Chapter 260: Book 2 Chapter 167 - The Lazy Inward Spiral

The labyrinth’s interior was esoteric in its complexity. The walls were carved with geometric patterns and full of negative space showing glimpses of alien worlds. Water flowed like time as mountains dripped from boiling skies as Zoe passed along the hallways, racing over a floor draped in intricate shadows. The pattern of light dappled her, and to try and puzzle it out would be to stop and sit for an eternity, so she moved on, leaving the beauty behind in her pursuit of power.

She had done so much, and come so far, she needed to push through to the end. No matter what that end looked like. She owed it to her friends and herself.

Trinch followed behind her, the chains of the Black star sparking as they struck the stone of the tunnel’s construction. Whenever they approached a junction, Trinch called out a direction, the labyrinth woven into his Skein tugging him along like a pre-wound thread.

“Up.”

And they flew up a spiraling staircase that branched out like a world tree, but they ignored every potential stacked path until Trinch called again.

“Left.”

And down they darted along a hallway taller than most houses with the bleak corners shrouded in shadows as the light along the walls flitted through carvings of desperate men and women facing off against the carnage of minotaurs.

“Right.”

“Left.”

“Up.”

“Left.”

So it continued, the lazy spiral inward. Trinch’s clipped commands reminded Zoe of his manner in Purgatory, not in the delivery, but in the tense sense of control he seemed to crave. They flew, closer to something, through emptiness, and nothing, and she felt a tension brimming through her muscles, pulling them closer, as her Willpower flung her along like dust before an explosion.

Too much time in her mind, Moth fluttered in agreement, but she remembered the brush of the labyrinth’s essence against her soul. These hallways and tunnels and spires were not as empty as they pretended. She remembered the feeling of denizens crawling inside her like ants through her bones.

“Where are the denizens?” Zoe called out.

Trinch was silent long enough for Zoe to contemplate attacking, but at last, he spoke.

“I’ve been avoiding the things that don’t smell like people, but they’re following us. There’s a lot of them.”

“Them?”

“Minotaurs.”

So, they flew through a bubble of emptiness, while some things scrabbled around them. Zoe wasn’t entirely sure she believed him. How like Trinch it would be to lie. She wanted to, but couldn’t completely, believe that they were on the same side. No, better to think they were moving in the same direction. The Black Star’s definition of friendship would serve her for now, so long as she never forgot her own.

Moth fluttered quickly, insistently, but Zoe couldn’t make out the words. Mirror slipped away from her face and she breathed in the unfiltered dusts of the labyrinth. The sterile air smelled of ancient bone. This place around her was spun, but what source the web? Fate’s excretions rippled under her unobscured gaze as Moth continued to peel away until she pooled on her back and emerged as her own self, a cloned torso budding from Zoe’s own.

“Zoe?” Moth leaned down and whispered into Zoe’s ear. “Are you really going to burn it all down?”

Zoe was surprised by the question.

“Will you try to stop me?”

“Me?” Moth smiled against her ear, long Mirrored arms curling around Zoe’s neck as the two of them shot down a carved hallway. “No. I’m with you, Zoe. I’m for you… I am you. I’ve been you this whole time.”

Zoe flew in silence, she went left when Trinch called out, but it took her a moment to respond to Moth.

“You’re my reflection, aren’t you? And my reflection is --”

“You.”

“I’m going to burn it down. I don’t know how, but if the center of the labyrinth really holds a wish then I’m going to take it and use it. If Fate twists against me, like the gods always do, then I’ll find a way to pin him down. I’m sick of the universe losing because the gods want to play games.”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Ok,” Moth said as she melted back into armor. “I love you, Zoe.”

“I love you too,” Zoe said with a grin.

Mirror coated her as Trinch called out from behind.

“There’s something up ahead. They’ve encircled us, no avoiding them.”

“Minotaur?”

“That’s the best word to describe them.”

A five-way junction raced into view, but Zoe slowed. She hovered in the air before the conjoined tunnels. Trinch’s wings buzzed and he came to a stop on the ground beside her. Silence held sway for a breath or two before Zoe understood the sounds between the whispers. Something erratic, crawling like static across a screen. Things. That was how her brain described the sound to her mind.

Things were coming, and you shouldn’t see them, you shouldn’t face them, you should turn and run because anything -- even death -- would be better than giving more detail, more a name, more description to these incoming entities.

Zoe dropped to the ground. Time flowed through her fingertips as Faith held her head high.

Trinch grinned as he rolled his shoulders, the loud pop of a stubborn joint echoed before the sound was devoured by the silent slithering of the approaching… things.

“You feel it?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Fear?”

“They want us to think it’s fear,” Trinch said. “But it’s cheating. The game wouldn’t work if we didn’t play by their rules.”

