Dungeon Item Shop - Chapter 392: The smell of smoke (Patreon)

“Hello?” calls Fresh, looking around the settlement.

Stone houses surround her on all sides, built tightly together to form what looks like an outdoor complex of sorts. It is a place of many doorways, but none of them are closed. Rather, every opening is simply carved into the stone and obscured with either what surmounts to a hanging drape of beads or some loose fabric that sways in the odd wind present here. Fat bodied mushrooms grow out of the cracks in the long-untouched rock surfaces in wide spread clusters.

Something courses through the stones. It feels like a deep pulsation, a tremor in the rock, like the strike of a heartbeat moving through the settlement. But she can’t really place where it’s coming from.

Fresh looks around the area. The air smells sweet, like a fragrant fruit-tinged smoke. But she doesn’t see any reason for it to be so, let alone anybody, apart from the vaguely human-like faces carved into the surfaces of the giant rocks of the buildings. “Is anyone here?” she asks, looking to the side. She leans in, peaking in through a doorway. The inside looks like a bedroom with a few beds, but they all seem familiarly undisturbed.

In an odd flashback, the sight reminds Fresh of the bed she had seen upstairs in their old house in the north, the one that she assumes was Jubilee’s old bed, by the telescope. It had looked like someone had made it in the morning and then simply never returned to it.

Sitting back on her broomstick, she hovers through the settlement, sparing glances into every open doorway. But it doesn’t matter which one she looks behind, there’s nobody here to see. The only signs of life that she can identify are the mushrooms, growing out of the forgotten structures, and that odd rhythmic pulsation, which feels like… a drum?

People had once lived here. She assumes this is where the witches’ sect had moved to, after they went to the south, to the spirit world. But… for whatever reason, they don’t seem to be here anymore.

The smell of smoke becomes more pungent. The sensation of the drum carries through the air. The flying broom carries her through street after street, moving deeper into the complex, flying her in through one of the large stone doors, which is unnervingly ornately carved into the shape of a mouth, with two stone hands that have been sculpted as if they were tearing it open.

The tickling odor in the air becomes stronger still, as does the sensation of the drum. Mixing together with it now, as she moves deeper into the complex, is the sound of a voice, a man’s. It is as rough as the coarse stone of the walls around herself, chanting a tune that feels vaguely familiar. But she can’t quite place it. No words are distinguishable, at least ones that she can decipher. Rather, it’s just a series of throaty, guttural sounds. The closer she gets to wherever the magic broom is taking her, the thicker the smell becomes, the heavier her body seems to feel, the clearer the man’s gravelly voice is.

Fresh blinks, trying to hold herself up straight. Her body feels unusually heavy. Was she always this heavy? She tries to lift up her arm, managing, but with a noticeable amount of effort. Instead, she opts to take the easier route and leans down on the broom, letting it carry her weight for a while.

What a weird feeling. What a weird place. Is there something in the air? The smoke. She feels kind of funny.

The broom rounds a corner and Fresh lifts her head, her chin resting on the broomstick.

Having reached the center of the stone temple, she stares around at the ritual chamber that she has arrived at. It is a large, stone-wrought hall, filled with intricate stone carvings of faces and people, humans and elves and orcs and demons and dwarves and everything else conceivable from harpies to mush-mushes. All of the sculptures are piled on top of each other, stacked like a pile of corpses indiscriminately heaped together after a slaughter. Moss and ferns have overtaken the entire structuring, overgrowing it apparently from the inside-out. 

The broom moves her closer and she spares a glance towards the statues. They aren’t statues of corpses. The faces are all laughing. Hands reach out, grasping on to each other. Stone bodies splay out, touching as many people as they can. All of their faces are painted with dumb, goofy smiles or determined grins that hide a hint of mischievousness, as if they had known what a stranger’s first perception of them from a distance would be. Staring closer however, Fresh realizes that the context of some of their poses is certainly… unbefitting of a workplace environment. But, given the expressions on the statues’ faces, the sculptor seems to have had fun with their work, if nothing else.

She clears her throat, looking back ahead of herself, her eyes wandering through the dark chamber, towards the single figure, the single light sitting there at the end of the grand chamber, a figure, hunched over a drum. He vaguely resembles a human, sitting with crossed legs. But at the same time, he is very inhuman. What appears to moss, grass, ferns, mushrooms appear to be growing from his body. Long, green, disheveled growths drape from his arms as if he were wearing a long-sleeved suit of forest-shrubbery. Grass and leaves flow around as his arms continue to drum, as his upper body and head continue to shake and bob to the rhythm of the unusually loud instrument that he hammers against. Colorful, fragrant smoke wafts up from the drum as he strikes it, surrounding him with every impact.

Fresh feels an unusual sensation of familiarity with the entity. The broom hovers before the man, lowering itself down to the ground for her to get off of it. Fresh obliges, stepping down onto the floor as the man continues his ritual of drumming and chanting.

Lowering her gaze, she realizes that he isn’t hitting against a drum. It’s a large mushroom-cap. With every strike, fine powder shoots up into the air, surrounding his silhouette. It isn’t incense smoke that fills the air. They’re mushroom spores.

Her body feels heavy. Really heavy. Just standing upright feels very tiring.

Fresh sits down on the other side of the man, finding her legs crossing as well, her palms resting on her knees. It’s just the most comfortable, natural way to sit given the body-load she’s experiencing right now.

