The god I see?

Much like most people are faithful to their God, whether they have a good reason to be or not; much the same goes for the robin and their faithfulness to the expectation of finding worms in the dirt, as they did the previous morning, and every morning before that.

Similar to how the robin is unaware that its keepers throw the worms from a bucket each night, those people are unaware that their God is only a figurehead. It is naught but a result of nature’s abstruse adoption of our travail, us that spilled from Her inadvertent parturition.

I will not deny that God, but it explains the world as fruitfully as a keeper throwing worms explains how the worm was born.

My ‘god’ exists as a matter of fact. It is not divine or temperamental, and its actions may be whimsical consequences of incompetent decisions and incomplete knowledge.

The reason that it is a god—that is, pre-eminent, and antecedent—is that it had no choice but to be born.

—Seth Ladderspawn

A single thought dominated my mind: that I needed to get to Cris. Without her knowledge, and without her skills, I would certainly perish. I could only hope that she wasn’t fatally wounded. It had happened too fast to know what state she was in.

I dared not make a sound however; and if I took a step, it would be on top of the patchwork vines. Cris had said something about the vines being able to feel, which means—

I swerved my body to the side, an instant before something flew past and slammed into the wall. It had pierced the air directly above where my feet were grounded.

It could sense where I was, no doubt.

I froze and stilled my breathing. In one direction, behind me and towards the centre of the hall, rustling sounds and intermittent gurgling continued. Amongst those sounds was also an uncanny cadence; I hoped it was just my imagination, that it was something conjuring up primitive attempts at speech.

“Guh… Guhuhu…” It made sounds that could’ve been called a laugh.

I shifted my weight just slightly, and the thing responded instantly. A rough, scaly tendril of a vine wrapped itself around me before I could react, and I was pulled in closer to the centre. I tried to push the vines off me, but there were too many, and they easily pinned my arms to my sides.

Crap. I had one hope remaining now, but it was highly unlikely. But if my internal clock was accurate, there was a chance.

“Why,” a voice came out from the mass I sensed in front of me. It was undeniably a human voice, though twisted and unnatural.

“Why what,” I engaged it. Buying time was all I could do.

“Why… can you see… normal?” it asked. If I had to attach an intonation to its question, I would say that it sounded genuinely curious.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “What are you?”

The vines wrapping around me squeezed tighter, causing my elbows to grind into my sides. I could feel my ribs buckling under the pressure, and my lungs complaining. My arms were on the precipice of breaking.

“Tell… me,” the voice said disconnectedly, as though each word was a struggle to find. “Why can… see… truth?”

“Are you the cause behind these hallucinations?” I asked, despite expecting to be crushed further. Fortunately, I wasn’t, yet.

“Hallu… cin…” it mumbled. “Yes… But… You… Not working… Answer…”

“And if I don’t tell you?” I goaded. Not that I knew anyway.

The next words that it spoke surprised me.

“H-Help,” it said.

It was a different voice—no, the same voice, but the speaker had to be different. I could tell now that this was a girl’s voice, though it was deeply distorted by the struggle to speak.

“Who is that?” I asked, then hurriedly added, “I’ll help, but you need to let me go!” There was clearly something deeper going on here than there just being a creature in the darkness. The grip around me didn’t loosen at all however.

“I can’t…” the voice wavered. “It’s in… my mind… help…”

Then the voice changed back to its earlier, stilted form.

“You will… become… like this,” it said.

The girl from earlier, who I had chased after, sounded different to this. And now, this second female voice. The fact that we’re searching for two lost girls. The strangely acting plant life.

I felt anger in my chest with the thought that what we were searching for was right here, within arm’s reach, if only my arms weren’t constricted. I could only curse, “What the hell are you.”

“… You will… not answer?” it asked. The death-grip tightened dangerously.

“If you want an answer, I need five minutes to think,” I said. Whatever this thing was, it seemed desperate for an answer from me. I needed to use that to buy time.

“… Fine,” it answered.

It was a surreal experience, to be in the grip of an unknown monster, about to be devoured but given time to ponder.

“Cris… If you can hear me, don’t make a move,” I said aloud. I had no idea whether she was okay; the fact that I had heard nothing from her was a bad sign. That said, the first step to taking control of a situation was to eliminate unknown factors.

The voice had said that I could see ‘normal’; meaning that my perception wasn’t being affected and warped? But there was no doubt that I was led into this mess by an illusion, just as the others were. I had heard footsteps where there was nobody, and all four of us were sleeping. Was our hearing even affected as our perception was? I had even seen an ordinary booklet become filled with nonsense writing.

If this control over my mind had changed, when did it, and why? It would be no joke if being bumped on the head earlier had cleared my mind like magic. It would explain why I felt that I could make my way around the corridors as we were running from the flames, but it would also open up other questions.

“Time…” the voice said. I guessed my time was up. I could lie, but that would probably only result in an immediate death.

Perhaps my intuition was wrong. It had surely been 24 hours since the last time, I fretted.

“Tell me one thing,” I said. “What are you called?”

“… Called… Name… is ‘poppy’… I… consumed many… poppy…” it murmured at a crawl.

“’I’? You speak through the mouth of a human, don’t you. A parasite…”

“No more… questions…” it said.

“One more thing,” I interrupted. “Tell me this person’s name, then I will answer you.”

Things shuffled minutely in front of me. I got the impression that I should be glad that I could not see what was happening. I had become aware of the fact that I could feel the body heat of another human a small distance from me, tangled in vines that smelled of wet grass. I felt pained.

“Name… H—“

That’s when it finally came to fruition. I felt a shiver down my spine. Suddenly, something had changed in the room. What was this sensation? I felt like, I was being watched. But of course I was—by this thing right in front of me. But it was something more. The hall, which was enormous for an underground space, and several stories high, and entirely devoid of anything but us on the ground… it was claustrophobic in this moment. An undeniable pressure filled the space.

