The bruises on Zoe's soul lightened with each step through the dark halls. Though the shadows persisted around her, she no longer felt the overwhelming pressure of the Witch’s foot. Even with power singing through her veins, she was still insignificant compared to the system rulers. Why had the Witch even stopped her like that? What did she want from Zoe? Just when Zoe thought she was making progress, someone reminded her that in the grand scheme of things, she remained insignificant.
All the steps on her journey might as well have been zero.
Her hounds growled as her anger fed through the link with them. It felt good being surrounded by them, but she couldn’t help but feel that it was like talking to yourself: it helped with the loneliness but she still felt like she was going crazy. The hallways seemed like they would never end. Zoe ran her fingers along the wall just to feel she wasn’t running through a featureless void. She was half tempted to conjure up the demon’s map if only to know that this place actually had a way out.
It wasn’t natural, and she knew the Witch was doing something… but what exactly, and why, were questions she couldn’t comprehend.
The scuffing of her footsteps eroded her sense of time, and just as she wondered how long the hallways of the courthouse would extend, whether they would wind through darkness eternal, or whether she was as dead as the body of Sister Salt, Zoe saw light ahead.
[Go and play with your friends]
The words dripped through Zoe like hot wax and she shuddered as the air rushed around her. Mortar crunched and wood twisted. Plaster cracked overhead as the light spilled out from the doorway in front of her — ember light tracing the outline of a coal-black door — and showed the hallways twisting as they compressed back to their normal size.
Zoe looked back over her shoulder and gasped.
The open front doors lay behind her, and beyond them lay the snow and a field of shattered mantises. Their souls no longer hovered in the air, though Zoe couldn’t say what had happened to them. How much time had passed as she wandered through whatever pocket dimension the Witch conjured up?
She remembered the words of the Witch and felt exactly like a piece on a board. Zoe only wished she knew the game.
Her hounds scratched at the door, her connection with them ebbing and flowing as she pondered what lay beyond.
“Is that where they are?” she asked the dogs. “Is Anton on the other side? Bella?”
The hounds whined their affirmation, and Zoe drew a deep breath. Mirror slid over her skin as she did her best to be careful and reached forward to open the door.
Heat struck her. Drier and hotter than anything she’d ever experienced. The air wobbled and her eyes stung as she tried to look through the doorway. Hotter here than the dream of the angel and demon, when she sold away a piece of her soul.
Extra Mirror coated her eyes, and she gazed through the rippling heat at what lay beyond the door. The room had once been a mailroom of sorts. Pigeonholes covered the walls, but intense heat scorched the paper to blackened ghosts. It was a large space, but the myriad desks now stood in a defensive circle. Deep, barbed gouges in the wood showed what they had defended against.
There was no sign of life in the room, and the heat rippled up from the center of the desks. Zoe stalked closer as her hounds fanned out into the room. The only thing she could smell was the slight singing of hair. Fortunately, her enhanced body was tough enough to ignore the heat. If she had been a mere human, she would have fainted before the door even opened. Inside a chamber like this, she would be like a chicken in a fryer.
With a kick, she knocked a desk aside and found the source of the heat and light.
A hole lay in the center of the desks. A perfect circle cut by something like a laser, for the cement of the floor, and the rock beneath, had formed slick glass. Fiery bars lay across the top of the hole like a cage.
Zoe moved the other desks out of the way as she walked around the hole. There was no sense of danger, but the flames twisted and rippled in the air. Heat poured from them and Zoe couldn’t be sure if the flames danced or merely the surrounding air.
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This was a technique, but who cast it? Even when she had the Ruddy Chain — and a pang of anger and sadness washed over her at the thought — it was difficult to cast a permanent technique. Her hounds were hardly one such thing, for though they took her Skein to move around, they were creatures of the New Flesh first.
She knew of nobody who could cast a technique rooted in flame… a memory resurfaced, shaken loose by the smell of decay that still haunted her nostrils. In her first conversation with Sister Salt, the woman had mentioned a child of flame. At the time, Zoe wasn’t sure if she was being literal, metaphorical, or simply talking about the flames of time that had ravaged the woman’s flesh.
Could that be the person who cast these bars? One of the survivors perhaps? A hope she forgot about blossomed. Zoe needed there to be survivors. They couldn’t all be dead. Humanity couldn’t fade so quickly…
Her hounds scratched and sniffed around the circular hole.
