#molded Ethan winters | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

averysexyleon · 1 year ago

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Forty Nine

RE8 | Wintersberg | Romance, Slow Burn | Action, Sci-Fi

Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story

Table Of Contents

This is the work of the Black God.

It is the work of a desperate man, nothing more. No gods required.

Nonetheless, his powers will have to be taken before he is imprisoned. With the aid of that entity there is no telling how easily he might escape.

We are in agreement. Bring forth the King.

—----

Ethan awoke with a start; his journal was in his hands; he’d fallen asleep on the parlor sofa. What were those voices? He realized they’d been speaking the medieval dialect of Romanian. Godric’s dialect. The blond sat up, rubbing his eyes, and was slightly startled as the front door opened. Karl entered, bringing in an armful of firewood, and crouched by the large, empty fireplace.

“What are you doing?”

“Just finished puttin’ everybody to bed,” the other said in an amused voice, “Figured if you’re gonna banish yourself out here, you might want a fire.”

Ethan sat up slowly, wondering what time it was. He’d come to the parlor after dinner; it had been early. He closed the journal and rubbed his eyes again. “Thanks.”

“You don’t have to hide away, I can take you,” Karl chided; he looked underdressed, wearing only cargo pants, his boots, and his long-sleeved shirt. Without his coat, hat and glasses, he looked so young and handsome. His thick frame was silhouetted against the created beginnings of a small fire, his masculine profile was full-lips, nose, brow. When he pivoted and smirked at Ethan, the blond blushed. He instantly wondered how to tell Karl to ditch wearing anything that hid his face and body, forever.

“Do you want to…stay in here for a while? I can get us drinks.”

“Sure, Buttercup.”

As the fire grew, Ethan returned to the parlor with one glass of wine, one whiskey. Karl was sitting on the sofa as he had the night that Ethan told him about Godric. He’d been in a similar cheeky mood then.

See anything you like, Buttercup?

Even further back, Ethan remembered sitting on the ottoman while Maricara inspected his face, his hand, musing about his existence.

Walking in the darkness, with no notion who he is! But how can it be healed?

His haltingly amiable words to Karl. What color were your eyes, before….?

Green.

Ethan sat next to the older man, not asking if he could cuddle; Heisenberg’s arm was already draped over an empty spot that seemed made for him. Yellow eyes lit up with a smirk at Ethan’s serious expression. The scowl brightened into a boyish smile when he met the other’s eyes. For a moment they looked at each other, neither speaking.

Ethan handed over the whiskey.

“I’m not the wife,” he began, and Karl chuckled almost too readily, as though he knew it would come up sooner or later. “You’re the wife.”

“No way.” Karl’s accent was never misplaced, somehow.

“I was meaning to tell you, Miranda was trying to get into my head,” Ethan was smiling behind the wine glass, “Looking for where Colm’s body is-I have no idea why-and I didn’t want her to know, so I started thinking about you. She got to see your ass.”

Heisenberg made an overwhelmingly disgusted face, while Ethan laughed. This caused Heisenberg to laugh, then drink deeply from the glass of whiskey, and he placed it on the table with a final cringe. “So she’s back to that shit…I knew it was gonna happen, she just needed time to get her power back, I guess.”

“Is that something she was able to do?”

Karl’s expression by firelight had never looked more serious, more hurt. “Not with any accuracy, with the people who got cadou. Which was lucky for me…but I still trained myself to think of anything but her while I was around her. Others, sometimes…. It was torture for ‘em. Put a few people out of misery after she got in their heads an’ they were punished for whatever it was she thought they knew…or believed. When Donna figured out how to use her…” he gestured, “Miranda had her start doin’ that dirty work. Messin’ with heads. Takin’ things out. Puttin’ things in that don’t go.” Karl’s eyebrows raised. “That’s…about when Donner’n’I stopped….when I-I…c-c…”

Even his voice was haunted. He bit his lip, willing his stutter to quiet, as Ethan stared into the fire alongside him. Karl sipped again, this time stroking his fingers along Ethan’s bicep. Ethan spoke, willing to give Heisenberg a break after that intense confession.

“I…I guess, read? Chris today, by accident. I don’t know how that’s possible, I thought it was only a thing that happened here, or with people who were infected.”

Karl’s expression moved to a sly one, and Ethan turned to him. “Did you know he…had feelings for me?”

“Ethan, I don’t know how a guy is a computer genius, a complete badass with a shotgun, and a total idiot all at the same time, but you are one of the most obtuse son-of-a-bitches I’ve ever met.” He laughed at the scowl now on Ethan’s face. “Of course I know. How did you NOT know?”

“Does it…bother you?” Ethan knew his own jealous streak had shown up several times, but he assumed Heisenberg’s hatred of Chris was over the factory incident, not his feelings toward Ethan. He’d never acted concerned about it.

