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//Log record - ‘Mr. Gopher explodes’ beginning//
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Grim shook herself from the tangled pile of bodies and rose into the air. She vibrated her chassis to get as much of the vile gunk off of her as she could, but a thin layer of blood, meat, and slime remained, painting her a rusty brown. Maybe she could get the Icy lady to spray her down after this was done?
The other three figures wiggled around on the ground, trying to untangle their various limbs.
Three, not two, for after Grim and Little Red… greeted the little old lady (with their bodies… at high speed), they’d tumbled down the road leading to the cottage... into the path of one very annoyed mountain goat.
Said goat was now lying on top of the old lady, who was lying on top of Little Red, who in turn was trying to snap at the stunned goat with large, drooling jaws. The chaos of the pile, the goat trying to get away, Little Red trying to bite the goat, and the old lady trying to stay out from between the two, only further entangled them.
Grim didn’t need to be an expert in humanoid mannerisms to see the old woman become increasingly frustrated with each passing moment. Her wrinkly, eyeless face grew more scrunched and a shade redder. The lips of her wide mouth pulled back to reveal sharp, jagged teeth, and tiny blue specks of light lit up in the dark holes where her eyes should be.
“ENOUGH!”
With more force than Grim suspected such a frail-looking woman should be capable of, she shoved both struggling animals away. The air rippled slightly, and Little Red was thrown backward. The large, canid-like creature rolled head-over-heel for a few meters and slammed into the stone wall of the pass with a loud yelp.
Meanwhile, the goat exploded into a cloud of red mist and meaty chunks. Little Red righted himself, shook his head, and pounced on one of the larger chunks of former goat. As Little Red loudly gnawed on the meaty hipbone, the old lady slowly turned toward Grim. Her wide mouth was pulled into a deep frown, and her empty eye-sockets blazed with a flickering blue spark. She flicked her arms down, clearing off some of the blood and goat bits covering her.
Grim slowly floated backward; the old lady definitely didn’t look like the cheery old grandma who’d met them in the mountain pass. Morgana slowly approached, her voice echoing in a strange way that the tall mountainous walls didn’t account for. “Yoooooou... I assumed you were one of the children’s puppets… but it seems an annoying little fly managed to slip through my net. Do you really think this… thing will protect you? Do you know who I am?! I am the Witch of Dreams! I am the Mother of Nightmares! I am Morgana in the Mountains! These lands have been my hunting grounds since before your grandfather’s grandfather was even a dream in his mother’s eye.”
Grim floated further backward. She didn’t like the look on the old lady’s face. Grim knew she was in trouble, and her external cameras scanned the area, searching for a way to escape. She considered straight up, but she’d tried that already, when they’d met the wolf creatures. Grim had instantly been swarmed by the hundreds of flying creatures that nested on the clifftops.
She could fly past her. Grim doubted the old lady was fast enough to catch her. That meant flying in range of Little Red, though, and she didn’t like the way the large dog creature looked at her, even as it chewed on its goat hip. Besides, that would mean abandoning the humans and Mr. Gopher.
That left her only one real option. With a flare of her thrusters, Grim shot backward, back toward the cottage.
“Oh, no you don’t! “
Morgana reached out as if to grab Grim, but they were still separated by more than a dozen meters, so Grim doubted the old woman could catch her.
… until Grim backed up into a giant stone hand that had erupted from the ground beneath her. Grim struggled against the hand’s grasp as Morgana stalked closer. Only after she threw her thrusters into full atmospheric burn did the stone fingers wrapped around her crack, then break. Grim spun out of control, flipping end over end as she arched through the air, then fell back to earth.
Before she hit the ground, however, Grim came to a sudden stop. Morgana stared into her primary optical sensor, grinning a wide mouth, sharp-toothed grin.
“Gotch ya!” she exclaimed. Grim could feel her chassis compress slightly as it was squeezed by the old woman’s hands. Hands that had grown larger than the woman’s body, into twisted, gnarled claw-like things.
How?! When Grim started her out-of-control tumble, the old woman was still dozens of meters away! Not even Little Red had moved that quickly when it was chasing her! Morgana slowly tilted her head as her grin spread wider, far wider than a typical humanoid should have been capable of. Wider than her head should have physically allowed. Grim’s processors started aching just watching it.
The old woman gave a light chuckle. “Now… to find out where you are… Hmmm?” Morgana’s grin slowly morphed into a frown as her empty eyes narrowed. “Strange… I can’t find the puppet tether you’re using… Now that I look, I don’t see any runes or sigils on your puppet, either.”
