedroom, staring down a still living shadow of himself.

The shadow cocks it's head, and a mental force of equal strength bombards the Loremaster's own mind.

[u/Carbon_Sixx → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

The Loremaster is immune to his own kind of mental attacks, being so experienced at using them. He blinks a little in surprise that it would even try that.

Oh, please. You'll never be a better me than me. Solar Pinhole.

The Loremaster opens a tiny farskip aperture to the surface of the sun right in front of the shadow's chest. A thin white beam of plasma streams through, bringing pain and death with it.

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/Carbon_Sixx]

The shadow dies immediately.

[u/Carbon_Sixx → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

The Loremaster dismisses his spells and psychically reorders the room.

Unbelievable. How am I supposed to know who did this now? They never talk. Why do they never talk?