oops dot wav

your thirst is mine, my water is yours.

in the long run, a dram of water doesn't seem like all that much of a thing, you know? half a cup of water at moderate room temperature, maybe?

but it's the semantic meaning of it, tayum.

Tayum looks down to their arm, to the mumbling set of jaws tonguing out their sins with the whining drone of microbial vocal chords. Shaking fingers reach for their secondary canteen, the one full of honey, to pour into the mumbling fungus. They couldn't talk that way, couldn't lead the worms to them. Wheezing, reeling, spitting spores, they stumble deeper into the recesses of the canyon. How could there be so many worms?

Tayum's left eye is speaking to them now, a large and toothy mouth erupting forcibly from between the tender gills brushed across their face.

KITH AND KIN, it screams. YOU SLEW YOUR BONDED KITH BURRUFUGOOHO, THE STALWART SNAPJAW FIRESNARLER, AND WERE CURSED.

Right, right. She'd jumped into the firing line of your carbine, more like. They hadn't meant to do that. Surely, a dram of water couldn't mean that much? But of course, of course it does. It's not just a dram of water. It's an explicit admission of care, a moment of sharing. Opening your heart to another being, and saying "I am willing to take care of you, even if it were to cost me wealth and water."

so for you to have become an oathbreaker means that you cannot be trusted to take care of another. to love another person.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!" Tayum slaps his hand over the mouths again, desperately unable to stem the noise even with the added honey to occupy them. Behind, back down the cramped red rock hallway, they can hear the rapturous undulations of the Mirthworms, tearing themselves into new Mirthworms. "How the fuck were there so MANY?!" With an inarticulate, raging groan, Tayum splayed their fingers out behind them, a spray of pale white wax droplets flinging behind them with the motion. Embedded between each of their fingers is a wick, and in sequence, each wick begins glowing as psionic energy folds itself into Tayum's mind, down their fungus crusted spine, and into their fingertips. An arc of directed light strikes true, slicing into the barest glint of slick wormflesh on the edge of darkness.

Their lungs are burning. Their body isn't made for this. Yards behind, they can hear the yelping, snarling cries of their remaining Snapjaw comrade. They're not going to survive either.

THEY ARE STILL COMING TO TERMS WITH YOU BEING A KINSLAYER, screams the mouth. THEY NEVER THOUGHT YOU CAPABLE OF SUCH CARELESS CRUELTY.

"Don't they get that it was an accident?! I didn't, I didn't..." Tayum staggers out into a clearing- an antechamber with a tiny hole in the ceiling, leading up to the strata above, to fresh air and freedom. Light filters in through the pinhole down to a minute green sprout, furtively forcing its way up through the soil. "And I'm just done for. Just like that. Fucked?"

FUCKED, screeches the mouth.