We return to formation and resume the march. The atmosphere is of grim and steely determination. If Cathez so orders us, we are prepared to charge whatever beast assails us next, be it dithyok, whipper beast, or something worse. We will fight and die for the almergris—for the Runethane’s fool plan because he is Runethane and we are sworn to obey him.
Well, I suppose I’ve never sworn to obey him. Yet I will do so anyway, because there is no turning back now. Not with the whipper beast waiting below—how we will get rid of it after slaying the white jelly, I do not know.
The forest in this layer is thicker than the ones below it. The trunks are pressed tight together so that I lose sight and sound of the others regularly. Thick, bushy undergrowth impedes us. It’s sticky with sweet sap, and the insects buzzing through the air avoid it. The air is cloyingly moist and the smell in the air is like rotten fruit.
These upper levels are rumored to be slightly poisonous, filled with lung-rot and blood-boil spores. The least of our worries right now.
Or, perhaps not. The forest is very quiet, eerily so. At first I think this is just an effect of the foliage being so thick around us, then, as our march wears on without even the rustle of a biting beetle or small bzathletic, let alone the screech of a chitin-bat or tread of a dithyok, I start to suspect there’s another reason for the silence.
What that might be I cannot fathom.
“Hirthik says he smells gelthobs,” someone whispers.
“How can he know there’s more than one?” says Fjalar. “How can he smell anything past these damn mushrooms anyway?”
“No idea.”
Two hundred steps later, a halt is called. We wait in anticipation. Has a predator been spotted? Are we to charge it? Barock is called to Cathez, likely along with the rest of the squad leaders, and this time we can’t hear the conversation that takes place, just pick up a few unintelligible snatches that drift through the crowded trunks. After ten minutes he returns.
“What’s going on?” Fjalar asks sourly. “Why the hell have we stopped?”
Barock glares at him. “Don’t speak before you’re spoken to. We’ve stopped because there’s a mass of gelthobs in our path. A big circle of them.”
“I’ve never known them to do that before,” says Jarick. He rotates his mace in his hands, making the head spin round and round. A sign of nervousness, perhaps. “They’re solitary creatures.”
“Maybe they’re doing what our Runethane forbids us from doing,” Fjalar says.
“Shut up!” Barock snaps. “That’s your last warning, Fjalar. How in hell can you joke at a time like this?”
“Just trying to lighten the mood,” Fjalar says sourly.
“Well, don’t. Three are dead. Try to take things a little more seriously from now on. Show respect.”
“Never meant to be disrespectful, leader.”
“Just shut it. Anyway, we don’t know why they’re acting like that, but we think it’s because of a lack of predators.”
“Makes sense,” says Jarick. “Safety in numbers doesn’t hold true for gelthobs. They don’t want to concentrate their scents and make themselves easy to find.”
“Yes, well, the natural world works in mysterious ways. Anyway, we’re going to go around them so they don’t disrupt our formation. It’s a long detour, but stay alert and don’t let your guard down.”
“We won’t,” another squad member promises. “Not after... That.”
“Good. Take a drink and and a quick bite to eat. Then we’ll be off again.”
I take few bites of jerky and wash it down with a swig from my waterskin—some of the others take beer for courage, but I value keeping my senses sharp.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
We rotate the formation, a considerable undertaking in so thick a forest with dwarves unused to mass-maneuvers. Once Cathez has circled around to make sure all the squads are in proper position, we resume the march.
The stillness persists. The only animals I detect are vague humps that might be gelthobs, and hand-sized beetles chewing at the tops of the taller mushrooms. Nothing assails us, apart at one point when a swarm of biting flies descends on us and starts trying to crawl into our helmets. We cover our visors as best we can and use sound to guide ourselves until they give up.
“Halt,” orders Barock.
We’re finally at the next set of stairs—bars hammered into and spiraling up the stalk of the petrified mushroom. The stalk is thick at the higher layers: here it would probably take at least a hour to walk around it. The bars wind around it at least three times, so I estimate a four or five hour climb at least.
I hope the stillness persists.
