Shale and Naia walked back into the death-flat with a certain amount of trepidation, Shale lighting the way with her knife. Ailmon strode in there with calm confidence, almost as if distracted in his mind. Even Naia seemed subdued by her suspicions. When they came to the horrible tableau, Ailmon calmly reached out with one hand, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow, and moved the strange piece of furniture, which turned out to be a transport crate. The corpse that had been draped over it was almost disintegrated in a puff of nasty dust as soon as it was disturbed, but he paid it no mind, just shoved the crate aside and crouched on the floor where it had been. Below it was a small hole in the floorboards.

Shale, covering her nose and mouth, stepped closer to look over Ailmon’s shoulder. Below the floorboards was a small room or tunnel under the house. From what they could see up here through the small hole, which looked like it was dug by tiny scratching, claws, the narrow space beneath was shining in a strong, vibrant purple and green. The light came from several of the round stones they were so familiar with, growing out of the bed of moss that covered the walls down there as it had covered the corpse and crate.

“Are we really going to make friends with this thing?” Naia asked, craning her neck to look past the other two.

“I’m going to try to communicate with it. It’s an interrogation of a suspect. Think of it that way,” Ailmon just said, distracted. Then he sat down, cross-legged, in the spot where the crate had been so he could see the seedpods of the fungus through the hole in the floor.

The eerie light from below cast strange shadows on him and made him seem like a bizarre silhouette. Shale backed up against one of the trash-walls, looking sideways at Naia. “Maybe I should try to clear a path towards one of the windows…” she mused.

“Oh, Hells no! You aren’t leaving me with fungus-ghoul Ailmon!” Naia stated categorically and crossed her arms. “This was your idea, so suck up the stink!”

A little while passed and they just looked at Ailmon. Occasionally, he would nod or tilt his head as if thinking of a response. There was clearly some form of conversation happening, but it was soundless.

“I have an undead person in my house,” Naia said after a while.

“Eh… What?” Shale looked sideways at her, puzzled.

“Yeah. I named her Mitzi. I made her. She keeps the place clean, protects against intruders... I love that woman to bits. Great cook. If you are not too squeamish. I usually protect myself against poisons and diseases before I eat, but really, that’s a good habit, when you think about it.”

Shale closed her eyes briefly. “You have an undead… What? What does that mean?”

“A corpse. Animated and with loads of personality. I taught Mitzi a wide range of rude hand gestures. It’s great.”

“Alright…” Shale looked at her doubtfully.

“My point is, my home life has a much-loved shambling corpse in it, and I find this-” She gestured at Ailmon. “-incredibly unsettling! I just thought I should be communicative and all that. Put things in perspective in clear terms.” Naia nodded to herself, gaze still fixed on Ailmon.

“Sure…” Shale nodded slowly. “I hear what you are saying.”

Naia sighed theatrically and poked at the moss-covered crate with the tip of her shoe, scraping it off in puffy, luminous clumps while watching Ailmon intently for a reaction. He still sat quietly and didn’t react. Speaking a few words of magic, Naia enchanted her hand again and kicked the crate. Ailmon still didn’t react, and she sighed.

Shale tilted her head, looking down at the crate that had scooted away, leaving a trail of almost-clean on the floor. “Huh…” she said, and Naia held her hand out to look at the crate. A mark was stamped into the wood, and Naia scraped more of the moss off, her attention divided between the task and keeping an eye on Ailmon. It took her a while to scrape a section clear.

“Herradine,” she said, when the text came into view.

“That was the ship that guy you spoke to said he sailed with…” Shale said.

“Hey! Ailmon!” Naia exclaimed loudly. “Hey!”

Slowly, as if from a daze, Ailmon moved his head and turned towards them, blinking slowly. “Eh, yes?”

“How’s it going?” Naia demanded.

“I’m having some trouble…” He wrinkled his brows. “How do you feel death?”

“Ehm…” Shale just said and shared a sideways glance with Naia.

“I mean… everything here… Saibee communicates in feelings. Emotions. I…” He faltered.

