Zoe’s impact created a deep hole in the muddy bank at the tower’s base. Mud filled up to her waist. Worms squirmed against her skin. She looked up at the shaft of wet earth above her as clods rained down. The walls sagged and collapsed.
Her mirrored skin repelled everything that fell.
Mud sprayed out, and she laughed at the bottom of the now conical hole.
[Skein 94/131]
The impact cost 25 Skein, and the falling mud cost another 5. Normal walking didn’t trigger the effect, there was a threshold of force and the minimum was 5 Skein. It helped that the activation was automatic, so if someone attacked her while she was unaware, the technique would still function.
She flexed her legs and leaped from the hole. This progress in the journey of her Skein lifted her spirits. With a smile, she walked along the edge around the base of the tower and her reflection walked beside her. They caught each other’s eyes.
Zoe froze and looked out the corner of her eye. Not even the corner. With her enhanced Insight, she was aware of her peripherals even while staring straight ahead. Her reflection stood in the water, watching her, but Zoe couldn’t return the gaze.
Because this might be her imagination, and turning her head would confirm if her reflection was independent, or if she was losing herself to hope.
Moth…
There Zoe stood, slowly sinking into the fetid mud, as she wondered what lay on the other side of the reflection. Was that where Moth originated?
She recalled her reflection looking out at her from the fragment of the Mirrorbell. This dimension’s flat light was nothing like the flickering orange of the campfire. It couldn’t be the same optical illusion.
Did Moth come from the world within the mirror? If so, perhaps their encounter began when Zoe brought Mirror into her body.
She turned, and her reflection turned. They faced each other. Algae choked water rippled between them. Zoe waited for her reflection to move without her. Waited for almost half an hour.
But she wanted it too badly and, as with all such things, nothing happened.
A bubble drifted through the wispy mist between the trees. It passed Zoe, slowed, and spun. There were no eyes on the creature, no distinguishing features at all. It was wrong in its simplicity, but still functional in its alien way. Zoe felt no terror, only a fundamental revulsion.
The bubble bobbed across the water and whipped chains toward her. Zoe’s chains reared up, but she commanded them to stay back. She braced herself as the bubble’s chain struck her sternum. With a crack, her technique repelled the attack.
[Skein 79/131]
The shockwave ran down the chain and the bubble bobbed, but otherwise seemed unharmed. Maybe if she was closer, she could rely on reflecting attacks like Moth, but eventually, the technique would drain her Skein.
She dodged the next strike. Mud sprayed across her mirrored skin and flicked away. Zoe extended her chains, but their tips bounced off the bubble’s flexible skin.
Out on the water, the bubble had the advantage. Its reach was greater than Zoe’s and if she met it out on the water, the bubble could liquify itself. She didn’t want to fight one of those jagged, inky shapes.
If she even could.
Hoping there was another way, she scooped up a handful of mud and focused on the Metal essence within her.
Chains whipped at her. She dodged, focused. Skein flexed, flowed beneath her skin, into her skin, metal replaced mirror in muted splotches. But the Skein went no further than her skin. She couldn’t extend it out to impart her essence into the mud.
Oriz mentioned receiving Gates at level 15. This was when the user’s Skein could affect the environment. Zoe had hoped for a shortcut, but it seemed her knowledge was too limited, or the universe was too strict for such an idea to work.
She dropped the mud and dashed toward the tower. Across the mud, toward the ancient wall. Relentless chains snaked after as she leaped and slammed her mirrored shoulder into the stone.
[Skein 69/131]
The doubled force sent a tremendous crack running up the side of the wall. Chunks of masonry fell about her as she landed back on the mud. She was unharmed, but slamming into the wall left her rattled.
She had to conserve her Skein. Oriz and Princh were untrustworthy. Their response to Moth’s birth still stunned her. How could they consider her clone after all the time they spent together? But Oriz’s advice about Skein maintenance rang in her head like a bell.
She never knew if there was another worm.
Though her mirrored form was powerful, it was cheaper to use Metal to break apart the collapsed masonry. She gripped a fist-sized piece of rubble and threw it at as hard as she could. The projectile beamed at the bubble.
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It collided. The bubble rocked, and the stone sank deep inside before the exterior snapped back into place. The rock tumbled out into the water as the bubble wobbled in place. It retaliated with furious chains as it bobbed closer, closer, but still out of range.
The fight wasn’t deadly. Not yet. But Zoe couldn’t afford to get worn down. She picked up the sharpest pieces of rubble and threw them as fast as she could. They slammed into the bubble.
The bubble deflected the first, but the second struck as the shape wobbled. She could throw hard, but her aim was poor with her reduced Dexterity. It took the sixth rock to strike at the same spot before a tear formed in the emerald skin.
The bubble spun with featureless rage.
Its chains whirled like a murderous top as it flew toward the bank and entered Zoe’s reach. She swept a chain out to defend and struck with the others. They entered the tear in the bubble and pulled it apart from the inside. The translucent skin of the bubble peeled back to reveal a floating sphere of gunk.
The stench assaulted Zoe, and she vomited as the bubble’s remains slopped into the water.
[Ding!]
[Stop it, stop it, stop it!]
[- 4 chains for being a meanie.]
