Fortunately for my frayed nerves, we are not plunged into battle just yet. While the heat and light of our torches is certainly attracting the attention of the dithyoks, biting beetles, and spindle-legged bzathletics, none have yet worked up the courage to attack us. Ninety runeknights is no easy meal.
Light does not make the Mushroom Basket any less foreboding than it was in the dark with only sound to go by. If anything, light makes it worse. Glistening fungi sprout like towers of flesh from the musty earth, the spores under their caps like clusters of red buboes. Pools of brackish water swarm with tiny eyeless fish that snap and bite and chase each other in endless circles. The stalactites are covered with red, yellow, and white mold, making them look like rotten teeth. I feel as if I am in a maw which could close down on me at any moment and chew me to a pulp.
The smell is a vomit-inducing mix of feces, rotten plant and animal flesh, tanning acid, and cloying fungal spores. Being able to see where each scent is coming from somehow makes them worse than they were in the darkness.
Our column squelches onward from one stairway to another, which steadily grow more unsteady, worn and disused. Several are occupied by slimy gelthob larva or nests of biting beetles and must be cleared to the sound of metal hitting flesh, hiss-screams, and the thud of dead things hitting the ground far below. After the fifth layer, the highest I’ve ever been to, there are no more stairs, just iron nails hammered deep into the stone. Some of these paths are on the outer walls, and some are on the central stem of the gigantic petrified mushroom that gives these caverns their name.
After we reach the eighth level, Cathez halts us to bark some orders:
“The predators are circling closer now. From now on we will march in battle formation. Leaders, organize your squads.”
“Squad four, battle formation!” orders Barock.
He already told us what our positions are to be on the march up. It’s a kind of thick spearhead formation, with Barock at the front, a rank of three behind him, two main ranks of four, then a rearguard of three fourth degrees. I step over a small pool of mud into my place: middle left in the second main rank.
“Four ready!” Barock announces.
“Three ready!”
“One ready!”
“Five ready!”
“Two ready!”
“Six ready!”
“Squads, to your positions!” orders Cathez.
We march in time to our position on the left flank. Out of our six squads of fifteen, three and four are to protect the flanks. Squad one, led by Cathez, is the main slaying squad, two the auxiliary slayers, and five and six make up a double rearguard. It all looks very clean and organized, mud and ichor splattered over our armor notwithstanding, though how long it will stay that way I fear to guess at.
“March!” orders Cathez.
The soft earth makes wet sounds under my boots and the heads of long thin fungi brush against the base of my breastplate, leaving trails of sticky spores on the steel and titanium, as we march through the forest to the next climbing wall.
I shut my eyes to better hear if there’s anything beyond the trees. It’s hard to tell for the rumble of dwarven boots, but I think I detect the footsteps and wingbeats of the predators stalking us. The heavy one-two tread of dithyoks, the low buzz of adult biting beetles, the high pulsed squeals of chitin-bats, and also the stomp of something bigger than any of these.
“What’s that heavy noise?” I ask the dwarf next to me—a fifth degree called Notok wielding a short spear and holding a large shield. “The one with the six-beat rhythm.”
He shuts his eyes to concentrate on the sound. “Might be a whipper. Not too sure though. Jarick, can you tell?”
“Yes, that’s a whipper,” says Jarick, a fourth degree in the rearguard in incredibly thick and heavy-looking plate. “Sounds like a big one too.”
“They’re all big,” laughs Fjalar from the rank in front of me. “Size of the meal hall with a stomach to match. We’ll run into worse though, I’m sure.”
Both twins are on the hunting party, though well separated. If I were Cathez I'd have had just one with us, or neither. I suppose he values their combat abilities highly enough to disregard their other shortcomings.
“What do they look like?” I ask him.
“Surely you mean sound like? No one’s ever been dumb enough to shine a light in its face until we came along.”
“The lights are to stop the darkness,” Jarick snaps. “No demoralizing.”
“Yes, well, being eaten by a whippper beast might be less painful, I suppose. As for your question, Zathar, I imagine it looks like a gigantic monster with six legs and a muscled tentacle in place of a head. No one knows where its food goes—I’ve always imagined it to have an open kind of stomach on its back, a big bath of acid where you get digested slowly and painfully.”
“I suppose no one’s ever brought one down, then,” I say.
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“No. Best plan when you run into one is to call off the hunt. That’s what we’ve done until now, anyway. Cathez seems to have other ideas.”
“Fjalar!” Barock snaps. “No demoralizing talk!”
“Yes, leader!” He does a mock bow of apology. “No worrying on the march, leader!”
“Quit your damn attitude! Or how would you like to be the leader of a new squad, of one, to be our rear-rearguard?”
“Wouldn’t like that at all, leader!” he laughs. “You won’t do that, though.”
“I just might if you won’t shut it.”
“Oh, all right then. Shutting up now.”
He makes a mouth-closing motion with his hand; turns it into a two-finger salute at the back of Barock’s head for the briefest of moments. I roll my eyes. The killings haven't had the sobering effect on his and his brother's childishness I know many hoped they would. They've played an active role in spreading rumors too.
If one catches wind that the other believes the darkness is responsible for the killings, the other whispers that it’s a traitor. A new theory crops up that it’s the shadow twisted into the shape of a dwarf, the other proposes that it’s actually a dwarf that’s been twisted by the shadows. It’s anger-inducingly childish.
