Traveling through her portal was the most pleasant experience Zoe ever had. Velvet slipped over her, and space folded, light slipped, pink, white, blue and she laughed as she exited the portal in an abomination of birth.

Zoe exploded out from a mantis’s chest. Her Skein dropped a little at the exertion of her Willpower over the mantis, but she had teleported! The fruition of her body path had finally come. Mantis surrounded her, and she couldn’t be happier.

A Chroma Viscera spun at her. The patchwork woman twisted with rage, her rolling joints moving oddly as her stitched mouth opened wide.

“We are the Chroma Viscera and we —”

[Mind’s Eye Incision]

Zoe grinned as she thrust the blade of her hand into that open mouth. Psychic blades disassembled Skein, and white light flashed as the humanoid head reverted to a mantis. The creature shrieked as Zoe wrenched the skull from the neck. Bright pink blood burst out like a broken fountain. Flames spun out from the four human hands as they went limp. Zoe stepped out of the inferno unscathed, her heart singing with the joy of battle, there was only one Chroma Viscera left and her hounds had it cornered against the brick wall of a shop.

The creature leaped up onto the wall and crawled onto the snow-covered roof. Zoe jumped after. A sheet of ice slid away from her landing, but she was already running. The shops formed a multistory ring around the courthouse in the center of the town square. The Chroma Viscera ran along the perimeter as Zoe pursued. As she ran she spied the fenced-in gardens — the polyp wasn’t visible behind the overgrown vegetation leaning against the flimsy fence.

Her hounds kept pace on the ground. The Chroma Viscera fired a technique over her shoulder, but Zoe effortlessly dodged.

It had been so hard to fight the first one, and that had only been yesterday. Now, with the power coursing inside her, she was a different person altogether. The Black Star chains no longer dragged her down — though the Mirrored chains felt like a bandaid on an open wound — and she was in tune with her Body Path and New Flesh in a way she didn’t know possible.

This wasn’t a fight, this was a joy, and she only wished her friends were here to see her power.

Zoe chased after a fleeing mantis on the rooftops. It had taken the form of a human, and the alien expression of fear tore at the stitches around its mouth. Zoe flung her bell-tipped flail ahead and shattered ice in the Chroma Viscera’s path. Snow exploded out as Zoe played with the harmonics. The frozen rooftop shattered and the Chroma Viscera went flying.

Zoe followed it through the air. Her flail wrapped around her fist. The Bell became a glove of gleaming Mirror. Lightning coursed toward her, and she gritted her teeth as the attack found a home in her flesh. She tasted ozone, but lightning couldn’t stop her momentum, and Zoe’s flying punch found the creature’s nose.

It shot down into the ground with a clap of thunder. Bricks exploded up and dust cascaded in the golden light of the gardens. Her hounds circled the crater, snarling, and Zoe alighted amongst them. The smell of masonry clung to the frigid air.

She glanced at the pitiful wreck of a creature in the crater's base. Its flesh glowed, half human, half mantis, and blood of pink and black ran in puddles around its broken body. Zoe stepped down to extract the core that pulsed in its chest.

The weak bubbling of blood from its mouth almost sounded like laughter, and as Zoe got close, she heard what it whispered.

“I am the Chroma Viscera and I am a distraction.”

Zoe’s blood ran cold — fear and death energy braiding through her veins — where were her friends?

She looked around for one of Anton’s eyes. None were in sight. Her hounds panted in the silence of the golden light. One of the Mantis at the base of the stairs cracked, and a soul burst up from its carapace like a white flower. The screeching began, and the high-pitched sound needled Zoe’s ears. One by one the other mantis released their souls. Zoe’s teeth went on edge as their pale glow replaced the golden light from the gardens. Her friends were inside the courthouse, that was what they said… she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember… the last few minutes were so blurry and the power she stole screamed at her to keep going. Who cared about friends when she could crush her enemies with such ease? No, she needed this power for the sake of friends. Were friends merely weakness and weight to drag at her? Binding chains with links of impenetrable love? Her hounds nudged at her, snuffling, and she pocketed the three cores to rub their ears.

She had to move.

Snow exploded as she raced toward the open courthouse doors. Past the screaming marionette mantis souls — let them summon reinforcements, she would crush them all — and into the dark, crypt-like space beyond. Cold pressed upon her, and the light from the doorways swiftly faded. Which way were her friends? A pale hound raced ahead of her and sniffed out the way. She followed the sound of iron footsteps on cold tiles.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Anton!”

Mocking echoes bounced off the hard walls of bureaucracy. Offices extended away in the courthouse, stairs, halls, a dark space extending away from her — fear shifting dimensions until her speed was as nothing.

A smell filled her nostrils — salt — as though the ocean waves lapped just beyond the walls darker than black. With a frustrated roar, Zoe lowered her shoulder and charged through the wall.

Light filled her eyes. The weak light of guttering candles. Diseased and yellow as the smell of burning wax. Sister Salt lay on her bed, a sliver of light surrounded by soft velvet shadows. Thrown back blankets revealed a bandage-wrapped body. The old dressings had soaked in sweat, dark pus, and blood. How long had the woman lain abandoned? Lidded, all-seeing eyes tracked Zoe and the hounds padding their way into the room.

