Chapter 80: Chapter 80 - Stories in Blood

A mile away, the dungeon boss sat atop the island in the middle of the lake. Its long grey limbs crouched in the trees and the dirt. The mansion fused to its back by hateful essence. The scale was uncomfortable to the mind: flesh should not be so large, and yet there it was, undeniable in its truth.

The mockery of a turtle reared back its head — toothy maw large enough to swallow a car — and bellowed a challenge to all. The air reverberated like a drum. Zoe felt something in those echoes, an approximation of the truth of her body path, but more than anything she felt despair. This creature radiated danger like an active volcano, and it had just swallowed the last fragment of the Mirrorbell.

The other two fragments sat on the damp wooden floor of the attic. Glinting in puddles of lake water. What had seemed exceptional prizes minutes ago now shone like false tinsel as the sun beat through the open window. So close, and yet…

“What are we supposed to do now?” Zoe asked.

As one, she, Bella, and Anton turned to Oriz. The alien woman who had stood as a pillar of experience for the humans, a guiding beacon, and now a frail and rainbow-sickened waste of an adventurer. Zoe’s heart skipped a beat when she saw Oriz barely able to stand.

The grass blade that so effortlessly sliced through flesh now served as a walking stick. Rainbow leaked from her pores in fitful bursts. Her eyes were bloodshot, and dilated, as she gazed out the window at the monstrous beast atop the island.

“We have to…” her voice trailed away as she looked at Zoe. “You need to get the fragment. I can slice open the belly, but that will take everything I have left. I think… it will kill me.”

A cold sweat formed on Zoe’s brow as the others turned to her.

“Forget the slice,” Zoe said. “How long do you have before the dungeon devours you?”

“Maybe half an hour?” Oriz’s smile flickered. “But I can’t slice it anyway… You’ll need to kill it to absorb the fragments. But, I’m not sure something like that will give you three levels.”

Anton sighed.

“So we’re doomed?”

“There has to be another way,” Bella said. “What other win conditions could there be?”

“What if Zoe died?” Anton said to the suddenly quiet room. “If Zoe died, the quest would end. If the quest ended, do we get booted from the dungeon? What’s the fail condition for a dungeon?”

Anton turned to Oriz, but everyone stared at him. He rolled his eyes.

“Yes, obviously I don’t want Zoe to die. But what if she stops her heart with her technique? Would that count as death for the system?” Another long second as they stared at him and listened to the crashing of dirt spilling into water as the monstrous mansion-backed boss crawled toward the lake. “Hey! I’m just spit balling! I don’t see any of you coming up with plans.”

“Shut up, Anton,” Bella said.

“Hey —”

“No,” Oriz croaked. “It’s not a bad idea, but, we can’t count on it working. One, Zoe’s false death might become an actual death. Two, we can’t know that her death would reopen the dungeon door.”

“What does that mean?” Anton pressed. “We either complete the quest or die trying? That’s horrific.”

Oriz shrugged.

“It’s the price for quest modification.”

The statement settled upon Zoe’s shoulders like a lead weight. This was all her responsibility, and so it was up to her to solve the problem. Fortunately…

“I have an idea,” she said.

She crouched and dragged the two Mirrorbell fragments closer. If she could cut her way through the trap in the staircase… She flexed her wrist, and a shining scalpel of Metal essence formed.

“I’m going to slice through the bindings of the fragments,” she said. “If I can harvest the essence inside them, then it should count towards the completion of the quest. I won’t need to level up to incorporate them.”

“Will that work?” Bella asked.

“I have the [Quest Breaker] title. It should work.”

They looked at Oriz, who nodded.

“Do it.”

###

The lounge was a circle cut out of the red rock. A bench set into the warm crystal that could be flooded like a spa, but currently remained dry and dusty. The back of the lounge extended hundreds of feet up in a clean-cut cylinder. Stars glinted high above in the perfect circle of exposed sky. Nobody could descend to the lounge at the bottom without surviving the drop.

Rue sat there, hunched over, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. Glassik sat beside him, her expression an ice sculpture of cute dismay as she rubbed his back with delicate fingers. Across the circle, Morn plucked at a forty-stringed instrument, an idle harvest dance from a planet disintegrated long ago. Their music was always sweeter than their produce, but the song plinked unnaturally in its echoes along the crystal cylinder. It did little to uplift Rue’s mood, and though Morn’s playing slowed, it did not stop, and Rue had not the heart to tell the ancient scarecrow warrior that he wanted nothing but silence.

For how sad is it to admit you want silence and loneliness when all your friends want to do is bring you comfort? It is a special kind of self-pitying pain that makes one flee the balm.

The floor rumbled beneath his feet. Mosaics depicting battles under supernova skies split, dislodged tiles, spat dust and ruptured. Rue blinked, and Urum stood before him.

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“I greet Rue, Prince of Crimson Skies, Blade Forest, Leader of Apocalypse, Primus Pilis of the First Cohort of the Crimson Armada and —”

“Enough, Urum, I know you hate me. No need to drag any of this out.”

“I don’t hate anybody.”

Morn continued plucking away, the harvest song slowing as the fruit on the vine grew sickly sweet. Glassik removed her hand from Rue’s back and cast a frosty glance Urum’s way.

“Now’s not a good time,” she said to Urum and then whispered pointlessly. “He’s not feeling the best.”

