“Mishka?” said Astrid, looking between the air of identical bear-like women – one with a hood up, the other with it down. “Mishka?”

  Astrid had thought that finally, finally they’d been safe, that Mishka had figured it out. But it wasn’t over, and now… now there were two Mishkas? Two short, brown-haired, cute-earred, magician-looking maniac wizards who despite being, sometimes quite frustratingly, ‘a pacifist’ Astrid was beginning to realise was actually a rather terrifying individual. And if this ‘not-Mishka’ was the ‘Real Mishka’s’ greatest fear – and wasn’t that egotistical and more than a little predictable? – then Astrid didn’t imagine that the copy would be half as committed to peace and non-violence as the real one.

  The not-Mishka raised her head and reached up to lower her red hood. Her red eyes sparkled with glee, and her sharp toothed smile gleamed in the harsh light.

  “Oh yes, what else would it be?” said the not-Mishka. “Her deepest fear, her deepest shame.”

  The real Mishka exhaled. “Astrid, take Razzarl and go,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” said Astrid, trying to help her friend the way her friend had helped her and Razzarl. “She isn’t real Mishka-”

  The not-Mishka laughed and turned to look at Astrid with a maniacal grin. “Aren’t I, little monkey? I’m not some phantasm from a storybook,” said the not-Mishka. “Unlike the Gentleman and the giant spiders and the Absence and the endless store, I’m real.” The not-Mishka pointed at the real Mishka. “Look, I’m standing right there.” She snorted. “Under several layers of cowardice and denial, but there none-the-less. Isn’t that right, General?”

  The Real-Mishka stiffened at the title. “Astrid, take her and go,” said the Real-Mishka.

  “What about you?” asked Astrid.

  Astrid knew that despite her friend’s weirdness and aura of unflappability, that Mishka wasn’t as tough as she liked to pretend. She wasn’t immune to fear – Astrid had seen the facade crack and shatter when Baelgoroth had been destroyed and Mishka had been overwhelmed for a few moments by a deep and profound sorrow. The small, bear-like woman felt things deeply, and if Astrid understood things correctly, that was a weakness against creatures like… whatever was making all this.

  “Mishka, it- it will kill you,” said Astrid.

  “Maybe,” said Mishka.

  “Then you need to run,” said Astrid, grabbing her arm and trying to pull Mishka away. Mishka, however, was surprisingly solid and incredibly strong, and didn’t so much as budge.

  “You can’t run from yourself,” said Mishka softly. “Not forever. This was always going to happen. One day.”

  The not-Mishka chuckled. “Oh, so you’re going to fight me? All that vaunted pacifism, the noble mask – straight out the window when you face a real threat?”

  “This isn’t violence,” said the real Mishka, a hint of a quaver in her voice as she summoned crackling lightning to her fist. Across from her the not-Mishka did the same. “It’s self-harm. My vow holds.”

  A crack of thunder heralded the opening of the wizard duel, the real Mishka striking first with a blast of brilliant aetheric energy. The not-Mishka caught it on a glowing golden shield, bouncing it off and up into the ceiling where it blasted a hole straight through the concrete roof.

  Rain began to pour in through the gap, and Astrid grabbed Razzarl’s hand and ran for the doors. Before they could make through the large entrance-way, however, a stray piece of magic from the duel – some kind of blazing silver missile – smashed into the wall above the entrance.

  Astrid and Razzarl skidded to a stop as debris began to rain down on them. Astrid risked a glance back to see one of the Mishka’s – she wasn’t sure which, release a plume of blisteringly hot silver fire, which the other countered by sweeping her hands apart and somehow transfiguring into a flight of metallic starlings that swirled around and then back towards the other caster, which, a moment later, smashed against a large, ripped up section of the floor, which was hurled forward.

  Spillover from the duel spread like a shock-wave from the centre, and Razzarl screamed in fear as a large display of enchanted glass trinkets of inscrutable purpose exploded next to them, showering them in glass, opening myriad tiny painful cuts, and zapping them with mana-discharge.

  “Is there another way out?” said Astrid.

  “What does it matter?” said Razzarl. “The- this isn’t real. It’s as fake as the maze was!”

  “Sure, but I don’t want to find out what happens to our real bodies if we die in here,” said Astrid. There were a series of rapid, overlapping claps of thunder. “And that seems like it will very much kill us!”

  “There is a back entrance, for freight and staff,” said Razzarl, before looking over her shoulder. “But it’s on the other side of that.”

