Fungal Halo

Something in this androgynous creature’s eyes captivates me. It draws me in, inviting me to say hi and strike up a conversation.

“What are your pronouns?” I ask, after they introduce themselves, trying to be polite.

“We/us/our,” is the response.

My colleague and partner—the only one who understands me on any meaningful level—ignores my pleas and my thrashing against these restraints to inject me with the same substance that killed all our test subjects.

She is a monster, and it was me who encouraged her to be so.

The kiss hits me like a knife wound in the mind, like something cold and foreign, violently separating parts of me that only ever knew connection with one another.

She slides herself into that makeshift opening, and the pain of her unexpected intrusion screams inside me.

There she is, my equal and opposite.

Fell creature of The Deep, the Piercing Tooth of the Great Maw That Devours, She Whose Steps Blight The Land approaches with wicked blade drawn and wild eyes staring.

I grip my own sword. Our great conflict ends today. It must.

When your eyes alight upon me, there is an ache within you, isn’t there? Something you’ve always lived with. Something with roots deep down in your very bones.

I see you wrestling with it. I see your longing. There is a question on your lips you need to ask me.

“Are you me?”

The Chosen One’s blade finds its way home at last, buried to the hilt in my chest.

I look up from the wound into brilliant blue eyes, where I find triumph and questioning, “Did I do it? Is it over?”

I smile in reassurance. It’s over. This whole charade is over at last.

“At last, we have the High Priestess of that loathsome church in our grasp,” the hooded figure declares in triumph as others lead the young leader of a faith in decline to the prepared altar.

You never questioned why your exploration of this hidden temple’s ruins went so smoothly and easily, did you? How you seemed to instinctually notice the hidden passages and trap triggers? You and your fellows rode a wave of excitement all the way to the most hidden chamber here.