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As Pharloom fell to darkness in the dying shrieks of its Goddess as she sank into the terrible abyss below, the Wormways came alight.
A beautiful, vibrant, pulsating blue conquered her tunnels, twisting and turning into each nook and crevice to spread its delightful life to all it could touch. Some of these branches sprouted fluttering, butterfly-like growths, which glowed with a fantastic bright hue. Buds of swirling substance flourished; oozing, dripping, coating the soil with its brilliance, furthering the spread of its vines with every small drop.
The creatures within the tunnels were reinvigorated, eyes brightened and shining, forms expanding and strengthening. They began to breathe and bleed nothing but that wonderful cerulean, and for it, they would never die.
And of course, at the center of it all lie the genius mind that brought it about, covered in snaking vines that erupted from his own shell. Zylotol the Alchemist, a scientist who, under his Master’s orders, has seeded a perfect beginning to accompany Pharloom’s end. His breath wavered and fell stilted, eyes kept wide open and burning blue, as a gland within his center pulsed and hungered. Around him lay destroyed materials cast in disarray along the floor, as though his laboratory had been ransacked. But more importantly, he was surrounded by the glorious fruits of his labor; Plasimum, his life-giving wonder, bearing down from all sides with suffocating grace and beauty.
It pools in his mouth. He lets it fall. Lets it cascade down from his eyes and continue nourishing the soil beneath him. Lets it flow through his hemolymph out through the vines, acting as a heart that fed his veins ever-so-diligently. His research has progressed further beyond what he could ever have imagined, and what a miraculous end it’s brought. To live forever as a source for its greatness… What could a bug ever truly desire more?
“Bzzt!”
…A noise disturbs him.
With great effort, Zylotol’s head rises. Not that he can see much of anything now, as the room around him has turned to nothing but a haze of sapphire. And yet, he peers up toward the tunnel’s ceiling, trying to see past the cloudiness toward whatever could possibly be choosing to bother him while he works.
“What a miserable little thing you’ve turned into! Are these the ‘benefits’ you and that woeful assistant of yours kept touting all this time?”
It’s a voice. A shrill, taunting voice accompanied by the sound of frantic wingbeats and buzzing. Though Zylotol’s mind has slowed, he would be a fool not to recognize it. Once he forces his eyes to focus, a zipping, fast-moving blur finally enters his vision, and he catches the gaze of a familiar fly.
“…Yarnaby,” He rasps, bluntly and disinterestedly. “Why do you intrude… upon my laboratory? You are not… welcome.”
“Oh, please! You have no power to shoo me away! Nor should you!” She scoffs and chitters her mandibles, before darting about to the other side of his head, out of his view. “Look at the state of you! As if I would not be naturally drawn toward an affliction so nasty and vile.”
Without wishing to put in the energy to face her, Zylotol instead opts to huff indignantly, lowering his head back down into a more comfortable position. It is not her fault she is ignorant, though why she chooses to insist upon such ignorance when the results are plain in front of her face, he will never know.
“Not an… affliction,” He rebuts, though he’s not sure why he bothers. “You understand the advantages… of Plasmium. You have admitted to it… yourself.”
“Well, yes, perhaps once even I could see its uses,” The voice has somehow traveled to the other side of him in the span of an instant. “But that was prior to seeing you now.”
“Now?” He questions, as though the words she spouts are preposterous, before raising a claw to wave her off. Something he must’ve done more accurately than he realized, as a startled buzz accompanies the action. “Now I am… evolved. Enlightened. I have become something… greater than bug. A source for Plasmium… A source for its spread.”
Incessant yet dismissive bzzts are all he receives at first, as the grating sound of her wings goes in vicious circles around his head. He wishes he could lift himself to see what it is she is so enamored by, but that would pose a danger to the roots he’s so dutifully connected to. Instead, he merely falls silent, waiting for her to acknowledge his obvious success and be away with herself.
“A source for spread,” She echoes after a moment from somewhere behind him. “That much is obvious, yes! What with these terrible things that now sprout from you, and how you’ve left them wriggling all about your disgusting little tunnels!”
He can hear her flutter by somewhere above him, high enough that he must strain to hear her past the thrum of the Plasmium. “But you have truly lost yourself if you believe you are not afflicted. Show me you can even pick yourself up off of that ground and move, Alchemist.”
Zylotol grimaces, wishing he could simply tune out her annoying words and not be easily goaded into arguing. It would hardly be the first time. But while he once valued her input, perhaps once sought it out, that was before her experiments had turned gruesome, and before she’d voiced her faithless indifference toward Plasmium. It was a time long, long since passed, and he’d thought maybe she’d moved on, too.
Evidently, he was naïve to believe that.
“I needn’t walk if all I need is… here,” He mumbles. He shall not play her games. “I have achieved… all I could ever wish for.”
“Oh, what, this nonsensical enlightenment you speak of? Hah!” She finally returns to the front of him, stooping down to his level so he can see her face properly. From what little he can reliably parse from her expression, she is undoubtably amused. “Even if that was the case, it is the body I care for, not the mind. Your mind’s state has meant little to me in the past, I do not see why I’d bother with it now, bzzt!”