She pulled the still-struggling Grim closer and inhaled deeply. “Barely a whiff of spirit energy in you as well. Are you perhaps one of those golems those fools were playing with?… No, there’s no mana in you… and I refuse to believe that golemancy has advanced so far to hide from me, of all people.”
Morgana slammed Grim into the ground with one massive hand and raised the other. The hand folded in on itself in unnatural ways until it turned into an appendage with three long digits, each of which split into dozens of writhing tentacles near the tip.
“No matter. I’m sure I’ll learn everything I need to know once I pull this puppet apart. Then, once I do, I’m coming for you, my little wayward sheep. Don’t think you can run either. I’ll be sure to pull everything I need to know about you from your friend’s minds.” The old woman’s grin returned. “No one escapes Morgana in the Mountain.” She laughed, slowly inching the wiggling appendage closer and closer.
The next moment, Morgana froze, her head snapping toward the cottage as the sound of a gargantuan explosion rocked the pass. A massive fireball stretched into the sky around the bend and over the cliff.
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Morgana screamed, not in words, but in a primal voice that sounded like a thousand angry creatures at once. Her eyes locked on the slowly shrinking dust cloud; Morgana threw Grim into the side of the pass and rushed back toward the cottage, running on all fours.
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Several moments before the explosion.
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Jack staggered to his feet, held up partly by Jill, who wasn’t looking so hot herself.
“Wh-what happened? Last thing I remember we were cleaning up after fighting the Blood-cloaks. Then… nothing…” Jack said, his hands gently massaging his head.
“I… I’m not sure…” Jill responded. She looked around the cottage for anything that might help to explain where they were or how they’d gotten there. Unfortunately, the place looked like nothing more than a cozy little cottage you could find in any mortal village.
Despite that, something still felt… off to Jill. Something she couldn’t quite place. She wandered out of the small nook they’d awoken in and into a sparely decorated living area. The more she wandered around the room, the greater the feeling of ‘wrongness‘ grew. It wasn’t until she got to the small fireplace that something clicked.
Her eyes widened, and she rushed over to the plain fur couch and ran her hand over its lush, new surface. Jill’s eyes narrowed, and she kicked up the heavy rug and peered underneath. Her frown deepened, and she rushed to the fireplace, ignoring the small fire as she reached her hand up into the chimney and rubbed it against the inside. She pulled her hand out, and it came away… clean.
Well, cleaner than you would have expected.
Her heart sank. It was just like she suspected. This place… there was no ‘life’ here. Everything was too… new. It might look cozy and inviting on the surface, but it was only made to look that way. When in reality, it felt like it wasn’t really a place where someone truly lived.
“Jack! Jack! We need to leave!” she yelled deeper into the cottage.
“Jill! Come take a look at this!” came the response from wherever Jack had wandered off to. Jill followed Jack’s mana signature to a smaller room near where they’d woken up. A kitchen, if the utensils and pots said anything. Instead of a stove or firepit, however, a large metal cauldron took up the room’s center. Jack stood in front of the cauldron and stared inside.
Jill slowly approached and stared inside. “What the…” Jill furrowed her brow, unsure of what she was seeing. At first glance, it appeared to be some kind of soup, a deep blood-red color and bubbling. But the more she looked at this, the more that felt wrong. Despite what it looked like or how it behaved, she couldn’t shake the feeling what she was looking at wasn’t really a ‘liquid’ at all. It was a strange feeling she couldn’t quite understand, and it made her head hurt thinking about it.
The closest she could explain it to herself was as if someone had condensed ‘fire’ into a liquid. But that didn’t make any sense at all. Fire couldn’t be a liquid, could it? “What do you think it is?” Jill asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s beautiful…” came the response. Jill furrowed her brow. Beautiful? Creepy was more like it. This stuff was only increasing her unease about this place. She turned to tell Jack as much, only to find he wasn’t even looking at the pot.
Instead, both his and the gopher’s eyes were locked on a small tree in a runed pot in one corner of the room. Jill narrowed her eyes and approached them. Both men’s eyes stared transfixed on the small tree, like it was the most gorgeous woman they’d ever seen. And Jill had to admit, it was pretty.
Despite being no bigger than she was tall, Jill could tell this was no sapling. Its wide, charcoal-black trunk flickered with constantly moving veins of red energy, giving it the illusion that its base was shrouded in fire. Thin lines of flickering energy traveled up and through a white canopy of gold and red leaves with a single white flower, similar to a peach blossom, poking out of its top. It reminded her of the ‘bonsai’ that her mother liked to care for, though those were just common trees. Nothing like… this.
