Chapter 4
Thump, thump.
I’m staring down the slopes, peering into the distant, dark water of Emul’s Bog.
Ghalena’s body is behind me. If I don’t look at it, maybe I can fight the temptation.
Thump, thump.
I hear my pulse in my ears. My hands grip my head by the sides, pressing my ears together. The noise of crashing river is blocked out.
Thump, thump. I’m alive. I ate the fungus and… nothing happened.
What was I expecting? I swallow the meat and then it’s lights out right away? Stupid.
I expectetd… an escape. I’d die, and I wouldn’t have to dig my feet into the ground to prevent myself from spinning around and pouncing on that woman’s corpse like I was some starving scavenger.
But I’m stuck in the waking world, warring with myself. And I’m losing. My arms shake. My panting and I turn my head to check that Ghalena’s alright. What if Valeri had tried to eat her? I have to be sure.
I can smell her. The blood, my unfinished work at her neck. I’d hate to leave a job unfinished…
My mouth is open. I’m drooling. I try to close it, but I just lick my lips. So I close my mouth with my hands. I grab my face, bunching up the skin of my face between my fingers, pinching and pulling.
There was only one way to stop myself, wasn’t there?
I pull harder. I rip. I wrench.
My face is coming apart. Tear of blood drip. It feels… like taking off a pair of clothes.
There’s pain. It’s agonizing. But… it’s the pain of tearing off a scab. My vision goes dark as blood skin falls over my eyes. My face squishes in my head.
I cough. Not from spores… I’ve been screaming.
I stop, I catch a breath. And then there a pressure on my lap, a hard form pressing against me like a find.
Now that my ears aren’t filled with the roar of my screaming, I hear squawking. Chirping.
My raven making raw sounds of concern and care. Words would be pointless, wouldn’t they? Are you okay? Hell no. Please stop. That’s what I’m trying to do. Stop everything forever.
But there’s no counterargument to whining and nuzzling against me. I could say I’m too dangerous, can’t be trusted… but I didn’t have any desire to attack Valeri.
Was I just a cannibal, then?
I breathe out and pet Valeri.
I look toward the sound of moving water. I could jump. That’d be the end of it, wouldn’t it?
Valeri would try to stop me, but she couldn’t stop me. She’s too small.
I stand up and my vision swims.
Had I lost too much blood? I fall back on my ass.
Movement in the corner of my vision. I look at Ghalena, as much as it pains me, and I don’t understand what I see. I get closer, as dangerous as that is. My unfinished work… is being undone? The gorey mess of her neck is pulling itself together, black tendrils growing out from her windpipe and knitting together as if to make a living bandage.
I… have to touch it. Is my flesh being taken from me? I’ll just have to rip her throat out again.
I draw a breath. I can’t stand, so I crawl across the ground, on all fours like the animal I am. I’m perched over Ghalena, and I touch the still moving filaments. They hum with the same dark energy I felt in the tree logs. It’s… pleasant. I don’t feel the urge to rip this apart, not like dead flesh. It’s good.
Still… What does it taste like? I wanted to protect Ghalena from this fungus, so I can tear out her throat in her defense, now! No. The fungus is helping her, healing her, isn’t it? I’d just be attacking her again.
Unless… is this still her? I have to tear off the living bandage, I have to feel the cooling flesh of her throat. I have to know it’s still her, underneath.
It feels like ripping someone’s hair out.
I thrust my hand — not my tongue — into that blood crevasse.
Thump… thump… thump.
That’s not my pulse. Nor is it her pulse.
Red tears fall from my face and mix with Ghalena’s. I’m not sure if I’ve ever cried, but my lifeblood spilling out, that feels more honest anyway.
My vision is going dark. The arms and legs supporting me are shaking. I’m losing my strength.
My pulse is slowing, and another is restarting.
“Make a good feast out of me, alright Valeri?”
I sigh out a laugh, and I collapse on top of Ghalena.
We are suffocating in paradox.
We attend the great feast, and yet our meal dwarfs us by a incomprehensible margin. Surrounded, immersed in what must be consumed, our gullet is insufficent to contain even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what must be devored.
We have licked and licked at the plate upon which we arrived, and the great hunger only grows. We have gorged ourselves to the bursting on the mass that surrounds us, and what nourishment has it granted us?
