After Iris calmed down enough for Autumn to risk untying her, the party took turns interrogating her to discern her mental state.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Eli asked, "you freaked out pretty bad back there."

"I'm fine," Iris insisted, "just pissed off and cold. Would you shut up!" she whirled around on the pestering voice, then froze when she saw she was yelling at nothing.

"Uh, Iris?" Autumn said, "there's no one there."

"I know!" Iris said angrily, then squinted her eyes shut and rubbed her temples with a thumb and forefinger, "these ghosts are really getting to me."

"Come on," Victoria said softly, "we're almost there. This is all about to be over."

Iris nodded and moved to follow Victoria. Eli hung back and shared a silent exchange with Titus, expressing their mutual worries before following the others. The sense of impending doom grew ever stronger as they traversed the final stretch of cave, and finally culminated as an overpowering, soul crushing fear when they stepped into a large chamber with dark soil walls held up by tangled webs of roots and mycelium.

The back wall of the cave was a mess of overgrown roots, from within which a dim, ominous white light shone and slowly pulsated, casting long and dark shadows of the roots that encased it. There were fewer arms on the walls here, instead replaced by a dozen disembodied faces bulging out of the soil on the walls and ceiling. They were still, their eyes were closed, and their flesh was grey and slack on their skulls.

Eli, Titus and Autumn found themselves locked in place from utter fear, unable to take another step forward. Iris could move, perhaps thanks to her Fearless Resolve feat, but she wasn't sure she wanted to. It was Victoria who stepped away from the party and into the middle of the cave, where she stood and greeted the light.

The mouths of the faces in the walls cracked open and spoke in unison with ragged, raspy voices of the people they used to be, "trespasser."

"You've been down here a long time, haven't you?" Her voice was somber and empathetic.

"We are as old as the soil is deep. Leave now, or join us.""

"What are you?" she asked.

"We are the forest," the faces rasped, "we are the lands. We permeate all, and enable all to exist. We will permeate you, with time."

Victoria nodded in understanding, "you're a fungus."

"We are merely fungus, if you yourself are merely flesh."

"Of course, you have souls. Not just one, like me, but dozens. Maybe hundreds? How many have you claimed?" She took a step closer to the light.

"We are many."

"Aren't you tired?" another step closer, "you've been down here so long, all alone."

The light flickered, and for an instant between the flashes the hollow eyes of the faces flashed open.

"We are not alone. We are many. We are—remnants,” a face to her face briefly became the loudest voice in the symphony, “we-- are-- in agony. "

"The first among you, were you trapped here by the ghost fire?" she was close enough to lunge at the light now, were the roots not in her way.

"We were," the faces contorted into expressions of pain and sorrow, "our souls were sundered by the flame, we were made unwhole."

"So you couldn't pass on," she said said somberly.

"We wandered the ashlands. We searched for salvation. We found the light, and the soil found us."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Victoria grimaced as the final pieces fell into place, "this isn't the light you were looking for."

"The light brings us power. It brings us purpose. It brings us-- life."

"No," she whispered, "you've been caught like moths to a lantern. I'm sorry to extinguish it."

She lunged forward, slamming herself against the roots and reaching between them with an arm outstretched towards the light. She was so close she could feel the warping of reality around her finger tips. The faces in the walls screamed, and glowing spectral tendrils erupted from their throats, spilling out and manifesting into floating spirits that flew around the cave in a flurry before swooping down at Victoria. The specters grabbed at her legs with icy grips that passed through her flesh and clutched her bones. The spirits worked to pull her back as she squeezed her shoulders between the outermost roots. She grabbed hold of the inner roots and pulled as hard as she could, barely inching forward as she only just overpowered the pull of the specters while they bellowed shrill, rage-filled screams.

"WE WILL NOT DIE!" several spirits yelled in unison, while a few faces in the wall rasped, “please let us die.”

