Gool seemed renewed, and with every step, he acted younger, as though he walked out of the dust of eons. Zoe was disheartened that their fight had cost her points in Skein — and permanent points at that — but she held no grudge.

After all, she understood what one does because of hunger.

The swamp became a forest as Zoe and Gool traveled deeper. The sandbars became islands. The islands connected and became hills. The stagnant pools flowed into rivers through the valleys. Sticky heat persisted, but the trees grew from sickly things into towering giants that cast vast nets of shade.

In the shadow of one such tree, Gool squatted before a fractured jade statue. Black veins clotted underneath the milky jade, but there was no sign of life.

“I knew her,” he said as he scooped dirt away from her face. “A fierce warrior. She sacrificed herself so we could escape.”

He sighed, and Zoe didn’t ask him how the escape attempt went. They spent an hour burying the statue and resting from the sun. Dark blue fruit shaped like grasping hands hung from the branches, and the fingers were sweet.

There had been no bubbles seen that day, nothing except frogs and birds, but Zoe wasn’t concerned. By her estimate, she had more than enough death energy built up. The pulse at the back of her head was insistent. She needed to relieve the pressure soon, or she was worried it might crack her skull in half.

“Was there anywhere in the city with a lot of metal?” she asked.

Gool shook his head.

“Not in the city, but,” he looked about, muttering to himself. “But when we attacked, they responded with colossi. Walking beings of metal… many fell…”

He got his bearings and led on until they found an obelisk. Deep grooves in the stone from where some errant blades fell. He traced the wounds.

“This happened in the battle… So I imagine they would have fixed it if they won. It’s so hard to know what happened after all this time, but if my hunch is correct, we should find an appropriate place for you to level up over the next hill.”

They walked away from the unmarked grave, through the roots and the dappled shade.

“Why did you go to war with this dimension?” Zoe asked.

His smile only grew as the day wore on, wooden teeth splitting charcoal lips, as though every step away from his prison made him lighter.

“You are not yet level 10?”

“No.”

“When you meet the Smith… In my culture, we called it the first shackle. You receive your second shackle when you meet the Witch at level 15. The third shackle comes when you meet the Gambler — if you ever meet the Gambler. These shackles tie you to the system as much as the Black Star’s chain. The higher you rise in the levels, the more indebted your existence is to the system. You reach a point where you cannot distinguish your desires from your quests… At least, that’s how it was for me,” he sighed. “Incursions riddled my homeworld. Chains snaked through our cities, and I accepted the quest to invade in a heartbeat. It felt like the right thing to do…”

They reached the top of the hill, and Zoe gasped at the sight.

A lake stretched out before them. Miles across in every direction, the clear water reflected the pale sky. On the far bank, stood the blue beacon. It would take another day to walk around the perimeter and reach the tavern. She could just make out the dark buildings of a small settlement at the base of the bright blue light.

Islands stood in the lake, glinting like silver, but as her eyes adjusted to the glare — quickly with her advanced Insight — she noticed them for what they were. Giant suits of armor. Over two dozen steel entities frozen as they waded across the water.

The closest one stood only a hundred feet from the water’s edge. Zoe stared as they made their way down the bank. It stood taller than the tower she spent the other night in, though the water still came up to its waist. One arm was blown away, but the other extended up to the sky as though the colossus were blocking its eyes from the sun. An intense heat had struck it long ago, and rivulets of metal streamed away like dribbles of wax. They still hung, cooled in motion, after all this time. Vines grew amongst the still silver plates of metal. There were some holes, edges eaten with rust, and white birds flying out from within.

They stood on the lake shore, and Gool shook his head.

“This was a vast plain of flowers that smelled of burning honey. We had mages, level fifty, masters of fire. Their techniques lit the sky. My cohort attacked from underground, we erupted in the center of the city, but it was an ambush…”

“The city we just traveled through?”

Gool nodded.

“From what you tell me, that colossus closest to the shore will be a perfect environment for your incorporation.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll set up a camp, maybe do some fishing,” he laughed. “It’s odd, I’ve done nothing for thousands of years, but all I want to do is relax.”

Zoe smiled, but she wasn’t paying attention. Her gaze remained fixed on the statue. It glinted in the sun. Frozen in an act of defense, as though it gazed upon the face of god before being struck down.

A shiver ran down Zoe’s spine in time with the pounding headache.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

No matter Gool’s warnings, no matter the lessons of Oriz and Princh, Zoe had no more patience.

The warm air flowed over her, and she stood naked beside this man with charcoal skin. He smiled, while she remained serious, and their lockets sat heavily against their chests. Without another word, Zoe dove into the water.

The cold shock broke through her meandering mind. With purposeful strokes, she swam. There were no bubbles out on the lake, and she felt safe as she cut through the clear water.

Safe, but anxious.

Here, in another world, she prepared to take a step unlike any she had ever made. She swam under the water and through a hole in the colossus’s hip. Weeds and sand collected in the empty torso. The feet were invisible in the dark water below. She surfaced inside the colossus.

