The scavenger disembarked in the middle of the mostly non-heterogeneous night, a Borgian ghost lost in the labyrinths of morality and wood. With treacherous step it approached its prey, avoiding a fatal trip over the nut filaments and nutciceptors of Yggdrashell. Bedecked in a coat of darkness he waltzed through the safety measures, closing in on the agonizing, rigid body of Kalon.

It’s jaws of darkness opened, revealing small, sharp teeth that glistened under the lone beam of moonlight that attended Kalon’s fall in disgrace. Opening its mouth too wide for any man or any woman (sans your mother) the creature slowly bit Kalon’s lean arm, and he didn’t react, for all-encompassing pain had become its companion during the course of the illness.

Brunhilda picked the obscure creature up from the skin of its neck, as one ought to pick a puppy.

“Unpaw me, bitch!” ordered Jagger. “I am teething; I need to bite something or someone! Or consume copious amounts of opioids.” Jagger began salivating loudly. “I may be addicted,” he self-reflected.

Brunhilda snarled a whole dissertation on why biting Kalon to ease one’s pain was wrong, and how one needed to honor the lord of canids in every instance of biting.

“Tramadol is my shepherd, I shat not once,” Jagger the heresiarch countered.

Brunhilda tossed Jagger to a side and vomited another load of fresh water onto Kalon’s fevered forehead. The puppy had stopped wondering how she managed to keep it cool inside her long ago.

“Are you trying to kill your owner again, pests?” Asked the booming voice of their host.

“No, just bite him because he’s suffering from muscular rigidity and it can help me ease the pain on my gums.” Jagger showed his sharp little teeth. “Wisdom tooth have nothing on these deciduous babies. I am scheduled to change them in a few weeks.”

“Scheduled to change teeth?” the tree asked, spawning an eyebrow made of nuts on a wall made of nuts and raising it.

“The tooth fairy is very punctual. Do you want me to anger her? What are you, nuts?” Jagger answered, as grumpy as usual.

“Yes.”

Jagger planted his face on the nutty ground. “Not my wisest choice of words.”

“Wisdom is attained with age, pup.”

“So is death, but I am trying to cheat a painless way into it. So far, no luck.”

The tree hummed pensively. It was slicing its brains to study the distribution of the tissues in the slices. As of late, his lower parts, the ones below the hole that housed Kalon and the dogs, had rearranged into absolute mesarchy, and that was slightly concerning. Being the pattern god of nutrees didn’t come easy.

“I cannot grant you death, for you are Kalon’s original weapon. As long as he lives, you cannot be destroyed, pup. Some roads work like that.”

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Jagger opened his eyes wide and began hyperventilating.

“What do you mean I cannot die?”

“From the energy of Kalon’s very soul you will be built a new body if you happen to destroy your current one. Yours is the faithful life of a sworn sword.”

Jagger raised his gaze to meet a more dignified set of nuts than the ones on the floor. Any of them. “Was the alliteration necessary? Am I not disgraced enough without your plays on words?”

“Yes,” the tree yessed.

Was that dialogue tag necessary?

“Yes,” the tree answered the narrator’s question, to the confusion of everyone present.

“You are as stupid as Kalon’s dumbest piece of gut flora, tree,” Jagger said, and then stared intently at Kalon. It was so simple… “I think I know how to get the tetanus bacteria out of his system.”

“You do?”

Jagger nodded, and Brunhilda got between him and Kalon, growling in the dark. “It doesn’t include killing him, chill.” Brunhilda panted happily and got out of the way. Jagger climbed upon the bridge that was Kalon’s body, and placed his ear against his chest.

“What are you doing?” The tree asked.

Jagger shooed him and then whispered. “Judging how stupid the bacteria are.”

That got the tree to stop talking, partly out of understanding, and partly because his Vegetable Cells of Sentience had begun dying of obesity related comorbidities. Too much stupid can kill you, if you eat it. It’s like eating Dove. The brand of cosmetics. Too much of it is likely lethal, and, and… it’s beautiful, because if you eat enough you probably go dumb, so it will kill you, and you won’t have a clue why, perfectly fitting Queen’s song. [1]

“I think they are ripe for the picking,” Jagger said after listening to the way the backwardteria peddled proteins in the intravenous streets of Kalonia. “No doubt, this tetanus hails from Valelike Vale.

Then Jagger cleared his throat, joined his paws as though in a prayer, and inhaled. “This is traditional, and traditionalist medicine, Yggdrashell. Are you gay?”

“I am hermaphrodite,” he sheed.

“Ultra-archi-mega-gay, then.” Jagger sentenced. “Cover your aural nuts, I will harness homophobia to bring them out.”

“What?”

Jagger inhaled once more and then shouted in Kalon’s open-in-pain mouth. “The last male pathogen to leave Kalon’s body is a campy dicksucker, and the last female pathogen a scissoring whore!”

Kalon’s body started convulsing and blood coming out his pores, as droves of Valelikevalian bacteria, viruses and parasites left their host, scared of being considered one of them. The foul fluids dripped out of Kalon, and Brunhilda decided to puke some fresh water into his mouth to keep him hydrated as he bled his tormentors out.

“Do you think he will suffer brain damage due to the loss of blood?” said Jagger.

Brunhilda shook her head.

“Right, no brain to damage.”

A thick layer of scum began forming upon Kalon’s blemished skin. A veritable community of Ill-begotten ill-begetters, where a tenia that had crawled out of Kalon’s ass and several cysticerci that had been plucked out of their hiding in his liver joined forces to confront the bacterial xenophobia. A group of coronaviruses quickly evolved a secret service to topple fungal governments (for self-defense, of course!). A rat climbed out of Kalon’s mouth, it smelled like vomit and shit. Brunhilda mauled it on the spot and ate the entrails.

“Guh…” Kalon moaned. “My gut rat…”

A few moments later, Kalon’s body had been purged from all heterosexual pathogens. Jagger knowing himself immortal, lapped up the layer of clotted, illness-ridden blood that covered his owner.

As he did, the gods laughed like hyenas, and kept adding years to his lifespan.

The tree decided to take a nap, and discovered plants couldn’t sleep. Condemned to constant awareness, it took solace in the fact that, despite the toxin still flowing in Kalon’s bloodstream, at least the bacteria guilty of it had been taken care of.

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[1] The author doesn’t condone eating beauty products, even if they make you, in particular, ugly. He does condone listening to Queen and/or reading the Invincible comics and cheering for Space Freddie Mercury.