It was almost surreal, how easy killing Kia was. She wasn’t even looking at him as he unleashed four blows—a level 3 Stunning Bolt, which held her in place for long enough for him to shoot three basic attacks from Bereth’s quiver. The three basic attacks in short succession triggered one of Bereth’s abilities: Level 3 Piercing Bleed, which triggered an automatic 10% loss of max hit points.

With only 300 hit points, this was almost enough to kill her. If she’d had her wits about her, she probably could have planted a ward, run, maybe try to signal her nexus. Even a scream might have been enough to alert any nearby teammates. After all, Bereth was on his way to her. He might be within earshot.

But Kia wasn’t known for her quick wits. She was known for her deadly weapons. So instead she blinked and attempted to charge up her shield ability.

Too little, too late. Elzio landed the third of Bereth’s basic abilities, Headshot. It wasn’t cast at full strength, given the doppel’s limits, but it was enough to take Kia’s body to the ground, at which point it flickered and vanished.

Again, Elzio had to rely on his old teammates’ cockiness. If Kia had planted a ward inside her hideout, anyone could have seen what transpired. But who would ward a location they expected to spend most the battle? Because of her generally sedentary positioning, Kia rarely bought wards, and often forgot to place any she did. This cave would be shrouded in darkness until either an enemy visited it, lending them local vision, or planted a ward on it, which would give them universal map vision.

The former was about to happen soon, once Bereth arrived, so Elzio snapped back to work.

He let both the doppel and his invisibility spell drop, letting his mana regen without the constant tax they placed on his stores. For this next stage, planting the warded arrows on Bereth, Elzio needed a level 4 doppel of Kia, one that could speak and retain all of her physical traits, so he waited another heart-pounding minute or so, unable to see much of the waterfall from his position nearby.

The moment his mana reached 200, he cast his spell, and soon he was back inside the head of another doppel, this time Kia, hurrying into the waterfall hideout. To his great relief, Bereth still hadn’t reached the spot, and he quickly sat the Kia doppel down and began fidgeting with her arrows.

He couldn’t have made the call any closer. Less than a minute later, Bereth barreled into the hideout. If he’d noticed that Kia hadn’t produced the number of arrows she should, by this point in the battle, have made, he didn’t pay it the slightest mind. Once again, the man demonstrated his legendary tunnel vision. Knowing exactly how many arrows Kia could produce in a minute, well, that wasn’t Bereth’s responsibility. Elzio was the support. That was Elzio’s job.

“Here, Bereth,” the Kia doppel said, handing the arrows over. As the quiver met his hand, the doppel planted Elzio’s ward deep within the bundle.

“How are you holding up?” Bereth asked as he hoisted it over his shoulder.

The Kia doppel just shrugged and dropped its gaze.

“Can’t believe the asshole went and betrayed us like that,” Bereth said, growl barely audible over the waterfall. “Always knew there was something up about him, but this?”

Again, Elzio had to fight the urge to try and fish for information. It would be more gossip than intel, and while Elzio loved gossip, this just wasn’t the time. Every second that passed was a second that the warded Bereth could be gathering vision across the map.

“Not now, Bereth.” Elzio leaned into the little quiver Kia’s voice always got when she was upset. “It’ll be up to the councilors, what happens to him after this…”

“He’ll be tried as a traitor. It’s what he deserves.” Bereth shrugged as he turned towards the exit. “I’m sure he’ll have a thing or two to say. I’m gonna need you to update my boots when you get a chance.”

“Right. Good luck out there.” Elzio wanted to scream at Bereth to go, so he could drop this doppel and focus on the next task, but Bereth took his time, ambling away. That was fine, it really was. Bereth would be heading towards where the minion buildup was happening, so the longer he took here, the more time Elzio had to prepare.

Which meant he had to prepare.

Nance has arrived on Southern Road, Echo said. She’s engaging with the minions there. No other heroes have shown.

So they hadn’t sent Peter to one of the roads thus far. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was information missing, which wasn’t good, but it did mean the boy hadn’t made it to the Northern Road, or at least hadn’t reached a point where he’d be spotted by one of Echo’s structures.

Finally Bereth’s footsteps receded enough that Elzio let the Kia doppel drop. According to the clock that blinked on his overlay, it had been three minutes since Kia’s death. The team still thought Elzio largely worked with summoning minions or other such creatures. Once Kia respawned, they would know Elzio dealt in doppelgangers, and then the entire nature of his ruses would need to change.

Elzio needed to take advantage of their ignorance.

According to the ward he’d planted on Bereth, the archer had gone north to deal with the Northern Road. It would take him a few minutes to make it up there, enough time for Elzio to summon a Nance doppel before Kia respawned and warned them that something was very wrong. Without cross-team coms, she would have to make it to the team, but if they checked their maps, they would see her running past their minions and structures. They would know something was up.