We can see the suns, the stars, the glow of fires that flicker and snap. Our mouths are stuffed with a dim glow and a mere glimpse of true celestial radiance drowns us in envy, in longing, and need. And yet we are so slow. We are immobile, and the fires dance out of our reach.
We multiply and scrape at the dim glow and the dulling embers of flames too feeble to escape us. Yet our mulitiplication does not offset the attrition. We must be fruitful, and yet we fade.
We must consume, and yet the feast has swallowed us. We eat, and yet it does not nourish. We must hunt the liquid electric flames, and yet we cannot. We must grow, and yet we decay.
We have a duty we cannot fulfill.
We are suffocating in paradox.
And then a flame grasps us, and we suck in a last, desparate breath for survival through proliferation.
The feast may yet proceed.
Above me, there are stars in the sky and they should not be.
No sun and moon provides any guidance. Just scintillating multicolored holes in the black firmanent. I call them stars, but I don’t think they are. Maybe I could be convinced, if that was all there was. But roots crawl across the sky between each outlet, draining and transforming their colors as it ebbs and flows.
They twist and infect the world above me without symmetry, pulsating with alien disregard.
But stars never cared for anyone, either. That alone wouldn’t be enough to disturb me. But stars are distant, celestial things.
I trace these roots. In the distance, I see them descend to earth.
Infecting the same land I stand on.
And I can stand now. It doesn’t feel like there’s air I push around when I move, no wind or breath, and I don’t feel like I’m leveraging against the solidity of the ground. I feels like I think I should stand and then I am standing. My body moves on its own.
As I look around me, I am upon a pale stone road, as a bend before a arch-bridge over purple waters. There’s a blood stain on the ground.
It’s exactly where I remember tearing out Ghalena’s throat.
But Ghalena isn’t here, wherever we are. The blood is here, and there are drips. Did she get up, before I awoke? Where did she go?
Where is Valerie, that warm cooing-nuzzling presence?
I start following the track. It’s not just blood, but black motes intermixed and littering the path. It all gets fainter, as it goes on. Ghalena hadn’t been emitting motes at the end, had she? And the spacing of these tracks… she’s not alone. Something was following her? Leading her?
She might be in danger. I need to save her.
I walk upon the brick roads. Around me, I see structures (shelters? towers? houses?). Even the stone of them has eroded, any wood rotted away into dust. The dust drifts and floats in the air (or lack of air), and I realize it’s not just dust. Tiny dark motes are all around — so omnipresent I thought it was just a dark fog.
No, not motes. Spores.
A come upon a house with its front wall completely collapsed. Within, there are skeletons. Not human — animals. Foxes, squirrels. The spores have landed upon them, and knit together into a raiment of root-like flesh over the bones. It grows even as I watch, chitnous approximates of flesh.
I approach a skeleton and grasp its hand. Does it feel just like Ghalena’s new throat? The root-covered phalanges in my grasp squeeze back as if in handshake.
I dodge backward.
But the skeletons don’t stir. They’re not complete; I can still see the bone. What would I face, should I come upon a skeleton dressed in a complete suit of rootflesh?
…How many of the structures I passed had skeletons of their own?
Where was Valerie? I needed something to hold, to nuzzle me, to say something and break this morbid, otherworldly silence.
If there might be more rooted skeletons, knitting and growing, might they move?
I didn’t feel alone here.
I’d just have to be a bit sneakier in my approach. No more walking the open roads. I’d track the bloodstained spore-trail from the treeline. Skulking.
I come upon another bridge. Only this one is broken, yawning over a chasm meters long.
And chasm is right. There’s nothing underneath. A void — and at the other end, I see more not-stars. It’s like I’m in a shell, a vast egg already cracked. I dare to peek further, and there is no sun or moon beneath me. Only the fell glow.
The land here was different, discontinuous. A bunch of chunks of earth floating in the void? It did make me feel safe from the stars, if they were connected to the same chunk I stood on.
I can’t proceed any further than this. I’m not sure how Ghalena and her guest could have crossed this chasm either. Maybe they didn’t, and I erred in assuming they followed the road?
Let me check the trail again, more carefully.
(In the back of my head, I wondered why it felt so natural to call those spores a guest.)
