The crossroads existed eternal, but the landscape it scarred shifted like a turning carousel: forests, desolate clay fields, mountains sharp with crags, or soft with glowing fungus as a cave ceiling drips, the blue or a sandstorm like static between clear channels. Rue straddled the roads, his legs speared the twisted mud became shattered trees and floating ice.
Reality sharpened as he turned his thoughts to violence. He bent rules as the shifting land stilled into a muddy expanse. A wind snapped up and Rue’s whisper fashioned a twisting, invisible sword.
The Witch twisted and thrashed like a serpent to avoid his blade. Her eyes floated away from her and spun, their pupils bleeding as the crossroads split and split again. Her etched routes echoed the sky of towers and bridges. Two parallel labyrinths racing for complexity.
Whenever Rue’s attacks passed over a road, they split in either direction, and when they hit a crossroads they split again, so the Witch bled his attacks of any power as she squirmed her way — impossibly — across those same roads toward him.
Rue fled, but all roads led to him.
The Witch reared like a shadow wave as Zoe plunged toward the conflict. The distance was great enough for her to think, and though she coated herself in Mirror and thrust herself forward with Willpower she couldn’t outpace her doubts.
Was she even strong enough to make a difference?
“There’s a saying the old fate used before I took her chair,” Fate whispered in her ear as she dove. “The game is the game is the game. Let me show you what she meant. Right now you’re ignoring the labyrinth in favor of a rather exciting fight, but by skipping my game you lost the chance to win power. You have rushed into your game without preparation, but fear not!” Fate’s voice transitioned smoothly into Not-Cassy’s cackle. “For our games are not mutually exclusive. Just like order and chaos, life and death, we can — nay, must! — coexist.”
The word echoed around Zoe and shone. Golden threads spilled into being, burning with light, wrapping around her, around the molecules of her body and the air she breathed, shining like the reflection in a thousand bubbles, and what Fate spoke became true.
"So here are the rules, dear defier, as your fist nears the fray: for every hit you land, you shall steal their power. For every hit you take, you shall lose power.”
The golden threads snapped taut around her. She couldn’t breathe for a second, but then the hollow void in her heart opened and the threads were sucked down into her depths. She continued, Moth wrapped around her like a bullet’s casing, and the Witch thrashed beneath.
Her mind turned cold with the risks. She couldn’t afford to fail.
But she had no more time for thought.
The Witch grew beneath her like the horizon and Zoe crashed down fist first. A shockwave tolled like a church bell and tore eyes and ichor into a wave of gore. The Mountain of Faith burned beneath Zoe’s skin as she reached out for the sound and collapsed it into dozens of portals. Summoned spherical holes devoured and spat out the Witch’s flesh and her shocked scream was the most satisfying sound Zoe ever heard.
Until it dissolved into laughter.
[Chew at my nipple like an irate child, but I will train you to suckle and supplicate]
The splashing flesh reformed as though no damage ever occurred. Zoe felt a thrumming backlash as the Faith she spilled into the attack surged back into her. Tendrils of Mubilashi whipped toward her from tooth-lined pupils. She pushed herself on wings of Willpower, that strange flight of the void between voids still holding, and swung chains of Mirror as she danced around the attacking abominations.
She’d struck with all she had, but no wound showed in the wriggling witch worm. Waves of sand splashed high into the air as the monstrous system giggled. Eyes smiled up at Zoe. Too many teeth, even for eyes. Gaping pupils sprayed Mubilashi into the sky.
Zoe soared higher on the power of her Mountain. She moved faster now. A trickle of power flowed through her, something more than she had been when she fell. It felt familiar. The same pattern in Skein as in the [Witch’s Embryo].
A river of howling Mubilashi flowed after her as she flew. She dove up through a spinning canyon of labyrinth bridges and staircases. Mubilashi chewed thoughtlessly through the architecture. Zoe spun out of the canyon. She pulled the stolen energy through her body and accelerated past a bridge.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Mubilashi flung themselves after her.
Zoe coudln’t believe she was flying. Everything floated in the void so it hadn’t counted. Now she flew under falling rubble as she spun away from exploding Mubilashi. Her excitement was a distant part of her mind as she focused on the situation. She could keep ahead of the inky tide, but they weren’t supposed to catch her.
They kept her from the Witch, and Zoe wasn’t done with her.
Swordstrokes clanged across her senses as the battle resumed far below her. The labyrinth rippled as power spiked through reality. An invisible wave fluttered through her and expanded into the open air. She felt Rue’s presence. An attack overextended or redirected, or maybe even a piece of gore sliced from his body by the Witch.
The shattered as it poured into the hallways between the interlocking towers.
Zoe’s eyes widened. Stopped at breakneck speed. The dissipated shattered energy lay strung out before her like a spiderweb of broken glass. Rue’s energy would slice her to pieces, but if she didn’t move, the Mubilashi would catch her.
