[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 54: The Root of the Problem (Patreon)

“Pyuu!” the slime wailed in fear.

“What’s the matter, Smudge?” Shrubley asked, gently patting the slime.

“What’s up with Smudge?” Cal asked.

“Something is frightening him.”

Cal peered up at the slime. “Don’t worry, little guy, we’ll protect you.”

Shrubley took out his sword and shield. They were dramatically improved compared to what he used to have, but there was something about them that didn’t feel quite him.

For some reason, he thought he deserved the weaker, inferior weapons. They were more who Shrubley was, even if he was now a Copper Rank and should have better equipment.

He liked the poorly made practice sword and the pot lid that Winmore had tried–rather unconvincingly–to explain was a shield from a very old battle.

But Shrubley was a romantic, and he liked the story that Winmore wove for him far more than the unvarnished truth that sat before him.

Now he had something called a [Morph Shield] that could encase him in its layered protection and a wicked weapon called [Death’s Razor] which was far too edgy for a little shrub to be wielding, he was sure.

Upon his twiggy limbs, the shield and weapon felt and looked out of place.

“Can’t go back,” Smudge said softly. “Trees blocking our way.”

“Good,” Shrubley said, much to the surprise of the slime. He held aloft his sword. “We’re going to the heart of the lair! If there’s a beast to fell, we’ll fell it. Though I would be happy if it was just an abandoned homestead where we can rest and recover until the Countess is better.”

That would be nice,Shrubley thought. A little rest and relaxation after all this business with fighting and surviving would be quite welcome. I should like to have some nice tea and cookies as well.

“Every tree,” Smudge struggled to get out. “Trapped snakes. All buried inside.”

Slyrox looked around in alarm but could not see the serpentii bodies stuffed in the trees’ hollows due to the ensorcelling-magic about the area.

“Then it’s a very good thing we aren’t leaving,” Shrubley told him. “Once we deal with whatever is causing this, perhaps the trees will return to their proper non-ambulatory selves. That is very unbecoming of a tree, you know. And I should know.”

Smudge sniffled in some dangling snot. “Aren’t you a tree?”

“I’m a shrub. Very different indeed.”

Shrubley didn’t like the thought that the other trees were moving around one bit. He tried to keep it under wraps though, because the others were counting on him.

He had tried, on multiple occasions, to reach out to the trees. If they had a shred of consciousness, he should have gotten something from them. Instead, he was met with not just silence, but a strange sort of static sound that filled his head with unsettling emotions of pain and sorrow.

But whenever he looked at a tree, they were normal. Well, normal for here at any rate.

Their purple-yellow leaves made Shrubley feel sickly, and he remembered just how horrible he felt during their training. Now that he knew the trick of his [Verdant Inventory], he could use it to recharge with [Solar Synthesis] whenever needed.

Perhaps he could use that to his advantage against whatever he was going to find here.

The only upside was the complete and utter lack of any monsters to fight. The serpentii had simply vanished. He suspected the last several hours were uneventful for the same reason they were now.

There was nothing living but them in this part of the woods.

Hours passed. The sun set and they used a small sphere of Light essence from Shrubley to guide the way so Smudge could see. It never got cold here, but in the dead of night it was almost comfortable.

“Chicken feet,” Smudge said after a while longer, startling more than a few of them out of their tired reverie.

“What?” Cal asked, looking around hopefully. A pair of chicken feet would make some fashionable ears. “I don’t–right, I wouldn’t, would I?”

“Chicken feet house,” Smudge elaborated.

“Is there a house?” Shrubley asked, slowing down.

“Front right,” Smudge instructed. “Chicken feet house.”

Shrubley patted the slime affectionately and headed in that direction. The slime called out multiple directions for some reason, confusing even the unflappable Shrubley.

“We fight chicken?” Slyrox asked, bemused. “Hmm, maybe Smudge will have to tongue-flap where the enemy is, so we can muchly beat it up without eye-peeking it.”

At last, after seemingly walking in a corkscrew pattern, they passed through a shimmering wall of light. It wasn’t shimmering until they touched it, but when they did, it rippled like a mirror-still pond.

Shrubley gasped. As the first one through the barrier, he saw what Smudge must have seen this entire time.

It was a chicken feet house.

A homely little cottage stood on two massive chicken feet in the center of a bog of some sort. There were wooden planks all around to provide stable footing above the bubbling, swampy ground.

The ground Shrubley stood upon was at least a dozen feet higher than the sunken area in front of him containing the swamp. Here the ground sloped down sharply and smelled of life and decay in a curious mix that Shrubley had never smelled before.

It wasn’t bad, not to Shrubley at least, but it was odd. Especially after the forest.

