Could Anton join Zoe at the Mountain of Faith? Zoe frowned as she thought about it. There was a filtering mechanism for the Mountain portal, but she’d already interacted with it once. Her entire plan hinged on her summoning one such portal, maybe she could…
After all, unlike the other Mountains that Rue displayed to her, Faith was a relationship. There was the object or idea that one had faith in, and there was the faith holder. There was even the third aspect, the interplay of faith — whatever that was — between the two or more. Faith flowed, but for something to flow, there must be a beginning and an end.
Anton raised an eyebrow.
“What do you think?”
Zoe shook her head.
“Skidmark told me to give you a break.”
“That’s cool, so you think you can get the portal to accept me?”
“Yeah, I think I — no! You’re staying here.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
“You’re staying.”
“Mhmm.”
Zoe glowered at him.
“You’re infuriating.”
He bowed and flourished.
“At your service, boss. Let me know when you’re heading to the Mountain. I’ll come to say goodbye.”
“And that’s all?” Zoe frowned. “That’s all, alright? No, it is. I’m your boss, like you say, so you do what I say.”
He smiled.
“Exactly.”
Zoe shook her head and walked away.
“You’re not coming with,” she mumbled, but already her mind toyed with portals and how she could stretch their mechanics.
###
They spent the next two weeks on the beach in a state of staggered relaxation. They swam, ate, drank, sunbathed as much as the swirling sky let them, and waited for something to go wrong. Inevitably, something would, after all, it always had before.
Zoe knew the Witch was out there, up there, in there, listening and watching. She didn’t forget that a meeting was promised between them, and whenever a gust of wind shifted the sand, she wondered if it would keep blowing until a crossroads formed with a dark figure in the center.
Anton never brought up the Mountain again. He found an old building that was part apparel and part surfboard workshop. Everyone changed into beachwear with a joy that was hard to express — as though civilization were a joy singing through the veins as clean nylon and polyester rubbed against the skin. He set up inside the workshop and drew up the Mirrorbell plans. His Insight-fueled memory sketched out a perfect mockup of what he learned in the titular dungeon. Skidmark observed and asked questions relating to the physics of Earths old and new until he sent her out to follow his eyes and find reagents for his plan.
Bella slept on the sand beside her runeblade. If questioned, she said she was working on her tan, but after the first day, everyone left her to it. At night, she and Zoe entered the jungle to train against the few creatures willing to engage them. Both handicapped themselves to hunt the spectral sharks and test their ability to fight with skill rather than overwhelming power. Few words were exchanged in these nocturnal bouts, but the sadness that weighed upon the women lifted as the dark hours passed into dawn.
Zoe spent her time meditating on the Mountain Portal. It felt at once close, and staggeringly far away. Sometimes it wanted to come to her, and sometimes she couldn’t imagine returning. She waited to hear the system announcement again, but it didn’t come.
Day in and day out.
###
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
At the end of the second week, a delegation from another island arrived. A woman with fiery red hair that floated behind her in braids woven through with firecrackers. Dark makeup cast her face into a skeletal mockery as she sauntered down from a mega-yacht docked on the edge of the island where Zoe meditated.
Twenty men and women came behind her in cloaks as red as the woman’s hair. They carried spears whose tips spat and sparked. Zoe raised an eye at the uniformity of their equipment. They either found a reward in a dungeon or could craft themselves. Both interested her.
Zoe remained sitting as the imperious woman approached her with her spear bearers in lockstep behind. Before they were a dozen paces away, Zoe brushed her Willpower up against them. The group staggered instantly. The spear carriers collapsed, their knees buckling to the sand. The woman remained standing a fraction of a second longer, but the effort cost her. Blood dribbled from her nose and leaked from her eyes as her face paled like the sand beneath their feet. She collapsed sideways, shivering, as her spear carriers moaned behind her.
“You’re about level 30,” Zoe said conversationally. “Maybe a little higher, with a Dexterity-focused build. Your spear carriers are well rounded, but none are higher than level 25.”
The redheaded woman shook as the sparks died in her hair.
“You… you’re… what…”
Zoe sighed and stood up.
“I had a few lucky encounters,” she said as she dusted sand from her pants and walked toward them. “What are you doing here?”
