Chapter 22: The Rescue
The skittering things surged forward, a pale wave across the scummed lake. Their legs made a sound like rain on dry leaves, a horrible, rustling whisper.
Veylan didn’t charge the island.
He moved, but not toward the heart. With a powerful, lateral thrust of his tail, he shot through the waist-deep muck along the cavern’s edge, heading straight for the tangled wall where the Murine were trapped. The motion was so sudden Pip had to flatten himself, his claws scraping for purchase.
“What are you doing?!” Pip yelled over the fungal drone.
“The problem has priorities!” Veylan shouted back, his voice a whip-crack in the thick air.
The blight-centipedes altered course, chittering silently, closing the distance. Veylan reached the wall. The fungal net was thick, the strands as tough as sinew and weeping a sticky, clear sap. The two conscious Murine flinched back, their eyes wide with a terror that now included the massive naga looming over them.
“Don’t move,” Veylan commanded, his tone leaving no room for argument. He didn’t use his hands. The talons on his fingers were sharp, but too thick for the delicate work. Instead, he ducked his head, and with a careful, precise motion, used his teeth.
He snipped at the topmost strands near where they anchored to the rock. His jaws parted, and Pip saw the unique musculature of his throat pouch tense. It wasn’t used, but the instinct was there—the anatomy of a creature built for careful intake. The strands parted with soft pops. Sap oozed, smoking faintly where it dripped onto Veylan’s scales.
The first Murine, the tawny female, fell free. She dropped a few inches into the shallows with a splash, spluttering, scrambling backwards.
The centipedes were almost upon them. The lead creature, nearly a foot long, reared up, its blind head questing, mandibles clicking. Veylan’s tail, a massive emerald coil, didn’t strike it. It swept in front of the trapped Murine like a living barricade, slamming into the front rank of the creatures with a wet, crushing sound. Brittle chitin shattered. Luminescent fluid splattered the water, burning where it landed.
“Pip! Guide them!” Veylan growled, his focus on the net as he worked to free the second captive, a younger male with gray fur.
Pip didn’t hesitate. He stood as best he could on the unstable platform of Veylan’s head. “Hey! Over here!” he barked, using the commanding tone he’d once used directing haulers in the colony’s root-cellars.
The female stared at him, dripping, her mind struggling to reconcile his Murine form with his perch on the monster.
“The log!” Pip pointed with a dripping arm toward a twisted, waterlogged piece of debris floating nearby. “Get on it! Now, unless you want to be sponge-cake for those things!”
The shock in her eyes broke, replaced by frantic survival instinct. She splashed towards the log, heaving herself onto its slimy back. The young male tumbled free as Veylan severed the last cord. He was shaking badly, paralyzed.
“Go with her!” Pip yelled. The boy flinched, then scrambled after his companion.
Veylan turned his attention to the third Murine, still entangled. He was older, his fur silvered. He didn’t move. Veylan gently hooked a claw around the body, cutting it free. He didn’t let it drop into the filthy water. He laid it carefully on a dry-ish ledge of rock, a brief, respectful gesture in the midst of horror.
The centipedes recoiled from the massive tail, then regrouped, flowing around it. They were heading for the two survivors clambering onto the log.
“Veylan, push them!” Pip cried.
Veylan’s tail moved again, not a strike this time, but a controlled, powerful surge in the water. It created a wave that lifted the log and sent it skimming, like a rough raft, across the lake’s surface toward the tunnel entrance they’d come from. The two Murine clung on, their faces pale blurs.
The skittering creatures changed target. Now they focused entirely on the large, living disturbance—Veylan.
He rotated, putting his body between the blight creatures and the retreating log. His chest rose and fell, his golden eyes reflecting the hellish magenta pulse of the fungal tree. The protective fury from the ritual was a drumbeat in Pip’s blood, echoed in the tense cords of Veylan’s neck.
“Okay,” Veylan said, the word a low, vibrating promise. “Now we address the core.”
He surged forward, into the deeper, bubbling water. The centipedes swarmed him. They clambered over each other, trying to scale his scales. Their mandibles scraped against the emerald plating, finding no purchase. Veylan ignored them, a mountain ignoring gnats. His eyes were locked on the island.
