chapter 7 - The mycelium-entangled regicide
Arya's spine pierces her skin and grows into a bronze strain, the sphinx blooming at the end spitting out the memory goo of the first twin. Ramon's robotic arm was melting away, liquid metal seeping into the ground fungal blanket, spelling out in a network of mycelium a diagram of the construction of the lab three hundred years ago.
"Welcome home." The flesh walls of the mycelium nest suddenly slit into vertical pupils, and Garo's face emerged from the pupils. Her voice resonated through the mycelium, each hair attached to the clone's medulla, "The truth you are looking for is nothing more than colony excrement."
The sea of clones boiled beneath their feet, the countless faces of Arya fusing into a blood and flesh elevator. As the elevator sank into the ninth floor of the mycelium dome, Ramon's chest suddenly burst open, the snow wolf jade pendant biting into the bronze mechanical heart with a wail of jammed gears.
Memory vesicles dangle from the fungus dome, and Arya pokes one of them, the goo forming a holographic projection in the air - the warring nations are manipulating Ramon into slaughtering the village with a bone flute inscribed with Experiment Seven. And the location shown on the stone tablet at the entrance of the village is the coordinates of modern-day Gengetsu Pass!
"Time and space are lies woven by mycelium here." Garo's mycelial body peeled away from the wall of flesh, her skirts tumbling with the remains of weapons from all eras. With a flick of her fingertips, Arya's bronze strain suddenly exploded in length and stabbed into Ramon's mechanical heart, "Time for some fresh nutrients."
In the midst of the severe pain, Arya's demonic pupil automatically parsed the mycelium network. As the visual signal accessed the core database, she saw the ultimate form of the immortality program - all the Twins of all times were trapped in the time loop of the fungus nest, their grievances nurturing some kind of embryo!
Ramon suddenly ripped the strain from his chest, and instead of blood, bronze spores engraved with runes spewed from the severed mouth. The spores fell to the ground and took root, instantly growing into a bronze altar. When his mechanical heart resonated with the altar, the mycelium nest suddenly sounded an alarm: the Primordial Godslayer gene was detected awakening.
Garo's mycelial body began to disintegrate, revealing the bronze box at its core - the very same one that Arya had gotten at the Drunken Immortal Pavilion! The lid of the casket opens automatically, and what pours out is not a baby crying, but the embracing skeletons of the Primordial Twins. Their finger bones were entwined with juxtaposed lotus flowers, with miniature astrolabes embedded in the stamens.
"So we're the pathogen." Arya's strain suddenly blossomed, each petal mirroring a scene of carnage from a different era. When the seventh petal bloomed, she could see the true form of the fungus nest - it was a living spaceship cultivated from the corpses of successive generations of Twins!
Ramon's robotic arm plunged into the altar, activating the dusty Godslayer program. The nest began to quake violently as the clones melted into flesh and blood fueled the thrusters. Gara reorganized her body with a shrill whine, this time revealing the true face of the Primordial Astrologer - set in her forehead was the same cursed gem that had caused the Twins to turn against each other!
"It's time for the game to upgrade." Arya ripped off her demon pupil and pressed it into the altar, her eyeballs suddenly multiplying into consoles. As she bit through Ramon's mechanical veins and wrote down the Godslayer code in liquid metal, the outer walls of the fungus nest suddenly became transparent - they were actually in near-Earth orbit around the frozen home planet!
Garo's cursed gem began to overload as she frantically tore at the mycelium connecting the ship, "You have no idea what you're waking up to!" The mycelium nest suddenly deorbited and dove towards the home planet. Arya sees the horrifying truth in her weightlessness - the behemoth frozen under the ice has three thousand twin heads!
Ramon's mechanical heart suddenly pops out and turns into the Godslayer Key. As the key is inserted into the console, all the clones recite the Bronze Charter in unison, "The Godslayer is a slave for all eternity, unless ..." Arya picks up the second half of the sentence, "Unless the heart of the feeder is devoured."
The nest disintegrates in violent friction and Arya grabs Ramon and jumps into the escape pod. As they pass through the atmosphere, they see that Garo's mycelium is spelling out a distress signal on the surface of the ice - it turns out to be the oldest penitential scripture in Silver Snow City!
The escape pod crashes into the frozen surface of the sacred lake, and as Arya climbs out of the wreckage, she notices that the lake water has a bronze sheen. Ramon's mechanical body was dissolving, revealing a skeleton transformed by mycelium: "What's running through us ... is the virus of the Godslayer."
A bronze tablet suddenly rose from the center of the lake, the inscription written in virus: the Godslayer protocols are lifted, and the dropping of the cleaners has begun. There was a rumble from the ice in the distance, and three hundred mycelium bodies identical to Garo's broke through the ice, the astrolabes in their hands reorganizing the Godslayer code ...