The Winter Queen lunged toward Zoe. Her Ice-empowered Might propelled her across the chasm of floating rocks in the blink of an eye. Bella stepped forward with her howling runeblade to dodge the attack. Ice chips sprayed as a frozen fist struck the burning sword and pushed Bella back.
The two women exchanged attacks with deadly intensity, their footwork circling on the floating rock they stood upon. Blue light flashed as the Winter Queen grew an icicle blade to match Bella’s. Black rivulets splashed harmlessly off their bodies, but hissed when they struck the ground. The already scattered platforms shrank as the ceiling opened above them. A ceiling of gaping earth poured forth the black acid rain.
Beneath, the sky’s kaleidoscopic infinity beckoned
Without Bella to support her, Zoe knelt on the ground. She reached for Moth, but her sister remained in slumber, so she couldn’t access her Mirror. She felt naked without it, not to mention the lack of hands and feet.
But she was not alone — never alone in her flesh — and so she let the baying in her blood rise to the surface as her body twisted and split into seven hounds. With the silent thought link of the pack, she lunged forward to join the fray.
###
Clanging swords, barking dogs, shattering stones, and tearing flesh: these sounds reached Skidmark as she stood with the survivors. She felt useless listening to her friends fight. Almost as useless as the people she protected.
Anton stood with her, his eyes floating about, dodging the trickles of black water falling from the ceiling.
“I think we should help,” Skidmark said.
Anton nodded as his eyes drifted through the open doors to the next chamber where Zoe and Bella fought.
“She’s too powerful,” he said to Skidmark. “We’ll only get in the way.”
“Like hell, we will!” Skidmark said as electricity crackled across her knuckles. “Better to die helping than die standing here.”
“We’re going to die?” one survivor asked.
Skidmark glanced back at the teenager who asked the question. All their faces seemed to blur together for her, but she still shook her head.
“Not with us protecting you.”
The stone ceiling split further and a flood hit the nearby floor like a wet saw. Steam hissed and rose as the ground split in half. Cracks spread and the floor broke like a jigsaw into floating pieces. The black water flowed into the swirling sky but continued devouring the rock. Skidmark stared in shock as the straightforward path to the next room became an obstacle course.
“Damn,” she said. “We should get closer to the door.”
Anton frowned and summoned eyes to replace those lost in the deluge. The black water kept flowing down, and he sent his vision around the waterfall and up to its source.
“We need to keep the people safe,” he said. “Hmmm, the rock up here looks compromised.”
Skidmark swayed. She frowned and glanced at her feet. The rock she stood on continued to tilt. Soon, it would be vertical. Some survivors were already sliding toward the waiting abyss. Fear marked their faces as they scrambled away from the edge. Already tense, this extra complication sent Skidmark into overdrive.
She ran toward the survivors and hauled one away from the edge.
“Everyone jump now!”
The survivors leaped from the tilting rock to one nearby. The gap was about four feet but kept growing since the rock tilted up and up. Anton leaped onto the other side to catch people, his expression still distracted as his eyes flitted about both chambers. A bell tolled out and Skidmark’s tension grew impossibly higher. She should help in that fight instead of scrambling around with these useless —
No.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Everyone had their role.
Pushing up her metaphorical sleeves, she grabbed a young woman by the scruff of her denim jacket and shouted out.
“All aboard the Skidmark Express!”
The woman glanced up at her.
“What? Are you —”
Skidmark pointed her finger at the woman and zapped her with a thick lightning bolt that swallowed the woman and spat her across to the rock where Anton stood. He helped her to her feet as Skidmark turned on the other survivors.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Feeling a repeat of the river in the caverns above, she zapped people across the gap. This time the flame child blasted himself across on jets of fire. Skidmark’s heart skipped a beat when he sailed across the swirling sky. Maybe she was actually becoming sentimental?
One of Anton’s silver eyes spun beside her ear.
“I’ll handle the rest of the survivors,” he said. “You need to head to the other side of the room.”
Skidmark glanced in the direction his bobbing eye showed. Multiple waterfalls of inky water obscured her vision.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Mantis dug through the ceiling, that’s why it’s collapsing so fast, and they’re crawling down that wall.”
