Everything had led to this moment. All the steps she took, the time she struggled, the sweat, the blood, and the tears, but finally the soup was ready. Bella turned off the stove and wrapped kitchen towels around the pot’s metal handles. Steam billowed from the top as she carried it off the stove and over to the countertop. Her arms struggled with the weight of the soup, and she knew she should get back into the gym if only to keep herself in shape for Oriz.
“Too much damned soup,” she groaned as her shoulders burned.
With a heave, she lifted the soup onto the counter. She would have left it on the stove, but the electric coils took forever to cool and if the bottom of the soup burnt, the taste would permeate and ruin her day’s work. Somehow, Oriz always knew the soup had burned, no matter how much cheese and buttered bread Bella served with the meal.
The soup pot sat there like a metal monolith as Bella struggled to regain her breath. She was so tired lately. In her dreams, she was a powerful warrior. Her kitchen knife became an ancient sword. The scratches down its blade that caught the light like cryptic inscriptions became burning runes that branded themselves upon space and time.
She crouched down beside the kitchen sink and opened the cupboard. Behind the cleaning products and bulk packages of sponges, she found her tall bottle of white rum. More than half empty, she would need to figure out a way to sneak into town. Oriz discouraged drinking but liked Bella more when she was drunk. Another paradox of life in this little green house.
She sipped from the bottle rather than make another dirty dish and eyed the clock on the wall. It ticked in time to her heart, the sound as tiny and crisp as the falling of a dried pea onto a tiled floor. She sipped again, the white rum burning, oily, sweet, and molten down her throat.
Raising the bottle to her nostrils, she let the fumes invade her brain, but not even the stinging vapors could erase Zoe’s presence from her mind. That smell of sweat and blood haunted the black-skinned woman. Bella sipped again, and when she closed her eyes, she saw Zoe’s scarred grin twisted into a lopsided invitation.
“Leave with me,” Zoe repeated, her voice ticking in a vein under Bella’s forehead as the rum sang through her nerves, and the clock picked away at time, and the heated kitchen slowly cooled as the curved electric stove finally released its heat.
Bella took a deep mouthful. The rum burned and she gagged as she swallowed. Dribbles of clear acid down her lips that she wiped as her eyes teared up. Too much that time, the bottle was almost gone, and she screwed the lid on as fire spread through her belly and into her blood.
“Why do I stay?” she asked herself.
She stashed the bottle back under the sink. Her vision swayed, and she closed her eyes as it seemed the walls were leaning in with curiosity.
“What do I get out of being here besides consistency? Is that enough? Is inertia all I want out of life?”
Her head spun with questions and alcohol. She remembered her dreams where she fought alongside Zoe and others against monsters. To escape the trappings of civilization and forge a world of light amidst an apocalypse of darkness. Those dreams always set her heart racing.
But Zoe wasn’t like that in reality — she was scheming, dangerous, and… Bella frowned. What had Zoe done to make her think like that? Oriz always told her how Zoe just wanted to drive a wedge between them for some petty reason, but never elaborated beyond that. Bella wanted to believe Oriz, but…
“Am I going crazy?
Smoke tickled her nostrils, and she jerked her head toward the source. The counter beneath the pot of soup blackened and charred before her eyes. Languid curls of smoke snaked towards the ceiling. Bella’s eyes widened. She raced toward the range hood and hit the fan switch. It didn’t work. Flames licked at the countertop. What was happening?
She forgot a trivet!
“Damnit,” she said as she filled a cup with water.
The fire spread across the counter. The yellowed heat was worse than any stovetop. She threw the water, but it splashed uselessly. The fire hissed and snickered at her as it grew up the walls. Sweat dripped down her face as panic set in. She filled another cup with water and splashed again and again. The fire maintained itself and smoke filled the room.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a long black car coming up the driveway. Oriz was returning from work, and things couldn’t be worse. Bella screamed with frustration as she fought the fire.
Stolen novel; please report.
###
Zoe ran in the bodies of eight flaming hounds. Every step devoured the grassy world that imprisoned her. Their teeth flashed like molten steel as she snarled. Joy throbbed in the Chroma Viscera Core that served as her heart.
She was tired from battle, worn down by stress, but all shackles slipped from her soul at that moment. No thought for the Witch’s games, no thoughts for survival, only the joy in charging into battle and wielding the strength she called her own.
Oriz stood like a scarecrow amongst a field of grass. The surrounding grass grew to waist height, but the vibrant growth grew yellowed as Zoe’s hounds charged.
An internal command throbbed through [Our Heart’s Toll as One], and the hounds split to encircle Oriz.
The alien woman’s yellow eyes shifted, but she remained in her ready stance with an impassive expression. So stoic, but Zoe was determined to make her shake!
As one, her hounds charged.
They came from all directions. Too fast, too many angles to block, Zoe tasted victory on a tongue of flame.
