Zoe groaned as she rose to her feet. Blood flowed from the wounds on her legs. Her ears intermittently rang from the explosion and dulled from the blood running down the side of her head. It wasn’t her blood. She was covered, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at the cage. People had been there — scared, trapped, desperate — now they painted the floor.
The translucent mantis, Sarah, flitted away from the cave wall. Her mandibles chittered as she licked blood from her barbed forelimbs.
“This has been an interesting reunion,” she said. “But you’ll serve better as data points than my adversaries.”
She floated toward the skylight in the center of the rocky dome. Lightning crackled up and struck her. A singed wing fell to the ground and curled up blackened. Sarah hissed.
“You dare!”
Skidmark’s hair hung in her face, sweat coated her skin as she heaved in breaths. Zoe could see she was close to collapsing from Skein exhaustion, but still, she prepared another attack like a cat’s cradle of blue electricity between her fingers. It arced up so brightly that Zoe winced.
Sarah whizzed away. Her body blurred she moved so fast.
Grass exploded in her path, and Oriz formed out of the cloud. A bright green dagger drove toward the mantis’s head. At the last second Sarah dodged her neck, but still, the blade punched into her thorax. All too human blood flowed from the wound as Sarah spasmed and fell. Wind blades shot out at random. Zoe formed a shield of her chains and felt the blades crash against them.
When she looked up, Oriz had mounted Sarah and was plunging her blade into the mantis’s cackling skull over and over again. How many attacks would it take to die?
Zoe blinked, why was Oriz fighting so ruthlessly… She looked over where Bella lay coughing. Her body was crisscrossed with deep wounds. Blood welled up and flowed into the grass. Anton had dragged himself over, one leg dangling behind him. He tore scraps from her jumpsuit in an attempt to stop the bleeding. It was like trying to plug a dam with a tissue.
Zoe’s heart pounded.
Everything had gone to hell so fast.
Ice sloughed from the tube and crashed against the ground. More cracks ran down the length until the tube shattered like glass. A stench of rot filled the air.
A monstrous thing emerged.
It almost looked like a mantis, but Zoe’s mind screamed that it was incomplete. The head hung high on a neck too long, too human, armored plating missing in places to reveal human vertebrae stacked and coiling. Three long arms extended out, ending in the barbed scythes Zoe was so familiar with. Each blade was as tall as her. It floated forward, legs trailing beneath it, with some missing, and its belly exposed to reveal a glowing core of light and a hanging web of viscera. Hearts, lungs, kidneys — human organs connected by pulsing veins and arteries hooked to the creature and drooping beneath it like the sagging keel of a soft tissue boat. Colors flashed and shifted along its patchwork exoskeleton.
It pointed a red claw at Zoe. Fire spiraled out and Zoe threw up her wall of chains. The heat splashed against her defenses and licked at her Mirrored skin. She gritted her teeth against the pain. [Empress in Time] was better suited for defending against physical attacks rather than pure energy.
The flames died down and Zoe lowered her chains in time to see the colors shift along the mantis’s exoskeleton. From crimson to bright azure blue. Two claws raised and frigid cold rolled out. Frost crystals blanketed the blood and guts scattered in the grass. Zoe ran to the side as a cone of winter sprung up where she stood. She looked around. Where were her friends?
Anton tended to Bella with increasing desperation. Oriz had joined him, wrapping her lover in bandages of grass. Skidmark lay unconscious, collapsed from Skein exhaustion not far from Sarah’s severed head. She was just another body in the grass like all the others.
It was only her.
ding!
And me.
Her mirrored skin clenched her hand like a living glove. Moth wings trailed across her heart. Zoe nodded.
It was the three of them to defend her friends, and it would be enough.
Light pulsed from the core of the mantis. It tilted its head, eyes dancing like electric rainbows.
“I am the Chroma Viscera and I am in pain.”
Zoe raised her chains.
“We don’t need to fight.”
“Wrong.”
Stolen novel; please report.
It raised three claws of forest green. Syrupy light coiled forth, slow, hanging in the air like a haze as it drooped and sagged. Where it touched the grass the living tissue blackened. Where it touched the scattered body parts of the people in the cage, skin hissed and bubbled and spat. Poison? Acid?
Zoe leaped clear and created distance.
Fire burst out and lit the noxious clouds into a floating inferno. The red and crimson blaze reflected across Zoe’s mirrored skin as she ran to the side.
When the flames cleared, the Chroma Viscera raised translucent claws.
Zoe threw up her chains as a shield. The ground exploded as the wind blades struck. Where the blades wrapped around her defences her mirrored skin took the hit. She had plenty of Skein, but it was still dipping.
Her techniques didn’t give her any ranged attacks. How was she supposed to defeat it when her friends were all indisposed?
As though reading her thoughts, one of Anton’s eyes floated up to her.
“Boss, Oriz says we need to escape.”
She glanced over at where the alien woman had bound Bella and Anton’s wounds with vibrant green bandages. Oriz caught her eye and gestured for the ceiling. Zoe understood her intentions: Oriz wanted her to distract the monster while she escaped with her friends.
