White specs floated in a world of darkness pierced by white, jagged lines.

  No beast cried in the distant recesses of the jungle, and no insects crooned with their incessant buzzing. Not even the softest passage of the breeze disturbed the ceaseless, timeless fall of white.

  It was no wonder that Mach, the storm-aspected vanore, had ceased talking after a couple of days within that dark silence, deprived of his beloved wind. And after two days in that silent darkness, Nar could relate. Here, rather than a presence, the air was an absence, a nothing down which the bone dust fell and accumulated far below, in the depths of the Jungle of Silence.

  Just as it had been in the Hungry Jungle, the sweltering Jungle of Silence proved a nightmare to navigate, with dead trunks and mushrooms merging and melding in haphazard joinings, forcing the apprentices to traverse the jungle through the heights. Besides that, the jungle floor was so inundated by bone dust, that one could be covered and smothered in their shimmering weightlessness if they fell down into that deceptive flooring.

  At Nar’s side, Sej held a tiny mushroom, just a little pinhead growth she had ripped off the big bone fungi outcrop that dusted them from on high. As the mushrooms grew, they hardened, making them both impossible to harvest without damaging and, for that reason, useless. But in their infant form, just barely out of their primordium stage, as Sarke had explained it was called, the mushroom was still pliable enough to be harvested, and consumed…

  “I still can’t believe people take this. Hallucination by asphyxiation?" Nar whispered, in the lowest of tones, as he frowned at the bumpy growth on the wide calcified tree trunk at his side. “Why would anyone want that?”

  Sej stifled her laughter behind her mask. Nar’s self-heal was more than capable of handling the bone dust, just as it had been against the Miasma, but everyone else had been forced back into their masks. Even wearing masks, the others still needed nightly cleanses from the healers, as the particles they saw, drifting down from the mushrooms’ underbellies, were actually agglomerates of much, much smaller particles, which their masks were incapable of fully filtering.

  “You’d be surprised at the things people do for entertainment and escape,” the blue skinned guide replied, also whispering. “Life in the Nexus is not exactly what we dreamt it to be down in the cubeplants, you know? Everyone is looking for that sweet escape, no matter in what shape or form it comes.”

  “Still. I had enough hallucinations in the Climb,” he muttered, glancing down to make sure the others were still all there. Kur’s party was busy scrapping fungi off trees, as they had once again split the domain party into its individual parties, and Sej was accompanying them, while Sarke had gone with Row’s party and Leon’s relied on their implants to harvest the fungi.

  “Yeah... I tried it once and never again,” she said, storing a clump of white scrapings into a small container. “A lot of drugs don’t mix well with our kind of memories.”

  Nar nodded slowly but firmly. He scraped up another mushroom pin and raised it to his face to have a closer look with his [Sight]. The thing leaked a white, transparent ooze, and he just couldn't imagine how anyone would want to put it anywhere near their mouths, let alone consume it.

  “They look so nasty,” he said, twisting his nose. “Who wants to eat this?”

  Sej shook her head. “Most people in the Nexus have never left it, let alone seen what a mushroom looks like in real life. Plus, you know, marketing.”

  “What?”

  She just shook her head again and Nar left it at that.

  He raised his eyes and considered the impenetrable darkness above their heads. Not even his [Dark Vision], upgraded to level 3 now, could pierce far into that devouring darkness, and he suppressed a shiver at the thought of the Quiet hiding within its embrace, hunting those that made too much noise.

  At least we can whisper, he thought. Imagine going through all this without being able to talk. Even with the party chat, that would be a bit much…

  “The Quiet is not something we can fight,” Sej had warned them all, yet again, just in case, and to make sure, before they entered the Gloom. “We can whisper, we can do things quietly and carefully, but that’s it. Anything louder than that and we risk calling it to us.”

  “Do you know what it is?” Kur had asked her, even though he already knew the answer. “All we’ve found is that you can’t fight it.”

  “It is not known whether it is a singular being, or many,” Sarke had answered instead. “It comes for those who make too much noise. Those it takes, are never seen again. No bodies. No gear. No nothing.”

  Her explanation had sent a shiver shooting down Nar’s spine, and likely, everyone else’s, even though they already knew this.

