Zoe sank into the water.
Metal roots stitched her flesh to the shambles of concrete from the collapsed balcony. She struggled to hold her breath as the Metal burrowed deeper. Slippery black flecks floated up from her nostrils.
Despite the invasive pain of incorporation, Zoe pulled against her restraints. Her Might was 36. The power in her muscles was 18 times more than when she sat on the plane. She dumped her two free points into Dexterity to balance her coordination — though it felt like throwing pennies into a wishing well — and grabbed her Skein.
[Skein 75/117]
[Skein 61/117]
Spending 14 Skein brought her Might up to 50. Even underwater, even while enduring incorporation, the bulging muscles made her grin. Blood seeped from her split lips and as she laughed, a great bubble burst from her open mouth. She yanked her arms and pulled the tendrils from the broken concrete as a bird pulls worms from the earth.
She stood underwater in a cloud of concrete dust.
The surrounding street was once idyllic, but now a waterlogged ruin of despair. Corpses floated around her. Empty eyes and rotten flesh. Great sadness washed over her.
Was Bella alright, after taking this aura into her body?
But this question would have to wait.
A corpse brushed against her. The feeling of the thinnest, most timeworn thread against her skin straining, and snapping. She shoved the corpse away. Icy fingers closed around her wrist. She snapped the hand free and Cold fingers closed around her ankle. They all drifted toward her. Limbs moving stiffly. Heads turning. Fish-eaten grins.
Slow, but she saw hundreds.
The mirrodiles in the area torpedoed toward her, but the slow-moving dead grabbed any that came too close. Tired fingers of bone tore through mirrored flesh. The mirrodiles panicked and swarmed the surface. Water seethed with their lashing tails as they poured out of the alleys and windows of the drowned town. The dead snatching, spilling blood into the water. The mirrodiles did not retaliate, only fled.
A great crack sounded overhead as a panicked mirrodile smashed the five-seater boat.
[Might 36 (49)]
Zoe needed to escape while the boost to her Might remained. She squatted. Her skin flashed like steel. She leaped, shot to the surface, and burst into the air. Trailing water. Her arms pinwheeled as she landed on the mirror-tiled roof beside her companions.
The void within her was satisfied, but Zoe’s impulsive behavior had not been without consequence. Around the house swayed dozens of cranetongues screeching about trespassing. The circular patterns on their heads glowed and a furious wind whipped the water into a stinging spray.
“This is a terrible spot to defend,” Anton said. “And they’re surrounding us.”
The house was already surrounded.
“I’m sorry,” Zoe said. “The curse made it… difficult…”
Bella gave her a sympathetic look before pointing her sword at the island in the center of the lake.
“Let’s head there. I’ll bet these crocs are awkward on land. It’ll give us the advantage.”
“Unless there’s something worse on the island.”
A cranetongue squawked as undead hands ripped it below the water. Bloody froth spilled into the water. Mirrodiles scrambled at the roof, and the party climbed higher up the tiled spire.
“They destroyed the boat,” Zoe grimaced. “How do we get to the island?”
A handful of spires stood like whimsical islands in the glimmering water between them and the island. Besides the houses, the crystalline blue water was flat and treacherously full of the grasping dead.
Anton pointed between the spires.
“The spires stick up, but there are rooftops only a few feet below the water. Where we can’t run, we can wade, and we swim between the streets.”
Bella held her sword aloft. Heat rippled out in a sphere and pushed back the rain.
“What about the crocodiles? What about the undead?”
“We stay off street level and we move fast.”
Zoe grinned.
“And we kill any that get too close.”
Anton nodded.
“Can’t see any other option.”
“What’s that over there?” Zoe pointed.
A large yacht slid out from behind a clump of half-submerged trees. It moved at a fair speed toward them. Its angled planes reflected blinding light, like an origami piece folded from a mirror and set upon the water to float. It had an open deck and steep sides. If it passed within leaping distance of the roof they stood on — and it headed their way — they could leap across and remain out of range of the mirrodiles and undead.
There was one problem.
Just looking at the yacht made Zoe’s skin crawl and her heart quicken. A stinking aura of death rolled off it in waves. She could hardly keep her eyes trained on the vessel. Her limbs stiffened, and her palms sweated. The grip on the mirrored tiles grew perilous.
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The last time she felt something like that, she stood at Rue’s table.
A glance at the others showed they felt it even worse than her. Their faces pale and their eyes bulging. Inhuman terror like a rabbit frozen while a hawk wheeled overhead. Zoe gritted her teeth. Forced herself to speak.
“We have to get away from that yacht.”
As though it heard her words, its path angled toward their spire. No longer would it pass within leaping distance, now it was heading straight for them.
###
Bella’s sword weighed terribly in her hands. Her arm burned with exhaustion as the dread yacht sailed toward her. A single slice of mirror for the sail reflected a vision of herself ludicrously standing atop the spire and grasping the weathervane like King Kong. Heat radiated from the runesword as the cursed blade held itself up. The brambled roots wound through her flesh held her arm rigid while her entire being wished herself to collapse and cower before the coming nightmare.
But the runeblade disagreed. Metallic filaments trembled with contemptuous rage. The fear roiling from the yacht did not impress it at all.
That will be us, whispered the blade in its wordless fashion. Whole worlds will cower before us, and they will burn.
Heat flared as the sword enthused itself. Thorny tangles dragged at her Skein.
