Page 161 of Keldori By Daybreak

“Come on, Ciarán!” I screamed at him. “Fight it and tell me something that proves you’re you!”

“Ahltira,” he gasped. “Wren…”

“Ahltira? I don’t know what that means!”

“My name…”

I sliced through the mycelium.

Ciarán collapsed forward, and I caught him to lay him back in the dirt. Mycelium still hung from him, and ridges along his neck and cheeks betrayed the path they’d woven just beneath his skin. Blood seeped out from a sticky wound cutting deep into his abdomen. White roots dipped in and out between the layers of flesh.

“Shit,” I breathed. “Ciarán, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Ergoth grabbed me by my hair from behind, and I yelped as he threw me to the ground. He glared down at me, still wearing Ciarán’s visage. Fungus knit his abdomen back together with sticky strands.

“You would steal our food and cut our roots, but do we not all have to eat?” Ergoth said. “Do you blame Ergoth for doing what we must to survive?”

“I blame Ergoth for trying to eat my friend!” I leapt to my feet, loosing a punch swathed in blue fire as I did.

Ergoth grabbed my fist before I could make contact with his face. “We do not leave our strath. We do not seek out Magicians. We only devour those who come to Ergoth. Does this make us worth burning?”

“Yes!” I swung with my free arm and its serrated blades, cutting Ergoth clean through this time. He collapsed to the loam, and I stepped over his twitching parts to reach the real Ciarán again.

The cut in his abdomen was the deepest, but every bit of exposed skin had been eaten by roots to some extent. I hesitated, unsure of where to start, or if I even had time to heal him. His chest heaved with labored breaths, and sweat slicked his mottled skin.

“Ergoth was keeping him alive.” A new visage stepped out of the gloom. Ergoth had stolen my face again, along with the blue hair of my Nightmare form. “It is too late. The only way to save his life is to re-assimilate him.”

“He’d rather die.” I pressed my palms against his open wound.

Ciarán cried out against my touch, arching his back and recoiling away, but I let magick heat my palms and flow from me to him. I used our tether to feel out his injuries, and I could feel my magick stitching them back together, pulling at my own organs and tissue as it did.

And then I sent fire through his veins.

He screamed in pain, but the ridges under his skin receded, and the bits of mycelium still hanging from him shriveled and fell off.

Ergoth screamed in pain too, their voice echoing through the graveyard from every direction. I hadn’t realized more apparitions had surrounded us, but now that I looked more closely, I recognized Ciarán’s parents again, joined by a nightmarish version of his cousin Daithi. Massive sea stars crept through the curtains of roots, as did other beasts and creatures.

Orla, Galahad, Tiernan, and Ferrin all creeped closer, each one misshapen. My high school physics teacher stood with them, along with a clawed version of my father.

There were dozens, maybe hundreds of them lurking in the mist and mycelium, each one drawing closer.

“You will assimilate by the time the night is over,” Ergoth said, speaking still from the apparition of my Nightmare. “You and the boy both, and you will feed us for centuries.”

“You can’t have him!” I stood over Ciarán. “I won’t let you!”

“The ego of a Magician,” Ergoth sneered. “Ergoth does not require your permission.”

New hands grabbed me from behind and pulled me into a headlock that rendered my arm blades useless.

“We can be together here.” Ergoth was back in a new version of Ciarán, hissing in my ear with fetid breath. “Outside the strath, we must be separate from each other, but here, we can live for years. Together.”

Roots snaked off him to wrap around my arms and worm under the hems of my clothes.

“You won’t touch him!”

“You cannot stop us. We will take who and what we deem fit. We will assimilate. We will devour. You are helpless to resist. So why fight? We have devoured so many Magicians. We will devour so many more. You are not special.”

“I said NO!” The ground shook, and bits of fungus rained from above. Fissures cracked the soft earth, releasing sulfurous fumes that overtook the smell of decay. “I don’t care what Magicians you’ve had wander into your strath. None have been as strong as me!”