"That is the cutest thing ever."

Mimi thought she looked delightful. As a connoisseur of clones, a deacon of disguise, she knew mimics when she saw them. This one's imitation of her didn't nearly match the splendor of the original. But the double blushed cheerily when she waved at it. Then it waved back, its every movement an imperfect replica of her own.

Surrounded by spiderwebs and more spiderwebs (and a couple corpses now that she looked closely), the double was the sweetest thing her eyes had feasted on in a long while. They'd been trudging through Spider Hell for ages. Yes, it was called Deepnest, but she would never stop thinking of it as Spider Hell. The spiders never ended. There were always more spiders. Always.

But now! Her tired eyes, worn out by miles of darkness and drudgery, were greeted by a wonderful sight: herself. Her own bright clothes and bright smile. Mimi leaned forward, eyelashes fluttering. She put on her Bashful Grin, her Cutesy Pie grin, her Elegant grin. Her double mimicked them hesitantly, then with gusto!

Then it skipped merrily off into the darkness.

"Done with your circus show?" Dimentio asked.

"You're one to talk."

"I object. My vestements are finely tuned for the public stage. Whereas you insist on changing your outfit regularly, even though there's no good reason to."

"Excuse me, changing your clothes daily is a normal habit and it's all the rest of you who insist on wearing the same thing for literally ever. You're the weird ones."

"Your habit majorly inconveniences you."

"And it makes me look nice. And I told you I spent good money on those clothes! Actually, gosh, I bet my double could lend me a hand. Imagine all the beautiful dresses she might have in her arsenal. That I have in my arsenal!"

"Have you considered not engaging it? Why bother going after something so obvious a trap?"

"Sure, stay classy, ruin all the fun." She stuck out her tongue and bounced after it towards lands unknown, grand and beautiful adventure!

Dimentio sighed and drifted after her.


"Oh, there you are!"

Mimi found her double in a narrow cavern strewn with corpses. All manner of corpses dangled from the ceiling, choked in silk. Strung up and swinging. Drained of all fluids. Something had sucked hungrily on their sweet entrails and tasted of the divine rapturous flesh and golly she was getting distracted again.

"You have interesting taste in decor," she told it. "I almost approve."

Her double curtsied, flashed a smile, bobbed its head in a display of vim and vigor, twirled prettily and let its skirt fly out. Mimi clapped for it.

She wasn't stupid. She had, in fact, noticed the barriers slamming shut behind her with a crisp snap snap, a tangle of thorns or something else blocking her way out. And she'd seen the bodies strewn across the jagged ground as she followed her double. Some rested in tender repose, some had pure agony on their delicate insectile features. Their arms were outstretched as if reaching towards a long-lost friend (or lover?)—before they were sliced, diced, torn six ways to Sunday, and their insides greedily slurped up. If Mimi had to guess, she would say this mimic did not have good intentions for her. Oh well. They usually didn't. But she knew mimics, she could do this.

Also she was a robot and gears were generally considered unappetizing, but she questioned whether her fellow mimic was smart enough to recognize that.

Her double waved her over.

"Alrighty!" Mimi said. "So, how are we gonna do this?"

No sooner than she had spoken her double's neck snapped. It twisted ninety degrees, then wound clockwise like a loose screw while its ligaments trembled and gyrated as if in a windstorm. Spiders dripped from the ceiling. The corpses hanging from the ceiling trembled in a sudden wind, dead limbs jangling.

She clapped her hands in delight. It was really doing it! It was trying to copy her transformation too! She snapped her own neck in record time, and while her own six limbs were unfolding in response, she noticed a teensy bit of inaccuracy in her double's transformation. Her limbs weren't that... barbed. Or vicious-looking. And she didn't have an enormous abdomen swirling with ominously orange acid, and she didn't have spines down her back, and... huh.

"Doing things the hard way, then?" she muttered, as a barbed neck unfolded from the other mimic's grotesquely swollen abdomen, engorged with acid. "Well..." Her sensors glittered to life. She sensed intimately the air pressure, the humidity, a thousand other factors sprang to life in her mind. "Fine by me."

Most mimics turned out hostile, in Mimi's experience. It would've been nice to have a friend, but she could go without and instead bask in the pleasure of slowly and glamorously murdering an enemy. Almost as good.


The caverns wind down countless miles into unfathomable darkness, past crumbling cities, past worm-eaten storerooms piled with rotting bodies, past wild frascas of greenery festering with untended plantlife and untamed beasts. In the depths of these caverns, sleepless things stir. Corpses heaped dead, one atop another, twitch and unfurl into a standing army of reanimated soldiers, with no purpose but vengeance on the already fallen. Ghosts of all sorts wander these ruins.

Beneath them, in a dark cave where vicious stalactites stab from the ceiling and corpses are strung from the walls, two spiders face each other down.

They are both mimics, and they have done their jobs rather well, but the time for deception is over. One now takes the form of a hulking beast, sporting a viciously barbed exoskeleton whose razor points gleam in the ambient light. The other is our dear protagonist, a charming girl with no secrets whatsoever. Currently she sports six spindly limbs, thin as lines, which support a cubic body stuffed with gears and the assortment of other mechanisms needed to sustain life of this kind. Her eyes have shrunken to pinpoints, but she hardly needs them in this state. Her radar is fine-tuned, she has agility and reflexes, she is more than capable of analyzing her surroundings with an array of sensory capabilities far beyond what the best of this dead kingdom can accomplish.