However, this gave Elzio time to get to the Northern Road to summon the Nance doppel. General, unbuffed vision gave a hero about a 30-foot range in moderate foliage, like a forest, so that’s how far Elzio had to stay from the road, until he found a dense patch of brush. Brush limited vision to only other entities in the brush, unless something with universal vision, like a minion or ward, entered it.

Elzio found a brush about 30 feet away from Bereth, which was sufficient for his teleport doppel spell. As soon as his mana reserves hit 455, he summoned a high-level Nance doppelganger and teleported her directly behind Bereth.

Nance’s kit revolved around a specific, high damage spell, Melting Magma. It was a powerful damage over time spell that grew hotter with subsequent spells. If Elzio could get off a full rotation, he could almost kill Bereth.

Almost. Even by his most optimistic calculations, it wouldn’t be enough.

Still, he didn’t have the time to make any changes to the plan here. He fired off the Nance doppel’s spells in quick succession. Level 3 Melting Magma lasted 15 seconds, and its damage doubled with every other fire spell the enemy was hit with. If three spells were cast on her foe, the spell timer reset back to 15 seconds, but keeping the empowered damage. It had the potential to be pretty brutal, but the reset rarely happened since all of Nance’s spells had cooldowns longer than 15 seconds. Elzio didn’t have the means to stack fire spells, lacking his own, so he just continued her rotation.

After Melting Magma spell came the resistence piercer, Lava Cracks, and then the burst, Firechain. Elzio always hated that the resistence piercer had to hit after the DOT spell. It was inefficient. It meant the early ticks of the DOT spell didn’t have the increased damage from the amormelt. It was a small nitpick but he’d always been annoyed with Nance for selecting her spells how she had. Nance’s reasoning was that her expertise was clearing large minion waves, which meant that multiple target spells, like Melting Magma, or area of effect spells, like Firechain, were more important to her kit anyway.

“Ow. Ow, Nance! Nance what the hell?” Bereth’s voice went from pained to confused to panic very quickly. “Not you too! How? How can you—how are you—”

In hindsight, it seemed obvious that Bereth would be particularly susceptible to the belief that Nance had betrayed them, since Elzio had as well. So Elzio leaned into that a little bit.

“You can join us too,” the Nance doppel said, dodging a wildly shot arrow. “Bereth. Come on. You know it’s the only sensical thing to do.”

“You would betray us all, betray Pyrthet.” His voice rose with anger to a bellowing roar. “Nance, I can’t fucking believe it. I can’t—What?”

From the glazed over look on Bereth’s eyes, Elzio could tell something on his display had caught his mind. Either it was Kia, racing from the base, or it was Nance, up in the north. Regardless of who he’d seen, he must have put two and two together: there were copies of heroes on the map.

“You’re not…” Bereth’s voice trailed off to a whisper. The whole time he’d zoned out, Elzio had resisted having the doppel shoot any basic attacks at him. Let him stay under his little trance of realization, while the doppel’s cooldowns dwindled. The last thing Elzio needed was to snap him out early.

Slowly, Bereth’s eyes narrowed in rage. Was he putting it together or was he just angry? It was hard for Elzio to tell, but his time here was about up. Bereth’s health was below half, but Elzio still didn’t have the cooldowns to finish the job.

Time for a diversion.

“I see you’ve discovered my ruse.” Elzio raised his voice from where he stayed hidden in the brush. Bereth to wheel around the clearing, eyes huge. “I suppose it stood to figure you’d piece it together eventually. It doesn’t really matter. I won this battle before you even stepped foot in the arena.”

“Elzio.” The word wasn’t particularly loud, and that, in a sense, made it the most menacing Elzio had ever heard Bereth sound. It was a hiss of pure disgust. “I should have known. You always kept your skills such a damn secret.”

The distraction had bought Elzio enough time. Just as Bereth’s eyes had locked on Elzio’s general location, the Nance doppel, amusingly forgotten by the archer, sprang to life, unleashing its rotation of spells a second time.

Bereth’s health had barely begun to regen over the past few seconds. He looked down at his flaming body, feeling his health points slowly burn away. He shot a well aimed arrow at the Nance doppel, but Elzio killed the spell a moment before impact, and the clone vanished in an instant.

“I’ll find you,” Bereth said. “Wherever you go, I’ll—urk.” Without another word, he stumbled to the ground before vanishing. Only the enchanted arrows remained. The enchanted arrows and Elzio’s first ward. As his eyes fell on the glimmering artifact, Elzio had another idea.

His statement ‘I won this battle before you even stepped foot in the arena’ had just been a time killer, something to distract Bereth while the doppel regained its spells. But what if there had been truth to it? More than just planning, what if Elzio had snuck a traitor into their midsts?

After all, weren’t they currently fighting with a near stranger?

Now Peter was, of course, not a traitor secretly working for Elzio. But it would be too easy to make him seem that way. Plant a ward on him, follow his every move, kill any ally he got close to but never hurt him. It would take maybe fifteen minutes before they decided he was their enemy. They’d tear their own team apart.

Echo he thought, a grin spreading across his face. I have a new idea.