#coalescence

Eris leaned closer so Drifter could read her lips. "You missed one."

"Yeah. I figured. Thanks."

Eris handed him his gun and began to pace around the small cave they were in. Light filtered through a circular hole in the rock above them, illuminating a tree in the centre of the enclosed space. Amethyst crystals glittered and moss grew on several of the rocks around them. Outside of the Scorn bodies strewn around in various states of dismemberment, the area was extremely beautiful.

"The Divalian mists hold many hidden dangers," Eris intoned. "Much of this location's treachery is due to the reduced visibility perpetuated by the fog which obfuscates large portions of the landscape."

"Sorry," Drifter interrupted her. "My ear's ringin' so much I barely heard what you said. Somethin' about the mist?"

Eris turned back to him so he could see her lips. "It is everywhere."

"Yeah," he nodded. "Stuff sneaks up on ya."

"Precisely."

"It would have to be in the sketchiest area that we gotta go lookin' for your thing, huh? Bay of Drowned Wishes. What a name!"

"If it were in an area with higher visibility, the anomaly we are seeking would have already been found."

"Oh hey," Drifter pointed. "Tiny purple sparkle tree!"

"A Baryon Bough, yes."

"Always wondered," he said, gesturing to the large tree in the middle of the cave growing up toward the light from the amethyst-ringed hole in the ceiling. "The not-sparkle trees are called Baryon trees too, right?"

"Correct."

"What makes the little purple sparkly ones different?"

"Paracausal fluctuations in the fabric of reality. They are partially Ascendant, partially physical, but also semi-intangible and not fully adherent to a corporeal form."

"You sure about that?" Drifter asked as he crouched next to the glowing shrub as it phased in and out of existence. "Ascendant plane's not purple."

"It is likely there is also some residual combination of the Void Light and the Darkness," Eris told him. "The Awoken are all inherently touched by both the Light and the Dark."

"Huh," Drifter plucked the glowing half-tangible Baryon Bough and put it into a bag slung over his shoulder. "Freaky and pretty. Always good to grab 'em when ya find 'em."

"The Baryon Boughs?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"The boneheaded guys like 'em. They'll trade 'em for stuff."

"The… bone... headed guys?" Eris turned from the wall she was inspecting and looked at him quizzically.

"Yeah," he repeated. "In the city."

"I do not follow."

"Dragon bone heads in the walls. Shrines to 'em or somethin'."

Eris sucked in a deep breath and then spoke reverently. "Huginn and Muninn. Killed by Sjur Eido by order of the Queen."

"Is that what they are? Huh. This whole place is freaky."

"Hmmm… Yes, I suppose it is." Eris resumed her examination of the area.

"Like these glowy grassy flower things in the pools of water among the lily pad leaves? Just look at 'em. They're like little light bulbs. Got tall ones and short ones, flower ones and finger ones. Actually… you know… the flowers do kinda look a lot like the egg cup fungus on the Moon."

"What? Show me."

"Over here."

Drifter brought her to a shallow puddle. They both knelt down in the water to inspect the flora floating there. Eris summoned her orb to float next to her and began to study the smaller flowers.

"Like… if these ones had all light and colour sucked outta 'em," Drifter explained. "And were dried up and then someone like… smashed the tops of the orb flower things. They'd kinda look like the fungus on the Moon that looks like someone stuck smashed eggs on sticks. You know the ones I mean, right?"

"Fascinating," Eris murmured, stroking the plants with her fingers. "Your intuition has sound grounding. They may have some… genealogical referent. Perhaps due to the influences of the Darkness or… perhaps something else. Here."

Eris took his hand and brought it to the base of one of the flowers, pulling his fingertips into the inch-deep water. "Do you feel it?" she asked him. "The combination of Light and Dark shifting just under the surface of the stem?"

"No, but as long as you keep holdin' my hand I'll keep tryin'," he grinned at her.

"Tsch," she chided him gently. "It rustles, like a restless dream. The Awoken Queen's domain has been shaped by wishes and influenced heavily by paracausal forces… both Light and Dark. It is deeply in tune with the Ascendant plane… The crystalline structures scattered throughout its terrain resonate… sometimes strongly, sometimes faintly, with echoes of the power used in shaping it."

"Resonate, huh?"

"Yes."

"Well if they're resonatin' can we track that frequency? Use it to bounce off of what we're lookin' for like… I dunno… Ascendant magic sonar or somethin'? See if it bounces different back?"

Eris froze for a moment, staring at him.

"What?" he asked.

"You are simultaneously the most fatuous and astute person I have ever known."

"Hey! Sure I'm always eatin', but that ain’t fair."

"What?"

"Shouldn't never call people fat, Moondust, even as a joke. It's rude."

Eris blinked all three of her eyes, shook her head in confusion, and continued. "Hive magic is transmitted via several different mediums, one of which is song. If I could cast the runes correctly, it is possible that… Hmmm… I would need a conductor."

"Electric or like for a orchestra?"

"Neither, but… closer to electric. A medium through which to carry the resonant magic and… behave as you said… like sonar."

"A medium?" he asked her. "Like water carries waves?"

"Exactly."

Drifter pulled his hands away from Eris' and selected a different, nearby stalk. It was long and worm-like with a glowing tip shaped almost like a finger. He snapped it off half-way up and held up the broken end. It dripped glowing white sap.

"If the plants are singin' to ya, maybe the sap inside of 'em is carryin' their song?"

Eris' lips formed a small smile as she looked at him. "Perspicacious creature!"

"Don't you cuss at me!"

