With a single step, Trinch crossed the glade.
The armored woman crawled on all fours, distracted by the pressure around her throat. Weak despite the magical jewels draped across her body. Chains wrapped around Trinch’s body, binding him in a dark armor of his own. The chains moved with him, coated him, moved him — the metallic links serving as muscle fibers.
Trinch kicked her in the stomach.
His boot of chains crashed into her jewelry. Air cracked from the impact. Leaves shredded from the trees as the woman — Lorrilla — flew into the air. His chains shot up, looped around her, and dragged her back down. The crunch of her armor against his chain-wrapped knee stretched his grin from ear to ear.
Trinch spun, flinging her away into the trees. His chains outstretched like whiskers and searched for the other one. The one draped in shadows, she was crawling, where could she —
The ground fell out beneath him.
Darkness swallowed him, just like the shafts of darkness in purgatory. His heart rate spiked despite the comfort swathing of chains. The sense of futility returned. How many times had he leaped for the safety of this dimension? How many times had he tried to make his way back home?
Every time he leveled up. Every time he gained a new chain by sucking up to the Black Star system. None of it was enough to launch him up those wells of despair. And now, now…
He was home, but they wanted to kill him.
Why was the universe out to get him? Why was life so cruel?
The darkness leaked into his body. He scrunched up his eyes against the sting of hot tears. Why? Why? Why!
Why… did he feel like this? This wasn’t him… this wasn’t Trinch the Magnificent…
A sense of hollow smugness as, around him, the darkness smiled. Trinch snarled as he fell through the nowhere space.
It was all a dirty trick!
[Greasy Black Peel]
Skein flooded his skin. It puffed up, becoming spongy, until Skein oozed from his pores like crude oil. It swelled, darkening, until it split. From his forehead to his navel, his skin sloughed away, and with it, he discarded the grasp of the shadowy technique.
In an instant, he knelt in the glade under the sky of dark gold and glittering plum. His chains heaved and retracted from their flailing. Trees shattered, leaking sap of red and yellow in long bloody rivers, he stood and stepped out from the blackened skin puddled around his feet.
No sign of the women, no sense of them, no trace… but they were there as certainly as the promise of dawn. Hiding. Hiding like scum. His lungs were bellows, his heart a fierce hammer, stoke and pound, glow the forge of his rage.
These women relied on tricks, but they thought they could stomp him. Him? The Thief of Winter Joy? He would show them tricks!
[Charming as an Eel]
Skein flowed through his smile and out into the air. The glade twisted under his influence, under his magnanimity, as his Skein drew the attention of all living things. The bugs hiding in the bark, the scurrying animals hiding in the dirt, even the trees themselves turning toward him…
And then the two pairs of eyes of the women he fought… there!
His chains speared forth and punched through the thick bole of a tree. Struck flesh. The impact ran up his chains like a ripple of living pleasure. There was an intake of breath, and then sweet, hot blood poured forth. It ran down his chains. Dripping. Steaming.
“Had enough?” Trinch called out. “Surrender and I’ll show you my mercy.”
Laughter was their response. Loud and mocking. His technique shattered as the woman’s power soared. Pulsed, as though the world were a beating heart and she gripped it in her fist. The blood continued flowing down his chains, dripping onto the ground, faster, pooling in the glade, spreading and covering every inch of grass and dirt.
“You know,” said Lorrilla between her giggles. “I really needed to let off some steam!”
###
Zoe ignored the pain in her leg as the clock ticked down.
[Time until dungeon collapse: 59 seconds]
[58 seconds]
She sighed. The Mirrorbell fragments were heavy in her hands. Her hunger ached in her palms, itching to incorporate the precious — deadly — essence. Fragments like this first sent her down the path she remained shackled to. The path that — out of all the infinite paths — was now hers.
She breathed as the clock counted down inside her mind. Each second stripped away by the hideous whispers of the Mubilashi Seed suspended in the rotting brain flesh above her.
[44 seconds]
[43 seconds]
[42 seconds]
She gripped the fragments tight. Her friends would not make it in time. It was getting too close to the wire. She refused to let the countdown reach zero. Refused to let the Mubilashi Seed escape.
