The creature inside Moth struggled to contain its excitement. Everyone found their own way into the mortal realm, but it had never heard of such a ready invitation. That a human would willingly graft themselves to a parasite was too good to be true. Its natural inclination toward joy combined with Moth’s shining naivety to create a feeling of bright construction in its chest. It wanted to roll on the floor of the dreamlike surgery, knocking over misty tables amidst fits of laughter, but it restrained itself to a single smile as it described the technique to Zoe.

Everything was perfect.

“I can teach the technique but I cannot perform it,” this was true, as a creature of the void, Crimson Armada techniques were anathema to its form. “Your dreams, your mind, constructed the scalpel you hold in your hand. To slice into your essence and remove the irradiated areas, you will need to empower the blade to affect essence. Your history as a surgeon, and your affinity with Metal, will make this task easier. This is what you are in here to do, but it is only the first step of the technique I will teach you.”

Zoe examined the scalpel.

“It feels real already, but what is the technique?”

“Right now, you cannot cut, only part the essence like water. It will flow back into its original shape. This suffices to remove the splinters, but their taint will remain and affect healing. The grafting process will completely rid you of taint,” she paused to discreetly swallow a worm. “Your Metal essence can make the blade of dreams real, just as the blade of dreams can give your essence form and function. By combining the two in a cyclical feedback loop, you will cut and truly sever the spiritual flesh. This provides the opportunity for a new attachment.”

Zoe frowned.

“You keep saying ‘attached’, ‘grafting’, but a scalpel alone cannot do these things.”

The creature gestured with Moth’s hand at tables lining the back wall. They carried the ghostly visions of the tools Zoe required, or believed she required, for this technique was as much a manifestation of her knowledge as it was an activation of her essence. Once again, the creature thanked Oriz for sending Zoe into this state with so little knowledge of the outside world.

The untended lamb is a wonderful prize.

“Start with the scalpel,” the creature said with Moth’s tongue and teeth and lips. “From there, you can visualize the other tools, the operating table, and even the specific conditions once you progress the technique far enough. But for now, let your Metal essence flow into the scalpel, and let the scalpel slice through the essence.”

Zoe nodded. She held the scalpel at arm’s length and frowned with deep concentration. She looked so serious, the creature couldn’t stop a giggling worm from slipping between its lips. It chomped, but a piece fell out of its mask and onto the ethereal floor. It wriggled. A piece the size of a pinky finger’s tip. Fat and bruised purple.

Panic washed over the creature as it floated inside Moth’s dream flesh. It placed a foot over the worm piece and smeared it into the misty floor.

But Zoe was too busy concentrating to notice. Another, relieved, giggle slipped out. Zoe sighed and set the scalpel down on the table.

She stared into Moth’s eyes, squinting and tense with some burdensome knowledge of the flesh, before relaxing.

“You lied to me,” she said.

The creature tensed, ready to lunge for the scalpel. If Zoe wouldn’t cut it a saddle, then it would carve out a cockpit in her brain.

“What do you mean?” it said with Moth’s voice.

“You’re not Moth. She never spoke with such detail about essence, or techniques, she didn’t know anything about anything…”

Zoe’s voice choked off for a second, she looked away; the creature saw its chance to reach for the scalpel, but instinct kept it still.

“You’re right,” said the creature. “I’m not Moth, but I’m here to help.”

Zoe wiped her eyes.

“Are you my subconscious?”

The creature nodded. Sure, why not? It would be anything Zoe wanted as long as it got what it wanted.

“That’s right,” it said with Moth’s insipid voice. “I’m taking this form because it’s so emotionally charged, but I’m only teaching you what you already know. After all, you’re a surgeon.”

Zoe relaxed.

“You’re right,” she said. “Now, help me perfect the technique.”

The creature smiled.

“Of course.”

###

Zoe held back her revulsion as Moth’s voice filled her ears with instructions on stance, posture, breathing, and essence manipulation. It felt like listening to an encyclopedic audiobook, but the knowledge felt second nature. She pulled Metal into her flesh with ease, and, now that she realized the blade was only her idea of one, she found she could push the essence into her thoughts, and make the scalpel real.

The blade didn’t change its appearance much. Simple steel reflected a glint of directionless light. The weight — the gravity — changed. It felt solid in her hand, something she could hang from off the edge of a cliff, something rooted into the earth, into reality, something as real as — if not more so — than her.

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But it wasn’t ready. It wasn’t alive. Not yet.

Zoe smiled as she pooled her essence into the blade before, with an alteration of her breathing, she cycled her essence from her heart into the tip and back. The cycle quickened, and the blade quivered, and flickered, on the edge between real and more.

The name of the technique rose to her lips.

“[Mind’s Eye Incision].”

The metal pulsed once, stilled, and sharpened. It was the ideal scalpel, longer than normal, she felt the ridiculously keen blade as she waved it through the air. A blade designed to cut thoughts and essence but leave reality intact.

“Well done,” Moth’s voice came to her. “Now you can perform the surgery. I will be close by, ready for you to extract the grafting samples.”

Zoe stared at the creature puppeteering Moth. How could it talk so crudely, so simply, about cutting up bodies that looked exactly like Zoe's and mixing up the parts? Well, she supposed she understood the how, and even the why. What perplexed her was why it thought it would work against her.

She was grateful for the surgical mask, since it hid her disdain, her boiling fury, at the sight of what happened to Moth’s soul. To her sister’s soul.

