Zoe’s feet sank into the sand as she sprinted toward the worm. The creature had swollen to the length of a bus and its carapace shone like plated bronze. Bristles extended from its head like lobster’s antennae, waving and twitching to scent the air.

It faced Zoe, bright eyes shining with glee as she gripped the dagger. She stumbled in the sand, and its mouth curved in a hideous smile.

“Come to me, sister,” it said in a thousand overlapping voices. “Feed me the rest of your essence.”

Its forked tail thrashed the base of the dune and sent up a plume of sand.

Zoe charged through the raining grit, but her muscles ached. Her entire body felt wrung out, as though she had pulled a double shift at a hospital. Everything felt too heavy, too dull, even with her advanced attributes. It wasn’t just the day of rowing. Her Vitality should have helped her recover from that. This was something more.

While the influence of Oriz’s Willpower lasted, Zoe checked her status.

STATUS

Name: Zoe Chambers

Level: 8

Body: Metal, Mirror

Condition: Siphoned Essence (-50% to all attributes)

ATTRIBUTES

Might: 36 (18)

Vitality: 20 (10)

Dexterity: 11 (5)

Willpower: 35 (16)

Insight: 15 (7)

Skein: 117/117

Titles: Intrepid, Lodestone, Fools Rush In (Incomplete), Quest Breaker, Glutton

Techniques: Our Hearts Toll As One

The drastic change in her attributes almost made her trip and fall. What was this new line in her status? Condition. Her attention prompted a longer explanation. The knowledge unspooled in her mind as she stopped running and stood, a dozen feet from the worm. There was no point in charging into a fight when something was obviously wrong.

[Condition: Siphoned Essence]

[A parasite has drained the user. They have received a percentage of your essence. If you do not take retribution within the time limit, the attribute loss will become permanent.]

[Time until permanent loss: 29 days, 23 hours, 45 minutes]

No wonder the creature looked at her with such obvious glee… No wonder she could understand the emotions on such a monstrous face. It fed from her. It was her. Her limited Insight traced a spectral link between parasite and host. A system conduit granting it her power…

That thing stole half of her attributes. The attributes she sweated for. Bled for. Earned.

Zoe screamed. The dagger fell into the sand, forgotten. She gripped her Skein.

[Skein 117/117]

[Skein 60/117]

Fed the strands of energy directly into her Might.

[Might 36 (68)

Her muscles surged. Veins popping on her skin. She was solid metal. A killing machine. She would tear the creature in half. How dare it steal from her?

It would pay!

She leaped. Shooting toward the worm like a cannonball. The creature’s mouth gaped. Row upon row of slender teeth behind fat voluptuous lips. Zoe flew, her fist cocked and silver.

The worm spat a bright green bucketful of phlegm. But Zoe was in the air, she couldn’t alter her trajectory to avoid the projectile. She whipped her chains, but they slipped straight through the vile liquid. The globule slammed into her face. Glued to her skin. The impact sent her spinning backward head over heels until she crashed into the sand near the riverbank. The phlegm hardened around her face.

Blinding her. Suffocating her. She clawed at the encasing shell, but it was tough and flexible. Her Might enhanced nails dragged grooves through the disgusting substance. She cocked a fist and slammed into the side hard enough to make herself stumble, but the phlegm didn’t crack. Her muffled scream of rage made the shell buzz.

The sand rumbled.

She leaped on instinct as the worm charged like a runaway train. Sand exploded out. Stung her skin. She flailed through the air and crashed into a dune. Stunned. Feeling the burn in her lungs. The ground shook. She curled up in a ball.

Chains rattled.

A massive thump shook the ground. Zoe flinched at the boom. Someone grabbed her, lifted her upright, and with a sharp crack, split the shell of phlegm from her face.

Zoe blinked at the sudden light as air cooled her sweat-covered face. She saw a glimpse of a thin grass green blade receding into Oriz’s palm before the grey-skinned woman offered her a hand.

“You did terrible,” she said.

“Can you kill it for me?” Zoe sighed. “Please?”

