Robin blinked. Golden eyes? He flicked out a [Lesser Phantasm], a small silver mirror hanging in the air in front of him. It showed him his reflection as Eli saw it. It was real enough to do that, at least.

His eyes were golden. The rest of him still looked as human as he normally did, save for the auburn hair, which he had been keeping up in place of his usual brown. It looked good, though, the golden eyes, though where had he seen that shade before… His mind fuzzed as he struggled to remember. Robin was nothing if not determined, however, and he’d had more than enough of the mysteries plaguing him in this woodland.

He focused. Oh. Oh that was not good.

‘It’s the same colour as the ghilded ghourd,’ he yelped.

‘Get behind the wards,’ Eli urged. ‘Quickly!’

Robin dashed for the tower. Every third step or so his feet struggled against him, causing him to stagger. What was going on? It was like—oh. His mind flashed over the battle. The spraying seed. He must have swallowed one during the fight and it had been growing within him, somehow.

He staggered into the tower, the cool stone welcome against his hands as he braced himself against the entryway and then against the walls. As soon as he made it inside, the feeling of having to fight his own feet ceased.

‘Get it out of me,’ he demanded as soon as Eli followed him into the tower. ‘How is it even still in me? You purged—’

‘It doesn’t work on parasitical entities,’ Eli cut in. ‘Not while they’re alive and viable. I’d need a different spell for that.’

‘Need? Need? Does that mean you don’t have one?’ A world of magic and he was being taken over by a sentient stomach pumpkin because the closest cleric didn’t have the right spell? Unbelievable!

‘Not for something this advanced!’ Eli snapped. ‘It was never supposed to get this far—’

‘Wait, you expected this to happen!?’ Robin shouted. ‘You back-stabbing, god-bothering artistic hack!’ He let fly with [Cutting Words] and it felt good.

‘It was just supposed to be a joke,’ the cleric protested, wincing.

‘A joke? You? You’re about as funny as a hernia!’ Robin snapped.

Eli jerked back at the [Cutting Words].

‘If you want me to help get that thing out of you, you’re going to need to stop doing that,’ the cleric said.

Robin struggled with that. He didn’t trust Eli, but he didn’t have any other option. If the cleric wanted him dead or mind-controlled, he could have already done either of those things. And Nevarre had already helped him once. A joke, he could understand. It made a twisted sort of sense. Robin didn’t like it, but he could deal with that after he got this thing out of him.

His stomach clenched again. Robin groaned and looked down. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just his illusory coat, so he could clearly see his stomach distend and shift as something moved underneath the skin.

That was too much. Robin screamed. His hand started toward his stomach but jerked back as the ghourd seedling moved again. He couldn’t bring himself to touch it. Not any more than he already had.

‘Get it out! Get it out get it out get it out!’

‘I’ll do what I can but you have to distract it,’ Eli said, guiding him into the barracks and helping him onto the bed.

Robin grabbed the sheets in a deathgrip. It felt good to hold onto something. It helped ground him. He focused on his breathing. Slow, deep, measured. He needed to get himself under control.

Eli was digging through his pack, opening small packets of roots and herbs and discarding them as he muttered to himself. He was alarmed, actually concerned. Robin could feel that.

Oh sweet, shadowy Rhyth. The ghourd. That was why he could sense Eli’s emotions. When he had fought it in the clearing, it had controlled several animals, tried to control Eli as well. It must have some kind of psychic or mental abilities.

And now it was trying to meld with his mind? It was! Several small events snapped into focus as he thought about it. Times he had known something or guessed something he had no way or reason to know. He’d brushed it off as coincidence and luck and half-remembered fragments from his exploration of the tower database, but it had been this plant!

And it must have nudged him along. It soothed his suspicions, distracted him when his train of thought got too close to discovering its secret. This thing was insidious.

‘What are you doing?’ He called to Eli. He needed to know what the plan was.

Or did he? Did him knowing make it easier for the plant to fight back? He called out before the elf could answer.

‘Or should I not ask? Can you telling me that make it easier for the plant to fight back?’

‘No,’ the cleric replied, ‘it’s as dug in as it’s going to get. It clearly doesn’t have full control, and we’re not going to let it get there. You’ll be fine as long as it doesn’t have a chance to grow much more.’

‘How much is how much more?’

‘How long is a piece of string? There’s no way to really measure these things!’ The cleric was pulling roots and leaves from his pack. ‘I’m going to make you something to drink that will taste horrible but will hopefully help kill the ghourd.’

‘Hopefully? What do you mean hopefully?’ Robin almost lost control of his breath. He focused again.

‘It’s not exactly my area. I’ve learned the cure—well, way to deal with the thing—but I didn’t expect to need to use it on a ghourd that was this mature.’

Eli pulled a mortar and pestle out of one of the smaller pockets on the side of his bag. There was no way that normal physics would allow anything that big to fit in a pocket that small. Actually, now that he was looking at it again, the bag looked completely different. It wasn’t a scavenged sack at all! It was a full-on proper haversack.

Well, of course a cleric of a trickster deity would have a bag that could hide itself from various inspections and sneak all sorts of smuggled goodies past the guards in pockets too small to be worth checking. Handy.

