Zoe knew something was wrong when the coin stopped spinning. It halted, and Zoe’s momentum flung her away from the center. Her chain’s grip kept her from flying out into the fleshy room. It pulled her back and slammed her into the coral-crusted metal. She hung for a moment before the snapping of arteries and pipes caught her attention.

The coin fell forward, tearing the suspended heart free from its connections. Zoe released her chain and pressed her feet against the ancient metal. With a yell, she launched herself clear. The coin struck the wet ground with a deep, unpleasant squish. Zoe rolled across the soft floor, unhurt, and hurried back to the heart. The flesh no longer pumped. Its light faded and blackened, like the deep blue after sunset.

“Are you alright?” Bella called from the other side of the coin.

Anton’s eyes whizzed around the room.

“I’m not detecting anything in here with us, but I don’t like how quiet everything is.”

“A giant coin falling isn’t quiet,” Bella responded.

“No, but why did it fall?”

They argued and approached as Zoe crouched beside the heart. She gripped the heavy mass of flesh — even diminished it was the size of a legless horse — and turned it over. She squinted. With the light of the heart fading, the room was approaching pitch black.

“Anton?” She said. “Light, please.”

Anton’s eyes spun closer until they glowed in a tight orbit around the three of them. Something glinted — a metallic growth, a piece of shrapnel, the Mirrorbell fragment lodged in acid-burned muscle.

“So, that’s the final piece?” he said.

“What are you waiting for?” Bella hissed, bouncing on her feet with excitement. “Hurry and cut it out!”

“Get ready to cauterize the wound. I don’t want to risk the blood.”

Bella nodded, and Zoe lashed out with [Mind’s Eye Incision]. She planned on cutting the fragment there and then. It was time to leave this hellhole.

But something darted in front of her technique. There was a grating squawk and something soft struck the ground outside her field of vision.

“What was that?” Zoe asked.

Anton’s eyes orbited wider, and then his true eyes widened.

“We’re surrounded!”

A raven landed on the heart and cocked its head. The whole creature was formed of soot-filled blood. Its eyes were mirrored, and when it split its beak, a screech like glass on a blackboard shook the air. Zoe winced and lashed out with her chain.

The raven flapped away, but three more swooped down. Zoe cried out and directed her chain toward the Mirrorbell fragment.

But it was gone.

She blocked her eyes from the swooping blood ravens.

“Where’s the fragment?”

Anton’s eyes flashed around the room, and Zoe fought in the sudden darkness. Beaks stabbed at her skin, and she coated herself with [Self Reflects the World]. Force reflections pinged off her body as Bella backed up against her. Zoe adjusted her technique and stood back to back with the swordswoman. They stood so close she felt Bella’s shoulders bunch and release as the runeblade slashed through the raven-filled air.

“I found it!” Anton cried as sudden light entered the vast chamber of wet flesh.

The shaft of yellowed light illuminated Anton’s pointing finger. A raven clutched the Mirrorbell fragment between its black and gore-slickened claws. It flapped, awkward, heavy, steady toward the light.

“No!”

Zoe lashed out with her chain. It struck many birds from the air before it lost momentum, but it wasn’t fast enough to strike the raven carrying the fragment. Zoe’s eyes boiled over with red rage. The end was so close. She would not be denied, and so she sprinted after the bird.

###

The ravens were a pale imitation of Miserable Henry’s technique. Their blood was cool and congealed, tainted with soot and scabs, compared to the liquid crystal perfection of their originator.

Zoe’s mirrored skin was enough to deflect them, but it ate through her Skein. She charged down the halls like a bulldozer after the flying raven. The carpet squished and coiled under Zoe’s feet to try and trip her up. Her companions followed her, and the swarm followed them. As she ran down the hall, the wallpaper swelled and burst like ugly boils. When each bubble popped, a raven shook itself free of puslike matter before screeching and swooping for Zoe’s eyes.

Her chain and her mirrored skin were enough to stay free for now, but she couldn’t catch up to the bird that stole the fragment. It remained just out of reach…

Was it slowing down just enough to taunt her? To raise her hopes?

This whole dungeon felt wrong. This whole apocalypse felt wrong.

She knew about cutting away a piece to save the whole, but that was the logic of the healer. Everything that happened to her so far felt more like the twisting of the knife just to see what flowed. What goal could cruelty have? What purpose did hate without end serve?

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Zoe’s hunger growled something mindless, something grasping, and Zoe leaped over a long table in a collapsed dining room as her chain swung her off a chandelier. She could philosophize when she was free. For now, she needed to devour that glinting fragment.

The raven remained out of reach as the hallway straightened out, but Zoe was drawing close. Sucking down air. Sprinting with everything she had. Light bloomed ahead of her: the exit.

A large gaping wound in the architecture of meat. Double balcony doors ripped from their hinges. Paintings followed the chase with bulging, bloodshot eyes. The raven shot out into the bright blue sky beyond the hole, and Zoe leaped after, reaching, so close she felt the wind of its wingbeats on her outstretched fingers.

Her chain coiled out and latched onto the bird. She squeezed, and the bird squawked, its bloody body resisting the pressure like tough rubber. Zoe hauled it closer, eyes glowing with avarice, a scalpel of Metal forming between her outstretched fingers when a gigantic hand swept out of the water and battered her into the sky.

###

Anton screeched to a halt as the gigantic hand swept past the opening at the end of the hall. With a crunch of bone, Zoe vanished.