. . .

An hour later, Eris was crouched on the ground in the centre of several concentric circles painted on to the rock with the glowing sap the Drifter had gathered for her from the flower stalks in the area. Chanting in the guttural language of the Hive, Eris used the sap dripping from a beheaded blossom to draw the last of her runes as Drifter kept watch nearby, his scout rifle ready.

Eris' voice became louder and Drifter felt the air shift. He looked away from the entrance to the cave to see Eris, mist swirling all around her, hovering in the air. Then she shouted something he did not understand and disappeared.

Drifter frowned. "Moondust?"

Silence.

"Moondust, you still here?"

There was no response. Drifter's frown deepened.

"I hate it when she does that," he whispered to himself. Then he spun around at the sound of rotting nails scraping across stone and began to fire as a group of oncoming Screebs scuttled toward him out of the mist.

. . .

Eris found herself in a strange and nebulous space. It was not the Ascendant plane, nor was it her own reality. It was something tenuous and in-between. The vision through Eris' alien eyes was dim and muddled but, in exchange, a different sort of sensory input provided itself to her. It was a form of touch yet one with which she was entirely unfamiliar and her perception of it was not bound by her skin. Eris felt herself swirling and shifting, her own body ceasing to be a thing which concerned her. She explored this new sensation, seeking what information it would provide to her and felt herself slithering… shifting… wafting…

Her Drifter was there, but not there. He was shouting something. Death was near him. It scurried on many rotted legs. He threw fire at it and it burned, but more death was coming. Eris watched impassively as he defended himself.

She knew he was calling to her but she could not hear him. A rushing sound had filled her ears. She looked up and, instead of the brightly lit sky of the Dreaming City through the hole in the rock above her, she saw a swirling mass of blurry energy. Eris felt her limbs dissolving. Her corporeal form was becoming increasingly tenuous. This was not a state which could be sustained. She must be quick.

Eris breathed in and felt herself expanding, becoming even more thin and whisp-like. She began reaching out her tendrils and feeling in her misty amorphous form, seeking answers.

There. Like a bell ringing out, she could feel the essences around her ripple in response to the presence of the anomaly she sought. She demanded it prove its right to exist and it answered with mocking laughter, but the sound was one Eris recognized: Dûl Incaru, the Eternal Return, Daughter of Savathûn.

Of course.

So this was where she existed when her physical form was banished by the Guardian. A curious situation and one which would require more experimentation in future. Perhaps with this knowledge the curse of the city might be better understood. Perhaps, even one day, lifted.

Eris turned, her mission accomplished, and attempted to move herself back toward the Drifter. But she found that she was unable to do so. She willed the tendrils of this new form to coalesce in reverse to the way she had stretched herself out but they did not respond. She felt herself unspooling, drowning, becoming one with the mist.

"No!" Eris tried to speak, but she no longer had a mouth to do so. She tried to fight against her dissolution but no longer had limbs. Refusing to accept defeat, she spun in her mostly incorporeal form and willed it to twist and swirl like the mist she was becoming. This did work and she wafted closer to the Drifter, slithering along the wet rocks, intangible, using her wind-bound essence to bring herself closer to him.

Eris tried to cling to the Drifter but he was too solid and she was too indistinct. She passed right through him and had to swirl her way back. She needed some touchstone, something to help her bridge the gap between this murky haze and the physical reality she had come from. She spun again, swishing along the rocks and plants around him, seeking anything that might help her regain her corporeal form.

And there it was, in a bag slung over his shoulder, the "little purple sparkle tree" he had plucked and kept. Its boughs both physical and intangible, real and not-real, there and not-there.

Eris focused on the Baryon Bough as Drifter fought off another wave of Scorn. Her fingers, still in mist-form but almost physical, not quite yet there, tugged the bag off his shoulder. It fell at his feet with a light splash and opened. The glowing shrub tumbled free.

Eris poured herself into it, feeling it, filling it. She entered the spaces within it and then, once there, she was able to shift herself in time with it as it moved into and out of reality, pushing her own way farther with each slow pulse back into the physical world. In this manner Eris was able to ride the Baryon Bough's phases, using it to draw herself back out of the strange half-reality her spell had enabled her to enter.

. . .

Drifter threw another grenade and emptied his scout rifle into the Scorn Abomination that was shooting lightning bolts of Arc energy at him. It went down in a blue haze but, before he could blink yet more Screebs scurried across its dead body, heading straight for him.

He pulled out Trust and, eight shots later, he had gunned them all down.

There was a splash behind him.

He spun, finger on the trigger, ready to fire, only to point the gun muzzle to the side and begin running toward Eris. She was face-down in the water, the glowing Baryon Bough clutched tightly in one of her hands.

"Moonlight!" he yelled as he slid to his knees, splashing in the puddle next to her.

She reached out with her free hand and clutched his tightly.

Drifter helped her sit up and then grunted in surprise as Eris wrapped her arms around his neck, gripping him fiercely and holding him close.

"You all right?" he asked her gently while returning her embrace.

Eris sighed deeply and began untangling herself from him. "I am now. And… I have never been more grateful for your compulsion to scavenge random objects for personal profit."

Drifter blinked at her words, confused. "Right, well, I dunno what you did. But somehow, we've become a magnet for every Screeb in the Dreaming City right now. Can we get the hell out of here?"

"Yes," she said, relief in her voice. "Please."

He smiled brightly at her. "Transmat Firing!" This is only one story in the zine. It's filled with art and stories! Check it out!:

Ink by Comyet

Coalescence by me