Distances within the dark void were deceptive. Though Cassy, or Not-Cassy was easily viewable it wasn’t so easy to travel to her. The creature sat atop the tip of the dragon’s tail with its shadowy legs crossed like a yogi atop a Mountain, and Zoe couldn’t help but feel some mockery in that position. This creature lived to mock and torture, after all. Zoe would be foolish to think that things were different here. Faces on the dragon’s corpse turned to look up at her as she passed over. Eyes like sinkholes in expressions of shifting, burning light.
The group traveled in silence on the wings of Willpower. Each had their thoughts about moving toward this creature, and Zoe felt as though she should address them, but found herself unable to talk. This wasn’t something she wanted to address. She almost wished ANton never spotted the creature. So, when a notification pinged Zoe, she dove into the distraction.
[You have reached rank 5 of your body path.]
[The Bell At The Center Of The World]
[Rank 5 upgrades]
* [1: Tunnel Sound: When you strike and create a portal it will extend and open an exit point. The power of your strike will enhance the distance between the points.]
* [2: Silent Bell: draw spacetime into the shape of a bell, and while it waits for your strike, it floats independently of the world.]
* [3: Once and Future Reach: create a portal within eyesight without touching, but you must activate the portal once you move through it]
Zoe mulled them over. [Once and Future Reach] would provide her with new utility and functions, though she wasn’t sure she liked the clause that broke with causality in a way that was sure to punish her should she get a step wrong. [Silent Bell] was tempting, but ultimately she wanted to fight, and not to hide. Hell, if she wished to hide, she would remain floating where she was.
[Tunnel Sound] wasn’t flashy, but it was an extension of her pre-existing techniques in a way she needed. It would complete her, as though her current body path were an arm and this option were the hand.
She made her decision.
The knowledge, the change, swam through her, and she flexed her Mirrored knuckles with anticipation. In the time it took her to decide, they got close enough to Not-Cassy to float above her.
Skidmark looked hesitantly down at the monster. It sat alone, surrounded by others that kowtowed in obvious reverence. The sight sickened her, and her fist moved without thought.
Knuckles cracked against nothing and the void splintered. She felt her body path ring inside her as pink light splashed from a portal, but rather than a flat disc of color, she saw an expanding point as the hole became a tunnel racing toward the creature that possessed Cassy’s corpse. The pink circle resolved itself before her as the opening of a wormhole. She felt the strain on her Skein, almost negligible, and the tunnel-like she traced her finger along a pipe in the dark, touching the inside and the outside, and herself the pipe… it was a curious sensation but she couldn’t focus on it as she was too busy tamping her heart rate.
For the wormhole showed Cassy’s beaming face -- both in expression and illumination -- no more than a foot in front of her.
“So good to see you again,” the creature that wore Cassy’s flesh said. “I thought you would never come and visit.”
The grinning face sat like a neon mask upon a body of writhing shadows, but what Zoe thought at first was a smoky, insubstantial energy, was in actuality a mass of worms slithering over each other and belching wisps of aubergine vapor. One of the worms slithered through the eyehole of Not-Cassy’s bright mask.
Wrath reared up in Zoe faster than horror could subsume her, and she lashed out. Her fish passed through her portal and struck Not-Cassy in the face with a sound like shattering glass. Light splintered and scattered and the worms exploded into fine mist. The shockwave bowled over the parasites gathered around Not-Cassy and sent them tumbling over the landscape of shattered scales. It wasn’t enough for her anger, and Zoe gripped the portal with Mirrored Fingers to wrench it wider.
The hole in reality gaped, and Zoe tumbled through. She felt her friends follow -- their Skein brushing against hers as they passed through the wormhole -- and they joined her floating above the few squirming worms of Not-Cassy.
Bella spat onto the mess.
“Bitch,” she said with true disdain. “But now that’s out of the way, are you sure you should have done that?”
Zoe glared at the blackened streaks across her Mirrored knuckles. With a thought, her hand reformed, and the sludge fell away to drift like dirty snow through the void.
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“I didn’t think about the consequences,” Zoe said. “Though I doubt that creature wanted to do anything but taunt us.”
“I’m glad you did it,” Skidmark said.
“Could have saved some for the rest of us,” Anton said.
Zoe gestured to the light-faced creatures that crawled on the corpse and picked their way between burst asunder like the floor of a ruined temple.
“You can fight them if you want.”
“I don’t want to,” he said as his silver eyes raced out. “It feels like swimming in sewerage just because the weather is hot.”
One of the creatures leaped at his eye like a dog at a butterfly. The silver orb zipped away, but a long tongue of hair closed the distance. Black lines crisscrossed Anton’s glowing technique, and he cried out in shock and pain.
The creature reeled in the eye towards itself, and Anton roared. His eyes glowed a pure, blinding white and pressure rolled off his body in waves. The black void lit up like the guts of a star as Anton pointed at the creature grasping his eye.
“Release my gaze!”
The eye itself burned and the creature shrieked as the worms of its flesh melted and burst like sausages in a crucible.
The light faded from Anton as he slowly lowered himself down to the ground. Zoe joined him with a faint smile.
