Hazy gray filled his vision as his eyes flickered open. Abe could feel his body crying out to him in agony.

Looking down, he eyed his broken body. His gray skin and blue veins were entirely hidden beneath a blanket of red. He could see the worms lining his limbs, desperately keeping them from falling apart.

He couldn’t move, and the worms were entirely consumed, keeping him from falling apart and becoming chunks of meat scattered across the ground.

Not only that, but his deathly energy was draining fast like a plug had been pulled.

Groaning, he glanced around for anything useful. It was a cave; there was nothing remarkable about it. Limestone walls surrounded him, small puddles lined the floor, and rubble lay at his feet, likely remnants of his fall.

He could sense the worms; they were wounded as well but in far better shape than he was.

“Well, if you guys can’t help, I guess that’s about it. We’re dying in a fucking cave. Not that it’s any worse than dying just about anywhere else I’ve been lately.”

He felt the worms try to wiggle despite their situation.

“I’m not giving up, but I’m a piece of sewed-up chunks of meat; how the fuck do I get out of this? Right, like I thought,” Abe sighed.

He tried to relax and lean into his rocky seat in the cave, but as he did, he felt his body falling apart and reflexively restrained himself.

“I can’t even get fucking comfortable. Of all the ways to go, I got meat jellied.”

As if answering his call, a light began to glow faintly in the distance, illuminating the tunnel’s end.

He tilted his head and narrowed on the light, “The fuck is that supposed to be?”

The light pulsed, its warm light growing brighter, and seemed to move through the tunnel.

“Hello, are you a-a thing?” he groaned.

The light flashed and continued toward him.

“I’m not a fucking cat; you’re going to need to do more than float around little light if you want to impress me.”

A glowing purple cap dotted by white spots crept through the light.

Abe squinted and blinked, trying to make sense of the humanoid fungi walking toward him.

“A fuck what… a mushroom?”

Sporeling, an ethereal voice crept into his thoughts.

Gray, humanoid legs carried the mushroom closer, and brown frills ran the length up to its stalk beneath the purple cap.

“How’d you get in my head, mushroom man?”

Sporeling and I’m not in your head. I’m merely transporting thoughts.

“Great, I get to spend my last moments with a fucking telepathic mushroom. At least if I was going to put through all this bullshit, it could have happened with Nia’s legs wrapped around me.”

Nia?

“Don’t you worry about that, mushroom man?”

The sporeling stepped closer, tilting its head as it craned toward Abe.

“You’re not hungry, are you?”

The mushroom remained silent and took another step closer.

“Alright then, get it over with. It’s not like I can fight back.”

You’re gravely wounded, ghoul.

“You don’t think I’m aware of that?”

A gray arm extended toward Abe’s head, and tiny mycelium roots weaved through the air and connected with Abe’s face, and began to borrow.

The worms cried at the uninvited entrance, but they were consumed keeping him together and could not repel the invader.

Abe’s chest pulsed a moment later as the roots kept through his veins in search of something.

“What the fuck are you looking for? What do you want?”

A light shrill came from the mushroom, but it didn’t answer as the mycelium roots between them created a sponge-like cloud between them as they continued to invade him.

“What did I do to deserve this?” he groaned as he felt them crawling into every inch of his body.

The mushroom inched closer, leaning as if curious.

What exactly are you, undead?

What am I? What the fuck are you doing in my head?

Examining. You’re no normal ghoul. There’s something different about you. Something ancient.

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What the fuck do you mean, mushroom man?

I might be a dreamer, but I’ve fed on enough ghouls to know what they taste like. And there’s something different about you.

So, you’re going to eat me then, are you? Well, go ahead, bastard. Looks like this is the end of my road either way.

Special, but infantile. I have a proposition. Would you like to hear about it?

I don't know; does it look like I have much of a choice?

Silence followed momentarily, but Abe could feel the mushroom digging inside. It took him seriously and decided to continue studying his body.

No, you don’t. You will die without me; that is certain.

I’m aware, Captain Obvious. So, what’s this proposition, then?

I’m not sure if you can tell with that infantile brain, but I’m stuck here. I was reduced to fighting for survival in this cave. Reduced to rationing what little dream energy I had left in the hope that a miracle might arise. You see, this horrid rock only receives deathly energy, which is no good to me. I had hoped for many days that one day before I died, one of my own kind might visit, and I might be able to escape with them. However, that day has yet to come and might never. Yet here I am, faced with an opportunity I never expected.

Go on, hurry it up. You can see I’m dying, can’t you?

Yes, I can. I can save you. Your body's properties are special. I can feel it. By binding with you, I can heal your wounds enough to escape this cave. In return, you can bring me to a place with dream energy so that I might recover. Promise me this, and we may work together to survive this place.

So, you can’t leave this cave? How does that work?

My energy hums with its last drops. I survive purely thanks to the shelter of this cave and its ability to drown out the deathly energy from above. For if I were to step foot above the surface as I am now, I would die within minutes.

Abe thought on it a moment. His body was already crowded, and introducing another didn’t seem wise. But the mushroom was right. But left alone, he was dead.