Urum and Rue rolled their eyes, caught the other making the expression, and both scowled.

“What do you want, Urum?”

“I bring a gift from the ladies you left behind.”

Rue lifted his gaze from his hands.

“Oh?”

Urum nodded.

“From Lorrilla,” he tossed the swirling orb of crystalline blood. “I said it wasn’t wise, but she insisted you receive this.”

Rue caught the orb, and couldn’t help but smile as he rolled it along his fingers.

“Thank her for me?”

“Thank her yourself,” Urum snorted. “I’m not your messenger.”

“You work for me.”

“As an engineer.”

They glared at each other, and Rue decided it wasn’t worth destroying another starship just to make Urum take back his foul mood. Though, of course, Urum never had a foul mood. No hate in a heart of flawless stone, as they say.

“Thank you for bringing this to me. I will thank Lorrilla myself,” Rue set the orb spinning in the air. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate rubbing it into my face directly.”

Glassik raised an eyebrow at the orb floating above their heads.

“What is it?”

Rue snapped his fingers, and the orb expanded, fading as it grew until it ceased to be anything more than a faint red glow in the air, and in that glow a vision played: four aliens in a room inside a dungeon huddled around two fragments of reflective metal as an aberrant boss raged in the lake beyond.

“My gamble, my experiment… she lives. How like Lorrilla to pay attention to this when I had let it slip my mind, but…” he sighed. “It seems she chose Blood after all. Lorrilla will never let me hear the end of this.”

Urum smiled.

“I have one more gift for you. From the Shadow Tank herself.”

“Oh?”

His hand raced out towards Rue’s cheek. Without effort, Rue blocked it with a forearm growing thorns, but it was a feint. The true slap rocked Rue’s chin. His head snapped back into the crystal wall and sent a dark crack running up the crystalline length of the cylinder.

“You damned —” But Urum was gone, the ground rumbling, and Rue blinked away the smarting pain. “I suppose I deserved that. Morn?”

The ancient warrior raised a desiccated eyebrow.

“Yes?”

“Can you play something to accompany the scene?”

“But of course.”

His fingers worked like a vine along a wire. The tune grew, slow, and manic, like wood piled on a bonfire, waiting for the dark. Rue reached into his shirt and produced beer for them all as he sat back and watched Zoe struggle.

“You’ll make it,” he whispered. “You’ll survive, you’ll grow, and then you’ll kill me. I just know it.”

###

Zoe took a breath, steadied her hand, and sliced. Her scalpel struck the Mirrorbell fragment and felt resistance, true resistance, for the first time. The blade bit into the metal, but struggled to go deeper. She pushed. It made sense: a scalpel was a surgeon’s tool, not a blacksmith’s. She pulled away, the technique flickering, and the scalpel became a bone saw. With her Might-powered muscles, she tore into the Mirrorbell fragment’s essence. Her technique chewed through the fragment’s defenses.

The essence spilled.

[Mirrorbell fragments: 3 / 5]

Everyone let out a sigh of relief as the essences of Faith, Metal, and Sound pooled on the ground. The quest completion protocol triggered when she broke down the fragment, but breaking down was enough.

She didn’t even need to incorporate them.

But she knew, even as it stirred her limbs, that her hunger would not allow her to go without this opportunity. Quickly she sawed into the other fragment.

[Mirrorbell fragments: 4 / 5]

Essence mingled and spiraled on the ground like snakes down a drain. Her scarred lips snarled as her hunger dared her to resist. The bone saw became a scalpel without her even thinking. Thunder shook the room. Footsteps of the approaching boss? Or was it her heartbeat rocking her skull? She needed to breathe, but her hunger compelled her to act. No time for breathing. She starved, and you can’t live off air alone!

She gripped the scalpel in her trembling hands as she struggled to keep it from plowing into her leg and opening a new container. The Blood essence surged beneath her stitches, begging for release.

But, she wondered…

Did hunger have to be selfish? She looked up at Bella and Anton. If she trusted these people with her life, then didn’t it make sense to feed them?

Rather than cut herself open and spill the Blood essence she stole, she could use her technique to share the power. Make her team stronger.

“Come here,” she said through gritted teeth. “Give me your wrists.”

Anton understood first. He crouched and exposed his muscular wrist.

“You were getting too far ahead.”

Bella’s eyes widened, and she knelt beside Anton, her wrist exposed.

“Are there any side effects?”

Zoe placed the scalpel above Anton’s wrist.

“I’m pretty sure the Smith will hate you for this, but when you see him… blame me.”

“Are you sure that will work?” Oriz asked. “Do you know what it means to take on the ire of the Crimson Armada Trinity?”

And there, in her ears, the sound of a hammer beating faster, crushing an anvil to dust.

Oriz groaned from where she leaned against the wall.

“There will be a cost to this.”

Zoe looked into Oriz’s rainbow-bleeding eyes. Tried not to feel fear. Compelled herself away from any thoughts on the future. This was a hunt, and the trees grew tall around her, the shadows of the forest.

“I don’t care,” Zoe said. “I take responsibility.”

The howls of wild dogs broke through the beating of hammers.

And Bella grinned.

“What do you mean? The world might end?”

They all laughed, manic, joyous, and wild as Zoe sliced open their wrists and filled them with the essence of the Mirrorbell.