Chapter 4

Rillia couldn’t take her eyes off Vesha as she sailed the lotus boat down the Blue River. She took up more space than anyone else on the boat due to her size but the ant didn’t mind that. The crawfish’s physiology fascinated her, the ant secretly wishing she had the fins, gills and claws the female had in order to swim through water at the blinding pace her kind were able to. Without the Venom Drench of the ants’, crawfish were the strongest creatures in Wassergras and this combined with their aquatic capabilities made Rillia sure she could travel to Primeval World on her own rather safely.

I could go nearly anywhere if I were her. She thought. Land, water, it wouldn’t matter...I just wish I was her. Not only a crawfish but to be a part of the Exploratory Pincer brigade is beyond an opportunity.

Rillia would have been asking Vesha about her experiences in the brigade but the mood on board was rather tense. Melsil was obviously deep in thought as he sat against the edge of the lotus boat’s wall as Vesha kept glancing back at him in paranoia. Every twitch the fungus swordsman made caused the crawfish to jump a little, almost as if she was terrified enough to dive headfirst into the water in front of them. She was obviously afraid of someone with the eyes of a Dushil, unable to stand straight without quivering in fright. Barely anyone spoke as they sailed down the Blue River.

Rillia, herself, was scared at the prospect of facing the Red Fungus in war. It wasn’t just her life she feared for but, even moreso, her dream. With the Red Fungus mob causing this much chaos in the country she wondered if it was enough to delay her plans to go to the Primeval World may take years. You didn’t have to be an astute historian to know that wars often prevented travel for civilians. And if she was possibly killed before reaching the Primeval World then Rillia would never complete her promise to Distir all those years ago.

That’s why she also felt resentment towards Vesha and Melsil. Despite her jealousy of Vesha’s physiology and position as an explorer, she also felt anger at her. Here she was, after preparing for half her life to travel to the unknown world, Rillia was now forced to go somewhere she didn’t want to. She saw her new companions as burdens, almost on par with the ants back at Red Mountain. This caused her to say nothing to anyone as they sailed down the river, the silent tension growing dangerously thick.

They’re all burdens to me. Rillia thought. Even Jason, who shares my spirit of adventure, caused me to meet Melsil. And now I have to drag them around and endanger my quest for a world with no restriction. They’re worse than Distir...no, Jason’s not quite that bad...

The only person who wasn’t complicit in the unspoken resentment everyone else felt was Jason. The young man was smiling the whole time as he was ecstatic to go on a new adventure. At first, he was touching Vesha like he did Rillia, curious of her alien body, when first meeting the latter before she asked him to stop, to which he reluctantly did. After that Jason began staring out at scenery beyond them to find the pine straw piling up around them was giving way to oak leaves.

“What’s with the change in stuff on the ground?” he asked.

“Well, just look up,” Rillia said.

He did to find the trees that towered over them so high in the air that it was hard to observe them and therefore out of their normal field of vision were no longer just pine. Some were oak. The scaly, flakey barked plants were not with the green needles for leaves were now accompanied by the harder, ridged bark with pin-shaped leaves. The foliage fell to the ground, mixing together from being washed to form an amalgamation of plant material by the rain that Wassergras was known for. Jason seemed fascinated not only by the change in what littered the ground but what grew from it.

Mushrooms and other such fungi started appearing along the edge of the shore. This was a sign they had left the Red Mountain ant colony’s territory that mostly covered grassland and entered Usujin, the portion of the country mostly governed by the fungus people. While grown by the fungus people, they were generally not poisonous and never to the extent that those planted by the Red Fungus were.

Normal, brown-stemmed mushrooms with blue domed heads with yellow spots were aplenty as well as star-shaped, white fungus so large their appendages hovered over the river. Similar to Slab River, this was something that she would like to stay and observe but couldn’t because of others preventing them from doing so. They occasionally spotted both fungus people and pinecone people but those they didn’t pay them much mind, either due to fear or disinterest.

