Chương 60: 59: The Eleven Abominations IX

/// Clock tried to stand. Invisible telekinetic pressure crushed him into the ground. His own pressure. His own technique. His thoughts scattered. Sight fractured. Balance dissolved. Every sense turned against itself as his own telekinesis invaded his nervous system, scrambling perception until left became right, up became nowhere, and even his own limbs no longer answered correctly. He strained. Nothing. The reflected Clock hovered above him, smiling with too many teeth.

Its voice emerged warped, layered over itself like broken audio played backward.

"You're an ant trapped beneath my boot." Clock glared up through the pressure, blood running from the corner of his mouth.

"You'll be eating those words very soon." The imitation's smile twitched. Then widened. It pressed both palms together. SHRAAAAAAA. A deafening metallic screech echoed across the battlefield as violet Gloom flooded between its hands. A Reverse Blast formed. It condensed. The tiny sphere screamed beneath impossible compression, containing enough recursive force to birth a universe before collapsing it into a single point. Its target locked onto Clock alone. He fought harder.

The reflected telekinesis only drove him deeper into the earth. The copy held the advantage. Not because Iriz had surpassed him, but because she'd reflected everything she had seen. She simply hadn't seen everything he possessed. The mirrored Clock lowered its hands. The sphere began to fall. Clock closed his eyes.

"... Zwischenzug." In chess, it was an intermediate move - an unexpected action inserted before the obvious continuation, changing the position so completely that when the sequence resumed, it favored the player who had interrupted it. Reality lurched. The battlefield rewrote itself. The reflected Clock blinked. It now lay beneath the telekinetic pressure, pinned helplessly against the ground, while Clock floated where the copy had stood. The universe quietly decided those positions had always been reversed.

The Reverse Blast obeyed history. It completed the attack exactly as planned. Only the victim had changed.

"... Impossible-" BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!! Violet swallowed the horizon. The reflected Clock glowed from within as recursive force erupted through every vein, every muscle, every borrowed thought. Cracks of incandescent light raced beneath duplicated skin before the imitation folded inward, flesh vaporizing beneath its own impossible output until nothing remained but drifting motes of violet ash. Iriz's smile disappeared. Genuine disbelief crossed the mirror woman's face. She had copied Clock.

She hadn't copied the move he never let anyone see. The reflected Clock burst from the fading violet inferno completely intact, Transport having displaced every fragment of the Reverse Blast before it could truly touch him. His fingers swept across the strings. TWANG. The note wasn't loud. It was everywhere. Rippling crescents washed through the air before Clock could evade.

"Castling." Reality lurched. Clock froze. Castling. A cold spike of panic pierced his composure. That was his move. His vision tore sideways as his consciousness was forced into the reflected body, leaving him staring across the battlefield at his own body. For one impossible second, Clock found himself looking through the reflected Clock's eyes. His own body stood opposite. Then the note reached it. SKRRRRAAAAAAANG!

His body came apart in ribbons of flesh and violet light as the wave shredded the very space it occupied. There was nothing for Transport to divert. It wasn't a projectile or a force to redirect. The attack simply devastated the place where its victim existed. The second expired. Castling ended. Their consciousnesses snapped back into their rightful bodies. Clock's ruined flesh flooded with Gloom. CRRRRRK. Muscle rewove itself. Bone locked back together.

Skin sealed shut as another portion of his reserves disappeared forever. He growled. Then launched himself skyward again. The copy was already swinging. KRAAAANG! His guitar carved a violet crescent toward Clock's neck. Clock met it with his own. KRRRAAAANG! The instruments collided like swords, strings screaming as impossible force rippled through both bodies. They separated for less than a heartbeat before crashing together again. And again. Every exchange began the same way.

Their thoughts reached for each other, probing ahead to read intent and predict the next move. Each found the other already doing exactly that. A prediction of a prediction, answered by another prediction, spiralling into a nonsensical loop where every future contained itself. Both abandoned the attempt almost immediately. There was no point reading the mind of someone who was already reading yours. — The battlefield dissolved into flashes.

They flickered in and out of visibility with sheer speed, appearing only long enough for another exchange before vanishing somewhere else across the sky. Guitar necks became blades, every swing answered by a parry, every parry flowing into a thrust, every thrust becoming a feint. Elbows, knees and kicks blended seamlessly into the duel, each fighter reading the other perfectly because each already knew exactly what the other would attempt. Clock was already setting up the decisive blow. Transport wasn't invincible.

