Maien stood on barren rock. Darkness billowed around him, his cloak seeming to reach and cling even in the absence of wind. The size of that garment was carefully chosen, as always. Large enough to impress and defeat each opponent, yet leaving him concealed reserves with which to surprise.

Scanning the horizon with mystic senses, Maien confirmed that there were no Chaos Spawn close enough to be a menace. This was one of his favorite places to fight: the largest battleground of the last campaign of the Realms war. The war he himself had begun. The irony was almost as great an attraction as the practical advantages were.

Half-seen forms moved through the mist. Harmless in themselves, they had killed many darkstalkers by distracting them, or camouflaging the true threats of the realm of Aballam. Ozum's chimes had made the Chaosgrounds a dangerous place for the last weeks, but it seemed Everyman was calming down. Maien relaxed, and smiled at the memory of the many victories of his twelve thousand years.

He knew that the Shadow that called itself Dio was approaching. Maien knew how far away he was, and how fast he was approaching. One mage of the dark path cannot hide from another while their Shadow is revealed. It was merely a matter of learning to look.

Judging by the straight line of Dio's path, he had learned enough to know how to look. Excellent. It would be disappointing to have to hunt him down.

Dio walked, as he had been walking for hours now. [If Maien expected me to break free, then this distance is his first mistake. Or is it? Does it matter?] After the destruction of his crystal prison, Dio found that he had been stripped. More concerned with Maien than with his dignity, he had pulled his Shadow about himself and prepared for battle.

After a brief time, an... awareness had drawn Dio's attention away from his search for the master of the school. Dio sensed something, someone far away and still travelling. He had called the Tome of Shadows to his hand, and reviewed the section where Maien wrote of the limited use other schools had put their Shadow to.

They have used it to hide from those who study the light and call themselves virtuous. They have used it as a badge, and a mark of accomplishment.

[A badge... Then that is Maien] Dio had thought. Armed with this knowledge, he had returned to the squat two-story tower that served as the mage's lab. From the only unlocked bedroom he took a pair of short boots and a wide, ornate belt. In a hallway, an odd suit of armor provided fore-arm bracers and knee pads. One of the more impressive robes in another room provided material for a pair of pantaloons. It required considerable effort with a perfected knife to cut the silvery-blue fabric, so Dio left them over-large, stitched them with threads of night, and trusted the belt and the knee-guards to maintain his mobility. He left his chest bare.

Dio then set off after Maien, feeling a little better now that he was no longer so obviously desperate. [Was it a mistake?] The walk had cleared Dio's head further, and he had began to form theories based upon what he knew of magic and what he had seen Maien and his apprentices do. But it also gave him time to brood.

[Can I beat him? I know... I think I can resist what he did to me before, but... How long has he lived? How many other tricks does he have to defeat me with?] It felt like he was thinking in circles, just as it felt like he was walking in circles. Still, ahead of him, always in front of him, was Maien. Even if the rock he had seen far to his right was in truth so close to his path that his left arm could touch it. It felt like the aching taste of blue, under his tongue. [Enough of this. What can I do that he can't? There are the knives, but to think that Maien had never had to deal with a trick like that would be suicide. Still, that in itself could be useful. Show him something he will expect, and he might not look for the trick. And there is the other unique trait of my Shadow, the Shadow upon Shadow.]

The ground here was no different, the mist gave no more sign or lack of sign, but Dio knew. He knew he stood just below a crest, and Maien was lower than he. [Last hill.] Now that he was close, Maien blazed in his mind's eye like a burning flag. It was an act of superb confidence, for Dio knew that the simple act of restraining or withdrawing the Shadow would mute an enemy's sense of your presence. Still, Dio would not go into battle like a skulking coward, either.

The weird howling chorus of the Chaospawn echoed strangely through the mist. Dio jumped as the sound seemed to rush up and become a whisper in his ear. Drawing in a deep breath, he focused his vision through his burning eye. [Nothing but fragments of madness. We will be alone long enough for one of us to change that we into simply I.]