“Fine, get in,” Abe grunted, irritated at his lack of choice in this shitty situation.

I assume that means yes.

Don’t make me repeat myself, mushroom man.

Sporeling, the mushroom hummed within his mind as the mycelium fibers that connected them began to dig deeper. Soon, the white threads were peeling away from across the mushroom’s body, connecting to Abe and digging into him.

The bond wasn’t just physical; he could feel the energy transfer between them as the sporeling transferred itself into him.

In seconds, he watched as the mushroom's fibrous body deconstructed itself, sending its essence traveling along the mycelium, binding the two and into Abe.

A new layer of lighter gray, almost white skin began to form across Abe, hiding his battered and bloodied body beneath a new shell.

Squeezing his hands, Abe could feel a modicum of strength returning to his body. His energy levels were still pitifully low, but the bleeding had stopped, and the drainage of his life had been temporarily halted.

Groaning, he eased himself up. The feel of his body now felt foreign, more so than it had ever felt with the worms. But he was able to move, and this allowed the worms to relax their lifesaving efforts.

I’ve done what I can; the rest will be up to you, ghoul.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry. As bad as it looks, I’m normally pretty good at surviving total bullshit,” Abe said as he carefully pulled himself up to his feet and glanced around the cave once more.

Stumbling several meters down the cave, he struggled to find his footing as he fought to familiarize himself with his new skin and empty energy well.

Almost falling, he extended a hand to catch himself against the limestone wall and took a steadying breath.

Okay, maybe this isn’t going to be that easy.

An instinctual sniff escaped him, bringing with it the irresistible scent of Nia’s blood.

The vials. If I can get to them, I should be able to heal myself.

He sniffed again as he mapped out a path toward the vials. The earth between them muddied his ability to map a path as the scent seemed to permeate the ground. He sniffed again, trying to see if he could find a breeze carrying the scent of the blood, but nothing came.

“Not good,” he grunted, staring down the fuzzy, gray corridor. He wasn’t about to give up and hobbled down it, hoping to find something. But his senses told him a story he didn’t want to believe, that the tunnel he struggled down didn’t lead to the surface.

“I can’t accept being stuck in this fucking cave,” he grunted as he defiantly pushed on, driving himself forward in the hope of finding a means to survive.

******

Perfect white light shot forth from the tower and continued into the colorful array of stars and twirling shapes of the Vale sky. The white light narrowed as it left the shardworld, cutting through the darkness beyond and continuing until it was barely a line pointing through the Vale.

Wiping viscous, slime-like sweat from his brow, Slagot sighed. “You maggots actually managed to pull it off. I suppose you’re not completely useless,”

“So, we’re done here?” Targa grunted as he entered the chanting circle. “I’ve got loot to collect.”

“We are,” Slagot croaked. “The countess will be informed, and the funds will be released to the guild.”

“Good,” Targa said, kicking away a pile of dust in his way—the remnants of the acolytes consumed by energy channeling into the tethering rod.

Xer had been meditating to recover his deathly energy, returned to his feet, and swirled his hand across his orb as he summoned a few more golems.

“Go, find anything of value,” Xer waved as he sent his minions off to loot.

Viara was in the worse condition, but she wasn’t about to let the other two claim her prize, and she forced herself onto her feet and into the sky.

“Cheaters!” Targa roared and charged down the hill for the scattered remains of the shardbeast.

Once they were out of sight, Slagot removed an orb from his pocket, “Countess Katiana, the task has been completed, and the tethering rod has been bound.”

“Good, Slagot. You have proven yourself today. Our mission is almost complete. Return to me, my slave. You will be required for the invasion.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Slagot bowed to the orb and sent another message for a reaver ship to retrieve them.

He eyed the wreckage briefly, desiring its treasures for his own growth, but turned away with a snarl. There was so much left to do, and remaining on good terms with the reavers might be essential for their success.

******

The tunnel wasn’t that long, but it seemed to go on forever in Abe's weakened state. Worse still, it seemed that his senses were correct. No light ever came, nor did a breeze.

He stopped to sniff again, confirming he had passed the vial above.

This is pointless. There’s nothing here but an empty tunnel.

He turned back the way he had come. He hadn’t noticed anything of particular use in the previous tunnels either, but he had to check.

Strangely, while he could smell the vial, he couldn’t pick up the scents of anything else. Not only that, but he couldn’t see any energy sources above.

The mushroom had mentioned that the cave was protecting him from the deathly energy above and he wondered if that was what held back his ability to see the energy sources of the others.

Another explanation was that they had died, but he was fairly certain his golem bomb and destroyed the behemoth whale, and the rest of the attackers had been weakened enough that he couldn’t imagine them being enough to take the rest of them out.

Groaning, he forced himself on. Even if they were alive, they likely couldn’t see him if he couldn't see them.

Following another cave, Abe found himself at the edge of the shardworld, looking out across the swirling cosmos of the Vale.

One further step would send him falling into the abyssal darkness below, and up was a vertical rock climb, something he might be capable of at full strength but had no chance in his current state.

“I fucking hate this place,” he sighed, falling back against the wall and sliding down to his ass. “Is this what getting strong means? Never-ending bullshit?