Tales of the Dissolutionverse Box Set

by William C. Tracy

  The vine writhed, the blood flowing, then dripping, and an aura of white, and green, and orange grew around it. Those were the colors of Healing, Strength, and Power.

  Moortlin cocked their head and stared as a section of the stem sprouted little green fingers and pulled its way up the wall. It ripped away from the stem sustaining it, as if the youngest portion of the vine rebelled against the rest of its being.

  No, this is no Aridori. This was of the maji.

  As the vine continued to mutate—fingers to claws, leaves to wings, until the section which had separated was an emerald green flying thing of lace and steel—the two aspects of the Grand Symphony Moortlin could hear shifted to another key. The top of the vine left a smear on the wall, and another section with newly sprouted fingers shredded its skin against the rough wood.

  Auras rotated around the plant and its flying offspring as the Symphony of Strength—the aspect more closely associated with plants—bled notes into the Symphony of Healing. Lace wings blurred and the creature buzzed at Moortlin, making them duck with the snap of breaking branches as razor claws grazed the top of their head, leaving curls of hard flesh behind.

  Moortlin sucked in air, and ran fingers across the wound. It was not bad, but also unexpected. Foolish. Things were moving fast. Too fast? No. They would prove their worth to Councilor Fortilath.

  Musical phrases were staggering across key and tempo, disappearing for a few seconds, then overlapping and playing again as if a slow band had thrown down their instruments and performed an opera.

  Movement.

  Moortlin turned their head as fast as they could, to where the dirt street crossed another. Someone passed by. If there was a majus actively making this change—certainly not Aridori—that one must be close. Moortlin creaked after the unknown person, but when they got to the intersection they swung their head left, then right. No one was there.

  Wait. There was a furry scrounger, snuffling along where wood planks were buried in the dirt.

  Except. Hm. There was a feeling in the air, as if a thunderstorm threatened. A tremor in the Symphony of Healing quavered like a string being tuned to the breaking point. Moortlin tilted their head against the painful notes.

  Colors only a majus could see erupted around the creature.

  The scrounger stopped, shook, and its back bubbled as little yellow flowers sprouted from it. The petals dropped, and the flowers grew into buds, which opened to reveal tiny versions of the scrounger. The offspring swarmed down and followed their parent, which seemed unaffected by the stems still waving on its back. The creature scuttled along, followed by its new brood.

  Moortlin strode forward. They could not afford to stop, though the instinct to study, and learn, was almost overpowering. They had never heard such changes in the Grand Symphony—ones that did not respect the boundaries between houses. This was a new occurrence, and possibly dangerous.

  Down another street, Moortlin stepped around an abandoned board, still studded with the nails that previously fastened it to a home. It was writhing as if alive, colors of the Symphony around it. Moortlin shifted to one side as a length of grain ripped free, creaked upward, then drooped to the ground as if it were not wood, but elastic gum.

  A tortured wail split the air, and Moortlin stared at the next house. Lumber does not hiss and screech.

  The entire house glowed, and the Symphony transformed faster than Moortlin could track. It was music conducted by a mad genius, in three different keys at once.

  Moortlin had little time to think, but knew this was very dangerous—a rogue majus, or more than one. They were powerful to change the Grand Symphony so. The warnings from other Benish crashed through their memory. This one moves too fast. This one will be killed by something not understood. Aben is the only safe place for Benish.

  The slats of the house were bubbling, as if too close to a flame, but with no heat. Moortlin stepped close, though they wished to back away. At a touch, a pustule on the wood burst and crumbled to dust. Underneath was blue flesh, rubbery and wet.

  All around, the wood was shedding its outer layer like caked dirt, revealing the jiggling surface beneath. Benish anatomy had similarities to wood fibers. Will one also slough one’s skin, revealing moist nastiness beneath? Something clenched in Moortlin’s gut, but they pushed forward. No one else close could handle this menace, and if they left, who could say how fast the unknown maji would disrupt the Imperium?

