Joel crouched behind a tombstone and tried to calm his breathing. Rubbed his tired eyes, and watched Cassy climb a tree. She went up like a spider. The inhuman precision of her limbs broke his heart. This wasn’t Cassy. He was following a corpse.
No. He believed he could save her. Had to believe.
But why did she ignore his calls? Why did she move like an animal? Why had he ignored the others?
He sighed as Cassy hunkered on a branch and licked dried droplets of Anton’s blood from the bark. Dawn cast golden rays upon her pallid face. Blind eyes flowed rivulets of black gunk. Foul droplets splashed on the tree’s roots.
She suckled on a broken branch that had pierced Anton’s shoulder and steam curled from her eye sockets. She shivered in some kind of ecstasy and continued licking at the blood.
Below her, Joel approached the tree. His gaze fixed on Cassy. He knew it wasn’t her. Couldn’t be…
But he still believed in the power of love.
He crept toward the tree as quietly as possible, but he was exhausted. His foot snapped a twig. Cassy turned, ears twitching, and leaped from the tree.
She tackled him to the ground, straddling him, and grinned her too-wide grin. He couldn’t struggle. Could hardly think with the mixed emotions overwhelming him.
“Cassy? It’s me, it’s Joel, baby. Remember me?”
Cassy burbled. The sound wet and strained like a baby laughing while it drowned. She stroked his face.
“This body remembers your scent and your touch. How this body wishes to see you again, but they stripped away such knowledge…” Black filth trickled from destroyed eye sockets. “Such tragedy, and doubled by the life within.” Fingers splayed upon Cassy’s stomach as the creature grinned. “This body kept a secret from you… A body within a body. How wondrous life is…”
Hot tears streamed down Joel’s cheeks.
“You’re pregnant?”
Cassy’s fingers gripped his throat.
“Not I… this body.”
Joel clawed at the powerful hand.
“Cassy, baby, you’re still in there, please…”
The empty black eyes came close to his face. Dripped upon him. The dark flow reflected his terrified expression.
“Yes,” Cassy grinned. “Deep in the pools, she swims. You wish to join her?”
Unable to speak, he could only nod.
The hand around his throat released him. He gasped, but did not fight. Did not run away as a limp, veiny tube slipped out from Cassy’s sleeve. She guided the long tube into his mouth and he drank. It flowed in stops and starts, but he sucked down the sweet taste. A flavor like someone washed out an ashtray with off-brand cola.
He gulped it down. Couldn’t get enough of the stuff. A lump brushed his throat, but he didn’t care. He closed his eyes and continued swallowing as another tooth slipped down his gullet. As each tooth wobbled free from his gums, the void within him grew. The gnawing pit crumbled into a wide and toothless smile.
The dark and empty twin to the shining white tombstone smile of the thing that was Cassy.
She stroked his face as he drank. Her touch featherlight and caring.
“Join me, and together we will bring destruction down upon those who failed us. We will track them down and we will make them suffer. They will beg to drink our nectar. But it is not for such as them. No, they shall have a far worse fate…”
And the morning light shone down on the graveyard, a gentle peace broken only by the sound of Joel’s suckling.
###
Bella’s heart rate dropped, and she fell into sleep, turning over onto her side to get comfortable. Zoe watched her slumber and released her Technique. She walked to the water's edge but stopped halfway. What did she just do? Reaching into Bella’s heart and slowing it felt like an instinctive extension of her technique.
Our Hearts Toll As One cost one Skein to project every ten feet. The bubble of Faith and Sound passed through the air but bounced off the surrounding cave. She tried using it for echolocation in the tunnel, but the reflective surface of the mirror shards made it more unreliable than charging blindly.
It cost five Skein to link her heart to another person, and that cost remained.
She nibbled one of the indescribable white fruit. The skin snapped away like a rubber band and she chewed at the pulp within. Even replenishing her Skein with the Dungeon Fruit couldn’t restore the ten Skein she spent linking herself to Bella and Anton.
It cost one Skein to lower, or raise, a party member’s heart rate by one beat per minute. She didn’t know what to do with that information. If she kept spending Skein and replenishing it with the fruit in her hand, she could raise their heart rate dangerously high. Or she could bring it down to zero.
Zoe felt sick, and it wasn’t the strange fruit filling her stomach.
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She dipped her feet in the slow-moving river. The cool waters soothed her tired soles. The weeds swayed underwater. A gentle motion in rhythm with the river’s constant flow. Zoe let her feet sink up past her ankles. Her skin tingled as the socks of cool water slipped higher. A relaxed sigh escaped her lips, which she immediately regretted as her burns throbbed. She hoped they weren’t infected. Who knew what magical bacteria existed now?
Something moved amongst the weed.
She might not have noticed the shadowy shape without her advanced Insight, but she pulled her feet out of the water as a large creature emerged from the weed. Its head broke the surface, and two piggy eyes watched her. Unblinking eyes. The creature appeared to be a bulky crocodile with silvery green scales, but when she looked closer, she saw that each scale was a piece of mirror reflecting the surrounding cave. It floated forward toward her, and she backed away.
A System check confirmed the name mirrodile.
Would it climb up the ledge of stone and onto the cave floor? Or was she safe as long as she left the water?
The others kept sleeping, and she left them alone for now. Piggy eyes tracked her every movement, but the creature remained where it floated. She backed away from the water’s edge, cave dust coating her feet, and sat down against a tree as a wave of drowsiness overtook her.
Odd that she was tired, since a few moments ago she felt wired. But her heart’s temp slowed. Each thump grew further apart. Grew closer to the sedate pulse of the sleepers.
Her heartbeat was lowering to match the others. They were dragging her to sleep.
