As soon as Zoe sliced through Bella’s wrist, her calm evaporated and the fear took hold. The surety of her plan died as essence coiled and split beneath her blade. So many things could go wrong. Bella’s essence oozed, water and shadow brimming, teasing, testing the air for their new container, and swimming in the black liquid depths, the razor-backed serpent of the runeblade.

What if she couldn’t make this work? What if she drained her friend's essence and left them weaker than before?

Yes, whispered her hunger, what if?

She moved, reflex and practice guiding her, to slice open Anton’s wrist and prepare him for the — experiment? Surgery? Vivisection? — as the Mirrorbell essence dissipated on the dusty floor.

Her hunger saw the translucent Sky essence floating within Anton’s wound — a mass of bouncing spores — as an opportunity. Why share amongst three, when three can become one? What better legacy to her friends than taking everything they had for herself? She was the strongest. They could live on through her. It was only right, only proper, that she take Anton’s silver-eyed technique, that she take control of the runeblade, she take the Mirrorbell fragments for herself.

She had the greatest appetite, why should she not feed the most?

The scalpel of Metal essence transfigured into tweezers. She plucked at the threads on the floor, and scooped them up like spaghetti, as the thoughts raged inside her mind. It was all possible. Take and take and take and…

Standing on a borderline. Light ahead, dark behind, and braying hounds out of sight. The world curves and the horizon hides all who would watch. Oriz would die soon. She could take the lives of Bella and Anton. Not just their lives. Take their everything.

With their power, she could leave the dungeon and nobody would ever know. There would be no accountability. She sat alone in the dark upon a throne of trust. Her heart beat, and she acted.

###

The sky above the Bloody Eye filled with the phosphorescent streaks of the polyps. A hundred bands of green starlight pumped toward the newly incorporated planet, and soon another hundred would blast out of the canyon, and another hundred to follow, and so on, until the Bloody Eye served its purpose and shed its final tear of civilization.

Lorrilla studied the streaking lights from her garden of wilted roses. Paper curtains divided the spiraling garden into various rooms, ponds, and chambers. She stood before an open pristine doorway with her formal robes pooled on the ground behind her as she slipped into her subtle armor of plated blood and beauty. Each interlocking piece was little larger than jewelry, but it takes many coins to form a horde and there were few armors more effective for someone of her build.

Esme lounged extravagantly on the silken bed in the chamber behind her, a smile spread wide across her featureless face as she tasted the air and played absently with the sheets twisted around her hips.

“Do you need any help with the incursion?”

Lorrilla smirked as she clicked a delicate gorget into place.

“Need?”

Esme’s smile widened. If her skin were not a light-swallowing shadow, her blush may have been visible.

“Want,” she stressed the syllable. “Do you want some help? Or even some company?”

“I’m still mad at you.”

“Still? Maybe you need to punish me some more…”

Lorrilla didn’t turn around to face Esme’s lewd display, but with her gifts in blood and mind, she didn’t need to see to know.

“I should lock you up —”

“Please.”

“— and throw away the key. Really, Esme, that’s enough.”

“I love when you use your serious voice.”

Lorrilla sighed, and with a snap of her fingers, the remaining pieces of armor flew up from the ground and settled upon her body. They shifted, like sand in an hourglass, before completing their intricate assembly. She appeared a gorgon of blown glass, all sunset hues, with a sleek and windswept figure.

“I’m leaving.”

Esme stood and let the sheets fall.

“Then let’s go.”

Lorrilla sighed.

“Esme, you can’t just do whatever you want and get away with it!”

“Then what’s the point of all this power?” Esme kissed Lorrilla’s glass-shielded cheek. “Race you!”

“Esme!”

But Esme was gone, melted into shadow, racing across the void, a smile waving between polyps, stretching from the ruby satellite to the world of turquoise green above. Lorrilla sighed, snapped her fingers, and followed.

###

Anton and Bella lay comatose on the dusty attic floor. Zoe checked and rechecked their stitches. They had only been out for a minute, but she was worrying. The water lapping against the sides of the half-sunken house grew insistent, an aquatic tapping as the boss slid from the island into the water.

“Don’t fret,” Oriz told Zoe. “You committed to the path, all you have to do is see it through.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Zoe nodded but said nothing as she waited. Another minute ticked past.

Bella flickered like an old tape in an older projector. She gasped, sitting up, as Anton flickered away, before returning solid. His eyes wide.

“I don’t think…” he mumbled, looking around. “He’s not happy.”

Bella shuddered.

“Zoe?” she grasped Zoe’s hand. “He’s pissed.”

Zoe squeezed Bella’s hand.

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, for now, we have to get out of this dungeon.”

Anton rubbed at his stitches, but Zoe smacked his knuckles.

“Don’t do that.”

“So they’re like regular stitches?”

“Just don’t play with them.”

“They’re itchy!”

Bella nodded.

“They are itchy.”

Zoe smiled. She checked their stitches again out of habit and paranoia as they quickly discussed their plan. Oriz interjected at points as they formed a quick strategy. A sense of levity grew, a tightness of anticipation in Zoe’s chest, but she grew grim as a wave thundered against the side of the roofless house.

“Does everyone know their part in the plan?”

