Winterwing realized, far too late, that he was hopelessly lost.

Everything looked too similar to everything else, making it impossible to judge direction. The corridors he wandered were all the same ridiculous shade of red, and their design was enthusiastically, comically villainous. Light shone down from above, in the sections that were still lit at all, on walls that resembled nothing so much as the chitin of an exoskeleton, complete with spikes and strange joints. There were periodic tears and ripples through the floor that made movement harrowing. Every step was accompanied by the clear, stinging, choking smell of burnt plastic.

Maybe it would have been better to try to convince the other prisoners—

No, he was not going back there.

He found himself standing at a five-way juncture in dismay. It was strange that he had not been apprehended. It was not as if he was a master of escape; he was in plain view and disoriented. There was no alarm. Every hall was empty, and whenever he thought he saw a shape that could have been a person, the light revealed it just to be a trick of shadow, smoke, and architecture.

Staring down each apparently identical hallway, his mind began to ask a series of questions he was not prepared to answer. Were those Saurians? No. Had he just seen a living copy of himself? No. Had he sunk into a previously solid floor? Impossible, impossible, no, shut up.

There was an impact to his left temple, the world went sideways, and he found himself sprawled out on the strangely warm floor. He had been so wrapped up in his own creeping despair and confusion that he hadn’t even heard anyone approaching.

He thought for a second that one of his captors—he was still not going to say Saurian, that was foolishness—had finally caught up with him, and now he was going to have to fight a lizard larger and stronger than he was. The best case scenario was he ended up exactly where he had started a couple minutes ago, in a cage, and the worst case was maybe he ended up impaled on one of the lovely decorative spikes he had passed on his way here.

What actually happened was Winterwing picked himself up to his knees, looked over his shoulder, and saw his own face ready to kick the absolute shit out of him.

Winterwing had never seen himself angry. He certainly recognized that fury. That unmitigated, loud, blistering anger. He knew that glare, the raised feathers on the scruff of the neck. He had never actually seen it.

It was the strangest sensation, to stand in two places at once.

He managed to scuttle out of the way of a steel-toed boot, get to his feet, and take the universally understood defensive stance best described as ‘Please-do-not-hit-me’. This did not yield the desired results.

He got off maybe a syllable of what was supposed to be “What the fuck”, before his double came at him with rage and speed. Winterwing had enough sense to block or deflect the blows to his head, but took several full force in the ribs, and one in the stomach that left him completely winded. He gave no swings of his own.

Rather than a ten foot tall lizard made of armor and claws, instead he got to enjoy a beating administered by a faster, stronger version of himself.

The double might have made a demand, or a threat. He couldn’t quite process it. His brain got stuck on the voice being wrong. Got stuck enough that he paused, stupidly, and did not think to do anything about the fist coming for his face until it was too late. He was thrown back against a wall, narrowly missing the sharp teeth of the décor.

He had come home from work. That’s all he had done. He had come home from work, desperately wanting to sleep and not exist for a couple of hours. A couple of hours to himself, then he would wake up feeling better.

Winterwing saw the next punch coming for him. He did not side-step it entirely, it still grazed a shoulder, but that was enough space to grasp the extended arm and use it as leverage, along with his double’s momentum, to throw his attacker off balance and into the wall.

There were sloppy traded blows, some bruises that would be embarrassing later, at least one concerning crack that came from his torso, and a flurry of feathers that had been wrenched free from both of them. Winterwing’s best option remained evasiveness. He did not have anywhere near the raw strength to put up an actual fight, and could not see a decisive way to end the confrontation. At some point his attacker pulled out what looked like the energy weapon salvaged from the lizard crushed in the cell block, and Winterwing was able to grasp it and throw it down one of the dark hallways before it could discharge.

He could feel himself running out of time. There were only so many blows he could deflect, or take directly. It would only be a matter of time before he was unbalanced, exhausted, thrown to the ground, and blasted to pieces as he tried to stand back up.