  The door was unlocked, or the lock no longer functioned as such. The wood bent and flexed under their thick hand, and the door bowed inwards.

  Inside, a parent cried, and an infant played, surrounded by song and color.

  The parent was of the Methiemum species, fleshy, thin-skinned, with a mop of hair on top of that one’s head. Watery eyes, white with blue centers, unlike Moortlin’s small yellow orbs, watched in horror.

  “I can’t stop him,” the Methiemum pleaded, ignoring Moortlin’s intrusion. “He’s been doing this for a ten-day now. Things around him change. I don’t think he knows what he’s doing, but it’s getting worse!”

  The Methiemum held up one shaking hand. Rather than the brown color of the rest of that one’s skin, the hand was blue and green, sprouting thorns on one side and tendrils on the other.

  “Oh Brahm—no! I would have told someone, but they’ll take him away. I could distract him before, but now—”

  The parent turned to them and Moortlin saw the person’s hair was waving and curling, turning to thin spidery fingers rather than individual strands. “Can you help us? What is wrong with my child?” The parent was shaking, tears streaming from that one’s eyes.

  Moortlin pushed away the hollow feeling inside, like worms gnawing through one’s stomach. This was very wrong. So many adjustments in the Symphony, so quickly, was like a cascade of noise in their mind. The Symphony resisted too many changes, and the infant was barely old enough to stand. How can that one be so powerful?

  “One is a majus,” Moortlin told the parent. “One will do what is, hm, possible to set this right.” They tried to sound more confident than they felt. A mere child had created so much chaos that others thought the Aridori had returned, and the Council of the Maji had become involved. Should have listened to the others on Aben.

  The infant played with toes, and fingers, then grabbed at the air. Three colors spun out from it—green, orange, and white, and Moortlin heard the bizarre harmonies between the House of Strength and the House of Healing. There must be more notes they couldn’t hear, in the House of Power—the third color.

  The infant can hear them. This undeveloped person could change three of the six Symphonies that created and sustained the universe. Half of all existence.

  This is impossible. Keeping track of two Symphonies was a challenge Moortlin had barely started in their fifty-odd cycles. To influence both at once was incredibly difficult. To do so with three Symphonies must be exponentially harder. It will lead to madness.

  Moortlin gazed around the room, at the weeping walls, the distraught and mutated parent. Madness is already here.

  Then the infant looked at Moortlin, and their world changed.

  Threads of music assaulted them, seeking to play with the notes that made Moortlin’s being like a hunting beast played with its prey before eating it.

  Yet Moortlin felt no sense of harm from the infant—that one was merely curious. Moortlin’s flesh burned, their fingers clenching into claws. They did not feel pain in the same way other species described it, but the discomfort of their insides rearranging made them draw in a thick breath. That one likes to make plant into animal and animal to plant. They were naturally attracted to a Benish’s anatomy. Must restore one’s notes, quickly!

  “That one must not, hm, do this,” Moortlin rasped. Their words were calm, easing the child, but Moortlin grabbed for the notes at the center of their being, blocking the measures changing key in the Symphonies of Strength and Healing. There were more notes in his
music than there should be. Placed there by the child? The parent was no help, quivering in fear in one corner.

  Moortlin hoped the changes in the House of Power would falter once they blocked the aberrations in the other two Symphonies. They rushed through decisions, making judgements other Benish would consider rash. Can one teach the child? Not so quickly. Punish? That one may strike back by instinct. How does one communicate with a child so young?

  While their thoughts raced, a waltz became a march, a thrumming string becoming the snap of a drum. Moortlin threw their notes against the child’s changes, but the Symphony resisted them, flexed already to its breaking point. The toes of their left foot curled up, then stretched out, as if seeking to plant themselves in the floorboards, which bent up to accept them.

