“Wha-wha-what are you?!” Appo exclaimed. He scrambled up the side of the slide, reflexively kicking away from what had to be a ghostly apparition. Tomi belly laughed at the sight.
“Relax, dumbass. It’s still me, Lowya! I’m guessing this girl was someone you knew? Someone close?”
Appo couldn’t respond, instead continuing to back away. “It has to be a trick. This can’t possibly be a-”
“ I’m not a ghost ”
“This is how Gods take form within our realm,” said Lowya, speaking with much more fluency through Tomi than she did as the blonde girl. “‘Ostroprojectral Aura’ is the term I think your people use. I can’t just change into whatever from nothing. Humans have too many irreplaceable details. Too much hair, too many fingers and toes. Perfect symmetry is a bitch, I tell ya.”
After hearing her talk for a moment, Appo calmed himself. It was clearly Lowya, yet seeing her walk and talk as Tomi was disorienting. “Do you… know how she died?”
“I don’t have this girl’s memories. Just her projection, which I only have based on you. Think of her as a memory, only one I can step into like clothes! I get a bit of her personality, too. Like, she swore a lot. Pretty fucking cool, huh?” Lowya grinned awkwardly, flashing Tomi’s white teeth at Appo.
Appo was far from thinking so. “If it’s not too much, can you change back to how you were? The girl you are now… she died a little too soon.”
Lowya shrugged. Within a blink of an eye, Tomi Yald vanished. Lowya was now the little blonde girl again, giggling with glee. “You’re very, very weird!” Lowya exclaimed, her voice now replicating a young child again.
“So you’re a Goddess,” Appo said, somewhat calmed by the change in form. “What are you doing in Zabukama?”
“Zabukama?” asked Lowya, genuinely curious.
“The capital city of the Shadeon Empire? Where we are now?”
Lowya laughed. “Never heard of those silly names before! The people here called it Zartoshta! You must be lost!”
Appo sighed, before remembering that Zabukama was a local name. And although Ashfolk had referred to the empire as ‘Shadeon’, Isbibarra had also mentioned the Merkamensans had wiped away every trace of the empire’s language. It seemed the passage of history clouded many things.
“And to answer your question,” Lowya continued, “I’ve been here a very long time. Ever since the fall.”
“‘The fall?’ You mean the plague?”
Lowya didn’t respond, instead smiling and shaking her head before running off again. Appo chased as best as he could. He wondered if talking with Tomi would have to work if he wanted answers.
Despite Lowya’s short stature, she moved remarkably fast. Appo was afraid he’d lost sight of her before the cobblestone path led to what appeared to be a city square. It was barren except for a tall, narrow pyramid that towered overhead. It looked to be at least one hundred and fifty meters in height. Were it not for the fog, Appo would have been able to see it from leagues away. Surrounding this pyramid were thousands of individual thorny daisies, each growing out of every crack within the courtyard. The two walked around them as they talked.
“You want answers?” Lowya said, suddenly appearing to Appo’s right. “You’ll need to talk to a grown-up. I can think of someone you can talk to, just don’t get mad.”
Within an instant, the small blonde-haired girl became a fully grown man. He wore a well-fitted crimson tunic that went down to his ankles. Like Tomi before him, Appo recognized him immediately.
“Parbast?” Appo asked.
“Ah, again you recognize me,” Lowya said, this time speaking in a deep baritone. “I sense prominent emotion with this one, both respect and… frustration. Who was Parbast to you?”
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“He was my mentor: a surgeon from the city of Loam. Our relationship was… complicated.”
“Hm,” Lowya said, placing his hand on his goateed chin. “Would it please you to know that if I can take his form, it would mean that he has since passed on?”
Appo paused. “No, it wouldn’t.” At that moment, he realized what was off about Parbast’s appearance. Although Lowya had taken his form, this version was a younger, more robust version than the one Appo knew. This Parbast was in his early forties, whereas by the time Appo met him a decade prior, he was at least in his late fifties. The Parbast he knew was hunched from years of surgery procedures, and his hair had become white with age. This Parbast was toned, postured, and sported perfectly groomed obsidian hair. It was as if Appo had traveled back in time.