  Astrid glanced back to see one of the Mishka’s standing atop a spout of presumably conjured water, shearing off globules, freezing them, an then hurling the shard of ice at her unseen opponent.

  “OK, anything else?” said Astrid as they rapidly ascended a set of stairs. A blast of stray lightning rocketed over their heads, obliterating a large jewellery case and sending glass and gold and gems raining down around them, opening more cuts.

  “There- there is a large roller door, down far end for oversized freight,” said Razzarl.

  “Sounds great, let’s go!” said Astrid.

  They raced up a set of stairs to the clothing section, and were just passing the changing rooms when there was a boom, and a scream, and Astrid felt her heart leap into her throat as she looked up to see one of the Mishka’s streak past overhead and smash down into a large crate filled with female undergarments hard enough to obliterate the stand and a desk behind it.

  Astrid took a step towards it, intending to help what she simultaneously hoped was and wasn’t her friend, when it exploded outward, sending wood and metal and some rather fetching bras and panties out in a shock-wave.

  Mishka, one of them at least, rose out of the pile like a hurricane, battered and bloodied but clearly uninjured, bounding forward with superhuman strength and unleashing three glittering indigo missiles that shot off at several acute angles before swerving in and down and out of sight. A moment later there was a detonation of energy, and a split second after that, a response of blistering white-hot plasma.

  Astrid and Razzarl ran on, through shattering displays and between beams of elemental destruction, making for the far end of the store. Before they could reach it, however, the things all around them began to shift and warp.

  The gleaming white linoleum flooring cracked and buckled and darkened, forming rough, gravelly and uneven dirt. Displays became craggy, scorched and scarred rocks, the sports-goods section became a twisted carcass of some kind of downed ship, and the roof overhead gave way from vaulted industrial metal and reflective lining to a burnt orange sky.

  “What is going on!?” shouted Razzarl, as there was a roar of air, and an immense saucer-like ship wheeled through the sky overhead, spewing bolts of blue fire from massive cannons on its underside.

  The ground shook as the shots impacted, striking a partially ruined settlement a few kilometres away across a rocky and barren valley.

  Astrid came to a gasping halt and looked down into the valley, where once a river had run. There were hundreds of people – human, at a distance, who were arrayed in rough trenches and with advanced looking magi-tech cannons and rifles firing at a much smaller squad of shorter people who, at first glance, seemed to unarmed.

  The shorter people, for their part, were strolling forward, some kind of reactive shielding absorbing all of the shots – even those from the larger emplaced weapons, without difficulty. They were dressed in dark-steel armour, and had familiar looking cloaks over their shoulders – albeit powder blue, rather than the crimson that Mishka wore.

  “Those- I think those are Mishka’s people,” said Astrid, putting her hands on her knees and gasping for air. “Ursulans. This- this must be one of Mishka’s memories.”

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  Beneath them one of the Ursulan’s waved a hand lazily, and rocks and detritus rose from the ground. Then they closed their fist, and with a scream of protest the stones began to crush in on themselves, growing orange and then white hot as they were forcibly compressed. The Ursulan flicked their hands, and the balls of heat and matter shot forward. The entire line of defenders exploded as the super-heated rock violently detonated.

  “What do we do?” said Razzarl, holding up a hand to shield her face from the flames.

  “We find somewhere to hide, and hope to hell that our Mishka wins her duel,” said Astrid, pulling Razzarl onward as there were another series of explosions behind them. Overhead the saucer-shaped ship came to a stop above the town, and proceeded to absolutely pulverise it with its massive weapons. Volley after volley after volley until finally the cannons fell silent and the dust beneath cleared to reveal… nothing. The ship began to move onward.

  Astrid’s stomach churned. It wasn’t real, but, if it was a memory, it had been. It seemed that the legends of Ursulan viciousness and strength hadn’t been overstating things. She’d often found Mishka’s insistent pacifism irritating, she’d even accused her of self-indulgence, but if this was something that Mishka had taken part in, Astrid wasn’t sure she could find reason to fault her friend’s insistence that she never resort to violence.

  Although… that wasn’t what she was currently doing, thought Astrid, looking back to see the two red-cloaked figures hurling fire and lightning and plasma and more exotic spells she didn’t really understand at each other.

  Razzarl and Astrid found a space in-between two rocks that looked more solid than the rest of the terrain and huddled down as more Ursulan saucers descended from the sky and the duel between the two Mishkas became progressively more and more and more vicious.

  Back and forth flew the spells, until one of the Mishkas took a nasty hit and was sent crashing to the ground. The victor, who Astrid hoped was her Mishka and who was riding a column of flame, summoned a crackling ball of plasma to deal the coup d’grace. But then she hesitated.

