Hob enters the Durrance with a mission.

[Evil Hobgoblin]

The doors to the Durrance of Nightmares parted silently around the gatekeep of Bast. Delirion was healing nicely so far. Soon, he would have the Empty Hood, and soon, he would undergo the Ceremony of the Blasted.

Soon, he would grip the gauntlet.

But today was not that day. Today, there was still training and study to be done.

Hob pulled the reclaimed Book of Anger from his sack and set it on the floor. He licked the dirt and filth off his right index finger and flipped through the pages to find the one about making illusions reality.

Taking several steps back, Hob lifted his right hand and it became a fist. Strands of power flowed around Hob, then he bent and twisted those strands together, and lashed out at the Book of Anger.

The book glowed bright red, and lashed out at Hob, sending him tumbling off his feet. His eyes rolled backward in his head, then rolled forward and the dwarf gingerly got to his feet.

Diametrically opposite Hob, across from the Book of Anger-

Was Hob.

The second dwarf got to his feet, grinning in the same gap-toothed fashion that Hob himself did. The image spoke, but it was some strange combination of sound, mental projection, and something else that Hob couldn't place.

" Ye've dared to attack the BOOK of ANGER, lad.
Ye must now learn CONSEqu ENCES!
Suffer! Be replaced! GO MAD!"

Hob simply stared cold-eyed at the illusory clone.

His test of self was now.

[Evil Hobgoblin]

Hob began to call upon the Force, holding up his right fist. The other Hob did the same, the Book of Anger burning a furious bright red as it fed its creation.

Twin bellows echoed about the Durrance as each began to attack the other.

Hob charged in, sweeping his long arms in front of him. The clone opted instead to take an aerial approach, leaping into the air and diving towards Hob with an extended glowing blue fist.

Knowing what the blue fist meant, Hob spread his arms wide and simply roared a challenge.

The fist connected with Hob's chest and Hob's head jerked forward with the whiplash. His eyes bulged, and his arms flung themselves about limply. The dwarf collapsed to the ground.

That kind of force was more than Hob had ever mustered.

The clone began to cackle, raising its fist for another strike.

[Evil Hobgoblin]

The clone Hob punched with all the strength it could muster.

As it punched, Hob grabbed the punching arm and pulled it to the side. The powered fist hit the ground of the Durrance hard, grinding into it it.

Hob grinned and swiped at his wide-eyed clone with a large, hairy hand.

The hit was a resounding one, jerking the clone's face to the side in disorientation.

Hob got into a crabwalking stance, then flipped himself over. With a neat hooking move, Hob had his clone beneath the arms using his feet. As Hob finished the flip, the clone was slammed into the ground.

It bounced away and lay still.

Then, both dwarves let out simultaneous roars and attacked each other again. Hob leapt at his opponent with swift, bounding motions while his opponent got up into a crabwalk stance like the one Hob had done earlier. The clone placed his feet directly into Hob's path and kicked outward, kangaroo style.

It would have caught Hob full in the chest.

One of the dwarf's leaps took him up and over the kick attempt and into his clone, tackling him to the ground.

The clone flopped onto the ground with the force of the tackle, then clapped its own massive hands around Hob's neck and began to squeeze.

[Evil Hobgoblin]

The clone's brute strength was quickly cutting off Hob's air supply.

The dwarf pulled his arms back, then swung them inward into a vicious double-punch. They connected on the clone's midsection- hard.

The clone howled in pain and Hob suddenly found himself tossed into the air. His graceful falling arc was interrupted just before he could hit the ground.

But Hob hadn't done the interrupting.

The clone was lying on the ground, left fist raised in a clutching motion. The fist began to close and Hob found himself being slowly crushed- another of his own tricks.

And if it was done like Hob would do it, then there was a way out.

Hob jerked and twisted in the air, eventually managing to get himself upside down. Both arms reached out for the ground, latching into cracks in the stone floor of the Durrance. Hob pulled with all his strength.

The dwarf slid free of the vice grip, tumbling and hitting his head on the ground.

His clone howled, and Hob could feel the invisible fist attempting to grip him again, this time from below so there would be no escape. Hob cartwheeled away from the grip, narrowly escaping its deadly force yet again.

Hob made a quick mental note to improve his grip technique. Perhaps adjusting the fist projection into a spherically-shaped force would be less easy to escape.

Roaring again, Hob slammed his fists into the ground and gestured with his hands in a 'bring it on' act.

The clone snarled, something Hob rarely did. It made several sweeping motions with its left fist.

Hob suddenly found himself on the ground.

More large rocks like the one that had swept Hob's feet out from under him swept towards him, their size easily enough to crush the dwarf's head into paste on the Durrance floor.

[Evil Hobgoblin]

Hob's arms flexed, and he moved through a crabwalk stance straight to a handstand, and from the handstand a short push sent Hob into the air.

As one of the lethal rocks swept towards him, Hob caught hold of it and pushed up again, remaining in the air. Two more rocks shot at him from different angles, and Hob caught one in his hand, swinging under it and shoving off the second one with his feet.

