The clone loosed his arrow with a sharp, singing sound straight at Nouel. The shot was fast, precise, lethal – but Nouel moved with such delicate precision it looked as if he'd only tilted a single hair to the side. The arrow brushed past his cheek, close enough that he could feel the tremor in the air. In the same instant, he launched his counterattack.
"Volantis."
The word wasn't shouted, more like a controlled exhale. But the effect was immense. The two arrows floating beside him in mid-air shot forward at once – like racing sparks cutting through the air. They chased after the clone, who dodged in an elegant but frantic downward spiral. Yet the arrows clung to his trail relentlessly, as if they wanted to hunt his very existence.
The clone reacted in a flash, drawing his bow again and firing shot after shot at Nouel without pause. Nouel himself rode on one of his arrows – a reckless move, executed with the precision of a master – surfing the stone wall up and across the ceiling of the chamber, right over the clone's head. From this position, he kept firing down at him. The bowstring rang with each arrow that sliced the air, like metal in the cold.
Arrows collided mid-flight, some shattering into dust made of their own energy, others embedding themselves crosswise in the walls as the intensity of the battle grew. Everything was motion. Everything was speed. Everything was a dance of deadly precision.
With bows drawn and a single arrow on each string, both fighters hurled themselves toward one another. Time seemed to freeze – two hunters, two reflexes, two perfectly drawn bows. They fired. At exactly the same moment. And both slipped past the incoming arrow as if they shared the same body.
The two pursuing arrows that were still chasing the clone, Nouel stopped mid-flight. With one elegant twitch of his fingers, he made them change direction. Now they came at the clone from the front, not from behind.
The clone realized it too late.
They struck his shoulders with such force that he spun through the air and crashed downward.
Nouel didn't hesitate for a second. He drew a Terra arrow from his quiver – heavier, denser, full of grounded strength – and let Aether course through his veins. Ventus seized the arrow, accelerating it, letting it follow the natural rhythm of air, space, the Flow itself. He fired.
The arrow hit the clone square in the head.
A dull, unpleasant cracking sound was the only noise for a brief heartbeat.
But – just like before – nothing happened.
No core.
No weakness.
Nouel let himself drop back to the ground, giving up his aerial position. His boot touched stone, and he gave a crooked smile – an expression that might have seemed amused in another context, but here felt like mockery.
"Looks like arrows alone won't cut it. What a shame."
He slung the bow behind his back.
"Guess I'll have to make you suffer."
He drew a single arrow.
Not to shoot it – but to shape something from it.
"Tera, veni domum. Ventus, manifesta."
Terra-matter began to gather around the shaft. First like crumbling stone, then like shaped granite. Wind slid through narrow channels between it, sharpening, reinforcing, compressing the arrow's energy until the wood had become a grim knife. A tool forged from the essence of two streams.
In the distance, the arrows still lodged in the clone dissolved into a fine dust – Sanitas reclaimed them and erased them. The clone was "clean" again. Dangerously clean.
Nouel watched his hand.
The skin began to wrinkle.
Delicate lines, puckered and thin.
Like skin that had lain in water for too long.
He understood instantly:
This place was slowing the Aether flow in his body.
Not completely, but enough to delay it.
Enough to weaken him.
Enough to kill him, if he stayed too long.
"I don't have much time," he thought.
Just for half a breath, he thought of the others. Viktoria. Alvios. Raiiko.
Then his expression turned cold, sharp, focused.
He raised the knife.
He waited.
But the attack didn't come.
The clone stood still.
Motionless.
Head lowered.
That was wrong.
Far too wrong.
Nouel closed his eyes and listened.
Ventus was always speaking – but here, now, it whispered louder than usual.
And at the same time… it was too quiet.
It was artificially quiet.
He opened his eyes.
"From below," he murmured – instinctively, precisely.
The clone had left a double behind and slipped into the ground. The cold, damp mass – saturated with Sanitas remnants, thick and heavy – tried to drag Nouel down.
Nouel reacted with a reflex that looked as if the Flow itself were guiding him. He jumped aside. His knife sliced into the ground, struck fingers – several – and cut them off. Not enough to kill, but enough to force the clone out of hiding.
The clone burst from the hole with a violent jerk, empowered by Ventus. He now gripped two arrows – this time as close-combat weapons.
Nouel blocked both swings with the flat of his earth-and-wind knife. Sparks flew, chunks of dirt broke off, wind shrieked in short, sharp streams through the air.
He ducked, glided under the clone's arm swing and drew the knife along the tips of the arrows, leaving a groove along his forearm.
The clone finally showed emotion: rage, fury, pain. His teeth bared, veins bulged, eyes narrowed.
Nouel, on the other hand, smiled.
Then he stuck the knife between his teeth – and grabbed both of the clone's arrows with his bare hands.
He squeezed.
Wood cracked.
Both arrows snapped like dry twigs.
In one smooth motion – a harmonious, brutal rhythm – Nouel rammed the broken tips straight into the clone's eye sockets.
The clone screamed.
A sound full of pain, pure desperation.
He fell to his knees, clutching his eyes, screaming on – a raw, ragged howl that seemed to make the cave itself tremble.
Nouel pulled the knife from his mouth and grinned – wide, cold, arrogant.
"Hahaha… don't tell me you start copying my emotions after a while.
Are you stupid? Or can't you even control it?"
His tone was mocking, sadistic – yet calm, like someone who had already won.
The clone, blind, clawed desperately at the shafts in his eyes, trying to pull them free.
In vain.
"Well then… let's end thi—"
A massive roar cut his words off.
A sound so deep, so animal, so raw that even the stone vibrated.
It sounded like a wounded beast claiming its territory.
Like a warning.
Or a death cry.
Nouel spun around.
