As Zoe extricated a segment of the Title, it curled up and released a tiny hiss of steam. She paused, but, when nothing else happened, she continued. The pressure was on, and she had no time. This wasn’t the most complicated surgery of her life, but the stakes were the highest.
Despite her advanced Vitality, sweat beaded on her brow. A hand wiped it away, and she wasn’t even sure who it was. She hardly used her eyes at all, rather relying on [Sympathetic Resonance]. A chain continuously tapped between Anton’s body and her mind, the echoing resonance between the two forms revealing the threads of his Skein through the growing veil of steam. She could probably close her eyes completely but dared not.
Halfway through removing the pulsing red Title from Anton’s Skein, a terrible thought struck her: if Administrator error disabled the Title, would they even be able to use it? If not, all this pain and savagery was for nothing.
Dull terror scooped out her mind, but she continued working mechanically. Removing the Title was the goal, and she hurried as fast as she could. Mistakes were made. As she removed one of the Title’s claws, a thread of Skein would snap and curl away. The damage was minimal, but after this happened a few times she worried about what long-term effects Anton might suffer. Worst of all, the Title was located close to the eye of the Earth System she had implanted in him.
A problem she created, that she might make worse.
Though she hadn’t touched the eye, or any other technique, the concern remained.
How long did she have?
No time to check.
She cut the last claw free and lifted the Title between two chains. It squirmed in the air, a writhing red mass of clawed tissue. Before it could wriggle free, she brought over the mechanisms from the disassembled [Amberstuck Grenade]. She popped out the intake valve and the trigger. The webwork of amber glinted around the skull of a squirrel like a crystalized dreamcatcher. Spiraling the Title around the inner frame of amber, she swiftly started sewing the pieces together.
Fear trickled.
Could this even work? Though she was fixing it in place, something felt off. A tickle of her intuition told her it was already ruined. She was merely stitching corpses together in the hopes of magical lightning. But what more could she do? This was the plan! She had no time —
A moth wing fluttered across her heart, stronger, faster, more insistent than ever before.
Zoe gasped.
What was that?
ding!
I hear her, Zoe! Can you trust us?
Zoe closed her eyes and, after a terrible pause, relinquished control.
I trust you.
Her chains moved of their own accord. They twirled the last threads to link the curled-up Title into the circular fragments of amber while another blade sliced down her chest. She cried out at the sudden pain, but her chains stopped her from falling. The feathery touch of a moth upon her skin calmed her. Little kisses of wing tips. Chains pulled her chest apart like forceps — flesh and Skein both exposed. [Our Hearts Toll as One] went into overdrive. Her heart stopped and her veins stilled. A single bead of blood ran from the gaping wound in her chest and down her stomach.
She had enough oxygen in her blood — Vitality willing — for a few minutes of life. And she gazed with tiring eyes at the impending wave of sand. It would arrive before she ran out of air. If this didn’t work --
No.
She trusted them.
She had to.
A chain sliced through the bloated red skin of the Title and threw it away like a vengeful banana peel. Time essence — shining, melting, brilliant, too bright, her eyes contracting, squinting, they had always squinted, this was the sun every time she looked up as a girl and the feel of broken glass under her foot that time she — seconds colliding like cells bursting and reforming, a bud that never flowered but grew over and over casting off itself only to grow anew, something deep in her mind broke at the sight of raw Time but before the fracture extended through her soul and shattered the thing that was Zoe, Mirror flowed out from her heart.
Reflective tendrils pulled by the ghostly hooks on the end of her chains. [Mind’s Eye Incision], guided by some other mind, cocooned the raw Time in Mirror.
Chains worked quickly, steadily, to bring the Mirror back inside her body and close up the wound. Ribs groaned as they compressed gratefully back into place. The stitches grew increasingly sloppy as the wave of sand darkened the sky.
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There was no more time…
The snarling face of the desert thirsted for blood. A woman maddened by Hell’s fury. Her tongue of dunes licked teeth of wind-whipped dust. Destruction came in raw tonnage of sand.
Time crawled…
[Assessing technique…]
The system chimed inside her mind, the cold voice soothing in the heat of the moment. The doom of the desert slowed. Zoe saw each grain of sand dancing before furious lightning sundered the sky.
A fat and glistening bolt struck Zoe’s chest like a sledgehammer. Hurried stitches fused into her Skein as a pulse of creative energy smoothed out any minor inconsistencies. Heat filled her. The stink of molten metal coiled in her lungs. Droning hammers echoed through her bones.
Rough hands gripped the essence of Time, Wood, Blood, and Mirror inside her. The Smith’s voice came from the shadowy corners of her fearful mind.
[It is the apprentice, sloppy in their haste, forgetful in their eagerness, driven in their ego, that is most likely to burn themselves]
[Technique accepted]
[Empress in Time]
[A unique technique. A time-stopping area effect and the annihilation of universal time fuse with the Bell at the Center of the World to allow unparalleled manipulation and destruction of localized time]
The Smith’s voice chimed out one last time.