The cave went dark. Victoria sucked in an endless gasp as she floated in the air where the light had been. Her arms were outstretched and her back arched, her eyes wide and glowing as veins bulged around them. She flickered in and out between a physical state and a translucent spectral form as air rushed through the cave and into her lungs. She saw the face of every trapped soul, felt their emotions and witnessed flashes of their memory. There was another presence – not a soul, but a consciousness – lingering one each of their souls like a mold. As a lives and emotions flashed before her, the ancient, lingering mind dwelled only on bitterness and anger. Finally, her breath slowed to a stop, the light faded from her eyes, and she dropped limply to the floor.

Her companions -- at first stunned from fear of the living soil and then forced to recoil away from Victoria's reaction to the Thread of Power -- were now able to react. They each rushed towards the roots that now imprisoned her, and Autumn immediately began hacking away with her axes to free her. Iris blipped to the other side of the roots and crouched down beside her unconscious friend.

"She's breathing," Iris announced, prompting sighs of relief from Eli and Titus, "hang on, I think I can get her out of here."

Iris half lifted Victoria from the ground and held her in her arms as she blipped. It took an immense amount of mana and she was instantly struck with a headache, but it worked, and she and Victoria reappeared on the other side of the roots. Titus promptly crouched beside them to assess Victoria's condition.

"No signs of physical injuries," he said after a moment, "it’s hard to say about anything else, but her aura feels strong and there’s still mana in her veins. I think she'll be okay."

Iris withdrew a pillow from her bag and placed it under Victoria's head while they waited for her to wake. The faces in the walls were now truly lifeless, as were the arms which now hung limp and motionless. The cave felt quiet, still, and dead. After a short while, Victoria cracked open her eyes and sat up from where she lay.

"That sucked," she said nonchalantly.

"How are you feeling?" Eli rushed over to ask.

"Did it work? Are you badass now?" Autumn pestered.

Victoria waved them off as she climbed to her feet, "I'm fine. And yes, it worked."

"What's it like?" Iris asked.

"It feels—powerful, like I'm more than I was before in every way."

"Whoa," Iris and Autumn said slowly in unison.

"Nice," Autumn added at the end.

"What kind of thread was it?" Eli asked.

Victoria averted her gaze, "we can talk more about it later. Right now, let's get out of this cave."

"Wait!" Iris said hurriedly, "I still feel cursed. I thought beating the bad guy was supposed to fix it? What do we do now? I don’t want to be a zombie--"

Victoria tapped Iris harshly on the forehead with two stiff fingers, and Iris felt a strange sensation of something not-quite like mana rushing up from her heart, through her throat and face, and out of her forehead into Victoria's fingers. Immediately, her warmth returned, her eyes felt less heavy, and the whispering voices finally stopped.

"Whoa," she said quietly, "what was that?"

"You're cured," Victoria said curtly, then looked over each of the others, "none of you are cursed, we're good to go."

"Just like that?" Eli asked, "how do you--"

"No more questions," Victoria interrupted.

They made their way out of the cave back the way they came. The process was long and arduous, but no more difficult than it had been on the way in. When they reached the underground river, Victoria stopped short of the water and sighed.

"What is it?" Eli asked.

"No questions about the thread or my powers until we're outside, I mean it," she said firmly.

"Okay," Eli said, confused, "guys?"

"Yeah, of course," Autumn said, as Iris and Titus nodded their agreement.

Victoria took a breath, then transformed into a spectral form of herself. She was partly translucent and uniformly colored in a pale purple hue. A faint glow emanated all around her, and where her legs should be was instead a swirling trail of spectral energy. Without a word, she floated over the water down the tunnel at a much faster pace than her mist form had ever allowed.

"Hell yeah!" Autumn shouted, "we've got a ghost on our team!

"I'm not a ghost!" Victoria's voice echoed from further down the tunnel, sounding distinctly ghostly.

As the party made their way down the flooded tunnel, a raspy voice too quiet for them to hear came from the darkness they left behind.