Caen was keenly aware of the unresponsive clone. Just as The Seventh Guile had described it, this clone felt like an active extension of Caen. And he could… return it to himself.

  Caen pulled. And the clone vanished, flowing back into him.

  The well within him was restored.

  He could feel more fear and trepidation from the shadeling’s soul off to the side.

  “I am losing confidence in our oaths, Ar’Caen Ereshta’al,” The Seventh Guile said. “Are you already capable of masking yourself from my originator?”

  Caen had expected this. “You would have nothing to be afraid of, even if the answer to that was ‘yes’. I fully intend to honor our agreement.”

  “What purpose would I serve if you can easily perform my duties under the contract?”

  “We agreed to help each other in finding solutions,” Caen explained as he placed a candle on the floor, lighting it with a quick spell. The sun had already set. “Finding a solution to my problem much earlier than you anticipated will not change my commitment to help you find yours.”

  Caen could still feel uncertainty and mistrust from the shadeling’s soul, but he did not say anything more.

  There was a reason Caen had not started his experimentation by Mimicking The Seventh Guile's masking ability: It served no utility to him while Guile was present, and it couldn’t be used when Guile was absent. Also, he’d already located and isolated the relevant web of thread clusters. He could just fiddle with it later and figure out how exactly it worked.

  Besides, making a clone was far more useful to Caen.

  This time, as Caen reached into himself to form the clone, he began imbuing elements of his soul structure into it. Sensations, impressions, feelings, sounds.

  The shadeling’s borrowed instincts seemed to grow more comprehensible as he worked. Infusing the mold with this concept of himself felt… right. There was far too much detail in his soul, however, so he focused on infusing as much as he could.

  With one final exertion of his will, something flowed out of him, and a perfect replica of himself materialized there. The clone staggered backwards, rasping. Then he crashed into Caen’s weapons rack, toppling everything there and dropping face down on the floor. The clone was buried underneath the fallen weapons.

  Caen moved over to inspect said clone, and he heard a door in the next room slam open, followed by rapid footsteps. He looked up in time to see Zeris and Orissa barging in. Light from the corridor washed into the dimly lit room.

  “What happened?” Zeris asked.

  “Are you hurt?” Orissa inquired at the same time. She yelped and leaped back from the doorway, pointing at the clone with wide eyes. “Who is… why does that look like you?”

  “It is me,” Caen said. “I’m sorry about the noise. I was trying to make a clone.”

  “Cool,” Zeris said, laughing.

  Orissa looked horrified. “A clone. Oh, okay, then. That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do in the evening, after all.” Her hands began rubbing her temples as she walked away. “Ancestors, my head. A clone, he says. I think… I think I need to lie down.”

  “We’ll leave you to it,” Zeris said, closing the door. “Good luck!”

  Caen turned back to the clone. This one had a pulse and was breathing with clear effort, but was still unresponsive. A Dream-guarding probe revealed barely any mental activity. Its soul structure was far more prominent than the last, but something was lacking.

  Caen recalled the clone, thinking about where he’d gone wrong in the formation process. Shaping the clone after the likeness of his soul seemed like the right track, but perhaps he’d have to infuse even more of his soul into the clone.

  After dismissing the clone, he reverted his soul structure and took out his scripting tools. He drew a large circle around his room with tyrr ink. He’d hardly done any scripting in the past few months because of the trials.

  A proper sound-restrictive ward would prevent others from hearing whatever happened within it. But Caen was nowhere near skilled enough to completely block out sound. However, he could significantly muffle whatever unintentional noises he made.

  With his Vibration affinity out of abjection, the process was much faster than it’d been in the past. He imbued the script circle and grounding runes with his mana, and soon the ward was primed to him.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Caen sat on his cushion and returned to his previous task. Three failed iterations later, something flowed out of him. The clone fell to his knees, clutching his head, and let out a bone-rattling scream.

  Caen recalled the clone, cutting off the screams. Immediately, sharp pain spiked through his existence, causing him to double over.

  He understood… no, remembered the pure agony of it. Clutching his hair, unable to halt the pain, unable to stop it. It was too much. His throat felt raw.

  Caen was breathing heavily, beads of sweat forming on his brow. His mind was in chaos. Two memories clashed and refuted each other. He was on his knees, screaming. No, he was standing and watching in surprise.