  No! Moortlin searched through the Symphony of Strength, which connected physical objects together. The notes around their leg were twisted through and around the House of Healing, the music that told of biology. The resulting rhythms were a mangle of notes and timing, reflecting the twisting reality. Moortlin tried to change the notes back, but as soon as they did, their work was undone, the notes swept from their grasp. That one is too strong! The infant could hear more of the fabric of reality, giving that one a terrifying power.

  Moortlin doubled over as the change grew from their toes, to their foot, then up their leg, their joints cracking and shifting, yearning to form a new configuration. Moortlin slumped to one side, discomfort radiating up into their torso. If one had been another species, one would have collapsed in pain. Benish, fortunately, were hardy. The parent was not, and that one was curled in a ball. Moortlin could see something unnaturally twisted in that one’s face.

  The child could pick the exact notes needed and bend them to another aspect of the Grand Symphony, while Moortlin desperately tried to keep the new melodies from modulating into unnatural masses of notes.

  Then, the infant’s attention shifted and Moortlin’s changes gained traction, reversing some of the damage done to their body. Their foot, however, was fixed to the floor in a way they couldn’t hear clearly in the Symphony. This is more than one can handle. Disfavor by the Council was bad, but Moortlin had to be alive to receive it.

  Around the three, the house flexed, swaying planks weaving into gripping limbs, floorboards mating and dividing into pelts of fur, or flower buds wider than a person. The plaster ceiling dripped down around them, and there was a hiss and a scream as a dollop of the mutable substance fell on the infant’s parent. Moortlin shrunk away with a series of creaks and pops, pulling at their foot. It was welded to the floor. Will one have to cut it free?

  They shifted around their fused appendage as another arm of ceiling-matter plopped to the floor and began ripping tendrils of fungoid stalks free with newly-formed pincers. Moortlin lifted their other foot, wobbling, as a claw snapped. That would have severed one’s other leg, dense Benish flesh or no. One must leave!

  By the orange auras surrounding the room, much of what the infant did was in the House of Power. That symphony dealt with connections, and the infant must intuitively understand how biology and structures could be pulled and restructured like putty.

  And Moortlin was pulled along with the changes. They came far too fast and thick for them to even contemplate reversing them. Moortlin dove deep into the House of Strength, pulling the constitution from what little was left in the house, building a web of harmonizing choruses around them to rebuff all but the strongest of changes. The notes making up the core of their being were thinning, the score of their experiences growing quiet.

  Moortlin felt it before they saw the change. The infant had made the melody of Moortlin’s foot strange and dissonant, and it interacted with the notes they were pouring into the music. In a puddle around their toes, the wood was rippling with spiky purple crystals. As they watched in horror, the crystalline formations grew up and inside their foot and ankle. They could feel the pointed protrusions spreading through the interior of their leg, and curled around the pressure and discomfort.

  This is how three Symphonies can interact under one influence. And there is nothing one can do about it.

  They hunkered down, certain the room would soon collapse and bury them forever. They needed to get their leg free.

  However, the infant’s attention was on them again, and Moortlin could feel the Symphony almost as a physical presence of music, drums beating a dirge against their skin, pressing in with the child’s attention. Their leg spasmed as crystals broke through their skin, trailing greenish sap, growing a cocoon around their leg. Moortlin roared, in real pain.

  Then the crystal solidified, and as if satisfied with the rest of the chaos, the infant pulled the orange and green and white auras close, spinning them in a sphere. Squishy and naked, the little child sat in the middle.

  The young Methiemum held up one hand and Moortlin watched as that one’s flesh purpled, then shook, then hardened. The appendage lost color, becoming gray, then white, then perfectly clear, as if it was made of glass.

  Or crystal—like one’s leg. Did that one discover some truth hidden in the Symphony? Was it music concealed from those with only one, or even two houses? Can it change one’s leg back to normal?

  Moortlin tried to grab for the change, but the rhythm was too fast, the notes too intricate. The infant looked down and a leg morphed, like Moortlin’s, until it was the same transparent substance. The new material, whatever it was, passed in waves along the infant’s body, the floor and walls showing through it in stripes, then crosshatched.

