They had a long walk ahead of them. Eve kept a brisk pace which Caruso easily matched with his long loping strides. They walked through thick stands of pine, ash, and willow, past metamine patches guarded by boars and sunny streams shouldered with poppyshrooms. The increasing density of shroomtrees marked their progress through Zone 3.

It was hours before they crossed the Zone 4 shroomline. Caruso savoured the hike through the forest. He’d forgotten the oddities of the shroomtrees out here. Each one was as fascinating as it was strange. There was one that resembled a long thick snake stabbed with thousands of pink spikes. And another that was just a giant blue bowl filled with a milky liquid—a couple of dead nightjars floated inside. As they delved deeper into Zone 4, the bird life adjusted to the absence of regular trees. On one thick shroomtree, goldfinches had burrowed many dozens of nests up its thick stalk and taxied in and out of them like bees from a hive.

Every now and then they passed a giant shroomtower. Only at their tops did the giant pillars finally split into branches which veined through a single enormous shroomcap. As Caruso walked close by one, he heard a strange humming sound.

‘You hear that?’ he said.

‘It happens when the Godshroom is ripe. All the shroomtowers emit a tone.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Why do birds sing?’ Eve asked.

‘To attract a mate.’

‘It was a rhetorical question, smart-ass.’

‘Ah,’ Caruso said.

‘Also, some birds sing to mark their territory.’

‘Which one do you think the Godshroom is doing then?’

‘I wasn’t trying to make a metaphor. This might come as a shock, but the Godshroom isn’t a bird.’

As the shroomtowers claimed dominion over the Zone 4 forest, the humming increased into a constant background tone. The smaller shroomtrees thinned and eventually stopped completely, leaving Caruso and Eve to walk alone through the cathedral of giants. Far up above, the shroomtower caps all knit together, forming a continuous colourful quilt that spread high across the heavens. Instead of blocking the sun, the caps were all translucent, allowing light to shine down, as if through a stained glass window. The humming resonated all around them. Some towers sang a different note, but they all blended together in harmony, like music from a distant organ.

A far off woman’s scream pierced through the music. Caruso glanced at Eve, but she ignored it. When the scream came again, Eve tried veering away from its direction, but when it sounded again, Caruso stopped.

‘What?’ Eve said impatiently.

‘I recognise that voice.’

‘So?’

Once more, the scream cut through the forest, this time Caruso heard it calling “Help!”.

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘That’s Kumiko.’

‘So?’

‘She’s in trouble.’

‘And?’

‘She’s my friend.’

‘Your friend can handle herself,’ Eve said.

‘She clearly said “Help”. We should see if she’s okay.’

‘You would risk Webber’s life just to save a Forester?’

‘You knew Kumiko didn’t you?’ Caruso asked. ‘I remember you mentioning her.’

‘Yeah, she’s alright, for a Forester. But her problems are her own.’

‘This might sound weird, but I think I can feel Webber inside me urging me to go help her.’

‘Webber wouldn’t give a shit about her,’ Eve said.

‘Maybe, but it’s like he can feel through me that she is a friend.’

Eve raised an eyebrow.

‘Honestly, I’m not making this up. I am half Webber now. It kind of makes sense.’

‘You can hear Webber’s thoughts?’

‘No, not like that. But when I think of certain things, it’s like I’m sharing his gut reaction or something. When I look at you for instance, I can tell that Webber has a…fond disposition…’ Caruso trailed off.

‘Oh yeah? Can you say more about this disposition?’

‘I’d rather not.’

‘Whatever, this is a fucking stupid idea. I tried to help Kumiko once, she made her choice. And I doubt she’s changed. Let’s keep moving. We’re getting close.’

‘I remember you giving me shit before about running away.’

‘That was different,’ Eve said.

‘It doesn’t feel different.’

‘Think of Webber—’

‘I am,’ Caruso said firmly. ‘He would want me to try and help a friend, instead of coming up with excuses not to. Listen, she can’t be far away. Let’s just take a look, if we see any Foresters, we’ll bail immediately. But if she’s alone and needs help then—’

‘We rescue her and all go skipping merrily into the Godshroom together?’

