“It is a process best done slowly. If rushed, well, I do not need to explain the myriad of complications that will arise.”

“I have time. Years, even.”

“That is good. Very good. And you understand that this will be a foreign experience for you? You will feel things you have not before. Your mind will unlock new sensations and new capabilities. The world will open to you.”

“I am fully devoted.”

“Good, as I can see. Here. For a slower transition, you can put it in a drink. Otherwise, inject it right into your arm.”

“Thank you, but I will need the other one.”

“Why?”

“I have found another adherent, but alas, he cannot make it to this meeting. He has demonstrated his interest and his eagerness.”

“Your word spreads far. Good. I trust that he is as devoted as you say?”

“He is.”

“Here, then. The same goes for them. The process may take days or decades, depending on your composition of strands, but it will happen.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, which temple did you say you worship?”

“This one.”

“What was that?”

“…up…”

“Sorry?”

“Wake up!”

“Wake up?”

“Gen!”

----------------------------------------

Genebrict shoots to wakefulness. The Lone Soldier looks down at him, its army of stars behind it. As soon as he realizes what he’s seeing—that he’s seeing anything at all—he shuts his eyes and keeps them closed.

Almost, cracks that first voice—Mona Dortet, the thing that isn’t his sister. He’s sure of it now.

Footsteps shuffle closer. Stalt keeps his eyes closed, doing his best not to think about how they got where they are now and how long it’s been.

A hand sinks to the ground, and Stalt knows it to be Bolen’s. He waits for a tap: once for a meal, twice for approaching danger, and three for something immediate. He feels in the soft earth three thuds and rises.

Stalt crawls first through the tunnel they dug some time ago. Fragments of his shirt that he had torn and rolled into earplugs clog his ears, and as he crawls, he feels them shift out of place. He adjusts them, trying to cut all the sound out of their environment and anything else that would give himself and Bolen away.

It won’t do any good, says the first voice—that dreaded thing masquerading as his sister.

Shut up.

No! It snaps. No! No! It cuts off, whether because of the distance between them or by its own choice. Stalt doesn’t know and is not going to wait to find out.

The tunnel’s lip opens up, and soon after, Stalt can hear leaves crunching across the way, footsteps scraping on roots of raw ground. The sounds reveal the trespasser as unfamiliar with this region, grasping for purchase and slipping. Stalt hears only one body, which means Mona Dortet also hears only one.

He waits for the acolyte to still, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground. Then, slowly, Stalt looks upwards, seeing the acolyte’s back a few feet away. He’s a brute, doubtless Ox-infused, a huge quiver strung over his shoulder and carrying a compound bow half Stalt’s height. His teeth chatter, though not from the cold.

Stalt sticks his head above the tunnel just as the acolyte whips around, called by the distant maligned Mind that is Mona Dortet. Stalt runs forward, keeping his head down, avoiding looking at the acolyte’s face, and tackles him. The brute hardly budges, throws Stalt to the side, and stomps after him. The maneuver leaves enough time for Bolen to run up and slice a dagger across the acolyte’s neck.

Stalt keeps his eyes closed as the acolyte gurgles, his colossal form toppling to the ground.

Bolen calls out. “Roll!”

Stalt does, in the first direction he can think of. Something thwacks into the ground beside him. Another thwack sounds near Bolen—the compound bow loosing an arrow. Someone cries out from above and plops to the ground.

Footsteps rush over—hopefully Bolen’s. “There were only two,” he whispers. “I think.”

There’ll be more soon, brother! The first voice has turned the honorific into mocking.

Shut up!

Then, the second voice calls, the only one Stalt listens to now. It comes in fragments but holds Delah’s tone of soft assuredness, the same that led him through those bouts of homesickness in the galley outside Old Glaive. Lies, Gen, she says. Lies. Some. Time.

Bolen pulls Stalt’s head up and ties around his eyes what must be a fragment of the acolyte’s robe. Stalt pulls himself to his feet and slips his grasp on Bolen’s arm, finding wetness. “You hurt?”

“Nothing big. I don’t need my arms, Gen. Just my legs.”

He’s wrong, says the first voice. You’ll need everything.

Stalt doesn’t respond, letting Bolen pull him back through the passage and into the camp underneath the canopy, where the rest of the men reside. Stalt keeps his eyes blindfolded, his head down, and rubs his hands together over the words spoken around him. They keep their sentences strict, obscuring their position.