“I don’t get it. And please don’t tell me the fungus has a name…” Naia said tiredly.

“She does. It’s the only thing she can say in words. The rest is emotions and I’m trying–“

“Now it’s a she? Have you gone insane!”

Ailmon looked away with a puzzled expression. “I don’t think so…” he finally said. “But I’m trying to explain death to her, and I don’t know how.”

“She doesn’t know what death is?” Shale asked.

“Don’t scrotting encourage him!” Naia exclaimed loudly.

“No, she doesn’t,” Ailmon just said, ignoring Naia. “She has been trying to join our… collective. Our family. She believed all of us were part of one unit, so to speak. Her own colony consists of individual plants, but they are all linked into one person, for lack of a better term. So, although individual parts of the plant may wither, the whole is still there, and has been for centuries, as far as I can gather. It’s all she ever knew.”

“Let me guess… She came here on a ship?” Shale asked.

“Well,” Ailmon said and then faltered. “I surmise as much. When I had the vision yesterday, it was a powerful emotion of being removed and leaving my family behind, my colony. Everything I ever knew. I suppose it makes sense if she was taken from her home somewhere secluded and brought onto a ship.”

“The Herradine, to be precise,” Shale said and nodded towards the crate.

“Ah… well, that makes sense, I suppose.”

“Loss,” Shale said.

“Pardon?”

“For explaining death,” Shale added. “If she’s lost her family, tell her it’s the same for us to lose someone to death.”

“Ah. That might work. Let me just… try…” Ailmon’s concentration was quickly swallowed by the silent, strange communication. Naia stared accusingly at Shale, arms crossed so the glow from her hand was almost obscured, except for her middle finger which rested on her arm. Shale just shrugged. “We committed to this strangeness. We might as well jump as crawl to it.”

“Is that an orcish proverb?” Naia asked grumpily.

“Nah… but it could have been.”

o-0-o

When Aran came back to the Shindig after a late afternoon stroll back, quietly impressed at having experienced being thrown off a ship, albeit a docked one, the first thing that met his gaze was Naia. She was standing against the doorframe of the Shindig, large tankard in hand, gesturing angrily at a tall woman with short, white hair and rows of tiny horns jutting in two lines down her scalp.

“And then she said, ‘why don’t you go back and wait for Aran’, like I’m some sort of child and I was in the way. Aaargh!” Naia screamed in frustration. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do! I’ll have Mitzi cook up a storm and give them all a nice dinner, that’s what I’ll do! I should so not have told her I had Mitzi. But hey, maybe, probably, she didn’t even believe me. Because when I say, ‘oh, lookie, something dangerous’, they think–” Naia paused when she cast a random glance down the street and spotted Aran. “Well, here’s my pickup of sadness and disbelief. He won’t trust me either. That’s sort of his speciality.” She firmly handed her mug to the woman next to her, so she had her arms free to cross them.

“Lady, you need help!” the woman just stated and walked into the bar as Aran got close.

“Who was that?” he asked.

Naia shrugged. “No idea.”

“So… I take it something has happened?”

“Aren’t you a genius!” she snapped. “Well, come on, let’s go back to the fungus-lovers society!” She started down the road.

“Explain what happened?” Aran suggested, following her.

“Saibee happened.”

“Is that a euphemism for something?”

Naia gave a small sound, a mix between a growl and a huff. “Inside of the apartment on the ground floor that made all my ‘bad stuff is happening’-alarms go off, we found a fungus… mushroom… mould. I don’t even know what the difference is! It had already killed a million gerbils and a person, who was draped all over, being sucked dry by the fungus. So, of course, Ailmon decided to talk to it!”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Talk to… the fungus?”

“Yes, apparently it speaks in emotions and it poked at his brain pretty hard. I tell you, that man has to have a lot of feelings hidden, because he got all soggy and whiny. I thought I could at least rely on him being the boring one with no sense of fun or optimism, but nooo!”

“Hang on, he spoke to a fungus?” Aran asked again, trying to catch up.

“Yes. It’s a …brain talkie fungus thing. I told you there were brainworms in town, only I’m not the one who has them, apparently!”

