Lilian was talking about how mushrooms grew in wet habitats and a few of the different species they knew of that looked similar to the one they encountered.

The fact that a mushroom could make the Never Born hear and see things was only as astounding as a cheetah running beside D’Argen. Creating illusions, whether auditory or visual, was a skill the Never Born who had control over either the perception or essence aspects of the mahee could do.

Yaling had developed multiple spells with King Zetha, the strongest of them all in the perception aspect, which allowed her to play with sound outside of her body. She was, however, a kinesiologist like D’Argen and her sound spells could only affect so much. Thar, Lilian, and Abbot were naturalists. And D’Argen could only make other Never Born run with him. He could not even use other physical spells to help others become stronger, or heal faster.

“—and that is why I ran off.”

“You what?” Abbot shouted in alarm.

Lilian cleared their throat and shuffled around. After a moment, they started speaking again. “You know how light looks when it refracts off rain? How it turns into a rainbow only from some angles? I saw that in the clouds, but in only one colour in each spot. And it did not matter where I moved and it did not have a source and it… it was fluid, like water floating through the air. That was when I realized that it was not… demons… but something in the mist.”

“Spores, you said?”

“Yes, here.” Lilian started shuffling and immediately there were a few shouts of alarm. “Relax, relax. They are inert,” Lilian called out and the others calmed.

Only then did D’Argen realize they had taken out the mushrooms they must have collected earlier. He looked down and noticed something shiny in their hands, reflecting the light of the fire but too smooth and—glass. It was a glass jar filled with something.

“I have locked them in a spell so they cannot burst apart. The glass is a second precaution. But they do have a scent.”

“You saw things again?” D’Argen asked and reached for the glass.

“No. Thar surrounded it so it would not touch us.”

“It was strong,” Thar added in.

D’Argen could not stop looking at the small glass jar as he ran a finger down the length of it. The mushrooms inside it looked like a dark grey blur of shit. Which contradicted the scent. The more he thought about it over the past few days, the more he was sure that the burnt sugar that was stuck at the base of his throat came from these little things.

“—gen. D’Argen!”

“What? Yes. What? I’m listening.”

“Clearly,” Yaling scoffed from beside him. “We were saying—”

“Santis!” D’Argen interrupted her with a yell.

It must have startled the others into silence because nobody said anything. “Santis. He was… his scent. Sugarcane.”

“Sugarcane?”

“I swear, from the moment we got close to this mountain, I’ve been scenting burnt sugar. Santis… he used to do dream illusions. Make you—”

“D’Argen,” Abbot interrupted him. “Calm down. Santis is… long dead.”

“Yea, I know! I’m not saying he’s here. I’m saying… that… I don’t know what I’m saying but… do you think it’s possible his mahee is…”

“Here?” Lilian supplied in question, trying to find the right word when D’Argen trailed off.

“Yea! I mean… is it possible?”

Only silence answered him.

“Look, I may not be seeing your expressions right now, but I swear I feel all of you looking at me like I’m crazy. I’m not. Santis’s power was to manipulate dreams. On a few occasions, he was able to take those illusions out of the dream world and into the waking one. His scent was of—”

“Sugarcane,” Abbot said at the same time as him, understanding colouring his words.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Exactly! Yes.” D’Argen pointed to Abbot’s shape. He could not see the artist’s expression but he was pretty sure Abbot was uncomfortable being pointed out so literally. He quickly dropped his hand. “And, and, and maybe… maybe his scent somehow escaped. I mean, back then, the… the…”

“Ceremonies?” Lilian once more offered.

“Yea, the ceremonies. I mean, no. No. The spells. The spells we did for the ceremonies. We were still… working on them. Acela hadn’t yet perfected them and…” D’Argen once more trailed off. He felt like he could not find the right words to get his point across, not that he was sure what his point was, and although Lilian was helping out, they had nothing to give him this time.

“But… how?” Abbot asked into the silence.

“I don’t know!” D’Argen snapped back in anger. He was pissed. He had no idea why he was having such a hard time getting his thoughts out for the others to understand him nor why he was so sensitive to everything. “Maybe the same way a fucking cheetah ate and used my scent!”

“A cheetah did what?” Thar asked, dousing D’Argen in cold water and turning his red-hot anger into cold fear. For a moment, he had forgotten the other man was there.

