The laughter of the Mubilashi clanged like a cascade of cymbals as the black and pink portal to another island vanished from existence. Zoe spun in the air, no purchase, her adrenaline-soaked mind slowing down time as the last sparks of the portal dissipated.
No!
She refused to let this happen, and now she had the power to do something about it. Her Mirrored fingers formed a claw as she grasped at the flickering sparks.
[Empress in Time]
It was so much easier now. The weight of her Skein helped her leverage her technique. Though she still only had a fraction of Time essence, it was so much more malleable now. She used less than a fraction of a fraction to capture the last spark of Bella’s portal. It hung there like a burning gem as Zoe slammed into the laboratory wall. Marble cracked from the impact, but she dropped to the ground unharmed. With her Might, it would take more than being tossed like a rag doll to hurt her. She grinned, a feeling of violence welling inside her as she glared at the Mubilashi.
She could guess that the Witch sent it her way, but to what end? This could be another test, but as Zoe focused on keeping the spark captured, she found she had no patience for any cosmic tests. She was sick of being the mouse batted around by cats.
It was time to show the gods that she too had claws.
“If you flee,” she said slowly as Mirror raced over her skin. “I’ll let you live.”
Teeth rose and fell in the pitch-black smoke of the Mubilashi. It laughed in silence; it laughed like metal crashing downstairs, and it condensed rapidly into a humanoid figure crouched before her. The long hair of darkness. A face of spiraled fangs. Bony shoulders, and a thin frame, all eyes and shadow — both staring — and as it unfolded, Zoe gasped.
Despite the silhouette cut from the abyss, she recognized the shape.
“Oriz?”
[Who?]
The Mubilashi snickered as it stepped forward on tiptoes that splashed and reformed and curled.
“What did the Witch do to you?” Zoe said.
The Mubilashi cocked its head.
[We are the sum of our choices]
Fangs circled, and eyes blinked where eyes shouldn’t be, Zoe flinched when she met their gaze. Before, the anger had overwhelmed her fear, but now she only felt a sense of sadness.
“You chose this?”
[Once upon a time a pebble fell down a hill]
Moth fluttered across Zoe’s heart, and she tensed as her instincts screamed at her. She prepared to leap toward the portal.
[The pebble rolled and caused a landslide]
Zoe’s muscles flexed. The floor cracked beneath her feet. Dust swirled, sucked toward the weight of her Skein as her Willpower flexed. The air cracked as Zoe charged forward. She moved with a speed she could hardly believe. The wind flung her hair backward. The captured spark of a portal loomed.
[We call the landslide our world]
The Mubilashi exploded. Black tendrils coated in teeth lashed out like a thousand broken chainsaws. The onslaught shredded the remaining floor and walls and ceiling. Zoe pushed off the ground and twisted through the air. Her Dexterity hadn’t quite caught up to her Might, but it still allowed her to move through the air like a ribbon in the wind.
She spun, time so slow to her racing Insight, as the tooth-riddled tentacles flailed in the air. Eyeballs bloomed along the length and they glared at her pale and milky white, as dead and livid as Anton’s eyes were silver and dancing. She passed through the gauntlet of tendrils as the floor exploded into floating rubble. Zoe landed on a piece that rocked under her wright. She was close enough to the captured pink spark that she could reach out and touch it.
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[We all play in the rubble! No exceptions!]
Tendrils became hands as the Mubilashi snatched at Zoe from the crack in space that was its body. Zoe pushed off from the floating rock hard enough to shatter it to dust. She snatched up the pink spark of the portal as hands shot through the cloud of disintegrated masonry. With nothing to grip, Zoe fell into the howling skies. Neon clouds swirled in the distance like drops of ink as she plummeted toward infinity with the spark of portal cradled within her hands.
She released the hold of Time, now that she could touch the portal she could feel the resonance pulsing through it like the heartbeat of a baby bird. Her Body Path felt closer than ever as she brushed the portal and stilled it. Something this small, she could keep from collapsing.
The Mubilashi howled and poured over the edge of the shattered laboratory. It flowed from the base of the fractured island like snarling black sewerage, but rather than dissipate in the sky it congealed and shot toward Zoe as she fell.