“Ah. Shame you had to find out this way,” Lowya said. “I hope this form can work for you. I’m sure you’ve noticed that my vocabulary augments with the soul I can extrapolate from. If you have questions, now is the time to ask.”
“The Screaming Plague,” Appo said, focusing on what brought him all this way. “Did it come from here?”
Lowya paced, walking deep in thought. Her postural resemblance to Parbast was perfect. “It has been called many things in my time. ‘The Desert Madness’, ‘The Everlasting Pestilence’, ‘The Great Soulrot’ have all come to describe it. Of course, I know of many diseases that have been called an untold amount of names even far ago. But this new one, the “Screaming Plague,” is an apt one.”
The answer perturbed Appo. He had gone from babysitting to pacing the courtyard with a scientific peer. The haughtiness and self confidence in Lowya’s tone were near identical to his mentor, in addition to his long-winded responses.
“Where did it come from? And did it destroy Shad- er, this civilization?”
Lowya smiled, almost pitifully. “To say the plague destroyed the Zartosht overnight would be disingenuous. These things are always more complicated than that. Centuries of warfare, the encroachment of the Eivettä, and crop mismanagement, not to mention several other outbreaks all did their part. But the plague certainly dealt one of the final blows, yes.”
“But you created them, did you not?”
“Only as much as the God of Thunder creates every strike of thunder, or the Goddess of the Ocean gaze upon every droplet of water. I merely guide them, and how much depends on the power provided to me. Do you know what a plague is, Appo? What a disease really is?”
“What is it?” Appo found himself asking, not even trying to hide how little he knew.
“They are organisms, like you or me. Only unperceivable. Smaller than the tiniest insect; they would be insects to those insects, and even smaller than that. There are trillions within you right now at all times, and countless more throughout the world. Many are harmless, but some are dangerous. A rare few even kill.”
“Oh,” Appo said, wrapping his mind around the concept. He had thought he had long moved on from Parbast’s lectures, but here he was, teaching him in death. “But how can they not be under your control?”
“Is your kind completely subservient to the will of the Gods? Take yourself as an example: even the most homogenous of people refuse to be united in all manners. Even the most desperate of creatures will cling to their own maxims if they are strong enough. My precious diseases require far less than your kind ever would.”
Appo paced alongside Lowya, their steps completely in sync. They were not just talking: they were communicating. He had to make his statement.
“Goddess Lowya,” Appo began, “I come here from the city of Ash to find a cure for the Screaming Plague. The outbreak has spread far beyond anyone’s control. I was led here under the belief that the disease was a curse secondary to a stolen necklace, but those pretenses appear to have been… misled. I humbly ask if there is anything you can do in your power to halt the spread of the plague. It could be very well spreading across the entirety of Ostior as we know it.”
As Appo finished his request, he turned. Lowya stood a few paces behind him. She was no longer Parbast, but was instead a woman in her mid-twenties. She wore a white veil that covered the entirety of her head, emphasizing her bright red lips. Appo likewise recognized this form, more so than any other he had encountered.
“Mom?” Appo asked. He had not spoken with her in over a decade. Lowya taking her form only meant one thing.
Lowya reached down, picking up one of the thorned daisies. She handed it to Appo.
“I’m sorry, Appo.” Lowya spoke in a gentle voice far removed from the mother Appo recognized. Her voice had long become shrill by the time he had grown up. “I wanted to shield you from this. Take my hand.”
Appo did so. As he did, his vision changed for only half a second, but it was enough to see the truth.
He had still been walking in the fog, alone in the desolate city. He saw Lowya not as a human, but as towering columns of outstretched hands and fingers extending deep underground and into the sky, branching forever. He saw eyes both real and false covering her entire skin, approaching and receding like the waves of an ocean. In her outstretched clawed grip of several hundred fingers, Lowya held not a daisy petal, but the petrified skeleton of a corpse.
Only it was not a corpse; the being was still alive, its soul trapped within its rotten flesh prison, long decayed by time and anguish. Thousands of them surrounded Lowya and Appo, all piled within the courtyard. They were all victims of the plague, still suffering from their afflictions and itches, too weak to relieve their pain yet not dead enough to be free.
Appo came too again. He had just peered into what was reality, if only for a second. Even with the presence of his mother holding him close by, Appo fainted.