Panic made her heartbeat spike a moment, but it slowed again. Just as the others were bound to her, so too was she bound to them.
Her pulse ticked down from a normal waking heart rate of 80 bpm towards that of someone sleeping. She resisted the drag. The Technique unspooled her Skein and burned it without her control at all.75bpm.
[Skein 81/99]
80bpm.
79bpm.
78bpm.
[Skein 75/99]
84bpm.
83bpm.
The heart rates of the others settled in the 40s and the technique tried to bring hers to the same range, as though she must be the average of the others. How would this effect play out during a stressful situation? Would they all keep rising?
She continued burning Skein to keep her heart rate high, but the technique was relentless.
74bpm.
[Skein 65/99]
84bpm.
She finished the fruit in her hand.
[Skein 69/99]
There had to be a way she could cancel the Technique, otherwise, it would burn through her Skein until she fell asleep. She reached inside herself, mentally embracing the bell-shaped organ wrapped around her heart. At her touch, it made a false silence, an anti-toll, and the technique dissipated.
Only one heartbeat within her chest. She let out a sigh, despite the intense loneliness that washed over her. The feeling of multiple hearts had been alien at first, but she grew used to it over the last few hours. When they woke, she would explain the Technique and ask if they wanted her to use it.
It felt wrong to use it without their consent.
She held their hearts in her hands.
Was it her fault for misunderstanding the Technique description?
[Our Hearts Toll As One]
[User can link and listen to the heartbeats of party members. Skein cost depends on party size and distance between members.]
The description didn’t suggest manipulation, but she couldn’t deny reality. Even now the function sat within her mental reach like a loaded syringe. She dreaded telling the others in the morning. It felt invasive on a surgical level to feel their heartbeats throbbing inside her chest.
She felt horrified.
What kind of technique gave someone the ability to kill the others in her party? Also, the way the Technique recognized party members required some level of mutual trust. So, she could only use this Technique as a weapon against someone who she trusted, and who trusted her.
Did it want her to befriend people so she could betray them?
But the longer she thought about it, the more she thought it must be some kind of medical ability. It made sense, given her career as a plastic surgeon. After all, a medic might carry morphine, and that could save a life as quickly as destroy one.
So, should she tell the others?
She wasn’t sure.
She nibbled another fruit to restore her Skein. The mirrodile still watched her from the water. Two little eyes, beady and yellow, watching with reptilian apathy. The part of her mind that constantly monitored the quest countdown wanted to attack the mirrodile. It could provide her with the ice-cold experience she needed to level up.
Another set of eyeballs floated up to the surface. Two mirrodiles. Both watching.
She watched them watch her and continued restoring her Skein. Best to have a full tank if she was going to get in a fight.
While she ate, she monitored the essence inside her body. It was curious that the System cannibalized her gathered essence of Blood, Faith, and Sound into Our Hearts Toll As One, but when she used Metal essence to strengthen her body, no technique formed.
She flexed her fingers, and they flashed as though she dipped them in chrome. The action cost Skein. One Skein to boost her Might by one with the Metal essence inside her. But there was no System notification. No transformation sequence as a new technique formed.
Why?
Was it a difference in intent? In the request's complexity? She wanted answers but supposed she would have to wait. Maybe the settlement polyps would know something? Or this Gambler mentioned in Bella’s quest?
She sighed and tried to get comfortable against the tree trunk.
Three sets of eyes as another mirrodile floated up to the top of the river. The strange weed’s light refracted from their mirrored scales and brightened the cave.
Zoe prepared herself for a fight as she swallowed the pulp of a Dungeon Fruit. Was the taste growing on her?
Four mirrodiles now. Six. Where were they coming from? The seventh moved forward, the same size as the others, but it yawned its jaw wide and something slithered forth. At first, Zoe thought it was a tongue, but then she saw the feathers. And the beak.
The long head of a cranelike bird emerged from the mirrodile’s jaw. Zoe’s eyes widened. She scrambled back as the mirrodile vomited forth the creature. The long neck emerged from the throat, and a scan identified it as a cranetongue.
A scarlet wattle drooped from its chin. White feathers dripped saliva. The needled beak pointed at Zoe.
“You trespassed in our water,” said the cranetongue with a voice like a scratched recording of a heavenly choir. “But we are merciful. Your feet entered, and so we claim your feet. Bring them to us and we shall spare the rest.”
The cranetongue swayed in the air above the gators. Feathers dripped muck onto the mirrored scales of the host. They awaited her response. The other mirrodiles yawned, and more cranetongues spilled forth.
Zoe felt nauseous, but also…
Excited.
Her scan didn’t reveal a level, but they didn’t feel more powerful than the puppeteer. Even though there were seven of them. She got to her feet. Best let the others sleep. They shared a quest to reach level 20, but Zoe was the only one with a deadline. Besides, she could handle this quietly.
She gave herself a quick mental once-over.
STATUS
Name: Zoe Chambers
Level: 6
Body: Metal, Mirror
ATTRIBUTES
Might: 28
Vitality: 20
Dexterity: 9
Willpower: 27
Insight: 15
Skein: 95/99
Titles: Intrepid (+5 to all stats), Lodestone (+5 might, +5 willpower, metal attunement 200%), Fools Rush In (Incomplete), Quest Breaker (Increased chance of revealing hidden objectives), Glutton (+1 to all stats, increased Hunger)
Techniques: Our Hearts Toll As One (Faith, Blood, Sound)
Despite her burns, she smiled at the sight of her new strength. Somehow, putting it into numbers made it more tangible. More real. She grinned and her fist flashed steel. Without another thought, she charged the waiting beasts.