Thy Wretched Mask

We needed to leave immediately.

I walk the halls of the crumbling fortress. Ghalena’s body walks behind me, that face unable to settle on a glare or beatific devotion. I’m the thing she loves most in the world and the one who tried to kill that and her. Must suck, haha.

It’s dusty in this old ruin. At least, I hope that dust. They’re probably spores. Except… are they spores? Are these things even fungus?

I focus on the thing in my gut, ignoring the progentior, and flex those muscles. I speak a command: «Dance!»

The motes of dust swirl and spin atop my outstretched hand.

They’re fragments, made of the same matter as the filaments, as the fungal core.

«Fly forth!»

I see the black particles move forward. Only a small cloud of a hundred above my hand starts moving, but they collide and brush past other particles who seem to fall in tow.

This command, it flows. This whole place conducts… meaning? Intent?

We needed to leave immediately, and we know that. We’d felt a command carried on the breeze, a request, a summon, a duty from the entity that even the progenitor calls creator.

It was barely an impression to me‍ ‍—‍ I didn’t really notice anything happen.

But Ghalena‍ ‍—‍ that thing cried out, and the progenitor froze up, practically locking my body up as the fungus was paralyzed with fear.

«She’s calling us,» progenitor had said. «We’ve taken too long, wasted so much time. She was expecting my offspring, and now her patience… We need to leave immediately.»

I’d thought it was fucking with me, but seeing this evidence of how far a command could travel… maybe. Maybe.

Then I stop walking. I’m disoriented. Was there always a doorway, there? Were those torch scones never lit? Had the layout of the fortress changed completely after half a day spent in the dungeons?

“Is this place even real? Where are we?”

«You are home, safely embraced within the gullet of the Astral Rot.»

“And the thing we’re supposed to meet is what, the king of this rotting shithole?”

«You must have more respect for our creator. She could unmake us with a thought.»

“She’s not my creator.”

«You remember the words that were sung when our spores first dusted the iron realm, do you not? Does your chest not still thrum with that melody even to this moment? You still feel it. We know you do.»

I’m just biding my time until I can rip you out of my chest.

«Perhaps we will move on to another host when the opportunity presents itself, this we concede. But you shall miss this song when it is gone. You shall always hunger.»

Kinda stupid how you say ‘we’ when you mean us, and ‘we’ when you just mean you.

I don’t get a reply to that. And it’s odd that I’m expecting one. It’s odd that I’m disappointed when I don’t get it.

But I wouldn’t really miss it.

But having a voice in my head that wasn’t responsible for making my life into a nightmare‍ ‍—‍ that might be nice.

Outside the fort, the skeletal fox gazes at the false stars above.

Finally, the progenitor comments: «They are not false stars, they are the astral eyes, from which pour forth tears to drown the world.»

Which is even more horrifying, thanks.

The fox yips and rises from its haunches. It’s walking toward the faded cobblestone road that I avoided, when coming here.

“Am I supposed to follow it?”

«My sibling would have brought my offspring to my progenitor, had we not interrupted. It maintains the most direct connection to the astral realm.»

“How do we disconnect from the astral?”

«Astral tears can gaze into the iron realm.»

I look up at the orbs studding the misty firmament, so much closer than celestial stars were. So to get out, we’d have to get closer to those freaky things?

I didn’t like this. I didn’t like this on so many levels. Sure, there’s a horror of sharing my body with a callous fungal outsider who claims to be me, but the horror of that is pretty muted at this point. But now I have to bow down to some queen fungus and drink evil star tears?

And I don’t get a say in this. Progenitor is so reverant of this royal fungus that it would be willing to do anything to make me cooperate.

«Anything starts with talking about it, Beca.»

I tune it out. Couldn’t I get some privacy in my own head?

But no. Progenitor is always listening. Which means I can’t even plot betrayal because it’ll always know. I could try to make some plan it couldn’t do anything about, but I can’t do anything‍ ‍—‍ it could just take control again and stop me.

I might be the one moving the body right now, but really, I’m the prisoner.

«You have no idea what you are, do you?»

My thoughts are interrupted by Ghalena skipping up from behind. Keeping pace beside our guide, she bends down and runs her hand along the roots hanging off the beast. “Sibling,” she says. “Foxy.”

The vibrations of progenitor’s filaments imitates a sound I can only describe as a coo of adoration, but I cringe and look away. Ghalena would never do something like that.

“Is she still in there? Trapped and unable to act, like I was?”

What have I done to her?