Bella and Anton nodded.

“Then go, I’ll join you in a moment.”

They leaped from the window and over to the neighboring house. Pieces of shattered rooftops floated in the water, bobbing with the waves caused by the incoming dungeon boss. With their advanced speed and coordination, they hopped across the floating timbers like frogs crossing lily pads. They tracked a wide circle around the mansion-backed monster.

Oriz looked up from where she sat slumped against the wall.

“I wish I could do more,” Oriz’s voice was limp as waterlogged paper. “But I…”

“Rest,” Zoe said. “And forgive me.”

“Forgive you, for what?”

Zoe activated [Bell at the Center of the World]. Reality folded up around her, everything on display, Oriz stretched, and the intricate decay of her rainbow-bleeding body became as obvious as a textbook. She couldn’t put it into words, but from her position at the center of things, she understood, and so she reached out with her knuckles and tapped the core of Oriz’s being.

Her egocentric vision vanished, and Oriz gasped.

“What did you do?”

Zoe shook her body loose. It always felt wrong, returning from that space, like coming down from a high and entering the murk and mud of everyday reality.

“If I can stabilize an incursion, then why not stabilize your decay?”

Oriz flexed her fingers.

“I don’t feel any stronger…”

“You’re not stronger, you just have more time.”

“You shouldn’t have…”

Zoe smiled, and it felt good to stretch her scarred lips with joy instead of the hunger of a jackal.

“I did what I wanted to do. It’s better you’re alive. Now, wish me luck?”

Oriz smiled wistfully.

“No such thing as luck with the system I think.”

“Well, then…”

Zoe leaped. The attic floor thrummed from the power of her Might enhanced legs. She sailed up over the attic roof and surveyed the arena of the lake. The broken houses spread in circles around the lake, and the boss waded amongst them. It floated, as it had, like a turtle with its head reared above the waves made by its passing.

Yellow eyes burned in the armored head like bonfires. They swept about and locked onto Zoe as she hung at the zenith of her leap. She felt it then — the overwhelming power in the beast rearing up like a mountain behind it — ton upon ton pressed down upon her — screams and fists raining with hatred — the jaw opened so slowly — her muscles locked up — lightning pooled in the back of the throat like blue death dancing.

Zoe fell as the lightning raced toward her. She grabbed the building with her chain and swung herself down into the water. Lightning obliterated the air where she had hung. Burning stink of ozone. She struck the water, and dove, swimming until she could emerge behind the cover of another house.

One of their potential plans had been to kill the boss. Wear it down and deliver death by a thousand cuts. If it bled, it could die, right? But she knew now, after that moment of eye contact, there was no way that was possible. Even with all her strength, even with her friends, they were just mosquitoes facing off against a dragon. Oriz had shut down that plan before they could discuss it, but deep down Zoe had hoped it was a possibility.

Maybe… if she harnessed the blood inside her it would provide a connection to the Mountain of Hatred. Though Oriz suggested that was a worse idea than just trying to kill the monstrous creature with fists and sticks. Zoe wasn’t sure, but she also didn’t know how to incorporate the essence within her without leveling up.

She swam between the corpses of a family at their breakfast table, kicked up a rotted staircase, and emerged on a shattered second floor. The mossy bricks fell long ago and gave her handholds to climb up. She poked her head over the edge and scanned.

Anton’s silver eyes darted like pinpricks of light around the lake and the monster. Not getting too close, but monitoring things. One eye zipped toward her and hid behind the wall beside her head.

“Are you in position?” she asked.

It bobbed twice for yes. Anton had no problem incorporating the essence of the Mirrobell — his orbs were crisp as newly fallen snow — just as she had no problem incorporating the essence stolen by Moth in her dreams… she needed time to theorize and understand this new technique. Time she didn’t have.

“It looks like the boss is moving toward Oriz’s location, but it’s slowing down. Is Bella ready?”

A pause, and then two bobs.

“Ok, prepare for my signal.”

She focused on the bricks before her, hanging from one hand as her free fist readied. There was a beat, in her heart, in the universe, if she could remember the way the world felt when she activated her body path… almost, there… she could strike and sound out a gong that all would hear, that Bella would hear.

She considered using [Our Hearts Toll As One] for the signal but didn’t want to risk confusion in such a tense situation. She steadied her breathing and focused on the center of things.

The beast sloshed past, and Zoe ducked down. Its head passed the house. Jaw hanging ajar, drooling, flat teeth larger than her head, a jaw that could stretch to crush the house apart. It passed, and the shattered mirrors of the mansion on its back flashed with the reflected light of the lake. She could see through these mirrors into rooms, darkness, as though the walls did not meet flesh, but continued inside.

Did the mansion continue into the flesh of the beast like the stairwell in the yacht?

Zoe bit her lip. If that was the case then they could change their plan. By entering the mansion they could navigate toward the Mirrorbell fragment from the inside, rather than from the outside as was their current plan. Bella’s acid-tipped spear could eat through the boss’s flesh — provided it wasn’t in a digestive tract, which was why they shot down Anton’s Pinocchio-inspired plan — but it could be easier to do that from within.

“Hold,” she said. “Anton, send an eye into the mansion. I think we have a Plan B.”