The journey to the Spiked Shore was, compared to the rest of their journey thus far, unremarkable. Few things would be foolish enough to cross paths with four Mutants, and as they continued towards the Great Lake they were reaching closer and closer to the heartland of the Empire. Even drained by war, the strength of the Jackalopes remained indomitable here, as widespread as the tunnels of the beasts sharing the same name.
Currently, camped at one of the many pits of mostly already-looted rusted metal and concrete John’s history as a Rat gave him a certain knack in finding, the four were preparing for the night. Between Cobalt and Gorekin, none of them could go hungry. Especially as the furred giant took to his new gifts like a new limb, though none of them quite knew exactly where he was getting the bullets from.
“Look! Caught big one!” The big guy had laughed as he carried back a feral dox, its razor-sharp teeth and burnt-red hide a far cry from the fluffier specimens common in the ranches of the Empire. Another floated shortly behind him as Cobalt shimmered into visibility. The creature, the size of perhaps two or three fully grown men, had a gash on its side large enough for Faith to have crawled into.
John turned around from the ventilation shafts he was carefully drilling into the roof with a transformed right arm. “A vegetable or two would be kracking imp right now… never thought I would see the day where I said this.”
“No right season. Beside, no understand wild plant here.” Gorekin answered.
“Yeah, what he said.” Cobalt confirmed with a shrug. “But no matter where you are, meat is meat.”
John sighed. “Yeah meat is meat…”
“Hey John, help me light this fire, will you? It’s going to be dusk soon.” Faith asked.
Setting his mind away from the rather monotone meal palette of the past few days, John scraped some slime off his gills and spread it onto the pile of tinder. With a small spark of electricity the dry wood and grass caught alight, and lit the ancient walls of the decaying structure up. Perhaps at one time, this place was a treasure trove, he could recognise still the signs of supports placed in by previous teams of scavengers. Small holes meticulously carved into the rock would have allowed, perhaps, a child of maybe up to twelve summers to crawl through with a little effort and pilfer anything of value inside. As it stood now it was empty and forgotten, a husk that was little more than any other pit in the ground.
John’s gut wrenched a bit at the thought of the Lead Cave meeting the same fate. The cratered remains scavenged for scrap and promptly forgotten. Little more than another rusted pit in the ground amidst who knows how many thousands scattered across the continent.
[Blood pressure increase detected: Administer stabilising drugs?] ARTOS offered.
No. He thought. The past was over now. All that mattered was looking towards the future. He wondered what Cobalt’s mother’s Sect would be like. He had only truly experienced the Lead Cave, and while it was the most powerful Sect in the Golden Plains… he knew the rural region was far from the, apparently, heavily populated cities of the capital.
Faith took eagerly to the cooking, citing having experience doing it before. He wasn’t really sure what her story was, but from the bits and pieces, the green-skinned girl dropped they were in one of the Holy Union’s armies. Personally, he thought she was hardly someone suited for that sort of work, but he supposed it didn’t matter. People rarely had a choice in what happened to them.
[Searching files on deserters…]
Unhelpfully memories flooded in on various execution methods favoured during the Golden Age, apparently the things they would do to soldiers who fled their duty. Skulls burned out by guns that shot lances of light, forced to walk empty fields that exploded when they stepped wrong… or simply thrown in an empty cell and forgotten about until a superior officer made the entirely arbitrary decision to grant mercy or an execution.
“Never show me that again please.” John requested.
In a little while the food was ready and Cobalt started tearing apart the meat with her claws, the dagger-like extensions making short work of the quickly roasted Dox slabs. One of them appeared to have a small core, which was split among the group after being carefully mixed with herbs by Gorekin. Well, all except Cobalt, who simply ate her chunk entirely unprocessed as usual. Idly he found himself using his psychic power to move small bits of scrap metal onto the meat as a sort of seasoning, the taste of the metal having a soothing and almost addictive quality to it he couldn’t quite place.
“...Forgive me for being uncouth, but suddenly I am getting a strange itch.” Faith complained. Sure enough flakes of white were peeling from her green skin, illuminated softly by the flickering firelight.
“The start of a Mutation perhaps? You are about to reach your Third Step correct?” Cobalt asked.
“I don’t know, I haven’t really been… paying attention as of late.” Faith murmured. “I have been neglecting my prayers, and yet still?”
“You need prayers to Cultivate?” John asked, genuinely curious.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Suddenly Cobalt smacked him across the back of his head, causing him to land facefirst into a chunk of bloody meat embedded with loose metal.
“Don’t say stuff like that! You know this is important to her!” Cobalt hissed into his ear.
“No no, John have point.” Gorekin helpfully joined in, his hearing apparently kracking astute. “Why like this sister Faith?”
“I don’t… I don’t know how to describe it.” She muttered. “Nevermind, it isn’t important.”
The rest of the night was spent in uncomfortable silence, Faith having retreated to a corner after the meal to stare at her strange little cross and John had to wonder what exactly her life was like before this?