If it slipped free of its shackles, it would kill them all. She remembered that much from the Magnifying Glass. No matter how much she wished to forget — the screams, the silence — the teeth, the eyes, the devouring, watching darkness of the Mubilashi — the maw that witnesses and knows only joy in desecration…
[You can still free me…]
The smile returned as the creature sagged ever lower. Its shackles of pink and whorled flesh didn’t loosen, but its body drooped like warm licorice from the ceiling. She felt the offer like a warm gas creeping over her skin. It wanted freedom, and she could unlock the keys — the certainty of knowledge like the direction of gravity. But would it really give her a boon?
She remembered it calling itself an orphan’s soul. Was that too a lie? Or a fraction of a truth? She didn’t know what a Mubilashi was, she only knew of their danger. From what Bella said, the Gambler needed to release Mubilashi to activate the apocalypse-level weapon quest — the Maelstrom-Mubilashi set. Could she trust something so world-ending?
And what would the price of such power be? Because if there was one thing she had learned, it was the cost of her actions.
[Think of the power…]
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“I will not free you,” the pain of her shattered leg caused a waver in her otherwise determined words. “You can wait.”
[32 seconds]
[Not long now…]
[30 seconds]
[29 seconds]
The brain flesh surrounding Zoe sizzled and hissed. Pockmarks burst and hollowed out. Light flooded the gigantic cranium.
“Zoe!”
Bella stood on the shelf of bone where Oriz’s sword strike severed the skull. That same alien sword master swung over her shoulders. The runeblade pointed forth, and its caustic aura cut a path through dead gray matter. Silver orbs flashed into the space. Glinting.
“Anton’s almost here!” she said as she leaped down. “Hurry and incorporate the fragments.”
[25 seconds]
They made it faster than she expected. Hope surged. But, the portal would still open…
Bella landed beside her with a grin as a pale-faced Anton followed.
“If we go to the other dimension,” Bella panted lightly. “Then we go through together, yeah?”
Zoe met her eyes, met Anton’s silver gaze, and nodded.
She released her hunger.
[Level up! You are now level 28]
[Please select an element to incorporate:]
* Blood: Vitality +4
* Bone (Earth, Blood): Vitality +8
* [Fragment of the Mirrorbell (Sound, Metal, Faith): Dexterity -1, Might +7, Vitality +4, Willpower +7, Insight -1 (Lodestone Title applied)]
[18 seconds]
She selected the fragment of the Mirrorbell. Two fragments for the two levels gained by defeating the boss. The shards of metal unraveled in her hand. Threads of burning white and slender steel flowed toward her. The faith fell short, as her Body Path prevented her from incorporating it, but the Sound and Metal flowed into her. She shuddered as gunk oozed from her nostrils, her ears, her eyes. Essence forcing itself into her and forcing out impurities.
[Dungeon destabilized]
[Black Star Incursion: 135%]
Reality twisted and buckled and screamed. A gaping maw as the fabric of things stretched and gnashed. Toothless black jaws opened wide. A portal of darkness expanded out and surrounded the three humans. Besides the smell of decaying brains, there was no sign of the dungeon. Zoe shivered with the memory of passing between worlds, and then chains burst from the dark.
They clanged as they reached out. Grasping. Tentacles of ghostly metal. Anton and Bella flinched back, instinctively, but there was nowhere to go. Zoe’s breath caught in her throat.
She hadn’t known what a Black Star incursion would look like from this dimension. Faced with the might of that alien system, all she felt was fear.
Chains lashed toward her. Hands gripped hers. She squeezed back.
And her chain unraveled from her leg. She gasped as her broken bones shifted, but then her chain reached out and brushed against the incoming storm of metal. It coiled around another chain, and they embraced. For a heartbeat, everything stilled, and then her locket glowed.
[Ding!]
[Portal stabilized]
[Hello, Zoe. It’s so good to see you again. Really, really, really good! I missed you so much! Thanks for taking care of my chain for me!]
The voice invaded her mind like an overexcited child. Something groaned inside the structure of her brain as two systems pressed upon her with their combined weight. Blood replaced the gunk flowing from her nostrils and eyes. She wanted to scream, but she could not move.
[Your friend really missed you as well!]
