More attacks came, and Zoe struggled to maintain [Empress in Time]. Each of the Chroma Viscera’s twisted techniques drained her Skein, but she had to hold out until her friends were safe.
Her cloak reflected.
Blasts and beams of force pinwheeled out the open doors. Hidden behind her cloak, Zoe couldn’t know if she struck enemies. She only knew that their barrage continued. A blast of horned flame pierced the cloak. It narrowly missed Zoe’s nose, but still, a wrenching pain stabbed deep into her soul. More attacks came. A blast of ice sliced through the cloak and into her thigh. She gritted her teeth as flesh and soul took damage. Pain warped her movements, and her Mirrored fingers stuttered. She almost dropped the Chroma Viscera Core as she pulled it from her pocket.
There would only be one chance at this.
The attacks continued as a silver glow filled her peripheral vision.
“We’re clear, Boss,” Anton said.
How long had it been? A couple of seconds? A minute? With a sigh, Zoe gripped the rainbow-hued core.
“Are they close?” she asked.
“They’re a dozen feet from the doorway. Blasting techniques and —”
A stray lightning bolt disintegrated Anton’s silver eye, but another raced toward her.
“They’re keeping their distance for now.”
Zoe gripped the coruscating jewel.
[Chroma Viscera Core: built as a hope for conquering the world, this shifting prism transmutes essence].
The oncoming attacks had a pattern, but even the brief intervals between bursts wouldn’t let her safely flee
“If I retreat now, they’ll have an open target, but I can’t keep up this defense forever.”
“What are you going to do?”
Heat bled from the core into her hand. Essence shifted and swirled beneath its prismatic faces. It was the opposite of the hunger gnawing at her stomach. The urge to devour essence, to level up and fill the pit yawning wider than the shadows at her back.
A pulsing harmony reached out to her as the core begged, just as her hunger begged, and Zoe — in her madness — gave.
“What are you doing with the core?” Anton asked.
In answer, Zoe threw back her cloak. She stood, exposed to the oncoming attacks. The core flashed with color as she linked it to her Skein. With a click inside her mind, it became a part of her. Her new organ pulsed a kaleidoscope as she opened the hunger of her soul.
[Level up! You are now Level 47]
[Please select an element to incorporate:]
* [Snow]
* [Stone]
* [Fire]
Myriad attacks lashed toward her: lightning, fire, blades of air and ice, seething darkness, darts of acid, more than even her Insight could see.
The Chroma Viscera Core twisted her hunger.
[Please select an element to incorporate]
* [Everything]
Time slowed as Zoe gripped the hope to conquer the world. Her fingers squeezed the crystal until it cracked. Fractures in the core opened like saw-toothed mouths and they sucked at the attacks with ravenous hunger.
Lightning, flames, wind, ice — the core unraveled the potent destruction and sucked the attacks into itself — Zoe’s soul puckered as it opened itself up to a level of the essence — and with the swiftness of a surgeon — of a madwoman — [Mind’s Eye Incision] locked the dilation wide open.
Energy poured into her like a flood into a desert.
The thing she called her soul — buried beneath layers of Skein and Flesh — gnawed at by chains — rippled by icy words dropped like lead into subterranean pools of the subconscious — opened like a flower.
She couldn’t see because she could see everything.
Skein flowed through the air in a chaotic dance that began with the barbed scythes of the Chroma Viscera and ended with the stolen core in her hands. The veins in her raised arm burned with rainbow color as her flesh sizzled and healed with equal speed. Techniques whirled around the openings of the core. Whirlpools of Skein. Anton’s eye was sucked into the cracked crystal artifact. The fractures continued growing as her Gluttony spread its lips wide and devoured the energy. The bottomless pit branded to her soul swelled. Was it possible this would be enough to satisfy her desire?
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
She reached into the core with her Willpower and braided the essence into streams. One poured into her soul, and the other into her technique as she transmuted cacophonous destruction into Time.
The attacks petered out. Slowed. Stopped.
The crystal glowed and sucked down the last emerald flame before it shattered. Tiny cubes bounced on the ground, the only sound in the sudden silence.
Mantis stood in the snow beyond the open doorway. They watched her with their inhuman expressions, as calm as unfired guns. Zoe grinned.
STATUS
Name: Zoe Chambers
Level: 47
Body: The Bell At The Center Of The World (Rank 4, Progress 7/10), Flesh of the Rabid Hound
ATTRIBUTES
Might: 140 (+20)
Vitality: 60 (+20)
Dexterity: 74 (+20)
Willpower: 139 (+20)
Insight: 68 (+20)
Skein: 481 (+100)
Free Points: 1
Titles: Intrepid, Lodestone, Quest Breaker, Glutton, True Believer, The Magnifying Glass, Mayor of Unnamed Town, Hellbreaker
Techniques: Our Hearts Toll As One, Empress In Time, Mind’s Eye Incision
She had one level, but she had devoured 100 Skein. Her parasite technique let her sustain the incorporation, and the core let her absorb everything she touched.
