Chapter Sixty Four

A sense of awful remembrance came over Carza as they shambled, mud-slicked and weary, to the great grey temple in the middle of the salt marsh. The air reeked of salt, and for all the dampness it carried, it desiccated just as quickly. Addictive. Rehydrating and dehydrating all at once, a perpetual system which felt impossible to escape. And in its heart was the temple. In the heart of a random series of dry sandbars and rolling boggy hills, surrounded by lazy streams filled with flat brown fish which seemed to be formed from the mud itself. Carza almost thought she could hear the sea. The horses were keeping away from her... the mutation on her neck was starting to burn a little. A mound of ruddy flesh, like the shell of a crab or a lobster, mottled with skin tags. Still making up its mind on what it wanted to become. Felt almost like a collar. The temple... it was huge, it was grey, and it felt achingly familiar for reasons hard to articulate. Maybe it was something primordial. Her mind, terrified and flickering, went from random thought to random thought, never landing for long. Lirana wheezing in her gas mask, protecting others from mutation. Her animal howls as she attacked the ancestors, defending her old colleagues. The thing by the railroad, broken up and mostly dead, yet every constituent part fleeing to find life on its own. The Sleepless.

One school of anthropology had become popular recently. Some people called them 'perennialists'. Believed that anthropology could shed light on the illiterate and forgotten peoples of the world, could merge with archaeology to make sense of humanity's untold history. Believed that some experiences were universal. And in that universality, you could find... parallels, meaningful categories of analysis. Marriage was a popular topic of study, because all human societies needed to reproduce, so they might as well have a cultural framework surrounding reproduction. The same with kinship. The same with dining, the same with house-building (for almost no peoples lived with no home at all, even if that home was a temporary one). Always popular. And maybe this was hitting the mark. This temple - appealing to something perennial in her, an idea which her culture hadn't articulated precisely, but which nonetheless existed. Maybe forgotten over the years. It was hard to say why that was... it was a heavy grey thing, mostly made from hexagonal columns rising high into the air. The weather had beaten it down so much that it looked completely natural, she couldn't see any seams, any bricks... only its suddenness and the door in the front marked it out as artificial.

Maybe it was appealing to the part of the brain which still worshipped idols of mud and clay. Which could see the gods which lived in everyday matter. The same mentality which made her two friends here believe that the dead moved slowly through the earth and would come when called.

Founder, she was terrified. She was so very, very terrified. Her skin was clammy, her eyes kept watering, and her entire body seemed clumsy. Shrinking into itself, hollowing around a single iron-hard point in her gut. The gnawing, escalating more and more and more, demanding survival, demanding she chew every pill in her bag until her mouth filled with foam and blood leaked from her ears, her nose, between her teeth and behind her eyes, until her stomach emptied itself over and over in a desperate attempt to get rid of the toxins she'd forced it to take, until her throat was a mass of red ragged ribbons, torn up by the removal of mutation, until... no, no, wouldn't work, the mutation was purged from inside her, the problem was outside. Then she could slice it away. Snip, snip, snip, cut it off like removing a caul from a baby, slicing it away, peeling it free, burning it and then scattering the ashes...

Kani was murmuring to her.

Couldn't really hear. It was odd. When she was this frightened, this panicked, this utterly filled with dread, she just felt... felt cold and desperate. Reality in general faded away, the mud under her feet didn't even feel real. Just... matter, crude and unrelated to her current situation.

The only thing which mattered was surviving. And anything tangential to that survival was ignored.

