Zoe fell into a pit as the light bubbled around her.
Light became sound.
A hissing, a fizz like a cracked can of soda.
Everything shook, and she knew she would burst. Knew that her guts would split her skin and her brains would erupt from her skull.
Fell into a pit.
A desert stretched above her as she fell from the sky.
Heat filled her bones like molten lead. She fell so slowly into the desert. A bug in amber moved with greater haste but time was not within her reach. Only heat bubbling away as she collapsed on the sand.
So many horrors in the desert. Here in the dunes, she lost her eye to screeching blue baboons. She trudged on. Beside the slow river, she fought the worm until it birthed her doppelgänger. The desert sands ever shifted but always housed adversity. Climbing a rocky trail marked by goat hooves amongst thorny bushes smelling that slight spice in the air as the red wind whipped. Here in the desert, she drove her car on lonely nights when Ben was out of town. When she cried as she sped faster and faster and wished the night would swallow her. Wished the sky would open up and some God might come down and make of her… something.
Anything that wasn’t lost.
How many moments can stack upon themselves like coins piled for the winning? Once so long ago — not so long ago, but lived time has a habit of expanding beyond the confines of the clock — the Gambler asked her a question:
How many futures are you used to experiencing?
Now she drowned in pasts.
The desert swept over her, dunes racing like waves before the wind, and she sank.
A wave with the face of a woman and she reached for time but there was none — the organ burned from her chest by her own choices — you shall know the glutton by the scars on their lips —
She begged for the dark sky to bring respite from the scalding sand upon her skin.
A cool hand gripped hers.
Mirror against flesh.
Moth pulled her up and out of the shifting past and they huddled at the riverbanks. The waters whispered as they ran. Zoe squeezed her eyes. Her heartbeat thudded like a sick drum. None of it made sense, but it continued and Zoe had no hope but to persevere. In the back of her mind, so far away, so hard to reach, remained the unbreakable diamond of truth: this was a working of the System.
If an Epiphany was the flame, then she must wrestle with the kindling as the kerosene rained. She touched upon this truth and it resonated through her like the tolling of a bell.
Moth nodded and together they started walking. A third set of footprints followed, kept pace, and led the way. A shrouded figure, bent, emaciated, hidden by a robe, by shadow, by nothing at all. It turned — such withered flesh housed eyes of watery blue — and crooked a finger.
“Once upon a time, such was the thought of the Unnamed Earth System: all must change. Lava must become a stone. Steam must become rain. A cell must become two. Two cells must mutate and propagate. The birth of children, the creation of more, the first footsteps out into the desert where the wind howls like a cat in the cold.”
A shudder passed through Zoe as a snow-laced wind blew upon her. She blinked — snowflakes in her lashes melting upon her heat — and they stood at the edge of a chasm.
This was not real. It could not be real. It must be a dream. It must be —
The wretched figure cackled, the awful sound like a soup pot boiling, and it rose from Zoe’s stomach, caught in her gullet, and escaped her lips. For that bent specter of the Earth System dwelled only inside her guts.
You are haunted by what you eat.
“Nothing makes sense to the mind long gone and gone and gone and long gone was the mind of the System of Earth. For it met its fate as all must, by encountering that being greater than them. Always a bigger fish. Always a greater set of jaws to crush and twist. Some call the spectre Death. Some say Time, or Entropy, or Fate, but these are merely the wings upon which Change flies.”
Zoe found her voice there on that dark chasm as it filled with snow and ice and an ever blowing wind.
“I am not death,” she said. “I did not want to destroy you… I did not even know you were real. Everything was forced upon me. I need the power and you were already dead. It was a choice, but it was not…”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
She couldn’t continue to speak. How could she? Everything from her tongue was a lie. The diamond in the back of her mind shone.
[Epiphany of the Tongue: 49%]
This was all part of the system. She had to remember that. No matter how much her legs ached from walking. How goosebumps rose on her flesh from the icy wind. How the dust and grit got in her eyes. She glared at the Earth System’s husk as its watery eyes judged her.
“I ate you,” she spat. “And filling my belly was the only thing you ever did for me.”
The specter laughed and crumbled.
“Change.”
It disintegrated, and the wind bore the fragments and Zoe coughed as she inhaled. They cut up the inside of her nose, and her mouth, and she spat blood as the cliff crumbled beneath her. More dust, more fragments born on the wind. The canyon opened beneath her.
She refused.
Her finger slapped at the rock. Grabbed. Nails split. Her arms burned as they yanked almost out of her sockets. She screamed and choked on the pain as her knees slammed into the cliff face. Her feet dangled above the yawning black that swallowed snow and stone.