‘So scrounging for stones to use as makeshift mortar and pestle was also part of the joke,’ Robin observed snidely, before another wave of pain lanced through his stomach. ‘Ugh. Hurry up. The stowaway I’m packing is getting really restless.’

‘Fight back,’ Eli said. ‘That mental connection is a two-way street. You’re going to have to fight it mind-to-mind anyway if you want to get rid of it, so you might as well start now.’

The cleric began to grind together various roots and leaves. Robin felt his stomach clench and what felt like a tangle of moving vines slithering at the edges of his mind. Mind-to-mind combat? With a plant?

Robin grit his teeth and did his best to ignore the uncomfortable sensations. Likely they were an attempt to weasel into his mind even deeper. He needed to go on the offensive.

What would a plant fear? Robin brought up his memories of fire. Logs crackling in the fireplace, bonfires at Hallowe’en and Guy Fawkes Day, candle flames that burn too hot when you snuff them with your fingers, Robin gathered each of the images up, these memories of sensation, and flung them like miniature fireballs into the thickest of the shadowy vines he could feel at the edges of his mind.

It helped. He felt faint stirrings of fear and pain. The feelings were in his mind but they weren’t his. His fear didn’t taste like that. Robin should know. He’d had to stomach enough of it in his old life on Earth.

Robin spared a glance at Eli. The cleric was carefully mixing the ground roots and leaves with fresh water to make some kind of paste. Whatever that was, it wasn’t ready yet.

‘Keep fighting,’ the cleric commanded without looking at him. ‘You need to break its mind. Break the mind, and the ghourd will shatter. And it’ll be much easier to get out that way than if it’s still intact as well as struggling.’

Robin didn’t trust himself to reply, but he swore then and there that Eli was going to pay for this, and pay triple what Robin was suffering. Prank. Robin bit back a hiss. He’d show him a ghourd-damned prank!

That gave him an idea, actually. The thing had started as a prank, and had fed him snippets of song from his own memory to lead him to the charm recipe, so it must have some understanding of music. Hadn’t Eli said the vines consume the minds of their victims? Or was that another piece of knowledge leaking through the connection between Robin and the thing growing in his stomach?

In any case, he could use it, so use it he would.

🎶This is the song that doesn’t end…🎶

Robin focused on the catchy tune, the upbeat lyrics, and most of all, on the inevitability of the song he was singing with all his mental might at the stupid ghourd slithering in his belly.

🎶Yes it goes on and on my friend…🎶

Friend? More like bell-end. Still.

🎶Some creatures started singing it🎶Not knowing what it was…🎶

Robin really threw his mental back into the catchy tune, reinforcing the loop of the words, cycling the song around and around and around in his mind, projecting it at the ghourd as strongly and insidiously as he could.

🎶And they’ll continue singing it forever just because…🎶

Robin channelled every car journey with his younger cousins, every annoying minute, every time the song had played on the telly, or on the CD of kids’ music someone had given him (probably as an act of revenge upon his parents). He was relentless, the song was relentless, and each reinforced the other.

The tendrils at the back of his mind were knotting about themselves in annoyance, he could feel it. Yeah, deal with that, you overripe, invading squash-blossom! Robin’s tolerance for annoying songs was legendary. No way he would crack before this trumped-up pumpkin.

Wait. Could he somehow use [Cutting Words] to target the ghourd too? It was certainly worth a try. Words could be thought as well as spoken, and they needed to be heard, and what was telepathy if not hearing words that had been thought instead of spoken?

Before Robin could try, however, Eli was ready with the mixture.

‘Here,’ the cleric said, ‘you’ve got two options. One, you fight it to the death, mentally, and win, and I use this stuff to both help you by weakening it and then flush the pieces out of your system. Or…’

Robin didn’t like that pause.

‘Or what?’

‘I could try cutting it out of you and using the paste to kill it directly and then heal you back up with my magic and the Grace of Nevarre.’

‘Why don’t we try option one first?’ Robin snapped, not ready to trust in Eli’s magic or Nevarre’s grace at the moment.

‘Your body, your choice. Here, you’ll have to eat some of this—it’s disgusting, but don’t throw it up. I don’t have the ingredients for more.’

And the elf clearly didn’t want to risk taking the time to gather more. This ghourd must be closer to taking over Robin’s mind than he thought.

‘Right.’ Robin grimaced. ‘Let’s do this. I’ve already got the thing on the ropes. Hit me with the paste.’

Eli scooped up a big glob of the stuff on the end of his spoon. Robin couldn’t help noticing the ratsnake had even had utensils squirrelled away. Then the smell hit him, and Robin gagged. He’d mucked out stables that smelled fresher.

No help for it, though. Robin grimaced and opened his mouth. He needed this ghourd and all the crap it was leaking into his mind out of him before—

‘Wait!’ Robin said, a sudden realisation hitting him, ‘this thing has been leaking knowledge into my mind.’

‘Yes, but it’s doing that in order to take over your mind.’ Eli looked at him like he had sprouted another head, spoon poised less than an inch away from Robin’s face. ‘You can’t tell me you think holding off on dealing with it to get a few more facts is a good idea.’

‘No, but if we extract the ghourd, I might forget how to properly carve the rowan and knot the red thread. That thing came from it, not me, I’m certain of it. And without that charm, we won’t be able to escape Cherry.’