by Demi Harper
‘Growth,’ I read aloud from the silvery writing. ‘Tier two ability. Enhances and accelerates the growth of vegetation, including fungi. Wait – vegetation?’ I protested. ‘That doesn’t sound very god-like. You told me I’m to be the god of gnomes, not the god of mushrooms.’
‘Yes, Corey,’ said Ket patiently, ‘but there are many ways in which you can help the gnomes. Growth is one of them.’
The sprite gestured toward Gneil and the elderly female, now scrubbing about among the mushrooms.
‘These little guys might not look like much, but imagine the things they could accomplish if they didn’t have to spend quite so much time on tasks they’re clearly not trained to do! Growth could be used to make the lives of Gneil and Granny – as you call her – just that little bit easier.’
I watched Granny hand Gneil the tiniest bucket I’d ever seen. Calling it a ‘bucket’ was optimistic; it was barely even a container, a battered scrap of bent metal with some string attached. Gneil took it from her and ambled down to the stream at his usual snail’s pace while she chivvied him on from afar, leaning on a knobby walking stick. Their progress was almost painful to watch. My sprite had a point. Growth would come in very useful here, if you cared about that sort of thing. Besides, hadn’t Ket said that the healthier the life form, the stronger the flow of ambient mana into my gem? All I had to do was cast Growth on these mushrooms and I’d instantly become more powerful – not to mention impress the other gnomes, heretical wretches though they were.
I thought about asking Ket how to do it, but decided I was tired of being told what to do. Surely I could figure this out without the need for a lecture. I blinked away the silver symbols of the Augmentary and got to work.
First, I accessed my mana. It was surprisingly easy; a cool, blue pool waiting calmly in the back of my mind. A little over one entire globe, just waiting to be used.
Picking a mushroom at random, I focused and thought hard about what I’d just read about the Growth ability, expecting to summon up more symbols that would instruct me what to do next. Instead, another blueprint appeared, covering the mushroom in much the same way as it had earlier when I’d first experimented with Insight.
Here goes, I thought, reaching for the first time toward that source of juicy mana. Growth!
To my alarm, the blueprint instantly began growing. So too did the mushroom beneath it, as though the blue lines were a net being pulled, stretching the fungus until it was twice as tall as the others – no, three times taller – no, four times taller.
In the corner of my vision, I noticed my mana already beginning to deplete at a shockingly rapid rate. I’d been using Growth for barely a handful of seconds, yet the first globe of mana – the one at the bottom – was already halfway empty. I recalled Ket’s earlier warning – ‘You must never expend all of your mana at once, otherwise your gem will shatter’ – and began to panic.
Ket’s answering trill of alarm was drowned out by an ominous wooden crack. Time stood still as the mushroom’s stalk snapped beneath the sudden and unexpected weight, then, with a splintering creak, the bulk of the mushroom came toppling down – straight toward where Gneil and Granny loitered, gawking.
‘Corey, no!’
At the sound of Ket’s voice, I tore my gaze away, desperately seeking a way to stop the parasitic ability – which was still in effect, despite its destructive impact on its target – from sucking away the rest of my mana. I now had less than a quarter of a globe remaining.
Luckily, as soon as I stopped looking at the blueprint, my connection to the mushroom ceased, and my mana level stabilized. Just in time, too – there was barely a fraction of the globe left.
The monstrous fungus hit the ground with a thud. Feeling dizzy and sick from the near miss with my mana, I braced myself for what I was about to see. Two pairs of still, grubby gnome feet sticking out from beneath the colossal mushroom carcass, most likely.
I saw them. Gneil and Granny were sprawled in a heap beneath the mushroom, as I’d feared – but thankfully they were cowering in the gap between the stalk and the ground created by the edge of the mushroom’s giant cap. They climbed to their feet, shaken but clearly unhurt.
Relieved I’d managed to avoid squishing my only source of worship, I looked around for Ket, already anticipating a furious lecture about the irresponsible use of my new powers, or some such.
The sprite hovered beside me, her glow somewhat dimmer than usual. I braced myself for a tirade.
‘Don’t ever do something like that again without consulting me first,’ she scolded squeakily. Then she burst into delighted laughter and began to bounce around. ‘But you did it! You used Growth! And all by yourself, too. I’m so proud of you!’
‘Wait. You’re not mad?’ I relaxed a little.
‘Well, it would have been nice – and decidedly less traumatic for the little ones – if you’d checked with me first,’ she pointed out, gesturing to where Gneil and Granny huddled together, peering at the fallen behemoth in suspicious wonder. I felt a twinge of guilt, which I immediately bit back against.
‘They’re both fine!’ I said defensively. It was true. Granted, they had very nearly not been fine, but still.
I sensed Ket preparing to argue. ‘They’re fine,’ I said again, ‘and that’s all that matters.’
