Chapter 238: Book 2 Chapter 145 - What is Left of Me?

A thousand Mubilashi slithered through the air. Their eyes and teeth glinted like swimming stars. The twisting, inky bodies formed a face glaring down at Zoe as she crouched above her friends.

[Mother doesn’t like you]

[We like you]

[Let’s play together]

[Play until you’re nothing but pretty little pieces]

Zoe’s body path swelled within her. She stood on the sand of a cube of reality. At once on every side of this fragment space and time. Ripples flowed from her and through the section of beach and sky to form the walls of the [Bell at the Center of the World]. She needed to destabilize the world to break through and access the Mountain portal. It was close, but something blocked her, something she couldn’t quite understand.

The blasts of burning time had drained her Skein — vast as her reserves seemed to be — and the battles through collapsing futures had drained her mind. Her attention wavered, and the waves forming the bell around her became volatile, collapsing, tipping back down toward her and her friends.

The Mubliashi crowded around the shrinking dome.

Silver lines sliced them apart, but more flowed into the gaps like smoke through the bars of a cage. Zoe wanted to scream with frustration. She needed to escape, but the Mountain remained out of reach.

Anton grabbed her arm. He looked up at her with his eyes squeezed shut as tears of gore ran down his cheeks.

“You got this, boss.”

And she believed him.

Like a key turning in a lock, the triangular portal opened up beneath her. The Mubilashi howled as Zoe and her friends fell through and into the vast field of flowers. She hurriedly closed the portal behind her, but Rue’s voice drifted through in the chink of reality.

[Hurry, Zoe Chambers, the Crimson Armada advances upon us, and after that… our duel]

Blue sky rushed in to seal over the hole between worlds. The deep silence of the high-altitude valley hit Zoe like a thunderclap. She fell to her knees amidst the wildflowers. They swayed in a subtle breeze and the honeyed scent filled her nostrils. Was she crying? Stress left her quivering, and her stomach gurgled. She crawled away from her friends and retched. Something thick slid from her guts to her throat and back down. She coughed and retched again with dramatic force. Her guts contracted and burned. The Witch’s juice slid up her throat painfully slow. She coudln’t breathe as it did, and when it touched her tongue she puked in full. Black dribbles fell between her teeth and over her lips. Barely any at all. The rest of the Witch’s brew settled in her stomach like a contented cat beside the fire. There was no getting it out short of cutting open her belly, and even then, she wasn’t sure if that would work.

A silver light bobbed beside her head.

“You alright, boss?”

She shook her head and sat back.

“I… I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“What did the Witch offer you?”

“Godhood.”

“I feel bad for interrupting then.”

“Don’t… it was a lie. It was all a lie.”

“You seem different, though.”

Zoe nodded but hesitated to call up her Status. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see what changes Rue and the Witch wrought upon her. How much of her was left? She certainly wouldn’t have walked inside some fleshy portal before the apocalypse, but now she was more than willing…

The memory of those pressing bodies, the heat, the feat, sent a shudder through her. Who were those people? Part of her never wanted to know.

Leaving her status for the moment — due to priorities and not just fear — she crawled over to her friends. Bella and Skidmark remained unconscious. Blood leaked around their eyes and ears from when they looked upon the Witch. The damage to Skidmark was greater, with burnlike scars extending in branching patterns away from her eyes. Their breathing was steady, and Zoe wasn’t sure if there was anything she could do to help. Anton, however, remained conscious.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

A fat bee floated from flower to flower. Anton’s silver lights raced about the valley. It stood atop a peninsula that ended in sky and sheer cliff. Clouds rolled about and hesitantly revealed the stairwell leading up the mountain that towered over the space.

Zoe breathed in the peace. Part of her mind continued screaming, but with every breath it quieted.

“Why are you awake?” she asked Anton. “My stats, and the Witch’s favor, let me look upon her. Speak to her. But the girls are… not well.”

“Flesh of the Eye, boss,” Anton said with a grin. “I knew it would be good for something.” A bandage covered his eyes, but his orbs floated about as he lay amidst the flowers. “This place seems like a daydream. I could almost fall asleep here forever.”

“It’s like the nightmare doesn’t exist.”

“But it does, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, and I need to face it.”

“Do you? Does it have to be you?”

“Are you really asking me that?”

Anton shrugged.

“Just speaking up for the sleeping, Aussie. You know she’d say something sentimental right now. Me? I’m all for it. Boss Zoe sitting on God’s throne sounds about right in my books,” he said with a grin. “Just don’t forget who helped you get there?”

