The sky was so bright.
Who am I? She recalled a name… or was the name fed to her across some immeasurable distance? I am Zoe Chambers… No, I am more. I am Moth and I broke free of the cocoon.
Moth lay in a pool of translucent, blood-streaked fluid. Scraps and flakes of gilded armor littered the drying mud. She stirred, groaned, as her eyes adjusted to the light.
With her first blinking gaze, she looked up at herself and saw a twisted version. The first Zoe. Scars on the lips that spoke of irrepressible hunger. Rich brown skin like the deepest loam. A wild, concentrated fury in the eyes. How could she gaze upon herself with such naked hate?
Weren’t they sisters? More than sisters? Two halves of a whole?
She pushed aside the pieces of shell, the layers of membrane, her gilded cocoon, and stood. The flat light of the sky glowed on her mirrored skin. She stood tall, and perfect, beneath the heavens, and turned in the gaze of the four beings slowly surrounding her.
Besides her other self, she knew two of these aliens: Oriz, her sister’s master, and Princh, her sister’s guardian. The fourth being, she did not know, but his mighty frame, coated in green hair and bulging muscles, had been responsible for finally destroying the cocoon that held her in her lesser form.
She bowed toward him.
“Thank you for releasing me,” she said.
Trinch laughed, his hands on his hips, and beamed at the others.
“I like this one.”
Moth’s other self, the first self, spluttered.
“What are you talking about? She’s a… a clone! The worm copied me. It stole my attributes and copied me!”
Moth frowned. Of course, that was what happened. Why was sister so confused?
“We are the same,” she said and noted how her sister flinched at her voice. “We are the two from one, and now we must become one again.”
Oriz stroked her chin as Willpower flexed over the area.
“What do you think, Princh?”
The green-furred woman stepped forward, her eyes flashing as a technique washed over Moth and her sister.
“The system thinks they’re the same person. Zoe Chambers, both almost level 9 after all the meditation and combat, the only difference is their techniques. One has [Our Hearts Toll As One] and the other has a technique located inside her skin called [The Self Reflects The World],” she hummed. “Their existences are mutually exclusive. If we travel through the incursion with them separated, the Crimson Armada will force them back together. They won’t survive that process. We just need to choose the one who will help us.”
Moth waved.
“I am happy to help.”
Zoe stomped forward.
“Why are we talking about this? I’m the one you’ve been training. I’m the one you should work with.”
Trinch shook his head.
“I’m sure you both have your merits, but we have no time to discuss this,” he pointed at the bright orange flicker in the sky, already it had grown brighter, harsher. “The warden comes. Princh, Oriz, I need you to back me up while I fight.”
Moth and her sister gazed at the bright light. With their Insight, they could see it was not a ball of fire — no sun, no star — but a floating head. Flesh torn and scorched, flayed from cheeks and nose showing only bone and a dark hollow skull. One eye white and dribbling maggots, the other a burning, baleful orange. Viscera dripped from the ragged throat. Blackened blood and squirming globules fell toward the endless desert.
The head, the warden, floated toward them.
Moth fought down an urge to vomit as her mirrored skin reflected that foul orange light. She wanted to run. Run until that light no longer glowed upon her.
But her sister clenched her fists. Feet digging into the mud in the stance she learned so well, the stance that almost let her defeat the gilded carapace of her first form.
“Master,” Moth’s sister said. “How can I help?”
“There is nothing you can do,” Oriz was quiet, trembling. “That thing once equaled Rue. A power so great it continues after its head was torn from its body and lobotomized. There is nothing you can do…’
But even as she spoke, the great rotting head in the sky loosened its jaw of flat yellow teeth taller than houses. From the gaping chasm flew winged creatures. Batlike, manlike, great leathery wings like whip cracks even across this vast distance. They filled the sky like flies disturbed from a corpse and descended toward the ruined camp.
Trinch whirled on Moth and her sister. His chains flowed and reared like ten thousand clanking serpents.
“What are you still doing here?” He wrapped them both in chains. A heavy clang echoed through Moth’s head as she was tethered to her sister like balls on a bola. “Follow the blue light to the tavern,” Trinch said. “Whichever of you meets us there, shall be our savior.”
Before she could speak or protest or question, Trinch hefted her into the air. He balanced them in his massive palm as though their combined weight were a feather. One of Princh’s healing techniques washed over them. It itched the skin like maddened ants.
Oriz looked up at the two of them with concern, no, she looked only at Moth’s scar-lipped sister.
“We must fend off the warden, or it will find the tavern. It may take us days, but we will turn it back. I wish you luck, and remember the —”
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Screaming air cut off her voice.
Bound, Moth and her sister flew through the blank sky, the land raced underneath. Dunes, ruins, a river rippling like a ribbon in the wind. Vast swampland spread out before them. A delta system full of green trees, algae blooms, and vine choked towers of crumbling stone. The water reflected the blank sky, and dark things swam in the shallows.
In the distance, a pillar of blue light stood like a needle of ice against the horizon.
###
Zoe crashed into the swamp in a tangled splash of muddy water and broken bones. She felt the chain around her neck tethering her to the mirror-skinned doppelgänger that came from inside the worm.
Her own chains writhed the second she struck the swamp. Until now, they had been constrained — either intentionally during Oriz’s training or suppressed by the frequent pulses of high-level Willpower. Now, they came alive in Zoe’s defense. They pulled her broken body toward a muddy islet.
She flopped onto the dark soiled shore and gasped for air. Dead trees stood bleached white above her like organic gravestones. She cried out in pain between breaths as her bones snapped back into place with the indomitable efficiency of Princh’s technique [The Reef Regrows].
