The Exorcist Doctor

Half an hour later, the Heartcord Fishing Company had achieved its natural state: everyone was wet, miserable, and holding fishing rods like they had any idea what they were doing.

Twenty Saint’s Hands were scattered across the upper deck in portable steel chairs, their white masks glistening under rainwater while their fishing lines disappeared into the dark waves surrounding the ship. A few more had climbed onto the roof of the bridge for more height. Even the underdeck crews had opened several reinforced viewports along the hull and stuck their rods out through the gaps, which meant the ship now had bait dangling from practically every available side like some enormous metal sea-spider. Naturally, Gael respected the enthusiasm. He just didn’t respect the seating arrangement, because someone had given him a portable chair with one leg slightly shorter than the others, and it kept rocking whenever the ship breathed beneath him.

Oh well.

At least I got a chair.

He sat near the very front of the ship with Maeve, Evelyn, Liorin, Fergal, Cara, Jin, and Vivi, all of them arranged in a loose semi-circle facing the rain and the black lake. Their powerful spotlights were still sweeping across the lake, and he squinted out at the enormous shadows fleeing whenever the beams crossed the water.

That just wouldn’t do. The whole point of fishing was convincing fish to approach the bait, and shining industrial judgment onto them was unlikely to make them feel welcome.

“Oi!” He twisted around in his chair and shouted over the rain, “someone get into the bridge and turn off all the spotlights except the middle deck light! We just gotta see each other, not scare every fish here into religious reform!”

One of the Saint’s Hands immediately abandoned his rod, sprinted up the slick stairs, and vanished into the bridge. A moment later, the four bright cones of light died one by one until only a single overhead lamp remained shining down over the center of the upper deck.

“Good enough!” he shouted back.

Darkness closed around the ship again. The lake became a black sheet broken only by rain, ripples, and the occasional movement of large shadows passing beneath the surface—so now they could start fishing.

To his right, Maeve frowned as she eyed one of the large shadows, shifting her head so she could keep her umbrella propped up with her shoulder. “What’s wrong with these fish, anyways?”

“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” he replied, humming cheerfully.

“Vharnveil has private fish breeding farms too, especially for the richer barons, but none of the fish they breed look like… that.”

She nodded towards the water, where something with a fin longer than a coffin drifted right past the edge of visibility.

“How do these fish get that big?” she asked.

Evelyn leaned forward in her chair as well, gripping her rod tight with both hands to Maeve’s right. “Yeah, I wanna know too! ‘Cause the ones in the market tanks look fucked enough, but these ones out here are insane!”

“Fish here are strange,” Liorin agreed to Evelyn’s right, mask fixed on the water. “Why so many eyes? Why so many teeth?”

Vivi also cleared her throat even further to Liorin’s right. “I… would like to know, too. I’ve eaten plenty of fish up in Vharnveil. Why is it that some fish are relatively normal-looking, and some are… evidently Bharncair locals?”

Gael sighed and looked towards Fergal and Cara to his left. “Either of you two wanna explain the foundational principles of bioarcanic mutation to the children?”

But neither of the only ‘true’ adults in their team answered. They were sitting close enough that their shoulders nearly touched, and they murmured to each other about something Gael couldn’t hear clearly over the rain, but it sounded inconsequential. At one point Cara even chuckled a little, which was horrifying to see. How dare his dearest sister have a pleasant moment with Fergal while half of the rest of them were still wrangling with sea-sickness and cold, toxic rain?

He wasn’t about to spoil the mood between the two of them, though, so he only sighed again as he glanced at the children on his right.

“Listen up. I’m not repeating this again,” he muttered, shifting his fishing rod against his shoulder and looking back at the lake. “Myrmurs are parasites, but they’re only a subspecies of a larger monstrous group called the ‘Nightspawn’, which are bioarcanic bugs that fell from the stars over eighty years ago. When the dark stars fell, they also brought bioarcanic essence down with them. Essence does a lotta things with a lotta strange properties, but primarily speaking, the main function of essence is to mutate and strengthen whatever consumes them by forcing them to develop bug-like traits.”

He tilted his head towards Fergal first, then Evelyn. Fergal’s spider arms rested calmly behind his chair, while Evelyn’s folded fly wings twitched under her coat whenever the rain hit them strangely.

“Some mutated traits are obvious,” he continued, tilting his head at Evelyn again. “Fergal has spider arms, and you have fly wings. Your symbiotic systems keep them under control, but even if you didn’t have your system, you probably would’ve evolved those same traits by consuming jumping spider essence or horsefly essence. People who consume essence without systems, develop bug-like traits, and subsequently lose their humanity are called Afflicted, but you already know that, more or less, so here’s some new knowledge for all of you: humans aren’t the only ones who can consume bioarcanic essence.”

With that, he gestured vaguely around the lake by rolling his head around.

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“First of all, ‘consume’ is a broad word, but it basically means taking bioarcanic essence into any organic body,” he started. “Roots can absorb essence that has seeped into the soil, which means grass, flowers, mushrooms, trees, and all sorts of vegetation are capable of mutating. You’ve been living with them your entire lives, but you just don’t notice them because the traits they mutated are super subtle. I’d say… the Fogspire Forest has tons of highly mutated flora. We all saw them when we went there. Some trees have chitinous bark, some trees grow weirdly large, and some grow fruits that resemble insect eggs. Those are all effects of having consumed bioarcanic essence one way or another.”

He didn’t know how true that was for Vharnveil, but judging by Liorin and Evelyn’s pondering expressions, he assumed at least the two of them were starting to recall and realize just how much vegetation they regularly come in contact with were mutated. He’d even go as far as to say the artificial forest Liorin cultivated around the Heartcord Clinic was almost entirely made out of mutated trees and plants. How else would they have grown so quickly, even with Liorin’s Art accelerating their development?

