“Why botanical terms, anyway? Are we some kind of garden? Well… certainly if…”
“What was that? Uncle?”
“I…right. Sorry, Je, but that is just unsettling enough to be true.”
—Botanist Elder Mulkelvo “Mulk” Harbin to his assistant and niece Jecember Harbin. Both of Vesh’Foktle. 127 AB.
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What was once Old Glaive becomes a distant speck on the fading horizon. The Lone Soldier says its farewell as much as Stalt does the night after the Skelton pulls away from the base, spewing a line of firestarter sap behind it. When they reach a safe distance, one of Ingram’s marines throws the last powder keg over the edge, lit and tumbling like a fiery boulder. It smashes onto the ground, the base’s southern gate exploding in a violent frenzy of heat. The flames lick up in seconds, the gouts whipping so high that they almost touch the ropeway cord.
In the ensuing six days surveying the Kaskitian countryside aboard the Skelton, Stalt questions the stabs of sympathy he feels for the retreating Old Glaive, wondering if it’s his own. That’s your nostalgia and longing, isn’t it, Deh? Not mine. It is the process the Second Signature had described—the mycorrhizal moving from voices to sensations. He and Delah are becoming far closer than siblings ought to be.
A nine-story customs tower comes into view one morning, almost as tall as the bullwheel terminal in the Second Signature’s alcazar. Residences for the staff and their families plaster it, not unlike the Chant dwellings clinging to the same tower in Old Glaive.
As the Skelton lazes closer that afternoon, Stalt notices the thick mass of hardened raw ground surrounding the tower, well into its second stage and approaching its final one, when it decays into individual specks that can grow into roots again, with enough sustenance. He can’t see a Gash anywhere, meaning the patch here must have begun as a speck.
Lakes start to show weeks inland, most the color of mud, the odd ones as clear as Kaskit’s artificial rivers. The roots surround the latter, reaching under their surfaces and sucking them up, though slowly. One morning Stalt steps onto the Skelton’s top deck, sticks his tongue out, and tastes the metallic tinge of blood.
He’s finishing a pack of HEBs and some cultured meat he can’t quite discern when one of Ingram’s staff summons him into the commander’s office. Located in the center hold of the gondola, its glass floor offers the flourishing countryside to Stalt as if they’ve stepped back in time to an age before the Bursting.
“Even you wouldn’t last five minutes.” Ingram looks down through the glass. “Do you see any life down there?’
While the Skelton churns on, Stalt squints, searches, and finds a hardened carpet of entangled raw ground, plants sprouting from them that look closer to the kind you’d cultivate in a palace, though scaled up to twenty feet tall. They’re not far from the ones in the Second Signature’s alcazar. One faintly resembles the plant Stalt hacked away at the Basket with its blue fungal leaves. “No.”
“Right? All of it hardened roots—the stuff you’d make ropeway cord out of. If we could get a harvester colony out here, we could grab it all before it decays.”
Ingram is starting to sound like those men who only talk to hear themselves. Stalt could go without being reminded of those fields back at the Basket. He’d seen the cord winders and what happened to the men caught in their spools.
“I like to think the raw ground has a sort of… intelligence,” Ingram goes on. “Are we sure it stops expanding because it can’t find sustenance? I’ve seen plenty of patches where the raw just… gives up. It stops expanding because it chooses to.”
Stalt shakes his head. He’s seen more raw ground than all the men on the Skelton combined. “You’re overthinking. It stops spreading only when it can’t find something else to eat. The stuff below is just slow. Don’t be so scared of it.”
Ingram doesn’t counter the point. “My only fear now is that of the spreading word.”
Words. Oh, Stalt had heard some strange ones issued on those tongues. The name still hangs in the air. “Who is Mona Dortet?”
The landscape passes below while Ingram studies it as if thinking of what to say. “Your sister’s reach is strong.”
The dots don’t connect immediately. “That’s Delah? Why ‘Mona,’ then?”
“I’m guessing that’s the Chant’s name for her. Don’t ask me why it is so. I’m not exactly privy to their inner workings.”
A consideration arises. “Does that mean they all share a link with her, like I do?”
“By mycorrhizal? I doubt it. Usually, they entangle in pairs or triplets, though there are some examples of more complicated webs, especially if one existing mycorrhizal dies and another takes its place. It’s difficult to pull off, though, and fraught with risks. We suspect that she took the delicate approach because-”
“Because I’m her brother?”
“Partly. But if the Twin Admirals were her goal, she would want your integration to be flawless. And maybe in time it will be.” Ingram studies Stalt as if he is the subject of an experiment.
Stalt ponders some more. “And is mycorrhizal the only way?”
“Certainly not.” Ingram shrugs, considering something. “There is one possibility that would open up a can of worms.”
Stalt thinks he already knows it. “She’s a Mind.”
Ingram’s nod is slow. “Indeed. If this Mona Dortet—if your sister—is a maligned Mind, then she would control all the maligned in her proximity, including Chant, at least those far enough gone.”