Her eyes watch the man, who doesn’t seem to let her presence bother him. So she just decides to sit and wait for him to finish. She wouldn’t want to be a rude guest, after all. She studies him. If he was once human, the only hint of that remaining is the vague shape of his gestalt. Two arms, two legs, a head, a torso. But everything apart from that is off. He looks like a section of a deep-forest floor having come to life. Covered in flowers, in moss,  in ferns that swing around like strands of long hair, the man continues his practice.

Fresh closes her eyes, listening to the shaman chant. This is the witch, Gauden, she assumes.

____________________________________________________

Fresh feels herself floating in some abstract space. But she doesn’t open her eyes.

“Sister Perchta,” says the man’s voice. “Or, well, no. New sister Perchta?” he considers, talking to himself. “I’m Gauden,” he explains. “Well. No… maybe I’m new Gauden?”

The sound of the drumming and the rustling of his swaying body continue.

“New Perchta,” replies Fresh. “But you can call me Fresh,” she explains.

“Sister,” replies Gauden. “What brings you to our quiet place?”

“Perchta is still alive,” explains Fresh, getting right to the point. Despite feeling the cold stone floor beneath herself, she feels the room spinning at the same time. The girl stays there, sitting completely flat against the rocks, feeling the weight of her own body pulling herself down towards the core of the world. But at the same time, the room itself spins, slowly orbiting around a point of convergence she can’t identify. “The short version is that she’s evil and destroying the world now.”

They continue to float in silence.

“What can I do?” asks Fresh. “How do I stop her?”

“What is a fountain?” asks Gauden.

“Huh? A fountain?” asks Fresh, thinking for a moment. “It’s something that… cycles water around? Like a well, but… with a flow in it? I guess?”

The drumming continues. Fresh takes a deep breath, her chest pushing outward. The spore filled air still smells nauseously sweet. “What gives a well its power?” asks Gauden.

“Power?” asks Fresh, thinking for a moment. “I mean… I guess what makes a well valuable is its water?” she guesses. “Otherwise, it’s just a hole.” She frowns. “So you’re saying that I need to get rid of her source of power?” she asks, thinking for a moment. “What would happen to her then?”

“What happens to all of us?” asks Gauden.

Fresh sits quietly, feeling her upper body moving to the sensation of the drum. She’s having a hard time differentiating, but given the movements of her arms and upper body, she’d swear that she was inhabiting the man’s body right now. She can feel things dangling from her arms. Growth, ferns, vines.

“Where is everyone?” asks Fresh. “I thought the whole witches’ sect was here?”

“They are,” says the man.

“Huh?” asks Fresh. “But there’s nobody here except you and me and a bunch of mushrooms?”

“The circle of life.”

Fresh wants to tilt her head, but finds herself so disoriented that she doesn’t quite know how to do that anymore. “…Huh?”

“What happens to water that doesn’t flow?”

“It… gets funky?” guesses Fresh.

“It stagnates,” replies Gauden. “In this realm or your own. The rules are the same.”

“So…”

“What happens to the things in that water?”

“…They… get funky?”

“Drain the water and the fountain will dry, the rot will wither,” replies Gauden.

Fresh frowns. “Can you please be less vague?” she asks. “I’m not good at understanding cryptic instructions.”

Gauden laughs and she finds herself laughing at the same time, though she doesn’t really get the joke. “It’s simple,” says the man. A finger touches her forehead. “The answer was right above you all along.”

Fresh sighs. “That doesn’t help. Thanks,” she frowns. People sure do like to be cryptic about stuff like this. “Shamrock says ‘hi’, by the way.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” asks the man’s voice. “How these things line up sometimes.”

“Huh?”

“Fate is a strange thing. Sometimes I wonder if the universe isn’t just using us all to play a big, funny game.”

“…Huh?” asks Fresh, confused.

“It’s time to go,” says Gauden. “Don’t come back again. Next time, you won’t be able to leave.” He laughs, as if this were the joke of the season, his hoarse voice cracking. “Tell Shamrock to eat some vegetables.”

____________________________________________________

“…I don’t get it,” says Fresh.

“Yeah, because you’re as dumb as a bag of rocks,” snaps Jubilee. Fresh opens her eyes, looking around the basement of their home in surprise. “It was a good idea,” they remark. “But sometimes shit just doesn’t work.”

“A shame,” says Basil. “But I won’t pretend that I’m not a little relieved,” remarks the priestess. “The spirit-world is best left untouched. Who knows what’s going on over there?”

She looks back at the crystal-ball that her hand is hovering over. Fresh realizes that it hasn’t been an hour or longer at all. This is literally the same moment she had ‘left’ the real world in before. Shamrock’s green hand pulls back from the orb and he slips his gauntlet back on, adjusting it back into place.

“Let’s get back to work, people,” says Jubilee. “Come on. Time’s running out.”

Shamrock and Basil nod, returning to their stations. Fresh feels a pair of hands grabbing her shoulder, pulling her back to the table. She looks at her magical double.

“Hey, guys?” says Fresh.

“No more ideas,” says Jubilee. “Work,” they say, smelling the air. “…What the hell smells like street-guru?”

Basil sniffs the air. “You’re right, it does smell kind of… incensy.”

They turn to look at her. Fresh lifts a hand. “I think I died again,” she says, looking at her fingers. A piece of moss is there. She yelps, pulling it off and throwing it to the ground. Gross.