Chapter 37: Mushroom Forest

Down and down into the chasm we went, cracks in the wall lining the stygian abyss teeming with more life than I'd expected beneath the earth. Insectoid limbs and batlike forms chittering in the dark while stranger, bioluminescent things slithered and squirmed just out of sight. All of them sized as up as we descended but none of them actually tried anything, it was clear the Derro had long since established their dominance over this narrow stretch of subterranean wilderness although judging by what looked like a few bite marks on the gondola's wooden frame it had taken a while.

The gondola continued its descent and I cleansed my injured allies before healing their wounds with the demon-blood fumes, I hoped this wouldn't end up backfiring but the tooltips said nothing about mutation or addiction so I hid any misgivings and instead watched with satisfaction as punctures and gashes alike healed without scarring. It took a full 10 minutes of work to reach the bottom of the incline and we had remained on edge for the majority of the trip but eventually we reached the nadir of the lift and now the gondola swayed precariously over a 20 foot drop onto spear-like stalagmites that seemed somehow more undesirable than the previously incalculable fall into abyssal darkness we had faced at its highest point.

"We must be getting close now, look at that in the distance" It was little spots of light, still too far off to see the details but was unmistakable in their meaning. The Derro didn't need light to see down here but surface-born slaves certainly would. We stopped the gondola and Luna began tying a rope to the rail while the rest of us did a last weapons check. We had a simple plan, instead of an all-out assault we would stop the gondola here. Next we would rappel down to the bottom of the abyss and approach the settlement as stealthily as possible; Merri's captive had described a town as opposed to a city so finding our allies wouldn't be impossible although fighting a 1000 Derro head on would still be a suicide run.

We had been given three likely locations for our allies, the least desirable outcome was the Temple of the Worm, this was a place for favoured slaves and blood sacrifice, unless our allies had been completely broken they wouldn't be here, the next option was the farms where the Derro procured their food and building materials, basically It turned out the porous wood of the gondola, weapons and shields didn't come from trees at all, instead it came from these giant mushrooms that the Derro had growing along the eastern outskirts of their hive city. To reach the farms Merri would guide us through natural cave systems and monster lairs in order to circumvent the main Derro settlement. If that failed however then we would have only one place left to target. The Derro Caste system had Worm Priests at the top but it had a noble class as well, these nobles had personal slaves, usually purchased from the farms by an agent of theirs and brought into the city proper. If that was the case we would need to assault a Derro noble house and somehow escape without the entire city coming down on us.

One step at a time however, Luna slid gracefully down the rope followed by Farrah and Victoria shortly after, I placed a gloved hand on the rope and followed without issue, Merri untied it once we had all hit the ground, threw it down and then glided off the gondola on black wings and landing neatly beside us.

The Derro would hear the explosions and see the gondola hadn't made it back to base but that was all they would see, according to Victoria the little monsters only possessed a hundred feet or so of Darkvision, that was why they used the hive design, preferring short corridors to open battlefields. In theory we could also hide our light from them by using one of my magical darkness spells. The Derro could see through that with their own magical sight but only up close, in this no-mans land between gondola stations we could hide quite effectively, until we reached the hive anyway. I struck one of my umbral-infused spell-candles and a dome of magical darkness enclosed us, leaving enough room for the 5 of us to move together. It had taken a while to get the shape down right but at the end of the day it wasn't anything special, it was all in the way I infused the mana that shaped the casting.

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The ground down here was more like dirt than stone but without any natural light it may as well have been barren, no grass beneath our boots, no trees overhead. Just an all-consuming darkness around and above us, while our little oasis was lit by a lantern worn at Luna's hip. "What's that?" Luna pointed at something poking through the darkness into our little pool of light. The thing was made of mushroom stalk, marked by many little razor-sharp teeth and as we moved towards it the shape began to be revealed bit by bit. It was the prow of one of the Gondolas. It seemed the Derro had put in even more effort than I first thought to claim this patch of land from the denizens of the dark. Luna moved to inspect it and Merri raised a hand, I noted the tips of those usually manicured fingers, she had transmuted it into her combat form, tearing, slicing claws ready for action. "Caves that way, built like a lair."

Luna nocked an arrow but didn't yet draw or aim. "Which way do we go?" I was looking around at the edges of my little shadow-bubble, wondering whether something was about to come crashing through when Merri spoke up again. "Just keep going past the Gondola, there's caves and tunnels all around us, I don't feel a safe way through yet."

The gondola in question had been savaged, whatever had ripped it off the cables had torn dozens of holes in the hull in its haste to get on top and kill the Derro on board, by some twist of fate the vessel hadn't been skewered on one of the massive stalagmites that jutted up all over the floor, instead falling in between them and spilling some of its living cargo onto the ground where they had been mauled, ripped apart and ground into fragments of bone.

I saw a piece of a jawbone, teeth, a short thigh bone and a very thick humerus scattered alongside a pauldron of that blue metal and several of the blades. "Two dead Juggernauts, a priest and a couple dozen of the fodder units. Looks like it happened fast."

I hated that. "Multiple attackers then?"

Merri shouted an alarm and things began sailing through the dome. In the distance some Derro noble was probably enjoying a meal of spiced dirt, doing the worm on his living room floor and enjoying the warmth of a mushroom log fire with his Derro friends. None of those comforts for us. Instead, we were assailed by a swarm I first mistook as birds because of the sharp beaks and the feathers. Merri shredded 3 with her claws before they could hit her, a fourth blew past her with a scrap of flesh in its beak while a dozen smaller wounds opened in a 10-centimetre radius around the initial wound. I whirled, keeping my longsword between my face and the enemy even as more of the 'Birds' whipped by just overhead, something snatched a piece of flesh from my shoulder and I hollered in pain, whipping this way and that trying to catch a glimpse of the creatures that were now creating a storm of activity around us.

"We can take them, maintain the shroud, Jack!" Victoria once more defaulted to the microwave and as per usual it proved quite effective, unidentifiable gore rained down on me along with oily scraps of twitching blubber. I grimaced in disgust as I shook a larger chunk to the floor and saw what had looked like a feathery wing at first glance was actually a membranous wing like that of a sugar glider covered in hundreds of tiny tentacles tipped with little biting mouths.

The fight didn't slow, 'Birds' continued to swoop myself and my companions and Luna shot them down with black arrows while Victoria passed Oscillating death from side to side, everyone was focused on protecting me. Merri tried to quip with the others as they fell into their killing routine but neither of the sisters liked her calling me Senpai and Farrah seemed too utterly entranced with the act of killing to talk back. It was a thing of simple beauty to be honest, she slew the creatures with twin axes, twirling in a brutally simple dance that took chunks out of the swarm like it was a single organism and she did it with an absolutely rapturous look on her face.

I knew why I needed to be protected in this situation but it still felt bad not to be directly contributing to the killing; even If I was still earning a share of the experience.

Unfortunately though, there was nothing I could do to help my friends any more than maintaining the dome. If I lost concentration, then my allies would either have to snuff their light and die in darkness against the considerably more adapted Cave-Hawks or maintain it and draw the attention of over a thousand murderous Derro.