He looks at Stalt a moment longer than he should, and Stalt reads the implication. He is just as far gone as some of the men in Old Glaive. “How far does her reach extend, if that’s so?” he asks, quickly to get away from the point.
“We don’t know how to tell. It could be hundreds of kilometers. It could be hundreds of meters. Though, if her physical size is any indication…”
As the lieutenant commander’s thoughts drift off, Stalt asks, “What is she like now?”
Ingram swallows something back, then appears to notice something in the distance. “See for yourself.”
Stalt searches the vista below him, the drumlins of thick grass giving way to forsaken pastures, then to a pocked landscape of cannonball craters, singed leafless trees, dilapidated farmhouses, and dirty water. There are rivers of mud, lakes of mud, and pools of mud that could swallow the Skelton. It’s as if a great mudslide has rushed over the entire area in only a blink, extinguishing all life save for one spot.
It’s a patch of maligned flesh out to the east, almost like a puddle with a bulging dome in the center. It slithers forward, hungry and intent. It builds in on itself, pulling trees and eating raw ground, its central bubble bulging as it lumbers along. Its destination, Stalt guesses, is a collection of tall plateaus in the middle of a muddy lake. On top of those stands a city.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Lamascus,” Stalt places it, but he’s alone now.
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It is a city on the edge of desperation, surrounded by raw and rot. Its people are fatalistic and tired, welcoming their inevitable demise. They revel in the streets, not by rioting but by celebrating their approaching end. Before dinner, they toast the approaching maligned construction and attempt to speak to it in their dreams. They lean over the sewage tunnel mouths every sunset and calculate how many days until the inevitable turning point, the day their home is swallowed by that mass slowly approaching them.
After the residents have consigned their fates and basked in their new destiny, a line of six Kaskitian Far Flung gondolas comes into view, followed by a larger and much more opulent vessel. The vessels usually pass them by and are solitary, but this fleet is full of promise. Despite their path laid before them, the Flung’s arrival refreshes the citizens; humanity, for this fleet is the only exit from this doomed city.
In the hour before the Lone Soldier sleeps, hordes of desperate men without work or purpose gather at the base of one of the city’s support towers, cut through its protective fence, and climb it. Though most citizens have balanced along the intercontinental ropeway once or twice before, this starving place has hewed these brave few into trapeze artists, their determination the only balance they need as they sway, arms outstretched, along the cord that is the road to their freedom, and to the vehicles that will bring them there.
Warning bells ring through the fleet, from the Skelton to the skiffs. A squad of Far Flung marines, the oldest of Bolen’s youths, and Stalt balance across gangplanks fixed from the Skelton to the rear of the last forward Skiff. Soon, they reach the head of the formation, a vessel for ten packed to almost twice that. Ingram orders all hands of the fleets to the cannons, harpoons, and firestarter hoses, all aimed forward. Stalt avoids the press to get the best view, but when he arrives, it’s already started.
The Flung spray their hoses, releasing torrents of firestarter onto the cord, dousing the bandits like water to flame. They fire pistols, and slings and rifles at the approaching Skiff with wet and clumsy hands. The forward Skiff barrels down the sagging rope towards them, the bandits shrieking as it comes, seeing the line of other gondolas behind it and the looming Skelton trailing them all, a shape so large it blots out the distant countryside for a moment.
They cry out. Some gauge their fate and decide the easy way out is to jump. The unfortunate majority are left indecisive as their firestarter flares to life, melting their bodies and casting them into the mud below.
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A man steps onto the gondola’s ramp after the Lamascan bullwheel terminal staff docks the Skelton in its garage. From far off, Stalt observes the figure meeting Ingram and his entourage of officers. The new arrival must be a dignitary, perhaps even the city’s governor or the highest-ranked of the terminal staff. He exchanges no salute with Ingram, let alone words. The only flicker of recognition seems to be when the Lamascan dips his head, almost too low, before both leave the terminal.
“Concentration is low!” yells the Skelton’s resident medical zoologist, a short red-haired man always wearing goggles. He stands next to the doorway as men depart. “Personal vesicles will write on your backs that you’re a foreigner. So, if you want to avoid being pocketed or shanked, then thirty minutes of exposure. Max.”
Stalt dodges the line of Flung marines who think they’re safer by marking themselves as outcasts of this city. Stepping out of the terminal, he senses the city pressing closer to the bullwheel terminal. It’s evident in how the staff’s security tightens their bayoneted barrier to match the curious gazes directing their way. It turns out not a single soul missed the Flung’s welcoming display.
Stalt does his best to blend into Lamascus’s narrow streets, and among the throngs of its raw and misshapen men, he hears the mutters and the whispers and notices their leering eyes. He finds Jowles, Bolen, and his youths all in civilian clothing, probably learning from Bolen the same thing Stalt surmised: that to blend in is the best option in foreign territory. Their efforts are imperfect, with clothing too clean, tailored, and far from mimicking the surrounding populace. Stalt seems to be the only one garnering any rapport, or maybe it’s disgust.
