I crawled up through the dirt tunnel until I emerged blinking like a mole in a grove of the pale pines. Flowers grew amongst the grassy forest floor, and pollen hung heavy in the air. I dusted myself off and checked that my entire body was intact. The Butcher Bird’s warning rang in my ears.

  I needed to return to the expedition as fast as possible.

  But which direction was that?

  I filled my lungs with oxygen before reeling it all in a single shout.

  “Hello?”

  My voice echoed through the pines.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello…”

  “...Lo….”

  “Hello!”

  A reply drifted in on the wind. I smiled and started walking in the direction of the voice. I breathed deeply again.

  “Is that you, Mr River?” I shouted.

  “No.”

  I slowed.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Mrs River, my husband is at work. You can keep coming, though. I’ll lead you back to your camp.”

  I frowned. Should I trust Mrs River? I hadn’t personally met her, but it didn’t seem like I had another option.

  “I’d love to see you!” she called. “You weren’t awake when you were inside me earlier.”

  I relaxed at her words. She was the one who carried me downstream, and while I wished she hadn’t dragged me so far, I didn’t begrudge her when it was all my fault to begin with.

  “Alright, see you soon!”

  I jogged towards the sound of the voice, and the forest quickly cleared.

  Mrs River flowed and swirled. Her dark waters cut widely through the trees, with the banks on each side draped in soft leaves.

  “Oh, look at you!” she cried in an excited, bubbling voice. “So big and strong! Yet it feels like only this morning that I was carrying you in my belly like a sleeping baby.”

  “You were.”

  “Indeed! Now, why don’t you take my hand, and I’ll lead you back to your expedition.”

  She sloshed against the riverbank, and I reached down to grasp her fingers, but they slipped through mine like water. We tried a few more times, and at last she sighed.

  “I suppose you’re a bit too big now for me to hold your hand. Oh well, follow me, and I’ll bring you back to your comrades.”

  “You know about them?”

  “The other humans? Of course I do, sweet pea. The valley knows about your expedition!”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “I certainly think so. We’ve been so bored for decades!”

  I nodded slowly.

  “I sort of hope things stay boring.”

  “Hah!”

  I shook my head at her excitement over my misfortune.

  My willingness to experiment separated me from the expedition, but I wasn’t standing in the middle of a river now… I was simply beside one.

  Anyway, I had a new idea for a movement technique.

  Blood from my reservoir pumped through my muscles, swelling them until my skin was the color of a plum. As they expanded, I recalled the grey stone’s vision, and focused on the fibers weaving strength into my muscles. My flesh reservoir poured into my muscles, condensing them and contracting the swelling caused by my blood.

  My body fluctuated and roiled like a sheet in the wind as I tried to steady the crossover of flesh and blood manipulation. My heart pumped faster and faster, even as my vision slowed, oxygen and adrenaline flowing through my body until my flesh hummed.

  I burst forward like a song, quickly outpacing Mrs River as I raced beside her.

  Pale trees streaked past me as I launched myself through the forest. Bushes whipped. Air screamed in my ears as my feet tore the softened riverbank to shreds.

  I ran.

  This wasn’t an enrichment of my flesh from qi; this was an enhancement beyond what was normal through manipulation, and I’d made myself so fast my eyes and brain struggled to keep up. It was glorious.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I darted through the trees, sometimes closer to the river and sometimes further, always using her encouraging voice as a guide.

  Until I tripped.

  “Watch out!”

  Mrs River’s voice echoed in my ears as I tumbled end over end. I rushed to my feet and looked for the river, but it was still there, babbling away. Next, I looked for a root that might have tripped me and flung me forward into the trap of a living formation.

  I couldn’t handle being stalked by a maze again.

  Fortunately, there was no root snatching at my legs; I’d simply run faster than I could see and tripped over a half-buried corpse leaning against a tree trunk. The bones lay draped in fallen leaves and rusted armor with a hole punched into the center. Vivid orange mushrooms sprouting from the exposed skull and the shattered ribcage. The skeleton’s legs had sunk beneath the ground and roots long ago, as though they rested in a bath.

  I crouched down until I was eye level with the corpse.

  “Did you trip me for a reason?”

  The corpse didn’t answer, but I noticed something poking out beside his hips.

  Reaching forward, the muscles in my arms still bulging and quivering with the dual manipulations, I scooped away the earth and found a shard of fired clay. It was curved, like a pot, with a crescent hole cut out. I’d seen a hole like that before, and I held the shard up to the skull with some trepidation.

  I really hoped my theory wasn’t true.

  The crescent hovered over the empty eye socket, and a spider crawled in the darkness. I dropped the shard as though it were burning hot and as though I felt pain. Could it be? More impaled animals hung in the trees, their corpses long dessicated by exposure. Spiked amongst them, rarer but far more obvious, were some humans. Their skeletons punched through the ribs, and their limbs were dangling toward the earth.

  I walked to the nearest tree with a human and dug around until my fingers brushed over the rough surface of unglazed clay. It was round and large, and I gingerly unearthed it as I gazed up at the corpse punctured high above me with one branch sticking up through its ribcage and another through its mouth.

