Zoe’s heart thundered in her chest. The plan had been going so well. Slash the wrists with Bella’s and Oriz’s greatest attacks. Grab the chain with Skidmark’s magnetism. Run to the well.

In hindsight, it had been simple. Maybe too simple. She was reminded again that none of them had experience with this stuff. And deep down, Zoe always knew it would come down to this: her fighting for her life. The System always made things difficult.

The foot fell toward her like a judgment from the sky. The chains in her feet coiled and pushed. She launched herself away. The foot struck and the rock exploded like water. Zoe hit the cracking ground, rolling, trying to stop Bella and Oriz from taking damage but failing.

She groaned and pulled herself to her feet.

“Your problem is with me!” she shouted at the Angel. “Let my friends go!”

“All shall face judgment,” Oriz groaned, drool leaking from her mouth. “I might be lessened by my time here, by my work, but I am enough to punish you.”

“The chain didn’t deserve to be locked up!”

“It is not your place or mine to decide that.”

The chain in question continued to thrash on the end of one of Zoe’s finger chains. It leaked red rusted fragments. It was almost devoured. Zoe poked the Black Star.

ding!

Ugh, I’m so full! I might need to take a break…

Don’t you dare! Zoe screamed inside her mind. Eat the whole thing. You told me it was the only way to defeat the Angel.

Did I say that? Tee hee hee. I don’t know…

“Enough,” Bella rasped.

The Angel clapped its hands together. The thunderous explosions scattered the mists, and Zoe hurried to cover her eyes. Skidmark’s cut-off shriek indicated she was too slow. Her body stood frozen. Only Zoe and Anton remained standing.

[Empress In Time]

Moth’s mirror poured out over Zoe’s face, she blinked and gazed up. Through the veil of Mirror, she witnessed.

The Angel stood three dozen times taller than her. Its massive shoulders shuddered with rage, hands twisted into menacing claws as it stomped toward her. The wounds in its arm were healed. Light burned from its skin like metal in the sun. Wings spread and billowed like gossamer rain and they soaked into the sky and lit the world. Zoe never saw anything more beautiful in her life.

She ran as fast as she could.

Anton followed. His silver eyes floated through the air surveying everything. He fed a stream of information into Zoe’s ear as she focused on running across the shattered landscape.

“It’s coming,” he said. “Jump now.”

She leaped forward as an impact broke the rock behind her. Landing, she spun around and gasped.

The Angel crawled on all fours like a dog. Hair draped over its face but its eyes burned like the pits of a forge.

It charged and they ran, leaping aside as it clawed at the ground. Every time they tried to circle to the well, it interrupted their path. They were growing tired, and it was playing with them. Zoe strained to carry the weight of her friends. This could only end one way.

Ding!

Finished, ugh, I want to take a nap.

The Black Star had consumed the red chain, at least now Zoe’s burden was slightly lessened, but not by much.

“We need a plan, boss,” Anton said.

“I’ll distract it,” Zoe said. “You run the others to the well.”

“Just drop them in?”

She was relieved he didn’t question her decision to fight the Angel on her own. The others would have objected, but Anton just followed orders. Whether it was trust or blind obedience, it didn’t matter now.

She threw her friends toward the well, trusting that their enhanced bodies would either prevent injury or prevent it from lasting, and turned to face the Angel.

It barrelled toward her. The beautiful features distorted with anger. Its jaw hung slack and open as the perfect teeth glowed in the light. Fingers dug into the hard black rock like clay.

Zoe only had a moment.

[Empress in Time]

Moth’s mirror slipped over her completely as reality curved. The Angel distorted as she viewed it through the walls of a bell. Zoe reached for the small pool of time essence that had trickled into the technique over the last few days. With her hand and Moth’s, she pointed at the charging Angel.

It leaped toward her. Zoe activated her technique. Time burned, and the Angel froze.

Suspended in mid-pounce. Its hands were outstretched. Frozen, grasping, the wings outstretched like dawn. The eyes flashed with burning rage.

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The backlash of the technique hit Zoe like a sledgehammer. She screamed at the pain but ran forward. Out of the path of the Angel, her fist ready as she prepared a leap of her own. The technique wouldn’t hold much longer — there had only been a few drops of Time essence in her reservoir.

Her footsteps were loud in the silence. Antonhurriedly dragged the women into the well. He dumped them one at a time into the swallowing depths. Zoe sprinted.

The Angel spasmed in mid-air. Its limbs twitched like a stop-motion swimmer as it fought the crumbling fetters of Time. Zoe stood beneath it. Her body ached, but she readied her fist.

And jumped straight up.

The air curved around her fist, the walls of a bell distorting the flesh of the Angel’s sternum. She never felt more in tune with her body path than at this moment. The New Flesh linked her in a way she couldn’t explain.

Her mirrored knuckles reflected the shining chest above.

[Mind’s Eye Incision]

Her fist struck.

It pierced.

A shockwave burst across the Angel’s flesh. Skin cracked, spiderwebbed like broken glass, and boiling blood rained down. Zoe danced away as the Time slowed the droplets, but then [Empress in Time] collapsed.

The Angel shot forward, carried by its momentum, and it crashed into the ground. It rolled and howled — not with Bella and Oriz, but with its true voice.

A crash like cymbals filled the air. Echoing, resonating, playing over itself until the air screamed in pain at its distortion. Despite the Mirror coating her, Zoe’s ears bled. Her eyes ached, and she fell to her knees.

