Dark Rot

by Simon McHardy

  Goron stood up. Szat looked at him expectantly and raised his arms like a small child about to be picked up. Goron turned his back and limped off down the tunnel.

  Szat yawned loudly. “You’ll never do it without me.”

  Goron stopped. It was true. He couldn’t do it without Szat. Damn! If he was going to find the source of the corruption, he needed him. With a sigh, he turned around.

  Relief flickered across Szat’s face. Goron bent down, grabbed the demon by the scruff of his neck and dumped him on his shoulder. Szat resumed noisily chomping on his bat.

  He owed it to Morwen and Wichsault to try to complete the mission. He took a determined step and plummeted—he’d found the spider’s trapdoor.

  Morwen woke. Her head was so light it felt as if it might float away from her body. She tried to focus on her surroundings. If it wasn’t for the cave walls and the ceiling heavy with stalactites, she would have thought herself in the castle. A slight figure stood beside a huge black pot that hung from chains above a fireplace chipped into the rock. Humming, it chopped up what smelled like mushrooms, on the palm of its hand, then tossed them into the pot where they sizzled and spat in the hot oil. Morwen tried to move. She was encased in some type of cocoon. She strained against the fibres, but they did not loosen.

  Hearing her struggle, the figure turned from the fire and crossed the cave, the knife still in its hand. Morwen lay on her belly. Through the thin veil of web covering her eyes, she examined the shape as it came towards her. It wore an ill-fitting, earth-coloured robe with a frayed hem and an absurdly tall hat which drooped like a wilted flower. The shoes were remarkable too, brown leather spotted with white mould and chunky heels with strange, tooled designs. They halted beside Morwen’s head, and she could make out the fat toes painfully imprisoned in their pointed ends. “A nice fat one, Eggs, this will fill the pot.” A spider twice Morwen’s size appeared. Morwen flinched. The spider had two very humanoid-looking eyes, sunset orange, below which were six very spidery eyes, black and alien. They all sat above what was certainly a humanoid mouth. As well as eight legs, Eggs possessed two tiny, green arms.

  “She put up a real fight, Skruc. Walloped me with its stick before I could bind her,” Eggs said.

  “She?…Hmm…very large for a slaug.” Skruc squatted beside Morwen and tore at the web that encased her face, “It…it’s a human. You brought us a human.” Eggs’ legs trembled as he teetered back. “I’ve told you, only slaug. You’ve ruined supper.”

  The shame was too much for Eggs who fell onto his back. His legs twitched a moment before becoming still. “Playing dead won’t get you out of trouble. What am I meant to do with her now?” Skruc returned to his scrutiny of Morwen. “She doesn’t look at all friendly.”

  “I am friendly,” Morwen said through gritted teeth. And she’d show Eggs and Skruc how friendly as soon as they got her out of this cocoon.

  Skruc sensed Morwen’s ‘friendliness’ and raised a questioning monobrow.

  “Fine, you’re right, I’m not friendly, I’m mad. Drag me back to where that Eggs pounced on me and we’ll forget it ever happened.”

  Skruc stroked an imaginary beard in deep contemplation. Morwen took the opportunity to try to figure out what sort of creature he was. Beneath the limp wizard’s hat protruded two batlike ears. A large brow ridge bristled with a giant eyebrow that stretched from temple to temple, and from its protective shadow poked a long, pointy nose, nearly as flaccid as the hat. That was the unpleasant stuff. Everything else on the face was nice. Round, wide-set eyes were fringed with thick lashes, and plump, red lips rested against gleaming white teeth. Dimpled cheeks flushed pink above a cleft chin. Morwen couldn’t figure it out. “Whatever are you?”

  Skruc didn’t seem at all taken back by the question. “I’m a gnoggart.” Noting Morwen’s blank stare, he added, “My mother was a gnome and my father a boggart. And dearly departed Eggs here is a spoggart. Same father— Narg the Defiler—but his mummy’s a spider.

  Skruc looked her up and down. “You really are a person then and a wizard to boot?”

  “A warlock to be precise.”

  “I bet you know lots of magic spells and can look after yourself in a pinch.”

  “I’ve been known to curse people who don’t do as I ask and inflict great suffering upon them. Are you going to let me out now or what?” Morwen dug her fingernails into her palms drawing blood. If she could just move enough to point the staff at Skruc, she’d do more than curse him.