  I held a clay mask.

  Cracks crept in from the edges, but it was otherwise intact. Simple in design, featureless save for dimples that echoed fingerprints. Two crescent slits through which the demonic cultivator must have looked at the world. There was no mouth.

  Back in the facility, when I could still dream, this mask plagued my nightmares.

  “So, you were one of them.”

  The mask’s eyes smiled at me.

  “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?”

  My tongue dried in my mouth. I’d never heard a voice from this mask, and for it to be so rich and welcoming was more off-putting than if it had been sinister.

  “No,” I said. “You haven’t met me.”

  “Oh, but I have! You were one of our glorious projects.”

  He knew.

  How could he know?

  “I’m not an experiment.”

  The mask guffawed.

  “Now, now, don’t lie.”

  I remained silent.

  “Don’t be like that! You reek of our science, and I can see the design in you, the fingerprints in the clay, so to speak.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Ah, so now you speak. I see a weapon, and I see a slav,e and I see a scared little boy who doesn’t know why he runs or jumps or barks, only that he must, because the world commands and he dare not disobey.”

  My muscles rippled as my control over my manipulation slipped, but even as strength surged in my hands, I couldn’t bring myself to snap the mask.

  I was too afraid.

  “Nobody commands me.”

  The mask’s eyes twinkled.

  “Put me on.”

  I flinched away from the empty gaze as heat pounded in my brain.

  “No.”

  “You must overcome your fear by becoming your fear. Join with me, embrace me as though I am your father, and let us walk into the darkness together.”

  “No! Nobody controls me!”

  My face twisted. Heart rushed through me as I flung the mask to the ground. It shattered against an exposed root, and the pieces bounced across the loam. I could still hear the laughing mask.

  In the scattered pieces, I could make out the carved symbol of a lotus that must have pressed against a demonic cultivator’s face.

  Heat raged through my body, and I fell to my hands and knees.

  “Stop…” I drooled.

  My weaponized self screamed and raged, my muscles bursting like bloody boils as it fought for control.

  “No.”

  “Yes!” screamed a voice bursting from my torn cheek.

  My fingers twitched so hard they snapped, but I pressed my flailing hands deeper into the earth and filled my lungs with air.

  “I forbid it!” I bellowed.

  My voice echoed through the trees, and the heat subsided. I staggered to my feet and tossed my robes aside. I waded into the river and let the skin slough from my body. Blood flowed downstream and regenerated a new layer.

  I felt cleansed, but my weaponized self still pulsed in the back of my mind like a fresh burn.

  The shedding wasn’t an attempt to get rid of him, but any trace of having touched that abhorrent mask. Once I left the water, I redressed, and my gaze drifted back up to the humans impaled on the forest’s pale branches. Their chests shattered, a hole punched through their armor…

  The Hidden Lotus didn’t leave Howling Blossom Valley; the Butcher Bird killed them.

  “Did he get you all?” I asked the nearest corpse. “Or did some of you escape so that you could kidnap me?”

  Of course, it didn’t answer.

  “Ignore him!” called out Mrs River. “All of these people are terrible conversationalists. It’s like talking to a brick wall!”

  I stood and walked away. Mrs River was right. No matter what I’d said to the faceless demonic cultivators dragging me down the facility hallway, they’d remained as silent and implacable as stone.

  Back then, I’d believed with all my heart and -- well, my soul -- that they were unkillable, but now I’d seen proof there were people behind the masks.

  They could die.

  The pale trees loomed like the walls of the hallway as I jogged beside Mrs River. A chill crept from my bones despite the heat bubbling in my brain. The memory teetered on overtaking me, the yawning door, the shining tools, the smell of my blood in the air… and I struggled to figure out whose memory it was; all three of my pasts overlapping as the heat from my weaponized self crackled and popped.

  Though he wasn’t trying to take over again, I knew he was simply waiting for me to lose focus again.

  “Don’t worry,” said Mrs River, misinterpreting the source of my displeasure. “You’ll reach your companions soon. I can see them ahead, where I flow into the marsh.”

  “Are they alright?” I asked.

  “They’re happy!”

  “Really?”

  “They’re dancing around my puddles, with fists full of gold and gems. It's as though they aren’t in any danger at all!”

  Though her tone remained pleasant, there was an ominous edge to her words. I glanced around the forest, but saw no animals besides the ones impaled in the trees, their skin stiff as canvas, and their bones scattered on the ground below.

  Was the Butcher Bird watching me?

  I knew the truth now, but I couldn’t predict how it might react. Would it punish me, or deny my words outright? I wondered if it even knew, or if the truth of its situation was buried beneath layers of fantasy and false reality until nobody else could recognize its world.

  I shook my head, half with pity, and half with bewilderment as I ran alongside Mrs River -- I couldn’t imagine being so detached from reality.

  Heat flared in the back of my neck with every step, but I resisted, and soon the smell of marshwater tickled my nostrils, and the sound of cheering came from the distance.

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