Chapter 194: Book 2 Chapter 101 - Black Clouds

Oily clouds spread over the cemetery and cast a shade like rotten violets. The light clung to bloodied snow and shattered stone. Zoe’s mirrored gauntlet glinted like burning amethyst as she shielded her eyes from faces peering down from the smoke overhead.

Fat lips formed, echoes of Cassy in their shape, but voluptuous. Fattened cheeks crinkled eyes as they bunched in mirth.

“How human, how pitifully physical,” voices overlapped. “How like a surgeon to think controlled violence can solve any problem. Did you think that destroying the horse would kill the rider?”

Laughter fell like thunder.

Zoe glared at the clouds. Whenever she killed the creatures on the plane, they collapsed as corpses should. She had expected Not-Cassy to do the same — was that so wrong? But clearly, this vile worm was more than those simple ravenous undead.

The clouds grew heavy. They would rain soon. No tears, nor blood, nor milk from such a heaving mass could be good…

Zoe had to stop it.

She snarled and flowed down her Body Path. Mirrored fingers flung points of discord. The tiny portals struck the smoke and sucked it down, but they collapsed too quickly. Without Time essence, she couldn’t increase the size of the portals. Small bullet holes appeared in the cloud, but the rippling, smirking folds quickly smoothed over any punctures.

The hounds in the graveyard circled as they melted and rejoined her flesh. Strange, to feel her body becoming more whole — more real. She threw another portal half-heartedly. If she understood her technique more, she could create a wormhole and suck the clouds away, but she didn’t know where she would even send them. Violet eyes glittered above as though they understood her plight.

And they probably did, though Zoe doubted any intelligence remained in that brewing storm. Malignance, definitely, but not intelligence. Though those eyes still watched…

The clouds spread and Zoe stretched her attention as the hound in the tunnels continued racing. It followed its nose through the black tunnel. Her thoughts weren’t synchronous, as though a smaller version of her raced inside the body. It seemed the hounds could be ridden or left autonomous, once more she wished there was some kind of tutorial, but then the System of Earth didn’t exist outside of her own body…

A light in the darkness. Silver. Floating. It circled her hound faster than she could follow.

“Zoe?” Anton asked. “Is that… it feels like you.”

Zoe made the dog bark twice. It felt like using a remote control on her own body, and if it was any other situation, she would have laughed as a shiver ran through her mind. Stretching a new power like this was always exciting, but the skies above grew dark and pregnant.

“Ok,” Anton said. “I think it’s you… Skidmark says to do the Barkly signal.”

Zoe made the hound tap the ground. It felt surreal to be doing so while staring up at the storm. The splitting of her attention made it hard to focus on either scene. She wondered if this was how Anton felt all the time. Maybe this was why he always seemed so distant.

The silver eye bobbed.

“Ok, we’re coming. Lead me to where you are and I’ll lead the others.”

Her hound turned and ran back the way it came. A sense of relief passed through her, despite the coming storm: her friends were on their way.

The winter wind licked the rumbling clouds. A chill passed over Zoe’s skin as her Mirrored cloak curled and rippled. She gazed up, trying to meet the shifting iridescent eyes of the storm.

“What do you want?” the wind lifted her words. “Why did you do any of this?”

The faces melted, protruded, buck teeth and fat lips, eyes widening, squinting. Zoe thought they would only mock, but lightning arced across the town — illuminating insectile horror — and thunder followed.

“You are a fulcrum for change,” the thunder rolled, no longer any vestige of Cassy, or Not-Cassy in the voice, this was something ancient, something hard. “You are a point of weakness. If you break, the fractures ripple out.”

The voice shook Zoe’s bones, but she stood upright. Her friends were coming. The storm could bluster and blow, but she did not stand alone. Moth gripped her tight. In the distance, the Black Star’s pillar was almost out of sight. That system had used her — she couldn’t know if it had planned this from the beginning or if it took advantage of an opportunity — she didn’t want to know — but the creature, the entity, above her left her perplexed…

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“I don’t understand why,” Zoe stressed the last word.

Tongues of lightning tasted the air. Thunder squeezed her skull.

“You never will.”

Enraged, Zoe flung a sparkling portal up into the clouds. The spiteful projectile bit at the swirling darkness, but barely affected the storm.

“I don’t accept that,” she said.

Lightning struck a headstone beside Zoe. Marble shattered as the thunder rippled the air.

“You have the parasite blade. Cut yourself from yourself, cast aside the systems you call flesh and soul, and give yourself up to the beyond. Maybe then you will understand. Maybe…”

The thunder rolled away, but the voice echoed through Zoe’s mind. An intrusive thought poked at her techniques. She struggled not to activate [Mind’s Eye Incision]. What did it even mean? Cut herself from herself?