  Skruc ignored the threat and began tearing at the web that trapped Morwen’s staff. “Is this your magic staff?” Before she could give it a deft flick of her wrist, mutter an incantation, and blast Skruc with shadow, the gnoggart pulled the weapon free.

  “Not bad,” Skruc said huffing on the onyx and giving it a polish with his stained robe.

  “It’s cursed. Anybody who uses it, apart from me, is afflicted with a nose that won’t stop growing,” Morwen lied. Given the size of Skruc’s nose, she thought that would be the best threat.

  Skruc let the staff go with a clang. “We could release you, but there’s a problem…”

  Goron rushed through the darkness, unable to slow himself on the glass-smooth walls. He heard the murmur of voices as he catapulted into a firelit room, its contents a blur, and rolled to his feet with his axe swung back ready to strike.

  The mouth of a deformed gnome wearing a ridiculous hat dropped open and grew into a yawn when a ball of fire, emitting a high-pitched squeal interspersed with cussing, tumbled into the room after him.

  A dead spider, with what appeared to be a boggart’s head, came back to life with a jolt, waved two hairy spider legs menacingly, and drew two daggers with nimble boggart hands. “You were saying there’s a problem letting me go?” Morwen raised her chin and eyebrows, and smirked.

  While Eggs was away catching the meat for the pot, Goron, Morwen and Skruc gathered around the fire. Skruc sat cross-legged, and Morwen lay back with her legs stretched out, and her feet on the hearth. Goron squatted with his axe close by. He didn’t not trust either of the room’s strange owners and was ready to jump up and lop off heads at a moment’s notice. Szat’s appetite had overcome his aversion to spiders. He was taking a bath in the boiling mushroom broth and doing his best to drink his way to the bottom.

  “You can’t walk through the slaugs’ caverns. You wouldn’t get more than a foot,” Skruc said.

  “Slaugs?” Goron questioned.

  “Slug people.”

  Goron grimaced. “What…what’s going on down here? Gnoggarts, spoggarts and now slug people?”

  “It gets lonely down here in the dark,” Skruc replied.

  “But spiders—I’ve never been that lonely,” Goron said.

  “My father was a man with extraordinary tastes. Nothing was safe. Whether it was animal, vegetable or mineral he lusted after it.”

  Morwen’s lips curled up in disgust like fat worms tossed into a hot skillet. “Slug people really don’t sound very frightening.”

  “Not by themselves, but there are thousands of them. You won’t stand a chance. They’ve enslaved many of the boggarts, forced them to work in the mines, and hunted the gnomes to extinction. God rest Mummy’s soul.”

  “Is there any other way to the surface, a secret tunnel perhaps?” Morwen asked.

  “Not a one.” Eggs emerged from the tunnel dragging a cocoon. Skruc jumped up excitedly. “The meat’s arrived.”

  The prey gurgled in fear. Skruc fetched his knives whilst Eggs hovered close by him hoping for a compliment. “I suppose this makes up for the mistake earlier,” Skruc begrudgingly said. Skruc didn’t bother to put the creature out of its misery. He went straight into slicing it like a carrot—a piece at a time from the bottom up. It wasn’t until he got to the middle, the creature stopped squirming. Fifteen chunks of grey meat were all that was left. There were no bones or
blood, only a slimy, clear fluid that oozed across the floor.

  “What is it?” Goron shuddered and screwed up his face.

  “A slaug, of course, they make delicious stew. Skruc removed a dripping Szat and dropped several chunks of meat into the large pot to join the mushrooms. The grey slabs floated like globs of fat in the murky, brown water. Skruc returned to sit cross-legged by the fire. “We’ll let that reduce so it thickens. Now where were we…ah yes, the slaugs. There’s no way to escape the caves unless you pass directly through their burrows. That leaves you with only one choice, walk right through.”

  “But you said yourself, we can’t do that. They’re not friendly,” Morwen interjected.

  “That I did, but you won’t be noticed if you’re one of them.” The pot began to bubble and overflow into the fire like lava spewing out of a volcano. A cloud of steam that smelt like a latrine ascended to the ceiling. “I’ve a potion.”