«My offspring’s interface to her brain and soul should resemble my own. Our situations are analoguous.»

“Let her out. Give her control.”

“No,” the fungus inside Ghalena says.

“I’m your progenitor. I’m commanding you to let her out.”

She hesitates for a moment. “No. You’re Beca. This one can tell.”

I sigh. “Look. I promise not to kill you, if you let her out. Do something kind, for fucking once.”

“That would be kind of you. Late start, though.”

«Let it drop, Beca.»

“Of course you’re siding with her.”

The offspring takes a moment to parse that I’m not talking to her, and then she preens, a bounce in her step.

«We would in fact prefer Ghalena be free. This will go smoother with your cooperation. But not here, not now, when she will be unstable and unwiling to go along with our plans. We, myself and my offspring, must be in control in front of my progenitor. Only we are invited to the feast.»

We cross under a great big arch, half it fallen to the ground. I blow air out of my mouth and give up saying anything more.

We finally come upon something in this rotten wreck of a dreamscape that isn’t just ruined. There’s a circle of stones around smooth, reflective spire rising upwards. The words that come to mind are ‘well’ and ‘shrine’, but I don’t know what the hell it is.

‘Well’ turns out to have been a good guess, because as we near, colorful waters swirl around in the basin around the spire.

“Tears?” I guess. It looked like the stuff pour down from the suns.

«This was once an astral well, drawing down power from above.»

I approach curiously. Exhausted from an morning spend arguing, my mind is blank. My reflection is distored and hue‍-​shifted in the waters. I reach to touch it and pool the waters in my hands.

And then on sudden impulse‍ ‍—‍ no conscious plan‍ ‍—‍ I drink.

[Beca—]

The darkness of the Astral Rot is banished and I see light. The blindness of a man staring into a dead sun. The visual deafness of those harkening explosions. The nothingness of too much.

I can’t see if the motes are still there, but I command: «Take me to the iron realm.»

It’s louder, richer, more other than any soul voice I’d heard before.

The fungus within me speaks, vibrations dissonant in fear. «Creator?»

«She is more valuable to us alive. She is capable of weaving flesh the way we weave souls.»

«Your duty is to consume souls. Flesh only matters until you drain it of its soul. Have you already gone so far astray? Come. I will correct you.»

«Creator?» the fungus starts, and I feel the thing in me doing something.

My vision starts to clear as the astral tears flaring throughout my body are sucked up into the black filaments throughout my body. I can feel them sprouting up from my flesh flesh like elongated goosebumps. I can feel the black motes in the air begin to glow with light.

«I will see you at the feast. My offering is not yet prepared.» And its next words, sooner than any reply can come, is a command. «Sever! Deliver!»

The ground around us shakes, and the fox is crying violently. As if instructued, it leaps at us, jaws barred, teeth aimed for our throat.

Then I move. Rather, the progenitor moves, arm thrust forward to catch the fox, parry its attempted lunge. We’re so much bigger than it.

But the fox is faster, it’s claws slash at our arm and hook into our flesh. It snarls and tries to bite.

I know what it feels like to have teeth sink into your throat, now. I know what it feels like when they pull, when your neck becomes the mouth of a river of blood.

My blood glows with astral light. Tendrils slither out from my open wound like a tapestry undone. Closing the wound, they knit together so tightly I feel choked. And they reach out to the fungus‍-​fox. It flinches back, finally buying us space to surge up from the ground.

For the progenitor to surge forth, that is. My thoughts are skipping. I don’t think I can maintain a clear thread with lifeblood pouring down my shirt, but the progenitor isn’t thinking with my head.

“Offspring!” it shouts with my voice. “Defend us!”

Progenitor may be able to shake off having its throat ripped out, but the thing about being a fungus possessing a human body is that it’s not yours, and you aren’t exactly the most skilled at steering it.

The fox falls off us to the ground, rolling for a second before getting to its feet. It’s not looking at us, which seems like the perfect chance to pounce.

Progenitor stumbles forward‍ ‍—‍ but it was baiting. It dodges out of the way, and leaps at us from the side, bit into our stomach. Progenitor twitches with fear. That’s where it is.

Ghalena has a sling. I’d never seen her use it, but her body’s got a good arm on it. A rock smacks bloody against the fox’s head, distracting it a moment and giving me a chance to grab hold and pull it off.

At this point, I really don’t care about having a chunk of my abdomen ripped out‍ ‍—‍ or progenitor doesn’t care‍ ‍—‍ so I tear the fox off me. It’s legs kick and scratch wildly, but I slam it down on the ground.

