The Mimic Becomes a Merchant King

They spent the night in Gilly Froth's guest house, positioned in his back garden. It was all too likely the offer wouldn't have been extended were it not for Pearl's presence, but it was nice to be able to spend a night in a proper bed all the same.

At first, Coin wasn't quite sure he understood the purpose of a guest house. It seemed excessive to the mimic, who would have assumed there was little point to having more than one house. Surely everything you needed was going to be in the first house you got, and it wasn't like you could sleep in two bedrooms per night.

But then, when he put more thought into the matter, Coin began to see the logic to it. A house was the chief desire among many humans. Not only for the practicality of having a personal shelter, but because it could also be a great status symbol.

"I'm so rich that I can afford to have a smaller house in the shadow of my main house", it seemed to say. It was rather unsubtle, as far as gestures went. Particularly given how large Gilly Froth's main house actually was.

It was an important note to consider for the future. If Coin ever got the chance, he'd have to put the biggest, gaudiest guest house he could conceive in his back yard.

Those thoughts dominated his mind as he laid back in the padded bed of his room. Moonlight broke through the clouds and partially illuminated his surroundings. Coin's hands were resting against the back of his head, his eyes half-lidded as he looked at the rolling back clouds outside.

"It's a nice way to live," he mumbled to himself. Gilly Froth was a damn fool. If he could have this kind of wealth, then Coin could easily have the same if he tried hard enough.

He closed his eyes, expecting a calm and simple slumber.

Yet, when Coin opened his eyes, he found his surroundings shrouded in an abyssal darkness. He blinked around in confusion, stumbling until his body sagged against a wall of stone. Carved grey rock surrounded him on all sides, the floor and ceiling near-identical.

His eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, at which point he could see that the stone had been chiselled with a myriad of patterns. Spirals, lozenges, and carved human figures who seemed to be marching in lockstep in one direction.

Some of the stone panels had been sculpted with what looked to be vast, human faces. Their empty eye sockets stared directly at Coin.

"What... kind of dream is this?" Coin mumbled. Beads of sweat started to form on his brow, his skin prickling in disgust. Something about those faces was eerily familiar, and made an anxious knot twist in his stomach.

In fact, the more he looked at his alien surroundings, the more that odd sense of familiarity filled his head.

You.

The voice sounded as if it was simultaneously echoing toward him from a hundred miles away, and right beside his ear. Coin shivered and glanced around frantically. He saw nothing but darkness and the stone faces.

Slowly, anxiously, he trod down the corridor. His footsteps echoed endlessly around his ears.

He didn't know where he was going, what he expected to find, only that something in the back of his mind suggested that he should go further inside this strange place.

"Who's... who's there?" Coin called out.

Silence, thick and choking, answered him.

"This... this is a dream, it's not real," Coin murmured. The stone under his feet felt all too real.

Your dreams. I speak to you in your dreams.

The voice was vast and powerful. As if dozens of mouths were speaking in perfect unison.

"Who?" Coin hissed. "Who are you?"

This time the strange presence did not speak to him with words. There was a vast rumble, like thunder on the horizon, and Coin's consciousness briefly touched that of another entity.

In an instant his mind was flooded with a stream of images. Hundreds of them, overlapping chaotically, streaming by at such speed that Coin could only barely glimpse a few of them with any degree of clarity.

He saw screaming human faces, sprays of blood, the abyssal blackness of the deepest ocean trenches, waves and storms on the high sea, flocks of birds taking flight as several of their brethren were hooked and devoured by barbs of living shadow, and swimming schools of colossal sea creatures that radiated a brilliant azure glow.

Whatever Coin was speaking with, it was massive. He could understand that much at least.

He wheezed, nearly being knocked off his feet, and clung to one of the wall panels for support.

Apologies. Perhaps I underestimated the strength of your mind. It is... difficult to communicate from this distance.

"D-distance?" Coin breathlessly asked, fighting a strong urge to vomit.

But I am drawing closer.

A chill raced down Coin's spine. He forced himself to stand. That strange compulsion tugged at his mind once more, and he pressed deeper into the darkness.

"What do you want...? Do you... do you want to hurt me?"

No. We are... alike. Kindred souls.

Coin wanted to ask what that meant. Instead he found himself paralysed as he emerged from the mouth of the stone hallway, to find himself standing on a circular walkway that overlooked a gargantuan chamber.

It stretched for a considerable distance above and below where he stood, and he could see a myriad of stone staircases that linked the various levels and chambers of the strange honeycombed structure. At the peak of it all, attacked to the ceiling like a fungal growth, was a green crystal that bathed the room in an eerie glow.

