Not-Cassy reached inside herself and produced an orb of dark stone like polished obsidian. Zoe’s eyebrow twitched as she realized there was no way the orb could have been there since she saw how Not-Cassy’s body disintegrated. She must have picked it up as they slithered through the cavern, or maybe there were holes where she couldn’t see them. Why was she trying to resist ludicrous ideas like that at this point?
The orb crackled with a foreign energy. A strange aura that brushed Zoe’s skein at right angles. Another orb floated up out of the wriggling Joel, slipping through the crackled glass as though it were not there.
“Do you truly want to see your world?” She asked.
“Of course we do,” Zoe said.
Not-Cassy turned to Anton.
“I need your assistance.”
“Why?”
“You have the all-seeing flesh. Can’t you feel what you must do?”
He opened his mouth to respond but simply nodded instead. His skin slit as his eyes opened to gaze in all directions. He extended an open hand, and the eye in his palm wriggled as it gazed toward the two spheres.
A moment slipped by, silent in its lack of substance, and a feeling like a missed step ran through Zoe’s gut, she was about to speak, to act, when it happened.
The two orbs floated up until they hung like dark eyes in the cavern’s gloomy air. They pulsed, and the acrid smells of Joel’s tears, and the poisonous fumes of the worms, and the horrid sterility of the dusty tortoise corpse, all faded. The orbs pulsed, and the darkness of the void beyond the void vanished. The orbs pulsed — no longer seen, for how can an eye look at itself? — and Earth bloomed.
Or at least, what used to be Earth.
Gone was the globe, and now, not even the islands remained. The swirling colorful sky, so familiar, so alien, now bled into an endless sea. An expanse like a red mirror in which scattered dust was all that remained of the world. Zoe wanted to refuse what she saw, that it was a trick of Not-Cassy, but when she pulled on her Faith she found that it only validated what she saw.
“How long?” her voice croaked out of the nothing where she floated like a ghost in the walls. “When did this happen.”
Waves crashed, pink froth, as ripples spread across the sea.
“You entered the Mountain portal a hundred years ago by your measure,” Not-Cassy said into Zoe’s ear. “When the dragon cast you out of space he also cast you out of time as punishment for your greed.”
“No, this can’t be…”
“You know it to be true,” Not-Cassy’s voice shivered with delight. “So, tell me, will you rejoin the fight knowing that it’s already lost?”
Below her, the red sea spiraled, slowly, moving on a scale that would have broken a lesser mind, but Zoe was more now, and the tides that shifted could encircle worlds.
Zoe’s voice, ghost that it was, grew hoarse.
“What fight can there be?”
“The same one that raged for a hundred years.”
Bloody water plumed out of the center of the spiral. A piercing spear of water scattered into a ruby rain in the light of the stars. The water fell away and revealed the twisting, flashing mass it disguised. Zoe’s eyes tried to adjust to the sheer speed she beheld, but when they finally adjusted, she wished she could look away.
But where she floated, there were no directions or eyelids, and all she could do was see.
Rue fought the Witch in the ruins of Earth, and Zoe witnessed. Her mind flinched but she observed as Rue shifted between corporeal and metaphysical, his blade lashing out to sheer reality, while he rewrote laws so that accerleration increased sharpness.
Slices floated from him on a starlit wind toward the pale flesh of the Witch. She towered, for all she could do was tower, as the world folded upon itself into a crossroads with her at the center. Eyes rolled along her length as they shuddered with sorcerous ecstasy. Black shadows batted at Rue’s sword, but they severed like hair before scissors. She smiled beneath her brimmed hat, and blood flowed between her teeth as she uttered he parried with claws of starlit silver, and spoke an inverted word so that a blade cut itself. an inverse word and rewrote blades so that they cut themselves.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Rue cried out, but as his blades exploded he flung the droplets at the Witch and they cut through like spears.
His will rippled out and the laws reset as his blades grew and he stabbed down at the voluptuous curves of the wormlike witch. They crashed back into the ocean of blood, bleeding, fighting, thrashing, as they sunk from view.
“A century they fought,” said Not-Cassy. “A century more they will fight before Rue’s hold of his domain collapses enough to allow the Crimson Armada entry. Then he will fall for good, and the Crimson Armada will devour his system, and incorporate what they desire, and then it will march on to new worlds and yours will be forever lost to space and mind. Delightful, isn’t it?”
