Chapter 120 - Myconids (Patreon)

Zeke strode forward, his booted feet making a squelching noise with every step. Luckily, the effect from his [Greaves of the Spider Queen] remained just as noticeable as ever, keeping his footing sure. The same couldn’t be said for his companions, who were struggling with the swampy terrain. And poor Pudge was a bundle of annoyance and anger that threatened to erupt the moment some unfortunate enemy drew his ire. But as frustrated as he was, he couldn’t fight a swamp.

“Swamps aren’t supposed to be cold,” grumbled Tucker, who trudged along behind Zeke, knee-deep in the murky combination of mud and fetid water, atop of which floated islands of moss and swamp grass. Dotting the swamp were twisted evergreen trees whose thick branches spread out to cover dozens of feet in every direction. They weren’t any species of tree Zeke had ever seen, so he assumed they didn’t exist on Earth. Giving the strange vista an altogether otherworldly feel were the floating bog wisps – balls of blinking, white light not dissimilar to the mostly harmless wisps Zeke had seen in the mountains. However, with the everpresent fog that blanketed the swamp, they seemed altogether more sinister.

“This was your idea, remember?” Zeke reminded the huge man.

“I think it is pleasant,” said Talia, who seemed entirely unbothered by the ethereal landscape. She reached out and cupped one of the wisps in her hand, smiling broadly. “There is so much vitality here.”

“Great,” Tucker muttered, probably hoping that his voice was low enough that no one would hear. “Zombie girl is happy, which should put us all at ease.”

Zeke stopped suddenly and turned on the man, saying, “Don’t call her that. Or do you think I need to remind you that you’re part of the reason she is the way she is? I don’t –”

“It’s okay,” Talia said. “I don’t care. He doesn’t mean anything by it. Right, Mr. Tucker?”

“It’s just Tucker,” the big man stated. “And no. I’m just irritated. I’ve always hated swamps and cold weather, and this place feels like it was designed just to get under my skin.”

By this point, Zeke knew Talia well enough to recognize when she was lying. Even without the social cues, he was well aware of how much Talia struggled with her status as one of the undead. However, he also knew it wasn’t really his place to step between the two of them. If Talia didn’t want to make a big deal of Tucker’s offhanded insult, then Zeke wouldn’t rock the boat – not when Talia was present, at least. Now, when he and Tucker were alone, that was a different story. But that was a concern for another time.

“Do you know where this myconid nest is?” Zeke asked. “We’ve been trudging through this swamp for days, and none of us have seen anything.”

“It should be around here somewhere,” Tucker said, looking around. “If it wasn’t for this fog…”

Zeke couldn’t really disagree with that assessment. Without the fog obscuring everything, it was likely that they’d have already found the nest, which was supposed to be a mound of swamp detritus with a subterranean cave system beneath it.

“If the maps were right, it should be that way,” Tucker stated, pointing to the northeast. “Maybe a mile or two, at most.”

Zeke sighed, then glanced up at the sky. They had a few more hours before nightfall, but he didn’t want to summon his tower too close to the nest. So, he said, “We should camp here for the night. Once I summon the tower and everyone gets settled in, I’ll head out to scout things out. With any luck, I’ll find the nest, and we can hit it first thing in the morning.”

“I will go with you,” Talia said.

Zeke’s first instinct was to refuse her, but after only an instant, he realized he had no basis for going alone. The tower’s aura would prevent any attack, protecting their camp as well as Tucker. And besides, Talia was a capable fighter who could watch his back.

“Fine,” he said, focusing on a patch of swamp a few dozen feet away. With a thought, he summoned his tower, which had truly begun to live up to its name. Constructed of white stone with thick veins of crimson, it had resolved itself into a circular tower almost five stories tall. A tapering cylinder, its circumference spanned almost forty yards, with what appeared to be a many-spired crown at the top. The thing actually reminded him of Saruman’s tower from the Lord of the Rings, though not quite as overtly evil or oppressive. It wasn’t nearly as imposing, either, given its relatively small size. However, the tower was only in its infancy, and as such, it had plenty of room to grow.

