Their formless tread as shadows hid the jagged points of the passage walls, their omenly murk overhead yearning for the Voidlight: a miasma of entropic biology, Totum, the halves of souls. So long spent locked out, then unalive, then split apart, they forgot the meaning their wholeness once attached to this place before now. Dark and brutal fossils clustered on the doorway and nestled into the walls, like projectile splinters spat from a driven spearhead. Cradles carved into the stone the size of titans. Chaotic energy breathed in and out of the lungs of this room and nourished its heart, that gleaming, dripping crag. The reservoir that called. Totum clicked and sighed gutterally, a lion's grumble of contentment basking in rejuvenating sunshine. Only the sunshine was darkness, and the warmth was searing atomic division. They crawled closer.

The infinite microcosmic movements of their wards stirred air that had not been stirred in millenia, bringing back to life every mote of decay. Each of Totum's gnashing mouths salivated the same oil that collected underneath refractions of light from the crystals. Their eyes vivid and neonic and shifting beneath their unstable vessel, absorbing, admiring. This was home. In some way, it never was, but in another way, it was the only home they ever had, and they were grateful to return. If Lord Dhracia trusted anyone to reclaim this womb, it was Totum, if only because Totum's loyalty necessitated them being alive and not being drained by distance from their Origin. Unlike Tamulus.

The Leviathan prompted their attention. Behind, the others tested the palette of the Voidlight. They heard voices, their questions:

What is this place?

Why are we here?

What's the Hive?

And Totum paused, lapsing out of fixation on Memories and Origins. “This is the mitochondrial eve of your chaotic substance,” Totum replied, their masculine and feminine voices drawling and cutting in harmonious unison. “This is one of the many places where it begins.” How many others were out there, clawing their way out of dormancy? How many others had fallen apart, collapsed in on themselves, outgrown themselves until their hosts burst with Valkhounds?

They thought of what Mary was destined for and felt nothing for those she might condemn.

“This is where all such beasts like yourself are designed by the Masters and incubated. They presided over this womb: Astraea and Tenzin, Tamulus and Enki, Artio and Farina, myself--and Jupiter, before she and Tamulus grew to disdain their work,” Totum hummed, observing the room once more. Their eyes consistently returned to the oily spire, magnetized by that unending energetic compulsion to aggregate. “Hive is the antithesis of creation and destruction. Hive is the perfect stillness that settles your mind--and the sourceless echo in that silence in his voice. He had afflicted the golem between Polaris and Ursa, and he has been gnawing away at you all, tapping the tumult from your heads.”

Surely some of them had felt it, whoever was within range of the Hive's spores when it spread from the golem. Most of them were strong enough to dispel the mold, but even Totum could still feel his presence threatening to crystalize inside their consciousness.

“He's here,” the Warrior said suddenly. Totum's head whipped around, feeling it--feeling it in one self, and then the other. They searched, and: there. Toward the far wall. There was a chrysalis throbbing with life--fertilized by magic in the wake of their arrival, or overcooked, supersatured by years of neglect? It felt old. And it was under threat, being eaten away.

Totum uttered a noise of disgust and ambled cautiously toward the chrysalis. “We suggest you stay back,” said Totum over their shoulder.

Any beast inexperienced in dispelling the Hive ran the risk of imbibing his spores. But perhaps, by watching, these Chaos Forgers could learn.