Inside the icy dome lay a world of contradiction. Hot and muggy air washed over Zoe’s skin. Thawed droplets rained down intermittently, bitingly cold, but less intense than the black downpour outside. The city block engulfed by the icy dome contained the town square and the surrounding buildings. Golden light poured from the gardens behind the courthouse at the center of it all. The light flowed through the humid air like veins of throbbing honey.

“It’s in pain,” Zoe said.

On the edge of hearing the polyp screamed the white noise of a tortured throat.

Her friends stood with her. Skidmark’s curiosity shone as she observed the location for the first time while Anton’s eyes zipped out to scan the area.

“It’s mostly snow,” he said.

They stood outside a crafty little home goods shop. The town's inhabitants had thoroughly raided it, as the mantis raided them. Of either, Zoe saw no sign.

The courthouse and gardens stood across the street from the shop. Snow buried the two-story courthouse like cream on cake and if Zoe didn’t know where to look, she might not have noticed the building at all.

Gilded light spilled like dawn from behind the gardens. It framed the mound and lit the surrounding snow. The light exposed the deep wounds in the snow. Mantis footprints. The air filled with the chittering of thawing ice. A humid breath of wind clung to Zoe’s skin, she scanned the area as a bead of sweat ran down her neck.

“I see nothing,” Anton said as his eyes zipped back toward them.

“I expected worse,” Skidmark said with relief. “Some kind of final boss vibes --”

The surrounding snow exploded as Mantis burst up from beneath.

“You had to say it,” Anton said.

Dozens of Mantis ran toward them. Some flew, some hopped, and others reared as they widened their scythes for a deadly embrace. The riotous colors of their exoskeletons flashed across the snow. Skein glowed as techniques activated.

Zoe charged at the incoming tide of bugs.

Psychic claws projected from her mirrored fists. She met the bugs with a crash. Ducking beneath swinging scythes lit with ruby flames, she drove her fist into a retaliatory uppercut.

Insects screeched, blades clashed, and feet struck frozen concrete in a deafening concert. Zoe gritted her teeth as the sound thrummed through her bones — the harmonics of battle — and she laughed in tune with it all. Her strikes sliced through Skein-woven armor and punched into too-human organs. Where she could, she snapped minuscule portals into life. They consumed flesh and Skein alike before dissipating. Mantis fell before her as she stepped through the dance of the Grasping Vine. Ever forward, ever constricting, and all bugs that met her met their death.

An icy chill built in her veins and she let out an ecstatic cry as she leveled up. More power! She would have to wait to incorporate while she reaped the next crop of opportunities.

Her friends remained behind her in a knot. They fended off what bugs slipped past her attacks. Oriz remained the primary defender. Her long grass blade sliced through insects with ease. Zoe wished she could see Bella fighting beside her, but the woman remained in the cocoon on Oriz’s back.

Anton sent his eyes out and called instructions to the others, while Skidmark kept him safe with her coiling lightning. Any Mantis that got past her shocks received an injury of erupting gore from Anton’s open-palmed technique.

Steadily they worked their way across the street. The creatures were coming from the garden so Zoe aimed for the courthouse steps. She needed the defense of the walls.

A crimson mantis stood at the top of the steps, but the doors remained locked behind it. Its head turned rapidly as needle beams of flaming heat swept from its barbed claws. Zoe flared her cloak and reflected the force into the monster’s face. It hissed, unhurt, but distracted, and Zoe shot up the stairs. She slammed a knee into the crimson thorax. Her Mirrored boots sent a spike through its carapace. Force reflected out from the impact and the wound sent shockwaves through the mantis. It screeched, waving a scythe toward Zoe’s neck.

She found the resonance and cut it short.

The mantis crumpled beneath her, and she took a moment to breathe. An inch of ice coated the stones outside the doors. Icicles hung from the ornate double doors.

The mantis’s white soul ruptured from its injured chest and rose toward the sky. More souls in the street burst up and glowed above the fallen soldiers like astral mushrooms. One by one they squealed like tin kettles. Living mantis darted forward and snatched at the souls with their claws. They pulled long strands free and brought them toward their mouths. Mandibles peeled back and human teeth slurped down the screeching spectral mantis like wet noodles.

The bugs ignored the battle as they raced to devour the souls of the fallen.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

In that moment of breathing, Zoe kicked open the courthouse doors. Snow piled against the windows of both stories and left the room beyond a place of utter dark and utter cold. Anton’s eyes danced out to fill the space, but the chrome light only cast so far, and shadows gaped across the room.

“Inside, quickly,” Zoe said.

She held the door open as the others rushed inside. The wailing of devoured souls continued as Zoe slammed the door closed. A blue mantis slipped an arm through. The snapping mandibles followed the shoulder as it lunged at Zoe. She punched it in the face and it blasted backward. With a yank, she closed the door.

“Oriz!” she called.

The alien woman darted forward. Her palm thrust out and slammed into the door’s broken lock. Bright green light burst from her fingers as grass exploded out across the doors. Shoots lashed the doors to the walls. A mantis slammed against the doorway, but the fixed wood didn’t even creak.

“We have until they try to burn it down,” Oriz said as she set Bella down on a couch. “And after that a few minutes longer.”

“There’s nobody here,” Anton announced as his eyes darted out. “This place is empty.”

Their fogging breath glowed in the silvery light of Anton’s technique.