“Can’t go near the cord,” says Bolen, “the Chant run along it like rats.”

Stalt feels the Mind’s presence triangulating their location based on where they left Lamascus and the position of the Lone Soldier he saw when he woke. It can’t access his thoughts—he doesn’t think—unless he speaks to the voices.

So, it was through injection.

Who are you talking to? Asks the first voice.

Coffee, says the second. Sorry. Gen.

It’s alright, and he means it. Hearing Delah’s sincere apology means it could be no one else—save for the madness and malignment that has almost enveloped him. In this predicament, he’ll take any solace.

It is madness, brother. Don’t believe it. Everyone in your little troupe is going mad. Again, with ‘brother’.

“Another one gone,” Bolen says, probably to one of his youths. A hiss comes, and then someone inhales. A tap follows on a hollow container that must be an empty vesicle.

“There’s not enough to go around,” says Jowles. “I can spare mine.”

“Not yet, old man,” says Stalt, careful not to mention anything revealing their position.

The conversations soften, turning to the mundane, the ambiguous, the impersonal, and then to nothing. They silence for an hour until Bolen hammers his fist on Stalt’s shoulder—three bumps, then a fourth.

Time to move.

They trudge on, Stalt being pulled along while blindfolded. He jams the cloth earplugs deeper to ward away all sounds because the less he perceives, the less Mona Dortet perceives. He feels the stones and the roots and raw underneath him as invading presences, sensations he would rather be without.

How long ago, Deh?

He waits minutes, but the reply comes. Every meter westwards sharpens the timber of his sister’s voice, sculpting her presence to what it once was. Decades. Slower for… you… than me.

Stalt wants to press her for more answers, but he’s still unsure if Mona Dortet can also hear Delah’s voice. If it can, it’s not giving any indication.

Cold fills Stalt’s boots as rushing water reaches his knees. It must be the only route, for giving Mona Dortet this much information is too revealing. It is still night, he guesses, but with every passing minute, he feels the Pales warming the air as they ascend, ready to bathe the world in their searching light.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

They stop somewhere Stalt doesn’t know and hopefully never will. He is handled, tucked into a corner, spoon-fed some slop that doesn’t taste like Flung rations or cultured meat. They’ve probably run out of both. He curls up into a ball to stop shivering and closes his fingers around his fabric earplugs so that he doesn’t hear the footsteps outside their hold, which could be men, maligned, or neither or both.

Someone passes him a bottle, and he drinks it back. It stings his throat, almost choking him. Minutes later, his mind dizzies, obscuring his surroundings in a blanket of inebriation and swirls. He welcomes that shroud like a warm blanket. If he can’t see through it, neither can Mona Dortet.

The dream from before repeats in greater definition, each iteration bringing both voices and physical sensations. He detects the syringe pressing into his palms—Delah’s palms—and feels his sister’s nervousness and apprehension as he would his own. She hadn’t made the decision lightly.

Sorry, Gen, says the second voice, and his tears almost well up.

Something pinches his shoulder, and then he sighs as his muscles sag. It is no doubt an injection to make him sleep soundly and blankly. He dreams of nothing and is only aware of time passing when he catches conversations dotting that blankness.

“I haven’t shit since I left,” says a youth, careful not to mention how long they’ve been gone.

“Is this thing normal?” another one asks.

“No,” says the medical zoologist. “Fuck no.”

It could be seconds or hours that pass.

“What should I-” The boy stops.

Murmurs run between the men. Stalt feels something thud next to him, and then someone digs with a shovel, slow enough to avoid alerting the life outside their enclave, wherever it is.

“We do that to every man,” Bolen says later. “We slit their throats and bury them head to toe if they’re about to turn. Alright? That’s your duty to your friends here.”

“Friends” may not be the word here—more like allies born out of circumstance. They may not be maligned yet, but the continued exposure to this region’s air—without vesicles—ensures that reality closes every minute.

No qualms surface against Bolen’s idea. Stalt can’t even move to add his thoughts. He can’t protect anyone, and once the conversations turn to him and his inabilities, it’s then Stalt knows he is nothing more than a burden.

He tries to walk as they move him, but they don’t go far, and soon, the men deem it better to fit beams to Genebrict in a sort of crucifixion carriage while his limbs dangle as low as his mind does, dragged down by tranquilizers and drunkenness. He maps the voices of the men around him and notes when they cut off and do not speak again. He feels the vibrations in the ground when Bolen digs a hole next to him to bury the bodies. He stops remembering where they hide and reminds himself that this is for the better.