  “No!” came a gurgle from corner of the house. The creature that once was the infant’s parent was transformed. Eyes stared from melting ooze, fixed on the child, though no longer recognizable as a member of the eight species. Moortlin, trapped in the bubble of solidity they had constructed, crystalline leg fastened to the floor, could only watch. One no longer holds one’s own survival.

  The infant, seeming spun of pure glass, spread both hands wide as if grabbing for a treat. What once was living flesh, now hardened crystal, shook to a rising pitch, so powerful Moortlin was sure it would be audible even to a non-majus.

  Come with me.

  The voice was thorns in Moortlin’s mind, and they bent in agony, while the parent cried out in pain.

  There was sound like a sculpture of ice dropped on hot iron, and the infant disappeared in a splash of orange and green and white.

  Moortlin sagged, dropping the bubble of constitution they had created. The notes it returned to them was like water after a day in the scorching heat. Around them, the house sagged as well. With a sigh, the parent sank into a puddle of goo, that one’s body separating into a mess of proteins and acids. Where had the infant gone? Had that one discovered something from Moortlin’s condition? Simply collapsed in repeating musical phrases? They could hear nothing in the Symphony that gave a clue.

  Their Benish nature pulled at them to study this phenomenon, find out what happened. Their acquaintances back on Aben would have. But one is not part of that group, as was repeatedly said.

  Moortlin looked down at their leg, fastened to the floor planks. They could no longer feel it.

  Time to go. Limbs will regrow, over the cycles. Though that much of their leg, almost to their knee, might take a decade. They reached into both Symphonies, using their notes to rearrange measures across the two houses. Strength and Healing, plant and animal, biological and structural.

  Above the crystal, Moortlin’s leg separated with a snap and they limped on the stump, leaking sap, half crawling through the pulsating maw that used to be the house’s doorway.

  “You are certain it was to be a three-house majus?” Councilor Fortilath questioned. That one was standing, fists on hips, crest sticking almost straight out. “Not Aridori?”

  What else fits these facts?

  “It was, hm, Councilor,” Moortlin said. They still felt the raging Symphony inside them, as they leaned awkwardly on a crutch in front of the
Kirian. The leg would grow back, over the cycles, but not all had been restored internally. There were balls of matter inside, no longer their flesh. Moortlin thought they could reverse those changes, with time, and might even learn a few tricks of the Symphony from them. As the child learned from one’s accident? One must investigate how the Symphonies interact.

  “One has never seen such a, hm, display of raw power. One thought only mature persons were fully able to tap into the Grand Symphony.”

  “There are to be many aspects of the Symphony not yet understood,” the councilor said. That one’s crest fanned, then drooped, showing the Kirian’s worry. “However, I have…friends who also wish to study rare phenomena like this. You were surviving a complex and unstoppable force, and it is showing your constitution.”

  Quite literally. One should meet these friends.

  They shifted on the crutch, creaking with the effort. “One was not the real target,” Moortlin told the councilor. “But thankfully the problem has solved itself. The child is either dead or transformed somewhere which does not intersect this place.” They had not shared that the child likely got the idea for that one’s transformation from Moortlin. They thought it would not be well-received.

  “Has it?” Councilor Fortilath asked. That one’s crest made a sweeping question. “Even in another plane, a three-house majus could cause problems. What if it returns?”

  “Then these ones will, hm, suffer the consequences,” Moortlin said. “There was nothing one could have done to affect what the child did to the Symphony. That one was, hm, too strong.”

  “For one majus alone, yes,” the Kirian said. “For even a majus with access to two houses. However, with time and research, we may be able to fight back. This is to be fitting with other, rare reports I have seen.” That one paused, considering, crest slowly raising. “It was why I was proposing the Council send you. I am to be needing more maji with two houses, who have experiences such as yours.”