Though the Witch was still half a world away, she was gaining close. The goddess flew like a sinuous ribbon. Her pale humanoid form flowed with long twisting worms suckered onto her flesh. Bloodied parasites, Mubilashi, loops of intestines… hard to say which part of her was real, or if any of it was at all, but Zoe didn’t care. The Witch was — and always had been — competition.
Zoe refused to lose.
Crosses of folded space arced toward Zoe, and she propelled herself forward. Willpower strained against air and she screamed as she crunched through barriers of sound. She diverted the shockwaves with her body path, but her friends still jostled behind her.
“Aggressive,” Fate said with a titter. “The Witch is wounded, desperate, she’s wanted her little dream longer than your civilization existed — don’t you think she deserves to win?”
Zoe snarled as she cracked a portal in space before her. She launched through, and as it passed over she cast another one. The distance broke apart into chunks of teleportation. Her friends were tucked tight behind her, barely contained within her ever-contracting field of control.
“I don’t care what she wants or deserves,” Zoe half screamed, and half thought, the wind between worlds tearing at her words. “She’ll get nothing!”
She emerged from a portal to see a twist in the air. She spun to the side. Her friends dragged at her control, and she almost collided with the anomaly.
It unfolded as she passed. A crossroads flowered and the roads of dirt hung in the sky. The Witch stood in the center. She swayed, drunken, exhausted, her dark brim like a ring around a world as the long parasites hanging from her flesh danced to a silent song.
Zoe felt the Witch’s gaze seethe across her skin.
She opened another portal and pushed herself onward. It didn’t surprise her that another twist in the air awaited. Dozens, hundreds, extended between her and the labyrinth’s heart. Gnarled pillars like invisible smoke that flickered and rippled. Zoe flew through portals as fast as she could, and every time she emerged, another twist in space opened into a crossroads and there stood the Witch.
Two figures racing toward a singular point must converge.
Dirt and pebbles rained behind her as the Witch abandoned her temporary domains. Zoe never saw her move, but the goddess remained neck and neck.
The Smith and Rue were absent from this last sprint, but flashes of light on the horizon and the distant thunderous clang clanging of metal on metal told Zoe they still fought. Rue was buying her time, and she wouldn’t waste the opportunity.
She couldn’t.
The blue light of the labyrinth’s heart burned across the sky. It was the sky, and the mud below, it was the horizon, and the void, a condensed field, waterfall, tragedy in the color of a clear fall sky. She’d had so many wonderful days looking up at a sky that color, so many horrible days. Leaving and reaching a breaking point as she gazed up at the thin film of color, and now she strove toward it feeling as brittle as glass.
Her friends shuddered in the grip of her chains. Their teeth clenched as they held on. Willpower spilled from them and into her. They pushed toward the blue, the group of them, even Trinch and the Black Star helping, but the Witch was close behind.
The foul goddess’s blood stank in the air like a shark’s feast. Wisps of crimson stained the blue. Zoe reached for her Body Path, for her power, and tried to crack space apart, but the overwhelming pressure of the blue kept reality knitted tight.
Without portals, all she oculd do was fly. No crossroads twisted ahead of her for the Witch had the same limitation. They were in the endgame as they passed out of the sky and into the blue.
The Witch drew close. Even despite the darkness cast by her hat’s wide brim, her features retained their proud determination.
The two women flew alongside each other, so close they could call across the distance, but without a word the Witch attacked. Her dark claws folded space around Zoe. A crossroads pinwheeled toward her.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
It burst into rocks and dirt but was already collapsing as it opened. These weren’t stable enough for the Witch to teleport, but they were more than powerful enough to knock Zoe aside and let the blasted goddess steal the lead.
Zoe accelerated and climbed higher. She pulled ahead of the Witch, but more crossroads blasted toward her. Evasive maneuvers cost her speed and time. Her friends dragged at her, and she had to fly wide to avoid them getting hit. One blow might not destroy her Mirrored armor, but she wasn’t so sure about her friends.
“You can do this, Zoe!” Bella shouted in her ear.
“You’ve got this, boss!” Anton responded from the other side.
Lightning arced out from Skidmark’s free hand. It blasted into the Witch and left not even a scorched patch of skin, but the thought was there. Her friends believed in her, she couldn’t let them down.
The blue swept around her as she danced around the Witch, both of them ascending in spinning leaps like salmon climbing waterfalls.
