If cat-Styxx could be trusted, everything Aissaba had ever known, everything she had ever been or would be, was the result of two rocks trying to destroy each other. Cat-Styxx didn’t use the terms “Virtue” or “Rot” – on the grounds that these words were “propaganda created by your Master of Language.” Instead, he referred to one as “the Original” and the other as “the Copy” – and when Aissaba asked which was which, he smirked (as if he had anticipated this) and said, “Both would claim to be the Original, so… it depends on which rock you ask.”

  He went on to casually mention that one of these rocks happened to live at the core of the planet beneath them and that it could be listening at any time. “Let’s call this one the Original,” he said. The pebbles in the tree brightened at this, and Aissaba’s stomach dropped.

  “The exact nature of these rocks is incomprehensible to us mortals,” said cat-Styxx, watching Tassadu toss the life pebble and catch it. “But we know that they contain more space within them than without – an effectively infinite amount – enough to simulate large parts of our universe. This gives the Original and the Copy the ability to predict the future with surprising accuracy.” Suddenly, he was looking at Aissaba. “Whatever it is you’re about to say… a copy of you deep within the Original has already said it by now.”

  Aissaba didn’t say anything. She found herself trying to think of the weirdest possible thing she could do – screaming at the top of her lungs, peeing beneath her robes, biting off her own tongue.

  Cat-Styxx shrugged. “Well, then I suppose there’s a copy of you who couldn’t think of anything to say.”

  Aissaba was pleasantly surprised to find that cat-Styxx’s arrogance didn’t immediately goad her into a retort. She wasn’t sure whether this was evidence of personal growth, hunger, or just having grown tired of cat-Styxx’s incessant attempts to goad her. Whatever it was, she just smiled back placidly and said, “For an all knowing entity, the Original has a strange choice in chosen ones. We call ourselves Fortress Fuckups for a reason.”

  “You actually make a good point,” said cat-Styxx. “What goes on in your Fortress is unknown to the Original, just as whatever goes on here on this planet is unknown to the Copy. So mistakes in prophecies can be made.”

  As cat-Styxx paced back and forth, he grew younger and less cat-like, converging on a surprisingly adorable version of himself at the age of about twelve. He still wore a bandage around his neck, just beginning to spot with blood.

  “This is approximately what I looked like when I was recruited into your Fortress, about four years before the two of you were,” he said. He then split into two versions of himself, one taking up residence on Tassadu’s side of the fire, and one on Aissaba’s.

  “Let’s assume,” said the second cat-Styxx, “I’m the copy, and he’s the real Styxx. I grow up here on the Master World, he grows up in the Fortress. But unbeknownst to your Masters, however, our minds have been linked together. With me so far?”

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  “Pretty sure we knew all this already,” said Tassadu.

  “While I was growing up in the Fortress and beginning my thesis on recruitment optimization…” said the first young cat-Styxx.

  “...I was in charge of managing the connected twins project,” said the second cat-Styxx. “The more information from your Fortress we sent back here, processed, and fed to the Original, the more accurate the prophecies became – until one day, we were ready to make our move. All I can say is that, Fortress Fuckups or not, you were chosen. I can only guess at the Original’s divine reasoning, but I do have my theories about why it was the two of you. Not, say, one of your classmates. May I?”

  The young-cat-Styxx near Tassadu held out his hand for the green pebble that Tassadu had just caught. Tassadu raised a ridged eyebrow and, when the young-cat-Styxx’s face remained neutral, he shrugged and dropped the pebble upon the outstretched hand. Aissaba expected it to fall through, which it did. However, the bone spider darted across the campfire, kicking up a rain of sparks, and arrived just in time to catch it in its jaws.

  “This pebble,” said cat-Styxx, “has been in your hand long enough to… well, let me just show you.” Both young-cat-Styxxes waved their hands as if they were weaving a magic spell. If they weren’t so adorable, it might have been annoying.

  Assiaba heard a twig snap behind her. On her feet and wheeling around, she felt her heart skip a beat when another Tassadu walked out of the trees. She felt as if her heart were pumping acid instead of blood because it wasn’t the dragon version of Tassadu either – but rather the version that might have existed if he had never chosen to splice dragon DNA into his genome, a fully human version of him. A version of him whose lips she could all-too-clearly imagine kissing.

  “What is that?” said Tassadu, taking a defensive stance, scales shifting through a kaleidoscope of colors. “That had better be mind magic.”

  The uncanny Tassadu’s eyes were vacant and glassy, reflecting the firelight but without any light of their own. One of the young-cat-Styxxes gravitated toward the newcomer while monologing chipperly about how Tassadu’s thesis had been “an ambitious self-modification project targeting the substrate of his own genome.” Then, he walked through the zombie Tassadu without exiting the other side.

  The real-Tassadu growled low when the newcomer blinked and looked around as if just waking up. Aissaba stood behind her own Tassadu, unable to look away from the new one.

  The second young-cat-Styxx, monologing chipperly about how Aissaba’s thesis had been an “ambitious self-modification project targeting the substrate of her own graymatter,” also disappeared into the copy-Tassadu. The blue eyes began to blink in the firelight and settle on Aissaba’s.

  When copy-Tassadu spoke for the first time, it was with cat-Styxx’s voice, continuing his narrative as if nothing interesting had just happened, “Thus, I would conjecture that the Original values your unquenchable desire to reach inside of yourselves and change who you are.”

  When neither Aissaba nor Tassadu said anything, copy-Tassadu said, “Okay, look, in my defense, if I’d had a copy of my own genome on hand, I’d have tried recreating my own body first. But I've always appreciated yours, Tassadu. And I hope we can all still be friends!”