Black Mould - Thirteen - Formulating Steps to Move On

Things changed a little at home.

Not drastically, not at first.

My dad was grumpy and sour for a while, but he clearly wanted to learn how to live with a few fingers less, and he was quick to get back to work. Just two days off and he returned to the factory. He said that any more than that and he might be fired and would lose lots of the goodwill he’d built with the company.

I imagined it was pretty hard for him.

I, of course, continued to sneak out of the house to run over to my farm. This time I had a mission.

Doctor Livalis had mentioned three things that caught my attention: the first and most pressing of these were potions.

I had seen enough movies, shows, and games with magic in them to have an idea of what the doctor meant. Even my more professional studies touched on them. Celtic druids, some witches, and plenty of indigenous traditions used mushrooms in bizarre concoctions.

Some were genuine uses as well. Those tended to get synthesised and turned into medicine eventually, so I knew it wasn’t hocus-pocus. And in a world with actual magic and deities, I had no reason to doubt that potions were a thing.

Could I make one that healed my father though? That was a much harder question to answer, but I intended to find out.

The second thing was the mention of a dungeon. I quizzed my mom about it when she returned from work but wasn’t yet in bed. “Mom, what’s a dungeon?”

She glanced up from a pile of clothes she had washed. There was a place nearby with running water and a bunch of primitive washing machines. For a few coins, you could toss all of your laundry in, and for a few more, they’d starch and bleach the clothes. The entire street smelled like disinfectants and strong soaps, and the street-side gutters near there ran white with suddy water.

“Why are you asking?” Mom asked.

“I want to know,” I said. That usually worked well enough as an excuse.

“A dungeon is a scary, dangerous place,” Mom said. “It’s where the world doesn’t work like it should. They have their own rules and are guarded by fierce monsters. You shouldn’t go there.”

That sounded half informative and half like the exact kind of warning you’d give to a kid to keep them away. “What kinds of monsters?” I asked. I wanted to know more about the rules, but I figured I could lead into that.

“Wild things. Wolves and… bears, and creatures with too many arms and legs. Goblins too. Though they tend to be grabbed up by some companies.”

“Grabbed up?” I asked.

Mom nodded. “Every day, the dungeon changes back to the way it was before. Some companies send people in to cut down every tree, mine up all the ores, kill all the monsters for their meat. It’s hard work, and dangerous. You always hear stories of some monster getting loose, or of a new trap showing up that hurts a team of workers.”

So, dungeons were… what, magical places that could reset themselves, but not always exactly the same way? If that was the case, and if the resources grabbed there were permanent, then I supposed that it made sense that some would make a living from gathering everything that could be gathered.

“Can anyone go into a dungeon?”

She stood up, looked at me with tired eyes and hands on hips, then shook her head. “They wouldn’t let someone as small and scrawny as you in. No matter how many questions you ask them. Now help me fold your dad’s socks. Set any with holes aside, we can stitch them up.”

I nodded and jumped to help and do my part.

So, they wouldn’t let a kid in, but she didn’t say that you needed special permission or anything to enter. Which meant… well, maybe later, when I wasn’t in the single-digits still.

Mom went to bed soon after we finished with the clothes. She left me a few small tasks to do, then hit the cot and was out like a light.

She was a heavy sleeper, especially when she was clearly so exhausted. Nothing short of screaming at the top of my lungs would wake her up. So I snuck out again.

The third thing that Doctor Livalis had mentioned and which had me intrigued was the mention of unions. The way he spoke about it made it almost sound like he was talking about some secretive rebellion, something taboo that could start some trouble.

I ran back to my farm, because it was both faster, and it would level up my [Running] skill a little. I think I had to spend a lot more time on that to get it up any more. It seemed like there was a sharp decrease in skill gain past a certain level. Maybe it could be charted. My suspicion was that it wasn’t a linear increase in the amount of time and experience needed to level up a skill, but rather a quadratic increase.

On arriving at my farm, I found that there was a homeless person huddled up not too far from the door. Not an uncommon sight. What was uncommon was that the door wasn’t entirely shut.

Did someone break in?

I stopped in the road and stared.

Why? Why today, of all days?

“No one’s in there.”

I jumped, spinning around to look at the homeless… woman nearby. She had raised her head and was looking my way. “What?” I asked.

“No one’s in there. A few brats broke in. Thuggish sorts, you know? They rattled around in there, then left.”

“Oh,” I said.

Slowly, I moved over to the door and peeked inside. Nothing. Or at least, no one. Moving in, I checked around my mushroom farm, nervous that something would jump out at me. There was nothing though. A few of the trays had been pulled out, and it looked like someone had poked at the dirt I was using here and there, but the smell probably got them to back off.

My stool was tipped over, and it looked like some of my things were tossed off my table. Not much else though, and it didn’t look like anything was taken. I got onto the tips of my toes and snapped a horse head mushroom off at the stem before walking back out.

“Hey,” I said to the homeless woman.

“What’s wrong, kid?” she asked.

“Do you know who broke into my place?” I asked.

She shook her head. “‘Fraid not.”

“What’s your name?” I asked. She didn’t look all that old. Maybe in her forties, if I had to guess. Her skin was too pale, and covered in the same yellowy soot that covered everything in this city.

“Debra,” the woman said. “I’m Debra. I’m… I was a seamstress. Now I’m mostly just hungry.”

I shifted closer to Debra, then extended a mushroom towards her. She stared for a moment, then reached out and took it. Debra devoured the mushroom like a starving dog that had found a bowl full of kibble. “Okay, Debra,” I said. “Thanks for telling me. Do you think you can tell people not to break into my farm?”

“Your farm?” Debra asked. She stared past me and into the darkened room.

I could see the flicker of greed there.

“Yeah,” I said. “Most of the mushrooms I grow will kill people if they eat them. They’re used to kill insects and rats.”

Debra paused mid-bite.

“Not all of them,” I said. “Some can be eaten. They even taste nice. But you need to pick them at the right time, or else they’ll poison your gut, and then you’ll get diarrhoea.” I eyed Debra, and she swallowed carefully.

“I’ve lost some friends that way. They shit themselves to death.”

“It’s not a pretty way to go,” I said. “I’m going to install some traps. Tell anyone that tries to break in that if they do it again, they might get a face-full of spores. And then their livers will rot inside of them. It’s not a nice way to die.”

Debra nodded. “And if I do this…”

“I’ll give you a few more mushrooms. Good ones. Don’t worry. And thank you, Debra.”

I walked back into my farm, closed the door, leaned against it, then allowed myself to shake.

It was hard to breathe, and my chest tightened so hard it hurt. But I held back the tears. I might have been in a young body, but I wasn’t young myself. I could handle this. I just needed to think straight, to formulate some sort of plan, and to act on it.

I needed to protect my farm. I needed to find a way to help my dad.

None of that could happen if all I did was sit here and have a panic attack.

I locked the door up as best I could, shoving a chair up against it. Then I turned and surveyed my room.

I had a couple of empty racks, racks I intended to use to expand my farming.

That wasn’t a bad idea still. More food would be good, and we could sell it for a small profit. But if I needed to arm myself… then I only really had the one option.

The problem was that mushrooms were terrible weapons.

But… I couldn’t recall anyone ever weaponizing them.

There was potential there.

***