Marius

Marius of Corbeck had a gameplan.

Right now, it consisted of two things.

Well, probably more than that. But I'm a newbie, here, right? So, lets compartmentalise and start with these two:

1) Gain the trust of this warrior. You ain't gonna make it here on your own. You need a glorified bodyguard, mate. And this girl's your best bet. Stronger than the prisoners, and just naive enough to follow along with your plan and

2) Solve this quest, get the reward, profit.

Easy, right?

Well, like everything else in this shit-hole carved into the earth, nah. Not by a longshot.

Marius contemplated thus as he kept up his smiling facade while his eyes darted between the mushroom and the Argent girl with her hand resting on her blade's hilt.

He'd just realised the possible complication he might run into here.

Not that it was a big deal, no. Just a tiny little snag in his-

ARGENT'S KILL MONSTERS YOU MORON. IT'S LITERALLY THEIR WHOLE PURPOSE IN LIFE!

So he did little but smile up at his benevolent fungal benefactor and hope - pray to whatever Gods reinged in this foul place - that she didn't notice his blade-happy friend getting ready for a bout beside him.

Raava rose, undulated, and moved to his left hand side, opening her mouth to reveal her sparking teeth in the forever-night of the cave.

"You have found me what I seek, my little champion," she croaked. "The Matriarch of my enemies lies dead. The Lux'Agathiel you have brought before me as I commanded."

He gulped once and held the gem aloft. Its burning shine bathed the whole cavern in light, and the dead shrooms beside Raava began to stir, as though life was being breathed back into them already.

"Marius..." the girl beside him whispered.

He shot her a stare that said "OH BY THE GODS PLEASE DON'T FUCK THIS UP LITERALLY GIVE ME TWO SECONDS HERE" - or, at least, that's the jist of what he hoped to communicate. The fact she hadn't set to chopping the thing apart yet might have indicated that he'd gotten through to her.

"Indeed, such a treasure it is to behold once more," Raava continued, totally absorbed with the sight of the gem as she withdrew from Marius while one powerful vine reached out from under his legs and smeared itself across his cheek.

Shit, he thought. Is this really gonna be that kinda reward? Didn't even brush my teeth this morning.

His eyes darted again to the blonde Argent, who herself was fixated on the talking creature. He couldn't read her eyes but the expression she shot at it was anything but good.

Bug out, boy.

"Ah -ahem-," he coughed. "Thank you, Mistress Raava. I believe my part in our arrangement has been satisfied. Now, I believe you said something about a reward?"

"Ah, yes," she chuckled - a hoarse, crisp sound, like the rustling of a thousand dead leaves being trampled under the feet of screaming children. "You shall be rewarded, my dear little thief. I knew you would be the one to bring me and my sisters what we sought. Pity you had to spill the blood of the muscular one and his boorish brood to do so. He was ever such an exciteable big chap."

It was then that the words of the dying boy surged in Marius' mind - the boy who he could still see being slowly digested by the Mangler back in the bowels of this place:

We all got the fucking quest!

We really are all just pawns to you, aren't we? he thought, turning the gem around his fingers.

"Marius," a voice beside him suddenly whispered. "This being is an abomination."

He turned to look at the Argent girl as though struck, but not before the mushroom reared up and boomed with maniacal laughter. The crazy old gal seemed quite entertained by the remark.

"Ah yes!" She squealed in delight. "Marius, my dear little champion. You shall be rewarded handsomely. For you bring me not only what I desired of you, but something even more...delicious."

Two vines suddenly shot out of the ground and grabbed the girl by her arms, pulling them apart and throwing her sword away. Her scream was cut off by another thick vine that wrapped itself round her throat and closed shut her mouth. Her face grew bulbous - swelling with both the pain and the maniacal need to cry out in pain.

Her eyes shot towards Marius before she was dragged into the air to dangle upside-down before the cackling mushroom who's viscious grin only grew.

"Yesssss," she whispered, though even this snake-like declaration shook the whole foilage drenched room with the power that ran through it. "I smell it upon you, child of light."

"Now - now hold on, Madame," Marius stammered, taking one step forward and instantly regretting it as Raava fixed him with her penetrating gaze.

From the look of the vines that sprouted from her back and rattled beside her, that wasn't the only thing that could pierce him.

"My - my benevolent, bulbous benefactor," Marius mumbled, plastering his dumb smile across his face even as his eyes fought to look aware from the look of hatred the girl was casting at him in this moment.

"You must understand, my confident here was instrumental in obtaining your-"

"Oh, do please quiet yourself, little morsel!" Raava raged. "You have done your job - what little you could do. And worse yet you claim effort for that which you should not have accomplished. It is only due to the assistance of this warrior that you still draw breath!"