The water grew hotter as they approached the bubbling zone. The stench was unbearable, a mix of chemical rot and spoiled sweetness. The giant, pulsating fungi seemed to sense the threat. Their rhythmic glow became erratic, strobing. The clouds of spores thickened, a glittering, toxic mist.
One of the larger centipedes, braver or stupider, launched itself from a floating clump of scum. It aimed not for Veylan’s body, but for his head.
For Pip.
Pip saw it coming—a pale, many-legged missile spearing through the spore-thick air. He froze.
Veylan’s hand snapped up, faster than Pip had ever seen anything move. He didn’t swat it. He caught it mid-air, his fingers closing around its thrashing body. There was a sickening, moist crunch. Luminescent fluid oozed between his fingers. He flung the limp thing aside, his expression one of detached, focused revulsion.
“Stay low,” he murmured, and the intimacy of the instruction, amidst the chaos, was stranger than any violence.
They reached the island. It wasn’t solid ground, but a spongy, yielding mound of decay. Veylan hauled himself onto it, the muck sucking at his scales. The giant trumpet fungi were right there, throbbing, weeping. Up close, Pip could see their surfaces were not smooth, but textured with thousands of tiny, hair-like filaments that quivered in the heated air.
Veylan reared up before the dead, infected tree. He studied it, his tongue flicking rapidly. “The connection is at the roots, in the core. But the organs are these.” He gestured with his chin at the pulsing growths. “They are the lungs. The pumps.”
“So we pop them,” Pip said, his voice small against the giant, living pathology.
“We try.”
Veylan reached for the nearest fungus. The moment his claws made contact, the thing reacted. It didn’t just pulse; it convulsed. A jet of pressurized, magenta-tinged fluid shot from its trumpet, hitting Veylan square in the chest. It sizzled, not like acid, but like a potent solvent, eating through the biofilm on his scales. He hissed, snatching his hand back. The fluid smoked where it dripped onto the spongy ground, eating tiny pockmarks.
The other fungi around them began to tremble, angling subtly. Aiming.
“They defend,” Veylan stated, wiping the fluid from his chest with a grimace. The scaled skin beneath was reddened, irritated.
The centipedes, undeterred, were massing at the water’s edge of the island, beginning to crawl onto the muck. They were distractions. Annoyances. The tree itself was the foe.
A plan, fragile and desperate, clicked in Pip’s mind. It came from watching the fluid jet out. From understanding pumps and pressure.
“The throat!” Pip blurted, clutching at Veylan’s hair. “Your throat pouch! You can hold water, right? Not just… food?”
Veylan glanced back at him, an unspoken question in his slitted eyes.
“It’s a pressurized system!” Pip yelled, pointing at the trembling fungi. “They shoot to protect themselves. But if you block the tube… if you force something back into the tube under pressure…”
Understanding dawned on Veylan’s face. A brutal, logical understanding. He looked at the sizzling fluid on his chest, then at the nearest pulsating fungus. He looked at the filthy, glowing water of the lake.
“It will not be clean water,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Pip replied. “It just has to be not them. It has to be something they can’t digest. Something that ruptures them from the inside.”
A faint, dangerous smile touched Veylan’s lips. It was not a pleasant sight. It was the smile of a guardian who had found the tool for his task.
“Hold on very tightly,” he said.
He slithered back into the bubbling water, just at the island’s edge, ignoring the centipedes now clawing at his lower coils. He dipped his head, opened his mouth, and submerged it. The muscles in his neck and jaw worked. Pip could see the subtle expansion of the throat pouch beneath his jawline, filling with the black, glowing, poisoned water.
Veylan lifted his head, water streaming from his face. He surged back onto the island, directly confronting the same fungus that had sprayed him.
It trembled, orienting.
Veylan didn’t reach for it with his hands. He moved with speed, his upper body coiling like a spring. He didn’t try to dodge. As the fungus convulsed to fire its corrosive jet, Veylan struck.
His mouth opened wide, but not to bite.
He sealed it over the trumpet-like opening of the fungus.
There was a wet, muffled sound. The fungus bulged, its violent pulsing turning into a frantic, trapped vibration. Veylan’s throat muscles convulsed. He was forcing the contents of his pouch—a gallon of stagnant, blight-ridden lake water—backwards, into the fungal lung, against its own internal pressure.