Sunlight streamed through holes in the head, chest, and neck. Long frozen slag formed stalactites pointed at her. She waded out onto a dry pile of sand and logs, detritus that washed up and climbed up onto a metal ledge. In the middle of the chest of an ancient war robot, surrounded by silvery metal, she felt as though she were stepping out of the forest. Bright light, and brighter eyes upon her. Stepping across a threshold into a new world.

Was it safer to remain in the trees with the dogs? Was it better to remain a child?

She answered her questions with action and flexed her Willpower.

###

Her Willpower pulsed, and notifications surged. Death energy shivered her bones. The water dripped as though she were a hunk of ice.

[Level up! You are now level 10.]

[Level up! You are now level 11.]

[Level up! You are now level 12.]

[Level up! You are now level 13.]

But the slamming of a hammer drowned out the system’s voice. In beat with her heart, furious pounding, metal against metal. Heat washed over her body from some unknown source. She dripped sweat and reached out to the Metal in the environment before she received the system prompt. The colossus shuddered, groaned, as ancient metal twisted off into tendrils. [There is enough Metal to satiate the void. Do you wish to continue?]

Yes.

She had such a void to fill.

Like snakes, the metallic essence slithered through the air toward her. Silver stabbed into her body, pulsed, poured, she opened her mouth and screamed at the heavens…

And the heavens broke.

[All stardust returns to the star.]

The pale sky split and tore like paper. In the darkness beyond, littered with flaming stars, and pulling the sky in twain, stood the Smith.

A being the size of a sun. Ten thousand hands gripped reality and held the sky at bay. A blindfolded head gazed down at the world and saw only her.

Zoe shivered under the gaze.

[Ding!]

[No! Go away!]

Chains poured across the sky like stitches and tried to pull the rent closed but to no avail. The Smith reached through the crisscross of chains. Ghostly metal shattered at the touch of a hand that could crush worlds.

Zoe screamed as metallic tendrils poured toward her body, as a hand blocked out the sky, as gods fought over her.

The Smith’s hand swept up her soul and plucked it from her body.

###

Zoe stood in the forge of the Crimson Armada system. A universe of fire and heat. The stone platform under her feet rippled and glowed. A small platform, connected by a bridge to an anvil upon which a world could rest. At the anvil stood the Smith.

Just as the Smith stood at a million other anvils, in all the fire that surrounded this dimension, Zoe’s mind struggled to understand the confluence of time and space she found herself in. The Smith gazed down at her with blindfolded sympathy, while it reached pliers into the fire and pulled out a white-hot wriggling figure, while it beat down with hammers like era-ending asteroids, while it plunged molten souls into oceans and the vapor rose like the gasp of a dragon.

Zoe spun, and everywhere she looked she saw the Smith, and she fell to her knees and she wept at the scope of the system.

[Hush your mind and focus, Zoe Chambers.]

The gruff voice entered her head, and silence followed. She still felt the omnipresent heat, but it was like a warm hug, rather than a suffocating fire. The pounding continued, but it was her heartbeat, not the constant slamming of steel.

Panting, she forced herself to stand, and the Smith stood on the other side of the platform. No taller than her. His forge shrunken to a human apparatus. He grinned, with muscular arms folded across a leather apron, but his blindfold remained.

Zoe took a step forward.

“I’m…” what was she supposed to say to a god? “I want to get —”

[I know what you want. I know what you need. I know what you deserve.]

Zoe staggered. The words echoed through her, and she felt a rifling in her soul as though she were a book and the Smith flicked through her pages.

“Who are you?”

He smiled.

[Myself, my sister, and my brother. We are the last members of the Crimson Armada: a smith, a medic, and a drunken layabout locked in the brig. We survived Armageddon. We survived apotheosis. Now, it is not the time for history, but for the future. Your actions, and your goals, determine the path of your body… in most cases.]

Zoe felt a familiar dread settle upon her.

“Most cases?”

[Because you devoured the Fragment of the Mirrorbell, you must choose a body path that accommodates that magical item.]

Would that action ever stop haunting her?

“What are my options? I need to return to my — to your — dimension.”

[You lead those who follow. You fight tooth and nail. You cross between worlds. There are three body paths you can choose from:]

Zoe felt the information slam into her brain like a hammer. She fell to her knees as knowledge echoed.

* [The Echoes Of Time: Detach yourself from the present and become lost in the emotions of time. Recall the past and hear whispers of the future. Through this body path, you can extend the event of the incursion so you can traverse.]

* [The Bell At The Center Of The World: Resonance is the source and the goal of all sound. Let the world become your bell and strike to stabilize, or destroy. Through this body path, you can stabilize the incursion so you can traverse.]

* [The Impatient General’s Bell: Toll your arrival and appear amid your enemy. Let sound speak your fury and then become the sound. Through this body path, you are fast enough to traverse the incursion before it collapses.]

Heat washed over her. The fire of creation. Her soul trembled as she gazed again at the universe on fire. The Smith, in all his multitude, leaned over her and waited for her decision. The patient silence between strikes. The silence dying, as a strike must come, a decision must be made, before the hot iron cools.

But what body path should she choose?