After Lilian’s magic lesson, Nakoda and I ventured a ways in front of the group. He said it was so that he could report back to the group if we saw any Grays. In reality, he just wanted to discuss what we’d just learned about magic as it pertained to my unicorn-ness. Yet, because of his excitement, he still spoke a little too loudly, risking the others hearing him anyway.
“So what if we’re like that?! We both really wanted to save Alton from that flying lizard and because of that your magic activated! And since you’re magic, and we’re brothers, that makes me magic! WE’RE MAGIC! MAGIC RIDERS OF THE WING!”
To be honest, I was only half paying attention. Mostly because, by this point, everything was now covered in gray moss. The jungle was a spec of green in the far-off distance. The moss was moist and warm due to the sun. It took me a moment to realize what was really bothering me.
The silence.
Traversing across the island, my ears had grown accustomed to the various sounds of life in the jungle. But out here, there was nothing. Even the flies were too terrified to come out this far. Because of that, Nakoda’s words echoed louder than they otherwise would have. Even my own breathing seemed intense to my eardrums. Aycenia was right. This wasn’t natural. Whatever the Gray God was doing to this segment of Smuggler’s Shiv was just wrong.
I glanced down at the terrain. An image came to me then. Aycenia’s kind, smiling face being gradually covered over by all of this gray fungus…
No.
I felt the spark then, in my heart. The same spark of rage that had empowered Nakoda and I, allowing us to save Alton-
“Whoa, buddy!” Nakoda suddenly called out. The magic slipped away, but the rage lingered, bubbling beneath the surface. I glanced back at him. He was pointing to our right. Only then did I realize that we’d been coming upon a cliff. But that wasn’t what immediately caught my attention. No it was the fact that colossal tendrils of the gray fungus were forming out of the ground. The stretched from the cliff’s face and connected to another cliff farther off, acting as bridges. There was one fungus bridge directly in front of us, and I spotted another a fair bit away to our left.
Nakoda and I stayed put and waited for the other to catch up to us. “Wow,” Alton said, glancing around. “Looks like the Gray’s God is already working on infecting the rest of the island.” He pointed at the nearest fungus bridge. “It looks like it extended from that direction first and,” he pointed to where the bridge connected to the mainland, “is burrowing into this section here.”
“Not just there,” Belkross grunted by the cliff’s very edge. He gestured for Lilian to join him. Everybody else joined in to. Hesitantly, I craned my neck to look over. There were dozens more of the tendrils jutting out through the gap between the two cliffs, like parasitic spiderwebs.
“Hey, use what he made against him,” Paco said, jutting a thumb over his shoulder, at the first fungus bridge we’d seen. “We use this to cross.”
No one could come up with a better alternative. Nakoda and I approached the bridge. He poked it with his lance to see if it’d react. It didn’t move, but when he pulled back his lance, whatever damage he’d done near immediately healed over. Better to be safe than sorry, Belkross used all of the rope we had to tie the group together. It was a slow going, but the bridge was able to support me and Turtle just fine, even if my feet did sink into the fungus as we crossed. Though it didn’t help that Nakoda kept muttering to himself, “Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down,” the entire time.
On the other side, the fungus “grass” was taller, near to my knees. It was moist, and slimy, having trapped the moisture from the previous storm. The odor was also much more intense on this side, coming from the gray grass. I tried to keep my anxiety in check as Belkross untied the group.
“The air feels…gross,” Nakoda noted. He opened and closed his mouth and then made a face. “Tastes grosser.”
On that positive note, we moved forward, though at a much more cautious pace. Up to this point there hadn’t been any signs of creatures that could have been the Grays. On this side, the silence was even more deafening.
“Stop,” Paco whispered. Because of the silence, he might as well have been speaking normally. He was kneeling atop Turtle’s back, rifle aimed. Everyone followed his line of sight to see who he was aiming at. Roughly fifty feet away, lying in a pool of dark water, was dark lump of…something. It was too far away to see if it was a rock, or lump of moldy vegetation, or a person. We still had no idea what the Grays actually were or looked like. I then looked past the object and saw a few more much, much farther off, all resting in interconnected pools of water.
“No gun,” Lilian told Paco. “Too loud.”
“I count at least five of them,” Belkross grunted.
“Grays?” Alton asked.
The mercenary just shrugged.
“How about we just go around?” Nakoda offered.
“Could be a trap,” Paco replied. “Spore bombs or something meant to infect us. Or maybe monsters. If we go on, let them stay to our rear, they could ambush us and cut off any chance of us getting out of this place.”
“I agree with your logic, Paco,” Lilian said. She snapped her fingers at Belkross. From inside his coat he pulled out a bow and a handful of arrows. She took it and prepared to take aim. “But the gun’s still too loud. Though keep it at the ready in case it reacts.”
Paco shrugged a shoulder in reply. Lilian cocked her arrow, exhaled deeply, and let it fly.
It sailed over the lump.
Alton immediately covered his mouth with his arm to try and muffle his laughter. She glowered at him in response. While she did that, Belkross bent over, picked up a rock, and threw it at the same lump. Unlike hers, his aim was true. And the object burst, spilling grayed gore across the surface of the pool.
“A corpse,” Lilian said, lowering her bow. “Feed for the fungus I’m guessing.”
“That’s really gross,” Nakoda said. “I still vote we go around.”
“But now we know,” Paco told him, tapping a finger to his head. “And now we don’t have to worry about these things attacking us.”
