Chapter 182

As Rosalie had predicted, the plan went off without a hitch.

They put as much distance between themselves and Lucinda as they could. Leaving early in the night, even the higher-advancement wayfarer shouldn’t be able to catch them. Though, Rosalie didn’t seem to take much comfort in that. She pressed hard, having the team run for hours straight. Zoey was fortunately well beyond her embarrassing starting point: hours of running posed little difficulty, as much thanks to her own improved stats as the ones she had gained from the team.

Rosalie wanted to find a shard and enter it before Lucinda woke. She seemed oddly confident they would be able to do so. Zoey had found that confidence somewhat odd, since, as far as she knew, shards weren’t easy to track down. Oftentimes, travel was only half the problem: crawling over one of the pocket dimensions of the Fractures and actually locating a shard entrance could be an effort that took days, or even weeks if a person were particularly unlucky.

If Zoey found it odd with only her superficial knowledge of shards and the Fractures, then of course Delta, the native to this world, also found it strange. She was the one to outright question Rosalie on the topic.

“Is it that compass thing you’re always carrying around?” she asked. “It helps find shards, somehow? I didn’t know artifacts like that existed. Has to be rare. Where’d you get it?”

Rosalie hesitated for a few moments before responding. She frowned and tucked away the compass.

“Actually, it’s a skill,” she said. “The compass is a decoy.”

Delta whistled in appreciation. While not directly combat-relevant, being able to swiftly track down shards explained Rosalie’s rapid progress to second advancement.

Of course, no one blamed Rosalie for not explaining her skill earlier, or using the compass artifact—the fake artifact—as a decoy to obfuscate the ability. If anything, that Rosalie was willing to share the details of her class showed that she was growing more trusting of the party. Zoey might rattle off her skills to just about anyone without thinking twice about it, but in reality, doing so was a big deal. Zoey didn’t know a single of Delta’s or Maddy’s abilities, beyond the obvious ones she could piece together from seeing them fight.

Over the course of several hours, they traversed across four pocket dimensions before Rosalie guided them to a shard entrance. Each of the strange portals manifested in different ways. This shimmering black magical doorway was situated underneath an enormous fallen tree. The portal was two feet tall and twelve or so wide, filling up the hollow space between the felled tree and the ground. They had to enter sideways, shuffling awkwardly in the dirt to fit.

Without ceremony—they were in a rush—they entered the shard one by one, with Rosalie leading, and Zoey last.

As with every time before, entry into the shard came with a moment of disorientation. Zoey elbowed off the stone floor, coming back to awareness with—not grogginess, but something close. The disorientation cleared as she blinked and took in her surroundings.

Having been through this process a few times, Zoey ran through her checklist.

Was she safe?

Yes, in an immediate sense. Her eyes darted across the cavernous room she’d arrived in, taking it in as fast as she reasonably could. Several of the shards before had been of a man-made aesthetic, but this one was a sprawling underground cave system. Red veins of some glowing material spiderwebbed across the ceiling, snaking between stalactites of various sizes, and pulsing in a slow rhythm. As if the red veins were inhaling, then exhaling.

The air was hot, not stifling, but uncomfortable, making sweat bead on her forehead. And the reason for the heat was obvious: more even than the veins of red material covering the rocky ceiling and walls, which glowed red-hot to her senses, there was, on the far end of the spacious natural room, a lake of magma. Literally. An orange, placid pond, superheating and warping the air above it. Zoey’s eyebrows rose, seeing the strange sight, but she moved on. She was scanning for danger, and the pool of lava didn’t indicate anything like that—though she was concerned about some monster crawling from it.

Soon, she had finished her appraisal. The cavernous room seemed empty of hostiles. They were safe. She hadn’t been thrown immediately into combat, which Rosalie had mentioned was rare, but more than possible.

Next, Zoey concerned herself with her teammates. Once again, the team had been split up, though at least Zoey hadn’t arrived alone this time. Or with a clone of herself, as had happened with the second shard. Instead, Maddy lay on the floor next to her, still unconscious. Zoey had woken—if that was the correct word—first between the two of them.

Zoey looked inward, inspecting the last important item on her checklist. Did she have access to her inventory? The answer was, as the previous shards, sort of. Many of her practical preparations—her ‘normal’ combat gear and weapons—had been stolen. At the same time, she hadn’t been emptied out. Of particular note: her primary weapon, a third-advancement wand which Rosalie had insisted she buy in case a situation like this cropped up, remained, as did her alchemical collection kits. She said a silent thank-you for the last part. It meant she’d be able to make plenty of collections for Sabina to toy around with when she returned.

Zoey cataloged all those crucial details in the first few seconds of waking. The stranger, more specific details, she had forced herself to ignore. But now that she had confirmed she was safe, she allowed herself to take in her circumstances in their entirety, rather than just the most important factors.

She hadn’t arrived naked. She’d noticed it immediately upon gaining consciousness, of course, but had temporarily ignored it. Now, she looked down at herself.

She was wearing ... a bodysuit.

Black latex hugged her body from the neck down, conforming to her curves without an inch of space anywhere. Except, not latex, really, but some magical fantasy world equivalent? Because the glossy black material didn’t make the noises she would expect when she swung her arm around, testing the outfit’s flexibility. It had far more give. Nearly identical in appearance to latex, but comfortable, combat-ready, and honestly—somehow even more tightly conforming to her curves.