Conflict

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. If I find something that canon does not cover, I will make stuff up. If canon then refutes me, I will revise. Do not bother me with fanon; corrections require citations.

3) I will accept any legitimate criticism of my work. However, I reserve the right to ignore anyone who says "That's wrong" without showing how it is wrong, and suggesting how it can be made right. Posting negative reviews from an anonymous account is a good way to have said reviews deleted.

Part One: Divergence

Hungry. So hungry.

Chantelle had been lost in this place for three days now. She had snatched quick, furtive gulps of water from a spring in the hillside, but there was nothing resembling food that she dared eat. Worse, there were others here. Some were human. Of the humans, none spoke her language, but there were some concepts that transcended language. Hunger. Thirst. Other basic needs.

Some of the men were … brutish. She'd had to fight off two attackers so far; belatedly, she blessed her mother for the self-defence courses which she had so reluctantly attended. Other women had not been so lucky. There had been screams in the night.

However, without food, she would soon be too weak to fight off any of the attackers, human or otherwise. Nightmarish visions of cannibalism, of the people ganging up to hunt loners, ran through her head. She had not joined any of the groups. There was a very definite tax for pretty women joining such groups. She was a loner.

The strange portals beckoned to her, offering a way home. But she didn't know which one was hers, and she didn't know how to tell once she stepped through. So she dithered, venturing a little way into one and then another, seeking desperately to spot a clue, a hint, as to which one led home and which were traps for the unwary.

Of course, there were also the monsters to be wary of. As far as she could tell, they didn't want to rut with her; they just wanted to kill her, to get a head start on the cannibalism. This was the disadvantage of being with a group; you were all too likely to attract the attention of a monster, then be discarded as the rest of the group made its escape.

Chantelle was making her way to the spring, passing by one of the groups, when she saw the girl. Not more than ten years old, with black hair and skin as pale as Chantelle's was dark, the kid wore a homespun dress. As young as she was, there was more purpose in her than in any of the dozens of people dumped here by the catastrophe. The trouble was, she was marching straight toward the crater where the thing was. Chantelle had done her best not to look at the thing after the first day. Some people had gone down there and not come back; she doubted that it was because they had found their way home.

She stepped into the girl's way. "Sweetie," she said urgently. "You don't want to go down there. It's dangerous." Her words, she was almost certain, would go straight over the girl's head, but maybe the tone would register.

It didn't. The girl just kept on going. Chantelle tried to grab her, but her hand closed on empty air as the girl dipped her shoulder at just the right moment. She tried again, but the girl stepped out of the way just in time. It couldn't have been more efficiently done if they'd practised.

I can't just let her walk into danger alone. The girl was a new factor, one that she couldn't figure out. Maybe she knew something, or could do something. If nothing else, she had plenty of moxie, as an American friend of Chantelle's had once put it. And if the worst came to the worst, Chantelle could just pick her up and run. She was getting really good at running, usually away from something, or someone.

The girl reached the edge of the crater and stepped over, sliding down as if on an escalator. She just didn't stop; one long slide from top to bottom, never losing her balance. Chantelle doubted that she could replicate the feat; she descended as quickly as she dared, sliding from outcrop to outcrop. She was certain that if she tried to do the same as the girl, she would end up at the bottom with broken bones at least, quite likely a broken back or neck. As she skidded toward another rock in a cloud of loose dirt, she tried to keep track of where the kid was going.

Oh christ. She's going into the flesh garden.

This was the thing that Chantelle had done her best to ignore. Just being monstrously horrific was not enough; the thing twisted space in ways that gave her headaches. That it was the source of the portals that had brought people here, she was sure. But she was equally sure that it was much, much more. More of what, she wasn't entirely clear about, but it was something that she had chosen to ignore as a problem that she couldn't solve and didn't want to face … until now.

Four days ago, she had been a twenty-year-old college student with a half-finished psychology degree. Her biggest problem was how she was going to explain her failing grades to her parents after she finished her summer vacation. Now she had to venture into a place that looked like it had been had been painted from the nightmares of H P Lovecraft by Salvador Dali and Hieronymus Bosch, and try to save some kid from killing herself. Without, it had to be said, getting killed herself.

Reaching the bottom in a cloud of dust, Chantelle made her way toward the same gap in the rocks that the kid had gone through. Stepping through, she found herself in a surreal approximation of Hell. In her head, she had called it a 'flesh garden', and what the grey flesh around her was trying to grow was … a human being. She could see it in the hands, arms, legs and other body parts.

There were other things too, things that she averted her eyes from. Places where space twisted in a way she didn't want to think about. The worst part was the noise. Sounds like beating hearts and audible breathing came from all around her, making her want to curl up in a ball and scream until it all went away.

But the kid hadn't freaked out, so Chantelle couldn't either. She could see the drab, homespun dress in the distance, and hurried to try to catch up. It wasn't as easy as it seemed; while the barriers of flesh didn't move to bar her way, she still had to walk on things that looked like bits of people. Occasionally, these twitched and moved, not with purpose, but enough to give Chantelle the screaming heebie-jeebies. Or they would have, if she didn't have a terminal case already.

Mother wanted me to become a doctor. I am never, ever, ever going to medical school after this.

The kid had stopped and was talking to someone. No, she was looking at something, another extrusion from this garden of fleshy horrors. This was a complete person, or at least part of one. It hadn't finished forming yet. At that moment, it was bent over, just in the process of raising its head.

There was something in the kid's hand; Chantelle couldn't make it out. But she struck, hard and accurately. The thing convulsed for a moment, then slumped.

