Zoe proclamation saturated the group with silence.

“I’m with you, boss,” Anton said instantly.

“Why?” Bella asked

“I’ve too much invested in it already,” said Zoe. “And…” her hand brushed against her throat. “I still remember that moment of darkness, when Rue’s anger gripped the world by the throat. To use his power in such a careless way, I don’t want someone like that steering my fate.”

“He might be different now…”

“Why are you playing devil’s advocate?” Anton asked. “Boss hasn’t steered us wrong yet.”

“Sorry,” interrupted Steffanie as she pointed between Anton and Zoe. “He works for you?”

“No,” said Zoe.

“Yes,” said Anton with a pointed look at Zoe. “Till the end of the world and over the edge.”

“That’s sweet,” said Steffanie. “I also chose Crimson Armada. Guys who get all dramatic over their exes aren’t my cup of tea.”

“His ex?” Bella asked.

“The vibes between that sword god and that love lass were about as obvious as whatever you two have going on,” Steffanie waggled a finger between Oriz and Bella. “No shame, by the way, just saying.”

Bella sighed.

“I just wish I had an exhaustive manual, you know?” she said. “I want to compare notes. Cross-reference facts. Plan.”

“I get it,” Zoe said. “But this is the best we can do for now. When we get back to the town, when we deal with those damned bugs, we can set ourselves up for a nice winter vacation. I have so many plans it feels like my head is going to explode, and they’ll take time. Sure, would be good to have you by my side for all that.”

“Not that guilt trip again,” Bella said as a lopsided grin formed. “Alright, in for a penny, in for a pound, yeah?”

Zoe nodded.

“Oriz?”

“I chose as soon as it offered the prompt. Can’t get my Skein back without Skein.”

“Makes sense,” Zoe turned to Jack. “What about you?”

He rubbed a hand against the back of his head.

“This is awkward… I mean, look. When I finished high school, all my friends were kicking around town playing music. My mom told me to go to college, and not to worry about what my friends were doing. I stayed in town and formed a band —”

“A great band,” Steffanie corrected.

“Thanks, but I always wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t caved to peer pressure.”

Zoe felt a lightness across her heart — untethered floating — as Jack severed her technique from his heart.

Was there anything she could say to stop him from leaving? Did she want to fight for him to stay?

“I wish you all the best,” she said.

“Yeah,” Anton chimed in. “Good luck.”

“Good luck, mate.”

A portal of bladed light collapsed around Jack, and he vanished.

Zoe blinked.

Oh…

ding!

And you two didn’t even hold hands!

Zoe shook her head.

“We’ve all made our decisions then,” she turned to the punk. “Welcome to the group, Steffanie.”

“Please, call me Skidmark.”

Zoe grinned despite herself.

“Alright, Skidmark, are you Catholic?”

“Jewish, why?”

Zoe gestured at the corpse behind her.

“It’s time for communion.”

“Stole my joke,” Bella grumbled as she hunched down over the corpse and started cutting

###

There was nothing magical or beautiful about cutting up the corpse and eating its flesh. She did not feel like she took in the body of a god as she passed slivers of half-charred and half-raw meat between her lips, ground it on her teeth, and swallowed it down.

On the first bit, she gained a new line in her status.

[Epiphany of the Flesh: 1%]

No more information. No clues or descriptions, just a percentage gained for swallowing the fatty morsel. After a brief discussion and a round of slivers, everyone gained the Epiphany. From then on, they continued eating.

Time in Hell had a dragging sense, like the final five minutes before leaving a lecture, and no matter what Zoe thought about, the consumption of flesh seemed to last a lifetime. Specks poked between her gums. The burned fat lined her gullet. Her stomach swam and bloated, but just as she never got hungry or tired in Hell — so Bella and Oriz claimed — she never got full either. They each took turns relieving themselves beside the cages so they could come back and continue eating.

Stolen novel; please report.

They moved in silence like parasites picking apart a decaying corpse. Afterward, perhaps, they would speak, but for now, they needed to get through what they were doing. They needed to get through this last act of… respectful desecration. For this fallen God, this failed savior, could still serve them. The Earth System would live on, not just in the power of Rue and the Heart Torn System, but in them.

Each swallow was a bellows to Zoe’s rage. It clouded her thoughts and her sensations. They were stuck in hell… her quests and her planet lost… and why had Jack left? Why hadn’t anyone said anything about it? What was there to even say? She was groping blindly through horrors, and questions only made her stumble, a mental spiral growing deeper and deeper until she was the quietest of them all.

When it was her turn to find relief behind a stack of cages, she was startled from her tangled rumination. In the middle of making room for more flesh, a sickened voice slithered into her ear.

“You’re chasing enlightenment, aren’t you?”

She started and almost slipped into a mess. With a grimace, she stood and faced her speaker. Her grimace intensified.

Had she ever seen something so ugly?

The speaker gripped the bars of a cage with three-fingered hands. Each digit was fused with its neighbors and covered in fuzzy chitin. The body that pressed against the bars was emaciated beyond starvation, and between the exposed ribcage and the flaring hips was an abdomen so thin and smooth it looked like a broomstick. The head had a working mouth, but smooth chitin coated the entire face. No eyes, ears, or nose that Zoe could see.

Hexagonal holes punched into the chest, and from them, fat wasps poked their heads and bristled their antenna. They watched Zoe, waiting for her response.

“I only want power,” she said.

“Then you should be in this cage with me. Do you want to swap places?”

