Alter Egos

Chapter 18

It was... quiet.

Achlys stood silently on the cliffs overlooking a city that was glowing in the distance, he was waiting for the moon to disappear behind the clouds, and as the night was plunged into deep darkness, Achlys slowly began accumulating energy. The runes, somewhat crudely drawn into the ground, began to glow with a dangerous purple light. Achlys smiled as the ground began to bubble violently and unnaturally, and after a few agonizing seconds, a hand burst from the ground, sharp and clawed. Soon after, the rest of the body dragged itself out of the depths, coughing slightly.

"There you are. I was starting to think I did the ritual wrong." Achlys smirked as a dark chuckle arose from the other. "It's not easy to completely get rid of someone such as I, you can forget, but I will remember." The being appeared to look like a hedgehog, more specifically, Shadow. He strangely looked a lot like him, albeit there were a few noticeable differences, such as the absence of a mouth.

There was a moment of silence.
"Where, pray tell, is that partner in crime of yours? I'm quite sure that they were meant to be summoned as well." Achlys stared as the other flinched and looked away with a hard look in his eyes. "Mephiles." He flinched again, more violently this time.

"Iblis is gone. When they tried to erase us, that idiot transferred all of the energy they had into me and disappeared. I don't know what happened to them but I have a pretty good idea... looks like some of that annoying princess's personality rubbed off on them that whole time they were stuck together."

Achlys was silent for a moment and Mephiles crossed his arms. "I see... I also know what it's like to lose someone you cared about." Mephiles was surprised at his tone but as he turned, the others expression was back to stone cold and menacing. "You were defeated by three hedgehogs, am I correct?"  Mephiles was surprised he knew that. "Yes..." Achlys seemed satisfied with that answer and motioned the other to walk with him. As he explained everything, Mephiles was silent the whole time, the only sound being their footsteps in the rustling grass. "Now... you are probably wondering why I brought you back?" Mephiles tilted his head curiously, waiting for him to continue. "You can do as you please in this world, just on the condition that you will join me to destroy it on the day of retribution."
Mephiles was contemplating this.
"Explain..."

The wind had picked up violently and was still blowing by the time they went their separate ways. Mephiles was walking around, thinking about the events that had occurred and didn't notice a person struggling to fly in the wind until they let out a yelp and started to descend from the high winds. Mephiles floated upwards to where the stranger was falling and caught him as gently as he could, slowly going back down to the ground. He placed the stranger onto the ground as he quickly moved away, muttering his thanks in an apologetic tone.

"S-sorry about that, I'm usually able to handle winds like these quite easily, but I'm exhausted from all the work I'm doing."

"It's no problem-" Mephiles was cut off as the stranger wobbled and barely managed to catch himself before he fell. "Do you have somewhere to stay for the night?" Mephiles inquired as he helped the stranger get up. "Yeah... it's actually a few hundred meters away."
"Then I'll help you."
"You don't have to-"
Without a word, Mephiles slung him over his shoulder and started walking in the direction the stranger indicated. The stranger kept saying that it was okay and that he could walk there himself, but those words fell on deaf ears. There was a moment of silence before he spoke again. "Do you have somewhere to stay as well? It is pretty late out..." Nothing. "If you need you can spend the night at my place until morning as thanks for helping me out..."

"Sure."

"Oh, alright then, I think there was an extra mattress stashed in one of the storage closets... oh, and by the way, I forgot to ask, what is your name?"

"Mephiles."
"Oh! That's a nice name."
"And what about you?"
"Me?"

"My name's Silver."

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Ahhhhh I'm so sorry this chapter was so late, school is so stressful right now. And due to some upcoming events, I'm taking a indefinite hiatus from writing this story. I apologize if you've been waiting for this chapter to come out and learn that there's not gonna be any more updates for who knows how long. It kinda depends.
Again, sorry, and if you're reading this-

Happy reading!

And Merry Christmas.