An hour after the village head arrived at his cabin, Syryn found himself in a room with the body of Cami. The tiny corpse on the table tugged at his heart strings and it took everything in Syryn to not turn away and abandon what he had come to do.

The alchemist hadn't wanted Rei to suffer through it with him so the guard had been sent away. Now, he was alone in a bare room with nothing but his tools and a sheet covering the small child.

Syryn sank into the cold comfort that came with letting his demon through just a little bit. The small amount of insanity it brought took the edge off the feelings that Cami's dead body inspired in him. 

He was careful with how he handled her. Syryn made sure not to leave obvious cuts that would show during her funeral.

And when opened up her skull, it was with a sinking heart that Syryn observed the haemorrhage and necrosis in her brain. Her condition was so advanced that not much of her brain tissue was left intact. The alchemist had a hypothesis for this. He believed that the grey nodules were a fungal species that thrived and propagated inside the human brain. He took a tiny sample of Cami's brain tissue and put it inside a test tube. One final test would determine the plausibility of his hypothesis. It would be the final piece of the puzzle that would connect everything together.

----

"It's done," Syryn told Cami's family members who were standing outside the building where he worked.

"Was it the same thing you found in the builder's brain?" Asked the old woman who had inisisted that it was a possession.

"It is what killed her. I'm sorry." Syryn was a little numb from having let his demon out.

The grandmother nodded before grabbing Syryn's hand and weeping. "We should have listened to you sooner. Maybe she wouldn't have died then. We failed Cami. Oh Cami," her tears fell like rain.

"None of us could have helped her," Syryn said to the old woman. "Cami was lost the moment those things entered her brain. You didnt fail her."

The alchemist then turned to the head man. "We'll know by tomorrow if it's the same disease. What will you do with the plant if it's confirmed?"

"We'll burn it down," the headman appeared to have aged more after Cami's death. "How can we repay you, healer?"

"You can let me have the plant," Syryn answered. It was a source of something so terriblee that it attracted Syryn. He could think of multiple creative ways to harness its horrors.

The headman recoiled at Syryn's answer. "What? Why do you want it? Aren't you afraid of what it could do to you if you were careless with it?"

"It's not the plant that kills people. It's the stuff on the plant. Imagine the consequences of a situation where the fungus finds ways to thrive on other species of plants? This village is a paradise for it."

A wave of fear swept through the gathered crowd. "Are you saying it could spread to other plants?" The headman asked.

"I dont know." Syryn had heard of creatures that burrowed deep into the bodies of their victims. They were known to alter brain chemistry in a way that would change the behaviour of the host to suit the needs of the parasites. It explained why all the insects and dead people gathered to die near the plant. Something about it, like its perfume, attracted the hosts to the plant. To answer the question of why, Syryn hypothesised that the fungus began a second phase of its life cycle on the trumpet plant.

"Sir, are you certain it's my plant that did it?" A woman pushed to the front of the crowd. It was the owner of the trumpet flower.

"I will ascertain that for sure when I get the results of my test by tomorrow," he answered her.

"Then why have I not fallen sick?! Why those people specifically?"

"I can't say for sure. Some people are just genetically more predisposed towards certain conditions. I believe that the fungi's natural host is the species of insects that we found in large numbers. Humans are perhaps an accidental host," he was thoughtful as he answered. If the fungi and the trumpet plant were symbiotic in some way, they were both evolving in a direction that threatened humans. Syryn suspected that the evolution wasn't an accident. The merchants who sold the seeds were suspicious even if they weren't directly culpable for what had happened.

"How can you say that?" She shouted. "You should be sure of it if you're going to accuse my plant of killing people!"

Syryn was done here. He wasnt getting paid for investigating anything, and nor was he tolerating the annoying complaints of clueless villagers.

"I'll come to your house in the morning when the result is ready," Syryn informed the head man before he walked away the crowd.

----

When Syryn reached his cabin home, he was surprised to find Lucien awake.

"Syryn, what's going on?" The question caught the alchemist off guard and he realised it was Red that had spoken.

"You, what the hell happened to you?!" He jabbed a finger at Red's forehead.

"I passed out for a few days. Big deal. Stop being so dramatic."

"Dramatic? Is that the gratitude I get for taking care of your comatose ass?"

Red pressed his lips in a line and turned away from Syryn. "Thank you." It was a small sound, so small that Syryn almost thought he was imagining it.

"What was that? Say it louder."

"Fuck off."

Syryn was happy to have him back. "Are you okay now, Red?"

The child shook his head. "Another month or so of sleeping. I'll probably wake up multiple times in between though."

"And what about Luci?"

"Luci will sleep less. Why are we here, Syryn?" The redhead looked around at their surroundings and landed on Akida. "And who is the new guy?"

"I decided to stop over in this village because I was worried about you. I'm still not sure about leaving for Nua till you're all better."

"Let's get moving. I hate the smell of this place. Woke up to the stink of something so pungent, I wanted to throw up in my mouth."