  It cost her, the almost defeated Mishka reacted in an instant, and a blast of lightning caught the other in the chest and sent her flying back through the air, further and further and further until she landed with a bone-jarring crash not too far from Astrid and Razzarl, sending dirt and rock spraying up into the air.

  Her Mishka, Astrid realised. The one who hesitated, who hadn’t taken an opening when she’d had it.

  Astrid rose from the cover and sprinted across the churned and broken ground, her heart hammering in her chest as she skidded down to where the battered and broken form of Mishka was lying, blood pouring from her weeping wounds.

  “Hey!” said Astrid, grabbing the smaller woman. “Come on, stay with me, I’ll get you out of here.”

  “I’m sorry Astrid, I don’t think I’m going to be able to get you home,” said Mishka weakly, her eyes taking a moment to focus on Astrid. “I was too weak.”

  Astrid looked up to where the other Mishka was hovering atop a pillar of flame, looking down contemptuously.

  “Hey, listen to me, you’re not weak,” said Astrid. “You’re infuriating, and annoying, and incredibly arrogant, but you’re not weak.”

  “You say that, but you don’t know her, monkey,” sneered the not-Mishka, landing and moving forward, her boots crunching on the gravel. “You don’t know what she did – how she lost her nerve.”

  “Shut up! You- you vicious woman,” spat Astrid, stepping in front of Mishka. “She’s not weak! She’s strong, and brave, and, sure, she’s not as good as you at fighting-”

  “-as she was at fighting, you mean,” said the not-Mishka lazily. “I am her – forty seven years ago, before she ran away like the little coward she is. You think you know her? This butcher?”

  “Yes, I- well, not everything about her,” said Astrid. “But-”

  “This,” said not-Mishka, gesturing to the battered battleground all around. “Is a charming little world called Verinor-4. Laid waste to by the 7th Ursulan Legion, and ‘contained’ at a sufficiently low techno-arcano development level to satisfy our ever paranoid people. And who commanded this vicious little sortie? Why, the great General Mishka, of course.” The not-Mishka did a little bow.

  Astrid frowned. “You’re lying.”

  “She’s not,” said the real Mishka weakly from behind her.

  “And we were proud of it, you know?” said the not-Mishka. “Of how efficiently it had all been done, how exactly the industry had been levelled, how precisely their army was ripped to shreds. We were the darling of the Ascendancy, on track to become the next Marshal. The youngest ever, we would have been.” The not-Mishka sighed theatrically. “But you were too weak, weren’t you? You pathetic excuse for an Ursulan.”

  The real Mishka began to cry.

  “Too weak,” said the not-Mishka. “You could have achieved the final victory over these pathetic lifeforms. Ensured that the Ascendancy would reign forever. But did you? No, at the last hurdle, you stole the Splinter, and you ran away. From your creche, from your friends, from your responsibility, from your world.”

  “Listen… evil-Mishka, or whatever the fuck you are,” said Astrid. “I don’t know who she was before, but I know who she is now. And she’s not ‘weak.’” Astrid turned towards the real Mishka. “Listen to me Mishka. Whatever you did, whatever you ran away from, the person you are now is so much stronger than the one you were.

  “This… this cold, vicious woman, maybe you were her, and maybe you did terrible things, but you saved me, you even tried to save Baelgoroth. The desire to help people, to try and make a better universe, and… yeah, to try and atone for things you’ve done that were wrong – that’s real strength. That’s stronger than all the death-saucers and evil-past-doppelgangers in the galaxy. I’m sure you ran away for a good reason, and it wasn’t because you were weak.”

  “You don’t know me,” said the real Mishka.

  “I know you’re my friend,” said Astrid. “I know you’re obsessed with sweets and you have weird fashion sense and you try so very hard to be better than you were. I didn’t understand that, before: I thought your pacifism was annoying. But I see now that I was wrong, it isn’t about being self-indulgence, it’s about you trying your hardest to do better, to not let yourself become her again. That’s admirable, that’s true strength – and this… jackbooted nutcase version of you is so much weaker. It’s easy to follow along with the rest of the world, to conform – it’s always harder to listen to your conscience.”

  The real Mishka stared up at her, red eyes searching Astrid’s blue ones.

  “Really?” said the real Mishka weakly.

  “Really,” said Astrid, taking her bloodied hand in her own and squeezing it.

  The world around them shattered, and for a moment Astrid felt like she was falling through space.

