The warbling call of a leathery gull came through the bright portal loud and clear, as though Zoe were before an open window looking out onto the beach. The shoreline curved away in a sickle. Gool sat cross-legged on a smooth rock with a smile on his face as white and bright as the sand surrounding him. He wore baggy pants of sewn leaves but no shirt. The dark wooden skin of his chest shone like bronze in the flat light.

“Hello, again,” his voice rich and smooth and flush with health.

“Hello, Gool,” she said, wincing at the pain in her leg.

His smile fell at her expression.

“You’re in trouble,” he set his fishing rod aside. “Can I help?”

[Dungeon Collapse: Postponed]

[Stand by…]

“I think the trouble’s over.”

He nodded.

“Then you want to come fishing? I’ve built quite a large beach shack, it could fit all of you. Hello, all of you.”

Zoe grinned despite herself as she introduced Gool to Anton and Bella. No matter everything that was happening, it was good to see Gool again. Was that the influence of the Black Star system’s locket, or was the locket quantifying such friendship?

[Ding!]

[Tee hee hee]

[You two should have a play date!]

The Black Star’s answer was no answer at all, but then lockets glowed. The weight around Zoe’s neck grew heavy, full, like a ripening fruit. Gool adjusted his posture against the growing pressure around his neck.

“How about it?” he said.

“Fishing?”

“I’m combing purgatory for imprisoned survivors. The bastards transformed one into a fish, but I should catch him soon,” He grinned. “You could help me.”

Zoe made to brush off the offer, but she paused. She could do that. Travel back to Purgatory — to the Black Star system — and stay there. That boss fight had been harrowing, was it something she wanted to go through again?

And again?

But just as fast as the thought came, it vanished. She shook her head.

“I have to fight for my world.”

“I knew you’d say that.” He reached down into the pocket of his baggy fishskin pants and pulled out a parcel wrapped in jade that flowed like silk. “Here, don’t open this in the dungeon.”

With an underarm, he tossed it through the portal, and Zoe caught it with surprise. There was a surprising heft to the package though it was no larger than a ham sandwich. Her stomach rumbled despite the moment, when was the last time she ate?

“What is this?” she asked

“A gift from a friend. Good luck, Zoe. I’ll speak to you soon.”

The portal winked out.

[Ding!]

[Oh no! He’s gone, whatever will you…]

[I’m still here!]

[Yay!]

[Now we can play forever!]

Zoe grimaced at the shrill voice of the Black Star system. Bella gripped her shoulders and spoke, but the pounding in Zoe’s temple drowned out all sound. Her head split, as both Systems sounded in her mind.

[Tee hee hee!]

[Assessing Performance…]

[You’re going to be my favorite I can already tell!]

Time drooled as the Crimson Armada System hijacked her brain to crunch the numbers of her memory.

[Boss: Murdered]

[Mini-Boss A: Murdered]

[Mini-Boss B: Murdered]

[Mini-Boss C: Alive]

[Mubilashi Seed: Alive]

[Loot: Acquired]

[Rooms Cleared: 6 / 7]

[Dungeon Pillar: Destroyed]

[Quest Status: Resolved]

[Grade: B]

[Initiating Ending…]

“What does that mean?” Bella asked.

“I think we’re finally done,” Anton responded. “At least, I hope we’re done.”

Zoe looked around the room of rotting brains. The Mubilashi winked at her with a stark white eye the size of its face.

[You should have freed me when you had the chance, Zoe Chambers. I wish you luck, may you live to regret your choices]

Bella threw a fragment of bone at the suspended figure.

“Shut up!”

The fragment touched the nebula skin of the Mubilashi Seed and vanished.

“What is that thing talking about?” Bella asked with a shudder.

“I don’t know,” Zoe said. “I think —”

[It would have been nice to devour you cell by cell, alas…]

The Mubilashi Seed’s sigh passed through them like grains of static, and then the Crimson Armada spoke with a clarion of jubilation.