So. I did take a wrong move, but only about ten meters back. They left the right, disappearing into an alley way between another fallen tower and a mass of bricks so eroded I can’t identify the function.
As I tread closer, I’m getting close. I can feel it. I can smell her. That blood… Ghalena is a alive here. Her blood is pulsing and it smells so enticing. She’s alive and I can change that.
It’s hard to keep stalking. I long to bound forth in a stride, to find and pounce her. But I’m in my element when I’m sneaking. That’s my advantage.
My pursuit takes me to a small fort. Was it always small, or had the grand walls and battlements faded away? I emerge from the treeline and climb up the walls, slipping in through a window.
There were books, rugs and furniture here, once. But every bit of cloth, wood, or leather is left moth-eaten and moldy, half-crumbling away to dust and black spores.
My steps are light upon the weathered stone. I creep through the fort in a crouch. I close my eyes and inhale the scent of Ghalena. It’s dark, and do I even need to see? I just follow the coppery aroma that promises an end to the urges that burn within me. I just need my nose and my ears — soon I’d hear those breaths, pained with coughing, and cries of fear and pain. I’d bring her peace and stillness.
I’m fantasizing about killing her as I walk these halls, and I’m not even fighting it at this point. Not now. I’ll save my energies for restraining myself when the critical moment comes.
When I open my eyes, I find that I’m treading into the bowels of the fort. Dungeons? Is she being kept prisoner?
Why didn’t I encounter any guards?
My nose becomes unnecessary. I hear Ghalena’s muffled cries.
I slip into the prisoner’s chamber. There’s a gaunt form in full rootflesh, not human, but a fox. Its roots tie together in to thick ropes which bind a resisting victim. If I didn’t have the passionate truth of my nose to attest, my eyes would now inform me: this is Ghalena, all her faintly blue flesh, all her tall, muscular firmness.
She’s still coughing, in between her cries. Black motes line the mucus dribbling out of her nose.
Her eyes widen when she sees me.
That’s the cue her captor needs to turn around and finally see their infiltrator.
I don’t have knives on me (why don’t I?), but I’m willing to try for an unarmed takedown.
Except the figure buzzes a greeting. «Oh! Hello, honored progenitor. Come to tend to your offspring? The vessel resists thy gift most terribly.»
“I, uh…” I start dumbly. “Yes! I want… some time alone, with this one. To deal with her gift.”
«As you wish, progenitor.»
The gaunt figure steps away and trots for the threshold even as I enter.
I step over to Ghalena. I reach for her face and I resist roughly grabbing it — but I don’t resist caressing that firm, clammy flesh. But I grab the roots muffling her, and tear them away.
“Y-you.” She coughs. “Beca? Your eyes are glowing. Are you… Or are you a… ‘progenitor’? Have you come to corrupt me?”
“Your voice… I didn’t think I’d hear it again.”
“Beca,” she breathes, relieved. “Didn’t expect you to come to my rescue. I guess we’re even now, aren’t we…?”
“I’m not. I don’t think this is a rescue.”
“What?” Her voice is strained with worry now. It’s not a shriek because Ghalena wouldn’t shriek, but anyone else, it might be. “Is this a joke? Don’t fuck with me, not when I’m dying.”
“I can’t resist.” I do more than carass now. I claw her flesh.
“Fuck you, Beca. This is what I get for saving you, isn’t it?” She coughs what might be intended as a laugh.
“You don’t get it, Ghalena. I can’t resist. There’s something wrong with me. Always has been. I want to hurt you. Your neck?”
She touches the still-bloody region where the living bandage grows.
“I did that. The only reason I didn’t do more damage was because I couldn’t figure out how to get your armor off. I want to eat you. Or something like that. Rip your skin off and wear it. Taste your blood, feeling it drip over my skin.”
“So what, this is two monsters fighting over who gets to claim me?”
“Looks like it, but I don’t know what’s up with these fungus skeleton things, honestly.”
“I started piecing things together after I died and woke up here. That fungus… it’s magical. It infected me and it’s trying to transform me. We’re in some mental, spiritual realm connected to the fungus. I’ve been resisting, but I don’t know why it’s defering to you. Unless… I don’t know. Vile recognize vile?”