[Skein 25/57]
[Skein 24/57]
[Skein 23/57]
She wished she still had some of those Skein restoring fruit, but they had rotted within minutes of leaving the safe room. Beside her, Anton struggled to keep his grip on the slippery mirrored tiles. Zoe remained the calmest, her breathing deep but steady. Though even she didn’t seem capable of moving.
Below them, the bloody water roiled as Mirrodiles fled the coming yacht. No sign of the skeletons through the murky gore. Did they flee? Did they wait? It would make running difficult if they lurked an inch beneath the cloudy surface.
Though running seemed an impossibility with her limbs frozen as they were.
She could use her Skein to boost her Willpower.
[Skein 22/57]
[Skein 21/57]
But she had no idea how much that would cost. From what Zoe said, reaching zero Skein was something she couldn’t let happen in a situation like this.
Though she had none of the Skein restoring fruit, she still had one trick up her sleeve.
[Do you wish to open the Gambler’s gift?]
[Yes] / [No]
She still couldn’t believe she had slept on the boat while this notification lurked. An eldritch inaudible voice and a psychic explosive lodged within her mind. But ever since she awoke, she had been loathe to touch that wrapped parcel of power. Thinking about it felt like waiting for a shot to fire, to split the earth and send dust charging toward the sky.
What if that went off in her brain? She was no stranger to the System’s dangers. To the crooked gifts of the Gambler. No matter that the sword was powerful, she was now Doomed.
I am powerful, heat swelled from the sword, my wielder must be powerful. Take what you wish and burn the rest.
Zoe disagreed with the apocalyptic skies burning in the sword’s ardor, but she saw the point. Why waste the options that were at hand? She recalled Zoe describing her decision to select Metal, and once more she disagreed.
She couldn’t think about her life down the road if she didn’t do everything she could to survive this moment.
[Do you wish to open the Gambler’s gift?]
[Yes] / [No]
Yes.
The parcel popped open. She flinched as the sound of party horns and popping confetti played loud inside her mind.
Time crawled.
[Congratulations, you don’t know how lucky you are! But conversations like this are best had in real time.]
[Temporal connection stabilized…]
[Hello again, Bella. I see you’re in a quandary. A genuine dilemma. I’m so glad you reached out to me, but what else could you possibly do? I’m so obviously the best choice you could make.]
Bella couldn’t speak or even twitch a finger, but she could still respond. Her voice flexed in the same dimension as the eldritch voice.
Shut up, you wanker.
[Aghast! Gasp! Egads! How very well dare you?]
Bella felt a grin forming, though her cheeks did not even dimple. The sword bolstered the feeling.
Gambler. Foppish, foolish giver of gifts. Give.
And Bella echoed the sentiment.
Give your gift and go.
[It is so good to invest in someone with a backbone. Do you feel my grin sliding across your face? That is how happy you make me. Allow me to return the favor.]
The parcel unfolded in her mind. Knowledge at her fingertips. Power within her grasp. Beyond the roof, the yacht cruised forward like a shark’s fin. Frozen in action, captured in exquisite detail by the jelly of time encasing her.
Mirrored planks with mirrored nails. Angled sides in a chaotic arrangement like an unfolding flower or a paper swan. The yacht dragged water toward the prow. It sailed not on the slice of mirror above, but on a hole. An inverse reflection of a sail that drained the waters of the lake.
If it drew near enough, it would suck them down into the depths it dragged along.
She silently prayed for the Gambler to hurry.
[It’s wonderful to be appreciated.]
[Please, select a gift. Each is a bespoke solution for your present predicament.]
* [Charm Of The Monsoon Fairy: a token allowing the user to embody the Monsoon Fairy.]
* [Ghastly Cymbals: autonomous shields of psychic metal to protect the mind.]
* [Fated Cartographer: a living tattoo to point you where you want to go.]
She quickly scanned her options.
The Fated Cartographer seemed incredibly useful, but she couldn’t see how it would help her right now. Charm Of The Monsoon fairy was interesting, but Ghastly Cymbals seemed the best choice. If they could diminish the overwhelming sense of fear, then she could escape. But would it protect the others?
By asking the question, her focus drifted over the gift option. Unlike previous options presented by the System, this one unfurled with information.
* [Ghastly Cymbals: artisans of an empty jungle built these disks from elders of their tribe. High Dexterity is required to wield them, but, once floating, the Skein cost is negligible. The disks protect against attacks of ghostly, magical, or psychic origin.]
She was ready to accept the option when the runeblade’s thorns prickled her mind.
She was seven again. Running through sprinklers on a scorching summer day. Her dress and fairy wings the same straw yellow as the dying lawn. Missing two front teeth and eating ice cream cake at a friend’s birthday party.
What did that have to do with anything?
Fairy, the sword insisted.
Did it think she was a fairy?
Time was speeding up. The yacht dragged itself closer. She could smell the fear now as the air drifted into her nostrils. Not long now. She had to decide.
* [Charm Of The Monsoon Fairy: a lock of hair that temporarily transfers a modicum of the Mosnoon Fairy’s Techniques to the owner. Upgradeable item. High Skein cost to activate.]
The sword grinned inside her mind. A sharp and alien desire radiated from the metal brambles grinding against her flesh. The insistence was overwhelming her thoughts. The charm was appealing, but was this her thought, or the swords?
We are one, whispered the sword with a voice like testing dull blades.
After a moment’s thought, Bella accepted this.
She chose the Charm Of The Monsoon Fairy.