“You’re sure?” Skidmark asked.

“You’re positive?” Oriz added.

Anton glanced at Zoe, who shrugged. He sighed and dug into the pocket of his jumpsuit. A lens appeared between his fingers.

“This drains my Skein, I hope you appreciate that.”

“Is the cost too high?” Zoe asked seriously.

He rubbed the [Everywhere Lens] against his sleeve and shook his head. His eyes floated amidst the foyer, showing the low ceiling and the empty reception area. A hallway of offices ran off to one side, and on the other lay a set of stairs where Sister Salt should have been sleeping.

Zoe did not know what fate befell that poor woman.

“I’m ready,” Anton said.

Darkness chomped the room as his silver eyes vanished one by one. In utter darkness, he whispered something unheard and placed the lens against his eye.

Blinding white.

Zoe slammed her eyes shut. It was like staring into a stadium light. The light invaded her brain. It burned her eyes even as her Mirrored cloak wrapped around her face and formed a mask. She dared not look for the pain.

“It’s over,” Anton said.

Her eyes still throbbed.

Timidly, she opened them and looked around. The same foyer awaited her. Black shadows sank like burn holes in her eyes.

“What did you see?” she asked.

“I can’t see anything,” Skidmark said.

“That was quite painful,” Oriz added.

“There’s nobody here,” Anton said. “Snow blocks the windows and doors. This is the only entrance.”

“Until it thaws outside.”

They could hear the dribbling of water as snow melted against window sills. It filled the darkness like a giggling whisper.

The doors shook. After a moment, they shook again. Loud thuds as Mantis slammed against them like organic battering rams.

“Should we be worried?” Skidmark asked.

Oriz scoffed.

“The bindings will hold against more than that.”

“What’s happening outside?” Zoe asked.

Anton gazed at the door and gestured. A silver eye shot toward where his finger pointed at a chink in the black frame. The eye slipped through like light through water.

“The mantis finished eating the souls,” he said. “They’re bigger now. More wings to each of them.”

“Wings don’t matter,” Zoe said with a flex of her Mirrored fingers. “But I wish Bella was here to cut those souls apart.”

Oriz met Zoe’s steady gaze with one of her own.

“I also wish Bella was here.”

An uncomfortable silence stretched until a window shattered. Zoe bolted toward the large mossy mantis as it pushed through the new hole in the wall. Glass scratched at a carapace composed of thick moss.

Zoe missed the reach of her chains as she bolted toward the mantis. Her fist smashed its head like a rotten pumpkin. Green moss exploded out across the walls. It clung there and glowed and started spreading.

Oriz uttered a jumbled, alien curse as she darted forward. Her hands wove in a pattern as she interfered with the technique expanding across the room.

Anton and Skidmark hurried to move benches and tables against the windows.

“Zoe!” Anton called. “Other side.”

Another window broke.

The silence held until Anton cursed.

“What is it?” Skidmark asked with a relieved voice.

“Incoming,” Anton’s voice trembled with fear. “It’s one of those monsters…”

Thunder rumbled the building. The doorway shuddered as flames spat through the cracks. Heat blistered the air and withered the vines. They dried out and tightened like leather in the sun. Still, the flames raged. An inferno descended upon the other side of the door and the tongues licking through the blackening wood burned crimson, emerald, and bright violet.

Zoe and her friends backed away from the doorway.

“Any second now,” Oriz said as she placed Bella back upon her back.

Zoe settled into a stance.

“What is it, Anton?”

But he didn’t have to answer, for thunder shook again and the doors shattered into burning chunks of wood and grass. Golden light flooded through the open doors. There were no more souls outside, no ethereal wailing or glow, merely a scattering of mantis plump with energy. They charged at the doors, nimble despite their bulk, and lathered into a frenzy.

Above them, driving them forward like the wind behind waves, floated three gigantic mantis.

“We are the Chroma Viscera,” the three spoke as one, and Zoe stepped further back from the open doors. “And we are enraged.”

These were not the same as the decaying creature she fought last time. These three radiated completion. They floated without wings, but their organs no longer dangled below on a web of arteries and veins. A bulging gelatinous carapace contained the organs like a lump of hardening amber.

“Retreat,” Zoe said. “Go deeper into the building.”

Her friends moved, but each of the three techno-organic reapers waved four arms. Techniques burned yellow, white, blue, green, red, purple, and black as they formed along the blades.

Zoe ran forward.

Incandescent techniques burned toward her. The air throbbed, and her body strained to move as she drew her cloak wide across the open doorway. For a fraction of a heartbeat, she waited, shrouded by the cloak. Cold sucked at her back. The dark building her friends ran into drawing at her like some void. Her breath hung in the air and fogged the inside of the cloak.

How long had her reflection looked so exhausted? Her reflection moved, and Moth met her eye. The barest fraction of a smile grew on her lips. She nodded.

Thunder wrenched the surrounding air. The shock ran through her arm and her feet crunched an inch into the floor. More attacks came. Technique collapsed upon technique into a frenzy of skein yanking her cloak and shaking her body. It felt as though she wrestled with a wave. Techniques exploded. The intensity was more than she ever tried to deflect.

Chaotic lightning bled into crystals of ice before bursting into shards of poisonous fire. Spirals of darkness looped and splashed like whips of acid. Darts flapped feathered wings before vanishing all together into puffs of razored air. The attacks came without pause and Zoe held on as best she could.