Zoe stood on a speck of stone while hammers echoed like preparations for doomsday. Each strike thrummed through her bones. Fire surrounded her. A blazing infinity as though she stood in the center of a star.
The crushing heat of the forge.
Sweat trickled down her skin as she considered her options. The choice that would determine her future… though she realized she didn’t understand enough. Oriz and Princh had given advice, and though she wanted to trust them… the locket resting against her chest spoke another truth.
She gazed up at the Smith, who watched her with the wavering passivity of a well-fed flame.
“Hello?” her voice was nothing in the forge. “Can I ask questions?”
[Ask.]
“What is a body path? I don’t understand how it’s different from the techniques I gained earlier.”
[Every time you incorporate elements you collect raw materials for me to use. I choose the options most suitable for your future progress and we reforge your body to follow the path. You shall become a pure function like a fish swimming or a bird in flight.]
“But how is this different from techniques?”
[You are aware of the Skein in your body, but Skein flows through reality. Your body will determine the way you move through Skein. It is not an ability, but a shape. It will persist while you live and end when you die. Techniques come and go and your body shall house them. As you level up, you shall feed your body, and its shape will draw closer to completion. Every rank in your body path brings you closer to the ideal you select right now.]
“I’m from a world that…” she stopped. The Smith knew where she was from. He knew everything about her. “How do I know which to choose? How much time do I have?”
[Time never stops, Zoe Chambers. If you do not decide, I shall curse you to remain as you are. But, I owe you a favor...]
Zoe swallowed at the ominous words.
“A favor?”
The Smith’s mouth stretched in a rictus smile. Flat yellow teeth like ingots of gold filled the open grin.
[Many fall through the holes between dimensions, but you are the first to summon one of the Trinity. My presence has repaired the damage to reality. Let me reward you.]
He swung his hammer hard against the anvil. Sparks flew up and spiraled in an oval frame. Zoe blinked as a view formed through the burning window.
A mirrored ballroom.
Bella and Anton stood back to back. Defending themselves. Splinters flew.
###
Bella wiped blood away from her eyes. The cut across her forehead was healing, but it was still bleeding more than was comfortable.
Anton leaned against her back. She could feel his tired breathing, even though he stood straight. She saw his placid expression, fake though she thought it might be, in the tall mirrored walls surrounding them. Light came in spears from holes in the high ceiling. The chandeliers were nothing but homes for the spiders. Tarnish crawled over everything. Wallpaper wept black slime. The floorboards lay crooked and warped.
Dust and rotted wood puffed up as she turned in a circle.
“Bookshelf!” Anton yelled.
Bella turned and stepped forward as a bookshelf flew across the room towards them. Rotted paper trailed behind the heavy antique. She swung her sword, heat rippling out, and split the bookshelf in half. The bisected pieces smoked from the wound.
She turned back as Anton kicked away a chair. Another crashed into his head. An explosion of splinters. Anton stumbled. Bella stepped forward and hacked at the next chair. It broke against her blade, and they stood back to back again.
The doors to the ballroom opened, and more furniture dragged across the floor.
“Have you figured out what to do yet?” she asked Anton.
“Working on it.”
Figures pranced in the mirrors. Lanky, mischievous men. They grabbed the furniture, knees bending out as they lifted the heavy wooden pieces above their heads, and then hurtled them at the pair in the center of the ballroom.
One mirror stood shattered, with black gunk oozing from the cracks. Figures still danced in the fragments. Breaking the mirror was not the solution, but they didn’t know what was. Now, the lanky men had them pinned in the center.
“Oh no,” Bella said.
Through one door, shoved by a figure in the mirror, a shelf of weapons scraped its way across the floor. Anton sighed.
“I wish we had our big steel boss right now.”
Bella readied her sword.
“Me too.”
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###
Bella and Anton spoke to each other, but Zoe couldn’t hear the words. Anton spat blood and grinned, but it was humorless. Bella swore, pointed, and swore again as she swung her blade at a small thrown hatchet.
The sparks drifted away, and the image faded.
“What is happening there?”
Zoe tried to calm her heart. She shouldn’t be too concerned. If all went to plan, she would arrive back in the dungeon before that fight resolved.
[My presence in this dimension has corrected the exchange of time. As a reward, I give you a glimpse of the comrades you miss so dearly. Truly, friendship has created more power in this universe than even my forge.]
His words hit hollow as Zoe stared at the fading sparks. The Smith fixed the exchange of time? Did that mean… She checked her quest clock and realized she had no access to the system.
Her heartbeat flared.
“Does that mean time is parallel now?”
[Yes.]
She felt sick.
It was time to decide.
What were her choices?
[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.]
[Makes use of Sound, Blood, Mirror, and Time. Forgo Metal and Faith]
As the Smith recounted the option, she felt herself stepping into the possibility. Time was a direction, and it would become useable. Her mind spun as past and potential overlapped, ripples upon ripples, echoes of voices long gone and never spoken. With this ability, she could slow down the incursion. She could extend a strike of lightning until it burned the duration of a storm. She could replay herself, repeat herself. Loneliness would never be a problem again.
