*Day 9 - The Desolation's Edge*
The dwarf was arguing with a mushroom.
Not metaphorically. Not as some philosophical exercise. Literally standing knee-deep in toxic swamp water, gesticulating wildly at a purple fungus the size of a carthorse while making what could only be described as aggressive humming noises.
Ora stopped at the edge of the bog, her corrupted senses trying to process what she was witnessing. The dwarf—if that's what he was—looked wrong for the stereotype. No beard, for one. His chin sprouted delicate white filaments that might have been fungal hyphae. His skin had a grayish-green tint, like old bread beginning to spore. And his eyes...
His eyes were completely black. No whites, no iris, just obsidian orbs that reflected nothing.
"Oh, now you're being deliberately obtuse!" the dwarf said to the mushroom, though his mouth didn't move. The words seemed to emerge from somewhere around his throat, like sound filtered through cotton. "The nitrogen ratio is completely wrong for that kind of sporulation. You'll poison the entire watershed!"
The mushroom, predictably, said nothing.
The dwarf threw his hands up in exasperation. "Fine! Kill everything! See if I care! I'm only trying to prevent an ecological cascade that will turn this swamp into a lifeless—"
He stopped mid-rant, those black eyes swiveling to lock onto Ora.
"Oh good," he said, voice dripping sarcasm. "A surface dweller. Come to vibrate your meat-flaps at me, have you? Going to make mouth-noises about how lost you are? How you need directions? How the scary swamp is too wet?"
Ora's hand instinctively moved to her blade. "I'm just passing through."
"Passing through." The dwarf laughed, a sound like spores popping. "Everyone's always 'passing through.' No one ever stops to appreciate the hyphal networks. No one ever asks about the mycorrhizal relationships. It's all 'where's the road' and 'help me I'm dying of toxic spore inhalation.'"
He sloshed through the water toward her, and Ora noticed he left a trail of bioluminescent foam in his wake. Also, the water around him was... cleaner? The murky brown cleared to crystal transparency wherever he stepped.
"You're one of those Boletan dwarves," she said. "A Nano di Boleto."
"Oh, she knows the name. How cosmopolitan." He stopped a few feet away, head tilted. "Though technically incorrect. I'm only half Boletan. My mother was from the deep networks. My father was..." He paused, those black eyes narrowing. "Why do you smell like tree?"
"It's complicated."
"Everything interesting usually is." He circled her slowly, making soft clicking sounds. "Tree and death. Growth and entropy. You're a walking contradiction. How are you not exploding?"
"Practice."
He barked another laugh. "I like you. You're probably going to die horribly, but at least you're interesting about it." He straightened, extending a hand covered in what looked like moss. "S'pun-duh. Mycological specialist, ecological terrorist, and currently the only thing preventing this entire region from turning into a toxic wasteland."
She didn't shake his hand. "Ora."
"Ora." He tasted the name. "No, that's not right. You're something else now. Something with too many syllables and not enough vowels." His head tilted the other way, an unnatural angle that would have snapped a human neck. "You're going south. Into the Desolation proper."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"To kill someone."
Again, not a question.
"Yes."
"Good. It's probably Netharion. Everyone wants to kill Netharion these days. He's been very busy destroying ecosystems for profit." S'pun-duh turned back to the giant mushroom. "Unlike SOME OF US who are trying to maintain balance!"
The mushroom continued its silence.
"Is it... sentient?" Ora asked despite herself.
"Of course it's sentient. Everything with more than a thousand hyphal connections has some form of consciousness. This one's just being petty because I told it its spore dispersal pattern was inefficient." He kicked water at the fungus. "Which it IS, by the way!"
A cloud of purple spores puffed from the mushroom. S'pun-duh inhaled deeply, then sneezed, sending glowing particles everywhere.
"Toxic?" Ora asked.
"Only to things with standard respiratory systems. I'm mostly fungus at this point. My lungs are more like gill slits filled with symbiotic mold." He said this like it was perfectly normal. "The real question is why YOU aren't dead. Those spores should have melted your alveoli by now."
"I'm hard to kill."
"Clearly." He studied her with those unnerving black eyes. "You know, I was just thinking I needed to head south anyway. Lots of dead things in the Desolation. Dead things mean interesting decomposition patterns. Might even find some Corpse Crown—haven't seen that in decades."
