Jill's hand moved to her side. Silver light coalesced into a blade. Silver runes formed in the air, surrounding Clive.

  "Put the brush down, you faker."

  "No." His grip tightened. "Not until you listen to me."

  "I've heard enough lies."

  "Then hear the truth." He kept his voice steady despite the wind whipping around them. "You want proof I'm real? Fine. Ask me something. Anything. Something only he would know."

  "Memory can be copied. Stolen. Implanted." But her voice wavered slightly. "The goddess told me—"

  "The goddess told you what you wanted to hear." He leaned forward, making Azura drift closer. "She knew exactly how to twist your grief into a weapon. That's what gods do, Jill. They manipulate."

  "You don't know—"

  "I know you. I know that you bite your lower lip when you're nervous. That you hum off-key when you cook. That you cried during that documentary about deep-sea creatures because you thought they looked lonely."

  "Stop it."

  "Make me."

  The blade grew brighter in her hand. "You think I won't? The Goddess showed me the truth. There are many of you, but only one of him. The Clive I know would never associate with those horrible San Dioral people."

  “Jill—”

  “Enough talk. I already made my choice.”

  The silver runes around Clive begin to reflect the moonlight. They formed a three-dimensional cage of moonlight around him that contracted inward.

  [Moonlight Implosion]

  The notification flickered across his vision just as the pressure hit. The beams of light compressed, trying to vaporize him from all sides.

  Clive drew his mithril sword and slashed his brush across the blade in one fluid motion.

  [Paint: Black Void Blade]

  Ivory black pigments coated the steel, transforming it into a weapon of absolute darkness. The blade drank in the surrounding moonlight. But it was insufficient. Cracks spiderwebbed across the metal as it absorbed more energy than it could contain.

  The sword detonated in his hand.

  The shockwave knocked him off Azura through the air. Azura swooped beneath him, catching him on her broad back before he could plummet again. She descended rapidly, depositing him on solid ground at the summit.

  Get up, Azura urged. She's coming.

  Clive pushed himself to his feet, shaking fragments of mithril from his palm. Blood welled from a dozen small cuts where the blade had shattered.

  He looked up.

  Jill floated above him, suspended in moonlight. Her robes billowed despite the still air. She raised one hand, and the moon seemed to pulse in response.

  A translucent status window materialized unbidden before his eyes:

  [The Moon Mother]

  Power Level: 800

  Eight hundred. His chest tightened. Sayid had been 600, and that fight was hard enough. This one might be close to impossible. But if the only way to reunite with Jill was to defeat her, then that is what he had to do. He had to knock it into her that he was the one and only Clive.

  “I don’t want to fight you, Jill. We were meant to be together, not against each other. But if I have to bring you back, then I do what I must.”

  "Together? There is no together. There's only what comes after." She raised both hands, and moonlight gathered in her palms like liquid silver. "I'm sorry it has to be you. But this is the only way I get him back."

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The first moonbeam lanced toward him.

  [Draw: Silver Mirror]

  The mirror materialized just in time, angled at forty-five degrees. The moonbeam struck its surface and refracted skyward in a brilliant flash.

  Jill hesitated mid-cast. “Reflections. You always were the clever one… turning science into art.” Her expression crumpled. Then hardened.

  "No." She shook her head sharply. "No. That's not—you're not him.”

  She thrust both hands skyward.

  [Lunar Rainfall]

  The sky split open.

  Dozens of moonbeams rained downward like falling stars, each one a column of concentrated radiance that scorched the ground where it struck.

  A single mirror wasn't going to cover this.

  Clive threw himself sideways as a beam cratered the ground where he'd been standing. The heat washed over him even through the dodge. He hit the rocky surface rolling, his sketchbook already open, hand flying across the page.

  [Draw: Silver Mirror]

  One materialized. Then another. Then three more in rapid succession. He scattered them across the plateau, each one angled perfectly. His [Motion Vision] mapped trajectories in real-time, showing him exactly where each beam would strike.

  The mirrors caught the moonbeams mid-fall. Light refracted wildly, bouncing from surface to surface in a cascading network of reflections. The plateau became a maze of intersecting radiance.

