Zoe shouted again.
“Rue!”
Her feet planted against the floor and her whole body stiffened like an extension of the plane’s metal. She strained her throat like a siren, the muscle of her tongue hitting her teeth as she shouted louder over the roar of the plane, over the cackle of the mad god.
She reached for power — for systems — that weren’t there anymore. No Skein, no Moth, no Heart Torn accolades, nothing to boost or augment with radical force, and so she reached deep into the shallow pool of the Earth System.
“You wanted a champion! Here I am!”
Something crackled. A shock of electricity ran through her tongue and she seized that power in the hope it would project her voice out into space.
And into time.
The Gambler stopped laughing as Zoe’s voice echoed
“What are you doing?” he said. “What power is that? It’s not mine —”
He snapped his fingers and Zoe’s upper lip dribbled like wax. Her mouth sealed over as the Gambler stood and examined her with a scowl.
“You shouldn’t have been able to do that.”
Do what exactly, Zoe wasn’t sure, but she heard her voice still, echoing out in the air between the air, thrumming through her bones like a tremor in the earth. The Gambler grabbed her by the throat, and the sound hummed through his flesh, causing his golden sleeves to ripple and dance.
“I don’t understand. You burned the future. You have no power. Tell me how you’re doing this.”
The ripples spread beyond his sleeve. Spread out like a film of oil across the sloshing surface of reality. The barking of hounds behind her grew fuzzy, and the airplane itself stretched further away, the Gambler said something, but the words slipped around her.
A whispering spiral of dust crept behind her. The scent of the desert in her nostrils. Old rocks underfoot, new stars overhead, she slipped from the Gambler’s grasp as a scene played out in her mind — apes around a crackling ruby flower that devoured the flesh of trees and whittled limbs down to blackened bones — as it fouled the air with smoky heat the apes drew further back — hotter than noonday — bellies full of roasted prey and greasy lips smacking — eyes reflect the stars as the woodsmoke spreads across cold air — tongues hit teeth to express meaning beyond emotion — not just warning or desire or greeting — intent — dream — hope — thought.
Language slipped from the tongue of apes and in those crude movements, Zoe felt the echo of herself.
Of her system.
Epiphanie of the Tongue: 100%
A river roared through her. The fuzzy world snapped into focus, again, and again, worlds overlaid on worlds. She saw the Gambler in the confined area of the plane, and she saw the open sky swimming with color after the Crimson Armada came and wreaked its havoc, and she saw the distant world beyond the worlds, Fate’s playground, with the sky of blackened webs.
The Gambler stood in all three, and he looked around with eyes growing wide.
“Stop this,” he hissed at her. “I’ll grant your wish, but stop!”
Zoe ignored him. She tried to speak, but the flesh around her lips gummed her mouth. Her tongue worked inside her lips and she felt the dark skin gag tearing. Her voice slipped through in a sifting wheeze.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“No!” The Gambler shouted.
He snapped his fingers and the floor shifted. Bland blue carpet and metal tiles dissolved into golden scales. No, not scales, coinds. The coins shifted, rustling, before they fell away. The plane dissolved into a golden rain and Zoe fell as the flesh sealing her lips split completely.
“Rue,” she whispered with her empowered tongue.
Wind whipped. People screamed as they fell around her. Gold reflected the moonlight. Her words cut through it all.
The epiphany didn’t come as a choice like her flesh had, this was something subtler, something truer, and her request slipped out into the possible futures.
Her words slipped into a universe of ash. Into the nothing that remained after her ultimate wish. She felt the universe burn, her memories, her flesh, her achievements, her losses — the ocean of blood that she spread and bled became nothing but dust, and into that dust, she searched for a friend, and against impossibility itself, her words found the one she called.
The grey void between worlds collapsed at her urging, and Rue came forth. His silver form burned incandescent in the sky, as he towered, forehead brushing the stars into a crown as his toes dragged across the surf-laden Pacific.
His eyes, sword-lined whirlpools, turned to her and his gaze speared everything in place. No falling, no rushing wind, and the golden coins hung in swirling constellations around the floating passengers.
The air prickled across her skin and she saw the Gambler stiffen as Rue held him at infinnite bladepoint.
She understood then, the impossibility of what happened. When she made her wish, she traveled back in time, and left in her wake an ashen universe where nothing dwelled. The power of the Crimson Armada, and of Fate, could not undo those flames, but the Epiphanies of Earth didn’t work within Fate’s terms. An alien system, her system, and one that could cut through Fate’s command like a knife. With her native power, she searched through time, and when she reached, she birthed as much as she beckoned. A shoot, a fleck of greenery among the dismal void, and that possibility grew, for if it can be spoken it can be summoned, and the Rue that poured his silver light upon the world as the one she remembered and the one who remembered her.
“Zoe Chambers,” he said with a predatory grin. “I thought the howling flames devoured us both, how happy I am to be proven wrong.”
Zoe grinned as Rue’s palm lifted her up into the air. She saw Bella and Anton and Cassy and Joel all looking at her, and if she could explain then she —
She could explain though.
Her mouth moved, but what came forth wasn’t a word, wasn’t even a skein of tangled language, but rather a thought, translated.
“It will all be alright,” she said and the words became truth.
Peace settled in the air, but the Gambler rebelled. Space bubbled around him. Dawn flooded the sky like the lights of a studio. Ghostly faces pressed into the sky as the Gambler pulled his studio into existence around them. This face of Fate might have been destroyed in the future, but here it was alive, and Zoe felt a familiar tension grip her.
If the Gambler could form his stage and create a game then everything would go awry, and the peace she promised her friends would be a lie.
“Hold,” she commanded the Gambler.
The word stripped power from her tongue’s epiphany, but it worked. The Gambler stiffened as the alien force bound his limbs and Skein. High-tension Skein thrummed and crackled. He couldn’t move and his eyes bulged with furious anger. Foam built at the corner of his mouth like the sparks of a fuse. Any second now he would explode with all his madness and machinations.
Rue struck. His blade descended, a sky falling in a single stroke to slice through the frozen Gambler. Silver clashed against gold, and the universe shuddered before the Gambler snapped. Rue’s blade passed through the Gambler and once more the mad god died.
The falling coins evaporated and the plane reformed like fog wiped from a mirror. Zoe stood in the little area where the waitress once stood, but now Rue took her place. He seemed more human now. Impossibly beautiful, cheekbones like daggers, and silvery skin, but mostly human.
Zoe shook her head.
“It can’t be that —”
Rue held up his hand.
“Your words still ring with power, Zoe Chambers, be careful what you say. As for ease? Overwhelming power is not earned easily, even if the results are quicker than expected.”
She nodded, reveling in the strange feeling of the epiphany. It was as though lightning swirled in her mouth. Would everything she said come true? It was hard to say, no pun intended, but she could already feel the power fading. It might have a permanent effect like the Epiphany of the Flesh, but speaking into the future and commanding Fate had robbed much of her reserves.
“Well,” she said carefully. “There was business between us, so what happens now?”
The sound of ringing metal made her jump. The metal rolled, like a coin, and she looked with wide eyes and a racing heart, but there was no coin, no last calling card of the Gambler, no — instead she saw Fate’s warped metal crown roll out of the darkness and come to a stop between her and Rue.