It took a few minutes before the woman could respond. Zoe spent the time checking the spear bearers’ vitals and rolling them into the recovery position.
“You’ll all be fine,” Zoe said as she sat back down beside the red-headed leader. “Sorry if I came off a little strong. Honestly, I expected someone like you to come sooner.”
The red-headed leader placed her knuckles in the sand and pushed herself up onto her knees. Zoe could see the pained frustration in those eyes, but it lurked behind sheer disbelief like fish behind aquarium glass. This woman survived the tutorial — which sounded horrific from the secondhand information Zoe received from Maria and the other islanders who heard it from Big Bob — and then conquered the first island she encountered in the outside world. She believed herself to be an apex predator. At level 30, her strength, and her techniques, would have made her a living god in the old earth, but here and now before Zoe, she was nothing more than a bug.
Zoe remembered the feeling of Rue’s table and staring up at gods so large that they took on the features of geography. Mountains of more than flesh. She gave the woman a sympathetic look and handed her some water.
“Your friends will recover,” she said. “Let’s have a little chat.”
The woman took the water gratefully, drank, swallowed, and sighed.
“You’re not human,” she said.
“I sort of am,” Zoe said with a lopsided grin. She couldn’t deny that she was enjoying this. A wind whispered across the sand as she settled her Mirrored hands on her knees. “So, my name is Zoe Chambers.”
The woman’s eyes widened. They took on that slightly distant look someone got when they checked their status.
“You’re the one who got us all the Magnifying Glass upgrade?”
“One of the people, yes.”
The woman tilted her head.
“That upgrade prevented me from failing a test in the tutorial. Thank you. My name is Tonya.”
“Why are you disturbing my meditation, Tonya?”
“A quest,” the woman said. “We were told to kill you.”
“We?” Zoe asked as she gestured toward the spear bearers.
Tonya shook her head.
“No, the other island leaders and I,” she paused as she made eye contact with Zoe and glanced away. “Big Bob was one of us before you killed him.”
“I gave him a choice.”
“Will you give me the same choice?”
“I’m not here to rule. If you’re doing something disgusting then I’ll kill you, but if you’re not, then I won’t. Can you promise you aren’t doing something disgusting?”
Tonya quickly nodded.
“Big Bob was the worst of us. I swear! We all left the tutorial together when that mad god Rue came and tore it apart. None of us liked him, we —”
“Hold up,” Zoe said as she raised a hand. “Rue broke up the tutorial?”
Tonya nodded and gave a play-by-play of her experience of the tutorial’s abrupt and catastrophic end. Zoe mused on this information for a moment, and the red-headed woman clearly felt uncomfortable interrupting Zoe’s thoughts. She could almost get used to this level of fearful respect, if she didn’t have better things to do.
“You mentioned a quest?”
“Yes,” Tonya nodded again, even faster this time. “The Witch gave us a quest to kill you.”
A chill raced down Zoe’s spine.
“The Witch?” Zoe asked as her Willpower whipped the sand. “What was the quest?”
[What indeed?]
The Witch’s voice trailed down Zoe’s spine like icy fingers. Zoe shuddered as time bubbled around her. Space gelatinized. Her thoughts raced in the circular tracks of her brain as something unseen leaned down through the layers of the cosmos to speak with her.
[Your first quest was The Burden of Being Interesting, and I see why you piqued the fancies of a despondent war god on the brink of eternity. A fiery soul glowing bright amongst the black implosion of a newly gained world. You spat with heat, and so he cradled you in the hopes you might burn a hole through his ennui. But where is the warrior? The champion? Where is the surgeon of the apocalypse ready to cut the cause from reality and bleed out a cure?]
The words bounced through. Echoing pangs and spasms. Blood frothed at her lips, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow or spit. The Witch held her tight.
[A bug under glass must become something fierce indeed to cut the observer, so I give you a choice]
[Quest received:]
[Kill Them All]
[Objective: kill all twenty-one people on the sand before you like the worms they are]
[Reward: postpone your meeting with the Witch]
The words settled around her like the leaden waters of a frozen lake. She gasped as time uncoiled, as space flowed, as her thoughts ran unshackled. Tonya looked at her with curiosity, and the spear bearers groaned as they awoke. Zoe stared at them all, her hands shaking, as the quest pounded at the forefront of her mind.