“Oh wow…” Jill softly whispered.
“Wow indeed…” Jack replied, his eyes not leaving the tree. “My [Plant Sense] is going crazy just looking at it.”
The gopher turned and stared at Jack, tilting his head.
Jack returned his gaze to the gopher and said, “Oh, right! We never got that far in the lessons, did we? I mentioned before how a mage uses mana to draw their spell circles, yes?”
The gopher nodded as Jack continued. “Everything living produces small amounts of mana, but in order for a mage to really make use of their mana, they need to feed their mana furnace with spirit energy.”
Jack pointed to the middle of his chest, right below his heart. “Cultivators do something similar, but instead of refining their dantian and body with their spirit energy, mages grow their mana furnace, allowing them to produce more mana.”
Jill sighed and asked, “Why are you explaining this to him like he understands? He might be smart for a Root Gopher, but he’s still just an animal.”
Jack turned to her and actually shushed her! The gopher even leaned over and angrily chittered at her. Jill shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose as Jack turned back around and continued. “A mage can use their mana for two main purposes. The first, spell circles, is what’s typically called ‘active magic.’ The mage is actively building the circle on reality with their mana and unleashing its effect. However, the second is sigils, or ‘passive magic’. These magic circles are engraved not on reality, but on the mage’s soul.”
The gopher’s eyes widened as if it understood.
Jack nodded. “Right? Sigils are essentially a mage’s answer to the cultivator’s body refinement. They are the way to grow and improve a mage personally, beyond just their magical arts. But they come at a cost. Every sigil engraved on the soul requires a constant supply of mana to remain active. This, in turn, cuts into a mage’s mana production, effectively reducing what they have available for active magic. Magedom is a delicate balancing act between your active magics, passive magics, and mana furnace. Too many passive magics, and you don’t have enough mana for anything truly powerful. Not enough, and you become a glass cannon; able to use large magic, but you’re done for if even a weaker cultivator gets a hit in on you.”
Jack held out his hand. Like clinging vines reaching for the sky, a twisting green light rose from his palm. “One of my sigils, [Plant Sense], lets me not only detect all kinds of plant life but gives me a general sense of their value by measuring their spirit or mana levels.” He lowered his hand, returned to the potted tree, and continued. “This… this is making my sigil scream; I don’t think I’ve ever felt such an intense reaction… it’s… it’s--”
“It’s going to have to wait.” Jill cut him off, grabbing the collar of his robe and picking up the gopher by the scruff of their neck.
Both struggled in her grip as she dragged them away. Jack called out in a panic, “Jill! Wait! Stop! You don’t understand! Whatever this thing is, it’s powerful! If… if we can bring it home, even without the [Pure Water] spring, this could change everything!”
Jill paused for a second, but shook her head and pulled them toward the exit. “Then we can come back for it. Later. After we know what the hell is going on. This place…It’s not right. We need to get out of here quickly.
“WAIT! JILL!” Jack yelled.
Jill sighed. Her brother could be so obsessive over these kinds of things sometimes. She spoke as she turned. “Jack, I’m serious, this pla--AUGH!”
Jill’s words were cut off as a large charred, clawed hand reached out of the nearby boiling pot and wrapped itself around her neck. Jill dropped both her charges and grabbed at the hand as she was lifted from her feet. Even through her icy spirit energy, she could feel her skin burning as she clawed at the hand that was slowly choking the breath out of her. Jack dropped to the floor and rolled to a standing position, then pulled out a dagger and stabbed the arm several times as it tried to drag Jill into the pot.
A small pulse of spirit energy came from the gopher, and a thick stone pillar erupted from the floor, targeting not the arm, but the pot it emerged from. The stone pillar struck the pot with the sound of a gong. Something in the pot screamed with a high-pitched wail, then lost its grip on Jill. She fell to the ground, coughing, the skin around her neck blistered and charred.
The pot wobbled, then fell away from them. A tide of thick, boiling red ‘not-soup’ poured out, instantly igniting or melting anything it contacted. Everything but the strange potted tree, that was. The tree was splashed with a large quantity of the substance and went wild, its branches waving like it was stuck in some unseen storm. Its roots burst out of the pot and flailed, drinking up the substance like a thirsty man in a desert, and quickly grew in size.
Jack stared at the scene with wide eyes before turning and picking up Jill, who was still struggling to breathe. He then made a break for the open door, following the quickly escaping gopher into an expansive garden in the back of the cottage.
The pair made it only roughly a hundred meters out the door before a massive explosion threw Jack off his feet.