Keep going, Gen. I am sorry.

Soon, it becomes hard to argue.

----------------------------------------

He is unsure if it is days or weeks later, but huddling under an alcove and strung out on the floor, Stalt starts gaining control. “Wearing off?” he manages.

“Yeah,” says Bolen, somewhere above him. “We ran out. Keep those eyes closed, Gen.”

His blindfold is getting warmer, though it’s still night. It must be. “Closer?”

“Closer. Real close.” Bolen crawls up to Stalt, and it’s then he learns it’s not Bolen speaking, but Jowles. There is no one else in the night save for the crickets and chirps and the pounding presence of that first voice that shrinks and the second one that grows. “Gen?”

“Wuh?”

“Gen… it’s getting worse.” The old man takes a slow breath. “Get these boys out… alright? They don’t-”

For hours, the Ferrence employee lays there. Stalt scrunches his eyes closed to keep any invading sensation at bay. Jowles had been with him since the beginning, accompanying him to the cenotaph. He should not have even been here. Maybe he’s just sleeping. Stalt lifts his blindfold to check.

The thing that lies there could not be further from Jowles. Its eyes—if you can even call them eyes—are hollow cavities where organs should be. His skin is a dark brown speckled gray, far from the pale white it once was. His fingers have shriveled to half their size, the rest of his skeleton poking through in awkward places. His arm bone juts out from the skin, having burst through at some point.

That will be you… soon, says the first voice.

You’re cutting out, Stalt tells it.

Then, the second voice. Don’t let your guard down, Gen. They are coming. Still, they are everywhere. They want you. Stay strong. These are good men here. They deserve the world from you. You owe it to them, alright, Gen? Gen?

It’s the most Delah has ever said to him since she died—since he thought she died. He suspects that if he keeps westward, she’ll be spewing entire speeches to him, or maybe none, for she only spoke when she thought it was necessary. Right now, Stalt believes it’s necessary.

“We can’t keep carrying him,” says a voice beside.

Stalt shuts his eyes again but keeps his ears open.

“We can’t just leave him here.”

“Who says we can’t?”

“I fucking say it,” says Bolen, the only voice Stalt recognizes now. “You saw what he’s like. He’s a fucking monster. If they corner us, he’ll snarl. We need him.”

A monster, Deh.

They’re not wrong, she says, but maybe you need to be a monster right now. Monsters survive, Gen. Monsters thrive in shit like this.

Hells, it is you.

“We just need to get away from whatever that thing is,” says Bolen. “Then, we’ll all recover and backtrack to Kaskit.”

“Not along the cord, we won’t. It’s covered in them! And we don’t have vesicles anymore. If we go now, we can reach Lapasia’s walls.”

“And do what?” asks Bolen. “You think they will take a bunch of raw men?” A pause responds. “That’s what we are all now—raw men. Look at my hands! These aren’t fingers, boys; they’re tentacles. It’s like I’m holding two octopuses.”

Deh, they’re turning.

I know, says the second voice, clearer than ever. Give them a few days, and they’ll be indistinguishable from your friend Jowles.

I…

Stalt can barely muster the effort to mention the next point, but he doesn’t have to because Delah senses it perfectly. It’s not a good idea, she tells him.

But there’s no other way.

“Where’s the zoologist?” asks Stalt, speaking for the first time in days.

It takes moments for others to respond. Stalt keeps his eyes closed but feels Bolen’s hand on his shoulder. “He’s… still here,” he says, in a tone suggesting he is almost not.

“What is it?” The zoologist’s voice is cracked and phlegmy like a membrane clogs his throat.

Stalt’s not sure if his brain can construct the words required, so he says it plainly. “Cut it out. Cut the mycorrhizal out of me.”

Gen? Genebrict?

“Cut it out,” Stalt repeats. “If you remove it, that thing won’t see me.” He doesn’t open his eyes but can hear the men shuffling and regarding each other. “You can cut it out, right?”

The medical zoologist dwells on this. “I… I guess I could, given that it’s large enough, which I think is safe to say it is. Then… then it should have already burst through your skull. I’ll have to make an incision.”

That might have been the swelling headache before, but Hells, it should have hurt more. Maybe if you were further from the end, it would have.

Gen! This is a shit idea!

“Can’t you just shave a piece off it?” asks Bolen. “Just the cap?”

