I AM CERTAIN WE'LL MEET AGAIN!

With practiced agility, the duplicitous stranger easily avoids the Oriental halberd's silver arcs, yet Gilgamesh does not relent with his assault. After delivering another powerful lunge, the cretin impishly hooks the basket of foodstuffs over the weapon's blade and issues a sarcastic taunt, ”Oh, no, you have managed to swipe the food from me with your daring skill. Now eat your spoils, you donkey.”

”Silence!!” Gilgamesh roared, angrily snapping his spear to the side. This would launch the basket away from the pair of warriors, sending it tumbling down over the grand monument they both stood atop of and scattering its contents to the earth below like cherry blossoms in spring. All sense of hunger and joviality had been replaced with sheer, volcanic fury. 

Wasting no time, the enraged swordsman lunged for the fake Bartz again, performing a wild dance of cuts and slashes in a most obvious display of his malcontent for the latter's churlish behavior, feral but experienced. Go ahead and stand still, Gilgamesh thought, it will make your death swift and painless!

Who was this charlatan? What compelled him to believe with such unflinching certitude that they had ever met one another in the past? How could he possibly have an awareness of events that simply haven't occurred before? Under typical conditions, one could have easily wrote it off as Gilgamesh simply being a brainless buffoon, but something clearly wasn't adding up, and neither he nor this Bartz impersonator were sharp enough to have it all click into place yet.

The truth of the matter was rather simple: Gilgamesh had never seen this guy before. Or this 'Hildibrand' character, or this 'Lycoris' woman, or this 'Finnley' person. In fact, everything this japing juvenile had been attempting to insinuate never happened in the first place. It was like the both of them were trying to gaslight the other into believing a false narrative, except Gilgamesh was at a major disadvantage, because from his point of view, none of this ever happened.

It was a real wonder Gilgamesh hadn't been accused of being an impostor, as well.

Alexander Sorel ● AAAAAAAAA ● 348 words