“Are the others down here?” she asked them.
They looked at her and tapped their paws. She smiled at the synchronicity, odd as it was, and set her eyes on the flames. It was impossible to tell how hot they were.
With longing, she wished she could dip a chain into the bars, but alas…
Surely normal flames wouldn’t hinder the Mantis. After all, the Chroma Viscera had used fire in its myriad techniques.
Thinking of the Chroma Viscera, Zoe drew one of the three cores. She wished she had better clothing than the white and green jumpsuit, but at least it came with pocket dimensions. The core pulsed and kissed the walls with prismatic flecks. Her hounds watched the light for a moment as they sat at attention and waited for her commands. The white hound lounged in front of the door, tongue lolling as its eyes and ears perked toward the dark hallway beyond.
She felt safer with them around her than she had in a long time.
With the core in hand, she crouched down beside the flaming bars. First, a test to ensure what precautions she needed. She leaned a lock of Mirror-coated hair against the flame.
The Mirror blackened and bubbled. Moth whispered against her heart as the protection caved under the elemental force, and Zoe drew her head back. Pinching her fingers, she removed the singed hair and cast it into the hole. It disintegrated entirely as it passed the flaming bars.
“Looks like I can’t just jump through,” she muttered to herself.
It was time to see if she could repeat her earlier experiment.
The Chroma Viscera core would allow her to transmute the Fire essence, but she needed to divert it correctly. This wasn’t the time to incorporate — especially not after her soul had closed. While she had tried storing essence inside herself during the dungeon, she believed such actions were foolish. The Blood she incorporated then never sat well with her. No, this essence wasn’t to be taken, merely redirected. Hopefully, it wouldn’t destroy the core.
She circled the hole and examined the way the flaming bars flowed from side to side. The gridlike pattern looped upon itself like a city of burning canals. At last, she judged the best point of entrance and leaned over the edge of the pit to place the gem inside a flame.
As soon as the flames touched the translucent crystal, it pulsed a deep blood red. The crystal trembled as heat radiated from its core. Ripples passed across the surface, as though it were a lump of molten glass Zoe squeezed between her fingers. She knew her assumptions were correct — these were no normal flames — for a terrible emotion traveled up her arms with every ragged pulse. Her fingers shook as the fiery Skein surged and fed into the crystal. The emotion was formless, nameless, something primordial — biting rage, screams, a loneliness that could swallow a world — a universe — it sickened her with its absoluteness. Tears rolled down her mirrored cheeks and evaporated into steam before they fell into the pit. She gripped the ruby crystal as it soaked up the flames. The bars flowed into the crystal and she used her Willpower to control the core as it absorbed the Skein.
Heat scorched her palm, but she resisted crying out. She knew, deep down in her soul, that if she let pain crack her focused facade, it would never end. This emotion radiating through her… was not something she would survive.
The flames vanished, and Zoe lifted the core with both hands. It’s weight sent her staggering backward. She couldn’t remember lifting something so heavy since she had first incorporated Skein into her body. It took all she had not to drop it down the hole. Lifting the core above her head she sent out a pulse of Willpower through the crystal. The ruby light gleamed and lit the room like an office space from hell.
Moth leaned against her, and together they willed the core to transmute. Ruby light faded to chrome as Skein spilled from the core. Vast wings of Mirror spurted out of the crystal like a fountain of gossamer. They shimmered in their own light as they spread out and carried a sense of rocking peace that sent new tears down Zoe’s cheeks. These tears didn’t fade as they rolled across her Mirrored skin. They dripped into the pit below, shining gems falling like stars into the darkness as Zoe pocketed the core.
Devoid of flame, the pit waited.
With a gesture, she recalled the hounds into her body. The white hound was the last, and it gave her an enigmatic look before rubbing its head against her thigh.
“I’ll be careful,” she said.
Though she knew it hadn’t been warning her about any danger she might find down the hole. No, this warning was deeper, harder to interpret — as primal as the rage of the flames.
With a sigh, Zoe scratched the hound behind the ears. It leaned against her, before fading into her body with a whisper.
“Ready when you are,” Zoe said to the empty room.
Not for the last time, she missed the voice inside her mind.
“I guess I’m ready then.”
And she stepped over the edge of the pit.