The Wolf
The first thing they noticed about the labyrinth wasn't walls or twisting corridors. One moment Wolf and Viper were walking next to each other, discussing the utility of certain knives and which ones they preferred, the next Wolf noticed that his twin was gone.
Teleportation?
Nope. And I didn't change directions either.
Wolf looked around, seeing nothing but the desert that had previously been there. Viper was off in the distance, giving him a short wave, but doubling back didn't help them meet up again.
You saw that?
Wolf noticed several distortions in the air around him, like shimmers that came and went. As he took another step, he found himself looking at a brick wall.
Behind him was still nothing but sand, yet it was a different location from where he knew he should have been.
"Fucking hell..."
He activated his comms, rolling his eyes.
"Support team stay put. Everyone out hunting, activate your trackers. They've thrown up a maze, and I wanna be able to navigate it."
He tried breaking the wall in front of him, managing without issue, but finding that the wall restored itself the moment it broke. Enough time to move through if he needed, not enough to really do much else...
"Annoying, but not much of an issue."
The more he looked around, the more walls he saw. Moving into the newly formed corridors and hallways was almost like coming home. The cramped confines in the middle of the desert made him think back on his earlier training, when they had still been confined to the Sahara, skulking underground to avoid detection.
It required a little more care now than it used to. Simply hiding underground had been enough then, mostly trying to avoid satellites. Now he was listening for movements. Anything that moved with too little care to be one of his own, he would either try to avoid, or prepare to ambush.
Most groups he heard soon trailed off, taken by the labyrinth as it worked itself into its final shape, but there was a group of mercenaries that couldn't avoid him.
The first thing he noticed in that fight was how smoothly the new gauntlets let his claws cut through his prey's skin. It was certainly an improvement when it came to offensive capabilities when compared to the previous model, though it came at the cost of defensive features. He imagined the plates scraping over skin wouldn't be too comfortable for his kin, let alone when the gear actually took a hit.
His metal hands had no such issues with the gear, as they smoothly broke through his victim's skin, wrapping around the cervical vertebrae and pulling them free from the struggling body without issue.
He dropped the bones to the ground and took a look at the blood stained gauntlets. They caught the blood on his hands, directing the flow of it into several small reservoirs flowing through the plate that protected his underarm.
That was a feature he was sure they put in just for him. He decided to use it, letting some drops crystallise and shooting them towards two more enemies. It was a decent replacement for a throwing knife, or some other form of ranged weapon. Not as destructive, but able to replenish during combat.
He looked at the last member of the patrol. The Guild hadn't exactly sent their best in the first wave. Or their bravest, judging by the smell...
But then, how brave would anyone be if their friends had just been murdered in the blink of an eye. Wolf decided on a little mercy, drawing a knife from his belt.
It was a funny thing. A few minutes before he had tried to explain to Viper why rondel daggers were his favourite, now he was using the long slender blade already. The weapon could cut just fine, but as it was made for armoured fighting, stabbing was what it did best.
The thin blade slid into the man's head, entering from the base of the head, up through his mouth and into his brain. It was one quick, smooth motion, no fanfare or grandstanding.
Afterwards, he wiped the dagger on the man's clothing, before letting the body drop to the ground. He had to wonder as to the purpose of the labyrinth. Sure, it split them up, but...
"If this is what they put in here, what's the point?"
They hadn't even been superhumans.
"Distraction maybe?"
Could be. The whole labyrinth could be there just to buy time. Or maybe they were trying to give him a false sense of security. Trick him into lowering his guard, before striking the real blow.
But then, if they wanted him to lower his guard...
"Then why are the walls whispering?"
It was barely audible, even to him, and he didn't understand the language, but the stones that made up the walls were whispering. Not all of them, of course, just the corridor to his right, as if to guide him that way.
"Could you make your traps any more obvious?"
It was either that, or they tried to keep him away from there.
"Either way, I probably wanna kill it..."
