Book 4 - Chapter 110 - Exploring (1/2)

The sky above them was typical of a binary star system’s. There was no true night, for it was instead replaced by periods of brief twilight before the sister star’s dawn. Most of the time it was full sunlight, and hot. A normal person likely wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in this place before dying of dehydration.

As the travelers looked around, they noticed the broiling suns above. The largest was four times the size of their moon and burned with a pale blue light. It was beautiful, and was encased with a blinding and alluring halo. The smaller one was about the size of a pea, and only barely visible.

Surprised couldn’t begin to describe Hellflower’s reaction. She stood there with her mouth literally agape. Yet the surprises didn’t stop, for in front of them stretched a huge and ancient forest. Instead of large, thick trees they might expect, it was instead composed of towering spindly things with enormous mushroom-shaped canopies.

Wait, not mushroom-shaped. Actual mushrooms!

Those were absolutely gigantic mushrooms! Hundreds, maybe even thousands of them stretched as far as they could see.

The largest of them was about a hundred meters tall or more, and the smaller variety were the size of a thumb. They were easily crushed beneath their feet as the two wandered closer. They came in all different colors as well, and were tightly packed together like a sea of fungus. Spores hung in the air lending to an even more powerful impression they’d stumbled into some surreal dreamscape.

Then there were the creatures, strange things that fluttered through the air. They darted around, eating the spores that floated around.

Magical, fantastical, incredible!

Hellflower would never have believed such a thing if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

Flora, fauna, environment... everything was completely divorced from the reality they came from. Her attention was snapped backed to her side when a gas mask was shoved into her face. Cloudhawk’s hoarse voice was warning her, “We can’t be sure these spores aren’t poisonous. Wear this.”

“The closer we get, the more I like you.” Hellflower gave Cloudhawk a coy smirk as she slipped on the mask. Her eyes glimmered as she continued to look around. “It looks like this place has been abandoned, except for these small critters. Where should we start looking?”

“That’s where Oddball comes in. It’s been doing nothing but eating and sitting around in the Vale for days like a fuckin’ pig – time for some exercise.”

Oddball chirped at him, peeved at the insult. How could his master say such things? Oddball had been a good companion, training diligently! The pudgy bird lifted off his shoulder and quickly began to swell. Where Oddball was typically about the size of a fist, suddenly it weighed some fifty or sixty pounds and was considerably larger.

This took Cloudhawk by surprise. “Shit, you’ve packed on those pounds! I should start calling you Oddbulge!”

The little thing’s volume had doubled at least, and he kept the same adorable rotund figure. The golden feathers remains, soft and shining, and its round owl-like head was still half swallowed by the portly form. It was still a ridiculous thing to look at with its round body, big eyes and stubby wings.

Hellflower’s scientific standpoint was confounded by what she saw. Physics dictated that a creature that fat with so little lift shouldn’t have been able to fly at all. As she watched Oddball let out a shrill chirp, and started to glow with golden energy.

Like a fiery arrow it shot into the distance, then stopped in mid-air. It turned its head back toward the two and chirped as though bragging at how much faster it had become.

Cloudhawk shouted after it impatiently. “Stop wasting time! Go find what we’re looking for.”

Oddball’s portly body was incredible agile, and its field of vision had expanded considerably from before. What’s more, its eyes functioned like x-ray vision capable of peering through the mushroom caps below. Before long, it spied the remnants of an ancient city nestled in the forest.

They’d come here to find any relics that may have been discarded. An abandoned city was as good a place as any to start their search.

“Let’s go.”

Cloudhawk and Hellflower set off after Oddball.

Aside from the spores, they noted that there wasn’t any other sort of plant life around. Oddly enough, even though the ground was barren these mushrooms still managed to sprout and grow humongous – just out of nowhere, springing up from the sandy dirt. There was no indication that they should have grown so large with so little nutrition.

Strange was the only way to describe this place and its wildlife. Strange and inexplicable.

“It seems this world is in direct sunlight at all times. The earth is parched. I can’t see a drop of water anywhere. It appears this has forced the wildlife to adapt in strange ways – if I had to guess, the fungal surfaces are efficient solar energy collectors. See the wrinkles on the underside?”

Cloudhawk lifted his head to look at what Hellflower was talking about.

Where the exterior was smooth, the inner wrinkles beneath the mushroom caps undulated gently as though it were breathing. Like an animal.

“Its respiration rate is rather quick, suitable for gathering any moisture left in the air. In the same way our breathing works it is constantly exchanging oxygen for waste material. It is a natural energy reactor. You can almost feel the energy within it. Whatever it left in the soil it gathers up, and through some complicated chemical process converts it into the nutrients it needs to flourish.”

Hellflower was almost muttering to herself while she examined the alien flora.

She felt like she’d wandered into a treasure trove of secret information. Cloudhawk, on the other hand, couldn’t care less. He was more concerned about the hidden dangers he knew had to exist. Seeing as this was a completely foreign ecosystem, who knew what sort of things existed here humans weren’t equipped to guard against.

Hellflower thoughtlessly wandered around, trying to look at everything at once.