The chains retreated, and the darkness slid away. Bright light flooded them from a featureless sky. The crashing sound of waves against a shore of sand and shells. A man sat on a rock dragged close to the shore. Cross-legged, his skin like dark wood under purgatory’s flat light, with a long line dangling from his fingers and leading to the iron waves.
Gool waved through the portal.
“Hello,” he said with a tone of mild surprise. “Are you coming back?”
###
Trinch ran through the trees — literally — when he couldn’t find a path between the thick vegetation. His lungs heaved against broken ribs. He clutched at the bloody wound that wouldn’t stop gushing — the severed stump of his right arm.
Where did it all go wrong?
His attacks had been precise, swift, and merciless. He knew he was strong, and with the boost of the Black Star system, nobody at his level should be able to resist him. Could Crimson Armada mountains provide that much of a boost?
Could it be that all his time training in that other dimension was wasted?
When Lorrilla burst out from behind the tree, she took immediate control of the fight’s momentum. Before he could enter a defensive stance, she appeared in front of him. Her attacks moved through the air in impossible patterns. His Insight failed to keep track of the fluid punches, the blade-handed strikes, that crushed his ribs and sent his blood spiking out in geysers. He tried to move, but shadows sucked at his feet. He sank lower and Lorrilla grabbed his arm and heaved.
The tearing sound haunted him. Wet and visceral in his ear. The crunch of bone and gristle snapping. With his [Greasy Black Peel] he escaped the shadow woman’s trap, and a blast from [Cuddly as a Cactus] gave him the opening he needed.
To flee.
His swift strides brought him to the edge of the floating island. Hallucinogenic sky stretched out before him, and… there! Another island floated below. It was only a few thousand feet. He leaped down.
Wind whistled past him. Cold rush. A familiar feeling.
The island below was more forest, though it seemed bathed in wintery snow. A small metallic structure glinted amongst the trees near a town. More islands floated in the distance. Once he hit the island, he would leap away. He would escape these pursuing women.
This would not be the end of —
Lorrilla appeared in the air beside him. Falling at his pace as she drew back her hand. Trinch snarled, out of rage or fear he did not know. His chains lashed toward her eyes and —
Her open hand struck his cheek, and Trinch exploded.
###
The corpse of Trinch lay smeared across the ground. Chunks of green-furred flesh lay sizzling amidst the ruins of the trees in a wide circle of devastation and gore. Blood pooled, sizzled, and steamed, in the central crater. Organs, eyes, and bones, all stabbed into the ground. Split apart by the impact, but too high level to shatter when they hit the ground.
The shadow woman crouched amidst the devastation and poked at a piece of Trinch’s furry green ass.
“You really tore him up, Lorrilla. Wasn’t this excessive?”
The beautiful Lorrilla strode around, her helmet tucked under her arm.
“Do you know how much it will cost me to repair this armor?”
“Don’t wear it then.”
Lorrilla sniffed.
“You wouldn’t understand with the way you walk around naked.”
They continued talking, bickering, until the shadow woman brought up the important question.
“Do we leave the corpse here? Or eradicate the island?”
Lorrilla sighed.
“Eradicating the island is outside our codes… honestly do you read them at all? No, don’t answer. The Black Star chains are gone, and that’s the important part. We’ll leave the corpse behind,” she paused, scanning the world with her Mountains of Blood, Mind, and Searing Soul, and a smile crept across her full, luscious lips. “This is now the most powerful magical resource on the planet. Not for long, but for now.”
The shadow kicked away the butt and wiped her finger on a miraculously unsoiled leaf.
“Then let’s go back, I feel my buzz wearing off…”
Lorrilla sighed.
“You have a problem.”
But the shadow woman was gone, and a moment later, Lorrilla followed into the void. A streak of darkness, a streak of blood, racing up toward the twinkling red satellite in the sky.
Silence fell upon the grove, and amid the blood-spattered foliage, a silver-grey insect rubbed its antennae with joy. It was not a louse, not a termite, though it looked a little like both. A being of Skein made flesh. The last desperate grasp for life by Trinch…
[Termites In His Smile]
Others joined the first. More and more insects until a silver-grey horde trickled into the dark of the forest away from the shattered corpse.