Moving down the stairs took about as long as Eshanai had expected, but the Oni soon grew impatient, taking multiple steps at a time to try and get down faster. He would have stumbled and fallen if not for Eshanai catching him mid-air. That convinced him to take the stairs normally if at a hurried pace.

They passed more empty chambers as they descended levels with more passages leading away, but the scent led downwards, so the passages were ignored. They soon came upon a cloying acrid stench that even the Oni could smell and had to stop as he retched in a corner of the stairs.

”Blight it all. What is that smell?” He swore as he stood up shakily and brought a sleeve across his mouth.

”I don’t know,” Eshanai answered, seemingly unaffected. ”If it’s this bad for you, think about how it must smell to me. Just keep your tongue in your mouth, and you should be fine.” The Oni looked at her bewildered before sighing.

”It doesn’t work like that for ordinary people.”

”What? You mean you have to smell things all the time?” Eshanai said in obvious fake astonishment. ”No wonder you’re so grumpy.”

”Very funny,” the Oni said and smirked. ”But I think I have earned the right to be a little grumpy.” That made Eshanai pause. She hadn’t meant to upset him, and even though he smiled, Eshanai knew he hadn’t moved on, or else they would have fucked by now. If she wanted a piece of that dick anytime soon, she needed to help him move past his trauma. It was clear he wanted her. That was extra frustrating. If he wasn’t careful, she might take him to bed no matter what he said.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t-.”

“Please, don’t pity me,” the Oni interrupted. “I get enough of that from myself to last a lifetime.” He pushed off from where he had been leaning against the wall and tried to ignore the foul odor coming from below.

“How do you deal with it?” Eshanai asked suddenly, “how do you come to accept a thing like that?” The Oni looked at her for a moment, surprised, before he smiled sadly.

“I haven’t, not really. I still see their faces when I close my eyes, but I can’t just lay down and die. They wouldn’t want that for me.” Eshanai stared intently. She couldn’t fathom having absolutely no chance to see her passed loved ones again, even though she had begun to doubt.

”I still don’t understand how you can live with that,” Eshanai said incredulously. ”I at least hope that my sisters will one day be reborn. To be spawned out of the mountain to live again.” The Oni grew intense at her words, his shoulders bunching up and muscles straining.

”What did you say?” He asked slowly.

”You didn’t know?”

”I knew that Naga are borne from your sacred caves, but not that you are reborn there!” The Oni exclaimed.

”It is hard to say if we really are.” Eshanai began, afraid that she had put her tail in her mouth and only given him false hope. “I have only seen one such case with my own eyes. She wore the same face but lived for such a long time and then got a new life. Are they the same person that I knew? Some say yes, that it’s the same personality with the slate wiped clean. Others say that there is no way they can turn out exactly the same.” Eshanai speculated, but the Oni wouldn’t let it go. Pushing off from the wall and getting all up in her face.

”They are reborn?” He asked again quietly.

”Yes,” Eshanai answered simply. ”From all that I’ve heard, some are.” The Oni grew thoughtful and quiet as he started walking down the stairs again. Eshanai followed.

The silence grew strained between them as they continued to travel downwards. Eshanai could tell the news had rattled the Oni, but she was unsure what she could do to cheer him up. Maybe it was best to leave him alone for a time, to let him process this on his own. That was easier said than done however, she kept glancing at him. Wondering what he was thinking about, what he was planning. She hoped he wouldn’t do anything stupid.

She did see an opportunity when they came upon another empty level. She tried to see things from his perspective. His flame was great for lighting his way, but beyond that, it was pitch black. It was like hanging in empty space, in a void. Not knowing what was out there or how far it was to the floor below. It did seem to unnerve the Oni as he always kept one hand on the middle pillar.