Aran stopped and briefly put a hand on her arm to make her halt, too. “I don’t think I understand this. And what are you angry about?” he asked, knowing he was walking on thin ice and she might explode.

“I’m angry, Aran, because I’m scared of that thing. It invades minds. Oh, and bodies. That corpse-guy didn’t vomit spores on us out of nowhere. There’s no telling what it’s doing to Ailmon’s brain right now, and he invited it in without a second thought. I’m angry because you don’t take my warnings seriously!”

He looked at her for a moment. She was unusually solemn. He nodded. “I’m not particularly thrilled about this either. How did they get into contact with the… thing? And what was it saying?”

“Ech…” Naia sighed in exasperation. “At least you’re listening. It invaded Ailmon’s brain and tried to talk to him, and he talked back, and then Shale said it was like interrogating a suspect, but Ailmon had to figure out how to explain all kinds of things to it, like it was a small child, and definitely on the stupid end. So he’s right now sitting in the death flat, chit-chatting with a murderously dim killer mushroom. I left when it tried to convince him it just wants to go home!”

They began walking again.

“Where did it come from?” Aran asked.

Naia waved a hand vaguely. “Some colony on an island, provided it’s telling the truth.”

“And it arrived here how?”

“A ship, Aran. A ship, like everything else in the slagging Life Sea that needs to go elsewhere. Sheesh!”

“Fine! Relax. It’s not me pissing you off,” he snapped back. “So, did it kill people? Is the fungus the murderer? How did it wield a knife?”

“I don’t know,” Naia just said, calmer this time. “I don’t understand anything of what’s happening. Let’s just go back there so you can see the madness for yourself. And smell it.”

o-0-o

Shale and Ailmon were standing outside the house when Aran and Naia arrived. Both leaned against the wall in the last rays of the setting sun that cast a golden glow over the timber-frame house, making it look almost not as rundown as it actually was. They were both pale and tired-looking, staring ahead of themselves blankly, Shale’s skin a paler shade of green.

Ailmon finally looked up as they approached. He nodded to them but said nothing.

“So… mushroom?” Aran began.

Shale rubbed her forehead in an exhausted gesture. “Yeah… Mushroom…”

“What did you find out?” Ailmon asked, visibly pulling himself together.

“Oh, no! Not here. Not a chance. We’re getting outside of range of the charming death-fungus before we discuss anything!” Naia stated categorically. She turned and took a few steps down the dirty street before realising the others weren’t moving. “Come on, people! Hustle it! There’s a bar a bit away from here and we are going there so you can explain yourselves!”

Aran looked from Naia, stomping down the street, to Ailmon and Shale. Ailmon just stood still for a moment and the two shared a look between them as if some form of communication were happening that Aran couldn’t grasp. Then Shale nodded and followed down the street, and Ailmon did the same, a pained look in his eyes for a moment before he made sure to keep his gaze averted.

They walked in silence, which seemed oddly oppressive and troubled to Aran, and finally reached a dingy bar a few streets away. Naia was holding the door open, but stood in the doorway like an eldritch sentinel. “Are you out of reach?” she demanded.

“Yes, Naia. We are out of reach. She’s alone again,” Shale said.

Naia narrowed her eyes and then stepped aside, letting all three of them enter. They took seats in the small common room, ignoring gazes from the few rather sloshed regulars.

Aran ordered a round for them and then looked at Shale and Ailmon.

“So… Saibee did kill one person. The owner of the flat. Nebbeth. But she didn’t know. She didn’t understand death,” Ailmon said.

Naia just sat with her arms crossed, radiating displeasure.

“Alright,” Ailmon added, “and she killed a few hundred gerbils when she was just learning how to navigate and spread.”

“And Saibee is…” Aran asked.

“She’s a living entity. A plant, I suppose, but endowed with… I don’t even know how to term it,” Ailmon said quietly.

“Clunged up brainpowers!” Naia supplied.

