“Trinch!” the voice of the Winter Queen echoed through the laboratory. “Rescue your queen!”
The words bounced off the shelves and rattled the beakers and tools. An icy chill crept after them, which the flaming mantis in the center of the lab shook off.
“Try to tell Trinch what to do?” he chuckled. “This is what you get for relying on others.”
His exoskeleton glowed like coal in the wind and dissipated the settling frost as he returned to his work on activating the ship.
It was complete, a long vessel with a sleek ovular body and long flight tendrils trailing behind. Though only built for atmospheric flight, it could escape this island and its Queen. Once free, he had a whole planet to explore.
He felt a pang in his heart — not his old heart, but this new simple thing that pumped inside his armored skin — as the Queen’s monstrous quest compelled him. The oath he made to her tugged at him and drove needles into his flesh, but he grinned and clacked his mandibles.
If pain was enough to make him stop, he wouldn’t be Trinch, now, would he?
A small tablet of black slate hovered in the air beside the smooth, dark, ship. Cables connected the tablet to the ship, just as a series of chords and roots connected the ship to the ceiling. The Polyp had long since died, but its role in this machine birth was done. All that he needed to do was wake up the ship. He tapped at the crystal with his scythes but grew increasingly frustrated.
His long barbed claws were inefficient at typing in the commands on the control crystal.
“Trinch! Please!”
“Damn, she sounds desperate.”
With a flare of the essence, his ruby scythes grew white hot and dripped. He flicked his wrists and the long scythes split, before his essence reached out and canceled the flames.
“Not bad, Trinch old boy.”
Where before he had long red scythes like any regular mantis, he now had five clawed fingers. Crude and dribbled like half-melted candles, but they sufficed. The red exoskeleton claws cracked as he wriggled the muscle beneath. Heat glowed like lava through stone as he manipulated them across the black stone tablet. Within seconds, the ship whirred to life. The tendrils rippled like streamers in the wind as the ship lifted off the ground. The hatch opened up, and a gangplank slid out like a metallic tongue. There was enough seating space for around thirty people, or one Trinch and his ego. His mandibles clattered with self-deprecating humor. He had to keep himself grounded, lest he lose touch with the world.
He stepped onto the gangplank, but his legs refused to move.
“Trinch!”
He snarled at the oath gripping his flesh.
“I am nobody’s pet.”
[Greasy Black Peel]
Essence oozed up through his exoskeleton. The ruby armor became spongy, and dark, as though soaked in crude oil. A line cracked down the middle and Trinch stepped forward, his skin sloughing away as he advanced up the gangplank. The blackened skin remained on the ground, the oath and his promises dissolving into the sludge.
This was the first time he activated his old techniques in this new body, but he found it was like riding a zoozophomb: you never forgot.
His new exposed flesh was a pale pink and soft. Weaker, but one shell replaced another as the hatch closed behind him. The flight chair remolded itself for its awkward shape and he seized the controls with long fingers. The ship responded like a bird leaving the nest and he tilted up off the ground and shot toward the open doors.
###
“Trinch!” the Winter Queen’s head shouted with increasing desperation.
Zoe and Bella exchanged a glance. Any tension they initially felt had faded.
“You know Trinch, right?” Bella asked.
“He’s a bastard,” Zoe said from where she sat footless and handless. “Though, I thought he was dead.”
“Some bastards don’t die.”
“I suppose.”
“Trinch! You swore an oath.”
“This is making me feel bad,” Bella said. “Like, I don’t know…”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Yeah, but we should still —”
A high-powered whine filled the air as a gigantic metallic cuttlefish flew overhead. Wind whipped behind it as it flew over them. Zoe’s Insight let her spy a pink shell-less mantis at the wheel. It met her gaze and saluted her, before grabbing the flight controls and yanking them back. The high-pitched whine peaked as the large ship executed a perfect loop before diving through the gaps between the platforms and into the swirling orange sky.
“Was that the ship?” Bella asked.
“Yeah,” Zoe said. “I think that was Trinch at the wheel.”
Bella frowned.
“I don’t understand.”
“I understand,” said the Winter Queen softly. “I finally understand.”
The scent of incense grew thick and hazy. Golden light spilled sourceless and warm as the howling wind became a soft, murmuring chant. A feeling entered Zoe’s chest as though she just walked into a high-ceilinged cathedral.
[A mountain arrives]
The words echoed like a chime as a triangle of piercing blue light formed behind the Winter Queen’s head. Ice flowed from her neck into the shape of a human body, inside the sheathe, her dark blood trickled into channels carved like veins.
“I understand the true cold of Winter,” she said as one icy hand pressed against the ground to lift her. “True abandonment, true isolation, true loss.”
