The alley collapsed inwards like the falling Red Sea. Zoe and her friends bolted for the exit as sloshing bricks and mortar crashed toward them. Oriz, with Bella on her back, exited the alleyway first — her feet skipping across puddles with barely a whisper of a ripple in her wake.

Zoe followed behind, her powerful strides sending shockwaves through the ground.

But her friends fell behind.

Before Zoe reached the edge of the alleyway, she turned. Anton and Skidmark were gaining, but they could not outrun gravity. Zoe wasn’t sure if it was her heightened Insight, or a remnant of activating [Empress in Time] — the question died in the half second it formed. She reached for the drop of Time essence she had collected and froze the falling debris.

The collapsing bricks paused their descent. Her friends kept running. The strain of the technique was lessened now she no longer had the Black Star attached to her. Zoe wondered about the source of her power. Each system fed from the battery and she was the one who suffered. Before time could return to normal, Zoe bounded forward. Moth knew what she wanted as she moved. Her Mirrored cloak spread out like a parachute above the heads of her fleeing friends. Zoe stood tall as Anton and Skidmark ducked past her.

The collapsing building struck the raised shield of Zoe’s cloak. Impact shuddered through her. Her knees bent, her back felt the strain, and her arm ached from upholding the cloak, but the Mirrored technique reflected each piece of rubble. They blasted away from her as her skein dipped, but not too much. She was no longer so frail that a falling building could take her out.

A grin grew, and she laughed as the last bricks bounced away from her cloak. Her friends waited in the street. Expressions of concern, of awe on their faces. She rejoined them and they continued running.

“Thanks,” Anton said to Zoe.

“So, you still think this is a normal storm?”

“I only said it had no Skein.”

“You said it was normal,” Skidmark said. “You were smug about it.”

“I wasn’t smug!”

“I don’t know…”

Zoe laughed. The rain dripped through her hair and slid off her mirrored gloves. It seemed to ignore the Skein of her techniques, just as Anton ignored Skidmark’s teasing — though Zoe wondered if there were long-term consequences to this storm’s exposure.

Black rain fell like soft lead upon the town. Each drop shattered roofing tiles, broke windows, and burned through bricks. Hissing steam rose to the corpulent sky. Zoe and her friends ran. Their steps slipped as the ground turned to muck beneath their feet with a sound like hissing vipers. Chunks of ice floated on syrupy black puddles of liquified sidewalk.

Zoe darted to catch up to Oriz. Only the alien woman had any sense of destination. She led them as they ran. They kept to the main roads as alleys continued collapsing in on themselves.

“We can’t stop the rain,” Zoe said to Oriz. “But if the storm keeps up, it will eat the island into nothing.”

“You think there’s that much spite in the last gasp of a parasite?”

“You clearly do.”

Oriz nodded as they turned a corner. Ahead of them lay a street full of abandoned cars. The rooftops had disintegrated, and the tires melted.

Zoe grabbed Oriz’s shoulder.

“Wait for the others.”

“They’re too slow.”

“Where are you going?”

“Anton mentioned a bunker under the Polyp.”

“Right, the demonic summon that gave him the quest.”

A silver eye floated up to them, bobbing as it avoided the rain.

“I still have the quest,” he said.

“Which means the demon is still alive,” Oriz added. “So the safe room it guards remains intact. If we can secure the polyp and the safe room, then there’s a chance we can survive the storm.”

“You think we can survive this?” Zoe asked.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“There’s a chance.”

Zoe nodded. She wasn’t ready to accept her death, and Oriz’s plan was as good as any Zoe could come up with.

“Then we go to the polyp.”

The town continued melting around them. Rain poured, and the dissolving was gradual, but the scale of it was shocking. Where before they ran, now they waded. The flowing black waters, churning with liquified stone, flowed through the streets, a flood cycling endlessly, sweeping away corpses of humans and bugs. Zoe and her friends climbed up to avoid the thirsty waters. The houses became islands of walls and they leaped between them. Zoe felt a thrum through her Mirrored boots and gloves.

“Yes,” she whispered as she sailed through the air. “I remember the swamp.”

They encountered a living mantis as they neared the town’s heart.

A shrieking mantis of bright green leaped out of the sloshing water. Its claws glowed with intricate runes. It had no chance to activate its technique. Zoe’s gloves became Mirrored claws. Light danced off the bladed tips, a virulent green as she swept toward the charging bug. It had seventeen wings. It was powerful, but nothing compared to her.

[Mind’s Eye Incision] empowered her attacks. Psychic blades extended from the tips of her claws as smoothly as a cat’s. She tore into the bright green carapace. Skein snapped at the brush of her bladed strike. The runic technique vanished and the barbed claws twitched at their lack of power. In that moment of strumming cords, she felt the mantis’s harmony, and she willed it to collapse. A pink portal sparked in the mantis’s chest like guttering fire. It screeched as its thorax collapsed, and then even sound could not escape its fate.

