Reality folded around Zoe like a paper plane. The cave pressed in around her. Friends overlapping with cold air and snow and the sight of the swirling purple sky. She tried to breathe in two dimensions. A thin stream whistled through her like a scream through the void.
Soft grass underfoot and a softer blue sky above. Her panicked breathing slowed as she blinked away the lavender-scented sunlight. The others sat around Zoe with radiant expressions as though the lens of the world were smeared with Vaseline. Everything was beautiful. She looked down as her hands moved across the softest thing she ever felt. A fluffy creature stared up from her lap. Long ears and little black eyes set in a cloud of fluffy wool. Her heart melted a little as it snuggled into her lap.
Oriz held up a rabbit with an expression of childish wonder.
“This creature is ridiculous.”
“They’re Angora rabbits,” Jack whispered. “My grandma kept some.”
Zoe stroked her rabbit.
[Welcome, Team Three, to Episode 2 of the Magnifying Glass]
Zoe blinked at the voice in her head. She took a deep breath, and the air tasted like morphine.
[This episode is called Barbeque You! Overcome three rounds to win.]
[Please standby for obstacle one…]
The group sat in silence, stroking the rabbits as they looked out at the rolling fields of grass under the powder blue sky.
[7 seconds to launch. Standby]
Zoe set down her rabbit and blinked heavily.
“Hey,” she said to the others.
[5 seconds]
[4 seconds]
They turned to look at her.
“Let’s win,” she said.
[1 second]
[Launching Team Three into Obstacle One!]
The world exploded, and things only got worse from there.
###
The flame mantis ran. Four legs devoured distance with the hunger of flames. Snow and trees passed it by, not that it saw with its shattered eyes, but with the heatsense throbbing from its Skein, and the three simple eyes detecting variances in light and dark guided it through the forest. Soon it would be back at the nest.
It shivered with anticipation at the report it would give the queen.
Would she reward or punish?
It did not know, but ecstasy lay at the end of either road.
Cold grew in its vision like a guiding star. The queen. A deep pit of gnawing frigidity. So intense. The flame mantis veered towards the sight. The pit grew, a hole devouring the ever-throbbing heatsense. A void like the space between the stars.
An emptiness like the space between the words of the system.
Had the queen grown stronger?
The flame mantis stopped. Hesitant. It rubbed its claws, preparing them, uncertain if they could do anything against the pit that stood up in front of it. Without its compound eyes, it saw no features, merely a figure draped in light and casting shadow. The heatsense told of the bottomless dark.
It was human — not human its sense of self-preservation screamed — and more humans — not humans! — laid around it in various states of being fed and being fed upon.
And the creature smiled.
“Come to feed me?” said the soft whisper of air passing over long-dead flesh.
The flame mantis ran.
Heart pounded burning ichor through its flesh. Claws back, body angled forward for speed, it flickered wings and hopped along as fast as it could. Crashing into trees. Stumbling through snow. It didn’t matter which way it went so long as it went away.
Even the queen's majesty was forgotten as the desire to live gripped it with the ferocity that only flames could know.
For the universe is cold and devouring, and in the end, it shall win.
The mantis stumbled. Energy is like dying coals. It crawled, shivering, through the slush. So long as it kept moving.
Until it slowed and stopped and looked up at the sky with shattered eyes.
No thoughts for a single moment, and then came a voice. A tiny voice. An insect voice. One so small and shrill it could have been the wind whistling through the fractured carapace of the flame mantis’s skull.
“I think you’ll do nicely,” said the little voice. “Now, nameless bug, how would you like to do me a favor?”
The flame mantis had no energy to respond, and so it simply lay there as the tiny grey bug crawled inside its head, into its brain, and began poking at nerves.
Heat pulsed like a second heart of molten lead between the eyes.
Limbs thrashed in snow. The mantis stood under a foreign command. Swayed. Fell. It caught itself and walked.
“Yes, yes, yes!” cackled the bug inside the bug. “And so the next chapter of Trinch the Winter Thief begins!”
###
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The Gambler’s voice resounded through the air with all the false cheer and magnanimity of a mic’d up game show host.
“... what a disappointing showing from team two. Truly tragic. A moment of silence for our fallen champions.”
Zoe blinked at the harsh studio lighting.
“That’s enough silence! Let’s make some noise for team three!”
A crowd cheered, a thousand hands unseen beyond the glare in her eyes. She wore a bright green jumpsuit cinched favorably around her waist. Her friends and Jack stood behind her with matching outfits.
Instead of the sandy floor for the last time, they stood in a small red room. One wall held a door, and one wall was missing, replaced by the blinding lights that hid the audience. Zoe wasn’t sure if she was glad she couldn’t see the faces of the aliens watching her peril.
And, of course, there was the Gambler. Or, some version of him, at least. Rapier thin, dressed all in black, with neon shoes, and a smile like a pocket full of change. But the eyes — slowly spinning in their sockets — held all the funhouse charm of the Random Number God.
He walked over to Zoe with a microphone in his hand.
“How wonderful it is to see some return competitors. And not just any competitors! I should remind you all,” he said as he faced the unseen audience, “that Bella here is the inspiration behind the obstacles in this round!”
