The earthen mantis charged beneath the frozen ground toward the car. There was no time to empty the car or even try to get out of the way. Zoe did the one thing she could think of doing. She pulled back her fist with all her might. Her chain wrapped around her arm and fist with the tension of a killing python, and she struck the ground like Thor's hammer.
[Bell at the Center of the World]
The world peeled up and away, as though she stood in the center of a bowl, a bell, and looked at reality surrounding her. She saw the car rising, the forest stretching, the dirt and the road, and the mantis swimming through it, all as her fist crashed down into the center of it all.
She punched the mantis as hard as she could.
Reality snapped back as her blow rang out in the air with the purest crystalline tang. Ripples spread across the frozen highway. Snow and rock and asphalt chipping and flying up. The tremors stopped, and then the earth exploded.
The mantis flopped up out of the ground, half dragging itself like a drowning man fleeing a frozen lake. Bulky back legs dragged as it scythed its way forward. Anton fired. Bullets cracking loud and ugly, discordant thunder against the serenity of Zoe’s blow. The bullets bounced off the thick earthen carapace, and Anton stopped firing after the second shot proved futile.
“Bella,” Zoe said. “Take its soul.”
Bella charged forward without a word. Her sword pulsing with heat that wrecked snow into steam. She slashed at the creature, dodged its parry, and brought her blade up into its flexible neck. Chips of earth fell away, but this creature was of the loose dirt, the sod and soil, more than it was of the rock, and so Bella’s heated blade thrust deep and pierced the soul. White light blossomed and leaked as a shrieking keening rose, but it quickly died like a record melting on the player as her sword devoured its very being.
Zoe was captivated by the sight, something so purely awesome, so biblical about a soul being erased — or maybe she was just dizzy from the use of her Body Path ability — but the silent and graceful watery mantis almost took her head off.
It was her Blackstar chain that saved her.
Wrapped around her arm, it pulled her up into an awkward defense. Barbed claws bounced off her chain-covered arm and knocked her to the ground. The other mantis shattered the back window of the wagon and started clawing at the people inside. Anton, standing on the rooftop, cleaned over the edge and fired at point-blank range. The gunshots echoed out until the pistol clicked.
But each bullet passed through the watery flesh.
Its mandibles clicked and spread apart, wider and wider like a dentist’s nightmare, revealing a set of human teeth in a monstrous smile.
“Your species is as foolish as it is tasty,” it slurred.
The voice shocked Zoe, but she could only shuffle backward as the other mantis stabbed down at her with its claws. She parried with her thighbone club. The claws bounced away from the heavy bone, and it too opened its mandibles to reveal a lipless human mouth. A fat pink tongue licked the white teeth until they shone wet in the garish light of the hallucinatory sky.
“Give us the bone. You shall live if you give us the bone. Ha ha ha ha ha.”
The other mantis spun its head around to stare at Zoe.
“Ha ha ha ha. You shall live. We can be trusted.”
Zoe kicked the ground in response. The force launched her up into the air and back so she could land on her feet and glare at the tall monstrous bugs.
“Back away from the car. You want to talk? Then give us some space.”
Their heads revolved until they stared into each other's eyes. They were like reflections of each other as they clicked their mandibles in some grotesque perversion of language.
“No. Ha ha ha. Negotiation requires strength,” it poked a barbed reaper claw through the shattered glass of the hatchback window. “Your cocoon is fragile. Your young are unprotected. Give us the bone or we eat your young.”
“Anton, are they hurt?”
A silver eye floated beside the window, and Anton shook his head.
“You hurt them?” Zoe said to the mantis. “You’re dead.”
“Ha ha ha. Decide now, before nest elders come. Ha ha ha.”
Zoe grinned as Bella approached with her sword slung over her shoulder.
“No reinforcements are coming,” Zoe said. “We ate your friend's soul. They won’t call for nothing.”
Both sets of watery eyes locked onto the fallen corpse of the earth mantis. They hissed.
“Demons.”
“Heathens.”
“Others, they must be, others. Report to the nest. Alert the queen, I shall hold them off.”
Zoe’s scarred grin grew as she hefted her thighbone club.
