“Luna?!” I screamed and felt her pulse as Luna laid on the ground. Her heart was beating inhumanely fast, but even under these conditions, she smiled and caressed my cheek.

“I can see it now … Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis …  Lucinda … I know a way … it´s through you…” Her soul flared up again as she tried to activate her magic again. Although it resulted in a failure, she kept going and going.

“Stop it!” Tears fell down on her face as I knelt beside her. I couldn’t believe what was happening right in front of me. The girl I called my friend murdered herself through repeated usage of magic and I didn’t even know the reason for it.

“It´s alright … it is the only way forward …” She said with determination, even in her state. She must have seen something through her magic that gave her the iron will to claim something like this. But even then, her lips trembled and revealed the fragile girl beneath the shell. My heart was aching, I would do anything to stop this, but as always, I was completely helpless in the face of death.

“Lu … keep going … I know you will make the world a better place …” Her heart stopped beating as she spoke the last word and closed her eyes. Only the sound of my weeping spread through the otherwise completely silent tent. The only thing I liked in this world was taken away from me in a manner that I just couldn’t accept and didn’t understand. It wasn’t Luna who was at fault here. It was this shitty world that was responsible for so many of my deaths and now Luna´s as well.

I screamed with all my might, let the rage out of my heart and convinced myself that this world had to burn, in one way or another, for Luna´s sake and for mine. I growled as someone rudely pulled on the back of my dress, away from Luna´s corpse that laid there beautifully and peaceful. I turned around and punched Markus straight in his face. If he wanted to separate me from her, he would have to do it by force. Luckily, he let go of me, but another hand grabbed my shoulder.

“Lucinda! Calm down and look at her. She didn’t die for nought…” I turned around as fast as I could, away from everyone else who was staring at her corpse in horror. Her belly had deformed itself and now pressed onto her clothing from the inside. Even through the shirt, I could see how things wriggled around under her skin.

“No …” Not even her corpse was spared from this cruel world but was used to feed these hated parasites inside her. I screamed full of hatred as one of these worms travelled further up towards her neck. In a grotesque second, the worm bit through her skin. Blood flowed out of it and with it, came the worm. It had pitch-black skin and wriggled on the ground like a maggot. Although quietly, it squealed like a pig, begging for the attention of the mother.

It was my fault. Everything. I left her alone with the mage and she had to pay the price for my failures. Heck, I even slept with this mage in the same carriage with Luna. Despite her weird behaviour, I didn´t think one second that I had to mistrust her to this degree. She was a mage in this army, so I did assume that a lot of checks were done before allowing her into service. And yet, this happened. Everything was my fault. The rage dissipated as quickly as it came and I turned into a crying mess.

She was gone. And I was to blame for it. A small part of my brain registered how I was dragged outside, away from the worms that slowly but surely crept towards us.

“How do we kill these things?!” Arthur screamed nearly into my ear. Sure, he was believing me now, but it was too late. It was too late for anything. I didn’t answer his repeated pleading for a way out of this situation, nor did I react as I was slapped on my cheeks. It felt just incredibly dull in comparison to how my heart ached.

“Luna did this for a reason. She saw her own death even before it happened, and she readily accepted it. She would die at some point because of these parasites, but she chose to do it at that moment. She wanted Arthur to see it, she wanted you to be in charge of fighting this monstrosity that ate her from the inside. Now, will you follow her wish and make this world a better place, or will you let this worm devour everything?”

Tom´s words were cold, completely devoid of any emotion. And yet, they did arrive at the place they needed to be. He was right. The wonderful girl that could read patterns chose to remove herself out of one. It wasn’t because she wanted to, but because she had to. Her death gave me an opportunity I absolutely couldn’t miss.

“Fire … burn everything down.” I said weakly as I stared at the tent in sadness, but also in hated that slowly grew inside my chest again. Markus swiftly took a nearby burning torch and threw it on the fabric of the tent. The fire started to spread nicely and soon the pane fell to the ground as the wooden beams became brittle. It was at this moment when the worms, still wriggling inside the tent, got in contact with the fire.

It was a small, but noticeable explosion, that happened right at this moment. Luna´s death gave me three benefits, although I hated to admit it. Arthur was bound to listen to me now as he had absolutely no chance of beating this thing with his usual methods. He just had to know that and as such, he didn’t want to realize the danger we were in previously.

But she also gave us the perfect opportunity to test a weapon against these monsters. The explosion in purgatory or the one in the supply camp certainly showed me once. These things were incredibly weak to fire.

In addition to that, two of her words changed my view of this situation completely.

“What is Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis?” Asked Tom, rightfully so. None of the others couldn’t answer these questions, but I could. I played with this plant for quite some time as we had an ant colony in a glass container.

“It is a fungus that controls the actions of ants. These worms need to reproduce just for infecting others. It is not an illness that is spreading around this camp, what we are seeing are the symptoms of a worm taking control of the body and killing the host in the process.”

It was the only viable explanation. They were parasites through and through, capable of reproducing by eating human flesh, but also able to control the humans they didn’t eat up. The soul I couldn’t see wasn’t hidden in any way. They were just not there anymore, but rather in purgatory, already searching for a new home, just like Luna´s soul did.

I was living in a camp, filled with the undead who were exceptionally good at recreating the behaviour of their hosts. There was just one slight problem with my analysis. The mage had a soul, but as time went on and the fire burnt down, I realized that this wasn’t an issue at all.

They were all parasites and only she had a soul. She controlled her children in an exceptional manner and without her, they would all turn into a frenzy.

I was dealing with a hive mind, controlled by a single queen.

“Find this bitch.” Killing her was our last option as I had no way of evaluating the consequences of a thousand worms who all had murdering and reproduction in mind. For the world, this could be catastrophic. If it was as bad as a functioning hive mind though … only Luna knew as she had seen the pattern that drove this development.