After Melsil had turned the mushrooms at Slab Lake into fertilizer, they had left Slab Lake by the next morning, the entire mushroom cleansing taking all day. But before that, Melsil had given the Knife Claw soldiers directions to where he remembered the various bases of operations the Red Fungus lived in. He had penciled down on maps the soldiers had brought them and marked where their strongholds were. Rillia was headed down the river for two reasons: one was to drop off Vesha, Melsil and even Jason to the Red Fungus stronghold Melsil personally wanted to arrive at while the second was to travel down the river (possibly with Jason) to the Primeval World. However, Vesha did not go with them.

“I want to stay by you,” she said to Rillia before they left. “I have an interest in the Primeval World, same as you and we’d have a better chance of surviving by sticking together. I don’t want to lose sight of you. However...him…”

She pointed to Melsil.

“I don’t trust.”

Most of the Knife Claw soldiers, upon hearing Vesha’s declaration of the Red Fungus’s intention of war, swam in two different directions: one was to the Blue River’s channel that had been dammed by the Red Fungus throwing stones into the water, the other the direction Rillia and her companions were headed in to find the Red Fungus’s base of operations at Usujin. However, since the crawfish had such an advantage in water, they swam fast enough to outpace them. They were guided by the directions Melsil had shown them.

The first day of sailing was the bitter, quiet kind where no one but Jason spoke or hardly moved to due each others’ suspicions and offenses. The whole day’s boat ride was incredibly uneventful and that added to the tension everyone, save Jason, was feeling. Each person was so frustrated at the other that Jason was the first to bring up a legitimate concern.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “What are we going to do for food?”

“Go get some,” Vesha snapped. “If you’re so hungry.”

He stared at her blankly while Rillia glared at her, miffed that her friend had been thrown such a terse remark. She wanted to say something back but was interrupted. Jason apparently didn’t take this offense to heart.

“Hey, you’re right!” he said. “I’ll go get us some food! I’ll get us something to eat, don’t you worry!”

He jumped from his position in the boat into the water, paddling against the river’s current to get near land. He swam the distance from their boat to the shore in a moment. Vesha turned to Rillia with a confused look on her face, perplexed at his strength. It was the first emotion she had shown that day that wasn’t disgust or apprehension.

“What is he?” she asked.

“Don’t ask me,” the ant replied. “He rescued me from drowning one night and decided to come along with me just...just because. Strong enough to lift this boat with one hand, kill ten fungus swordsmen and take out a grass frog in one punch. Says he has no memory of where he came from or who he is. He doesn’t even know his name without it being written on his clothing.”

“That-that’s impossible,” Vesha answered.

The ant recognized this as a way to relieve tension. Vesha’s attention was turned from hating Melsil and giving him passive aggressive looks to talking about the weird creature they had brought along. Most everyone had been too focused on their fears and ambitions to notice what an oddity Jason was but now that wasn’t a problem. The fact that Vesha was more relieved meant Rillia was as well.

“Yeah, I know,” Rillia said. “He looks like a Giant to me, but apparently he knows nothing about them. He matches all the descriptions of one but is nowhere near their size.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve...I’ve read about the Giants to some extent and...now that you mention it...he does look like how the old explorers used to describe them. I’ve always been curious about the Giants and their civilization as well as what they left behind as discovery of what they left behind could aid in gaining new crawfish habitat but…”

She shook her head.

“I never wanted to investigate it that badly,” Vesha stated. “The Giants’ stuff mostly lies in the Primeval World, or even beyond that if we’re to believe certain explorers and that’s...that’s just too dangerous and uncertain of a place to travel to if we don’t even know if there is much profit for the crawfish from their inventions.”

“Say, Vesha,” Melsil said.

The moment that broke the sigh of relief Rillia had was when the fungus man addressed the crawfish. She could tell just by the tone of voice it was both dreadfully serious and patronizing. The ant cringed in fear of what he was about to say.

Oh no. She thought.

“Why is that you want to help the crawfish so badly?” he asked. “Is it because they are in the greatest need out of all the species of the world...or is it because they are your own kind?”

“I…” she said, clearly perplexed at his statement but also becoming more tense. “I-I don’t understand the question...”

No, you do. Rillia thought. The answer, of course, is so obvious she doesn’t understand why it needs to be asked. She’s never thought about it before...no one’s ever brought it up before. Melsil...you’re too demanding of others

“Why do you want to help the crawfish?” Melsil asked. “What is your reason for helping that species?”