“I should have realized earlier, but I was too hung up on my own drama,” she said as she placed a hand on Anton’s shoulder. “Congratulations on conquering the Mountain of Faith.”
Anton placed his hands in his pockets and shrugged, but his eyes met hers with acknowledgment.
“Cheers, boss.”
Skidmark and Bella flew down to join them. The woman’s eyes were wide as they gazed between Antonn and Zoe.
“You two are in another league aren’t you?” Bella said. “Is there any way we can catch up?”
Skidmark shook her head.
“I doubt it, but to be honest… that display was terrifying. It shook my soul to look at you, Anton. I don’t know if I want that kind of power coursing through me.”
“Are you sure?” Zoe asked. “Because I think I need more, more Mountains, more heights if I’m to achieve what I want.”
“You want to kill the Witch?” Bella asked.
“I do.”
Bella sighed.
“You know, it feels weird talking about them like this, but I guess the Crimson Armada doesn’t have a grip here.”
Skidmark scuffed the ground.
“Do you know what this place is? We’re standing on a dead dragon larger than my gran’s village. I thought those were stars, but I think it’s just these corpses dissolving into crystals. Are these all people cast out of reality like us? Will we turn into corpses and have tiny people walking on us and having this same conversion?”
Zoe gazed out at the expanse of stagnant midnight.
“The void beyond the void, if what the Dragon told me means anything. All I know is it’s the place where those despicable parasites come from. The ones that controlled Cassy and tried to control me.” Zoe flexed her fingers and produced the translucent psychic blades of [Mind’s Eye Incision]. “This technique has been instrumental in my climb to power. There’s no way I could have achieved what I have without it, but to think it came from a place like this…”
One of the creatures crawled toward the worms at Zoe’s feet, and Zoe kicked it away with an involuntary look of disgust.
“These things hurt my eyes to look at,” she said.
“How unfair,” said the worms at her feet.
Bile rose in the back of Zoe’s throat as she looked down at the squirming worms. Only a few dozen of the bloated bruise colored creatures remained. A tiny droplet of light clung to the head of each one and illuminated there were a few dozen Cassys, as though each were a piece of a shattered mirror.
“You hurt me,” the worms giggled in their overlapping voices. “Ouch, owie, oh wow, oh no, oh me, oh my,” the voice dissolved into mocking laughter as Zoe raised her foot and summoned the Mountain of Faith. “Stomp all you want, but it’s your funeral.”
Zoe hesitated and cursed herself for doing so. She knew she should wipe out this creature, and all the others like it, but her curiosity defeated her.
“Why is it my funeral?”
“Because I alone can help you, and more than that, I’m the only one who wants to help you.”
Bella stabbed one of the worms. She crouched down to inspect its wriggling form on the tip of her runeblade.
“I call bollocks,” she said. “You’re spinning lies so we don’t kill you. How could a worm even help us?”
“More importantly,” added Anton. “Why would a worm help us?”
“A clew is something greater than a worm,” hissed the worms with dignity. “But in any case, I want to help you because I have seen how Fate plucks at your strings. It is not how things should be, as much as things should be in any case, and I do not wish it to be the way things are.”
Zoe frowned.
“You mentioned Fate to me before, and you’re not the only one. What do you mean by that?”
“Information is but one prize I offer, but first I need something from you.”
“What do you want?”
“Blood,” the worms hissed thin vapors. “A drop or two to reconstitute myself, and then I shall lead you to your two prizes. The first is a pathway to more power. The second is the meaning of Fate.”
Bella raised her hand.
“I don’t trust this at all.”
“Seconded,” Skidmark said with obvious revulsion. “We should keep flying toward the light.”
Anton frowned.
“Can it be anyone’s blood?” he asked.
“No,” Not-Cassy’s worms responded. “Zoe’s tastes the best.”
Zoe gazed toward the slit of light pulsing in the distance. It was no closer for all their flying.
“Does anyone ever reach the light?” she asked.
“Nobody reaches the horizon,” the worms responded with tiny glittering smiles. “Such is the truth of all worlds both real and not.”
“This isn’t real?” Bella asked.
“Delicious questions, almost as tasty as blood.”
“Fine,” Zoe said with a barely suppressed snarl.
She sharpened her Mirrored finger to a blade and sliced at her wrist. Dark red blood splashed down onto the worms. They writhed and swam in the puddle as Zoe’s wound zipped closed of its own accord. The worms wriggled over each other, knotting, frothing, as hundreds slithered out of the puddle of blood. No matter how many worms crawled free, the blood remained, and soon the humans were forced to step back from the clumps and piles of worms pulling themselves together into a ghastly humanoid shape.
Wriggling hands dragged down across a seething head and a face of bright light emerged. Cassy’s smile appeared.
“That is so much better,” she said with a thousand voices in perfect unison. “Now, I will tell you about Fate on one condition.”
“What?”
Cassy’s visage twisted and as she spoke, each word dripped with more venom than the last.
“When you approach the throne at the center of reality, you must knock Fate down, tear off their crown, and shatter it to pieces.”