Coin was frozen for several moments. The size of the strange place was daunting enough, but what struck Coin above all else was the strange familiarity of this vast cavern. As if he had once walked through here.

Elbrinth.

The thunderous voice snapped Coin to attention. "I've... heard that name before."

The bowels of the world. The shaded undercity. The precipice of Sheol.

Coin continued to scan his surroundings. The more he looked, the more he could tell how ancient everything around him was. Decay had only barely taken root in the stone, but the mustiness of the stale air spoke of countless centuries.

"Sheol?" Coin mumbled.

Your eyes look through my eyes. You walk upon my memories. But, deep down, you have memories of this place too. But you are young. A newborn. You scarcely grasp the truth of things in the way I can.

Coin grimaced, trying to snap himself from his stupor. "I... I don't know what this place is!" Which seemed to be partially true. Whatever the strange sense of familiarity assaulting his mind was, he had no way of knowing where it was coming from.

The strange voice in his head ignored his protests.

Animus.

The word struck his mind like a bolt of lightning. Coin's body shook from head to toe, a startled gasp rising in his throat.

He didn't know what it meant, but something about the word made his chest tighten.

The drive to live. The fundamental power to exist. Able to give consciousness to formless, mindless flesh.

Coin grimaced as a wave of pain rolled through his head. The underground city melted away in a flurry of smoke, replaced with surroundings that were genuinely familiar to Coin.

The dark, fungus-filled corridors of the Thaeka temple.

A shape scuttled past him. Coin froze as he laid eyes on it. A treasure chest, walking on four limbs. Coin's blood ran cold.

"That's... me."

The sense of familiarity struck him tenfold stronger. There was no denying it. Just as the presence showed him its memories, now it was experiencing his.

He followed after the echo of his past as it crept through the darkness of the old temple. Until both he and his past self came to an abrupt stop at the sight of a corpse.

"And that's that wizard. The one that..." Curiosity gripped him with greater intensity. He made his way forward while his past self sniffed at the corpse, acting out the moments before his evolution began. A chance, Coin reasoned, to see the potion that helped him evolve.

Sure enough, a glass vial was hitched to the belt of the corpse. It was filled with a cloudy green liquid. He leaned in for a closer look and tapped the glass. It was far sturdier than he was expected. The kind of glass that could withstand a hammer blow without incident.

Yet the more he stared at the potion, the stranger it seemed. The liquid inside seemed to be moving of its own accord. Silvery wisps swam through the liquid, steadily shaping themselves until something that look like a face had taken form inside the glass.

Animus. As I thought. You are indeed like me.

Coin tensed. "What... do you mean?" He couldn't look away from the glass. The face in side the bottle took on a more define shape, eyeless sockets staring directly into his very soul.

It felt like, in that moment, he was looking at his own reflection.

His past self got to eating, pulling the wizard's corpse toward his toothy lid. Coin swallowed hard, time grinding to a halt as those gleaming fangs started to hover over the strange glass bottle.

Did you truly believe a random potion made you into what you were? No. It was no mere alchemy that gave us our minds.

Darkness suddenly swam at the edges of Coin's vision. He groaned and clutched at the sides of his head, a powerful tremor shaking the temple.

The distant, thunderous voice groaned too. But, to such a vast entity, it was a noise like tectonic plates colliding.

Communicating in this way is... difficult. Strenuous. I must withdraw. But we shall communicate again.

Coin opened his mouth to speak, just as the world around him dissolved into an erupting tide of blackness. The swarming smoke flooded his mouth and nose, strangling him and choking out whatever air was in his lungs.

Coin snapped his eyes open and sprang bolt upright in bed. He stared about with wide, frantic eyes. Now he was back in the room of the guest house, shrouded in the dark of the night. He saw nothing. Heard nothing. Just the room, and a silence only broken by his own panicked breathing.

His head ached something fierce, the mimic groaning and screwing his eyes tight. He tried to remember what he had been dreaming of, the strange stream of memories that was fast fading from his conscious mind.

Dreams were fleeting things, even those born of psionic pressure. All Coin could really recall in his ailing state was an endless darkness, staring into a reflection that was not his own, and one word... Animus.

He stared out of the window for several long moments, without breathing or thinking on much of anything. The dull ache in his head warded all attempts at complex thought. His mind grew calm, all thoughts melting away save for one foreboding notion that loomed large in his mind.

There was something out there in the world, something huge, fixated on him. And it was drawing closer.