Chunks of grey matter floated in the spreading pool of wretched filth. Zoe felt a tingle at the nape of her neck. A hint of static from another world.
If she flexed her Willpower, she would receive the winter’s breath of death energy. But was it enough to level up? She forced herself to ignore the crawling sensation. This was only one bubble. She wanted to reach level 10, so she needed to pop multiple bubbles.
But, more importantly, she needed to find a suitable location.
If she leveled up here, and her hunger forced her to incorporate, she had no elements that would work to her advantage. Mud and water and stone.
Oriz had spoken of a build’s unity. It was best for Zoe to stick with the essences she already incorporated: Metal, Mirror, Blood, and Faith. When she incorporated the fragments, she would receive Sound as well. From Oriz’s advice, she was already spreading herself thin.
There was a sweet spot to be achieved between too many and too few elements in the body. One shouldn’t overspecialize. Case in point, she could feel her lowered Dexterity. By her calculations, it was at 9 while her Might sat at 38. Even though she was more nimble than any pre-system human, she still felt clumsy as her muscles fired faster than her nerves could coordinate.
She needed to increase her dexterity. Hopefully, she found one of the magical items that Oriz spoke of, though her hopes of achieving that in this dimension were slim.
But instead of despairing, she smiled. She was in a unique position. Because of the interference of the Black Star system, she could delay her level-up. She could rack up more kills with the bubbles and she could wait until she found a secure place to integrate. Hopefully, one with a source of Metal.
With her eyes on the bright beacon, she leaped toward the nearest column sitting above the water.
###
She continued traveling, though her progress was slower than she first expected. While her powerful body could leap further than before, it cost more energy than walking. Even with her enhanced Vitality after incorporating Moth, she grew tired.
She saw bubbles infrequently. Sometimes alone, often in pairs, but never in such a large swarm as when she first landed in the swamp. By the time the sky was growing dark, she had defeated six more bubbles.
The last had come down to a fistfight as she used the Grasping Vine to step through a barrage of chains. Her hand extended like a spear into the translucent bubble, and sticky ichor flowed down. The tarry muck stained her up to the elbow and refused to wash away. She gagged and scraped at her Metal skin with a handful of mostly dry sand, but it only made things worse.
With the rise of the odorous fog, the beacon dimmed. Her head thrummed with unacknowledged notifications. She had to be past level 10 now, and the knowledge thrilled her. How high a level was she? Without flexing her Willpower, without restoring her connection, she couldn’t be sure.
But she needed a safe place first. As the sky dimmed, she looked for a place to spend the night. At last, she found a flooded temple with a second story sitting above the water. It would provide sanctuary, but the lack of metal made it less than ideal as a potential place to incorporate.
She would just need to sleep through the pounding headache and continue looking in the morning.
The entranceway was collapsed but there was a small enough gap at the top of the rubble so she squeezed along her belly — sparks flying where she came in contact with the stone — and entered the room. The stone of the temple was the same bland cream-colored stone as used in the tower and the labyrinth in the desert.
But on the far wall, there sat a statue of bright jade, shot through with blackened veins. It depicted a squat humanoid with three legs, seven feet tall as it sat, and a shaved head dominated by bulging eyes. Shadowy light played across the stone orbs… as though they watched her.
She lay out on the surprisingly dry floor, turned her back to the thoughts of the statue, and tried to sleep. Her entire body felt wrung out, sore, and soon she entered the fugue state of almost sleep. Dark crept over the land, and fog enveloped the temple. In the small room, Zoe lay safe, but the occasional green flash outside showed the bubbles remained active.
Hours passed.
The pounding buzz at the back of her head made sleep difficult. The heavy gaze of the statue made it impossible. Around midnight, she crawled up to the opening above the rubble and watched the bubbles passing by. They danced through the foggy sky in their dozens.
They circled each other like jeweled baubles in orbit. Green, but also blue, and bright yellow. Zoe didn’t know what the colors signified, and she kept still and quiet. Without her chains, the prospect of fighting dozens of the creatures was daunting. The bubbles circled each other, brushed against each other, gaining speed until they were blurs in the fog.
Her Metal body didn’t mind the uneven rubble and, lulled by the hypnotic lights, she fell asleep on the pile with her head near the entrance.
She awoke to a stone hand closing around her ankle. It dragged her down the rubble back into the temple room. Stone scraped against stone as something moved in the pitch dark.
[Self Reflects The World]
Her technique repelled the grip.
[Skein 85/131]
She leaped forward and collided with a colossal shape.
[Skein 70/131]
A sharp crack of force struck stone. Her Skein dropped and dust billowed up into the room. Zoe coughed in the dark, and a chain wrapped around her throat.
[Skein 65/131]
She wrestled, but the chain snaked around her limbs, drawing them back. She flexed, and the chains bucked, her technique flicking them away, but they continued to loop back and constrict her, sliding across her skin, tightening as her Skein dropped.
[Skein 55/131]
[Skein 50/131]
Her arms bent back until it felt as though her shoulders would pop. Should she drop her technique? She was running out of time to make her decision...
Something wet snickered from the corner.
“It has been too long,” said an ancient voice. “Since I last tasted Skein.”