  “The Quiet is not something we fight. It is something we avoid,” the reptilian had continued. “If one of us is taken, it’s goodbye.”

  And what in the Pile can you even say to that? Nar wondered, as he scanned the impenetrable darkness around him.

  Right below them, Cen and Gad chatted in hushed whispers, doing their best with gathering the little white growths the way Sej had shown it to all of them. Kur, Tuk and Rel were working together on another branch, and Mul and Jul were quietly scooping mushroom after mushroom at a much faster rate and with a much more practiced ease than the non-gatherers. The last two of their party, Viy and Jasphaer, were off to the left, a bit away from the rest and down, and they seemed to be deep in conversation.

  Wonder what that’s about? Nar thought, considering Viy’s deep frown. Of course, he didn’t pull on his [Hearing] to eavesdrop. I wonder if he’s started talking to her about her affinity. He was supposed to be our mind healer too. I think they’re called psychologists?

  An elbow called for his attention.

  “Look!” Sej whispered, pointing up.

  Nar snapped his head upwards, fearing the worst as his vicinity suddenly lit up with a hazy light. Instead, he found a soft, white light dancing amidst the trunks above their heads. It left trails of lazy, swirling white particles in its wake, shadows stretching in grotesque, darting shapes all around them in a way that brought Nar all the way back to the little crystalight he used to carry around in the cramped mess of his cubeplant.

  “What is that?” Nar whispered, when it became apparent that Sej wasn’t panicking.

  “A beast made almost entirely of aether,” Sej whispered, her tone awed. “We call it a quiet lover.”

  He frowned at her. “A what?”

  “A quiet lover,” she repeated, a touch of mirth in her words. “They are formed when the seeds of the brightness-tree absorb enough aether to become sort of sentient.”

  She adjusted herself besides him, crouching into a wider and more comfortable stance on their branch.

  “These seeds will only rarely survive long enough to absorb enough aether to gain mobility, and once they do, they are driven by a simple goal. To find another quiet lover to become a couple with. Then they’ll fly and fly around the dark, quiet Gloom, sharing their aether with each other until, eventually, for reasons still unknown, they drop to the ground and there sprout as a new brightness-tree. You’ll see one of them, I think, on our way out of the Giant’s Canopy, as we cross Illum lands to get to the Heart of the Jungle,” she explained. “The tree trunk of the brightness-trees grows as two separate, intertwined trunks, and its leaves glow with strong, but gentle white light. The illum love building their settlements under them… But it is said that if not both of the seeds make the journey, the other one will go on flying, bleeding itself of all its aether until it dies. As if unable to bear the loneliness.”

  “That’s… wow,” Nar whispered, eyeing the glowing ball of light and the surreal patterns it drew in the fallen bone dust.

  “Amazing, isn’t it? Of course, Sarke has a much more technical explanation that craps on all of that nonsense,” Sej said, smiling. “And the runners carrying the Miasma from the Miasma Point to the Heart of the Jungle seem to think of them as the trapped souls of delvers that died within the Gloom, taken by the Quiet. Lost and lonely, their souls attach to seeds, which then seek comfort and solace in the company of another who has suffered the same fate…”

  A shiver ran down his spine, as he watched the little ball dancing in that reality of black and white.

  “I… think I prefer the first one,” he whispered.

  The guide chuckled and elbowed him again. “Don’t worry. It’s just scare stories the old hands use to make sure the young’uns keep their wits about them. I myself have told it in the past. It works!”

  “Right,” Nar said. “And you did say you’ve been here for years… You never thought about going somewhere else?”

  Sej shrugged. “The pay’s alright, and the job’s as secure as they come. In the Nexus, that’s a big thing.”

  “Still… You don’t level up anymore, right?” he asked. “I thought most people stopped at around 100.”

  “Most people that care for it do,” she clarified. “And most people don’t care. Things only get worse the higher you go, and the majority of people get into the delver business to make XP, not for heroics. Leveling up is just a side effect.”

  She chuckled at his confused face.

  “Everyone you see or meet needs XP to survive, Nar. From the cooks aboard your ship, to the pilots, to us guides, and even the people you saw in that warehouse back in town, carting goods to those massive cargo hauling ships,” the guide said. “Tsurmirel may be footing the bill for everything you guys need now, but one day you’ll need to survive by yourselves in the Infinite Nexus. And outside of the B-Nex, everything costs something, XP or otherwise…”

  “Right. I know that,” he said. “But it’s still so… weird sometimes.”