"I travel alone."
"So do I. We can travel alone together. Much more efficient." He didn't wait for her response, just started sloshing southward. "Besides, you'll need me when you hit the Salt Flats. Nothing grows there. Nothing. It's an ecological void that makes my mycelial network scream. But I know the paths. The ones that won't strip the flesh from your bones, anyway."
"Why would you help me?"
He stopped, turned back. For a moment, his expression shifted to something almost vulnerable.
"Because three weeks ago, the Plague reached Boleto."
The words hung in the air like toxic spores.
"The Plague?"
"Psychic screaming sickness. Turns the network against itself. Makes the collective consciousness eat its own memories. My people are dying, and they're dying in the worst way possible—forgetting they ever existed while still being aware of the forgetting."
His black eyes reflected nothing, but somehow conveyed infinite depth.
"And you think Netharion is connected?"
"I know he is. Him and his Distiller friends. They've been harvesting something from the deep networks. Something that shouldn't exist. Something that makes souls into..." He paused, searching for words. "Currency. Condensed suffering with exchange rates."
The corruption in Ora's veins pulsed with recognition. The Distillers. Always the Distillers.
"Fine," she said. "You can come. But—"
"Don't touch anything, don't eat anything, don't make deals with anything, and definitely don't trust anything that claims to be helpful." S'pun-duh grinned, showing teeth like tiny white mushrooms. "I've heard it all before. I've been navigating hostile ecosystems since before your precious crystal city learned to sing."
They walked in silence for a while, Ora following S'pun-duh's seemingly random path through the swamp. Everywhere he stepped, the water cleared. Everywhere she stepped, things grew and died simultaneously.
"You know what your problem is?" S'pun-duh said suddenly.
"I'm becoming a monster?"
"No, that's a solution, not a problem. Your problem is you think in binary. Life or death. Good or evil. Human or monster." He paused to examine a cluster of blue fungi. "Nature doesn't work that way. Everything is always becoming something else. Decomposition is just another form of growth. Death feeds life feeds death feeds life."
"That's very philosophical for someone who was just yelling at a mushroom."
"That mushroom has a Ph.D in biochemical engineering. It's just too stubborn to use it properly." He plucked one of the blue fungi, popped it in his mouth. "Want some? Tastes like copper and regret."
"I'll pass."
"Your loss. Regret is an acquired taste, but it grows on you." He chuckled at his own joke. "Grows. Fungus. See what I did there?"
They reached firmer ground as the sun began to set. The Desolation stretched before them—a wasteland of ash and salt and bones. Nothing grew here. Nothing lived. Even the corruption in Ora's veins seemed to quiet.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" S'pun-duh said, genuinely awed. "Complete ecological collapse. Do you have any idea how hard it is to kill everything? Even bacteria? Even spores? This took deliberate effort."
"The dragons did this?"
"Dragons? Ha!" He laughed bitterly. "Dragons just finished it. This started with the Distillers, hundred years ago. They tried to render the very concept of life from this place. Tried to distill existence itself into something they could trade."
He knelt, touching the dead soil with reverence.
"They almost succeeded. Would have, if the Leviathans hadn't intervened. Drowned the whole operation. But the damage was done. This place will be dead for another thousand years."
"Unless?"
He looked up at her, those black eyes unreadable.
"Unless someone figures out how to make death itself into a form of life. Know anyone working on that particular impossibility?"
Ora flexed her fingers, watching thorns extend and retract. The Heart Tree's gift pulsed in her veins—not just corruption now, but something else. Something that bridged the gap between growth and decay.
"Maybe," she said.
S'pun-duh stood, brushing ash from his hands.
"Well then. This should be interesting." He started walking into the Desolation. "Try not to die before we find Netharion. I want to see what happens when someone feeds a Distiller to his own machinery."
As they walked into the dead land, Ora found herself almost grateful for the strange dwarf's presence. His constant commentary was annoying, yes. But it was also alive. Vital. A reminder that even in the face of absolute devastation, life found ways to be irreverent.
Behind them, the giant purple mushroom finally released its spores in a pattern that was, S'pun-duh would have been annoyed to know, significantly more efficient than his suggested configuration.
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*End Chapter 8.5*
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