-it's disorienting, finding himself in this place. Jordar looks around, and there are the others, each at their own little window looking out on reality. He's- missing pieces, he realizes. His mother- almost all of her, not just the face or the name but all of it. He doesn't remember half of what he learned at school, and that's not just the years that have passed clouding his memory. He's forgotten things- parts of his life, bits of knowledge that he should have. Still, it's almost automatic to call out to the others.

"Is everyone alright?"

He sounds more confident than he feels.

"Everyone sound off," barks Commander Vonn's voice.

He's staring ahead at the 'window', through which he can see- himself. He watches, eyes tracking every movement.

"M.S. Gerlu reporting." The response is essentially automatic.

As Hazgiar comes to his bearings on the dimension they've ended up in, he notices that there's something subtly off about his eerie. He attempts to focus his intuition on Commander Vonn, to get a better idea of how off the rails things have gone, only to find himself transported from his own patch of light to the commander's.

"That's new." He mutters.

Commander Vonn whirls around, brow furrowing.

"-you're not-"

He looks back to his window. Through it, Gerlu can see - another Gerlu, talking to another Vonn.

"M. S. Boyad," intones another of their party. He joins them within a few seconds of speaking, staring at Gerlu intensely.

"Something wrong with my intuition. Or, something's replaced it. Has anyone else noticed any changes, mentally? We might be dealing with some manner of psychic phenomenon on top of this dimensional displacement."

Hazgiar never invested much training in his intuition. Powerful psychics draw the bad kind of attention, and even if he's sometimes wondered what it would be like to be that special. But, whatever this new thing is, it's more facile than the intuition ever was. He can already feel that there's more to it than just...teleporting between windows, or whatever he just did. Something in particular feels sort of, complementary, though he can't place his finger just on how. He experimentally pushes outwards with the intuition, a simultaneously alien and intuitive mental action.

"Hey guys? I don't think he's-"

"We noticed," Vonn says curtly.

"M.S. Gerlu, you've been replaced by your reflection. This is the overshadow. We aren't quite the same people you knew, but we're going to do our best to help. If you'll look outside this mirror here, you'll see some of what I mean."

Especially because there's no chance they can make it out there, not with how many chunks he's missing from his - from his illuminator's- life.

Nothing comes of the flounder with his intuition, though he thinks he might have come close to something.

Regardless, he follows orders (Are they orders? Might as well.) and takes a closer look through the window, or mirror apparently, and sure enough he finds a view of the campsite, including the crew...and himself, or his reflection? Thinking about the angle he's viewing the scene from, he thinks this mirror must be part of the sandship's keel.

He sighs, before turning back to Commander Vonn. "So, what are we going to do?"

"We're going to tell you what's happening, because our mission has changed.

We're not your team- they're out there. We're their reflections. It's a phenomenon of this place- the overshadow. We're made the first time someone looks into a reflective surface.

Are you with me so far?"

"I am, though...Hm. This must be related to the comet, or else an enormous coincidence. Do you have their memories? This isn't the first time any of us have looked into a mirror before."

Nod.

"I don't know what it is about the comet, but it's somehow connected to the place it came from. I have- some of the other Vonn's memories, and I have memories of what this place is and how it works.

Reflections usually want to get out. Overshadow's a hard place to survive in. We don't have the memories we'd need to make it, out there."

Left unstated: otherwise, they would have already replaced their counterparts.

"Vonn, there's something out there."

He can hear growls approaching.

Gerlu's got at least one more question about how this whole reflection thing works, but hostiles take priority. He grabs his sidearm and pivots, covering any angle that Jordar and Vonn don't.

They're not quite black- they look like they might have lighter greys underneath the swirling darkness that cloaks them. When they jump, their four legs briefly become visible. The shadows form into spikes along the spine, claws on the hands, and fangs where a mouth might be. There are two creatures, just outside Jordar's little alcove of light. One of them howls, and another jumps to strike Jordar.

Vonn and Gerlu both line up their shots, but it's Boyaz who finds a clear one.

The howl is worrying, though.

"It's signaling more of them," he guesses. "We need to move."

Gerlu can only look between his pseudo-crew mates briefly, not looking away from the evidently monster-infested darkness for too long. “Where do we go? There aren’t any mirrors or the like anywhere even vaguely near here.”

"-it'll be easier if you can do it. Have you noticed anything where you intuition used to be? Anything that you can flex, that might affect the darkness?"

As Vonn says this, his left arm turns into an insectoid pincer that grabs one of the shadow-creature's legs to hold it still.

Boyad shoots this creature as well, and closes his eyes.

“Something about it changed, focusing on you did the teleporting thing earlier.”

He’ll definitely try focusing his intuition on the beasts now. He wouldn’t have expected it to do much before, maybe whatever’s changed will be helpful here and now?

Whatever has taken root in him has someting to do with the darkness- he could obscure himself and the others, or he could blind the darkness-creatures that are coming after them.

But the rest of what he could do- he could use the rest of this space- the greys, the areas where the darkness meets the light of the mirrors. He can bend and twist it around him into new forms. He could give it shape, turning these shadows into weapons or armor.

Several of those things definitely sound helpful! First, he'll attempt to steal away the creatures' sight, and begin to move away from where they last him and his compatriots. Once the creatures are a bit further away, he'll try and sculpt the grey into spikes or blades or anything else reasonably dangerous to try and keep the creatures from following.

It's as smooth as manipulating his arms and legs is. Now that he knows what it feels like from the inside, it is more obvious that the others have been doing the same thing- at least, with the greys. They don't seem to be able to do anything with the darkness.

"Alright. Take my hand. We're blowing this joint."

Gerlu promptly takes the not-commander's hand.