”You sure you don’t want me to carry you?” Eshanai asked innocently, but the Oni kept quiet and continued walking. ”It’s an awful long way down. It would be a shame if you went splat,” she continued. But when that too was ignored, Eshanai decided to take the initiative. Rushing forward, she swept him up in her arms to grin down at him. He glared at her in return and actually punched her in the face. Catching her by surprise, he got in a decent hit, and Eshanai dropped him, out of astonishment more than anything.

”Don’t just drop me like that,” the Oni said in a panicky voice, having just scrambled from the edge to get to the center pillar.

”You punched me,” Eshanai countered, sounding almost impressed. “In the face.”

“Yeah, well, it worked, didn’t it? Takes a lot for you to get the message,” the Oni stood up with a huff and brushed himself off. Eshanai hated this. She felt like they had been making some progress. The Oni seeming to warm up to her for a moment, but now they were back to square one. She shouldn’t have mentioned the sacred caves. It only put ideas in his head, false hope.

“What will it take for me to make you abandon this fool’s errand of yours?” Eshanai said and sat down on the stairs, folding her tail around herself.

“What are you even talking about?” The Oni said with a scoff. “I thought the spirit wasn’t a problem anymore.”

“You know exactly what I mean,” Eshanai’s eyes narrowed as she stared the Oni down. “As soon as I mentioned rebirth, you turned weird. You're planning to go to the sacred caves, aren’t ya?”

“Why shouldn’t I? Even if it’s a small chance, I’d still take it to have my family back,” he sounded almost desperate, on the brink of a breakdown. “I won’t run into much resistance with your elder’s orders and all that. I could just waltz right in, couldn’t I?” Eshanai had to restrain herself, or she might do something she would regret. What he was suggesting was the utmost sacrilege, the ultimate evil in her mind. To disturb the sacred caves was to risk their whole existence, to interfere with the next spawn.

“Even if you could make it up there, you would still have to contend with the elders,” she said, having taken deep breaths to try and calm down.

“Why do you care anyway?” The Oni asked defiantly. He kept staring into his flame, the weird look back in his eye. Eshanai did not like it, full of greed and ambition. “I thought you had started to dismiss the elder’s rules.”

“Not this one,” Eshanai answered, and the two of them stared each other down for a tense moment that felt like it stretched on forever. The Oni looked away first again, and staring intently at the ground, he said.

“Fine, let’s move. This stench is killing me.” Eshanai felt like he let that go too quickly. Bah, she was no good at this. Why couldn’t everything be solved by fighting and fucking? Life would be so much easier. If only some of her sisters were here, Rulan could talk some sense into this man in no time. Eshanai missed them.

This time she let silence rein as they made their way the rest of the way down. Eshanai got a clearer picture of what was down there. On the lowest level, there were shelves upon shelves of what must have been books. There seemed to be no burial chambers down there, only a single large room with the bookshelves.

There was movement down there too. From this distance, Eshanai could not tell much more than that it was a short two-legged creature. From what she had smelled before, it could only be her goblin unless there were other short bipedal creatures down here. It was moving around something big and amorphous.

As they came below ground, Eshanai could sense that it was a goblin moving about down there. It was erratically moving around a bunch of big mushrooms that seemed to grow together and over some of the bookshelves.

Making it down to the last level felt different, as if this part of the ziggurat was built for another purpose. It was certainly built more recently, for as the building up above looked dilapidated and overgrown, this part looked brand new. The stench grew almost unbearable down here. Eshanai refrained from Flicking her tongue out anymore, and the Oni breathed through his sleeve.

”Can you read any of that?” Eshanai asked the Oni as she stared at the clearly discernible writing carved into the walls and ceiling. They were in a small room housing the staircase with a wooden door leading to the bigger room with all the bookshelves and her goblin.

”Who cares,” the Oni scoffed, having to hold a hand over his mouth and nose to keep from retching. ”More human nonsense, I’m sure.”

”It must be important, or else I’m sure they wouldn’t have taken the time to carve it into every available surface,” Eshanai countered.