The smell of singed decay filled Zoe’s nose, and she fought at the bile rising in her throat.

At least that was some proof she remained human underneath all the —

“Changes,” said a darkly seductive female voice. “So many changes, I hardly recognize myself in you.”

The voice came from behind her, breath across her back, familiar as a lover in a drunken haze, and Zoe turned —

She screamed.

Pain thrashed at her mind, and her dogs whimpered. Her mind tucked inside herself as her hounds placed their tails between their legs. All of them whimpered, the sound rising from her throat as she fell to her knees.

“You mustn’t look,” chided the voice as soft as mother’s lullaby.

“You mustn’t touch. You mustn’t know. Simply, believe.”

Blood ran down her cheeks. Zoe wiped at them. Her eyes felt like open wounds. She blinked, and the hazy room returned, that shallow pool of candlelight in the dark, Sister Salt continued watching, but something rippled in the darkness behind, and long fingers stretched across the wounded woman’s shoulders.

“Who are you?” Zoe asked.

“You know who I am.”

“The Witch.”

[Yes]

The word filled her mind and soothed her soul. All her aches faded like creases steamed from a sheet. Zoe sighed, and then the word slipped from within her and the pain of existence returned. She sobbed, and only the force of her Willpower stopped her from begging.

“Don’t worry,” the Witch said with delightful laughter. “We are not done speaking.”

The dark fingers stroked Sister Salt’s shoulders, and the burned woman groaned. A smile hovered in the dark as bright and ancient as a partial eclipse.

“Where are my friends?” Zoe asked.

“I don’t care about your friends.”

“What do you care about?”

[You]

Zoe moaned as the word rolled down her spine. She lay at the center of the universe. All bowed to her, raised her, worshipped her and —

It faded, and she shivered.

“Stop… stop doing that.”

[Make me]

Zoe snarled, and her Willpower flexed. Her soul surged in the dark room and the candlelight flickered. She felt herself rising, titanic, and unbreakable expression of human resistance and —

She lay flat on the ground before she realized something flattened her. There was no ceiling to the room, only darkness, but that darkness moved and flowed like the robe of a woman. In the silhouette, blacker than shadow, Zoe spied something like legs, they straddled Zoe as she squirmed beneath something like toes — something like, but not — the darkness soared up and the lights of the room vanished as Zoe tried to take in all that had crushed her — at the top of the darkness she saw a face and —

“No! Oh God please help —”

Blood vomited from her mouth. Her eyes pooled with sanguine tears. The sound of her retching silenced as her ears bled. An oozing layer formed on her pores as every aspect of her rejected that glance of the face above. She had thought the angels were monstrous — sublime — to behold, but they were nothing compared to —

[Nothing compares to the lover in the dark, sweet child]

The hedonistic words swept away the blood like warm water washes lathered soap. Zoe sucked in a breath of air, and it tasted of the sickness of the dying woman, but at least her mouth wasn’t full of blood. She lay on the floor with aching muscles. The memory of that cosmic boot upon her soul still echoed. She could feel the pressure cracking at her bones and muscles, enough to tell her that more — infinitely more — could be applied without effort.

She was a bug beneath a boot, no matter how many mantises she could destroy.

“What do you want?”

Self-indulgence filled the room like cheap perfume.

“I want everything, little one, it’s the only reason I exist,” and the Witch laughed like a finger trailing Zoe’s spine. “But I suppose what you really mean is… what do I want with you?”

“Will you tell me? I don’t like these games.”

[The games are for the players, not the pieces]

Zoe struggled to sit up. No pressure remained, but the echo was more than enough to make her muscles flinch before they flexed. She looked around. Sister Salt gazed at her. The woman was more bandages than skin. Her piercing eyes met Zoe’s. Sadness there, but also determination. What was she thinking?

It struck Zoe then, that the Witch knew Sister Salt’s thoughts just as she knew Zoe’s. Where was the Witch?

“You truly wish to see my face?” The Witch’s voice purred with amusement. “My, my how brave you are. Maybe later…”

Zoe looked around the candlelit room. Only shadows like black velvet draped in swathes. She glanced back at Sister Salt. the woman lay still, too still, and Zoe hurried to her bedside. Those pale eyes stared out from the gap in the bandages. They reflected the candles, but no other light shone from within. Sister Salt was a corpse. Had she been dead when Zoe entered the room?

Zoe’s heart pounded. Rage and fear surged through her veins.

“What is this trickery? What do you want?”

But the Witch was gone, and only the shadows remained, deep, and sullen, and so Zoe backed out of the room to look for her friends. Her hounds followed her back into the dark halls of the courthouse, and it wasn’t until she was a few steps away that Zoe recognized the Witch’s voice.

It was the same as her mother’s.

She turned, but there was no door behind her. No candle-lit room. Only the dark. Zoe pressed on, following her hounds through the halls and away from whatever she witnessed.

Behind her, the dark lingered, and she felt its eyes upon her soul.

But she did not turn again.