The tension in the gas station was palpable. Zoe was fired up from the fight but frazzled — spiritually if not mentally. There was something wrong with looking at bodies and knowing they should be sprawled in different positions. Killed in different ways. A twisted deja vu.

[Cores remaining: 3/10]

[Time remaining: 3 minutes, 7 seconds]

Time ticked, and she needed to destroy the cores. If she couldn’t destroy all three cores — including the one that lay beyond the barrier surrounding them — then the demon would respawn.

And that would only prolong the waking nightmare.

“Listen up,” Zoe said to the two on the ground. “You tried to kill me and my friends. You had no problem doing that. I’m going to save your lives, but it will hurt more than anything you’ve experienced. Despite that, you must trust me. I’m a surgeon, I have a Skein technique that can keep you alive. Now, one of you roll over. We have to be quick.”

The two men cast a glance at each other. Something deep and conflicted passed between them that Zoe didn't have the energy to puzzle out. One rolled over. He had a young fragile face and was crying. It was the one with the broken wrist.

“Please, I never wanted any of this. I just worked weekends —”

Zoe placed a dead man’s belt between his teeth as Bella pinned his hands and Anton grabbed his feet.

“Bite down. You know your Vitality?”

He looked up at her and nodded.

“Focus on your Vitality. Put everything into healing yourself. You want to close the wound. Just focus on that thought, even when it hurts.”

[Our Hearts Toll as One]

Her technique latched onto his heart, but the other goon resisted her. It was to be expected. Can’t save them all. She sighed as she slowed the young man’s heart rate, kept it steady, and sliced open his stomach.

He screamed into the belt as she reached up inside him and grasped the core.

“Vitality,” she said. “You can heal from this. You’re superhuman.”

[Minds Eye Incision]

She cut away any last connections, removed the core, and crushed it in her grasp.

[Cores remaining: 2/10]

[Time remaining: 2 minutes, 01 seconds]

The young man lay whimpering on the verge of unconsciousness. His heart rate slowed under her control to prevent too much blood from escaping. She wouldn’t let it stop completely, but only his Vitality could save him.

“Anton, put pressure on the wound. I’ll stitch it in a minute. Bella, hold down the other one.”

The second man took one look at his bleeding friend and sprinted away. He raced toward the doorway, some technique giving his feet wings, but Bella’s runeblade sliced through his hamstring. He fell hard, gasping, as Zoe landed on his back. She flipped him and punched a mirror-coated fist through his ribs. He screamed as she reached inside and found the demonic presence.

It was messy work, but there was no time.

[Cores remaining: 1/10]

[Time remaining: 37 seconds]

Zoe stared at the blood on her hands. She should be proud of the impromptu surgeries — ghastly as they were — but the countdown and the presence of the man’s heart rates in her mind distracted her from any satisfaction. So long as that core remained outside the barrier, the demon would respawn.

It was all for nothing. She just knew the demon would come seeking —

[The final core has been destroyed!]

[The exorcism of the One-Eyed Crow is complete. You have successfully banished the One-Eyed Crow to the Gambler’s Hell. Calculating rewards…]

“Oh,” Zoe said as her breath fogged the now cold air.

The gas station shuddered and sighed, and the lights went out. The humming fridges and air conditioning died. Silence bloomed as any semblance of electricity vanished. Dust floated in the air. Frost spread across the windows.

“I wonder who broke the final core?” Bella asked.

A large chest materialized in the center of the room. Flat and long, made of red leather and bound with spiked black metal. A yellow eye stared at them where the lock should be.

[Congratulations! You have received a Hellbound Chest!]

“Probably some bug,” Anton said as he poked the chest’s bulging eye. “I call first dibs on the loot.”

“That’s not fair,” said Bella as she walked over. “Zoe did most of the work, if anything she should get first dibs.”

“You think she would have looked in the computer?”

“What are the bugs?” Oriz asked from where she sat. She had been quiet while Zoe operated, either from trust or tiredness. “And what is this place? Some kind of hostel?”

Bella and Anton continued bickering as they explained the situation to Oriz.