Something makes for his pocket. Stalt grabs a wrist and finds it belongs to a boy not a day past ten years.
“Rich men from the rope!” The boy spits at Stalt’s chest, wincing with a face caked with dirt.
Stalt throws him away, and the boy runs off through a gathering crowd. Stalt curses them and tells them they’re about to be burnt to a crisp like the bandits on the rope. Only half disperse.
Kaskit may be coddled, but Lamascus is a strung-out, lazy mess on the edge of the raw. Even its construction shows evidence it cares little for the decay; no enclosure surrounds it, and the other bullwheel towers that once turned for smaller municipal cords are now worn pinnacles, ornamental and without function. Yet the surviving structures have found a purpose in the approaching sight, facing their doors, windows, and balconies to the approaching mass of raw.
Stalt finds an alcove to gaze at that apparition, which Ingram claims is Delah. How can he gauge any resemblance? It’s as if he’s looking at a tsunami and being told he knows the person it once was.
“Tomorrow night,” Bolen tells them. “Just have to last that long. My guess is it shouldn’t be here by then.”
It. His sister. Stalt shakes his head, suppressing an urge to run down and jump into that thing’s arms.
“We should return,” Jowles says, only ten minutes out. “The Skelton is a fine place to reside in.”
Stalt doesn’t necessarily agree with the man. As comfortable as the vessel is, this space is a change of scenery. “Don’t you just want to breathe air sometimes?”
“Not the kind you seem to enjoy, Mr. Stalt.”
Bolen barks a laugh and smacks the old man on the back. “You’re not the only one who said that to him before.”
With Stalt in the lead, Jowles, Bolen, and his marines in tow, they take to the Lamascan corridors, threading along the stoned arched bridges connecting the city’s pillars. They gaze long into the gaping sewer mouths that leak sludge into the muddy lake below, searching for threats but finding only the clamor of a city on its celebratory deathbed. Bolen’s youths keep flintlock pistols and daggers underneath baggy shirts; otherwise, everyone looks eager to return to the Skelton except Stalt.
Don’t get lost in here.
Stalt suppresses the urge to look over his shoulder to see if someone is speaking. A few heartbeats pass before he understands. You’re back?
I never left. Will you turn back tomorrow, brother, or must I pull you out?
Stalt huffs a laugh he hopes isn’t noticeable. Maybe this place will grow on me. Besides, is that a threat?
Just a jest, brother.
A jest?
Her voice changes its timbre. Softer but scornful. Liar.
Stalt pauses, realizes he’s stopped walking, and continues. Who?
It.
What?
There are no words after that, but the silence that settles yields to Stalt’s purveying thoughts. Just then the voice changed its inflection, sounding softer than the one that’s been talking to him all this time. Delah loved to make voices, but now? And who is a liar?
“Liar,” Stalt utters, repeating what that second voice said. These men with me? Jowles? He turns around to regard the Ferrence employee, who only nods at the inspection. The old man couldn’t squash a spider.
You’re not listening. It’s the first voice that says it, the one that threatened him, the one he’s known all this time.
As he’s about to reply, his head throbs. He rubs his temples, making it seem like a normal reaction to any headache. The pain vanishes a second later, but not without leaving him violated. Delah’s presence has always been strange, awkwardly intimate, but now it seems he has just been thrown into a room with two other people who are both disappointed to see him and one he didn’t know was there.
Stop messing with me, Delah. Oh, the innocence of such a request is not lost on Stalt.
The pain returns, a fraction of what it was before, but persistent and pulsating. Stalt clenches his teeth and has to stop walking, gripping a railing on a staircase that spirals down the outside of one of the pillars.
Bolen notices. “All this walking getting to you?” He pats Stalt on the back hard enough to stop him from choking if he were. “We got maybe fifteen minutes left till we have to return.”
Stalt blinks, wipes stinging tears away, and looks out to the encroaching maligned mass. Periodically, he notices gouts of flame from the bodies of heavy shelled men stepping away from it, trying to afford the city a day or two. Every moment that mass approaches is another that the pain in Stalt’s head grows, and that second voice, whatever it is, grows louder. Could it be?
The men don’t know what to make of his silence, but as they contend with that approaching mass, Stalt can see them calculating not just the hours until it’s here but the minutes.
“We should return,” Jowles insists as the bodies of the night’s crowd press tighter, obscuring both themselves and their return path.
Stalt looks around, turning again to the thing that could be his sister, then to the citizens who seem not to notice him anymore. He still has time and needs to know what that second voice is trying to say. “Go without me. I’ll see you in the morning.” Besides, he could use a respite.
Jowles frowns. “What happened to thirty minutes?”
“Does it look like I can’t last thirty minutes out here?”
Jowles eyes Bolen for a retort, but the militia captain nods. “Into the shit, as always,” he says and points off to an establishment at the end of the street before the two men walk away.
Heat blasts out from roaring hearths inside the place as the door flaps open, meshed with sweat and the sounds of men closer to raw than anyone in Kaskit or the Far Flung fleet.
In other words, my kind of people.