Shrubley looked behind and saw his friends coming through the barrier. They shimmered for a moment as they passed through.

“I suppose you could punch in its windows,” Cal told the koblin. “Must be a weak spot, glass and all.”

“Is the house doing it?” Slyrox asked. “The magic, I mean.”

“I don’t think so,” Shrubley said, noticing the curl of smoke from the crooked leaning chimney and the lights on in the windows.

“Somebody’s home,” Cal said.

“Good,” Slyrox said, punching one mittened fist into the palm of the other. “Been too much walking, not enough fisting!”

Cal had a feeling that wasn’t the correct phrase, but he was also a skeleton that hardly remembered having blood and organs, so maybe he wasn’t the best authority on modern phrases.

“See anything else, buddy?” Shrubley asked as he carefully picked his way down the sloping lip.

“Trees still behind.”

Shrubley had seen them too. Shorn of their illusion, he’d seen the horrific trees and their gruesome cargo. Smudge’s simple explanation made all the more sense now.

It didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would, but he didn’t mention this to the others as he urged them down into the lower elevation where the trees would be hidden from view.

Mostly, Shrubley felt bad for the trees. They were suffering in one way or another, that much he was aware of. However, he didn’t think it was the magic doing it.

It was this realm.

Everything was a pale copy of something real and so, in a way, the trees knew this as well. The grass, shrubs, everything was a mimicry of something that truly existed.

And yet, they themselves didn’t exist in the same way. The world itself was permeated with this feeling of incompleteness. A loss that could never truly be understood or grieved.

“Are the feets moving?” Slyrox asked the slime, unsure if there was any additional hidden magic at play that he could see clearly through.

“Pyuu… No. Not yet.”

“Not yet?” Cal asked nervously, wriggling his newly reconstituted left hand in place.

“Pyuu,” Smudge said in confirmation.

The planked walkways shifted uneasily under their feet. Things bobbed unpleasantly in the water.

With the light of Shrubley’s essence sphere, they could see little v’s rippling through the dark green waters. Shrubley felt like he should feel relieved at not seeing what was making those ripples, yet he felt quite certain that not seeing it would be the problem.

Shrubley watched as the ripples came up to the floating planks to investigate, but whatever was beneath the surface didn’t seem to care and after a few tense moments the v’s trailed away.

“I feel like we just got very lucky,” Cal said, watching the rapidly fading ripples. “What do you think that was?”

“Crockle,” Slyrox said. “Angry things. Look like logs, snap-snap mouths full of teeth. But lazy. We are too many for them, maybe.”

“They like to eat lots? I like to eat lots more,” Smudge said, mustering some nerve.

“It’s okay, Smudge,” Shrubley said. “If it wants to leave us alone, I say we do the same.”

“Pyuu,” Smudge said aggressively. A little steam came out of his mouth in a gust. He wasn’t going to let anybody hurt his family, even if he had to put all of them inside him. No one among them was a mind-reader, and especially not a slime-reader, so they couldn’t question what exactly that implied.

A crockle liked to eat things? Nothing could eat better than a slime!

“Do you suppose we just… knock?” Cal asked as they climbed the rickety steps up to the front porch of the moss-covered cottage.

“Will the feets attack?” Slyrox asked, head tilted down, smoky lenses reflecting the house’s light.

Even as the only other light source in the unsettlingly dark night, the cottage still didn’t appear the slightest bit welcoming.

“It is the polite thing to do,” Shrubley said, stepping up onto the creaking porch floor and stowing his equipment in his [Verdant Inventory]. There was no call to be uncivilized.

“Yeah,” Cal said nervously, standing off to one side so that anything coming out of the door wasn’t likely to get him too. “You say that, but what if a big snake comes barreling out, or it’s some evil old wicked witch who wants to boil us alive?”

“They are free to want,” Shrubley said calmly. He made a fist and knocked gently on the door. “Wants are free. It is only when you make a want a reality that you must pay the tax for your action.”

“Muchly wise,” Slyrox put in.

“Pyuu!”

“Besides,” Shrubley said, folding his hands gently and turning around to an empty space that Smudge quietly pointed out to him. “Our host has been watching us all this time. Isn’t that right, ma’am?”

From a darker corner of the porch, a rocking chair suddenly emerged and a billowing figure dressed in midnight materialized out of the shaped shadows. It wasn’t as if they suddenly teleported in. It was rather like looking at a cloud and realizing it was a face.

Once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it. The person had always been there, just like that face in a cloud had always been there.

“Well, well, well,” said the figure without bothering to get up. “Some keen eyes ye got there.” An old and withered hand emerged from the dark folds and pointed to the door.

There was a faint crackle of power, and the door sprang open.

“Best be gettin’ inside,” said the old woman.

It didn’t sound like a request.