Chapter 200: Book 2 Chapter 107 - Fire Child

Zoe fell into the pit, and her smile grew with her momentum. She was being reckless, but she didn’t care, and there was a power in that. It was hard to see the bottom, or if there was one. She had no way of casting light, and it reminded her of falling down the Angel’s well.

With any luck, her friends were below her again.

This time, she plummeted without chains to slow her, but she had her strength: more strength than she ever had before.

Her Mirrored fingers dug into the sides of the pit like a cat against a curtain. She carved grooves as her Might exerted itself against the slick, glassy rock. Fragments spat out. Slivers and shards that pinged off her Mirrored skin and ricocheted out into the darkness. She slowed, and when she heard the tinkling of rock striking the bottom, she kicked off the wall and let herself drop.

Even in the darkness, she landed with poise. Her knees soaked up the fall, and she stood. She missed Anton’s lights as she peered around the perfect shadow. Above her, a circle of black upon black, she saw the pit’s opening. Whatever faint light touched that room, none reached down here.

With a thought, a white hound slid out from her flesh. It padded around the pit and snuffled at the ground before it walked away. Zoe followed the sound of footsteps for a few dozen feet until she came to a wall. Feeling it out, she found it was a U-bend in a tunnel. The pit lay behind, and with it her access to the surface. If she needed to, she could jump and climb her way out. Her heartbeat sped up at the thought of plunging deeper beneath the island’s surface, but she continued. The tunnel twisted away and her white hound stood there, waiting, with a silvery light upon its pale fur. Dark eyes watched her with all the patience of a ghost.

They continued, and the silver light grew brighter, drifting toward her, and Zoe grew excited as a familiar silver eye floated toward her.

“Anton!” she called out.

“Good to see you, boss,” he replied as nonchalantly as ever. “I’m glad you survived the mantis.” The eye bobbed as it circled her. “You’re stronger.”

“They couldn’t hurt me if they tried,” she said with a smile. But her expression dipped as she remembered how a mantis wind blade almost severed Anton’s leg. “How are you? And the others?”

“We’re safe for now. Oriz isn’t your biggest fan at the moment.”

“I’m aware. Has Bella recovered?”

“Still in the cocoon.”

Zoe nodded. She had thoughts about that, but Anton didn’t need to hear them.

“What happened to you?”

“Best if you follow me.”

The silvery eye drifted away down the tunnel, and Zoe followed.

“So, the last thing I heard was you calling for help…” Had she been so caught up in the battle that she ignored her friends? She shuddered at the changes being wrought upon her mind by the system. How much of her remained? She was close to level 50. So did that mean she had lost almost half of herself to the Crimson Armada? “I’m sorry, I should have come sooner. The Witch delayed me, and I saw Sister Salt and…”

Anton’s eye remained silent as he led her through the tunnel. His silver light reflected off the glassy walls. At last, Anton spoke.

“You’re probably wondering who made these tunnels. Well, they’re the ones who found us. A few survivors of the mantis attack. The stories they shared… I’m not sure what we could have done if the Gambler hadn’t pulled us away. God, it’s so good he’s dead.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a child here who, well, I thought he was as strong as you, he might have been before you leveled up. Where you went Metal, he went Fire. Remember that building we saw burning when the plane crashed? That was him.”

Zoe ran a finger along the slagged walls.

“He made these?”

“Yeah, he’s the only reason there are any survivors at all. They fled when the Mantis Queen came. The Polyp helped them at first, but it’s almost dead.”

“What?”

“We’re here now,” Anton said. “You’ll see for yourself.”

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They turned one last bend in the tunnel and emerged in a massive cavern.

For a moment, a thought struck Zoe — how big was the floating island? She knew it was wide — after all; she had walked and run and fought all over the surface — but this was her first time exploring the depths.

The space before her seemed large enough to be an airport — at least a small one. Anton’s silver eyes floated and illuminated the stalactites drooping like wax from the ceiling. Zoe stood atop a ledge, and down below was a campsite of a half dozen tents and maybe three times as many people. They sat around a large fire, and even at the distance, Zoe could see the pain and weariness on their features.

“Did the child build this cave as well?” she asked as she followed Anton’s light down a long slope. Stairs were cut in at intervals as she made her way down.

“No, this was a part of the island. We believe it would have eventually either become a dungeon or something. But now? Looks like there won’t be an island soon enough.”

“You mean the rain?”

“In the distance, you can see where the cave extends beyond the border of the ice dome.”

“I almost expected the dome to be a sphere.”

“They didn’t find it while digging, but you see in the distance, here…” A light danced away at the edge of the cavern. “See this?”

Zoe squinted and made out the silvery trickle of black water.

