The time construct in the corner of Caen’s vision put the time at about 6 in the evening. Caen had woken up nearly two hours ago and had decided to do some training before his clone returned.

  Right now, his willpower was enduring quite some strain as he sat on his meditation cushion with ten candles arranged in an arc before him. Passionfire burnt merrily on all ten wicks, yet the candles were shrinking a bit more slowly than they should have been.

  He was Mimicking Orissa’s Transmutation affinity. She was in Zeris’s room, which was right beside his.

  Transmutation magic was all about change. Both the effect of it and the process of it. Caen was trying to prevent the candle from burning or succumbing to the change that the Impassioned flame sought to enact. It was very difficult, as certain changes were harder to resist than others.

  At the same time, a separate portion of his mind and spirit concentrated on casting a Liquid magic spell over and over again. He was doing this in abjection as he could not Mimic two affinities at the same time. Not yet, anyway.

  A bowl of water sat by the door. Caen’s goal was to cause the water to evaporate. He could simply do this by heating the bowl with Fire magic, but that’d be cheating. Transmutation could also achieve this, but again, that would defeat the purpose of this exercise.

  His willpower wasn’t quite at the level it normally was. Sleeping should have amended that, but it hadn’t. A quick run of Untor’s boulder revealed that he wasn’t close to Will fatigue. He had a suspicion, and for this reason, a separate portion of his mind was inspecting his soul structure.

  It seemed just a tad less vibrant than usual. Almost as though it had lost some of its richness. There were other tells. He was terribly low on mana, but his reserves seemed… smaller. Caen felt as though many aspects of himself were diminished in significant but manageable ways.

  He felt a new presence enter the house and could tell from the cord of connection that it was his clone.

  Caen immediately connected to The Seventh Guile, who was still in Caen’s shadow. It was the oddest thing. He could see the shadeling’s soul structure, which looked nothing like it usually did. Caen wasn’t even sure what he was seeing through Soul-sense.

  Worse still, he couldn’t even determine the exact location of the shadeling. He was probably somewhere within Caen’s shadow, which should have been below and behind Caen. But through Soul-sense, The Seventh Guile’s location was indeterminate.

  Be that as it may, this didn’t stop him from pairing the shadeling’s cloning ability with Dream-guarding. All his other spell constructs vanished.

  A few moments later, Caen’s clone walked into the candle-lit room. They exchanged a nod.

  Caen pulled the clone into himself. His counterpart vanished, his clothes dropping to the ground.

  Caen's mind was inundated with conflicting memories. He began sorting the memories into the different streams while also paying attention to the other things that were happening.

  The mental components were easy enough to parse; however, the physical and spiritual were a bit trickier. He considered swapping out Dream-guarding for Spirit-healing or Blood-healing, but he worried that this might interrupt the integration process. Also, Dream-guarding made it easy to focus on several things at once.

  Fortunately, The Seventh Guile’s cloning ability came with instincts, as well as an awareness of what elements of his clone could be integrated.

  Caen could somehow fuse these elements with himself. He wasn't sure what each one meant until he’d integrated it. Soon, with some help from Dream-guarding, he’d integrated all of the clone’s memories, the exhaustion the clone felt, and some of the nourishment from the clone’s meals.

  There were other strange additions that Caen didn’t quite understand. But his borrowed instincts did not warn him away from them.

  He’d barely replenished any of his mana while sleeping, and the clone had even less mana than he did. Once he was done with the integration, he would check to see if he’d recouped mana from the clone.

  Caen carefully combed over the clone’s memories and experiences, examining its thought patterns, emotions, and reasoning. It was all indistinguishable from how he perceived himself or might have behaved. There was nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary. The clone was as Caen as Caen could be.

  He let out a breath. That had taken nearly an hour. The clone had slept for eight hours, and that had been the easiest portion of his experience to integrate because of the low energy use.

  He noticed that he felt complete. Like all that was missing had been restored. Even his soul structure had increased in vibrance, or rather, returned to its original vibrance.

  He reverted his soul structure and scanned his spirit. There was quite a bit of slag buildup. He’d recouped a very little amount of his mana. His integration process clearly needed some work.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Caen formed a clone once more. His counterpart got dressed, while Caen stood up from the meditation cushion and stretched, his mind whirling.

  “I’m not sure I can overstress how convenient this is,” the clone said, tying up his hair into a bun.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Caen replied.

  The utility alone filled him with excitement. Being in two places at the same time was an excellent time saver. He could accomplish twice as much as he normally could. And that was with just one clone. If he hadn’t been very motivated to help The Seventh Guile get more tails, this would have cleared that up quickly.

  Caen had sensed his grandparents and his father returning to the house some minutes ago. Everyone else was still out, though they all planned to have dinner together.

  Without needing to communicate, he and his clone went downstairs to help with the preparations.

