The swamp dragon climbed down the last hill of the Gor tribes, out of the last forest shaped under the laws of reality.

  The sign that they had crossed a boundary was in the trees, specifically the ubiquity of mycorrhizae at the roots and conks up the trunk. These fungal symbiotes coexist with trees as adoptive limbs that would not have grown naturally and embody the meaning of life in abundance: life is unique, every life has purpose, diversity is our strength, together we are better, with coexistence we can be eternal. This was only the beginning, Father assured, there was more to see the further they went.

  Hypae filaments that threaded across the canopy grew into engulfing mycelium webbing. Soon there were great mushrooms, their caps hanging threads at the edges, and their stalks protruded by wooden branches. Eventually, the mushroom-covered trees and the branch sprouting mushrooms were so intermingled that they defied classification.

  Among the bushy canopy were birds preying on the fat caterpillars and worm clews that chewed on plump peaches and swollen pomegranates. Lorises and monkeys swung across hyphae vines to drink the sap from wood and the culture from stalks. Mosquitos nestled under matted fur and sodden feathers to gorge deeply on blood while gnats and beetles infested the mushrooms and trees. Luna moths and comma butterflies fluttered their way to and fro, ingesting the nectar of blooming flowers.

  The swamp dragon trampled over the tall grass far beneath it. Keelback snakes slithered across quaggy soil and mouldering dirt to strike at pikas nibbling the edges of moss, but did not dare provoke the tuskpigs and razorboars chewing on fallen branches. Gors, either on pilgrimage for enlightenment or exiled for redemption, waved their passing before returning their spears and bows to the sog deer obliviously enjoying leaves.

  This was the visage of life at its barest and purest, untamed and free, virile and flourishing. There was still death; that death served to feed the fauna and fertilize the soil with mulch that nourished flora, but death it was. But there was yet a place beyond death, a paradise that showed the beauty of life beyond limits: The Great Bog, an extension of the Ur-Father’s Garden, seeded upon this world.

  The forest trees thinned, in density and thickness, and the swamp dragon’s legs plunged into brackish pus. Humidity was so damp one could nearly drink the air, so rich with spores one could taste it. The blackened algae on the pus surface slid out of the way of the drifting lily pads lounged on by nurglings. The little lords whistled to alert a series of bells that would sound the arrival of visitors.

  Where once there was a sun in a sky that was fickle with the coming of night and the change of seasons, there was now an oozing sore upon festering heavens, ever suppurating the pus that fills the bog and, eventually, will flood the world. Businesses of fat, furry flies made up the black clouds of this realm, while mists of midges hovered over the pus surface.

  On the horizon was the great tree, though so far away, the girth of its trunk was akin to a mountain, and the breadth of its boughs was a canopy unto itself. Lumbering rot flies were outpaced by their energetic cousin noro flies, the droning of their membrane wings giving the true impression of their size, where the backdrop of the tree would belie their enormity. Plaguebringers, the footmen of the maggotkin, climbed the great tree to tame those flies as well as the wild mulloscoids that suckled on leaves for their gel. When not out on leave taming beasts to call their own, the plaguebringers work under Pusbloom’s contagium, ‘The Chortling Cacophony’: in times of peace, they cultivate the bog, organize the more simple maggotkin, and collaborate with mortals. They form into cysts made up of tallybands that balance martiality with the glee of doing battle in Nurgushin’s name.

  Splashing about next to the dragon were slug hounds, great beasts of Nurgushin who gambol on their bellies and clapped their hands and hollered from both mouths in vain attempts to invoke joy in the hearts of their dour cousins, the leech hounds who crawled along trying to ignore their annoying family. The leaping pox toads made splashes of much greater height, and they passed their time by using their lengthy tongues to tether down the hyperactive noro flies. It was all the better if the irritated flies came down to fight at ground level.

  Deeper now, where the tide has slowed, and peat has clumped, the nurglings rode on sphagnums through the sedges and heaths. Keen-eyed plaguebearers had their parchment out in the endless effort to tally the plethora of worms, parasites, viruses, bacteria, and germs that were brewed in the processes of the bog. The mischievous little lords splashed and dashed the tallymen’s efforts to their ire.

