33. [Red Tide] An Invasive Species (Patreon)

--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—

Cuda Bite and Throne Gazer, 2nd Renown Skulker and 3rd Renown Trident Master of the Reef, eyes on the prize

Red Tide, Enchantress of the 4th Renown, The Reef, wheeling and dealing

Salt Wall, Berserker of the 2nd Renown, and Turtle Jaw, Quill of the Reef, worried about the horns

 Theo Adamantios, Axe Master of the 6th Renown, and Sylvie Aracia, Penchenne, find themselves in debt

Vikael Rambrother, Shifter of the 11th Renown, Besaden, not quite himself

***

9 Harvesend, 61 AW

The outskirts of Besaden

231 days until the next Granting

Cuda Bite slipped out of the shadows a few steps behind Throne Gazer. The trident master stalked through the trees with purpose, following the broken branches and scraped trunks made during the approach of the giant ram. Ghostly white mushrooms dotted the trail. Pausing to look at one, Cuda Bite flinched as the cap seemed to vibrate and strain toward him.

Hustling to catch up with Throne Gazer, Cuda Bite nearly reached out to grab the other man’s arm before thinking better of it. Even on a rough path covered in leaves and limbs, Cuda Bite’s steps were silent. He didn’t want to get accidentally stuck, so he let a trident’s length open up between him and Throne Gazer before speaking up.

“Where the hell are you going?”

Throne Gazer’s shoulders bunched, but he barely broke stride to glance back at Cuda Bite. “I’m going for the Ink,” he said simply. “You are welcome to join me.”

“You just bail on the others in the middle of a fight?”

“That is not a real fight,” Throne Gazer replied.

Cuda Bite glanced over his shoulder as someone—the Penchennese girl, it sounded like—screamed. “Seems real enough to me.”

 “We can’t kill the rabid beastlord and he can’t kill us,” Throne Gazer said. “It’s sparring, at best. Someone was always going to need to stay behind as a distraction.”

“And you decided it wouldn’t be you? We should’ve talked it through—”

“Did you and Red Tide talk it through with us before you killed Most Loyal Spear?” Throne Gazer said sharply. “Don’t pretend at honor with me, little thief. I don’t see you rushing back to help them.”

Cuda Bite couldn’t deny it. He had fallen into step beside Throne Gazer. The small collection of Ink symbols felt warm on his chest. “Someone needs to watch your back.”

Throne Gazer snorted. “Yes. And why shouldn’t it be you?”

The noble peered down his nose at Cuda Bite—the young skulker had gotten used to that look—but there was something new in Throne Gazer’s eyes. Cuda Bite remembered a similar expression on the face of his first woman. Begrudging respect.

“You have thrown your lot in with Red Tide and I don’t blame you,” Throne Gazer said slowly. “It is wise, even, out here in the wider world, where it’s just the five of us. She operates in a way that I… have never learned to.”

“One way of explaining it,” Cuda Bite said.

“But eventually, we champions will return to the Reef.”

“As prisoners, probably,” Cuda Bite muttered.

“As liberators,” Throne Gazer corrected. “When that day comes, I could be a very good friend to you.”

Cuda Bite had fenced enough stolen trinkets, dealt with another oca’em thieves and crooked land-walker captains, that he knew what it sounded like when an offer had a hook hidden in it. Better to stay quiet in a situation like that. Nose the bait and see what the ripples revealed.

They continued through the forest, the sound of the battle with the giant ram fading behind them.

“You sure they’ll be alright?” he asked.

“Of course,” Throne Gazer replied. “Our allies are surprisingly capable.”

***

Red Tide ducked her head to the side, letting the axe flip past her ear. Sylvie screamed—crouching and covering—although the thrown axe was well wide of her. The weapon’s handle bounced off a tree and thumped into the dirt.

Theo lurched forward, still holding his other axe. He moved with all the grace of a newborn child. The axe master opened his mouth as if to say something, but a pale fuzz of fungus rushed across his tongue.

“Your man’s under the influence,” Red Tide observed coolly.

“Yes, I can see that,” Sylvie replied, backpedaling.

“Tough luck for you.”

Red Tide stepped to the side, clearing a path between Theo and Sylvie. The staggering axe master cocked its head as if trying to come to a decision, then pressed on toward Sylvie.

“What are you doing?” Sylvie screamed.

“He can’t kill me,” Red Tide replied. “You, on the other hand…”

“It’s not Theo,” Sylvie yelped. “He’s controlled by some… some forest abomination.”

