Darkness and Hellfire

Chapter 35 We Try Stealth

Isaac awoke from his dream of a giant dragon made of mushrooms with a golden crown to Lenna nudging him. “We should get moving.” She told him quietly.

Isaac sat up and rubbed his eyes. “You’re not gonna sleep?” He asked her.

“No. I got plenty of rest.” She replied and handed him breakfast.

Isaac accepted the food that he was quickly starting to hate. It wasn’t bad but it was bland. And the exact same each day, which was what was really getting to him. “So, mushroom land today.” Isaac said by way of small talk.

“The next three days. Maybe two if you are up for it.” Lenna explained.

Isaac shook his head to get the image of mushroom dragons out of it. “Is it safe to sleep in there? Well, you know, less safe than it usually is?”

Lenna took some water before answering. “Yes. Don’t breathe the spores. Best case they are poisonous.”

Isaac paled. “What’s worst case?”

Lenna made eye contact. “Mind control.” She said dead serious.

Isaac swallowed. “Noted. Anything we can do to keep that from happening?”

“Touch as little as possible and remember; slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Sudden movements will only attract their attention.” She explained.

Isaac nodded and before long they headed out.

—

Five hours later they entered what was to be the first of twenty seven mushroom caverns. The tunnel opened up to a cavern that was no smaller than two hundred feet across, a hundred and fifty feet high, and seven hundred feet deep. It was covered in mushrooms of all sizes and shapes.

Some of the mushrooms were the glowing ones that Isaac had seen before. Those mushrooms were poisonous but could apparently be used to make darkvision potions according to Lenna. There were whitecaps of monstrous size littered around the cavern and growing out of the walls and ceiling. The white caps were either one to two feet tall or well over ten.

The larger mushrooms would occasionally open up under their caps and let out a cloud of spores which for the most part would simply drift to the ground. Some of them would occasionally get caught in a draft and float across the cavern to land somewhere else.

“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast right?” Isaac asked while eyeing the spores.

Lenna nodded slowly. “Yes. Follow me.” She headed out first. She was careful to not step on top of any mushrooms and moved with utmost care.

They were almost through the cavern before Isaac came to a realization. “They aren’t dark aligned.” Isaac said mostly to himself.

Lenna whispered to him without looking back. “What do you mean?”

“My death mana should kill them. I want to try it.” He explained.

“At the exit.” Lenna replied after some thought. Her fire would work very well on the mushrooms but there was the small problem of there being miles of them and her not even having enough mana to clear even one of the caverns of them.

At the exit Lenna stopped and waited for Isaac and his experiment. He covered his hand in death flames and reached do towards one of the smaller whitecaps. He grabbed its cap in a fist and raised his hand back up to chest height. He opened his hand and nothing but decayed dust fell out and drifted away in the slight draft.

“It works. I can fight them for real.” He turned to face Lenna. “I can fight them with magic!” His excitement was palpable.

Lenna raised a hand slowly in front of her face. “They can hear you.”

Isaac swallowed hard and nodded. He stopped wasting mana on his death flames. As smoothly as he could he followed Lenna as they continued through a mushroom infested tunnel.

Their trip through the miles long fungi forest was mostly quiet. They saw a few rotting corpses of various monsters in one of the caverns but they didn’t slow. Towards what was supposed to be the end of their first day in the mushroom kingdom they came across something Lenna was dreading.

Inside the largest cavern Isaac had ever seen were walking, talking, mushrooms. They were holding spears made of bones and had shields made of mushroom caps. Their legs were half as wide around as they were and their trunks were three feet across. Their arms were a little smaller than their legs but they seemed to have grown into their weapons. They had pits on the sides of their head that Isaac assumed were like their ears. They also had a singular eye in the upper middle of the body about a foot below their cap. They were eight feet tall to the base of their caps which were another foot and a half tall. They were white with red caps and they seemed to move clumsily about while creaking at each other.

“Can you make both of us disappear?” Lenna whispered to Isaac.

Isaac tilted his head to the side. “I never thought to try honestly.” He placed his hand on her shoulder and started dumping shadow mana out at an alarming rate. By the time he had covered her completely he was already half empty. He closed the circuit and although he could still see her he could tell that she had disappeared for everyone else.

He cut the flow of mana and wiped some sweat from his brow. “Not yet.” He said and took a few deep relaxing breaths.

“Takes too much mana?” Lenna asked.

Isaac nodded. “I have enough to turn us both invisible for maybe ten seconds. A little longer if I’m okay with bottoming out completely.”

She nodded in understanding. “Can you silence my gear like you do yours?”

Isaac nodded and guided shadow mana between her metal plates and around her weapon. “I can keep this up permanently. I’ll have to tap into my reserves for myself though. It’s a lot harder to do this to you than it is to do it on myself.”

“How long at a time?” Lenna asked while trying to formulate a plan that didn’t involve them going to war with the caverns themselves.

“A minute or two. Long enough to sneak past them. The real problem is that there is nowhere to hide. How well can they see?” Isaac asked.

Lenna’s gaze returned to the mushroom warriors. “Not well. They can only track movement. Their hearing is pretty average. The real problem is that all of them are connected.”

“How so?” Isaac questioned.

“They can feel when their brother’s die. Shared pain or something.” Lenna explained.

“Any crazy magic to blow them all to bits?” Isaac asked half jokingly.

Lenna nodded. “Yes. I could fireball them but it would blast spores everywhere.”

Isaac froze. “Wait, you can actually blow them all up?”

Lenna nodded again. “About twice per mana pool. Once if I wanna fight normally for a few seconds afterwards or need to heal.”

Isaac thought for a moment. “I have two plans. One is slightly more crazy than the other.” Lenna looked at him so he would continue. “Firstly. I could go invisible and hack at them while you make your way towards the exit without me making you quiet. I’d be the distraction and not really be focused on killing any of them. After you make it I’ll disengage and meet you there.”

“That’s the crazier plan right?” Lenna asked. “The risk of breathing in spores will be very high.”

“Oh gods no. That’s the less crazy plan. The crazy plan is you scorch a wall free of mushrooms, I coat you in death flames and use you as a shield against all the spores that’ll go flying from you blowing them into a thousand pieces.” Isaac said his entire plan in one breath speaking quicker as he ran out of air.

Lenna stared at him for a moment. “You are insane.”

“Probably. But it should work. I can’t coat myself in them or I’ll melt too. But you, my Lady, are healed by them so you’ll be fine. The spores that get close to you will disintegrate on contact and we’ll just have to hope none of them get around you.” Isaac explained.

Lenna thought for a moment. “What about our gear?”

“I didn’t melt your clothes when we first met, did I?” Isaac retorted. Then his mind started down the rabbit hole of the reason why his death flames don’t melt certain things. He eventually settled on them simply not working on things that weren’t alive.

Lenna nodded in acknowledgement. She turned to face the mushrooms again. “Let’s try to sneak past them. If that doesn’t work we’ll try the crazy plan. I don’t like risking you getting covered in spores.” Lenna conceded.

“Alright. We try stealth and if that doesn’t work we go with plan B. There is no one to notice if there is no one left to notice.” Isaac said with a nod accentuating the last part.