Before she could ponder the question further a hound leaped to her side. It panted and circled her and melted away. She stood straighter as her flesh returned. Her friends followed out of the mausoleum. They gaped up at the clouds above.

Anton limped over to her, his leg wrapped in a grass-green bandage and his arm over Skidmark’s shoulder. Oriz followed them with a long cocoon on her back: Bella.

Zoe’s heart panged at the sight. So much pain and it was all her fault… Moth squeezed her hand.

No, she couldn’t dwell on the past.

“I don’t know how to stop the storm,” she said as her friends gathered around her.

“Anton?” Oriz asked. “Could your [Storming Absolution] help?”

Several of Anton’s eyes whizzed up toward the clouds. He studied the storm with a frown.

“I think —”

Lightning chained through his eyes. He winced and looked away as he wiped a teardrop of blood from the corner of his eye.

“[Storming Absolution] works on curses within the Crimson Armada system. This, whatever this is, is neither a curse nor of the system. My spell won’t do anything.”

Skidmark stepped forward. She had been frowning ever since Anton’s eyes burst above them. Silver fragments still rained down. She lifted her hands, lightning arcing between them, and flung a bolt of incandescent energy toward the storm.

The lightning fed into the clouds, and arced amongst them, lighting up the leering faces with glowing veins of shocking white. The violet eyes rolled back as the bulging lips of the blackened cloud grimaced.

Skidmark’s lightning sputtered out, and she dropped her hands to her side. She heaved for air.

Zoe rubbed her shoulder.

“What were you trying to do?”

“I… I was just angry.”

Zoe laughed.

“I understand, but…”

“Yeah, I don’t think we can do anything.”

Oriz looked at Zoe.

“What is your goal here?” she asked, her tone direct and serious.

“Huh?”

“Look,” Oriz pointed at the town. “The town is lost. Perhaps the polyp as well.”

“I have received no notification about the polyp,” Zoe said defensively.

“Neither have I,” said Anton.

“You should if you lose it,” Skidmark said. “That’s what happened when we took over a polyp in Scotland.”

Zoe looked toward the town.

“I suppose we should find the polyp then.”

“To what end, Zoe?” Oriz demanded. “You don’t care about this town. You don’t care about this island. Why take the settlement? Why not leave it to the bugs? They’ve already taken over.”

“There are people here. I need to save who I can.”

“Do you?” Oriz’s expression was unreadable. “Is that who you are?”

Her friends turned to her. Watched her. Scrutinised. She lay on an operating table, innards exposed to an atrium, what needed to be cut away from her so that everyone would look at her and see an intact, healthy human being? Was that even what she was anymore, after all the systems, that had dwelled inside her mind? She bared her teeth — a smile, a grimace, a challenge — and pointed toward the town.

“I will save the polyp because it’s what I said I would do. I will save what people I can. If the mantis get in my way, I will squash them like the bugs they are.”

“And what of the Mantis Queen?”

“She will die.”

“You’ll seek her out.”

Zoe considered the question as the icy wind blew snow through the air.

“I think she’ll find me.”

Oriz met her gaze, grass bending beneath the storm, but roots holding firm. She nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

“What of the storm?”

Anton raised a hand.

“As far as I can tell it’s just a normal storm, though the faces aren’t right… there’s no Skein, that’s what I mean,” he finished lamely. “I wish I was here to see you beat her.”

“It wasn’t as glorious as you might think,” Zoe said.

She could still taste that acrid smoke in her mouth.

It was time to go.

Anton’s eyes shot ahead of them as they made their way toward the town. Oriz and Zoe moved at the front of the group, ready and able to fight, while Skidmark helped Anton along.

A road encircled the graveyard, and beyond was a residential area of medium-density housing. Old brick tenements stacked on top of each other. What gardens once grew lay beneath feet of snow. There were signs that people had dug out paths, but the snowfall steadily covered these. Cold and empty windows looked into dark houses. The wind blew screams from deeper into the town. Zoe’s heart hardened at the sound.

She would make the bugs pay the only way she knew how.

Pain and violence.

They found a side street that led toward the town’s core, and as they hurried along the hardened snow, it rained. Fat black drops that left a sooty residue in the hand.

Skidmark looked at the dark pool she had cupped in her palm. The rain stank of smoke and burning meat.

“You know, I thought it would be worse?”

Puddles collected on the snow like diluted tar, but the water hissed and smoked where they touched the bricks of the narrow alley. The rain continued falling as it ate away at the surrounding buildings. A brick fell from the destabilized rooftops. Zoe and her friends hurried forward as the alley started collapsing.