Now Vesha looked personally offended at the fungus man. She glared at him, raising her pincers defensively as if to fight him, as if his question threatened her almost as much as a threat to her life did. Rillia wanted to jump off board but she was steering the lotus vessel. She almost thought this would lead to a fight.

“Because they are my people,” she said. “Every person has a right to protect their kind and mine are the crawfish...so I live for them.”

“But what if someone, say, the Red Fungus, believe their duty is to serve their kind to the harm of others?” Melsil asked. “And they do so by directly hurting other species and inhibiting their freedom?”

“Are you really trying to justify the Red Fungus?” Vesha asked. “I was under the mentality you defected from them and we’re now headed to fight their base of operations. If you were a double agent...you wouldn’t openly proclaim such...so, what are you doing?”

“Trying to get you to see your own hypocrisy,” he answered.

This was the breaking point for Vesha. She snapped at him with her claws, a loud clicking sound could be heard that Rillia recognized as when crawfish were about to fight. He had provoked her badly.

“What did you say?” she demanded. “You think it’s so crazy to live for your own people that raised you and cared for you?! Are you like the rest of the Red Fungus in that you believe in killing others for your own power?!”

“No different from crawfish,” Melsil stated.

Rillia wasn’t even afraid at this point. She just sighed in frustration, practically wishing a storm would come in and take them out rather than listen to this. Vesha began swatting at him in fury.

“We didn’t kill millions of innocent lives, moron!” she cried. “I serve the crawfish because they are not guilty of such atrocities!”

“Yes they are,” Melsil stated. “The crawfish used their superior strength to bully other species, the fungus included, into submission. Their ability to exist on both land and water was weaponized in the expansion of their territory by pushing out other peoples, something that both the Knife Claw army and Exploratory Pincer brigade aided in. If it weren’t for the ants, you’d be the most dominant race in all of Wassergras.”

“So you are sympathetic to the Red Fungus!” she cried. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you. The Knife Claw army was desperate to find the Red Fungus mob but...I knew you had a hidden agenda.”

“My agenda isn’t to the Red Fungus,” he said. “It’s not even to the fungus people. They’ve profited from the Red Fungus’s wealth they’ve gained from blackmailing others with their red mushrooms’ poison. But you have profited from the crawfish’s expansion as your kind also gained great wealth. How are they any different?”

“I...I can’t believe this…!” Vesha stated. “You’re comparing them and saying we’re the same...right after you condemned the Red Fungus for using that very rhetoric to gain new recruits! Do you like saying opposites for the sake of confusing others?! Is it a game to you?!”

Melsil didn’t get agitated as she rebuked him. He expressed little in the way of emotion even when threatened. It was almost unnatural how little Vesha’s words affected him.

“You’re so convinced of your own kind’s moral superiority that you don’t even see the parallels,” he said. “And when I bring them up to you, you merely claim that’s fungal apologism...an attempt to silence the critics of the Red Fungus.”

“Of course we’re morally superior!” Vesha stated. “Your kind have destroyed millions of lives and desecrated civilizations and cultures! What more do my kind need to be better than yours?!”

“So are you just going to disregard your own species’s atrocities?” Melsil asked.

Rillia stared straight forward, occasionally glancing back at them to make sure they weren’t doing anything that would hurt her or the boat.

“We did what we needed to do to survive,” the crawfish replied.

That’s when Melsil raised his voice.

“And that’s what the Red Fungus said as well,” he said. “They used the exact mentality you just stated as reason to bully others into gaining territory. I hope you know the Red Fungus are one of the richest organizations in Wassergras...but the crawfish people are even richer. Most of their wealth was through conquering others…”

As Rillia glanced to the right, she saw Melsil staring right at him.

“But ants are the wealthiest of all,” he said.

“I never wanted anything to do with my kind,” she said before turning back to the front of the boat. “The only one I ever cared for was Distir...and he betrayed me.”

“Are you jealous of our wealth?” Vesha asked. “You want it for yourself?”

Melsil then began to laugh.

“This world…” he said. “Everyone is so...selfish. You sit here and argue that...that it was wrong of the Red Fungus...to do what the crawfish did? And yet...you say what the crawfish did was...to survive?”

