A chain formed a perfect circle in the sky. It spun like vultures over the wounded clay, and from its center shadow fell. A perfect column of darkness slid and left behind a trail of dunes. Chains slipped out from within the shadows like eels. Shock thumped through Zoe’s chest at the sight. She never expected to see this again.

Certainly, not here.

But it was foolish to think her brief encounter with the Black Star system earlier would be her last.

The advancing column approached at the same speed as the other threat developed.

Tumbled on the ground beneath her, chitinous flesh bubbed and bulged with the force of [Incorporate Me]. If someone’s body was sucked through a tiny hole in a spaceship hull, then Zoe imagined this would be like the view from outside. The creature expanded in gut-wrenching horror as its limbs expanded into something delicate and humanoid.

Zoe flung tiny portals toward its glowing form. Chains whipped from the sky and struck down her attacks. The portals flickered and disintegrated. The chains showed chips, but they didn’t break.

ding!

How have you been?

“I don’t want to talk,” Zoe said.

Chains reached toward her, she avoided them as she poured Skein into a portal above her head.

I’ve had some time to think…

“I don’t want to hear it,” Zoe shouted as she formed a large portal above her head.

You owe me an apology.

“What!”

The pink sphere expanded and she flung it up toward the source of the chains. Her devouring attack carved a tunnel through the pillar of shadow.

ding!

You’re controlling. If it wasn’t for your need to keep me in my place, I never would have left the way I did.

“You said you needed to grow.”

You were stifling me, but you’re so wrapped up in your victim complex that you can’t see that. Do you think you’re the only one who has suffered?

Zoe’s mind spun at the words. She could hardly work her jaw enough to speak.

“I’ll never apologize to you,” she said. “You’re just trying to --”

“I’m sorry!” Trinch’s voice rang out.

His transformation under the influence of “I don’t want to hear it,” Zoe shouted as she formed a large portal above her head [Incorporate Me] had finished

He hovered on long and translucent wings. His shaggy body elongated, the limbs dangling and bent like a mosquito’s. He turned two eyes to her and she met his gaze. No eyeballs, only endless tunnels spiraling away -- the labyrinth made flesh. A wide grin of flat grey teeth spread in a face of soft green fur. His tongue slipped loose, long, muscular, and tipped in a needle.

“I’m sorry, for what I did to you,” Trinch said. “I took you for granted and I shouldn’t have. Will you take me back?’

“What are you talking about?” Zoe shouted. She charged a series of ball-bearing-sized portals and flung them toward Trinch. He darted around them and raced toward her. “I’ll never forgive you.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

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Dread gripped Zoe’s heart in icy fingers.

ding!

I accept your apology!

Chains snaked out of the dark pillar and slid toward Trinch. An endless amount swirled over his fur. They borrowed their tips against his flesh and latched themselves to him. He cried out, needle teeth bared wide. The bug-Trinch monster stopped flying and gripped his head as his body convulsed with pain.

Zoe flew forward, her fist ready, and aimed to strike the head. A sound like shattering glass rang out and Trinch dodged aside from her.

“We did it!” Trinch laughed with staggering smugness as the tinkling faded. “Thank you, old friend.”

“What are you talking about?” Zoe said. “I’m not your friend.”

ding!

It’s not always about you, Zoe. He was thanking me.

“That’s exactly right,” Trinch said as he stroked the chains lovingly. “I’m sorry baby, I’ll never hurt you again.”

ding!

You better not!

They laughed together and Zoe felt sick in a way she never imagined feeling, but neither attacked. The pillar of darkness swooped away from them. A snail trail of dunes followed. Trinch hung in the air, wings droning, as the chains coiled around like seaweed.

“Zoe Chambers,” Trinch called out to her. “I have freed my mind with my magnificence. You may acknowledge with applause.”

“You what?”

Trinch’s grin stretched until it curled in his cheeks.

“The Witch took my soul, but I took it back.”

“You’ve traded one master for another.”

“I’ve traded a master for a friend.”

ding!

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Zoe prepared herself for a fight. She slowly drifted through the air. A silence stretched around her. For all that gods shimmered on the horizon -- titanic brushstrokes of blood and steel -- the air sat empty and still above the clay.

Nothing grew below, and nothing moved.

Trinch hovered, tracking Zoe as she listed through the air. They watched each other, waiting for an opening. Je rolled his neck, vertebrae cracking as the chains lengthened and wrapped together into pythonic knots.

“I suppose we go to the death,” Trinch said. “May the best win.”

“I don’t want to fight you,” Zoe replied.

“I’m not surprised.”

“You broke the Witch’s control, why would you still do her bidding?”

Trinch squinted at her.

“Because I want to?”

He blurred. Her Willpower yanked her back. A hard-earned reflex telling her to move even as her eyes processed Trinch’s disappearance. He appeared in front of her, clawed arm swinging through the space where she’d just been. Chains lashed a hairwidth from her eyes.

He followed her as Zoe catapulted backward. Chains slipped toward her but she dodged and sailed up into the void. Something sailed over her shoulder. She glanced back, as Trinch’s skin burst into quills. The spines fired at her, but they bounced off her Mirrored armor.

The ground below her shrank and excruciating detail. She dodged a barrage of spines as a Mirrored chain unspooled from her hands. It flashed in the light as a bell the size of a motorcycle formed on the end.

Trinch shot toward her. His chains extended toward Zoe’s, trying to ensnare her technique as she tossed the bell high. His chains arced up in pursuit. The Black Star could destabilize her armor. If it struck her she would be done.

A twist of Time from her hand. Trinch stopped as the world froze around him. Chains writhed and broke through the control a fraction of a second later.

It was enough time.

[Bell at the Center of the World]

Her arms burned as she pulled the chain down through the air. The bell crashed through the stunned chains and tolled silver doom. Vibrations rippled out and shattered the chains.

Trinch and the Black Star writhed in pain as they plummetted.

Zoe flew down through the rain of metal fragments. Her fist crashed into Trinch’s forehead. The thick bone cracked like sick thunder as Zoe punched again. Her gleaming chain wrapped around Trinch’s neck to stop him from flying away from the force of her blows.

Crunches shook the air, but Zoe knelt at the base of a forest of Black Star chains. Their broken tips descended on her. She burned through Time.

Attacks against her ceased to be as she froze and incinerated them from existence. One hand held back the parasitic system and the other pulled the chain tight around Trinch’s throat. Trinch refused to die, but Zoe refused to release her grip.

They crashed into the mud. Trinch shot down beneath the surface. A crater birthed itself in a cataclysm of flying dirt. Zoe held tight, her knee driving Trinch deeper. The cosmic strength of the Witch rasped against her soul like a violin’s bow. She couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or pain, but it was power.

ding!

Let us go!

Zoe grinned as Trinch’s body jerked to a halt against a colossal buried bone. Cracks rippled through his vertebrae.

“If I let you go, you’ll turn around and attack me.”

Trinch glared up at her. His arms twitched, broken and limp, and yanked itself clear of his skin. A new arm wriggled as the old flesh sagged and blackened into the crater. He swung at Zoe but she deflected his attack with ease. Her other hand held the Black Star above her like a chandelier.

“How many times can you peel out of damage?” she asked. “Do you think it’s more times than I can beat you to a bloody pulp?”

“I will survive,” Trinch drooled. “Then I’ll kill you.”

“I wonder.”

“Nothing you can do is enough to --”

Zoe stabbed a long thin blade up Trinch’s nose and jiggled it around.