“…oh, how time flies. I’m ten minutes behind,” In the midst of his retelling, John abruptly stopped in his tracks, consulting a small disc-shaped chip strapped to his wrist which Zachary guessed to be this cult’s version of a watch.

The elder turned to Zachary apologetically, placing his wooden right hand on his shoulder. “Sorry about this, young one. I have to go and prepare for my daily sermon. I trust that you will attend, yes? It’ll be in an hour’s time – there’s a bell signalling the start. You won’t miss it. In the meantime, you can look around your new home. Get familiarised with the various amenities we provide.” Leaving the otherworlder with those words, the old man walked briskly away, back in the direction of the communal space.

Now left completely alone, Zachary could do what he intended from the very beginning – stealing the knowledge that these cultists had amassed in their reclusive lair. He rubbed his hands together in glee, strolling carefreely down a hallway leading to more unexplored rooms.

I suppose it isn’t exactly stealing if they’ve accepted me as their own, he mused. It’s more like receiving a gift, really. And their leader literally gave me permission, so I’m not going to stand on ceremony. New Skills, here I come!

The records room wasn’t hard to locate; it was a cramped storeroom off in a corner filled entirely with dusty volumes stacked from ground to ceiling, a worn bulb providing illumination winking in irregular intervals as it struggled to stay lit. Zachary casually grabbed one off a nearby pile, brushing the accumulated detritus off the cover to read the title.

Unfortunately, it was here that he realised his error – that he had mistakenly assumed he would be able to comprehend the words that were written there.

Normally, when he first inserted himself into a new world, the system would ensure sufficient parity of memories with the native denizens nearby. Meaning that a general understanding of language, both written and spoken, would be uploaded to his consciousness, allowing for him to converse fluently with the first person that he came across.

There had been hiccups in the past, like his spawn point being in the middle of an uninhabited desert, and his language center being overwritten by the skittering of a colony of mutant sandworms. Or that one time that the native people spoke entirely in phrases unpronounceable by human tongue.

That was nothing a quick swap to a different Mask couldn’t fix, though. The Wandering Philosopher could generally bootstrap his way into the subtleties of a language in the first few lines of dialogue spoken to him, and the Mind Flayer would simply rob some poor soul of their repository of vocabulary. If he needed augmentations to his personage to communicate, the Mad Scientist could easily whip up an auditory organ or two, no problem.

This wasn’t the problem here – no, the problem here was that these so-called ‘human’ cultists had abandoned the Beastkin common tongue entirely. From the messy scribblings on the front, Zachary could tell that they were bastardisations of the English alphabet. A newly invented language that did not exist in the history of Aphelia before now. And to make matters worse, they were juuuust a little off – as if somebody who had zero clue what each letter sounded like individually or strung together had mashed them up to create an indecipherable abomination.

As such, the book he was now holding had the title, ‘YFJKQAI VZ JKL PAXZR YSCXNB’.

Zachary sharply exhaled, in a mixture of anger and exasperation. How was he supposed to learn anything if everything was written in some… made-up language that these fanatics had cobbled together from random garbage they’d seen from Earth?! He flipped the pages to confirm this, scanning quickly as he did so. And yes, every page was the same gibberish repeated over and over again.

I’m not going to learn all this crap from scratch, he thought. I’m terrible at memorisation; it'd take months! What I would give for temporary access to one of my other Masks… Screw it. I’ll just get that John fellow to read everything to me.

As he reached the end, something caught his eye; just for a split second. He popped open the book again, rifling through the pages, finally coming face to face with a faded black and white photograph, stuck to the pages with three large splotches of hastily applied glue. A Polaroid, if he had to guess. Or the product of one of those brandless disposable cameras.

Huh. Photograph. They have cameras here? Quality’s kinda trash.

