Zoe raced to the end of the gossamer tunnel. She saw flashes of silver, blood, and fire through the wide spaces — the world streaking and blurring like paint in the rain — a battle beyond the scale she understood even with the Witch’s power squirming sodden in her Skein. Zoe didn’t need to join that battle — as much as she wanted to — she just needed to reach the center. If Rue could keep the Witch at bay, she could make it.

The tunnel ended, and they entered another staircase spire. It spiraled up and down and she considered her direction as she set her friends and Trinch back on the floor.

“That’s one way to get around,” Skidmark said.

A tremor raced through the labyrinth.

“What’s causing that?” Bella asked.

“Some of my eyes slipped outside,” Anton said. “Every time the gods crash into the labyrinth it shakes.”

“Rue and the Witch?”

“The Smith as well.”

Zoe’s lips tightened. She thought the Smith would stay out of this conflict. She turned her attention to the stairwell.

“Up or down?” she asked Trinch.

He cocked his head to the side, eyes glassy for a moment before he pointed up.

Zoe nodded.

“Onwards, then.”

She scooped everyone up in her Willpower and launched them up the stairs. Her power drilled through the air as Faith became her rocket. The labyrinth shook from another impact. Air rang around them and Zoe leaned into [The Bell at the Center of the World] to redirect the effects. She slowed and hovered in the air, her friends floating around her. A wide corridor surrounded them. Carvings in the walls showed the stars reaping worlds of grain, but now a crack shone with the light of the outside world. Another tremble widened the crack further. Minotaurs flickered at the end of the tunnel, but they avoided the touch of the light, and when the labyrinth shook again they fled.

The ceiling collapsed inward. The path forward became a pile of rubble, and laying on that pile was the slender sword form of Rue. His body flashed like a broken chain in the moonlight. Blades twitched in the billowing dust. Far above, taller than the sky, loomed the Witch and the Smith.

The blind god cradled a hammer with a head like a stretched moon. He swung it down toward the labyrinth, but Rue raised a hand. Silver light sprayed out and caught the descending impact. Blinding light flashed. A ripple so deep in reality Zoe coudln’t hear it, only the echoes brushing against her body path.

She clapped her hands and a a bell formed around her like a stone in a river’s path. The curved dome encompassed her allies totally. Time bled as the shockwave wore on. She closed her eyes to the light and endured. She had to come too far to lose any of her friends now.

The explosion faded and she released the bell. It faded with a chime that brought peace to her soul. A short-lived sensation as she looked through the cleared air at the massive opening in the labyrinth.

The gods were fighting elsewhere, but the damage was done.

They stood atop a fragment of a broken bridge. Both ends shattered. Surrounded by an empty sky, even as the labyrinth weaved in the sky above. The explosion carved a hollow sphere in the surrounding spires and tunneled walkways.

Zoe could hardly believe they survived at all.

Her bell protected the space they stood upon, but it only remained where it was because she held it in her Willpower. With a thought, she sent the chunk of labyrinth hurtling toward the mud far below.

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It sank from view and they hung together above the colossal landscape.

“I wish you didn’t get rid of the floor,” Skidmark said.

Zoe nodded absently. With the labyrinth cleared around her, she could finally see the center of the maze. Across the curvature of the world, through the gaps in the labyrinth, she saw the throne and the wish. A burning blue light, like the afterimages of staring at the sun as a child. The color wasn’t real, wasn’t out in the world, but it was brighter than anything.

“That’s the goal, isn’t it?” Bella asked.

“If I reach it, then I win. Fate’s power will be…”

The bubble of floating people drifted toward the light. She couldn’t even say it out loud. Could it be possible that all her problems were about to end? That she simply needed to reach that sapphire beacon and everything would be over?

“What does that mean?” Bella asked.

“It means I can control everything,” Zoe said as she accelerated the bubble. “After what I’ve seen Fate do, I can’t believe anything else. You should have seen how the Witch groveled before him.”

“Would have loved to see that,” Trinch said as his wings buzzed, keeping him afloat even while she cradled the air.

“Seconded,” Skidmark said.

Bella raised an eyebrow.

“So you’re going to control the universe?”

“That’s a lot of souls,” Anton said. “A lot of responsibility, boss, I can’t imagine someone better.”

“Thanks…”

Zoe glanced at the blue light. She couldn’t help but see this race as snatching a weapon, but was she really just applying for a job? The absurdity made her chuckle.

“What?” Bella asked.

“Wondering if I should prepare my CV.”

Bella frowned, and Zoe sighed as she pushed more speed into her flight speed. It didn’t matter what would come of this, there was an immediate problem that required a solution. Free will or not, she had to do this.

She would not hesitate.

“Everyone hold on,” she said. “This will be a lot easier if I can focus.”

Her fingers extended out into long Mirrored chains. She wrapped them around her friends and even clung to the Black Star extending from Trinch. With a slight adjustment, the greater bubble of Willpower dropped. Her friends fell a few feet before they

Her Skein surged and she launched toward the blue light in the distance. It was further than she expected. The wind whistled around the sphere she commanded. Time and space warped to support the alien structure of the labyrinth, so it was no surprise that travel outside it was affected — she’d felt something similar in her fight with Trinch but hadn’t been able to pay attention to it at the time.

She knew what it was instinctively. Fate didn’t want her cheating like this. It didn’t want her acting outside the script… though he seemed to only value her when she went off script… but… She frowned and pushed herself even harder. It wasn’t worth trying to puzzle out Fate’s goals, motives, or identity. Once she reached the center of the labyrinth it would all make sense.

She had faith in that.

She had to.

Or else it was all too painfully futile.

She felt the prickle in her peripheral vision before she heard the voice.

“Anton put it in such a lovely way, didn’t he, Zoe?”

Her eyes darted to the left. Fate reclined on a burgundy loveseat with wooden clawed feet. The suggestion of an out-of-view fireplace in the light flickering across his face and his bare chest open within a black silk kimono. He stroked a thin mustache, though any sense of androgynous handsomeness was lost by the smoking metal crown in his head.

“What will you do with all those souls?” he asked.

“Does anyone else see that?” Zoe let her voice whisper out to her friends.

They glanced at her and chorused a series of negatives. Zoe sighed.

“I’ll do a better job than you,” she said.

The paint-stripping wind whipped her words away, but she knew Fate heard.

“Job is such a funny word used by the powerless. A mingling of responsibility and reward. Urgency devours purpose as you strive to pin survival on your terms. Do I look like a job to you?”

“You look insane.”

“Another fragile word. Do you really think you look any different from me?”

He reflected her as she flew. His posture matched hers as she cut through the air. For a moment, his expression copied her grim determination, before a cheeky grin split his face and made her want to scream. He wasn’t the Gambler, he couldn’t be, but she saw the echo — no, she saw the source.

“Did you make the Gambler?”

She didn’t even know why she asked. What use was knowledge in such a scenario? What did she want to hear?

Fate smiled and looked over his shoulder. Not-Cassy padded out of the dark behind the loveseat. She leaned over the high-arched back. Her matching kimono spilled open to reveal lengths of pallid flesh.

“You’re tormenting her,” she said with a grin. “Will you tell her the truth or more lies?”

“I don’t lie,” Fate said with a wink. “I don’t make anyone be, do, or think anything. Trust me, it dulls the watching. You’ll want to be as hands-off as possible, that’s if you get my crown at all.”

He pointed past Zoe.

Zoe risked a glance and swore.

There, on the far horizon, the Witch raced toward the blue beacon at the center of the labyrinth.