The interior had been altered just as much as the exterior, with the entire first floor looking like nothing so much as a trophy gallery. Ringing the walls were white statues depicting Zeke’s triumphs over the various monsters he’d faced during his time in the Radiant Isles. The croco-rats were there, swarming over an idealized version of Zeke. So were the more mature trolls. The troll warlord. The harpies. The drachnids. Whatever magic was responsible for the tower’s design had even managed to make his fight the fecal fiend look heroic. It was as if his entire life after being reborn was represented in the statues, and at the center was a fountain with a pedestal at its center. There, he saw another statue of him, standing with his shield at the ready while a statue-version of Abby crouched behind him, her bow drawn and an arrow nocked. Pudge was there, too, looking like the fiercest dire bear that had ever been born.

“A bit ostentatious, but who am I to judge?” said Tucker, standing beside him in the entryway. “At least I’ve got a functioning lab now, though. You really should tell me sometime how you got access to an evolving skill like this. It really is incredible.”

In addition to the revamped first level, the rest of the tower had been altered as well. For one, each level seemed to have been intended as a suite for the individual members of Zeke’s party, complete with sitting rooms, fully functioning bathrooms, and something tailored for the intended user’s needs. For instance, Talia had a training suite, complete with a sparring room and a meditation garden. How the plants managed to survive indoors was a complete mystery to Zeke, and one he didn’t intend to investigate – especially after he tried to make sense of the underlying runes and was left with a migraine that still hadn’t faded even two days later. Tucker’s level, predictably, was equipped with a laboratory that looked strikingly similar to the one he’d had on the edges of Micayne’s estate; the only caveat was that none of the glassware or other equipment could leave the tower. If it did, it would dissipate into motes of mana.

For his part, Zeke’s level was the best equipped of them all, and it had clearly been built for two. It sported an archery ranged, a sparring room, and a library. Curiously, it wasn’t equipped with many books – just those Abby had managed to steal from Callum Einar back in Beacon – but it had plenty of space. On top of that, it had all the comforts of home, which is precisely what it was intended to become.

However, the most welcome change was the first sub-level, which contained a fully functioning kitchen. By Earth standards, it was crude, with wood-burning stoves and rune-powered cold storage, but it was light years beyond cooking over an open campfire. All in all, it was a miraculous transformation, and one that Zeke hadn’t really expected. One day, it had been a house, and the next, it was the tower.

“Mind cooking dinner for us while we’re gone?” Zeke asked.

Tucker grinned. “In that kitchen? Sure,” he said. “Snake again? Or do you want something different? Like snake.”

“We really need more variety, don’t we?” Zeke muttered. His stores of other various meats had already been exhausted, leaving them with the veritable ton of snake meat he’d harvested during his time in Nightweb Ravine. The stuff wasn’t terrible, especially when Tucker got ahold of it, but a little variety would’ve been nice.

“Maybe the next evolution of your skill will give us a fully functioning ranch,” Tucker said.

“We should be so lucky,” Zeke answered. He knew Tucker was joking, but he had no idea where the limits of the tower lay. If it could create an alchemy laboratory, was a ranch really so far-fetched?

Pushing those fanciful thoughts from his head, Zeke knelt beside Pudge, saying, “You can’t go, okay?”

Protect! Pudge thought, lacing it with a stubbornness only a two-year-old bear could muster.

“I need to be able to find my way back, buddy,” Zeke stated, scratching behind Pudge’s ears. He intended to use his connection to Pudge as a waypoint. It wasn’t perfect, but it’d get him into the right area. “And I need you to protect Tucker, okay? He’s helpless by himself.”

“I’m not –”

Zeke cast a withering glare at the big man, which served to shut him up.

Pudge fixed Zeke with his most serious stare, then thought, I protect. Be safe.

Zeke nodded, then pressed his forehead against the bear’s snout. For a moment, Pudge radiated confidence and calm that far exceeded his meager age. And then it was gone.

“Be good, buddy,” Zeke said, giving Pudge one last scratch behind the ears before standing. Then, he stepped out of the tower to find Talia waiting on him. As was her default, she stood completely still, not blinking or breathing. Stepping past her, he said, “You know, I kind of envy you.”

“Why?” she asked.

“You don’t have to breathe if you don’t want to, right?” he asked.

“That’s correct.”

“Then you don’t have to smell this horrible bog-stench,” Zeke went on. “Chalk one up for being undead, right?”