The fungus swelled. Its glowing skin stretched, turning thin and translucent. The hair-like filaments stood straight out.
It burst.
It wasn’t an explosion of fire, but of putrid liquid and shredded tissue. Magenta light died instantly, becoming just so much foul sludge. Veylan reeled back, spitting, wiping his mouth and face with the back of his arm. The remains of the fungus dribbled down the dead tree, inert.
A ripple went through the cavern. The other fungi stuttered in their rhythm. The mist of spores thinned, just for a second.
One down.
Dozens more to go.
Veylan turned, his eyes finding Pip’s. They were fierce, shining with a grim victory. He spat again, a blob of black water and fungal gunk. “Your idea,” he said, his voice hoarse from the foul liquid. “It works.”
He turned back to the tree, coiling to approach the next pulsating growth. The centipedes, as if sensing a critical wound had been dealt, redoubled their efforts, swarming over his tail in a desperate, scratching tide.
The battle for the gut of the forest had truly begun.
The battle for the gut of the forest had truly begun. Pip shifted so he was at the apex of Veylan’s head, then wound his tail and hands around several strands of hair, anchoring himself like a sailor in a storm. The world became a lurching, violent landscape of scales and spraying filth.
“Next one!” Pip shouted, his voice nearly lost under the cavern’s fungal drone.
Veylan moved with purpose, ignoring the centipedes etching faint scratches on his hide. He dipped, filled his throat pouch with the foul water, and lunged for another pulsating fungus. It tried to spray, but he was faster this time, clamping his mouth over the trumpet opening. The muffled, internal pop was deeply satisfying.
Another light winked out in the hellish gloom.
“Two down!” Pip reported, feeling a savage grin spread across his own face. It felt alien and right.
“Many to go,” Veylan rumbled, already twisting toward a third growth. The rhythm of the entire chamber was faltering now, the light show becoming a discordant flicker. The centipedes’ movements grew more frenzied, less coordinated.
But the blight wasn’t helpless. As Veylan sealed onto the third fungus, a different one, further up the dead trunk, swiveled silently. It didn’t aim for Veylan’s body.
It aimed for Pip.
A jet of caustic fluid shot through the air. Pip saw it coming—a gleaming arc in the magenta strobe.
“Left!” he screamed, yanking Veylan’s hair instinctively.
Veylan flinched, the movement abrupt. The fluid missed Pip by inches, splattering across Veylan’s shoulder instead. It sizzled viciously, and Veylan let out a sharp hiss of pain, breaking his seal on the fungus. The half-burst growth writhed, spraying liquid wildly.
“It’s targeting me!” Pip said, the reality cold in his gut. The thing was intelligent, adaptive.
“Then we adapt faster,” Veylan gritted out. He didn’t pause. He reared back, and with a powerful, sweeping blow of his arm, he smashed the damaged, spraying fungus clean off the tree. Pulp and luminescence exploded. “Hold on. This will be uneven.”
What followed was not a careful surgical strike. It was a brutal, full-bodied assault. Veylan used his tail as a massive flail, crushing clusters of the smaller, budding growths at the tree’s base. He used his claws to rip and tear at the rubbery flesh of the larger ones, dodging their spraying defenses. He was a whirlwind of scaled destruction, and Pip clung to his hair, riding the fury.
For every fungus Veylan destroyed, two seemed to take its place, swelling from the rotten bark. The centipedes thickened, becoming a living carpet over his lower coils, their weight starting to slow his powerful movements.
“Veylan, it’s regenerating!” Pip cried, watching a newly torn stump bubble and swell with nascent light.
“I see it.” Veylan sounded tired. The corrosive fluid had burned red welts across his shoulders and chest. His breathing was labored. He halted, coiled defensively, assessing the tree that was healing itself even as he wounded it. The protective drive from their ritual beat between them, a shared pulse of frustration and fear. This wasn’t working.
Pip stared at the patterns in the bark, his mind racing faster than it ever had in the colony’s tunnels. The fungi weren’t random. They followed the deep, twisted veins of the tree, lines of sickness that converged…
“It’s a system,” Pip murmured, then louder, conviction steel in his tiny voice. “You’re attacking the blisters, not the infection. Look!” He pointed a trembling finger toward the base of the tree, where the roots met the water. A thick, conglomerate mass of pulsating tissue throbbed there, darker, almost black with sickly light. All the veins led to it. “The heart’s not in the trunk. It’s in the roots. That’s the pump.”