[Congratulations! You have cleared the Mirrorbell Dungeon!]

[Transitioning…]

And the world fell out from under them, like a trapdoor into a void between voids.

###

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Zoe lay back in the spa. Hot water ate away at her aches and pains. Flowers and oils floated on the top, steaming aromatically, and colored the water lily white like strained milk. The herbs, the essences, woven into the water moved through her body. An itch like a dull vibration — not painful, nothing was painful — moved through the shattered bones in her leg. She sank back, water rose her neck, her chin. It should have been scalding, near boiling as it was, but her Might-enhanced body, her Vitality-enhanced body, allowed her to enjoy the temperature.

Her ears dipped below the surface. A sound like pop rocks as the fractures in her bones clicked back together into a seamless whole. Only her face and breasts remained in the air, and with a deep breath, she submerged both.

Floating in a boiling womb, milk around her, and the taste of honey on her tongue. A flutter of moth wings across her heart as she spun. The spa extended out. Smooth terracotta tiled walls growing to give her as much room as she needed.

A space not restricted by space.

As though she floated — healed — inside a dream.

Which was not too far off…

She kicked to the surface, gasped as the steamy air touched cool upon her flushed cheeks, and leaned on the edge of the spa.

Zazzatha handed her a cut crystal glass of some amber alcohol that tasted like weak honeycomb bourbon. She swished the ice around and listened to the clinking with slight disbelief before drinking.

The little moan that escaped her lips was beyond her control.

Her friends were nearby, but she felt no need to disturb them.

Bella floated in her pool while a white-uniformed attendant — not Zazzatha — wiped down her runeblade with oils. Skein fluctuated around the sword as it crooned with pleasure.

On the other side of the room, Anton lay facedown on a massage table. He groaned as a heavy-set woman kneaded his back like an overworked baker.

“So,” she began her question as Zazzatha topped up her glass. “Why exactly were you trying to kill us?”

Zazzatha grimaced. His pained expression out of place on his soft, scholarly face. He sat back in his wooden chair and set the decanter on the table beside him.

“You see all this?” he gestured to the upper floor of the bathhouse, with its glass ceiling fogged by steam and the tall windows along the wall letting in fat slants of light. “And you hear the bustle of the town beyond?”

“I see, I hear. This was all underwater though?”

“From the perspective of the space and time we occupy, it will be underwater in the future,” he sighed. “This is what I fought for. To protect this bustling town, this decadence — I’ll admit it — but also this beauty, and this love of beauty! It was a beautiful town before they ruined it. Before… I ruined it, I suppose.”

“My master, Oriz, mentioned your story. You sounded like the villain.”

Again, that grimace, as though he were chewing a lemon.

“That’s all that’s left after the Crimson Armada turns you into a dungeon: stories. Words. Echoes. No town, no people, nothing — all of it wrapped up around a wound between dimensions like a bandaid, like a gag.” He sighed. “If I sound bitter, I am.”

“It’s been thousands of years, haven’t you come to terms with it?”

“We only get to experience this normality when adventurers clear the dungeon. Most fail,” he turned as a door swung open and an attendant pushed in a long, wheeled table. “Ah, lunch is served. This way?”

###

Zoe spread the dungeon fruit preserve on a cracker and took another bite. Sweet, and tangy, like how you imagine smoking a cigarette might be as a child. She took another bite.

She sat alone at the table, picking at the various preparations of dungeon fruit. There were pies, tarts, sliced fresh or grilled, and even a salsa with salty chips. Underneath a domed metal lid sat mirrordile steaks, sausages, and a boat of white gravy. There was no need for the food to replenish her Skein, she felt as though she breathed it, bathed in it, and dripped it onto the tiles.

It was all full, all around her.

She was a drop in a deep well.

Zazzatha approached the table with a rolled paper under one arm.

“I have your prize.”

Zoe eyed the paper. What was it? Some kind of magical scroll? A list? But she set those questions aside as she gestured at the opulent space of steam and sunlight and terracotta tiles.

