Utterly Mad

The feeling in Kings Court deepened to something resembling terror. It was a thing with teeth that gnawed and worried at the staff from it's place hidden beneath a gray veil on the spore dusted table of the mind. By noon, King's Guests had begun to arrive. Pricetown's resident great and good from every house. To them, the staff was cordial and "friendly." Underneath, many of them knew something was going to happen, they didn't know what, but they knew. By evening, that feeling had passed on to the guests as well in due part to the fact that the host had yet to show himself.

The mood shifted to one of gray restlessness on the part of the guests, and rumors began to circulate. Where was King, the host? Where was his white mistress, the albino Pinky? Where was she of a thousand faces, Minx? And where was this "Dark Lady" their host had carefully spread rumors about? But more, who was this "Gray Queen" the staff had begun to whisper through sluggish lips.

Outside, night began to fall and yet still there was no show from King. Cousin, the ragged coyote sooth Sayer shied away from King's Court with an animalistic static of fear prickling up his spine. He yipped at the moon, and to the ears of the approaching men of the searing spear, his cries were an omen of doom. The doctor had called in the spear to check King's Court, and these specialists, these angels of burning mercy, had already treated many minor cases in the area around the court. As night fell, they moved in on the center of the bright that had begun to fall once again on Pricetown.

---

No one knew what happened that night, save for the escaping searing spear, but everyone for miles around saw the fire. In the morning, the people of Pricetown awoke to find the streets filled with billowing smoke, and King's Court a smoldering ruin. Damon Craig, the demon of searing spear, told a blood curdling tale of ambush and of nobility slain. Of burning and of monstrosities emerging from the dying bodies of King's infected staff. The story of that nights work would be told and retold in the coming year, and later remembered as the mycus terror began to over take Pricetown the following summer.

The men of the searing spear entered through the front doors into a main hall in which was taking place a veritable orgy. The leader of the searing spear, a man know for his fiery zeal in pursuit of the fungal menace and who stood tall and slender, announced aloud "Ladies and gentleman, I would ask that you remain calm and cooperative. The searing spear has reason to believe the premises has come under infestation by the gray scourge."

Damon's eyes drifted as he spoke, taking in the crowd of faces and thinking "infested, all of them are infested." His gaze came to a rest on another newcomer. As they had entered, so to had another. She was terrible and beautiful to behold all at once. Pale ivory skin smooth and rich in it's fullness over a body that all men would want beneath them in a bed of silks, and women would look on with jealous scorn. The woman's eyes seemed a strange blazing rust flaked purple, and her lips showed the bright crimson of freshly spilled blood. It was just below the head of this Gray goddess that her one obvious flaw shown. The wound that had ended her life, blossoming with mycus six years run to riot.

"Hi." Said the apparition humorously, "I'm Rita."

There was silence in the hall. The captain of the searing spear looking up into the eyes of the gray Queen even as she gazed back down into his steely blues. Someone screamed, another person vomited, and many in the room suddenly came down with a splitting ache, like a fire ignited at the center of their brains. Rita's little grin and powerful gaze never shifted, but Damon's did. The staff had begun to convulse while still others attempted to flee. A woman attacked the Noble she had been in the act of servicing, biting him on the throat while still straddling the man. He threw her from him with a shreik of pain and anger, her head struck the floor and split like an over ripe melon spewing grey mush and tendrils. This same woman was not dead though, and she sprang from the floor, her head a ruin, and threw herself at the Noble.

"So fast..." Thought Damon, "how has it spread so fast unless..." His gaze shot back to the woman at the top of the stairs, and he pointed to her. "Get her, she is carrying Marloss. Dont just stand around using your thumbs as fart corks, get her! She's a fungal vampire for fuck sakes!"

Rita laughed and swirled her skirts, and act that revealed her lovely alabaster white legs before the skirt shed a blinding cloud of spores. A thrill went through the room at that, and the men of the searing spear we're all at once beset by the staff of King's Court, now little more than mycus puppets and fungal zombies. They fought there way back, until they reached the doors and three men volunteered to go back in and do what needed to be done. The rest of them would hold the entrance and wait. Damon exerted his mental mutation and combusted a whore from the inside. Fire spat in jets from her infested eyes and mouth and every other oriface making her look like some profane bomb. Gaslight blades cut and cauterized and a flamethrower spit its raging conflagration.

Deeper in, Rita danced. As she did, she released cloud after cloud of infectious spores and relished the feeling of being one mind of many and the sensation of spreading the many in such a way. She took the time to pounce on someone she encountered, one of the searing spear, and straddled the woman like a lover and kissed her. That kiss was one of death of course, Rita's mouth filled with a squirming mass of tendrils. Some as thin as thread and others as thick as fingers, each tipped with a short and sharp bone proboscis. The woman beneath her was drained of both fluids and memories in mere moments. "They are going to incinerate us." She said aloud as she went over the woman's most recent memories. The bomb was taken up, and in her strong hands was little more than a cheap China cup to be smashed into shards. "Going to have to get going I suppose." She giggled a little, tiny puffs of dust being ejected by the little movements this caused in her chest. Rita didn't want to burn yet, not when she had a vengeance half fulfilled. Not when she was still having so much fun. She rose from the dried up husk, the blue bloom in her chest opening like an oddly placed brooch filled with fluid and power, and made her way to a place she knew she could escape the coming infernal holocaust.