Skidmark grinned and leaped from the tilting rock. She landed on a platform and started sprinting as electricity crackled along her arms. The floating platforms wobbled beneath her as she ran. Even though she only touched them for a few steps, they tilted and listed. She adjusted herself, careful not to slip and fall.
She felt so slow compared to her [Skidmark Express] technique. If only there was a way to zap herself.
She leaped from one rock to another, sailing through the air faster than any human in history, but still feeling the drag as infinite clouds swirled beneath her. The smell of the sky filled her nostrils. If she was being honest, the thought of turning herself into lightning was a little frightening.
A black curtain of a waterfall stood before her. Above the roaring, crashing water, she heard a chittering. Excitement filled her. How many mantises were on the other side? She felt so useless just standing with survivors. Was Anton right, could she really not do anything to help? She knew she couldn’t fight as well as Zoe or Bella, but…
She shook her head.
No.
She was Skidmark Stephanie!
Before she could think anymore she leaped through the waterfall. The rock on the other side connected to the marble wall. Seven mantis crawled down. Three were blood red, two were bright green, and two were vibrant flamingo pink. They gazed at her, chittering, and peeled their mandibles back to reveal teeth.
Before they could speak, Skidmark raised her hands and started firing lighting. Finally, she could vent some of this frustration!
###
She sank into a midnight pool and let her name melt into the umbral bath. Who was she but a question? Was she the eyes that see or the mind that forced the eyes to open against a world too bright? Darkness stank of tar and smoke and licorice kisses. Darkness ran over her tongue like oil and filled her nostrils and slid underneath her fingernails. Darkness coiled between her cells and teased them apart until she ached.
She had a name once, when she walked upon a world of grass and flowers. Those plants clung to every surface with roots that resisted hurricanes. It was in the nature of grass to cling, to hold, and she filled her soul with that nature. The humid air carried spores and let ferns climb skyscrapers. Everything was possible so long as you held on, you had to hold on, to your faith, to your love, to your sanity, to yourself…
But now she sank into the guts of the Witch, ever deeper, and she lost herself, piece by piece, dream by dream, thought by thought…
[What are you if I take all of you?]
The question grew from within her body and bloomed in her mind. She tried to speak but darkness flowed between her lips and filled her mouth until her cheeks bulged. Teeth floated inside that liquid, that smoke, that shadowy nothing, and they latched to her throat as her stomach ballooned. Darkness leaked through her like a sieve. The gaps between her cells only grew. She kept trying to speak, but she couldn’t even think properly, couldn’t even be frustrated enough to cry as she sank — or was she floating now? A piece of the dark?
[You know how to speak]
Was that true? She turned, thoughtful, yes, it was true, as true as the ever growing grass as it clung to her soul, even as those windswept blades dyed themselves the dark of the cosmic void, she knew.
[I know how to speak]
It shocked her to hear such a voice come from the thing that was once her body.
Applause rang through her as her body drifted apart. Pride filled her. The pride of a mother, no longer distant, the Witch’s pride. Her voice filled her ears, soothed her, teased her further apart until she was no longer together, the grass finally teased free, midnight blades floating like stars, teeth and oozing darkness, and eyes that opened and saw a world that was not too bright.
The world would never be too bright again, because she had become the shade and the stretching shadow, the mouth that devoured the sun.
[Thank you]
She said it from the bottom of her heart, though she no longer had a heart nor a bottom to her depths -- no more than a hole has substance did she have a whole.
She gazed out at a cavern of jewels with a thousand unblinking eyes. Cracks lined the stone, and she seeped from them and out into the tunnels like shadows come alive. The Witch, her mother, her mistress, spoke into her lovingly.
[You know what you must do?]
She knew.
There was someone she had to find. Two someones. She recalled their faces, one pale, one dark, and how they had done right by her and how they had wronged her, but that was the old her, the one before, and she laughed like a cutting saw as her teeth spiraled for all that love and all that hate was so small now. With her new perspective, she no longer cared, but the Witch asked, commanded, and she obeyed. For she was no longer one to question and no longer the one called Oriz.
Now she was called Mubilashi, and it was time to play.