The six of them emerged into the ‘throne room’, and took stock of their surroundings.
The inner sanctum was far more ornate and finely carved out than the basic chamber that held the soldiers and the cocoons, more suited to being called a proper throne room. Were it not for the aspects of the cave it was carved from, one could have said it was from a castle. Light seemed to leak down through cracks in the ceiling - most of it shining down on the grand throne at the back of the chamber, where the Tenebris Imperatoris sat, glaring at them.
To their right, against a wall, were three cocoons, each covering the clones left behind up to the neck, to be used as ‘master copies’ for further cloning.
Jay’s eyes flashed, doing a quick scan. “No humans in those cocoons. Nat, Florrie, blast ‘em.”
Natalia got out the energy launcher, and she and Florrie proceeded to obliterate the cocoons in short order.
The Emperor sighed as he stood up from his throne. “What a pity. Oh, well, those mass-manufactured duplicates don’t hold a candle to the originals anyway. Once you’re back in your cocoons-”
“Fat. Fucking. Chance,” Anja snarled, “We’re ending this, Harlan! Once and for all!”
He looked pained. “Anja… Salvation for all is in our grasp, and you would reject it, despite what you experienced?”
Anja sighed, forming her arm blades, “There’s only one person in this world who can promise salvation to all, Harlan. You’re not Him.”
“Then if my path is wrong, may He strike me down. But until then…” The Emperor reached for his hair.
Jay pointed his staff, firing off a quick, thin energy beam towards their enemy’s hand, forcing him to move to the side, “Not letting you pull that trick again!”
The Emperor chuckled, as everyone else started following Jay’s lead, either attacking from range, or in Anja and Sonia’s case, rushing him down to engage in melee. He summoned his spear, forced to use both hands as he deflected blows and slashed back at them, moving around the throne room, “So that’s your plan, hmm? Try to stop me from summoning my clones while trying to overwhelm me? That’d be an excellent strategy, but there’s one small problem.”
Natalia and Florrie suddenly turned around, as they deflected a couple of spear strikes. Estella sensed something approaching swiftly, and raised Allagi to block an incoming spear strike - from one of the Emperor’s clones. Jay deflected another strike with a shield.
Anja and Sonia also evaded a couple of incoming strikes from above, but that left them surrounded by the Emperor and two of his copies.
“He already summoned them ahead of time!” Natalia winced. This had been brought up as a possibility when they were talking strategy earlier. This would leave them outnumbered, but it would also likely confirm how many he could summon at one time. “But this means he can only summon six at most!”
Estella chuckled, as she went on the offensive. That was still significantly better odds than last time, and Anja and Sonia were the strongest among them in terms of raw physical power and magic resistance - as long as they held out long enough for the group to take out all six clones, then they could turn the tide.
Still, that would be harder than last time. She could feel that the clone that she was fighting was stronger than the one from before - about as strong as the original was previously. And he kicked her ass when he was fighting her solo. This was going to be challenging.
Allagí spoke up in her mind to advise, “Don’t fight him alone. You and Jay need to coordinate, otherwise the both of you will fall alone.”
She stuck close to Jay, who formed a long, spectral blade from his gambanteinn. When the two clones attacked, she blocked both strikes, straining a bit against their combined strength, but Jay swung quickly, extending the blade and sweeping it across, forcing them to jump back, but both were struck, causing them to briefly spasm as their forms started becoming more unstable.
Jay noted, launching multiple ice projectiles (in the shape of very sharp spikes) after them, which were swiftly deflected, “Looks like the mind blade is particularly effective against them!”
Estella couldn’t help but grin, charging as she started launching electrical projectiles at them while she closed the gap, putting them on the defensive with quick strikes of her blade after electrocuting them. They attempted to cast spells, but it seems in their disrupted states they simply fizzled out.
She carefully watched the pair’s strikes, focusing on the blows aimed at her legs and face and ignoring any aimed at her upper body. As expected, their spears simply weren’t able to pierce the lion pelt, allowing her to mostly disregard defence and get in close to strike, slashing back when one of them attempted to stab at her.
Unfortunately, one thing she overlooked is that when she tried stabbing or slicing at one of them, the other would move to block her strike. And the other thing was that they could still use their free hands to attack unarmed, nearly knocking her off-balance.
Estella winced, barely avoiding a palm strike after a failed stab, Why do these things have to be better martial artists than me?!
Jay’s voice suddenly echoed in her head. “Estella, jump!”
Estella immediately jumped, moments before a sudden rush of water went under her, flowing around her opponents’ legs. Before she landed, the water was flash-frozen, surprising the pair as their legs were frozen in place.