And for now, that meant everything but herself and her companions, who hauled her along. Her legs hadn't stopped working. But she was slower than them, weaker than them, and now they helped her scramble over the last few little hills, splashing through tiny muddy rivers, disturbing the rest of a dozen toads which glared sullenly at them while their backs swarmed with little brown tadpoles, burrowed into little fleshy pockets. Seemed like the earth was squirming. The great sea of mud where all good scholars went after death, to the halls of the Founder, where his libraries were endless and study was infinite. Founder, she was seeing the end. She was seeing the nameless creatures in the grand mud-lake, where rain fell perpetually to wash away all sins, to wash away the tattoo on her forehead. Because she would meet the Founder soon, and he'd have no need to see through her third eye any longer. She kept scratching her forehead, trying to feel the change in gradient... still there, still there, she was still alive, still alive, no matter what the terror was telling her.

The door.

They'd reached the door.

The temple was dark, vast, and... and dry, presumably. Warmer than the outside. The walls were caked with salt, and the water mixed with it to create great tears. Like the whole temple was weeping. The door was a solid mass of metal, turned green from rust until she had no idea what it'd originally been. Hints of carvings... hints of letters, or abstract shapes, or towering monsters, or nothing at all. Simple geometric designs warped by the passage of time. Kani shoved at the door... it held firm for all of a few seconds, before Carza's weight was unceremoniously deposited on Ayat, and Kani roared at the door, sounding utterly feral for a second... and ripping away. Pushing it forwards with all the strength she could muster - which turned out to be a pretty bloody huge amount. Wouldn't be long before Carza could match her, once contamination marched through her muscles and made her into something flawless, something deadly, and something that wasn't her. Mindless and savage. The door squealed like a stuck pig, like a Scabrous outrider on the hunt, and inch by inch it gave way. Rust was shed in enormous grey-green flakes - like the grass which had surrounded the forests where Lirana had died. More omens.

She was thinking like a nomad. The grey-green door. The primal familiarity. The squealing. All bad luck. Bad, bad, bad luck.

Typical. She'd gone native. Hull would've ribbed her for that. Asked if she wanted to go raiding for a bevy of wives at some point. Not a funny joke, but one he'd definitely have made.

Maybe she'd see him again. Soon.

The doors gave way, and a rush of dry, salty air rushed out... warm. Warmer than here. The three of them stumbled inside, and Carza realised that it'd been drizzling out there. Drizzling heavily. But the mud had foamed up so much, the stress had weighed so much that she'd barely even noticed. Only noticed now, as her tweeds shed water like a shaggy dog's coat, dripping to the bone-dry earth. The three shambled inside quickly, and Kani got to work on the door again, heaving it shut... the hinges screamed, and Carza could hear them about to break... as did Kani. She stopped. Not fully closed, but... a narrow sliver of light, wide enough for any of them to squeeze through, was a sight better than no door at all. The collar of mutated flesh was shivering at the change... Founder, it was alive, developing a life of its own... cut it out, cut it out, cut it out now-

"Ayat. Get her sat down over there, against those pillars."

The temple's interior was gloomy. Shadowed. A few slit windows set high up the wall, where grey light spilled, but it was barely enough to illuminate the vague outlines of things. Founder, this place was huge, like... like those cathedrals she'd heard about, the huge churches built elsewhere on the continent. Ayat helped her over, Carza's legs feeling... weak. Very weak indeed. Shock. Stress. All the exhaustion of the last few days crashing home. No more putting it off. No adrenaline pushing her onwards, mutation wasn't an enemy that could be outrun or muscled through, and her body knew it. Knew that it'd done what it could. And that the rest was up to the brain, to her allies... and as far as the body was concerned, it could finally demand she rest. After the race down the mountains, the pursuit of the Scabrous, the pursuit by the Scabrous, and then the swamps... she needed a nap. Many naps. A perpetual one, even. She slumped against the hard stone of a hexagonal pillar, staring up into the dark ceiling for a few moments before she snapped back to herself. Started dragging her bag out, noting how the horses - which had accompanied them inside, shaking themselves to shed all the moisture they'd accumulated - were keeping a very healthy distance from her.

They knew what was happening. They knew what it meant. And they weren't willing to get dragged down with her.

Fair enough.

