Grey bugs crawled along Trinch’s corpse like mercury spilled across a green shag carpet. Each one of the insects had a wide toothy grin. The flat and yellow teeth gnashed and chattered like a million broken blenders. Their eyes focused on Zoe.

“Free at last! Thank you, Zoe Chambers, and thank you in advance for your body.”

Zoe back into the air. She floated above Trinch’s colossal corpse as the bugs coated it completely. They waved their crooked antennae in her direction.

“Don’t be like that!” they cried out. “Help out an old friend who’s down on his luck!”

Zoe clapped her hands and the shockwave tolled out. The insects shattered and blasted apart, but they kept crawling. Some creatures took to the wing, but her attacks knocked them out of the air.

The tide didn’t stop.

Zoe was torn between using [Mind’s Eye Incision] to try and extract Trinch’s ability to turn into a bug or using [Empress in Time] to erase the horrible sight from existence. As a survival ability, it was effective. She still couldn’t believe he was alive after all this time.

After all this damage.

She clapped again, but more bugs flew out of Trinch’s shattered remains. Zoe had more than enough energy to keep attacking, but did she have the time to stand here? Even though she held Trinch at an impasse, she didn’t want to let even one bug escape.

It wasn’t worth it trying to dissect one, she needed to kill them all.

She smiled as she prepared [Empress in Time]. It was much easier to draw on her ultimate technique. Where before she struggled to have enough Time essence to truly use the ability, she now felt like a mosquito tapping into a vein. Time flowed through her. The Witch’s stolen power drew the cosmos close enough to touch, and her Mountain of Faith ensured she had enough.

Flames wrapped around her fingers, Time chugged, and with a release of power, she froze the bugs in place. They floated up above the corpse-like scattered tinsel. Their gossamer wings vibrated as they strained against Zoe’s technique, but she held them for now. Zoe was about to incinerate them all when something slammed down toward her.

Her instincts let her avoid the attack. She spun away into the air, releasing [Empress in Time] as she avoided another attack. This last one flew straight toward the void in her heart. She dodged by an inch and saw the long tendril arc past her. A soft blue in color, and glowing, the texture like spun webs. A dozen more tendrils stabbed toward her out of the sky.

The labyrinth found her.

She flew through the air and avoided the continued onslaught.

As the tendrils shot past like liquid spears they whispered through the system.

[Don’t Incorporate Me]

Zoe spun as [Really, Don’t Incorporate Me] shot past her. This was the labyrinth she pulled apart. It had followed her into this intersection of systems. The clash between Rue and the Witch continued to shake the very fabric of reality, but another fabric encircled them all. The labyrinth reached across the sky like the delicate swirls of frost. Spires and bridges branched and interwove beneath the black, starless void.

Zoe raced through the air as the tendrils of incorporation flowed toward her empty heart. As she dodged, a bug smacked into her face. Even though it touched her Mirrored cheek, it clung to her skin and crawled up to her cheekbone to peer into her eye.

“Got you,” Trinch said with a grin.

Zoe slapped her face. She squished Trinch under her palm but the shockwave sent her tumbling back. A strand of [Really, Don’t Incorporate Me] shot toward her eyes and she barely spun out of the way in time. Trinch’s bugs laughed as they flapped around her. The tendrils of Incorporation avoided the flying bugs like water flowing around a storm. She had called them with her heart, and broken the labyrinth into its essential threads. They were for nobody but her.

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She avoided the mess she called as the bugs continued flying toward her. Zoe reacted as best she could. Her mind racing as her body twitched and danced through the air. The tendrils raced down like serpentine rain.

[Empress in Time] froze a sphere around her. Zoe clapped her hands and widened the frozen time into a bell. Already the captured time trembled under the onslaught, but Zoe took the moment to breathe and focus her mind. [Mind’s Eye Incision] slid from her fingertips. Long, thin knives that extended her grip into psychic claws. Faith pulsed beneath her skin. The light flashed from her eyes as she released [Empress in Time] seconds before the temporal technique collapsed.