Oriz’s eyes hardened.

“No. We could kill it, but those attributes would be lost forever.”

“Then can you hold it down for me? You’re strong enough…”

“What will you learn from that? To run for help? If Rue didn’t step down from the heavens to stop you from falling into this dimension, then he wants you to figure things out for yourself. We’ll stop it from killing you because we need you, but if you can’t kill this worm yourself, with your own power, then we’ll row down the river and leave your attributes behind.”

Zoe sat up and sullenly stared at the worm as Princh wrangled a chain through its mouth like a gag. Seeing the creature stoked the fury in her heart.

“Never mind, I want to do it myself.”

Oriz nodded.

“Rest up and get ready for round two."

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###

The worm writhed and bucked. Its movements shook the ground, but it couldn't move. A chain wrapped around its body — cutting into its flesh — kept it squirming in place. The chain trailed away from around the worm, through the sand, to Princh's ankle. She ignored the twitching creature and the jangling chain. Instead, she focused on the pieces of her pipe as though Willpower alone could repair her favorite implement.

But she was a doctor, not an artisan. Another terrible day in purgatory.

Oriz approached with her whispering footsteps.

Princh sighed.

"She's pathetic. Why don't you let me squish the bug? I want to get going before it rains"

"I have a new plan."

"Do tell."

Oriz's yellow eyes flashed.

"We were going to use her connection to the new quest right? Have her create an incursion?"

Princh nodded slowly. Since they never finished the dungeon, and since they never died, they still had the active dungeon quest. It had been quite a shock when, a couple of months ago, it suddenly changed.

[Dungeon Objective Updated: Assist Zoe Chambers in absorbing the remaining fragments.]

[Bell fragments absorbed: 0/3]

It had been a shock. Nobody in their right mind would do something as dangerous as absorbing a dungeon quest item. They were the pillars that held up the dungeon, and the dungeon was essentially a dam keeping one reality from entering another. Take out too many pillars, and the dungeon collapses. Collapse the dungeon, and reality spills over. In this case, the Black Star dimension would incur on the Crimson Armada dimension. Her eyes hovered over that hopeful prompt.

[Black Star Incursion: 35%]

How lucky were they that Zoe fell down the shaft and right into their arms?

"Yeah,” she said. “I still say it's our only shot."

"Of course it is. Not even Trinch can jump between dimensions… but hear me out. She doesn't have a body. She hasn't met the Smith."

"Yeah, she's useless. What about it?"

"Damn you're poor company when you're not smoking," Oriz reached out and gripped the pipe. Her technique flexed, and a long strand of emerald monofilament wrapped around the broken pieces and bound them together. "Smoke your lungs out, now, listen. We level her up, we get her a meeting with the Smith, and we encourage her to choose a body that will help us."

Princh packed a bowl with charcoal-colored herbs.

"Help us how?"

"The incursion will only last a fraction of a second, but it would last a lot longer if one of us had a body that empowered interdimensional travel."

Princh took a deep hit, sighed, and let the black smoke dribble from her chin.

"That's devious."

Oriz shrugged, obviously proud of herself.

"I just saved her life, it's the least she can do."

"Oh? So you'll tell her about your plan to choose her path for her?"

"Nah."

Princh's smile extended from ear to ear. She glanced over Oriz's shoulder.

"She looks ready for another go with the worm. But just remember something."

"What?"

"If Rue asks, I'll tell him it was your plan."

She strolled away from the scowling Oriz and took another contented puff. It wasn't such a terrible day in purgatory after all.

###

The second time Zoe charged, after Oriz saved her, she didn’t leap.

[Skein 90/117]

She flexed her Skein but remembered Princh’s disdain at her previous tactics.

[Skein 50/117]

Rather than boost Might alone, she split her Skein between Might and Dexterity.

