Time relaxed as the Quest crawled across Zoe’s visions.
[Kill them all]
It became a whispering centipede of words that entwined the groaning people lying on the ground. She could see the text hanging in the air. Smell the Witch’s breath like secrets and blood and — once as a student she dissected an eyeball and the faint smell of the discharge that spilled out onto her fingertips — haunting memories. The words watched her as she watched them.
“What is it?” Tonya trembled as she sensed something wrong.
“The Witch gave me a quest,” Zoe said slowly.
Waves crashed in the distance.
“What quest?”
“She wants me to kill all of you..”
Tonya paled, she crawled away across the sand, unable to stand or speak as the fear made her babble. Zoe ignored her. Seagulls rose overhead against the sky of neon green and pink. She sat on the warm sand and contemplated the fresh blood that might drench the dunes. Was it worth it?
She felt no hesitation, only consideration. For two weeks, one question sat upon her mind and now she wondered aloud:
“Will this take me closer to the Mountain of Faith?”
She stood. The answer was obvious. Sand fell from her knees. She couldn’t put her finger on an explanation, such things were too nebulous because it didn’t come down to who she was or what she had done. No, it came down to who she wanted to be. Faith lay in the future, and two worlds lay before her: acceptance or rejection.
She raised her eyes to the swirling heavens. What eyes did those colors hide? What lies? What fear caused the Crimson Armada to blot out all the stars in heaven?
A smile crept across her face as an answer bubbled up from her blood.
“I am the fear,” she murmured to herself, and then louder.
[Will you accept the Quest?]
[No]
Her words resounded through the air like a leaden bell.
Waves slammed against the shore, and ghostly spray flew high into the air. The iridescent light reflected off them as though liquid opals rained down. A darkening spread across the sky. The spear bearers groaned and sat up. Sand stuck to their faces where their eyes and noses had bled, and they rubbed at them half-conscious of the situation.
Lighting peeled across the sky like the fins of sharks.
[You have received a Quest]
[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]
[Do you accept the Quest?]
[No]
[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]
A pounding headache loomed.
[No]
[You have received a —]
[No!]
[You have received a Quest]
Zoe snarled and opened up her Mirrored fingers.
[Mind’s Eye Incision]
Ghostly blades sprouted from her fingers.
[You have received a Quest]
Feeding on her Skein like parasites, they grew into swords before she brought them under control. A sense of life pulsed within the spectral metal in a way she’d never felt before.
[Kill Them All]
[Objective: kill all twenty-one people on the sand before you like the worms they are]
Curiosity made her want to play with them, to see how they danced in the light, how they cut, but the echoing system voice instilled urgency in her actions.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
[Reward: postpone your meeting with the Witch]
Zoe closed her eyes and tapped a finger on her arm. The ghostly blade passed through skin, muscle, blood, and bone as though they were the colors in the air and then she felt her Skein. That wire, that string, that woven mystery at the basis of the Crimson Armada’s power. What did it mean that her body was reconstituted at the most base level into such a thing? How could there be any avenue for her to resist the gods of this system? How could the tapestry defy the loom? It didn’t make sense, but her existence proved otherwise. Nothing had struck her down purely for existing. There was a reason, a plan, an excuse to keep her around, and so she would continue.
If gods wanted to play games, she would cheat until she won.
The molecule-thin tip of her blade plucked at her Skein and sent a resonance throughout her body. She listened as best she could for the traveling sound and any imperfections. A stutter in the strings, chaos in the chords, and her blade moved with the instincts of a surgeon to plunge below her left ear and slice. That same rubbery, scrambling resistance as when she removed the parasite planted by the Smith. She pulled with a hooked blade and flung the quest into the air.
It floated, spiraling, black and smiling, dripping, a maw grinning like the neon crescent moon as blood fell in glinting obsidian to a ground bleached of color. A smell of old blood and crypt earth. The sky darkened and waves crashed like distant thunder. Strings extended from the hovering quest to all twenty people on the ground.
Tonya gasped and looked back. Her eyes widened with horror as she struggled to understand the twisting rope that extended from that creature to her throat. Zoe sliced through the quest. It squeaked and slid apart before it and its strings evaporated like shadows at dawn.
Zoe pointed her Mirrored finger up at the sky.
“You wish to postpone our meeting? I reject your offer. Give me the rewards you owe me or tell me to my face why you will not. I do not fear you, Witch!”
Reality peeled.
Those that could, fled in all directions, but Zoe remained at the center of things, at the center of the world, and stared up at the bell she rang. The colors of the sky flaked away and darkness observed. The deep shadows of untouched earth. A buried silence in the sky as though of a coffin born without hinges. Zoe’s body shuddered, and the involuntary mechanism of cells facing something beyond oblivion, but she steeled her mind and stared into the void.
“No quest will make me kill these people. I am nobody's puppet.”
