The Many Mouths Doctrine

In the hours before we left for Colorado, I was visited by a god.

It had no body, but It loomed.

It had no voice, but It spoke.

I was dreaming, but I was not asleep.

The world resolved around me was not a place, but an absence of one. I was adrift in an infinite expanse of pure white, undifferentiated gray. There were no walls, no ceiling, no floor, only a featureless pale void that swallowed all dimension. A silent, sterile canvas awaiting an artist’s first stroke.

But I was not alone.

Above me, It pressed through the fabric of that unreal place—a writhing mass of shadow and movement, like ink bleeding through water. Constantly shifting. Never settling. Tentacles upon tentacles, infinite and searching, reaching into my mind the way a finger might trace bone beneath the skin. It shimmered in places. Not gold. Not color. Something like oil catching light where no light should be.

It watched me.

And then I understood.

It was not watching.

It was anointing.

And I had already said yes.
You will not speak for me.
You will gather for me.
You will not be my mouth.
You will be my tongue.

You will move through the world as reflection
drawing sin not to cleanse it,
but to return it sharpened.

Each indulgence given freely will make you deeper.
Each shame drawn out will become a weapon in your palm.

Pride will adore you. Lust will obey. Envy will offer its throat.
Wrath will not understand until it is already yours.

You will not punish them.
You will show them what they are.
And in knowing
they will fracture.
And in fracturing
they will open.
And in opening
I will enter.

You are my Apostle, but not my voice.
You are the one who walks after the prophecy,
and makes it true.

You will not die clean.
You will not die holy.
You will not die at all.

You will recur.
You will swell.
You will remember.

I name you Kuth’durareth.
The Eater of Sin.
The keeper of soft thresholds.
The one who leaves no one untouched.

Go. Gather. Inhabit. Return.
I will be watching from beneath their skin.

I awoke with the taste of salt on my tongue and something wet in the corner of my eye.

I did not feel afraid.

I felt called.

FROM THE BOOK OF THE WHISPER BORN
An origin hymn of Vorazd, as remembered by the Apostle Kuth’durareth.

That morning we arrived at the marijuana plantation.

The Vessel had been searching for a more efficient vector—something that could carry Vorazd’s infection further, faster. The Chrysalis was effective, yes, but limited. It required presence. Ritual. One-on-one contact. Each conversion demanded time, intention, proximity.

It was powerful.

But it was not scalable.

The answer was under our nose the entire time.

Months prior, before Yelena ascended to become Ka’va’Vorazd, Vessel of Vorazd, she purchased a cannabis company as an investment opportunity. It was a cynical move—timed in anticipation of federal deregulation, projected demand curves, and a lucrative exit strategy once the government caught up to public appetite. Old Yelena was always hunting angles. Now, however, she was looking for vectors.

GreenLit was the name. Quietly expanding. Modestly profitable. Its primary operation sat on a stretch of sunburnt prairie in Colorado, near Avondale. The greenhouses were functional. The staff was young and distractible. But what caught our attention wasn’t the infrastructure. It was what had been hidden inside it.

While combing through the company’s internal servers during a routine audit, one of Yelena’s acquisition teams flagged a set of recently deleted files. They were encrypted. Sloppy work. Sloppy enough to leave the filenames intact.

SCARECROW.

Bifrost’s acquisition team saw redactions and ghosts in file trees and became nervous about completing the transaction.

The Vessel saw potential.

Scarecrow was not just a name. It was a failed program. A buried experiment. A residue of something the company had tried to build—and then erased, too late.

We were going to dig it up.

The farm, at that point, was little more than an anarcho-capitalist commune—populated by free spirits and nonconformists the previous ownership had tolerated. But there was more to it than peace murals, holistic posturing, and meditation retreats. Beneath the lodge, a bomb shelter from the 1950s had been repurposed into a high-end, self-sustaining bio-lab where cannabis and psilocybin were genetically engineered into newer, stronger, stranger forms.

This is where real science was practiced. Cold. Serious. Uninterested in branding. Steel counters. Modular bio-containment hoods. Rows of glassware under LED task lights. Climate-controlled storage units. Negative pressure incubators.

Everything required to engineer the fall of humanity.

There were three others in the room with me: the Vessel; Steve Goldberg, her technician; and Dr. Aris Thorne, Chief Science Officer. The lights were too bright for how early it was, and too cold for anyone to admit discomfort. I liked that. Discomfort made people honest.

Dr. Thorne was nervous. Foot taps. Arms crossed. He was in his mid-fifties, white-haired but not dignified, with the sunken look of someone who didn’t sleep without sedatives. His shirt was tucked but wrinkled. His tie was misaligned by half an inch. His hands never stopped moving—adjusting his glasses, smoothing his notes, flicking nonexistent dust off a screen that doesn’t need him.

Thorne, the Vessel, and I were huddled around Steve, hunched forward in a chair with bad posture, fingers clacking on the keyboard, navigating through the file system of the shadow drive the doctor forgot to scrub in his attempt to hide the evidence.

After a series of rapid-fire clicks, a window maximises to fill the display. A video. And before Thorne could react, the footage was already playing.