”Certainly self-important,” the Oni snickered through his hand.

”So you can read it,” Eshanai announced triumphantly.

”Yes, some,” he answered with a dismissive hand wave. Eshanai only stared at him expectantly with arms folded under her breasts. Finally, the Oni tore his eyes away with a sigh. ”They are names of those who lay buried here and some groveling before their god-emperor.” He added as an afterthought.

Eshanai again inspected what she now knew to be names. It gave the corpses up above more of an identity to her, and she wondered what their lives must have been like before they died. She had heard the stories. Who among the Naga hadn’t? Her favorites always involved someone overcoming impossible odds. Like the War Of The Stars or The Lord With The Ring, those were just that, stories. It awakened the wanderlust in her, wanting to see for herself if there were truth to these stories, if there were other people out there.

”So, is it in there?” The Oni asked.

”Hm,” Eshanai hummed distractedly, still looking up at the carvings on the walls.

”The goblin?” The Oni clarified irritably, snapping Eshanai’s attention back to himself.

”Oh yes, it’s in there, alright. But it’s acting strangely.”

”Strange how?”

”There’s some sort of big misshapen bunch of mushrooms in there, and the goblin seems to be massaging it,” Eshanai said the last part in a questioning tone.

The Oni looked troubled at that but wasted no more time on chatter. A swift kick made the door splinter and fly open to bang loudly against the wall. So much for the quiet approach, Eshanai thought as the Oni stepped through, flooding the other room with light.

Eshanai had never seen so many books in one place and in such good condition. There were some volumes on the ship she had taken up as a residence. Not as many as in here, and they were mostly illegible. That didn’t matter so much as Eshanai couldn’t read anyway, but the pictures were nice. Maybe she could have the Oni help her find a book on sailing.

Nothing came to attack them as they walked through the stacks, So Eshanai decided to throw caution to the wind. If the sound of the door banging open hadn’t given them away, what harm could looking at a few books do?

”What are you doing?” The Oni asked in a harsh whisper as he looked back to find her leafing through a rather hefty tome.

“No pictures,” Eshanai muttered to herself and slid the book back onto the shelf before pulling out another one and hastily starting to browse through it.

“Is this really the time?” The Oni asked. “We didn’t come here to have a leisurely stroll through the library.”

“Would you relax?” Eshanai answered as she scanned through the shelves. “My little goblin won’t get away, trust me. I know where it is at all times.”

“It’s not the goblin I’m worried about,” was hissed at her through gritted teeth, and the Oni started to pull on her arm to get her moving physically.

“Instead of dragging me away,” Eshanai said as she bound up his legs. “You could help me find what I’m looking for,” the Oni fell over backward, and Eshanai let herself be pulled with him to land on top. She grinned in his face. The Oni scowled at her before rolling his eyes and sighing.

“Fine,” he said, and a book pulled itself out to float down and hover where Eshanai could look at it. She couldn’t read the words on the cover, but it had a picture of a ship, so that was promising. “But no more delays,” Eshanai grabbed the book and let the Oni get up from under her. She was so busy admiring the cover and thinking about what knowledge was held inside that she almost forgot to grope him. Almost.

They were on their way with a few curses and much slapping away of hands and tails. Eshanai carried her book close to her chest as she led the Oni straight to the goblin. Coming out of a stack of shelves, they saw the little guy. It had its back turned towards them and was currently spreading a colorful liquid onto the enormous cluster of mushrooms she had sensed earlier, massaging it in.

The stench now grew unavoidable, almost forcing itself into her mouth and nose every time she breathed. The Oni had it worse, falling to his knees and gagging at the smell. The liquid the goblin was lubricating into the mushrooms seemed to be the source. How it could stand it, Eshanai had no idea.

There was a table against one of the walls filled with bottles of brightly colored liquids of different shades, some bubbling away over tiny fires, while others almost seemed to swirl around in their containers as if they had a mind of their own. Approaching slowly, the goblin finally noticed them as its ears twitched and it turned around.

