Swamp

After spending a few minutes staring at the fungal expanse in front of them, the two explorers decided to retreat in the entry tunnel on account of Chillushrith’s legs slowly sinking in the soft and muddy ground of the cave.

After sitting down on a drier-looking spot on the ground, Alice shot a glance towards the giant spider resting just beside her. “Thank you for leading me here,” she said as she carefully munched on a random mushroom she had picked from the ground, soon spitting out its unpleasantly bitter flesh and ignoring the mild poison it contained, her enhanced body already consuming it, “but I’ve seen the way you kept sinking in the ground, even in the outer perimeter of the cave… are you still going to cross this expanse with me?” she asked, already expecting the negative click she obtained.

It really was time for the final goodbye.

Chillushrith appeared somewhat agitated, her palps twitching erratically before a ripple shook the exoskeleton covering her large frontal limbs, the metal turning into a fluid as it forced the mud caking it to fall on the ground. The moment her two legs were clean; the spider reached for a thread of silk and carefully inscribed a series of webs on the wall of the tunnel.

The first web showed two spiders side by side; the bigger spider was sinking into the ground, its legs completely submerged, while the smaller one moved normally on the surface. That, along with the agreed-upon pictogram of ‘time’, managed to convey how much time had actually passed since the Thinkers had last explored this place.

“You were so small!” she exclaimed, “It must have been a very long time ago, right?” she asked, immediately rewarded with a click of the arachnid’s fangs.

However before she could ask some more, Chillushrith started weaving once again, this time producing two different webs, both showing a very ugly embroidery of a human figure walking between the giant mushrooms of the cave. In the first one, Alice’s attention was taken by the depiction of a large flare of lines that came from the gap in front of the figure, most likely the spider’s way of describing light.

The other, instead, didn’t have the same rays and showed a number of round, bipedal creatures that seemed to be following the human as it walked.

“I guess I should progress during the day,” she murmured, her eyes glued to the strange creatures; she felt like she had already seen them somewhere but she couldn’t really remember where.

After that, the spider weaved her last web, this time of some kind of creature that she would apparently encounter after moving past the swamp, some kind of massive beetle the Thinker seemed to be particularly focused on.

“I understand. I’ll try to proceed as carefully as possible. I’ve fought against enough titans already.” She stated with a small smile before her expression turned melancholic once more.

“I wanted to thank you again, even if you are the crankiest creature I’ve ever met you’ve still managed to save me quite a number of times. Maybe we’ll see each other again… maybe. Please make sure that Skitter receives care while he heals.” She said, smiling when she heard the annoyed hiss of the hulking female who immediately turned around and stomped away, soon disappearing in the darkness of the labyrinthine caves she had guided her through.

Alice made to move onward herself when she noticed the long coil of threaded wire Chillushrith had left on the ground for her, a smile appearing on her lips once more.

“What a surly girl.”

And now I’m alone once again. I’ll need to be much more careful now. She thought as she scouted the edges of the large cavern, wary of loud sounds and hidden predators as her feet sometimes broke through the large, heterogeneous crust of mycelia and squelched in the mud beneath.

Surprisingly, the silken material of her shoes seemed particularly good in that moist environment, its mesh too tight to let the foul-smelling mud through and too smooth to be caked by it, easing her movement through the outer layer of the swamp.

Despite the quality of her footwear, however, the young woman still found herself coated in brown splatters all over her body, something she promised to resolve once she found herself a safe and dry resting spot.

If I find one. she told herself in her mind, using her enhanced sight to observe her surroundings and immediately spotting numerous vague shapes darting through the thick stalks of the distant giant toadstools.

Alice shivered; she was not looking forward to that part of her journey, one that she couldn’t really avoid as the forest reached the sidewalls of the space and became thicker the closer one moved to the opening.

The girl had just stopped to sniff at a colony of particularly tasty-looking mushrooms when she felt something brushing lightly against the skin of her calves; she glanced down, only to see half a dozen, long and fleshy appendages suddenly latch onto her legs.

