Blood rained from the Witch’s wide black hat. Within each droplet, an eyeball hung suspended like a child within a womb. The eyes stared at Zoe as they fell. She tried to avoid their touch, but the wet sand swallowed up to her waist and despite the numbers of her attributes, she was helpless beneath the hot kisses of the bloody rain. They screamed as they shattered upon the sand and watered the crossroads that rippled like red silk in the wind.
Zoe desperately tried to think beyond the horror of the moment. It encompassed her. Stretched out her mind until there was no room for thoughts. She opened her mouth and let instinct speak.
“The child speaks out of want and wonder. Its every sentence is a petulant demand but in its innocence, it knows not that it offends. Need and naivety intertwine to create a language that compels.”
She scarcely heard the words that left her mouth. They floated up from her like the air out of drowning lungs.
Epiphany of the tongue: 88%
Zoe almost didn’t notice the whispered notification as the Witch’s presence crashed down upon her like a noonday sun. Her smile burned bright and curved.
[You compel me?]
Inquisitive warmth trickled down her spine, and legs as the sand slithered over her skin. The groaning, wheezing sound of stone on stone shook the air. Zoe ceased resisting, if the Witch wanted to bury her there was nothing she could do, but maybe there was something she could say.
“I compel you,” Zoe said with a firmness she couldn’t believe. “Give me the reward you promised.”
[You wish to become the trinity’s third?]
“I wish to end the apocalypse.”
[Impossible]
The grinding grew louder but Zoe pressed on.
“To shift a planet, one needs only a long enough lever. I have the blade, give me the length, and I shall cut the beginning from the weave of fate. We are all tangled in the Skein, let me cut a way free.”
Epiphany of the Tongue: 98%
The Witch drew in a breath, and the grinding stopped. The sand stopped. The rain stopped.
[Interesting]
The Witch stepped back and shrank until she was merely tall. With a fluid movement, she sat cross-legged on the sand. The falling rain congealed into blobs as dark as tar. Eyes peeled on these floating globules, fangs smiled, a hovering parade of Mubilashi that bobbed above the sand. The Witch gestured toward Zoe, and the bloodied sand bubbled and twisted. Zoe rose in the swell and settled in a chair of cream stone with burgundy cushions. The Witch lounged opposite her and waved a fan before her face.
[My dead brother played with Time. He believed it was one of the greatest weapons in our arsenal. I never agreed with him. What good turning-back moments only to live them out again? Nothing new ever comes from reliving the past]
The chair was comfortable, shockingly so, but the Witch’s gaze impaled Zoe. She couldn’t see the eyes that viewed her. The Witch’s face remained veiled by shadow as absolute as a hole in the ground.
“I have saved the life of my friends by rewinding time.”
[You could have made new friends]
Epiphany of the Tongue: 99%
Zoe’s eyes widened at the statement. Such a view was so… alien. Should she try to align herself to such a mind, or should she continue as she was?
“I like the friends I have.”
[I can see that. You even wear one of them as your hands and feet. How droll. I wonder, what would your friends say if they heard your goals? For if you cut away the apocalypse — as you call it — none of you would ever meet each other, nor would you meet your true selves. Say what you will, and you do, which I adore, but the Crimson Armada is the proving ground for the best of all souls]
“Souls don’t need to be proven.”
The Witch laughed. Zoe clamped her jaws shut and tried to resist, but the sound spilled forth from her scarred lips and she laughed. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she cackled. Her chest ached.
The laughter stopped, and Zoe drew great sobbing gasps of air.
[I find your ideas naïve, your point of view limited, and your tenacity… commendable. You would make a terrible replacement for my dead brother]
Hot rage flickered in Zoe’s belly. She understood the fly buzzing in the spider’s web. Even in the face of the inevitable — especially in the face of the inevitable — one must struggle.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You turned Oriz into a monster and forced me to kill her! For what? For nothing?”
The black orbs of Mubilashi floated around her. Eyes wide and bright. Teeth bared. They smiled as the witch smiled.
[If all who attempt a test pass, then the test becomes a failure]
“Why?”
[Why?]
“Why let me live and slaughter the others?””
The Witch tapped her chin, and a thoughtful silence settled onto the beach. The waves lapped at the shore and the ghostly tide rose with each crashing swell, spectral foam sweeping across the sand, reaching ever closer to Zoe and the Witch, brushing away the blood, washing away the corpses, rising until Zoe’s ankles dangled above hissing foam like the mouths of a crowd far below.
The eyes peeking through the Witch’s sheer clothing blinked and climbed above the water. They settled upon her arms and chest and stared at Zoe.
Ghostly fish, sleek and silver, swam through the water and circled above. Zoe felt the silence crush her lungs. She drew shorter and shorter breaths but dared not break the silence.
