Madru: Blooming

There sat a lone woman on her knees, deep amidst the woods. Surrounded by mycelial red threads and blooming yellow fungus, she gazed upon the small village that had raised her. Lost deep in prayer, she repeatedly begged for salvation. From drought, from starvation, from beasts, from familial disputes - the woman begged to the empty heavens above. For three days and three nights, the young woman sat under a dead tree and prayed without end.

In front of her was the great tree of the divine Lady Coedraig. Last winter, the frost had torn through its bark. Now it could only rot away, and take the villagers’ hopes and dreams with it. Their goddess had abandoned them, being replaced by this sickening growth that had afflicted the tree. Once, Lady Coedraig would bear many fruits and give the local druids advice on how to weather the oncoming tribulations. Now, she was silent.

Lady Coedraig was the protector of all the woods. Without her, the village would surely die. With the villagers’ prayers falling on deaf ears, there was little that could be done to stave off the coming winter. The harvests had failed due to a terrible drought. Animals had to be sacrificed early because the people were malnourished, and subsequently eaten before the winter arrived. Wild boars had settled in the nearby forests, chasing away much of the previous prey and replacing it with dangerous swarms of aggressive beasts. Plague had spread among the villagers, causing many to grow too ill to work the fields to begin with. It was a hopeless situation.

But the woman in front of Coedraig’s decaying remains did not give up. She would not concede to the death of her goddess. Instead, she prayed to any deity who could hear her; any at all. But even that had fallen on deaf ears. She had been praying for three days and three nights, and the hunger had won at last. The woman could do naught but cry. Clutching her prayer book in her arms, she fell on the dead, dried grass and wept for hours. Alas, the hunger soon subsumed her sorrow.

In a desperate attempt to survive, her instincts kicked in. She would eat anything that looked palatable. Even if it was poisonous, like a mushroom. One dripping with fungal honey. A dangerous substance, but one that would sate her, surely. Just for a little while. So that she could make the journey home, and inform the druids of her failure.

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“Oh Lady Coedraig, please hear my prayers. Don’t let me die here.”

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Leonard: In the eye of the beholder

The surrounding forests have grown dull and dry as of late. Lifeless, white-yellow grass dominates the landscape, its usual hue having been drained by an overgrowth of red mycelium threads. Corpses of young animals lie scattered about, being pecked at by the occasional infected raven. A chorus of beetle wings droned through the air, as if one was constantly stalked by hovering insects. The air was stagnant and pungent, overwhelming any who dared trespass upon this accursed soil. Trees were decaying, covered by a blanket of fungus. Most of the knights of Coedraig left long ago, not wanting to share in the infection of the druidic fools. The roads were quiet, the merchants avoided our homeland. We were slowly dying from within.

Tender Rust has conquered these lands, made it their own. Nature is actively receding from this threat - and nobody is doing anything about it. The people who still remain in the village worship a false idol, a lady carrying the goddesses’ name. In any other age, it would have been considered blasphemy. The druids, desperate for relief from the droughts and the suffering, accepted this imposter into our midst and fell at her feet the moment she offered a solution. Why can’t they see that she is not the same benevolent goddess we all came to worship? Their minds have been poisoned by this idol’s words. She is a danger to us all.

Most of Coedraig’s previous knights defected. Many scattered to surrounding lands thereafter, in search of a new life, but a small band of people remained in order to fight the encroachment of this fungal blight upon the land. We cut down vegetation and escort packs of animals outside of its tendrils, all while scorching the land and ensuring that its cursed dew cannot reach us. Unlike normal mushrooms, Tender Rust mimics the shape of a flower. Additionally, it seems to reproduce via a viscous liquid known as “fungal honey”, a sweet, crimson-coloured secretion that contains its spores. This combination of features makes it highly transmissible between animals and people - an infected individual can pass it along with just a drop of their sweat. This land will become a living hell if nobody intervenes.

If only we didn’t send that girl out into the woods, we would’ve never had to suffer such dishonor.