Its weakness was mathematical. Infinite speed wasn't required. Infinite mass wasn't required. All he needed was to accelerate as much as physically possible, deliver every ounce of force with absolute precision, and compress that impact into a single infinitesimal instant where its value became infinity. Transport could redirect finite attacks. Infinity made it hesitate. That hesitation lasted less than a heartbeat. Less than enough. Clock was already moving.

The sky fractured beneath his acceleration as he shot across the false world, landing atop a jagged mountain peak. Stone groaned beneath his boots. A second impact answered him. The reflected Clock landed on the opposite summit, resting his guitar across one shoulder.

"You're persistent," the duplicate said, its warped voice dripping with arrogance.

"I wonder how long that determination will survive." Clock said nothing. He lowered his centre of gravity. BOOOOM! The mountains shook as both launched forward, colliding between the summits before either peak had finished collapsing. The instant their hands met, reality buckled. Transport collided with Transport. The laws that normally diverted force simply... failed. Every strike became a localized infinity, focused so precisely that it existed only where flesh met flesh. Neither dared let a punch miss.

If even one blow landed on anything except the other, the released force would have propagated unchecked, erasing far more than the battlefield. Existence itself hung on their precision. To anyone watching, speed had ceased to have meaning. There was no sequence to follow. No motion to track. Only the aftermath of collisions as both abandoned restraint, knowing a single clean hit from the other could end the fight forever. Clock's forearm smashed into the copy's guard. CRAAACK!

The reflected Clock answered with a straight cross that snapped Clock's head sideways, drawing a spray of blood before the exchange flowed onward without either fighter slowing for so much as a heartbeat. The reflected Clock flowed immediately into a vicious blend of capoeira and boxing. Spinning heel kicks chained seamlessly into hooks, uppercuts and overhands, every acrobatic rotation disguising another punch from an impossible angle. Clock answered with Jūdō. He never met force with force.

A hook became a sleeve grip. A spinning kick became a shoulder turn. An uppercut became a wrist capture. Every attack was redirected by centimetres instead of blocked, the duplicate's own momentum carrying it off balance. Clock flowed from tai sabaki into kuzushi, breaking posture with minimal effort before threatening throws that forced the reflected Clock to abandon entire combinations just to recover its footing. The duel became a blur of impossible motion. Clock slipped inside a hook.

The reflected Clock flicked two fingers. An invisible shove caught Clock's shoulder. THUD! The hook clipped his jaw after all. Clock answered by twisting into a shoulder throw. The copy widened its stance. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. A pulse of telekinesis dragged it the final few centimetres. CRAAACK! Clock's knee crashed into its ribs instead. They separated for less than a heartbeat. Both raised a hand. The air between them warped.

BOOOM! Invisible force slammed into invisible force, knocking each of them just far enough off balance that their next punches crashed into each other's faces simultaneously. Blood sprayed across the sky as they launched straight back into the exchange. The reflected Clock planted one hand against empty air, inverted, and scissored both legs into Clock's thigh and knee. THOOM! The mountain beneath them fractured. Clock's stance shifted half a step instead of breaking.

Before the copy's follow-up cross could reach him, he vaulted over it, jacket whipping through the air as the punch carved beneath his boots. He caught the extended wrist, twisted his hips, and tried to sling the imitation over his shoulder. The reflected Clock rolled with the throw, landed on one hand again, spun low, and whipped a heel toward Clock's ribs. Clock dropped his elbow into the kick, absorbing the impact, then immediately drove forward with a shoulder check that shattered the cliff behind the copy.

The imitation slipped away. A jab snapped toward Clock's face. TWANG! A point-blank Reverse Blast detonated between them. BOOOOOOM! Violet light swallowed the sky. Before the glare had faded, a guitar screamed through it. SKRAAAAAAANG! The sharpened strings carved across Clock's chest. TWANG! Another Reverse Blast erupted. BOOOOM! The second flash blinded him all over again. The guitar whipped around from the opposite side, tearing through his shoulder and back before he could recover. Clock shot away. Or tried to.

Invisible telekinetic pressure seized him halfway through the movement. His body stalled. The reflected Clock dragged its guitar through the air. SKRREEEEEEEEEE! Violet crescents chased Clock for miles, raking across his body again and again as he was hauled helplessly through the sky. Flesh split. Bone cracked. Blood scattered across the mountains below. His body should have come apart. Instead, invisible telekinetic force clamped every piece together, refusing to let him separate. Clock's eyes widened.

"RAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" He rocketed back upward. The reflected Clock's lips had only just begun to move.