“You want to see if the gods carved out an exception for that? Personally, I don’t trust the fuckers.”

Red Tide watched the gears turn behind the young woman’s sharp eyes. She could run back the way they had come and hope to find some help beyond the walls of this forest enclosure, but that didn’t seem likely. Meanwhile, with every step he took, the fungus controlling Theo became more capable of operating the man’s limbs. Could she hope to outrun a champion? What would happen to Theo if she abandoned him here?

“Help us,” Sylvie said through gritted teeth. “Help me.”

Red Tide smiled. “You’ll owe.”

“House Aracia pays its debts,” she snapped.

Her land-walker family name meant nothing to Red Tide. But the timing was too perfect for Red Tide to resist. Theo crunched through the shards of coral she had sprinkled in the grass. As he did, Red Tide waved her hand in an upward spiraling motion and accessed [Coral Tender].

Twisting pillars of coral sprouted from the ground, snagging around Theo’s legs and then pushing higher, pinning his arms and knocking his chin back. Unlike when she’d made a pincushion of Most Loyal Spear, Red Tide willed this coral to be without any murderous points, although the coarse edges still scraped Theo’s skin. Clenching her fist, Red Tide made the coral squeeze tight around him. Theo’s axe-holding hand slipped free but he couldn’t do more than flick his wrist, dinging the edge of his weapon against the coral.

“That easy,” Sylvie said. “You played me.”

“I offered a service,” Red Tide replied. “You want me to let him down? Put on a show for you?”

Sylvie edged forward. “Theo could break your oca’em trickery if he used his Ink,” she said. “The fungus must not know how.”

Red Tide lifted her harp over her head and handed it to Sylvie. “Hold this. Don’t fucking break it.”

There remained the matter of the giant ram. The beast had partly sagged into the grass, seeming spent after puking its spores into Theo’s face. But now it stomped its hooves again, breaths coming in agitated snorts. There was a man in there—a champion of Besaden—they had all seen the Ink. A man could’ve slipped through the tightly overlapped redwoods of this enclosure, but not a giant ram. If the fungus was incapable of utilizing the Ink of those it possessed, perhaps the beastlord was stuck this way on purpose.

“You got enough coral to trap that big bastard, too?” Turtle Jaw called to her.

The Quill and Salt Wall had remained flanking the beast while Red Tide dealt with Theo. The giant ram tossed its head, feinting in Turtle Jaw’s direction but not yet making a charge. Red Tide took measure of her Ink—she sensed what the gods would give her—and knew that, while [Coral Tender] hadn’t yet faded, she would not be able to produce enough to imprison something so massive.

 “No,” Red Tide said. She stepped closer, creating a triangle around the giant ram with the other two oca’em. “I got another idea.”

“Where did the other two go?” Salt Wall asked. Brandishing her hook, the berserker looked eager to once again test her strength against the giant ram. “They are missing the fun.”

“Your friends went off to look for the Ink that is no doubt bound to the source of this infestation,” Sylvie said, sounding a bit smug for someone crouched behind a tree, making herself small.

“Cowardice,” Salt Wall barked. “I thought the gods rewarded prowess in combat.”

Red Tide didn’t reply. She eyed the giant ram, trying to guess which one of them it would charge. She wasn’t surprised that Throne Gazer had gone off after the Ink on his own—at least Cuda Bite had gone with him, and was likely too pragmatic to turn back now. The skulker could have her share. There was more to be gained here than just Ink. A debt from the Penchennese might prove just as valuable on the island.

And then there was the beastlords who they had come here specifically to bargain with.

“Here it comes!” Turtle Jaw shouted.

The giant ram broke for Salt Wall, the berserker letting loose a cry of joy as she rushed to meet it. As she raised her hook, the giant ram sharply turned, spraying Salt Wall with grass and dirt. Salt Wall’s attack peeled back a strip of flesh from the ram’s flanks, but the beast promptly kicked her with one of its back legs, sending the berserker airborne.

The beast pivoted for Red Tide.

“Good boy,” Red Tide said. She opened her arms. “Come and see what I have for you.”

The giant ram dropped it head and smashed into Red Tide’s chest. Her body buckled, the wind left her, and she was pinned beneath the beast’s snout, its rotten musk flowing over her face.

***

The mushroom stood as tall as a man. Like the trail of spores they’d followed this far, its flesh was pale white but, unlike the others, this huge specimen became translucent at its bulbous cap. The thing reminded Cuda Bite of a jellyfish. Floating within the mushroom cap was what looked to be a brain—small and shriveled like the pit of a fruit. Cuda Bite detected ripples flowing out from the brain, vibrations in the mushroom’s gelatinous dome.