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  “No more dispensers for us,” she said. “Not that you miss them, do you?”

  “Crystal, no!” he said, eliciting another smothered laughter from her.

  The little ball of light above their heads moved further across the party, and the others looked up in surprise and awe.

  “Reminds you of home?” she asked, as she tracked the light above their heads. “Even shines kinda the same as a crystalight.”

  Nar nodded, but he left it at that.

  “So, does that mean that as long you have the job, you will guide people through the jungle?” he asked Sej, trying to keep his mind off home.

  She sighed.

  “Oh. Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s complicated,” she said.

  “Because of… Sarke?”

  Sej nodded. “That too.”

  She plucked up a mushroom pinhead and regarded the gooey thing in her gloved hands, before smooshing it.

  “Life is… not straightforward,” the guide whispered. “You come outside, and all of a sudden, you need to earn your keep and decide what in the Pile you’re going to do with your life. And you have a whole life to decide about, you know? Sure, there are endless choices, but just how many can you actually afford, or achieve? Just how many paths in life are actually available to you, fresh off the Gate as you are, and without a point of spare XP to your name?”

  She dropped the slimy mess over the edge of the branch, and looked up at the quiet lover, still dancing silently over their heads in the rain of white.

  “There are only two ways things can go for a Climber in the O-Nex. Either you’re extremely lucky and manage to impress a guild during the Ceremony, or you don’t,” she whispered. “And I didn’t. The Order of the Forgiven housed and fed me, but sharing a bunk and a dirty toilet, with cold showers and gruel for food with another hundred other people all crammed up in a room with space for forty, was not exactly what I risked my sanity and life to Climb for, right?”

  “No. I guess not,” Nar said, his voice grave and somewhat strangled.

  “I took all sorts of odd jobs. Any that would accept me and didn’t require me to debase myself, but all of them were dirty, dangerous, and low paid. Not that much different from what I used to do in the cubeplant. So, while I managed to move out on my own to a twenty-person bunk room in a slum house instead, you can imagine that life in the Minus was not the dream I had been hoping for,” she continued. “I tried to apply for delving guilds and parties, but it was tough. No… it was impossible. Unless you’re a party leader, tank or healer, there’s a shit ton of DPS out there to pick from, and unless you can stand out… well, I didn’t.”

  “That… doesn’t sound great,” he mumbled, unsure of what to say.

  “It was a miserable two years,” she whispered. “Until I finally lucked out. An opening for an apprentice guide came up on one of the many employment newsletters I was signed up for, with a corp that was expanding like crazy and needed a crap ton of new guides. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but I met their criteria and I thought, what the fuck, right? What did I have to miss?”

  “I guess you got it,” Nar said, offering her an unsure smile.

  “I did! The first few delves in here were terrifying, but slowly, I got my jungle legs under me. And two years later, as a now “seasoned” combat guide, they paired me with a very stern and quiet gathering guide,” she said, grinning widely.

  “Sarke?”

  Sej nodded.

  “It was like a drama! We hated each other from the moment we laid eyes on each other! I thought she was a stuck-up bitch, and she probably thought worse of me, and we could barely agree on the same thing,” the guide said, her blue eyes sparkling at the memory. “But then, we got stuck in a bad spot, and I learned she was someone I could trust with my life when the worst of the worst came to pass…”

  She wiggled her eyebrows at him.

  “A few months later we got together, and three years after that, here we are still,” she said. Then, her blue eyes darkened as the quiet lover moved on in its search for a partner. “But now, the future is coming, and the future is where things always get complicated.”

  Nar eyed her quietly as she picked up another little white nub, his eyes shifting back to his [Dark Vision].

  “Sarke is a smart woman. Like, a proper academic,” the guide said. “Do you know what that means?”

  Nar shook his head.

  “It’s like someone who does research for a living, usually with a sort of teaching organization," she said, struggling to find the right words. “Does that make sense?”

  “Like a professor?”

  “Yeah! Exactly like that! But their focus is more on researching things and making discoveries rather than teaching others. And their fields of study can be just about anything.”

