THE SEED
Burn pollutes. Once breathed in, the spores keep growing long after the drug’s effects have worn off. For some, there is no way back. The blossoms of decay tickle the back of the infected’s throat. Fungus spreads around their mouth. Wherever they go, they cough flakes and foamy phlegm. Spreading the Seed. Wherever they lay their heads, Sepsis soon spreads through the ground, reaches for the walls, gropes shakingly outwards, becomes airborne and finally, infects others. He’s a Leperos, a threat. Only fire can cleanse his corruption.
EPIGENESIS
An adult’s cells are completely formed. Sepsis eats through him as if he were nothing but food for a new spore field. An unborn baby’s cells, on the other hand, are full of potential.
Babies born close to Mother Spore Fields are different. Their eyes are cold as a starry sky. They don’t recognize their mothers, but they smell the milk, follow it like a bee follows the scent of nectar. They climb and claw their way up and onto the waiting breasts, suckling until there’s nothing left but blood and they are violently torn from the trough. They flail with their little arms and legs and cry out in a way that makes the Clanmen quick prayers.
These children are called Soulless Ones, Abberants, or Psychonauts. They awaken a primordial fear in people. Many cannot stand it, taking the small body and bashing it against a stone until there is no life within. Others see the soulless ones as ancestral curses, trials sent by a spirit or an angry god – to be rid of them would mean a betrayal of the circle of life.
Carrying the children through the years, they see the changes. Insects trace patterns around them, drawing mandalas into the dust. They even wriggle up their legs, hiding in skin folds and hair. Yet these children never cry. Never laugh. Never talk. They only demand with their eyes and take what they can get. They do not mind cold and escape clothing as if it were a prison.
While their kin withers, the Abberants continue to flourish. Children from Pollen’s tundra develop subcutaneous lumps that harden, fuse into bone shields, and grow spurs. Franka’s soulless grow glands that exude sweetish pheromones that charm their families. In the Balkhan, the children emit otherworldly sounds, which bore into people’s minds until they reach the deepest subconscious level and there, start reaching out with shadowy tentacles. In Hybrispania, the children can speak with other people’s voices. Words spoken to the children tumble from their own mouths, as if they were somehow echoing just one moment into the future. In Purgare, dust and stone rise to orbit the child. The ground warps, lurches and bends to greet them. The sun itself focuses upon them with searing heat.
PORTENTS AND WONDERS
These phenomena end as suddenly as they had once begun. The earth around the children burns up, and amidst the loose dirt, a symbol becomes visible. Then it collapses, like an image made from magnetized metal slivers once the induction lines break.
The Spitalians know it only too well. These symbols are different from those that blossom on Burners’ bodies. Ancient and identified, recorded, they have been handed down and taught by humans for thousands of years and derided by modern scientists as nonsense. If the Spitalians could check one of these children’s body now, they’d find that feverish heat radiates into the organism, emanating from one focal point on the body axis. Its position and the symbol exactly correspond to one of the energy nodes described by the ancient people – a Chakra.
Seven of those energy nodes are aligned along the center of the human body, from the coccyx up to the cranial vault. They all are ascribed special attributes and together form the character. According to the old texts, they need to be in balance for a person to be happy and healthy. But within the Abberants, only one singular Chakra glows. The others are cold, black holes. This singular Chakra outshines every other aspect of a Psychonaut’s life, exactly lighting the way into his or her future. For them, it’s an endless fall into the extreme of the Chakra attributes.
THE FINAL BATTLE
Mother spore fields are bursting to the surface everywhere. They transform the land after their fashion. In their troughs nestle the Psychonauts, a seething mass of primordial, highly adapted creatures. Their number is growing, and wherever their domain intersects with Mankind’s, more Abberants crawl from pregnant women’s wombs. They take control, reaching for the crown of creation. Humankind stands at a crossroads. No less than its soul is at stake. The Eshaton was only the prelude. The final battle has begun.