And an instant later, Alice felt a sense of invasion of her biological system as her dermis was painlessly cut by a round mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth that had also released some kind of pain inhibitor in her flesh.

Disgust filled her body as the tendril started rhythmically contracting to suck her blood, coiling around her legs to keep her in place.

Without a moment of hesitation, the girl immediately reached for her knife with her left hand, unsheathing the metal and obsidian blade and effortlessly shearing through the first five meat tubes, ignoring the spray of red and blue blood that came from the severed ‘tentacles’ before the stumps receded into the mud they had come from.

The last one, instead, she grasped with her right hand, almost retching when her fingers touched the slimy and turgid maroon surface that was still eagerly siphoning her ichor.

She, however, didn’t let herself falter, squeezing tightly around the tendril and only slightly flinching when it decided to release its hold on her leg and latch onto the back of her hand, easily cutting a round hole through her thin flesh and puncturing the blood vessels underneath.

“You don’t know who you are fighting against.” She gritted through her teeth as she gripped it tighter, ignoring the dizzying feeling of loss of her vital fluids as she bruised its flesh and started slowly pulling it out of the mud, feeling it twitch and strain against her strength as she dug her heels in the soft bed of mycelia.

A moment later, the sludge opened up with a loud glop and a panting Alice stared at the barely moving culprit.

It was a razor clam, like the ones she would sometimes eat the rare times she went on a holiday to the sea with her parents. This one, however, had likely decided to try some steroids when it was young and then moved straight to crack to finish the job.

The clam was as long as her forearm and almost as thick; now that it wasn’t covered in mud, Alice noticed that its shell was of a muted green with vibrant blue and red stripes, a quite ugly amalgam of colors that promised nothing good from the creature sporting them.

As far as she could glimpse from a very quick magical inspection, instead of filtering nutrients from its environment like most normal mollusks, this engorged species had instead decided to become a giant ambushing leech, ridding any unfortunate prey of its vital fluid whenever it passed over its spot.

She was not an unfortunate prey.

After killing the last one, the young woman carefully sealed her wounds, grabbed a handful of random mushrooms for taste-testing, and then stomped away from that spot and back into the tunnels.

“Fudge this place already” she murmured as she carefully divided the tasty mushrooms from the disgusting ones, smiling slightly when her body simply ignored the toxins contained within the spongy morsels, some of which would have probably killed her in the past.

She was back on her dry spot in the tunnel, now much cleaner after carefully using the Lumen to eat the grime covering her and her clothes. Her control of the minuscule particles had increased to such a degree that she could easily force them to ignore the precious fabric of her dress and only consume the dirt stuck on it, an incredible achievement if she said so herself.

“And if this is how the entire walk is going to be, I’m definitely not going to enjoy it. I just wish there was a better way” she lamented to the orange mucilage growing on the wall beside her as she threw a mushroom cap into the air and caught it with her mouth like a peanut, immediately spluttering it out when its content turned out to be tasting like wet trash on a hot summer day.

She kept eating the small pile of mushrooms until there was only one left, resembling a honey mushroom but with an incredibly bright yellow color on its flesh.

Pensively, she made it jump up and down on her open palm, feeling its almost imperceptible weight and the silkiness of its skin against her own.

“It’s definitely an improvement on a diet of only raw meat but I’m probably going to start feeling like Mario very soon,” she said before popping the last one in her mouth, feeling it almost melt on her tongue and reveling in its astonishing sweet and almost peachy flavor, coupled with a deadly toxin that gave it just enough spice.

She sat there, savoring her current favorite thing in that new world as a smile slowly appeared on her face.

“Mario huh? Let us embrace its nature.”

Alice slept softly for only a couple of hours, her hearing turned up to the max in order to sense any incoming ambush, her rest soon interrupted by the loud chirring of countless beings that suddenly erupted from the expanse in front of her, causing her to yelp in surprise and swing the mace to prevent an attack that wasn’t coming.

After confirming that she wasn’t being ambushed by a predator, the young woman groaned slightly as she got up on her feet before carefully advancing towards the source of the noise, her weapons drawn and ready for anything.

