The mushroom was about three feet high, partially mobile, shaking... and shrieking loudly enough to qualify as an ambulance, if any of them knew what that was.
Alas, the Sound Bubble was up, and nobody heard it before Verd brought her heavy spear down and chopped it in two... at a careful distance from the pinkish-purple veined mushrooms next to it.
"What the heck are those doing here?" Amber pointed out, as a couple tentacles spurted out of the violet caps and slapped Verd's spear with oozing slime. "Aren't they subterranean?"
Everyone looked up at the stone roof above them, back down at her, and she scowled. "Come on, this is just an entry tunnel..."
"Planted by someone with a fungus affinity, obviously," the Shadowknife said. He pointed at a cluster of large yellow balls nearby. "They stopped the violets from eating the yellows, and vice versa. Zyguomy probably has some Fungal Queens ahead, and likely a number of mushroom folk enslaved to them."
"Ugh!" All three girls made the same expression at the same time, amusing the heck out of the two hyn and the dwarf. Feist just gestured them ahead.
Amber threw a flask of alchemical cold over the yellow spore-balls, freezing them and rendering them inactive long enough for Verd to chop them to bits, not letting any of their poison spores fly. Continuing on through the tunnel, they made their way towards the secluded valley on the other side.
"Masks on," said Verd, slapping on her own, a dark thing which would filter out spores and protect their eyes and noses. Amber had naturally painted all of them in black, white, and red bloody skull patterns. Even the dwarf and hyn covered up their faces, as the spores were increasing quickly ahead of them, and none of them wanted something to start growing on and in them.
"Eh..." murmured the Shadowknife, as they came to the entry, and saw the blasted remains of half a dozen mushroom folk, crude faces formed on the base of toadstool stalks, all of them over six feet tall. They had been ripped apart by focused magic of some kind, leaving them dripping slime in multiple parts.
Beyond them was a valley, nearly buried inside a valley almost completely enclosed by the stone walls above. The amount of light that came down from above basically never reached the ground, by the angle of the gap above, only the cold of the higher stone and the wet of the melting water.
There were mushrooms everywhere here, growing taller than Amber's head. Toadstools, puffballs, clusters, waving tendrils, fuzzy patches, brainlike lobes, fleshy branches, umbrellas and tallcaps and more, all in a dizzying array of weird colors and textures.
No green plant life at all. The Gray had a strong foothold here...
Verd bent over the dead. "No fire or lightning, or acid residue. A force effect wouldn't melt through them like that, though..."
"It's eldritch energy," the Shadowknife said, his Helices sweeping over the dead fungal-folk. "Mixed with some force magic."
"A Warlock?" That energy was pretty unique to Pactbound.
"Warlock and Wizard, I think. Quite familiar. I've crossed his trail before, but never met." Small hands caressed the hilts of long knives. "Interesting to find him here..." His voice didn't make that a positive thing. "This place is under dimension disruption, so he couldn't Shadow-Step any further, likely came out of it right in front of these guards. He killed them, then took flight." His unseen head lifted inside his cloak. "That way, I think."
"He's coming in on the right. We should go left," Verd said, and cast a glance at the Shadowknife.
"I think I shall go introduce myself to him," the hyn mused and took a couple steps.
Everyone blinked, because he was very suddenly not visible, like his Helices had gathered around him and erased him from sight.
"Oh, that is very good!" Veis hissed for all of them, very impressed. Even Feist had to nod, a little wide-eyed. Less then two paces away, and vanishing from ALL his senses instantly... he knew his elder brother was dangerous, but had never seen it driven home so hard.
"There's already death spores in the air, then. They know trouble is coming," Grym grunted, sniffing with an air of experience.
"So, being sneaky is out?" Amber asked with a smile.
"There's no audience but us here, lass," Feist laughed, and her face fell sharply. "That said, I'm sure we're going to have some interesting times ahead of us." He pointed at some waist-high rolling spheres which had just become visible on a faint path between the mushrooms, writhing tendrils sticking out to either side. "I don't think we want those to run over us..."
----------
Tongues of grey-limned red energy lanced out, rays of power that tore into the assembled fungal queens and erupted into some extremely powerful fireballs, ravaging the cold-loving creatures. Once, twice, thrice, the blasts pounded them down from the flying wizard above, while rhinoceroses with tentacles for eyes and rather unsettling distortions to their physical anatomy charged groups of mushroom-infected humans and fungi-men in cycles, slamming back and forth between the groups of them without stopping.
The dark-haired wizard, owning a haggard beard, one eye noticeably larger then the other, raised his hands and shouted out words in some language that was old before humanity crawled out of the oceans. Writhing black tentacles erupted out of the ground, lazy and purposeful, snaking out to wrap around the shrilly screaming fungi queens... and space seemed to open around their bases.