But so easy, to lose herself in wanderings of time and the pursuit of memory and minutes.
“What does it mean to forgo Metal and Faith?”
[The Echoes Of Time does not require those essences, and your body will reject them when you level up.]
Giving up Metal would mean giving up her Lodestone title bonus. She was certain this bonus was half the reason — probably the only reason — she was still alive. The double boost to stats was a tremendous advantage, but the title also encouraged her lopsided attributes.
“My technique [Our Hearts Toll As One] makes use of Faith essence…” She almost couldn’t ask the next part of the question. “Will I lose this technique if I choose this path?”
[Techniques exist independently of your body. You will not lose the technique.]
Zoe hated that she let out a sigh of relief. As much as she abhorred the technique, she didn’t want to let it go.
“I’ve never seen Time essence.”
The Smith nodded.
[It is rare, and Time is a hard mistress. This body path is the longest of your options. It will take 70 levels to complete.]
Cold sank into Zoe’s stomach.
“70 levels?”
[A body path maps out your future levels. As you level up, you feed your body, and it grows. You cannot attain another body path until you complete your first. Interdimensional travel is an advanced concept, and few would choose it for their first level.]
The Smith grinned again.
[Especially not someone from a raw world such as yours. This pleases me. The Crimson Armada abhors the timid.]
“Are there any shorter paths?”
[The Bell At The Center Of The World is a path of 50 levels. The Impatient General’s Bell takes 60 levels to complete.]
Zoe knew it became harder to gain levels. Even her own experience had shown this. Larger and larger quantities of death energy were required to level up. And the enemies that gave the increased amount of death energy would only become more dangerous. Meditation existed as an alternative method, but it was slow.
She felt anxious committing to such a long path. 50 levels seemed daunting, let alone 70. She understood now why Oriz said she would regret the favor. She was signing herself up for decades of work — possibly centuries if what Oriz and Princh said was true.
But she had delivered that promise.
She no longer completely trusted the two alien women, but she felt no reason to abandon them to this reality. If she could help, she would. Whatever situation came of her selected path, she would make the most of it.
[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.]
[Makes use of Sound, Metal, and Mirror. Forgo Blood and Faith]
Her body tolled. Energy coursed through her and she felt her knuckles creak into a fist. It was all so obvious. All the world needed to create perfect balance was a single strike. She could deliver that strike. The universe would rise up to cup her, envelop her, and she would make it ring.
The world was a bell, and she was the clapper.
And just as she could unify energies with a single strike, she could cause disarray. She could break them down, make them collapse… She could stabilize the incursion, or she could create one of her own.
The sheer power of this path made her step back. It was tempting, so very tempting, to just accept it outright. The path was the shortest and seemed the best suited for her purposes.
But she stood in a cosmic forge and would not ignore any option presented by the master of this reality.
[The Impatient General’s Bell: Toll your arrival and appear amid your enemy. Let sound speak your fury and then become the sound.]
[Makes use of Sound, Blood, Metal, and Faith. Forgo Mirror.]
This path began atop a hill, and from the vantage, only more hills rose. Each peak held a castle, and the castles held her enemies. They cowered while she amassed her troops on the planes.
The gates stood before her now. Imposing wood so ancient it hardened into rock. She rang herself, a furious toll of the bell of doom. The sound was her, and she was the sound. The enemy gripped their helmets on the walls, behind the defenses, and Zoe appeared wherever her sound tolled. Walls meant nothing. The enemy could not hide.
She was the fury of sound, and all would hear her.
All would cower.
She forced herself back and fell to her knees. Eyes squeezed shut against a tolling in her ears. She could still see the red skies. The broiling apocalypse. That path had been the strongest. It had gripped her like an undertow, and if she hadn’t forced herself back, she would be upon it still.
Zoe knelt, hot stone scraping her knees, and pondered her choice. She felt a strong connection with the [The Impatient General’s Bell], but the power of [The Bell At The Centre Of The World] held its own allure.
One offered speed and an outlet for her rage. She could see herself standing atop a hill and directing her troops to slaughter the enemy. This body path spoke to her anger, but what would it mean to forgo Mirror? Her interactions with Mirror were purely coincidental. Without the Mirrobell dungeon, without Moth, she may have never even considered it as an option, but now?
Now….
She had gone through so much to attain the essence and make use of the technique [Self Reflects The World]. She flexed her hand. Mirror ran up and down her skin. Even without her system, she felt her technique draining her Skein.
It had taken an emotional realization to make this technique her own. Incorporating Moth was not enough, it was the act this symbolized inside her mind, and inside her heart. She had taken a step away from the desperate desire for control that spawned [Our Hearts Toll As One].
A flutter passed across her heart. She blinked, unsure if she felt anything, or if it was just her imagination.
Her palm reflected her mirrored face as she gazed down, at herself, through the infinite chain of reflections — all of them puzzled, intense — maybe one of them was watching from within.
She released her technique. Dark brown skin replaced Mirror, though it was hard to say which she felt more natural wearing.
She pulled herself to her feet and faced the Smith.
“I have made my decision.”
[Then we shall begin.]
The Smith reached forward, and he scooped up her soul.