  ***

  Sh’leinu laughed as she complexly knotted a brightly-colored scarf around the clone’s neck. Niodt, Caen’s grandfather, was currently promoting hair growth on the clone’s lower face.

  Caen always kept clean-shaven, like his father, but it was a little odd watching a thick, white beard grow on his face, or at least a face that looked perfectly identical to his.

  They’d dyed the clone’s hair and eyebrows a deep brown.

  “His hair’s still too long,” Zeris mused.

  Aunt Vensha picked up her scissors again and began snipping.

  Both Caen and the clone winced. They liked having long hair. But this was important. Leaving the clone behind in Drenlin required a thoughtful disguise.

  His father and Elemna, his grandmother, were… giving the clone a manicure.

  Orissa was drawing tattoos on the clone’s arm.

  They’d all very quickly gotten over their ‘qualms’ about his clone as soon as he said he wanted to hide the clone’s appearance.

  It was very suspicious behaviour. Maybe his family members were trying to tell him something.

  Caen sat in the living room with Aunt Grena, who shook her head in amusement as she sipped from a glass of wine, and Uncle Teiro, who laughed quietly at their antics.

  They trimmed his clone’s brown hair quite low, and Niodt had grown a fluffy beard and mustache, which Vensha had begun dyeing brown. Other than the speculon and the vague bone structure, the resemblance had been concealed.

  “So unrecognizable,” Sh’leinu said, sniffling. She covered her face and began to cry. Elemna left the clone’s hand and pulled the other woman into a hug.

  “It’s okay, darling,” Elemna muttered, her voice shaky. “We’ll still see them in Grat as often as we'd like.”

  That seemed to make even Ergen start crying.

  Beside Caen, Aunt Grena quickly wiped her eyes, sniffling very quietly.

  Caen’s eyes watered.

  “We should give Zeris a makeover,” Orissa spoke up. “We won’t get to do that for a while.”

  Aunt Vensha made an exaggerated snipping motion with her scissors, and Zeris pulled back, clutching her own hair in faux-horror.

  Aunt Grena chuckled, and soon, everyone else was chuckling too.

  ***

  Hours later, Caen sat on the rooftop watching the night sky, thoughts fluttering through his mind.

  He felt his uncle’s soul before the elderly man opened a window and slipped out of it.

  “Hey, Uncle Teiro.”

  “Ar’Caen. You look lost in thought.”

  “Just thinking about how bizarre this all is,” Caen admitted. Only six months ago, he’d been living a completely different life. “I’ve been so…” he shook his head, “lucky.”

  “Fate is an uncertain thing indeed,” Sh’kteiro agreed. “But the Weave is impressionable.”

  Caen gave him a quizzical look.

  “It’s something my mother used to say,” Sh’kteiro replied, with a gentle smile.

  Caen had never met his maternal grandmother. She’d died decades before he was born.

  “The Weave is influenced by our actions. It pays attention to what we do. It is a terrifying truth, but perhaps there is some comfort in knowing that your efforts ultimately matter in some way. Struggling as much as you did for all your life might very well have set in motion the events that brought you here.” Sh’kteiro chuckled. “Don’t mind this old man. We Diviners can get philosophical at times. You’ll see.”

  Caen smiled. “I’ve always enjoyed your philosophical ramblings, Uncle. Will you be returning to Pectos soon? I won’t mind paying you a visit sometime.”

  “Hmm. I don’t believe I’ll be returning to Pectos anytime soon. Rialgar, Aimaya’s Chancellery, this war, I don’t trust any of it.”

  Caen processed that silently. The centuries-long war in the Agtanji plane had never reached Rialgar because of the Archmage Trellam’s protection of Rialgar.

  “Should I be concerned, Uncle?”

  “I wouldn’t want to worry you, Caen, but strange things are happening on this continent. It is particularly suspicious that Trellam has been silent for some months now. But who can know the mind of one so powerful? I cannot share what exactly they were doing in Odaton. Even your mother was not privy to the extent of their plans. This might just be an untrusting old man’s paranoia, but I am going to be here in Drenlin for a few months. Just in case.”

  Caen ran his hand through his hair. “Ancestors.”

  “Their wisdom will guide us, and the Entity’s lights will preserve us. Do not let this bother you. You are starting a new chapter of your life, and you should look forward to that. Like I said, I doubt that anything will come of this. Everyone here will be fine. I promise. Vai and I will make sure of that.”

  Caen nodded, but he only felt slightly assuaged. He felt his parents approach before they climbed onto the roof.

  “So this is where you’ve been,” Ergen said as he came to sit down beside them, Sh’leinu joining him.

  Vensha stuck her head out of Zeris’s window. “They’re on the roof!” she called back.

  Soon, everyone crowded the rooftop, lying on their backs, stargazing. They chatted and laughed well into the night, and Caen felt more at ease as time passed.

  If you have any feedback or if there were any portions of the story you had concerns about, please, feel free to share it here.