Ravens pelted past him, scratched him, pecked him. Even with his eyes scanning the hall it was hard to dodge them as they flew past and out into the open air. The empty air.

Zoe was gone…

Bella came hauling out of the corridor behind her. She grabbed a hold of him.

“What are you standing here for?”

She pulled him off his feet with the momentum of a falling anchor and hauled him toward the exit. The open doors of bright blue sky.

“No!”

He dragged against her, but he was not Zoe. He did not have the raw Might to counter Bella’s body path, so he sent a glowing eye into her face.

“Stop!”

She blinked and ducked as a raven swooped past her head.

“What?”

They stood on the edge of the hallway, frayed carpet and shattered floorboards extending like false tongues into the air. The fresh, muddy scent of lake water was overpoweringly fresh after the confines of the living mansion.

Bella glared at him, demanding an answer as her cursed sword fended off bloody birds. What did he do to end up with this woman as his constant companion in the apocalypse? Had he died on the plane? Was this hell?

Probably…

A grin twitched at his poker face, but he shut it down.

“Zoe got knocked away by the boss’s hand. If we go out there, it’ll hit us as well.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

He hissed with frustration.

“I was —”

Bella grinned.

“The quest didn’t end, so we know she’s alive. God himself couldn’t kill that woman.”

“Don’t tempt fate.”

“What do we do?”

His eyes flicked out of the opening, floating in the air, surveying the wrecked houses in the lake, scanning for —

A hand swept through his eye and dismissed the technique with a bark of static and a lance of pain through his mind. He coughed, tasted blood, and re-summoned his eye. More shot out into the lake but others went back down the halls.

The ravens were gone now, their purpose served.

“We can either find a new exit,” they both shared a look down the dark, quivering hallway and shuddered. “Or we figure out a way to stop the hand from hitting us.”

Bella nodded.

“I don’t want to go back in there.”

“Agreed.”

“Because even though it’s a trap to leave, it’s only more of a trap to go back inside.”

“Agreed.”

The sweeping boss’s hand shattered Anton’s eyes. Water sprayed them from its passing. Anton grunted with pain, but two eyes made it past the boss and soared high to survey the area. They spun, looking everywhere — he saw Oriz struggling to stand in the roofless attic, and he saw another form bloody and broken, forcing itself up out of the dusty rubble where the mansion once stood. Human? Bricks sloughed from a mirrored hide that flickered — black skin torn bloody — before mirror returned. Rubble bounced away, Zoe stood, wavering like a drunk forced uphill, bone snapped out at her wrist, her chest caved, eye and jaw shattered — his eye zoomed in as close as its range permitted.

She saw him, spat blood, and gave a thumbs up.

“Zoe’s alive,” Anton said

He kept looking for the fragment.

“I have an idea for how we can leave,” Bella said.

“What is it?”

“My body path will let me immobilize the arm, and anchor it to a spot, but we’ll need precision.”

He summoned the eyes in the mansion and let them float back out of his face as he sent them out into the lake to look for the fragment. Purpose drove him. It was all so easy when he had a purpose.

“Can you go now?”

He saw the lake; he saw Zoe limping through the trees toward the shore; he saw Oriz summon a grass blade that leaked her own blood; he saw Bella nod, and he saw himself standing at the center of it all like a plastic flower frozen in repose.

“Ready when you are, mate,” Bella said.

“Let’s go.”

She grabbed his arm, and they ran. The space beyond the hall, so bright, so true, coming closer. Closer. His heart filled his throat as death approached. They leaped. Weightless, as he should be, as the Sky within him demanded.

A titanic hand rose from the lake to swat them away.

###

Oriz leaned on her sword like a grandmother on her cane. Her vision was awash with rainbow as her eyes melted on a fundamental level. Whatever stabilization Zoe had done had been wasted. Who was she to receive such a favor from one she wronged?

A terrible master.

Just like her old master, the one whose name was devoured… Oriz always thought she would break the chain of masters who used, but had she?

Had she even tried?

The wall blocked her vision of the lake, of the boss, and so she swept her blade and sliced the bricks apart. Rubble slid away from the angle of the cut and she saw a bright rainbow sky, a choppy rainbow lake, and a great rainbow monster grinning as it swatted at two humans leaping from its side.

Her heart — already failing, flailing — skipped a beat.

One human, Bella, spun in the air. Her body pulsed, and a dark, amorphous mass shot from her heart. It struck the rising hand like molten lead and dragged it down into the water. The boss snarled and roared like twisted thunder. It thrashed and sent waves out that rose higher than the houses sticking above the lake.

It surged, standing for the first time, its mountainous weight balanced on two titanic legs as its clapping jaw brushed the sky, but it remained lopsided. One hand pinned in the water as the other flopped about.

The boss could not free itself, and Bella and Anton got themselves clear of its immediate vicinity.

Oriz smiled. A body path ability wouldn’t last long at Bella’s level. Only seconds would remain, so Oriz needed to be quick.

She took a deep breath, and stepped beyond the Grasping Vine, into the Suffocating stance, and poured everything she had into her blade.

[The Dead Feed the Grass]

The world blurred rainbow. She lost feeling in her fingers as the dungeon fed on her essence. A shame, that she couldn’t feel the technique, the joy it brought her, but she didn’t need to feel it to know how to move.

Oriz swung, and Oriz fell, but her technique raced forward and cut everything in its path.