We took the long way around the pools and their respective corpses, going deeper into the gray land. Even so, I did get a better look at some of them as we passed by. They were all animals. Most of them were big. But not big enough to fight off whatever had caught them and shoved them into the ground to feed a “god.” Stalk-like vegetation was growing through the corpses. One poor lizard was strung up on one of these stalks like a decaying scarecrow, the fungus holding its mouth open, as if it were forever screaming…
Thump…thump…thump…
The noise started off faint at first but became unmistakable as we kept going. It was as if the island itself had gained a heartbeat. It wasn’t loud enough to be overbearing, but it was impossible not to notice. In this land of rot and corpses, something having a heartbeat, being alive, seemed unfair.
As I pondered this, the mossy terrain began to steepen, as if we were walking down a large hill. The very tips of some structure began to peek over the horizon. It was past noon by this point. The sunlight illuminated the fungus, making it glow almost silver all around us. More of the stalks appeared here and there, some alone, some growing in groups. Some were as tall as trees and growing out of much larger pools of water that came together into a lake. Eventually we had no choice but to step into the lake. The water was shallow, barely a foot tall.
And that’s when we came across the first Gray.
We were lucky it didn’t see us first. It happened to be facing away from us. Hunched over, it was busy burying a dead animal into the muddy soil, sending ripples across the lake as it worked. It had the basic shape of the man. Unsurprising, his clothes and skin were all various shades of gray. And he was very short, maybe only a little taller than Nakoda. Vegetation grew out of his skull, making the torn flesh around his face and back of the neck hang off. The muscles of his arms were taught as he worked. Jammed into the ground next to him was a moldy spear, its curved blade tainted with fungus.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Paco look back and forth, clearly searching for others. But this Gray seemed to be completely on his own.
Before anyone could do anything to stop him, Belkross bolted forward, charging at the Gray. He was as silent as a shadow. His sword slashed across the Gray’s shoulder, making it spin towards us. Then, before it could properly react, Lilian shot another arrow. This time her shot was very true, entering the Gray’s mouth, cutting off his scream. Then, just as the Gray began tipping forward, Belkross swung his blade again, cutting off the little monster’s head. The body fell to its knees and then plopped onto the ground.
“Damn,’ Alton said, sounding both impressed and unsettled.
“Just needed to warm up first,” Lilian sniffed. She frowned. “Wait…is it still moving?”
Hesitantly, we all joined Belkross around the body. Sure enough, like a headless chicken, the body was continuing to twitch and spasm long after the neck had been severed. The Gray’s mouth opened and closed repeatedly, and his milky eyes danced in their sockets. Rather than risk the head somehow reattaching to the body, Lilian set it on fire. Belkross than grabbed the flaming head by the stalks growing out of the skull and chucked it far, far away. Proving once and for all that, yes, the mercenary was, indeed, fire resistant.
Nothing of much interest happened after that. Not until we came across the ship.
We found ourselves at the top of yet another hill, this one overlooking a field of moldy stalks. They encircled a clearing and at the center of this clearing was ship. How the ship had landed this far inland was anybody’s guess, but it was somehow in decent shape. Like everything in this cursed place, it was covered in gray mold. I spotted more Grays waling back and forth across the ship’s deck, and a few acting as sentries and patrolling the stalks.
“Quick!” Alton hissed, pointing at an incoming sentry. If we stayed up on the hill, he was sure to see us. “Into the creepy corn!”
“Not corn,” Lilian replied, moving, nonetheless.
“Don’t care!”
We managed to get into the stalk field without being spotted. It was only then that we looked down and actually realized what we were stepping on. Corpses. Hundreds, maybe thousands of animal corpses. A stalk of fungus was growing out of each one. Some were little more than decayed meat hanging off of skeletons. Others were fresher. Nakoda immediately covered his mouth with his hands to try and keep himself from puking. In contrast, Paco had to sarcastically reprimand Turtle for absentmindedly trying to eat one of the dead bodies.
The stalks grew close enough together to give us cover, but not close enough for us to have trouble walking through them, even me and Turtle. As we pushed through this garden of death, the unnatural heartbeat from before was as loud as a drum. And it didn’t take a genius to realize it was coming from that ship…
“Hey,” Nakoda suddenly whispered, pointing through the stalks. “Um…is that a Gray or…?”
Everyone turned in the direction he was pointing. Crouched towards they edge of the stalk field was a man. He was covered in coat of grayed seaweed. Like Lilian, he also had a bow, though his was much cruder. His skin wasn’t gray, more a tan tinged with pale…green?
He didn’t react as the group slowly approached.
And then he suddenly aimed his bow and took a shot. The arrow flew out of the field, striking an incoming sentry in the neck. The Gray fell onto his face. The seaweed man then pounced, grabbing the Gray by the ankles and dragging him back behind the stalks. Seaweed Man produced a dagger and jammed it repeatedly into the Gray’s head until it was crushed mush. The body kept twitching, but it wasn’t getting up any time soon. Especially after Seaweed Man jumped around and slashed his knife clean through the Gray’s ankles, cutting off the feet.
“Huh,” Belkross said with clear approval while Paco and Alton nodded.
Only then did Seaweed Man look up.
“You sure did take your sweet time,” he said, rising to his feet. He gestured over his shoulder with the ruined dagger. “Now come. My treasure is aboard that ship.”
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