Chapter 251: Book 2 Chapter 158 - Pinned Specimens

Zoe considered Not-Cassy’s words as the ghoulish creature’s worms slipped further into shape like wriggling muscle fibers.

“Why would I do that?” Zoe asked. “Why would I fight Fate? Literally, I mean.”

Though the fact she had an Accolade from the Heart Torn system telling her to do that made her feel as though this was meant to happen. A feeling like being bound to railroads -- but was she the damsel in distress or the train? Both are equally incapable of freeing themselves but are deluded by motion into thinking it moves toward destiny rather than predestination.

The Not-Cassy shrugged, her face a glowing illusion of boredom, and if she saw Zoe’s inner turmoil, she didn’t display any recognition.

“Because I wish it, and because you wish it too.”

Anton kicked the creature’s leg. Worms scattered and it slumped over before it started to rebuild itself.

“Don’t tell the boss what she wishes,” he said.

“That’s alright, Anton,” Zoe said. “Why would I wish an end to Fate?”

“Vengeance. Don’t you want to get back at the bastard who made you dance through all your despair? Who sent you from one world to the next? Who sent a creature like me into your mind so you could fight and gain an unnatural power? I know you do. I know how you seethe thinking about some mastermind planning your actions and thoughts. Even your dreams. Rail, and flail, bash your fists bloody against the belly of the machine, but you will never escape the gears. Not, of course, unless you kill the one at the controls.”

She finished her speech with a wide smile full of dark worms.

“So, what do you say?”

That feeling, that old metal feeling, her Willpower barrelling down a track carved in her mind by rage and fear -- that old rut down which she slunk like mercury down the path of least resistance.

She ground her teeth.

“I want to say no,” she said. “I want to stomp you and burn you out of existence, out of not-existence, out of whatever it is you call life. But I’m curious. You insist that someone is behind the scenes pulling on my strings?”

“Pulling on your wires,” Not-Cassy said with a smirk that made Zoe’s blood boil.

Skidmark snorted.

“This is such obvious manipulation. Can this thing prove any of this? How do we know she isn’t just a distraction preventing us from getting back to Earth?”

Not-Cassy giggled.

“Earth? Why would you care about that?”

“It’s our home you scum,” Bella said. “The same home as the person whose body you stole, whose damned face you’re wearing right now.”

“What, this old thing?” Not-Cassy tapped at the smiling projection of light. “I’d change it, but why bother? It’s one of the last faces to come from that planet.”

Her words sent a chill through Zoe.

“What do you mean?”

“Earth is gone. Your planet is gone. Your home is --”

Bella swung her sword through Not-Cassy’s neck. Worms burst into steam as the neon face burst into iridescent splinters.

“Sorry,” Bella said as she set her sword down. “I just couldn't listen to her lies anymore.”

“What lies?” the worms chorused. “Follow us and you will see. Let me buy your favor with a display of tryst.”

The headless creature slunk away over toward the edge of the drifting dragon corpses. Worms seethed and wriggled as a new face glowed into being. Without looking back at them, Not-Cassy bunched into a mass of worms, before shooting off into the void. The creature sailed away toward a distant corpse that resembled a half-chewed tortoise whose head and limbs trailed behind it like curtains of stardust.

Anton sent one of his eyes after it but turned to face Zoe.

“What do you say, boss?”

Zoe looked between her friends and the white slit in the void. Could she feel it? The wire tugging at her heart and hands?

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I’m not a robot,” she muttered.

“What?”

She looked at her friends.

“Do my choices matter if they are presented to me? If someone hands me a choice that I would be stupid not to take, and then I take it, does that mean I have no free will? Would it be better for me to flail against their options out of a stubborn desire to forge my own path?”

Skidmark frowned as she floated up off the dragon’s corpse.

“I don’t quite understand… but this creature is obviously trying to deceive us. It’s a monster, you remember it in the tunnels, and that cloud of rain melting the island, why would it try to help?”

Bella stared at her sword.

“I get it,” she said. “The Gambler gave me this sword because he knew I would take it. Everything that happened to me since then has revolved around this blade as though it were the axis of my world… but if I didn’t take it, we’d all be dead.”

“I would have lived,” Anton said.

“Through the dungeon by yourself?”

Anton shrugged.

“Who can say?”

Zoe pointed at him.

“Exactly. Who can say? We look back and it all feels written in stone, but that is the past, the future is a murky liquid. I just feel that every choice I’ve made has been wrong. If Rue never goaded me into incorporating the Mirrorbell, would we be here right now?”

