"I still don't understand who the hell that was," Autumn said.
It was early morning, and the party was making their way north through Black River Point towards Big Beaver Dam. It was a particularly hot day, and Titus and Eli had reinstated the rule that personal packs must be carried. In practice, however, this only affected themselves and Autumn, as Iris only had her bottomless bag and Victoria spent much of the journey in spectral form, her now translucent backpack weightless like the rest of her in that form. She had been capable of traveling long distances in mist form before, but the inability to speak and low reaction time made it not worth the down sides. Now that those were no longer problems, she intended to spend quite a lot of time as a specter.
"He was just a fragment," Victoria said, "a single shard of a much more powerful soul. I felt when it when I tried to absorb him."
"Absorb?" Autumn asked.
Titus reached down and slapped her shoulder. She gave him a shocked and affronted look at first, then realized he was reminding her of the newly agreed upon rule not to ask Victoria any questions about her new powers.
"Oh, right," she said, "sorry."
"It's okay," Victoria said, twisting around to float backwards through the air as she spoke to the party, "the point is, that wasn't the whole guy. If it had been, he would have been a lot stronger and we would be dead. During the fight, he told me something. He said I took his godhood."
"It was the Titan!" Eli's eyes went wide despite him having been pretending he wasn't interested in the conversation.
"A piece of him, at least," Victoria nodded, "the remnants left behind after the explosion of ghost fire all those years ago. My guess is he was wrapped up in the hive mind of souls caught in the allure of the Thread of Power, and managed to escape when I absorbed it. Gone mad from all the years as a fragmented soul, he lashed out and blamed me for his failures. He was just part of all this, though, the real big bad was the fungus.”
“So I’m not crazy,” Autumn said, “you were talking to those ghosts down there about mushrooms!”
Victoria laughed, “not mushrooms, fungus. Mushrooms are just the part of fungus that sticks out of the ground, the actual creature is below ground, in the soil.”
“Creature? I thought mushrooms were plants?” Titus asked with a curious look.
“Nope,” Autumn said, “I don’t know what the hell they are, but they don’t cook like plants, that’s for sure.”
“Calling them creatures might not be accurate,” Victoria said, “but they’re certainly more similar to animals than they are plants. Not similar enough to absorb a Thread of Power, it seems, but similar enough to draw power from one.”
“So the golem and the zombies,” Eli wondered aloud, “they were being controlled by mushrooms?”
“Fungus. Ancient, sentience, magically entangled fungus,” Victoria explained, and then added, “powered up by souls.”
“Damn,” Autumn said quietly.
That's all just a guess though," Victoria stretched and yawned, placing her hands behind her head and closing her eyes as she drifted along beside the party, "could have been anything, really."
"You seem relaxed," Eli observed, “all things considered.”
"Why wouldn't I be?" she cracked open an eye and looked over at him, "I feel great."
Even in her ghostly form, Eli could clearly see the facade she had built to hide her worries.
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As the ghostly Victoria leisurely floated along the trail, Eli, Titus and Autumn were hiking up hill in the scorching heat. Sweat was dripping from their faces, and in Titus's case, even dripping out of his armor. Even Iris, who mostly stood in place and blipped between patches of shade, was beginning to sweat through her robes. They each gave her disgruntled looks.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
When they reached Big Beaver Dam, there was a single giant beaver guarding the bridge on the Black River Point side of the dam. He wore a leather kilt with a single suspender strap that crossed his chest and over one shoulder, and he wielded a large club that had been gnawed into shape. He held out his hammer to block the way as he looked the party up and down. After a moment, he picked up a large wooden slate with a roughly polished surface, on which were crude carvings that loosely resembled the party.
The beaver grunted and held the slate up for the others to see, tapping his with hammer before pointing it at Victoria. She shifted back to her physical form and casually dropped to the ground. The beaver looked back at the slate, then back at the party, and nodded with a grunt before motioning them through.