The blank sky glowed, and the mud steamed, as her body knitted. On the other end of the chain, jangling and tugging at her body, she felt the mirror-skinned clone still living, swimming, making its way toward the islet.
What was that thing? She knew the worm was a parasite — some consequence of the cursed item she ingested — had it always intended to form a clone of her? To replace her?
Their attributes were split, but in the end, there could be only one. Princh’s words sickened her. They would have been forced together if they were back in the Crimson Armada’s domain. Did that mean the only reason she was still alive, still separate, was because Zazzatha tossed her down that shaft between realities?
What happened when people were usually cursed? Though she supposed she needed no answer to that: the worm had tried to consume her often enough.
And now that thing was crawling onto the islet. Its bones regrown by Princh’s magic, or perhaps they never broke. That elusive mirror technique capable of repelling the impact of landing. Even now, the mud and slick weeds of the swamp slid from the perfect mirror skin of her nude double. A pristine, smiling reflection of her amidst the sunbaked stench of the swamp.
Zoe attacked.
Her chains speared through the air. Mud flew from the vicious links. Eleven points struck mirrored skin as the clone stood, and were rebuffed by an equal and opposite force. Zoe felt the jarring force travel down her chains until it struck her body. She sagged to her knees, but stood, charging and stepping into the first forms of the Grasping Vine.
Metal poured through her flesh as she struck, stepped, kicked, stepped, and the clone smiled as the blows bounced from her perfect mirror skin. Zoe screamed with frustration — technique forgotten — and wrapped steel hands around her clone’s mirrored throat. She squeezed, but no matter how tight her grip, an equal force pushed back her hands.
It was impossible.
[Skein 107/117]
[Might: 36 (18)]
She ignored her master’s command and seized her Skein. Pushed it down into her Might.
[Skein 50/117]
[Might 36 (75)]
She felt like a god. Howling as she squeezed with impossible strength. Metal fingers squeaked as they clutched down through the aura of force, down against smooth mirrored skin, and finally choked the gullet of her smiling clone.
The clone’s eyes widened with panic. She flailed in the mud, but Zoe’s enhanced, metal grip was unshakeable.
The mirrored skin — the clone’s technique — cracked. Like a chain reaction, fractures spread down her throat. Across her collarbone and breast. Up toward her chin. Jagged pieces angled away from the raw, breathing flesh beneath. Zoe glared down at the peeled-back skin, at the red muscle oozing blood. A shard of mirror sliced into her metal skin, straight through like a misplaced scalpel, and her own blood fell. Dripped. Intermingled with her clone.
A cloying, iron, sickly smell rose as the bloods mixed and flowed into the thick mud in which they wrestled. Zoe’s hands fell away at the sharp new odor. She felt the weakness of the clone. Felt that she could go for the kill. Reach into the exposed throat and rip out everything that gave the clone life.
But some deadly awareness stopped her. Something she saw reflected in the mirror of her nemesis.
The water around the islet churned with dark shadows, and something rose from the froth.
###
Squidlike creatures swam beneath the swamp surface. Obscured by sediment, they appeared as erratic silhouettes, eldritch shadows of tentacles and grasping limbs. Drawn by the scent of blood, the sound of conflict, or the temporal nearness of death. They circled the little hump of mud Zoe mistook for safety.
She stood, leaving her clone on the ground with its wound slowly closing. It had not fought back, even when its life neared the end, so she did not fear it, especially when her entire being screamed to flee.
For the shadows beneath the surface were rising, and the sight broke a little piece of Zoe’s mind. Once again, she grappled with the fact she stood in another reality.
The shadows surged and broke the surface, but they were not tentacled monstrosities, instead, simple bubbles broke free and floated up. Large bubbles tall enough to swallow a person. Slightly green, but translucent. They floated toward the island. The shadows vanished from the water as bubble after bubble floated free of the frothing swamp, and then the swamp stilled, for no more shadows swam.
They all floated free, as shapes — creatures? — of light and air.
[Ding!]
[Hooray!]
Bubbles surrounded the islet in their hundreds, refracting the flat light of the sky into green rainbows. One floated toward Zoe, dipping and bobbing across the now-still water. She drew back. Terrified to touch the living shape.
[Ding!]
[No fun! No fun! You should always play with bubbles!]
Some unknown instinct shrieked at her to run. Run toward that distant needle of blue light and find safety. She listened, she wanted to obey, but — she glanced down — she would need to drag the mirrored clone with her.
And she would have to keep it safe, because if anything happened to it… then she would lose all her attributes. The nasty, brutal, survivalist deep inside begged for her to kill the clone now, before its wounds healed, before it decided to fight back.
But what if she leveled up? What if she was incapacitated while these bubbles swarmed her and did… she didn’t know, but that deep voice screamed…
Another bubble zipped toward her on a wind that was not there. She dodged on instinct and dove forward into the mud. The chain tethering her to her clone rattled, long enough to allow movement, but not too far.
The swooping bubble rushed over her fallen form and collided with one of the dead bleached trees. It squeezed against a sharp jutted branch for a second, and Zoe winced as she waited for it to pop.
But it bounced away like something made of rubber, softly floating higher, spinning.
And then a chain shot out from inside. The links moved so fast it appeared a liquid stream. Zoe rolled aside as the chain slammed into the mud. Another bubble wobbled, and a chain shot down. She rolled. More chains. They tore the mud apart.
[Ding!]
[Play time!]
Zoe rolled against some links and recoiled as they tried to grab her. More chains speared toward her.
A hand hauled her away. She stood. It was her clone, the serene smile gone, and the expression in her eyes all too familiar.
Zoe nodded.
“Fine,” she said to the unspoken question. “We’ll work together, for now.”