  “Oh! Sarke’s must be about plants, then,” he said, understanding dawning on him.

  “Flora. You know how she feels about that,” Sej said, with a low chortle that Nar shared. “But, yeah. She’s been studying and working out here for years, in the hopes that when she finally submits her application, and her research with it, that she’ll be accepted into one of these places.”

  “And is that… back at the Nexus?” he asked.

  “Yup,” Sej said. “College of Delving, Agriculture and Flora Studies. Or, you know, one of the Radiants know how many such places that share the same name and business. But it's level 0, you know. It’s proper O-Nex, not the Minus, so you know it's a fancy place.”

  “Wow,” Nar said. “And do you want to go back to the Nexus?”

  She snorted. “No. Not really. It’s a bit stuffy in there, you know? And my memories of it are just as bad as the cubeplant ones.”

  He didn’t know. Not really, but he was starting to understand that, as the expression went, things weren’t exactly rose-colored back in the City Without End.

  “But you do want to stay together, right?” he asked.

  “There’s together and then there’s together,” she said, her shoulders tensing. “We don’t actually live together, you know? Her research equipment is too sensitive to my aura, and we can’t afford to replace it willy-nilly. She also always works late into the night when we’re not delving. Living in my place basically means that she has to give up pretty much every proper appliance and real home comfort out there, too…”

  “Because you’re an auramancer and she’s an aethermancer,” he whispered.

  “Auratech is absolute shit in comparison to real technology,” the guide said. “It’s funny how we can have sex without issues, but cooking together on the same stove? Turning on the same lightbulbs? Woah, there! That’s too much! You better fucking forget it!”

  She clenched her jaw.

  “Ugh,” she muttered, looking down at the crushed mushroom in her hands.

  She flung it away and reached for another one, her expression tight.

  “I’m sorry,” Nar said.

  “Ah, it’s not your fault. It’s just the way things are,” she said.

  Nar recalled Mok, the engineer who worked at the heart of the Scimitar, and who made the change from aura to aether.

  “Would… would you consider swapping to aether?” he asked, his words barely audible.

  “I did. Of course I did. But my aura is… it’s a part of me, you know?” she said, and he could hear the pain in her voice. “Is it fair to give it up for someone else? Even if… even if you love them? Even if it's for their dreams?”

  She shook her head and took a deep breath.

  “Sorry, forget about it. I don’t know why I—”

  She frowned at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “There’s something about you, isn’t there? Something that invites trust.”

  “Me?” Nar asked, his eyebrows rising.

  “Yeah… It’s not as obvious as Leon or Calli. Or even Kur, Row and Gad,” she said, half closing her eyes at him in the pitch darkness. “But I’ve met people like you. And I can tell it’s there, whatever it is.”

  She patted his shoulder.

  “And it's quite strong. Especially because most people might not even notice it's there,” she said, offering him a smile. “So be careful how you use it.”

  “I… What?” he asked, utterly confused.

  Sej chuckled and stood up.

  “Tally up. We have enough by now,” she said into their party domain chat, calling the attention of the other two parties nearby as well.

  And as she stepped away to go check on the others’ work, Nar could only stare at her back in confusion.

  What was that all about? Actually, didn’t Leon say the same thing?

  *********

  The little growths danced before her eyes, the white lines in the darkness swaying and mocking her.

  Viy blinked and dry swallowed, and reached for the same pinhead again. And again, it seemed to evade her.

  She inhaled sharply. What was that sweet, sickly smell in the air?

  Viy…

  Viy!

  Where are you, Viy?

  Happy! Happy and outside!

  After what you did to us?

  You don’t deserve it! You don’t deserve it!

  She gasped as faces appeared in the tiny mushrooms.

  Viy…

  Viy.

  “Viy?”

  A hand reached for hers and in her startle, she jumped backwards several feet, and almost fell out of the branch.

  “It’s alright. You’re alright,” the healer whispered, rising slowly. “Everything’s okay now, yeah?”

  Viy cast her eyes about with a wild despair, searching for faces in pinhead masses of mushrooms that surrounded her from all sides on those dead, cracked and jagged branches.

  Viy…

  Viy!

  How dare you survive!