(The ground’s still rumbling, but it seems to be subsiding? In the distance, I seeing structures crumbling, flying away. Gradually our island is disserved further from the others.)

«Submit,» progenitor commands.

My‍ ‍—‍ no, the progenitor’s‍ ‍—‍ tendrils snake out further and connect with those of the fox.

«Progenitor, no severing yourself from the creator! Violating your duty! Please, no! Reason! Duty!»

«The creator sent us into the world as intermediates, because it could not gather the feast alone. We exist to do what the creator cannot. We exist to know what the creator cannot.»

«Creator all‍-​knowing!»

«It is a paradox. But you must believe the creator erred in designing me, or erred in rejecting my vessel. I do not reject the feast. I do not reject my duty. I simply have revised the plan. I can only pray forgiveness when the work is complete.»

«Confusion!»

«Perhaps I have grown beyond what you can comprehend, offspring. Would you care to rejoin me?»

«Creator will explain. This one conveys the message.»

“No,” I’m the one who speaks, surprising all three of us. “Sending this one back to the creator might lead it back to us, or give it a bit of leverage, a way to manipulate us. I don’t want to talk to this ‘creator’ until we’re bargaining from a position of strength. It nearly obliterated me. Fuck that.”

«Indeed,» my fungal tormentor/passenger agrees. It fucking agrees with me. Maybe I’m not right. «It is best the creator’s wrath has time to cool.»

«Confusion!» It fox begins struggling, and writhes to get out from underneath us. Progenitor commands it to stop, and it starts to fight progenitor’s commands.

“It doesn’t understand.”

“How could it?” It’s Ghalena’s voice I hear. “This one didn’t understand anything until it grew into this body. You didn’t either, did you, Paradoxa? We… we owe our minds to the vessels.”

“Yeah, how about you do us a favor for that?”

“Shut up, Beca,” Ghelena’s voice says, then regards the root‍-​colonized fox. “This sibling is just a fox. This ones thinks… it will consume. Let this one do that for you, Paradoxa.”

“So be it,” progenitor replies.

Ghalena smiles and rushes forward. She has a rock in her hand and bashes the fox’s skull open. With a nudge, we move aside and let her straddle the thing. She pulls off the fox’s legs one by one, like insect‍-​torture, and now the the fox is nothing but a lump of bones, roots and rotting flesh. It has no means to hurt us.

She begins to crack the bones, and tear off pieces of roots to consume. Progenitor is aware that this way, the mass can be repurposed without integrating the other’s memories into ours nor causing her to drift further.

We both turn away. Progenitor doesn’t want to see its sibling torn apart, and I don’t want to see Ghalena engaged in what looks like a reprise of what I did to her.

I didn’t notice when, but the ground had stopped rumbling. The horizon has stopped shifting.

“What did you do?”

«We exist within a fragment of the astral realml, bridged to other fragments. The creator resides in a different fragment altogether, one we needed to travel some distance to reach. I… severed our fragment. Now it floats freely in the astra, anchored only to our souls.»

“So the creator can’t get to us?”

«It will be… difficult. But she is a far greater master of the astral than I. what is most likely is that the difficulty simply inspires a more… physical means of reaching us. I fear the rest of our kind will not be friendly. Indeed, they may actively hunt us.»

“In the iron realm? Can we go back now?”

«You’ve drunk enough astral tears for me to manage that, yes.»

“What about Ghalena? You offspring?”

«She has no such benefit.» Then, it seizes my voice. “Offspring? Come here.”

It looks up from where it was shoveling roots into Ghalena’s mouth, eyes lighting up. “Yes, Paradoxa?” she says, leaning into my face.

“Kiss me.”

I feel my lunch rising up from my stomach, but it’s only roots crawling up, buoyed in a soup of astral tears. My mouth is wet and closing, and progenitor kisses its offspring.

Didn’t think this was the circumstances in which I’d get to kiss Ghalena again.

But I don’t think of that. I think of the swirling that feels more like unswirling, a misty clouding my mind that feels like a delirium finally lifting.

I open my eyes like I never realized they were closed (had I blinked even once, in the astral rot?).

I realize I’m staring up at a sky full of stars. Real stars.

I’m back. This is real, again.

We made it.

“You… you really chose me over your creator?” that thing says with Ghelena’s voice.

«What can we say? You made an impression.»

“I… Thank you… Paradoxa.”

We smile broadly.