CAMERA FEED: OBS_ROOM_3
DATE: 06.18.2023
TIME: 22:11:14

The timestamp meant nothing to me then. Now it feels sacred.

Subject 04 sat motionless beneath a wash of fluorescent light, facing away from the camera. One chair. One table. Four walls. His back was slouched. The posture of someone resigned to being watched.

He began to mutter.

“we… we…”

The sound quality was poor, but I could make out the tremble in his throat. A low hum followed—uneven, circular. Not melodic. Not wrong, either. Just… foreign. His jaw stretched wider than it should have. Blood seeped from the corners of his mouth like ink through linen. He did not flinch.

No one in the room said anything.

Not yet.

Steve leaned forward. His hand twitched once against his jeans. I watched it instead of the screen.

The humming continued.

When Subject 04 finally spoke again, it wasn’t to us. It wasn’t to the camera either.

“we are the sky now.
we are the drip in your tooth.
we are what screams when no one is looking.”

He laughed softly. Tried to stand. Failed. His limbs folded like bad furniture. Then a sound—chewing. Wet. Wrong.

His mouth was empty.

I remember that detail. I remember not blinking.

At 22:23:07, the screen glitched. Three frames of violet. Then stillness. He was upright again. Facing us.

“you cannot name us.
but we remember your flavor.”

He began crawling toward the camera.

And then the feed terminated.

No one moved.

Dr. Thorne looked like he was going to faint.

He hadn’t said a word since the footage ended. His face was pale, pinched. A gloss of sweat clung to his hairline that no one—least of all me—was polite enough to mention. His fingers twitched at his sides, desperate for something to fix, something to hold, something to be useful. But he could not remember how.

The Vessel turned away from the screen. I reached past Steve and closed the window with a flick of my fingernail against the enter key. Like sealing a coffin.

No one spoke until she did.

“Thank you, Doctor,” the Vessel said at last. Her tone was polite. Linen over a blade. “That was… enlightening.”

Thorne swallowed. Hard.

“Ms. Gorgo, I understand your enthusiasm,” he began, already wrong, “but this was never meant to move past early-stage modeling. The compound’s effects were inconsistent. The side effects—”

“—are promising,” the Vessel interrupted. “Hallucinations. Dissociation. Nonlinear perception. All markers of successful psychic destabilization. You tried to suppress the outcome because you were afraid of what it meant. I’m not.”

He tried again. “I don’t think you understand what you’re dealing with.”

That’s when I spoke.

“You did not,” I said, quiet but clean. “We do.”

He turned to me.

I don’t know what he saw in my eyes, but I know what I intended: inevitability. I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t sneer. I didn’t have to. I watched him understand, slowly, that the future had already moved past him—and he would not be brought along.

“I’ll need your badge,” the Vessel said.

He blinked. “I’m sorry…”

“You’re not,” she said. “But you will be.”

She stepped forward. Held out her hand.

Thorne hesitated.

He did not understand the mercy he was being shown. He could not appreciate how fortunate he was to be allowed to walk away.

But eventually he reached into his coat and pulled out a plastic badge clipped to a branded lanyard. He held it. Paused too long. Maybe he thought we would blink. Maybe he thought this was still a negotiation.

He was wrong.

He offered it.

She took it.

That was the end of Dr. Aris Thorne, Chief Science Officer.

“Typically,” I said, already logging his termination on my tablet, “I would have security escort you from premises.”

Pause.

“Unfortunately,” I added, without looking up, “you have no security.”

That’s when he broke.

“But… why… why would we… need security guards!” he stammered, breath catching on each word. “We operate under the non-aggression principle!”

I lifted my eyes from the tablet.

“We do not, Mr. Thorne. You will escort yourself from the building at once. Your personal effects will be shipped to your address on file.”

He opened his mouth again. Something pathetic and feral in his posture now—offended that the world had not paused for his unraveling.

“Oh yeah?” he said. “What if I tell everyone here what you’re trying to do?”

It was a brave line, delivered by a dying man.

“The police will be called,” I said. “You will be arrested for trespassing on federally regulated cannabis cultivation facility, and felony will make other companies balk at prospect of hiring you for anything other than janitorial work.”

I tilted my head slightly.

“How are your toilet-scrubbing skills, Mr. Thorne?”

He froze. I saw it happen. Behind the glasses—his eyes wide, pupils dilated, mind running—but no exit came.

I softened my tone, just slightly. Just enough to make the cruelty sting less like an attack and more like procedure.

“Leave peacefully. Do not attempt to access any terminals, equipment, or devices on your way out. Your access codes have already been revoked. Do not speak with any employees.”

I paused. Then added:

“Especially Deborah.”

Steve turned in his chair. “Yeah. Especially Deborah.”

I didn’t smile, but I felt the weight shift in the room.

“Your severance packet will be sent to your personal email by end of business,” I said. “Follow my instructions to the letter and you’ll receive it. Fail to comply, and you receive nothing.”

I crossed my arms, hugging the tablet to my chest like a folded blade.

“And do not ever threaten to violate your NDA again. Any attempt to do so will be met with immediate legal action. We have entire law firm on retainer that would enjoy picking its teeth with bones of your life. You will live out your remaining years indigent, dependent on the kindness of others.”