She didn’t hesitate, stabbing at one of the clones as soon as she landed. The other clone blocked the strike, but was suddenly impaled on a cluster of Jay’s ice projectiles, causing him to go limp. The clone she had attacked tried to strike back, but again his blade bounced off the coat, allowing him to run him through, before lifting Allagi upwards and essentially ripping him in half.
Both clones burned away, as Estella turned to Jay, “Nice, quick thinking, Jay.”
“Gotta be creative when you can’t directly affect living creatures without touching them,” said Jay. “And it’s good that you acted quickly and didn’t give them any time to break out.”
“Both of you did well, and with relatively minimal energy expended, too,” Allagí said.
Estella turned, “Okay, enough flattery, let’s see how Natalia and Florrie are doing…”
Natalia had been dreading this. It was bad enough to fight the real thing previously by herself, but now she was fighting clones of the same rough level of power, and while Florrie was by her side, she was worried that just the two of them was simply not enough.
Last night’s dream had actually essentially been a study and strategy session on Sun Wukong with Akane rather than another training session. It turns out that while Wukong was indeed very powerful, ‘Journey to the West’ had exaggerated his various abilities at least a little bit. And Akane theorised that his evil offshoot was not only likely lacking in some of them, but what he did have was severely limited in comparison to the real thing. The fact that the Emperor could only summon six clones at a time supported this theory.
She still had to potentially look out for abilities such as: innate polymorphing, changing into air and wind for stealth, size-shifting, true sight, astral projection, possible immunity to non-divine flames, and last but certainly not least, the ‘freeze’ ability he used on her the day before, which Akane called the ‘Body-Fixing Method’, a special ability that was one of the few known exceptions to being unable affect people with spellcraft without some form of direct contact. And even then it had limitations, such as preventing the user from performing any other action while maintaining the effect.
She had already done a run-down on these with the others that morning, along with potential strategies to counteract them. It was time to put them into practice.
Natalia was using the blade rifle and mace shotgun combo, as she and Florrie peppered the two copies at range and clashed in close quarters. The enemy was durable, but Natalia was able to make use of her shields for deflecting projectile spells and making it easier to block the spears when her personal shield needed to recharge. Florrie didn’t need active shielding, since her powered armour had a much stronger shield battery, so she seemed to be focusing on attacking.
One of the clones suddenly pointed at Natalia, “Freeze!” Natalia felt her body suddenly lock up, as if rooted in the very spot.
Moments later, he was blasted in the face by one of Florrie’s palm blasts, before he was targeted by a full volley of energy micro-missiles, blasting small but not insignificant chunks off of him while he was still recovering. The other clone tried to strike at Natalia with his spear, but she was immediately able to move again and deflected it with her mace, slashing in retaliation as she channelled her Energeia into the blade with enough power to inflict a serious gash into his chest before he was able to leap back a significant distance.
The other clone tried to attack Florrie with several fast spear strikes, but while it did start doing damage, she managed to grab the spear. Seeing this, Natalia began to charge the energy in her mace, recalling the beam rifle so she could hold the mace in both hands.
Florrie yanked the clone towards her to swing a punch, which he ducked… right as Natalia began swinging the mace with both hands, directing the swing so the clone’s dodge would move right into its path.
The mace collided with his head, letting out an explosive burst that obliterated it entirely, causing the body to collapse to the floor, as it began to burn away.
Natalia was suddenly tackled, sliding several meters on her back, and raised a couple of energy shields defensively as the other clone began furiously stabbing at her, letting loose a surge of electricity that made her scream in pain as it overloaded her shields.
Florrie suddenly grabbed the clone’s head from behind with both hands, and with a burst of energy as well, caused his head to explode, before tossing the corpse aside. “NAT! You alright?!”
“My body is tingling, and I think I’ve got some cuts, but I’m okay,” Natalia groaned as her suit’s automatic healing functions began to work on healing the few injuries she suffered and repairing her suit. She reached a hand out, and Florrie grabbed it, pulling her up on her feet. “Thanks, Florrie.”
“Yer welcome. We make a pretty good team, huh?” Florrie chuckled.
“Yeah, we sure do.” Natalia glanced at Estella and Jay, who had just finished up with their clones. “Okay, good, four down, two clones to go… And Harlan himself…”
Anja and Sonia were back to back once more, surrounded by the Emperor and two of his clones, who immediately moved into close combat.
Anja knew she couldn’t outfight him through pure martial arts skill. So she decided to leverage her new size and strength granted by Clara’s milk. Sonia seemed to have much the same thought, turning up the heat on the flames covering her arms until they turned blue, and started swinging her claws furiously, while Anja extended her blades and started rapidly slashing, using her extended reach to match the current length of the spears.