‘Please, Eve.’ Caruso looked her in the eyes and felt a rush of emotion pass between them. He knew she felt it too. There was a softening of her eyes and a relaxing of her face that he only ever noticed when Webber was with her.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But you will do exactly as I say. If I get a bad feeling, we leave immediately and head straight to the Godshroom. If I have to drag you there, I will.’

They continued ahead, closing in on Kumiko’s yelling. Caruso followed Eve’s lead as she snuck up from behind the thick trunks, scanning the area before dashing to the next shroomtower trunk.

During one such scan, Eve looked up and chuckled, ‘I don’t believe this.’

‘What?’ Caruso followed her gaze up until he saw it.

Kumiko was two thirds of the way up a shroomtower—at least eighty paces off the ground. Only her top half emerged from the bare trunk, her bottom half disappeared inside. She was still holding her blinking pole. She gave another yell for help—she hadn’t seen them yet.

‘How’d she get up there?’ Caruso asked.

‘Probably lost a fight with a waller. Blinked into that shroomtower instead of falling to her death. Pretty lucky.’

‘There’s no one here,’ Caruso said. ‘If she blinks all the way through, I can catch her.’

‘Not yet. We’ll walk around, make sure no one's hiding behind a trunk.’

They gave Kumiko’s shroomtower a wide berth, and confirmed the area was clear.

‘If I save her,’ Caruso said. ‘You’re not going to kill her or anything, right?’

Eve rolled her eyes.

‘What?’ Caruso said. ‘It’s something you would do.’

‘Fair point. I probably would if it was any other Forester.’

They approached Kumiko’s tower, she saw them and waved down.

‘Kumiko!’ Caruso yelled up at her. ‘Blink through the trunk. I can catch you!’

‘Are you sure?’ She called down.

Eve sniggered. ‘She’s got a lot of faith in your walling abilities.’

‘It’s fine! I can do it!’ Caruso replied with a little more confidence than he felt. He’d never caught anyone from such a height before.

‘Don’t break her legs,’ Eve said.

‘Even if I did, she could still blink her way into the Godshroom.’

They walked upzone of the shroomtower. Caruso stood beside the base of the trunk and looked up. ‘I’m ready!’ he yelled.

‘Here I come!’ Kumiko shouted back..

Caruso stared up the thick towering trunk, concentrating on the opposite side from where Kumiko was stuck. After a couple of seconds she appeared up in the air beside the trunk, then plummeted straight down.

Caruso thrust up a tall wall beneath her. She was dropping faster and faster. As she approached, he lowered the wall with her, allowing her to plant her feet on it. Her legs bent into a deep squat as Caruso slowed her fall, but there wasn’t enough room to slow her smoothly. When she reached ground level, she sprawled heavily onto her side.

‘Are you alright?’ Caruso said, rushing to her side.

‘I think so…’ Kumiko tested her legs then slowly stood up. ‘Yeah, I’m good. Nice catch! Thanks for that.’ She looked him up and down. ‘Caruso? What—’

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

‘Move,’ Eve said behind her. Eve stood downzone from Kumiko, clearly not ready to trust her. ‘We can talk as we walk.’

‘Nice to see you too, Eve.’ Kumiko started walking alongside Caruso. ‘So, you’re an anima now? How did that happen? And what are you and Eve doing together?’

‘It’s a bit of a story,’ Caruso said.

‘I’m sure it is. I’d love to hear it.’

Caruso glanced back at Eve. He froze. Someone had blinked from inside the base of the shroomtower. Serene. And she now sprinted towards them, blinking pole in hand. Eve hadn’t noticed; the background humming masked the sound of Serene’s footsteps.

Caruso instinctively shot four walls around him and Eve and Kumiko. But it didn't stop Serene. She blinked her pole through the wall, catching the back of Eve’s head with a sound like an egg being cracked open. Eve crumpled to the ground, blood emptying from her ruptured skull.

Caruso felt the familiar icy drip down his spine, but there was another strange sensation there: a cold buzzing.