"Cloc..." CRUNCH! Clock's hand punched through its throat. His fingers burst from the back of its neck, tearing the ruined larynx free before the word could ever become "Clockwork." The reflected Clock tore itself free, springing backward through the air as fresh flesh crawled across the ruin in its neck. It chuckled, the sound wet and distorted. The wound sealed. Both disappeared. They met again between two collapsing peaks, twin spinning kicks whipping toward each other. THOOOOOM! Their shins collided.

The shockwave ripped the mountaintops apart. Both were hurled away, twisting through the air before dropping back toward the shattered earth, already driving themselves into the next exchange. Clock deliberately overextended with a diagonal slash. The reflected Clock committed to the opening. Clock released his guitar with one hand and slipped beneath the incoming strike, his body flowing with the continuous circular motion of Liuhebafa.

The reflected Clock's blade carved through empty air as Clock stepped outside its stance and unwound his hips. A Changquan straight punch crashed into its sternum. Transport stuttered. Clock never stopped moving. He stepped through the punch, driving a palm beneath the jaw, an elbow into the ribs, a whipping backfist across the temple and a rising shoulder that broke its balance. A sweeping Changquan kick collapsed its stance before a final short Liuhebafa palm hammered into the same point over its heart. THOOM!

KRAK! BOOM! THOOM! Every strike landed during that infinitesimal lapse. Perfect alignment replaced brute force. Every joint, tendon and muscle linked into a single uninterrupted chain, each impact reaching infinity for the briefest instant and forcing Transport to stutter again before it could recover. As the final palm launched the duplicate across the sky like a meteor, Clock understood something. Fighting himself was exhausting.

As long as that imitation still possessed its false Gloom, they could continue this exchange for years, wearing each other down blow by blow. Fortunately... He'd already decided how it would end. At the very last instant, he buried the thought beneath layers of disciplined emptiness, concealing his intent before the reflected mind could ever read it. Clock caught his guitar one-handed. His fingers spun every tuning peg to maximum output. TWANG. One note. The violet crescent crossed the reflected Clock's body.

At the same instant, six Reverse Blasts bloomed into existence around the duplicate like violet stars. They converged. BOOOOOOM! Recursive force swallowed the reflected Clock from every direction at once. The crescent carved through the centre of the explosion as the Reverse Blasts folded inward upon themselves, multiplying the devastation. It erased him. Skin. Bone. Organs. Atoms. Everything dissolved into incandescent dust. Clock watched the empty sky, his expression unmoving.

"... You'll recover." His regeneration restored a previous healthy state. Complete annihilation meant nothing to an ability like that.

"Clockwork." The colossal clock unfolded behind him. Its hands began turning backwards. The reflected Clock had only existed for less than an hour. Clock rewound only the imitation's personal timeline. Its history unravelled through every exchanged blow, through the moment Iriz had reflected him...... and continued one second further. To a time before the duplicate had ever been created. The clock hands stopped. The reflected Clock ceased to exist. There was no earlier self to restore.

History itself erased the copy before its first moment ever occurred. A surviving Operative, armour cracked beyond repair, raised a trembling hand. CONFIRM PROTOCOL: LAW-REVOKER. DURATION: 3. 00s. A single tap. The device struck the glass. A wave of metaphysical objection rippled through the arena. Clock's law faltered. Transport became only an idea, and for three seconds, ideas could be denied. The shattered remains of the reflected Clock dissolved into drifting violet ash. — Iriz unfolded.

The mirror Abomination disappeared as though she had only ever been a disguise. In her place rose a towering silhouette of a woman fashioned from fractured glass. Cracks ran through translucent skin like rivers across a frozen lake, while behind her spread vast wings composed of countless broken mirrors, every feather a razor-edged shard reflecting a different reality. Wherever the light touched her, the reflections refused to agree on what she looked like. Clock stared. The false Clock was gone.

Now he had to face the creator. Gloom stirred through his eyes. Words appeared across Iriz's body like lines from a script only he could read.

"Perfect Reflection." Every attack returned from another direction.

"Mirror Self." Reflections given life.

"Reflected Wounds." Harm suffered became harm shared.

"Mirror Angle." Momentum obeyed reflective geometry.

"Identity Reflection." Attacker and victim exchanged places.

"Mirror World." Orientation itself reversed.

"Reflection Lag." Reflections acted before reality caught up.

"Broken Mirror." Infinite fractured possibilities.

"Mirror Prison." Every escape reflected into failure.

"Reflection Theft." Shadows abandoned their owners.

"Mirror Verdict." Violence judged its creator.

"Symmetry Enforcement." Injury demanded balance.

"Mirror Collapse." Reflection and original occupying the same existence.

"Reflection Denial." Presence erased by removing its image.