Approaching it proved a problem though. Not because it was indeed a trap, or because anyone got in his way, but because navigating the labyrinth worked differently for the Warslaves than it did for their enemies.
Thanks to their inherent resistance to magic, Wolf's movements through the labyrinth were fully at random, rather than the guided paths the Guild had intended for him. He stumbled on the wrong end of a trap meant for someone else, slaughtered them and moved on, all without really knowing how to get anywhere.
That pattern repeated several times over, leading to more and more deaths on the enemy side, and leaving Wolf to wonder why they weren't recalibrating the labyrinth to work on the Warslaves.
"Should be a simple matter of altering the way it interacts with the magic field, unless..."
Two options...
"Either the spell's too complicated, or it's upheld through an artefact."
The first one meant that if the caster died, they wouldn't be able to get it back up, the second meant it could simply be destroyed.
While pondering that, he noticed for the first time that the corridors opened up into a room.
"Fancy..."
A mirror on the far end of the room spread a blue glow, illuminating the room with a light that Wolf would describe as... calming.
Soothing, maybe even.
"Interesting."
He saw the two mages eyeing him nervously. Both had been channelling magic into the mirror, disturbed by the sudden and unscheduled arrival of the Warslave.
Wolf observed both of them, making use of the fact that they seemed frozen in either surprise or fear, to take his time.
A man and a woman, obviously related, dressed in the signature trench coat...
"So, you two work with artefacts, huh?"
That snapped them out of their stupor. The man took a step back, reaching for his spellbook, while the woman mostly just seemed annoyed.
"You guys have no respect for a tight schedule, do you? How'd you even get here?"
The man froze again as soon as Wolf's gaze came to rest on him. Seeing as to how the aggressive one didn't move, he decided to humour the talkative one for a bit.
"Well, for one it's kind of our whole goal to ruin your efforts. As for your second question... I don't really know either. Your labyrinth is flawed. Can you pass that along to whoever's in charge of that?"
"I'll make a note to do that after we kick your ass."
"You think you can?"
She pointed at the mirror.
"That's what we have that for."
Wolf weighed his options, shrugged and threw a knife at the mirror, shattering it into pieces.
"Fat lot of good that did you-"
The shards moved.
One of his swords was already in his hands as it started forming a humanoid shape. He'd already taken a low guard when he saw what they were making.
As they finished, he was looking himself in the face, though it seemed a little off. The scars were there, but he sensed blood flowing through its arms and its eyes were off.
The look in them was wrong.
Oh, and the colour. They were gold, rather than his own red, though glowing with the same power.
In a way, it was him. Or rather, his ideal image of himself. The version of himself he would only ever be in his dreams, on the rare occasions that those were not just nightmares.
It wasn't the Wolf he was looking at, whose telepathic resonance pressed in on his mind, looking desperately for someone to explain its existence to it. It was the child that had been taken in by the scientists 28 years ago, just born and confused.
But like the original, it was subservient to others.
A jolt of pain shot through its mind, compelling it to attack the Warslave in front of it. It struck with its claws. Wolf caught them on his arm, feeling it bite into his wargear, but his mechanical limb held.
That was not to say he could keep his footing. The copy was every bit as fast, strong and agile as he was. Even the power radiating off it was the same as his own.
But it lacked his experience and training. It was a child, flailing on instinct. Those instincts were impressive, but unlike Wolf, the copy hadn't had the time to hone them in the same way.
Wolf rolled back and got up, pushing his back against the wall, before dodging to the side, letting the copies punch sink through the stones of the wall, before clawing at its side, tearing open a wound in its left side.
It recoiled. It wasn't used to pain. Wolf could see tears springing up in its eyes, followed by a question that begged for an answer.
Why?
He had no real answer for it. It was a problem, it couldn't stop on its own, so Wolf had to deal with it. He only knew one way to deal with a problem. His sword shot up, slicing into the copy's chest, causing it to scream in pain with an all too familiar voice.