[Might: 36 (38)]

[Dexterity: 11 (25)

It stung to see her attributes so low, even after boosting them with a third of her total Skein, but she couldn’t argue with the results. Why had she ignored Dexterity? As a surgeon, it made sense she would favor that skillful attribute, so she supposed it spoke of her personality that she poured her effort into maximizing Might. Something about crushing everything in reach resonated with her on a fundamental level.

She hadn’t chosen Metal accidentally, after all. Really, nothing was ever an accident. Even this fight with the bestial gilded parasite arose from those first choices on the plane…

Her heightened Dexterity gave her the grace of a feather on the wind. She danced across the sand. Curved dagger gripped underhand. Savage grin stretching her scarred lips.

When the worm spat stinking globules of phlegm, she sidestepped each bucketful with ease, keeping low to the ground, where she remained mobile. She wasn’t a feather; she was the wind racing across the desert.

The parasite reared up as she approached. Mouth opening wide. Bristles flailing, bright blue sparks glowing at the hairy tips. It swept the spearlike antennae toward her. She leaped at the last second. Her powerful legs launched her past the worm’s attack. She brought the dagger up, such a perfect line of attack, never had a blade felt so true in her hand. The curved blade met the bronze carapace.

And bounced away.

The force of impact jarred Zoe’s hand, and she barely kept her grip on the dagger’s handle. Her feet struck the slimy underbelly. The creature’s stink, like bile and urine, filled her nose. With a kick, she sailed backward, out of range of the clasping mandibles surrounding the mouth.

But not out of range of the sparks running down the length of the bristles.

As she sailed backward, a jagged bolt of blue lightning arced out. It writhed, wormlike, through the air. Once again, she had no maneuverability, and the lightning struck her in the chest. Deafening. Pain. Blinding. White.

She blasted back into the sand, body spasming, as smoke curled from her fingers and toes.

A glob of phlegm struck her face, gluing it to the sand, but this attack was almost an afterthought. She gripped her Skein, ready to dump it into Vitality to get back on her feet, when the phlegm cracked away from her face.

She blinked away the white, the dark, the red, as her eyes recovered. Oriz leaned over her with an expression of amused pity.

“You did slightly less terrible that time, but you ruined my knife,” she pointed at the twisted mass of hot metal in Zoe’s hand. “Princh will chain the creature again. I’m going to give you some fighting lessons.”

Zoe coughed up a taste of burned blood.

“Do we have time?”

Oriz cackled, and it was not a little unhinged.

“You’re in purgatory, Zoe Chambers, time is the only thing we have.”

###

Oriz and Zoe sat cross-legged in the vague shade of a crooked palm tree. The river flowed beside them, turgid and grey. Princh sat over by the boat, filleting the mirror-scaled fish on a plank of wood. A long chain led from her ankle to the dunes where the worm lay trussed up and twitching.

“You obviously know how to throw a punch,” Oriz said, “and how to kick.”

“Not well,” said Princh, her pipe stuck out at an odd angle as black smoke dribbled down onto the silvery sashimi, “Couldn’t hit snow in a blizzard.”

“Ignore her,” and Oriz turned over her shoulder to shout. “Because she didn’t want to teach you so she can keep her opinions to herself!”

“I’m not wrong!”

Oriz scowled, but her expression smoothed over as she turned back to Zoe.

“She’s not wrong. I can’t guess what plans Rue had for you, but it's obvious nobody’s taught you any real martial arts.”

“I took some —”

“This isn’t a discussion. I am teaching, and you are honored to be my student.”

She gave Zoe a pointed look. After a moment, Zoe dipped her head.

“Thank you?”

“You’re welcome. Usually, I hate questions. But while I am teaching you, I want you to ask questions.”

“Why are —”

“About what I teach you. About the stances. About the motives. While I teach, nothing outside of my teaching exists, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You were in our custody, but now you are under my tutelage. Expect the same level of mercy, give the same level of respect, and you will leave this dimension as the strongest native of your planet,” Oriz paused, as though weighing Zoe against some hidden scale. “Do you agree to these terms, Zoe Chambers?”

Zoe silently clenched a fist in the sand.

“Yes,” she nodded. “Please, teach me.”