“Nah. I agree with him, why would it bother me?” Heisenberg managed more whiskey. Ethan considered this, and finally smiled at what he realized must be a compliment.

After a comfortable pause, Heisenberg turned the empty glass in his hand, staring at the crystal patterns. “Do whatever you have to, to not let her see what she wants to see. I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about with the grave-don’t tell me, I don’t need to know-nothin’ good can come of her wanting information, and then gettin’ it.”

Ethan realized something in that moment, and he turned to Karl, wide-eyed. “Is that why you won’t talk about–!” The crystal fragment.

Karl’s expression told him he was correct. Ethan’s face fell. “Wait, was it…Miranda trying to get that information from you? Did she…possess me?”

Karl had apparently already considered this. He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think that was all you, wantin’ to know. An’ Ethan. I don’t want to talk about it because…”

They were about to delve into a new era of their relationship, a deeper layer, Ethan realized. Karl had been nothing but honest with him since he’d met him, but there was still this one wedge between them. The single thing he didn’t speak about, and Ethan was finally going to know why. It would mean many things, maybe, but it would bring them closer in a way that Heisenberg was afraid of. It was the final secret, wasn’t it?

He should have felt excited; he felt sick.

“Not only does talkin’ about it uh…invite those thoughts…because it does. But. Eva and I have known for years now that the thing has to be destroyed. This is somethin’ in the making for a long time.”

The Duke had said that, hadn’t he?

“Always thought I’d have to kill…them.” He was talking about his siblings. “They might still end up dead-None of us know the full extent of what the shit does. Miranda probably doesn’t even know, she just guesses. We don’t know if it’ll kill me. I planned for it just in case. Made peace with it.”

“But you still have your cadou–?”

“Right. That cadou was a lot stronger before. The crystal was like a built in turbocharger. I could do a lot more with it. With it not powerin’ the cadou,” Heisenberg chose his words carefully, “I don’t have the same power. I used it when you and I fought. I won’t do that again, I want the damn thing gone, I want her gone. I’m happy to fight her however I can, and probably will, til the end. But the crystal has to go before that, an’ when that happens, there’s a chance I might go with it.”

Ethan was silent. His blood felt like ice. His head felt full of cotton. He blinked at the fire. So this was the conversation. They’d gone from a tense dance of words around coffee in the dining room, to this.

This was what it was like to not be in denial. Neither he, nor the other person, was trying to change the conversation into something hopeful, or protect feelings. Nobody walked off in the middle of the discussion. There was a completed delivery of potentially devastating news, and a quiet acceptance.

A billion ‘what if’s and ‘but’s boiled beneath the surface. And yet Ethan knew that for as much as he knew about the mold, Heisenberg and Eva both had years, decades….in Eva’s case, a century, on his information. They had accepted it as a possibility. He now had to accept it as a possibility.

Was more black fluid coming from his eyes? The tunnel vision felt like it was coming back. He dragged his fingers across his face and looked; no, it was tears. He was hyperventilating. He laughed at his own stupidity and then drank more wine. Karl was looking at him, but he couldn’t look back.

“Talk to me, Ethan.”

The scowl was aimed at the fire. His voice sounded like a child’s.

“I don’t want you to die.”

“Maybe I won’t.”

“What’ll I do if you do?” He finally turned, really crying now, to see the still-contemplative look on the other’s face. He put a hand over his mouth to stop the stream of begging, pleading that threatened to come out. In a gesture of unusual tenderness, Karl threaded his hand through Ethan’s blond hair, almost petting him.

“It’ll be okay, Papa. Remember what I told you? We’re all just energy. I’ll always be around in some way.”

Ethan still had his hand over his mouth, and now he leaned down into Karl’s chest, thinking of many different things. His own father’s disappearance, Mia’s deaths, his deaths, Godric’s imprisonment, the crystallized man in the tomb. Alcina’s devastation over losing barely-human daughters. Eva’s great yearning to be human and how she seemed to spend every moment of her human life grateful for existence, drinking it like nectar.

Life seemed very fragile and unfair and he could only cry about it. Karl’s arm draped over him, pulling him in closer.

Maybe it would be okay, but maybe it wouldn’t.

For the second time that night, he didn’t remember falling asleep. Though Karl had no fear about a potentially dangerous Ethan, he respected the blond’s wishes to be alone, and after tucking him in, Karl left the room. Ethan slept by the light of the dying embers.

Neither Karl nor Ethan saw the shadow of Jochen, constantly beside him, never truly dead or alive. He sauntered out after his brother, eager to watch the other work.

—------------

Ethan fell in his dream, into a dark spot of a catalogued megamycete. He knew when he sat up that she would be there, looking at him with her pale eyes and confused expression.