It was a repeat of her fight with the Angel.
But just like then, Zoe wasn’t content with escape, she wanted this thing dead. Its core glowed and pulsed with coruscating colors and she wanted it. Whatever let it shift elements, she knew that was something that could assist her [Mind’s Eye Incision].
She nodded to Oriz.
If Zoe could help her friends escape she would do it, and if she could fight a little longer — a little harder — she would do that as well.
A blast of ice came toward her and she leaped back. Her chains grabbed the wall and she slung her way along the outside. Dodging attacks with her chains digging into the rock and swinging herself along. The Chroma Viscera spun to watch her, its head clicking, twisting — this felt far more like a meat machine than even the most insectile of the mantises.
It floated toward her and raised its claws. One glowed red, one blue, and one green.
Three attacks spun toward her. The fire burned up the poison into an inferno belching black smoke. The ice seemed useless in the attack.
ding!
I don’t think it’s very smart…
Heat washed over her as she leaped through the blast to close the distance. Her skin scalded beneath the mirrored coating. It resisted the heat some, but not enough, and she screamed, channeling the pain into fury.
She flew through the air toward it and her chains lashed out with their maximum weight. They lashed down at the Chroma Viscera. It raised its claws to defend and her chains shattered a claw. It fell away and melted into a puddle of chitin and goopy flesh. Close up now she closed in with all the entangling speed of the Grasping Vine technique. A claw-raised metallic steel and buzzed like a chainsaw. She caught it in her chains, and though it tugged at her, almost pulling her arm from its socket, she dragged herself closer. She struck at the creature. Organs hung from the loops of arteries and intestines. They popped like viscous pinatas under her attacks and the monster shrilled like a kettle of flesh.
A crimson claw flashed in her face and she was forced to disengage as an inferno blasted out.
How much Skein did this creature have? Though it floated above the ground, it had no wings. Like with Sarah, she couldn’t tell its level. And the uncertainty put a tingle of fear in the back of her mind. Fear, and rage.
Amber fluid dripped from its cracked face where she had struck once before disengaging. It spat human teeth onto the ground as its eyes glowed like floodlights.
“I am the Chroma Viscera and I am enraged.”
“Whatever.”
Zoe beckoned with her fists.
The creature charged.
She met it, chains lashing out as its claws shifted yellow and sparked with lightning. A shock ran up her chains and she collapsed to the ground. Steam rose from her Mirrored skin as the technique flickered on and off. She gritted her teeth and gazed up at two blades glowing an ominous purple.
That was the Skein cancellling technique. She couldn’t afford to get hit by that. Her chains pulled her away from a savage guillotine of barbed chitin. One of Anyon’s silver eyes buzzed in her ear.
“We’re clear, boss,” he said. “We’re on the other side of the crack. Join us as soon as you can. There’s no telling how long until the mantis that fled returns with reinforcements.”
Zoe nodded.
“Sure…”
She stared at the glowing core of the monster. Her entire body ached. She was tired. Blood ran down her legs. Her scarred lips twitched. She wanted that core.
Needed it.
The sky above the dome was clear for now, and she could end this quickly. She knew she could.
“Boss, are you coming?”
“Give me a minute.”
She had to do this.
She charged toward the mantis. Her chains were wrapped into fists. It swung at her in a combination attack of slashes, the two glowing purple scythes like dual-wielded swords. She squeezed her technique.
[Empress in Time]
There was barely a strand of Time essence gathered by the technique, but there was enough. The mantis stuttered for a fraction of a second, but it was enough. Zoe dodged under the swooping blades and leaped up toward the underbelly of suspended organs. Blood and slime dripped as the Chroma Viscera reared. Zoe might be past the blades, but they could still seize her.
She slung out her chains and hooked them around the exposed innards. The barbs came down. She yanked her chains. A wet shriek filled the air. Glowing purple barbs slammed into her back.
[Skein Disabled: 5 seconds]
Her mirrored armor shattered as the barbs hooked into her flesh.
[9 seconds]
[14 seconds]
She screamed and pulled with her chains.
Organs slid free and crashed into the ground below like rotten watermelons. The mantis screeched and crashed into the ground. It flailed and Zoe leaped free. Her chains yanked the last of the pulsing things. The stink of rot filled the air like a wet fart as Zoe shakily pushed herself to her feet.
[12 seconds]
[11 seconds]
The Chroma Viscera trembled on the ground. The light in its core flickered and strobed. All the colors overlapped into white in that pattern. The bug itself twitched. Its limbs were crooked and stiff in death, but it raised its head to gaze at Zoe as she limped closer.
“I am the Chroma Viscera and I am scared.”
Zoe nodded. She hobbled closer, her hands raised. Mirror slid over her chains to glove her hands. She held them upright and open.
“I can make it stop hurting.”
The bug stared at her.
“I am the Chroma Viscera and I want it to stop.”
[2 seconds]
[1 second]
[Skein enabled]
A whisper rippled out from her heart and seized control of the coruscating core.