They crossed the dam without incident, and on the other side they found the same two beavers that had greeted them on their first crossing. At least, they were all pretty sure these were the same two beavers.
"Tar er-ash!" the friendly one said, turning to greet the party as they approached the end of the bridge, "aighar?"
"Shouldn't have any more trouble," Autumn said proudly, "we took care of it like it was nothing."
"Naight vie!" the beaver replied.
"Please, no need to thank us," Autumn gave a slight bow as they passed, "it's what we do."
The less than friendly beaver huffed, while the friendly one waved them off as they entered the old growth forest once more, leaving Black River Point and the Big Beaver Dam behind them.
"How did you know he was thanking us?" Eli asked.
"Oh, I have no idea what he was saying," Autumn said, "I was just guessing."
They reached the coast of Giantrock lake not long before noon and enjoyed a light lunch of foraged salad and berries. As planned, the same boat and guide that had dropped them off arrived around midday to ferry them back to the city. During the ride, they all agreed to put off turning in the quest until tomorrow. Not only were they all exhausted, but the final report still needed to be written. Victoria agreed to write it, as she understood the most of what had transpired, with Eli agreeing to proofread it for her before they turned it.
"So," the boat guide said, "what happened over there? You guys find the loggers you were lookin' for?"
"Would you believe dozens of lost souls culminating in a ghost fungus that was puppeteering corpses and creating dirt golems?" Victoria asked.
The boat guide thought about it for a moment, "aye, for Black River Point, I could believe that. Let me guess, the loggers cut too deep into the forest and pissed the thing off?"
"Seems that way," she said, "no one deserves what happened to them, but it's definitely a lesson about messing with nature."
"Can you really call it nature?" Eli asked, "I mean, the whole thing was caused by a mad titan trying to become a god, right?"
"Every titan tries to become a god," Victoria said, "that sounds like nature to me."
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The stagnant air of the Flopping Fish perpetually smelled of mildew and lake water, but that didn't stop the sighs of relief from each adventurer as they finally returned home. They filtered through the front door one after the other, each dropping their packs unceremoniously atop the nearest table.
"First one upstairs gets the first shower?" Victoria proposed.
"Deal," Eli said, immediately darting towards the stairs.
Victoria smirked, shifted into spectral form and drifted up through the ceiling.
"Oh, come on!" Eli complained as he sprinted up the stairs in vain.
While Iris blipped around the room to light sconces, Autumn nudged Titus with an elbow and nodded towards the kitchen. He nodded back, and they made their way to the kitchen with Iris blipping after them a moment later. Titus crouched beside the hatch in the back of the room and swiped his fingers through a thin line of sand he had placed on the hatch before they departed for their quest.
"Hasn't been used," he observed.
Autumn paced around the room with her hand on her chin, "what does that tell us? Is he staying gone to avoid the Shark Titan?"
"Maybe," Titus said, "but if our theory about this hatch leading to the same place as the portal he dumped Gerald the Fish into turns out true, it doesn't rule out that he's been coming and going with his portal."
"I didn't notice any wet spots around the tavern," Iris said, "so I guess we at least know he hasn't stepped out of his portal in the tavern for a little while, maybe a day?"
"We still need to know if he's in there or not before we can make a plan," Titus said.
"We have six days before the deadline to get the fish," Autumn said, "we don't have a choice but to start planning now."
"There's a lot to do," Iris agreed, "where do we start?"
"We need to know everything about this hatch and where it leads to," Autumn said, pausing momentarily to think before continuing, "getting inside is only step one of the heist, everything else happens after that, so until we know what's on the other side we're just guessing and not planning."
"Vic mentioned a ritualist she knows who might be able to help us with that," Iris said, “sounds like that should be our next step.”
"Good," Autumn nodded, "if we're lucky, it'll just be empty water with our fish swimming around for us to catch."
"And if we're not lucky?" Titus asked.
Autumn looked up at him with a grin, "then we're going to need a crew."