Princh’s rattling chains and saltwater techniques heralded dark dreams for Zoe.
Being a surgeon, she thought she was fine around gore. But seeing her blood soak into the sand. Feeling barbed antennae grind against her spine as her legs stopped working. Tasting her tongue cooking in her mouth…
She relived these moments in the depths of her slumber. Never ceasing the battle with the worm until woken for the next day’s training.
Even during the day, she felt the worm contemplating their battles and growing in strength.
Oriz’s calm voice kept Zoe reasonable. The grey-skinned woman’s measured guidance through the steps of the Grasping Vine, helped Zoe forget everything except the strength of her body. Over tea and fish, she received schooling on her fights. What went wrong, and what went right. With each fight, she improved. Got closer to destroying the worm. The more carapace she split, the more she revealed the slender mirror-skinned being inside. Arms, legs, a female form, but no face.
Not yet, but soon.
A week of the routine passed: train, eat, fight the worm, and sleep off her injuries. Dream horrendously. Then woken at dawn for more.
In this little oasis of hardship, Zoe thrived.
###
Every day, the scent of decay grew stronger on the wind. Pieces of mirrodile corpses floated past the camp. Bright flashes of the mirrored scales and chunks buzzed with flies amongst the reeds. Cranetongues leaking feathers as they bobbed along. The flesh rotted, and the fish changed.
On the eighth day, they stopped eating fish. A single drop of the healing potion sufficed for meals. Zoe ignored the lack of food, and the brevity of the new lunch ritual. She focused only on her routine.
On the twelfth day, hunger pangs drove Zoe out into the dark. She hunted down a baboon and roasted its flesh over coals. Oriz and Princh declined to join her, and later the next day she felt the heavy meat move through her. Sweat poured from her skin. Cramps stabbed her with knives. The worm took advantage of her sluggishness.
Zoe screamed as the worm tore free her arm and gulped it down like a heron swallowing a fish. Princh waited until the worm had bitten down on her other hand before intervening. Her chain bound the colossal parasite, as Zoe dragged herself to safety.
She stared up at a sky the precise shade of grey that meant it would be dark in two hours. It would rain green fire tomorrow. The stench of wet, decaying meat would only grow stronger. The pain broke through her Willpower and she screamed. Blood stained the sand as a healing technique wrapped around her ruined shoulder. Her flesh knitted like seething worms.
As her arm regrew, Zoe trudged off to meditate, but Oriz stopped her.
“You look frustrated.”
Zoe studied her rejuvenated arm.
“I feel the same,” she flexed fingers that hadn’t existed a minute ago and sighed when nothing happened. “I’m no closer to harnessing Mirror.”
“You must have patience,” Oriz strolled toward the camp with her hands clasped behind her back. “I want to discuss our plan to escape this dimension.”
Zoe hurried up to walk beside her.
“Every time I bring it up you rebuke me.”
“It’s silly to say it now, but we had to be sure we could trust you.”
“I suppose.”
Zoe thought of Bella and Anton, hopefully still alive in the dungeon. Though she realised they must be, since only a handful of hours had passed for them. She trusted them, at least, she trusted Bella. Oriz watched her with curiosity, and Zoe nodded for her master to continue.
“When you reach level 10, you will face a choice.”
“Like selecting an element?”
“This choice is far grander. An entity called the Smith will come for you, and in its forge you will choose the metaphor for your physical flesh. This determines the abilities your body can manifest, as well as those you can never use. Your choices for elemental essence will become limited. There is beauty to being raw, and unformed. But once you hit level 10, and as you progress beyond, your wild beauty will transform.”
They walked in silence for some time, passing beyond the camp and out into the dunes.
“How do I know what choice to make?”
“The Smith is not as cruel as other aspects of the Crimson Armada and, usually, there are no wrong answers.”
“Usually?”
They stopped outside the camp.
“You place me in a position where I must make a demand of you, Zoe. Fate brought you to this world, to us, and now…”
Zoe placed a hand on Oriz’s shoulder.
“You’ve helped me so much,” Zoe met Oriz’s eyes. “How can I repay the favor?”
“Let’s discuss this over a proper meal.”
They combed the dunes and gathered up pieces of wood that still burned with the green fire of some passing dungeon. When they had enough, they stacked them atop a dune, high enough that a wind blew away the scent of death and the flames flickered a ragged undertone to their conversation.