“Oh… it’s melting through the island…”

“Yeah. Got any ideas, boss?”

“Get the hell off the island?”

“Yeah.”

The eye led her toward the fire, and she saw some people from the town — all strangers — and Anton. They sat on rocks around the fire and enjoyed the warmth. Anton nodded to her. Steam rose from his clothes.

“This is the one I was telling you about,” he told the survivors. Then to her. “The others are in the tents. Catching what rest they can.”

Zoe raised an eyebrow. Anton could carry out multiple conversations with his eyes now. That was new. It seemed they were all growing more powerful, too bad they might all die soon.

Though, that was hardly news.

Zoe walked up to the circle around the fire. Though there were many people, they all sat silent and sullen. None had any Skein presence, barely outshining the fire they sat around. They glanced up at her but quickly looked away when she returned their gazes.

These were weaklings, she realized. They fled the fight and survived, but only by luck. If she stayed she would have fought. She might have saved them, but how long would she have had to stay to defend them? How many times would she have had to risk her life to save theirs?

In abstract, such a lofty ambition was something she would agree to in a heartbeat, but faced with the reality of these people sitting around and waiting to die…

Zoe shook her head. She was a doctor. A surgeon. This wasn’t how she thought. This wasn’t who she was…

But was it who she was becoming? The thoughts didn’t feel alien. They didn’t feel wrong. They just felt new, and cold, so terribly cold.

She placed her hands out to absorb the heat. The warmth tickled her skin, but she gasped when she gazed into the flames. What she presumed were logs was a sleeping boy. He couldn’t have been over four years old, and the flames spilled from his body like a kerosene-soaked coal.

“This is the boy you were talking about?” she asked Anton.

He nodded.

“Nobody here knows his name. They’ve been calling him Charlie. He burned down a building when the apocalypse struck, and well…”

“All those lives,” Zoe muttered. “All those levels. The system shouldn’t work like that.”

“It shouldn’t, but it does.” Someone sniffed. A young man wearing a heavy raincoat with the hood over his head. “It makes you think it favors the strong, and that by working hard anyone can become strong, but that’s not the truth. The system favors monsters. If you aren’t a monster, you must become one, and if you won’t become one, then a monster eats you. Just like they ate… ate…” he placed his face in his hands and sobbed. “They ate every one!”

His voice twinged a memory.

“Fleshripper?” Zoe asked.

“Yeah.”

He wiped his nose on his sleeve. Fear reducing him to a child. He nodded and looked up at her.

“You came back too late,” he said. There was no accusation in his voice. No emotion at all. His eyes were as dead as the rock beneath their feet. “The mantis came and there was nothing we could do. I thought you would…”

“The Gambler took us,” Zoe said. “There was nothing we could do.”

“He already explained that,” Fleshripper said with a wave toward Anton. “Just like he explained that there’s a way out of here.”

Zoe whirled on Anton.

“Is that true?”

He raised a hand and wobbled it.

“Sort of, maybe, but yes.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Didn’t know how to explain it.”

“Try,” Zoe said in a deadpan voice.

“The mantis queen is after the polyp.”

“I know, we should stop her if we can…”

“We can’t. The polyp is already lost.”

“Oh,” Zoe said with a sag. How had it come to this? “So what can we do?”

“I received a quest to defend the town. The quest remained the same the whole time we were in hell, and even when we got back, but just now it updated. The last gasp of the polyp… That’s why I tried to reach you when you were fighting the Chroma Viscera.”

Fleshripper gaped at her.

“You fought one of those things?”

Anton laughed.

“She tore three apart as though they were tissue paper.”

Fleshripper shook his head.

“I don’t believe you.”

The other survivors echoed his disbelief. They stared at Zoe and Anton as though they were aliens. Zoe smiled back at them and drew a pulsing gem from her pocket. She held the Chroma Viscera core above her head. The gem reflected the firelight like laser-cut dawn.

“Is this proof enough?” she said quietly. “We’re going to figure out how to escape this mess.”

It felt like a waste of time. It felt like the right thing to do. Her thoughts swirled, and Moth brushed against her, but there was no guidance in that emotional touch. Only love, and support, and so Zoe gazed out at the survivors.

“You have lived this long, and we shall all live longer. Anton, how can we escape?”

“It’s a long shot —”

With a thunderous crash, a section of the rocky ceiling collapsed at the back of the cavern. Water gushed down through the hole.

“I don’t care about that,” Zoe said. “And I don’t care about long shots. I want to get out of here. I want to get all of us out of here.”

Anton smirked, before resuming his stoic poker face.

“Someone has been building a ship,” he said. “And I know where it is.”