The church was haunting without sound. Zoe’s footsteps toward the door stirred the dust, but there was not even the softest whisper of her feet sliding across the gritty stone. The wooden walls swallowed sound, as greedy as Zoe’s hunger, and her breathing, her heartbeat, her digestion, poured into the silence.
Following a childlike urge, she rapped her knuckles against the wood. The impact traveled up her arm, but she heard nothing. Grinning, she flushed her flesh with Metal and punched the wall. Her fist went straight through the ancient wood. Sawdust and splinters spilled out onto the floor, but there was no sound. She laughed in sheer delight at the magic of it all, but that too was silent.
Still smiling, she moved through the beams of sunlight leaking through the ceiling and found the door. Ancient hinges flaked rust as they opened, but there was no squeak. She stepped beyond the threshold, into the dusty graveyard of the dungeon, and the wind greeted her ears with a gentle song.
There was no sign of damage from the fight with the Puppeteer of Bones. All the graves, the trees, stood intact. Bella and Anton were absent, she stood alone, but she did not care at all. She walked away and the church creaked in the breeze as Sound returned to the structure.
For the first time in a long time, her body felt whole. In tune. Eleven levels worth of Sound essence filled her, and she could feel the balancing of her attributes. It was not much, not enough, especially since Sound increased her Willpower and her Might. In a way, she had changed nothing. The gap between her attributes was still there, but now her body moved with additional grace. She could feel the increase in her Dexterity and Insight. It wasn’t perfect, but she counted this as a step in the right direction.
The Mirror of the graves flashed in the sunlight. Thunder echoed in the blue sky. She frowned at that, gazing up, and saw a ripple beyond the blue, as though someone was making hasty changes behind a theatre’s drawn curtains.
It hurt her eyes to look, but she stared, trying to determine the machinations of the clockwork universe. When gears turn, there is a meaning, even if the only goal is to grind the gazer into mulch. The fabric of the blue sky bulged as thunder echoed, and an answering shimmer coursed under her feet. Zoe felt it now, the Sound in her body reacted in a sensitivity she never experienced before.
What did it mean to have a body full of Sound? 44 points of new Skein coursed with vibrating power inside her. Invisible sound, but no, not invisible because sound must travel through a medium. She saw sound in the world's movement.
And the world above moved, just as the dungeon moved, and in the grinding of its bones, she heard an explanation…
A rattling of arms.
The dungeon hated. What other explanation for such a place? The dungeon hated all intruders and sought to destroy them within its means. But if its means were not sufficient? It would adapt, as all living things adapt. And what could make the dungeon react in such a way?
Trinch and Oriz must be here. Their power upset the ecosystem of the dungeon. It was preparing to attack them.
Zoe wasn’t sure if she was relieved or upset to realize that the others had come with her from purgatory. She had mixed feelings about Oriz. Though she had lied, she had betrayed, the older woman had taught her, had guided her, and had not been completely dishonest.
Trinch, on the other hand, made her shudder with revulsion. She could hear the insects crawling through his grin. She didn’t want to see him again, but she dared not hope Trinch was gone.
How useless hope was when the mad gods of the system could read her mind.
With these sour thoughts, she walked through the mirrored gravestones toward the pink stone angel. She could feel the Skein threads in the air like cobwebs brushing her skin. What must it have been like for Anton to follow these threads when they were fresh from the airplane? It was strange how quickly he adapted to this new reality. She liked to think she adapted, but that wasn’t true. She was a fighter. One who clawed their way to the top.
Her greatest fear was that there would be no top. Who wants to claw forever? Who wants —
Zoe slapped her face with a metal hand.
She shook her head, suddenly sickened. Bloody tears marked the edge of her cheeks. Blowback from staring at the blue crawling sky. She hadn’t noticed the pain, the pressure, so obsessed was she with her interiority. But the smarting blow settled her mind. She growled, spat, grinned, and clenched her fist. Sound had boosted her Insight just a little, but she could feel its impact in her mind. Willpower was like an engine thrusting her in whichever direction she pointed. She had to be careful which direction she chose, and it seemed Sound sent her spiraling, thinking about herself and others, how they all intermingled, how everybody was thrumming and humming, each person an instrument in a universal harmony…
She slapped her other cheek. Hard. A tooth loosened, and her Vitality started securing it once more. She needed to increase her Vitality, but that would have to come later.
For now, she had a boss to dig up.
###
Her Metal hands made quick work of the Puppeteer's grave. It squirmed in the ground like a great leathery brain. A monster if ever she saw one, but this time around her Skein was further along. She not only felt its presence, she understood its words.
Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Betrayer. Die. Die. Abomination. Die. Die. I must scourge unholy from the crimson face of the heavens. Die. Die. Die.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Skeletons ripped themselves up from the surrounding graves. Their mirror-sheened bones flashed in the blue sun. Baleful green fire burned in their eyes. They grabbed ancient rusted weapons. Rusted scythes and crooked swords. Maces.
Like the maces that clapped Cassy’s skull and cursed her to undeath.
Zoe’s Metal fists clenched so fast sparks leaked out. She stared down at the pulsating mass of pink flesh.
“Keep summoning your bones,” she hissed. “None of it will save you.”