It was the trumpet flower. So Syryn wasnt the only one who couldn't tolerate it.

"That's Akida by the way. He's our new guard. Useful avian."

Red's gaze took in the sight of Akida chopping some firewood with the expertise of a lumberjack.

"I'm going back to sleep," Red informed Syryn. "Let Luci have dinner when he's ready to."

-----

At the crack of dawn, Syryn stared at the test tube with mixed feelings. It had the streaks of white powder now familiar to him. Here was confirmation of all his suspicions. It was hard evidence that proved beyond a shadow of doubt about the insidious nature of the fungus. But it left Syryn with more questions than answers.

How did humans become an accidental host to the fungus? Which groups of people were more susceptible to its invasion? Who were the merchants that had brought it to this place? Maybe he was overthinking it and the fungus was just a freak of nature that had evolved in that direction because of a set of random coincidences. Well, it wasn't his problem.

"Akida, get ready to leave. We're moving tomorrow, early in the morning," he told the guard. "Do we have mounts?"

"I'll take care of the logistics. Wrap up whatever work you've got left today."

Syryn left the details to the reliable guard and made a beeline to the headman's house where Dinah was already waiting.

"Healer, we've been waiting for you." The man stood up from his chair and greeted Syryn. Dinah nodded once and waited for the alchemist to speak.

"Look," Syryn retrieved a corked test tube from his pocket and held it out to the duo. "White streaks. The same result that I got from the builder's sample as well as the plant samples."

The headman blanched. "So it's all true. They all died because of that plant."

While they conversed, Syryn saw a crowd approaching them. People were angry. There was the trouble that he had wanted to avoid.

"This man is lying! Headman, how can you believe him without evidence?!" It was the owner of the trumpet. Was she really such a penny pincher that the thought of losing her plant was making her crazy enough to gather a mob? Syryn wondered.

"Didn't I show you the test tubes?" Syryn asked the crowd. He had displayed evidence of fungal infection before the autopsy on Cami had started.

"And how do we know that you didn't just fabricate them?"

"You could have made everything up!"

"None of us know anything about the suspicious experiments you do. It doesn't mean you can just fool us! We're not stupid."

Syryn hadn't heard something so hilarious in a really long time. He began to laugh at the man who said he wasn't stupid.

Offended by Syryn's unbridled laughter, the man sputtered in rage. "You- it's you that killed them! And you're trying to blame the plant for it!"

The alchemist wiped a tear from the corner of his eye and smiled. "If you want to place the pot on my head, I dont mind taking the blame for everything. But that also means you'll all have to die." Common sense and logic were commodities that the villagers had a dearth of.

"Are you threatening us? Look, he admits it!"

The alchemist had a vague looking smile on his face that Dinah didn't like.

"When did Syryn arrive at the village?" She asked the headman.

The confused man who had almost believed the villagers recalled that one victim was already dead when Syryn's party had arrived. It meant that he was innocent.

"We passed by the funeral procession of Torben. It couldn't have been the healer," he informed the crowd.

Many faces in the crowd looked uncertain after the headman's revelation.

"That doesn't mean he didn't do it! For a healer like him, it's just as easy to poison the water and make us believe that he's innocent. Don't believe his lies! He is an outsider!" It was the man that hadn't wanted to risk his life during the boundary demarcation.

"And what proof do you have that Syryn did what you accuse him of?" Dinah asked the crowd.

"Why do we need proof? It's obviously him," another stupid villager shouted.

"Okay, and what about my motives? Why would I bother to come to this backward place of a village and murder a bunch of people who I've never met?" Syryn asked them since Dinah was intent on taking the peaceful route.

"How do we know? We aren't mind readers!" The woman replied.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. The words echoed in Syryn's mind. How were they so stupid? Could he raze this village down so that the morons could not spread their stupid genes? No, sterilise them, his conscience suggested.

"He is innocent," Dinah stood in front of Syryn and reiterated to the crowd when she'd made the realisation that logic was absent in this court. The frightened villagers had made their minds up about the alchemist, a target they could actually attack.

"Priestess, step aside and let us take the healer away!"

Dinah was the only thing standing between them and a furious demon. The villagers didnt know that. Syryn was more than capable of burying the entirety of the village under rubble. She wasn't saving Syryn from them, it was them getting saved from the man's wrath. How she wished she could tell them.

When a burly villager stepped forward to push her aside, Dinah decided she had had enough. Power flared in her eyes and the air surrounding Dinah became so hot that it charred the skin of the man that had tried to touch her.

"Do not presume that you can touch me so casually," she told the man. The warning in her tone could not be mistaken for anything else. "The goddess sees that you have no gratitude for the goodness rendered unto you by an innocent man. Scatter or you will perish this day."

Dinah in her priestess avatar was terrifying to behold. The villagers scattered like leaves on a windy day. And when the last one had run away, she turned around to the alchemist and squeezed his arm.

"You should leave the village, Syryn."