“I suppose,” Talia said, following him.

For a few minutes, the pair trudged through the bog until the tower faded into the mist. If it weren’t for Pudge’s presence in the back of his mind, Zeke would’ve thought that it had disappeared altogether. But given that Pudge was still there, and he seemed completely at ease, Zeke knew it was just the overbearing fog reinforcing the solitude.

“It’s not so bad, you know,” Talia said.

“What’s that?” asked Zeke, glancing back.

“Being undead,” she answered. “Once I got over the shock, I’ve come to realize that it’s a gift. I’m certain that I will think differently when we rejoin civilization, but for now, I am content.”

It was a lie she was telling herself. Even if Zeke couldn’t infer that much, he was privy to Talia’s conversations with Abby. Not the details – he didn’t want to pry – but he needed to know her general mindset so he could determine whether or not she posed a danger to the team. And according to Abby, the girl was struggling with her own identity, and in a way no one could really help. Not until she turned a corner and decided she deserved to exist. But for now? She wavered back and forth between believing she was a monster who needed to be exterminated and a girl who was terrified of revisiting the abyss. Caught in limbo, the only thing that kept her putting one foot in front of the other was her status as part of their group. Without them, she’d have already lost herself to either despair or her undead nature.

It was an incredible amount of responsibility, and one which Zeke would rather die than shirk. He’d only known Talia for a few months, but she had already wormed her way into his mind in such a way that he would never abandon her. It was similar with Tucker, though for wholly different reasons.

“Good,” he said. “We’re not –”

Talia reached out, grabbing his armored shoulder. He was about to complain when he turned his head and saw the looming hillock of swamp detritus before him. It was at least a hundred feet tall, and it was comprised of various rotted branches, moss, and mud. However, that wasn’t the most disturbing part of the construction. No – that title belonged to the creatures swarming and wriggling over its exterior.

Some looked like nothing so much as bugs, save for the fact that they were covered in mushrooms and moss. Others were bipedal, in various shapes and sizes, depending on their former race, and sprouting extra root-like tentacles from their backs. Still others were much bigger, with writhing crowns of fleshy tendrils that looked as if they were floating underwater. One and all, they were too far away for [Inspection], but Zeke didn’t need the Framework to tell him which were the most dangerous.

“Well, that’s disturbing,” Zeke mumbled, crouching low.

“So much vitality…”

Zeke glanced at his companion, seeing wide-eyed awe etched across her face. He gripped her shoulder, shaking her as he said, “Snap out of it, Talia. You see an entrance?”

She shook her head – the most human-like mannerism she’d displayed in quite some time – and said, “No. It must be on the other side.”

“Great,” Zeke said. “Just stay low, and if we –”

A geyser of fetid water erupted into the air, accompanied by a loud screech. A moment later, Zeke’s mace was already on its way, caving in one of the insectoid myconid’s shoulders with an overhand swing. Talia, not to be outdone, pounced on it, her claws glowing with green venom as she eviscerated fungi and flesh alike. With each slash, puffs of glittering, gold spores clouded the air. Talia, who didn’t need to breathe, was unaffected, but Zeke summoned a potion for himself and downed the contents. It burned, but according to Tucker, it would protect him from infection.

In seconds, the myconid had been ripped into a thousand, little pieces, which unceremoniously sank into the water.

“Well, that was –”

Again, Zeke was cut off as a hundred other screeches filled the air. That’s when he remembered – the myconids were a hive mind. What one saw, the rest did as well. While the Framework presented them as individuals, they were better described as a singular entity. And that entity knew they were there.

“Shit,” Zeke breathed, his head whipping back to the hillock; already, the swarming monsters were coming their way. Zeke retrieved another potion from his spatial storage and handed it to Talia. “Tucker said they don’t go far from the nest, right? Well, looks like we’re going to find out if that’s true. C’mon. Let’s go.”

“Back to the tower?” Talia asked. She quickly downed the point; while she didn’t have to breathe, there was no guarantee that the spores hadn’t taken root somewhere inside of her. It was better to be safe than sorry. “Or do you want to lose them first?”

“Lose them,” Zeke said. “Then we’ll go home.”

Talia nodded, then took off, with Zeke hot on her heels. Behind them, a mass of fungal monsters pursued, screeching all the while.