Just as Chantelle got close enough to see that the kid was standing on a giant hand, of all things, everything changed. The twitching movement stopped, all around her. The heartbeats stilled, the breathing halted. The hand that the kid was standing on relaxed, spilling her to the ground. As she did so, Chantelle saw that the kid was holding a short knife.

Did she just stab this thing to death?

She caught up with the kid in time to help her to her feet. Pointing to the now motionless humanoid figure, she asked, "Is it dead? Did you kill it?"

The kid considered her words for a moment. Well, duh, she can't understand you.

But then, to Chantelle's amazement, she answered. Her voice was stilted and halting, the words accented oddly, but recognisable all the same. "Not dead, but not alive."

"Well, should we finish it?" Chantelle looked around at the still-nightmarish forest of body parts. She knew that she would feel much better if it was dead and gone. As it was, she would never again be able to close her eyes without seeing it in her mind's eye.

The girl shook her head. "No. It is not dangerous any more. There is something else we must do."

"Getting out of this pit of horrors? I'm all for that."

For the first time, the kid looked her in the eyes. Chantelle saw the weariness around her eyes, the hollowness of her cheeks. "We will do that. I have no home to go to, and I need shelter."

"Well, sorry, kid, but I've been lost here for three days myself."

The girl's smile was weary. "I will take you back to your home. But there is something that we must do first."

"What? What must we do? What's more important than getting out of this hellhole? And what do you know about this place, anyway? What happened here? Where are we? What is this thing?" Chantelle knew that her mouth was running away with her, but it was better than screaming.

For a long moment, the kid considered her tirade of questions. "You will see," she replied simply. Turning, she began to climb over the various body parts in a particular direction.

There was no more reason that Chantelle could see to go in this direction than any other, but that was the way the kid wanted to go, so that was the way that Chantelle was going to go. If this kid can get me home, then I'll walk through the gates of Hell with her. She glanced back over her shoulder at the rim of the impact crater. Oh wait, I just did.

They didn't go far; the kid stopped at a weird nodule of flesh that didn't seem any different than any one of a million other weird nodules of flesh in this fucked-up place. It twitched as she set the knife to it; she paused and looked up at Chantelle. "I will need you to hold it steady."

"Sure, why not?" Chantelle took hold of the nodule. It was warm to the touch, and she could feel almost subliminal quivers running through it. Maybe we should have finished killing that thing after all. "What's this for?" If she says 'lunch' I might just throw up. If I had anything to throw up, that is.

The knife moved surely, splitting the outer skin. Chantelle concentrated on holding her hands steady. On the next cut, a tough covering was peeled aside to reveal a red-veined white lump the size of a baseball. As she sliced more of the covering away, the girl spoke. "There is another like this one. Stronger. We must defeat it as well. It will destroy the world if we don't. Hold that."

Obediently, not even questioning now why she was following the orders of a girl half her age, Chantelle wrapped her hands around the lumpy protrusion. It was warm and slick under her hands, pulsating very slowly. "What is it?"

"It is the thing that controls the powers of this godling." The kid was concentrating now, cutting carefully, but without any hesitation.

Controls? Powers? "Okay, what are we going to be doing with it?"

"You are going to be ingesting it."

Chantelle stared at the thing that she was holding. In the kid's hands, the sharp little knife had already severed halfway through the spine or stalk or nerve plexus or whatever it was that connected this thing to the main mass. There is no fucking way I am eating that. "You have to be joking with me."

The kid looked up. "I am not joking with you. We will need to reduce this thing to its essence and then you will have to drink that. That is the only way to gain enough power to face the Other."

Chantelle shook her head. "I need to know more."

As she sliced away the last of the connective tissue, the girl began to explain. There were two of these … things; the girl called them 'godlings'. This one was now rendered incapable of moving. Removing this nodule meant that, even if this one was revived, it would not be able to call on its powers.

"You keep talking about powers," Chantelle objected as the lumpy object came free. It was no longer pulsating. "What do you mean by that?"

The girl's gaze was direct. "You have seen the monsters?"

Chantelle shuddered. "Yes. I have seen the monsters."

"These godlings are made up of many smaller parts that bestow powers. The monsters had powers pushed on to them that went wrong. This piece will let you control all the powers in this one."

"And by 'powers' you mean …"

The girl shrugged. "The ability to fly through the air. The ability to destroy your enemies with a wave of your hand. Powers."

Oh. Shit.

"Uh … so we're going to somehow reduce this … this thing to its essence. And I've got to drink that essence. And that essence will give me powers."

"Yes."

Chantelle looked at the girl. "You've got all the answers. Why aren't you going to be the one drinking this essence?"

"Because I already have powers. I would reject the essence. It would be wasted."

"Ah." The penny finally dropped. "All this stuff you're doing, it's because your powers told you how to do it?"

The girl nodded gravely. "Yes."

"So now what do we do?"

"We go home. Your home. There is much we must do before we can confront the Other."

"You mean before I confront the Other."

"Yes. All I can do is tell you how to defeat it."

Chantelle considered that. "Well, you seem to know what you're doing so far." She paused. "Wait, I don't even know your name."

The girl raised her chin. "I am Fortuna."

"Well, Fortuna, I'm Chantelle. Pleased to meet you. Now, I believe you said we could go home?"

"Yes." Fortuna began to lead the way out of the now-quiescent flesh garden. "It's this way."

Clutching the nodule in her hands, Chantelle followed on.

End of Part One