Aliens cheered. Bella frowned and opened her mouth to retort. No sound came out. She stepped forward, but some invisible restraints held her back. The others were likewise bound and gagged by a force Zoe couldn’t detect but knew was there. The gambler had singled out her alone.
She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
Bella shouted in silence, but the Gambler only laughed.
“I’m afraid we don’t need any more ideas, Bella!”
He mugged the lights, and the audience shrieked like hyenas fumbling with violins.
“Now, I should explain the rules,” the Gambler grew serious. “Episode Two will be split into two rounds. Round one is easy enough to explain. It’s all in the name: Barbeque Pit. You’ll go through this door and enter the room on the other side. The round will begin when the door closes behind the last team member. Inside you’ll find some seasoned meats — marinade, dry rub, or salt and pepper, pick your poison! — as well as vegetables for those amongst us with less blood in their appetites. A hole in the ceiling will pour burning hot sand that will slowly fill the room. Cooking the meat, the vegetables, and the contestants! Your challenge is to find the key and escape the room. Do you all understand?”
He placed the microphone up to Zoe’s scarred lips. She glared into his whirring eyes. No matter the new face, she recognized the cold horror of a tossed coin. For a split second, she wondered if her aim had been too small. Maybe Rue’s death wasn’t the end of her quest. Maybe…
Yes…
Yes.
Yes!
The Gambler echoed in her thoughts as time crawled.
Yes, he did, and yes, he does. He knows all because you are all and he is all and how fantastic to have a cell despise the body and lash out with tempestuous fury! Will you become a cancer inside me Zoe Chambers? Get out of my head! Get out of our head perhaps you meant to say? Appalling manners you earthlings, so rude, even as you grow like the tumor that killed your mother. Rude begets rude I suppose.
Zoe’s eyes widened ever so slowly as his words sank in.
Sink.
Sunk.
Let my words anchor you to reality, because, yes, I do in fact know everything about you and everything about your world and all its fickle fates and fortunes but that is not why we are here. That is not what we are doing. We are simply...
He raised his hand and light trailed behind as he moved through treacle time.
We are simply...
Living!
He snapped his fingers.
“You understand the game?” he asked Zoe with the microphone held up to her scarred lips.
Zoe blinked as her heart hammered a relentless pulse inside her head that drowned out the cheering crowd.
“What’s the prize?”
“Straight to it! You gotta love this one! After round one, the competitors return to their sad little planet for a whole day. I know that sounds like a punishment,” he pulled at his collar. “But hear me out! Every contestant will receive a rare prize known as Double Gains. For the twenty-four hours — I know, such a random length for a day! — The system will register their experience at twice the rate, and if they level up during this period, they will receive a double boost to their Attributes when incorporating. What a doozy! Then they’ll come back for round two. What’s round two? You really want to know?”
He winked at Zoe as the crowd cheered.
“You know,” he murmured. “You can elevate a savage to godhood with levels and Mountains, but you can’t take away their base desires. Bread fuels the flesh, but blood fuels the mind.” He tapped his forehead. “You’ll have to wait for round two!”
“And now,” he continued. “The clearance crew has finished resetting the Barbeque Pit. So let’s give team two one last goodbye!”
The red door opened.
A technician in a black leotard walked out carrying the front end of a stretcher. Zoe blinked.
“Ronnie?”
The young man’s haunted eyes flicked over to her, but he said nothing as he continued walking past. There were nine other technicians in matching uniforms. They all carried stretchers.
The stretchers carried team two. Five corpses draped in glass like toffee apples. Glass hung in hairlike strands from the side. Brittle, it snapped as it touched the floor. The thick clear layer of glass preserved their burned and bubbled faces locked into grotesque howls. Zoe could hear them screaming. She could smell the charred skin, and the deeper, boiled blood smell of meat barbequed to perfection.
Bile rose up her throat, but a subtle force field pushed it back down.
Can’t have a mess said the gambler inside her brain.
“They tried so hard!” called out the Gambler. “But in the end, they only failed, and we shall forget them. So say goodbye to team two!”
“Goodbye team two,” raved the audience.
“Goodbye team two!” shouted Zoe as that invisible force manipulated her jaw.
“Goodbye team two!” shouted her friends despite the strained horror on their faces.
“A wonderful show of sportsmanship from team three, and now if they’ll kindly step through the door?”
Beyond the open red door, absolute darkness waited.
Zoe glared at the Gambler as the invisible force freed her limbs. For a moment, she contemplated activating [Fools Rush In], if only to burn the damned god and the audience.
“Do it,” whispered the Gambler. “Make us feel something true.”
She only glared the harder as she turned and stomped through the door. The lights at her back as she stepped into the darkness. Her friends followed, and the door closed behind them.
No lights came on.
[The Barbeque Pit has begun]
The whisper of an hourglass touched Zoe’s ear.
[You have 5 minutes until the room fills with burning sand]
[Four minutes, 59 seconds…]
[Good luck, and try to be entertaining]
[Four minutes, 57 seconds…]