“Animals work the same way, too,” he said, squinting at a particularly heavy movement beneath the water. “When the Nightspawn first descended, a lotta wild beasts ate their flesh, drank their contaminated water, and nested in their contaminated soil. Barn animals and livestock that lived in controlled environments may not have come in contact with essence—which is why, Vivi, most of your Vharnish fish look ‘normal’—but I’d say about ninety-five percent of all animals in the wild had no such protection. So many of them developed bug-like mutations, becoming stronger, wilder, and more aggressive. Fish in Wraithpier are no exception. You might say they were especially exposed because so many Nightspawn corpses sank into the sea when they first fell, so the entire northern sea is saturated with bioarcanic essence, mutating just about every fish there is and making them pass their mutations down to their descendants. Therefore, Wraithpier has big and weird fish, but Vharnveil doesn’t. Good enough?”

Maeve frowned. Evelyn frowned too, while Liorin and Vivi tilted their heads. All four of them had the same ‘look’, which meant they were still evidently confused about something Gael knew he didn’t explain properly—he just didn’t want to explain it because he was lazy.

Come on, just gimme a break. I just wanna fish in peace and—

“But that’s strange, isn’t it?” Maeve asked it first. “If consuming essence causes mutation, then how do regular Bharnish eat these fish without mutating? Most of them don’t have symbiotic systems like we do, but they still look mostly human with a strict diet of fish, and mutated vegetables and meats too.”

Evelyn nodded so hard rain shook from her hair! “Yeah, yeah! Back at the orphanage, I fed my hounds meat from weird chickens and cows all the time! They weren’t normal hounds, sure, but I fed them tons, so why didn’t they grow wings or chitin armor or bug legs or somethin’?”

Liorin chimed in after a moment, equally curious. “In my village, we used to feed strange leaves and roots to our birds as well. Why no mutate for them?”

Gael groaned and pulled his head back. “Because of the half-life.”

“Half-life?” all of them repeated.

“It’s the time required for volatile substances to undergo… oh, whatever. Three of you never graduated school anyways,” he muttered. “Basically, bioarcanic essence can be passed down from one generation to another, but not completely. If a mother and father both have mutations, those physical traits can pass down to their child, but the essence saturation powering those traits diminishes over generations if the child doesn’t consume new essence themselves. Essence is only generated naturally by Nightspawn—and by extension, Myrmurs. Everyone and everything else is just ‘borrowing’ essence.”

“Borrowing?” all of them repeated again.

“Let’s say a human mother has a hundred BeS—bioarcanic essence saturation—and the father also has a hundred BeS. You might think the child would have two hundred BeS, but that’s not how it works. The child would probably be born with fifty BeS instead, which means even if they inherit the bug-like traits from their parents, those traits would be weaker, less active, and less essence-rich than the parents’. That’s what I mean by half-life. If I recall correctly myself… by the seventh or eighth generation, the descendent might still have inherited bug-like traits from their first mutated ancestor, but they may have almost no meaningful essence saturation left if they’re not an active consumer of essence themselves.”

Vivi let out a soft breath. “So because fish breed much faster than humans, the ones we see now are probably at least in their fiftieth generation.”

“And modern mutated fish have instinctively learned not to consume bioarcanic essence if they can help it—at least, not faster than they can get rid of the essence by reproducing—so even if they do have a bit of essence in them, it’s not substantial enough to cause mutations in those who eat them,” Gael finished. “Don’t quote me on this, but I think one BeS is the minimum threshold for something to induce mutations in the consumer. Wraithpier locals have gotten remarkably good at determining whether the fish they reel up have more than one BeS or not, so they know which ones they can eat and which ones they can’t eat… but I’m also pretty sure over ninety-five percent of all mutated fish have less than one BeS, so making distinctions doesn’t really matter either way. Basically all of them are safe to eat.”

Then the ship suddenly swayed to one side, and Gael jolted upright in his chair. So did Maeve. Jin stood almost instantly, and Vivi gripped her rod so tightly he thought she might snap it.

Behind all of them—near the middle section of the upper deck—one of the Saint’s Hands had risen halfway out of his chair, both hands locked around his fishing rod as it bent towards the water. The line strained hard enough to hiss through the rain, and two other Saint’s Hands were already rushing to grab him around the waist before he could be dragged overboard.

Gael’s grin returned at once.

“Oh, there we go!” he shouted. “Pull! Come on, put your back into it! If that’s a Myrmur, all three of you are getting a pay raise and possibly a workplace injury named after you!”

The Saint’s Hands strained hard as more crewmen gathered around, shouting encouragement. Even some of the underdeck crew leaned out of their viewports to look up as the rod bent lower and lower. Something began thrashing beneath the water, not huge enough to tilt the ship, but strong enough to drag three grown men forward a step.

That was when the three men finally roared, planted their boots, and yanked backwards in a synchronized heave.

For one glorious second, Gael felt hope as the beast was pulled out of the water—and then a man-sized mutated fish slapped onto the middle of the upper deck, flopping violently in the rain.

Disappointment.

It was ugly, certainly. Its scales were patchy and black, its fins had too many joints, and it possessed a row of little twitching cricket legs along one side of its belly, but it was just a fish. No red pulse in his vision. No Host curled inside its body. The gathered Saint’s Hands stared down at it, obviously disappointed as well.

Gael sighed, turning back around to face his own fishing rod.

“Well, that’s disappointing!” he sang. “Don’t worry, boys! The night’s still young, and the first catch is still worth something! Nobody’s leaving tonight until we catch a Myrmur!”