“Ah, more hands come to join the labour,” it said in its scratchy goblin voice. Hearing such articulation coming out of a goblin was surprising, and Eshanai paused in consideration. The Oni plowed right on through.

“What are you talking about, welp?” He practically snarled. “You can begin by using those fancy new words of yours to explain what you are doing down here.” The goblin seemed to almost shy back from the Oni before it twitched and straightened itself.

“This one has accrued a lot of fear of you, but that’s alright,” came the calm voice out of the goblin’s mouth. “It won’t need to fear anything ever again. We plan to keep it. After all, it has been so very useful. A bit dull perhaps, but with clever, dextrous hands.” It held up its hands as if to show them off, bending every finger individually as it admired its own limbs.

“What do you mean we plan to keep it?” The Oni asked and eyed the mushrooms towering behind the tiny goblin. “Who am I talking to right now?”

“Forgive us,” the goblin performed a bow. “We are the collective, as we like to call ourselves. The fungi you see before you are merely a small part of our being, yet all reside within this structure's many levels. Until today.” So the mushrooms had somehow taken control of the goblin. Eshanai was more surprised about that than the fact that the mushroom was actually alive. Such things were common on the island. Although the mushrooms outside had seemed apathetic in their attitudes, she had spent a significant part of the trip over here talking to a tree.

“What do you want?” It was Eshanai’s turn to ask questions now. She had made the hole for the mushroom to escape out of. It seemed sensible to ascertain whether or not it would be a problem. The goblin’s eyes turned to her, and it seemed it had to restrain itself not to run away it was shaking so much. That unnatural calm came over it again before it spoke.

“It has even more fear of you, it seems. We almost lost control in its panicked state.”

“Answer the question,” the Oni butted in helpfully.

“Oh, to expand the collective, we suppose,” the mushrooms said through the goblin thoughtfully while they stroked its chin. “To gain more powerful minds would be our priority, but we are already well on our way to achieving that.” The goblin smiled towards Eshanai.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The Oni asked.

“It means that your scaly friend here will soon be joining our collective, whether she wants to or not,” the goblin said with glee. As soon as those words entered Eshanai’s ears, she could feel something moving about in her stomach. I knew inhaling those spores would come back to bite me, she thought as something started to make its way up her throat slowly.

“It already has an effect, I see. That was quick,” The goblin said, sounding surprised. The Oni turned towards her in alarm, saw distress in her eyes, and reached out a hand towards her. He was no doubt trying to purge whatever had infected her like he had done with her venom when they first met. It was a nice thought, but something long and coarse suddenly shot up her throat and forced its way out of her mouth to wrap around the Oni’s throat, strangling him. He dropped his hand to wrap it around what looked like the root around his throat, ending the force acting on her. He even tried to burn it with the flame in his other hand, but it was slow going. Eshanai frowned at the thing sticking out of her mouth, it did resemble a root more than anything a mushroom would produce, and she suddenly understood. The fruit from the tree. She had swallowed it whole, seeds and all.

She put a hand on the Oni’s and pleaded with him with her eyes. He looked at her with shock at first, then with doubt before he managed to nod in his binds, choosing to trust her. The fire stopped spraying over the root, and he stopped struggling against it. There were a couple of intense moments where the root kept going, but as Eshanai had thought, it soon let the Oni go. He collapsed to the ground in a coughing fit and breathed deeply, regretting it as the acrid stench entered his mouth.

Before Eshanai could go to him, the root dove back into her mouth and forced its way into her lungs, she choked and gagged, and tears came to her eyes as it ripped at something in there. Once, twice, seven times, it pulled something free of her lungs. To Eshanai, it felt like someone was tearing her insides apart, which might actually be what was happening. The root slithered out of her again and threw something bloody and wriggling on the floor.