Zoe ignored their increasingly heated words. It had all the hollow venom of a defense mechanism against the psychological ravages of the apocalypse, but she couldn’t muster the energy to join in. She wanted to sleep, eat, and meditate. She wanted to wake up and have everything back to normal.

With a flex of her mirrored technique, the blood on her hands slid to the floor.

This was the new normal. Better stop thinking otherwise.

Her friends opened the chest and called her over, but she cast one last look out the broken doorway. Snow lay quiet upon the highway and blanketed the forested hill. Dark shadows hid the details of the trees as a blue-green aurora bloomed across the sky.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Some detail she spied while under the influence of the python charm but hadn’t noticed in the battle's focus.

Just who destroyed the final core?

###

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Derek couldn’t wrap his head around what happened, even as he lay bleeding out from the aftermath. His shot had been perfect. Straight into the center of that mirrored demon’s chest. Right between the breasts. When in doubt go for the body. She wasn’t a buck, no way she’d be leaping away from this one. But it hadn’t even made her take a step back.

And then, somehow, she shot back.

The bullet snapped his gun and passed through his shoulder. He burned Skein to keep his Vitality going, but it was making him sick.

And he couldn’t keep it up at the same time as his technique. They liked to joke that the One-Eyed Crow was a limitless pool, but that wasn’t the truth. He could feel his Skein fraying, thread after thread pulling apart like a lifeline holding him up–a lifeline about to break.

His wound burned even as the snow’s cold crept into his flesh, inch by glacial inch. His fingers grew stiff. His blood chilled as it flowed. The tears were gone. His technique stuttered. One moment he lay inside the folds of snow and space, in his pocket of stealth — safe — the next the hard cold licked the fear leaking from his pores. The last thread of Skein holding him up snapped, and he truly lay there exposed to the world.

At least the sky was beautiful.

He only hoped he died before a mantis found him. What those insects did to humans… His numb body shuddered.

“Hello?” said a soft, angelic voice. “You look like you need help.”

It was torturous to turn his head, but the voice compelled him.

A young Asian woman squatted beside him in the snow. She was a smoke show, and naked. Completely naked. His eyes raked her up and down with disbelief. She didn’t seem too cold but something about her seemed strange…

How had she gotten so close without him hearing her?

He supposed dying distracted him. Was she even here? Was she a dream, a ghost? Some mad technique of the mantis before they dragged him to their nest?

No, she had goosebumps on her arms, her breath fogged the air, and her nipples stuck out hard. Though the left one seemed covered by a thin pink tube. It ran up her shoulder, wrapped around her arm, and led away like a leash. His eyes followed the thin pink flesh until it reached a heavyset man on all fours behind her.

Snow clung to the heavy man’s frizzy red hair. Frozen drool hung from his chin. Derek flinched as he made eye contact with the crawling man. Those eyes… They were wells filled with barbed wire and screaming children.

Small creatures clung to the man’s back. Derek’s vision dimmed as if his dying mind rejected the creatures, but he still saw them: emaciated, hairless, monkey-like babies, masses of them crawling and staring with too-large eyes.

The woman gripped Derek’s chin. Her fingers pinched through his stubble like an iron lover. She directed his gaze back at her.

“You want my help? You want to… live?”

His eyelids were so heavy. Frozen blood sealed his lips, but he forced them apart.

“Please…”

“Don’t worry,” she said, as she smiled with too many teeth. “You're safe now. I have a place in my plan just for you."

The pink tube left the crawling man’s mouth and slithered toward Derek. If he wasn’t half-dead, he would have screamed. The tube slithered up his leg, toward his mouth, the hoselike end puckering and dribbling black milk.

He tried to push it away, but couldn’t move his arms. Not enough blood to struggle, just enough to watch. The tube wrapped around his throat, creeping upward. It was wet and warm against his skin like a dog’s tongue.

“No, don’t,” he said, and it took all he had to say the next part. “Let me die. Please.”

She cocked her head and her smile widened.

“No, I don’t think I will.”

###

After stitching the surgical wounds closed, Zoe and Bella found some ratchet straps to secure the men to dining room tables. Partly to stop them from disturbing their wounds, but mostly to keep them in place until they made an actual plan.

Anton didn’t bother hiding his impatience as he waited by the chest.