“What could be delightful about this?”
“The crash of entropy. The violence of life’s resistance. All the little pieces trying to keep themselves together.”
A sweet, high-pitched giggle flooded the air around Zoe. She wanted to puke, but she had nobody. What could she do? The world she fought for was already lost, even though the battle raged on. The scale at which they fought was too extreme. Even with her Mountain, how could she hope to match systems?
Rue and the Witch burst from the water again. A forest of spears grew about them and pierced the Witch’s flesh. She wriggled free and the wounds became mouths with tongues that lashed Rue in place. His sword slipped from his hand and danced as though the sky were a gilded palace. Flesh severed, reality bent, flesh renewed, they crashed into the ocean and sent up a wave large enough to drown cities.
This shouldn’t even be her fight.
“Why did you show me this?” Zoe’s voice trembled. “Why did you tell me.”
“They say that ignorance is bliss,” Not-Cassy said with a wistful sigh. “But pain is a worm wriggling on a hook. Wriggle for me, little worm.”
Zoe ached at the words. She should never have trusted this monster, though she knew she would make the same choice if given the chance, she would want to know.
A rustle of cloth behind her. A presence itching as though someone stood behind her, watching, breathing, far too close. Though she had no body, had no direction, Zoe turned.
Something groaned and snapped, and she fell to a cold hard floor. She sucked down air and it rushed into the lungs she had once more. The ground wriggled beneath her palms, before once more becoming firm. She looked around, and the whole room seemed a shadow draped in velvet. It was a tall space, but the walls twisted as though a spider built a cathedral. A throne jutted up beneath the tallest spire, and on the throne reclined a figure.
Crown.
Eyes.
Languid posture.
Zoe’s eyes darted away. It was too much to take in. Her mind couldn’t handle the intensity, but she understood the impressions of a bored king staring down at her like a child toying with ants.
“Why am I here?” a bemused voice said. “Why is this happening to me? Those are the questions on your mind, how dull.”
Zoe’s mouth opened, and closed, she had been about to ask those questions.
“You’re Fate,” she said.
“I suppose I am. You are Zoe of Earth, champion of Rue of the Crimson Armada in his quest to die a glorious death, though judging by his fight with the Witch he isn’t trying too hard to succeed in that quest, is he? I had such high hopes for the Crimson Armada, but they’re like any spoiled child grown fat and insolent.”
Zoe didn’t know what to say.
“Yes, you do,” Fate said with a sigh. “Please, don’t stand on ceremony. I’ve seen it all before.”
Zoe tried to look at him, but her eyes refused. She summoned the Mountain of Faith, and her neck creaked up as light burned in her eyes. The throned figure resonated with the Mountain. A thread of Faith ran through him, like a single strand in a tapestry wider than her sight.
“What is this?” Zoe asked. “All of it? What is this game that you’re playing with the world?”
“With the worlds, plural, get it right if you wish to throw accusations. But you already know, don’t you? I see the answer shining in your skull, right beside that parasite you carry.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, right, got ahead of myself. You will know soon enough.”
Zoe struggled to her feet. Fate’s gaze straddled her shoulders like the weight of the world. A voice hissed inside her mind.
“Don’t worry,” Not-Cassy said. “He can’t truly see me, only the actions I might take.”
Zoe stiffened, and Fate laughed.
“There it is, it just became more real. You are carrying a parasite, aren’t you? One of those little crawling things from the void beyond the void. I bet it told you to smash my crown, as though it would get what it wants if that happened.”
“What would happen?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Forever.”
“He lies,” Not-Cassy said. “The powerful protect their power with lies.”
Zoe had no idea who to trust.
“Where are my friends?”
“Somewhere dull. I grow bored of talk,” Fate said. “You were all set up to fight. A few mountains to acquire, and then you could stand toe to toe with the Witch and Rue, then maybe you would come here as an equal rather than as a groveling subject.”
“Why would I come here?”
“To kill me, of course. To take my crown and my throne and my dread responsibility.”
The cold, reading pressure upon her skin faded, and when she looked up she saw a young man. His eyes were wide, and sunken, his hair oily and bedraggled. The crown seemed heavy, a thing of gold fused to his skull, she could see the scars beneath his hair, and he supported the weight by resting his chin on his hand.
“Do you want to die?” Zoe asked.
A sharp grin cut through the derelict facade.
“I want to be entertained!”