Why was she feeling so... numb? Why wasn't she crying, or screaming, or acting like a child? Why was...

She was acting like a child. She was acting the way she did when she was very young. Silent. Terrified, but never showing it. Wary of everything. Skittish. A rat scurrying from place to place, one eye on the sky, one eye pointed ahead. And terrified of what would come from the sides, from below, from behind. Terrified, and aware of how much she couldn't see and couldn't know, all of it fusing into a helpless paralysis which just made her seem... paranoid, distrustful, barely even human. Eating quickly, with her rake-thin frame curled around her meal to make sure no-one could steal it. Always looking over her shoulder, always looking for ways to escape. Never showing weakness, not even to herself. A charade where if she faked being unafraid for long enough, she'd become unafraid, so long as she never, ever dropped the act.

She could speak with the clarity of time - she'd never stopped being afraid. And all she'd done was, day by day, reduce herself to an animal. Could feel it happening again.

Kani hunched over her, and started to examine the mutation. Ayat was close by, and Kani dragged him even closer, forcing him to examine it too. Right, he'd been at war, mutations tended to happen a lot during those things. Dead bodies, dead animals, abandoned fields, huge amounts of biomass for a mutant to consume, or for contamination to enter. He'd know. The two of them studied her neck for an uncomfortably long time, murmuring inaudibly to themselves... and their expressions never really improved. Neither of them were used to mutation, they lived in a place where mutation was rare and their own biology was fairly resistant. In a country like theirs, a wellspring of mutation could just be... avoided. They could literally just walk away and nine times out of ten they'd be completely fine. Sure, it meant they were constantly mobile, their families were small, they suffered from numerous raids, they had a myriad of problems, but mutation wasn't one of them. Lucky bastards. Ayat fumbled for his knife, checking it for cleanliness... a second later, splashing some clear alcohol over it from a tiny flask. Sterilising the metal. Good move. He came close, angling the knife down... and he shot her a quick, shameful look.

"Get it over with."

Carza hissed. Just cut it away. The majority of the mass, that it. Slice it, dice it, burn it. Carve it all away and hope that something good came from the experience. The knife came closer... Carza took the strap from her bag and clutched it between her teeth. Remembered how it felt to clip away her skin tags, and... well, that'd hurt. This would hurt more. The tip of the knife danced over the surface of her skin for a moment, and she barely felt a damn thing. The mutation wasn't feeding her any stimulus, it was just...

The knife pierced.

And the mutation squirmed.

Carza clenched down on the strap, hissing... not because of the knife. She didn't feel that, not beyond a vague pressure. But because the red-hot collar of mutated flesh was pressing inwards. Tighter, tighter, tighter... strangling her. Her breath was choked off in an instant, and she started to gasp madly, struggling to get any air at all... none. She'd breathe, the air would enter, it would stop at her throat, she'd breathe again, and it... it felt like she was drowning, she was drowning on dry hand. Her hands came up, reached... and the sensation tightened. She legitimately worried that her throat would be crushed. Her vision was exploding into stars, turning dark at the edges... Ayat's knife, the knife, it was still here, it was... the pressure turned sharp. The mutation was trying to survive. And it was starting to burrow, to extend filaments inwards. If it got into her bloodstream, if it got to her brain, she was...

Her hands changed course.

Slapped the knife away.

Ayat backed off...

And the mutation relaxed.

No more filaments piercing deep into her skin. And no more pressure. The collar became... just a collar, no longer a garotte. Carza fell forwards, coughing madly between desperate breaths, welcoming the coolness of the floor... even as she felt tiny salt crystals scraping against her palms like sandpaper. The collar slithered slightly, realigning. It was... oh Founder, it didn't want to let her go. It wanted her. It had flesh attached to it, and intended to make use of it. Needed her. A parasite growing on her neck, slowly expanding and infiltrating until there was nothing left of her. Already it'd learned how to stay latched on like a leech, already it knew how to linger. Carza's eyes watered, but she refused to cry. Refused to break down. She was becoming like Lirana. Mutating. Soon enough there'd be nothing left at all. She felt hands on her shoulders, hauling her back up, propping her gently against the pillar once again. Kani, Ayat... the hands shone, and nothing else really mattered at this moment.