Oriz shifted her fingers in a cryptic gesture, and the grass surrounding her bent outward in a spiral of swords. Zoe’s eyes widened, and she leaped. She sailed over the blades. The razor tips pointed inches from her flaming belly.
Her other hounds weren’t as fast.
The seven ran headlong into the defensive circle and slashed themselves to pieces. Offal of coals and belching fire spilled onto the grass and an inferno raged up to the grassy heavens of this funneled world. Zoe snarled as her hounds’ deaths echoed through her heart. The sound formed a hammer blow, but she was determined to emerge stronger from this crucible.
“How can you defeat me?” Oriz said with a smirk. “I taught you everything you know.”
Zoe charged. Her jaw spread wide as she aimed to tear Oriz’s laughter from her throat.
Oriz stepped toward her in the perfect sequence of the Grasping Vine. Her sword flashed out and caught Zoe’s teeth. With a twist, Oriz sent Zoe tumbling back toward the circle of bladed grass. The spikes angled themselves to impale her, but Zoe shifted in the air. Her flaming hound body became human, and she coated herself in Mirror. Twisting in the air, she struck at the spikes and disrupted the skein. She hit the ground, skidded, and charged again.
Oriz stepped forward with her long cruel blade.
They met again and again, Zoe charging, and Oriz deflecting. The rainbow-edged saber slashed through Zoe’s Mirrored armor and left deep cuts in her body. Zoe’s rage only grew. She leaped back to create distance and avoid a low sweep of the blade. With a thought, she created a long whip of Mirror that ended in a bell. Using her new range she struck at Oriz. The momentum of her attack was too great to parry, and so Oriz dodged.
Her body dissolved into grass moments before the heavy bell struck, but the tolling rolled across the grass, and in those spikes of harmony, Zoe created portals.
Slashes of space littered the area, and Zoe moved through them. Faster, and faster, she leaped through a portal to emerge behind Oriz’s back and swing the bell hard. The pressure mounted on Oriz, her blade swung out to deflect the chain as her body vanished into shredded grass. They moved faster than the eye could follow, only instinct keeping either from death as the raging flames towered in a circle around them.
Sweat dripped down Zoe’s mirrored face like condensation on a cool glass. If she could keep up the pace, then she knew Oriz would either fall or lose control of the technique that trapped her and Bella in this false world.
She moved through a portal and swung a fist. Oriz’s blade came up to parry. Zoe wrapped [Mind’s Eye Incision] around her knuckles and struck the blade with all her momentum and Might.
The blade shattered under her blow and Zoe cheered inside her mind as her fist sailed past the broken sword and struck Oriz in the chin. Though they’d been fighting for minutes, this was the first true hit from either of them.
Oriz’s head snapped backward as she flew through the grass. The bladed circle parted around her as she slid toward the raging flames. Zoe gave her no grace and pursued instantly. She flung a Mirrored chain around Oriz’s waist and yanked her forward into Zoe’s raised knee. It struck with perfect harmony, and this time there was no hesitation.
Zoe felt the resonance in her bones as she destabilized Oriz’s skull. A portal cleaved bone and Oriz sagged as blood poured from the cleft in her jaw. She gazed up with rage spitting in her yellow eyes. Her fingers twisted as she summoned a new blade, but Zoe stomped a Mirrored heel between those alien eyes.
Bone and flesh shattered under her foot, and the world around them vanished. Zoe staggered. Her lungs heaved air as she looked about a cavern of rock. Jewels glinted in the ceiling like a sultan’s discarded horde. This had to be another trick. There was no sign of the cocoon other than the faint scent of drying grass, as though she drove past a football field on a hot summer’s day. Where was Oriz? Where was —
“Bella!”
Zoe spied her friend lying on the edge of a floating rock. Without a thought, she leaped from her current platform to the one that supported her friend. Vertigo spiked as she glanced down at the hallucinogenic hurricane beneath her. At least that answered one question: nothing lay beneath the floating islands except an eternal fall.
Any further questions of apocalyptic geography vanished as she reached her friend. Bella lay limp and wet, her body wrapped in damp strands of limp weed as though she were a corpse washed up on a beach. The smell of the ocean coated her, and her dark hair brushed across her eyes. Skin as pale as bones and cold as ice.
“Bella? Can you hear me?”
Zoe couldn’t feel Bella’s heart through her technique, so she reached down to check her vitals. As she leaned forward, Bella vanished. The rock beneath her dissipated into shredded grass and Zoe fell through the air toward the swirling sky beneath.
With primal instincts, she twisted and reached for the edge of the rock. One hand slipped, but the other grasped the edge. She dangled there, her strength making such an action easy, but still her heart thundered as the knowledge of an endless plummet filled her with dread. Breathing deep, she reached for the edge of the floating rock, when Oriz appeared above her.
A foul smile spread beneath yellow, feverish eyes, as Oriz stepped on Zoe’s knuckles.