As prepared as he could be, he mounted the crest of the hill, and paused to gaze at the despoiler of his realm. Standing a dozen meters up the other hill, Maien wore a deep blue robe, belted with silver. The sleeves were slashed to reveal a silvery material. Beneath the robe could be seen wide, loose black pants. But the Shadow drew Dio's attention. It flapped and stretched in no wind, and was fully half again as large as Dio's full cloak. The mark on Maien's hand blazed black fire, visible even at this distance. The mage's hair seemed to shift between gray and black. Dio couldn't see, but he was certain Maien's every breath exhaled black mist.

[I am ready. I have to be ready.] Dio began his descent. It was obvious what the first move in this drama had to be, but there was nothing more to do about it. He was right, or this would be very short.

The master raised his burning palm. Tendrils and sparks of black jumped and flared with new life. The distance was still too great far Maien's words to carry, but the thrum of power was so loud the sounds were clear. {Umbra Ligare}

Dio could feel the magic, like an invisible mountain rushing through the air. It was far, far more potent than the first time Maien hit him with the spell. He had no way block the assault, and to dodge would be meaningless. [The test.] Dio smirked slightly, and walked two steps further before the spell hit him. Then he froze.

The look on Maien's face was easy to interpret. The Power Maien had gathered drowned each word beneath the wingbeats of an unkindness of ravens. {You disappoint me, Dark One. After I've gone to the effort of bringing you here, to my favorite battlegrounds, you disappoint me? Did you learn nothing from your time at my school?}

Shadow Dio was unable to restrain himself from cocking his head to the side, both amused and appalled by the deliberate arrogance of Maien's question. A blurred darkness remained where his head had been. He shrugged, and resumed his approach, leaving a hazy silhouette behind.

Close enough for normal voices, Dio halted. "It was from the North Americans that I drew my inspiration. Some truth makes its way into every body of myth and legend, but I could think of nothing useful from the European tales. They used an animal sacrifice for defense or respite. Literally, a scapegoat. A shaman, however, might use his shadow," a gesture back at the silhouette, "to absorb a curse or even a death meant for him."

Maien gave a slight nod, and lowered his power slightly. "Very good. Continue."

"Our mantles are not normal shadows, of course. But they are not mystic gifts from some unknown entity, are they? Shadows, like eyes, are thought of as mystic links to the soul. The ritual does not call for a boon in exchange for loyalty, it takes a piece of our own souls, and uses the Dark Power we have, or have stolen, to pull it into the physical realm."

"Indeed." A wolf's smile marked the mage's face. "More shadowsoul means more soul and more Mantle. The Dark path is a shortcut, but with a price. A psychic of the Light spends far longer just learning to focus their soul and gather its energy. In combat of the spirit, we are inherently weaker, but we do have an advantage in creating secondary avatars."

"So what will you try now? Mentis Demergere, the mind submerge?"

Cruel smirk still in place, Maien shook his head. "You've figured out that it takes less effort to set a defensive shadow than to shape a binding pattern. In that fool's game I might overwhelm Lane, but I would be exhausted before you would be. No, now, Shadow, on this ancient battlefield you shall learn who truly holds rank in the Land of Shadows!" From his sleeve Maien produced a crystal knife, which he displayed to Dio. "With a knife such as this I stabbed your king, I slew the Lord of Shadows and took his essence into myself!" The blade flashed, and the silver cord fell to the ground at the mage's feet, followed by the robe.

Maien's chest and shoulders were a mass of blazing darkness. Flesh was barely present, and cutouts in the pants displayed more black taint. "You may have found a way to defend against my magic, but when I command you shall offer your throat to the knife! I am your liege now!"

"That remains to be seen. But why, Maien? Why do you torment and sacrifice Shadows? Why did you kill the Shadelord? Why did you react so violently when I threatened your family? You owe me this answer, destroyer of my homeland."