Another boulder sped at Hob, this one larger than the rest. Faux Hob was attempting to take him down with whatever means necessary.

Hob reared his arms back, then swung them forward and caught the top of the boulder as it neared him. With a neat leapfrogging motion, Hob was over and past the deadly projectile and heading for the ground.

He landed, sensing right away that something was amiss. The clone's power was at work in some way.

"Graaaaaaahhhhhh!" the clone shouted, pure rage boiling from him.

And then the square floor stone beneath Hob cracked away from the others and lifted upwards. Hob just stood on it, amused.

Without warning, the tile reversed itself, swinging around so that Hob was beneath it. Without purchase, Hob began to freefall towards the hole in the ground where the floor tile had been. His head jerked upwards as he began his fall and he could see that the tile was also falling, but just out of his reach.

That hole could easily become his grave.

[Evil Hobgoblin]

Time was in short supply, but there was enough of it to accomplish what Hob wanted to do.

Hob spread-eagled his limbs, slowing his fall. Split seconds later, the floor tile was within reach of Hob's long arms. He gripped it, then swung his body up, alongside the falling tile, and then away from it. Hob spun in the air and his feet hit the ground at the same time the floor tile fell back into place, adding to the thudding echo that reverberated about the Durrance.

The dwarf looked up at the sky. Despite the swift nature of the battle, a half hour had nearly passed. Hob grinned at his opponent. Both of them knew what happened at the half hour mark.

The clone roared and charged at Hob, who similarly shouted a war cry. Huge fists swung at Hob, who caught them with his own hands and batted them aside. Hob lashed out with his own punches, one of which scored on the clone, who screamed in desperate fury.

The two simian dwarves tore into each other, turning horrid slams into graceful cartwheels and taking hits that would have felled Endor redwoods and human beings alike. The minutes slipped by, Hob's gap-toothed grin growing wider with each sliding second.

His pride equated to inattention for a split second, and the illusion took advantage, catching Hob with a fierce uppercut. Hob spiraled into the air and suddenly stopped moving. Pressure was forming around him- pressure that was in a spherical shape and slowly contracting to crush him.

But Hob would not be crushed. He punched at the sphere of pressure.

The pressure faltered for a moment. Hob continued to pound and slam on the sphere like a raging beast attempting to free itself.

It worked. The pressure sphere fell away and Hob began to drop to the floor, the clone Hob clutching his head in apparent pain.

The technique would obviously require adaptation before Hob could make good use of it.

The clone's head shot up, eyes blazing and left fist clenched. Hob's fall suddenly stopped, and he could feel a pressure wave building in front of him similar to the one Rama Sha had used in his attack on Bast. The dwarf's eyes widened in surprise as he was suddenly and abruptly blown backwards. He crashed into one of the pillars of the Durrance at full force, leaving a cracked imprint in the side of it.

Hob tilted and fell to the floor, landing on his hands and knees.

Then, he saw the length of the pillar's shadow and began to laugh.

[Evil Hobgoblin]

The real Hob stood and flung his arms out wide, beginning to harness the Force as he had refrained from doing so far. He had taken half an hour of punishment from the clone, and now it was his turn to attack.

The Dark Side boiled and churned within Hob, and he began to work with the pressures in the air around the Durrance. On each side of the arena, two poles of power built on themselves. Hob lowered his arms and the power released itself in the form of two weak pressure waves that would hit the clone with the force of brick walls.

The clone Hob bunched itself up wrenched at the Dark Side. The air around it seemed to twist into threads and encircle the clone in a protective way. When Hob's attack hit the clone's defenses, the power behind the waves seemed to bend and twist itself into the protective channels of air.

Hob had a sudden intuitive flash. The clone meant to combine the power of both pressure waves and release it upon Hob himself. That could not be allowed to happen.

Above the clone, Hob could sense high air pressure flowing into a growing sphere. The clone itself was protected by a layer of intensely high pressured air that had been forced away from the clone's body, causing a low pressure air mass to be present around the clone.

The clone finished channeling the force of Hob's pressure attack and released the binding forces on it with a sick grin.

The grin suddenly vanished as the clone realized that there was a crack in its' carefully formed defenses. High pressure sought low pressure and in the process flattened the clone into the ground.

[Evil Hobgoblin]

The clone got up on shaky feet, matted hair swinging with dizziness. Hob's light and subtle misdirection of the clone's attack had caught it off guard and momentarily stunned it.

The Force formed around the clone's neck and suddenly altered itself to become a choking grip. The clone's hands shot up to tug and pull at the invisible noose, but the small target area made it easier for Hob to concentrate on keeping it intact. The crushing process accelerated as Hob forced it along, lifting the clone into the air simultaneously.

The clone's fist glowed, then swatted at the air. Hob was hit from behind with one of the rocks he'd been attacked with earlier. His concentration broke and he stumbled forward, catching himself on his knuckles.

The clone fell the short distance it had been lifted and hit the ground again.

[Evil Hobgoblin]

The clone bounced off the ground.