Mirrored skeletons charged her, and she screamed at them. Screamed at the world. Weeks of frustration boiled up from deep in her guts. The unfairness of the apocalypse. Months of rage. The unfairness of a relationship she didn’t even understand she was trapped inside. Years of spiraling darkness.
She never left the woods.
And the skeletons surrounded her. Bony hands raised weapons high and brought them down in executioner blows. Mirrored grins reflected her distorted, warbling, silent form as she screamed.
Their blows rained down and bounced off her like hail on a car.
Her fists crashed out, Metal against Mirror, and once more, Metal won. Her fists shattered skulls. Deflected weapons. She kicked out and sent skeletons flying to break against the mirrored headstones.
It was all pointless.
She knew this wasn’t the goal of the fight. The puppeteer would summon the monstrosity of bone if it thought it was in danger. Skeletons surrounded her, and Mirror flushed her skin. Her technique reflected their weapons and sent them sailing across the graveyard with bony hands still attached.
So pointless. This didn’t tire her. She had used no Skein besides the activation of [Self Reflects The World]. Hadn’t even needed to slip into the stances of the Grasping Vine. The technique was there, in the back of her head, but she didn’t need it for this. It didn’t even raise her heart rate enough to be proper venting.
Sickened, she walked over to the Puppeteer where it sat in its shallow grave.
“You were a monster,” she said. “You killed people I should have saved. But was that you? Do you remember?”
Bones raced across the graveyard toward the puppeteer.
Die. Die. Die. Die. Di--
Zoe’s stomped on the creature, and it popped with a wet blue fart. She stepped out of the grave, blue gunk up her leg, but with a flex of her technique, Mirror coated her and the blood slid away.
Bones clattered to the ground. Lay still, reflective, glittering in the sun. Cold energy flickered through her veins. She sighed and sighed again, but lungs are a bellows not meant to be empty. The rage, sadness, shame, and despair swirled around the hole in her heart.
She wanted to crouch beside the grave and cry. She wanted to run. She wanted to bury the Puppeteer and with it all memories of this place.
But instead, she rose, and she walked over to the trees of lilly-pillies. The pink berries were as sour as she remembered. She chewed mindlessly as she gathered dry sticks and branches into her arms. Enough for tinder, but not enough for a fire. She approached the church. Metal fists broke planks. The dungeon thundered, but she knew the changes, the dooming groaning, was not for this room. She would learn the reason for those sounds, she knew, but for now, she would light a fire.
The planks formed a pyramid; the tinder sat ready, and she snapped her metal fingers. Once, twice, and sparks flew out on the third strike. Smoke curled, and a flame grew. Heat billowed out, and she let it soak into her skin as she skewered chunks of the Puppeteer.
After the bounty of the green room, such a meal seemed grisly. In truth, she wasn’t even that hungry, but this was a victory.
The pink flesh cooked until it was a pale white streaked with red. She chomped down on chunk after chunk and told herself it tasted like lobster.
###
Night came and blew a cold wind against her fire between the gravestones. She kept the flame going by breaking chunks of mirrored headstones into a windbreak. There was no reason to wait in this room alone. The pathway to the next stage of the dungeon lay open. She didn’t fear any of the mirrordiles or cranetongues. She wasn’t even sure that she feared Zazzatha anymore.
But she sat, numb and warm as the wind blew against her. She waited for the others to return, and soon, after hours of darkness alone with her thoughts, her hunch was rewarded.
On the faintest edge of hearing, a sound she heard with Skein and not flesh, the pounding of hammers. There came a flash of something that wasn’t light. A smell like singed metal and burning flesh seeped from the space between the air. Reality cracked, and thunder spilled. For the briefest moment she saw the Smith in all his multiple glory. The fire of a thousand suns slaved to his forge.
And then she no longer sat alone.
Anton and Bella joined her beside the fire, images of perfection with their new bodies. The crackling flames lit them all, and for a long moment, nobody said anything. They were more than human now. Each now walked on the path toward embodying a metaphor. The first tentative steps were taken, and behind them, sinking into their footsteps, lay their past.
What world awaited them on the far side of the dungeon? What would the people be like? If this happened to them in just a week, a few weeks in Zoe’s case, then what of the world? In a year, could any of them look around and recognize what they had been? Who are we without a history we can trace to our current selves?
Her thoughts circled, and Zoe lifted a hand to slap her cheek and break the spiral.
But Bella caught her wrist. The blonde woman was not stronger, but there was a heaviness in her grip. Her fingers dragged on Zoe’s skin, a great weight like gravity, anchoring her in place, pulling her down…
Hard to spiral when you cannot move.
Zoe’s hand relaxed, and Bella let it fall with a soft smile. Words unneeded. What could they say that they hadn’t felt in each other’s pulses for that brief — that endless — moment?
Anton picked up a skewer and stuck it into a piece of puppeteer. His movements floated like a dancer on wires. Silvery eyes floated off from his own and bobbed above the graveyard.
“You know that saying about your old stomping ground?” he said to nobody as he cooked his meat.
“No,” Zoe said, feeling a grin rise. “What old saying?”
Anton bit into his meat, breathed out steam, and spoke as he chewed.
“This place seemed so much bigger back then.”
The dungeon lay ahead of them, and whatever mysterious changes it evoked, but, for now, Zoe laughed with her friends.