“How long can we stay here?”

Zazzatha’s eyebrows rose up his slender grey forehead.

“I’m pleased you like my past. Most adventurers only stay to heal and receive their prize. They’re usually quite interested in returning to their homes and bragging of victory. When the people aren’t real,” he gestured wryly to himself and the other attendants. “The joy lacks charm, or so I have been told.”

Zoe snorted.

“My world was just integrated. I don’t even know if I have a home to return to, let alone how I would get there if it did.”

He nodded.

“Sounds like the Crimson Armada hasn’t changed. Do you know what year it is out there?”

“I have no idea what answer would satisfy that question.”

Water splashed onto the floor as Bella hauled herself from her spa. A sloppy grin hung from her face as she weaved her way between the pools sunken into the floor. She gripped a near-empty crystal decanter of fuschia wine.

“Did I hear someone say prize?” she sat in the chair opposite Zoe. “Hey, Anton, you want to see the prize?”

“Later,” Anton said into the cushion of the massage table.

At some point, while Zoe was eating, the masseuse lost her shirt. She ground her elbow deep into Anton’s calves and he moaned shamelessly.

“Just us girls, then,” Bella said with a wink.

“You’re drunk,” Zoe said.

“I know, right? It took long enough. You think they have bloody marys in here?”

“We don’t have everything,” Zazzatha said with a touch of melancholy. “Only what we had in our lives…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Zoe said awkwardly. “What is the prize?”

Zazzatha cleared part of the table so he could unroll the scroll. The material was thick, more like leather than paper, and when fully unrolled it was almost six feet long. Zoe stood to get a better view.

She gasped.

“Is this what I think it is?”

Zazzatha smiled, a complicated expression torn between pride and shame.

“This is my life’s work and the reason for my sorry existence. This is my crime against the system: the blueprints for the Mirror Bell.”

###

Anton’s silver eyes floated up and down the blueprint as he committed every inch to memory. Equations, diagrams, lists of ingredients, notations of Skein. A complex work of math that none of them had seen before. While he scanned, Zoe and Bella pointed at various sections, comparing the notes to their own experiences handling Skein.

Zazzatha stood back, his hands clasped behind his back, waiting.

Finally, Anton’s eyes blinked out.

“I don’t understand half of this,” he shook his head. “It’s too complicated. I feel like I’m looking at the blueprints of the atomic bomb.”

“But you memorized it?” Zoe asked him.

“I could draw it blindfolded.”

“Good,” she sighed as she turned back to Zazzatha. “What’s the catch? If the system locked you up for creating this item… why can we have the designs?”

Zazzatha shrugged, the expression too human on the alien body.

“You defeated me and mine, and so I — by the authority enforced by the Crimson Armada — deem you worthy. They did not lock me up for my creation but for my actions. For my beliefs. Maybe, you will do better. That is the System’s goal, at least.”

Zoe looked down at the blueprint. Sickness rose in her guts as flashes of comprehension flitted through her brain. She couldn’t believe she had incorporated the fragments. She hadn’t known… but no wonder everyone who did looked at her as though she were mad.

She caught Bella’s look, the same as hers. With a guilty start, Zoe remembered she wasn’t the only one with this complicated essence stitched into her soul.

“I think I understand the idea of it,” Zoe said. “But what exactly does it do?”

Zazzatha smiled. All scientist. All glee. He snapped his fingers.

[Mirror Bell: An unholy item that strips control of the Crimson Armada System wherever it tolls]

Zoe’s eyes widened.

“It takes away the system?”

Zazzatha nodded as his grin sharpened, and became crueler, like the smirk of the old fighter who threw Zoe into the shaft of darkness.

“It’s how I took control of the town,” he said. “When someone loses the system, when they lose their Skein… even the highest level adventurer is only so much meat.”

Zoe stared back down at the blueprints. A cold and glorious plan unfolded behind her eyes. With a weapon like this, a lowly mortal could kill a god.