Zoe hadn’t even realized tunnels branched off from the larger cavern. To her mind, it was a random bubble in the rock only accessible by the path carved by the fire child. The reality seemed to be something more akin to a termite mound. Tunnels opened constantly in the walls as she followed Anton’s silver eye — it reminded her of a set of lungs cast in stone — she couldn’t be sure if this cave was natural, system-derived, or some combination of the two, but then she never really knew anything about caves.

Zoe followed the silver glow through one winding tunnel where it opened into a cave with three openings ahead. Without hesitation, Anton’s eye flew down the leftmost path. Zoe had memorized the same map as him, but he demonstrated the worth of high Insight.

They continued racing through the rock, sometimes ducking, sometimes leaping chasms, but always maintaining their high speed. If it weren’t for the silver glow of Anton’s eye, Zoe wouldn’t have been able to move like this even though she knew the route.

“I expected you to reprimand me,” she said as they ran.

“Not my place,” Anton said through his eye.

“It’s exactly your place,” she retorted. “I don’t want blind followers.”

Anton was silent for a moment.

“You should have finished Oriz yourself.”

His flat voice made the accusation all the harsher as his eye zipped down a gash in the floor. Zoe leaped after and fell. A chimney of black rock rushed past her. She hit the ground and sprinted forward.

“Bella deserved to finish things herself,” she said.

“Your decision put Bella in danger. There’s no place for ceremony in such dealings.”

Zoe knew she could have held Oriz in place if she still had her chains. This wouldn’t have happened if the Black Star hadn’t betrayed her. Had anything good come out of Purgatory? She struggled to adjust to the Black Star’s absence. Even conjuring chains out of Mirror was an awkward stopgap solution, and she wasn’t sure about pursuing such a path. Maybe she should move on completely.

Regardless of excuses, her decisions had repercussions.

“Thank you for your honesty.”

“I don’t want Bella to die,” he said.

“Neither do I.”

“Before, I would have told you I don’t want Oriz to die either. I saved her from her curse, and I thought that might be enough, but some people wear shackles so long they carry them even when they’re gone.”

Zoe snorted.

“You saying you saw this coming?”

“Nothing happens in a vacuum. Her actions might make no sense to us, but she’s following a thread of logic.”

“Never expected such philosophy from you.”

“I’m writing a book, remember?”

“How’s that coming?”

“You tell me, boss,” Anton’s voice grew softer. “Next chapter resolves Bella’s fate.”

His words spread like ice through her chest, but Zoe’s rage burned away any tension.

“Are you saying I should try to understand Oriz? I should spare her?”

“Hell no, she kicked me into the roof of a cave. Rip her to pieces and burn the shreds. If the fire gets out of control, maybe I’ll piss on it.”

“Damn, Anton.”

“Whatever,” she could hear his shrug. “Bella is up ahead.”

Iridescent light filled the tunnel from around the corner. They slowed their pace and Zoe peeked around the edge. Ahead lay a chamber with an open floor. The fluid, hallucinogenic light of the inky sky spilled up on the rushing wind and illuminated a vast network of grassy threads. It looked more like a spider’s web than anything else. Various lumps hung along the threads like beads on an abacus, some were the size of a football while others might hide a person or a horse. The threads overlapped in a way that hurt Zoe’s eyes. There was more to the shape than mere complexity, some kind of technique worked against her comprehension.

“I can’t make it out,” she said. “It’s like trying to understand a dream. How about you, Anton?”

“Give me a moment…”

His eye hovered and glowed before it split apart. Two eyes floated before Zoe. One remained beside her while the other drifted toward the grassy threads.

Zoe bounced from foot to foot. Whatever fear lingered, whatever rage burned, was replaced entirely by eagerness. Her friends wanted her to be decisive. They wanted her to act.

So did she.

Hesitation was a thing of the past, but she needed to know what lay before her rather than charge in blindly.

“I didn’t know you could split your eyes,” Zoe whispered to Anton. “I didn’t know you could carry multiple conversations either.”

“Beauty of my New Flesh,” he replied. “I’m still working out what it did for me, but the synergies between my techniques are amazing.”

Zoe nodded. Curious how her flesh had granted her a new ability, whereas Anton’s had streamlined his. She wondered if she was approaching her flesh wrong, or if it reflected their personalities. Too bad the Earth System could no longer explain anything.

Anton’s eye floated between the strands. The silver glow rippled as it passed deeper into the web. It would vanish behind one woven strand and appear behind another further away as though it skipped the intermediary distance. Zoe frowned as distortions played before her eyes as though the scene were sand drifting through disturbed water.

“Anton?” Zoe asked after a couple of minutes. “What do you see?”

“It’s strange in here,” he said.

“I see nothing abnormal,” he said.

“Something’s hunting me,” he said.

Zoe frowned as Anton’s voice overlapped out of the silvery eye floating beside her.

“What do you mean?” she said. “Anton you’re not making sense.”

“It’s an illusion,” he said.

“It’s a dream,” he said.

“It’s just grass and I’m trying to find the cocoon that contains Bella,” he said.

Zoe stared directly at the eye beside her.

“Anton I think you should pull out of there. You’re sending multiple answers.”

The silver eye bobbed beside her, innocuous and silent.

“Am I?” he said.

“No, I’m not,” he said.

“You deserve to die,” said someone that wasn’t Anton.

The last voice sounded perverse, like the hissing of reeds as they rubbed together in the wind.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“I presume I’m speaking to Oriz,” Zoe said.

“No?” came Anton’s voice.

