Chapter 62: Three's a Company

Chapter 62: Three's a Company

Every single point of awareness that wasn't busy flew up to the first floor, my mana thundering in their wake; my lazy cave bears raised their enormous heads, stirred by whatever had made that noise, and peered outside their individual dens long enough to lock eyes and growl. Even heavily pregnant, they were ready to beat the shit out of each other. Something I very much respected.

But what I didn't respect was someone clambering their way in the halls outside of my floor.

The light outside my Fungal Gardens was thin and weak, only reflections from the algae-light within, and no matter how many points of awareness I threw at the problem, they couldn't see anything more than the vague outlines of further stones. What they could do, however, was hear the conversation neatly bouncing off the surrounding rocks and echoing straight back into my floor.

"Stop that," one hissed, a masculine voice speaking in that brutish human tongue. "'e said it's supposed to hear us."

"I bloody know," another shot back, though his voice was pitched lower. "Just... are you sure?"

"Either this or the brig. That's answer enough for me."

A thump, like someone clicking their clawless fingers, but muffled; my intangible ears pricked as something faded away, dispersing with the hum of ambient mana, and suddenly I could hear them once more. The rasp of leather boots on stone, the hiss of escaping breath, the splutter of a torch. The sounds had all been there, but quieted, hidden by some magic. They'd tried to sneak up on me.

But then dropped it, right at the entrance? Clearly they knew what I was, if they were using this amount of caution, but then they went against their previous intelligence and came at me with all the quiet of a sea lion. Interesting.

The noises grew louder as they approached, and with my near hundred points of awareness swarming around the cove entrance, it didn't take long before they swam into a vague sort of view. Two men, both humans, with the sort of scrappy, hungry-starved appearance I was beginning to associate with Calarata. Basic leather garb, no particular armour or defense, and, more interestingly, no particular weapons.

Hm.

"Where's that entrance?" The one on the left mumbled, poking his head through said entrance; but for him, all he saw was the stone wall I'd brought up directly across from the entrance, forcing him to walk to either side to actually enter my halls and very neatly disguising this entrance platform as just another part of the outside caves. So he merrily kept walking forward, despite his obvious trepidation about entering my floor proper. Glorious. "'e said it should be here?"

"Should be," the other agreed, flexing his crooked fingers. They stepped forward into my little alcove without fear, eyeing the entrance to my dungeon directly to their left. The limestone wall hooked in slightly, giving them something to crouch behind, which they immediately did so.

"Stay behind the wall," one advised with all the self assuredness of someone who truly believed he was correct. "Shouldn't be able to get us from 'ere."

Ah, I loved idiots.

As one, they peered around my limestone outcropping, algae-light catching their faces. My creatures hadn't been alerted to their positions yet, still mostly unevolved little beasties who didn't have the honed perceptions of those on my lower floors, but I could see a few waking up—two luminous constrictors, one with his bulk wrapped around a stalactite directly by the other entrance and neatly hidden from their eyes, a couple of cave spiders with their webs spun directly over top of the entrances, even the enormous lacecap shifting slightly in their direction.

Unfortunately, given as they didn't have weapons but were still coming for me, I had to guess they were more magically inclined; and as I didn't have a method to hide my actions yet, I presumed that if I started to command my creatures to attack them, they would not only feel that, they would also figure out that they were within my dungeon instead of slightly outside, and neither of those were things I was interested in.

So I'd leave that up to my creatures.

The two invaders exhaled, looking at my floor with the awe I so appreciated. The serpent's skeleton in particular made them very curious, although I wondered whether that was pure curiosity or some type of greed. Rare bones would surely fetch a great price.

Until, of course, they were revealed to only be a strangely large luminous constrictor. Not my problem.

What was my problem, however, was when one of the invaders stretched out his hand, ruby-red light crawling over his fingers, and launched a goddamn fireball into my floor.

I would figure it out, though. That was known. Having something bright and burning for my future floors would be truly wonderful. I nearly jumped directly into the memories before remembering that no, perhaps I should finish this up first. Facts were always irritating.

But even though the other one had run away, I had a sneaking little suspicion that I could send out a luminous constrictor or some other ilk to go find the invader in the halls. There would be no better time to test that than now, when I knew there was only one and there was–

The Drowned Forest awoke.

I barely even recognized it at first, too busy about to read the notifications crawling over my core, but then the situation hit me. Rhoborh's alarm was going off, and in a way that I was getting notified.

The alarm system went off thousands of times a day, as burrowing rats and kobolds and cave spiders bumped various bits of flora throughout the many rooms, but that was safely regaled to a small, inconsequential part of my day. Sure, for the plants it was exciting—every time the alarm went off because some foolish stone-backed toad wandered onto a section of green algae hiding a vampiric mangrove's thorns beneath, that meant a meal and mana—but that was very little to me. I'd safely shuffled the management of that alarm off to a mere fraction of my power as I dealt with other things.

But apparently, something got through that.

I gathered a few points of awareness, now that I didn't need my hundreds watching the door, and sent them spiraling down to the second floor. It probably wasn't pressingly important, maybe an unfamiliar creature coming through the river onto the second floor, but you didn't survive as long as I did without a lot of care. I reached out to my core, ready to read those two messages.

Those points of awareness told me to wait just a second longer.

The plant that had sent out the alarm was a section of billowing moss, old enough its fronds delicately drifted in an intangible breeze, positioned right at the exit of the first room, in a relatively straight path from the entrance.

But there was nothing around it.

No creature, no fallen branch nor stone, not even an errant gust of actual wind. Just nothing.

The billowing moss shifted again as something else brushed it, a frond bending from an intangible pressure. My points of awareness swarmed; and with my mana sense in full activation, I could feel... something. The air didn't waver properly, the pair of cloudskipper wisps kicking up wind that never quite blustered this one part, a hazy outline of something I couldn't properly catch.

Something was inside my halls I couldn't see.

No time for subtlety; I called upon everything single creature I had on the Drowned Forest, pulling them all to this first room. The entire kobold tribe awoke, stirring with their claws reaching for spears. Luminous constrictors and ironback toads jerked upright, reaching out; even Seros rose his mighty head, frills extending.

The figure—tall, vaguely humanoid, probably another bloody invader—stopped moving. The billowing moss by its feet shifted again, that same intangible force pushing against it. My points of awareness spread out and I could see the serpents slithering into the first room, hear the distant crash of kobolds amassing—no doubt the figure heard them as well. The moss moved again.

Go! I bellowed. An entire faux tree of webweavers sprung to action, flinging themselves through the space the figure had inhabited; they fell harmlessly to the bed of moss. Kobolds appeared, jabbing spears through empty air, flicking their tongues out and furrowing their scaled brows. The Chieftess banged her ornate spear against the ground, warbling in that confusing tongue of hers.

There had been a human here, but now it was gone.

My points of awareness flew out; on the Fungal Gardens, even amidst the chaos, I found a whitecap mushroom squashed, a boot's imprint over its surface, a burrowing rat spooked from being bumped by something it couldn't see.

So. Um.

If it hadn't been for Rhoborh's blessing, something invisible could have gone all the way through my halls and captured my core before I was even aware. And something had tried that, failed, and still managed to get away before I could stop them.

Okay. That was bad.