“Miranda,” he sighed, closing his eyes. Not really Miranda. A fragment of Miranda. The only decent part she had left, apparently.

“You! I…forget who you are. You learned how to come at will?”

“No, I’m sleeping. Dreaming.”

“I must have been thinking of you.” She giggled; it sounded just like Eva.

Ethan rubbed his face tiredly. She continued, “Still, if you can come here in a dream that would mean, maybe your powers are growing?”

“You…the other you, said something today about almost being out of time,” he said. The train station. Maybe his desire to know had brought him here. “Out of time for what?”

She sat cross-legged. Ethan wondered why this couldn’t have been the Miranda that he encountered; she seemed so docile, charming. Even her thoughtful frown was nearly innocent. Couldn’t they just make a quick trade?

“I can only guess…But I can sense that the core of the Mold, the consciousness, will die soon. She cannot lead from there. The mold is a colony, yes? It must accept a queen. Without a queen, it will fall apart, just memories moving into the earth like raindrops. There has been so much energy used lately.”

Ethan thought of the dragon. Their re-creation of Eveline, who seemed to have far more power than everyone else. Eveline had, after all, created her own fungal root-in Dulvey.

He scratched his head. “Could you do that? Could you be the queen?”

She looked startled. “I…am a discarded piece. A reject. I cannot even remember who I am much anymore. We all go to the voices, and then nothingness, without a complete mind to lead.”

Ethan switched to rubbing his temple.

How could he tell Eva that this was her future? She’d done it, without knowing, for nearly a century anyway. With no guidance, while witnessing the terror her mother inflicted on an entire settlement for multiple generations. He’d just accepted the possibility of Heisenberg’s death earlier in the evening, and now he was going to have to accept that Eva might also have to leave him forever? And if she didn’t….

He was crying again. Miranda-fragment put her hand on his knee; she felt less than solid, like a soft breeze. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know what to do,” he confessed, laughing while crying.

“The Black God has been calling you,” she said, looking at her own hand that had been on his knee, as though she only knew this information after touch. “Maybe it has something to say that will help?”

“What even is the Black God? I’ve heard that since I came here. Isn’t it just the Mold?”

“No,” she tapped a finger on her chin. She was stunning. He hated looking at her and seeing someone so beautiful. “It is….a consciousness that was created from mimicking humans, perhaps. The Mold rarely creates things on its own, it just copies memories. But this one was created long before us all, before this land was settled. It is a trickster. It has helped, but…” she tsked. “It is a fickle one.”

“Miranda embraced the Black God,” Ethan said in a monotone, dragging his hand down his face. “She accepted it, or whatever it was she wrote in her notes.”

“Yes, one like you, a traveler, can do that. It has been done. Our long-ago Kings were instructed to split its consciousness between all four of them. First to win our land. And then to rule it. But it was banished after it kept…well…eating outsiders. The Kings became cannibals when they embraced the Black God for too long. It is a powerful friend, but has no human mind.”

He remembered what Godric had said, about who the Black God was. We are.

He remembered Miranda eating the bloody heart as she sat on the rock island.

“Where….is it?”

Her expression of curiosity blossomed into one of awe. “You really….it’s…I…hm…don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know.”

“That makes two of us.”

Ethan closed his eyes again.

He sought the fireplace with the burning embers. The sofa. The two empty glasses that sat on the table. When he opened his eyes, he was sitting up on the couch. Karl’s fire crackled gently at him as if to tell him to go back to sleep. But, Ethan stared out the window. A restlessness overtook him. He recalled the storm Heisenberg had created to correct the hysteresis of the consciousness.

They had uncovered a small, glowing red bundle of neurons and other cells. It was under the surface, down the cliffside. The caverns hadn’t been made by rock, but by petrified mold. This whole area was ancient fossil, and the mold just kept growing in it year after year, making a cocoon bed out of its own fossils.

Ethan grabbed his phone and scrolled through it, looking for some sort of placation, some communication that would bring him peace, or allow him to ignore his restlessness. He found the opposite.

From Chris.

-Yeah, we all underestimated you. I’m not ashamed to say that, I’m relieved you’re as tough as you are.

-You have no idea how tough I have gotten. At this point I really should be studied.

-Don’t joke about stuff like that, Ethan…some people who get infected really are.

-I know. I just hope it’s enough to finally get rid of her.

-If anybody can do it, it’s you. You’re resilient as hell. And maybe as stubborn as she is.

-I’d say more stubborn, she just has time on me.

-Fair enough. Don’t go doing anything crazy just because I give you my full stamp of approval to be in charge, and told you that I believe in you. I try not to say shit like that even when it’s always been true.

-Since when have I ever been anything but cautious?

-Very funny.

-You should say more ‘shit’ that’s true. I like hearing the truth.

-Don’t push your luck.

