Anton hopped from mirrordile to mirrordile. The movements only required a slight flex, there were so many corpses he didn’t need to leap far. The soft slap of shoes on mirrored scales echoed off the rocky walls. His silvery eyes waited up ahead, where the tunnel opened onto the flooded town. Two eyes floated far behind him, scanning for anyone sneaking up, but so far there was nothing.
It stung to be sent away. Maybe Oriz would have done nothing if he resisted her, but he knew he couldn’t resist her. She controlled her presence, her essence, but whenever she looked at him he felt it brush across his skin like grass through a cheap shirt. The memory flashed through him — the lightning strike memory — of how she decimated the mass of Zee flesh.
He leaped up and grabbed the rock, fingers finding holds on instinct, and he crawled along the tunnel until he reached the open mouth. With a quick core-powered movement, he flipped himself up over the lip until he sat on the little ledge overhanging the tunnel mouth. His eyes floated out to survey the town.
The buildings seemed much the same. Mirror-tiled rooftops coming to a slender point like soft serve ice cream. Each point stuck up in a static orbit around the wooded island. Maybe the buildings couldn’t change? He figured a dungeon was like a cross between a procedurally generated video game and a recurring dream — or nightmare. Things repeated, familiar, but different. The same object, but the shadow changed.
The last thought disturbed him, so he pulled the [Tome of Bloody Thunder] from where he had it tucked under his shirt. He had noticed that system-generated items had a way of concealing themselves once they were on your person. Bella never complained about having to carry the sword around, though it should have been an awkward adjustment. Was this another thing they were supposed to ignore?
He turned the brittle yellow pages with care. Scrawling burgundy ink shifted until it reached his eyes in an approximation of English. His Insight made up the difference, roping in meaning that might otherwise have eluded him. He found the place he had been reading from and continued.
“... not the skin or tangled muscle knotted around fragments of bone but the faith burning the engine driving the mortal arrow into the threaded thickening of mutual extermination. This faith lies at the bottom and the top of every mountain and every valley. Walk in the light or the shadow but know that there is one measure and manage the grim flickering fire of the fuel. Faith is the root and the sickness…”
He blinked as the nebulous words settled into his mind. It was confusing, but he was approaching the gist of things. A notification buzzed.
[Storming Absolution]
[Spell Comprehension: 17%]
The book rested in his lap as his eyes skimmed above the tranquil water. His silvery technique reached the edge of its range, around a hundred feet from him, and gazed at the town and island. It seemed much the same. Corpses floated beneath the surface, the same as before, and he refrained from staring beneath the water with his eyes in case he awoke them like Zoe did last time.
He tried to continue reading, but not even his manic curiosity was enough to distract him. Zoe lay… dying? Transmuting? He wasn’t sure, but he felt useless.
Though, not like he had been trying to be useful…
Before the Mirror essence could direct his thoughts into an inner spiral, he plucked at the Sky within him and scattered his thoughts wide. Attachment was a tool. Zoe and Bella were useful and kind enough, but he had to protect himself. What could he do to help besides scout ahead?
He leaped down onto a floating mirrordile. The corpses were further apart now, and he had to be careful when leaping, but he made his way toward a house, leaped onto the gutter, and climbed up the spire. It was effortless to balance upon the tip with one foot. He took a small joy in knowing he was more flexible, more coordinated, than any human in history — well, until a week ago. There must be other monsters like Zoe out there in the world, with opportunities that shaped them into high leveled beings, just like in the Gambler’s show. Some of them must have chosen Dexterity instead of Might…
The mirror-clad yacht slid into view. It must have been on the other side of the island. The slice of glass sails reflected the false sun in squares of brilliant glare. His eyes moved closer, but kept their distance, and surveyed the elegant craft as it cut its way through the water.
There was no hole.
Where before the yacht sailed upon a draining abyss — the same hole that Zoe fell through into the Blackstar dimension — now the yacht cruised through the tranquil water. A reflection sailed beside it, mirror upon water, and water reflected within mirror, an infinite chain of yachts and subtle waves weaving between the buildings.
This was a change, but Anton wasn’t sure what it meant. The ship sailed toward one of his eyes. He didn’t want to get too close, but he had to know more. It seemed Zazzatha wasn’t upon the deck and the yacht eerily moved without a crew like some kind of ghost ship.
The water ahead of the prow exploded. Jaws twisted up and snapped around his floating eye, canceling it instantly. Anton reeled, wobbling atop his perch as the feedback snarled his mind. He still had eight other eyes floating, and they saw what happened.
The yacht was not a yacht, but the fin of a great beast. Armored scales like car doors plated the bullet-shaped head. A bulging bloodshot eye the size of a motorbike twisted and scanned the buildings with cruel glee. Anton ducked behind the roof to hide. He canceled his technique. Held his breath as the lack of awareness rushed in on him, darkness like a shallow grave, and he held his essence close lest the beast sense him.
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With a great splashing of water that sent waves rocking around the submerged houses, the beast lowered its head. Anton continued holding his breath until his lungs ached. He took careful breaths, taking his time to refill his lungs, until he saw the yacht sail around a house and continue its circuitous loop.