Ironic too, considering Galar’s warning not to go around asking questions putting myself in danger, but then again, they’re always careful to shut up a few days before the rumor-mongering reaches a peak and Cathez is forced to step in and yell at us.
I wonder if there’s a method to their madness. Spreading conflicting rumors, stirring up confusion... While also having the caution not to overdo it and offend the authorities... Isn’t that what the killer would attempt?
Killer, or killers? Or allies of the killer?
That would go some way to explaining Galar’s warning not to ask questions as well. Deter proper investigation while you stir up confusion. Yes, that seems like a strategy a clever killer would come up with, and the killer is certainly clever.
I think the twins warrant further investigation, though to be fair on them, they certainly aren’t the only rumor-mongers in the fort. I’ll run my ideas past Jaemes and Nthazes after—if—I get back.
The six-footed stomp grows louder as we approach the climbing wall. I turn my head back to see if I can get a glimpse of it, but the blinding glow of the rearguard squads’ torches and weapons makes it hard to make out distinct shapes. I shut my eyes, and think I hear the swish of something long moving back and forth above the highest mushrooms.
If that’s the whip beast’s whip, its owner must be enormous.
“Double-time!” Cathez bellows.
He’s noticed it too. My palms begin to sweat despite the relative lightness of my gauntlets. We march faster, boots churning the earth into sticky mud and grinding fungi and insects both into paste. A high-pitched chitter comes from overhead, followed by a rush of air as a chitin-bat dive bombs us. A spear stabs up from squad two, narrowly missing its wing.
“Triple-time!”
We begin to run, and though we try to keep in formation as best we can, mushroom trunks and patches of deep water force us away from one another. The chitin-bat swoops down once more—or maybe this is a new one—reaches with its claws at Notok who blocks with his shield. It grasps the rim and tries to drag it up.
I lash out with Heartseeker deep into its chest. It lets go of Notok's shield and flaps up, screeching in agony. A moment later we’re at the cavern wall. I stop my momentum; my boots halt first and I splash face down into the mud. I crawl to my feet cursing, aiming Heartseeker left and right and up, scanning with eyes and ears for any more chitin-bats, or dithyoks.
“Squad five, up the wall!” shouts Cathez.
Even though five is a rearguard squad, they’re the first to scale every wall in case there are any nasty surprises waiting in the next layer up. I hear them clambering up the metal bars sticking from the rock—their grunts of exertion are oddly distorted from echoing back off the wall.
I catch sight of something lurking behind a nearby mushroom trunk. Two blade-like arms flash in the torchlight.
“Dithyok!” I shout.
“What’s it doing?” Barock asks.
“Staying back for now. Do we go for it?”
“Hang back. No need to create extra risk.”
Fjalar claps me on the shoulder. “No, no, Zathar. Why don’t we go for it? Eliminate the threat before we turn our backs to climb up.”
“Shut up,” snaps Jarick. “No reason to provoke it.” He brandishes his mace at it, and it cringes from the light, or maybe just from the movement.
I worry that Fjalar does have a point though. Maybe it would be better to eliminate the threat now before we present it with the tempting target of our exposed backs.
“Five up!” calls their leader from up above. “Nothing here.”
“Good,” Cathez replies. “Squad one, up with me.”
They begin to ascend. I keep my eyes and ears trained on the forest before me, sensitive to any and all movement. Some biting beetles make an appearance to the left of the dithyok, and are scared away when our rear-rank brandishes their blinding weapons at them. The dithyok itself pokes its toothed maw out from behind its hiding spot every few minutes or so, then pulls it back. It’s waiting for its chance to strike.
The six-footed thud of the whipper beast grows steadily louder.
“Two, climb!” Cathez orders, even though he’s not at the top yet. Until now he’s been having only one squad climb at a time to ensure we aren’t all in a vulnerable position at once. It seems the threat of the whipper beast has changed his calculations.
Squad two begin their ascent. There is a sound like a rope being dragged through the air so violently the very air deforms and shreds. The biting beetles shoot up into the air and vanish into the darkness, spooked. A great dark line whips out and snatches a straggler down. The victim doesn’t even have time to chitter in shock.
The six-foot stomp grows louder.
“Squad three now!” shouts Cathez as soon at the last member of two starts his climb.
Us next, but will we have time? I force myself to hold position. After witnessing the speed of the whipper beast’s lash, I don’t think there’s any way at all to defend against it. It doesn’t matter how tough your armor is if that trunk wraps around you and sweeps you from your feet in an instant. You would need runes of weight—ones like my opponent in lead ten years ago had, but a hundred times more powerful—or else a very sharp axe or sword to cut yourself loose before it threw you into its maw. Even then, the momentum would have you flying through the air to crash into the midst of more eager predators.
The tearing sound comes again, and something screeches. The mushrooms shiver slightly. The dithyok turns to face where the sound came from, then dashes off in a multi-limbed blur.
“Shit,” Notok mutters. “Even the other monsters are scared of it.”
“Don’t waste your energy on fear,” Barock says. “We’ll soon be climbing. We’re next.”
Oh hell, am I glad that I’m not in squad six.
“Squad four, climb!” bellows Barock as the last member of three grabs the lowermost bar. He’s not waiting for Cathez’s orders. “Climb! Fast as you can!”