Life became obsolete under death. Pure darkness encased like an ebony tomb. Ton upon ton of dirt pressed through cracks in the coffin. Gasp, cold air hits the lungs and freezes flesh. Death came. Stink of rot, for she was rotting.
Zoe…
Was not.
In the darkness, she fought against herself. Wrestling. Tearing. Gouging. A maddened creature with two heads, two backs, a snake turned upon its tail, and the tail bit back.
She screamed — the taste of blood so thick she gagged and the scream bubbled — and fell to her knees onto ground hard as midwinter ice. Beyond her — she is not there how can she be? — the boat, the beast, the dungeon, still and silent.
Rue loomed above like a silver, sun-topped tower. His horizon-wide smile as cruel as a guillotine. Hand clenched around a beating heart and silver blood like a rain of knives into the dark ocean that is an empty mouth. Vertigo and despair. No point in living, no point in anything at all, Zoe crawled, swam, fell through endless black toward the knives.
She should end this sick charade of existence.
End it all for the love of —
The nightmare ceased as suddenly as it began.
Zoe blinked away tears. On her hands and knees, Mirrorbell fragment clasped tight, nausea rising, ebbing, swelling, as drool hung from her lips. The cabin’s decayed opulence and pulsating organs remained. Dim, small, fragile as all life. She choked on the normality of it all. Bella and Anton huddled against the floor, cowering, hands over their heads, and Zoe crawled over to them.
“It’s alright. We’re alright.”
The lies came from her lips as nothing more than the mumbling buzz of flies around a corpse. Nothing would ever be alright again. Another lie, for bright hope already cracked the dark shell. Despair crumbled, and clicked, as it collapsed. A sound like bones rattling…
Shadow in her peripheral vision. Something hard thumped down upon the back of her head. Her technique was still active, and [Self Reflects the World] repelled the attack she was too woozy to react to. There was a muted crash as something hit the fleshy wall behind her.
The skeleton stirred, but her Skein was low. Time to go. She stood, energy levels protesting but muscles more than capable of the task. Without effort, she helped Bella and Anton to their feet. Her friends, moaning, and mumbling, moved toward the stairs. Zoe was grateful for all the essence that boosted her Willpower — sometimes being as hard as metal had its benefits.
Behind her, the skeleton climbed to its feet. Grey robe hanging in tatters like a funeral shroud. It reached for her, clawed at the air, and grinned. Baleful fire sputtered in the empty eye sockets. She could feel the malicious puppeteer watching her through the flames, but she had no time to deal with this. The boat swayed once more, and the skeleton slipped as it came toward her. Zoe stomped down onto the skeleton’s shin as though she were stepping through to the other side. The impact cracked the bone, and the secondary impact repelled by her mirrored foot blasted into the fractures. Bone fragments spun out into the room and bounced off her skin.
Zoe grinned as the skeleton fell to one knee, but the fragments were already twitching back toward the whole.
Mirror fell from her skin as she canceled her technique to preserve Skein. She slapped the skull for good measure before turning and hustling after her friends.
“Thief…”
Zoe stopped at the second stair. She turned and gagged. A blackened, blistered tongue the size of a welcome mat hung from the cauterized wound Bella carved into the fleshy lump. The reddened, weeping eye glared at her accusingly.
She realized she had been wrong. The skeleton wasn’t Zazzatha — or wasn’t the only Zazzatha — the fleshy lump shared that foul dungeon boss’s identity. Its voice, burbling, sickened, held the same smug cadence.
“Thieves always coming and plundering… I am no nest of eggs… Thieves must die.”
The skeleton hurled itself toward Zoe, but she sidestepped, thrust out an elbow, and shattered the skull. The bones scattered and fell down the stairs. Their clattering echoed up and down the winding staircase, and Bella turned, and glanced, as she climbed.
Pale, wan, Bella leaned upon her emerald-tipped spear.
“You need help?” she asked Zoe.
Zoe shook her head as she matched stares with the eye in the lump.