Skidmark floated upside down.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about right now. No offense, Zoe, but is this just a pity party?” A certain tension filled the air, but Skidmark didn’t back down. “Who cares if you are in control or not? You’re making the best decision you can at the time. I think that the illusion of free will is the same as the real thing.”

The words struck Zoe as wrong, but the earnestness stirred the Mountain of Faith inside her. She gazed at her friend and wondered if this wasn’t some kind of artificiality speaking through her. A sense of contrivance, of being here before, as though she were paper folded so intricately, a blueprint for surgery, a knife entering flesh to finish a job.

Surgery or murder…

Her thoughts scattered and she let them drift.

Faith wasn’t thought, it was action, and with that decision, she pushed off the dragon and leaped toward the tortoise.

###

Zoe’s friends followed, and one by one they sailed across the void and joined the wriggling Not-Cassy on the glittering tortoises shattered remains. Its shell buckled up like the arches of a forgotten cathedral. Not-Cassy slithered down the cracked bone that wound like a staircase into the hollow guts. Overhead, globules of worms hung like molten bats from the arches of shell, their glowing faces turning to watch Zoe and her friends. Whatever thoughts they had, if they had any at all, they kept to themselves.

The tortoise was the size of an ocean liner, but the winding staircase of crackled bone spiraled into depths that shouldn’t have been possible. The light faded as the slit in the void vanished from view. They floated like ghosts down the stairs until they reached a space where perhaps a heart the size of a mansion once beat, but now only their breathing stirred the dust in the cavern of dried leather. Anton’s eyes bloomed like silver lanterns to illuminate the space. In the center, mounted atop an ossified throne, a mass of worms lay crucified.

Spread out into a cross, and coated in a glass-like substance to stop its flesh from dispersing, the creature lay struggling. Its face flickered with light and Zoe felt a hideous revulsion as she gazed upon her visage wracked with pain.

“What is this?” she said as the light of Faith filled her eyes.

Not-Cassy gestured theatrically.

“This is the one that tried to steal your sleeping soul. She was so proud of her attempt, at her encounter with one of Fate’s chosen, even though she failed. It was on me as her elder to remind her that pain and punishment are what await failures. Are you pleased?”

Not-Cassy’s earnest face glowed in the dark as the figure bearing Zoe’s face writhed and screamed like a mute television.

“I’m not…” Zoe looked away from the creature that resembled her. It wasn’t her, nor Moth, but it tried to take those things away. She should have been mad, but she found a deep unease building instead. “I don’t want to look at this.”

“You want me to let it go?” Not-Cassy asked.

Zoe stared for a moment longer.

“No.”

“Very well, then I shall hide it from view but know it shall continue to feel pain for eternity or until I grow bored or find a new use for its worthless flesh, but until then,” Not-Cassy flourished and a cone of darkness hid Not-Zoe from view. “Now, for the second reason we came here. You don’t believe me about your world, so let me show you just what has happened.”

She led them deeper into the cavernous space. Organic tubing slithered along the floor and piled in long dead masses. These piles built up into walls, and in a circular room, they found another creature pinned down under glass. The mass of worms held no face until Not-Cassy slither-stomped over and placed her wriggling foot on its encased chest. She pressed down hard enough that the glass cracked and the screams of the worm-thing escaped. A vile acidic scent filled Zoe’s nostrils, as though the creature wept vinegar.

“I told you to wear a face when we have company!” Not-Cassy hissed.

The creature flailed, but the translucent wad of glass kept it stuck to the ground. Light flickered around its head and resolved into a face.

Zoe’s stomach turned.

“Jesus,” Bella said.

Anton’s eyes hovered closer as Skidmark looked away.

Joel’s face adorned the creature, but bloody, loose as a used condom, a fixture of regurgitated light struggling to maintain a shape for the mistress crushing it with her squirming heels.

A hellish effigy of pain.

“What. Is. This?” Zoe said.

“This is my little doggy,” Not-Cassy said. “He was a bad boy, and he failed his mommy, so I’m teaching him a lesson.”

“I don’t understand,” Anton said in a flat tone of voice. “Do those words actually mean what they mean to us?”

Her face glowed as she turned toward him.

“I can teach you what they mean.”

“No… no, thank you.”

“A shame. You would look so good with children hanging from your meat.”

“Why did you bring us here?” Zoe asked as the peak brushed beneath her skin. “If you just want to screw with us, then I will destroy this whole monstrous place and you with it.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Not-Cassy said with a titter from every pinprick mouth on her body. “But since you are so temporally insistent, let me show you why we’re here.”