“Relying on brute strength? Is that your grand plan? I’m disappointed,” Harlan said mockingly as he deflected incoming blows, “You two don’t have much in the way of ranged options, do you?”
“Still learning how to properly control these flames,” Sonia remarked, thrusting her hands towards him and one of the clones, unleashing a surge of flame, “But I can still do THIS!”
The pair spun their spears, deflecting the incoming fire, but had to back off to avoid what were basically twin flamethrowers. Anja took note - not as immune to fire as the original Sun Wukong apparently was. Interesting.
“True, true. Gotta say, Sonia, I never would’ve expected you being a were-lioness,” remarked Harlan, “Were you ever planning on revealing that to any of your friends? Or did you not trust them enough to maintain the ‘masquerade’? Was it more important than Matt’s life?!”
That was a bit of a low blow. Sonia snarled, intensifying the flames and launching them further, “OKAY, FUCK YOU! If I could’ve saved Matt’s life with my powers, I would’ve in a heartbeat! We both know even he barely had time to push Anja out of the way, and he was right there!”
That actually gave Harlan pause, and he genuinely looked guilty, as he continued to evade the flames. “I apologise. You’re right, that was… uncalled for. I have become far too bitter a person, it seems. No matter, though - that will be in the past once my new world is a reality!”
Anja was clashing with one of the clones, frustrated that he was able to back off and hit her with his extended spear, while her blades had a limit to how much she could extend them without diminishing effectiveness. As the spear cut into her and lightning sent jolts of agony through her body, she cursed herself for not being able to do more…
Prometheus spoke in her head, “So you gonna just stew in frustration or actually try something?”
“How am I supposed to know what to do when even you don’t know what your abilities really are?!” Anja snapped as she backed up against Sonia’s back.
Suddenly, on touch, she felt something flow into her body. Time slowed to a crawl as she seemed to visualise outlines around everything around her. “Wha… what’s happening?!”
“Well, well, this is interesting.” Appearing in front of her, was the translucent figure of a voluptuous anthropomorphic giraffe woman, with blue-green eyes and yellowish-orange hair tied up with a band. She wore a dark blue suit. “You accidentally copied one of Sonia’s powers. Specially, the super-analysis she inherited from ‘me’.”
“Who the hell…?”
Prometheus noted, “That chick’s part of your psyche, not another person. But neither of us have seen her before!”
“The name is Thandi Antonis, or at least, that’s the name of the person I’m based on. It seems copied and inherited powers also include an ‘imprint’ of the person that power came from. I’m not a split personality, just a mental ‘filter’ of sorts allowing you to process what’s happening,” said the giraffe, as she conjured a translucent image of Anja’s body, “Let’s figure out your other innate powers, or at least some of them. It seems you can copy powers from Gaians, though only one at a time right now, it seems.”
Anja replied, “Okay, neat, but I guess the only offensive power she’s got is, like, psychokinesis? Which I can already do?”
‘Thandi’ remarked, “What you can do is ignite flames on your body. She can manipulate fire much more freely. There’s a difference there.” She highlighted what was apparently lines of flowing energy through Anja’s body, “But while one door is closed, another is open. Consider the implications of being able to essentially harness your internal energies to create flames. You could potentially do so, so much more than that.”
Both images began to fade and her perception of time returned to normal as the implications dawned on Anja, and she felt energy spark in her hand. She thrust her hand forward, launching a sphere of energy from it, surprising the clone in front of her as it struck his chest and exploded.
Anja fired off several more spheres, intuitively seeing flight arcs as she curved them to keep her enemy on his toes as he blocked and deflected, before a pair of organic ‘boosters’ emerged on her back. She put her hands together, letting off a larger burst that her enemy was forced to detonate right before it reached him. The ‘boosters’ erupted with energy and force, launching her right at him as she extended her arm-blades and flew right through the smoke, spinning rapidly with flaming blades as she turned into a whirling blade of death, using the force of her momentum to break right through the spear shaft when he tried to block and ripped right through him, cutting him into three pieces, which started burning away.
“Not bad,” remarked Prometheus, “Could be more efficient with your energy use, though.”
Landed and turned around to see Sonia still trying to keep the Emperor and the other clone at bay with her fire powers, though all three were briefly distracted by seeing what Anja just did.
Anja planted her feet, and fired up her ‘boosters’ again, launching herself past Sonia and slashing at the other clone, who dodged to the side. However, that expected, as she suddenly turned around, and launched herself at him again, moving her arms into a cross shape and extending her arm-blades into an eight-point star-like shape. The clone’s eyes widened, and he was forced to block rather than evade, having virtually no room to dodge in any direction quickly enough.
She pushed against him, pushing him backwards… and right into an intense stream of fire from Sonia, setting the clone completely alight. Sonia leaped at him, ripping his head off with her claws.
