“It would be fascinating if it were not so terrifying. The machines have discovered they are incapable of matching the strongest Cultivators in one-to-one combat, having thus far relied upon numbers to make up the difference. And yet these vile desecrations of human corpses are almost ingenious in their cruel efficiency. There were rumours of course that in the Golden Age similar monsters roamed in the Eastern Empire, but not even the ancient Daltokki would be capable of such a monstrous achievement. We can only be thankful thus far it has been easy to identify the imposters.” - Libera Guild war council notes.
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“What’s going on?” Faith yelled as she was abruptly escorted by a couple of burly cultivator guards. The two of them seemingly sharing a similar sort of mutation that accelerated their muscle growth far past what was natural or indeed, by her own reckoning, comfortable.
“The Elders have requested an audience for you and your group. Do not make this harder than it has to be.” One of the men grunted.
It had been less than an hour since John left to talk with that creepy guy in private, and she had a strange feeling that told her this was related somehow. Her skin itched, or more accurately the flesh just beneath the skin, as her mind ran in circles. Just what could have happened in the short amount of time that elapsed?
She was led to the same circular room where they previously stood before the Elders. At first glance, she thought them much the same as the High Presidents of the Golden Promise Church, those individuals who led entire congregations of faithful under the divine right signified by the blessings heaped upon them.
Soon they were led to the massive circular spike that was hollowed out to house the Elder’s council. Already present was Cobalt, her eyes glimmering with a painful grief which spoke volumes about how well her interaction with her mother went. Gorekin was here too, looking presumably as confused as she felt. The beast-man was hard to read but you hardly needed to be an expert on the matter to see the common lines of tension across all living creatures under Creation.
Bright lights abruptly turned on and the Elders gazed down upon them, faces inscrutable… but evidently unhappy. “You stand accused of bringing a spy into the Sect. What have you all to say for yourselves.”
She looked around confused, and judging by the expressions the others made they were equally dumbfounded by the accusation.
“Elder Fisher… with all due respect why are you making this accusation?”
“Because your friend was an infiltrator. A wretched machine in human skin.” The voice of their guide spoke out. A bloodied man with a slowly regenerating stump of an arm walked out.
He smelled like the freshly preserved corpse of a High Bishop she saw once, at the public funeral. She was perhaps ten summers then, and she remembered how even despite the chill of the Long Winter the body seemed perfect, all except the smell. Not rot or incense, something else entirely. By the looks of things, whatever John was accused of doing, it was bad.
But even for the short time they had known each other she knew he was no spy, she had faith in him.
“Where is he now? Shouldn’t he be here to defend himself? Surely you can’t just take his word for it?” She argued.
“Yes! Make no sense you do! No justice!”
“Brother Marcus is an honoured veteran, you are all outsiders. Why should we take your word over his?” The blue-skinned Elder argued. “If he is an agent of the Machines we cannot allow any leniency! He must remain contained!”
“John has metal in him only because of a cybernetic relic he was exposed to years ago! He has been with us the entire time, if he had been replaced we would have known it!” Cobalt argued.
“You are but outsiders, why would we put your word over that of an honoured veteran? The evidence is damning, dozens of mortal servants and Sect members of high repute! They also report seeing bones clad in metal, wires ripping out of his body! It should be considered a great mercy he was not put down on the spot!” He argued. “Until an investigation concludes however you are all under suspicion and will be held with him until a verdict is passed. Unless anyone here would vouch for you?”
Cobalt looked up at the stands and stared in the direction of the snake woman- her mother. And conspicuously there was only silence as the woman turned her head away.
She felt a pang of pity for the girl as red rage bubbled over the girl. She knew what it was like to feel abandoned… though for her she had to admit it was mostly her own fault.
Still, she was outraged by this turn of events. Not alone either, given the way Gorekin stood up straighter and bore his teeth with a strange grimace. She felt something bubble beneath her skin and burning through her meridians… she had to hold it together. It would do no good to suffer the Curse now.
“You will be held in the dungeons for the time being until we conduct a full investigation into the matter.” The fused-looking woman, Elder Fisher, told them. “This is a matter of paramount importance, this is all the leniency we can allow.”
She looked towards the man who stunk of preservation and swore she saw something gleaming unnaturally behind his eyes. It could have been a mutation, but something in her soul told her otherwise.