The sky grew pitch black, and their green fire glowed lonely under the firmament.
For the first time, Princh offered her pipe to Zoe. The dark smoke tasted of the deep earth, like swallowing a cave, and as Zoe coughed the heavy vapors, Princh patted her back and smiled.
“Nothing like it, right? Just wait for the side effects.”
Oriz declined the pipe and produced three small parcels of thick paper and twine. Inside each parcel was a portion of cooked meat, some yellow grain, and seared slices of a vegetable resembling a turnip.
Zoe salivated.
“You’ve had these the whole time?”
“Saved for a special occasion.”
They ate with their fingers and wiped the mess away on the paper wrappings as Oriz explained the plan.
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“When you first incorporated a piece of the Mirrorbell fragment, you changed the dungeon quest. Most people would never do this, because of the scars of gluttony, because of the danger of incursion, but you did not know, and in your ignorance, you have offered us a lifeline. We received the same update to our quest,”
Oriz flexed her Willpower and shared her quest.
[Dungeon Objective: Assist Zoe Chambers in absorbing the remaining fragments.]
[Bell fragments absorbed: 0/3]
[Black Star Incursion: 35%]
The ethereal voice sounded distant, and resounding laughter echoed the last statement. The youthful giggle of the Black Star system.
[Yes, soon it will be playtime.]
The three women sat on the dune as the green fire crackled slowly on the dried wood. Two different dimensional essences intermingled, neither destroying the other, though both tried.
Princh burped.
“Trinch figured you out straight away. A newly integrated world? Tick. A Metal user who didn’t know what they were doing? Tick. Someone who would piss off Zazzatha enough to be thrown down the pit? Tick, tick, tick,” she groaned. “He’s going to be insufferable.”
Oriz nodded.
“No living with him after this, good thing we’ll finally be free. I can’t wait to put a universe between myself and that muscle head.”
“But how does this relate to me?” Zoe asked.
“Nobody we trust on this wasteland of a world uses Metal essence. Princh has explained why it is rare, but what makes it more important is that you started destabilizing the dungeon. You began an incursion and,” She glanced at Princh, who nodded, “We have these.”
She produced from her mysterious pocket, two dull pieces of jagged metal.
Fragments of the Mirrorbell.
Zoe’s breath caught in her throat as her gluttony howled. The scars on her lips twitched, and a feral grin that was not her own formed on her face. She reached out, but Oriz placed them back in her pocket.
“Not yet,’ she said with a small shake of her head, yellow hair spilling about her yellow eyes. “Once you have met the smith and received your body path, then we can level you up to incorporate the mirror bell fragments. When you have incorporated both of them, the incursion will trigger, and we can return to the Mirrobell dungeon. We can return to our universe.”
Zoe forced her fingers into a fist to stop them from grasping.
“I understand why you need me to incorporate the fragments — none of you can incorporate the metal — but why do I need to wait until level 10?”
Princh passed Zoe the pipe as she spoke.
“A system will spread from person to person, from planet to planet, like a virus of the mind, cloning itself and latching onto their souls. But when two systems meet…sometimes they merge, creating a unified system from the best of both parents. More often, they go to war. The Crimson Armada system met the Black Star system thousands of years ago, and that whole time they have been fighting each other. The Crimson Armada is ruthless, it has stripped the Black Star down to its last world, down to the last vestiges of its intelligence and attributes. Eventually, it will exist only as the metaphysical bones of dungeons, the fleck of irritant at the core of so many pearls. This devouring is constant. The shafts that march across the desert are slowly shrinking, but they are not incursions. One can fall down but never climb back up.”
Oriz passed the pipe from Zoe to Princh. The wind died, and black smoke curled above the green-lit sand.
“An incursion is different,” Oriz said. “They are true passageways between systems, between realities, but they exist for only a fraction of a second. When it does, we will need someone with a technique that can engage with the wormhole. We need someone who can stabilize reality enough to transport us from purgatory to the dungeon. Nobody has such an ability,” she gave Zoe a pointed look. “Not yet.”
“You want me to pick a body path to help you out of here,” Zoe raised an eyebrow. “I don’t understand the secrecy.”
“Choosing a body path that will help us, will be a very specific choice. It will set in stone your path for the rest of your life. Meeting with the Smith… is the truest freedom most ever experience. To send you into this cosmic encounter with shackles is the foulest taboo.”
