Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty Six - 266Thadeus Thangle pushed through the blowing wind, peering into the snow-like accumulation for his target. His wild thatch of white hair was tangled with sticks and leaves, but he hadn't put mind to his appearance in weeks. Illusions, after all, covered many things and he'd had more important things to worry about. Now he clutched at the enchanted rock in his fist, praying to the Twins that its gale inscription not fail. It held, for now.
Twin's praise for small blessings.
Around him was a forest of giant, oozing mushrooms. They formed a second canopy beneath the trees, stretching thirty or forty span floor to gills, while the tops soared higher still. The expedition into the Verdant Pass had encountered it two days after emerging breaking through the Tin Gate, and with them came the humanoid mushrooms called Lamellans. They varied from Gnome to Human to Ogre-sized, and no two were alike in appearance, but all of them were violently opposed to the company's intrusion. Even worse, they had control over the larger tree-fungi: at their command, spores would rain down from above like snow.
The spores were the true killers.
The efforts of the wind mages had made it safer for their company, but it had taken them two deaths to realize the danger. Those two scoutsTwins have mercythey had died when the spores rooted in their chests and began to grow. In seconds the poor fools were more mushroom than man, and they were dead. No measure of healing could save them. Now their mages expended themselves to keep the spores away from their teams, but their Mana would only last so long.
The Lamellans were many, but the true threat was the monster lure at the center of their horde. The steady supply of undifferentiated Mana was enticing and enraging the local beasts in turn, driving them into a frenzy and fueling the nonstop production of their spores. The Hand led a charge against the Lamellans, personally taking down hundreds of them, but still they came, their unnatural procreation more than a match for an Adept's killing fury. Zara may have been able to find and destroy the lure, as well as the entire forest of monsters, but she had gone ahead. Doing what, only the Sorcerer knew.
That left him. A tiny Gnome against a fungal horde.
His target ducked behind a thick stalk of fungal flesh, swift as a hare in a winter storm. Through haze of violet Mana vapor, the Gnome could only make out the dim flash of crimson and white metal. Thangle would have been impressed if he wasn't so annoyed.
Damnable redcloaks. How dare they touch my precious illusions!
He had spotted the redcloak moving through the army, covered in a Seeming spell. The spell itself was similar in kind to his Obfuscation in that it was an illusion, but where Obfuscation confused the senses a Seeming simply showed you what you expected. In this case, a small, weaker Lamellan carrying a heavy rock. Their size and threat were dwarfed by the ten foot monstrosities that swarmed around them, and even the monsters themselves were fooled. Not the Terrific Thadeus Thangle, though. He spotted the violet haze of augmentation Mana in an instant.
Thangle ducked beneath a thicket of fibrous strands, his small size a boon as he moved alone through the horde. Aside from the wind stone in his gripenchanted by a harried magethat ensured the spores kept away from his face, Thangle was slowly rotating his own augmentation Mana in deft circuits. Each pass turned Lamellan senses away, toward juicier, extant targets.
Obfuscation is level 62!
"Nine Sundered Serpents!"
That cataclysmic shout was all Thangle heard before the forest around him buckled, and the flash of silver and deep blue Mana surged out in jagged streams. Trees crashed to the earth, followed by mushroom spears that sprayed fountains of snow-white spores into the air. Those spores were caught up in the storm of Mana and dissolved instantly. Those streams, nine of them, extended from the greatsword of the Chosen Hand and bisected legions of the Lamellan all at once. The man stood at the head of the guard, his Spirit a riot of power that hurt Thangle to even look upon, even as his Skill threatened to cut the Gnome in half.
Blasted fool! Thangle danced backward, taking cover behind the ten span thickness of a tree. Can't he see I'm out here?
Of course he couldn't, that was the point of his illusion. But Thangle only saw that as the man's failure. If Felix were there, he would have spotted the Gnome right off the bat.
I should have gone to the Foglands, too, he whined. But no, I decided to help the city guard instead!
The earth shook again, but this time it wasn't the Hand's attacks, but the fungal horde's response. A creature, birthed from the glistening gills of a downed mushroom, it was the size of one of those ice warriors. Easily twenty span tall and just as wide, a solid, damp knot of mindless violence. It charged the moment it gained its feet, bashing through trees and fungal forces alike on a b-line toward the Hand.
Analyze!
Name: Lamellan Titan
Type: Mycid
Level: 72
...