The Angel punched the ground. Knuckles shattering rock into dirt. It sat up, and molten blood oozed from the wound in its chest. It was a small wound, so much smaller now that Zoe wasn’t up close, but it wasn’t healing.

Anton’s eyes continued to float and one of them raced to her.

“They’re in the hole.”

“Join them.”

He saluted.

“Good luck, boss.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him leap into the well. His eyes continued floating, surveying, but they would vanish if he fell out of range. Not even Bella knew how deep the well was, so that might happen at any moment.

But Zoe had damaged the Angel, and she had bought her friends time to escape. It might as well be a victory, provided she lived to tell the tale.

The Angel stopped its screech and raised its hands to the sky. A word came from its mouth, but Zoe could not hear — could not understand — blood filled her eyes and ears and nose and mouth — she choked on the Angel’s word as it spoke in Skein.

Dust spat up from the cracked ground as the island groaned. Zoe felt the trembles beneath her feet and she ran. Spikes thrust up where she stood. Bones. The white tips curved like tusks. Their shadows long and bleak as the Angel strode toward her.

Zoe could feel the vibrations before they emerged, but it took all her coordination, all her strength, to keep herself zig-zagging away. A spike burst from the ground and she spun away as it nicked her mirrored cheek. Reflected force blasted the bone, but it didn’t even crack. Despite her mirrored armor, Zoe felt the pain as her face bled.

Every time she tried to head toward the well, the bones diverted her. The Angel was steering her toward it.

And the bones kept growing. They rose taller than houses, than trees, great rib bones like the remains of fallen giants.

The Angel was building a graveyard in which to kill her.

But the blood still oozed from its chest. Boiling droplets spattered the bones and the rock. Zoe smiled with scarred lips. This wasn’t the first time she fought in a graveyard. She didn’t die then, and she wouldn’t die now.

If the Angel wanted to bring her close, then she would make it regret that decision.

She leaped up onto a piece of bone. Her chains extended out to loop around the curved tusk before she flung herself onwards. Bone after bone she launched herself forward until she flew toward the Angel. Her mirrored fist outstretched with momentum like a missile. Reality curved as she summoned the [Bell at the Center of the World].

[Mind’s Eye Incision]

The Angel slapped her out of the air.

Zoe struck the ground before she heard the crack of thunder. Bones shattered. Knew the damage — ringing ears — black vision — before she felt the —

Pain consumed her.

Numbed.

Burned.

Zoe blinked. One eye didn’t work. She winked. And the Angel approached. Its eyes burning with righteous judgment. As hot and as impersonal as the sun.

Each heartbeat battling with the next. The pain overwhelmed her as her body shut down, limp from the shock, and she lay in a crater. Mirror slipped around her as Moth stood free of Zoe’s body and dragged her, but they would never escape.

Her chains were limp. She couldn’t move them, and they spooled out from her like the tendrils of a jellyfish washed up on shore.

The pain left no room in her mind for fear.

One of Anton’s silver eyes floated to her.

“...”

It said something but she couldn’t hear.

Black Star…

ding!

Oh, no, I took a nap and… Are you ok?

Zoe coughed up blood.

“Joking…”

ding!

I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Let me help!

Her chains flexed and stretched until her fingers and toes lifted her off the ground. Moth slipped back around Zoe’s skin, a perfect suit of Mirror, as the Black Star carried Zoe away like some great spider. Blood leaked through the mirror as the three of them scurried away.

Dying…

ding!

You’ll be fine! We can beat this stupid Angel. Do you know how many Angels I killed before they… in the war?

No…

Me neither. I lost count tee hee hee!

This will help.

+1 ruddy chain

What’s this?

ding!

I’m so happy to have this back! It lets us attach chains.

The Angel stomped down. Its feet avoided the sharp tips of the gigantic bones. It pursued Zoe with indifference as her chains scampered her along. Her Vitality worked at suppressing the pain, but Zoe still felt like a ragdoll. Moth held her together, and the Black Star moved her, but without them, she couldn’t do anything.

No, that wasn’t true.

The new chain could be attached?

Ding!

That’s right! When you touch a point the chain will grow from there like a beautiful flower. It can be linked to another point as well.

Zoe smiled and regretted it at once. The shattered bones in her skull didn’t respond well to smiles.

It was a wonder she wasn’t dead.

The Angel probably intended for her to suffer.

Its arrogance would be its undoing.

Anton’s eye floated past her face.

“You’re not looking good, boss.”

“I’ll… fine…”

[Hound Manifestation]

Her damaged flesh writhed. What had been unpleasant before made her scream. Moth gagged her mouth with Mirror. The muffled sound tortured Zoe as two black hounds burst from her flesh. They each darted away through the bones, guided by Zoe’s silent instructions.

The Angel continued to stomp toward her, and now Zoe turned to face it. The Black Star chains climbed a jutting bone until Zoe stood at the top like a bug on a stick facing the monstrously beautiful Angel.

A smile stretched across the Angel’s pallid features. Wings flapped and a great wind swept across the island. Those wings were at once there, and absent, threads weaving the Angel into reality as it prepared to lay its terrible judgment upon her.

The hounds each reached a bone, they waited, and then, under Zoe’s command, they activated the ruddy chain. Black metal links sprouted from the bones, gleaming red in the light, and shot toward each other. The chains met and formed a single strand that snapped taut between the bones. The Angel stepped forward, its eyes fixed on Zoe. The chain caught its ankle, and strained. The bones creaked, but they held in the earth. The Angel’s burning eyes flashed as it tripped and fell toward the field of sharp bones.