The vines, and the thing in front of me, became utterly still.

This had happened a full day previously; Varus and Karl had stopped all function, and stared off into the distance.

And a full day before that… I only remembered it being around noon. The same thing had happened in the village.

It would only last for 15 or 20 seconds. I grunted and pushed my arms outwards; the vines maintained their posture, but they didn’t fight back. They had become unresponsive, and it was enough for me to slip through them, and crawl out from their hold. I leaped towards the wall where Cris ought to be. I grappled in the darkness for a few precious seconds, and then I felt her body.

“Syco…” she mumbled. She sounded barely conscious, but I felt relief from a place deep within my heart that she was still breathing.

“Cris, I must have done something that interfered with the poppies,” I said in a rush.

“Don’t know…” she said.

“Something that only I did, is there anything?” I urged.

I heard a slight gasp from her. “Mostwurm?” she said, and then she pushed her small bag into my hands. “The buns—maybe…” she said.

True enough, I was the only one who had eaten one of them. Cris’s hesitation told me that she doubted that it was relevant, but there was no time to think any longer. I took the bag and ran back into the vines.

“—?” The creature regained its consciousness, sending a ripple of movement out through the vine groundwork. I had wanted to get back into its grip, to fake that nothing had happened, but it was too late. The question was, now, would it attempt to capture me again, or would it switch right to attack? It would already know where I was by my footsteps all over its tendrils.

A flash of light illuminated the room at that moment, emanating from behind me. It was just in time for my primal instincts to dodge out of the way. Only after this happened did my vision catch up, and my mind realize that I had just barely avoided a piercing green object. I also saw the true form of what was before me.

My knees buckled involuntarily. I had to pin down the urge to stop in my tracks and turn tail. My stomach churned at the split-second image I had seen.

But I took a few more steps forward with my momentum—

Then something ripped through my right hand, and then tugged me to the side.

Regardless, I summoned the dregs of my energy and took one of the simple buns from the bag, and thrust it towards the creature, where its—her mouth would be.

“Guh,” I was halted by a surge of pain from my side, and I was unable to stretch forward any further. I could feel a warm air on my fingers that gripped the food: the exhalation of the trapped girl.

“… Close…” the vile voice said.

“Holly,” Cris’s voice rung out strongly. Tinged with sadness, she continued, “can you smell that? It’s something you know, I’m sure. Your mother asked us to deliver it to you, so… please.”

After a moment of silence, I heard something surprising. A sniffle, where my hand was outstretched. Then the girl took a bite of the bun. And swallowed.

A confused quiet reigned as nobody knew what was happening. Even the creature seemed in anticipation of what would occur. Then, the control of the mouth was back to it. “Haha…” it laughed. “What…” it began—then paused. The vines went limp suddenly, then pulsated, then tensed; the one that skewered my palm expanded painfully, and I bellowed in pain as it felt like my hand would burst. But the vine retracted.

The cacophony of sounds that began thereafter was indescribable. It spoke no longer, but I could comprehend what it was doing. I heard bones cracking. The vines tore at the body of the girl they enveloped—they pierced into her jaw, but the foreign object was not there. They tore at the neck and opened it, but it was not there. The sounds grew more chaotic as the vessel was taken apart, tracing the trail of the infection, but it was clearly too late. Even when the ripping sounds trailed off, it would not recognize the problem, and it had already ruined itself.

I retreated to where Cris was as this happened, and helped her to her feet.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“No, I just bumped my head,” she said. “Its attack just grazed me, but I got knocked out. Let’s try and leave.”

I felt that she was leaving something unsaid, but she was well enough to walk, so I didn’t argue. The vines around us flailed weakly still, but their actions were completely different to before. They now behaved like brainless parasitic flora—as they should, I supposed.

“I saw what the poppies did to her…” I said quietly. Cris stopped me from continuing.

“I’m sure it’s highly intriguing,” she said. “But I’ll hear it… later.”

She created a small light and pointed it at our feet, then walked on ahead.

At the far end of the now silent hall, there was in fact a heavy, rotted wooden door. We pushed it aside, causing it to fall apart in chunks, and stepped through to another hallway. After rounding a corner, there was another door, this time stone, and wedged firmly into a rock wall. The sound of a river was clearly audible from the other side, and thin vines could be seen attempting to penetrate through the slight gaps around the door.

“What now?” I asked. Cris still looked out of it, as she had earlier.

“What if, we open this door, and beyond it is just another black corridor?” she said, with a shiver. “What if we get outside, but its just another illusion?” She clutched her head, beginning to panic. “This sucks, this sucks!” she repeated.

“This isn’t like you Cris,” I said to her, but she shook her head. “You don’t know that,” she objected. Her eyes were stuck to the ground as she sniffled.

“Cris, are you seeing something?” I asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

But there was something there. If I looked closely, there were red-bulb bugs skittering around. And one of them was carrying something rather unusual: a shiny silver ring. The object slowly drifted about the floor like some impossible life form.

“A ring? Hey, I can see it too, you know,” I said. Cris didn’t respond. “Here, if you eat one of the buns—“

“It belongs to the only friend I had in the village, you know,” she said. She then picked up the ring, which the little bug still clasped to; Cris gently pried the red-bulb off and put it back on the ground, then pocketed the ring.

“Sorry Syco, just wait here, okay?” she said, and then she ran off the way we had come. I didn’t even have time to hesitate before a force pushed me from behind, and I slipped on the ground. Looking back in the disappearing light, there was nothing there except for blood, that pooled on the ground before my eyes.

“I thought this insanity was supposed to end now,” I muttered to myself, and then I ran after Cris.