Before he knew it, he was standing at the window, staring out across the moonlit field. Ethan’s gaze was on the part of the field he couldn’t see from here; the house was on a high hill. But he knew, remembered very well, where IT was. The fungal root had re-colonized far away from the ceremony site, and almost seemed to hug the caverns underneath the cliffs of this home, as if it were the only un-contaminated ground left. Shrinking away from the area of the blast radius.

Ethan didn’t even put on shoes; he was out the door in a moment, moving across the dark cliffside trail like a ghost. He followed the path of the funeral procession…it felt like so long ago. The path where Karl had ridden by him on the large black horse. Past the hill where Karl had pulled the mechanical heart out-the first time he’d ever seen the engineer shaken. Where he’d learned who Eva was, saw Eveline reappear in the ‘flesh’ for the first time.

Why are you helping me?

Because I hate Miranda.

The blond peered down the steep cliff sides, where before, Eva had appeared and reappeared, moving along the rocky cliffs when Ethan was Heisenberg’s anchor. Heisenberg had yelled at him, “Why can’t you do THAT?”

He turned behind him to look toward the house; moonlight illuminated the quiet, dark manor. The tall grass, now mostly dead, whispered around him. Like the castle and Donna’s home, the Heisenberg manor was positioned at the far reaches of this mountain valley, as if to pull away from the organism that resided under it. As if their ancestors had wanted to hide in the mountains, away from the center of the root.

His family slept there, and Ethan might have felt guilt over once again venturing off on his own, except that the desperation he felt was louder in his soul than the guilt.

He wasn’t accepting death as he was told to, was he?

Was he doing what Miranda did?

He was supposed to go back to bed, and hope that whatever had gotten into him since stepping into that pool didn’t take over. Hope that he didn’t try to wrestle information out of another member of his family. What if he went after one of the children next?

Being out here, learning what to do-however he was going to do that-was less frightening than going back to bed and pretending that they had time, that there wasn’t a need for him to step into whatever full power he had at arm’s reach. Or, maybe, he was delusional and it was all an excuse and the pool of death had ruined him completely. Ethan’s cheeks were streaked with dried tears.

He didn’t want Karl to die.

He didn’t want Eva to die, either.

He didn’t want to keep locking himself away.

In Chris’s notes he’d read about Miranda’s encounter with the Mold. She had wandered into a cave, touched the root. Her mind was flooded with information. It was a feeling more than a thought, but Ethan’s mind was made up.

As the tall man disappeared from the cliffside, now easily moving from precipice to precipice, jumping the way that Eva had jumped so long ago, those inside the manor began to stir and awaken. Most of the inhabitants didn’t know why, but were roused from their dreams. Some fell back asleep quickly. Others stayed awake, peering at the ceiling or wall, wondering what had awakened them.

Ethan could sense the energy from the fungal root as he moved closer to it. He was only several petrified-mold shelves away from the ground. Karl’s attempts at burning the top layer of mycelium worked well farther out, where the water helped him conduct electricity over wide swaths of land, but here the ground was insulated, protected. And the root’s energy was strong, he realized.

Miranda was close, he could sense her. Ethan moved once more, stepping from the sandy white shelves of petrified rock to the ground. His bare feet touched on dirt threaded with mycelium. It did feel electric; his hairs stood on end, he heard a buzzing in his ears. He stared at the ground, noting the silvery strands that pulsed as if reading him.

The one that healed us.

Whatever voice that was, referred to Karl’s tornado lifting debris and rot away from the core, allowing it to ‘breathe’...to survive.

That was technically Heisenberg, he answered in his mind. No longer had he communicated with the consciousness than she was there, standing ten feet away. His conversation had called her to him like a beacon. Though Miranda smiled-in her sinister way-at him, she looked perplexed, as if she were surprised to see him.

“You’ve made a grave error, doing all of this in an attempt to stop me. So much energy you’ve wasted. I cannot re-enter the Megamycete as its ruler. What will you do instead, who will you sacrifice?”

The taunt hurt, as it would be Eva who suffered. Miranda seemed to catch onto this emotion, and she tilted her head. “Eva..?”

“How can you just pull a crystal out of somebody without killing them?” He asked bluntly. Ethan didn’t want to argue, he just wanted information. If he had to touch the fungal root to get it, so be it. But maybe she was feeling as generous as her clueless, trapped remnant.

She chuckled, not even listening to his inner dialogue.

“Worried about dear Heisenberg, are we?”

His lips moved into a tight line. “Tell me.”

“You mean, like this?” Miranda pulled her golden-clawed fingers away from herself; in a shower of sparks, a glimmer moved into her hand. She held it aloft for a moment, turning it. “Alcina’s. There are many others, lost to time, but the ones I seek, we both know who has them.” She pushed the crystal back into her body, her eyes glowing white as it merged, skin turning white and threading with white veins.