Thangle pulled his attention away from the beast as soon as he realized it was well beyond him. Instead he poured more of his concentration into his Obfuscation, even as the earth bucked again. Ahead the redcloak had been slipping like an oiled shadow between mushroom and trees, but the roaring charge of the Titan threw him to the earth. The stone he'd gripped fell and, with a flicker, escaped the reach of the redcloak's Spirit.
No!
The unremarkable boulder turned instantly into a shining green gem the size of a Human head. It was unpolished except along two sides, where gold script was barely legible. The moment it escaped the redcloak's Seeming, the monsters in the area went absolutely insane.
Zara considered the site of the next Passage. She had cleared the area with some difficulty, as the fungal growths were impressively resistant to magical forces. She found the trick of it soon enough, however, and now the low mound of their next pathway was razed. The last thing she wanted was one of the Lamellan creatures entering the Passages after them. It would be...unpleasant.
"My lady!" Keru shouted from above. Zara looked up to see him bobbing atop a thin branch, feathers fluffed in alarm. "The Mana purity just rose an entire twelve percent!"
She felt it. A lingering coolness on her senses like mint on the tongue, but strangely tasteless. Undifferentiated Mana. She whipped her head back to the battle happening half a league behind her. The lure is potent, more so than the last.
"Wait here, Grouse," she mumbled to her avum. The ugly bird chirped urgently and Zara rolled her eyes before tossing an opened bag of feed at its feet. Grouse cooed in delight before ignoring her entirely. "Keru, lead the way."
A wave of power lifted her from the clearing, carrying her behind her familiar at speeds not even her mount could match. The fungal forest reemerged around her, filled with their horrid spores, and dominated by the press of thousands of fibrous, glistening bodies writhing atop a single point. Her people were just beyond, valiantly trying to cut through the mass of violent Lamellan, but each one killed was met with another two emerging from the woods.
"Ten Sundered Serpents!"
The Hand's Mana surged forth, cutting down an enormous specimen in a single blow. A wave of Mana bolts, arrows, and conjured spears followed, with little result.
We haven't the time for this. Zara raised her hands and poured power from her core. It gathered in her hands where she shaped it into a spellform that was half sung into existence.
Full Stop.
Thangle hurled himself over an errant line of metal Mana, barely clearing it before it carved a Gnome-sized chunk out of a Lamellan warrior. He might not be seen, but those Mana blades would kill him just as easily as anyone else. Easier, in fact. The illusionist never put much into Vitality, after all.
He pushed up from the ground, careful not to breath in the spores that had fetched up between roots, and stumbled onward. At least, until a wall of blue-green Mana screamed into existence, visible to even the most Mana-blind. With a gasp, he put a massive tree between him and the power, and erected the paltry defensive magics he knew. The power swept through him, unconcerned with his attempts, and Thangle felt his senses heave.
Next thing he knew, he was twenty strides away, upside down against the burning remnant of a giant mushroom.
"You're alright, Thad?" Karp called from across the clearing. The red bearded archer was covered in soot and his footsteps kicked up piles of ash. Thangle managed a weary nod before righting himself. "Good. We got enough injured."
"The...the lure?" Thangle rasped. His body felt curiously dryparched, evenas if he hadn't had a drink in days. "Where's the lure?"
"Lure? Oh the rock?" Karp gestured toward the easterly end of the clearing. "Zara and the Hand got it after they killed the rest of the shrooms."
Thangle gritted his teeth. He'd been trying to get the lure because no one else had noticed it or listened to him when he pointed it out. Hehe let himself breath outward, releasing tension from his Body.
They got it and stopped it. That's all that matters.
If they hadn't, the fight would still be raging. In fact, the entire forest had nearly been struck down, as all the vegetation in hundreds of strides had been rendered to crumbling ash. Nothing but their people had survived, and even then quite a few were looking haggard. The danger, however, seemed to have passed. Thangle could appreciate no longer being in mortal danger. After the battle for Haarwatch, his appetite for large, involved battles had grown thin and it had never been large in the first place. There was a reason his physical stats were as low as they were; combat was not for him.
An icon wiggled in his vision and Thangle raised his eyebrows in surprise.
Obfuscation is level 64!
Mana Shield is level 22!
Turned Blade is level 19!
You Have Earned a New Title!
Warrior of the Fungal Forest (Uncommon)!