It sunk as the rushing tide swept it away. Zoe felt the eyes of her friends on her back.

“That was impressive,” Anton said.

“The chains were holding me back,” Zoe replied.

None of them had mentioned the lack of the Black Star. Perhaps they saw its portal in the distance — she knew Anton’s Insight let him observe it — and remained silent. This wasn’t the time for questions, but all the same, she let out a sigh.

“The Black Star betrayed me,” she said, and couldn’t hide the growl in her voice. “If I find it, I will destroy it, but for now,” she flexed her clawed glove of Mirror. “For now, it’s passing is a blessing. Let’s continue.”

More mantis attacked as they drew near. Mobs of them with few wings between them, still light enough to fly — fire and wind and lightning techniques spitting from their multicolored blades. Zoe and her friends destroyed them all. Anton gained a level as they drew close to the courthouse at the center of town.

The rain darkened the air and drew a veil across the distance, and so it wasn’t until they reached the spot where the flood stopped that she saw what awaited. Black, noxious waters lapped up against the side of a magnificent dome of ice. It was as though a snow globe captured the town’s heart. Golden light played upon the inside, though the thick walls were too frosted over to reveal anything inside.

Zoe stood atop the wall of a three-story building. It had once been a bank, and then a shopfront with apartments above. Now the plaster and red brick dribbled down the sides like hot wax. She adjusted her footing as her friends joined her on the edge.

“The Mantis Queen must be inside,” Zoe said redundantly. She chewed her lip. “It seems she’s powerful enough to hold back the storm.”

Oriz stood poised and graceful as she adjusted the cocoon on her back.

“For now,” She added. “There’s no telling how long she can hold up a technique like that, or what it cost her.”

Skidmark made a face. Her hair was slick on her face from the constant black rain.

“So she’s weak and vulnerable… or too powerful for us to face?”

“She’s not too powerful,” Zoe said with certainty.

“You don’t know that.”

Zoe shrugged. She felt an itch building beneath her muscles. Her hounds wished to be let loose.

“I’m happy to find out.”

Anton’s eyes danced around the dome of ice. It was as large as a city block and almost 30 stories tall. Only the falling rain hid it from sight, but now it dominated the sky.

“It would have to be thick,” Skidmark said. “For it to be strong enough to sustain itself.”

“Unless she’s pumping Skein into it at a constant rate,” Oriz observed.

“How much Skein can one creature have?”

“Monsters are built differently,” Oriz said, her eyes glancing at Zoe as she spoke. “They are a challenge for those who would take the system’s power for themselves. Often they grow, but more often they have certain… advantages.”

“Something you want to say?” Zoe whispered so softly only Oriz could hear above the falling rain.

Their eyes met, but neither moved.

“Can you cut through it?” Anton asked Oriz. “the same attack you used on the boss in the dungeon?”

Oriz squinted at the dome.

“That attack took a lot out of me.”

“You’re healed now.”

Oriz dipped her head to acknowledge his point.

“I’ll try, but if she is maintaining the technique, the opening I create might not last long. Everyone will have to be ready to enter.”

“We’re ready,” Zoe said.

Oriz adjusted the weight on her back before she sighed. The grass straps that kept the cocoon on her back unraveled. She held out the cocoon containing Bella and offered it to Zoe.

“Would you carry her?” Oriz asked. “I need to be free to complete the perfect strike.”

“Of course.”

The bundle was lighter than it should have been. Though it outlined Bella’s body like a spider outlines a fly, there was a disconnect between what she held and how it felt. Black water beaded on the surface and ran down the edges. The cocoon was rough and soft against Zoe’s palms in equal measure, a strange echo of feedback through her Mirrored skin not unlike the touch of the chains.

She held her injured friend, while Oriz prepared her perfect strike.

A sword of grass lengthened in the alien woman’s hands as she adjusted her stance on the crumbling wall. It happened in a moment too fast to follow. A beam of rainbow light. Of nothing. For a moment, the rain stopped. A crack like thunder rang out as the dome of ice split in a hairline fracture. Golden sunlight spilled out from within.

The black drops resumed as Oriz took Bella from Zoe’s hands.

“Let’s go.”

They leaped from the wall, and it collapsed after them. Bricks rained down with the droplets and crashed into the dark flood. Zoe hopped across piles of bricks, and floating truck beds, and reached the dome of ice. The rent in the side ran up the entire length. Already, new ice crystals formed along the edges as the gash scabbed over. She couldn’t see beyond the golden light of the polyp, but she sensed danger and fear.

The polyp was afraid, and it called for help. She leaped inside the dome and it closed after her.