"Hmmph. Perhaps I do owe you that much. Parents cannot be trusted to be callous enough to properly teach their children magic. In my time, it was customary for mages of the dark paths who had children to entrust them to allies, people with similar magic and common enemies. It was also customary to teach the child some basics, reducing the risks and giving the teacher a reason not to simply chose unaligned apprentices. My parents were teaching me. That day, they summoned a minor demon, not teaching me how, but simply demonstrating.

"The demon they summoned was being ridden by a Marionette. The possessed devil was driven into the wards, crashing again and again into the protective magics. My parents and my older sister had crafted the pentagram well. The demon died before it could break free. The Marionette did not.

"I began to hate your kind that day. Cowering against the wall, listening to my mother plead for my father not to hurt her. She reminded him of the sunset during their honeymoon. My world crumbled as I listened to her beg for her husband to free her, even as she vivisected him. And then she began to laugh.

"My father was dead before my sister recovered from the destruction of the pentagram. She was still confused, but when the monster turned my mother toward me, I begged her to save me. In her eyes I could see the pain and guilt she accepted when she threw the knife that killed my mother. When my sister leaned over to check our mother's pulse, the shadow lifted itself free and attacked her.

"Reanne had raised her defenses, but even I could tell she was losing. She couldn't speak, but she mouthed her last words to me, and dove into the pentagram. The enchantment was still capable of returning a supernatural creature to its own dimension.

"I have been in Makai twenty thousand years, and not a day passes when I do not return to that day, to try to understand my sister's last words. There is not a day when I do not dream of my mother laughing over my father's body."

Shadow Dio shook his head slowly. "All of your pain, caused by one of my kin maddened by its own suffering."

"Of course. Monsters have no sympathy for any but their own."

A small chuckle. "I hope you believe in the historical imperative. I wouldn't want even you die suffering the guilt of causing your own pain."

The darkness marking Maien's body blazed up anew. "I don't know what you mean and I don't care. Come here. Now."

Dio stepped forward, command against will. "Has your hate held you..." Step. "blind for this long?" Step. "The Marionette was mad... and feral..." Step. "because of the pain of..." Step. "your killing the Lord of Shadows!" Tension ends, a thread snapped. "Which is why I hope you can believe the Realms War would have occurred and killed the Shadelord anyway. I would be... put out... even if the one who would suffer is the man who usurped my throne. Maien! It was my father you killed to trigger the Realms War. As the heir to the Shadowlands, I deny your authority over me. You will have to prove your rank with Power."

Hissing with deep breaths, Maien locked his gaze on the single spark in Dio's face. "My authority is the Power of your father, dark prince. And it is magnified by the stolen essence of a legion of his servants. Do you believe you can overcome that much Power?"

"I don't need to overcome that which is irrelevant. I secede, Maien. I secede. I am not here to challenge you for control of the Shadowlands. I am here simply to kill you. You will die in the name of revenge, and to insure you will never be a threat to me again." Dio created five knives and threw.

Maien swirled his mantle, easily sending the four blades clattering away. During the moment of distraction, Dio called forth one of the patterns he had added to his mantle during the long walk. "Shadow Flow." His mantle rushed in, hiding the vampire in a blurred silhouette, then flowing out into a half-dozen effigies, all moving identically.

"Hmph. None of the feet were moving." Without making a gesture, Maien swept a lash of Shadow across the image that remained in place. No contact. "Not so bad after all. And you're serious." Maien sent a spike of his Shadow through the image to his right, the nearest of the forms approaching him. It flickered, revealing the landscape behind. "I can't feel you through the Shadelord's link anymore." Another spike, followed immediately by a curved blade sweeping through the remaining trio of silhouettes. Dio was behind none of them. "Excellent! You should try running a shell game at a carnival! But you still have to take me down if you want to remove my threat."

Dio spoke from Maien's left, one of the last forms to be tested. "That's what this is for." As the mage reacted, Dio stepped through his Shadow one more time, emerging from Maien's right and pulling the fifth knife, now a night-kissed blade, away from his own face. "Essence blade." Maien spun, once again twisting his Shadow into a defense, but the blade flew straight and swift, as if the Shadow wasn't even there. The weapon thudded home... into the upper arm of its target.

