Waves rippled through the air in the distance as the noon sun pierced the thinning canopy. The core grove stood like a wall of wood and shadow to the east, with dapples of mangrove scattering out from it into the western marshlands like blueberries from a dropped basket. From between their towering forms, a tiny figure cautiously ventured into the more open spaces.
The exploratory foliage looked all around before pausing to stretch out its arms and bask in the sunlight for a moment. Then, somewhat reluctantly, it set itself back to task and began examining the area. The land to the west was a sodden marsh, dappled with only the occasional tree, a lot of grasses, and foamy green puddles. Unspooling a tiny wooden cylinder attached to a thin woven rope, it made two broad, slow circles at full extension before pulling the line swiftly in towards its lifted hand, exciting a quick series of high-pitched chirps. Then it slowed for two more circles before doing it again.
The speedy pulses relayed its identity, how many trees past the last expedition it had traveled, and that a change in the foliage had been found. Hearing the call picked up by another ranger to be passed back home, the little shrub nodded to itself and continued on. It made a broad circle around the nearest shallow pond, pausing at something that looked like some kind of very large nest or bed. It eyed the eggs within for a moment and then pulled out the whistle again. The whistle was spun in a complex pattern, warbling out three repetitions of the nocturnal Chuck-Will’s-Widow signaling a possible threat in the area, before it stowed the item once again and hurried back towards more familiar trees.
The humid air was alive with chirps and buzzing, still but not silent. Then the swift fibrous brushing and thumps of footsteps on grass drowned out the white noise of the drifting mosquitoes, as a dappled brown theropod sprinted over to the nest. It reared upward, standing tall to inspect the area for the source of the strange sound it had heard, sniffing loudly. When nothing caught its attention, it hunkered down and checked the eggs. Deciding all was well, it moved off toward the water and began to drink.
Black tendrils erupted from the murky water and wrapped around the predator's head. As the feathered hunter dug its talons into the muck and struggled, the body of a caiman was partially pulled from the depths, the lengthy head having been replaced by a wriggling mass of mucosal slugs. The pair thrashed wildly, locked in a mortal struggle and kicking up mud and clumps of grass. With a screech, the Cretaceous combatant wrenched itself free and staggered away from the water. The hideously corrupted caiman only slid disinterestedly back into the water as its prey collapsed and began to seize.
—
Liv smiled as one of her little rangers trundled back into the grove, rushing to add its discoveries to the growing map the shrubs were creating nearby. Turning back to her current project, she cracked her knuckles. She paused then, eyes wide. She’d cracked her knuckles… and she’d heard it. When had that happened?! How had that happened? Was that new or had she just failed to notice the change? Smiling like an idiot, she clapped her hands and was thrilled to hear the slapping sound of her palms. Liv threw up her hands, fingers held in ‘the horns’, and gave a victorious yell.
“WOOOOO!!!” her voice was oddly echoed in a metallic ringing as the crystalline core behind her flared and vibrated. She turned to gawk at it but decided to set that aside for later. Right now she had a more important task.
Her experiments had shown that the mushrooms reacted to state changes, basing their status quo on the condition of the object at the time of connection. If she’d done this correctly and hadn’t screwed up her math, then she was pretty sure she could use this to track her SP in real time! Currently, she was full up, so she made the connection from the first fungal cap directly to her own core. Liv hoped that was actually where the SP was stored or this probably wouldn’t work.
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The thread materialized, and the first mushroom went dark. That caused her little organic not-gate to trip, and behind her most recent little display, a bright red bar appeared, displaying [100%]. The new window was a simple, bare bones little thing. Perfect for an alpha test.
So far so good but it was the next step that would indicate success or failure. Some quick math had assured her that 1% of her SP was about 4.25 points. She had no way to spend exactly 4.25 so she had to time this carefully. Making five skeeters took about two seconds. Her current regen gave her about .05 SP per second, so from the moment she spent her first point, she needed to start counting out exactly fifteen seconds to regenerate .75 SP before making the second connection.
Counting under her breath, she concentrated as hard as she could, using her pulsing clock to keep time, creating the bugs and timing the connection of the second mushroom. As expected, the layer below her display disappeared, and a new bar marked [99%] appeared. Liv was practically vibrating. This was it. If she’d done her math right, she’d know if this was going to work in exactly one minute and forty-five seconds.
“Good gods, longest minute of my LIFE…” She muttered, counting the seconds by the pulsing of the mushroom circle. When one hundred and five seconds had passed and nothing changed, Liv was about to sigh in defeat. Then the clock sent the next pulse through the network.
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“YEEEEAH!!” Liv exclaimed, doing a frenetic series of air guitar strums before falling to her knees and putting up her middle fingers toward the sky. “SUCK IT, YA’ BUZZARDS!” she screamed at her domed canopy, cackling with glee. This was it! No more stupid daily calculations. No more having to remember to update the stupid character sheet. No more wondering if she’d forgotten to log an expenditure.
It was a small victory, she knew. At the end of the day, all she’d really managed was to set up what amounted to a gas gauge. She wasn’t a programmer or an engineer, she was well aware of her limitations here. But she had built a simple logic system out of gods-damned magic mushrooms!!
“In a cave! With a box of scraps!” She quoted, giggling.
As Liv danced and spun about in her living fortress of plants and fungi, twin shadows watched, unseen, from their perch in the branches above.
“Buzzards?” Muninn asked.
“It’s referring to us,” Huginn explained dryly. Undeterred, the first bird moved right along to the next question.
“Why has it done this? This is not how mushrooms are meant to grow,” the raven’s whisper was brimming with curiosity.
“Inefficient!” the second chided, cold and aloof. “They’re meant to be spread among the trees, keeping them healthy so they can grow more densely. These odd rows are a waste of seiðr.” The obsidian corvid shuffled his feet and looked to his brother, drawing his attention back from the spectacle below. “Muninn.”
“Hmmm?”
“How many other dungeons use these in this way?” Huginn asked the keeper of memories.
“None,” Muninn chirped, enthralled.
“Never? Even among the others from its world? How many have we taken from there?”
“Thousands. But not in a long time,” Muninn recounted distractedly. “Last one was Gunnar Egilsson.”
Huginn watched, deep in thought, as the young core prance about like a fool for a time, before setting itself to work on expanding this strange fungal web it was weaving.
“How do you think it will do?” Muninn inquired of the more clever twin. “Will this one survive?” Huginn’s gaze was as shrewd as Muninn’s was innocent, as the pair worked to better understand this strange spirit.
“It may be time to speak to it again,” Huginn murmured.
“So soon?!” Muninn’s attention returned to him in an instant. “That’s not how we did it before.”
“Irrelevant.”
“Returning so soon has ended poorly in the past.” Muninn reminded his more presently-minded twin. That seemed to give Huginn pause.
“We should bring this to the Allfather.” The clever conceded to the wise.
Below them, Liv was so focused on counting the seconds and timing her connections that she never even noticed the echoes of flapping wings within a space no bird should have been able to reach.
[https://imgur.io/vcVjofF][https://imgur.com/a/FTZpHbw.gif][https://imgur.com/a/FTZpHbw?s=sms]