  He split his mind in two and began sorting the memories apart. One mind for one stream of memories. When he united both memories, it still felt jarring. It was almost as though his consciousness had expanded to seamlessly include the experience of another.

  This reminded him a bit of what it felt like when he threaded several souls together—that sensation of being in more than one location at the same time.

  It made him wonder how shadelings handled the conflicting memories. He asked The Seventh Guile.

  “You are once again asking me to explain things that I have never had reason to question or investigate,” the shadeling said warily. He had retracted his clone, and now two tails swayed behind him. “My abilities come naturally to me. Whenever my clone returns, I understand what it understands and learn what it has learned.”

  “And this happens immediately?”

  “No. It takes some time.”

  “Very interesting,” Caen replied as he reverted his soul structure. His suspicions were proven when he verified that he was running low on mana. He’d replenished some of his reserves earlier in the day, but cloning was clearly mana-intensive.

  He spent the next three hours attuning mana.

  Caen's next attempt formed in a lotus position before him, staring back at him with lucid eyes. Cords of connection ran between the clone and pretty much everything in the room. The clone’s soul structure was much stronger than those of previous iterations, but it paled in comparison to Caen’s. The formation process hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped, and he had an idea what was wrong.

  “Failure,” the clone said in Caen’s voice.

  “Abjection?” Caen asked.

  “Yes. No affinities. And I don’t have Soul-sense either.”

  “Did any abilities or instincts from the shadeling carry over?”

  “None.”

  “Besides that, how do you feel?” Caen asked as he probed the clone’s mind.

  “One moment I was you, then the next, I’m sitting opposite, naked and weaker. It’s certainly jarring. I’d have preferred to conduct a scan myself. I can’t feel my spirit, naturally. I feel as tired as you do. And my mind seems alright to me. We should try again.”

  Caen concluded his probe. The clone’s mind was in good condition.

  “Thank you, Caen," he said to the clone. "This was insightful. Withdrawing now.”

  The clone nodded and, the next moment, flowed back into Caen. In actuality, the clone merely vanished, but he could feel him return.

  He was prepared for the memories this time. With Dream-guarding spells, he began sorting them apart as soon as they infiltrated his mind.

  Knowing what to expect made the entire process much faster. Even after he’d united the memories, the absence of an exact sequence of events took some getting used to. He clearly understood the clone’s perspective and experience.

  Caen carefully formed another clone in the likeness of his soul structure. His technique was getting better with each attempt.

  The clone materialized on the floor opposite him with a soul structure almost as robust as his. Caen let out a sigh of relief. He felt confident about this one.

  “No cloning abilities and no instincts carried over from the shadeling,” the clone said. “But I have access to Dream-guarding and Soul-sense. I can also feel my bond to Chasma, as you must already know. Testing?”

  “Yes. But first…” Caen turned to The Seventh Guile and spoke in Klakalk. “When a clone’s precursor or originator dies, the clone continues to live, is that correct?”

  “That is correct,” the shadeling said. He sat in the corner of the room.

  “And you spoke about deviation. How long does it typically take for this to happen?”

  “Deviation begins from the moment a clone is formed. And continues even after the clone begins to function as though it were its own person. Regardless, a precursor can always reincorporate its tail no matter how long they’ve spent apart.”

  Both Caen and his clone nodded at this. They wanted to determine if disconnecting from the shadeling would keep the clone operational.

  “Disconnecting now,” he said, reverting his soul structure.

  As soon as he did, the clone’s own soul structure began to… unravel at an impossible rate. Not even a second later, the clone vanished.

  Caen fell backwards, as pain exploded in his body, mind, and spirit. His soul structure trembled violently, and it felt as though something were forcing its way into his soul. He was inundated with a strong sense of disharmony and incompatibility.

  He had the presence of mind to immediately Mimic The Seventh Guile’s cloning ability. As soon as he did, flashes of fractured memories and sensations assaulted his mind. Caen continued to shudder on the floor as he sorted them apart and integrated them.

  He had only retained a little over half of the clone’s experiences; a significant portion of the memories seemed to have been lost. Still, in the moment before vanishing, the clone had clamped down on his own soul.

  That was worth attempting properly.

  The Seventh Guile watched Caen, tails swaying, and Caen could feel bewilderment and confusion from the shadeling’s soul.

  Caen sat up.

  Alright. Let’s try that again.