[ Location: The Derry Sewers - The Central Cistern ][ Date: October 15th, 1962 - 8:25 AM ]
I swung like a baseball pro.
CRACK.
The sound bounced off the concrete walls like a gunshot and my iron rebar smashed the flying zombie's head into mush.
The monster blasted backward, slamming into the wall and sliding down into the muck.
But my hands went completely numb.
I looked down with my super strength, I had swung so hard I actually bent the thick iron into a useless, ninety-degree angle.
'Great,' I thought, tossing the ruined metal into the water. 'Iron metal sucks against zombie skulls.'
"Vivan! Look!" Ronnie shrieked, pointing her flashlight.
Dozens of pale, bloated hands reached up from the black depths, grabbing the concrete edge and a whole new wave of drowned corpses pulled themselves up and filthy water poured from their mouths.
They all had glowing, silver eyes.
"Get behind me, Ronnie!" Hank yelled.
He shoved his daughter back against the wall and his hands shook violently as he gripped the revolver. "Vivan! What do we do?!"
"Don't panic!" I barked, stepping right in front of them to block the horde. "Center! Fire!"
Hank aimed at a rotting guy in a pinstripe suit and pulled the trigger.
BANG.
The gunshot was deafening.
The magic bullet hit the zombie square in the chest.
White, holy fire exploded from the wound. The monster shrieked in absolute agony as the magic burned it from the inside out.
In three seconds, it collapsed into a pile of smoking ash.
"It works!" Hank yelled, his eyes wide with hope.
"Four bullets left!" I warned him, keeping my eyes on the crawling monsters. "Don't waste them! Let them get close!"
"They're coming from the sides!" Ronnie cried out.
Two bloated women were crawling along the slippery walkway, snapping their jaws at the empty air, trying to flank us.
"Ronnie, the light!" I ordered. "Shine it right in their eyes!"
Ronnie whipped the heavy metal flashlight toward them and because I had stamped a magic seal on the glass lens , it was like a concentrated sunlight.
The moment the light touched the zombies, their wet skin started to smoke.
They start throwing their hands over their eyes and stumbling backward into the dark water.
'Okay, they can hold the line for a minute,' I thought, my muscles coiled tight. 'But I need a real weapon to clear this room and where the hell is my Clone?'
[ Location: Secondhand Rose Antique Shop - Main Street ]
(Perspective: The Shadow Clone)
The bell above the door jingled.
I walked straight to the glass display counter at the back.
'Original said it was a heavy silver rock. Debris from the Macroverse. A piece of meteorite that crashed here millions of years ago.'
I saw it and It felt ancient, sitting on a red velvet cushion was a jagged chunk of dark, silvery metal. It looked like a boring shiny metal rock to a normal person.
I smashed the counter with my fist and grabbed it and got out of the room.
"Thief!" a tiny, giggling voice echoed.
I froze and slowly turned around.
Every single porcelain doll in the shop had turned its head to look at me and their painted lips stretched open, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth.
"You can't take that," a doll in a pink dress whispered and her glass eyes flashed a sickly orange. "That belongs to Him."
The dolls started crawling off the shelves, Dozens of them.
Scurrying across the floor like incredibly creepy spiders.
'He knew this rock was dangerous to him.'
As a shodow clone I didn't have much mana but I didn't need magic for this.
"I hate dolls," I muttered, cracking my knuckles.
I stepped into a batting stance.
The pink-dress doll leaped right at my face, jaws snapping.
SMACK.
With my enhanced speed and strength, I literally punted the little porcelain freak across the room and it shattered against the wall into a hundred pieces.
I waded through the swarm, kicking, stomping, and backhanding possessed dolls.
They bit my denim jacket, but their tiny teeth couldn't pierce the muscle underneath.
Chucky's got nothing on me.
I kicked the back door off its hinges and burst into the alleyway.
I sprinted toward the main street overflow drain , the specific vertical shaft Original knew connected directly to the ceiling of the central sewer cistern.
"Special delivery," I grunted, dropping the heavy Star Metal straight through the iron bars.
It fell into the darkness.
'My job is done.'
I smiled, and then intentionally broke my own magic connection.
POOF.
[ Location: The Central Cistern ]
I stumbled in the ankle-deep sewer water and the memories of the Clone flooded my brain instantly.
The dusty shop, creepy dolls and the metal drop.
'It's falling..'
I looked up at the massive drainage pipe twenty feet above our heads.
"Cover me!" I yelled to Hank and Ronnie.
"With what?!" Hank panicked.
Three more corpses were pulling themselves onto the walkway.