He tried a new, desperate tactic. It consisted mostly of screaming “Fuck you”, and running full-force, shoulder-first, square into the double’s gut, and finally knocking them to the floor. That wasn’t going to be enough. There was nothing to stop his stronger self from getting right back up, so the best he could do was to fall on top, and try to use the advantage of his full range of motion to finally land some blows himself, in a flurry of feathers and more swearing.

The world went sideways again, as if the ground itself had chosen that moment to become impatient and heave them both off, and they were thrown, tumbling as dead leaves in a soundless wind, through the intersection, landing in another of the identical hallways.

“How does anyone expect me to get any of the good work done with this ceaseless stream of interruptions and noise?”

There was a wisp of smoke, and then a figure. The one with a leathery skull of a face. “Can you children not save this pointless quarrel for later?” it hissed at the two of them. And then a wave of a clawed, ancient, mottled hand, that sent the two drakes first into the vaulted ceiling, the opposing spiny walls, and then back down to the floor.

There was a brief pause, as Winterwing sat himself upright, where he and his copy made eye contact again, and there was the recognition that they now had a larger problem, putting the original fight on hiatus. The other’s eyes diverted down the hallway, into the dark, for just a moment, and then back to him.

Winterwing stared back in disbelief. He was now being asked for help. The motherfucking audacity.

The steel beneath him rippled, as if it were the surface of water, rather than solid, heaved around both of them, grew hot. It couldn’t be magic, because things like that didn’t exist, yet at the same time, he had no better explanation for it. Yes, maybe the lizard was a bigger problem, temporarily.

Winterwing got to his feet, shakily, feeling foolish, but trying his best to take full attention, sprinting forward and shouting at the bony apparition: “Why don’t you wait your turn?”

The ground faltered, or maybe it was his feet. His attempt was halted entirely in the space of a second, and he was gripped as if by a giant, invisible hand, and flung back in the direction he had come. His other self had enough sense to duck under the incoming body, and smoothly came to one knee, with the previously hurled energy weapon in hand, retrieved a few short feet from where they had been thrown.

Winterwing landed hard, again, and his torso let out a complaint that seemed to pinch his lungs shut. There was a blaster discharge, then another. This struggled to his feet, though halfway there, he felt a great heat at his back, and a massive fireball zipped over his head, crashing upon the sharp lines of the corridor like an orange wave breaking against rocks, and he looked back over his shoulder indignant disbelief.

But the bleached skeleton of a creature was retreating before the onslaught of the double, hands up before his face, as if that would protect him from an energy blast. Then the creature dissolved completely, a puff of smoke in the air. The smoke dissipated, and there was no more bleached skeleton in ripped robes, just the two of them breathing hard, waiting for the next crisis to come.

A temporary truce. They ignored each other.

The remaining three prisoners had caught up with them at last, attracted by the noise, but offered absolutely no support beyond wide-eyed gawking.

With the moment of immediate crisis past, and Winterwing knew he should have immediately begun moving again. Somewhere in this ridiculous place, Emily needed his help. No one else even seemed to care to find her. But all he could do was lean against a wall and try his best to breathe, not too deeply, because doing so brought a flaring pain through his entire midsection that was worsening the longer he rested. He was going to have to move soon, or he wasn’t going to be able to stand at all, and still he could not make himself do it.

The copy had remembered him again, though the white-hot rage was gone, and had turned into a gaze of suspicion. An implied threat hung in the air that there would be further violence at the slightest hint of provocation.

While Winterwing wasted time leaning against the wall, his chances of finding his friend were getting slimmer.

As the two identical drakes stood there, glaring at each other, it became clear that the physical fight had come and gone. Winterwing wasn’t a threat, and at this point could offer very little in resistance even if he could stand up straight. His side was searing, his face was swelling, and the best he could to was lean there, silently daring for the confrontation to continue. To see what satisfaction came from beating someone that could not or would not fight back.

It seemed to be enough to cause the copy some hesitation, at least.