He squinted at the picture, trying to make out the features of the people depicted within, but all he could reasonably tell was that it was a couple of smiling Beastkin kids huddled around a much taller woman, her face blurred from artifacting from flaws in the camera, or simply damage from the passage of time. She seemed to be the caretaker for these children, the sole adult figure for the lot of them. But there was something off about her, like she didn’t belong. Like she was a completely different race from the Beastkin children.

To be more precise, she was indisputably a human.

He was certain of it – the woman was the only one with no fur covering any part of her body.

Ah ha, he smirked, tapping proudly on the unknown lady’s face. There you are, otherworlder. Knew these idiots couldn’t have come up with all this themselves. This trip wasn’t a waste, then. I don’t need to learn from these bozos; I just need to get a hold of her.

Just then, a harmonious ringing sounded from behind Zachary, echoing through the halls of the underground complex. Sermon time. He shut the book and returned it to its place on the mound.

It was time to get some answers from the horse’s mouth himself.

~

The room, Zachary noticed, had been changed considerably from when he first arrived. The desks filled with sheaves of paper were pushed flush against the sides, and a large red mat was laid over the ground, on which the hundreds of cultists were now finding their places on. Zachary obediently followed, plopping his behind down on an empty space.

The leader was currently waiting patiently on his pulpit, a simple wooden stand which, in truth, didn’t look at all imposing. There were no fancy carvings or intricate embellishments. It was just that – a wooden stand. But despite the lacking stage, Zachary guessed that the followers of this cult weren’t here for the designs – they were here for their leader.

BANG.

A fist came down hard on the wooden pulpit, making it vibrate from the impact. At once, the murmuring from the crowd stopped, and hundreds of adoring eyes focused on the man that had hit the stand.

“In the beginning,” John started, his voice sombre and imposing. “We were lost. We had been deceived by those around us, with vile lies of unity and harmony. We did as we were told, blindly following the words of our parents as they fed us vicious falsehoods designed to keep us in our place; keep us foolish and easy to control!”

“Then,” his voice grew gentler, the wisp of a smile creeping onto his lips. “She came. The Holy Mother.”

“The Holy Mother.” The congregation chanted as one with the elder, causing Zachary to jump a little. Nobody told him this was supposed to be a collaborative exercise. He mouthed the words, pretending to be in on the consensus.

“She brought us out; out from the haze of untruths and deceit! And she gave us the blessing of knowledge. It was her, her who had seen through the troubles that ailed us, she who had took pity on us, the unintelligent misfits; and gave us meaning- nay, purpose!”

“She gave us the tools of liberation, and in her infinite wisdom, allowed us to decipher the truth within, ourselves! And yes, it may have taken time to replicate her advanced gifts, to learn how they worked; but we managed it! With naught but our own two hands! Electricity! Smithing! Us humans! Not those foul beasts!”

Get to the good part, Zachary impatiently thought. Skip past the fluff. Ok, Holy Mother, yadda yadda, where is she? Tell me how I can find her.

John clutched the sides of the pulpit as he stared out into the crowd of his believers, his jubilant face slowly becoming more and more downcast.

“But as you know, the animals… those nasty things… their brute strength allows them to dominate us. Their great numbers prevent us from ever becoming free. Even this,” He raised an object high into the air, an L-shaped block which Zachary immediately identified, even from afar.

It was rudimentary and shoddy sure, but still, without question, a gun.

Damn it woman, you gave them guns? Zachary thought, incredulously. Haven’t you read any stories in your life? Imbalance of military power and whatnot? It’d be a bloodbath! Wait, why haven’t they eradicated the Beastkin? They have guns! It should be a cakewalk!

“Even this, isn’t enough for us to drive them back.” John sighed as he holstered the weapon by his side. “Try as we may, our research has yet to overcome the barrier that is their innate durability. And these weapons, while powerful in their own right, just can’t bridge that immense chasm.”

