The Madman's Guide to Miracles

The temple sat at the bottom of the clearing, surrounded by tall, pale pillars that looked like old bones sticking out of the dirt. It was strangely clean. She’d spent the first few months sweeping away dead leaves, scrubbing the black rot from the stone with her bare hands, and polishing the floor until it faintly reflected the green canopy above.

Then, when the floor was spotless, she sat down on the altar steps.

And stayed there.

She was waiting to see if anything was left to want.

It was a strange, quiet exhaustion. She had spent her whole life believing that human impulse was the only honest thing in a world full of false rules. Desire was her compass, and she’d always followed it without looking back.

Years ago, when a sudden urge told her to turn her steel against the very order that had raised her, she hadn’t fought it. Denying an impulse was the only sin she recognized. She cut them down, left their books to rot in the sun, and walked into the trees alone.

She had followed every desire until she ran out of ground.

And at the end of the line, there was nothing.

No urges left to chase. Not even the basic instinct to keep breathing.

She’d spent three days thinking about it.

Letting her lungs stop seemed like a reasonable next step.

Then something heavy smashed against the marble steps outside.

A wet, dull thud echoed through the archway.

She didn’t move at first. She kept her eyes on the empty doorway, her white dress pooled around her on the cool stone.

She almost let it go.

But something stirred in her chest.

Neither pity nor concern.

Just something new.

She stood up and walked to the entrance.

A man was sprawled over the top step, bleeding into the dirt.

He was a mess. His clothes were slashed to ribbons, his left arm black and swollen with some foul curse, and four raw trenches crossed his ribs.

She didn’t feel sorry for him.

She watched his jaw stay locked, teeth grinding as he stubbornly fought to stay alive.

Why bother?

What is out there that you want this badly?

She wanted to find out.

She grabbed his mud-caked wrist and pulled him across the threshold.

She knelt beside him and started healing.

She placed both hands over his torn chest. A pale light bled from her palms, laced with faint streaks of pink. It closed the wounds and quieted the black veins creeping through his arm.

She couldn’t remove the curse.

But she could make it sleep.

Her strength drained quickly.

She watched it happen with quiet interest.

She simply wanted to see what happened next.

For someone who lived by desire, that was enough.

His breathing steadied.

By the time his pulse settled, her consciousness slipped away, her body folding against the altar stone beside him.

He shifted slightly, a low breath escaping his lips.

She leaned back against the marble, her voice barely a breath.

"I found something I wanted," she whispered. "That’s more than I had this morning."

The light faded.

Silence returned.

Where her hand had rested on his chest, a small pale metal ring remained against his shirt.

••••

My eyes snapped open.

I sat up fast, my hand flying to my ribs.

Huh.

My thoughts were actually clear. Sure, I still had some strange impulses crawling around in the back of my skull, the Horror blood doing whatever it did, but I could think again.

And now I was wearing a black cloak?

Who the hell changed my clothes?!

Never mind that.

I looked down at my body.

Four fresh silver lines ran across my skin where the wounds had been.

I checked my left arm. The black veins were still there, but the burning had disappeared. The curse had gone quiet, sitting beneath the skin like a cold ember.

Even the Bloodburst fog was gone.

My head was clear. My legs felt steady.

"What..."

I muttered it to no one, voice raspy in the enormous room.

I got up slowly, backing toward a pillar with one hand on my hip.

The place was empty.

Just an altar, a stone bench, and silence.

Then I caught a glint of metal on the floor right where I’d been lying.

I walked over.

A ring. Plain, smooth, pale metal. No markings. No stones.

I stared at it.

Nothing felt suspicious about it, but my hand moved anyway. A weird little itch at the back of my brain told me to pick it up.

I grabbed it.

Warm.

I slid it onto my index finger.

"You took longer than I expected."

I flinched, spinning and wrenching Mercy from my pouch in one motion.

"Who’s there?!"

A woman stood two paces away.

Long white dress. Pale pink ribbons hanging from her sleeves. Dark hair resting over her shoulders.

She looked completely calm.

"You..." I kept the cleaver up, arm stiff. "You were the one at the door before I got knocked out."

"I was."

She took a quiet step closer.

"And you’re pointing a meat cleaver at someone who just mended your skin."

I lowered the blade a fraction.

She looked real enough.

But something about her felt off.

Who the hell lived alone in a ruined temple like this?

"Who are you?" I said. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, no one in particular. Just someone who was slowly rotting away, I suppose."

She tilted her head.

"But then I found something I wanted to see."

A small smile appeared on her face.

"So I changed my mind."

I stared at her.

"...Wait."

My eyes dropped to the silver lines across my ribs.

Then to the black veins in my arm.

"You saved me?"

"I did."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"I guess I should be flattered." I gave her a tired look. "Didn’t think my dying corpse would be interesting enough to change someone’s plans."

"Curiosity is enough."

Her pink eyes locked onto mine.

"You have a rather peculiar tenacity for living. I found myself wondering what desire keeps you clinging to it."

She smiled faintly.

"That’s a pretty weird reason to save someone."

Instinct took over before she could answer.

I didn’t trust strangers. Especially ones who talked about death like it was no big deal.

I looked down at the pale ring on my index finger, hooked my thumb under the band, and pulled.

It didn’t move.

I gritted my teeth and yanked harder.

It did not budge one bit.

"It won’t come off," she remarked calmly.

"What did you put on me?" I snapped, glancing back at her. "A tracking spell? Some kind of binding curse?"

"It’s just a ring."

A quiet laugh escaped her lips.