Zoe laughed at their serious expressions.
“It seems like this path you mention is the only way that I will return to my home, so I don’t see the gravity of the request. I would not have considered this plan without you so, again, I can only thank you.”
Oriz shook her head.
“The path of power is long, Zoe Chambers. You are still thinking in terms of survival, where every minute must be considered on its own, where tomorrow cannot be guaranteed. You thank us now, but in the centuries to come you may look back on this conversation and wish it never happened.”
Zoe shrugged.
“I trust you,” she said. “If choosing an ability to help you is how I can repay you for saving my life, then I will do it,” she smiled, genuine. “You have my word.”
###
Zoe awoke to a head full of lead and a scrambled system prompt. She flexed her Willpower.
[You have been poisoned by Grave Flower. Your body will purge the side effects in 22 hours, 45 minutes.]
[Side effects may include:]
* [Euphoria]
* [Optimism]
* [Sadomasochistic tendencies]
* [Dry mouth]
* [Desire for more Grave Flower]
* [Numb extremities]
* [Loss of fingernails, toenails, teeth, and hair.]
Zoe listened to the list of symptoms with growing alarm. She sat up, looked about the predawn camp, and saw Princh rocking with suppressed laughter.
“What did I say?” she squeezed out between fits of giggles. “Isn’t it great?”
Zoe chuckled. Despite the heavy head and the looseness of her teeth, she felt good. It amazed her that Princh could be so grumpy after smoking that stuff all day. She probably built up a tolerance.
Her day progressed as they always did. She was wary of her nails and hair and teeth, but nothing fell out. After a drop of healing potion for lunch, she readied herself to face the worm.
When a ripple of dread passed over the camp. It stilled the wind. Hushed the whisper of sand on sand, the trickling of water, the rasping of breath. She glanced up with the instinctive fear of a rabbit. There in the sky — the forever blank sky — were two anomalies.
A bright speck of burning orange, and, larger and growing larger, the shadow of a colossal man.
Trinch.
Oriz appeared beside Zoe and pushed her toward the edge of camp.
“Get clear!” she said.
“What?”
“Run,” Princh shouted from over beside the worm. “Run, run, run!”
Zoe glanced once more at the growing shadow of Trinch. She could see now the ten thousand writhing chains. The speed with which he fell.
What an impact that would create.
She sprinted away.
The sand sucked at her feet as she ran downriver, but she pushed on. Muscles burning, lungs sucking down breaths, she flexed her Skein into her Might and flew across the sand. After a couple of miles, she turned back, just in time to see.
Impact.
Sand exploded in a towering wave. The shock thundered across the desert. She pulled Metal into her flesh, but the force hit Zoe hard enough to knock her to her knees. She stood, spitting sand from her mouth, and blinking metal eyes against the grit.
Sand rained down, and three figures argued in the center of the camp. One of them beckoned her, and Zoe returned.
She wondered what became of the worm, though in a few moments, she saw for herself.
The camp, the worm, everything, lay in tatters. Zoe witnessed the carnage with dull eyes… what happened to her attributes?
Trinch stood in the center of the wide crater, his hands on his hips.
“I won the bet,” he grinned, “Now say it.”
Princh and Oriz glowered as they got down on their knees and kowtowed.
“Trinch is the smartest, strongest, and most handsome person in all the universe. We are but dumb, ugly, weak little babies compared to him. May it forever be so. May we be so blessed as to bask in the radiance of his presence.”
Trinch preened.
“Well done. Especially you, Princh. I can see you’ve been practicing your humility. Now,” he turned to Zoe. “Is this our little savior?” he frowned, and turned toward the shattered remnants of gilded carapace. “Or is this?”
Zoe looked at the corpse of the worm.
“What are you talking about?”
She walked closer, sand becoming mud underfoot as the worm’s translucent blood seeped into the desert. The others remained silent as she approached the corpse. The worm, the creature that called her sister, that broke her body in a dozen gruesome ways, was finally dead. Slain by the errant force of Trinch’s landing like a bug underfoot.
But not slain entirely, no…
For in the ruined shell, amidst membranous remnants, a silver figure squirmed. Hands, feet, all humanoid, all feminine, and finally, a face. Glistening, reflective, but unmistakably human.
Unmistakably Zoe.