I mean, she's not wrong...

Marius wore his most profound look of of pained pride as he stumbled forwards just a little more.

"No," the mushroom-crone murmured. "You had the assistance of this one. This one - who's whole being is borrowed."

Borrowed?

A question for another time, Marius. File the thing's crazed obsession away. Concentrate. You know what you're looking for.

"I smell it upon her," Raava continued, bringing the girl close so that the plant's vile, corrupted breath cast spittle across her purpled face.

Come on, come on.

Another step forwards.

"I smell it inside. Living. Breathing. Corrupting."

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

He looked again at the girl, and he could swear that her eyes were about to pop from their sockets.

Come on...

Another step.

"I smell - one of my kind!"

Come on!

Attempt Persuasion?

YES.

Success Chance-

I DON'T BLOODY CARE.

"Madame Raava!" he shouted, mere inches from the base of her stalk. "I have served you well - I have been your blade in the shadows of your ruined home, living only so you and your sisters may rise again and populate your domain with your beauteus fauna. I have almost died so you may live. And in return, I ask not for riches or gold, but merely the freedom of the true treasure I found out in the darkness of this cave."

Both the plant and the girl stared down at him in total confusion.

Now that I've got your attention...

"Let me tell you a story," he began. "A tale of a young lad living a life so hopeless and misguided that he believed himself no better than the most wretched scum of this earth. He believed himself lower than dirt - even as those around him told him he was destined for greatness. They saw the potential for good in him. They saw him - that's what they said. But what did they know? They saw only what they wanted to see. This boy - he knew his own heart. He knew all he was destined for was darkness. And so that's where he knew he'd end up - under the earth where only the darkness would keep him company."

Raava started to lower the girl. The vines seemed to retract from the air around him.

"But in that darkness he found something that grew. He found you, Madame Raava, and then he found the very girl you produly hold in your leafy fingers. He found two women who made him believe he could be more than he believed he could be. He thought he wanted treasure in this place. But money? Jewels? Pretty baubles? What are they in comparison to the true treasure of knowing oneself through the mirror of others. What are they but material abstractions. Colorful nothings not even valuable enough to serve as manure for the weakest sunflower?"

He saw, out of the corner of his eye, the vines retract from the girl's mouth and arms. She wheezed with all the power in her almost crushed lungs, but he paid nothing more than momentary attention to her.

Seal the deal, you Lvl 2 thief.

"So, please, Mistress Raava. Please don't kill my friend. Let us go together out there, and enrich the lives of others in this damnable place like we have done for you and your soon-to-be-revived sisters. Let us go out there and spread the message you have taught us - like a seed germinating in the warm light of day."

Oh! I should write that one down.

The great mushroom throbbed twice as though in recognition of his words, chewing on the meaning behind them. The emotional resonance. She slowly bent towards him and let an otherworldly, wrinkled smile play across her still throbbing stalk.

"You have such a silver tongue, don't you, little thief? Your flourish with the word of man has always been your sharpest weapon. How I do so enjoy the taste of your poetic little blade."

"Then you'll love the taste of mine."

Marius saw a flash of silver out the corner of his eye where the girl fell, accompanied in the next nanosecond by a wail of monstrous agony as one of Raava's vines was sliced apart. Her bulging eyes fixed on Marius as he started to skitter away, and only turned once he heard the pulverised plant scream again as the Argent girl embedded her blade into the being's quivering stalk. Three vines shot into the air from behind Marius, homed in on the girl who was now covered in her foe's spilling swamp-green 'blood', and shot through the air towards her.

"TREASON!" Raava wailed into the cavern. "IMPALE THIS CREATURE!"

Marius saw the vines arc down, and the girl dislodged her sword to turn and face them.

Well, shit, he thought. Looks like she's stubborn AND crazy.

He watched her draw her blade through the air with both hands and cleave through all three reaching vines.

But she's strong.

Raava reered up and brought her other tendrils down on the girl's back, tearing right through her armor. She fell forwards with a grunt and in the next second another vine had found her throat.

"STRUGGLE FOR RAAVA, LITTLE ARGENT FOOL" the Madame railed. She slashed at the girl's bare back again, and when her vine retracted back it was coated in the girl's blood.

Marius gulped to watch the sight.

Look, the girl attacked the plant. You were doing your thing. She's the one that was willing to die, here.

He backed off as the girl screamed when another whip-like vine struck her back. Then the same cloak of gold flowed out from her in an aura to repel her restraints. She spun round and ran right back into the same tendrils dipped in her own blood and slashed through them one by one.

He focussed his eyes:

HP: 10/30

She's weak.

And the big girl?

Morphology: Raava of Duskwood

LVL: 3

HP: 30/60

RES: BLDG, WOOD, ERTH

WK: PYRO

Stronger, obviously. And way more resilant than the girl. She could hurt it, sure. But she was human - with finate strength. This thing was beyond them both. It had waited here, patiently, probably since the time of The Rattling itself. Didn't the girl see that?

Another sinuous vine arced down and the girl batted it away, her stance never faltering.

Looking at her, he could see the truth: there she was, predicting her enemy's movements, checking her blindspots, turning with grace and delivering ripostes and parries when she could. She was fighting by rote. By the book. Just like an Argent would. It would've been enough up there, on Averix. It'd probably been enough for her, her whole life.

But this ain't the surface, Yelena.

He watched another sharpened vine rake her back and make another laceration that brought her to her knees. Still she rose, and just kept cutting, while the laughter of the thirsting plant echoed through the cave.

Marius sighed.

Toss a coin, he thought. Toss a coin and let that dictate your morality. That'd be better than choosing the dumbass route every time.

He looked on at the melee like the coward he was. Tired. Frustrated. And somehow, still alone.

Another strike tore blood from the girl's face.

Ok. Pretty crazy gal vs Definitely crazy plant. Lets weight this up, shall we? Because we both know you're gonna side with one of em.

The girl returned the blow with a swift slash that cut into Raava's pulsing torso.

Crazy gal pros: mobility. Toughness. Determination. And a certain sense of naivety - I could use that.

Cons: the sickly predilection for justice all those Argents had. There wasn't much utility in that at all.

Raava brought her appendages together and a flurry of thorns shot from them into the girl. She tried to block them - cut them apart - but he saw the gashes they tore into her waist.

Crazy plant pros: Inhuman power. A healthy green glow. Affordable living conditions - rent free, in fact. And...sisters.

Crazy plant cons: probably evil (he was 87% sure), obsessive, a little unhinged in the brain department, and a voice only a mother could love.

A deaf mother, at that.

He thought about it, stroking his chin as the Argent girl and his seedy mistress continued their melee.

You could join the winning side, Marius. You could finish the girl off, take the exp AND Raava's reward. You could have it all and come out totally unscathed. Good start in the wider world of the 'Loft that way. The kinda start you never had up there.

But when he saw the Argent girl launch herself into the forest of thorns Raava sent her way for the fifth time, cutting the plants up, tanking the damage, letting the blood seep from her back, he came to a conclusion:

I'm still the same fucking idiot I've always been.

"Hey, Raava!"

The shroom jerked her head up and fixed her gaze on him as her vines continued smacking into the girl.

But the ferocity of her blows abated when she saw what the thief was holding.

"You want your light?" he asked, holding the Lux'Agathiel in his hand. "Come get it."

He threw the bulb into the air and watched as the mushroom's eyes followed it with absolute focus, panic seeping into her fungal features. Her vines reached up to grasp her treasure - the thing she'd sent hundreds of fool mortals to their deaths to find.

Even if it was a little dimmer than she remembered...

Then an arrow flew through the air and made contact with the bulb, shattering it instantly and dragging a cry of panic from the mushroom's gaping mouth. But in the next instant she felt its contents coat her vines, raining down on her head and stalk. It was...liquid inside?

Liquid?

Marius lowered his bow and smirked. In his free hand he held a newly lit torch.

The mushroom's eyes found him just at the moment he tossed it, and for Marius the chorus of victory came with a little ding:

Deception: Success

Raava had only a second to register the sticky viscosity of the Crocarachnid spume that now ran down her body. The impact of the torch hitting her was lost in the all-consuming sensation of her crisp plant-flesh being eaten away as the fire swam up her vines and burned away every last inch of her - every catered-to growth, every thorn, every tiny leaf that she'd maintained since she was nothing more than a sapling. She couldn't even be sure that the scream that escaped from her mouth was really hers.

Marius watched her sag and burn away with little more than a dissatisfied grimace. Her scream was just as human as those he'd heard in his youth - the Glancers that he'd watch burn in the market squares of Lucent, Glenfields, or really any of the villages and cities that dotted the land above. And for a moment, in her dying eyes, he thought that he saw the glimmer of something recognisable in there. Something that had once been shared between her, him, and the Argent girl slowly raising her sword for the killing blow.

"Surfacers," the plant chuckled as her final breaths left her. "May this Firvak girl be your doom, my little Marius!"

Then the girl's sword came down, and the sudden humanity in those eyes disappeared, closed shut forever in the jaws of death.

DOMINION LORD SLAIN: RAAVA of Duskwood

EXP: 75 (Shared Combat Victory: Party Kill)

Current EXP: 175/250