Something caught his attention from above. A small bright window had appeared far above in the shroomcap canopy, from which two figures were now falling.

‘Stay in your walls,’ Kumiko said before blinking outside.

Caruso tried to process what was happening. Serene had killed Eve. Eve was dead. Why did this have to happen? The strange cold buzzing sensation came stronger, Caruso clenched his fists. Serene had been waiting inside that shroomtower for them. He wanted to fight her. He wanted to punch her in the face. He wanted to kill her. But before he could do anything, the floor of his little box raised him and Eve’s body a pace or two off the ground. This wasn’t Caruso’s doing—someone else was walling him. Threads then laced in through the roof, strapping him down in place so he couldn’t move.

He dropped his outer walls to make sense of things. It all became clear when he saw Ferris and Niko beside Serene and Kumiko, all standing atop a short wall next to the platform Caruso was threaded to. It had been a trap. Caruso looked at Kumiko but she didn’t return his gaze.

‘Caruso,’ Ferris said with a toothy grin. ‘You’ve grown.’

‘What is this?’ Caruso said, even though he already knew. ‘Kumiko?’

‘Sorry, Caruso,’ she said.

‘Don’t feel bad, Caruso,’ Ferris said. ‘You can’t expect your little friendship with Green to be worth more than two thousand years with me.’

Kumiko still wouldn’t meet his gaze.

‘It took us a while to realise what happened to our prisoner,’ Ferris said. ‘Impressive. I mean that. You figured it out, didn’t you? So tell me, how did you do it? How does the animashroom work?’

Caruso didn’t respond. He knew how powerful the information he had was. And now that Eve was dead, only he and Orange knew it. Thinking about Eve made the cold buzzing spread further up his spine. A chaotic mixture of anger and fear swirled through him. Caruso couldn’t tell what belonged to him, or what belonged to Webber.

‘Tell us what it is, Caruso,’ Ferris said. ‘Then you can come with us to the Godshroom. You’ve done nothing wrong. All you did was protect your friend. That’s a quality we admire.’

After a brief silence, Ferris’s grin retracted.

‘Caruso. Tell me. Now.’

When Caruso didn’t answer, rage quivered over Ferris’s face.

‘TELL ME HOW IT WORKS!’

A thread snapped tightly around Caruso’s throat. The look in Ferris’s eyes left no doubt; Ferris would kill him. And that meant killing Webber, too. The reality of death loomed starkly before him as the thread tightened and choked him. Caruso couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even claw at the thread strangling him. If he did tell Ferris about the animashroom, Ferris would kill him anyway—he was sure of it. There was nothing he could do, no way out of this.

Despite being strangled, there was a freeing satisfaction from disobeying Ferris.

The thread bit deeper into Caruso’s neck. As his vision blackened at the edges, Niko put a hand on Ferris’s arm and the strangling thread slackened.

Caruso gulped at the air.

Niko smiled at Caruso as she used her walling to extend the platform outwards, several paces in all directions, until it swallowed the wall the Foresters stood on. They could now walk safely around Caruso without worrying about being launched to their deaths.

Niko stepped towards Caruso, over one of Eve’s lifeless, outstretched arms. From a pocket, she produced a truthbutton and pushed it at his mouth. Caruso turned his head from it.

‘If you don’t eat it, sweetie, I’ll have Serene blink it into your stomach.’

Caruso decided eating it would be the wiser choice. They all waited while it kicked in. He was facing downzone, towards the shroomtower Serene had been hiding inside. Beside him, the blood pooling from Eve’s ruined head was soaking into his pants. It was still warm. I’m sorry, Webber. The strange cold buzzing intensified and numbed a line up his spine, all the way to his neck.

Niko pulled Caruso’s head towards hers, peered into his eyes, and gave a small nod. ‘Now, Caruso,’ she said. ‘How did you get the animashroom to work?’

The loosening effects of the truthbutton opened him up, relaxed him a little. He found himself delving into a long explanation about how he understood the animashroom, and how he, Orange, and Eve had arrived at the theory. When he was done, Niko smiled, squeezed his shoulder, and said, ‘I always knew you could do it, sweetie. Nice work.’