Ah, Zachary nodded in understanding. They haven’t perfected it yet. It’s just a peashooter. I suppose it makes sense; if they did have assault rifles and machine guns, we wouldn’t be huddled here, listening to an old man screech about how terrible the world is. We’d probably be living in those Beastkin homes on the surface.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“So, in a begrudging compromise, we trickle what precious little we can spare to the greedy beasts in exchange for our own sustenance, all while hiding away our true abilities. The real technology that can kill even them. It is a truce in name alone, for either side would eagerly leap at the chance to wipe out the other. A fragile peace; held together only by transactional value.”

“Next is a story I’ve told many times before, and one that I’ll tell many times again in the future. As you all know, the facility above us is where the Holy Mother once sheltered us under her nurturing guidance. And it is also there that we’ve derived most of our blessings, in the form of inexhaustible knowledge and advanced machinery.” John paused, his voice now simmering with suppressed rage. “Do you know what the animal scum calls it?”

“Ruins. RUINS! They arrogantly ignore the source of their advancements; replaced the truth with more lies. And now they swagger in, week after week, pilfering and looting our birthright; our precious belongings!”

He slammed both fists into the stand, eyes bulging with fury.

“This has to stop! We must take back the surface! Wipe out the animals and reclaim our rightful homes!”

There were a few shouts of agreement from the flock at this, but plenty of silent nods as well. What John was saying was right; why should they, the intelligent but less physically inclined, have to concede the lands up above to their lessers? They should put their brains together and eliminate the Beastkin scourge altogether!

Ugh, I can’t take more of this garbage, Zachary thought in disgust. An echo chamber on steroids. Bloodthirsty fiends, the lot of them, just itching to get to the killing. Give them a reason and they’ll murder their own parents. Nobody’s even questioning the things they’re being told; they’ve just swapped one liar for another! If it were me, I’d never fall for such transparent lies.

Although, thinking about it, that’s probably what every person here told themselves at the beginning… Whatever, I don’t want any part of this, I’ll just ask what I want to know and dip.

Raising his hand, Zachary spoke up, “Hi, John? Quick question; is that okay?”

Hearing a question posed, John peered out at the crowd, looking to see who had their arm up. Upon seeing that it was the newcomer Bob, a welcoming smile was flashed at him.

“Of course, Bob, anything for one of us humans! What would you like to ask, child?”

Zachary cleared his throat, then continued. “Yeah, so I've noticed that you’ve been talking about this um… Holy Mother… in a very roundabout way. Can I meet with her? Maybe have a short conversation of some kind? I’m sure she can provide answers to some of my queries about the Church. And other unrelated stuff.”

“Ah,” John’s smile vanished, replaced with a glum look. “Alas, my child; that won’t be possible.”

This… was not sounding like a good development.

“Um... why not, John? Is she perhaps… bed-ridden? I don’t mind making a trip to where she’s resting, really; just point me in a direction! I’m a very good walker.”

Zachary demonstrated as such by lifting his knees up and down on the spot in an exaggerated act of walking, but the elder waved it off dismissively.

“It isn’t like that, child. She had been… Corrupted. It was an unfortunate affair, a truly saddening turn of events. For our founder, our benefactor, to have blasphemous thoughts of wanting us to live together with those animals… to confer onto them the same blessings she had given us! Inconceivable,” John shook his head sadly. “It pained our hearts to have to do it.”

Uh oh.

“… do what, John?”

He sighed deeply.

And Zachary knew what he was going to say before he uttered the words, but in his heart he was praying that it wouldn’t be the case, that there would be some other reason for the female otherworlder to no longer be a part of this cult.

“To end her life, Bob.”

Shit.

“It was a difficult decision to make, but we had to make it. For we could not bear to share a home with them, and we could not brook dissent; even from the most divine of places. She passed painlessly, after consuming a fast acting poison slipped into her favourite meal of simmered stew. We treated her remains with care, and have interred them with the highest of honours.”

There went his only lead.

They killed their prophet? The one that he just recited a whole speech about? What was all that about her giving them boons and crap? Bunch of crazy lunatics.

