Chapter 48: Chapter 48 - Fish Skin Suit

Zoe treaded water as her master and her new ally drank tea together. The sight tied a knot in her stomach. Oriz stood and blew the steam from her cup.

“Hello, Zoe,” she said. “You’ve grown.”

Zoe floated a moment before she swam toward the shore. If Oriz wanted to hurt her, there was nothing she could do. She might as well get dry.

It felt odd to emerge naked from the water. Her body was perfectly proportioned. Symmetrical. She had never been nude in front of Oriz or Princh, but her alien master did not react to her body.

She looked about. Where was Princh? She didn’t smell the foul black smoke. Was the green haired woman hiding?

“I’m making pants,” Gool held up a length of shimmering fabric. “There’s a cup of tea for you.”

He bent over the fabric. A needle blurred in his hands, threading Skein through the fish skins as he stitched them together. Zoe took up the cup of tea. Warm in her hands — flashes of the forge — and her heart slammed in her ears like a hammer on a cold anvil.

“Time is normalized!” she tossed out the tea. “It’s not slower here. We have no more time. I need to get to the tavern.”

Oriz placed a hand around her shoulder and led her away from the camp.

“Walk with me,” she said as they found a game trail leading up the sloping banks of the lake. “You’re worried about your companions in the dungeon?”

“Of course.”

“If they can’t survive the next day without you, then saving them is only prolonging their suffering,” she held up a hand. “I know it's cruel. Life is cruel, but we must wait a day. Now, do you want to tell me what happened with your clone?”

“Her name was Moth.”

Oriz nodded, and they kept walking. Wildflowers brushed against their shins.

“Your meeting with the Smith was a success? I can see you have a body path, but it is not one I recognize. A pursuit of harmony, yes?”

Oriz’s restrained question was at odds with the excitement in her eyes. Zoe couldn’t help but feel some of that same excitement. The horror of the Smith was fading as she listened to the birds and the bugs beside the water. A sense of normalcy with Oriz by her side.

Acting as though nothing had changed…

“There’s a lot you didn’t tell me,” Zoe said.

Oriz met her gaze.

“That’s true. Did the Smith answer your questions?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you do?

Zoe looked away, at the lake, and the bright blue beacon of the tavern.

“I followed the plan,” she said. “I selected a body path that would help stabilize the incursion.”

Oriz looked her up and down.

“That’s what it is,” she said to herself. “Not harmony, but the balance between stability and discord. What is it called?”

“[The Bell At The Center Of The World].”

Oriz sighed.

“So the Mirrorbell haunts you still?”

“It seems I am constantly reminded of my mistakes. Decisions made without knowledge, without consideration, haunt me. Much like the decision to trust you and Princh,” she bit back her rage and forced out a question. “Why did you consider Moth? Why would you even think of choosing someone besides me to cross the incursion?”

“That wasn’t me. That was Trinch, and he didn’t know —”

“You said nothing.”

Oriz pursed her lips.

“You are an angry lady, Zoe Chambers. I don’t know if you’re going to explode now or later, but I know you will. Should I risk my life and the lives of people I have known for centuries, on someone so volatile? Or should I trust them to a smiling clone with a childlike view of the world?”

Zoe stepped back with disgust.

“You would have manipulated Moth like that?”

“I will do anything to go home,” Oriz stepped close, her humorless face inches from Zoe’s scarred lips. “Won’t you?”

Zoe clenched her fists but said nothing, did nothing, as she matched Oriz’s sunflower gaze. Oriz snorted.

“If you wish to strike me, then strike. Scream if you wish to scream, but let it out. I’ll not abide rotting fruit in my basket.”

Zoe’s skin flushed silver as [Self Reflects The World] activated.

“Did you know her technique would become mine?”

“That’s not how it works,” Oriz shook her head. “The technique you possess is not the one Moth carried. There is an overlap in your mental, and emotional states, but since you were touched by the system’s lightning you know it is your own.”

“Was that Trinch’s plan, or yours?”

“Trinch’s. Are we done?”

Zoe sighed, as the technique deactivated.

“Am I so untrustworthy?”