He healed just as quickly as Wolf would, but Wolf knew how maddening the pain was, especially if you weren't used to it. All the memories came flooding back as he looked at the creature in front of him. He remembered that same pain, how he'd reacted to it. The copy didn't understand that pain any more than he had as a child.
He couldn't help but feel somewhat sorry for his doppelganger. It wouldn't stop him, nor the copy, but he was glad he could at least say that much. What he gathered from the minds of the two mages told him the mirrored creature wouldn't live long anyways, and what existence he would experience would be in service to its summoners. The mirror ripped an ideal version of the one reflected in it from the observer's mind, which would then continue to try and kill said observer until it died five minutes later.
He would never get to live a real life.
Cutting him down was mercy.
But it wouldn't be acknowledged as such by the copy, which fought desperately to hold on to his life. A sword leapt into his hand, and Wolf almost nodded approvingly as he blocked an incoming strike.
The posture was somewhat off, forcing the copy to step back a little, as his arms were pushed out of the way. Wolf followed up with a downward strike, zornhau, towards the head, swatting the copy's sword aside, and forcing it back another step.
He teleported instead, a pure reflex, copied from the original's mind. But the copy's body wasn't used to teleportation, throwing his mind and senses into disarray. He threw up, giving Wolf a moment to deal with the mages.
They were still in the process of raising their hands to cast spells, the entire exchange between Wolf and his copy taking less time than it took them to blink. Wolf casually cut the man's hands off, leaving him unable to cast spells, before repeating the process with the woman.
When he was done, he slit their throats in turn, before turning back to the copy.
"Can you talk?"
The creature's mind shot out towards him instead, overflowing his telepathic senses with impressions. Fear, confusion... so many questions... and a compulsion to fight the Wolf.
And an unwillingness to give in to the compulsion.
The copy's mind fought back against the compulsion with a tenacity that Wolf wasn't sure he could mimic.
"Don't. It'll hurt more if you fight it."
He would make it quick. A swift cut to the ribs, taking out both hearts in a clean and quick motion. The copy threw himself back, dodging Wolf's strike by a hair. He struck back, his sword coming up in a wide arc, that Wolf would have been able to easily deal with, even if he hadn't had his senses to back him up.
His left arm left the hilt of his sword, intercepting the copy's strike, grabbing hold of the blade and pulling back to drag him off balance.
Instead, the copy let go, and his claws shot forward in a swift, direct motion, digging into Wolf's chest, just under the metal of his right shoulder. Had the arm still relied on muscles to move, Wolf would probably have lost use of his arm for a while, but now his sword came up under the clawed limbs of the copy, and as Wolf pushed the weapon up, he severed the creature's left arm.
His mirror image roared in pain, sinking to one knee.
"I told you."
The only answer was the pain swirling in the creature's mind. Wolf opened up parts of his own mind in response, leading his copy down his own thought patterns to distract it. It worked, and Wolf saw an eager flash appear in the copy's eyes.
It dove into his thoughts as if he had been starved for ages, and Wolf had offered him a meal. He carefully observed and weighed every thought and feeling he could sense from Wolf, even smashing through several barriers Wolf had placed to keep him out of his secrets. He wanted to know everything about the Warslave he shared a face with, wanted to...
Pain interrupted his exploration, and he looked down to see that Wolf had struck, and cut cleanly through both his hearts. It would take a moment for it to die, maybe half a second if he was lucky, but for someone as fast as he was, that was a lot of time.
Wolf saw the remaining clawed hand shoot up towards him, trembling, but glowing with the same red light of Wolf's own Bloodsurge. The Warslave could easily avoid it, could simply take a step back, teleport or sever the arm amongst other things.
But he was curious.
What did Bloodlust mean to this creature?
The clawed hand opened, shot towards the wound in Wolf's chest, and covered it with the red light.
Wolf waited for the explosion of pain, waited for the blood to rip from the wound and dig into him. He wanted to see if the dying creature could.