He didn’t speak.

She crossed her arms, happy, it seemed, to know more than Ethan. “Do you remember when the Mold took you, at the ship? Eveline’s root was there. You were absorbed by that Megamycete, Ethan. At an earlier time, so was Mia. When it chose you, and pulled you in, you became something else entirely. Something so much more. So did Mia. Unfortunately, by the time she got to me, her mind was not intact.”

“Fuck you.”

“Is yours?” She grinned. “Do you understand?”

“What the hell does my past have to do with my question?”

She chuckled against a rumble of thunder. “You are more powerful than you know, Ethan. You were a human who became part of a core. The others are not. They never will be. They are simply this organism trying to create its copies, as it always has, its own ecosystem.”

“Who else has been absorbed by a…Megamycete?”

“I was,” she said proudly. “Rose was. As well as someone else you know, but not the ones you look to save.”

He threw his hands out. “I’m done with the fucking riddles. This isn’t a storybook.”

“You could send the Lords to me,” she said abruptly, and he tilted his head. So this was why she’d appeared to him. She had something to say, to bargain. He’d figured. She spoke again, realizing he was listening intently. “I can remove the pieces, and leave them intact.”

“And…if I did…Heisenberg?”

“I will exchange his crystal for the one you currently have. His brother is very useful to me. I have spent a lifetime curating his mind into the obedient son that his twin was not. He knows how to move through strata expertly. He is non-negotiable.”

“Molding his mind, huh. Is that why he got away from you? Why he’s still away from you?”

Her smile faltered, and he lowered his head. The wind was blowing now, icy on his neck. Ethan barely felt it. He had another question.

“You have Heisenberg’s?” That didn’t sound right.

“It is a one time offer, Ethan. I suggest you choose wisely.”

He couldn’t read her, the way she read him, he realized. Dammit. Was she bluffing? It didn’t matter. Ethan knew that if he made some kind of deal with the devil-to Heisenberg, the literal devil-and lost their one chance at getting his brother back, Karl would never forgive him. Besides, if she really did have the crystal, she would have to crush it to destroy whatever part of Karl was inside it, right? Heisenberg was still alive, so either the cadou could exist on its own, or she was lying. Right? Hopefully.

Ethan was desperate to find a loophole or a solution, but not this desperate.

“I always choose wisely,” he said curtly, and stepped closer to her. His intent wasn’t to interact with her, however, and the blond dissipated as his body morphed through the layers of mold, re-emerging moments later in the last place he’d seen the root. A cavern, where grey rock and walls of crystals surrounded the thick, black knot.

He knew, sensed, that she could not follow him here. Godric had put it best.

She is denied.

The Megamycete had changed.

The last time Ethan saw it, the strange growth was the size of a car, resembled a curled fetus, and something similar to a human heart. It had glowed red, brightly, angrily. And it had a heartbeat, a rapid one.

Now the root towered over his head, fifteen, twenty feet high? More importantly, it had changed shape. It no longer looked like a fetus at all. It looked like a human heart, complete with tendrils of mold suspending it in the air like blood vessels leading away from its center. It moved and pumped grotesquely and again Ethan wondered why he had to be made out of something so disgusting. He approached it, surveying further.

This change is your work, Ethan.

The same voice as earlier, the one that spoke about healing. He ignored it, to examine the health of the root.

Some of the walls of the ‘heart’ were graying, hardening. It was struggling, he realized. The center still glowed bright red, still seemed to have plenty of vigor within them, but he was reminded of Heisenberg when he saw the massive amount of energy, and the breaking, failing tendrils around it. He didn’t even need to ask what the problem was this time. The absence of the mother, the mind…the heart? Of the mold.

This is what Miranda had meant. They were running out of time to save the Megamycete. What would happen if they didn’t give it the component it apparently needed? Why couldn’t the damn thing just adapt?

Eveline’s Mold was destroyed, and her consciousness lived on. Lived on in Ethan, he realized abruptly. He carried all of them inside of his mind. Jack and Marguerite as well. The house. The Molded within it. He’d become a holder of a world, without even realizing it. That world was now connected to this one; he’d become a part of this one as well. So had Rosemary.

He would live if this mold died. Rose would live. But everyone else existed only through the conduit of this organism. He didn’t know what would happen. Ethan didn’t want to find out, he realized.

Careful now, he heard a voice mutter in a teasing, tantalizing voice as he approached. Don’t want to touch anything dangerous.

It almost sounded like Godric. This was different from the cacophony of voices indexed by the mold. Was this its creation? The Black God? He could sense a presence here, one that wasn’t invisible voices, or another person.

He spoke aloud. “If I…touch you. Am I going to lose my mind?”

“Human minds are so easy to lose. Like pocket change.”

