Figured out who the cultists were!
God, the smell of it.
You get the smallest, most attenuated sniff of deathheart when you’re doing off-world training. You get it only once, too. Any attempt to get another whiff is an automatic washout from the training program, and good luck trying to get off-planet at all. Nobody wants to have your eventual drug-addled death on their conscience.
How did deathheart smell to me, when I got tested? It smelled wonderful, and like death, and I was terrified of it. So I guess it smelled like it was supposed to? This wasn’t the weak stuff, though, diluted a million times by robots with no brains to burst. This deathheart was the true quill, and the deadly aroma coming up to me slammed at my entire nervous system at once and tried to dig in.
God bless that training program, though, because my reflexes kicked in immediately. There aren’t many times where a spastic jump back actually helps anything, but encountering deathheart is at the top of the list. I screamed “FLEE!” at the top of my lungs — anything to get the air out of them — as I scrabbled for my face filter. I’ve got reflexes for that, too: pop the capsule, breathe in the filter, try not to bite down on it as it sends tendrils over your face and down your throat, and wait for it to stabilize.
Man, outer space is freaking *dangerous* in your universe.
Part of the job of this revision is to never miss a chance to make this whole thing deeply, deeply creepy.