“What’s going on, boss?” he said.

“There is no Oriz,” the reedy voice laughed. “There is no Bella. Do whatever you want, but know that love conquers all.”

“What you have isn’t love,” Zoe said.

“Boss, what’s happening?” Anton said.

“I feel kind of…” he said again.

“And what do you know of love?” hissed the reeds.

“Anton, cancel your second eye.”

“I don’t want to,” he said.

“I can’t!” he said.

“You have no power here,” said the reeds.

Zoe sighed.

“Anton, this might hurt. When I find you, I’ll apologize again.”

“What are —”

“No, please —”

“Nothing you —”

Zoe extended a Mirror finger into the heart of Anton’s eye and popped it like a soap bubble. Silvery fragments of static drifted down like snow. She sighed. An echoing vibration came from within the grass nest where his other eye disintegrated.

“Just you and me now, Moth. You feeling up to it?”

In answer, the Mirror creating her fingers crawled up her arm and over her body. Hallucinogenic light swirled off her armor.

“Of course you are. Back to back until the end of time, right?”

Zoe cracked her neck and strode forward.

The grass coated and connected dozens of floating rocks. Though the canopy obscured most of the gem-studded ceiling, the mineral wealth flashed with the colors of the lurid sky below. A sense of inversion flipped her stomach, but then it passed.

Summoning her hounds, Zoe strode into the nest, and she felt the rippling pressure of a dream lay its fingers up her mind. Fear built its pressure at the back of her neck, but she remained as unwavering as the steel in her veins and pushed forward. It didn’t matter what Oriz sent her way, she would not hesitate.

###

Skidmark looked over with a raised brow as Anton shouted in pain.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He had one hand clapped over his left eye. A trickle of blood leaked down his cheek.

“Nothing,” he snarled. “Zoe canceled my eye, but I’m not sure…. No, I know why. Oriz is using Dream Skein, or at least mimicking the effects of it. It’s interfering with our minds.”

“I thought she only had Grass,” Skidmark said. “How worried should we be?”

“Who knows?” Anton said as he wiped away the blood with his finger. He blinked and looked around the tunnel where they stood. Behind them stood the few dozen survivors with their dogged expressions and the glowing toddler walking amongst them. “So many plants contain poisons, hallucinogenics, drugs, you know? She could do anything. I’m not an expert.”

“I thought you were the Skein nerd?”

“Shut up.”

He kept wiping, and Skidmark pursed her lips in concern.

“That’s a lot of blood,” she said as she turned to the survivors. “Hey, you, give me your shirt. Yes, you, no I don’t care that you’re not wearing anything else.”

She took the shirt and tore a ragged strip. Somehow or other the shirt was mostly clean. Maybe some kind of technique, but that was Anton’s department. She would stick to normal science thank you very much.

With deliberate care, she dabbed at the blood leaking down Anton’s cheek.

“How’s the boss?” she asked conversationally, as though the world wasn’t about to melt out from under their feet, though she supposed it was fairer to say it was about to melt out from over their heads. “She in a killing mood?”

Anton sighed.

“She is almost overjoyed with murderous intent, but I know this will weigh heavy on her if anything happens.”

“It’s sort of her fault though, isn’t it?”

Seven eyes opened on Anton’s face as he fixed her with a hard look. Skidmark fought to suppress a shiver. She failed but replaced it with a sneer.

“Don’t ogle me unless you plan on doing something about it.”

“You’re insufferable,” he replied.

“Don’t know the meaning of the word,” she said as she stuck out her tongue and threw the bloodied bandage at the survivor who gifted her the shirt. “You’re all cleaned up, so lead the way, Mr Looking Glass.”

Anton sighed, and they continued down the tunnel. They jogged at an even pace since all the survivors had at least a couple of levels, but some didn’t even have a Body Path. Luck, more than skill or grit, kept them alive.

Skidmark still felt like a human, she still believed she had a heart beating in her chest, but she couldn’t help feeling weighed down by those weaker than her.

“I wish we didn’t have to play babysitter,” she said loud enough for everyone to hear.

Several survivors cast their heads down in shame.

“We do what the boss told us,” Anton said. “She does her part and we do ours.”

“I hope she does her part.”

“Have faith.”

Skidmark met his gaze.

“I remember Hell,” she said. “I’ve seen what she can do, and I’ve also seen how she acts...”

“So have faith.”

She sniffed in response.

“Still, I wish we didn’t have them around.”

“Me too,” Anton said with a shrug. “But that’s why we have Bella. She cares so we don’t have to.”

“Is that how it works in that machine brain of yours?”

“Say whatever you want, Skidmark, I see more than you think.”

“You see us finding a bed after we finish this mess?”

Anton stumbled as he ran. She felt his eyes staring, and she pointed a finger gun.

“Yeah, try to figure out if that one was real, why don’t ya?”

He scowled.

“There’s an obstacle coming up ahead.”

“When is there not?” Skidmark said with a roll of her eyes.

The tunnel widened into a large, tall chamber like the inside of a vase. Stalactites glittered overhead as Anton’s eyes danced around them. Water dripped down into a river that cut through the stone floor. The rushing waters were wide. Maybe Skidmark and Anton could leap them, but the other survivors? Skidmark glanced at the way they huffed for breath. Yeah, no chance.

She studied the water.

“This is the black rain,” she said. “It’s eating away at the bedrock.”

As though to punctuate her words, the river edge crumbled away with a hiss. She stepped back just in time. Damn it! Not only was the fast-running water a hazard, but it was getting worse by the second.