No response. She patted him lightly on the cheek. “Oi, mister, wake up. We gotta move.” She jostled him slightly, and the ragged motion caused one of his sleeves to ride up his arm, revealing skin that was even darker than a normal Wastelander’s, so black it almost looked charred, although there was no evidence of it having been burned, at least not by any normal kind of fire she’d seen. She pulled his sleeve further up his arm, shivers multiplying as they trembled through her. A quick inspection of his other arm proved the same result. This man was suffering from an awful skin condition the likes of which she’d never witnessed. It was almost like his limbs were being eaten—no, devoured—by some creeping darkness, its maw formed of the shadows themselves.

“Mister,” she tried once more, the first hint of true panic slipping into her voice.

Still nothing. Though she could tell he was breathing, ragged inhalations and exhalations scraping through his slightly parted lips, there were long pauses in between each one, as though his lungs were deciding whether to keep working or take an extended holiday.

She shook his shoulder. “Mister! Come on now. Ye did good, but we need to git ye back to yer hut ’fore…” She trailed off, the weight of the mushrooms pulling on her shoulder. The mushrooms! Lady Brenner had said they had medicinal uses, specifically when boiled in a tea. Was this man the reason she kept a supply on hand? Did she bring him one of her night ’shroom teas secretly each day, slowly nursing him back to health, working to erase whatever skin condition he was afflicted with?

Perfidy didn’t have time to boil water, much less turn the mushrooms into something drinkable, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t use them…

She pulled one out, staring at it closely. It was the strangest mushroom she’d ever seen, and not just because it was glowing white as it lay on her palm. For one, the topmost portion, which her mother had always called ‘the cup’ but which Perfidy thought of as the umbrella, wasn’t thick and solid like most mushrooms. Instead, it was almost like a woman’s lacy undergarment, full of holes as it webbed and flowed from the apex down the sides. But it was also firm, ribbed, like the whalebone commonly used in a lady’s corset, not that Perfidy had ever donned such an unwieldy garment. Around the base of the cup were dangling droplets of a softer substance, like a cavern’s stalactites except shaped like oozing sap. The stalk was also thicker than most mushrooms, as though it had aspirations of becoming the trunk of a tree one day.