The surgery dissipated like smoke from a falling cigarette. What had been insubstantial became simply light. Illusions stretched across space. Zoe gripped the crumbling reality with her Willpower. Urged it to remain. It continued to slip, to fade, like smoke through her fingertips.

“Please, Moth,” Zoe begged. “Let me do this.”

Moth, covered in her own blood, smiled weakly up at Zoe.

“Alright.”

Moth was light in Zoe’s arms, like lifting a child, and she placed her on the operating table. Readied the scalpel — blade slipping between real and dreams — and tried to steady her hand. Failed. Breathed. Steady.

“This will probably hurt,” Zoe said. “I don’t know enough yet to make it not hurt I…”

Moth gripped Zoe’s hand with weak, blood-slicked fingers. That same smile like all the world was candy.

“It already hurts,” her body softened, fading, dream becoming nothing. “Save my life, Zoe.”

Zoe locked down a sob as the pressure overtook her. This was what she wanted. This was what she trained to do.

The blade extended her will, and she sliced.

She undid the scalpels on Moth’s wound, ignoring the winces and moving with as much speed and grace as her limited Dexterity allowed. If she had these capabilities before the apocalypse she would have been the greatest surgeon in the world, but now she was aware of the brick wall her lowered attributes represented. With care, she re-opened the wound and removed Moth’s beating heart. A thing of perfect mirror that cracked and healed as it pulsed blood through her dreaming veins.

With one hand she held the heart, and with the other, she sliced down into the body of her essence. The cut flesh that once contained the card-sized splinter opened wider, it parted, and she placed Moth’s heart inside. This was not true surgery. This was like cutting pieces of a jigsaw and hoping they would fit.

[Mind’s Eye Incision]

She summoned a needle and thread that glinted like steel in the dream’s fading light. Moth’s body fell apart as Zoe sewed. Essence coiled, burgundy, mirror, becoming coiling wisps. The last thing to fade was Moth’s smile…

But her heart beat on.

Zoe hung her head with exhaustion. Sweat dripped from her body. Her breathing came ragged. The second pulse sped the flow of essence, and exacerbated the pain of the incisions. While the thread still held, she sewed up the remaining incisions upon her hand and neck.

The surgery faded as she finished and she floated in absolute light with the representation of her essence. Mutilated. A body with a heart stitched between its breasts. Stitched scars on the knuckles and throat. Pain radiated out, and Zoe felt a lump in her throat. Had any of that been useful? The heart lived, but…

A cool and soothing hand slipped into hers. She looked down, but there was nothing there, merely the ghost, a memory, like running her hand across a mirror in the morning. Moth’s mirrored heart pulsed, and the pain faded, her essence body loosened, related, and drifted toward Zoe. With each pulse, the heart sank into the chest, a fraction at a time, but her essence was not rejecting the transplant. Moth would live.

It had been a toss-up to cut out her heart — Zoe blocked thinking about the tactile sensation of reaching inside Moth’s chest — but if Moth’s true nature wasn’t hidden in her heart…? Well, Zoe didn’t want to think about the alternative.

She did what she did, and she would live with the consequences.

Her essence body drifted closer, arms outstretched, and Zoe embraced herself. Tears down her cheeks as the stress faded, as the dream faded, as she left the light, and once more entered the darkness of the real world.

###

Zoe gasped awake on the boat. Sweat coated her skin. She blinked and stared up at the familiar craggy rooftop of the underground. A grass tether kept the boat from bobbing further down the river. Oriz, Bella, and Anton all watched her, waiting for her to speak.

It was a familiar sight, though never had she delivered this news about herself.

“The operation was a success,” she said.

Oriz shook her head. Rainbow light spilled from her loose yellow hair.

“More than a success, I would say. The rhythm of your essence should be diminished in recovery, but you’re stronger than before. What happened? What have you done?”

Bella helped Zoe sit up.

“She’s been alright,” she said gesturing toward Oriz. “But don’t think you need to explain yourself to her. If you want,” she raised an eyebrow and nodded at Oriz threateningly.

Anton nodded.

It touched Zoe that they would fight for her, but she knew how quickly that fight would end. Though, an unwinnable fight didn’t have to be a futile one. She smiled as a new lightness fluttered through her veins as soft as a moth’s wings.

“Let me show you,” she raised her hand. “The metal in me has been so directionless, but now,” she flexed [Mind’s Eye Incision] and the scalpel appeared. “Now I know how to use it.”

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Oriz spat over the side of the boat and made a complex warding gesture across her chest.

“Where did you…? How?” She shook her head. “Never have I met anyone so dark-fated as you, Zoe. That is a parasitic technique, used by those who worship the creatures of the void.”

“A parasite taught it to me.”

Oriz’s eyes widened. Rainbow flared as she darted forward and pressed a blade of grass upon Zoe’s throat. Bella and Anton fell from the rocking boat with a splash.

“A parasite has all the memories of the host. All the knowledge, but they are not the host. Tell me, if you are Zoe Chambers, how do you feel about Trinch’s plan to save us from purgatory?”

Zoe’s eyes narrowed at the reminder.

“Trinch is a monster. If I get the chance, I’ll kill him.”

“But what about your freedom?”