Veylan followed his gaze. The central mass pulsed, as if aware of their attention. A deep, sub-audible thrum vibrated through the water and into Veylan’s bones.
“If we kill that…” Veylan began.
“The whole network might crash,” Pip finished. “But it’s underwater.”
Veylan looked at the swarming centipedes, at the spraying fungi above, and finally at the dark, submerged core. He took a long, settling breath. The gentle, watchful protector was gone, replaced by something primal and decisive.
“I need you to be my eyes up here,” he said to Pip. His voice was calm, a terrifying contrast to the chaos. “When I go under, the ones on the tree will try to stop me. Tell me where they are aiming.”
“You’re going to drown that thing,” Pip stated, understanding.
“I’m going to fill it until it forgets how to be anything but dead.” Veylan’s golden eyes met Pip’s. “You ready for a rough ride?”
Pip tightened his grip on the hair, his tail wrapping another secure loop. “Just don’t swallow any of that crap. The taste is probably awful.”
A quick, genuine smirk flashed across Veylan’s pained face. Then he moved.
He didn’t approach the root-mass from the front. He slithered sideways, then plunged beneath the black water, a massive ripple spreading outwards. The world for Pip became a shuddering, submerged blur of sound and movement. He gasped a breath and held it, as if he were the one diving.
Above, the fungal trees went wild. Their light stuttered frantic, bright codes. They swiveled, searching for their target, finding only empty water.
“They’re confused!” Pip yelled, though Veylan couldn’t hear him. The centipedes milled in agitated circles.
A tremendous bubbling erupted at the base of the dead tree. The water churned. The central, pulsing mass of blight-light began to… inflate. It strained against its own membranous skin, glowing brighter, then dimmer, fighting an internal pressure.
Veylan was down there, his mouth sealed over the heart of the blight, forcing the poisoned lake into it, gallon by relentless gallon.
A fungus directly above the chaos suddenly stilled. It angled itself straight down, toward the bubbling epicenter. It had figured out the plan.
“One’s aiming at the water! Right below me!” Pip screamed, uselessly.
The fungus convulsed. A jet of corrosive fluid shot down into the churning water, right where Veylan must be.
The bubbling stopped. The water went terribly still.
For three long, hollow heartbeats, nothing happened. Pip’s own breath froze. The centipedes slowed, sensing a shift.
Then, with a volcanic heave, Veylan erupted from the water. He threw his head back, roaring in pain and rage. A large, fresh burn sizzled across the side of his neck and jaw. Clenched in his teeth, ripped free from the roots, was the dark, sack-like heart of the blight. It was bloated, distended, weakly pulsing.
He threw it.
The mass sailed through the air and smacked against the cavern wall with a wet explosion of black fluid and dying light. The effect was instantaneous.
Every fungal light in the cavern winked out.
The sudden, absolute darkness was louder than the drone had been. Then, from the walls, the familiar, gentle blue-green glow of the natural bioluminescent fungi began to reassert itself, painting the cavern in soft, sane relief.
The centipedes stopped moving entirely. They simply collapsed, becoming inert, brittle shells crumbling into the water.
Silence, broken only by the drip of clean water and Veylan’s ragged, pained breathing. He swayed, lowering himself until the water lapped at his chest. The burns on his shoulder and neck looked angry and raw.
“You’re burned,” Pip said, his voice small in the vast, suddenly quiet cavern.
“It’s fine,” Veylan rasped, but the strain was evident.
“Liar.” Pip carefully unwove his tail from Veylan’s hair. He scooted down, using the strands like climbing ropes, until he stood on the broad plain of Veylan’s shoulder, near the nasty burn. He hesitated, then placed a small, furred hand on the unharmed scale beside it. “That one got you because of me. Because I was up here.”
Veylan turned his head slowly, his great golden eye regarding the tiny mouse-man. “No. It got me because you were up here to see it coming. We stopped it.” He let out a long, shuddering breath that smelled of foul water and exhaustion. “Now, let’s find those two you saved. I think… I think I’d like to get out of this hole.”
Ahead, where the log had floated, a faint, timid splash echoed. Someone was waiting.