The matriarch’s delicate porcelain features hovered above Zoe’s face. Her eyes were wells of oil. No reflection in those bottomless depths. A smile of pearls. Her breath warm, florid, tickling Zoe’s sweat-streaked skin.

Zoe felt herself lifted from the ground as the centipede coils of the matriarch’s body tightened. The loops of curved flesh suspended her while the matriarch chittered. Zoe reached out toward the limp boneless hands as they stroked her forehead. Cold and fleshy fingers brushed behind her ears, where Zoe’s horns would one day grow. She couldn’t wait to embrace that change. If only the transformation would make her as beautiful as the matriarch…

The creature smiled as though it knew her thoughts. Of course it knew her thoughts. They were the same. Two streams forming a river…

Why are we doomed to fight?

Can there never be enough? Enough for all of us? Can we ever lie down in the grass and trust the world to let us sleep?

Zoe’s eyelids grew leaden. Coffin lids closing at the bottom of a mausoleum. Quiet of the deep crypt.

Black pools swallowing.

Zoe sank.

Willingly…

Sometimes, giving up feels better than anything else in the world.

###

Zoe sat at a sticky table and stuck into the happiest meal of her life: lasagna and birthday cake at a family restaurant in the town she grew up. Name forgotten, purposefully or not, but lost. Sprinkles stuck along her cheeks. Icing under her fingernails. Her mom smiled, and she didn’t smell like cigarette smoke that night, she smelled like the perfume in the golden bottle.

They smiled at each other, mother and daughter, as they licked cake from their fingers and laughed at the mess on the table. Too much mess for two people, they both knew better, had better manners, but there was something magical about that night.

A sense as though the world would end tomorrow, and all debts were forgiven.

Zoe ordered another milkshake, chocolate. Her mother ordered strawberry. The saccharine smell of the artificial syrups always brought her back to this place. Bubbles of frothed milk against her lips. Taste of condensed flavor.

The last happy meal of her childhood, the week before her mother left.

But in some corner of her mind, soft and repetitive as a lullaby, that meal continued forever…

###

The matriarch’s song sounded like thick bubbling oil. Lulling. There was a conquest through pacifism that could not be matched by tooth or claw or fist or blade. Zoe sank into the deep smell of underwater. The grass shifted around her… endless swathes of yellow grass… she closed her eyes as a single purple stalk bent towards her…

A noose tightened around her throat. Cut into her flesh. She scrambled as suffocation sliced through the peace of the matriarch’s embrace. Breath hissed out through her lips, her nostrils, but she couldn’t bring it back into her lungs.

It wasn’t the matriarch, this was Oriz’s technique. Grass wrapped her throat. Choked her.

Conflict was inevitable. Even an act of kindness involves pushing someone from their current path.

The matriarch smiled and chittered, her long curled horns brushed against Zoe’s cheeks. Black, oily slime dripped from her mouth. The same liquid that pooled in her eyes. It smelled like burning caramel.

A droplet landed on Zoe’s chin. It hissed as it melted through her skin. Zoe’s eyes bulged out at the sudden pain.

Violence must be reckoned with.

Muscular flesh pinned her arms, but her chain lashed out.

And bounced off thick, rubbery hide. The matriarch laughed now — a burbling like air rising from an undersea fissure — and more black liquid spilled onto Zoe’s face. Her skin sizzled and smoked as the fluid burned into her tissue. The creature was dissolving her face like a fly preparing its meal.

Zoe reached for her Skein.

[Self Reflects The World]

[Skein 100/153]

Mirror sheathed her flesh, and the sizzling stopped. The matriarch tittered and squeezed, but Zoe’s technique repelled the force. For a single moment, the centipedal coils loosened, and Zoe moved.

She thrust out with her elbows, the doubled force of her technique sending sharp jabs into the matriarch’s flanks. The porcelain face smiled and leaked. Zoe suspected it could only display the one emotion.