Nonetheless, Zachary pressed on. There was still a miniscule chance that there could be something in the belongings she left behind. An object that could help him communicate past the walls of reality. She was, for all intents and purposes, still an otherworlder; the mechanism of her travel would be usable to him.

“But, in the end, she had a point, right? The Beastkin – animals, you call them – you could’ve reasoned with them, tried to find a way to cooperate? Live together, like she wanted? For example, she might have had, I dunno, something that she brought with her? Some sort of magical device that could have achieved this? Anything ringing a bell, John…?”

John frowned at those unexpected words from one he regarded as pure.

“Bob, do not go down this path; it is a false one, a line that will only end in pain and suffering for all parties involved. She was misguided, is all. One misstep is all it took for her to become tainted. There was no truth to her in those last days. Only falsehoods and lies; just like the animals she sought to protect.”

Irritated, and somewhat frustrated that his only tangible source of information had been murdered by the very same person that now preached meaningless scripture at him, Zachary blurted out what had been at the back of his mind all this while.

“STOP WITH THE DAMNED DOGMA! You guys are All. The. Same! I’d thought this from the very beginning, but just didn’t mention it out of simple courtesy. So if you're going to rant on about how you were right to kill the person that gave you everything in the first place, explain this to me; if I had been born to a Beastkin parent, then so would you! So would all of you! How can you call yourselves human; when you’re all Beastkin?!”

John’s face was now stony, entirely solemn. Zachary panted, his throat hoarse from screaming out his inner thoughts. For a few lengthy seconds, the underground complex was silent.

Then the elder spoke once again.

“Not any more, child. We are beasts no longer. Disciples of Humanity; show this newcomer our resolve.”

All around Zachary, cultists stood up, taking distance to form a large oblong circle surrounding him. Zachary quickly hunched down into a battle position, fists to his front. He didn’t know how a Level 7 would fare against a literal horde of Beastkin, but he’d certainly give it a go.

He quickly realised that this was not a lynching; nothing of the sort. For it dawned on him that each would-be human were now detaching some part of their body, and placing it on the ground in front of them. It might be an arm, a leg, or in some cases a glass eye, but every single one of them had a deformity which they were hiding with a prosthetic of some kind.

“Do you see, child? Do you see what lengths we’ve gone to rid ourselves of the stench of beasts? Of animals?” The bellows of the elder resounded around the room, he himself having removed his wooden right arm and maniacally shaking it in the air. “This is what it means to be human! MAN, NOT BEAST!”

“… man not beast. Man not beast. Man not beast.” A low monotonous chant began around the room, as the cultists carried on their leader’s message.

They did this to themselves, Zachary thought, horrified. They all did. They chopped off their most beastlike appendage and shaved off all their fur in an attempt to reduce their Animalisation value.

That’s… fucking insane!

“Bob,” John now spoke gravely to him, locking his wooden right arm in place just as the other assembled cultists did the same, securing false appendages back where they belonged. “I understand your doubts; we’ve all had them in the beginning. So I won’t hold those blasphemous words against you; just this once. But you would be wise to remember; that we are willing to do anything to rid this world of the animal scum. Anything. Understood?”

As Zachary mutely nodded, one single thought ran through his mind.

He hadn't been horrified by the self mutilation of the cultists, he'd seen worse in other realities, after all; but by what it implied.

The cult had revealed themselves to be exactly what he had only vaguely estimated of them; except way, way worse. He’d believed them to be a bunch of jealous losers, hiding away from the victors - the Beastkin living on the surface - while licking each other’s wounds. No, they were more than that. They were mad devotees, every one of them, single-minded in their purpose of eradication.

And you couldn’t reason with someone like that.

How, then, was he going to get more information about the Holy Mother - the sole thread he had found relating to otherworld travel - if she was seen as some sort of traitor to the cause?

Ah, crap.