Ailmon looked at her calmly. “Well, she communicates in emotions. With ehm… yes, brainpowers. All parts of her contain a measure of her personality. The bloompods we have been finding–“

“The shicks!” Naia interjected.

“…Yes. They are her seeds.”

“As far as we could gather, she was taken from her home and has been trying desperately to communicate ever since,” Shale explained. “She thought the reason she wasn’t successful in communication was that she wasn’t part of the collective here, so she has been trying to join us. She just didn’t know how to do that. She…” Shale faltered, gesturing vaguely with her hand.

“How did a plant distribute these bloompods, then?” Aran asked, trying hard to make his tone as neutral as possible.

“She arrived here in the crate. By then, she was reduced to just one bloompod. I suppose the old woman took the crate into her home, and Saibee managed to contact a few of the gerbils in the flat to have them scratch a hole in the crate and floor, so she could root herself in the ground below the house.” Ailmon tentatively took a sip of his drink. His eye twitched at the taste and he let the rest sit.

“Alright? What then?”

“Well…” Shale downed her drink, unflinching, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “The gerbils died, but she got stronger as she found sustenance and she began growing the bloompods to distribute, so she could join our collective. She eventually reached the old woman and had her go around and distribute the pods to those she felt she could reach the easiest. That was the vision, or rather, memory, which I experienced when we breathed in …Sargon. She seems to be able to steer people around, but there’s a bit of time before it takes hold.”

“And that’s why several of the victims have been ill before they died?” Aran asked as information slowly began to click together in his mind.

Ailmon nodded quietly. “I surmise as much. It was a snippet of Saibee’s consciousness that was battling theirs for control. Do you remember that Ginnifer reportedly said something about, ‘She’s crawling with gerbils’ before her untimely end? I believe she must have gotten the same manner of impressions from the bloompod as we did from the spores in Sargon’s system. Only the onslaught was too much for her and drove her to suicide.”

Aran looked at them for a while, not sure what to make of this. Then he shook his head. “So, I’m assuming there’s still no handy explanation of how the other victims ended up violently murdered?” He looked sideways at Naia, surprised she hadn’t kept the commentary up. She just scowled at him warningly.

“She, Saibee, didn’t understand what was happening,” Shale began. “She’d make contact and try to integrate herself into a host–“

“Victim!” Naia interjected.

“…Victim,” Shale agreed. “And then it would disappear from her consciousness. She was desperate when we found her. There were no more gerbils near enough for her to reach, and Nebbeth and all her other …victims were dead. She had no means of communicating and couldn’t reach Nataniel because he apparently has some sort of natural mental resistance to her.”

“So someone out there knows who has been infected. And he is going around killing those that Saibee reached out to,” Ailmon said, as if wrapping the discussion up.

“She drives people mad, huh…” Aran mused.

“I suppose that Ginnifer is proof of that,” Ailmon agreed quietly.

“Why not you two?”

Shale and Ailmon shared a sideways glance.

“Because I let her speak, I suppose,” Ailmon finally said and shook his head. “She speaks in emotions. It’s quite confusing at first, but I felt… Nobody deserves to be that lonely and desperate. She’s a sentient being who was taken from her family against her will and deposited in a strange and frightening new place all on her own, with rules she didn’t have a chance to understand and without knowing the language. She didn’t even understand what it meant to be able to move. I suppose I… empathise. Starting over on your own, of your own free will, is at best a daunting task. Having it forced upon you is horrendous.”

“But not an excuse for murdering people!” Naia stated categorically.

“I agree,” Ailmon said smoothly. “Not an excuse. But an explanation that deserves to be taken into consideration.”

“She arrived on the Herradine, right?” Aran asked before the exchange got out of hand and cashed in a furious glare from Naia.

“Yes,” Shale confirmed. “The name was stamped on the crate in Nebbeth’s flat. Nataniel Bargess from upstairs must have brought it with him.”

“So if someone on the Herradine was suddenly driven mad, it was most likely this …Saibee’s fault, right?”

“Bargess seemed quite normal. And Saibee let us know she couldn’t reach him,” Ailmon said.

