“No!” she yelled. “That Rali is lies! Real Rali is through! Go now, Grady, or Rali dies!”
My blood froze in my veins.
With one last look at Kest and Warcry, I turned and ran for the window. It took three shield bashes, but I finally broke the lock on the shutter. I shoved its dented, clanking metal up and dove through.
Instead of smashing face-first on the ship’s kitchen floor and busting out a bunch of my teeth, I slammed into a pile of bloody cadavers steaming in chilly winter air. The dead, lace-patterned eyes staring out of a nearby helmet made my heart stutter.
“Rali?”
The corpse pile shifted under me, and I braced myself on a headful of shaggy black hair. That was Rali, too. I jerked my hand back. Next to that head was another familiar chunky body, its guts cut to ribbons, leaking black Selken blood onto another dead heavyweight. I grabbed a helmet and ripped it off of a fourth Rali.
All the corpses were Rali. Him in various battle dress, all wielding different weapons, all cut down in a variety of ways.
Tripping and stumbling on the shifting flesh-surface under my feet, I picked myself up. Snow fell in big fat flakes across a field of cooling bodies who were all my best friend. An icy breeze carried the sound of fighting to me.
Up a low rise, an endless army of Ralis was attacking a single overweight guy with shaggy black hair, cutoffs, and a sleeveless shirt like a surfer dude who didn’t know it was the middle of winter.
“Rali!” The real one, I meant.
Either he couldn’t hear me or he didn’t have the breath left to respond. He was wielding a pair of tonfa with swords set in the ends like something from a bad vampire movie and slaughtering his attackers—himselves?—left and right. The blades flung droplets of black blood whenever Rali moved. He was keeping the army at bay for now, but there were too many of them and they were coming at him from all sides. Eventually, he was going to tire out and get killed.
I ran to back him up, but the squishy, uneven corpses kept shifting and rolling under my feet. It was like a nightmare.
I stopped suddenly, realizing what an idiot I was. It wasn’t like a nightmare, it was a nightmare. The laws of physics and reality didn’t apply, which was why instead of disemboweling himself on those ridiculous tonfa blades, Rali was owning these guys.
With a thought, I made myself appear at my best friend’s side and shield-bashed a berserking version of himself trying to impale him on a spear.
“Hey, man, are you okay?” I yelled, kicking the spear-wielding Rali down.
The real Rali whirled around. His shirt was soaked with sweat and blood, and his shaggy hair was matted with gore. His eyes were completely black, every bit of white absorbed into that lace pattern.
Fury. Hatred. Rage. Selkens’ eye lace was like a mood ring. It thinned out when they were afraid. It got thicker when they were angry or really happy and shifted from thick to thin when they were uncertain. I’d never seen either of the twins with completely black eyes, though. In real life, there was always some light in them.
“You!” His voice echoed across the battlefield like thunder.
Rali lunged at me. His blades rang as they sliced through the air, and it was all I could do to get a Death Metal shield between us before he planted one in my skull. They thunked into the shield and scraped off. Rali snarled and stabbed and sliced.
“It’s me! It’s Hake!” I yelled, trying to stay on my feet as I backpedaled through the corpses. He wasn’t even using Spirit, and still I could barely keep up with his attacks. “Sushi sent me to get you out of here. Someone’s attacking us on the ship and trying to kidnap you. We’ve got to get back and help Warcry and Kest fight them off!”
Nothing I said was getting through. Rali kept throwing blades. I dodged, slamming out blocks with Death Metal, but didn’t counterattack. I didn’t want to hurt him. Obviously his mind was stuck in this nightmare. I had to find a way to convince him that none of it was real.
An axe came down on my shoulder from behind. Bone crunched and blood splashed my cheek. I’d been so focused on Rali that I’d forgotten about the army of fake Ralis surrounding us.
With a growl of frustration, I sent off a concussion blast of Miasma in a carefully focused Mass Grave, hitting every life point except mine, Rali’s, and Sushi’s. All around us, bodies thudded to the ground. The battlefield went deadly silent.
Rali came at me again, still pressing his attack. My foot caught on a body’s arm or leg, and I fell backward onto my butt. Rali lunged, the bloody edges of his swords gleaming in the light of the white and blue day suns.
Instinctively, I shoved Death Metal between us. The tonfa swords collided with my turquoise Spirit, throwing sparks as they scraped off.
“I’m not here to fight you!” I yelled, putting my shoulder into the shield to brace it. “You’re my best friend, remember? I’m a screwup, and you have to keep saving me, but for some reason you stick around. Probably because I haven’t read Ten Lightning Strikes Against the Hero yet, even though it would literally take about eight minutes.”
The attacks stopped. When I looked around the edge of my shield, Rali was glaring down at me, his dark eyebrows pinched and all-black eyes wide with hatred.
“You made me glad they were dead instead of us,” he snarled, pointing one blade at me like an accusatory finger. His shoulders heaved with shallow, furious breaths. “Hundreds of bodies, a Heartchamber full of life and Spirit destroyed in a second. It should’ve been devastating, but all I could think was at least we got to keep living. You did that. You made me evil
