Reality flattened until the shadowy throne room became a black speck upon an endless white expanse. A sense of whirling grew, but impossible to pinpoint. Zoe’s mind spread in two dimensions, brushing against Rue’s razor-edged thoughts, against the Witches overlapping mind, and against the familiar yearning of the Black Star.
ding!
It’s so good to see you again!
+1 chain
Zoe felt the drain upon her core as a chain sprouted from her body -- a new line extending away from her smeared silhouette. She tried to tear the chain away, but her muscles weren’t designed to move like this.
Did you miss me?
I’m sorry about what happened, friends really shouldn’t do that to each other. Let me make it up to you.
+2 chains for being so great.
Two more links sprouted from her body. Zoe summoned Moth over her skin.
I missed you so much, Zoe.
+1 chain
The next chain failed to attach, her Mirrored skin radiated with Faith and deflected the parasitic links. The Black Star’s voice didn’t flicker in its enthusiasm.
Did you miss me? Can I be your hands again?
The chains extended out from her. She felt them like someone had transplanted limbs, at once familiar, but intimately foreign. They pressed upon her mind like the wails of amputated ghosts. A silver line encircled her and cut her off from the dark mass of the Black Star and its ramblings.
[Zoe]
She couldn’t breathe or speak, but faith glowed in her flattened eyes as she radiated gratitude as Rue continued.
[I refuse to fight for Fate’s entertainment]
Shapes rose from the world’s surface like a dusty sheet draped over an assorted garage. The world tilted into a labyrinth as the walls formed around Zoe. She breathed as her vision expanded into three dimensions. Rue stood beside her as bright and vague as the reflection on a noonday blade.
[We need to team up to take out the others]
Zoe’s chains swirled around her. She twitched them this way and that, reveling in their prehensile strength.
“I’ll fight with you,” she said. “But that doesn’t settle things between us.”
Rue threw his head back and laughed. Zoe reached up with fingers wrapped in [Mind’s Eye Incision] and sliced through the chains. Her psychic blades cut through links like butter. She sighed with relief as the Black Star faded away from her.
It was so unexpected to see that system again, and Zoe worried that if she let the chains remain attached for much longer she would have relied on them again. Even now she felt that nostalgic longing.
The walls around her connected into a lattice, a three-dimensional labyrinth expanding like inflated lungs, but they weren’t complete yet. She could see through the walls as though they weren’t really there. Traps and monsters slept inside the translucent weave.
A vast death maze congealed out of Fate’s mad boredom.
“The game is simple,” Fate’s voice thrummed in the world’s veins. “Reach the center of the labyrinth and claim your prize.”
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Silver blade light shot out from Rue’s palm. The blinding lines of light lashed through the crosshatching walls and a tunnel opened up to the shadowy throneroom that lay in the void beyond the void. Rue’s technique punched a small hole into the growing world, but the wound closed even as Zoe watched.
Rue straightened and grew, his presence spreading into the world.
[Let what is cut continue to cut]
The small round wound flashed silver, and the circumference widened as it sliced into Fate’s labyrinth. Rue extended a hand toward Zoe. His aura wrapped around her and lifted her into the air. They soared toward the wound in the sky. Ripples passed across the void’s dark curtain.
“You really won’t even try the labyrinth?” Fate said eagerly. “That’s so disappointing, but not unexpected. I wonder if your game will beat my game?”
They soared up through the crisscrossing bridges and towers of the labyrinth. Distance expanded even as they raced.
[Let the cut announce the blade]
Reality kicked around them, and the wound in the labyrinth’s mesh appeared before them. They were inches from escape when reality buckled once more.
Zoe staggered forward and collapsed onto the mud beside Rue. She looked about, rolling to her feet with brown clay sliding off her Mirrored skin. Dead trees glowed beneath the stars. Grooves of an unwalked crossroads extended off toward the horizons. Rue stood and rolled his neck.
“It was worth a try,” he said. “But I figured the Witch would side with him. She’s been waiting a century to swallow me and I finally walked right into her --”
“Your voice!” Zoe said.
“She’s siphoning off the power I stole from her when I ascended.”
“I thought the power came from Fate.”
“He is the source of all sources.”
“Did you know about Fate?”
Rue shook his head.
“Not until my godhood. I felt him there and should have rebelled, but it was like questioning the existence of my bones.”
Zoe looked around. The stars glittered like watching Mubilashi.
“Where is the Witch?” she said.
“She’s going to wait us out and drain our power. She is the power that comes after a choice, but without any options, we must wait here forever. Even someone like us can starve to death.”
Zoe looked around at the expanse of mud surrounding her. The iron smell of fresh clay filled her nostrils. Was she going to starve to death in a space like this? She gazed at the sky as a tired anger brewing inside her.
“Use your sword laser again,” she said.
“The Witch
Rue raised his hand with a wry smile.
“It’s odd to be so limited again,” he said. “Almost makes this fun.
Silver light flooded the landscape as he pointed at the stars. A thin beam of sword light sliced toward the heavens and drained the light from the land. The black void split and writhed. Not one mass of darkness, but a collected heap of bodies all roiling and pressed upon each other, their sweat flowing between the glowing stars like oil on water. Silver light punched deep into the sky, but Zoe knew this planet-ending attack would not be enough.
She raised her hands, fingers twisting with flame, and added her technique.
[Empress in Time]
The silverlight ringing the wound in the sky froze. Instead of shrinking, the circle remained where it was, and the coupling figures in the sky fell upon the rating blades. Blood rained down as the sky collapsed around the frozen circle of Rue’s attack. Fat drops splattered on the clay as Zoe staggered under the weight of the technique.
Her new power made such an action possible, but she still held one reality-bending attack pressed against a dimension-creating technique. Strange forces sputtered against each other, a sensation like spelling math and singing dance, she cried out.
She could do this.
Her friends relied on her.
Light flashed from her eyes and ripped across the landscape. Flecks of clay burst from the surface of this shrunken world as she raised her eyes toward the heavens. Her technique strengthened into iron shackles upon the blades. The dark figures in the sky shrieked. They scrambled away from the blades until the sky burst apart in a great flood of blood and blackened bile.
Zoe closed her fist and a burning umbrella of time swept away the hideous viscera. When the flames disintegrated, the sky of the twisting, stacking labyrinth remained. Zoe staggered in place as Rue floated over the ground toward her.
[Well, you got her attention]
The ground exploded up from beneath Zoe’s feet. She shot high into the air, spinning over and over, and couldn’t help thinking that she wished she could fly. The shrunken world of the crossroads unfurled beneath her to cover the horizon, two grooves beneath like scars, and above her the lattice drew close. Her Mirrored fingers stretched out into a rope to lash around a pole jutting from a honeycombed bridge. She swung herself around and landed on another tower. The rough, woven stone trembled with the force of her impact. She gripped and looked around, her pulse pounding.
The battlefield stretched out below her. A recognizable sight from her two times viewing the apocalypse after the apocalypse: Rue dancing like the tip of a sword toward a screeching tower of eyes. This time, she wasn’t just watching.
Gripping the wall with all her strength, Zoe took a deep breath and launched herself down toward the conflict of systems.