"House of Mirrors." Countless reflections. One truth.

"…" Even Clock felt his stomach tighten. Iriz slowly raised one hand. CRRRRK. Her body fractured. One shard became two. Two became four. Four became sixteen. Within moments, a hundred mirrored Irizes surrounded him from every direction while glittering fragments continued breaking away from each of them until the battlefield resembled the inside of an endless crystal. Clock didn't move. He couldn't. Every offensive option reached the same conclusion. Strike one. Strike all. Strike himself.

Even looking at Iriz became a punishment. One reflection showed Winter smiling at him. Another showed her corpse. Butter laughed from one mirror. Lucien reached toward him from another. One reflected nothing but an empty battlefield. Others showed moments that had happened, moments that never had, and moments that never could. Every mirror insisted its version alone was the truth.

The images layered over one another until faces blurred together, voices overlapped, and every memory, hope, regret and grief crashed into his senses at once. It was overstimulation beyond comprehension. Clock genuinely couldn't see a path to victory. His hand shot out. FWIP! FWIP! FWIP! Reverse Blasts screamed into existence, violet spheres tearing across the crystalline sky. Every blast struck Iriz's mirrored body, ricocheting through impossible angles before hurtling back toward their creator. BOOOOM! BOOOOM!

BOOOOM! Clock crossed his guitar before himself as recursive force detonated against his body, hurling him through a mountain ridge. Violet fire rolled over him before Gloom suppressed the worst of the damage. Iriz watched in silence.

"You should stop." Her voice drifted from every mirror at once, gentle enough to sound sympathetic.

"The more you struggle... the worse your suffering becomes. Please. Accept your death. There is no shame in reaching the end. All hope was lost the moment you looked upon me." She tilted her head.

"Your thoughts reflect. Your sister is dead. Don't mourn. You'll join her soon."

"I'll make it quick. That is my gift to you." Clock ignored her. A single shard slipped free from one of her wings. It reflected only emptiness. He shifted instinctively. SHRRRK! His shoulder split open. Blood sprayed into the air, turning translucent like liquid glass. The wound remained. It hadn't merely injured his body. It had reflected itself across his entire personal timeline. Past. Present. Future. Every version of Clock now carried the same wound. So those shards could kill him. Another came. Then another.

A thousand. Clock vanished, weaving through the storm as mountains exploded behind him. Reverse Blasts bent his trajectory while his guitar swept across the air. KRAAASH! A crescent of violet force shattered hundreds of shards into glittering dust. He kept the attack well clear of Iriz herself. Touching her was no longer an option. His mind raced. Every attack became his own. Clockwork was useless too. Even if he rewound her before this form, she'd simply reflect it.

Worse, this manifestation stretched a full year into her history. Clockwork rewrote individual timelines, not time itself. Reaching beyond this form meant paying for an entire year of her history... for every reflection. The Gloom cost would be catastrophic. If she split into a thousand copies... He'd pay it a thousand times. He'd survive. Barely. Then he'd face the remaining Abominations with almost nothing left. At that point, an ordinary Enforcer with a rifle could kill him.

Clock stared at the endless sea of mirrored wings. Every path ended the same way. This wasn't a choice between victory and defeat. It was a choice between two different losses. — Clock closed his eyes and took one slow breath. When they opened again, there was nothing left inside them except calculation.

"... Zugzwang." The word settled over reality. In chess, Zugzwang described the cruelest position imaginable. Every legal move worsened your situation, yet standing still was forbidden. For the next thirty seconds, fate imposed that rule upon its target. Every decision, instinct, and action became the worst possible one. Fortune bent. Probability soured. Every choice quietly led toward defeat. The curse reached Iriz. Then struck Clock. A hundred mirrored faces watched him.

"I reflected it," she said calmly.

"So now... we both lose." Clock was already moving. BOOOOOM! The battlefield erupted. Mirror shards swept across the sky, carving apart mountains. Clock threaded between them, but Zugzwang had begun its work. Every dodge forced him into another attack. SHRRRK! A shard cut his ribs. Another pierced his thigh. A reflected edge sliced his arm. None of the wounds healed. Then the mirrors changed. His reflection blinked. He hadn't. Another smiled. Another cried. One turned and walked away.

"Reflection Lag." The reflections moved before reality. Clock punched. His reflection punched first. CRAAACK! His own knuckles shattered. Another mirror rippled. Mango looked back at him.

"Clock..." He almost stopped. The image burst apart. Her dismembered body stared back. Prism laughed in another. Then screamed. Lucien reached toward him before becoming his father... then a stranger.