Zoe grinned.

“I won’t forget. You’re the reason we got here. That element of Faith that I couldn’t find, but your faith in me helped open the portal.”

“You’ll make me blush.”

Zoe laughed. The sound rang out rich and proper over the flowers, but it faded as she gazed at the stairs leading up the mountain. She needed to start. Needed to take that first step.

But first, she needed to know what happened to her on the beach.

Name: Zoe Chambers

Level: 49

Body: The Bell At The Center Of The World (Rank 4, Progress 9/10), Flesh of the Rabid Hound, Witch’s Embryo

ATTRIBUTES

Might: 240

Vitality: 160

Dexterity: 174

Willpower: 239

Insight: 168

Skein: 1481 (+500)

Free Points: 0

Titles: Intrepid, Lodestone, Quest Breaker, Glutton, True Believer, The Magnifying Glass, Hellbreaker, Smith’s Blessing

Techniques: Our Hearts Toll As One, Empress In Time, Mind’s Eye Incision, Witch’s Transmutation

Accolades: Defy Fate, Out of World, Wielder of the Blade

Zoe’s eyes widened as a little shocked noise escaped her lips. These were significant changes, especially the change to her Skein.

Anton’s eyes swooped toward her.

“What is it?” he asked.

Zoe took a moment to explain the changes to her status.

Her Skein had grown by half again as much, but cuiriously there was no corresponding growth in stats. This must have something to do with the Witch’s Embryo change to her body. When she focused on that she got a vague prompt.

[Witch’s Embryo: The transmutation to godhood has begun inside your body]

She could feel it inside her stomach when she tapped at her Skein. The strange, thick ichor slowly leaked out into her body. Rather than being digested through her guts, it spread into her flesh like dye. Some shadowy substance lay beneath her Skein. It reminded her of a Mubilashi, but it had substance, where the Mubilashi didn’t. The growing web wrapped around both her corporeal and conceptual self. It thrummed with power and after a moment she realized…

“It’s a technique,” she said.

“What is?”

“[Witch’s Embryo] is a technique and a body alteration… I’m not sure what it will do.”

“Why not find out?”

Zoe looked around the field.

“Here?”

Anton nodded eagerly.

“Unless you want to start up the stairs while the others daydream beneath the flowers.”

“You can look after them.”

Anton snorted.

“I’m coming with you, boss. We established that.”

Zoe stared up at the clear blue sky. It brought such a sense of nostalgia, though she could make out no sun, moon, or stars.

“I don’t know if you can…”

“You said it yourself that my faith opened the portal. If I can’t climb the stairs then I can’t, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Show me your new technique.”

Zoe nodded and stood, but she gazed at the accolades on her status. They were aspects of the Heart Torn system and felt close to the Titles of the Crimson Armada. She supposed that made sense. The Black Star was alien in comparison, as was the Earth system since they both came from outside the Crimson Armada, but Rue grew to power within that old System so it only made sense that his felt similar.

But what was an accolade?

[Defy Fate: for acknowledgment of your efforts, you have gained moderate skill at defying fate]

[Out of World: for acknowledgment of your efforts, you have gained moderate skill in exploring other dimensions]

[Wielder of the Blade: for acknowledgment of your efforts, you have gained moderate skill with blades]

Zoe frowned. The accolades were vague. No numbers, no real definitions. She could understand what it meant by her efforts, since each accolade related to the hectic months of her life that occurred since the System came to earth, but she wondered what moderate skill meant in a situation like this.

[Mind’s Eye Incision]

A ghostly blade floated between her fingers. She gestured and it spun between them like a trick penny. WIth a smile, she made it grow and shrink. The air whined as the blade cut through it and she wondered if the mountain area was composed of Skein at all.

Dismissing the blade — and satisfied with some understanding of the accolades — she crouched and tapped the ground. Her fingers felt for resonance, and it was there, but the Skein felt off, as though it were merely worn by the ground and not the ground itself. It was almost as though —

“What’s wrong?” Anton said. “You thinking or are you just putting it off?”

“Thinking,” Zoe said with a glare. “But fine.”

She walked away from him, unsure if she needed the distance but better safe than sorry, and reached deep within herself. Usually, a new technique activated itself before she even realized she had one, at least that was how her other techniques came to be. Powers that birthed themselves with wails. However, this technique, this alteration to her body, seemed insidious in its quiet. She could feel it there, like a cobweb in the dark of her guts, but she pushed through her hesitation and activated her strange new power.