He had to get back and warn the others about the boss. Had Oriz not noticed this? Or did she not consider it important? He prepared himself to leap back across the floating mirrordile corpses and return to the tunnel when something… didn’t catch his eye.
He frowned and summoned his technique once more. Nine silver eyes drifted about him, scanning outward with overlapping lines of sight, looking for whatever it was he didn’t see… Wrong way of thinking about it. His [Dandelion Gaze] didn’t see exactly but translated the fields of essence into vision for his brain. What they noticed — didn’t notice — was a small patch of essence somewhere amongst the houses.
It was as though reality was telling him it was normal. He frowned as his eyes circled toward where he sensed the abnormality. He wouldn’t let the world gaslight him.
Movement in a window caught the attention of one of his eyes, and the others zeroed in like a swarm of drones. There was a figure. Silhouette. Gone. He couldn’t reach the house himself without touching the water, but his eyes floated through the open window. When scouting like this, intruding, sneaking, his technique felt like a true extension of himself.
The room was an attic of mold and dust and decrepit waterlogged wood barely holding itself together. It reminded him of the corpse he pulled out of a sunken car one time. Nobody remembered the man’s name — some embezzling accountant for someone who didn’t matter but knew people who did — but his face had been intact in a clay floating on oil kind of way. The second they dumped the body out it sloshed like paint from a can. Ruined a pair of sneakers.
Sky scattered his spiraling thoughts. Curiosity was a double-edged blade, and he carefully aimed it out at the world, surveying the attic. There was a square hole in the floor, a trapdoor leading to a dark submerged hallway.
Blood swirled around the submerged attic floor. Little footprints — claw prints — marked the wood upon the walls and ceiling. An eye gazed up.
A grey-skinned gremlin hissed and fell. Sharp teeth sank into his silver orb and Anton shrieked with blind pain. His mouth filled with black gunk. Tears wept like oily maggots from his eyes. He felt his technique shudder, the magical organ inside his head recoiling as an outside force — not essence — intruded.
He canceled the technique, but not before he saw a pair of glowing eyes drift up from the submerged trapdoor. A knowing smile. Seductive in all its horror. Cassy, beckoning, like an underworld prostitute.
Lack of vision caved in his world as the technique ended and Anton gasped. Spat out the foul taste, not caring about touching the water, and ran.
He leaped from the house to mirrordile, and his foot splashed the water. The yacht veered toward him, and he kept going. Faster, sloppy, fear driving him back toward the tunnel with its shallow water and low roof. The yacht sped toward him, and the waves burst toward him as the great monster reared its abyssal head.
A roar like a nuclear bomb rocked his ears. He stumbled, fell, and splashed a dozen feet from the tunnel. Never much of a swimmer, he kicked and paddled toward the tunnel. If he could just get closer. He had to get back to the others. No thought but return. He kicked his way into the tunnel, kept going, and didn’t turn until he was sure the beast had no way of getting to him.
The monster floated in place a hundred feet from the tunnel entrance. It smiled with teeth taller than him. Sickness rose, the shame of prey. The beast never tried to catch him. His heart pounded, and the creature’s nostrils flared as it savored his terror.
Anton let himself pee in the water, a faltering stream into the river’s flow, as he turned and continued swimming. Soon, he would be able to think enough to climb out and hop from mirrordile to mirrordile, but for now, he just needed to move.
He had to get away from the beast.
He had to get back to his friends.
###
A new technique?
Zoe took the scalpel from Moth and felt the weight become real upon her palm. She flushed steel through her skin. The connection between flesh and tool was absolute, like another finger in her hand. She smiled. Was this a direction to take the metal she had hoarded so far? After all, the scalpel as a symbol of incorruptible strength was her initial reason for choosing metal on the plane so long ago.
She let her smile play across her scarred lips as she acknowledged Moth’s statement.
“You’ve already taught me one technique, what would you teach me now?”
Moth stepped closer — close enough Zoe smelt her breath leaking behind her mask like a trace of bitterness — and placed a warm hand upon Zoe’s chest. Palm over Zoe’s beating heart, fingers light upon her flesh.
“It is not a technique I know, not something I can do, not in this form. But I can guide you into it, and it will… no, I feel like I am imposing on you.”
Zoe pressed her hand over Moth’s.
“Please, I owe you so much. You can ask.”
“This technique is surgical. It would mean that instead of simply slicing the irradiated spot from your essence, you would carve gaps.”
Zoe frowned.
“No offense, but that sounds more like butchery than surgery.”
Moth nodded.
“Initially, yes, it is an amputation. But the surgery comes afterward when you restitch new essence into the holes.”
“New essence…” Zoe’s eyes widened as she understood.
Moth clapped her hands excitedly.
“Exactly! You’ll need a donor, and since I’m here… well, it will let us be together again.”
Zoe reeled. She never expected such an opportunity to come after that cold night in the cold stone tower, but now she had the chance, how could she refuse?