  Then she jerked upright with a gasp, her eyes opening and searching wildly for Mishka, Razzarl, the evil-Mishka, the battlefield-

  She was back in the changing room, insanely tight trousers stuck around her thighs. She’d fallen back against the wall, and her head ached a bit, but she was, otherwise, fine. There was no sign of the cuts or burns she’d gotten from the exploding glass, and not a hint of the ashy soil from the battlefield.

  She pinched herself. It hurt. Did that mean she was-

  “Mishka!” she said, ripping off the trousers and bolting out of the changing room, turning her head this way and that as she scanned for her friend. For a moment she was worried that she might find her collapsed somewhere, as badly injured as she had been in the nightmare, but then she spotted the small bear-woman picking herself up off the ground down near the pet section. She was uninjured, but looked exhausted, and was rubbing her temple as she stared down at some kind of… octopus on the ground.

  “Mishka!” said Astrid, throwing her arms around her friend. “Are you OK?”

  “Oh, um, yes,” said Mishka weakly, patting Astrid awkwardly on the back. She really didn’t seem to get hugs. “Fine – and- and you?”

  “I wasn’t the one who was brutally injured,” said Astrid, letting her go and peering down at the octopus that was twitching on the white linoleum. “What is… that?”

  “That is some kind of psychic parasite,” said Mishka, bringing out her magnifying glass and scanning it. “Not from this world – no idea how they got here. It linked my para-cortex with my amygdala, and the psychic part of my brain, dragged you all in with me. It was feeding off the psychic fear energy…”

  She raised her hand, and there was a crackling sound as she electrified the tank.

  “What-”

  “Not intelligent,” said Mishka, shaking her head.

  “Why didn’t they latch on to anyone else?”

  “No paracortex,” said Mishka, tapping the side of her head. “You don’t feel like food to it.”

  “So, it was all… in your head?” said Astrid.

  “Sort of – I was hosting it…” Mishka shook herself. “It doesn’t matter. We should find Jowel, and Mr. Simonds – and Razzarl.”

  “Will they be OK?” asked Astrid.

  “Hopefully,” said Mishka. Then she glanced down, and her cheeks reddened ever so slightly. “You, um, might want to find a skirt first.”

  “I don’t wear skirts, I told you,” said Astrid, punching the Ursulan on the arm. Then she winced and rubbed her knuckles – what in the hells was Mishka made of?

  They found Mr. Simmonds near the jewellery section, with a seemingly unharmed Razzarl freaking out over him. He was breathing, thankfully, and after checking him out Mishka said that he was in some kind of coma. She couldn’t say when he might wake up, but he wasn’t dead, so that was better than Astrid had feared.

  Jowel was the same, and Astrid and Mishka waited around long enough for the emergency services to arrive to take them to a hospital.

  “So, um… hello aliens,” said a somewhat calmer Razzarl, moving over as Jowel was being stretchered away. “Um, the guard will be here soon, and… well, I think you probably don’t want to be questioned by them?”

  “Preferably not,” said Mishka, before blinking. “Oh!” she rummaged in her pocket for a few moments, before bringing out a massive fistful of gold. “Here.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t need to-”

  “I promised,” said Mishka, fishing out another handful and pouring it into Razzarl’s cupped hands. Several pieces overflowed and clattered to the floor.

  “That is- that is- I don’t know what to say,” stammered Razzarl.

  “Don’t need to say anything,” said Mishka, a ghost of her usual smile gracing her lips. “Go and be an archaeologist – or work in a museum. Set your own up, maybe.” Mishka’s smile fell. “Also – there is a tank of dead octopus-things in the pet section – that’s what caused this. They’re a psychic parasite, they sensed that I had that ability and latched onto me – I don’t know if anyone on this world has that power, but maybe don’t stock them anymore?”

  “Right… right,” nodded Razzarl.

  They bid the woman farewell, and Mishka and Astrid easily found an out of the way place to Voidwalk in the labyrinthine store.

  “Hey, Mishka?” said Astrid, as the bear-like woman began ripping a hole in the fabric of space and time.

  “Mmm?” said Mishka.

  “You’re a good person,” said Astrid. “I want you to remember that.”

  “That’s kind to say, Astrid. But I’m not, and I never will be.” Mishka smiled at her. “I’m glad you see me as a friend though. I haven’t had a friend, not in a long time.”

  The portal into the Beneath opened with a baleful howl, and Astrid took her friend’s hand as they stepped forward into the fallen, decaying universes. This time, hopefully, finally headed home to Pescia.

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