“If I touch you, will it kill the root? Take more power?”

“Not so much more. I have been waiting for you. Saving energy. Sending you strength.”

He thought of moving the sarcophagus. Pinning Heisenberg.

“Why me?”

“So that we all may survive.”

He thought back to Miranda’s mind. A trickster. A ‘fickle one.’

Ethan’s heart beat so hard in his chest he thought it might burst.

“Shall we, Ethan Winters? Do you want my help?”

Alcina, he thought wildly, I need you here.

Was that even possible? His entire being, this entire chamber, coursed with energy. If it was possible, it would be here. The Black God chuckled, as if he didn’t mind entertaining.

Ethan turned, eyeing the cavern, which had no entrance or exit. The crystals glistened from the red light on the fungal root, and then, startlingly, Dimitrescu shimmered into view. She seemed translucent. She was traveling as he used to travel–in dreams, her physical body likely still sleeping. She wore a black silk nightgown.

“What is this? Am I dreaming?” Alcina hesitantly stepped toward Ethan, eyeing the Megamycete skeptically. “Is that…”

“I need your help,” he began anxiously. Her utterly bewildered look was almost humorous.

“Surely you are not going to touch that thing.”

“It’s…whatever’s inside…it’s offering to help us.”

“And you trust…THAT?”

“It won’t let Miranda anywhere near it,” he said quickly. “The whole reason it looks like that on the edges is because it…kicked Miranda out, I guess, after the ceremony with Rose. It also has…all the voices.”

She looked back at the root again with an expression of wonder, laced with her usual disgust. When she didn’t speak, he pressured her, “Weren’t you the one who said if I could fully transform, it could be used against Miranda?”

She arched a brow. “Well, yes, I suppose.”

“You were in control of yours. How did you do it? Please. If you think I can’t do this, be honest with me, I need it right now, I need somebody to tell me the truth. I trust you to do that.”

Alcina was completely taken aback at this, but recovered quickly. She blinked rapidly, and crossed her arms, pacing and staring at the crystals that surrounded her.,

“I…was not in control at first. I suppose I am very headstrong. I was not frightened, I was angry that my body had done something so unacceptable, without my permission. I thought of my daughters, in the end. Every time I transformed, they entered my mind, instead of fear. Had I not had this stubbornness, lack of fear- no doubt I would have been as Moreau. Emotions ruled him, and ruled what his body did. Miranda asked many questions of me after I showed her what I could do. All of her questions related to my emotions, my thoughts, state of mind. They seem paramount to a successful transformation. To keep control of yourself.”

Ethan followed her pacing, watching her phase in and out of view with each pulse of the ‘heart.’

“As to your second point…” she stopped, dropped her hands, and turned her head to meet his eyes. “You, Ethan….” Her smile was soft, barely perceptible. “You will be fine. You made your way into a lost place with no exit, and fought with every fiber of your being, well past barriers anyone else could have. I have no doubt that you can control whatever this thing will turn you into. However, what then?” She eyed the root with suspicion. “After Miranda is gone, will it quietly remove itself from you? Will you slowly go mad, as in the old stories? Look at…well.” She huffed, batting her eyelashes. “Look at what happened to her.”

“Yeah,” he countered. “I guess I figured I’d cross that bridge when I get to it.”

“Such a man,” she muttered, but didn’t move. Her eyes were on Ethan as he wiped his palms on his pants, and then stepped forward.

“I hope I won’t regret this,” he muttered, hearing the laugh from the entity he now knew was the Black God. As Ethan lifted his right hand, he hovered it for a moment. “Did you know Godric?”

“The warrior King, I so loved him. So many good battles together. Then one day….ritually ripped apart from each other. I would have broken him out of there, somehow…..and they knew it.”

This was enough to satisfy Ethan. If it was good enough for Godric, it was good enough for him. It was this, or go lay back down and try not to wake up black-eyed and insane, with no memory of it.

He touched one of the black spots on the bottom end of the ‘heart.’ Instantly, his vision went black. Alcina’s consciousness disappeared from the cavern, her worried look unseen by Ethan as he wrestled with the pain, unfamiliarity, of thousands of voices surging through his entire being, as if he were electrical conduit. One of the voices-presences-was louder, stronger, snaking its way deep into his chest.

When he burst upward through stone and dirt, it wasn’t like his previous travels. Turning into air, as Eva had once called it. Ethan quite violently erupted from the ground, the crystals and mycelium both bending out of his way when he moved, his force enough to burst through soil on its own. He struggled to stay conscious, shaking dirt from his hair-he felt suddenly exhausted, as if he should sleep, but he ground his teeth instead. Unsteadily he stumbled, and then fell onto one knee.