“You were,” Oriz placed a hand on Zoe’s shoulder. “You fell out of a hole in the sky with the build of a spy. How should we have acted? But now you have returned… I know this is too late, but please allow the gesture.”

Oriz bowed to Zoe.

“Thank you.”

Zoe felt uncomfortable at the sudden humility. Oriz’s willpower flexed, and a system notification echoed inside her mind.

[Oriz of the Razor Grass wishes to join your party.]

A flutter passed across her heart. This was not just a gesture, but a supplication, and Zoe responded.

[Our Hearts Toll As One.]

A bubble of Skein grew from within Zoe's chest. It expanded out and brushed over Oriz, sank beneath her skin, and found a beating muscle nine-chambered and leaden grey. Zoe's technique wrapped around Oriz’s heart. She felt the steady beat as though it were inside her chest.

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Steady, calm, so low she felt her heartbeat falling to match.

Oriz looked up at her.

“Do you trust me now?”

Zoe wondered if she could even kill Oriz with her technique. Surely someone as powerful as Oriz would have safeguards. Perhaps her attributes would be strong enough, her Vitality high enough, to counter her technique without needing to spend any Skein. But was that the metric of trust she wanted to establish? How easy someone was to kill?

That path extended out before her, and she had the body to walk it, but it disgusted her.

And so she released her technique.

It was all a play. Even if she used her technique on Oriz, there was no way she could complete it in time. But she appreciated the gesture, and so told Oriz of her time in the swamp as they walked back toward the camp.

But Zoe took note: no locket appeared for Oriz.

###

Gool had Zoe stand on a tree stump while he fitted her fishskin trousers. They hung loose enough that she could move freely. The material felt surprisingly strong, and it smelled like clear running water.

“I was a tailor,” Gool explained. “Armies need uniforms made and mended. Hold still, we’ll start on the jacket.”

While he draped the jacket around Zoe’s shoulders, Oriz drank tea and questioned her about the Smith.

But whenever Zoe thought about what she saw, she choked up. Her mind scrambled away from recounting the memory of that dread eye — that sky of burned flesh sweeping from horizon to horizon — she almost puked once, but eventually recounted exactly what happened.

Oriz blew steam from a fresh cup of tea.

“I can’t believe you spoke to the Smith like that,” she shook her head. “I tried to tell you about the gravity of the moment. They’re gods, Zoe, or as close to gods as anything that can exist in this reality.”

“You said they can’t kill us.”

Oriz spat out her tea.

“No! I never said that!” She wiped tea from her lavender dress. “The Smith won’t strike you down, no matter your distasteful insolence. He lets all roam free from his forge, saints and scum alike. Nevertheless, what you did will certainly get you killed.”

“What did I do that was so bad?”

“You got the system’s attention.”

Silence crept over the camp. Gool tutted as he finished adjusting Zoe’s jacket.

“It seems things are the same as they were in my time,” he tucked his needle away somewhere. “You’re ready.”

Oriz stood.

“It’s time to go. Trinch is waiting.”

“What about Princh?”

“She is elsewhere. Preparing for our egress.”

Zoe glanced at Gool.

“We’re going back to the dungeon I fell through,” she said. “Do you want to come?”

Gool shook his head.

“I think I’ll stay here a while.”

Zoe wanted to push him to come, but it was only a selfish desire. She wanted someone she trusted by her side. Though, if she made it back to the dungeon, that would happen soon enough.

She hoped.

“Alright,” she said. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Gool.”

He clasped her hands.

“And you, Zoe Chambers. I’m sorry I tried to eat you when we first met.”

“So am I.”

They grinned in the fading light, and Oriz led Zoe away.

The master led, and the disciple followed, away from the lake’s edge into the trees, and they left their ally behind to start a fire and sit beneath the starless sky.

###

Oriz led her through the night. Game trails wound through the thick trees of the verdant hills. The air remained warm, but the bright blue beacon cast a wintery light upon the forested land.

The pace increased until they ran. Zoe followed Oriz, only ever catching her back as she moved past a tree, or leaped for a single brilliant moment across a fallen log.

Was the speed through the treacherous forest a necessity? Urgency? Or was it a test?