“Keep going.”
Bella nodded and continued up. The boat rocked again as Oriz fought the beast in the world outside. The Zazzatha lump snickered at Zoe.
“Thieves… fools… steal my power and grow your own, I dare you. What fate do you think befalls those who grow beyond the bounds of the Crimson Armada? Soon enough you shall know my suffering in your own hellish dungeon.”
The spiteful words flicked across Zoe like cold ocean spray. She strode over the reassembling bones and grabbed the long blistered tongue.
“Enough.”
She yanked the tongue with all her might and it tore from the mouth with a wet and awful sound. A burbling screech escaped the mouth before the thick blood filled her throat like a gag. The cabin walls pulsed and quivered as the boat rocked harder than ever before. Zoe struggled to maintain her feet as blood splashed about her ankles.
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The eye glared, but only a hateful laugh escaped in bubbles from the waterfall of gore. Zoe turned and ran for the stairs as the blood rose and rose.
###
Up the stairs, she sprinted. One of Anton’s silver eyes floated in front of her to guide the way and stop her running into the tight walls in the darkness. Behind her, the bony skeleton clambered, the sound of its hard claws scraping against the fleshy stone.
There was no end to the tunnel. Her steps were meaningless. The trap had reactivated. She would be stuck, running forever as the skeleton pursued her, doomed to flee until she flagged, until the unkillable enemy rent her flesh from her bones and she joined it in macabre, ivory silence.
But then an arch of light at the end of the stairwell framed the twin silhouettes of Anton and Bella, and she knew the horrible moment was over, she ran on, outpacing the skeleton and her fear. Stepped toward the light, reached…
And stopped.
She couldn’t move. No matter how hard she tried, her feet remained rooted to the steps. The skeleton clicked closer and behind it the lapping, burbling sound of rising blood. Zoe grabbed the walls and tried to drag herself forward, but her fingers curled into fists, and refused to grab anything.
She felt herself shrinking, falling down a long well into the depths of her body as her scarred lips twitched, and spoke.
“You denied me once,” her hunger growled. “I demand essence. I demand power. You shall not deny me again.”
Blood gurgled behind her as it flowed up the stairs from the ever-bleeding wound of the savaged Zazzatha lump. She couldn’t turn as the skeleton clicked its way toward her, dripping, reaching, the feeling creeping upon her neck as it drew closer.
Was her hunger about to let her die?
“Zoe!” Bella cried out. “Move, girl!”
Zoe’s lips twisted, and she pivoted. Her hunger pulled her like a puppet as she slammed her forehead into the approaching skeleton. The crack of the collisions split the skull in twain. Pieces fell and clattered down the stairs until the rising blood swallowed them. The pool grew, dark, dark, red, and Zoe tasted it iron rich at the back of her throat like a scream held too long.
She felt small, alone, unable to move.
Bella grabbed her arm. Anton grabbed the other.
“We have to go!” Bella cried. “What are you doing?”
“It’s not me! I can’t control myself!” but the words didn’t come.
Zoe shoved them both back, her Might unstoppable, and she was glad her hunger spared them rather than dragging them down. Who was she to drag people under with her?
She railed against her hunger as it descended the steps and waded into the blood. The python charm around her arm activated and the Blood essence grew in her mind like a prismatic code. All was blood, and she understood all, but this was futile.
“We have no way of harnessing the blood,” she hissed. “We have no container.”
“Fool,” her hunger responded. “How is my host such a fool? You cannot make a container because you do not need a container.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You, sweet one, foolish one, you are the container.”
Zoe screamed inside her mind, railed with horror, as her fingers moved on their own to summon the metal scalpel. It dragged down her thigh from hip to knee, slicing apart the network of Skein beneath her skin, and then her finger dug into the flesh above her knee, nail poking bone, and she dragged back as though she were opening a zipper.