"Shoot the closest one!" I barked. "Buy me thirty seconds!"
Hank fired.
BANG.
Another flash of white fire and zombie turned to ash.
"That's three shots left!" Hank screamed. "Vivan, hurry up!"
I ran directly under the massive drainage pipe.
Splash.
The heavy, jagged chunk of Star Metal dropped out of the pipe, falling fast.
I snatched it right out of the air.
It was freezing cold and felt completely alien.
It hummed with a vibration that made my own magic react defensively.
'I need to forge it.'
I dropped to my knees in the gross, churning sewer water.
I placed the Star Metal on the wet concrete and pressed my palms flat against the cold surface.
I flooded my hands with pure, holy energy.
They glowed a blinding, violent white. The heat was so intense the dirty water around my knees instantly vaporized into hissing steam.
The Star Metal resisted at first but it wasn't dark magic.
It was cosmic debris and slowly, it started to absorb my power.
The smell of burning meat filled the air—my own hands cooking.
The pain was blinding and it felt like holding a red-hot stove coil.
"Gahh!" I gritted my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut. 'Push through it. Don't stop.'
I used my raw strength to physically mold the superheated, melting metal.
I dragged my blistering fingers across the rock, pulling the core into a brutal, jagged, eight-inch spike and wrapped the leftover metal around my knuckles to make a handle.
A trench knife made of cosmic starlight and Aether.
"Vivan, behind you!" Ronnie screamed.
I grabbed my newly forged Star Metal knife and the hot handle seared my blistered, bleeding palm, but the metal instantly bonded to my magic, cooling just enough to hold.
I spun around just as a rotting corpse lunged at my back.
I drove the jagged spike upward, burying it deep into its brain.
The reaction was instant.
It didn't just burn like Hank's bullets.
The Star Metal acted like a cosmic poison to Pennywise's magic and the corpse shattered like a broken mirror.
The pieces dissolved into nothing before they even hit the water.
I stood up slowly, panting heavily and steam rolled off my wet clothes.
My right hand was a blistered, raw mess, but I didn't care.
The crude knife in my grip glowed with a faint, pulsing blue-white light.
"Okay," I wheezed, glaring at the remaining zombies. "Who wants to be next?"
But they didn't attack.
The remaining bloated bodies suddenly stopped moving and their silver eyes went completely dark, like puppets with cut strings, they all collapsed face-first into the dirty water.
Dead and For real this time.
Silence filled the room, broken only by our heavy, ragged breathing.
Hank lowered his gun slowly and looked at the floating bodies, then at my glowing knife.
"Did... did we win?" Hank asked, wiping sweat off his forehead.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
The slow, mocking sound of hands clapping echoed from the darkest tunnel across the room.
"Not quite, Hank," I whispered, tightening my painful grip on the knife.
Ronnie whipped her flashlight beam toward the sound and her hands shook so hard the beam danced on the wet concrete.
Stepping out of the shadows was Pennywise.
He looked slightly different than his 1980s version, his silver suit was more vintage and dusty, with faded orange pompoms but the smile was exactly the same.
Razor-sharp, cruel, and stretching way too far across his painted white face.
"Bravo, bravo!" Pennywise giggled, his high-pitched voice echoing eerily. "What a show! The boy playing in the mud! It's like watching a rat try to build a sandcastle!"
Hank stepped in front of Ronnie, instinctively raising his gun again.
Pennywise didn't even look at the gun and took a jaunty step forward, his yellow eyes locked entirely on my face.
He noticed my burnt, bleeding hands and smirked.
"Ouch," the Clown pouted mockingly. "Did the little hero burn his paws? I was hoping you'd just drown, Vivan but you're stubborn and I like stubborn meat. It's chewier."
I just stepped forward, pushing past Hank, and pointed the glowing Star Metal knife directly at his chest.
Pennywise stopped dead in his tracks.
His massive, painted smile vanished instantly.
The cocky energy of clown completely drained out of the room and his yellow eyes widened, locking onto the jagged piece of metal in my hand.
He actually took a half-step backward, his boots splashing nervously in the shallow water.
"Put that away," Pennywise hissed.
He didn't sound giggly or playful anymore.
He sounded genuinely disgusted and afraid. "That smells like... smells like the Turtle."
I smirked.
The searing pain in my burned hand was totally forgotten, replaced by the sheer thrill of watching a cosmic clown back away from me.
'This time for real'
"What's wrong, Bozo?" I whispered, taking another slow step toward him.
The knife hummed brighter in the dark. "Don't you like my arts and crafts?"
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