Time burned away into bright chasms. Chronological crystals flowered and billowed, birthing galactic motes that floated in the endless gaps between light. Through the dust and ash and fragments of seconds, Bella tumbled. Across the land of crystalized fire, she hurtled. Across space without even the gasping of a second to mark the journey. Agony seared her. A constant buzz. She only thought of it ending. Prayer and pleading spilled from her lips as she fell through the portal’s throat and into the long and looping intestinal wormhole. Finally, it spat her out.

The red metal floor received her hot and throbbing body with a dull rumble. She rolled onto her back and laughed weakly. Waist-high, red-painted metal walls enclosed her in a perfect square about the size of an office. In the red embrace, she breathed.

Time flowed through her. Her thoughts moved from one to the next. Her blood pumped. Her cells died. She aged, she lived.

As she breathed, and marveled in the motion of her breathing, her gaze followed the golden spire rising into the dark sky. It grew from some distant place. Sleek and long like the handle to a spinning top, it thrust into the sky.

No, not a sky, but a hole.

Terrifying — in the abstract sense that she should be terrified — but she didn’t care where she was, because she lived. For eons — for seconds — she had been a slice of time, a frozen statue torn out of a slice of time. She shivered at the memory. More than she would ever fear death, she dreaded a return to that hell between hells.

Oriz groaned beside her and sat up.

“Are you alright?” Oriz asked.

“What kind of question is that?”

They both giggled as adrenaline flushed through them. Their eyes met, and Bella retreated from the flicker of camaraderie. She wouldn’t trust Oriz, not yet.

A metal hatch door sat in the center of the small floor and it was painted the same bright red as everything else. More half-walled cubicles extended as far as she could see. She stepped to the edge to peer over the wall, and her stomach flipped as gravity tilted. She fell against the wall and barely caught hold. What had been the floor was now the wall at her back and the chest-high wall was two feet of floor and beyond that…

Malicious gravity sucked her toward that great hole in the sky, but she pressed as firmly against the floor at her back as she could.

“What did you do!” Oriz hissed.

“This isn’t my fault!”

Pink ribbon coiled out and hung over the edge like a loose intestine. It rustled against Bella’s foot. It was tied around her ankle and led to Oriz’s, tethering them together with twenty feet of pink satin looping upon the red floor between them.

With a rumble of thunder, a flaming rent appeared in the sky before them. Heat billowed across Bella’s face and her breathing faltered as time curled and smoked around her.

“We only have a few seconds,” Bella said as she edged over to the hatch door.

“Don’t fall,” Oriz said. “We’re tied together.”

“I won’t fall,” Bella snapped.

The hatch door squealed as it fell open. The door landed vertically, sticking out over the short red floor like a tongue over lips. A throat of darkness lay on the other side.

“Do you think it’s a trick?” Oriz said. “That going inside will make things worse?”

She couldn’t be sure after her last experience with the Gambler’s game, but Bella gave her question no thought.

“Stay here if you want,” Bella said as she climbed inside the ladder.

Oriz watched the satin ribbon wind its way into the throat. Flames belched from the sky as the One-Eyed Crow crawled through the portal. Its true form was gigantic. Feathered tentacles lashed and pulled as it split its beak and cawed a rusty trumpet of the apocalypse.

As the pink ribbon tugged at her ankle, Oriz hurried into the hatch and closed the door behind her.

###

The Bloody Eye floated beyond the last gasps of the atmosphere. A ruby world hollowed out from a god’s heart. Canyons riddled the surface, and below crystalline caverns wormed their way to the core. Inside these chambers, the crew of the ship worked and lived.

In one particular stalactite-studded cave, a crew handled the recording of polyp data. Here, the floor and walls were a pale white crystal with living veins pulsing beneath the smooth cloudy stone. The crew of five young cadets took shifts recording, taking notes, and sending out maintenance requests. This was the opportunity of a lifetime. They were on a quest to incorporate a solar system under the tutelage of the greatest warrior the Crimson Armada System ever produced.

But in the year since they joined, each had only spoken with Rue once. His advice had been profound, if a little distracted. Now that the crunch time of getting the polyps to launch was over, they spent more training and less time working. So for this quiet midnight shift, only Sarine sat there, listening to the polyp song.

The helmet sat lightly on her head despite the bulk. Wires drooped from the ceiling like jungle vines and connected to the brassy ports on the exterior. With the shield over her eyes, all she could do was listen.

Thousands of voices sang out their lives. A choir in tune with itself, as though each mouth were connected to the same heart. Solos sank into choruses from which fresh voices emerged.

And it was all data, all a story, and Sarine listened for the blips. Most hated this job, but she loved it for the opportunity to grow. The polyps understood their environment so profoundly and she wanted to develop such an ability. So she focused on the interplay of melodies until sweat beaded onto her brow.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Her study was so great she didn’t notice when Rue and Unren entered the chamber until it was too late. She hastily removed the helmet, and the song vanished.

They ignored her, so engrossed in their conversation were they. Rue stood in a silver robe like a half-sheathed blade, his lean muscles and sharp cheekbones at complete odds with Unren’s hulking green muscles dusted with loam.

“I’m not helping you,” Unren said, and he folded his bulging arms as emphasis.

“You have the best relationship with the Gambler.”

“I’ve never even met the Gambler.”

“Exactly!”

“Enough of this.”

The chamber rumbled as Unren’s composure slipped. Sarine suppressed a gasp at the sudden weight upon her lungs. She pulled the release tab, and the helmet retracted into the ceiling. She blinked, gasping at the pressure, and froze.