  When the stew was ready, Skruc spooned out five generous bowls of the concoction and passed them to his guests. Goron and Morwen wrinkled their noses—the latrine smell was stronger.

  Eggs squeezed in beside Morwen and Goron and began to slurp at his soup. Goron edged away from the hairy legs.

  Szat downed his stew in a few greedy gulps and didn’t wait to be offered seconds.

  “I’ll help you under one condition. The slaugs are ruled by a single female, Gagurt. Once she’s dead the colony will die out. Slaug queens won’t tolerate other females and devour them on sight.”

  “So you want us to kill her?” Morwen said holding her breath and lifting the bowl of soup to her lips. She pretended to take a sip. “Mm, delicious,” she said and elbowed Goron in the ribs, “Drink,” she hissed, “you’re being rude to our host.”

  Skruc grinned at the culinary compliment. “Exactly, but it won’t be easy. I’ve tried and never been able to get close to her. She’s…ah…always engaged in repopulating the colony—it’s a full-time job. There might be a way, though. Once a week the slaugs and boggarts gather for a melee. Any slaug who distinguishes himself becomes her lover for a night.”

  “Sounds tempting, we risk our lives for a chance to spend the night in the bed of a slug,” Morwen replied.

  “Slaug,” Skruc corrected.

  Goron took a sip of soup. He couldn’t distinguish its consistency from mucus. He forced himself to swallow, but his gag reflex kicked in and coughed the glob back up. It remained in his mouth, as unappealing as a wad of phlegm hacked up from a diseased lung. It wouldn’t do to spit it out, and to swallow it was out of the question. Instead, he discreetly raised his shirt to his mouth, pretended to cough and left behind the mouthful of slaug soup whereupon it slid down the inside of his shirt and came to rest in his belly button.

  “What’s to stop us walking out of here?” Morwen said smirking at Goron who’d gone very pale.

  “It’s not for me I ask, it’s for all the boggart slaves and the memory of my father. They don’t accept me as one of them, but I feel a family obligation. They live and work in such horrible conditions. I’d be a fool to trust you’ll do the right thing. After you kill Gagurt, I’ll give you the antidote. If you don’t do what I ask, you’ll spend the rest of your lives as slaugs.”

  “I think he’s got us there,” Morwen said.

  The droopy hat waggled in agreement, and Skruc clonked over to the rows of labelled, glass-stoppered bottles lining a shelf at the farthest end of the cave. He selected a bottle from the fluorescent range and poured out a dose of the shimmering liquid. The potion tasted no different from the soup. Goron gagged and moaned as he tried to keep it down. A solid mass, the elixir sat in Goron’s stomach until it began painfully to expand. Goron doubled over and curled up into a foetal position. Morwen was going through the same agony but with more cursing. Only Szat seemed indifferent to the pain. The glug inside Goron continued to swell until he lost shape and became a gelatinous blob. He was a ball. His limbs were swallowed up. He screamed in pain, but his voice was a gurgle. The last thing he saw, as his head retracted like a turtle’s, was the spider, Eggs, and his hungry eyes. They were going to eat him. He was sure of it. Everything went dark. All senses were lost to him. He was alone with his fears, unable to do anything but quiver.

  Firelight and the hazy outline of the room appeared. He could smell the bubbling slaug soup, hear Egg’s excited chittering, and Morwen’s frightened gurgles. The blob he’d become began to shrink—take form. Arms emerged, the skin turned grey and slimy. Something sharp dug into his shoulder, and he scrabbled beneath him to find the culprit. His right hand clasped a familiar shape, the head of his axe. The cold steel brought comfort to him. Goron’s vision returned as his eyes crept from the blob on stalks. He saw Morwen, or he hoped it was her, a giant male garden slug with arms, holding her staff. Her face was a nondescript slab of grey flesh. The mouth was only a hole and her nose resembled a large knot. Szat, a miniature version of his mistress, was sitting on her shoulder.

  “You look hideous,” she burbled in another language. But he could understand her.

  “We’re all hideous.” Goron took a step forward and realised he didn’t have legs. He tried wiggling his bottom half like a snake while he kept his top upright. It worked but was slow and sluggish. A few circles around the room and it felt a little more natural.

  “Right, are you ready? You can take your weapons. The slaugs are great scavengers and use whatever weapons they can find. Just do whatever everyone else is doing and you’ll fit in fine.”