No more crossroads came. The blue forced even the Witch to focus on her flight, but as the goddess climbed above Zoe, the long parasitic worms detached from her and slithered through the air. Gaping maws puckered like festering wounds along their pallid flanks as they dove toward Zoe.
There was nothing poetic or metaphorical about their intent. They would not trap her in space and time. They would devour her and her friends. If Zoe could use her techniques, she could evade them — possibly destroy them. The power roiling off the creatures was horrific. Black Mubilashi squirmed in the depths of their jaws. Their power had been hard to distinguish from the Witch, but now they were separate and Zoe saw they were monstrous. They fell like bombs, like stage rockets, and the Witch flew faster, higher, as death came for Zoe.
She wanted to fight, the urge itched in her blood, but all her attention was focused on maintaining her flight against the overwhelming pressure of the blue heart.
She had only seconds before the worms hit. She needed to do something but if she stopped flying for even a moment she would lose and then —
Something slithered against her chains. Before she could turn, the Black Star detached from her grip.
ding!
I’m sorry, Zoe.
“What are you doing!” Trinch shouted as he grasped for Zoe’s Mirrored chains. “This wasn’t the plan!”
You change your plans for friends.
The Black Star gripped Zoe’s chains and spun in the air. Trinch’s weight pulled him down as the chains lightened Zoe in an echo of [I Shall Carry You]. For a moment, the world became a blue pinwheel, and then the Black Star launched Zoe and her friends. They rocketed past the worms. The blind, blood-seeking parasites squirmed in the air, but momentum carried them down as Zoe flew up.
Trinch and the Black Star fell away as Zoe felt a burst of acceleration from the reduced load.
Anton’s eyes flickered around her head. A burning halo of silver suns as he told about the fight below.
Chains unfurled from Trinch like the heads of a hydra as he shot toward the worms. He slammed into one’s head and it burst, but the body constricted around him, mouths gnashing. The worms and the furry green man tumbled through the air. Chains and blood rippled in chaotic bursts as they plummeted toward the clay.
“I don’t want to know,” Zoe said.
She hurtled onwards as Anton’s eyes blinked out. She ascended into the blue, catching up to the Witch, and moving too fast to think about what happened behind her.
With her load lightened, she flew even faster.
She could trace outlines of the labyrinth around her. Obscured by the blue light as though by massive distance, the hardness of marble softened into skin. The mud below was now a dirty ocean. Arteries of braided towers flowed around her, so spaced apart she didn’t need to adjust her direction at all. The scale of things ached at her, like a child’s first understanding of space.
Masses of spires and tangled passageways hung in the faded backdrop, as real as the stars, and just as distant. She hadn’t played with Fate’s toy, and so he swept it off the table. This wasn’t about the labyrinth anymore, this was simply a race to its heart.
And the Witch was winning.
That very fact sent a pang through Zoe’s heart. The Black Star sacrificed itself, and it didn’t even matter. Zoe’s Faith wasn’t strong enough to believe the Black Star won the fight against the worms. Zoe felt heat welling in her eyes, though Mirror coated her face, a silver teardrop slid down her cheek before the wind whipped it away. She wouldn’t hear the Black Star’s voice again, and even thoughh she hated that monstrous thing… she had to hate it…
She never said goodbye, and now she never would. Her fingers scraped as she clenched her fists and flew. In this race through the vast and hollow distance, it all came down to power and weight. Zoe wasn’t sure how much power the Witch had as she bled a deluge onto the landscape below. The droplets scattered around Zoe from where the worms had latched on. They fell like scarlet anemones, and Zoe avoided them out of principle more than anything else.
Zoe had power, the stolen force of the Witch twitched in her muscles, but she was also dragging weight. Her friends hung behind her, and she felt them lending their Willpower, but it was not enough.
Anton’s eyes burned with a blinding light as he channeled the Mountain of Faith. His power latched onto her like a second set of wings. They blurred up through the air.
But it was not enough.
The Witch was an ancient thing, vile with power, twisted with the ways of Fate’s system. It was folly to think Zoe could win. She just wasn’t strong enough to carry everyone.
Anton gripped her shoulder. His eyes were warm as Heaven’s light as he smiled at her. A sick chasm opened in her heart as she shook her head, knowing his intent as surely as she knew the Mountain coursing through him.