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((Double Wednesday -- Page 2 of 2))
Royo activated the Sword again and tried to circle around to Seyos’ backside.

Seyos pulled out a pair of artifacts, and Royo identified them immediately.

The Twin Blades of Boros. Small swords which were capable of guiding even an amateur swordsman’s hand toward the vital points of his desired opponent. Exceptionally deadly at close range. Crafted 33 years ago by Luann.

With that knowledge, Royo backed off again and sent out an extra wave of copies.

Where was he keeping all these damn things?

The Deceiver’s Cloak. An artifact which allowed access to several small pocket dimensions. Crafted 4,612 years ago by Skapa.

Ah.

He didn’t want to fire his pistol again and give away his position. At the moment, the best course of action to his mind was to wait for the Sword’s invisibility to recharge. It would only take a few minutes, if he could hold out that long.

He seemed to be relatively safe as long as he kept multiple copies afoot. Running around the room in circles was especially helpful in that regard, because all of his copies mimicked his behavior, and by choosing the correct pressure point on the Sword, Royo was able to have as many as eight of himself all running counterclockwise around Seyos.

It was clearly pissing Seyos off as well, which was a nice bonus.

Royo took the opportunity to examine the Sword. While he already had a working knowledge of it, he wanted to be sure he hadn’t missed anything.

The Sword of Hamenszoon. An artifact capable of producing illusions based on the wielder. Crafted 794 years ago by Hamenszoon.

Huh. Surprisingly uninformative.

Royo tried looking harder, wanting the Eye to provide him more detail.

The Eye did so, spelling out the exact function of each one of the Sword’s pressure points, as well as informing him that they required manipulable soul power to do so. And as Royo had already discovered, seven copies was indeed the maximum number of illusions that the Sword could produce at one time.

The Piercing Eye was even so generous as to tell him the precise amount of time remaining before the invisibility was fully recharged. One minute, forty-eight seconds, and counting.

That was better. Royo was satisfied.

Movement from Seyos drew Royo’s attention again, and he was ready to identify the next artifact.

It was a small cube, small enough to fit in Seyos’ molten palm.

The Box of Perdition, the Eye told him. An artifact capable of producing explosions with a range of up to 750 meters. Crafted--

What?

Royo skipped the last part and instead pushed for more detail.

The Box had to be set on a timer with as little as fifteen seconds or as long as fifteen minutes. The blast would not harm the box itself but could still produce a force of up to five tons.

This was a very large problem.

Royo knew he couldn’t wait any longer and went on the offensive. All seven clones of himself followed suit, converging on Seyos simultaneously.