The tendrils slithered toward her, but Zoe was ready. She reached out with her claws and caught the distilled Skein. Alien thoughts brushed against Zoe’s mind. Her corridors echoed as denizens raved. She lost herself in the spiral of her chambers. There was only the stillness and the growth for all eternity —

Moth fluttered along her heart and Zoe shook her thoughts clear.

Her fingers moved and her claws shifted the tendrils, directing the [Don’t Incorporate Me] away from herself and sending it over to strike a cloud of the bugs. The essence struck the miniature Trinch’s and their bodies vaporized. Blue ash floated away. Zoe’s eyes widened, but she was already moving. Her breathing remained steady as she reached for the next tendril and redirected it.

Tendrils flew from her claws into the advancing bugs. Her Insight found them where they flapped in the air and her Faith guided her attacks. She wasn’t throwing, but redirecting. Her hunger drew the tendrils in, and she passed them along.

For once, she felt in tune with the empty curse in her soul.

She blasted [Don’t Incorporate Me] and [Really, Don’t Incorporate Me] into the rising bugs and even into the corpse below. Whenever the tendril struck the corpse or the mud it sank without a trace. If it flew too far without hitting anything it turned around and flew back toward Zoe, but she would catch it once more with her psychic claws and send it back at the cockroach Trinch’s.

As their numbers lessened, the survivors grew stronger. They flew faster. The air cracked with their wingbeats. Zoe tolled attacks through sound and reality, but the bugs shot through her technique. Only the tendrils helped her to carve them out of the air, but they were not infinite. The labyrinth grew closer to her like an encroaching fractal, but she dared not reach up to the spires with her hollow hunger. After seeing what the essence did to the Trinch bugs, she had no desire to put it herself.

Bugs exploded into ash and sparks until only one remained. It wove toward her through the air like a drunken, grinning bullet.

“Coming to get you!”

Zoe reached for another tendril, but to her shock, there was only one. Fat and almost golden with light, it raced toward her through the air. The bridges and towers of the labyrinth reached closer, as though they wished to touch the tendril peeling away from them.

[Incorporate Me]

Zoe’s claws hesitated as she caught the tendril, and she almost dropped it. Should she take it to herself? Or send it directly at the bug flying toward her?

She just couldn’t believe that Fate would hide something good inside something so obviously.

“I’m dying to see what you choose.”

Zoe didn’t need to look to know Fate sat beside her. His eyes glued to hers like a kid in front of a television.

“Friend or enemy?” Fate said. “Poison or power? Moments like this are why I spend eons planning.”

His voice whispered into her ear. Heat thudded through her veins. She tried to block him out, to dismiss his reality, but she had no power over Fate.

Would that change if she incorporated the tendril?

Or would it doom her?

Why was this taking so long? She should have no time to think, but time flowed like cold soup. She looked to the side — right or left it didn’t matter — and met Fate’s gaze.

“I’m not your puppet,” she said. “Release my mind.”

Fate looked at her sadly.

“No matter what you choose, it’s my strings, that’s why I’m so bored.”

Zoe grabbed the tendril. Fate’s time pressed against her, but she retaliated with [Empress in Time]. She didn’t direct the power, just pulled on it. Time flowed and bucked around her hand, but she couldn’t move.

“Fighting back is always so predictable,” Fate said. “Don’t you know you can’t fight fate?”

He vanished and time flowed. Zoe gripped the tendril and sent it flying toward Trinch.

“Predictable,” Fate muttered in her ear. “But acceptable. I hope you’re happy with your choice.”

The fat tendril slammed into the tiny Trinch like greased gold. Instantly Zoe knew something was wrong. Instead of blasting into ash and sparkles, the bug pulsed a hideous veiny white. His flesh bubbled and bulged. Zoe raced toward him. Whatever this was, it was a nightmare in the making. A Mirrored chain grew from her hands with a bell at the tip. She swung it toward the glowing Trinch as its silhouette bloomed into something incandescently humanoid.

As her chain drew near, a black chain whipped out of the sky and shattered her technique.

ding!

I can’t believe you replaced me like that!