From below, the floating island lay scattered in the air. Fragments drifted and bled rock and ice and vegetation. It was an impossible view to her mind, one she never expected to see — like a detonated moon in orbit. Despite the horror racing toward her, Zoe felt calm. She cradled her salvation, and on the other side, her friends waited. Doubt could not exist in her mind. She knew she would see them again. Even as she fell through the endless clouds and the islands shrank above her, she believed she would make it through.
The wind whistled like prayers in her ears. The smell of incense grew stronger. The lurid light shifted, golden, and bright even as the Mubilashi closed in.
[A Mountain approaches]
[No! You cannot! I won’t let you!]
Zoe smiled at the timing, but she had no desire to seek a Mountain right now. With a flick of her wrist, she stretched out the pink portal into something large enough to swallow her. Gravity pushed her through, and she entered the world between worlds with a wide grin.
A chain wrapped around her ankle. Teeth chewed against her flesh. The tendril yanked at her even as the portal drew her inside. She could feel her body being torn in two.
[If you won’t come out and play, then I’ll have to come inside!]
Zoe shuddered as the tendrils snaked their way down her legs. They squeezed her, choking off her air even as the bright lights of the portal played at her eyes. Her brain fizzed and popped — she wasn’t supposed to be exposed to a portal like this, it was supposed to be instantaneous.
She swam, clawing at the void with her fingers, feeling for a resonance, anything, that might provide a grip to bring her further in…
But then the Mubilashi would come with her. It would emerge through the portal. It would find her friends. The combined rage of Oriz and the unstable horror of a Mubilashi. How could she pay that price?
With a heavy heart, Zoe released the portal and let the Mubilashi suck her back out into the howling sky. They tumbled as the pink portal snapped close. Zoe reached out for it and the sparks brushed across her Mirrored fingers.
The Mubilashi howled louder than the sky as it strove to tear Zoe apart. Its limbs snaked around her legs and body, yanking, and pulling, and she felt a creaking in her bones, but she still had one hand free.
With a hammer-like strike, she slammed into the flesh of the Mubilashi. Resistant and abrasive like the skin of a shark. Parting before her fist like a cloud of smoke. She felt its nature in the vibrations, this thing was not Skein, but the dye upon the threads, a shadow of the power that filled her, and even as she struck at it, the Mubilashi flowed into her, tiny tendrils ignoring her Mirrored armor and pulling at her cells.
Zoe opened her hand and flexed her fingers. She couldn’t strike a resonance with the Mubilashi itself, but she could use her fingers. Moth’s mind joined Zoe’s grip, an echo inside the mirror like bones inside of flesh, and with a sense of her own resonance she collapsed five points at her fingertips.
Five portals opened. Spheres of hunger devouring the smoke of eyes and teeth. The Mubilashi screamed as the portals tore at the substance that was its flesh. Zoe yanked her hand free. Blood flowed from the hooked wounds where the Mubilashi tore at her, but she gave as good as she got.
Sky stretched between them as Zoe fell and the Mubilashi seethed around the cluster of portals. It tried to escape, but the portals pulled at it like anchors in space. The distance grew, and the wind rushed past her, but Zoe heard only the chanting, and smelled only the incense.
[A Mountain arrives]
Below her, so far below but rushing closer, a portal formed. Whiter than distilled snow, a perfect equilateral triangle, beckoning. Zoe steered toward it as the Mubilashi screamed above her. The portal shot toward her at the speed of gravity.
A sound like raining cats as the Mubilashi tore itself to pieces to escape the sucking portals. Lessened, enraged, it shot toward Zoe.
She was close to the Mountain portal now. The chanting filled her ears. The Mubilashi crashed into her and sent Zoe spinning. It wrapped around her like oil. Teeth sank into her flesh. Eyes rolled.
[I’ll never let you leave]
Zoe flew off course out into the open sky. The Mubilashi entombed her. There could be no escape from its fanged maw, but she refused fear’s embrace.
[The Mountain of Faith beckons the chosen]
Though she couldn’t see, Zoe felt the portal rush toward her. Waves of peace buffeted her even as she twisted and fought at the Mubilashi. Fangs pierced her skin, hooks pulled at her flesh, but she understood the calm of the Winter Queen when she faced the Mountain of Winter. The system chose her to enter, and she could think of nothing else. One hand remained clenched at her side, but the other extended out through the smoky void toward the triangular portal. It was close now, merely a skin of horror between her and faith, she collapsed portals at her fingertips and burned her hand through Mubilashi as she reached out and brushed the pristine white portal of the beckoning Mountain of Faith.