Her questions rattled in her chest as her heart beat slow and powerful. An exercise like this didn’t feel as superhuman as it would have a few weeks ago. But she felt the same indecision, the same uncertainty, at following someone she didn’t — couldn’t — trust.

But all the same, she followed through the trees, because she wanted to get home.

###

Chains carpeted the undergrowth. They clinked underfoot as Zoe and Oriz walked into a clearing atop a hill. Dark sky above and the beacon below them. At the center of the chains, Trinch lay beside a crackling fire. Bandages coated his torso and throat, but he smiled as they strode into the light of the camp.

“So, the shiny one didn’t make it?” he asked.

Zoe flexed [Self Reflects The World] and Trinch laughed as Mirror encased her skin. His applause boomed out through the trees.

“Well done! Very well done indeed! You carry her with you wherever you go. That is how it should be with all friends and foes,” he spat a louse from his smile. “And now it is time for you to carry us, your greatest friends of all. How shall you do it?”

Zoe glanced at Oriz.

“Um, the body path I chose is called [The Bell At The Center Of The World] it’s um…” she found herself suddenly tongue-tied, as though trying to describe air to a fish. She knew how her body worked, but how to put it into words. “I can stabilize the incursion, make it last long enough for us all to traverse the distance between this reality and our own.”

Trinch nodded.

“Oriz, show her what she’s working with.”

Oriz flexed her Willpower, and it rippled through the camp. The constant almost-whispering presence of the Black Star system faded.

“Access your status, Zoe,” Oriz said. “And share it with us.”

STATUS

Name: Zoe Chambers

Level: 13

Body: The Bell At The Center Of The World (Rank 1, Progress 3/10)

ATTRIBUTES

Might: 52 (+14)

Vitality: 20 (-8)

Dexterity: 11 (+2)

Willpower: 51 (+14)

Insight: 19 (+2)

Skein: 150/153

Titles: Intrepid, Lodestone, Fools Rush In (Incomplete), Quest Breaker, Glutton, True Believer

Techniques: Our Hearts Toll As One, The Self Reflects The World

Zoe’s eyes widened at the breadth of change. The loss of Faith and Blood had impacted her attributes, as well as the massive amount of Metal she incorporated before seeing the Smith.

Trinch nodded as he studied her status.

“Not bad for a backwater foundling. Now, show us your Body. Focus on that.”

Zoe focused with those strange mental muscles.

[The Bell At The Center Of The World.]

[Resonance is the source and the goal of all sound. Let the world become your bell and strike to stabilize, or destroy.]

[At Rank 1 you gain the ability to enter the center of reality once a day. Through a single strike, you can stabilize or destabilize one object. Skein is not burned, but your Skein total determines your strike’s impact on the object’s stability.]

Oriz sighed. It was a tired sound, centuries of patience rewarded with disappointment.

“There’s no way that she’ll be able to stabilize an incursion. Not with her Skein. She’d have to be dozens of levels higher.”

Chains slithered across the ground as Trinch sat up. The movement made him groan with pain. Blood spotted his bandages. What wounds did he suffer in that fight that Princh couldn’t heal?

She looked around.

“Where is Princh?” she asked.

“She is in position,” said Trinch. “Waiting for us, so that we might leave.”

“I don’t understand —”

Trinch raised a hand. It was larger than her face. Even without his monstrous aura, his presence instilled silence.

“Tell me, Oriz, if she gets her body to rank 2. What then?”

Oriz’s eyes widened.

“You’re thinking of Ansilfer’s theory of need-based growth?” She turned to Zoe. “Focus on your body, on the prompt that came up, and think about the future… no, like that, yes!”

[The Bell At The Center Of The World]

[Rank 2 upgrades]

* [1: Your impact on an object’s stability now equals twice your total Skein.]

* [2: Your cooldown is decreased to 12 hours.]

* [3: You can bring a party member with you to the center of the world.]

Trinch howled with pleasure. The shockwave of his laughter scattered the fire and cast the camp into a blue-tinted gloom.

“We just need to get her to level 20.”

“But Princh is already in position,” Oriz said. “We have less than a day.”

“It will be fine,” Trinch’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. “I have a plan.”