"An inspired use of basic principals!" Maien's face showed no pain as he pulled the knife from his arm and examined it. "By infusing the 'essence blade' with a small amount of your Shadow, you vastly increase its ability to penetrate magical defenses. Oh, and because a Shadowmantle can take in other objects of Shadow, you make my defense completely worthless. At least, that defense. Oh, and I should deal with this, I suppose."

Maien made a complex gesture with his left hand, and a fold of his Shadow changed the injured arm into something that would have looked at home on an obsidian statue of that Russian brute, Zangief his name was. [Dio considered recruiting him once, but a closer check showed that he was so stupid, he would be useless even as a Stand-wielding vampire.] Maien flexed a few times, then picked up a head-sized rock and crushed it. [There was no denying the strength of his grip, though.]

"Every type of Power has things it is best at, ways for it to accomplish a task easily. But that is never the only way for it to operate. Enough Power, properly applied, can do anything, can overcome any handicap." Maien held up his enhanced arm. "Observe. This is recorded in my texts as the Lunaris Obscurare defense, the Lunar Eclipse shield." A pattern in Maien's mantle was visible for an instant before the entire section of Shadow blew apart, forming a hazy globe around the mage. "Go ahead, try another of your cute knives."

Dio had already prepared one, but this open challenge shattered his hopes of it working. [ No! I can't give up! I, I have to take it a step further, I have to be more than what he expects!] With a flash of Dio's fingers, one knife became four, all of them bulleting a Maien's new defense.

In front of each knife the black haze concentrated into solidity and extended out, like a rewinding video of a drop hitting water. All four blades spun away.

"That which cannot be met head-on can still be turned. Good. Now begins your true lesson in the benefits of experience!" A dozen tendrils reached out from Maien's Shadow, each tipped with claws and inward-curved blades. Dio countered the same way. To fight like this was instinctive for a Shadow. The vampire kept his defense close to his body, costing himself reaction time if he missed a block, but maximizing the awkwardness of the distance for his opponent.

However, that assualt was just to buy Maien time. Dio spared a moment to glance and see the mage shaping a black ring a foot across, then he felt a black cloud invade his thoughts, flowing in through the cracks of his doubt and fear. [What are you?] a voice seemed to whisper [A flawed copy of a flawed being? How do you think you can win? Why do you want to win? Even if you do survive, tomorrow you could end up someone else and merely wonder what was so important to you.] A blade got past Dio's defense, then another.

And now Maien threw the ring.

It expanded as it flew, stopping when it was centered a dozen feet above Dio's head, and wider than he was tall. Darkness began to pour from it like a waterfall, pooling and beginning to fill an invisible cylinder around the Shadow as the blades increased the tempo of their attack, stabbing and slashing in through the curtain of darkness, giving Dio only fractions of a second to react to each strike and blocking any chance of escape through ring above and the dark liquid was getting closer to his feet no way to tell what it would do to him but Maien wouldn't be kind "The World!"

The monochrome blue armor in front of him, hope driven by desperation, Shadow Dio reached in a direction that had been closed to him since his new birth. Pouring forth every once of strength he could spare, Dio pushed against the wall of weakness that blocked him from the greatest ability of his stolen Stand.

And time... Bent.

Dio found the sluggish motion of Maien's blade no threat, and it was easy now to pick a gap and leap. As he soared through the mist, he noted that even the dark voices had dopplered down. [Yyyooouuu cccaaannn'ttt wwwiiinnn...] [No. I stand a chance after all.] His fall was taking a long time, perhaps thrice as long as expected.

To kill the time, Dio launched a stream of plain knives, an watched as slowed to somewhere between the speed he threw them and the speed he normally could throw. [So, unlike the stillness, anything I throw does gain some advantage!] Dio watched as they reached Maien's shield. The dark haze had to flow from one blade to the next, and Dio saw one blade shatter, as it was halfway through when the dark flowed around it. [It can be overwhelmed!]

