Chapter 75 - Tangled Paths (Patreon)

The Mycolith Tangle was exactly what it sounded like: a maze, and there were always mushrooms nearby. After heading through the portal from the Ashlands, they’d arrived in the staging cavern where the Vetucor Convoy usually did trade, and had been slowly moving their way through a series of winding tunnels ever since. Sul, the giant lava snail, continued to pull their cart of supplies without complaint. Malachi wasn’t sure what a giant snail complaining would sound like, but he was sure Sul would manage to inform them somehow.

Arisone, the gorgon from the Dark Mire, slithered along contentedly. The rock passages were worn limestone, which was much nicer on her scales. As she moved past one wall, a bright looking mushroom caught her eye, and she plucked it and took a bite.

“Spicy,” she said contentedly, offering the rest to Malachi.

“I’m good,” Malachi said. To Diana, who was walking on Malachi’s other side, he muttered, “Spicy to a gorgon means poisonous.”

The three male gorgons riding along with Arisone slithered out of wherever they’d been hiding on her, making “Mraaw!” noises until she fed them bits of the mushroom.

Nerys, the ignian who’d Malachi had met in less than ideal circumstances, but had turned out to be a competent combatant, was ranging up ahead with Heria, the ignian scout who’d helped Malachi out with his spearwork quite a bit. They were saying something to their fungarian guide, a guy named Five Hollow.

Malachi caught bits of what the guide was saying echoing back: “…almost there! Just a left turn, right turn, left turn again, right turn, right turn into the fourth passage, straight ahead, and then down under and around the lake, a right turn, and then another left turn!”

Diana left Malachi’s side to go cast her bolster tissue spell again on several of the people they’d rescued from the baradaeth slave camps who’d insisted on coming along with them. Malachi only knew what spell she was casting because of process of elimination; she knew three spells, and it sure it wasn’t mending flames or seeking fire swarm.

“Is it working?” he asked her when she rejoined him.

“I think so. It’s not exactly a double-blind study, but the control group reports more symptoms. It must be helping against the toxins. I still haven’t seen a ‘resist poison’ notification myself, though, so I’m guessing it’s a mundane toxin, but our poison resist enchantments are working against it.”

“That’s generally how it works,” Nerys said, suddenly next to them. Diana startled and swore.

Malachi sighed. “One of these days, someone’s going to think they’re under attack and stab you when you do that illusion bullshit.”

“Oh, it’s already happened twice,” Nerys said dismissively. “Two more hours until Grotto City, as best I can tell. You know what the worst part is? The Ummoria don’t even have books. At least, not traditional books. They write things using a weird braided rope system, where the kind of fiber changes the meaning. Nearly impossible to learn unless you’re a fungarian. I’ve been asking Five Hollow about their history, though.”

Malachi’s eyes fell on the fungarian who was still talking to Heria. Five Hollow looked vaguely human, and there was some sort of humanoid body underneath the tangle of mycelium, but the fungal symbiote covered his outside in a tangle of hyphae. Most of the other people from Earth were keeping their distance. Malachi couldn’t blame them for being creeped out. A fungal organism attached to a brain sounded a lot like how a cordyceps fungus worked. Sure, the fungarians said they were symbiotes, but they would, wouldn’t they? Except, they’d been reliable trade partners with the Vetucor for generations now, so they probably weren’t evil parasites trying to take over the Realms.

But they were still creepy-looking.

So prejudiced, SERA-Phasia said in his head.

Hows the ethereal network treating you? Anyone hunting us yet?

No, I’m mostly doing contingency setup and finding backdoors to exploit. Obviously, I’m still being monitored by all these other System Units, but none of them have sent anything worrying out on the network.

How far does the ethereal network go, anyways? Presumably, it’s only in the Realms, so if we get back to Earth, you’ll be able to tell me a lot more, yeah?

Haha. ‘How far does it go’ is a great question. If it’s not on Earth, I’ll spill so many beans. You have no idea. It’ll be bean Armageddon. Beans like you wouldn’t believe.

‘If’? So the ethereal network can… spread?

Sigh. Can’t talk about that part.

Malachi would just have to hope. There was still so much they didn’t know about the Sidereal Convocation, and none of the natives he’d talked to had any idea how a ‘sphere-world’ like Earth got caught up in the Realms. SERA-Phasia knew a lot, but was restrained by constantly shifting regulatory protocols.

Meanwhile, the Maatugivi Empire continued to move about the Realms, either burning cities like Matrasa in the Dark Mire themselves, or sending proxies like they’d done with that baradaeth lavamancer in the Ashlands.

Still, what he and Diana had learned was a lot more than anyone back on Earth knew. They needed to get that information back. And critically, if they could get more people Magical Cores, it could change the course of the war. They just had to hope the realm full of dinosaurs that was linked to the Mycolith Tangle was the same one that had established a lingering portal in Kansas.

***

Two hours later, they still hadn’t even made it out of the caverns. The route between the portal cavern and the city was patrolled regularly, so they only saw a few smaller monsters creeping about the caverns. A patrol of mycolith soldiers passed them as they neared the city. Several of them had completely gray mushroom caps growing out of their heads, while three of them had caps with radically different colors and shapes.

“Is it a ranking system, I wonder, or cultural expression?” Diana asked, more to herself than anyone else.

A bit later they emerged from the caverns. The warmth of the forest was a nice change from the cold caverns, but thankfully it was also nowhere near as searingly hot as the Ashlands had been.

The humidity, Malachi could do without, though. Far too much like Mississippi summers.

Above ground, the Mycolith Tangle had lots of pointy spires of rock. If the underground had been a tangle of caves, this was a tangle of plants, with dense brush, tall trees dripping with vines, uneven ground covered in a mess of roots. The roots here weren’t nice enough to stay underground, either; some were just tripping hazards, while others had buttress roots that stuck up to about chest height. And, of course, there were mushrooms all over the place, hiding under fern-like leaves, along the trunks of the trees, and even growing up in the branches. The rock spires were covered in webs of what looked like lichen, though Malachi had never seen lichens so thick or colorful.

“It’s like karst topography, except I bet just like the Ashlands, it doesn’t actually experience erosion,” Diana mused.

Why couldn’t she have gotten me? We could talk about rock facts all day, SERA bemoaned.

Malachi was too busy trying to pick out the trail to respond. Rays of scattered light pierced the canopy, but the dappled shadows just made finding the route even harder. Five Hollow had said there was a road they were following, but their definition of ‘road’ was clearly different.

“Almost there!” Five Hollow said cheerfully, and led them through a gap in the trees where the roots were only tripping hazards, not actual barriers. Sul dutifully slimed after the fungarian, and the rest of the group followed.

Now that were more places monsters could come from, Malachi fell into a habitual alertness, scanning the canopy, the surrounding forest, and occasionally checking behind them. Heria and the other scouts were already doing that, and had better magical abilities for doing so, but he didn’t feel right unless he was also checking.

Once again, Malachi appreciated the stability enchantment on his boots. It had saved him from slipping around in the Dark Mire, helped him climb down cliffs in the Ashlands, and now kept him steady on the uneven forest floor, even when a patch of moss slid out from under him or a root slithered out to snag his feet.

Arisone wasn’t at all bothered by the roots, but the ignians and humans with their group started complaining as they noticed the hostile roots crawling about the forest floor looking to knock their ankles.

SERA, why are the trees trying to trip us? They’re not carnivorous, are they?

Look, everything needs to have a hobby, SERA said in his head. After a pause, it added, I honestly have no idea. Some of these magical organisms are just weird. Information in the monster database doesn’t extend to arboreal motivations.

Fortunately, the journey through the tangled forest wasn’t as long as the caves. Unlike the Ashlands, the Mycolith Tangle seemed to have a proper day and night cycle, too, which made telling how much time had passed significantly easier. They passed another group of fungarian soldiers on patrol from the Grotto. In the brighter light, Malachi could now see that the armor they wore resembled carapace.

“That armor looks strange. Are there giant insects here?” Malachi asked Nerys.

“Their crafter druids grow it,” Nerys said absentmindedly. He was looking around the trees even more often than Malachi.

“Fungi also produce chitin,” Diana added helpfully.

“But there are giant insects here. Five Hollows was telling me about these giant centipedes that have haste spells and really nasty pincers.”

“Ah. Great,” Malachi said.

The forest was eerily quiet as they walked. No bird calls, Malachi realized. He wondered why. Most of the animals and plants they saw strongly resembled things from Earth, but often, entire clades of organisms were missing from a Realm.

At last, they came up to a cluster of large rock spires. Nestled up against them were several enormous oak-like trees that were overgrown with mushrooms of every kind. There was a town-sized sinkhole next to the pillar and trees, and inside, more tangles of plants and mushrooms. Two streams cascaded down into the sinkhole where they joined a mid-sized river that moved through the town and disappeared into a dark cave.

“Welcome to Grotto City!” Five Hollow said.

The gorgon city of Matrasa had also been suffuse with mushrooms used for construction. However, it had still resembled a city, with recognizable streets and buildings. Grotto City, on the other hand, looked more like overgrown ruins than a proper town with streets. Branches and mushroom caps grew out in circular structures that kept most of the city dark. Some of them were clearly artisan shops or markets, while others just looked overgrown. The roads all twisted and turned about in the same manner the jungle route had.

A switchback down a slope of the sinkhole brought them down into the city, and Malachi got a better look.

Throughout the city, fungarians moved about, hauling goods, weaving, cooking—thank god for that—and trading. However, they did so in silence. Pairs would come up and clasp arms, then hyphae would entangle each other and they’d stand there like statues before eventually untangling. Then they’d exchange something and move on with the rest of their day.

Beneath the dome-like larger structures, it took Malachi a moment to understand what he was seeing. Instead of individual fungarians, there were clusters of them. Instead of clasping arms, there were tangled networks of hyphae linking their heads together. None of them moved. The smell coming from underneath those domes was terrible, and when Malachi saw a couple of fungarians pull a cart up next to one and start shoveling food waste at the piles, he realized why. Apparently their diet changed when they were in that fugue state.

It was all creepy as hell.

Diana was having the same feeling. “I’m not sleeping anywhere that doesn’t have a locked door,” she murmured.

“They have to have something for outsiders,” Malachi said.

Thankfully, they did. There was a cave near one of the waterfalls that had been expanded and apartments had been carved out. A few ignians were already staying in one, and as their group approached with Sul and the cart, they came out to greet Hepuria, the Vetucor representative.

“Glad the portal has been reestablished,” one of the waiting ignians said. “When we heard how big that army was… well.”

“It was a close thing,” Hepuria said. “We need to meet with the Hivemacht and Memarian. What’s the situation here?”

“Same as it always is,” the ignian said.

Hepuria just gave a grunt of acknowledgment.

Malachi untethered Sul and took the giant snail’s reigns. He escorted the snail to a stable within the cave where a pile of leaves waited, then joined the rest of the group in unloading the majority of the cart’s supplies into the rooms—most into a storage cave that had a door made of metal bars wrapped in braids of roots, while the chests of personal effects went into the apartments. He and the other humans didn’t have much, but the ignians had provided them with a few items for personal care.

A small aqueduct caught water from the falls above and ran it down to a series of five limestone pools.

Malachi’s eyes lit up. “Baths,” he said, which turned Diana’s head as well. Yes, the Ashlands had those geyser pools the ignians were fond of, but the waters were far too hot and full of heavy metals. Malachi hadn’t had a proper bath in ages.

“Ugh. They never heat the water properly,” Nerys complained.

“You’ll want to take your bath after the meeting,” Hepuria said.

“Oh. I see,” Diana said.

It took a bit for everyone to settle in. Ge Yichen, one of the people they’d rescued from slavery in the Ashlands, accompanied them, even though he didn’t have a Magic Core to translate. Two women who had been part of that group—Malachi couldn’t remember their names for the life of him—also joined. The rest, including Fido the Pomeranian, stayed behind, along with most of the ignians.

As they made their way into what passed for a city hall, Malachi understood Hepuria’s advice. Apparently, people with decomposer symbiotes had a fundamentally different relationship with the smell of rotting plant matter than humans did. It made sense. The rot probably smelled great to them. But it was all he could do not to gag as they entered what passed for the council chambers. A tunnel near the spires wound down into a large chamber full of piles of compost. There sat the Hivemacht and the Memarian.

Diana had chatted with Five Hollows as they walked, and between him and Hepuria, Malachi had been told a bit about what to expect. Seeing it, though, was very different than hearing about it.

The Hivemacht was just a regular fungarian, albeit one with the most elaborate crown of mushrooms he’d seen yet. The pointed caps were refined and regular, forming golden spikes.

We’re never going to find a place that makes normal-ass helmets, Malachi thought.

The Hivemacht wore an embroidered robe that was obviously enchanted given how many runes lined it. He also had a glowing ring that suffused his whole hand with a blacklight glow.

Orn-aetheric enchantment, SERA noted. Those were rare, he knew.

The fungarian leader sat on a throne made up of fused animal bones, with colossal ribs jutting out of the top of the chair. Whatever beasts they’d killed to make that throne had to have been massive, which probably was the point of showing them off.

The Memarian was the thing that unnerved him. They were like the interconnected fungarians in the dome structures throughout the city, except taken to a new level. At least a hundred humanoid bodies were connected to the wall in hyphae. Unlike the tangles he’d seen in the city, though, these hyphae seemed to have been carefully grown into artistic patterns, making the web of tendrils connecting the bodies look more like tapestries than anything fungal. Near the edges of the weave, those tendrils extended into the compost piles.

Several attendant fungarians stood guard wearing the chitin armor and carrying a mix of magical weapons. He noticed that there were small fungal clusters near the ends of the polearms, and hyphae webs around the hilts of the swords. Weapons designed to take advantage of their focus on fungal druidic conduits? he wondered.

“Welcome, guests,” the Hivemacht said, though he stayed seated.

“Welcome,” the Memarian said, speaking directly into Malachi’s head. Something about the voice made it feel like he’d just dipped his head in warm water. He shivered involuntarily.

However, they needed allies, and more importantly, they needed guides to find the lingering portal.