It hadn’t been obvious straight away, and Zoe let her emotions distract her from the truth. She wanted it to be true. Hoped for a miracle. But when the creature started talking about techniques, she had grown suspicious. Something wasn’t right, and so she flexed a technique of her own.

[Our Hearts Toll as One]

The sphere of Skein had pulsed into Moth’s body and passed through the heart. Moth would not have resisted the technique. With grief, with rage, Zoe realized Some kind of parasite animated Moth’s ghost.

And her technique marked it as an enemy.

For the first time in a long time, she was grateful for the technique developed by mistake, and it seemed to have led her to another one. The scalpel felt realer than real, and the knowledge of its uses came with the name like an instruction manual.

“Thank you for teaching me,” she said.

“Of course,” said Moth, “But we must hurry before —”

A giant hand descended from the sky. Blunt fingers like tree trunks crashed down around the operating table. Knocking over tables and sending tools clattering across the floor.

“Your master doesn’t trust you,” the creature said. “She’s trying to pull you out before you can complete the surgery. You’ll die if you leave!”

###

Oriz gripped Zoe’s temples in her hands.

“She’s resisting me. I don’t know what’s going on in there.”

“You have to help her!”

Bella crowded Oriz, rocking the boat, as the sword pulsed with uncomfortable heat where it sat on the other end of the vessel.

“I’m trying,” Oriz said at the edge of her patience.

Dripping footfalls sounded down the tunnel. Anton returned. Had he seen the beast attached to the yacht? Oriz couldn’t spare him any thought as Zoe twitched under her fingers.

“Come on,” Oriz hissed. “Hurry and let me help you!”

###

Zoe nodded as she stepped aside from Oriz’s giant thumb, subconsciously moving her feet into the Grasping Vine as she worked closer to Moth’s body. Most of what the parasite said was probably true, but she felt light, uncaring. With the scalpel in her hand, it reminded her of the time she walked down the corridor toward Ben’s office. All she wanted at that moment was to slice his throat from ear to ear.

She extended her hand in a Grasping Vine strike, and the blade fit into the movement like a missing puzzle piece. She sliced through the nurse scrubs and into Moth’s chest. In a second, skin and muscle cleaved. She pressed against the bone, her monstrous strength channeled through the surgical tool until the blade sank through the ribs and hovered above the heart. Blood spilled and wafted away. Droplets became burgundy smoke and then nothing before they touched the floor. Moth’s body collapsed to its knees as it grabbed at Zoe’s hand. It hissed, and Zoe tore away the surgical mask.

Purple ichor stained Moth’s mouth. Fat worms poked their heads through holes in the rotting flesh surrounding her lips. She hissed again, and the worms echoed the hiss with their half-chewed throats.

Zoe ignored the clawing hands and reached into the incision in Moth’s chest. She focused on the technique, on the reality of essence, and conjured a silvery pair of forceps. She pinched the fibrous creature wrapped around Moth’s heart and pulled.

There was no resistance as she unearthed the hideous, gunk-dripping root system. It leaked motor oil and pus as it limply twitched. Oriz’s finger came down from the sky, and Zoe tossed the roots onto the ground. Oriz’s fingertip smushed it into blackened paste before pulling away as though stung and vanishing into the foggy sky. The ceiling remained torn, drifting, after the passage of the giant hand.

Silence filled the room, and Zoe dropped to her knees beside Moth’s corpse. Blood still flowed from the wound. Moth’s eyelids flickered. She was awake, not just a corpse, but a living puppet.

“You freed me.”

No. No. No. No. No!

Zoe placed her hands on the wound. She pushed it closed. Summoned staples with her technique and pressed them into Moth’s flesh. The wound closed, Moth’s essence pressed together like slices of bread. Together, but not healing.

“No, Moth, you’ll live this time. You’ll live…”

Moth squeezed her hand.

“The room is fading…”

Zoe looked about. The misty world of dreams, of thought, was ragged at the edges. Falling apart after Oriz’s intrusion.

“I won’t let you die, Moth.”

Moth only smiled.

Zoe knew what Moth wanted, but she refused. Through [Our Hearts Toll as One], she grasped Moth’s heart and kept the pulse steady. She poured Skein in as it dropped. Not this time.

She turned to the body on the table, her scalpel raised high, and a mania rose inside her. This was fine. She was not a monster. She was not Doctor Frankenstein. She was Dr. Zoe Chambers. This was fine.

She sliced into her body; the blade skimming around her knuckles as she gouged out a section of flesh the size of a strawberry. She felt the taint in the essence surrounding the splinter and she carved it free with precision. Blood pooled, but she had no time. She quickly sliced around the jugular, using care not to prick the artery, peeling the skin back with forceps, barely removing any flesh at all as she removed the splinter located there. More blood flowed, but she moved on and placed the blade over the heart.

The scalpel flickered as the essence flow within her staggered. All these incisions affected her ability to channel essence. The cons of operating on yourself. She gritted her teeth — mental and physical — and continued. The blade sliced into the flesh — an eerie echo of her earlier attack on the parasite.

Metal blade brushed against the card-sized splinter, and Zoe carved around it until she had a chunk of flesh larger than a smartphone. With quick fingers, she pulled it free and placed it on the operating table. A chunk of red translucence — both flesh and essence at the same time.

Staggering now, panting now, Zoe turned to Moth.

“The technique will work,” she extended her hand to help Moth off the ground. “I can graft you into my essence. Please, let me save us both.”