‘Who else knows, Caruso?’ Ferris asked.

‘Just me and Orange.’

‘Good. Orange won’t be a problem.’

‘You really believe that?’ Niko said.

‘I have him under control. He’s already entered the Godshroom anyway. Caruso’s the only loose end. Green, take care of him.’

Kumiko’s eyes flashed with panic but she quelled it and nodded. Caruso watched as she walked over to his blinkshadow—she looked conflicted. He was facing downzone, straight towards her. There wouldn’t be another chance. He looked pleadingly into his friend’s eyes.

‘Kill him, Green,’ Ferris ordered.

‘Her name’s Kumiko,’ Caruso said.

Kumiko pointed her pole at Caruso’s heart, glancing between him and Ferris.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

It was unclear who she said that to.

Then she blinked her pole straight through Caruso’s heart.

He couldn’t believe what she’d done until he stared down at the pole in his chest. His stomach churned with nausea and adrenaline. A sickening roar of pain, both sharp and dull, burned through him.

But he wasn’t dead.

Kumiko pulled her pole back and blood glugged from the large wound. She stared at him in confusion. Caruso shared this confusion. He wondered if she’d simply missed his heart. Then realisation bloomed. Kumiko hadn’t missed. She never missed. Her pole had successfully destroyed his heart.

But Caruso had two hearts now.

He grinned. His injury was still serious; blood slicked down his body to mingle with Eve’s on the platform beneath. And each breath felt like a new hole was being ripped through him. But there was comfort in knowing Webber’s heart was fighting to keep him alive. Besides the shock of his wound, his spine was pulsing with life. It was overwhelming. He wasn’t sure what it meant. But he had an idea. He glanced down at Eve’s body, and the cold buzzing flared up, confirming his suspicions.

‘What’s going on?’ Niko said. ‘Why is he still alive? Did you miss?’

‘No, of course not,’ Kumiko said.

‘Caruso, sweetie, why are you still alive?’

The truth came effortlessly. ‘I’ve got two hearts.’

‘Fascinating… So, all of those boy’s organs are working inside you?’ Niko began pacing around him in circles while asking more questions about animas. Caruso answered slowly, and elaborately, kept her talking, all the while he focused on his spine.

There were two distinct sensations. One was the regular icy flow he was used to feeling. He could follow its energy down into the mycelium where it offered to reemerge as walls around him. The other sensation was this new cold buzz. But when he tried following this one down into the mycelium, it disappeared.

Niko asked more questions and continued to circle him. She was interested in the anatomy of animas and got Caruso talking about spines and spinal cords, about how successful animas share their bodies. She was gleaning as much as possible while Caruso still drew breath.

Caruso closed his eyes and replayed the moment when Eve’s head exploded. The memory caused the cold buzz to sear painfully into his back. Strong enough that lights kaleidoscoped behind his eyes, and strong enough that he could sense an echo of this buzz, five paces behind him—upzone from him.

Webber, I know you’re gonna help me with this one.

Niko was currently downzone, where Ferris, Serene, and Kumiko all stood. As she paced back around him she asked Caruso how much longer he expected to live.

‘Maybe five minutes… But there’s also a chance I won’t die.’

Niko walked down past his side. ‘You think you can survive this?’

‘It’s possible.’

He recalled what Webber told him about blinking. He stared once more at Eve’s dead body and let the reality of her death seep deeper into him. The echo became even more defined. Caruso narrowed in on it. Eventually the echo became indistinguishable from the sensation down Caruso’s back. He could feel them both equally, he held them in his mind.

‘And how would you survive such an injury?’ Niko asked. Caruso tracked her voice behind him, she was a moment away from passing directly upzone from him.

‘Like this.’

Caruso simply chose the echo, imagining himself to already be there.

And then he was.

Nikos body slipped wetly off him. Caruso pivoted and leapt for the edge of the platform. Ferris’s threads emerged, but instead of grabbing Caruso, they darted for Niko, tourniqueting her body. That was all he saw. He never got a good idea of the exact damage he did, or if he had killed her. He didn’t bother looking back.