The blond watched his hands elongate as he held them up; his heart raced even more. His body felt warm, for the first time since he could remember. So warm he wanted to pull his skin off. He was burning alive. This was the metabolism of the mold, he knew. He didn’t know how he knew. Ethan held his head in his hands, grunting against a sudden crushing headache. He heard the voice inside.

Sleep. Rest.

I can do it.

“No,” he argued, feeling his very calcified-white skin growing strange, crystal patterns around his limbs. It needed more arms, more legs. Too small. Maybe more eyes? Ethan fought against this too. “NO, NONE OF THAT.”

He dragged what he could of his long, clawed hands across his face. Black fluid trickled out from his eyes, and his cheek felt like stone-cracked marble. Smooth, with deep fissures. Though he couldn’t see it, his skin had lost all color and now resembled something like the moonlight that streamed down over him. Shadow and blue-white light mixing as this…guest? Intruder?

Part of him

–NO.

Changed him.

It seemed the Black God conformed at least partly to its host; Ethan did not turn into an entirely new creature. His body grew in height, elongated, and he felt the burn on his back where his skin crackled–Tendrils? Fibers? ……Wings? In horror he realized that they could climb, bony structures that protruded from his back, holding wispy black tatters with hooked ends. They reminded him of Miranda’s mutated form’s wings-those had looked downy.

It wanted to get up, away.

NO.

Ethan dragged his hands-claws, blackened, with dripping ichor hitting the ground as it flowed from his fingertips-into the dirt, pressing his bare feet there too. He felt his toes flex, and realized they were long and clawlike as well. It was now a tug-of-war with his body, with him holding on, clenching teeth to the ground, and the thing inside him wrestling up, seeking the sky.

The same obsidian that moved down to cover Miranda’s eyes was creeping toward his own, but his stubbornness seemed to give it pause. The shining mycelium strands, black veins underneath, pooled across his forehead, under his chin, but his eyes remained uncovered. The blackened pools crystallized, blackened like a crown over his brow. They had relented; he could see.

His vision blurred, reddened. He recalled the crimson light from below, the energy of the Megamycete. Ethan’s sclerae became red, his pupils golden. Suddenly his teeth ached. His entire face ached. When he stretched his mouth in a strangled cry, he was forced to acknowledge that his entire jaw was larger, his mouth wider somehow. His tongue licked around a row of sharp, elongated teeth.

Teeth for tearing.

Ethan couldn’t argue with that one.

Up.

He didn’t want to go up. Well, he did, but not like this. Not right now. Not until he could get control of this thing.

And then what?

Well, he’d be in control, that’s what.

Was he talking to himself?

Ethan felt something pulling. Tearing. Himself. Oh, no you don’t, he thought wildly. But he watched the ground disappear from view, and then everything disappeared.

On the cliffside, out of his view, Eva, Alcina, Moreau, Donna, and Heisenberg were all running down the trail, approaching the end of the rocks where the bonfire had burned months ago. Karl was in front by a long shot. Behind him Eva yelped, “There!” as they all skidded close to the edge, peering down the long craggy ravine. Right as she pointed, the gaunt, long figure barely recognizable as Ethan exploded, bursting into-

“Kingfishers,” Karl marveled, his eyes luminescent as his head tilted up, following their flight pattern. There were hundreds of the small birds moving in tandem together. The former lords and their sibling watched in awe at the silhouettes against the moon. The brightly colored birds bobbed and weaved in a murmuration reminiscent of Miranda’s crows. The flock hugged the cliff wall, drifted up, trying to fly high, then lowered. The movements were fluid, but jerky, as if a tug-of-war were taking place.

“You can do it, Ethan,” Alcina muttered under her breath, eyes on the flock.

Donna turned to stare at her older sibling. “Do what?!”

The birds all collapsed into one dark cloud, that then morphed in a flurry of wings. When Ethan reappeared, it was on one of the ledges. He held his head in his hands and cursed, but the sound barely carried. It was a growl, inhuman, no vocal chords maneuvering any language.

His body was elongated, different. His forehead, arms, legs dripped with black. He was barely recognizable, but it was him, all right.

Karl didn’t have his hammer, but he raised a hand anyway, summoning any long-lost pieces of metal from the valley below. When Eva motioned to the others, Karl turned back to them. “No, stay here.”

After biting her lip, Eva nodded, and Alcina said haughtily, “You have two minutes.”

Heisenberg scoffed at this, but meandered down his awaiting steps quickly. As he descended, he finally chose to hop over to a higher ledge than Ethan. He stared over the white ‘rock’ at the creature that sat on all fours.

It was tall, lean, dark on the edges-hands, feet-with a pale torso and face. Not so different from Miranda’s transformation, it was a beautifully grotesque thing with long legs and longer arms. But this one looked suited to being on all fours, with its hunched posture and inverted hocks. Karl was reminded of deer legs, due to the thinness and shape.