She was dead.

Kani looked uncertain, kept chewing her lip... Ayat just looked guilty at causing her pain. Carza said nothing. Just stared down at her chest, breathing heavily, struggling to get herself back under control.

"The swamp... there should be some gyre-root out there."

Ayat nodded slowly.

"Yes. Should be. The juice should help."

"...we'll be back soon, alright? Do you need one of us to stay with you?"

Carza didn't respond for a moment. Just started getting out her notes, checking them for damp with the disaffected calm of someone who knew they were going to die, but hadn't quite processed it. She had an enemy she couldn't fight. Gyre-root... she didn't know the word, but she could imagine. A little herb, probably crushed up and smeared clumsily over a mutation. Would hurt it, sure. Would damage it, sure. But kill it? Kill it before it could infiltrate further and seek shelter in the warmth of her body? Not a chance. It was unrefined. The natural world wasn't a generous thing, anti-mutagenic herbs were always mostly concerned with protecting themselves, you needed very high concentrations to achieve anything meaningful for a human. They were defending their own, simple biologies... nothing as complex, as large, as refined as a human.

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It would be a treatment. A source of relief before she presumably died.

Needed to sketch out the beginning of the ethnography. The basic plan, something to be sent back home. A letter of introduction for Kani and Ayat, if they chose to go to ALD IOM. A letter for Melqua, to say... sorry. A letter for Hull's parents. A letter for the treasury section, to make sure pay was sent back to the members of the expedition who had families... just Lirana, really. Her cousin in Mahar Jovan. And... no, Cam and Egg had requested some money sent back to family members, she remembered that. Right, and Lirana's biography, for processing... she was asking for a lot. If this was sent back alone, no-one would listen. Needed a courier. Needed Ayat and Kani to hold this stuff for her.

She shook her head. She didn't need company.

She needed herself and her notes and her calm preparations for death. Wouldn't scream and beg and hug someone. She felt like a cat slinking off to a lonely place to die in peace and quiet, disturbing no-one. Animals would rage against death if they could see the thing causing it, if they could see a way out. But when there was no way out... calmness. Pure and utter calmness, the sort which only biological impulse could create. And she could feel it now. Memories of being a street-urchin coming back. The same calmness back then, too... certainty that she would one day die, and a vague resignation towards that fact.

Old-worn calm. When others around her died, she was torn up.

When she was about to go... she felt nothing but weariness and an urge to sleep. A desire to get her last scraps of work done before she went. The collar squirmed uneasily around her neck, coiling a little closer. She wasn't going to die. She was just going to cease, and something else would walk away wearing her skin. Shamble through the mud and the salt and consume anything it found which reeked of rotten contamination. Her clothes would wear thin, and her skin would thicken and toughen. Her gait would change, she'd drop to all fours, anything to conceal her profile on a horizon. Her limbs would change. Her teeth would sharpen and multiply. Her eyes would become those of an animal. And eventually there'd be nothing left of her.

Maybe she should ask them to kill her before that happened.

Maybe she shouldn't force them to take that burden.

Kani and Ayat left in silence, hurrying to find as much of that herb as they could.

