The variations. Shay coughed against the smell of old flesh and musty mushrooms. Moisture dripped with single drops onto her as she was being dragged somewhere worse.
“Oh-so you’re fake-awake.” Amneshay rattled. “Dizzy as shame.”
Spores shook free into the air as she was pulled along, her body scraping and disturbing the growths.
“Bound-and-round-profound.” Amneshay hummed. “Tea should-would last-past a while longer than this? Let’s shiv you a more.” one of her fingers was a needle, and she jabbed it into Shay’s thigh. “Bliss-this.”
∞
Before the syringe could be emptied Shay jolted away her leg, snapping the needle useless and off. She threw her legs up to kick Amneshay, sending the horror’s metal jaw flying. Shay was free, and ran weighed by dizziness back towards what was once her shop. Gurgling and seething the old assassin umbrastepped towards-behind her, though Shay at the same moment did the same in anticipation, and the two switched places within the damp tunnel. Amneshay burst with distorted, jawless laughter.
“Which version of the tale or plan would this be?” Shay taunted. “Where you kill yourself over and over?” from every mound of mushrooms, limbs were jutting not yet claimed; her own.
Version after version of her all had come this way. Sustaining the growths.
∞
Amneshay drew out two small daggers; Shay recognised the hilts. They had once been her parents’ swords, though long had been the ages and many duels, and the long blades now were chipped very short, slathered in poison:
“You-two always wished you could just kill your happier, more hopeful thoughts. Stop them turning up from their nowhere. Here-there-where I am! Putting our hopes to rest, because you have failed because I have failed, leaving Woid and Serib ‘safe’ in The Club. Don’t-won’t-want you to go through what I’m going slowly through.”
Another mote and moment passed, another variation of the stories Amneshay had slipped into. The mounds of dark-glow fungi growing from Shay’s countless corpses, here gathered by sickened Amneshay over nonillion cycles. The mushroom pile nearest and brightest to Shay had one of her own skeletal hands sticking from it, still grasping a rusty version of her parents’ swords. Jawless Amneshay launched into an umbrastep, her daggers meeting Shay’s rusted blade pinched from an uncovered grave.
“Quicker!” Amneshay gurgled.
∞
Shay stepped again after this to exploit an old injury she hoped Amneshay still had. She slammed her pommel into the back and shoulder of her foe, dismantling them for a moment too long. Spider webs between the stalks and gills of mushrooms shook.
“Do you remember that, when we were shot protecting Serib? When we still believed in something?”
Amneshay yowled madly and began again her assault. Mad with ancient sadness and shame.
∞
The tunnels were tight for Shay’s longer blade, better suited to the jabbing needles and short daggers of Amneshay. Rusted steel rang on itself. Clashing splinters. Shay spotted an opening, alas she too had left herself open in the same way. She cut her opponent's prosthetic arm clean off at the elbow. Her own arm too fell lifelessly shortly after and deadly poison gnawed immediately up into her shoulder from the sawn elbow. Amneshay scarpered off through shadows her own.
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“I just-rust have to keep away from you-two, until - blood emptier and poison filler.” The plan was to let the poison do as poisons can, and blood loss failing that. “It won’t hurt, deadly-yes but numbing-yes. Lay down your why’s, you-two! Our once-why’s bone-sewn to suffering.”
∞
Shay deliriously tore off some fabric from her filthy clothes, giving her something to bite other than her tongue.
“No-oh, is it hurting?” Amneshay shambled mercifully forward. “Oh-no it shouldn’t-couldn’t. No!”
Shay listened barely able to stand, her face convulsing as what remained of her arm flapped at the elbow struggling for support. Reaching for things it could not reach for.
“I mixed it right… I know-woe I did…” Amneshay chattered to the dark.
The poison was perfectly mixed, numbing and painless the drift throughout Shay’s torso, giving her every reason to let it take hold, and let go of herself. Woid was there in her mind, leaning into his smile. Serib chomped away at smoky soup. Her parents lit tall candles after long jobs. They all were safe from Entropy, gathered strange from different ages. If only she would let go. Shay groaned into the torn cloth, feigning worse her agony as to use Amneshay's twisted mercy against her. Amneshay was distracted and gargled:
“My arm-harm… it happenstanced-differently.” She reattached her jaw, looking for her other prosthetics.
∞
“Too soft and too slow.” Shay muttered through her fabric, viciously throwing her tarnished sword at Amneshay.
The old assassin umbra-stepped with ease-away and behind Shay trying to stab her in the back, though fell right instead into Shay’s defences. Sacrificing the distance between them.
“Quicker-now.” Amneshay begun a finishing move, not wanting Shay to suffer for a moment longer.
∞
Her rotten wrist was a weaker thing than Shay’s living bones; far easier to twist and break. Amneshay with but one arm and dagger was soon disarmed by Shay’s lone hand. It was over quickly, as practice and purpose aligned.
∞
After, the old assassin’s arm hung as though detached by her side, and Shay watched the life leave her own already long-dead eyes, the sockets bulging with a crack out of place, the punctured skull making room and space for the poisoned dagger now deep to the hilt. She had disarmed Amneshay and used her own dagger against her.
“Even if here I die…” Shay spat out the fabric, no longer needing to keep up her farse, letting dreams and their ideas fall instead of herself. “I will never once have been you.”
∞
Shay slumped with that dire version of herself down to the dank metal, surrounded by spores aglow. Her thud against the tunnel echoed throughout Forever. She was familiar with the poison creeping into her chest from her hanging elbow. She soon felt she had dwelled there for longer aeons than she could know, speaking to her dead self, even patting them on the hollow back:
“Direstalk. Nice and easy for just-us to grow anywhere.” She rummaged among the near mushrooms, finding those that did not glow and hid in the wettest roots of those that did, coloured with shades both of brighter and darker indigo.
∞
She gave chewing them a go, and then rubbing that paste into her mortal wound. In small amounts an antidote to most other poisons is direstalk, in large amounts the worst of all. The numbing agent added by Amneshay had not dulled the potency, but had nulled the poisons’ resilience to a cure. Shay ate the rest and noticed the severed prosthetic arm of Amneshay, bony thing, clacking towards her and away from where the old assassin lay dead.