“We go in one line,” Cathez orders. “All the squads one after the other. I don’t like the silence. It might mean the next level up is worse than usual, so we need to get up fast. Don’t hurry, though. Some of these bars are rusted: this route isn’t often used.”
One by one we start upward. The bars are arranged close enough together to form very narrow steps—I’m glad I made my boots so well, they’re perfect for this kind of careful walking, so long as I don’t have to make any unexpected movements.
At several places there are gaps we have to jump and clutch on to the next with our hands. Halfway up, one of these gaps is about ten meters long, and Cathez, leading from the front this time, has to improvise a bridge. He has a length of rope and a stub of a rusted bar passed along to him. He ties the iron to the rope to form an end-weight, tosses. The rope wraps itself around the ten meter distant bar first try. He ties the end he’s holding to the bar he’s standing on, then squats down, clutches the rope with both hands, swings down, and climbs along it.
We all cheer when he makes it to the other side. The cheering quickly dies when we realize that we’re all going to have to do the same thing.
When it gets to my turn, I nearly vomit as I swing down. I move forward yard by yard, arms straining to take both my weight and that of my armor. The way the runes of my gauntlets amplify every one of my movements just a little too much makes the crossing that much more perilous. Halfway along, I pause to compose myself.
I scan the landscape as I take my deep breaths. My eyes are no use of course, since the sun-like glow of the various maces and hammers of light strapped to the senior runeknights’ backs does not penetrate down into the forest from this high up. Instead I listen to the forest, hearing where it’s thicker and denser through how the low buzzing of insects filters up through the mushroom caps, sound-seeing the gentle hills and slow-flowing rivers, and as I scan all this I'm trying hard to detect any sign of movement.
There is indeed very little. I detect only the slow circling of the gelthobs, and the stomp of a few whipper beasts approaching them—the only predators in these caverns not equipped to climb or fly to different levels. Only half jokingly I mutter a thank you to the gelthobs for distracting the monsters, then resume my passage to the next side.
I make it without incident. Our long ascent continues and, quite miraculously, we make it to the tenth level without anyone having fallen to their deaths.
“Still nothing,” says Notok, wiping some mud from his shield. “Just some insects.”
“Whipper beasts too,” Barock warns.
“Are we to charge them if they come for us this time?” asks a tenth degree—called Kithok, I think.
“Don’t worry yourself about that. Drink and eat up. We’re moving soon.”
The forest of the tenth layer is even thicker than that of the ninth. Fungal roots ensnare our feet and cling to our legs with such regularity I can’t help but worry that the mushrooms, hungry for fertilizer, are trying to tie us down and strangle us. Ugly insects hop from trunk to trunk, biting into the wood to get at the rot-smelling sap, and also biting into us hard enough to scratch our armor. I squash one, splattering my gauntlet with bright crimson. Its fellows don't seem to care; they continue to bite at us.
“Ah!” shouts Kithok. “Shit! My eye!”
He drops his torch and spear and starts trying to wrestle off his helmet, shouting in agony the whole time.
“Ah! Shit!”
“I’ll get it off you!” Jarick says, and with some deft handwork undos the catch at his neck and pulls the helmet off.
There’s a beetle gnawing into Kithok’s flesh just below his right eye. Fjalar dispatches it with a flick of his finger. I hurry forward and put my torch up to his face so we can see the damage. The beetle’s mandibles have cut right down to the bone.
“Get a bandage out, Jarick,” orders Barock. “Quickly, in case anything smells the blood.”
Nothing does, though. In fact, that single bite is the worst injury anyone suffers on our traversal of the tenth layer. The eleventh is just as uneventful. Though at the approach to the stairway to the twelfth layer we hear a whipper beast approaching, it proves way too far off to catch us.
We traverse the twelfth layer without incident also—until we find ourselves waist deep in a bog filled with wriggling worms. Even so, no harm comes to us. We just double back and make our way to the stairway to the thirteenth layer by another, even quieter route.
Then, below the final set of climbing spikes, we detect a cacophony.
Directly above us, a battle is roaring.