Not so safe after all

While traveling upstream, we spent our time talking about nothing. Salma was surprised by the fact that I used to till the land. The reason she was so surprised was that I was fairly muscular for my age. Well, I also hunted. That means I ate a lot of meat. Especially livers, where animals are most nutritious. As a result, my muscles developed with the farm work far better than others.

Our pleasant conversation was cut short by an unpleasant scene floating down the river. Corpses in various unrecognizable shapes were floating on top of the water, making their way to wherever the waters of Nylle were going to take them.

The corpses had their valuables intact. Judging from their shapes, they haven't been eaten either.

"Hippos. We need to get away from the water. We should give them a wide birth"

The mere thought of encountering a hippo sends shivers down our spines. Those things are nothing short of monsters. The hulking beasts had maws as wide as a grown man's upper body and an aggressive demeanor to boot. We would rather not encounter such a terrible thing.

We immediately pivoted away from the river. Of course, doing so carries its own risk, but anything is better than fighting those things. We need to be mindful not to go in circles.

When someone tries to go somewhere in an environment like a desert where every dune looks the same, by virtue of one's dominant leg stepping further than the other leg, a person who is walking in the desert is in real danger of walking in circles and then dying from thirst.

The land we are traversing is in a flood zone. It has no houses, no towns, no anything. It's smart that we do not travel when the sun is at its zenith. By taking the sun to either side, we can travel toward the north properly.

Half a day later, we, once again, encountered another concerning scene. People of all shapes and sizes, walk toward the river. Dogs, horses, and camels accompany them. No one rode the camels and horses. Everyone walked. Even ones clad in silk, are sometimes barefoot. We called out to them only to see that not a single one of them turned their heads. We approached them. The situation was far too weird to not try and figure it out.

I approached one of the travelers and put my hand on his shoulder. There was something weird about his half-closed eyes. He muttered something between his parched lips, producing no sound. He started yelling in panic, voiceless. His lips spelled one single phrase:

"Kill me, Kill me!"

His eyes fully opened. There was something about them. The eyes pushed out of his skull to reveal a translucent worm with something jiggling within. At the tip of the worm was an eye-like motif.

 "Aah!"

I fell on my back out of terror. I was not alone. Asenath and Salma, too, were shaken. We ran away. About a hundred steps to discover, the monstrous people didn't chase us. I stopped, and so did the woman. As the first shock of the fear wore off, I was able to think clearly.

"Let's kill them."

Salma looked at me, baffled.

"What do you mean kill them?"

I stood firm. The instinct is to run away. However, in that brief moment, I saw a man begging to be saved.

"Yes, let's kill them, and if we can, burn them."

Under my leadership, the girls gained their courage too. We impaled them and watched them spill their lifeblood onto the sands. The worms got out of their skulls to meet our spears in the end.

It's a scene of carnage. We pushed the corpses together with our spears. We don't want to touch them, and we don't want to be near them too much. With the help of a little torch oil, they went up in flames. May Anubis have mercy on their souls.

We left the place immediately after we said our prayers. Asenath suggested we put the tip of our spears into the fire to burn off whatever might have smeared on it.

We keep shivering the more we remember what happened.

"The world is truly a terrifying place."

Asenath vigorously nodded. Her face is contorted with worry. Salma said what everyone was thinking.

"We could've been like those people."

We still don't know what that was or how those people became like that.

"Let's reach a town fast and find a priest. I have a bad feeling."

Asenath nodded.

***

We covered a lot of ground the next day. We arrived at the town of Tava. Tava is larger than any town we have visited before. We made our way to the guard's house and told them about corpses and worms. They told us to hurry to the temple.

The old priest calmly nodded when he heard our accounts of the events. He nodded, understanding.

"What you encountered was the dreaded demon worm. The people you've seen have been infected by drinking water tainted by the demon worm's egg. They were probably marching toward hippo territory to get ripped apart and tainted more with water laced with their eggs. So, the cycle would continue.

Did you drink any water from the lake before seeing those corpses flow down? No matter. I need to check on all three of you anyway.

Now, you three should lay on this slab in turn. I need to check you all for demon worm eggs."

Asenath was the first one to lay on the slab.

"All clear. You are clean."

Asenath breathed a sigh of relief. She was spared from that horrific fate. She unloaded her water flask onto the sand. Any eggs that might be in there were now fated to dry upon the sand under the blazing sun.

Salma was clean too. Thank gods.

The last one to lay on a slab is me. The old priest knitted his brows and uttered those dreaded words.

"You have a demon worm egg in your stomach."

Terror overcomes me.

"Get it out! Get it out! Get it out!"

The old man's eyes shone with golden light. All of a sudden, I was as calm as the night desert.

"Tell me, boy, do you have an arcane heart?"

I answered honestly. I brought out my token from my pouch and showed it to him. He smiled, content with the evidence.

"You, my boy, have a sliver of a chance. You will go through the union agony and become one with the demon beast inside your belly. Then, my boy, you will survive by absorbing the egg. The cure itself is often deadly. You must never stray from my guidance."

The old priest guided me to a chamber. I was stripped naked, and all kinds of glyphs were written onto my body by the priest's servants.

"First, I have to tell you how this poison works. It shows you hallucinations, and if the hallucinations make you panic, your heart rate increases, delivering more poison to your organs. Eventually, you would have a heart attack. You must not fear. You will die if you do. Your mind will surface your worries and sins. You must be firm."

He kept drawing with his brush.

"The poison is essential to preparing your body for the merger. If you have any means to resist the poison, don't use it. If you are immune to the poison, you are out of luck. It will be my moral duty to put you out of your misery before the worm takes you."

Reassuring. I nodded in acceptance. He needs to know that I'm ready.

I sat on the platform. The ground around the platform has glyphs chiseled throughout, all of which are filled with faintly glowing sand. I was given the poison of the merger agony.

I took a moment to calm my mind and drank it. It burned its way down with its bitter taste. My stomach churned.

The priest put his hands on my forehead.

The glyphs around my body and the ones on the ground shone.

"You will fall into a trance once poison permeates throughout your body. Before then, you might see some hallucinations. Such hallucinations always tell you something about yourself. Take the opportunity to interact with the problems within the depths of your heart and solve them. A heart that is lighter than a feather is a great thing for a budding priest."

As he said that, I started to see shapes depicted within the temple's inner walls shift and bend. Faces appear and disappear from the amalgamations on the shifting visages. I had no choice but to trust this man. So, I let go of control and focused on keeping myself calm.

My vision slowly darkened, and I found myself at the shore of the Nylle. The moon was so big that it almost covered a quarter of the sky. Corpses flowed down from the river. My mother's corpse, my father's corpse, Salma, Asenath, and my own. All came to life suddenly and invited me into the waters.