“You should just kill them. We could all use the experience.”

“You’re a monster,” Bella retorted as she checked the straps one last time. “They’re human beings, not monsters. Right, Zoe?”

“Right,” Zoe said.

In truth, she had considered it, briefly, but didn’t want to abandon her medical training completely. She had dedicated years to healing. To throw it all away for convenience’s sake…

Oriz slept at another booth. She promised Zoe she was fine, there was nothing to do but wait for her energy to restore itself. Zoe wanted the same sleep herself, but curiosity drove her toward the hellbound chest.

“You can just open it,” she called to Anton as she placed a blanket over Oriz.

“It’ll only let you open it.”

Zoe chuckled, checked her master one last time, and joined her friends in the other room.

The chest was long and impressive. It’s red leather came from some kind of scaled creature. and the rusted spikes tapered to a sharp tip. The whole construction was mean and elegant. Heat prickled Zoe’s palm when she brushed her hand along the surface.

“How do I open it?” she asked.

“I think you poke the eye,” Anton said.

The yellow eye in question blinked at her. She poked it, and rusty hinges squealed as the chest opened. Inside lay seven square bottles packed in hay. A sulfurous smell rose and dissipated as an envelope appeared atop the bottles.

Zoe picked up the envelope. The paper was heavy and rich, and the red wax seal was of a crow clasping a gigantic eye. She glanced at her friends, who shrugged, and so she opened the envelope. Inside was a letter.

“To the humans Zoe, Bella, Anton, and Cassy,” she read aloud. “And to the Zintel Oriz, congratulations on defeating me in honorable combat.” She put the letter down. “So now we know what happened to the final core.” They looked out the window as turquoise light danced across the snow-covered landscape. “They got out of the dungeon then.”

Silence loomed cold and heavy as a fridge until Bella snatched the letter from Zoe.

“Your world holds many unique treasures,” she read, forcing a pompous tone into her voice. “But none so grand as its people. It was a delight to encounter so many of you in such a short period. Truly, you are a fierce, and bloodthirsty crowd. Time in the inferno grows ever longer, and it is people such as you that make escape worth the effort. As a sign of my respect and a token of honor, please accept these vials of my essence. May they serve you better than they served me. I hope to fight you again in the future, and cast you into the fiery depths where I now burn,” Bella laughed. “Yours truthfully, wickedly, and lovingly, the One-Eyed Crow.”

Anton shook his head.

“What the hell?”

Bella groaned and punched his arm.

“That’s the worst joke I’ve ever heard,” she said as she picked up a vial. “Are we meant to drink this stuff?”

The contents inside the square-cut glass were the darkest black. It swirled, and in the faint light shining in from outside they could make out that it wasn’t liquid, but feathers swirling inside.

[Essence of the One-Eyed Crow: each vial contains a portion of the demon’s power. Should you drink it you will gain temporary access to a demonic technique and a slight permanent stat boost to Insight and Dexterity]

“Nice,” said Anton.

“Yeah,” Bella agreed. “It sounds pretty god damned —”

[Warning: handling, drinking, or crafting with demonic essence can alter the current physiology of your Skein and flesh]

Bella almost dropped the bottle as she hastily shoved it back inside the chest. Zoe closed the lid of the chest.

“I think we should wait for Oriz to wake before we use these.”

“Agreed.”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Bella said as she yawned.

Exhaustion hit them all. The night beyond the windows called for them to join the world in slumber. Anton volunteered for the first watch.

“We have just over a day before the Gambler’s show,” Zoe said as she and Bella laid out blankets on the carpet of the manager’s office. “We can rest up here until we go, but if you want to wake me —”

“It’s alright,” Anton said as he tapped the spell book he found in the Mirrorbell dungeon. “I want to read. My eyes will keep track. Just sleep. You’ve earned it.”

“Alright, keep an eye on the patients and —”

“Zoe,” Anton said firmly. “Thank you for saving my life. Please, sleep. I might need you to save it tomorrow.”

Zoe nodded and closed the door. She lay down on the blankets, politely refused Bella’s offer of a travel-sized plastic bottle of bourbon, closed her eyes, and passed right out.