The beast roars. The battle begins.


The first thing it did was charge directly for her. The air hummed with tension, glittering soul particles swirled in its wake. It bared previously-hidden fangs and swung its barbed limbs.

She swung back. Metaphorically of course, she wasn't built for direct fighting. A wave of rubees manifested from the corner and flew horizontally towards her enemy. It charged through them and they shattered. Whoops. She sidestepped in advance as it jumped towards her and another wave of rubees rose from the ground, stabbing up towards its abdomen this time. It leapt to avoid them, again heading for her, and she changed course and skittered onto the ceiling.

It followed. She clung to the ceiling with spidery finesse, avoided the corpses, but this was its lair and it knew the way around better than she did. She couldn't outrun it.

She reversed direction, swung towards the ground.

A fountain of orange acid gouted into the air. She summoned a wave of rubees and their sparkling facades blocked the wave of toxic sludge. Errant droplets burned her gears, her legs. With an effort of will more rubees manifested, deliciously sharp, and she directed them rapid-fire towards the abomination. Its legs bled orange sludge, its bulbous center oozed acid. It did not falter.

The creature howled, its screech cut piercingly through the air, a cry of unrestrained rage. If it had murder on the mind before, now it had double-extra murder. So did she.

The abdomen made it look intimidating, but in actuality she was taller than it. She had the benefit of being able to curl her legs up and sprout rubees from her many orifices. They made an excellent defensive shield, rather porcupine chic, she thought. Tragically, she did not have time to marvel over their glitter and highly sharp edges, as she would now have to use those sharp edges to stab a fellow mimic to death.

She squeezed rubees out of her every orifice until she was bristling with them, then flew towards it as a spinning ball of doom. It jumped midair in a huge arcing movement that took it to the opposite end of the cavern, and she missed. Rebounded off the wall and locked onto its new position as it skittered back and forth across the cavern floor, legs tapping frenetically. Missed again. It leapt onto the ceiling and spat a stream of acid at her. She uncurled, summoned a wave of rubees that protruded from a cavern wall and directed the acid onto the walls where it frothed and traced sizzling orange rivulets.

Still on the ceiling, it dodged into a crevice as she sent another barrage of rubees. They impaled into the ceiling. Stalactites shivered, clouds of dust plumed from the walls. What was it planning? She hoisted a shield of rubees around her. Moments later, acid rained from the ceiling. The shield deflected enormous globules that splattered onto the rubees and ate through them.

The time gave her precious moments to think. Her roving sensors noticed something. Those bodies hanging from the ceiling, strung up like spiders might gather wrapped food in a web. It was smart, but in its berserk state would it still notice if she cut them down? A distraction.

She manifested a few rubees and sent them to slice at the cords. Jackpot. The creature seized upon the nearest corpse, a strange corpse with a horned skull and fluttering gray cloak but no body, and screeched. Twice. The cavern rumbled, she wondered if nearby creatures might hear but it had picked this corner of the tunnels clean.

It seemed to have forgotten her completely.

Then it was distracted, rustling back and forth between the fallen corpses as she summoned an army of rubees behind her, out of sight, nestled behind an elevated section of the cavern it couldn't see.

No kill like overkill.

With sheer force of will she manifested rubees all around them, a rotating halo of death rubees, framing her in a halo of red shards. As one, they flew towards the enemy as it shrieked and charged towards her.

The creature crashed into them, shattered them, but behind them there were more. She sent her endless barrage. Rubees. Red, shiny, dazzling, perfect, light nestled in their facets, scarlet and crimson. Orange acid sprayed on them, stray drops of acid ate at her gears, but if she could win that was fine. She had a plan.

The beast shrieked as it was swarmed by red projectiles, waves of them rose from the ground to engulf it. Jewels crashing down in a merciless wave. She sent more. They enveloped it until it was just a bristling red ball being swallowed by rubees. She made them close in, further, until the effort grew immense and her head throbbed and finally she stopped and let the rubees clatter to the ground.

The dead beast lay in pieces. She'd pulverized it.

Someone clapped. Without even turning, she knew who it was. She approached the empty space where she knew a certain someone had been hiding and watching the entire battle, without lifting a finger, and kicked it.

He shimmered into existence with an abjectly hurt expression on his face. "Ah, the pain! You wound me so. I thought we were friends."

"I don't have time for this right now," she said. "Did you seriously let me fight this thing by myself?"

"You looked like you had it well in hand. You didn't even get hurt."

"You mean besides the parts of me that got corroded by acid?"

"Ah, well, mere small injuries, 'tis but a flesh wound, easily mendable. Besides! We are the bosomest of buddies. If you'd been in real danger I would have—" He snapped. "Just like that! And saved both our skins. But since I obviously did not, you were very capable, blah blah, I applaud you. I'll applaud you some more." He clapped again.

"I have no idea what you're saying half the time."

"But wasn't it cathartic? Don't you feel satisfied?"

She looked at the mouldering pile of spider bits, now sizzling in a bright orange puddle of sludge. Then at the mega swarm of rubees behind her.

"I guess," she said.

"Well then! All's well that ends well, et cetera, you know how it goes."

"I don't know how it goes—"

"We should probably be off before the other denizens come to investigate the sound. There were quite a few loud screeching noises coming from over here."

She threw her hands in the air.

"I guess," she said again.