“Okay... Alright. So let me get this straight...” Hastur sighed, shaking his head slowly and trying to get a grasp on the situation. He'd been summoned here out of the blue by Octavian. Contrary to what some believed, he had no need to consider the primus enemies, nor a threat. Everything he did was for them, always. To cleanse humanity of its overly abundant mage population was necessary. And they, in turn, considered him a means to that end. Something they could not risk doing themselves, lest they lose the 'faith of the masses'. “Racist mushrooms...? As interesting a concept as it is, that has nothing to do with me.”
Octavian didn't seem nearly amused as he was. Hastur had an enigmatic personality, a vicious sociopath who devoted his life toward science and Solomon's legacy. Unlike the master whose steps he labored to follow in, Hastur was not a great threat. He could not reach elemental apotheosis no matter how hard he were to try, his gates were locked some time ago. Thus, he was allowed to live. And in this case – perhaps even find redemption in committing himself to higher purpose. “They've killed thousands already, and only leave humans alone. It is not a joke.”
“Why not let your legions handle it? Clearly, this is having a marked toll on both the eastern successor states and Varia. Where do I come in?” Hastur asked, curious. More importantly... “And how do I stand to benefit from this?”
“I would, but we can't. They avoid armed groups of humans like the plague, and we've no real ability to gauge their capabilities. Casualties have been controlled thus far, but multiple small villages have been turned into ghost towns. The only reason we know much of anything at all is because of the survivors in Trier.” Octavian sank into his throne. First, Hastur's experiments escaped the confined of the successor states – but only a few hundred managed to crop up.
They were swiftly put down. As per their agreement, Haran and Varia were not to be touched. Unfortunately, as they say with the best laid plans, a bizarrely potent reaction of spira in Amistad had laid this plan to ruins and activated everything much earlier than anticipated. Inadvertently saving the republic and spreading the mites all over the place. They were indiscriminate, a failure but that had provided some very useful data. “I've no talent for anima, so I want you to investigate this anomaly. If Solomon is back...”
That could only be bad.
“Solomon is long dead. I'm sure it's nothing more than a race making itself known in this land, mana has created stranger things and based on the data presented they seem reasonably well contained around the successor states. Which begs the question – why haven't they fallen? I've heard of no such thing occurring in Baccia, Amistad, nor the Brotherhood lands...” Hastur feigned disinterest but Octavian could tell he was feeling differently. He may be under some kind of pseudo-agreement with the primus of Varia, but he was under no illusions that Octavian couldn't squash this clone flat. While it'd be hard, Octavian was a powerful mage and a primus to boot. If he and the legions of Varia began to hunt him down, the plan could be delayed by decades.
But he'd agree, despite Octavian's ambiguous answer. Departing from the shining capital city of Dorian and allowing the clone to head back of its own accord. Once he was aware of an anomaly in the local anima, he found exactly what he was looking for. A few weeks at most, nothing difficult, but then again he was the 'greatest mage of the modern era'. This was just further proof to him that he was right, and nobody could stop him. They were all so weak, soft and too caught up in their consumerist loop obsessing over titles and conveniences rather than doing what was necessary.
Of course he was a hypocrite. Hastur would do everything for himself with magic, but he hated the idea that someone, somewhere – was harming the world just out of convenience. Doing something as ridiculous as abuse the mana the keep their heads dry or floors warm. Ridiculous, but the life form he'd been tracking was even more so...
Most of the presence lay deep beneath the ground of Amistad. Shockingly, it was everywhere. Literally everywhere. It's roots extended for hundreds of miles and he could hear the thoughts traveling down along the titanic sheet of growth.
The size of the thing wasn't what concerned him the most. As he dug down through the earth to get a better look at it, Hastur realized something. Solomon's great 'failing', if one wanted to infer that the greatest mage of all mankind had failed at anything...
It was, in his words, the fact that he was unable to manifest or create a proper soul. In all things, he succeeded. The chimera were intelligent, more so than humans if given enough time to grow, and very able. 'Shaping' the anima to create a new lifeform. Solomon had literally achieved what even a few gods could not. Created life and seeded it, gave it agency, form, and purpose. But it wasn't so divine a power as to simply will these beings into existence. He used genetic templates pilfered from the lost cities of the orik and tweaked them slightly. Combining multiple animals and magical creatures to create something new and greater than the sum of its parts. He'd tried to approach the human genome, and failed before settling for beasts. After all, they turned out far more balanced and less... Unsavory.
His experiments with mankind were written of in his proper 'book', but there were other volumes and notes that could be found in some of the darker places in the world.
Hastur was nowhere near the true legacy of Solomon, and he knew that. Too much had been lost in the years since the man had disappeared. Hastur's own approach was more akin to living necromancy, creating flesh golems of pure instinct. He'd never been able to infuse any true will in his creations. Even his haemonculi were but shadows with a simulated human response. Thirty seconds 'talking' to one could show you that. They were just anima, and until possessed by something else as was their purpose, empty shells. Lacking the immortality and endurance of the undead unless Hastur reshaped them to be young again, but they couldn't exist forever. Not even the true progenitors of the chimera could, it was not in the worlds nature to let things live eternal. A drop of spira was all it took to render one mortal, and Hastur himself was no exception. Biologically, he might exist for thousands of years – which from the mindset of almost any race on the planet would make him seem immortal. But eventually, the world would remove him. Correcting an error and enforcing 'its' idea of balance.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The only way to make oneself immortal was to separate their mana and spira, presumably. But no matter which process of doing so one engaged in, the side effects were rarely worth it.