She remembered a passage from the Holy Scriptures. The Eternal Enemy will walk in the flesh of man, as he did in the old days before the Burning of the World. He shall deceive the nations, but the righteous among them shall not be so easily fooled.
Nonetheless, strong arms gripped her and escorted her down to the dungeons. But she didn’t miss how the top layer of her skin seemed to slide independently from the lower flesh, and as the shackles were secured she silently prayed in thanks for what was perhaps a true blessing from God.
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Leaning in the corner of the concrete box, a cell the humans called it, a strange concept meant to hold prisoners they did not want to kill seemingly. Grrkkn took stock of the situation and walked through the previous events. The boy John was falsely accused, that much was obvious and it seemed like a disturbingly common trend as of late. But he felt something else too, there in the Elder’s room he felt something. His spores had germinated inside that strange human… and had found something to latch onto.
John wasn’t the machine infiltrator, he was. But as it stood would they even believe him? The accusation would have been near impossible to prove at that moment, and he was dubious at best about his chances to win a fight unarmed. Especially with the fungal strands seemingly having a difficult time reaching full maturity even with a suitable substrate given the signal to grow so late.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
So he waited, patiently allowing himself to be carried off and placed in restraints. It mattered little, the fungus kept growing, its song partially impaired by the strange bonds placed upon him but doing little to prevent mycelial strands from directly growing into his nerves. He was relayed vast volumes of information, slowly spreading from his location across the entire area, and what he found he wished he could just spend days slowly pouring over.
The spikes the humans lived in were a remnant of a massive mechanical array now too damaged for him to even repair. Its purpose unknown, but what little could be salvaged was remade into the framework of the entire facility. There were machine eyes lining many walls especially the so-called dungeon, imperfect, rare and often heavily decayed not to mention the images beamed through the fungi were blurry at best. But enough for him to see what was going on elsewhere.
Faith was already doing something interesting. The spiked layer of her outer skin began to crack and peel away as she writhed violently, leaving behind plates of ooze-soaked chitin. She slid out of her restraints easily, almost boneless, and much smaller in mass. He suspected it was much like the great insects of the Mother Forest, how they would shed their skin once a moon, a sacred sight so rarely observed.
Cobalt was doing a bit more poorly. He wasn’t sure what was going on with her, but it did not look pretty. She seemed to be in true agony, apparently having done something to herself in an attempt to escape. But he could tell she remained conscious and focused, that woman could not stop at anything once her mind was set.
Finally, there was John… held below even them. The camera wasn’t able to reach him directly, but he could tell the cell was something else. It would take even more time to get fungal strands inside the cell, but he had a good idea in any case it would not be easy to free his friend before the real infiltrator achieved whatever goals he had in place.
Several mushrooms grew to full size within his restraints, feasting on the radiation within and glutting to a respectable size with some direct encouragement. The colony wasn’t established enough for him to do much more elsewhere, but it was more than enough to simply snap out of the puny restraints. After that there was little the door could do to stop him either, the circuitry powering the lock long since overridden by the direct control of his spores.
“Hey! What are you doing how did you esc-” A guard shouted before he was rendered paralyzed by the powered armour he was wearing freezing in place from sudden fungal overgrowths. He winced, it was a shame to damage a Relic so rare, but needs must.
“Sorry.” He said, taking his gun and swiftly knocking him unconscious with the butt end as the visor of the helmet was opened by hyphae pulsating around the electronic controls.
He was lucky here, not all the guards would need machinery to help them. He had to be fast.
Moving towards Faith’s cell, he found her having apparently slid out between bars. She seemed far more surprised to see him than he was her, then again, he did have an advantage.
“Go help Col.” He grunted. “Me see how get John. Many days spore all at once, hard focus on many thing at once. Will tell how thing go.”
Immediately understanding, she ran off, leaving a trail of slime in her wake.
He breathed in and felt the steady pulse of days worth of spores spread throughout the facility and grown with his signals to overabundance. He was starting to get tired now, the overexertion of feeding and controlling the fungus getting to him, but he had a clear path forwards.