Carza sat in silence, and worked. Papers. A brief plan, chapter by chapter. Basic concepts. Biological notes to establish context, ecological notes to refine that context further. Cultural concepts of precariousness, with luck to correct it. The free market of ideas amongst the clans. The structure of clans as a whole. Raiding practices, comparing them to the concept of war crimes back home. Forgiveness rites. The Scabrous... though her notes there were lacking, and she barely had the time to scribble a few down. Maybe best to neglect that point, let the others take it over. They were clever, they'd know. Then... letters. Melqua last. Wanted to spend time on it. She started spreading her papers across the ground, feeling her collar pull tighter and tighter as she went. It knew it'd been found, knew it was attacked, and it wanted to speed up the process. Subtlety gradually abandoned. The floor was dry enough for her to work on, smooth enough too - only salt crystals to interrupt it, whoever made this temple had done a good job. In another time, she'd want to make notes on it. Now? She was just glad for the dryness and the smoothness, everything else was tangential and inconsequential. A letter to Hull's parents. Apologising for his death. Ensuring that they knew he'd acquitted himself well. Saved her life. Been a good friend. And he ought to have his name first on the ethnographies. Easy enough. She'd been rehearsing that letter for a long, long time. A letter of introduction - Kani and Ayat of the Puliraliq (cadet branch) were to be afforded all the privilieges given to her, to reward them for their help, for their delivery of the information, and any further information they may give to whatever anthropologist wished to work on them.

Ideally, her salary and the salary of Hull ought to be given to them. Rooms, too. A zero sum - the resources given to Hull and Carza simply transferred, never removed. The dying breath was the one which carried the greatest truths, according to the Founder. And so the words of the dying had a power which no other word could hold. So they'd damn well better listen, and listen close. She'd haunt the hell out of them otherwise. Ask the Founder for permission to go back to the waking world and torment every scholar who betrayed the intent of this letter.

I will now go to the lake of mud and the house of the Founder.

Yours,

Carza vo Anka

Finished.

And Melqua...

Oh, Founder, what was she meant to say to Melqua...

Sorry.

That was a start. Her hands shook for a moment, and she quietly reached back into her bag. Digging for something she'd thought she'd... still intact. Still here, after all this time. The wrapping paper for the fruitcake Melqua had given to her at the station, a little fuel for her long journey. Smelled like home. For all the fragrances she'd smelled in the steppe, in the mountains... nothing could quite match this. Nothing at all. She inhaled deeply, remembering home, remembering the room of roots and the experience of curling close to Aunt Melqua as she adjusted to living like a human. And with that... she felt something of the animal fading in her. Just for a second. She felt human again, and... and being human hurt. No more Melqua, no more Ayat, no more Kani... no more anything. No more study, no more labour, no more purpose. She realised, all of a sudden, that... she didn't know if the lake of mud would really wait for her. If anything would. In the end, she just felt... she didn't know what she felt, but it was empty and uncertain and worrisome. And she backed away from the papers quickly. Could feel her eyes moistening very slightly, and didn't want to stain her last will and testament. Would seem... seem very unprofessional. And the last thing she wanted to do was seem unprofessional in her last written work.

She'd loved Hull. She loved Melqua. And Kani, Ayat... she had a genuine affection for them, could imagine spending more time in their company. She was the last one to remember her expedition's members. With her gone, only Miss vo Larima would remember, and... she didn't seem the type to write long elegies.

She shivered. And wanted Kani to come back and hug her, clutch her close. Tell her everything Carza wanted to hear. That Carza was intelligent and witty, that she was driven and potent, that she was pretty. All the petty things she wanted to hear, to make her feel like her existence had been recognised. Because any form of recognition would work. She was dying, and she wanted to construct a four-dimensional portrait of herself out of memories and pages and praise, a flattering portrait which could be passed around and admired and... and maybe that would mean something.

Maybe.

Slowly, carefully, she rose to her feet. Her hands were shoved in the pockets of her coat, and her face was set in a rictus of concentration. The collar felt larger. Advancing upwards and downwards. Already encircled her neck... and now it was spreading. Not very quickly, but... anyway. A little work, and she had a torch lit. After enough encounters, she'd made sure to carry around some branches for torch-lighting purposes... the nomads used horns to carry their fire, and Ayat had left one behind. Hollowed out horns where fire could be kept without burning the hand. And with her burning horn, she advanced into the darkness of the temple. Just needed to stretch her legs before she got back to work.