“You overestimate yourself,” she said. “Bella, how does some living incorporation materials sound?”
Bella paled, but she forced a wolfish grin.
“I thought you’d hog everything for yourself.”
“Cheap shot,” Zoe laughed as she charged.
Her club swung overhead. She felt the momentum in the bone. It seemed disassociated from regular gravity. She could move it, and it only moved faster. Every swing grew easier, as though its weight shifted exactly how she needed it to shift. Right now, as she leaped and swung the club down toward the mantis’s water, bulging-eyed skull, she willed it to be heavy.
And heavy it grew.
The mantis snarled through human teeth and tongue. Its barbed and watery limbs frothed as they surged up toward her.
[Self Reflects the World]
Mirror soaked her skin as the claws struck her. The reflected force pushed them back, but the drain in Skein was greater than Zoe expected. There was a tidal force in these watery bugs, more of an ocean than a creek.
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The claws bounced away as Zoe brought her club down. It split the watery exoskeleton apart and cleaved with meteoric weight toward the ground. The two halves of the mantis stood there, swaying, stupid, wings fluttering, before they sagged to either side and fell apart.
The other mantis flapped its wings and fluttered away, creating a distance between itself and Zoe.
“Ha ha ha.”
Zoe frowned.
“Why is it laughing?”
Two more voices joined the first and laughter bubbled up.
“Ha ha ha.”
“Ha ha ha.”
The split corpse cackled. Its broken mouth sealed into two gumless holes full of teeth. Spilled organs retreated into the split carapace as the two halves reformed into identical mantis. Each one half the size of the original. They buzzed five wings each and gnashed human teeth with laughter. Zoe swung her club out toward the nearest, but it buzzed up and away into the air.
Anton fired, but his bullet passed straight through the watery body.
“Flee and fly!” screeched its double. “Tell the nest! Tell the queen!”
Zoe swung at the tiny mantis. It fluttered away, but her club clipped its legs. They splashed and the whole creature spun. She clubbed again, and it splattered across the snowy ground.
The taller watery mantis swayed and spread its claws wide.
“To me! Ha ha ha!”
Liquid mantis flowed through the air straight into the gaping mouth of the tall nine-winged mantis. Zoe swung at it, but it sidestepped her with grace as the wings on its back split and split again. Gossamer flesh dripped with moisture as new wings budded and bloomed and buzzed.
Thirteen wings fanned out wide from the back of the dark blue mantis as it stood and swayed twice as tall as any of the humans.
“Strike me,” its voice boomed like a wave striking the shore. “Hurt me. Give me everything, but I shall hold you until my nest comes. And they shall come.”
It slashed at Anton, and he threw himself from the car roof. His usual grace was absent as he fled the vicious strike. Metal groaned as the claw cut through it like tissue. Blood sprayed out. The mantis lifted a claw that dripped with gore.
“Ha ha ha.”
Its unblinking eyes fixated on Zoe.
“Only fools fight the ocean. Your world is our world now.”
Zoe snarled. Snow exploded up as she leaped. The club slammed into the watery hide. Droplets sprayed out, and the creature swayed away. It reformed even as it slashed back at her.
[Self Reflects the World]
The watery claw bounced apart, and the mirrored force further scattered it, but even as she wound up for another swing the droplets were reforming into the thirteen-winged beast.
But that was fine because Zoe was only keeping it distracted.
Bella charged from behind the car. She moved with that same fluid grace as the giant mantis. Her sword swung out like a baseball bat into the creature's hide, and her aura exploded out. Hot and burning.
Bubbles burst from the mantis’s fluid flesh and it screamed. Steam enveloped the scene of mayhem as the mantis slashed wildly.
But the steam did not return to the creature.
Bella slashed again. Legs erupted into steam. The creature hacked at her, but Zoe took the hits on her mirrored forearm, and the barbed claws scattered. For several tense minutes, the fight continued. The creature fought with suicidal patience as the combination of shattering force and disrupting heat whittled away its power. Finally, Zoe broke through its guard and swung her club into the chest. The creature sagged on the verge of splitting, before the reared up and sloshed on top of Zoe.