The wound burned beyond any edge of sanity. Even her hunger swayed, and fell to one knee, straight into the pool of blood. But the curse straightened her limbs and Zoe’s eyes widened as the scalpel became a needle and thread — glinting steel in the mouth-dark stairwell — and her hunger stitched blood essence into the flowing wound. Blood into blood. She became the container.
This foreign power boiled against her. Her heartbeat slammed in her chest, in her ears, not mortal flesh but an immortal hammer. Strike of iron on iron. Sparks. Her nostrils flared as her hunger worked through cramped fingers and blood loss, but not loss, as the blood flowed into her with each pulse, each pulse sucking down the rage-filled fluid ascending the stairs, and in the bubbles bursting she heard Zazzatha’s snickering and the sickness rose but she was already too far gone.
The hammer beat became a crescendo, the heat rose, and a blackness pressed in around her.
[I am displeased]
She knelt in the Smith’s forge as he stood, high, powerful, muscles like mountains and sparks raining like the end of all stars. Burning oblivion in the heart of his forge as his hammer swung a thousand times to strike creation. He glared behind his bandaged eyes.
[Was my work so foul in your eyes that you sought these other paths?]
Zoe found she could speak. Here, under the blind gaze of furious judgment, her hunger abandoned her.
“I didn’t… It wasn’t me,” her voice pathetic, drying as blood flowed from her leg onto the dusty platform of cosmic stone. Mortal blood, and not the essence now bound to her being. “It was my hunger. My curse.”
The Smith sniffed at the air.
[Techniques of the void. This is not the path I forged for you. The path we forged together. Do you think deviations come free? Do you think there is no penalty for grabbing more than your allotment? For debasing what is mine?]
He stomped toward her and raised his hammer above his head.
[I should take you back to the forge]
“Enough.”
Zoe started at the sweetness of the voice. The Smith halted. Hammer raised high, nostrils flaring, ears twitching, ground trembling with his apocalyptic rage as the darkness of the forge pressed in upon them all.
[You go too far, Lorrilla]
A delicate hand landed on her shoulder. She looked up and saw the most beautiful woman of her life. The goddess of love, of blood: Lorrilla.
“I am a Princess of the System, I claim her, as is my right. Do you refute the right granted by your brother?”
The Smith spun the hammer into Lorrilla’s face, but before it could strike, the forge tore itself apart like cobwebs before a hurricane.
[I respect your claim… for now…]
Zoe plummeted through shadow toward her body, but a gentle hand held her floating above the pool of blood. A palm as broad as a tennis court, and she gazed up into the beautiful eyes the color of hopeful desire.
She didn’t know what to say, but the words tumbled from her lips.
“Thank you, you saved me, but…”
“There are no buts, Zoe Chambers. I saved you, because you finally chose Blood! And you defied the Smith, just to show me your adoration!”
Lorrilla wiped away a tear, and Zoe remained silent.
“Truly,” continued Lorrilla with her angelic voice. “I am touched. Continue your quest with my blessing, little mortal. You shall find that Blood does not so easily run from problems. Know that I am watching, and my expectations are high.”
Lorrilla’s hand tilted, and Zoe slid into her body.
Home.
She gasped for air but tasted only blood. Coughing, gasping, kicking — leg burning with pain — she swam, flowed, out of the open archway and onto the wooden deck slick with gore. Bella and Anton were nowhere to be seen. Belly sick, body aching, Skein drained, she pulled herself over the edge of the rocking, listing boat, and hurled herself through the window of a passing house.
Ancient glass shattered around her body. She ignored the scratches as she hit the floor of a moldy, sodden attic. For a second there was quiet, and she breathed, as her blood flowed from a wound already stitching itself closed.
She closed her eyes. Dark. Heartbeat. Flutter of a moth’s wings against her soul, soothing, cool, and power, new, coiling, deep, and solid like the roots of a mountain ready to grow. Zoe smiled, with lips scarred, with lips she controlled, and swept her fingers against the dirty floorboards as though making an angel in snow. She knew the folly of thinking herself unstoppable, but, for the moment, she reveled in the thought.