Stone ground on stone as the doors opened wide. Another chamber lay beyond the first, it was the same size, a steep-walled square with stone of black and white marble in an intricate but alien pattern. Suggestions of a tessellated spiral caught Zoe’s eye, but she looked past the faintly mesmerizing design at the doors on the far wall. Matching doors lay on either side. While the chamber with the ladder had one door, the following room had three leading in all directions.

Anton’s silver eyes floated out ahead of Zoe as she entered. She coiled a silver chain around her wrist, more out of a sense of comfort than anything else. Her heart still pounded with battle lust, but no battle lay ahead.

“Can you explain this, Anton?”

He stood in the room behind her, catching survivors as they dropped, but he spoke through the silver eye like a ventriloquist.

“When I visited and received the quest from the guardian demon, I thought there was only one door, and only one chamber beyond.”

Zoe frowned. She didn’t doubt him, but her eyes revealed a truth none of them expected. Was this more Dream Skein? Another illusion like the one that captured Bella and her? She couldn’t be sure, and so she advanced carefully into the room. When she reached the center, she raised her foot and stomped.

Her Mirrored sole slammed into the tile and shook the floor. She felt the vibrations travel to the edges of the wall and back — her unshackled Insight fueling her senses — and she resonated with the harmony. Something coiled beneath the tiles like a cable under a carpet. When the vibration reached her, she slammed her foot down again and caused it to spike. The ground chimed like rung crystal. Dust shook from the ceiling. The hidden cable uncoiled and thrashed. Tiles cracked like concrete over a growing root. Light shone up from the fractured ground. Golden light, warm, sunshine in paradise, and a familiar voice spoke with childish earnestness.

[I knew you would find my clues]

It was the polyp’s voice, but it came broken, slipped with static, echoing from the past. Zoe frowned as she concentrated.

[You were the mayor. You were supposed to defend]

Longing filled her. Tragedy. She wandered through her dark childhood home, chasing her mother, straining her ears for a voice she would never hear again. Tears ran down her cheeks as the polyp’s emotion ran through her mind.

The forest called her, but she steeled her heart.

[You returned too late for rescue]

“I’m sorry.”

[But you are not too late for revenge]

The drumbeat of her heart spiked at the words. Survivors pattered into the room, watching Zoe stand amidst the crackling light. She was no mayor to them. The terms of the system meant little to humanity, but the responsibility was real. She would avenge the wrongs wrought by the mantis.

Her knuckles squeezed with reinforced determination. Her rage redoubled.

[As the Mantis Queen tore me from my body, I spent the last of my energy building these chambers. The doors will open for you, but shall slow them down. It is only a stopgap, for they will reach the vessel, eventually]

“Can we save you?”

[I am but a ghost]

Black emotion spilled out of the light like leaden smoke. All present bowed their heads as the polyp’s words rang out through the marble chamber.

[Forgive me, for I burden thee with my unfinished business]

[Quest: Slay the Oppressor]

[Defeat the Mantis Queen]

[Rewards: after killing the Queen, gain double experience for 72 hours]

Zoe accepted the quest even as it filled her mind. One glance at her friends was enough to tell her that the others received the same mission. The double experience was a powerful reward, though she supposed all it meant right now was a boost to whatever contributions they made toward killing the Winter Queen.

She could live with that, after all, she was already on her way to kill the queen.

“Did you accept the quest?” Bella asked her.

“Of course, you?”

“Yep.”

“Same,” said Skidmark.

“I’ll accept if you are, boss,” Anton added.

Zoe turned to face the group of survivors.

“What about you?” she asked.

Fleshripper blinked at her. The young man had become the spokesperson for the few dozen survivors. He stood beside the flaming toddler with a consternated expression on his face.

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“Why would we?” he said with a sigh. “Even if we accept the quest, there’s no way we can help.”

Zoe shook her head. She had expected little and was happy to let it go. For all that she found herself thrust into leadership, it wasn’t a role she relished.

Skidmark, however, stomped forward.

“That attitude is exactly what got your town taken out in the first place!”

Bella grabbed Skidmark’s shoulder.

“Easy, mate. No need to —”

“No! We’re saving their asses and all they do is mope! Now we get a quest to avenge their polyp and they don’t even blink before they say no!” She stormed up to Fleshripper. “Did you see the apocalypse out there?” she practically shouted as she poked him in the chest. “Did you get the damned memo? The world is different now, and if you want power, take it at every opportunity you get!”

Fleshripper hung his head, but one woman behind him stomped forward.

“Who the hell do you think you are to —”

Blinding lightning crackled and struck the ground before the woman’s feet. She stepped back, blinking, stunned, and silenced. Skidmark scoffed at her.

“Your words mean nothing if you don’t have the power to back them up. That’s the world now.” She leaned in close, a foul grin on her face. “I’ve been to hell, sweetheart, and returned.”

She stomped away from the survivors and back toward Zoe and the others. The stretch of black and white tile — now cracked — expanded between the two groups. They might have the same goal, but they remained separate.

“Feel better?” Zoe asked her.

“Not in the slightest,” Skidmark said with a huff. “Let’s hurry up, I want to kill something.”

Bella ran a finger down the length of her sword, her expression clearly showing that she wanted to, but refused to say anything pointed.

“Which way?” she asked.

