The floor glowed green, the first ritual progressing beneath her outstretched fingers. A pulsing beat echoed through the ruins, steady and constant. The still, dead air seemed to breathe with life for the first time, and a gust swept through the corridors on beat.
She raised and lowered her arms in time with the breathing, the pulsing, as if she were a part of it, and the green glow grew and shrank with her motions. A great swell approached, a crescendo that sent debris, undisturbed for centuries, flying, kicking up a cloud of dust that swirled back and forth with the pulses, which grew more frequent and intense.
With a flash of bright green, she felt the strength leave her body rapidly, like a river crashing through a failed dam. She fell forward, her torso collapsing over her crossed legs, and she lay there for several long seconds, lacking the energy to rise.
A scratching by her head drew her attention, and she forced herself up onto her elbows. Before her was a small, overgrown form that twitched periodically, as if something were surprising it in a regular cadence. It was covered in mushrooms, mycelia sprouting from nearly every inch of its body so thickly that it was impossible to determine what the creature was prior to its infection.
Just visible between the covering of spores was a green glow, which made her smile. She was exhausted, but her limbs felt suddenly lighter, the air suddenly cleaner.
For the first time in years, she had tasted hope.
Her eyes snapped open, the cold blue shining into the darkness, illuminating the shambling forms all around. She ignored them, and they ignored her, passing by each other without even a glance.
Standing before an overgrown rocky ridge, she waved her hand casually and, with a dim flash of light, the wall retracted, revealing a dark passage that seemed somehow darker than the shroud of night already covering the fungal forest.
The doors slid silently closed behind her, and the tunnel’s darkness became suffocating, though the freezing shine of cold blue eyes illuminated just enough to glimpse carved and decorated tile underfoot.
Only the thump of footsteps echoing down a vacant corridor disturbed the silence for a time, but her eyes suddenly flashed blue, and a grimace crawled across her face. Quietly, so quiet that it might have been the wind, a distant roar echoed off the walls of the hall, as if someone struggled nearby.
“Figures you’d put up more of a fight,” the woman said, throwing her silver braid over her shoulder and continuing her walk after the brief episode.
“You were pretty close, you know? Should have collaborated with Ung’Thol more. He was even closer,” she chatted idly, her eyes flashing once again as a faint groan sounded around her.
“Wonder why he got so much closer. I’ve read all he left behind, and his methodology was pretty logically consistent. The premise was certainly mad, but once over that hill, it all followed a certain logic. Was that what failed you, then? Logic?”
Another flash of blue.
“Perhaps it was a personal stake? You see, Ung’Thol researched to save his love. He thought he could shift her into another vessel, preserve her soul, if only so that she could rest indefinitely while he found a more suitable option. Was your issue that you merely enjoyed the subject matter without having any personal investment in it?”
A flash of blue, brighter and more forceful than those before. A voice on the wind groaned in the passage, desperate.
She turned a corner, the wall opening before her without prompting. A wide room whose dimensions were hidden by the darkness yawned before her. There were two sources of blue light in this space: her eyes and the orb that sat on a pedestal near the door. It glowed with blue energies, swiring beneath the glassy surface, faces seeming to appear and vanish in bubbling effervescence.
“Well, if it’s any comfort, Ung’Thol’s work was useful to me, but it is you yourself who will be useful to me now,” she declared, standing before the orb.
She reached a hand out, touching it as she closed her eyes. A pulse roared out from the orb like a shockwave, kicking up dust clouds and briefly illuminating a wall of undulating, pulsating flesh on the far end of the cavernous room.
A strangled cry sounded, fading away as the orb’s glow intensified, the swirling radiance growing. A drop of sickly green mixed into the blue like contamination in clear water, but the tidal forces of the blue vortex quickly whisked it away, tearing the contaminant to shreds and diluting it thoroughly until nothing remained.
She retracted her hand, her eyes still closed. The chaotic energies within the orb settled into a regular pattern, though they did not return to their idle state when she had first arrived. They seemed poised to take days to settle completely.
She backed away from the orb, her steps mechanical, precise, her eyes closed. As she backed across the room, a horrible squelching and sucking sound approached, like someone digging their hands into a fresh wound.
She raised her arms to head-height, and pulsing red sphincters of flesh attached to them, consuming them up to the elbow like ravenous bloodworms. She was raised by her arms off the ground, pulled back into the wall of flesh, which wrapped around her in wet tendrils, encasing all but her neck and head in meat.
Her skin undulated, as if bugs crawled beneath it, and despite the unholy scene, it took on a healthier color. Within moments, her lips became plump and moist, her hoarse breaths softened, and her nose and cheeks reddened with color.
It took only minutes for her breathing to become long and deep, and only minutes more after for them to stop entirely. She seemed a statue carved in vivid likeness, encased in a tomb of flesh, perhaps dead, perhaps merely waiting.
And on the other side of the room, the swirling blue orb cast its unearthly glow.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter