Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen; soccer is a gentleman’s game played by beasts; football is a beastly game played by beasts

― Henry Blaha

The grass felt wrong under Thaddeus Mersey’s cleats. Too soft in some places, unnaturally rigid in others. The groundskeeper had been maintaining this rugby field for thirty years, yet something had changed in the past month.

The complaints started after the unusual rain - three weeks of unrelenting downpour that left the earth saturated and spongy. Players reported uneven footing, balls taking strange bounces, and an odd chill that seemed to hover just above the ground even on warm days.

Thaddeus knelt at the center of the field one evening, running his weathered hands through the grass. His fingers sank deeper than they should have, the soil beneath yielding like flesh. He pulled back, wiping his hand on his trousers, disturbed by the oily residue that clung to his skin.

The university insisted the tournament proceed despite his concerns. Twenty-two young men thundered across the pitch the following Saturday, their bodies moving in perfect athletic harmony until the incident. Halfway through the second half, the ground beneath the scrum seemed to give way - not collapsing exactly, but shifting, as if something beneath the surface had moved to accommodate the weight above it.

Three players were hospitalized with what doctors called “unusual chemical burns” on their legs and torsos. The university cited a reaction to new fertilizer. Thaddeus knew better. He’d never applied chemicals to this field that could cause such injuries.

That night, he returned with a spade, driven by an unsettling certainty. The moon cast long shadows as he dug at the spot where the scrum had faltered. Six inches down, the soil changed color and consistency. A foot down, his spade struck something that was neither rock nor root.

What Thaddeus unearthed would change everything he understood about the ground beneath his feet. The buried object pulsed with a dim light, and as he stared in horror, he realized the latticed surface resembled nothing so much as the pattern of a rugby ball, scaled to impossible proportions. And it was growing.

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