Bella kicked over to the boat and swung her sword at Oriz, who turned it aside with a grass-covered palm.

“Ignore her, Zoe,” Bella said. “She’s crazy!”

Oriz ignored Bella.

“Princh was horrible to you,” Oriz said. “Are you glad she died?”

Zoe flushed, avoided Oriz’s eyes, then met them again as her anger rose.

“No.”

[Self Reflects the World]

Mirror coated her throat and reflected the force of the grass blade. The blade trembled, sparks flew, but it did not move until Oriz pulled her hand away.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she dismissed the blade. “You’re not a parasite. The emotions you displayed are your own, it’s just… The techniques you are developing are all… evil. This new one is a pathway to great power if you can avoid letting it corrupt you. It won’t help with your levels, but the ability to harness essence is…,” she sighed. “I don’t have time. Not here. Yes,” she nodded to herself. “I’m going to get us all out of this dungeon, and I’m going to continue being your mentor. I will teach you with complete honesty and transparency because I fear you are being manipulated.”

Zoe massaged her throat as she canceled her defensive technique. Did Oriz get to decide she could teach her? She wanted to argue, but she had too many questions. Such as…

“Manipulated by who?”

Oriz helped Bella and Anton into the boat.

“There’s a theory of a fourth member of the Crimson Armada. Not a being like them, but something beyond, something controlling them. Some call it fate and claim this theory is heretical superstition. There’s no actual proof, but when someone like you comes around…. So many things have gone wrong for you in such specific ways, that it seems the work of some dark fate conspiring to shape you into a specific tool,” Oriz gestured to the lake beyond the cave mouth with a rainbow bleeding finger. “We must get out of here. Beyond lies a new dungeon boss. Anton?”

He started as Oriz passed the conversation to him.

“It’s some kind of giant shark or dragon. Maybe it’s a mirrordile, if all the mirrordiles were smushed together. The yacht was its fin. I don’t know what level it was or even how we could hurt it at all.”

“You can’t,” Oriz said. “It’s a level 30 monster, but its power indicates that it has climbed a mountain. You can tell because of the way the essence spikes during its flow. Did you notice that?” Anton nodded, but Zoe didn’t understand what they were talking about. Oriz continued. “If I had to guess, I would say the Mountain of Rage. That gives it an effective level of 150.”

Zoe’s mind silenced at the statement. Water lapped upon the cave walls. Bella and Anton were equally stunned.

Oriz smiled.

“Don’t worry. You’re not supposed to fight a boss like that. You’re supposed to sneak onto the yacht and steal the Mirrorbell fragment. It’s probably in Zazzatha’s cabin.”

Anton shook his head.

“That thing detected me the moment I got close, how can we sneak into the cabin?”

“Don’t worry. It will be too busy dealing with me to worry about you three.”

###

The boat floated past mirrored houses. An eerie silence filled the space. No birds, no insects, nothing to make any noise. The island loomed in the center of the lake. Dark trees shrouded the dark manor at the top. The windows flashed in the blue sky’s directionless light. They felt like glass eyes crawling across Zoe’s skin. Was it the Mirror inside of her making her think like this?

Oriz gestured from the prow of the boat.

The yacht sailed into view and they got ready to leave the boat as Oriz stepped into a variant of the Grasping Vine. She held her palms together, eyes closed, before extending one hand back. From her hand, she drew a blade of grass longer than she was tall. It gleamed like polished emeralds.

Her other hand formed a fist. Motes of green light spilled from between her fingers. They floated about like spores, and when she opened her hand and blew, a cascade of glowing seeds flew out along the water. Where the seeds touched down they sprouted into a lush carpet of floating grass.

“The grass will hold your weight if you're quick,” Oriz whispered. “Get the fragment, use the signal, and then get away. Do you understand?”

They all nodded, and she smiled.

“It’s odd to be back here, with you three. Last time for me, I was the young one. Now,” she directed this last word to Bella. “This is how you handle a blade.”

The yacht sailed toward them, a wave pushing out ahead of it as it gained speed. The monster’s body spread like a dark shadow beneath the prow. A head reared up. Yellow eyes blazed with hate. Oriz moved.

One second she was on the prow, and then the boat bobbed upon the lake. She appeared before the creature’s snout as it prepared to roar. Her blade moved like grass under the wind. A true strike too fast to follow, but the red gash across the creature’s face marked the journey.

She kicked away from the snapping jaw and landed on a nearby rooftop. The monster glared at her as its blood dripped thick and oily into the water. For a moment, they watched each other, and then the monster roared.

Waves sloshed and windows shattered as the very air boiled with fury.

The monster charged toward Oriz, but she had already moved, leaping backward from house to house, leading the monster in a circle. Soon, the yacht would pass the carpet of grass.

Zoe leaped from the boat onto the grass and got her balance. It was awkward, but she could move on the floating platform. It extended a hundred feet, and she could see how the yacht would intersect. She sprinted forward. Anton and Bella followed.

Another grass blade slash sent blood flying into the air. Another roar followed. Zoe felt the reverberations throughout her body. If they weren’t pressed for time, she could see herself studying the monster. There were secrets in its roar that felt compatible with the path her body followed. Perhaps its essence could help her?

Her scarred lips pulled into a grin as she formed a reckless plan.