A blade rested against her throat. She cast her senses down and detected nothing, but her mind told her that if she moved, or spoke, a blade would slice her head from her shoulders. Rue’s eye gleamed as he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. The blade prickled the outermost layer of her skin, and Rue blinked.

The blade vanished and Sarine breathed deeply as she backed away to the other side of the cave. She looked away, hiding her presence, but she still saw the truth.

A red line crossed Unren’s throat. Blood dribbled down his shoulders. He raised his hands.

“Rue.”

His mighty arms unfolded as he reached out to squeeze Rue’s forearm hard enough to twist metal. Unren’s voice came from far away as Sarine curled up and witnessed.

“Not around the crew.”

Rue inclined his head and withdrew his presence as though it had never been. He spoke slowly as Sarine hid herself in the dark corner, still feeling the blade against her throat, inside her mind, scraping across every cell and memory as though her existence were a chopping block.

“Why are you being so stubborn, Unren?”

“I’ve never interacted with the Gambler.”

Rue pulled his arm free of the titanic grip without effort.

“Exactly. That’s why you’re perfect. Look, I’d talk about it more but he’s listening.”

“You shouldn’t have misbehaved in his audience. What were you doing there, anyway? I thought bloodshed was beneath you, or was it your purpose of being? I forget sometimes you change your mind so often.”

Rue walked over to the helmet. He faced away with such casualness, as though he wasn’t turning his back to Unren, tunnel lord, shaker of worlds, engineer supreme for the Crimson Armada system.

“And you don’t need to accompany me on these inspections.”

“A captain should know how his crew runs his ship.”

“You’re not the captain,” Uren spat. “You’re just the madman at the helm.”

The song still trickled out and Rue pulled the helmet down to his ears.

“I can’t hear her yet. She isn’t even at a polyp. Days till her quest fails, but what does that even mean if she falls into another dimension? I had hopes for her. She’s even come up with a plan. Oh, she just entered a polyps area of control. What are the odds of that?”

“She has the stink of Dark Fate about her.”

“Surely,” Rue said as he released the helmet to its pulsing cables. “Do you know what the true terror of the Gambler’s games is, Unren?”

Unren folded his arms.

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Your level means nothing when the Gambler wants to play. Nothing! All your victories. All your struggles. All your suffering. You are at his whim in the games that follow.”

“If it’s so awful how can you think I’d come?”

“Because we’re still friends.”

Unren sighed.

“Damn you, Rue.”

“But you’re in?”

“Tell me one thing?”

“Sure.”

“Why didn’t Lorilla agree to join you?”

The silence stretched out between the godlike beings — as sharp as a razor — as quiet as the deep earth — and then Rue coughed, and shuffled his feet, and as Sarine lay in the corner she thought he might be any of her peers teammates struggling their way through the world.

“The answer, my friend,” said Rue with embarrassment. “I didn’t tell her. Not yet.”

Unren laughed.

“Ok, then I’ll join on one condition.”

“No. I think I’ll go alone.”

“No, no, no don’t be like that.”

“You can’t do it!” Rue shouted, and his intent sliced the air.

But Unren was already gone, the air rumbling after his departure, as he raced off to find Lorilla.

Rue sighed and walked over to where Sarine lay huddled in the corner. He crouched before her.

“I’m sorry that I lost control, cadet. That shouldn’t have happened, but it did. They’ll tell you control is the most important thing, even if it’s a lie. You can’t control a battlefield, you can try, but things fall apart. You can try to control friends, but then they’re not friends anymore. You can try to control yourself, you can try, but what happens when you are just the things you want to do? What happens when the beast inside is chained by shoulds and woulds and has no freedom to lash out?”

He poked her in the chest, and warmth jolted her blood. She sat up as a frenzy overtook her. Her wounds persisted, but she no longer cared. The memory of pain trailed behind her like a broken fetter. “

"I remember you, Sarine Nightclimber, level 52 cadet mastering the three-fold blade, and now you’re trying to master your environment,” Rue continued speaking, but Sarine struggled to listen as her heartbeat roared. “Listening to the polyp song is a good first step. They interweave themselves, their voices, calling out, but they don’t hear each other. So how do they have such a rhythm? The answer is beneath any song, any sound. The answer, as always, is the system. Do you understand?”

Sarine shook her head. She could hardly hear anything at all. How could Rue be so calm? The sun was exploding. The sun was her heart!

“Who cares about awareness!” she screamed. “Who cares about listening? I can charge through anything!”

Rue examined his finger.

“I think I overdid it,” he murmured as he reached into his sleeve. “For your troubles and your friends.”

The clink of glass was like cold water through Sarine’s hot and raging body. She rushed toward the six brown bottles on the floor. What kind of secret elixir had he left her? She turned to express her gratitude, to scream her thanks, to beg him to stay…

But he was gone.

Trembling from nerves and spiking adrenaline, she picked up the note and read aloud:

“This is a dry-hopped red ale. I hope you enjoy.”

Beer made by the greatest warrior to ever fight. She clutched it to her trembling heart. What secrets would this unlock within her? It had been such a struggle to gain levels after 50. Death energy no longer worked, and enlightenment so often slipped through her fingers. But now… now she held a frosty bottle of the stuff.

Would she share? She supposed it was only fair, but first, she would drink alone. The bottle cracked easily, and the foam hissed up the slender neck. She raised it to her lips, the scents of citrus and malt wafting out, she inhaled, and she sipped.

She gagged.

“Way too bitter,” she sighed as she took another sip and gagged again. “Hopefully, it boosts my attributes.”

She drank and waited, but her status remained unchanged.