She pauses, and he sees her head tilt slightly to the side, before she approaches even closer. Far, far too close for comfort, forcing Zylotol to draw back with a grunt. “Although I’ve reason to doubt it’s all there now, either. You slur your words, Alchemist, and seem to have convinced yourself that this disease you have is a blessing!”
“It is not… a disease,” Zylotol emphasizes, frustration beginning to seep into his words. “It is a blessing… It is the start of… a glorious future. Something… that will bloom across Pharloom, inhabit all its creatures…”
“And do what?” Yarnaby expectantly prompts. “Have you seen what it’s done to the creatures just beneath us now?”
“Yes…” He sighs, contentedness allowing his shell to relax. “And isn’t it… beautiful? I only wish I could… peer deeper, somehow…”
Her first question goes entirely unanswered as Zylotol’s eyes glaze over, glimmering spots of blue dancing across his vision. He sees a Pharloom that is covered in its brilliance, a thick forest of glowing Plasmium; the creatures within left basking in the glow, attaining true ascension and understanding beyond what any God could give. Emboldened, empowered, filled to the brim with knowledge and primed to perfection.
Why couldn’t Yarnaby see? Wasn’t it her goal to treat the sick, the frail, the pitiful? Shouldn’t she, too, celebrate its influence? It could be the answer to every question she’s ever had. Never should she need to cure a patient again.
Maybe she needs to partake in it. Maybe, if he could simply convince her to consume the blood herself…
“You and your ceaseless delusions,” Yarnaby’s words cut through his thoughts, bringing some semblance of reality back into focus. “Perhaps your mind is not so different now as it was before. Rife with beliefs of a miracle cure that never was, bzzt! What advantages it may have had seem useless now when it reduces you to such a pathetic state!”
She flits backwards then, for only a moment, before darting back in, lower down to his chest. Her eyes catch the shine of the beating gland at his center, bringing the image in his head of her indulging herself on the wonders of Plasmium back to the forefront. Loathe as he does to admit it, Yarnaby already had an intellectual mind. She is brilliant, in her own way. So if she, too, would just give it a chance, ahhh, to think of what she would create then…
“But I must admit, it does intrigue me so,” Her mandibles click together as she speaks, pointed and piercing and dangerously close to his Plasmified core. “If only you were not such a sizable specimen. Think of what my Extricator could pull from those glowing guts of yours now, bzzt! How far within you does it travel, I wonder?”
Mildly perturbed, Zylotol once again tries to pull back from her, causing the vines along his shell to twitch and writhe. “You will do… no such thing. I am not yet ready… To part with it. And certainly not leave it in… your claws.”
“Augh,” Yarnaby frustratedly snorts, craning her head back to give him a truly offended look. “Even now, you join the wailing crowd that shuns me! What qualms could you still possibly have with me simply having a peek?”
“I have known you… too long, doctor,” He grumbles, the title leaving his mouth with a hint of sarcasm. “It is never… that simple. Or painless.”
“And I suppose you mean to say you are free of pain now?” She easily retorts.
In response to that, Zylotol hesitates. To answer with anything other than a no would be deceptive, and the thought of lying about his work causes a deep revulsion within him. But as he takes that moment, Yarnaby’s expression turns to something unbearably smug, and he cannot keep himself from rising to her taunts.
“I do not begrudge… the pain,” He hisses. “It is a necessary cost. Unlike your… torture devices.”
She lets out a sharp, utterly appalled gasp, before dashing away with a truly disdainful retch. As she disappears from his view, he is unable to hold back a pleased chuckle, which clearly irritates her more given the increased volume of her buzzing.
“You know nothing!” She snaps. “To spit in the face of my thankless work – Ugh, the nerve! I have made spectacular achievements of my own, halfwit, not that you would care to learn. Obsessed with your own sickness! Bzzt! And to think you and I once shared a similar goal!”
His brief entertainment is instantly dashed by her jabs, which finally spark him into lifting his head to scowl back at her. “We did… But you rejected my ideas… And look who has succeeded now. Plasmium… Stretching across all of Pharloom. Your inventions… rotting, rusting, useless.”
“Oh, be silent!” She shouts, a loud buzz whirling past his head as she maneuvers around back to his side. He tries to follow her movements, but stiffness keeps him rooted. “Your infection will decimate the lands, and who will be left to cure it but I? Who will Pharloom turn to when this ailment you’ve released finally reaches the Citadel?”
Her voice travels behind him once more, and he jerks his head back when he feels the slightest tug on the vines just beneath his neck. She dares to touch him?! Dares to touch the Plasmium, pose a threat to its spread?
“My inventions have yet to reach their potential by no fault of my own! But when your dastardly concoction starts to infest the lands, maybe then the ignorant bugs around us will understand the need for it, bzzt!” She’s lashing out, understandably, reasonably, maybe, if she were a child.