But the oily eyes bubbled and spat with a toxic rage. The matriarch leaned over Zoe. The pallid cheeks swelled, lips pursed, and a spray of black fluid shot out like a hose.

Zoe raised her hand. The stream splashed against her palm and exploded out with the reflective force. But the Mirror bubbled and cracked. Zoe screamed and thrust her hand into the giggling matriarch’s maw.

The overflowing black acid ate into her, but enough Mirror coated her fingers. She formed a point and jabbed into the roof of the matriarch’s mouth. The reflected force jabbed up into the soft palate like a spear. Gore splashed out of the open mouth, blood amongst the black, and the matriarch bit down.

Her teeth chomped onto Zoe’s mirrored forearm, and the repelling force cracked them. The matriarch slithered away, coiling, and rearing up. Black slime dripped from her jaw, now snapped permanently open. Fat clouds of smoke billowed out from the bubbling eyes.

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Zoe rubbed her fingers at the noose of grass and felt it disintegrate at her touch. She kept her eyes on the matriarch. If Oriz wanted to interfere more, she would have done so.

The mirror on Zoe’s arm bubbled and split where the black slime touched her, so she canceled the technique. Her smooth brown skin returned, unblemished by the acid, before she flushed herself with steel.

But she felt the acid in the back of her mind — pulsing, sick, alive — eating away at the Mirror. She hoped the essence would rejuvenate, but for now the technique was off the table. So she stepped into the Grasping Vine and advanced on her enemy.

###

The matriarch was powerful, almost at the level of Zazzatha, but Zoe had grown since that fight. Her attributes, and her ability to use them, were leagues better. Though her enemy had the advantage in reach and speed, Zoe did her best to keep close, wrapping her positioning around the matriarch, her steel fists striking the tough flesh.

Glancing blows became bruises, and bruises became split skin. Zoe caught one of the vestigial arms, and it tore away like a slow-cooked drumstick. Blood flowed and watered the earth. The grass all around them was torn, and a new mud sprung up, squelching as they circled each other. The sky hit the zenith of light and began the long march into darkness.

Exhausted, Zoe faced the rearing monstrosity and relied upon what reflexes she had developed. Vitality kept her standing, and her body moved for her. The matriarch lashed with her tail and spat acid. Zoe avoided what she could, blocked what she could not, and advanced.

It was in this state — borderline automaton — that Zoe understood the changes in her body. There was a hum, though not quite a hum, a chime, though not quite a chime, a ringing from every atom that was almost inaudible. It was not a constant sound. It was distracting, but when she tried to focus it vanished. Always there on the edge like a darting mosquito. But if she followed the sound without following, she found a new rhythm.

A new resonance that had nothing to do with the Grasping Vine. It was not a stance; it was nothing recorded; it was alive. A living resonance and Zoe moved into the heart of the sound as she fought the matriarch. The world swelled, humming, rising around her. Cupping her. Gouged mud and torn grass and sky and blood and the twisting coils of the matriarch all rearing like waves, still moving, still flowing through time, and she became the clapper inside the bell at the center of the world.

Her body felt the opening. Muscles tensed, she flung herself forward in a blow. The movement was too quick, and the walls of reality slipped away as her Metal fist passed through the air. But enough remained. She struck the matriarch’s sternum before the resonance faded completely.

She struck, and the blow resonated through the matriarch’s body. Wounds burst open. Blood flowed. The matriarch squealed as black slime fountained from her mouth. She twisted once like a hooked worm before collapsing in the mud.

Zoe stared down at her knuckles. The hum was in her bones. The power of this path. Intoxicating…

She wavered, staggered, and collapsed, snoring before she struck the mud beside the matriarch’s corpse.

###

Bella crouched beside Anton in the makeshift shelter of wardrobes and cabinets. They both had circles under their eyes, pallid features from the sheer exhaustion of staying awake and aware. Anton gripped the wardrobe, fingers digging into splintered wood, as he kept it from being tugged away by the people in the mirror.

