With the darkness dispelled, the feelings of cold and dread that had clung to the twisted hallways were finally lifted. I could breathe more easily—not that my changing physiology required me to breathe anymore.

The presence in my chest pulsed more rapidly, as if beckoning me.

But that wasn’t the only thing I could feel.

I had my mind-powers back. It was like a limb I didn’t know I had was finally going un-numb. With the darkness cleared away from Ward E’s Lobby—at least for the time being—the tension that had been pulling me back and forth between the real world and the realms within my mind had finally relented. I could feel the Hallowed Beast’s presence calling out from within the remembered dreams of Mr. Himichi’s soul.

I didn’t waste a moment of time. I didn’t even bother to tell Heggy or Suisei what I was about to do. I just did it. I put a dopplegenneth in my body and recentered my consciousness into my Main Menu. My mind obeyed my command without hesitation. One moment, I was standing within my flesh; the next, I was back in my Main Menu, looking up at the dome of cloud-swept blue sky, with Andalon at my side.

“Cry the Lassedites, Genneth, what the hell happened to you?”

Through the physical dopplegenneth running my body, I looked up—away from Suisei—to see Heggy’s familiar face looking down over me.

And she wasn’t alone.

The lobby opened up behind her, through the double doors. I saw Vernon Marteneiss sitting in a chair against the wall right within view of the doors. Though the General seemed to be in high spirits—smiling at the sight of his older sister—his face was pale, and his breaths seemed labored. He kept one of his hands clutched at his side.

He stared at me.

Suisei and I stepped into the lobby.

This was the perfect moment for a whistle of amazement. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to whistle.

Beast’s teeth, I thought

The damage was extraordinary. It was as if a century had passed. The windows were stained and discolored, tainting the sunlight with sickness and virescence. Walls, floor, and ceiling were pock-marked by pits and ulcers where the spores had etched the material away. The stench of sweet, earthy rot was overpowering; it reached into your mouth and nose and stuffed its hands in your throat.

How much time had passed here, I wonder?

Consoles, purses, jackets, and food trays were clumped together here and there, scattered across the floor. Corpses lay on the floor, or up against the wall, ripening with fungus. Some had been trampled underfoot, others were silent and gray—statuesque—graffitied all over in dark lightning that had begun to grow onto the walls.

Something almost like a tree had begun to grow from the head of a corpse out in the middle of the room. The fungus sent out its haustoria from the body’s flanks and into the floor where they dug in, like roots, sending cracks along the vinyl.

Half-dead bodies were slumped over in the chairs. Distraught faces huddled up on the floor by the wall, shivering and feverish, their dark-shot eyes achingly turning toward us. Some of them still stared at us, even as their overgrown bodies had begun to merge with their surroundings.

There were two potted ficuses in the room, one at either corner of the southern wall. Like the people, they’d become overgrown, looking more like architecture than plants, misshapen, alien, and unholy. The trunks swelled with massive galls; the branches were strings of tumid beads. The bark was pushed up or to the side where the fungus rose to the surface. The roots were motionless tentacles that spilled out from the ceramic pots. The fungus wove across the twigs and leaves, forming flying buttresses where it merged into the corners of the walls.

The first corpse—the one whose explosion had triggered the quarantine—lay in the corner of the lobby, at the epicenter of a mural of fungal growth that, even now, was encroaching on the surrounding walls. The growth spread out in a dark sunburst, like ivy wings, covering the wall’s corner from floor to ceiling.

“Genneth!”

Within my mind, I turned to see Mr. Himichi standing by one of the soul crystals.

I walked over to him, my footsteps rippling on my Main Menu’s water-slicked floor.

“Kléothag wants to speak,” he said.

I nodded. “I can feel it, too.”

It was like there was a song in my chest; a melody, dictated by a mind other than my own. I let it rise out of me, without delay.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The light I felt within my chest blossomed, expanding out from me, growing brighter and brighter until it had blotted out everything.

It was pulling us into itself.

Before, in the hallways, I’d felt unsteady, as if I could drift from one experience to another at the drop of a hat—which, of course, was exactly what had happened.

But this? This couldn’t have been more different. It was like when Kaiju Kosuke had grabbed me and pulled me into the Noyoko of his message, only far greater, as if I was being hoisted up beyond the sky, to where the stars dwelled. Instead of cold or dread, I felt… warmth. Not the torrid heat of an all-consuming fire, but something gentle, like the hand of a teacher or a guide. It was a calm warmth, confident and proud, abiding with compassion.

The light faded, leaving me in… I wasn’t quite sure. I stood in a broad, barren valley. The ruddy earth was wrinkled with dusty hills and lonely mountains.

It was a place of total desolation, desiccated and cold. The sky overhead was dark and turbid, the color of clotted blood. Bright red clouds hung between the hills, covering the land in a murky haze. The only sounds were the sky’s empty howls, like wind between graves.

I trembled at the thought that I was standing inside one of the Hallowed Beast’s memories.

“Genneth?”