"House of Mirrors." Thousands of reflections. One truth. Or perhaps none. Clock answered with a storm of Reverse Blasts, aiming between reflections instead of at Iriz. Violet spheres ricocheted through the crystal labyrinth, forcing her to fracture apart before their reflected paths could trap her. For a moment... It worked. Then Zugzwang collected its payment. A reflected blast struck one mirror at precisely the wrong angle. BOOOOOM! It returned behind Clock, blasting him through six floating mountains.

Iriz suffered too. One reflection drifted half a centimetre too close to another. CRAAACK!

"Mirror Collapse." Contradiction spread through dozens of duplicates before she severed them from herself, sacrificing nearly a quarter of her mirrored host.

"So that is how fate chooses." Clock lunged. Reality lurched.

"Identity Reflection." Attacker became victim. Victim became attacker. For an instant, Clock charged his own body while Iriz stood where he'd been. He tore free through sheer will. THOOOOOOM! His shoulder met her mirrored palm. Glass skin fractured. Bones shattered. His collarbone exploded. Her sternum caved inward. Neither stopped.

"Reflection Theft." His shadow peeled away and walked to Iriz's side. He no longer cast one. Another exchange. His elbow grazed a mirrored wing. CRAAACK! The reflected force shattered his spine. Another mirror caught his gaze. His childhood bedroom. Then the laboratory. Then nothing. Whose bedroom? He knew it mattered. He couldn't remember why. Another mirror erased Winter's laugh. Another stole Prism's face. Another left only a blank silhouette where his sister should have been.

His memories weren't merely being shown. They were breaking apart. Every reflection created another version until the original vanished beneath contradiction. He remembered every possibility. He trusted none. Iriz struck. A mirror lance pierced forward. Zugzwang twisted fate. The lance missed Clock's heart...... and reflected through three mirrors into Iriz's own chest. She gasped. Clock charged. She did the same. Neither had another move. Clock tuned every string of his guitar to its limit.

Iriz collapsed every surviving mirror into one flawless plane.

"Mirror Verdict." Every act of violence judged its creator.

"Symmetry Enforcement." Every wound demanded another. TWAAAAAAANG! The note screamed across existence. The mirror accepted it. Reflected it. Amplified it. Returned it. Neither could escape. The reflected note struck them both. Silence. KRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAASH! Every mirror in the false world exploded. The sky became glitter. Mountains dissolved into dust. Clock remained standing for one second. Then another. Liquid-glass blood poured from every wound reflected across his timeline.

Across from him, Iriz split cleanly down the centre. Cracks spread until even the light inside her fractured into fading shards. She looked at him one last time.

"It seems... neither of us had a winning move." Her body dissolved into drifting crystal. Clock exhaled.

"... That's chess." A mirror fragment drifted past his face. The reflection wasn't his. He searched his memories for why that terrified him. Nothing came. Butter's name felt familiar. He couldn't remember her voice. He knew he had a sister. He wasn't certain what a sister was. He didn't even know who he was anymore. Another memory shattered. Then all of them. Even if his body stood again... Even if Gloom restored every broken bone... There would be nothing left to return to.

Only a man wandering an endless hall of reflections, forever unable to tell which memories had truly been his... and which had only ever been mirrors. His knees finally gave way. He collapsed as the shattered world came down around them both. Landing on one hand, he coughed violently.

"Khh-!" Blood spilled across the broken glass. He stared at it.

"…Blood?" His voice was small. Confused. He looked around at the endless ruins.

"…Where...?" Another cough tore through him.

"Hrk-!" More blood flooded from his mouth, splashing across his lap. He frowned at it with vacant eyes.

"… Why am I here...?" His thoughts drifted apart before they could become questions. The answers had already been reflected away. Zugzwang collected its final payment. His body responded to every wound in the worst possible way. Blood flowed into his lungs instead of out. His shattered ribs shifted inward, puncturing deeper. His diaphragm spasmed. His airway collapsed beneath the weight of his own injuries. Clock tried to breathe. Nothing came. Instead-"Ghk...!" A thick surge of blood rushed up his throat.

He choked. His hands weakly reached for his neck, as though he could remember what breathing was supposed to feel like. Another desperate gasp only dragged more blood into his lungs. His vision dimmed. The glittering fragments around him became stars.

"…I..." No name followed. No final realization. Only another wet, ragged choke. Even if the curse ended now, nothing would change. The reflected wounds existed across every version of his history. There was no unwounded Clock for the Gloom to return to. His body convulsed once. Then again. The third never came. Silence settled over the ruined world. His last breath escaped in a quiet crimson mist. Then even that was still.