The journey to the Ochre Dockyard had left Sharkbait parched. He dipped his toes into the water and flicked the cool droplets over his sweat-baked face. Travel from the Oracle Reef to the continent of Issaq had taken two days – but there was a great need: The Sea-Cucumber Colony had no doctors. The Captain, Skritch, refused to bring any in, or purchase medical supplies whatsoever, these issues compounded further by the colony's difficult location.

Sharkbait, who, himself earned his name from being attacked by aquatic life, had learned to bandage himself with sea kelp, and make poultices from the orange coral. When he'd heard that Quetzacoatl, the physician, was seeking new apprentices to take over work in her retirement, he'd bolted at the chance to learn the skill–and bring it back to the Ocean. Even greedy Skritch, he determined, should not keep his people from medical care.

But stepping out of the cool ocean and onto the dockside was–Something else. Square-shaped sandstone buildings dotted the pier, where ships from wooden canoes to steampunk raiders all rocked side by side in the water. He noticed the heat first: Unused to the sun touching his skin and the dryness of the desert air, he felt like a fish out of water. Then he noticed the scurrying forms of natives, pushing past each other in their haste and docking ships. The ocean was a lonesome place, and Sharkbait stared around in awe and timidity across the bustling activity of the dock.

"There you are!" A tsabhua with a doctor's coat and a fading purple pelt approached him. This must have been the elder. "Physician Quetzacoatl!" He submissively tucked in his paws and lowered his ears. "Yes, yes," she laughed gleefully, encouraging him back up with a hand motion. "Come in," she called, "We're just about to start an autopsy. You're going to want to take a look at this too, if you're going to become a doctor." An autopsy? Sharkbait followed her down the hot-sandstone street and ducked into the clinic after her, grateful for the shade.

The sandstone room was built like a theatre or perhaps more closely, a lecture room, with a defined stage at the bottom where three physicians worked on top of a body, and a series of steps where students sat and watched from above. "Rather unfortunate, I know!" Quetzacoatl expressed, "But this one is really important. We're examining the inner-workings of the mycelium plague." She gestured to the limp body of the tarkee, who was nearly fully covered in mushroom sprouts.

"The mycelium plague?" Sharkbait inquired, following Quetzacoatl until he stood at the surgical bed. She quickly armed herself with a pair of rubber gloves and accepted a scalpel from a well-trained belemoid assistant. "You haven't heard of it?" Quetzacoatl gasped, taken aback. "That's right… You are from the ocean, so…" She cleanly sliced off one of the oyster mushrooms, presenting it to her transfer student. "Fungi, clear as day, right?" She pointed out, "But lately, they've been growing on living beings… Like this unfortunate tark'ee."

Sharkbait cringed as one of the physicians inserted his scalpel into the cadaver. He exposed the flesh of the arm, revealing small, hair-like roots branching into the meat. "Incredible!" He gasped. "It appears that the fungi itself burrows into the host," Quetzacoatl remarked as the head physician, "It must replicate outwards this way," she followed the roots of one oyster mushroom to another, "And exact all of the nutrients from the host until they… Perish."

It was a gruesome sight for Sharkbait's eyes, the belemoid only having dealt with more minor scrapes and broken bones until now. "Mushrooms… But don't they..?" He thought aloud, remembering the fruiting bodies of underwater plants, visibly shooting seeds into the water. "Don't they reproduce with spores?" Quetzacoatl, who at first appeared too focused on her work to hear him, suddenly jolted. "Everyone," she yelled, "Put on surgical masks, right now! We're all in danger!"

There was a short murmur among the students watching, and then a mad dash for the cloth doctor's masks. At the surgical table, the physicians working held their breaths until they could flush their masks over their face, suddenly aware of the hazard of air-carried spores. As suddenly at the autopsy had started for Sharkbait–being flopped onto the hot sand and then brought in, it ended, the patient being carted away. "To be burned," Quetzacoatl shook her head, horrified at the thought of it all.

"I'm sorry that the autopsy didn't go as well as planned," she shook her head, in a sense both answering to Sharkbait along with the apprentice physicians in suite. "We will reopen the medical college in a month's time, and you are all welcome to a free alternative class, for the trouble. But please, return home and watch yourselves for any symptoms of mycelium that may present." Sharkbait gulped, his dream of a doctor's life spent helping people warped by the harsh realization that this career was fraught with real danger.