The sky shifted as the Gambler leaned through reality to examine the option the Black Star System had offered. Zoe couldn’t breathe under the weight of the glare. It flattened her. Spread her thin like a puddle before the wind. She lost scraps of herself as the gaze stripped away her dimensions and stretched her in two.
She could scarcely believe — with the last remnants of her mind — that she persisted. Even after she had her limbs lopped apart, even after Rue reached into her soul and stabbed her [Fools Rush In] Title, and now the Gambler crushed her beneath his gaze — how was she still here?
With a lurch like a slot machine’s arm, the attention snapped away. Zoe gasped, intact, as though the weight of worlds never crushed her.
[You exist at the mercy of those more powerful, now, what is this I see before me? The Black Star system wants to cooperate with us now?]
Ding!
I always wanted to be your friend, The Black Star system sounded petulant inside Zoe’s mind. You were too mean.
[You started it!]
The stars dripped.
The Gambler’s voice, when he directed it to the Black Star system, was scathing. Millennia of contemptuous history filled every word.
[Since we won the war long ago, I suppose I can afford to be a magnanimous winner. Let me examine this offer…. Let’s see… let’s see… No. I don’t think so. Why should I grant you power only for you to slip through a backdoor into the mind of one of my subjects?]
Blood trickled from Zoe’s nose as the systems spoke inside her mind. She wished she could melt and extend the puddle of her blood on the tiles. It was hard to keep track of everything.
The world tumbled like dice as the Gambler laughed.
[I want to know why should I let you have the best of all worlds. I suppose Zoe is the victim, so let’s hear her opinion. What do you say, Zoe?]
Both presences turned their attention to her. Why did she deserve the best of all worlds? Zoe felt a maddened laugh bubble up from inside her battered body. Best of all worlds?
Best?
She grinned up at the eyes in the stars and at the face in the depths between.
“I stole treasure from another world, don’t I get to keep it?”
[Don’t answer my questions with questions!]
Zoe shuddered as the Gambler’s attention squirmed through her body.
[But I do like your answer]
Yes!
Deafening applause exploded into the arena before fading into overlapping echoes. The pressure relaxed on Zoe as the systems permitted her to think. She sat up, collecting herself, and her ragged breathing filled the empty arena. As her Willpower calmed her mind, she examined the Gambler’s options.
The [Mind’s Blooming Chains] seemed best suited to her long-term goals of constructing a weapon. Direct manipulation of Skein would be a phenomenal boost. But was that forsaking the present too greatly? She was about to enter the Gambler’s game after such a disorientating change.
The mind spirit of [Silverlink Grasp] would be useful, and probably worth the dead chain hands draining her Skein. She already had more Skein than others she’d met, she could afford the sacrifice. Though having the Black Star system’s personality-stripped intelligence stitched to hers sounded horrific.
Like nailing herself to a corpse.
Of course, her favorite was still the [Blackpetal Touch] with living chains and no personality attached. She would miss the additional Willpower and Insight, but this option carried the fewest drawbacks.
She also had an idea for how stretching chains could answer the level 30 body path decision she kept putting off.
Thus her answer must be…
No, Zoe, the Black Star’s voice rushed up inside her mind. They want to cut me up and let you pick your favorite piece. You deserve the whole me! I can stretch, I can touch the astral plane, I can enhance your mind.
“You can take control of my mind.”
I swear I won’t. I pinky swear!
Zoe smirked as the eager words rebounded inside her skull, but her smile faded when she received a notification.
[??????]
[The Black Star System offers a pinky swear: it will never take over your mind]
[Do you accept?]
[Yes] / [No]
Earnestness pressed upon her like the warmth of a sunbeam. She smiled, she couldn’t help herself, despite the grueling horror of her situation, she smiled.
Yes.
The warmth suffused her, lifted her despite her injuries, and she stared up at the Gambler’s face in the stars.
“I’ve made my decision,” she said, and then louder. “I choose [Best Friends Secret Handshake!]”
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Space bulged and stretched as the Gambler leaned down through the night sky. His frown tore galaxies and Zoe didn’t know if it was real or false.
[You permit this parasite to weld to your body and mind and live forever as a part of you until death do you part?]
Zoe frowned at his wording, but when she squeezed her fist, she laughed: she had already taken the Black Star’s hand.
“I do.”
The gambler sighed, and a gale rolled like a coin through the arena.
[A pity my work goes to waste, but all the same, I knew you were worth inviting onto the show. My brother swears by his anvil, but I tell you the crucible of live fire is where the shiniest treasures are forged!]
[I’ll accept your Secret Handshake for the next episode. We’ll call it a proof of concept and follow the truest rule of all… Winner! Takes! All!]
Applause rippled as heat swept down her body from the tip of her skull down into her navel. Her fingers and toes burned as though were on fire. The Gambler vanished.
[Trinity request complete]
The painful heat subsided. Steam curled away from the chains as she lay crumpled on the tiles. Her clothes were sticky with blood. The stars dim. She flexed her new fingers. They were chains, but intricate, and subtle. A chain of the same length had replaced each finger and toe, and even as she watched, silvery shoots wrapped their way around them. She looked closer. They were silver chains growing like vines and wrapping up the black chains until they formed glowing silver hands. She brushed her fingertips, and each felt as soft as a petal.