  Canker priests from the drylands waded here either to collect pus in mason jars or to complete their pilgrimage to the heart of the great tree. Those who were there for pilgrimage hitched onto the swamp dragon’s many spines and horns, for they journeyed to that same destination.

  Finally, at the base of the great tree, they entered through the spaces between the pneumatophorea. These vaulted roots were composed of more than unbreakable wood; bonded to them were mortal bodies whose souls entwined with the great tree, their flesh held in bondage by branches around their limbs. Many of them were canker priests who heard the calling to be part of something greater than they could comprehend. Many more were sacrifices captured from the death god’s flock over the centuries. Their misguided faith shattered, they pleaded for the Ur-Father’s mercy from torment to the amusement of the maggotkin.

  Most precious of these sacrifices were the daughters of the death god. Even over centuries, even as worms slithered in their veins, even as bot flies nested in their eyes, their faith in the Anathema burned bright to scalding. Whether from misplaced hope or sneering contempt, they sang their morbid songs on wasting vocal cords. It was a tangy flavor that most maggotkin did not have the palate to appreciate, but the heart of the great tree craved it for they empowered her more than any other. While most sacrifices were tragic necessities to Yun, a sad end to those too stubborn or misguided to see enlightenment until it was too late, the suffering of sororitas always brought a smirk, even after the passage of the ages dulled his senses.

  Under the heartwood now, they passed by canker priests who had been forever changed by the mir meeting with the great heart. The forsaken: those who communed directly with maggotkin still within the garden, they gave their souls to ascension so that the daemon could inhabit their body within the mortal plane, the host reshaped by the fill of its new wearer. The bloatspawn: those blessed with Nurgushin’s bountiful gifts, like a child stuffed with food by their grandparents, they have bloated tremendously from the life teeming within them. Rotmire Acolytes: those chosen by the great heart as her personal attendants, she has given them her wood to wear and uses them to cultivate and direct her power.

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  The acolytes guided them to the pith, the spongy wood at the center of the great tree, where a hollowed chamber contained the heart. Pandamecia! A Horticulturist of the maggotkin, one of the wardens closest to Nurgushin. When the dark flood washed upon the world, it was her seed that was planted deep within Sinui and gave birth to herself and the great bog. It is She from whose boils that many maggotkin are birthed in the journey from the garden. It is her fetid humors that feed her children such that they may live eternally, and her fecundity that delivers beauty in jubilant celebration of the coming of paradise.

  Not so jubilant was her herald, Pusbloom. While her attentions held up the heavens, he was her assistant who managed practical matters in her stead. From his buoyant palanquin, the perennially irritated fellow logged the new arrivals; he did not need to hear their names, as he could read their souls by sight, and he otherwise recognised them. He handed the parchment to one of his mydas fly secretaries perched on his mushroom cap. The mydas fly ascended into the sponge of the tree to embed the parchment’s information into it.

  The swamp dragon lowered to let its passengers down.

  “Pusbloom,” started Mogala, clutching Kazha, “this is my daughter.”

  “Kazha, yes, yes,” he slurped, “you're dropping is in the shape of you, very fascinating.”

  “A ray of sunshine as always.”

  “There are tens of millions of bacteria on your hands alone. I have not the care to spare for individual lives.”

  “No, I suppose not. One can’t appreciate much when they are counting ad nauseam ad infinitum.”

  “Of course, you can’t appreciate vastness. The rituals and recipes you were taught are simplified and diluted techniques of the numerology and sorcery beyond your feeble mind.”

  Mogala handed the baby to her hubby.

  “The Ur-Father speaks to me and through me. There is no dilution.”

  “Mortals hear the language and imitate it. You have not the fluency to understand the poetry. At least the canker priests know their place as vessels.”