Whatever it was looked almost like the root system of a tree, but pure white with extremely thin roots still moving about. The Oni had recovered from his strangeling and quickly incinerated the seven wriggling somethings on the floor. Eshanai was too busy reeling, as it was her turn to gasp and cough up a storm. Blood splashed on the floor and dropped from her chin as she spoke haltingly.

”I guess,” she coughed. ”I guess we know why the mushroom men left me alone.” Eshanai pushed herself up from the floor, breathing heavily as she endured the Oni’s stare. ”What?”

”Yeah, I guess they didn’t want to hurt someone who could become one of them,” he said in a daze before he seemed to catch up and shook himself violently. ”What in the blight was that?!” He exclaimed. Eshanai looked at him as if she couldn’t understand how he didn’t get it, and slowly she said.

“I breathe in spores. They grow inside me, start to take over,” she nodded at him as if to confirm that he was with her so far.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said quickly, shaking his head and waving his hands in the air. “But what were those roots climbing out of you? You never told me you had bound a spirit.”

“Oh, yes, about that,” Eshanai answered with a chuckle, seemingly having forgotten about the blood covering her chin. “That wasn’t exactly voluntary. I didn’t know I had a spirit inside me until now, and I wouldn’t say I have it bound as it is more hitching a ride.” The Oni sighed and massaged his temples, something he seemed to do a lot while talking to her.

“So am I to presume you have no agreement with this spirit?” He asked with a groan.

“Well, no, it was hard enough to get some sort of response out of it,” Eshanai answered with a shrug.

“Be glad it decided to help out then. You should make knowing its motives a top priority. It most likely didn’t want its precious fertilizer to get infested by mushrooms.” That was a sobering thought. Eshanai didn’t regret having gotten to eat one of the heavenly tasting fruits, something even the elders spoke of with reverence. Here was the price she would have to pay. That fruit in exchange for directions was plainly ridiculous. Carrying one of the tree's children seemed more appropriate. Eshanai would have appreciated getting a heads up, though.

”Maybe it does want to use me as a particularly nutritious soil. I don’t know,” Eshanai said in the face of the Oni’s pessimism. ”For now, it seems benign, so all I can do is treat it with respect and hope it does the same to me.” The Oni snorted in derision before crossing his arms.

”Idiot, it will do what it likes no matter how you treat it. You best find a way to subjugate it or get used to it ruling your life.”

”Yeah, cause that has worked out so well for you,” Eshanai scoffed. ”How would I even do that anyway? I don’t have your mind bendy powers. There must be another way, other than making it my slave.” They continued their back and forth as the goblin silently watched. It observed the interaction for a time. The mushrooms had long realized that none of the beings bickering in front of it were infected.

”I’d say it has, and you don’t need telekinesis to bind a spirit, just a strong will.” The red-horned one noted as the collective had the goblin mix a new potion while the two beings were distracted.

”Don’t kid yourself. Your spirit will do precisely what it wants, like mine. You said yourself that it wouldn’t obey you.” The half woman half snake lady shot back, and the red one frowned, but before he had time to respond, there was a puff, and the two of them looked over to the goblin. It grinned madly as colorful smoke rose out of a bottle it held in its hands.

The goblin cackled madly as it threw the bottle at the mass of mushrooms. It broke against the spongy flesh, and shimmering liquid poured down over the mushrooms. The goblins' expression of absolute glee slowly morphed into a frown as nothing happened.

”I’ve had enough,” the Oni said and shot a stream of fire at the collection of mushrooms. Instead of setting them ablaze, the fire somehow reacted with the liquid. The goblins cackle reignited as a hole, for lack of a better term, opened up beneath the mass of mushrooms, and they fell through, taking a couple of bookshelves with them.

The goblin sprinted like a madman, Eshanai being too far away to catch up, and threw itself into the hole. She jumped after it but only got a glimpse of green fields, and burgeoning hills before the hole abruptly disappeared, to be replaced by the stone floor once again.