Okay. Don't breathe. Seriously. Don't even if I had a heavy duty mask.
I held my breath so tight my ribs squeaked. Every step I took was deliberate, slow, careful, the kind of movement you see in movies right before something explodes. Burn clung to my right shoulder like a panic brooch. Blaze was gripping my back like a clingy jungle gym. Barry? Barry had just oozed himself deeper into my hood and was humming what I swear was a funeral song.
Ahead of me, the Verdact Shrooms loomed like they were born from someone's moldy nightmares. They were small yet, wide, and pulsing, yes, pulsing, with sickly green spores that shimmered in the sunbeams filtering through the canopy. One wrong move and all hell will break loose.
Every now and then, they let out this soft little puff of fog that made my Organix Mask vibrate slightly.
Shiv had warned me. "One breath of that junk and your brain will be singing mushroom lullabies for the rest of your leafy life. You'll think you're a daisy or something."
I didn't want to be a daisy. I took another step. My boot crunched a dried twig, and one of the Verdact's thick mushroom caps shuddered like it had heard me.
"Don't move," I whispered to my leafy backpack crew. "Nobody moves."
Burn trembled. "I wasn't moving."
"You're literally glowing," I hissed.
"I'm a fire plant."
I stared at a particularly nasty-looking shroom, one with tiny mouth-like flaps on its stalk. Was it breathing? Why was it breathing? Why was I still standing here?!
I took a step and heard something making a crunching sound.
I held my breath.
I took another step then a squish. …What did I just step on?! Oh no. I risked a glance down and immediately regretted it.
Verdact Spores. Like a pile of them. And they were wriggling. Wriggling, as if waiting for someone dumb enough to squish them with their idiot boot.A bubble of panic rose in my chest. I tried to exhale it calmly, but it came out like a fart through my nose hole.
"Keep. It. Together," I told myself.
Burn gritted his teeth. "They're watching us."
"They don't have eyes," I whispered.
"They don't need eyes, they have spore sense! Didn't you read the warning?!"
"No, I skimmed, wait, what do you mean spore sense?!"
Suddenly, I heard a puffing sound.
A cloud of green mist launched from one of the nearest mushroom caps and drifted in our direction like a lazy ghost of doom.
Blaze hissed. Barry let out a burp. I think it was defensive. I froze.
The mist drifted inches from my face and clung to my mask like snotty cotton candy, but the enchantment held. No mind-melting. No daisy thoughts. Yet.
"Okay," I whispered. "Just ten more feet. Just ten more feet to cross the fungal death field."
"Eight," Burn whispered.
"I said ten for my own sanity."
We inched forward, passing under a hulking mushroom that was humming ominously. I wanted to scream. Or cry. Or sneeze. But I couldn't sneeze. One sneeze and we were goners.
That's when Barry tapped my forehead. Gently. Like a cursed omen.
I risked a side-eye glance. Barry held up a tiny glowing leafy hand and touched a lock charm for inhaling breathing. It was unnecessary but we're talking about parasitic spores here. But it can make a noisy breathing.
My heart did a flip. The air around me suddenly felt heavier.
That meant… I'd been puffing tiny little nose clouds into the air the entire time?!
"Close it," I whispered desperately
Barry pushed his cap into the side of my head like a button. The charm muted. No more nose fog.
The mushrooms calmed. Crisis... delayed.
I took one more step and finally saw it: a safe zone ahead. A patch of regular grass not cursed by fungal psychology.
"We're almost there," I breathed, voice shaky.
And that's when Blaze sneezed. Like, violently. Right onto a cluster of resting Verdacts.
They puffed in unison.
"…RUN!" I screamed.
I didn't have to say it twice. My legs moved on pure survival instinct, my thoughts somewhere between I don't want to be fungus food and why are there so many freakin' spores?!
Behind me, the Verdact Shrooms were going nuclear. Each step I took kicked up more of the powdery green nightmare, and the forest echoed with soft poofing sounds, like evil popcorn popping in slow motion.
The worst part?
The spores were following us.
No, chasing us. Like little airborne gremlins of doom.
"I DON'T THINK THE MASKS WERE MEANT FOR THIS MUCH!" I shouted, jumping over a log that looked suspiciously like it wanted to breathe on me.
Burn wheezed, clinging to my arm.
"They're meant for casual exposure! Not a full-blown sporeicane!"
Blaze was sprinting beside me with terrifying speed, seriously, where did he get those rocket-powered vine legs?! Even Barry, squishball of mystery, had morphed into a gliding jelly frisbee stuck to my back like a living parachute.
I dared a glance over my shoulder.
Baby boy or boyBad idea.
All the Verdact Shrooms were awake now.
Their caps were expanded like umbrellas of death, their stalks wiggling as if they had bones (they shouldn't!), and the air behind us had turned an unhealthy, glowing green. My Organix Mask was glowing red now!
"OH NO! BURN! MY MASK IS BLINKING RED!"
"That's the warning for saturation! You've got like... twenty seconds max before your brain becomes mayonaised!"
"TWENTY SECONDS?!" I shrieked.
Ahead of us was a cliff. Because of course there was.