  “I-I didn’t—I don’t…”

  “Viy, listen to me,” Jasphaer said, taking a slow, measured step towards her. “You need to let me cleanse you, okay? The aether from the mushrooms must be affecting you. So just let me help you, and everything will be better soon, alright?”

  She nodded, her eyes still darting around her.

  “The faces… They’re—”

  “Hush,” Jasphaer said, reaching his hand to her. “There is no one here but us two.”

  There was a sudden influx of heat from the side of her head, and an embracing warmth enveloped her brain. She closed her eyes as the voices quieted, trembling in the silence.

  “Better?” Jasphaer asked.

  She nodded, pressing her lips, and clutched his arm as though they were on water and she was drowning. He held her tightly as he worked to burn through the bone dust that had made its way to her mind.

  “Wish they’d given us better suits,” the healer said. “For particles this small, and for aether too, they don’t really do much. With your situation, and [Ego], it's going to affect you worse.”

  “My… situation?”

  She frowned, and with a sudden jerk, she pushed away from him, standing on her own.

  “I don’t—”

  “Don’t deny it.”

  She looked at him, shocked by his sudden and heavy tone.

  “Denying it only makes it worse, and nobody likes being lied to their face,” Jasphaer said, with a tone she had never before heard on the kind healer. Even his long ears were standing tall and at attention, rather than gently against the sides of his head and neck. “Especially not in matters that could endanger everyone’s life, as I’m sure they have in the past.”

  “I…”

  Her shoulders dropped. “Sorry. How did you know?”

  “They gave us a pretty comprehensive analysis of our parties,” he said. “And your affinity and [Ego] couldn’t show a clearer image.”

  “Harsh…” Viy said, looking away. “But true, I guess.”

  “Plus, you’re on meds, and you haven’t told me about it. And don’t deny that either,” he said. “I was with you long enough to notice the changes, and gradual as they were, they were still far too fast compared to what they should’ve been. Compared to what they can be. People don’t heal in a matter of weeks.”

  She pursed her lips, but approached him, and a black, squat vial appeared in her hand, which she handed over to the healer.

  “What’s in it?” he asked, frowning at the lack of a label.

  The halberdier shrugged.

  “You don’t know?” Jasphaer asked, his expression falling.

  “My teacher gave it to me. When you pulled that horn from my chest, I didn’t ask you how you were putting my ribs back into place either, did I?” she asked, glaring at him.

  His eyebrows shot up. “Fair enough, I guess. I’ll have to ask your teacher then, as drugs can have all sorts of side effects and interfere with healing. Did your teacher tell you of any?”

  She frowned at him.

  “That’s not a drug.”

  Now, it was his time to glare. “Even an HP potion is a drug, Viy. And they all come with side effects. No matter how desperate the need, all drugs come with a price. We just need to hope that the price and risk is offset by our need.”

  He raised the squat vial up to his eyes, but there was little he could make through the opaque material and in that darkness.

  “Are you taking it regularly?” he asked.

  “Every day,” she said, stiffly.

  “A build up drug, then, a tonic?” he asked, getting a reluctant nod out of her. “I thought so. It took time for it to gather in enough quantities inside you for you to start seeing its effects, and if you stop taking it, any drop in the daily intake can be significant this early.”

  He looked up at her. “You’ve stopped for a few days back in the Hungry Jungle, didn’t you? And the constant [Touch of Rot] cleansing and now the same for the bone dust must have burned a good deal of it from your system. Which is why you should’ve told me, so that I knew to be more careful to not affect it.”

  “Sorry…” she muttered.

  He sighed. “I’ll tell Leta about it. Don’t worry, she’ll keep it a secret, but she has to know in order to not affect it.”

  “If you have to, do it,” Viy said.

  “I’m just trying to help you, Viy.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “My teacher is handling it. I am handling it.”

  “Tally up. We probably have enough by now,” Sej suddenly said into their party chat.

  Viy leaped up to the branch above theirs before he could get another word out, and Jasphaer sighed, glancing down at the little black vial in his hands. It was a discreet container, for those who did not want their secrets out in the open, or those doing everything they could to forget that the problem was even there.

  He shook his head. The issue with that is that it never ended well…

  Might as well keep it and see what’s in this thing, he decided, storing the black vial. He could tell that there wasn’t much left, but hopefully it would be enough for him to run through the healer’s lab once he was back on the ship.