The last droplets of black rain sizzled on the ground as Zoe and her friends crowded around the red projection of the demonic map. It floated in the air and twisted at the edges like a billowing silk curtain pinned in the wind. Zoe eyed her friends.
“We know what to ask?”
Skidmark gave her a thumbs up, and Zoe nodded.
“Show us where in this room we can create a portal that will open onto another island that is safe and populated by humans.”
The map reeled, zooming through clusters of bloody scribbles and moaning slightly before it showed the bird's eye view of the room they stood inside. A cluster of crude mocking drawings of humans showed Zoe and her friends and the huddled survivors. It was as though the map struggled to show the human form since each depiction was an ugly caricature, impish, warped in proportion, and slavering. A square sat in the center of the depicted room, and in that square another square sat, in that square another sat, and in that —
“Don’t represent yourself,” Zoe hurriedly said.
The square vanished from the map, and the projection ruffled almost petulantly. Zoe felt a cold shiver down her spine like a single droplet of water from a thawing ice cube. She already paid the soul price earlier that day to access the map, so she wasn’t concerned about using it now, but it still left her feeling slightly nauseous.
The map was a problem she needed to solve another day, for the moment it was simply a tool. She focused her attention back on the projection. Three glowing options represented different corners of the room.
“Three points,” Bella said as she compared the map to the slowly breaking room around them. “I think I can access all three with my sword.”
“And then I can empower the portal and stabilize them,” Zoe said.
“Then we just step through one by one and walk out into safety?” Skidmark said. “It sounds too —”
Anton clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Which point do you want to use, boss?” he asked as he gave Skidmark a pointed look.
The Scottish woman raised her hands in compliance, and Anton removed his hand from her mouth.
“What’s the difference between the locations?” she asked. “Me, personally, I wouldn’t mind a beach holiday.”
Bella practically moaned.
“I miss the beach…”
Zoe smiled as she turned her attention to the map.
“Give details on the three points. Tell us the location, the safety, and the amount of people.” She turned to her friends. “Anything else?”
“Monsters,” Antton said. “I know there’ll be some, but what type? Personally, I’m fine with anything, but I think Skidmark is sick of cockroaches.”
Skidmark paused in the middle of picking mantis shell from her hair and glowered at him.
“Hey, don’t make me sound like a… did you think we were fighting cockroaches this whole time?”
Anton shrugged.
“All bugs are the same.”
Bella shook her head.
“You can’t be serious, mate.”
Zoe tuned out the growing squabble.
“Add monsters to the list,” she told the map.
Hieroglyphics swirled and circled like wounds rippling across the skin. It took a few minutes for the information to process, and as they waited, the ground shifted and a crack ran along the length of the floor. The room was now firmly in two pieces, slowly shifting apart from each other an inch at a time. Screams came from the survivors as they leaped from one side of the drifting platform to the one that held Zoe and her friends.
Skidmark broke off from ranting about bugs to help the survivors leap across.
Eventually, the map listed the details of the three departure points and their respective locations:
Island One: Swampia
* Terrain: a humid, vegetation-thick region that steams during the day and fogs at night.
* Danger: moderate
* Humans: the remnants of a holiday resort have established control of a Polyp
* Monsters: tentacles
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Island Two: Pacifica
* Terrain: a string of shipwrecks and atolls affected by extreme tides.
* Danger: high
* Humans: of the five inhabited atolls, two have polyps under human control
* Monsters: ghost sharks
Island Three: Winteria
* Terrain: a mountain covered in frozen waterfalls
* Danger: moderate to high
* Humans: none
* Monsters: yeti
Zoe recounted the details. After a moment's debate, the group unanimously voted for the beach.
“Ghost sharks sound better than snow at this point,” Bella said.
“And if I never see a swamp again, it’ll be too soon,” Skidmark added.
“But it’s your choice, boss,” Anton said.
Truth be told, Zoe wanted the beach as well, but she was suspicious of how that option had even appeared after they said it, as though the map was listening and changing details for their sake, but to what end?
Was this paranoia rational?
What paranoia was irrational in the apocalypse?
“Let’s do the beach,” she said.
“Maybe we can do ghost fish and chips?” Bella said as she walked off to the side of the laboratory indicated on the map.
Skidmark groaned.
“Don’t tempt me.”
Zoe hung back as Bella prepared to activate the portal and the others rounded up the survivors. Why did she feel so uneasy?
Moth fluttered across her heart, the whispers of her technique welled up in her ears, and Zoe sighed. Even with all the Skein she incorporated her mind remained the same. Did Sound just make her an echo of her former self? She felt like a bundle of contradictions: was she trusting? Or was she distrustful?
Was it even possible for someone to change?