And at the bottom? A shimmering fungal river. Glowing purple. Bubbling. Literally laughing. I didn't even want to ask what was in it.
"So what now?! We either get possessed by air mold or dive into psychedelic soup?!"
Blaze pointed to a narrow root bridge crossing a crevice to the right, thin, high, and absolutely not OSHA compliant.
"THERE!"
"I weigh too much!" I yelled. "That root's gonna snap!"
"Then run like your life depends on it,"
Burn growled.
"IT DOES!"
I bolted.
The root bridge bent under my weight like it was auditioning to be a slingshot. Barry's gooey grip tightened. Blaze zipped ahead and Burn kept whispering a rapid-fire fire prayer (ironic, considering he was a plant).
Poof! More spores. I coughed, and my mask blinked faster. This was it. Either make it across and live, or breathe once and become Spore King of the Forest.
The moment my feet hit the other side, the root snapped.
I screamed. But not because I fell, because Burn hadn't made it across.
I spun around.
Burn was hanging from the edge of the root bridge with one viney hand, dangling over the spore abyss.
"GO!" he shouted. "Save yourself! Tell my story! Make a bonsai of me or something!"
"DON'T BE DRAMATIC!" I yelled, grabbing his hand. "I'm not letting you die! Not now or ever!"
With one last yank, I pulled him up and we both collapsed on the other side, panting, coughing, and maybe crying a little.
The spores hissed and crackled behind us like angry bees, but they couldn't cross. Not yet. The Verdacts seemed rooted to their fungal swamp.
"Okay…" I wheezed. "New rule… never sneeze near mushrooms."
Blaze sneezed again, tiny this time.
Burn slapped him.
Barry glowed.
We were alive.
Mostly.
After the root bridge disaster, we limped deeper into what looked like a quieter part of the Verdantgrave Wilds. No glowing mushrooms. No gasping spore puffs. Just mossy trees and dead silence.
I dropped to my knees in relief.
"I think… we're safe."
The forest canopy above was thicker here, filtering out the weird green light and giving the ground a cool, dark shade. The air didn't smell like spores anymore. More likr an after smell of rain.
Barry plopped onto a squishy patch of moss and melted slightly in comfort.
Burn collapsed beside a fern and sighed,
"I can't feel my legs."
"You don't have legs," I muttered.
"Still."
Blaze was limping, his leaf-feet now crispy on the edges like overcooked kale chips. But he curled up next to me anyway, breathing in through his… whatever plant lungs he had.
For a moment, we all just sat there. No one talked. No one moved. I even dared to take off my mask, just to breathe properly for a second. I could finally hear my own thoughts again, and unfortunately, they were mostly screaming. I leaned back against a big mushroom cap behind me and let out a sigh.
"This must be a safe zone," I whispered.
It felt safe.
And that was the first red flag.
Because exactly 2.7 seconds later… the mushroom I was leaning against quivered.
I froze.
So did Barry.
Blaze tilted his head.
Burn slowly sat up. "…Did that mushroom just purr?"
The giant cap behind me twitched again, once, twice, and then it opened up like a giant clam.
And then it screamed.
"OH NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE!" I yelled, jumping away as the giant mushroom-face thing unleashed a sound like a car alarm being strangled by a goat.
From the center of its cap, dozens of tiny parasitic mushrooms burst forth like popcorn with teeth.
"WHAT IS THIS?! SPORES ON A TIMER?!" Burn shouted, running in circles.
The "safe zone" wasn't safe. It was Spore Nest Prime. I looked around and realized… we'd walked right into a fungal nursery. The moss wasn't moss. It was a soft fungus. The trees? Covered in microspores. Even Barry was sitting on something that was breathing now.
"GET UP, BARRY!" I screamed.
Barry flailed like a startled blob and launched himself onto my back, where he began shaking like a bowl of terrified pudding.
The parasitic spores were hatching,jumping, clinging, crawling across the ground with horrible little stalk-legs.
Blaze screamed (in plant language) and tried to set one on fire.
Didn't work.
"WHY ARE THEY FIREPROOF?!" Burn cried.
"WHY ARE THEY ALIVE?!" I screamed back.
I reached for my Interdimensional Store and slammed the button so hard I thought I'd break my finger.
"SHIV!" I shouted. "SHIV, HELP! GIMME SOMETHING! ANYTHING!"
A chime.
A message.
[Recommended Purchase: Mini Decontamination Dome – 10 Verdants]
I didn't even hesitate.
"BUY."
Instantly, a silver capsule dropped into my hand. I slammed it into the ground, and it pinged before expanding like a balloon and then WHOOSH!
A transparent dome surrounded us in a burst of light, throwing back the creeping spores and shrieking baby mushrooms. They sizzled like salt on slugs as the dome's anti-spore field activated.
Everything went still.
Silence.
The air inside smelled like hand sanitizer and lemon.
"I… think we're good," I wheezed.
Burn curled up on my lap.
Blaze was curled into a tight ball.
Barry was stuck to my face. We didn't speak.
We just stared at the madness outside, the fake safe zone now crawling with evil mushroom babies, chewing rocks, growling at birds, and slapping each other for fun.
I groaned. "I miss root bridges."