She could practically hear his condescending smile as another thick tension spread over their boat.

“That’s what they all say,” Melsil stated. “They all say they want to just survive...and yet they plant mushrooms that poison everyone once their torn up and drain the environment of resources, they massacre anyone who disagrees with them, they massacre people because they want the land those people live on, steal their water-”

“Stop it!” Vesha said. “I know what you’re doing and I-”

“Steal their wealth,” Melsil stated. “Enslave the other race, poison their trees they live in, steal their water supply...they do all these things. They commit all these terrible atrocities all because it’s what they had to do. Even though they had more than enough to live off in their original land.”

Rillia could only imagine the Vesha was absolutely livid and ready to tear the fungus man to pieces. However, when she glanced at her she could see the crawfish looked more defensive than angry. She looked uncomfortable, like Melsil was forcing her into a corner.

“But when another species does the exact same thing,” he said. “They also steal from the other species around them, enslave the other races, poison their habitat and water supply and the nutrients from the very ground...apparently that race is morally abhorrent in every way and should be wiped from existence. Apparently...one species is inherently greater than the other...so they can commit any amount of violence they want.”

“It’s different for crawfish!” Vesha cried. “Don’t compare us to your kind! We’ve had to routinely search out places because...because of our growing population! We have different needs...crawfish have to have an area of both water and land...we had to do things that were...not bad, but not pretty.”

The pain and uncertainty in Vesha’s voice was becoming dangerously apparent. She clearly was losing in the argument against Melsil. While Rillia would have normally told the fungus swordsman to knock it off, he was beginning to see his point. Vesha was clearly a hypocrite, believing Melsil’s race was evil for the Red Fungus’s actions while crawfish were morally justified for theirs. The hypocrisy of species violence was something Rillia had rarely considered but always knew existed.

He’s beginning to prove his points are valid. She thought. His dangerous ideology...it’s gaining traction...it’s sounding logical.

“If that’s your way of justifying atrocities…” Melsil said with a chuckle. “Then fine. And you admitted you serve crawfish because you are one. The idea of your kind’s supremacy or different needs as you called it is just selfishness. An ideology for and an excuse of selfishness.”

Rillia was glancing to see Vesha was strangely silent, her pincers still held up as if she wanted to fight.

“Do you know why the Red Fungus were even formed to begin with all those hundreds of years ago?” Melsil asked. “Because the fungus species had less land than any other species in Wassergras. The ants had stripped them of much of their former homeland and there was great dissension amongst their kind toward all those not of the fungus. Some thought of trying to fight back for their territory that was lost but the fungus people were too afraid of causing greater suffering to do so. And so...the Red Fungus formed as a result with all the cruelty of a people who had been shown no mercy.”

“Then what would you have us do?!” Vesha demanded. “Stop everything because we stepped on the toes of the fungus people long ago?! Not attack the Red Fungus when you gave us the location of their strongholds? Just not try to win this war to protect countless others because...because the fungus people have also suffered…”

“Your kind should have worked to make up for the atrocities we had been shown,” Melsil stated. “After the crawfish that had bullied us and others died, the generation after theirs should have worked to restore prosperity to ensure a good life for the fungus. Especially after what happened at Yellow Spore.”

“The Red Fungus were hiding there,” she replied. “It was their biggest base of operation. Many of the civilians were even complicit in their evil activities.”

“And some weren’t,” the fungus man stated. “Yet those innocent and those guilty died all the same. Because your current general, Grawsin Hulik, was too afraid of them and wanted to end the war quickly. Some say that Hulik caused the destruction of the entire city because Yellow Spore was the city that gave us the most wealth and he wanted to ensure that the fungus people’s power never eclipsed the crawfish.”

“Do you really believe that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said with an air of confidence. “Seems plausible.”

“Civilians die in war…” Vesha said, obviously very strained. “It happens-”

“You wouldn’t say that if it was your kind that died,” he said. “I know that because the crawfish call it a battle while mine call it a slaughter. A slaughter of thousands and the destruction of our most prosperous village...after losing the city that was our greatest source of commerce that affected us years afterward your generation of crawfish could have worked to restore our people. You Exploratory Pincer brigade members could have sought out new territory for the fungus people to live in...but you chose to do so only for your own kind.”