She felt like a rat. Filthy, muddy... stepping around in a place larger than her, which didn't deserve to have its floors marked by the caked mud on her boots. This place was... Founder, it was huge. An archaeologist from back home would kill to be here. She ought to mention it in her letters - 'venture into the salt marshes with desperate abandon, don't think about navigation, just press forwards and never look to the side, just try to go deeper and deeper. Realise you made a mistake when the fogs descend and you can see nothing. Then start navigating to the east, picking over the mud. Dismount from your horses, they're no good. And maybe you'll find a temple which was either grown or built depending on how you look at it. There will be a gap in the door for you to enter, and you must bring a horn of fire to see'. No, she'd sound mad... Ayat might know how to get back here. But in the fog, there was no guarantee of seeing it from a distance, and Carza was hopelessly lost, so... Ayat or nothing. And he was exiled from this place. Intended to leave as soon as possible, to a place where no-one knew what the black sash meant.

She wandered quietly for a long few minutes, feeling her way along the walls. The temple was enormous, and she couldn't see the ceiling. Only vaulting dark, so deep and so absolute that she was surprised to see no stars twinkling at the top. No idea what gods had been worshipped here. All she could feel was... well, a kind of nameless longing. The marshes were ugly, they were harsh, they weren't meant for humans to live in. The ground shifted too often, the rivers were too choked with silt and mud, you could go to sleep and wake up sinking through the earth to join the Iron Halls of the nomads. The nomads left almost no mark on the world. They ravaged and killed, but they also forced themselves to forget their ancestors, to forget their dead. The Scabrous had built geoglyphs, and no-one would ever repeat their work. Tents left no mark. The nomads seemed to have contented themselves with being forgotten, with fading away and meeting the fate of every animal - a nameless death with no remembrance. But this temple... it was eerie, seeing something like this after so long. But it was enduring. It was... such a different mentality to the nomads, who loved to forget. This demanded remembrance.

And yet the fog made her forget it nonetheless. That door had been rusted shut. The floor was undisturbed. No-one had come here.

The temple demanded to be remembered. And the world had insisted it be forgotten. And in the void between the intention and the world, there was a senseless longing. The salt crystals on the stone clung to her fingers, and it almost seemed like the temple was embracing her, carving her with its shapes, forcing her to remember it. Begging her to, really. Lost cause. She wouldn't remember her own name soon enough. Maybe she should ask to get buried here. Would feel appropriate. But would involve asking Kani to kill her, so... Lirana had lived for a while, right? Had a path ahead of her... finding another mutant, consuming it, not just being a mutant but advancing as one...

No. Definitely not.

She advanced into the inner temple. And...

Saw something.

Something moving.

Carza froze. Her hand flashed to her rifle... back with the papers. Back with the damn papers. Slowly, her feet began to retrace her steps, while her eyes remained locked on the darkness. Something was in there, something moving. And a second later... it emerged with unceremonious simplicity. It wasn't trying to impress, it was simply curious. An animal. Small dog, looked like. Mangy, and... oh. Mutant. She could see where the fur had fallen free, to reveal a tattered mass of hardened flesh. In some places, turning to scales. In others, to tough leather. In others, to a material which looked like the pads of a cat's foot. Just in patches, though. Elsewhere, fur still clung, albeit mangy and grey. The dog-thing advanced slowly, utterly silent. Pupils had long-since exploded. Teeth were beginning to multiply. Must've burrowed in, or maybe found some little entrance... lived here for a while. Didn't need to hunt, didn't need much of anything. Only more contamination would satisfy it, and it didn't need it to survive, just to improve. And now... oh, Founder, she had mutation around her neck. And...