“Get your claws… Off,” He commands, entirely disregarding her arguments. “I’ve already told you… If you care to listen… It’s not a—”
“Think of how easy it’d be!” She barrels on. Her claws instead squeeze. No, no, if she doesn’t let go, the supply will be cut… “To pierce deep into your shell, the shell of every poor bug tainted by this sick, and extract it drop by drop?”
“Stop—"
“And just who’s corpse will it be that I’m left to dissect when I must learn how this parasite overtakes its host?” She provokes lowly, and he feels another horrible tug. “Why not skip the wait and get it over with now, Alchemist?”
“You will… unhand me!” He thrusts his head forward. She releases, and he gasps, crumbling forward and just barely bracing himself before hitting the ground. He doesn’t notice it in the moment, but his glasses slip from his face, shattering onto the floor.
“This future you speak of… will never come to pass!” He heaves, curling in on himself in an effort to soothe the bloom of anguish that now crawled along his chitin. “Plasmium… It is an… Immortal substance. It will heal every bug and beast… It will spread, grow, endlessly… It is eternal life, never to be stolen…”
Through grit mandibles, he adds, “And you… You, too, will turn to it, eventually… You’re too curious not to… You’re too enthralled already. Drink it in…”
He lets out a shuddering, wavering breath, before pure, unfiltered Plasmium surges from his mouth in an outpour. It comes so easily, so naturally, so perfectly, he does not feel the urge to choke it back down. He does not struggle as it reaches the ground, seeping and soaking into the soil for further spread. Instead, he reaches forward trembling claws and catches as much as he can, before lifting it high above his head.
As though in offering to a deity.
“Take it now…” He gurgles passed the flood. “Take it and learn… Knowledge, it’s always… what you wanted, yes? Partake graciously… in the life I have to give.”
At first, he is met by nothing but long, drawn out silence. All he can hear is his own labored breaths and the muffled sound of wingbeats. Hands outstretched and head loyally bowed, he is left staring down at the pool of Plasmium beneath him, watching as it congeals and is absorbed by the ground. He feels it course throughout his system, feeding the damaged vine that had been so cruelly manipulated by the beast in his home.
And yet despite her transgressions, he is merciful. He is benevolent. He offers it out to her with open arms, begging her to understand, begging her to join us, become one with us, progress with us.
You can still be saved, Something pleads. Please, just take it.
…A claw touches his. He sharply inhales. The shaking of his hands is now bolstered by the vibrations caused by her wings. He can feel the Plasmium as it drips through his claws, down his arms and back into the crevices of his joints.
“I would be inspired by your persistence were it not so pitiful,” A scathing, yet uncharacteristically soft, voice is what greets him. “But I know better than to think it born of your sound mind.”
Some of the Plasmium leaves his claws. By what manner, he is uncertain. But he releases the breath he was holding and allows his claws to drop. She has taken it. One way or another, she has taken it. There is still time for her.
“The Great Yarnaby will study what you have given her with great scrutiny,” She continues, though at this point, he can barely comprehend her. “Though she is not so foolish as to consume it. It is other bugs’ diseases I wish to treat, not my own!”
“You will,” He answers, near silently. His gaze is caught on the shards left behind by his glasses. It reflects the light so masterfully. “Every bug will… soon.”
He hears a heedless scoff, then feels a light tap upon his head. “I’ll let you stir in that for as long as it lasts you, Alchemist. And when you perish, I shall return! Know that I will never let a specimen go to waste, bzzt!”
She will never get the chance. She will succumb be saved by then. Zylotol allows himself to find peace with this, choosing to ignore her words as nothing but dying attempts to hold onto her pride. She’ll never admit to him being right. But he can be humble and deny ever needing that verbal confirmation.
“Do as you will… doctor,” He settles, finding comfort where he can in his new positioning. “When we… meet again.”
He hears one final bzzt, her form of a farewell, before the fluttering of her wings can be heard zipping behind him, off into the tunnels for the last time. He listens for it for as far as he can manage, idly wondering how he never heard her approach to begin with.
But it doesn’t matter now. Something shifts within him, and he groans, before a new growth begins to twist its way out from his exoskeleton. It pries apart the chitin and slithers out along his arm, trailing the path where the Plasmium had trickled down before. He watches it with muted delight, and revels in how the bleeding hemolymph is similarly stained with its essence. Burning brightly blue, as it’s meant to be.
Then, he hears footsteps. Light, graceful steps.
A flash of red – a stark color against all that surrounds him – and he lifts his head once more.
“Ahh… Assistant,” He preens, happy to see her return. Even if she looks to him with poorly-concealed worry, disturbance, and misunderstanding. “Did you see… her? On your way through?”
The bug before him stares, then, with the purest of untapped curiosity, she asks, “Whom?”
…Ahhhh.
Zylotol shakes his head and smiles. A daze is wafting over him again. But there is no time to waste. He has limited time to learn more of Plasmium, and limited means to do so. And yet… an idea has breached his mind, of extraction and piercing shells and bleeding brilliant life.
“Nevermind, Assistant… Do you wish to learn more… Of Plasmium’s wonders?
I know what we must do.”