“Every race does that,” she said. “That’s why I told you a person’s responsibility is to their own kind.”

“And look how well that’s turned out for everyone,” Melsil said. “This beautiful world covered from one end to the other with bloodshed. And when we gasp at its horror, we don’t look to ourselves but to others. We try blaming the other when, in reality, it all comes back to not only what we’ve done but we allow ourselves to justify.”

Rillia was shocked to see how now stood up from his seat on the lotus vessel and drew his sword to reveal it’s white blade. As it left the scabbard, white dandelion-like spores filled the air around him, the particles glistening in the light of the midday sun. As he drew it, Rillia felt hope, excitement and wonder, as though the sword itself was calling her to a place of warmth and compassion like being nestled into her mother’s grasp when she was young. It was the opposite of the aura that the black venom swords exuded, that of fear, hatred and vileness, like their very essence was a poison that spread into and contaminated her mind itself. The sword was paradise itself.

“When I came upon this weapon,” he said. “It was like finding an inheritance I never knew was mine to claim. It was a legend of the fungus people, something very few knew existed. But my father, the head of the Red Fungus did. And they refused to let anyone know due to the dark truth it revealed.”

With her attention now fully drawn to him, Melsil continued to hold it up to Vesha to find the crawfish’s image reflected in it. The image it showed of her was a twisted one, a cruel and vicious painting of a person who was consumed by a selfish hypocrisy. Rillia couldn’t understand how the white spore sword communicated that to her of the state of Vesha’s character but it was doing so nonetheless. It disturbed her on a level she’d never experienced before.

I’m not sensing it through my mind or my sight…She thought. Is...is it my soul that’s reading these images?

“You have always acted for the benefit of your own species,” the sword told her as she looked into it. “You have never done anything for yourself, ever. Your duty and life has always been for that of your own people. And that is your sin.”

The realization it was giving Rillia was perfectly horrific. Every word it told her was undoubtedly true. The ant hated the thought of it showing her her own reflection.

“Never have you cared about any other people,” it said. “The species beyond crawfish were too much for you to show compassion on. It is not the belief in superiority of your species that drove you to that agenda but since they were your own race you knew the only way to advance your own status and rank among the crawfish was to join the Exploratory Pincer brigade. You always justified your actions as helping your species so much that you lost sight of what was hidden beneath that agenda: your true ambition to become great, wealthy and powerful. Your moral conscience didn’t allow yourself to realize the self-centered direction you went and so you chose to hide it, attempting to convince yourself your own self-serving ends were for the good of others.”

When Melsil sheathed the sword, Vesha collapsed onto the lotus boat, absolutely surprised. Any fight or defensive stature she took was gone, something surprising as big and strong as an adult crawfish like hers was. Upon the sword’s blade no longer being revealed and the white spores quickly fleeing the air around the mushroom swordsman, Vesha was lying on her back and barely breathing.

Her six legs twitched in the air a little as they were revealed after falling backward, her pincers far too large to even do that. Her eyes were blank as she was clearly looking at nothing, her mouth ajar. Melsil very obviously took no pleasure in this but there was a calm, stoic satisfaction from what he had just done. He had not only ideologically bested his opponent but given her a revelation that had undoubtedly shaken her world.

Rillia was desperately hoping she never saw her own likeness in the White Spore sword. She had come to terms with her own selfishness as she never really saw it as a hindrance. She figured if everyone was selfless, it would be the same as no one having freedom as they would be too concerned with others wants and needs rather than their own freedom. If the world took the idea of selflessness to such an extreme, it would be the same as never living. But if the White Spore sword showed Rillia that, she would be hurt on such a level that she might never pursue her own dreams again. She might never see the Primeval World.

“The Red Fungus never wanted such a sword known to the public,” Melsil said. “Not because it was evil, but because it was the opposite of evil. In every way. Only something as pure as this sword could show the evil of the heart of a person.”

All this was interrupted by a huge splash to the side of their boat. Rillia and Melsil turned to see Jason jumping on board with an arm load of fruit and a dead cicada in his other hand. He smiled at them as he dumped them on board.

“Hey!” he said. “What’d I miss?”