A Jaded Life

Silva started to sniff around the area before starting down one direction of the tunnel, with the rest of us following after her. At the same time, I made sure to taste the air around us, trying to keep us from wandering into any dangerous areas, be they magically created or mundane. Knowing that there were mushrooms around made me a little leary, still remembering the Withering Fungus and its countless servitors. Hopefully, I’d be able to find anything strong enough to influence us before it could do so, either with my Soul Sight, magical detection or using some other way or if I failed, maybe Luna or one of the others could cover my failure.

I still wasn’t sure what was actually going on in this odd cavern but maybe I would find some indication of it while we were hunting the rabbits. If nothing else, they would probably go to the place they considered safest as they were being chased and that safest place could be what made this place so peculiar. Out of curiosity, and to make sure we didn’t miss anything because we focused on our various night-vision abilities, I raised a hand and conjured a small, crackling fireball above my palm, the flame shedding light on the environment in a way that was somewhat comforting.

Now, in the light of my fire, I could see the colours in this cave or the lack thereof. The mushrooms were the most colourful and that wasn’t saying much, they were simple, white stalks with caps that ranged in colour from white to reddish-brown. Nothing special, nothing exciting and the walls of the cave were much the same. Fairly smooth, slate-grey rocks with a few discolourations and inclusions, nothing that I could use to tell me what happened here. There was neither the uniformity I would have expected if somebody had conjured this, or used magic to compress dirt into stone nor was there any other indication of magical influence on these walls, though when I touched one of them, I noticed there was something there, almost akin to an echo of magic that had moved through them a while back. A long while, at least that was what my senses were telling me, but given that the Change had only happened a few months back, it couldn’t have been all that long, unless I was faced with some serious weirdness.

As we moved, the mushrooms became a little bigger while there was more water dripping from above, not enough to be relevant but it was a noticeable increase and yet, the ground seemed to be quite dry. Deciding that I wanted to see if there was anything interesting about the shrooms, I conjured a shell of Ice around one of the bigger ones before forming blades inside to cut the stalk after we all got some distance. That way, if the defensive mechanism of the mushrooms was to release toxic spores of some kind, the spores would be trapped in the conjured shell, giving us ample time to escape. The only danger was that the shrooms were somehow linked and would all release spores if one was damaged but that was why we had moved away, just in case. If all the mushrooms released spores, regardless of distance, I would have to use Wind Magic to keep us safe as we fled the cave.

When the Ice cut off the stalk and sealed the sell around it, the mushroom simply fell over, the movement causing some spores to be released but it didn’t feel like they were part of the defensive mechanism, only part of the mushroom that had been jostled loose. Hopefully, not dangerous, I certainly couldn’t feel anything special about them, and neither could Luna or Lia.

Once the mushroom was secured, I conjured Ice inside the shell and rapidly dissected it, while Lia and Alex were watching carefully and, in Alex’s case, with a strange monocle. It was one of their numerous creations and by now, I had learned not to ask. They were happy to explain what they were doing but their explanations weren’t something I could understand without a lot of background research, as they had either learned or created their own alchemical jargon that I wasn’t familiar with, a jargon needed to understand their designs. Alchemy was weird, in a way that pure magic just wasn’t, where they used the strangest ingredients and somehow managed to draw supernatural effects from those combinations and actions, without any involvement of what I’d consider magic. Case in point, the monocle that allowed Alex to perceive something in regards to materials on a deeper level, somewhat similar to my magical sight, only for the strange, alchemical properties. I had looked through it once, only to lose my breakfast from the riot of colours that intruded on my senses, bringing with it a headache that lasted for days afterwards.

To me, the mushroom was nothing special. There were some faint traces of Astral Power that gave me a bit of an idea that it likely wasn’t edible, as the traces were mostly Poison Astral Power, but beyond that, I couldn’t tell it from any other shroom I might come across.

Alex and Lia, on the other hand, were somewhat excited by the shroom and were planning to collect a load of them on the way out, but before we could pick shrooms, we had some rabbits to catch, so we continued onwards.

“Stop,” a voice cut through the cave’s darkness and it took me a moment to realise it had been my voice, the command issued by reflex when my senses told me that there was something incredibly strange ahead. I could feel the stone continuing onwards, going around a bend, but at the same time, I couldn’t perceive the cave any further, as if something was blocking my Earth Sense. This might be incredibly bad, so I doused the flame on my hand as I told the others what I was sensing. Silva, in turn, let out a soft growl and we all readied ourselves for combat, just in case it was needed.

Moving through the restored Darkness, we stepped around the bend and stopped once more. The previously incredibly boring mushrooms had been replaced by something a lot more colourful. Mushrooms, lichen and some other plants were covering the walls and part of the ceiling and floor, all of them glowing in a riot of colours, giving off a faint, floral scent and I could feel faint magical emanations, despite being a few metres away. It wasn’t enough power to be dangerous, nor could I feel any active magic, but these were, quite literally, magic mushrooms. I doubted they were on the level of the Withered Fungi but I wasn’t willing to take a risk, even surrounded by a bubble of Wind Magic.

“It’s a Dungeon,” Luna quietly whispered, her eyes glowing with silver light as she stared ahead, causing me to sigh softly. Of course it was, now we only had to risk moving through a forest of magical mushrooms that might turn us into something strange or we would have to turn around and look for another path.

“Can anyone sense anything dangerous about the mushrooms?” I asked my companions, wondering if I should simply sterilise the area with Death Magic. It would likely solve the issue but leave me weakened from the drain channelling the necrotic energy caused, something I wanted to avoid as I had no idea what might wait for us further inside.

There was a round of negative replies and I decided that continuing on didn’t carry any prohibitive danger, at least if we remained cautious. In this case, that meant I quickly conjured a combination of Wind and Ice and sent a blast of frigid air down the cave, causing the mushrooms to visibly dim and wither. They wouldn’t die, at least not all of them, but the cold forced them to focus their powers internally, hopefully keeping them from becoming a danger to us as we moved past.

One after the other, we moved forward and now, I could feel the energy of the Dungeon Entrance in the air, just in front of us. It was weird, the energy was clearly there but it wasn’t magical, at least it wasn’t based on Astral Power. Even back on Mundus, when faced with the workings of the Divine, I had been able to tell more about it than I could perceive here, making me wonder what exactly that meant.

Shaking my head, I pushed away the questions and continued forward, bringing up the rear so Alex and Luna were protected in the middle of the group, while Silva and Lia led the way. Hopefully, the dungeon would be suitable for our level, though it was a faint hope, I doubted there were many dungeons at our level already. Either way, we should get something out of it, with the worst case being a few interesting materials.