In any other situation, he'd have thought this no different from any living thing. It was very real, barely artificial. Barely. The smallest amount of foreign anima bound all of its loose ends together in a shoddy network of many minds. Shoddy being the operative word, when in reality it was quite ingenious, a creative way to play around the 'rules'. Something so far beyond his capabilities that he awoke to an inner epiphany about what he'd been missing all this time. These things, the mycelium carpet that covered hundreds if not thousands of square miles... He could feel it. The thing had a soul. Many souls, and they were weak but they definitely existed. Billions of them... Maybe trillions, they bred and multiplied at a terrifying pace.
Hastur gulped. Whoever had done this, if it wasn't Solomon himself... Was terrifying beyond belief. He tore himself from his current body with such force that the haemonculi holding his essence fell dead on the spot. His clones were seeded all throughout the known world, something necessary considering the thousands upon thousands of neatly organized arrays that prevented gating through the empires. A legacy from Ellemar, perhaps the only advice he'd ever given that anyone had ever listened to.
He hunted and scoured the land for days. Everywhere he went in northern Varia, the thing existed – but nowhere in Haran. It was under Baccia, and Brotherhood lands, though not so far west had the peninsula dominated by Milano. Constantly spreading. Both to propagate, and if Hastur was right, which he always was, it appeared to be searching for something. Tiny roots probing the earth and letting a siren song inaudible to anyone without a grasp of spira and the ego it transmitted, calling out to something else. Something it called the 'father'. It's 'god', so to speak, though it seemed to be a wholly atheistic entity. A living nervous system not unlike that which ran through the bodies of man, only titanic in scope. Feeding on mana and spira alike, even starting to crack and wilt some of the deeper wards around the border. In some places, it had managed to breach the barrier demarcating dungeons and begun to conquer them.
Finally, following the roots toward one of its central nervous system, he found it. A part of it, at least, a far more complex web of sensory... Organs? A beastkin village settled between the demilitarized zone separating Varia from the county of Asmon. A scene of terror, to most, but to Hastur – it was a thing of beauty.
Thousands of beastkin were formed into well organized ranks. Refugees from Sinea, once upon a time, given their discipline and blood red standards. Another part of Solomon's legacy, though they were not 'created'. Simply given shells in which their fomorian souls could reside, those who hadn't managed to commit to that 'engine' of theirs. A people that had forgotten their legacy and turned to more primal ways. Devolved, considered a failure, and discarded. Hastur was close himself to a successful implantation of a soul, and it was his next logical step in following that path laid out by the greatest mage who'd ever lived.
He observed as the mycelium carpet burst from the ground, emerging as countless black trees, all spray some kind of nutrient rich liquid that aided in its expansion and defended it against the sun. Octavian hadn't been wholly incorrect in his description of them, 'mushrooms'. Vaguely humanoid fungal forms of all shapes and sizes developed for various purposes.
Long limbed and withered things with scrawny bodies and spiraling caps capable of using magic. Huge, hulking monstrosities built like gorillas, red and white fringes on their heads. Warbling and hissing as the fighting began. The beastkin were a proud and valiant race, and they would fight on to the last man near always – but the winner of this conflict was clear before it had even begun. Before Hastur's very eyes, the organisms produced by the black trees became more and more complex. Not particularly strong, individually, but they were adapting at an insane pace. Beastkin magic from the rear lines and their various engines of siege wiped out thousands of the things in the first volley, but they just kept coming.
Whispers could be heard when he let his mana brush against it. For whatever reason, these things hated the beastkin. Blaming them for all the failings in the world and setting their pseudo hive-mind on a one track objective to cleansing the land of anything not human. Twisting their forms and erupting from the ground as new trees, faster than they could be destroyed.
The red caps bloated, twisting into a new variant within seconds. Little more than ovoid pods on six stumpy legs, bursting when they approached the enemy into a cloud of black dust. Spores, Hastur realized. It didn't take long for these spores to bear an effect. In minutes, the raucous clamor of battle had turned into a hushed whisper. Everything within hundreds of meters of the site was... Not dead, technically. But assimilated.
Birds in their hundreds joined the smaller creatures of the forest, slamming heedless into the trees. Beastkin were allowed to remain where they were until the change took place, mockeries of their former selves, either absorbed into the root system or changing into tentacles mockeries of man.
Interesting... Hastur frowned. It wasn't so dissimilar to his own project, spreading via atmospheric particulate. He'd liked to have studied them further, but they were a threat to the plan. The spores made their way up to his place on the ridge and he could feel them wreaking havoc on what remained of the physical body he had occupied. If, for whatever reason, they were capable of learning from those they devoured, it would be best if he prevented them from learning the secrets he knew.
Almost perfect...
Almost. But not quite. While this was the work of a peerless genius far beyond Hastur himself, they were clearly not masters. It couldn't be Solomon. Whatever had done this was not human. An obsessive drive existed in this swarm to follow its will, and nothing else. Perhaps a flag from something that wanted to subvert Hastur's attempt at balancing the world. With that, he latched his anima to the creature like a parasite, working and unraveling it. All to be done now was try to curb the threat, coming to a more intimate understanding of how dangerous these things were.
And they call me a monster... If he'd a physical mouth, it'd be smirking at the thought.