“Most of the sensory data comes from the brain itself,” the zoologist explains, “which means the roots—the appendages that touch the brain first—are the most vital.” He swallows, deep and slow. “If we don’t get those individual roots out, they can regrow their own mycorrhizals and resume signaling.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” says Bolen.

“I wish I was.”

“So, just one pull is all we get,” says Stalt.

Gen, please. Don’t do this. It will kill you.

“Just one,” says the zoologist.

Stalt ignores his sister’s thoughts and words. Quivering, he asks, “Will it hurt?”

“There are no pain receptors in the brain itself. I can apply anesthesia to the scalp. We have some left, though you’ll still feel something.” He rummages through a pack. “We have infection to worry about, as well. And, obviously… interruptions.”

It must be Bolen who shuffles. “You good with this, Gen?”

“Wouldn’t have proposed it if I’m not. I’ve been in enough pain already, but I still want to live. Promise me that you’ll try. If it doesn’t work, leave me here.”

Gen, I urge you-

No, Deh. It should be this way.

Gen!

You put this here.

He hasn’t said it yet, and maybe he’ll never forgive her, but he would never be in this mess if she hadn't done it.

“Go on,” he tells the men.

They work, rolling in a stump and placing Stalt’s head on top. They sling a dry shirt around him while Bolen guards the door. They shove a piece of bark into his mouth to clamp down on, his eyes closed but his ears wide open as the zoologist pulls from his haversack instruments Stalt can only imagine.

I am so sorry. I will never do it again. It’s still the second voice. I just wanted what’s best for us.

Something pricks his head. Without consulting me?

“Can you feel that?” asks the zoologist.

I couldn’t! You’d say no!

“Feel what?” Why did you think this was best for me?

A reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Stay still, Genebrict,” says the zoologist.

Silence in his mind. Then, a flood of hiccups and sobs. Stalt feels his own eyes quiver at the onslaught.

Because, Delah says, because this way, we’ll always be together. No matter what. You’ll always be my brother, no matter what happens to us. I never could have done any of it without you. You raised me. I owe you my life, but more importantly, I owe you your own life. Understand?

The blindfold moistens. Sobs this time, and not just from his sister. Does she really think that?

You never stopped me from going, Gen, but you never stopped being a brother, despite what you think. Sobs again but quieting. Don’t let me lose my brother.

“Gen?” asks Bolen. “Are you alright? We haven’t started yet.”

He can’t deny it. His family is gone, save for one. If he pulls out the mycorrhizal, she may be gone forever. Before that may have been a truth easily stomached, but now? Now, things are different, and nothing will ever be the same as then.

Well, some things will.

“Don’t,” says Stalt and lifts his head. He fumbles inside his pocket and removes Delah’s pension cheque, still pressing against him all these days. “Take this.”

Bolen does. The paper makes scrunching sounds as he unfurls it. “Is this real?” A pause. “Holy shit, it’s real.”

“Take it. Split it among yourselves. Go to Lapasia. Find a gap in the cord and cross it—you can do it. Don’t stop until you hit the city’s walls, alright? With all that, they’ll be stupid not to take you in, raw men or not.” Stalt gets up. “Go on.” No one moves. “I’m going by myself to Hyrnlak. Do not follow me. That thing will chase me, not you. It doesn’t want you.”

They all know it. From their pauses, he can tell they’ve been thinking about it all this time. Maybe they would have gone through with the surgery against his will, eventually. At least this way, everyone gets what they want.

“You’re sure?” Bolen asks.

“I’m sure. Take the food, the gear, everything. Run for Lapasia. Don’t stop until you get there.”

There is a moment’s pause before they follow Stalt’s order, taking everything they can, leaving nothing but the bodies of Jowles and the other youths. Stalt waits as they fan out, imagining them running through the forest toward freedom.

Do you… think… can’t… spread far? It is the first voice, fading even more. Never has Stalt been so happy to hear something so unclear.

For the first time since leaving Kaskit, he chuckles. I don’t think you will.

Idiot! It screams.

Gen! Move!

Stalt shoots his eyes open, looking down in the same pattern he’s followed for days, seeing Jowles’s shriveled-up form much smaller now. Beside him lie two of Bolens’ youths, their bodies thrown on top and discarded. The Lone’s light casts a shadow onto them from a figure standing at the entrance to their dugout.

“Fairer if I join you in the shit this time,” Bolen says.