She stopped on the limit of the tunnel, slowly lowering her mace as her eyes fixated on the wide torrent of sunlight that erupted from the huge gash in the cavern’s wall and bathed the fungal forest with its warmth.

The girl felt her breath catch in her throat, constricting her lungs as she felt an almost physical desire to reach the distant rays of light, to bask in their radiance and forget all the horrible things she had experienced until then, a cleansing light that would rid her of the doubt, fear, and guilt that still nestled inside of her very being.

She craved it like a parched hermit in a desert craved water or a prisoner prayed for freedom, for that light was her water and her freedom, so close and yet so distant.

Almost unconsciously, the young woman tightened the grip on her mace, her fingers growing white from the pressure.

Her eyes unable to leave the wondrous sight, her expression still grew resolute as she promised herself that, whatever the challenge, she would get to the outside.

Whatever it takes.

It took her a few more minutes to be calm enough to notice the rest of the changes that had occurred in the cave.

Only in that moment did Alice realize that the cacophony she had already forgotten about was still there, coming from the sudden awakening of the expanse.

The young woman stood witness as countless swarms of insects soared to the air, frantically meeting to fight and mate and feed in a constant war against time and predators.

Between the insectile clouds, she saw dozens if not hundreds of bat-like creatures; like sharks rushing towards a school of fish, they swooped towards a swarm and unhinged their mandibles to allow the expansion of a gullet not unlike that of a pelican, swallowing the hapless creatures and quickly decimating entire colonies before flying back up towards the dripping ceiling.

Sometimes, however, the winged creatures dived too low, entering the range of some kind of caterpillar or multilegged worm which, from their position on a few of the larger mushroom caps, unerringly shot them down with a spray of sticky slime before slowly crawling towards their felled prey and consuming it whole.

Let’s say hello to the neighbors.

Alice wasn’t scared as she moved towards the edge of the forest; cautious? Yes, but she had fought and seen much worse during her stay in the cave system. Even the small colonies of leechrats she could spot here and there didn’t cause her much more than an expression of disgust. She had changed, grown colder.

As she walked, the girl was sometimes forced to kill more of the Razorblood Clams—as she had dubbed them— that desired her precious fluids, but it was in good time that she reached her target, one of the true giants of that treeless forest.

The mushroom stood well over four meters in height and, while still dwarfed by Maath, was still a quite imponent being, just its cap easily over six meters in diameter.

She checked for a lack of horrible monster hiding in its lamellated underside before placing a hand on the thick stalk in front of her, feeling at its surprisingly sturdy surface, nothing like the spongy softness she had expected. Which wouldn’t have made much sense in hindsight, it still needs to hold the weight of the cap after all.

It was still much softer than wood, so much so that she could probably break it with her enhanced hand if she really wanted to.

Let’s see how it goes first. She thought as she sunk the point of her knife in a comfortable spot to her right and started cutting a deep and round divot in the material.

She worked silently and quickly, careful of the unreplaceable blade whenever she cut another divot in the toadstool, only stopping when she couldn’t reach more of the stalk with her height and then staring at her work.

Mario didn’t have to fricking climb on his mushrooms though… just you wait, one day I’ll be able to simply jump four meters without a second thought.

Nonetheless, the biomancer drowned her complaints in determination, quickly sheathed her knife, tied the silken rope around the trunk as a very unsafe safety belt, and then started climbing, stopping when she reached the last divot and only then carefully unsheathing the tool once again to create the next set of handholds.

Half an hour later, Alice had slipped two times and almost stabbed herself once more but she was finally at the very top of the stalk, staring with hate at the lamellae blocking her way up.

“Should have thought about that.” She lamented as she plunged her knife into the spongy flesh one more time, creating a small gash where she then inserted her hand and simply started ripping away handfuls of white mushroom meat, slowly burrowing in the fungi like a very sweaty caterpillar until, after a lot of muted swearing, she finally erupted on the top and rolled to the side, dreading the moment she would have to go down once again to retrieve the mace she had forgotten on the ground.

“At least now it’s only a matter of jumping, right?”

She was sure it would be all right.

*****

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