The pseudo-feminine fibrous, slimy bodies of the fungal queens were dragged irresistibly back as they clawed at the mold-strewn ground, and bloop, bloop, bloop... they were yanked into those holes and vanished, as the holes closed behind them.
The rhinos rapidly made short work of the remaining and shell-shocked fungi servants, ignoring the fact that infectious mold and mushrooms were spreading all over their glowing, mutating hides.
The wizard had bent over in mid-air, clearly dealing with convulsions of some sort, and waved his hand. The Summoned beasts wavered, and then a wave of blackness seemed to open and suck them in, leaving nothing behind.
Swearing was clearly audible from up in the air as the wizard twisted, fighting off whatever effect was shaking him after that casting.
He was not at all prepared to suddenly fall down from the sky.
His curse was interrupted by a somewhat wet face-flop to the lichens on the ground, which he Soaked for no real damage but a groan and a curse.
Then a pair of bare feet not quite touching the moldy, mushroom-strewn ground stopped in front of his eyes. He froze as something moved through the manafield, and the magic which he had just used to turn this battlefield into a slaughterhouse was snipped away as cleanly as if he was a puppet with severed strings.
"Oh, shit," he muttered hoarsely, and then promptly vomited all over the ground.
It didn't quite manage to touch those small, bare feet, which waited patiently as his eyes rolled back, and black lines bulged under his skin alarmingly before slowly and reluctantly retreating.
The haggard, pale wizard didn't make any sudden moves as he fought back whatever was happening inside him. It was a full minute before he dared look up into the hooded shadows of the hyn standing over him, two long knives gleaming.
"I'm-," he started to say, then turned his head and hacked and spit out some more stuff, that started to glow where it smoked on the ground, "-sworn to the Mazakam."
The Shadow and the Knife stared down at him. "You're an off-worlder."
The man shuddered, looking back up at the hyn who had him at his mercy, fevered and mismatched eyes wandering over the transparent Helices that were swirling through him, and taking away all his magic.
"Yes," he didn't bother to deny. "Not by choice. I was kind of thrown here."
"Why?" the Shadowknife asked.
"Well, I was in a real bad situation, and I screamed for someone to save me, so something did, by throwing me here."
"The Mazakam?"
"Yes. The price was accepting a Pact. I've been their toadie ever since."
"The Mazakam seek to feast on Aberrants, both here and Outside Creation. That does not make them our friends. They would happily sacrifice this world and all upon it for a good chance at a snack. What manner of fool are you to call out to such beings, knowing what they would make of you?"
"I would have been dead, and I didn't have much choice! They answered, imposed the Pact on me, and threw me here!" He seemed to want to get up, uttered a moan, and then flopped back down. "I should have done nothing enough to stir the Brotherhood! I don't make a habit of inflicting magic on the innocent!"
"I have marked your trail at dozens of Aberrant sites and ceremonies," the Shadowknife said calmly, totally unsympathetic.
"Yes. I was preparing them for action by the Watching Stars, when the time is right. Far easier then drawing on their power off the cuff. They seem to be all over the place. When their numbers build and they finally start attempting Summonings, I can return, and feed them to the Mazakam!"
"And you think we haven't sensed your casual use of the Tyrant's Triad?" the hyn purred, his knives gleaming.
"I've done no lasting harm, I've built up no undead forces, and I've made no grabs for power, nor messed with the fundamental powers of the Land," the wizard spat out. "My business with the Mazakam is sufficient for you to stay your hand, unlike Zygomouy's pets here. Fighting corruption with corruption may be unwise, but it is effective enough in its own way."
Brother Shadowknife looked down at him, his unseen eyes as ominous as mountain heights.
"If you seek to grab temporal power, especially by use of magic, you will be dealt with."
The wizard-warlock took a deep breath. "I understand. I will be circumspect, and not seek to take advantage of those with little to lose."
"Your name?"
The haggard face twisted, mouth rising in a strange smile. "Memphistopheles."
The Shadowknife blinked. "You have a very inauspicious name," he said carefully, and drew only a knowing, dry chuckle in response.
"Yes, the man who named me was a fool," he agreed, coughing weakly. "May I go? I have fed my masters, and there will be a short period of time before they... motivate me to feed again."
The whirling, living Helices slowly withdrew from him. Slowly and carefully, he regained his feet. His dark robe made his build hard to discern, but he seemed lean and tall, with scars or traces of pox on his neck and hands. He looked down at the hyn who barely reached to his ribs, still unable to see his eyes. "Raise your Stillflight. Please."
There was only a pulse from the Helices, and the strange wizard was airborne, trailing liquid black flames as he shot up towards the gap in the stone roof of this buried valley at great speed. In only a few breaths, he shot into the gap and away, obviously headed elsewhere, and away from the walking death that was a Void Brother.