Take Oris for example. Zoe thought she had that woman pinned down, even if she was an alien, but she just kept drifting further and further from the model in Zoe’s head until she became a monster instead of a mentor. Oriz became something Zoe had to kill, but had she always been? Did that monster lurk behind those yellow eyes even in the desert?
A flutter across her heart brought her back to reality.
“Are you ready, Zoe?” Bella called, and from her tone, Zoe knew she had asked a few times.
All her friends, all the survivors, waited for her on a rocky platform with a wall of beakers and tools that was slowly drifting out into a sky of burning turmeric. Zoe nodded. She dismissed the demonic map and leaped over to them with ease. Change didn’t come, one had to create it, and if she worked, maybe she could change herself and the world around her. Certainly, that was a goal for her power, rather than just revenge and destruction. It was something to think about at least.
She pushed thoughts of mentors and monsters and revenge aside. Sound might be an echo, but she could still listen to the present.
Bella swung her sword in a few arcs and focused on the point in the air highlighted by the map. Nothing stood out — just air hovering above a cracked marble floor.
“Are you ready?” Zoe asked.
“Too bloody right I am!” Bella said.
The runes burned along her blade. Her eyes faded as the sword cohabitated with her mind. She stepped forward with mechanical precision and swung her sword down in a perfect cut. The skin of the world peeled back and darkness remained. A black tear in the air as tall as a person. Bella staggered back, and though the cut was quick, it clearly took a lot out of her.
“I can feel it,” she said as the blue returned to her eyes. “The portal opened on another island.”
“What does that feel like?” Anton asked.
“Like opening a door,” Bella said. “To a home you haven’t been before.”
Zoe stepped forward. She rolled her shoulders and tensed her Skein, then breathed, loosened, and stepped along her Body Path.
[Bell at the Center of the World]
Reality buckled and flowed as the bell formed once more. The black tear smeared like oil on water. Zoe could feel the growth inside her now. Compared to the first time she used this ability back in the Black Star’s purgatory, she had a weight, a presence, like lead flowing through her veins. Stepping forward, Might making her light, she clenched a fist and struck out with all her power.
The bell tolled.
Vibrations shot through her body and echoed out through reality. The Sound essence woven through her Skein made a crisp note of the blow, and it fed into the portal with ludicrous ease. What was a black and starless void glowed pink and purple as it grew. Reality’s skin peeled back and light bled forth. The survivors from the town on top of the island gaped at the display of interdimensional energy. Some of them had never even met the Smith, and the swirling patterns in the sky were the greatest extent of the surreality that the Crimson Armada had brought. They didn’t understand that the new reality they existed in was one of wandering dimensions and shifting worlds.
Zoe smiled as the portal spread until it was large enough for three people to walk in at a time. She kept one hand on the edge of the portal. The torn reality gnashed her Mirrored fingers like teething smoke. It tickled and hurt and made her heart race no matter how much she called on [Our Heart’s Toll as One] to calm herself. She was touching something that existed beyond the system, something fundamental, and when she had time and safety, she would study this, but right now she needed to focus on keeping the portal open as Skidmark corralled the survivors through two by two.
Zoe marveled that she’d never really had the time to observe people entering portals. There was a slight hissing sound as though raindrops became steam. Colors pulsed in time to the heartbeats making their way through the space between worlds. A sense of anticipation built in Zoe as she prepared to leave the island behind her for good.
The last of the survivors made their way through the portal with the crawling fire child beside them. None of the people of the town had looked back or thanked Zoe and her friends. Their faces were too drawn with stress and worry for such things and Zoe didn’t blame them. She understood what it was to be powerless in a world of monsters.
The laboratory was quiet with only her friends. They stood for a moment, but the strain of holding the portal open was taxing and so Zoe spoke through gritted teeth.
“No hurry, but…”
Skidmark saluted her.
“See you on the other side,” she said as she walked through.
Anton and Bella exchanged a look, and Bella nodded.
“Pearls before swine,” she said and stepped through the portal.
Anton gave Zoe a long, scrutinising look.
“You’ll follow, right, boss?”
Zoe nodded.
“Of course.”
He gazed at her and conjured an eye to watch her, but when he stepped through the portal the eye dissipated as its master was transported far beyond range.
Zoe stood alone in the room with the portal fighting her fingers. She didn’t look around, because she didn’t care, but she prepared herself. Once she let go of the portal, she would have almost no time to make it through.
“Ok,” she said aloud, her voice small in the hallucinogenic sky. “One, two, and —”
The floor exploded as darkness streaked through the stone. Eyes and teeth swirled in the tentacled shadow as a grin formed.
[Found you at last]
Zoe’s eyes widened. She released the portal and moved toward it, but a hand of fangs slammed into her chest and flung across the room. Zoe watched in horror as the portal closed without her.