A count in the back of Dio's mind reached twenty. Time snapped back to normal, and he touched down. Maien ceased his mis-targeted attacks and looked at Dio. "I thought I had you as easy as that, but you did put on an impressive five seconds, I must admit."

Dio just listened, catching useful information and hoping for more. [Five seconds to him? So, I get four seconds for each one? Not bad, if not as intimidating as the full stillness.] And his hopes were not in vain.

"And I see your wonderful projection has grown darker, and more solid, perhaps? Whatever have you been feeding it?"

[Did I just... push some of my mantle... into The World? That would account for the power, but... my soul... ]

"Speechless? Well, no matter." Maien's face twisted, leaking the hate, fear, doubt and more that he was covering with the 'bantering teacher.' "TIME FOR YOU TO DIE!"

Before the scream had reached him, Dio grabbed a fold of his Shadow. And squeezed. Squeezed until something... broke.

He was left holding a fistful of needles, each more than a foot long. And he threw them.

The rest of the mantle, shattering, followed.

Looking at the onrushing storm of spikes, Maien knew it was too late for offense. Even if Dio died now his mind would hold long enough. And his defense was overwhelmed. The first were being deflected but when the mass hit...

So Maien called on his reserves.

When Dio saw the gleaming black sphere he knew his attack had failed. The black shards bounced off the darkness and scattered in all directions, softening back into wisps of night amidst the fog.

Dio raised his and The World's arms to call in his Shadow, then froze as the sight of the wisps, longer than they were wide, pointed at the ends, many bent and thus thinner in the center... [Like domino masks...] ...triggered one more moment of synthesis in Dio's mind. [Ancient battlefield... Form and Power... Some things easier... A masquerade...] Maien's globe began fading.

"UNQUIET SPIRITS OF THIS BATTLE!
YOU WHO WARRED TO DEFEND AND AVENGE MY SIRE!
I CALL UPON YOU TO AGAIN PARTAKE OF THE RAPTURE OF COMBAT!
HELP ME DESTROY MY FATHER'S MURDERER,
AND CELEBRATE THE FESTIVAL OF MADNESS,
REJOICE IN BLOODSHED!
JOIN ME, IN THE
DEATH-BORN REVEL!"

[I can win, because crafting Form is harder for Shadow than simple Power is!] The drifting wisps stopped, then became more clearly masks as a legion seemed to walk out of the mists. Vampires, Weres and Succubi, they had but three things in common. They all wore black domino masks, they were all warriors.

And they stared at Maien with hatred nigh-unmatched by those on this side of the grave.

At the center of all the glares, Maien... laughed. And his Power had transcended voice.

A single sweep of his arm, and a black wind tore the masks back into harmless wisps of night. {You, even you, will need a hundred and twenty more years of practice before you can shape something like that and shield it from even the simplest disruption! You might have enough power to face me, and you are far more innovative, but what is innovation to you I saw in the days of the Realms War! Gather your pathetic Shadow and spare me the effort of absorbing each separate shred after I KILL YOU!}

The words pounding into his mind, Dio did as Maien bid him, shocked by too many brilliant failures, drained by surpassing too many of his limits only to have it proved that he wasn't enough. Four arms raised, two fleshtone, two deep flat blue, he beckoned his manifest soul to him. It came in a slow spiral, and Dio did little to hasten it, knowing that Maien had a dozen ways ready to kill him. Dio could see them, in his burning eye, corpse upon corpse upon corpse, all of them his, and not a single path where he walked away.

And now his stalling was almost over, and he waited for the beginning of the end, waited for the first wisp to touch him...

But it didn't. It touched The World.

With a sound like the gentle beating of mighty wings, every wisp rushed in and vanished into the Stand.

The World took two steps forward and turned to look at him.

The sexless, glossy black statue bore the headpiece of The World, and the tubes still connected to the armored forearms. The rest might have been a statue of Shadow Dio himself. It regarded him with compassionate eyes, raised a hand to Dio's face...

And exploded.

Feeling the touch of chaos on his exposed face, surrounded by a cloud of darkness in the mist, Dio stared at Maien.

And Maien stared back.