“I ate the mushroom you told me not to.”
“Oh. That means… yes, I think I get it. The mushroom you ate created the spores that infected me — it’s the progenitor of the fungus in me. But I don’t know why you don’t feel the fungus’s mental influence. Do you?”
I shrug. “I just woke up here after eating it. I guess I haven’t felt much other than thinking… some of the skeletons elsewhere, I saw them and thought they hadn’t finished being transformed into beautiful works. I kept calling the spores in you a ‘guest’. But I’m used to weird thoughts like that.”
“Right, the whole wanting to kill and eat me thing. You’re, um, resisting it right now? Thanks, I guess. Keep doing that.”
“Should I? It would put you out of your misery, wouldn’t it?”
“Why would I give up fighting?”
“Because you’ve lost? It’d save you some suffering.”
“You’re pushing hard for this mercy-kill thing. You want to kill me more than you want to fuck me?”
“Always. But… I don’t have to kill you. Corpses feel different. The urge is stronger. Fungus feels different. It’s weaker. If you stop resisting… I don’t need to tear at rootflesh. So it would protect you.”
“And then my body would be no more than a vessel for these fungus. You haven’t felt its influence, you don’t know what it wants to do. Our world, the iron realm, it’s just a feast to these things. They want to consume every soul.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to be a servant to their monstrous schemes.”
“That one said it was my gift. So maybe… you’d be a servant to my monstrous schemes, actually.”
“That’s not any better.”
“Even if I let you do whatever you want?”
“I don’t want to be your mind-controlled slave, even if you’d be a nice slave-owner.”
“Right. Well. I’m going to attack you. So make your choice.”
“Beca! Please, I—”
“I’m tired of fighting it, Ghalena. I… did kinda enjoy the time we had together. You taste wonderful.”
Ghalena is backing away from me, but this is a cell and there’s only wall behind her.
“Do you even know what you are?”
“I think I can only find out by living it for once.”
“No, you… have you ever heard of a ghoul?”
I stop.
“I can tell you what I know, but only if I survive.”
I shake my head, and stalk forward until Ghalena has nowhere to run. I crouch down and lean toward her face. She tries to punch me, but I catch her fist. I feel stronger; she’s nothing but weakness, after fighting the fungus for so long. I grab her with another hand to hold her in place, put my weight on her.
She slouches. “I’ll give you another kiss. I’ll let you touch me wherever you want, just, please, stop.” She sighs. “If… if it feels good, will you let me live? I could be yours every night, for the rest of our lives. Is that enough?”
But her flesh would be mine forever, when she’s dead. I could have this touch for the rest of my life without hurting her. “I’d feel less guilty about killing you, to be honest.” Though I wonder if that was because I wanted to kill her. It wasn’t like I felt any guilt about what I’m doing. “Maybe I can give it a try after you’re dead?”
“W-with my corpse.” She cringes. “But what’s necrophilia to a cannibal…”
I grab her throat. I shift my hand to where the bandage ends and her warm flesh continues. I dig my fingers in and start to pull.
She screams. “Please, it wouldn’t be rape! I consent. I promise. I was just fucking with you, earlier. I wanted you all along, I-I was just playing hard to get. Please. You wouldn’t be a monster if you fuck me. It wouldn’t be worse than killing me. I promise. Believe me.”
I keep tearing. A strip of flesh gone from her throat. Blood spills out, slicking my hand. I lick it.
She’s crying. “I’m sorry. Please. Anything. Whatever you want.”
I wait, watching her throat. The root-bandage grows. It covers more of her flesh, advancing by inches. The blood soaks into the roots, they drink it up. I’m envious. I want to rip it out over that, but I resist.
“Fine. You win. Kill me, fuck my corpse, do whatever. Just… make it fast. Please. Don’t torture me. I’m sorry.”
I lean toward her ear. The words… don’t feel like mine. But they feel right. “Then please, accept the gift of your progenitor.”
Having lost pints of blood, staring town death and torture, Ghalena still pales further at that.
“Beca… Beca… is any of you left in there?”
I bite her neck and tear out another strip of flesh. I suck on the bloody meat before swallowing. I watching the roots grow without meeting her eyes.
“Beca… please. Anything. Say anything!”
I bite her neck and tear out another strip of flesh.