It was just walking. Not running. Not pouncing. Nostrils flared, and she saw tiny dark holes surrounding it - additional nostrils forming, with more advanced senses. Anything to detect more contamination. It was silent, maintaining direct eye contact. Utterly still. Nothing natural, nothing that a regular animal would do. Carza backed off, faster. The dog-thing matched her pace, but never came closer. Just maintained its distance, never falling too far away. Sniffing quietly, staring unblinkingly with pupils that had long-since erupted and flooded the iris. She saw how its muscles were bunching smoothly as it moved, how powerful it was, how it could rip her apart if it got in...

She was close. Could feel the air from the open door.

Her friends would be back soon, and... she glanced away for a second, checking that she wasn't going to step on her papers, and...

The dog stopped following her.

Instead it circled lazily to her left, almost fading away from the light, but its eyes continued to gleam with blank interest. A second. A pause.

And it moved.

Carza started to run... and the dog was faster, bounding across the ground with the ferocious abandon of an ambush predator, leaping upwards. Carza felt its weight collide with her, force her to the ground. A huge creature, eyes burning, staring down with bland hunger. And yet... it didn't bite her. No jaws sealed around her neck and began to gnaw, it just... pinned her to the ground, rested silently atop her...

And sniffed at the mutation growing on her neck.

A second later, it gave it an exploratory lick.

Carza whimpered.

Seemed to enjoy what it found. And for a bizarre second, the mutant just... ignored her. All attention paid to the mutation. It lapped at it like... well, like a dog. Nothing unusual if she didn't look at its malformed skin or distorted pupils. As long as she kept her eyes closed and ignored the smell, she could almost pretend it was normal. Just a dog, lapping affectionately at her neck. But Carza knew where it was going. It didn't consider her worth watching. Only her neck was relevant right now... and soon enough it would start to gnaw. To strip out any form of contamination. She glanced around... no, her rifle was too distant. Her papers were scattered like snow across the grey floor, and... and... the sight of the papers filled her with an eerie fury. A dog was stopping her from working. A dog. No, definitely not, she hadn't finished her letter to Aunt Melqua yet. No thought about risk, about waiting, about playing for time. No thought about the future, not when she had no damn future. Her leg braced...

And her knee lashed upwards, hitting the dog in whatever passed for a sternum.

There was no yelp. It simply shivered, and slipped...

Her hand lashed upwards, one arm still pinned under an enormous paw.

Hadn't clipped her nails in a little while.

One nail did nothing. Just scraped empty air. Three nails scraped along the cheek, tearing up the mangy, half-disconnected fur, maybe drew a little blood.

The final nail plunged into its eye. And she hung on tight, anchoring in place with the others, and pushed. Deeper, deeper... until she felt the jelly pool over her flesh like the mud which streaked every other part of her. The collar was pulsing. Sympathetic to her heartbeat, eager for more contamination to be spilled on it? She pushed deeper... and was screaming something. For once, she knew what it was.

"I'm not fucking dying, I have too much fucking work to do!"

How embarrassing.

The dog slid from her, trying to detach from her nail... and Carza rolled away, scrambling to her feet. Hah! She'd... now she could run for her rifle, grab it, put the dog down easily enough, burn the body, and... and she'd rolled to the wrong side. The dog was between her and her rifle. One eye flat and bored, the other a vacant, bloody socket. There was no growl, no snarl, no bared teeth. One second it was still and staring. The next... rushing. Carza sprinted into the other direction, into the heart of the temple, as the dog followed her, the only sound being its nails - abnormally long and sharp - creating strange cadences as they scraped along the floor. But she knew what it wanted. It wanted to rip her throat out. She was a threat now, not just the platter holding its meal. Kill her. Rip away the mutation. Heal its eye. And move on. There was no passion to it, no meaning. She had no weapons. She had no tools. Her allies were elsewhere. And the red-hot collar was trying to tug her back towards the dog, insisting that she hurt it more, and strip away the beautiful contamination from its corpse, mutate herself further, let her skin thicken and pupils burst like black stars, let her mind fade and her body become a unique species, utterly unlike any other.