  “It is your ignorance that does not allow you to understand. Only mortal tongue can translate the Ur-Father’s voice to the mortal plane. It takes mastery to make foreign meaning comprehensible reality. It is our rituals and recipes that soften and fertilize the soil for the Ur-father’s seed to take root and be nourished. You would not be here without us. You would be nothing without us.”

  Pusbloom’s grimace twisted into full scowl. His distended belly swang with the swivel of his palanquin and jiggled as he hopped down into the pus with a splash.

  “Need I remind you that this sanctuary was planted for your protection? Spoiled brat, your ancestors would have been extinguished if not for us!”

  Yun brought his daughter close and whispered, “Don’t worry, they are always like that. Uncle Pusbloom is happy to meet you,” the next part he said aloud, “and I’m sure Pandamecia would be happy to meet her as well.”

  Mogala and Pusbloom stopped their bickering cold. After exchanging curt grunts, they headed to the bottom of the heart. At the bottom was a hanging cornucopia filled with flawless gemstones. Beyond all sacrifices, prayers, and rituals, these gemstones facilitated Pandamecia’s presence in this world long after the maelstrom receded. Pusbloom had said these stones each contained souls vastly more valuable than those of even the Anathema’s daughters. Highly coveted they are, they must be guarded from jealous rivals with vigilance, for without them, the great tree, the bog, the maggotkin, all would wither away, no matter how many sacrifices are offered.

  Together, Mogala and Pusbloom drew upon the souls in the stones. One by one, raised veins along the heart walls throbbed bile. The heart wobbled its gestation, like an old machine groaning awake on rusted gears. Internally sorted now, the atriums and ventricles pulsed the bile with increasing synchronicity.

  Then a heartbeat.

  “Yun, dear?” It beat from all around and within, the palpitation of the tree attuning to their hearts, “is that you? And who is this!” Yun raised Kazha to the heart. “Kazha! What a precious thing she is! I never thought you would bring me a child.”

  “Neither did I,” shrugged Yun, “life is unpredictable.”

  “Oh no, life is quite predictable. A strapping young man falls in love with a wonderful woman, they arouse each other's passions until it overflows and bears fruit. A tale told trillions of times across all time. A tale I never tire of. I am just happy to see you in it. You had become so distant. I thought you’d soured.”

  “I might have. I might still. But for now,” he looked to his wife, her glistening fur and ethereal poise as beautiful as the first time he saw her under those feculent orchards. In his eyes, in his memory, she was a painting that stood above all the dull reality around her.

  “I’m sure she will be just as lovely as her mother.”

  “She better,” Mogala broke from the sorcery, tuckered out from the effort, “I didn’t carry her just for her to be as ugly as her dad.”

  Poise gone, there’s the other side of Mogala he knew and loved.

  “My pustules proliferate farther and faster with each passing day,” beat Pandamecia, “soon I will be in full bloom.”

  “Portents of verdancy,” said Mogala, retaking Kazha, “visions of yetborn, voices yearning to be heard, clawing at the walls between the warp and world, desperate and craving. More than one shaman and priest has been overwhelmed by the pollen of the coming season.”

  “We are in a circuit to ready Sinui. We have come from a meeting of the herds.” Said Yun.

  “Don’t let me keep you then. Time is a fleeting thing. I will be here when you are done.”

  The couple made their way toward the swamp dragon.

  “Hold!” Called out Pusbloom, “I will accompany you. Just give me a moment.”

  Pusbloom widened his stance and clenched his fists. He grit his teeth and squeezed his eyes closed as he began to exert himself. His shaking sent rapid ripples in the pus, and his groaning filled the heart chamber. The crown of a mushroom cap peaked out of his behind. The rim of the cap was the hardest part. At least it was not antlers or horns like his fellow plaguebearers. Once he had widened enough to get the full rim out, he released a gasp, panting from exhaustion.

  “You need to relax,” teased Mogala, “let it slide out.”

  “I know what I am doing, woman!” he groaned, “I have done this many more times than you!”

  Pusbloom fell to his hands now. A clone of him slid out, covered in his effluvia, into the slurry of pus. He fell over completely when the feet exited with a pop.

  Both bodies rose in tandem.