  But Clive wasn’t just defending. He was painting.

  Each mirror he placed was positioned exactly, angled to redirect its captured beam not away from him, but toward a specific point in the air. The reflected light began to trace letters against the darkness.

  I

  L-O-V-E

  Y-O-U

  J-I-L-L

  <3

  The words blazed in the sky above the battlefield, written in her own power turned back into truth.

  Jill's assault paused. She stared at the message hanging in the air. The silver light around her flickered, dimming for a second.

  But then something broke inside her.

  "STOP LYING, YOU IMPOSTER!"

  The silver light erupted outward in a shockwave. Her eyes blazed white-hot as she raised both hands overhead.

  The moonbeams detonated simultaneously, transforming from focused beams into spheres of explosions. The mirrors melted, as the temperature spiked beyond what matter could endure.

  Clive threw up his arm to shield his eyes from the blinding flash. Heat washed over him. When his vision cleared, every mirror he'd created was gone, reduced to cooling puddles of slag scattered across scorched rock.

  His sketchbook felt thin in his hands. Three pages left. Not enough to recreate that mirror array. And especially not enough to play defense against someone with an infinite well of moonlight to draw from.

  This approach wasn't going to work.

  He needed to change the battlefield itself.

  "Azura!" He sprinted toward the cliff's edge. "To me! We're executing the plan!"

  The dragon was already rising, her massive form cutting through the smoke and steam. The eclipse? Now?

  "Now!" Clive leaped without hesitation.

  Azura's talons closed around him mid-flight, lifting him smoothly onto her back.

  Jill floated higher to intercept them, her form a blazing star against the night. "Running won't save you, fake! There's nowhere the moon doesn't reach!"

  "I'm not running. If the moon gives you power..."

  He loaded his brush with black pigment.

  "...then I'll take the moon away."

  [Aerial Illustration: Lunar Eclipse]

  Azura began her ascent, climbing in a tight spiral that carried them up and around Jill's position. Clive painted as they flew. He started with a circle. The black pigment hung suspended between earth and moon, forming a disc of painted shadow that grew with every rotation Azura completed. Wider. Darker. Each stroke expanding the painting to match the moon's own circumference.

  The painted eclipse swallowed the last sliver of visible moon, completing the circle, and total darkness fell across the mountain.

  Silence fell. Total darkness swallowed the mountain range. The only remaining light came from the fading silver radiance still clinging to Jill's form.

  Clive's chest heaved as he tried to steady his breathing. He was exhausted, but it had worked. The moonlight was gone. Her power source, severed.

  "We did it," Clive breathed.

  Something's wrong, Azura said. She's not falling. She’s not getting weaker.

  Clive's eyes snapped back to where Jill hovered. The silver light was still dying—but she wasn't dropping from the sky. Instead, she hung there in the darkness, her head tilted back toward the eclipsed moon.

  Then she laughed.

  "Fake Clive." Her voice drifted through the darkness. "Did you really think blocking the moon would stop me?"

  The last of the silver radiance vanished.

  And something else took its place.

  Shadow bled from her like ink in water. Her white robes darkened to midnight black. Her features blurred, becoming indistinct, as if she existed slightly out of phase with reality itself.

  [Phase Shift: New Moon]

  "The moon has many faces," Jill said. "You've only seen one of them."

  She vanished.

  One moment she was there, the next she simply wasn't. Clive's eyes swept the darkness frantically.

  "Where did she—"

  Pain exploded across his back.

  He pitched forward, nearly sliding off Azura's scales. Something had struck him hard but when he whirled around there was nothing there. Just empty air and darkness.

  Left! Azura banked hard.

  Clive caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. He raised his brush, but by the time he could track where she'd been, she was already gone.

  Another impact, this time against his ribs. The breath left his lungs in a rush.

  You gave me the darkness." Her whisper seemed to come from inside his own shadow. "Let me return the favor."

  Never assume your enemy has only one face. The moon waxes and wanes, and each phase demands a different strategy.

  — The Book of the Moon 1:7