It wasn’t a surprise the core had shattered, she could feel stress fractures in her Skein. She wouldn’t have been surprised if she shattered as well, but she survived. With care, she closed the opening in her soul — the mouth that opened for a level up finally closed with a sigh, satiated at last.
Skein rustled in her ears like a hound slinking through tall grass.
“Boss?” came Anton’s voice from a new eye behind her. “We’ve found an exit to the polyp. I’ll lead the way.”
Zoe gazed down imperiously at the mantis. Her boots and gloves grew up her flesh until Mirror encased her entirely. The technique wove a skintight armor boasting gauntlets and boots. Spiked pauldrons adorned her shoulder and her mirrored cloak billowed behind her — intact.
Her fingertips itched with Time.
“Will you follow me?” she asked the Mantis.
“We are the Chroma Viscera and we serve the Queen.”
“I am your Queen.”
The power swelling in Zoe’s chest urged her words. Lent them an absolute confidence.
“We are the Chroma Viscera and we must purge blasphemy.”
Zoe grinned as she beckoned them up the stairs.
“Then come and give me your cores.”
The Chroma Viscera screeched as one and the other mantis charged. There were seven. Their bloated carapace at the seams with the still wriggling meal of their brethren’s souls. Wings blurred as they launched forward.
Zoe met them with joy. Her mirrors reflected gnashing mandibles as chains spun out from her wrists. A long Mirrored flail she whirled over her head as a bell formed at the tip. The flail crashed into a yellow-hued mantis as it approached the steps.
The mirrored bell crashed into the sulfuric thorax and shattered. Long Mirrored shards exploded out and sliced through Skein and armored flesh like tissue paper. A sound of breaking glass rang out as a portal formed in the mantis’s chest. Zoe spun her arm forward, and the flail followed. It crashed into another mantis and shattered a barbed scythe that dripped violet flames. Another portal formed around the bug as it limped away from the strike. A metallic scythe swiped toward her head, and Zoe stepped through the portal, chain swinging. All attacks aimed at her missed as she swung the flail around.
Voices warbled in the air. A choir of angels descended to witness the slaughter.
Viscera slid from Zoe’s Mirrored skin as she whipped the surrounding bugs to pieces. Thunderous peals rippled out as the bell smashed through scythes, legs, thorax, abdomen, and head. Slashes of pink portals winked as Zoe moved naturally down her body’s path. She struck down the last mantis as it charged toward the unprotected doors.
The warbling voices plucked at her skin.
She turned as light pulsed from behind. The Chroma Viscera glowed with a flash to equal Anton’s eyes, but the starkest white rather than silver. Their hideous, bloated silhouettes melted down into something human. Brilliant white outlines of nude women dropped to the ground like discarded mannequins. The light faded and three women stood there — abominations all. They were slender, and their translucent skin showed an abundance of pulsing organs. Heads cocked at angles as they examined the world through their new bodies. Someone had sewn their body parts with thick, ugly stitches connecting mismatched humans. Legs were different sizes, and each had four arms sprouting from the torso. Their faces were jigsaws.
Were they mantis first? Or human?
The transformed Chroma Viscera darted forward in a jerking, dancelike pattern like puppets bounced across the ground.
Each one of them had a smile stitched into their face. The lips peeled back to reveal perfect teeth.
“We are the Chroma Viscera and we rejoice.”
Their fingers burned with the radiance of Skien — twelve attacks headed her way.
Hounds split from Zoe’s body. Their footsteps were heavy on the snow as their hides glinted with a metallic sheen. Six hounds of steel darted toward the three women. Footsteps crunched ice, and they met. The Chroma Viscera spun like tops as the hounds leaped at them.
Zoe brought her chain around and lashed at one of the women’s feet. Air tolled as she wrapped ankles and hauled the woman aside. The Chroma Viscera bounced against the ground, unscathed, until three hounds fell on her. Iron fangs tore apart flesh and the Chroma Viscera shrieked. It struck at the hounds with fingers of glowing purple, but the fusion of New Flesh and Skein resisted the disruptive technique.
The first Chroma Viscera died as a hound tore out its throat. The heart followed, with arteries linked like sausages.
“Bring me the core,” Zoe whispered to the air, to the hounds, as she spun her flail into the next foe.
The remaining Chroma Viscera avoided the hounds with swift, jerking motions. Techniques fired and one hound fell to a barrage of ice and lightning. Zoe passed it and took the essence back into herself as she pursued the Chroma Viscera. The two transformed bugs led her away from the courthouse. Her hounds pursued, biting at feet, leaping like toothsome missiles. The Chroma Viscera led her on a merry chase out into the snow.
“Zoe!” one of Anton’s eyes zipped toward her. “We’re —”
An errant bolt of turbulent wind destroyed the silver orb. Zoe charged at the bug that fired. She swung her chain, and the bell peeled out pink mouths of destabilized space.
She needed to get to her friends, but she must settle this first.
A hound brought a glowing core in its mouth. Zoe took the jewel in one hand as her other drew the chain back overhead like a circus performer. She whipped the snow, and a crack tolled in space before her. Zoe darted through the portal.