The words had an odd ring to them. Not just a question, but an offer, something underlined by the Crimson Armada System. Zoe stepped back as her eyes widened. She had assumed the cages were full of damned, but…

“You’re a demon.”

He bowed, and his head flopped low, as though the neck were sloppily constructed, but the wasps continued watching. There were even more hivelike holes punched into the demon’s back.

“I am the Four Hearted Wasp, it is a pleasure to meet you Three Souled Zoe Chambers.”

“That’s not my name.”

The creature smiled.

“You seek enlightenment. The knowledge of flesh, am I right?”

Zoe checked her status.

[Epiphany of Flesh: 76%]

“I suppose I do…”

“You will not gain enough by eating that corpse, not unless your allies go hungry. But you would never do that, as one ruler to another, I can see that your heart beats for them like mine does for my hive.”

The demon’s words irritated her, too close to her thoughts, what was it trying to do? Why did it give her a demon name? Trying to form some bond, some empathy, no doubt. Trying to weasel into her heart.

Zoe smirked scarred lips.

“You don’t look like a ruler in that cage.”

“Perhaps you should ask my subjects.”

She expected it to indicate the wasps crawling from its torso, but instead, it stepped aside. Behind it, in the corners, were other bodies. They twitched feebly, still alive, but from the holes chewed into their faces and throats, it was clear Zoe would only speak to one occupant of the cage.

“What do you know?”

“Ahhh…” It slid its smooth, chitinous cheek down the bars. “It has been so long since I made a deal, you must forgive me for savoring this moment.”

As the demon licked its lips, Zoe felt a weight fill her heart. It was as though leaded beads had been piling inside the muscles, and now it tugged on her arteries, drawing her heartstrings tight until she wiped away a tear. This was all so… awful.

And Jack had left, without even really looking at her. A friend gone, but no… not even a friend… just someone in her party…

She looked up as the demon writhed. What power could this thing give her? What was the lowest cost she could get away with.

“So?” she said.

“I know of the doors in this area, and I know where they lead. I know which door hides a captured angel begging for freedom. What better source of enlightenment than a body of heavenly flame? And all you have to do is free me…”

Zoe looked into the polished, exoskeleton dome. Her reflection waved back and, she couldn’t be sure, smiled guilelessly at her.

She smacked herself in the forehead.

“Oh, what am I doing?” she said as her fingers dragged down her face. “Of course, this is a bad idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just wait a moment.”

“What?”

Zoe walked away.

“No!” the Four-Hearted wasp shrieked as it clasped through the bars. “Come back! I can help you! We can help each other! Come back!”

Zoe walked over to where her friends sat staring at the grisly remains of the meal. The light of flame and shadow hadn’t changed, the whole hellscape of cages and iron was lit like a smoky flame, but emotion moved on regardless of time and space. She looked at her companions. Bella and Oriz leaned against each other, listless and bloated. Anton stared at the eye in his hand. Skidmark lay on her back and looked up at the undulating cages above. There were scraps of pink meat clinging to the bones and a pile of organs with a few slices taken off. They tried eating the organs, but it only advanced the Epiphany of the Flesh.

Nobody had taken her up on the theory that an organ had to be surgically implanted. It seemed there was a limit to what people would subject themselves to for power. Well, she supposed she should exclude herself from that, since her stolen kidney nestled inside her guts.

Exclude herself, and Anton, who had insisted she stitch the Earth System’s eye into his head as soon as she said it might work. Though when she asked if he wanted to replace his eye or gain a third one, he grew silent.

Now he looked up at her.

“I want you to sew the eye into my chest. You can hook it up to my heart and I think… I think you should use part of the brain. My Body Path tells me it’s possible and I trust you to make it work.”

He extended the eye to her. Even severed, the eye looked up at her. So much trust, so much weight, as though a world caved down upon her shoulders.

But isn’t that where she should be? At the center of the world?

Zoe nodded.

“I’ll do it, but it will take… whatever passes for time in this place.”

Bella stood with an expression of queasy determination.

“While you’re doing that I’m going to feed my sword.”

“I’d like to watch,” Skidmark said from where she lay on the ground. “If that doesn’t make you uncomfortable. I always thought that spear was interesting, and kind of evil, it will be a relief to see it devoured.”

“I don’t mind,” Bella said.

Zoe pointed at the picked clean carcass.

“I don’t suppose anyone wants to try and get the Epiphany of Bones?” she joked.

Her friends groaned.

“But seriously,” she said. “Did anyone reach 100% on the Epiphany of Flesh?”

The grumbled discontent told her everything. They had devoured a corpse for nothing. She sighed.

“A demon tried to make a deal with me while I was pooping.”

Oriz nodded.

“So there are demons in the cages? That might explain why roaming demons have avoided this area. What did it say?”

“That it could help me gain Enlightenment of the Flesh.”

Oriz’s eyes widened.

“Did you make a deal?”

“No… it seemed stupid. Deal with the devil is a bad thing, right?”

Oriz wavered her hand.

“Usually, but not always, it depends on the deal. A demon in a cage is probably desperate for any kind of deal. We have it over a barrel,” she stood and squeezed Bella’s hand. “I want to speak with this demon.”

“Go ahead,” Bella said.

Anton stepped up to Zoe. He held the eye in his hand.

“Boss, I need you to sew this into me. Make it work, please.”

Desperation shook the connection between their hearts.

Zoe nodded.

“There’s no way I’m freeing the demon before we are all ready to go. Bella, do… whatever you need to do. Oriz, please deal with the demon. Anton, lay down and get comfortable. I’ll do my best, but this is going to hurt… a lot.”