Tears of bloodied grime stained his cheeks. Remnants from the development of a technique. It had happened in an instant, but the shock of seeing his eyes explode still made Bella shiver. He said he wasn’t like Cassy, and she believed him…

Mostly…

Her grip tightened around the runeblade.

No, he’s an enemy. His blood must slake our thirst. Dry as the cracked desert and deep is our thirst. Give him unto us before we must drink of ourselves.

A chair slammed into the shelter. Wooden splinters bounced off the ballroom floor. Bella tried to ignore the wheedling blade, but she could feel the growing presence of the Doomed title.

[Doomed (+5 to all attributes for each unlocked rune soaked in blood, -5 to all attributes each day the blade goes thirsty).]

She didn’t have an exact countdown, but it was coming. Her body felt as though she woke in the middle of the night after drinking all day. Sun wrung dehydration. Her veins pumped dust. Her tongue swelled, searched for moisture in a paper lined mouth.

Slice open his throat! He is the enemy! Give us his blood! He is not worth our trust or our time or anything at all!

Anton grinned at her, his eyes flashed like pearls.

“I’m ready if you are.”

She released her grip on the blade. White knuckles, but no sweat on her palm. No moisture left for sweat. She nodded at Anton, and he activated his new technique.

Ghostly eyes floated out of his own. They rose like pale bubbles, nine of them, and rose through the small gaps in the makeshift shelter. His grin grew wider.

Did she think the boyish smile made him cuter?

No.

But it was nice to see something other than his fish-blooded poker face.

“I see them,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Bella gripped the sword and hacked through the wardrobe leaning over them. It fell away in two pieces. She stood tall and wild as heat billowed from the blade.

“Where are they?” she croaked.

Anton stood as his eyes floated about the room. He stepped up behind Bella and placed his hand on her elbow.

“Three steps forward,” he murmured.

Bella noticed the tall, thin man in the mirror giggling soundlessly as Anton led her toward him. The curled toes of his shoes wobbled ridiculously as the man pranced on the spot with malicious glee.

“Turn a half circle,” Anton said.

“I can see them in the mirror,” Bella hissed as she turned.

“That’s just their shadow.”

He adjusted her elbows as though spotting her at the gym.

“Like this, now slash.”

The blade swam through the air. Bella felt the slightest resistance, as though slicing through a falling feather. Blood splattered the mirror on the far wall. The glass reflected nothing as the blood ran down the glass and pooled on the floor.

But the gore remained on the inside of the mirror.

Bella checked her status. The blood of the reflection men counted toward her Doomed title. A knotted tension left her shoulders, and she grinned as the thin men scampered about the room.

“Let’s cut them to pieces,” she said.

###

Zoe woke to the pounding of drums. It echoed the beat in her forehead. She sat up. The sky above was dark. Oriz knelt beside her and held a clay jug of water to Zoe’s lips.

“Drink.”

After drinking, wiping her mouth, and looking about the wild and weed-strewn garden, Zoe blinked with understanding.

“We’re at the tavern.”

Oriz nodded.

“We didn’t have time to go to the metal walkers, but there’s metal in the still. It should be enough for when you level up.”

“You should have woken me.”

“Sleep is important, Zoe.”

Arguing now would achieve nothing, and so Zoe stood beside her master and stared at the tall building on the other side of the tangled garden. A path of loose flagstones raided from labyrinths wound its way to an open gateway. No door, for the entrance to the tavern remained forever open.

“Won’t incorporating the still cause problems?”

A small smile slipped across Oriz’s thin grey lips.

“Where we’re going, that won’t matter at all,” she stepped onto the path. “Come, it is time for us to leave this dimension.”

Zoe nodded and followed, but she felt no elation. She wanted to trust Trinch’s plan, but the march towards the tavern, the pounding beat in the air, the groans of unseen customers, the smell of fermenting grain…

Was it really time to go home?

Or did the universe have one more trick up its sleeve to make her life a living hell.