“All the doors look identical,” Anton said as his eyes flitted about the room.

“Touch the doors,” Zoe said as she walked toward the one straight ahead.

“What?” Anton asked.

“Feel the temperature.”

Zoe placed her hand against the black stone. It was cool to the touch. Skidmark touched the door to the left.

“Warm,” she called out. “No, cool, but not that —”

“This one is icy,” Bella shouted from the door to the right.

Zoe pointed at Bella.

“Then we go that way.”

###

The chambers continued much the same. Large empty halls of geometric perfection. Monochromatic tessellated floors. A still, empty air in which no dust hung. They grew colder as they progressed. A wintry air occupied the rooms. Whirls of frost on the black marble walls glowed with a twilight blue before the spirals became a thin coat, and eventually sheets of snow that concealed the patterned floors.

It was strange to enter a space like this, and it reminded Zoe of the dungeon. The appearance of artificial age. These rooms only existed for a few hours, a day at most, since the polyp had not fallen long ago. It was such a waste of sanctified power. Instead of a home, the polyp spent its last gasps creating a tomb.

It seemed the moral of the Crimson Armada that violence is the spark of all things, even the flames of creation.

[Such shallow insight]

“Care to enlighten me?”

[Enlightenment cannot be given]

“Evasive.”

The Witch’s laughter tickled Zoe’s spine, but she said nothing more. Zoe snarled as she pushed open another set of doors onto an empty chamber. Scars lined some walls. Deep gouges in the midnight rock that glinted like starlight in the glow of the ethereal snow. This wasn’t the first room to show signs of battle, but so far they saw no blood or bodies. What had happened here?

“You alright, boss?”

Zoe nodded at Anton’s floating eye.

“Got a problem with god.”

“Anything we should know about.”

Zoe hesitated before deciding to let slip the burden from her shoulders.

“The Witch is watching us.”

“Us or you?”

“When I entered the cocoon, she mentioned something about a trial. She was pitting Oriz and me against each other. I think she wants to replace the Gambler, but there has to be more to it than that. Why would she pick us?”

Anton shrugged on the other side of the room as he spoke to Skidmark about something in person.

“Dead man’s boots,” he said through his eye. “It makes sense to me.”

Zoe smirked.

“That should be the first sign that something’s wrong.”

“Hilarious,” Anton said drily. “We found the door, this way.”

The group progressed through another cold door and stepped back as the gigantic marble slabs swept clear piles of snow. Flakes drifted down from the distant ceiling.

“We must be close,” Zoe said.

Anton’s eyes raced ahead, their chrome light reflecting off the gentle blizzard.

“There’s a body,” he said.

Zoe instantly readied herself. With a flex of her feet, she sprung forward into the room. Mirror coated her body, reflecting the whirling snow, as she landed beneath Anton’s glowing eye. She heard the unhurried footsteps of Bella entering behind her, and the subtle whine of the empowered runeblade. Skidmark and Anton would keep the survivors in the previous room. If needed they could close the doors. Dark blood stained the snow. A trail of ruby droplets led to a corner, and Zoe followed as the hounds within her stirred.

A great gangly demon lay slumped in the corner. Something had torn the arms from its torso, and it only had one leg. Blood flowed in rivers into the snow, and steam rose around its body. The face was half shattered, and a long tongue dripped from the snout. It appeared to be a corpse beaten to death, but the chest rose and fell, and as Zoe’s mirrored feet crunched over ice, a bloodshot eye opened and rolled toward her.

“You were the mayor,” the demon said.

Zoe nodded.

“The Queen did this?” she asked.

“Ate me while I lived and discarded these scraps.”

Zoe crouched down.

“I can try to seal your wounds.”

“And prolong this pain? Shatter my core, please, and send me back to hell.”

Anton’s eye floated into view.

“What about my quest?”

The demon’s eye rolled to gaze at the floating orb of silver.

“You still live? Cowards all of you, to flee such a fight.”

“We were stuck in your homeland,” Zoe said flatly.

“It has a way of getting its hooks in you,” the demon said before coughing up blood. “Fine, your quest still stands. I am a demon and so I shall stand by my word, though in my condition I don’t know what good I’ll be to you.”

Zoe glanced at his expressionless eye, curious about what he was planning.

“I’ll break your core,” Anton said. “But I still want a reward.”

The demon’s eye fixed on his.

“You shall have one. Fulfill the original quest, and grant me a swift death, and I shall grant you a demonic pill.”

Footsteps approached out of the whirling snow. Bella walked up to Zoe, her burning sword slung over her shoulder, and nodded at the demon.

“Not killing it?” she asked with her pale eyes.

“No, Anton struck a deal. We’ll finish his quest and then we kill it.”

Bella nodded at the mutilated demon.

“What was the quest again?”

Anton’s eye danced closer to her.

“I had to bring the head of —”

The shattering of stone interrupted Anton as the doors to the chamber collapsed with a sound like an earthquake. Snow flew up into the air with a wintry howl. Silhouetted against the flurry was a colossal mantis whose head reached up toward the shadowy ceiling. At her side, a fire burned as bright as the noonday sun.

“So,” said a rich, inhuman, and somehow familiar voice. “You dare to dog the trail of the Winter Queen and her consort? It is time you pay for such indiscretion.”