“Not Bargess. A man named Eli. The quartermaster of the Herradine. He’s at Margan Elfslayer’s. He mysteriously went mad on the way back from the last journey. I had a feeling…” Aran shook his head. “Gods! I was in the room with him. He doesn’t want his door closed at night because he needs to sneak out. He’s in good shape, used to climbing the rigging, used to hard physical labour aboard. He can haul himself up to Corwin’s window. He can climb down from Shandra’s. He’s had contact with the fungus, so maybe he can somehow, I don’t know, sense it? Maybe he can feel his victims?” Aran fell silent and looked around.

All three were staring at him.

“Alright, I’ll bite,” Naia finally said. “Did you just solve this?”

“Well, no. We have to confirm it and apprehend him first. Or rather, the other way around. But it makes sense.” Aran grinned.

“How do you know about this Eli fellow?” Shale asked.

“Bargess visited him. They are friends, as far as I could tell. I had a feeling Eli wasn’t as blank as he wanted to pretend. So…” Aran looked at the others. “What do we do now? Should we go and talk to him or keep an eye on the hospital and try to catch him in the act?”

“Of murdering someone?” Shale asked. “Sounds a bit irresponsible. Even for us.”

“Unlike throwing yourself headfirst into an emotional conversation with a death fungus?” Naia asked casually and leaned in over the table. “We are definitely going to catch him in the act. Way much more fun!”

“So if we had said, ‘We’re going to talk to it for funsies’, you would have not been sour like a child who couldn’t have a sweet?” Shale asked pointedly.

“You are supposed to be the responsible ones! Ailmon first and foremost!” Naia snapped. “You betrayed me! If you can do idiot things like that, I can’t trust you’ll stop me from doing something equally stupid!”

“Oh, that’s where the bugbear is buried, huh? Don’t worry, I will stop you!” Shale said with certainty, brow furrowed.

“Really, so you’re done protecting a murder plant?” Naia snapped.

“She didn’t know she was harming anyone!” Shale barked back.

“How did the fungus even become a she?”

“She’s a she because she spawns seeds. I’m not arguing with you about that!”

“Men spawn–“

“Ladies, please.” Ailmon put a hand flat on the table in front of both of them. “The fault is mine. Will you hear me out, Naia?”

Naia leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. “Fine!” she finally said. “But make it good.”

“It was reckless. I agree.” Ailmon nodded.

“Thank you,” Naia said, less angrily.

“But when I felt her, the emotions mirrored something within me. I’ve been where she is, and finding my way was…-” He looked down on his hands on the table. “-difficult. And lonely. So I ran a calculated risk in speaking with her. If I hadn’t, I would have felt like I was giving credit to some of those who made my life miserable all those years ago.”

Naia stared at him, brow furrowed. “You were, what? Kidnapped?”

Ailmon gave only a blink in possible confirmation and then said, “Like with Farrow, I need you to trust me.”

“Gods damn you…” Naia said quietly.

Aran shared a quick look with Shale, who shrugged. “Who’s Farrow?” he asked.

“No one’s problem anymore!” Naia snapped.

“Thank you,” Ailmon said, evidently taking the outburst as acquiescence.

“Extortion…” Naia grumbled. “But then I vote we send Ailmon and Shale in, stinking of death fungus. As bait. That makes it not as irresponsible,” she added smugly. “This Eli-guy will go for them if he can actually feel it.” She looked at Shale, eyebrows raised in challenge.

Shale scowled. “Fine! But just me. Not Ailmon.”

“Actually, it should just be Ailmon!” Naia stated.

“Because…” Aran pushed his cup away and leaned forward in his chair, looking at Naia. “Because the other victims have clearly been civilians who wouldn’t put up a fight. If we present him with a target that will obviously fight back, he might not take the bait. Right?” He looked at her, curious.

“Thank you!” Naia said. “I’m glad you’re not stupid.”

“You actually thought this through?” Shale asked sceptically.

“Of course,” Naia said casually. “I’m irresponsible. Not dumb.”

“That’s one interpretation…” Shale muttered under her breath.