It heaved, exhaling and sounding like a bull, complete with steam issuing from its nostrils. Karl wanted to cheer Ethan on, tell him not to fight it, give him some other sage wisdom-having transformed once himself as well, but he was rendered speechless, finally.

The thing that was Ethan was rising to stand now, almost fully upright, drawing itself up with closed eyes. It probably took all of Ethan’s concentration to maintain control of this form, and Karl stared, his own glowing eyes still wide. Was Ethan in control?

His clothing was in tatters, he had some kind of appendages protruding from his back. Claws dripped with inky black. When he lifted his head, Karl could see the familiar sight of blond hair. It stood out from the trails of black crystals that crusted around his forehead, leaking fluid under his eyes and down his throat. His mouth was entirely blackened, but they were Ethan’s lips after all. The thing-Ethan- grimaced-the teeth were not Ethan’s. They were fangs.

Karl was only on a shelf several feet higher than the ledge the blond had landed on. Ethan was close, but not within reaching distance. And now that he was pulled up to his full height, Ethan nearly towered over the engineer. He was easily seven feet tall, maybe eight. Heisenberg was still mesmerized into silence when it saw him.

Its eyes opened, and they were no longer blackened. They glowed red, with bright yellow irises. It stilled when it caught his gaze, and the grimace full of fangs fell. Ethan’s uncertain expression peered out past this creature’s.

Heisenberg actually beamed.

He’d know that upset gaze anywhere.

Ethan paused; seeing the other man had been his worst nightmare. He wanted to wrestle through this alone. This thing inside of him seemed to regard the other with nothing more than mere curiosity-do we need to kill? NO- but just as the shock spread across Ethan’s face he realized the nightmare of him becoming Molded had never been a nightmare to Karl.

Karl had, in fact, known what Ethan was made of all along.

It changed nothing for him.

This changed nothing. He’d never seen the engineer so fascinated.

Captivated.

Ethan thought Heisenberg would only be reminded of Miranda in this form, as Ethan was…it filled him with disgust. But as Heisenberg stood on the rock with an overwhelmingly enthralled expression, Ethan’s heart began to still.

Just then Karl whistled sharply, thumb and finger in his mouth. It caused Ethan to frown; his new face contorted in uncomfortable places; his brows drew over golden-red eyes, but the reason for the shrill ‘come here’ whistle became clear when a sleepy-but-excited Evie appeared on the rock next to Karl in her brand new pajamas.

She held a very awake, very squirmy toddler-Rosemary. Evie sat the girl on the rock beside Karl, who picked her up easily. Together the children each held out a hand to Ethan, as if they could pet him, touch him, or coax him to the rock. Heisenberg continued to beam, an awestruck look on his face, his own breath fogging around him in the cold night air.

Ethan dropped down instinctively to all fours, but was still within eye level of the group. Rosemary was babbling dada, apparently recognizing him when he could not even recognize himself. Evie looked impressed, something he never thought he’d see from her. Her smile was wide and genuine.

His eyes darted between them, back up to the engineer, back between them. Part of Ethan screamed in rage that Karl had brought his children down onto a cliffside to gawk at this animal.

But he could formulate thoughts even better with this added consciousness, that only saw things as they were. Had no fear.

They weren’t gawking. And they weren’t just his children, were they? This was what Alcina had spoken about. Family.

He pushed himself upright, standing only on his back legs, leaning his palms against the rock where the trio watched him. It felt less natural than being on all fours, but he was adamant to gain control.

Ethan’s eyes were still wild and reddened, but he dropped his head as if to show submission-in reality, he was exhausted, and didn’t want to fight any longer. He finally closed his eyes.

Don’t let me give up -

Rosemary’s hand on the back of his head burned to the touch, but there was also some sensation of…tearing. Letting go. Sleeping. It radiated from his neck and through his chest. And it wasn’t him.

When Ethan got the strength to climb onto the rock, his eyes flickered open enough to see that his hands were back to normal. His clothing was torn open where he’d transformed-he could finally, finally feel the chill of autumn air on his skin-and he was still barefoot. He rolled lazily onto his back as if the petrified mold were the most comfortable bed in the world.

His eyes were still closed. “I know, a cage,” he said to Heisenberg.

“Are you kiddin’ me? THAT was somethin’ Winters, that was, holy shit!…..”

“Dada-raaahhhrweerrr!” Rosemary approved.

The wind picked up, ruffling Ethan’s hair. He was ready, finally, to sleep.

#ethan winters #karl heisenberg #fic:the lightning that jumps between #fic: winters and the beast #donna beneviento #mother miranda #molded ethan winters #ethan winters deserved better lol #alcina dimitrescu #rosemary winters #molded ethan

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thelightningthatjumpsbetween · 1 year ago