Just a single moment of distraction – and yet the most dangerous instant of the fight.
His gaze swept the dark.
He expected another enemy.
Something new.
A fresh threat.
But in those few Tetra—maybe two, maybe three heartbeats—the clone's eyes regenerated.
Sanitas flowed through him like a curse.
The clone looked at him.
Rage.
Pain.
Dust swirling from the floor.
A fury so intense it was almost tears.
He lifted his head—and saw an empty patch of stone where Nouel had been standing just a moment ago. The space still echoed with the pressure of Nouel's presence, like the air hadn't realized he'd moved yet.
Nouel's face twisted.
"Damn. Missed the window."
He held his hand out.
With a single Ventus impulse he raised all the arrows in his quiver.
Every arrowhead turned toward the clone like a forest of fangs.
Nouel drew his bow.
He set the knife against the string – his final, lethal arrow.
The clone, meanwhile, did something Nouel recognized at once:
He charged the same technique Nouel had used to blow off the chimera's arm.
The chamber vibrated.
Ventus tore at the air.
Aether followed the pull.
A gigantic arrow began to form on the clone's string – a monster of compressed wind and pressure, so large it looked like it could carve out a new chamber.
They fired.
Dozens of arrows against a single colossal shot.
The impact was enormous.
Air turned to ash.
Wood charred.
Arrows vanished, one after another.
Wind screamed.
Aether roared.
Then the massive arrow struck Nouel.
His torso was ripped apart.
Arms, shoulders, heart, thoughts – everything was pulverized.
The rest of his body fell like shredded leaves to the floor.
His bow clattered away.
The Aether howled one last time through the chamber.
The clone panted.
He had won.
His expression twisted – sick with joy.
He looked at the massive hole he had blasted.
Burnt flesh.
Aether residue.
Black, hazy.
Until he realized:
There were… too few arrows.
Far too few.
He froze.
His victory turned to ice.
He sank to his knees.
And then he felt the pain.
Both of his Achilles tendons were cut clean through.
So precise that the pain arrived late – like thunder trailing lightning.
He screamed.
This time not in rage – but in real fear.
Next to him, Nouel's blood-smeared knife was buried in the floor, at an angle, as if someone had shot it like an arrow.
"So," said a voice – calm, almost bored – "too good to be true, wasn't it?"
At the edge of the room stood Nouel.
Arms crossed.
Unharmed.
Cold.
The corpse – paler than before – stared up at him.
An expression of shock, despair, incomprehension.
The clone tried to crawl, reaching out for the knife.
But it was too far.
He had no arrows left.
No weapon.
No strength.
No hope.
Even the Aether seemed to mourn his fate.
Nouel took two steps forward.
"You're probably wondering why I'm still alive, aren't you?"
He tilted his head slightly.
"It's simple… an illusion can't die."
He snapped his fingers.
"Ventus. Hellfire."
The ceiling crumbled.
Dozens of arrows came free – arrows that had been fired earlier in the fight, but hidden and held in place by Terra.
The ground cracked and released more.
They had filled the chamber the entire time.
Invisible.
Unnoticed.
Perfectly concealed.
Sanitas struggled desperately to mend the clone's severed tendons.
Too late.
"It's over."
The arrow rain struck.
Bone shattered.
Flesh tore.
Blood flew.
The clone was hurled upward, skewered by arrows, higher, deeper, over and over.
His scream broke off.
His core flared –
and went out.
The body dropped.
Mangled.
Rotting.
Truly dead.
Nouel stepped closer to the fallen body. He took a slow breath, then raised his hand.
"Ventus, recurro."
The wind obeyed at once. The scattered arrows – hovering in the air or lying embedded in stone – dissolved into fine, swirling Aether threads and curved back into his quiver in a clean arc, guided by an invisible hand.
The wood-elf stood still, looking down at the corpse, letting his thoughts pass it in orderly fashion.
He hadn't won this fight by brute force – but by clear thinking.
First realization:
The clone constantly adapted. Every strike, every shot, every motion was immediately captured and mirrored. An enemy that learned like flowing water.
Second realization:
Critical hits had no effect. No matter how precise the shot, the body barely reacted. So there had to be a condition holding this construct together. A core. A point where everything converged.
Third conclusion:
It was a remotely controlled corpse.
Its movement pattern was too clean, too empty – no intent, only resonance.
So he tried a different approach.
Nouel gathered the air around them, compressed it, and let it vanish for a brief breath. The air thinned – a moment that lasted barely longer than a Tick, but for a dead shell, it was enough.
The clone began to hallucinate.
He saw Nouel standing where he had been an instant before – a phantom image born from lack of air and an unstable connection to his unknown master.
Nouel, meanwhile, stayed clear-headed. He had already begun to hold his breath, his body supported by Ventus, his veins calm. No panic, no risk.
The clone struck at empty space. And in that tiny, perfect gap between truth and illusion, he unraveled.
No heroic strike. No shouted victory.
Just logic.
Nouel dusted a few specks from his shoulder and only then allowed himself to breathe normally again.
The fight was over –
and he hadn't taken a single scratch.
One last look at the shredded heap that had been his double.
Then he moved on.
Before him, a new passage opened. The blue moss began to glow again as he walked deeper. After a while, the tunnel widened into a cavernous space with rugged, mountain-like rock formations. Three more paths branched off from it.
It was quiet.
And empty.
"Looks like I'm the first one here," he murmured softly, with a faint trace of worry.
He hoped the others were okay.
He sat down on a round stone.
Then he heard footsteps.
Slow.
Dragging.
Coming from one of the side tunnels.
A figure emerged – but he couldn't yet see who it was.
Friend.
Or foe.
Nouel's body tensed.
He was ready.
For whatever would come next.