"Why do you stare at it as though I have cursed your entire bloodline?" she said, sounding almost offended.

She glanced at my hand.

"Your heart beats because I was kind enough to mend it. Must you truly distrust your priestess so?"

Every survival instinct I had was screaming.

But she had healed my ribs. Quieted the poison in my arm. If she wanted me dead, she could’ve finished the job while I was unconscious.

I stowed Mercy back in my pouch and pulled my shirt over the fresh scars.

She’d saved my life.

Trusting her was out of the question.

But basic manners didn’t cost anything.

"Thank you."

"No need." She folded her hands again, a faint smile tugging at her lips. "I merely followed my desire. Surely you can’t fault a priestess for that."

I turned away and started walking deeper into the temple, keeping my ears open for her footsteps behind me.

The walls were bare.

Only a strange glyph above the main archway, a circle fractured into jagged pieces.

I moved toward a side alcove and found rows of old scrolls and stone tablets.

I picked up one of the tablets.

Deep lettering had been carved across it.

TO BIND THE SPIRIT IS TO ROT THE FLESH. DESIRE IS THE ONLY DIVINE ORDER.

"Is this place dedicated to a god?" I ran my thumb over the carving. "I’m guessing it is, considering you’re a priestess."

"No."

Her voice came from just behind my left shoulder.

I turned slightly.

"Then what is it?"

She looked at the tablet.

"Desire."

I stared at her.

"That’s it?"

"Why would it need to be anything else?"

She said it so casually that I wasn’t sure whether she was joking.

She picked up another faded scroll and glanced at it.

"They believed one ought to heed every impulse. Whatever the heart desired, they did."

"Sounds like a cult waiting to fall apart."

She tilted her head.

"Eventually, someone desires something that leaves no one behind."

She didn’t elaborate.

I looked at her hands.

She was one of them.

And if her entire faith was built around following whatever desire surfaced, trusting her goodwill was probably a terrible idea.

I looked down at the pale ring on my finger.

Something about it bothered me.

I turned toward the temple doors.

"Well," I said, adjusting my pouch strap. "Let’s see if your freedom survives out there."

She walked past me toward the threshold, her white dress brushing softly against the marble.

She glanced back.

"I would rather you tell me your name, though."

I ignored her.

"Hello?"

I kept walking.

"Are you listening to me?"

I didn’t answer.

"At least tell me your name."

Still nothing.

She followed after me, her voice taking on an almost playful edge.

"Must I beg for it? Come now, tell your priestess your name."

I kept walking.

"Your name, dear. Surely that isn’t such a sacred secret."

I ignored her completely.

"...How terribly rude."

I stepped past the ruined threshold and onto the cliff edge.

And stopped.

The forest below was unrecognizable.

The corruption had spread everywhere.

Trees twisted beneath the gray canopy, black growth crawling over the ground and up the cliffs. Violet spore-fog drifted through the valleys.

The landmark I’d used to orient myself before the fight was almost completely buried beneath the growth.

"This shouldn’t have spread this fast," I muttered, hand dropping to Mercy’s hilt. "I was only out for a few hours."

"Hours?"

Her voice came from beside me.

She stood at the edge, looking down without a hint of concern.

"You dragged yourself up those steps six days past." She tilted her head. "Surely you did not think it was but a few hours ago, did you?"

I froze.

"Six days?"

"Nearly seven, in truth."

Cold sweat broke across my back.

Six days.

I had been completely gone while the woods rotted around me.

How long before I couldn’t step foot in this place at all?

If I wanted to kill the Four Regents, I had to move fast. Otherwise some random local Horror was going to finish the job before I even reached the actual problem.

A low guttural roar rolled up from somewhere deep in the valley.

Something moved through the trees.

A hulking creature pushed through the canopy, crushing everything in its path.

"They weren’t that big when I came in," I said quietly.

"The forest is changing."

She took half a step closer to the ledge.

"The rot feeds upon whatever it finds." She glanced toward the forest. "And it has found plenty."

I stared at the ruined landscape.

The path I’d come through was completely gone.

"Well," I rasped, tightening my grip on my gear. "Looks like getting out of here isn’t going to be as simple as walking back the way I came."

She was quiet for a moment.

My thoughts drifted back to the Broodmother’s nursery.

That strange thing I’d read about in the diary.

The way the corruption seemed to spread outward from it.

Could that have something to do with this?

"The corruption," she said.

I glanced at her.

She tilted her head.

"An ascension gone awry. Something reached beyond its nature and tore the boundary asunder."

She paused.

"What remains seeps outward, spilling into all that lies near

I stared at her.

"...What?"

"The thing you read in the diary," she said, glancing at me. "You were thinking of it, were you not?"

My body went stiff.

I hadn’t said a word.

Wait.

Could she read my mind?

My eyes moved over her face, searching for any sign she was messing with me.

Nothing.

No.

There was no way.

Unless...

My thoughts immediately started racing.

Had she been listening this entire time? Could she hear everything that went through my head? What if she knew about the diary? What if she knew about the heart? What if she’d already seen everything I’d done since I entered this forest?

But she had asked for my name.

I instinctively took half a step back.

She raised an eyebrow.

My eyes dropped to the ring on my finger.

No.

It probably wasn’t that.

Was it because of this?

Could she see my thoughts through it?

Or worse, my memories?

If she could, did she know about old Earth? About everything I knew about this world?

No.

She probably didn’t know anything from before I put the ring on.

Probably.

"How curious."

She tilted her head, watching me with that same serene smile.

"I wonder what else you keep hidden." Her smile widened ever so slightly. "You are becoming rather interesting."

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