Turning, I saw Mr. Himichi standing beside me, with Andalon in between us.

“Do you feel that?” he asked.

“Feel what?” I said.

“It’s different,” Andalon said. “This one is… different.”

“She took the words right out of my mouth,” Mr. Himichi said.

“Yeah…” I nodded. “I feel it.”

Some of the clouds began to settle in the distance, revealing something… incredible.

“Wh—… What is that?” I muttered.

Out in the lobby, voices moaned, pleading for help, asking for water, loved ones, and death. The air cracked with coughs. Spores and ooze splattered like paintballs.

“How many… more days are you going to wait… before you… start doing your jobs?”

The words came from a portly Arakkan man seated in a chair in one of the rows. It seemed he was the only person in the row who still lived. His once-pristine clothes—blue business suit, and expensive matching tie—were speckled in green, black and red. I could only imagine the rich brown hue his skin would have had before the Green Death had sapped it away. Fungal growths were sprouting from the blisters around his still-unbuttoned collar. The slow agony with which he turned his head toward us made it seem like his neck and shoulders had been fused together in a layer of rust.

I made a beeline toward him. Heggy looked left and right, searching for the nearest water fountain.

The man coughed. His fatty, sweat-drenched jowls jiggled. His rotting flesh hung precipitously from his jawbone. It seemed it would fall off at any moment.

“Sir,” I said, “my name is Dr. Howle. Can you tell me what happened here?”

“Doctors? You…” He grimaced. “Where were you?” He coughed again, weakly flicking his arm at us. “First you leave us to die, and then… and then you have the gall to show up and survey your handiwork. I paid my bills; I brought my money!”

There was delirium in his eyes.

I heard another set of double doors open. We all looked toward the sound, and to our surprise, the retinue of six that we’d gone in to save suddenly stepped into the room. They gasped at the sight of their surroundings.

Meanwhile, I swallowed hard at the sight of the plastic tunnel’s white walls through the open doorway.

“Dr. Marteneiss?” the leader said. “H-How did you get here?”

“We went in after you disappeared,” Heggy answered.

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you mean, ‘disappeared’?” the leader asked. “We only just stepped inside.”

One of the soldiers with the group of six stared at us in shock. “Alright, what the fuck is going on here?”

As the clouds cleared away, they revealed impossibly large, dully golden rings rising up in the distance. Emerging from the dusty red earth, they vaulted from one side of the horizon to the other. It took me a few seconds to realize the rings were concentric, nestled inside one another, but set off at different angles, like a gyroscope—wheels within wheels.

And they were covered in eyes.

I didn’t feel fear, though. The kindly warmth burned within me and held me tight, like the hand of a friend. Somehow, in that moment, I knew I was going to be okay.

“Look!” Andalon said, pointing upward. “It’s broked…”

Mr. Himichi nodded. “She’s right!”

High up, where they pierced the clouds, the rings broke. The arches they made over the sky were incomplete. And the more I looked, the more details I noticed. With each passing moment, tiny fragments of the rings’ dull, gold substance sloughed off and fell, dissolving into motes before they ever hit the ground. The great rings watched its own dissolution with its many eyes. The eyes would tremble and then blink, as if dozing off. They kept on blinking, staying shut for longer and longer intervals, until, at last, they closed once and for and all and began to slowly fade away.

From the darkness up above, a massive shape came into view. It was a fragment of one of the rings, dropped from who-knows where. Light streamed off it as it plummeted.

“It’s… dying…” Mr. Himichi said.

It was dying.

At that moment, a compulsion struck me. It was as simple as could be, yet powerful beyond: something in my gut told me to turn around.

So I did, and then I fell to my knees, slack-jawed.

“Guys…” I said, softly.

I knew they’d turned around, because I heard Mr. Himichi mutter, “Oh my” and Andalon whisper in awe.

“Wowwwwww…”

Behind me, stood the Hallowed Beast.

I guess that explained why I felt so calm and assured in this enigmatic, lifeless place.

Radiance rushed out from the Beast’s silvery pinions, casting light onto the ruddy darkness. Its fiery mane was as bright as the Sun, yet as gentle as a spring afternoon. The Beast stepped forward on all fours, Its tufted tail lolling just above the umbral ground. It was barely twice my height, yet I couldn’t look at It without trembling from the sheer pressure. Its power was concentrated, impossibly concentrated. Its footsteps should have been volcanoes and earthquakes, but, instead, its paws only softly crunched on the dust underfoot.

Then It opened Its mouth, and spoke. Its voice was deep and resonant. Light streamed off Its sand-colored hide.

I am Kléothag, It said. I greet you, Himichi Kosuke. We have met before, in another world—another life. Now, we meet again.

It bowed Its head.

There is much to be said, but I fear this message may end up incomplete. Your other self’s powers are, as of yet, und—

Static interrupted Kléothag’s words. For a brief moment, there was a jumble of image and sound. The message was like a scratched record.

—the Mwill, we had to—

—the Celestial Spear—

—war against—

Then the scene changed.