[Very well, I accept your rejection, but let me remind you how futile such actions are]
A deep groaning vibrated through the air. Zoe looked around for the source. She felt the harmony deep inside her, as though it resonated from every step along her Body Path. The people kneeling on the ground screamed. They clawed at their flesh, at their faces, and with their enhanced bodies they did great damage. Blood spilled onto the sand. Jaws clenched and teeth shattered. Tonya faltered six paces from her yacht’s gangplank. She gripped her head before it erupted like a bloody pimple pinched between colossal fingers.
Each one of the twenty people on the sand before her exploded. Blood and guts and bones fountained up into the air. Zoe ran forward, but blood spattered her face, and she could only watch with futile horror as body after body fell writhing to the ground before they popped like over-inflated balloons. The grinding, gnashing sound scraped through the air like the stone on stone of a mortar and pestle. Air hummed and bled. Zoe fell to the ground but she could not fall. Her body hung in the air as the color drained away and a black and white replica emerged. The blood of exploded victims hung resplendent and crimson and then, as though squeezed and shaped by invisible hands, formed a cross.
The geometric pattern of blood hung overhead before it fell. Blood splashed upon the dunes and the sand and the shells of the shore and painted a crossroads of gore. Where the two paths crossed, the blood splashed off an invisible figure and so revealed her silhouette. A woman with a wide-brimmed hat tilted over her eyes. Blood continued to drip from the brim as though the dark material were woven from gore. Bone white skin of her neck and cleavage flowed into a corset of black and red. A sheer robe covered her features, flowing, elegant, as light as a shadow on the ground, and this too dripped with blood into the crossroads below as though to keep the path forever wet.
She smiled, all teeth, and that same curved smile of glinting teeth split in the surrounding air. Eyes opened in the shadows of her clothes and the colorless sky. One great Mubilashi revolving around the island, around Zoe, and around the Witch.
She raised bleached fingers to her lips as she gazed around at the carnage.
[I forgot the feeling of flesh around my thoughts]
Zoe struggled to her feet. She felt no fear. No fear. No mind-numbing, bone-chilling — she felt fear, but it would not affect her. She stepped forward, and the Witch allowed the crunching sound of her Mirrored feet upon the sand. The system’s face remained hidden, turned away from Zoe to examine the blood, but the eyes in her clothes watched Zoe like a compass watches North.
“You didn’t have to kill them.”
[It has been a long, long time since I did anything because I had to]
Zoe snarled. She stepped forward again. Her feet sank wetly into the bloodied sand. Hounds slipped out of her flesh to fan around her as she approached the waiting Witch. With every step, the Witch grew taller. Zoe’s mind screamed, but she had enough Willpower to force herself closer. Though she looked up, she could not see the Witch’s face beneath the shadows of her hat. She stood at the Witch’s feet and it was as though she stared up at the clouds. Blood rained down onto Zoe’s face from the Witch’s hat, and the splatter was warm, and inviting, and the woman above was luscious, forgiving, motherly, caring, intoxicating —
She wrestled her mind away from the inviting figure above and stepped back. Her feet sank into the bloodied sand up to her knees. She struggled to move and sank lower.
“You’re a monster,” Zoe said. “You create flies only so you can tear their wings off.”
The Witch laughed, and the sound filled Zoe’s mind with pleasure. She laughed along. Delirious. Ecstatic. Screaming. She had no choice.
The laughter stopped.
[You are amusing, insightful, and dare I say interesting… but never forget my mercy here]
“You call this mercy? Or should I thank you for sparing me?”
[These are not the only people on the island]
The words chilled Zoe as she thought of her friends. What was happening to them right now?
“Don’t harm them.”
The witch knelt to stare at Zoe. Eyes flashed in the darkness like light on a bullet. Too quick. Too bright. Darkness reigned before Zoe even realized what she saw, and it was the darkness of the night. Only the fanged smile remained, unmoving, as words pounded into Zoe’s mind as unrelenting as the caresses of waves upon the shore.
[I haven’t yet, and maybe I won’t, but why should I listen to you? Why reward you? Why consider you for anything at all?]
An eye hung suspended within each raindrop and Zoe saw herself through the rain. She was so small, sinking into bloodied ground, a failure, a poor excuse for a human, and a poorer excuse for an usurper. Flawed beyond understanding, a tool too sharp to be handled, too impure to be reforged, a contradiction of love and hate, addicted to —
Zoe’s heart pounded as she struggled to exist.
“Why…” the question echoed through the dark forests of her mind. “For the reason the mother listens to the child.”
Silence reigned as the luminous eyes grew ever larger, ever brighter, and Zoe understood the moth racing toward the killing flame. The colossal, sizeless, Witch tilted her head. Her eyes — too many — flashed like lightning before sinking once more into the hat’s shadows.
[Go on]