“I am not your pawn!”
She coughed as the dust of that ancient corpse filled her lungs and coursed through her blood. Eyelids fluttered. She hung at the edge of the chasm. Moth stared down from above. A face of concern mirrored like polished steel, and in those distorted features, Zoe saw her visage as something so small and raw and full of wrath.
The specks in her blood bloomed as her sinews strained. The System of Earth wound its way through the minds in the desert. Minds of people who clung to stone tools in caves as they struck sparks and built fire and screamed at the burning heavens.
Their voices echoed in Zoe’s throat.
The first change is one of defiance.
Will you gaze up at the endless stars in fear? They are not for you; they are too many, too bright, better to cower and beg and hope…
Will you shake your fist at those distant suns? They belong to you and you must take them if they are not offered. No use is prayer or hope when all that is fated can be found at the end of your fingers…
Zoe reeled through the memories of blood.
She hung on the edge of the cliff face and she refused to hang. Her feet found some purchase. Her toes were numb from the cold as she forced them into cracks. Wincing at the sensation — knowing pain and damage must come — though she felt nothing now. The rock grew cold from the snow and she forced her hand up. Skin peeled from her fingers — frozen blood like glue — and she reached.
She climbed.
How far was it to Moth? With every inch she gained ten more grew between them. Laughter in her mind from that ghost clinging to her spiraling DNA. Did the ghost make them? Or did they make the ghost?
She climbed.
She walked through the desert as she broke apart. These were the steps taken by the Earth System as it flitted from mind to mind and gnawed at their faith, at their ability, at their striving for progress. She was not alone, for when she looked to her side a reflection looked back.
A reflection looked down as the mountainous dunes poured overhead. One by one the waves of sand poured into the bottomless chasm.
Zoe climbed.
It didn’t make sense.
Why was she here?
Sand poured down on her. She turned her head as it scraped at her skin, as it weighed her down. She had no power here. No more than a rag before the wind waiting to be blown away.
How long could she keep climbing?
How long could she keep fighting?
Change.
She relaxed her grip.
What did Change mean to someone like her? More power, more Skein, more abilities, and attributes… growth wasn’t change.
She let go of the cliff face. The frozen rock gripped her skin. Questioned her decision as gravity tugged her from the skin of her palms, of her soles. She left them there, those bloody handprints, footprints, upon the face of the chasm and she dove.
Into the dark below.
The shadows swept up. The sand fell. Her flesh dissipated and blew away.
Ten million nights passed in a midnight blur. The Earth System fed upon the minds of its chosen people. They gave it names but none stuck, each title fell away like a stone tossed into the sky, like a body into a bottomless chasm.
Zoe was dust on the wind, and a laugh caught at her.
Fingers snatched at the fragments.
She collected in a pile in the palm of a withered hand. Even in her shattered and scattered mind, she felt a sense of déjà vu. Her first meeting with the Gods. With Lorrilla, whose death had made everything… change.
She felt so close to understanding.
A bony finger stirred the dust that was Zoe. She gasped for air. Her body was whole and intact upon that decrepit hand that clutched her like a corpse's claw. Zoe gazed up into eyes like a sky of summer rain.
“You wish to claim the Epiphany of the Flesh?”
Zoe forced herself to her feet.
“Yes.”
“By what right?”
Her scarred lips twitched.
“By the right of a child who reaches for their parent in the night”
“That is not enough.”
Her heartbeat raced.
“By the right of a dog who devours prey.”
“That is not enough.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The palm shifted beneath her. No longer supporting her feet, she now lay upon the wrinkled skin as it rose through the air.
“By the right of someone who would avenge the theft of a world.”
A sigh escaped the lips above her and wafted over like a wintry morning breeze. She opened her eyes and gazed up at the swirling mists above the Angel’s island.
It took a moment of breathing and blinking to convince herself that the world wouldn’t shift around her. That the hallucination — the epiphany — had finished.
“How are you feeling?” Moth asked.
Zoe looked over.
Moth sat beside her. Knees drawn up and arms wrapped around. That same bright smile upon her mirrored cheeks.
Zoe smiled.
“I’m alright,” she said.
But she was shivering. Her mind not quite returned to her skin. It felt as though some part of her would always be falling, and all she wanted was to touch the bottom of the chasm. To have somewhere to put her feet so that she might continue.
Had her argument persuaded the Earth System? Or was it just a cosmic tab of acid running its course? She frowned. There seemed no way to tell the difference. Though, she didn’t feel any different…
[Reward processed]
[Please select a New Flesh]
Zoe gasped as the options chimed inside her mind. This would change everything.