The fungus had sprouted from a human body. The man laid there in the dirt, on his back, his abdomen torn open. Dead, obviously, his pale skin sunken and droopy. His head was partly caved in, lopsided, and his neck bulged and swelled. Cuda Bite got the distinct impression that the mushroom had burst up through this poor bastard’s belly and, at some point, sucked his brain down his neck and out.

Black filaments like veins ran across the length of the mushroom, swelling invitingly.

Ink.

“You ever seen anything like that?” Cuda Bite asked.

He crouched with Throne Gazer about twenty yards away, a distance Cuda Bite was only comfortable with because he still had one [Shadow Step] left in him. Throne Gazer opened his mouth and Cuda Bite expected him to answer the way he always did—show off his Horizdock education and tell Cuda Bite he was a provincial dumbass who was a fool for never encountering a gods damned mushroom monster.

But Throne Gazer simply shook his head. “No,” he said. “And I wish I still had not.”

“This forest, man.” Cuda Bite sucked his teeth. “I hate it.”

“Indeed,” Throne Gazer replied. “But I do not think that thing spawned in Besaden.”

“Huh? You think it’s visiting, too?”

Throne Gazer pointed to the corpse’s twisted neck. “The symbol.”

Stretched though the flesh was, Cuda Bite could still make out the Ink on the corpse’s elongated throat. That wasn’t the paw print of Besaden. Instead, the dead man’s Ink was of a curved dagger like a smile that dripped gold coins.

Cuda Bite hissed. “The Brokerage?”

Throne Gazer nodded. “Curious, no?”

All residents of the Reef and its many pods knew the Brokerage. They were bad luck. Riptides had a habit of smashing even the most powerful oca’em swimmer against the jagged rocks of the Beach of Blades. While all that the oceans touched theoretically belonged to the oca’em, there were still some places best avoided, waters where even they did not feel at home.

“As a rule, I try not to get too curious about those types,” Cuda Bite said.

“Then let us do what we came here for and be done with this place,” Throne Gazer replied.

“Sure. How do you think we kill it?”

Throne Gazer stood. He pulled back his trident to throw. “I suggest we begin by destroying the bra—”

Before he could finish his sentence, Cuda Bite had whipped a dagger into the mushroom’s translucent flesh.

***

Pinned beneath the giant ram’s horns and massive head, Red Tide felt the beast spasm as it began to regurgitate. It would be ironic, she thought, to fall under the sway of their fungal adversary. She had used her harp to hypnotize the Coralline Elite before killing them. Since then, her music had lulled plenty of wild game into bowing before her companions’ weapons. There might be some justice in Red Tide having her own will stripped away. A part of her wondered what that might feel like. Her passion for independence was, in part, why she’d ended up in this gods damned forest. Maybe life would be easier without it.

These thoughts didn’t linger. Red Tide didn’t give a shit about irony. Introspection was for old women.

She jammed her hands into the giant ram’s face, digging her fingers into the squishy growths of fungus that spilled from its mouth and nostrils. Then, she activated [Poisonous].

Red Tide’s toxins spread through the fungal growths immediately. The white mushrooms turned brown and curled in on themselves, falling away in flakes. The giant ram’s back legs kicked out like it was trying—too late—to extricate itself from Red Tide. But the body no longer wanted to fully cooperate. Her poison spread in a muddy web beneath the giant ram’s skin, setting its short fur on end as it curled down its throat and spread toward its heart.

In theory, the gods would protect the beastlord from her [Poisonous] touch, while allowing her to kill the growth that had taken over his body. The plan had come to her so quickly that she hadn’t a chance to tell Turtle Jaw and Salt Wall. She heard them rushing toward her—to save her from being crushed beneath the giant ram—although they hesitated when they got close.

Because there was a man on top of her now, not an animal.

The beastlord still had the horns of a ram, though they were smaller, jutting up through a mane of black and gray hair. He was bulky and broad and would’ve been tall if he’d been standing instead of stretched between Red Tide’s legs. His beard was thick and the Ink on his chest was hardly visible, buried as it was beneath an amount of hair that Red Tide found almost vulgar. He leaned back, gently releasing her fingers from his mouth, and then smiled.

“Ah, the delegation from the Reef has arrived,” the beastlord said. “My name is Vikael Rambrother. Welcome to Besaden.”

Then, he twisted to the side, and vomited out a bellyful of Red Tide’s poison.