D’Argen winced and waited for one of his companions to come to his rescue. They had all agreed to keep quiet about the cheetah until they had more evidence. Lilian, Yaling, and Abbot were such low ranking Never Born that most of the others would easily dismiss them. D’Argen was already disliked by too many of them. Bringing up something so controversial without any evidence at all would either get them completely ignored or turned into a joke.

It was D’Argen’s job to keep secrets, not to let them slip out during his distracted state.

“If his scent, somehow, escaped,” Lilian started softly, hesitating on every word. Clearly, they were trying to cover up his slip-up.

“Lilian. Stop,” Thar commanded in a voice that did not suit his current rank.

Lilian, who had followed Thar’s orders during the wars, immediately fell silent.

“D’Argen. A cheetah did what?”

D’Argen licked his lips and then started biting at the peeling skin of his bottom lip. Once it was ripped off, he soothed the tear with his tongue. The delay was too long.

Thar was one of them. Thar would not… D’Argen could not see Thar’s expression but he sincerely hope the man was not looking at him like he was crazy.

He opened his mouth and slowly started speaking. “It… ugh… look. So, we were in the Oltrian region and… well… one thing led to another… and…” D’Argen trailed off. What he would not give for Lilian to make some of those mushrooms spread their scent around and make the forest scream again. “Wait… auditory hallucinations do not happen without a source. Do they? I mean, what was the actual sound that we heard as a scream?”

“D’Argen, focus. Cheetah.”

“No, he has a point,” Yaling finally decided to help out. “To create sound from nothing at all, especially one that loud, is not… even I cannot do that. I understand the wolves howling, maybe, and the bear definitely… but they would not be spaced out like that. I mean, do wolves even—”

“Maybe the mushrooms can do more with your mahee than you can,” Thar interrupted and his voice was as cold as the chill around them.

D’Argen had not noticed when the man’s mahee had stopped protecting them from the cold winds.

“Did you report the cheetah to Vain?” Thar asked.

“Wait… you believe me?” D’Argen suddenly jumped back on the topic when he realized exactly why Thar sounded mad.

“What? Of course, I do. This is—”

“Why?” Lilian interrupted Thar.

The silence that followed made D’Argen feel awkward. With only seeing their basic shapes, he could not see any of their expressions and he felt like he was missing a lot of visual cues.

Thar cleared his throat after a moment and then said, “I encountered a… a bird.” For some reason, Thar’s pale face was turning a shade darker. D’Argen squinted his eyes until he could make out a nose, lips, and closed eyes.

“A bird?” Yaling asked with a tone that signified she thought Thar to be an idiot.

“It… it was weird.”

“How so?” Yaling prompted him.

Thar hesitated and his form started shifting around as if he was fidgeting.

“It was not… mating season… and… every creature that… came close to it… it was…”

He trailed off so completely but the rest of them understood. Lilian was shaking lightly beside D’Argen and a quick glance revealed them to be smiling wide.

D’Argen nudged them lightly until they stopped the smiling and shaking both.

“So… a bird made everything around it horny?” Yaling asked as if to clarify but there was an obvious smile in her voice.

Thar nodded. She did not need to ask anything more because even D’Argen could tell the man was blushing.

“Well, fuck me,” D’Argen breathed out with a smile. His expression made Abbot snort out a laugh and Lilian lean further into him. “No, no. I meant… oh wait. No.” The amusement faded away when what Thar said actually registered. “No. No, no, no. Not good! One… we can explain away as being crazy. Two? Here? Massive hallucinations. Something in the water. Whatever. But three? Three is…”

“Three is a pattern,” Lilian finished off for him. “I think… I think we have to go back to Evadia. We have to report this.”

“Lilian?”

“They are right. If we have encountered two… incidents like this and Thar a third… imagine how many more there could be?” Abbot added in.

The others all nodded. Thar’s face returned to its pale white colour in D’Argen’s eyes.

“D’Argen, how are your eyes?”

“Better. But I think Thar should replenish as well. He blocks the scents and I run us down. Just to be safe.”

They all came to an agreement and Lilian disengaged from D’Argen’s side in order to brew him another cup of the awful tea.

“By the way,” Abbot said off-handedly. “Did anybody remember to look for those flowers for the villagers?”

D’Argen was the first to shake his head. His mind had been, clearly, focused on other things.

“I wonder how their travelling merchant got them,” Abbot added in and that thought made them all pause. A cold wind picked up and howled around them. Thar used his mahee to calm it, but the chill it made remained with D’Argen the rest of the day as he thought about everything that led him to this damn mountain.