[My brother was not the only one broken by his toys. Best you learn from his fate. For you have made the sword, but can you wield it?]
Time resumed…
The wave grew pitch black as it reared up high enough to scrape the ceiling of glass. The woman’s face dissolved, and Zoe could see the figure of a wormlike demon swimming in the sand.
Zoe’s eyes widened as her friends prepared themselves. Oriz steeled herself while Bella raised her sword. Anton lay unconscious. A pulse of Willpower echoed from the wave, and it sent a shudder through them all. This was no mere sandwraith, but the queen of them all.
The wave collapsed.
Fell toward them.
Zoe breathed and —
[Empress in Time]
She sank as the world rose around her. An echo of her Body Path’s ability, but now the circle expanded out to encompass her friends. They stumbled, and Bella looked around.
“What —?”
White light burst from Zoe’s sternum. She staggered as a squirrel skull emerged, draped in mirror — no — formed of mirror itself, it looked about before melting, as the light pulsed again, a human hand extended out. Her hands — the hands she lost to Rue — pulled out an arm, and another, reaching out from her chest as the world rose in walls around them.
No, not her hands, her arms…
Moth’s arms, pulling herself free. Tears slid down Zoe’s cheeks as Moth stepped out from her chest. The same Moth she first saw in the Black Star’s desert. An innocent soul with reflective skin as brilliant as her smile.
“It’s you…” Zoe said as she fell to her knees at last.
Moth turned, and her smile widened.
“Only for a little while.”
Zoe reached out, but Moth turned away and raised a hand toward the walls of the world. She reached toward the wave of sand, the wave of demon, the wave of oncoming death, and touched the wall with a single finger.
A single chime rang out, like a silver bell tolling pure and clear, and then there was no sound at all.
Her mirror-coated finger pressed against the curved wall of the world as though it were a screen displaying the incoming wave. Her finger obscured the collapsing dune and when her hand fell away, it remained obscured. A cone of Time that grew wider until it dissipated a mile later and a mile wide. The wave collapsed, but the sand within the cone remained suspended. Inside, frozen in time, a worm-tailed demon hung in twisted rage. Was it intelligent or powerful enough to know what happened? Her eyes glowed with molten light, but she had not been quick enough to reverse the flow of time.
Moth turned to Zoe.
“The choice is yours,” she whispered.
Zoe nodded.
She lifted her thumb to the suspended demon and the mass of sand. A floating sensation as her Skein plummeted. Weakness filled her, like that time after she birthed the worm. Her stats were halved. So, Moth had been a part of her all along.
She smiled, despite the tears running down her cheeks, and raised her thumb to obscure the frozen worm. With a deep, shuddering breath, she tilted her thumb down toward the earth. Toward the hells of her soul. Toward annihilation.
“Burn.”
The sand glowed incandescent as every grain, every atom, split itself into raging flame. No scream escaped the cone. No sand fell. One moment the desert hung suspended, and then…
It never was.
Zoe felt the pain coming, the vast emptiness inside her where Skein once was, and then… a ping in her heart as a voice she hadn’t noticed gone, finally returned. She turned, and Moth stared in the same direction. They gazed at the surrounding walls, the curved reality of the desert, and listened with the heart they shared.
“What is it, Zoe?” Bella asked, her voice shaking.
“I found Skidmark. Moth, please…”
“Of course, Zoe.”
Moth pointed down into the sand and poked the curved walls of the world. When her finger strayed away a cylinder remained in place. Hard to see, but it became apparent as the sand shifted around it. The ever-sinking desert slowly revealed the shaft of desert frozen by Moth’s finger. Zoe placed her thumb up, careful now, trembling, calling with all her fading Willpower for some precision.
“Hold.”
She reached for the cylinder with her mind, with her Skein, and inverted the technique. She didn’t want to burn the entire contents, only keep the shape of the tunnel. She raised a thumb and tilted it perpendicular.
“Burn…”
Something broke inside her. She coughed. Blood rushed up her throat and burst from her lips. She sagged and slammed into the desert sand. Blood dripped down her chin and glowed with faint rainbow light.
But she had achieved what she wanted.
The tunnel extended, a shaft of sand frozen in time, and a central hollow burned out of existence. Moth crouched beside her, a hand touched her cheek, mirrored fingers to dark skin, cool to hot, and Moth’s sweet smile like blue dawn after a rainy night. Zoe placed her hand over Moth’s and tried to speak, but only tasted rainbow.
Moth shook her head, her hair tinkling like strands of glass.
“I’m so proud of you, Zoe.”
And she fell away, drop by drop, smile by smile, trickling into Skein and spooling into Zoe’s waiting chest. Silence filled the bell at the center of the world as Zoe, with the last of her strength, still grasping Moth’s unreeling hand, faced her friends.
“Hurry, the technique won’t hold for…”
The curved walls of reality collapsed. Oriz and Bella sprung into action as Zoe fell unconscious.