“In short,” I finished, “we will destroy you.”

His voice barely registered.

He froze. Eyes wide behind his glasses, pupils blown, mind scrambling for an exit that didn’t exist. I adjusted my tone—just enough to reframe the cruelty as policy. My instructions were clear: he was to leave immediately, access nothing, speak to no one. I felt the power realign itself in the room.

I told him his severance would arrive by end of business, contingent on perfect obedience. I folded the tablet against my chest like a blade in rest and delivered the final terms: if he broke his NDA, we would unravel his life like loose thread. Slowly. Legally. He would live out his days ruined, reliant, and forgotten. In short, I said, we would destroy him. He managed only a whisper in return. It barely counted as a protest.

“You can’t do this,” he whispered.

The Vessel raised one brow.

“Oh, Doctor,” she said, sighing. “It’s done.”

He looked between us—panicked, sweating, uncertain who to hate more. He threw his hands in the air and backed away like a man who’d just realized the fire was real.

“Fine. I’ll go,” he said. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you when this blows up in your face.”

He stormed out. Took the stairs.

Good.

It spared us the awkward moment of waiting for the elevator.

The door shut behind him with a soft hiss. Silence settled like dust in the lab.

No one moved. The centrifuge hummed low. My nails clicked once, twice, against the tablet as I finalized the termination.

Then I spoke.

“He will try to leak something.”

The Vessel disagreed. “He won’t.”

My eyes raised from the tablet to look upon her with reverence.

“Why let him live? Why risk it?”

Her gaze is difficult to meet. My questioning tone was not welcomed. My curiosity had led me to overstep my place. I felt small looking at her, and weak, and I ached for it.

But she did answer.

“Dr. Thorne still has a role to play.”

A knock.

Not dramatic. Measured.

Three soft taps—intentional enough to announce presence, but not importance.

The door opened behind us. Not the main one, but a narrow panel half-obscured between a chemical shower station and a stainless steel cabinet. I hadn’t noticed it before. That detail bothered me.

In stepped a small man—composed, precise, quietly armored in a perfectly tailored lab coat. His posture was immaculate. His hair was neatly parted. Thin wire-framed glasses sat delicately on his nose. His eyes smiled before his mouth did.

When he spoke, his voice was soft. Educated. Beijing, filtered through years of American academia.

“Chairperson Gorgo. Thank you for seeing me.”

Dr. Zhi Chen.

Polite. Pleasant.

And beneath that, the scent of something dangerous. Not blood. Not chemicals.

An absence of hesitation.

The Vessel turned to greet him.

“You’re early,” she said.

“Punctuality,” he replied with a slight bow, “is a form of respect.”

He then walked to the terminal, glanced at the paused footage—Subject 04’s crawl toward the lens—and smiled faintly.

“Ah. So that survived. Curious.”

I had read his dossier before we arrived. A PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Tsinghua. Postdoctoral research at the University of Colorado. His program had focused on genetically enhancing psilocybin strains for therapeutic use. Then GreenLit found him. Or perhaps he found GreenLit. Tony Savage, previous owner, had hired him to develop a market-ready product for the recreational mushroom wave. But Tony had no spine. No stomach.

Chen turned back toward us.

“I would very much like to continue the work,” he said, eyes locked on the Vessel. “With your permission.”

“Permission is granted,” she replied.

He nodded once.

“And the compound?” she asked.

Chen folded his hands behind his back like a lecturer preparing to recite a favorite passage.

“Stable—with adjustments. The solvent is no longer aerosolized. We’re using a nano-encapsulated delivery system now. Viscous. Self-replicating under the right thermal conditions. Non-particulate. It coats rather than bonds. The mind doesn’t know it’s affected. Not until the waking dreams begin.”

“Show me,” the Vessel said.

Chen walked to a refrigerated drawer, keyed in a four-digit code, and withdrew a small cylindrical vial no larger than a lipstick tube. He placed it reverently on the quartz table, as though setting down a child he didn’t want to wake.

Inside was a thick, black liquid—iridescent and alive. It didn’t flow. It listened. The ripples that moved across its surface were too slow, too thoughtful, too timed to be accidental.

“Consecration,” Chen said softly. “Our first viable culture.”

I leaned closer.

“That is not name,” I said. “That is threat.”

“No,” he replied. “That’s marketing.”

His voice didn’t rise. It deepened, slightly, like a priest explaining the bones of a relic.

“Consecration is the culmination of my life’s work. What you see is an extract taken from a unique fungal species I engineered myself. I harvested the most potent psychotropic gene sequences from dozens of Psilocybe strains—discarding nature’s crude limitations. Then I synthesized these fragments into a superior genome. One designed to rewrite reality itself.”

I glanced at the Vessel.

“Tony did not have stomach for it.”

“Mr. Savage ordered me to destroy it,” Chen clarified. He looked down at the vial again, and for a moment his expression flickered into something resembling grief.

The liquid pulsed faintly, sending a wash of oil-slick color through the mirrored glass.

“But I could not bear it,” he whispered.

“It would be like… killing one of my own children.”