The silence seethed closer. Zoe glanced over at Trinch,

“How are you still alive?” she asked him. “I saw the bugs, but… I thought you died, a few times now, actually.”

He shrugged.

“Death is a rule they impose. It’s like the levels. It’s like ascension.”

“You’re avoiding the question,” Zoe said. “And you can’t argue that there are magnitudes of power. Look at Rue and the Witch, we’re their playthings: your words.”

“Sure, there are magnitudes, but don’t you think it’s all so slippery? Look how powerful you are, and you’ve had the system for less than a year. If things can be fast tracked like that, then why have the tracks at all?”

“You’re saying it’s meaningless.”

“I’m saying it’s abitrary.”

“Same thing.”

“I disagree. Meaning comes from within, rules come from without. My life has more meaning than any cosmic order, and so I found a way to live beyond death. Look at your own techniques, and tell me they’re part of some plan.”

Bile rose in Zoe’s throat as she tried to think of an answer.

“What if Fate wanted us to be here, to be having this exact conversation with our exact histories?” Her eyes watered as a deep shudder raced through her body. “We can’t know if we have free will at all. Even your extra lives could simply be a tug of the strings by our masters.”

“I’ll have to answer that later,” Trinch said with his characteristic grin. “We have company.”

Zoe’s skin trembled as it struggled against pulling itself inside out. The nausea, the anguish, the pressure upon her chest. She looked around and gasped.

They surrounded her, the things, the minotaurs. Some part of her mind told her they were human once. People. Dreams, society, caring -- these echoes haunted the wide and twitching eyes that bored into her. There were a dozen but there might as well have been one. They linked to each other, flattened creatures smeared together, joined at hips and toes and shadows as they circled Zoe and Trinch like sharks. Lips peeled back to show flat teeth. Their slick bodies bubbled and bloomed as they rose toward the ceiling. Horns, for lack of a better word, sprouted from their heads. Grabbing, goring lances that burst from skull like rays of light.

The smell of them filled Zoe’s nostrils. Manure, hay, the human odor of a city sweating in the summer, urine, and crusted blood.

They wept as they reached for Zoe. Mooing. Groaning. Fingers clawed and sharper than their glinting teeth,

She didn’t give them the chance to get close.

Her fist struck out and rang a bell in reality between her and the minotaurs. The air cracked and bubbled out in a toll that scattered the monsters like dust in the wind. They reformed, drifting together even as the echoes of Zoe’s attack faded, but she was already moving. She fled down the hallway and Trinch followed. His wings buzzed as he raced to pull up to her side.

“You don’t want to fight them?”

“I don’t want to waste the time.”

They twisted left, right, up, spiraling deeper.

“You might not have much choice.”

Minotaurs flowed around the corner ahead of them like a sloshing of flesh. Bodies bled into each other, but the horns remained fixed points of clutching blades. Zoe’s whip of Mirrored chain extended at the same time as Trinch’s Black Star metal.

One chain tolled and scattered the dusty flesh of Fate’s prisoners, and the other chain sliced through. Screams rose like a stampede on fire. Zoe and Trinch lashed again and again at the flood. The pursuing minotaurs caught up to them and now they were encircled.

Countless minotaurs. One beast. Zoe’s eyes skipped over details. She didn’t want to look. Couldn’t make herself. Even with Insight powered by Faith, it was too much.

But just because she couldn’t see didn’t mean she couldn’t fight.

The creatures charged her. Choppy waves of flesh. Claws. Teeth. She struck back and splashed their gorey silhouettes upon the walls. Her blows rang like a mad church as her Faith rose in her. Brilliant light poured from her eyes and burned away the foul sloughing stench of the creatures.

The heat of her faith fed into her attacks. She marched forward, a chain lashing out before her like a machete through the jungle, and wisps of smoke evaporated as the creatures screamed.

“There’s more coming!” Trinch shouted from behind.

His back pressed against Zoe’s. She felt the shifting of the chains like vines. Had he lured the creatures here? Directed Zoe into a trap to tire her out before he attacked her from behind? She couldn’t be sure. Perhaps it was best to --

No.

Faith flashed even brighter and she felt it touching… something… beyond her usual reach. Not a thread, not a shadow, or a coin, but something deeper than them all. A flat surface beneath it all, and the light of her Faith showed something etched into the surface. It was over too fast for her to understand, but Trinch’s back pressed warm against her. Gore sprayed them, but Zoe felt stronger.

Safer.

“On my count,” she said. “Turn and attack with me.”

“We’ll be overwhelmed.”

“No, we won’t.”

Trinch scoffed but didn’t argue further.

“Ready, and, now!”

Trinch spun around and lashed at the minotaurs before them. His black chains whipped through them and severed heads and limbs. Blessedly, whatever glee the Black Star expressed, the system kept to itself. As Trinch lashed out and cleared a path, Zoe prepared [Empress in Time].