She only had seconds to decide what to do. Instinct acted first. [Empress of Time] caught the Mubilashi behind her. Eyes rolled in the frozen liquid as the horror strained against her technique, but Zoe had Faith.
Her body split into hounds and poured down through the jagged canyons and alleys of the labyrinth. Where before she could only split into seven, now she was fourteen. It felt alien to split her mind that many times. She felt the urge for them to split off and become independent, but she wrangled them as they spun and dove between the maze of Rue’s bladed reality.
“How are you enjoying the labyrinthe?” Fate asked beside all of Zoe’s ears.
With one hound she risked a glance to the side. Fate sat upon his throne, leaning forward with the awkward metal crown fused to his head. Not Cassy sat at his feet, her eyes peeled as she gazed straight at Zoe.
But the unnerving sight was the smile on Fate’s face. Too bright, too wide, too much like a spinning coin.
It couldn’t be. Could it?
The surprise rippled through the flying hounds and sent a few into the shards. Flesh and Skein severed and Zoe howled through nine mouths.
[Tunnel Sound]
She blasted open portals and fell through them to converge on one spot. Wolves splashed together and Zoe floated human once more. The Mubilashi screeched in the maze high above as Zoe focused on locating Rue and the Witch.
Losing those wolves tired her, but she managed to process the energy she stole from the Witch. A cold shiver raced through her as her level climbed.
[Level up! You are now Level 59]
Even though it was a huge boost, she’d hoped to gain more levels. It still didn’t feel like enough to fight the Witch. Explosions rocked through the Labyrinth, the shadows lengthed through the air, weeping before they snapped back to normal. How was Zoe supposed to compete in a fight that warped the world like that? Still, she needed to hurry up here and return. If there was anything she could do, she would do it.
She pulled away the Mirror covering and the dark star in her chest opened up. Even a few levels would be an opportunity to devour huge quantities of Skein and power. Her hunger expanded.
She desperately pulled it back in.
[Please select an element to incorporate:]
* [Don’t incorporate me: ? ? ?]
* [Really, don’t incorporate me: ? ? ?]
* [Incorporate me: ? ? ?]
What were these choices? She expected something different here, but not this. It felt too needlessly cruel. Too much like the Gambler. At that thought, she glanced out the corner of her eye.
Fate reclined in his throne, the epitome of excess, as Not-Cassy writhed in his lap. The baroque, shadowy webs of the throneroom concealed the worst of their bodies, but their eyes shone gold as they fixed on Zoe.
She couldn’t think about the implications of that. Hunger burned in her soul and if she didn’t devour something soon it would consume her, but her mind couldn’t even look at the choices. Her blood ran cold and slow and stupid. Every one of those options would be inviting death, she knew it.
But she couldn’t stop the explosion once it started.
Moth’s fingers held hers, and Zoe stopped holding it back. The void opened and drew the labyrinth into twisting threads. Zoe flew away from them. She raced as fast as she could, her heart trawling the unraveled maze behind her. Instinct propelled her more than any plan. She would avoid the labyrinth because whatever sent up a message like that through the system wasn’t to be trusted.
Towers dripped as she flew past them. Long dribbling strands spiraled after her.
“You are doing the labyrinth completely wrong,” Fate said drily.
Zoe ignored him. She detected the fight between Rue and the Witch. She punched a portal into existence and raced through the expanding pink circle.
She emerged in chaos.
Two discs intersected. One an expanse of wretched trees and red clay, the other a lake as still as a mirror. A crossroads of reality as Rue and the Witch struggled to impose themselves upon each other. Void burned around them. Darkness and dark flames. An empty universe waiting to be filled by the winner in the circle. Zoe saw no trace of the labyrinth or Fate’s horrific voyeurism but knew both remained.
There was no escaping them, and so she shot forward toward the discs.
The labyrinth followed behind her, distantly, but growing closer. Her heart still howled, the pounding muscle becoming a gaping hole, a void she refused to satisfy.
At least, not yet.
She felt familiarity as she neared the battle. If Rue kept the Witch distracted, then Zoe could land a blow that wouldn’t just steal energy, it would completely plunder.
She raced over the landscape of red clay. Lakewater sloshed and expanded through the trees. Above those trees, like dancers, like wrathful lightning, the Witch fought Rue.
Her form was almost human, besides the wide-brimmed shadow that crowned her. Rue appeared monstrous, a ring of floating blades that expanded and contracted like loosened lungs. Zoe raced along the ground toward them. She darted between the trees, keeping low to avoid their gaze.
But the howl in her heart drew too much attention. A boiling pressure surged across her skin as the Witch’s burning eye fixed upon her from the shadows beneath her hat.