A freezing aura buffeted Zoe and Bella. It blew at them, pressed them down, and it was all Zoe could do to keep her eyes open as the triangle of light suddenly grew until it was taller than a house. A vague image formed on the other side of a distant cerulean peak.
[The Mountain of Winter beckons the chosen]
“I hear your call,” said the Winter Queen as she rose..
She formed icy blocks around Bella’s feet with a sweep of her hand.
“Do not stop me,” she said. “Our paths crossed, and you felt loss, but that is my gift to you.”
She smiled as her icy body stepped closer to the portal.
Zoe snarled.
“No, you don’t!”
Her Willpower pressed against the aura like an arrowhead as she threw herself forward. Without Moth’s mirror to form hands or feet or chains, she couldn’t attack, but she didn’t need to. The portal thrummed in the air and she felt that vibration. With only one goal in mind, she launched past the entranced Winter Queen and struck the portal.
It wouldn’t let her through, she was not chosen, but she didn’t need to enter. She only needed to feel the harmony, and once she did, she forced it to collapse.
The blue triangle of light vanished.
The smell of incense, the soft chanting, the golden light, all vanished.
[The Mountain of Winter retreats]
The Winter Queen stood, frozen, before she glared at Zoe.
“You… dare?”
Zoe only smiled with her scarred lips.
“Deal with it, bitch,” Bella said from behind as she threw the runeblade.
The black sword spun through the air like a propeller before lodging itself into the humanoid skull with a thick crunch. Blood flowed up the blade and sank into the runes as the Winter Queen’s icy body shattered to pieces and spilled across the platform like so many spilled cubes.
Bella kicked herself free of the blocks around her feet and strode over to collect her blade.
“You think she’s really dead?” she asked Zoe as she helped her up.
“I hope so.”
As though to answer her words, a chill rushed through her veins as though she walked the path of winter herself. She shuddered, trembling as the death energy formed frost inside her flesh, and she matched Bella’s trembling smile with one of her own.
“L-looks… like, like, we… d-d-did it!” Bella stuttered.
And they laughed as the power surged through them.
[Level up! You are now Level 48]
[Please select an element to incorporate:]
* [Sky: Dexterity +1, Insight + 3]
* [Stone: Dexterity -2, Might +2, Willpower +4]
* [Ice: Might +2, Insight +2]
The energy awoke Moth and a Mirrored hand formed on the end of Zoe’s arm. The fingers didn’t tremble from the intense cold, and Zoe reached inside her clothes to produce a Chroma Viscera Core. She quickly linked the core to her Skein and opened up the well of her
hunger.
[Level up! You are now Level 48]
[Please select an element to incorporate:]
* [Everything]
The void within sucked at the world, all the essence available she transmuted through the core and into her soul.
Time rippled in threads as it poured into her mind and body, as it strengthened her.
Heat and pressure built, but Zoe held herself open, she had to level up as much as possible, no matter the cost.
Bella had postponed her incorporation, and could only watch with wide-open eyes as the howling colors of the sky streamed through the coruscating core. Color flashed out in myriad colors and ran down through Zoe’s veins. She shuddered on the edge of collapse.
The last time she did this, she absorbed 100 Skein instead of 4. She absorbed enough for many levels, but now she wanted to push her level higher. There was something intrinsic about being higher than level 50, some qualitative difference that had nothing to do with the number of Skein. She needed to reach that level, and she could feel it approaching like a horizon in a plane.
The core shattered in her hand. Shards of crystal shrapnel flung out. Bella flicked the runeblade out to parry away the flying chips. Zoe almost collapsed as the broken core burned through her mirror hands like a hot knife through butter.
But Moth was there for her, and even as she felt the level up opportunity closing, she reached with a reforming Mirror hand for a second core. Her Willpower — so much higher than it should be at her level — squeezed the core and her opening and she forced the world to give her power.
Was there any other way?
She screamed as the sky poured through the core and into her very being. The energy built up inside her. Steam rose from her skin. Smoke curled and she could smell herself cooking, but she was close. She was so close!
[Level up! You are now Level 49]
[Please select an element to incorporate:]
* [Everything]
A weight slammed down onto her, and her knees buckled. It was like a yoke of gravity around her neck. Might burst through her muscles as she shouldered the pressure. It doubled, and she screamed as her teeth ground against each other. She couldn’t breathe. Veins stood out all over her body.
The weight tripled.
Her clothes shredded as her muscles bulged. Energy poured into her, but the gap between levels 49 and 50 was without end. The energy that filled her before like a roaring river was barely more than a trickle.
No!
She needed the power; she needed to fill the gulf; she needed to move beyond the threshold!
But this was like a door without a keyhole. The pressure quadrupled and drove her down to her knees with enough force to shatter the marble. She had no air in her lungs to groan. Her skin bubbled.
The core exploded into burning dust.
Zoe sagged and rolled, limp, lifeless, toward the edge of the platform.