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Faith knew her pilgrimage with unbelievers would lead to some degree of conflict, and the prophet did always teach ignorance was no sin. For it was the duty of the faithful to enlighten those who were not aware of the Golden Promise, to invite more lost lambs to the rust-goat flock of the All-Powerful. Blessed are the children who spread to all corners of the world with the Golden Promise in their hearts.
But what did it make her? So weak and fallible in her own belief. She hadn’t remembered the last time she had properly prayed, to have properly communed with the spiritual… and yet she was still blessed with the changing of the flesh? It went against all she knew to be true, but it was not so easy to deny that which was before your very eyes.
In hindsight perhaps it should be obvious. Whatever method the Imperials used to cycle their Si was evidently quite different from that taught in the Holy Union, yet their cultivators were no less in number and quality. For when the Golden Promise was extended to mankind, it was to all mankind, as equals with no regard for race, sex or creed. Perhaps it wasn’t so incompatible with her beliefs after all, perhaps this was just how it was.
The deeper issue, however, the fundamental crux of the matter was, that she was unworthy. A coward, the worst form of sinner. She did not even bother to take the Good Book with her when she fled, did she?
And these recent feelings, welling inside her chest. The thoughts were so utterly wrong… she was sinning. Daring to live for herself rather than for the Almighty. Shameful. Disgraceful.
“Faith, you alri-ight?” Gorekin grunted. The words not quite coming out correctly in his throat. As a beast-man it seemed, he sometimes still struggled to manage the nuances of Imperial Glish. She doubted he would ever be able to pronounce some of the intricacies of her native tongue.
“I am fine.” She assured him. They were going to make it to their destination today. Cobalt and Gorekin leading quite literally by their noses while John occasionally pointed out where North was like some sort of living compass. By the metrics of navigation at least, her own talents seemed quite useless.
“Ok.” Gorekin huffed with a tone that she felt seemed to sound more like ‘you lie.’. “Cub you are, think pain noble endure. Cover wound with leaf, hide blood with herb, but truth is pain no noble. Pain no punishment and pain no reward, pain just is, and pain no invincible either.”
“What are you talking about.” She scoffed. “You act like you are so wise and yet, wait… how old are you?”
“Oh, mid aged.” Gorekin hummed, scratching at his chin with hairy claws. “Seven ten summers.”
“Seven ten…” Faith trailed off, considering just how much time that was. “Your people live to a hundred a forty?”
“Yes?” Gorekin responded, cocking his head to the side, evidently puzzled.
She didn’t know how to respond to that, and ultimately decided it would be best not to bother. His kind was the stuff of myths anyway, tales they told to children to scare them away from exploring the salt-caked deadwoods and getting themselves Cursed. Sure, at this point, why not?
Moving her mind away from that topic, she decided a little bit of distraction was in order. “So, how exactly do your abilities work? I think you have explained it before, but to be honest I am still not certain.”
“Hard describe yes. Especially when words still sometime not good.” Gorekin admitted. “You tongue not natural on mine, many year practice speak so good. Will practice much more, but always will be hard.”
“I understand, but do your best.” She told him.
With a nod, he started to explain. “Fungus not the fruit above ground, though many believe so. Fungus many roots, can spread many mile. Can grow almost anything, connect trees like big web in Mother Forest, but also can eat dead and living alike. Imagine many thread, so tiny smallest no eye can see, in every inch hundreds.”
“I never knew that.” She said genuinely. It felt like learning something new from the Scriptures for the first time. Knowledge so new and exciting all her previous worries seemed to melt into the background.
“Knowledge from ancient ancestor, long ago, when they born in steel cell before escape into forests they say human speak much on such thing.” Gorekin added proudly. “But anyway, my power make these thread. Many thread go into metal, connect wire, like vein and nerve. Can… no see not right word… can feel it. Can reach in and connect broken, change thing, like root of fungus to root of tree.”
“It reminds me of a story… from the Good Book. All things are born from one, the Great Spirit, three in one, Mother, Son and the Golden Promise. Long ago, long before even the flames that cleansed the Old World, the Son came down and taught mankind his ways, all of us are imbued with God as all of us are part of his creation. And the Golden Promise came down and filled the tongues of all that would listen, so that salvation may come to all who listen. For true fulfilment, the truest heaven is the realisation of oneness with the Divine. The essence of the Golden Promise, in a way.”
“Much learn about your people. Very interest me you are.” Gorkin happily grunted. “You very devoted sound like.”
“Me… devoted?” Faith laughed bitterly, the smile leaving her face. “Please. Let’s not talk about it.”
Before any more could be said, up ahead Cobalt spoke up. “We are at the border. I am certain.”
“How do you know?” She asked.
Cobalt rolled her ruby eyes and pointed towards a spike of molten steel ahead of them, standing perhaps a hundred or two feet in front of another… and another… and another stretching further than her eyes could reasonably track towards a shore so great it may as well have been a lake.
“Ah.”