Instead, a comfortable warmth spread through the wound, and Wolf felt it close in much the same way it would if it were to regenerate, though without the usual pains that brought with it.
The copy's arm fell limp by his side, disabled by the same wound that had earlier been inflicted on Wolf. At prompting from another telepathic push, Wolf helped him remove his mask, taking off his own in turn.
The two identical creatures finally looked each other in the face.
"It'll be over in a moment. Afraid this is as fast as it's gonna go."
The speed at which he spoke the words meant it would be impossible for humans to pick up what he said. He'd always suspected that some form of magic was involved in how fast his kind could communicate, mostly because it was somehow faster than the speed of sound, meaning any other explanation rendered it impossible.
The copy nodded, another telepathic push revealing that it felt relieved, as the pain ebbed away. He left his mind open, and Wolf was somewhat fascinated by his observations of the dying mind.
The copy's sight was leaving him now. He wasn't scared to die anymore, his mind finally settling down for the first time since he was created. Wolf sensed a tranquil clarity from him, and saw him smile, before the creature from the mirror breathed a final ragged breath.
To his surprise, that breath formed three words, spoken with absolute conviction in the creature's dying eyes, as if it tried to urge Wolf to listen.
"Live a life..."
Wolf spent a lot of time thinking about those words. Ever since he fought the Wraith and went through surgery, his mind had been uncharacteristically philosophic, and trying to figure out what the copy had meant with his words was not helping.
Wolf had already intended to survive, but somehow he felt like that had not been what the creature from the mirror had meant. It had felt more like a response to his own thoughts. An echo perhaps?
Or maybe his copy had just been nicer than him.
Was that what his ideal image of himself was? Felt unlikely, even to him. He'd always been proud of the fact that he was a competent combatant, which the copy most definitely had not been.
But he also had to admit that deep down, a part of the reason he had drawn the fight out somewhat was because he wanted to inflict pain on the mirror image out of envy. He'd seemed so innocent, and the look in his eyes, his own eyes, had angered Wolf more than he cared to admit.
Live a life.
In a sense, that was what he was already doing.
The irony was that the copy had meant the same thing as Wolf had, but if he had to put that into words, he had no idea what he himself had meant with the thought of a real life.
The thought occupied his mind as he demolished the trap that was originally meant for him. Some form of bloodless golem, obviously meant to test the waters on his Bloodlust.
None of them could think, making the kills unsatisfying to him. But then even the human kills felt... off. Even the scent of blood lacked something.
"Too many thoughts."
It's why he didn't like it when his mind was occupied. Killing was his only escape from his own thoughts, but sometimes not even that worked.
"Maybe I'm getting desensitised..."
Or maybe he just had to find a proper challenge. A fight that could take up all his focus, and silence the thoughts for a while.
"Long enough to get my mind back in working order."
"Talking to yourself is still a bad habit."
Wolf greeted his little brother with a short nod.
"Spider. How'd you get here?"
The pale Warslave sat down next to Wolf, shoving one of the dead bodies aside.
"Luck based navigation..."
"Wipe that smirk off your face."
"Hey, I finally get to gloat about something, let me have this."
Wolf shook his head.
"How's your art progressing?"
Spider's smirk grew into a childlike smile at the smallest show of interest.
"Found a few good materials to work with. Nothing too fancy, not taking any of it for the trophies, but... I've enjoyed myself."
"I noticed. I can smell the blood on you."
Spider seemed to notice his pensive mood.
"I smell the blood on you as well. What's the matter?"
Wolf waved his concerns away.
"Nothing. Some food for thought is all."
"I know something that'll cheer you up. How about the two of us go look for the source of this maze. Gotta be something big guarding it, right?"
"If we can get there."
Spider jumped up, stretching himself out in the process.
"Well, I'll be navigating, meaning we'll probably pick up Viper and Scorpion along the way. Sound like a plan?"
"Sure. Could use a good fight."