Then, the clone's body suddenly lifted itself up higher.

Hob made a swift, hammering motion with his right fist and the clone slammed into the ground again, the rebound taking it up into the air where Hob's telekinetic fists caught it. Once again, the clone raised into the air, much higher than either of the previous times. Higher than the walls of the Durrance, right up to the ceiling.

Then Hob let the clone drop. The body picked up speed, becoming windburned as it fell towards the ground.

And then, the clone's descent slowed and stopped.

The doppleganger cackled in triumph. Hob could feel energy gathering around its' body. He could feel the energy warping and twisting in a way that he'd never seen before.

And then black tendrils whipped from the clone's fingers like living vines, seeking Hob. It took no imagination to know what would happen if Hob were to become ensnared in those strands of the Force.

Hob leapt into the air and landed to one side, narrowly avoiding the area where the Dark Side Web contacted the ground.

The floor stone it touched suddenly crumbled to dust, aged prematurely by the abrupt loss of the energy that held it together.

Hob stared at the stone, then stared at the cackling clone.

[Evil Hobgoblin]

The tendrils swept to the right, continuing to chase Hob. The dwarf began to flee in consternation, circling the clone and hammering into the floor tiles with bounding leaps.

The clone continued to cackle, its' voice turning into a high, shrill keening laugh. It held the method to acquire the ultimate victory, and it knew.

Hob could see stones behind him literally dissolving as the webbed black tendrils chased their prey. Hob used the Force to sense the tendrils, and try to understand what they were and how they did what they did.

At first, Hob could sense nothing, but then he edged his mental presence away from the immediate vicinity of the tendrils and was able to realize what they were doing. Whatever the tendrils touched, be it air, or stone, or attacks of the Force, they drew it inside themselves and transferred the power to the clone Hob. That made them especially difficult to examine precisely. Whatever technique the clone was using, Hob could not learn it without tutelige or-

Hob shook his head and stopped. He drew back his fist and punched the air, sending out a powerful projected attack. It caught the clone full in the upper body, sending it tumbling to the floor.

The black tendrils did not disappear. The clone Hob was able to keep us his concentration, and as he fell, those tendrils swung and latched on to Hob's limbs.

It was as if Hob had suddenly been paralyzed. The Force in and around him was being pulled away through curiously shaped, circular channels that looped back on themselves. Weakness was setting in.

Hob attempted to draw upon the Force, but could feel his power being sucked away as soon as he tried to call on it. Hob began to twist and writhe his body in a vain attempt to free himself, but the tendrils would not let go. They would draw the energy out of him as they had the stones of the Durrance floor.

[Evil Hobgoblin]

Hob dropped to the floor of the Durrance on his hands and knees. He had one chance to make use of in the time that was left him. One chance to make good his escape.

It was true that the Dark Side Web drained the energy out of its' target. But if Hob could momentarily change the target- make the Dark Side Web seek something other than himself...

It was better Hob act than think.

The range Hob could affect was limited, so instead of sending the tendrils back at his foe, he worked to push them into the floor. The stone tile beneath his feet resisted his effort-

And then suddenly it crumbled and Hob fell into the gap it had left behind.

The tendrils had vanished from around Hob's arms and legs after he had fallen out of sight.

It had worked.

Hob lay in the dust of the stone tile, gradually gathering strength for what would inevitably be his final attack. If it succeeded, he would hold twice the power he had now. If it failed, Hob as the Black Hand had known would cease to exist.

Clone Hob peered over the edge into the hole and real Hob released his final attack.

A thick beam of black light leapt out at clone Hob. It was nowhere near as supple or as quick as the ones that had drained Hob earlier, but it was a Dark Side Web and would succeed in its' purpose.

Clone Hob spotted the attack and leapt into the air, clearing the gap with a shriek. Hob's attack met with the giant floor stone next to him and sucked it dry of energy in an instant. Hob was then pulling on the web, swivelling it to chase his adversary. The black light hit the floor tile to Hob's left and dried it to dust.

Clone Hob fell into the space where the tile had been. The black light wrapped itself around him, and he roared in challenge, staggering backwards into another tile. Hob's Dark Side Web coalesced around both targets and Hob struggled to hold the draining flow around his adversary.

At first, neither Hob seemed to gain anything, although Clone Hob was less drained going into the contest of wills. Black light suddenly swallowed both the clone and the floor stone as real Hob gained an advantage.

And then it was over.

The light that had clone Hob on the ropes was momentarily overcome by its target, but it was too little, too late. Real Hob had restricted the focus of his Web to target only the clone, and bereft of power the clone could not fight back. It writhed and screamed in agony as its' life Force, memory, and essence was drained away into the victorious Hobgoblin.

The sunlight in the Durrance indicated that an hour had passed.

Within Hobgoblin, new power surged and strained against his small form, then fell inside the flow of his energies.

The foe was subdued.

Hob stood and walked over to the Book of Anger, which was now no longer red, but passive purple. He took hold of the Book, then left the Durrance.

The echoes of his cackling was all that remained.