Caruso ran, just as Ferris had once advised him.

As soon as he cleared the platform, he summoned his own wall, using the very edge of it to propel him forwards as well as upwards. He repeated this with each step. And between strides, while in the air, he blinked.

The Godshroom called to him, and he flew towards it. He suspected someone gave chase—probably Serene. But that didn’t matter. Even though she was the fastest of the Foresters, today, Caruso was even faster.

He pushed off a wall with his right foot, blinked through air, then after landing, pushed off another wall with his left foot. He didn’t need to think too hard about the blinking—half of him already knew how to do it. He settled into a rhythm that propelled him forwards, through the dappled colours shining down from above, through the cathedral of shroomtowers that hummed their song, towards the Godshroom in the centre of it all. Webber’s heart thudded through his body, igniting his path forwards.

He never looked back.

Eventually, the quilted canopy parted and gave way to the clouds above. Caruso arrived at a large shallow crater stretching a thousand paces across, surrounded on all sides by shroomtowers. And at its centre, the Godshroom waited.

It reached towards the sky, higher even than the shroomtowers. A giant pearlescent mushroom spire. Its base resembled an upside down shroomcap that encompassed nearly the entire crater. Iridescent gills attached to the spire, supporting it and drawing him towards it like a flower’s petals draws in an insect. It was majestic, mesmerising. Caruso wished he could stop and soak in its splendor. But he was set to commune with the Godshroom in a more intimate way.

As he crossed over the lip into the crater, the running and walling became more difficult, but Caruso never faltered. With the Godshroom in sight, its call came louder than ever. Like the shroomtowers, the Godshroom had its own divine resonance, one which resonated through his entire being.

Caruso pushed off from the slope of the crater with one final wall, one that would take him all the way. There were no thoughts as he soared through the air. The wind whipped blood from his chest wound, and there was pain with every breath, but it was all cupped in an underlying peace.

The gills of the Godshroom were embracing arms, welcoming Caruso. As he shot into the Godshroom they pulled him in, pulled him under. It reminded him of the time he'd sunk into the soft shroomcap, but this time, he went all the way in. It was all encompassing, smothering yet nurturing. The world went dark around him.

There was a moment’s panic. Caruso couldn’t breathe. He was surrounded on all sides. It was dark, there was a building heat that seared through him. But something told him it was all okay, that he could let go now. It was time to relinquish control, to forget himself, to empty himself and let the power of the Godshroom fill him.

His spine awoke with a splitting vibration that resonated with the Godshroom. It spread up his back, and into his head. It expanded, filling every inch of Caruso’s life as completely as a perfect answer fills a question. It reached back through time to pull more of him in. Caruso trusted it, allowed it, surrendered to it. As he relaxed ever deeper into it, all pain became distant and small, dropping further and further away from him. Caruso wondered if this was what dying felt like. Or maybe it was what being born felt like.

The gaps between his thoughts stretched out until all he knew was the space between them. In that space, he was aware of the Godshroom in all its immensity. Just as It sank its mycelium into the earth below the forest, the Godshroom tendrilled through his soul, claiming him as Its own.

There was an incredible energy. But there was no longer a body or a mind to ascribe it to. It was all around him. It was him. This energy was present in every mushroom, in every being inhabiting the mushroom forest, and in every strand of mycelium that delved below the surface.

There was a sense of the planets above, floating and dancing like wind bound spores. Each had their own purpose. Each one was known and understood. They guided the Godshroom with their celestial language. Instructing It to wait.

As time fell away, others entered the Godshroom. Discarding their bodies but keeping that which yearned to continue. Each soul as important as the last. Each a vital part of the whole. Together they coalesced into the Godspore.

At last, the stars aligned, and with a rapturous surge of energy, there was a final release. The Godspore erupted from the Godshroom. Its duty on this planet was fulfilled. It was now one iteration closer.

With all It had accumulated, It travelled through the endless heavens, to grow and spread Its mycelium into the next world on its path.

The end