Sporemageddon

If I had known just how oppressive the seventh floor would be, then there was a real chance that I wouldn’t have come down into the dungeon at all.

Or maybe I would have come down better equipped? More lamp oil, and more lamps. Maybe one of those lamps that were set up so that they could hang from a pole fitted to my backpack? It would give me a source of light that was above my head and maybe turn the ceilings away from being dark, foreboding pits.

The [Glow Lichen] was doing its part. Sir Nibbles had a thick collar of it around his neck and a few strings trailing down his back. It created a space, maybe a metre wide, which was illuminated enough to see in. That was the best we had. The lamp I had by my side, and it did provide a wider, brighter beam of light, but it was diffuse on the edges, so I had to constantly pan it back and forth.

If I had been someone scared of the dark, then this place would have driven me mad. As It was... maybe I was developing a little bit of a new phobia.

In reality, I think the silence was what scared me most of all. The tunnels were entirely noiseless.

If there was cave darkness, then this was cave silence. It took a few rooms before it really hit, but once it did, I couldn’t not notice it. There was no trickle of water, no hum or whisper of wind. The space didn’t create or shift or make any noise.

What did make noise was us. Sir Nibble’s feet scuffed on the ground lightly. Usually I’d think of him as extremely stealthy, but that had its limits. The beating of my own heart was loud in my ears, and I found myself unconsciously holding my breath because it felt so loud.

“Pause here,” I whispered, and even though it wasn’t much more than a breath, one captured by my mask, it still felt loud.

Sir Nibbles stopped. We were at the entrance to the third room on the floor. The previous two had been entirely empty, and I felt a little annoyed at having tossed in some spore bombs to clear them out. Better safe than sorry, I supposed, but still.

It was, as the previous had been, a large, entirely empty space. That is, if I didn’t count the random rocky detritus as anything special. There were a few spaces along the walls where they jutted out unevenly, but that was natural for a cave.

I frowned as I caught sight of something. There was a wisp of white in there. My blood went cold, only, no, it wasn’t a Pale Stalker, that was more like a piece of cloth. Ridiculously, I assumed it was toilet paper for a moment, but no, it looked more like raw cloth.

Silk? The giant moths on this floor were supposed to create large weaves of the stuff.

I shrugged to myself, then tossed the bomb in underhand.

It went off with a loud whump, kicking up some dust from the ground and spreading a massive cloud of spores that immediately ate up the light I was shining into the room, casting foggy shadows on every wall and surface.

I waited for a moment, for something else to happen, but there wasn’t any other movement, not that I could notice, in any case.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said. I reset my satchel, then started forwards, only waiting a little to wipe the front of my lamp free of dust.

Sir Nibbles and I walked through the room at a slow, even at a slow, even pace, eyes scanning the edges and ears peeled.

That was probably why I was so spooked as something came rushing down from above.

I gasped, tossed out a quick [Blight] that missed entirely, then when the falling thing hit the ground with a hard smack, I screamed like a little girl and backpedaled all the way back to the entrance.

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Then nothing happened.

Sir Nibbles was between me and the fallen thing, back arched, fur standing out on end and claws fully extended, he was making a deep, growling noise that I could almost feel, only... the thing he was growling at wasn’t moving at all.

“What the hell!” I gasped.

Somehow--fortunately--I hadn’t let go of the lamp. I raised it, and aimed the beam onto the thing that had fallen.

It was a body. Long, with thin limbs. Too many of them. Only, no, there were only four legs. The two extras at the front were more like extended mandibles, with long, scythe-like blades extended from them.

A Pale Stalker.

It wasn’t moving, though that was supposed to be common for that kind of monster. Still, I reached out and hit it with a strong [Blight]. Enough that the scaly skin on its back started to turn black and rot away. If it was still alive and this was some sort of complex ploy, then it was very good at resisting pain and playing dead.

I scanned the lamp around, then aimed it up as best I could. Nothing. I hadn’t seen it earlier either.

I was developing a whole new phobia, one of giant monsters crushing me as they came down from above.

Sir Nibbles slowly moved forwards, sniffing at the body through his mask. It felt almost like he was trying to pretend that he hadn’t placed himself in such a way that he’d be protecting me.

“Thanks,” I said as I slowly inched forwards, then moved over to the body. I gave it a little kick, and my heart skipped a beat as it twitched, but that looked like a nervous response more than anything else. It was well and truly dead.

I circled the corpse and discovered that it had been frothing at the mouth. Kneeling down, I inspected its face. It looked more lizard than insect, with a little forked tongue and long, even teeth that looked dangerously serrated.

The foam... “Hmm,” I muttered as I touched it and rubbed my fingers together. Mucus? Probably something like an immune response? Maybe it was how normal Pale Stalkers protected themselves from environmental things, dusts and the like?

Some of my [Dead Man’s Cough] had made it into its lungs despite that.

I checked my lamp’s oil. Still plenty, so I set it aside with the light aiming my way and pulled out a knife.

A field dissection wasn’t ideal, but I wanted to know more about these things. So, I plunged the knife into the monster, working hard to bypass its scaly skin, then ran it down to open it up.

It wasn’t easy.

The Pale Stalker’s hide was a lot tougher than it looked. Not hard like armour, exactly. More like a thick, rubbery leather stretched over something bony underneath. My knife scraped, caught, then sank in with a wet little pop that made me instantly regret doing this while in a room so quiet that I could hear the sound echo off the walls.

“Gross,” I said.

Sir Nibbles huffed, which I chose to interpret as agreement.

I kept the cut shallow at first, because I didn’t know what kind of internal structure I was dealing with, and I had no desire to splash mystery cave monster juices all over myself. The first layer split open to reveal pale muscle underneath. There wasn’t much blood.

I worked the knife in a little deeper, then pried the flesh apart with the edge of the blade. The smell hit me a moment later.

It wasn’t rot. Not exactly. It was sharp and bitter, like cut grass left in the sun, mixed with old pennies. I leaned away, glad for the mask.

The lungs were easy to find, mostly because they were ruined.

They sat higher in the chest than I’d expected, close to the spine, and there were several little sacs running along the ribs. They were blackened and shrivelled now, with veins of grey rot spreading through them. My mushroom spores were already growing? I poked one with the tip of the knife and it collapsed in on itself.

I smiled, then used a bit of magic to push the growth along. Soon, there would be mycelium breaking through, and if I was lucky, this one corpse would turn into a nice new space to grow a batch of deadly mushrooms.

If we were especially lucky, someone, or something, might come to investigate the body and would trigger the mushrooms within. A sort of self-propogating trap.

Too bad that this wouldn’t be as viable anywhere but in a dungeon with so much ambient magic.

I wiped the knife clean on the Pale Stalker’s hide, then paused before putting it away. There were glands near the mouth. Two of them, swollen little sacs just beneath the jaw, connected to channels that ran along the bladed mandibles.

Venom? Acid? Some kind of numbing agent? I didn’t know, and I didn’t have the tools to figure it out. I also didn’t have the spare jars to store any of it, which was upsetting.

I cut one of the sacs free anyway, wrapped it in some waxed cloth from my satchel, then tucked it away carefully.

If it leaked and melted through everything I owned, I was going to feel very stupid.

“Let’s move on,” I said.

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