[It is quite the thing, to be so vast. You speak to me now, but so do a thousand others. A million more call out my name, but have not made the appropriate sacrifices. Then there are the billions who fear me and hold my name in the shadows of their minds where it is even more powerful. When something so vast interacts with something so tiny, the idea of why becomes lost. Dust trapped in the gears of an infinite machine can only circulate and spin, but this machine is bleeding to death]
The foam water stopped hissing. Zoe stopped breathing. Time stopped. Space stilled. Heartbeats continued like lonely drums and Zoe felt her friends trapped in their moments across the island. The Witch stood and approached and she was tall and proud with her head in the air, and small, bent to shortness, her hand outstretched and grasping, and innocent, skipping, the wide smile one of overflowing joy.
[That is why, little mortal, because the Crimson Armada can exist for eternity, but existence is not enough, eternity is not enough. I crave more]
She stopped before Zoe.
[Some rules predate us, and the ultimate rule is choice. Your choices in this time you call apocalypse have given you a quality I desire, so I present an offer. One last choice]
Time rolled and Zoe breathed and stared up at the darkness that covered the Witch’s face, that was the Witch’s face, for how could something so ancient still have an appearance?
Though deep in her mind the quivering root of her soul knew a face lay above her and knew, feared, understood that to see it would be more terrible a fate than death.
She wanted to cower, but understood her role, what must be done, and — truth be told — power lay within her grasp, so she stretched out her hand.
“Tell me,” she said.
The Witch inhaled deeply and some intangible part of Zoe drifted into those hidden nostrils.
[I will bring you up to the state of the trinity and give you the power to cut time. This is the only way you can have your world without apocalypse]
Zoe’s heart pounded. She had hoped for a reward, but this was too much. Her quest for the mountain, for dungeon treasures, seemed futile now compared to this offer.
The Queen of Crossroads, of bisected infinity, was the Queen of Shortcuts…
But there had to be a catch.
“What is the price?” she asked.
The Witch reached down and her fingers passed through Zoe’s. She brushed through Zoe’s flesh and Skein like light through glass, like a shadow through the air, like thought through flesh, and stepped closer. The shadows swept over Zoe. The eyes stared in, and out, and invited Zoe to become one. The joy of only seeing the world, of only tasting, of biting, of playing. She could give it all up…
She wrenched her mind back to the question at hand as the Witch stepped past her and through her and walked along the sand.
[Everyone asks for the price… I used to greet everyone when they reached level 15. It was a greater achievement at the beginning of the system than it is now. I would speak to them about their dreams and find out how I could help them. Sometimes I could do much, but often I could do so little. Power is such a dead end]
Zoe rose from the chair, stumbled, and straightened. Her muscles only worked from her Willpower.
“You’re avoiding the question.”
[Forgive me, I am so close to being corporeal; the flesh invites such wanderings of the mind]
Zoe felt a trap lurking as she walked after the Witch. Their footsteps light in the damp sand. The black sky stretched above her, but something prickled at her mind like the edge of a blade. Something watched her. Something more than the drifting eyes of the Mubilashi and the Witch’s robes. Something…
“I want to take this deal,” Zoe said. “I want this power, but tell me what you want.”
Pain stabbed through her heel. Zoe blinked. Shocked. She lifted her foot. A piece of glass stuck out from her Mirrored heel. Blood flowed rich and thick to the sand. Pain pulsed through her and Moth fluttered across her heart. The Mirrored heel dripped, mixing with the blood, and Zoe hurried to pull the shard from her sister’s flesh.
It was smaller than she thought, and sharp in the way only glass can be.
“I remember this…”
[Fragment of the Witch’s Crossroads: a sliver of glass, you recognize it like a half-forgotten dream, like déjà vu, but the pain is a promise of more to come, more pain, more power, more peace]
It felt heavy between her fingers. Slick with blood. It wanted to slip free and cut again.
[Did you think you left it behind? No, it was always in you, marking every step of your life]
Zoe focused on her Vitality, on the Mirror within her, on her connection to Moth, anything to stop the bleeding, but nothing worked.
[That pain, that feeling of life flowing out from your body to splash upon the world. That is what I want]
Zoe held her foot and stared at the woman, the system, the monster before her.
“I don’t understand.”
[You cannot take my power as you are, so climb inside my mouth. Let me swallow you, Zoe Chambers of the Planet known as Earth, let me take you deep into my belly and birth you anew]
Zoe’s eyes widened. She backed away, limping, her blood flowing into the sand.
“You want to make me a Mubilashi?”
[Would that be so bad? But no, I want to make you something more. Something wonderful. I want to make you a child of the system, a new life to carry on the legacy of the Crimson Armada to the glorious horizons beyond eternity]
Zoe stumbled and fell. She wanted to retreat, but her body remained frozen. The Witch towered above her, before her, standing over without taking a step to get closer, and reached down with a hand as white as fleshless bone.
[You have received a Quest]
[Rebirth]
[Enter the Witch’s maw and disintegrate in the womb of dreams]
[Reward: let yourself be born again to a mother who wants you. Born to a universe that is yours. Born to an unfettered destiny]
Those slender fingers beckoned like a lover in the dark, and Zoe shuddered as her gaze swept up the arm and into the abyss beneath the hat. For the abyss gazed back at her with an endless, alien love.
[That is my offer, now what is your choice?]