Anja retracted her blades and stopped her boosters, turning to Harlan. She could already see via her 360-degree vision that everyone else had managed to mop up the remaining clones. “No more soldiers and clones to hide behind, Harlan.”
Harlan laughed, as he stood up straight, “You really are full of surprises, Anja. But as it happens, I still have tricks up my sleeve.”
He suddenly began to expand in size, cackling as he grew to over twenty meters in height, utterly towering over the pair. “I’m going to enjoy this!”
Sonia winced, “Oh boy. He could do a lot of damage like this…”
“Yeah, but… He’s now a bigger target,” Anja said.
Harlan brought his foot up, and tried to step on them. The pair leaped away in opposite directions, with Anja firing off her energy shots, and Sonia trying to set fire to his leg. The stomp was powerful enough to crack the floor and knock them away with a burst of sudden air pressure.
The others immediately joined the battle, with Estella and Jay taking to the air. Estella got in close to start buzzing around him with her blade, while Jay was firing off beams from his staff, forcing Harlan to raise his arm to protect himself. Natalia had gotten out the energy launcher, and she and Florrie were firing off shots from afar. Anja, for her part, got back up on her feet, dashing around as she and Sonia continued to try and attack from a distance.
Harlan snarled, swatting Estella out of the air with his hand, sending her crashing to the ground, before striking at Jay with his spear, forcing him to raise a barrier. Jay was knocked away into a wall, and Harlan followed up by doing a sweep with his spear, knocking both Natalia and Florrie down.
Sonia snarled, thrusting both hands forward and unleashing a surge of flame that slammed into Harlan’s chest, burning at his armour, “You know the old saying, Harlan - the bigger they are, the harder they fall!”
Harlan winced as he took the heat, but swung the spear down on Sonia, “Perhaps, but that assumes that the giant falls to begin with! Here’s my corollary - the bigger they are, the more they will crush underfoot!”
Sonia caught the spear point, struggling to hold it up. “Anja… NOW!”
Anja noticed the chest armour was damaged. If she could just break through… She lit up her boosters again. But her analysis told her her strength wasn’t going to be enough.
Suddenly, Estella rushed in, unleashing a powerful energy blast at point blank, further damaging the armour before Harlan swatted her away again.
Then, two powerful explosive shots and an energy beam stuck, almost shattering the armour entirely. Anja could tell they were from Natalia, Florrie and Jay. It was just enough.
Anja roared as she launched herself at Harlan with as much force as she could muster, reinforcing her blades into the sharpest points she could form, setting them aflame as she thrust both arms forward towards the crumbling armour.
She smashed right through before Harlan could intercept her, ripping through his armour and right through his torso where his heart would normally be. She heard him let out a scream of agony as she tore through the other side, tearing a hole clean through.
Anja came out the other side, slowing her fall with the boosters as she turned around, seeing Harlan began to shrink back down to normal size, falling onto one knee, panting.
Anja sighed, and began to approach, one blade pointed at him, “Harlan… It’s over. You can’t win this fight.”
Harlan suddenly began to chuckle. But his voice was… wrong. “Yes, he can’t win. It seems the boy’s usefulness has finally come to an end.”
Anja’s eyes widened. She recognised that voice, even if she had only heard it once before. “You!”
Harlan snarled, his voice asserting itself again, “You… You backstabbing filth… We had a deal!”
The other voice remarked, “I’m afraid they were right, Harlan. I had you wrapped around my finger from the very beginning. For what it’s worth, I always enjoyed having you as my host. And if there’s one promise I will make, it’s that I’ll make sure the world you desire will come to fruition, but in my way. But it’s time I took the stage. Thank you for keeping my throne warm. Farewell, Harlan.”
“MOKUY, YOU-”
Harlan’s voice was silenced, as the Emperor rose to his feet, his chest stitching itself back together. “I’m going to miss him, at least until my new world is complete. But for now… It’s nice to finally have a body of my own again.”
The others began to surround him, and Anja clenched her fists, eyes narrowed, “You manipulative…! Harlan trusted you, and this is how you repay him?!”
‘Mokuy’ looked at her, with a smirk, “I’m still giving him what he wants, as I said. But what can I say? Manipulation and trickery is simply what I do.”
“Either way, you’re still outnumbered and outgunned. Just because you’re in control-”
Mokuy just laughed as a dark aura surged around him, unleashing a pressure that started pushing everyone back. “Oh, the boy was working with training wheels! He couldn’t compare to the likes of me. As for myself…”
He grinned, “I have gone by many names. I care not for whether you call me 'Dharruŋgu Mokuy’ or ‘Sun Wukong’, or any others. What matters is… I am the Monkey King. And this world is mine for the taking!”