Fluid flesh surrounded her. Acrid scent like crushed ants filling her nose, the taste like bile on her tongue. Insectile laughter clicked in her ears. She flailed, but only floated, her chain rushed out but it's coils spooled without purchase.
Bella’s sword sank up into the torso, and heat rippled out.
With a scream like a kettle made from human flesh, the mantis exploded. A wave of steam rushed out. No blinding white soul rose from the corpse, merely a black blade sheathed in rippling heat.
Zoe rolled over, her skin flushed by the heat.
"Bella? Are you alright?"
Bella staggered as the blade’s aura rippled away. Her feet strode through slushy water and she fell to her knees.
“Give me a minute…”
She closed her eyes as tendrils of slurry, and steam converged on her meditating body.
Zoe felt the same dead cold rush through her veins. Finally, her next level had come. Before the prompt could even come, she reached out to the metallic limbs of the mantis strapped to the sundered wagon. They melted like dribbling wax and spiraled toward her. She closed her eyes and opened her soul.
It was time to get stronger.
###
While the two women incorporated, Anton walked over to the wagon. The hatch door shuddered, and he opened the clasp. The thin, sexy boy Jack tumbled out into the snow. He wiped blood from his face as he crawled, hyperventilating, looking about with wild eyes.
Anton grabbed his ankle and dragged him back.
“Where are you going?”
“That thing is getting its nest.”
“Sure, but where are you going?”
“What?” Jack stared at Anton like he was mad. “We have to run and hide.”
“Maybe.”
“That thing sliced through the car like it was nothing! It killed — Carl exploded all over me!”
“And we killed it.”
“You can’t kill them all!”
Anton leaned in close to Jack, and he reveled in how the younger man backed away from him.
“You don’t know who you’re with.”
“You’re mad.”
“Nah,” Anton grinned. “Zoe’s the mad one. I’m just following her. Do you want a hand?”
Jack stared dubiously at Anton’s hand before accepting the help to his feet. He started wiping at the blood on his face with handfuls of snow.
“You think we can fight off a nest of those things?”
“We?”
“Well… I didn’t help in that fight. But I’m level 10! I have the body path of [Black Blossom Flames], and I don’t want to abandon the people who saved me.”
“You looked ready to abandon us a minute ago.”
“That’s different… I was scared.”
Anton rolled his eyes.
“Try living in a dungeon for a week. Look, if you want to… oh, here they come.”
Zoe walked away from the wrecked car with Oriz leaning against her shoulder. There was a deep tear in Oriz’s dull purple robe, but only grey skin showed through. As menacing as the creature was, it couldn’t pierce her skin. Zoe helped Oriz to sit before marching over.
Her presence had deepened, more solid, as though a juggernaut lurked beneath her skin. Which was true, in its way. She could no longer make her flesh go fully metal, but it still felt that way to look at her.
What did she see when she looked at him?
“The car’s useless,” she said, and a look of sadness passed over her face. “The patient didn’t make it.”
“Carl,” Anton added.
“Right. The mantis killed him…” her eyes unfocused briefly, lost in thought, before she stared at Jack. “Do you know where we are?”
“Uh, yes.”
“We only have eight hours until the gambler pulls us to his game. How far are we to the town?”
“It depends. Maybe six hours on foot? We could go faster if we flew…”
Zoe and Anton exchanged a glance.
“I don’t want to use that elixir just now,” Zoe said slowly. “And there’s no guarantee it will give us access to the right technique. Are there any shortcuts?”
Jack thought about it for a moment. His face paled.
“Um…”
Zoe nodded.
“Ok, Jack, you’re our scout,” she smiled widely as she poked him in the chest. “And just remember, I know when you’re lying, so you better lead us true.”
“Um, sure thing, boss?”
She stared at him hard for a moment, then nodded.
“I’m going to get Bella.”
Anton clapped him on the back as Zoe retreated.
“You got the hots for the boss, Jack?”
Jack spluttered.
“What? No! Why would you —”
“She could rip your head off if she wanted to,” Anton smiled thinly. “Don’t make her want to.”
And he walked away, enjoying his silver-eyed view of Jack’s sudden doubt about his new party.