Carza ran.

The temple seemed to sing as she ran through it, her footsteps echoing in the darkness which stretched all around her. Salt crystals cracked under her feet. The dog was coming. Its jaws were powerful, its teeth were sharp, and they probably dripped with some kind of venom. The mutant often had its eyes burst, often gained more teeth, and often gained venom - integrating the bodies of the venomous or toxic creatures they chose to consume. A house was infested with contamination, spiders consumed the contamination, mutants consumed the spiders, and a spider's venom entered their teeth, forming hollow needles that cracked off in the skin and refused to come out, barbed and wicked and cruel. It was coming. She ran into the dark blindly, no thought for the future. Most of her work was done. Just needed to find... find a stick, a stone, a weapon, something. This was a barbaric ancient temple, why weren't there any enormous ceremonial weapons just lying around?! Where were the jagged obsidian daggers, where were the onyx axes, where were the damn golden claymores? Where were... where was anything?

The dark was all-consuming, and nothing emerged. The temple had forgotten its own purpose, what gods it honoured, what people it served, what it was meant to accomplish. No statues, no murals, no treasures, just... just the dark, just the hexagonal pillars. Her horn of flame was somehow still in her hand, and she realised that she could use it as a weapon. Mutants hated fire. So... maybe... but if she failed, she'd be alone in the dark, with no hope of being found. The space around her was everything a home shouldn't be. It was vast, it was dark, it had no limit. It was strange, and utterly empty. Had all the form of a temple with none of the function, had all the space but none of the worshippers, it felt like a house of worship which had forgotten how to be a house, and how to worship, what to worship, when to worship... the dark had swallowed it whole. And it just kept going, on and on and on and on and-

She stumbled.

Something ahead. A pillar, larger than the others, engraved with images she could actually make out.

It didn't reassure her.

Images of a huge figure, face vanishing into the dark. Only a monstrously vast body, and... organs. The creature was opened with dozens of wounds, and when she looked she thought they weren't wounds at all, but mouths curled into sensuous crescent-smiles, or... the lower-openings which were too vulgar to name. Birthing organs - kidneys, lengths of intestine, pieces of lung, bones and the curling root-like growths of a circulatory system. The entire body birthing itself destructively, and each organ sculpted with such delicate care that they must've been observed in real life. No writing. Simply the image of vivisection, with creatures underneath, their hands raised up in slavish devotion. Humans, but with... with elegantly extended heads, cranial deformation honed to an art form, their eyes half-lidded, depicted with effortless seductiveness, faces so delicate that she felt that if she ran her hand across them she'd feel warm flesh and flowing blood. And... and her flame caught the face of the vivisected giant.

It was smiling.

Laughing. A deep-belly laugh that made its torso contort, allowing it to birth organs faster and faster and faster and-

She felt sick.

Needed to move, circle around the pillar, maybe get the dog to come close so she could burn it properly, set a light, and...

And the floor felt thin.

The dog pounced, and she barely managed to avoid it, circling around...

The weight of the dog crashed down.

And that was the straw which broke the camel's back.

The dog, for once, looked surprised. There was a vicious satisfaction there, she thought. A very vicious satisfaction. A satisfaction which ended as she saw the black cracks spilling over the floor, as curving and leering as the wound-mouths on the vivisected giant with its massive grinning face. No light. No sight. Nothing. She started to sprint away, but as her heel dug down... the cracks raced for her, slithering forwards like snakes sighting their prey, wrapping around the earth over and over, fighting to climb up and bite her ankle... the cracks widened.

And Carza fell.

A scream escaped her throat as she plummeted into the darkness. The collar around her neck burning like hot iron. The dog falling like a mangy comet, silent and still trying to swim through the air in her direction, jaws baring wide as a cobra's mouth when it was about to strike...

The darkness swallowed her whole.

And in the dark...

She could see no bottom.