  The secret passage led to a well-used corridor lit by the mellow, green light of fluorescent mushrooms. Wraith-thin boggart slaves, clad in threadbare rags, pushed the laden minecarts. Their haunted eyes stared from dust-coated faces as the slaug guards urged them forward with threatening prods and gurgled commands. The surface of the tunnel was thick with slaug slime, and traction was difficult for the slaves who slipped and slid and often fell face first into the muck. Goron and Morwen followed closely behind an empty minecart pushed by two boggarts and guarded by three slaugs who, oblivious to gravitational restraints, glided along on the ceiling. “I didn’t know we could do that,” Goron said excitedly and slithered up the wall to join them.

  He shouted for Morwen until, irritated by his badgering, she attempted the ascent. Morwen expected her single foot to lose its suction and drop her on her head at any moment, but it did its job.

  The minecart led them to a cavern so large Morwen wondered if they were on the surface. The illusion was enhanced by the starlike glimmer of glow worms high up on the ceiling. Numerous green mushrooms suffused the cavern with their surreal gleam. Their light nurtured a jungle of plants as tall as forest trees. Giant, leafy greens; silverbeet, spinach, collard greens, lettuce, watercress, and cabbages the size of houses grew in towering profusion. If it was eaten by garden pests, it was there.

  A lake, green from mushroom light, filled the centre of this strange world. Rivulets of thick slime from the cavern’s walls and floor slid into its depths. Morwen shuddered as she realised she wasn’t looking at cool water from mountain streams but slaug juice. The gurgle of the slaugs’ voices resounded like a waterfall and mingled with the strike of pickaxes on rock as the slaves laboured under the watchful eyes of hundreds of armed slaugs. “Well, I don’t think this is going to be as easy as we thought,” Morwen said.

  Goron turned from the cabbage he was sizing up. “Let’s talk about it over lunch.”

  “Lunch, where?” Szat looked around from his position on Morwen’s back. Not even his transformation persuaded him that green stuff was food. When Goron and Morwen ignored him and began feasting, he slid to the ground in a huff and wriggled off in search of his own lunch. First they munched their way through the centre of the cabbage. They tried every type of plant in the garden, leaving behind half-eaten leaves and gnawed stalks, before they decided their favourites were the tender shoots of silverbeet plants and juicy, ba
by spinach leaves. The more they ate the hungrier they felt, but their stomachs had limits even if they didn’t. When it became physically impossible to take another mouthful, they slunk off to digest the garden they’d just eaten.

  Through the daze of a food coma Goron heard outraged cries. Dozens of slaugs were milling around the hollowed-out cabbage, half-eaten stalks and missing baby spinach leaves. Evidently even the slaugs were meant to exercise restraint. Two indignant slaugs noticed Goron and Morwen watching them and hurried over.

  “Did you see who did this?” one of them asked.

  Morwen looked around and spotted a young slaug nibbling on the edge of a silverbeet leaf the size of a canoe. She pointed at the unfortunate. “It was him.” The group swarmed around the young slaug. Goron and Morwen took the opportunity to slip away. Angry shouts and shrill protests followed them.

  “We better lie low for a while, do a little exploring,” Morwen advised. They’d eaten so much they swayed like ships on high seas as they slithered along. A dark tunnel, lit with only the occasional fluorescent green mushroom, seemed like the perfect place. It did not appear to be frequented by the slaugs. There wasn’t the usual mass of wriggling youngsters or the habitual coating of slime on everything.

  The tunnel led to a cave filled with dirt-coloured mushrooms, their head-like tops seated on stalks as thick as men’s necks. A scattering of bones littered the ground, and discs of black fungus jutted from the rock. The air was a hazy yellow, heavy, and fetid. “Let’s wait here a little while until the uproar dies down,” Morwen suggested.

  In the gloomy confines, a growing sense of anxiety descended upon Morwen. She paced about the cave, head drooped, and hands constantly smoothing out non-existent creases on a non-existent robe. Her breathing was shallow, and the rapid gasps of air made her throat tighten. Waves of self-pity broke over her. I’m a horrible person, and I care only about myself. The sudden confession shocked her, especially as she knew it to be true. What must others think of me?