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The restraints placed upon her were impressive, blocking key meridians for Si transportation. Already she could feel the creeping sickness of the Curse starting to itch away at extremities deprived of drainage against the toxic build-up of atomos energy. It felt… wrong, being this small again. Cobalt had always been powerful for her age, the last time she felt small was when… that monster who burned down the Lead Cave came.
But she didn’t intend for the feeling to last long.
The group was separated, but she could smell their presences nearby. And further down the hall was the scent of John, vague and weak… but there. She knew he had to be innocent, it did not make any sense otherwise. But for what reason did he have to start a fight like that?
He may have been impulsive, but he never was the type to do something for no reason. There must have been some manner of injustice, and the only way to get answers was from the source.
She had a psychic mutation developing, thus far it had only let her deny the effects of other psychics placed upon her but it was incomplete, it was certainly a gamble but its full form might have something that could help her. Ordinarily, starved of Si as this place was, it would be impractical to divert resources to Cultivation. However, John had taught her that adversity was simply fuel for strength, she may not be quite the ridiculous prodigy in in-combat development he was but she couldn’t not try either.
Whatever the case, it was a gamble, but her soul said doing nothing wasn’t a choice either.
She pooled her Si to her brain, as it happened both the part she needed most and the one part they couldn’t cut off so easily without outright killing a prisoner. The psychic energy-dampening formations were draining away the power leaking off her and converting it into the very Si used to power the other containment formations, but very little could be done about fully internal circulation.
She breathed in and focused on what she wanted. Her psychic mutation seemed to be specialised in breaking other psychic connections, and obviously, it would be a massive help in breaking the bonds keeping her contained. There was the matter of the guards of course, less than there ordinarily would be, given the state of war gripping the Empire mobilising most of the able-bodied Cultivators free of other duties, but in a weakened state even a couple of mid-level Mutants would be an issue. Perhaps she could extend the psychic dampening to hide her position? Mutations were never a certain thing, even deep into the Wanderer’s stage, but neither were they truly unmalleable.
She doubled over in pain, a massive throbbing headache blooming in her skull. Gritting her teeth hard enough for the sharp edges to grind together, she kept her mind on meditating and circulating her Si. Given the burning across her body and the building nausea her body was hitting its limits, but the throbbing in her head and the light glow across the chains binding her told her it was working. She just had to keep pushing forwards.
Resisting the urge to growl in agony, she did just that. For a moment she blacked out and woke up seconds later froth foaming at the edge of her mouth. A seizure, a common side effect of when Psychic tumours grew too fast. Just a little more…
She had to bite down hard to resist the urge to scream at the next jolt of pain, rippling down her spine like one of John’s electric shocks. Her skin flashed uncontrollably as she felt the dimly lit cell grow uncomfortably bright. Her pupils were dilated, she was sure. Cold sweat beaded over her forehead and dribbled down her skin, it wasn’t enough to focus on the meditation… she needed something else…
She remembered her mother… no… the useless woman who gave birth to her. The pain, the betrayal, the hatred. She held onto it tight like a coal to keep her mind in place while her body seemed to fight her.
And finally, it passed. A wave of energy washed off her, causing the restraint formations to briefly glow… before going dark completely. Exhausted and heavily damaged, she hurled out the content of her guts before staggering up straight. The chains snapped easily, devoid of their unnatural reinforcements. A thick miasma of Si coated the room seemingly both from her own exertions and the destruction of the formations, doubtlessly enough to kill any other life that would have shared it.
“Cobalt!” A familiar voice shouted.
“...Faith?” She rasped, voice weaker than she ever really remembered it. “H-how?”
Reaching between the bars, the green-skinned woman who seemed… smaller and bendier… than she should be and coated with a thick layer of translucent slime reached between the bars of her cell and started layering healing energy onto her, immediately bringing relief to the worst of her self-inflicted damage. The girl looked like she had an entirely new set of skin, having apparently slid out of a lot more than just clothing to escape, she could see muscle fibres beneath the thin translucent new layer. Noticing her look, Faith quickly jolted back flustered, before apparently deciding modesty wasn’t worth it in this situation.
“It’s a bit of a long story but let’s get you taken care of first. Gorekin is already waiting! We don’t know what that creep is planning, but Gorekin says he has a feeling we need to act fast!”
She nodded and blinked away the stars in her vision. All else was unimportant, nothing was taking away the people she loved ever again.