With these new fingers, she felt both more and less, as though she were a ghost passing through walls and seeing everything.
“How about that?” she said.
Are you happy?
Zoe nodded.
“I’m tired. So tired. After this show I want to sleep for a week,” she sighed at how unrealistic that expectation was. Would she even make it through the show if she had to face off against Rue and Lorilla? “Let’s get our prize before the show starts.”
There were two minutes until the Gambler’s game began. Two minutes for her to take something from the treasury. With the pain subsided and her limbs returned, her mind cleared.
Rue said she could have anything, so perhaps she could try…?
“I want everything,” she said. “Give me everything from the treasury.”
The long silence that followed spelled out the denial of her request.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “Give me that time grenade.”
[Amberstuck Grenade: a reusable trap that petrifies its targets]
The smooth lump of amber filled her palm with a gentle weight. Inside the squirrel turned in half surprise. What had caught it off guard like that? She appreciated the heft. Her chainlike fingers clicked against the smooth glassy surface.
She smiled, distracted, as her fingers slithered forth as chains. When she retracted them to normal length, her hands appeared as though she wore gloves of delicate sterling silver chain.
Her attention returned to the other item she retrieved from the treasury. The item that juxtaposed her silver hand as much as the lump of amber.
[Fragment of the Witch’s Crossroads]
[No further description available]
What was it for? Well, if there was one fragment there was another. It must be a quest of some description.
She poked her mind at it, wondering what attributes it might boost if she incorporated the essence. There was no resistance to her probing Willpower, but a sense of overwhelming dread forced her to stop almost before she even started.
Something cold and wicked stood behind her. Panic made it hard to breathe as she carefully retracted her mind until she was barely thinking at all.
The dread evaporated, and the piece of glass sat there as innocuous and innocent as any blood-streaked green shard can be.
She focused on the lump of amber in her other hand. She needed to get this back to earth. The Black Star had solved her immediate problem: she was not in pain, she had hands again — better than ever before — and she could use her [Mind’s Eye Incision] with greater skill.
But the amber seemed a solution to her larger goal: a weapon. The amber contained time essence. On its own, it had been just a resource since she lacked a mechanism to control time, but Rue had just pointed one out to her. With the pain of his overwhelming control, Rue had outlined exactly where the Title [Fools Rush in] was located inside Zoe’s body. Once she had time, she could access the mechanism of her title and hopefully combine it with the essence trapped inside the amber.
It wouldn’t be as easy as that, of course, but with the theory from the [Mirrorbell], she was confident she could at least start her construction. Now all she needed to do was survive the Gambler’s machinations so she could get back to her planet and cut open her soul until time spilled out.
###
Deep in the cubic guts of hell, Oriz floated beside a squid-like raven. Several empty clay bottles of rice wine floated around them, with the opaque liquid dripping down to the fight below.
They floated beneath the ceiling of a large red cube. It was tilted, such that they sat on the air beneath a corner. The walls were so freshly skinned that they still bled and oozed that bright oxygenated blood that flowed fresh from the surface. Oriz waved her cup and sloshed some remnants over the brim.
This rain fell onto the mass of fighting crowlings as they encircled Bella. The tattooed woman whirled her runeblade at the creatures and sidestepped the falling droplets as Oriz pointed at the demonic raven.
“No, no, no,” Oriz said to the demonic raven. Her cheeks were red, and her vision wobbled, but she couldn’t remember the last time she felt so good. Demons really had excellent booze. “The hunt is nothing compared to the sacred beauty of a sword exchange. Two minds battle with their bodies as instruments. The body limits the mind in what it can achieve, and the body can only follow instructions. Swords as extensions of arguments! As extensions of souls!”
The squidlike being that was the One-Eyed Crow, with its head of a crow and multiple feathered tentacles ending in beaks, at least this version of its form presented itself as such, poured a bottle down one of its many snapping throats.
“How boorish!” it complained with a croaking voice. “How predictable! Oh, the swordsman thinks hunting is dull, thinks moving and thinking about more than a big metal member is something to complain about and sneer upon? Shock! Horror! I might as well rip my head off and be done with it all!”
Oriz sighed as she refilled her cup.
“Trust a demon to be melodramatic…”
“Fighting is just a slow physics, my dear! Who wins is a matter of entropy. A matter of momentum. Throw enough weight at someone for enough time and they will fall! It is as simple as that and I wish it were not the case, of course, I do, don’t think I don’t understand where you’re coming from, of course I understand! But what I’m saying is that in a world such as ours, where fighting is inherently a mathematical dullness, then the only genuine excitement — the only true joie de vivre — comes from pursuing that fight. The hunt is the quest for the fighter.”
Oriz produced a bottle of the black feathered essence, carefully pouring a few drops into her cup of wine.
“You see, my foolish feathery friend,” she sipped luxuriously. “You have proven me right. The hunt is the pursuit of combat. Combat is the goal, and the goal outweighs the journey.”
“That is a different argument altogether.”
“Sore way of saying I won.”
“I’m done with this.”
With a monstrous feathery tentacle, the One-Eyed Crow ripped off its head and threw it down into the chaos below.
“Melodramatic,” Oriz said as she tipped more black demonic essence into her cup.