‘I had no idea you cared so much about them.’
She said this with more than a touch of sarcasm. Still, how dare she insinuate that I felt anything other than vague revulsion – or at best, tolerance – for these creatures?
‘Caring has nothing to do with it,’ I replied loftily. ‘Gneil is my only source of worship right now. Of course I’m glad he didn’t just die.’
‘Whatever you say, Corey. Well, you may have ruined his mushroom patch, but he seems happy enough. And so does Granny! Look!’
Grinning like an idiot, Gneil handed Granny his miserable bucket, which he’d somehow kept hold of all this time. He said something to the old woman, then both he and Granny turned to stare across the cavern at my hillock, their eyes shining. Both gnomes fell to their knees – Granny more slowly than Gneil, though no less surely – and began to worship.
My mana began to slowly replenish. Even better, in addition to those blue lines of mana, the telltale green aura of Faith also began to shine from Granny for the first time. I’d gained my second Faithful denizen!
In the bottom left corner of my vision, the green triangle suddenly glowed brightly. The second tier had filled entirely, and now the number on the triangle read ‘three’.
Ecstasy that transcended physical sensation swept through every molecule of my being, a sudden inrush of blissfulness telling me I’d Ascended once again, this time to tier three.
Oh, I could get used to this.
‘Look at them,’ Ket crooned. ‘Aren’t you happy to be their god now, Corey?’
‘Yes,’ I murmured, still floating on a cloud of rapture. ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’
Seven
Raid!
‘Tier three, hm?’ I murmured to myself once the euphoria of Ascension had subsided. Three was still a low number, but it was another step on the road to power – and hopefully gaining enough of it to eventually escape my damnable gem, and become a being of flesh and blood once more.
What new ability have I gained this time? I wondered. Am I now a master of the elements? Earth? Wind?
I glanced toward the settlement where Gneil’s detractors still went about their daily business in complete ignorance.
Fire? I thought hopefully.
Before I could check, though, the green triangle – my ‘Faith triangle’ – caught my attention. Something didn’t add up.
‘Hang on,’ I said to Ket. ‘Since the triangle is inverted, that should mean each new tier needs more Faith to fill it than the tiers before. If Gneil alone got me to tier two, how come it only took Granny to get me to tier three? Shouldn’t I have needed more?’
‘Good question, Corey,’ the sprite complim
ented me. ‘In theory, that’s correct. Each tier requires an increasingly large amount of Faith to attain it. However,’ she gestured at Gneil’s faint green aura, ‘an individual denizen’s Faith levels can fluctuate. By demonstrating your powers on that mushroom – and then saving Gneil and Granny’s lives – you inspired Gneil to even greater heights of worship, which – along with Granny’s new Faith – provided enough to push you into tier three.’
Huh.
So it wasn’t just about converting new worshipers. I could also increase my power – and hasten my path to escaping this ridiculous new life of mine – by impressing those who were already Faithful. That’s handy.
‘Are you planning to bask in the glory of your Ascension all day, or are you going to look at your new abilities?’ Ket prompted teasingly.
Shaking off the distraction of yet more new information, I summoned the Augmentary – that silvery repository of knowledge – with a mental blink and honed in on the newest addition to my list of augments.
‘Creation,’ I read aloud. ‘Tier three ability; mana-based. Create god-born creatures by splicing the blueprints of identified life forms.’
Ket watched me, waiting for my reaction. ‘What do you think? Sound good?’
Hmm.
I had to say, ‘splicing’ sounded pretty sinister. But… the power to create new creatures? Living creatures? The chance to literally ‘play god’? Damn right I liked the sound of that.
‘When can we start?’ I asked.
Say one thing about me, say I’d learned from my mistakes. The Growth debacle was fresh in my memory, and no way was I about to jump into new territory again without first consulting Ket. Thankfully, she seemed as keen to get started as I was.
‘Creation is really quite simple,’ she began. ‘Essentially, you choose two blueprints—’
‘Any two?’
‘Yes. You select the blueprints from your Augmentary, drag them together to combine them, and voila! You’ve got yourself a god-born creature.’
‘Well, that seems easy enough,’ I said.
‘Well… it is a bit more complicated than that. Ideally, you’ll want to spend some time choosing which aspects of each creature to combine, for a start. When it’s done properly, the whole process is actually quite time consuming, and you’ll no doubt have plenty of experimenting ahead of you. But the first step is choosing a combination, so let’s begin with that.’
I located my memorized blueprints and cycled through the options.
Cave spider.
Fern.
Bolete mushroom.
Squirrel.
Earthworm.
Fox.
Moss.
Bat.
All the while, Ket continued to dispense advice.
‘It’s always best if you choose practical, logical combinations,’ she cautioned. ‘Something you can use to populate the outer tunnels of your Sphere of Influence and effectively protect this cavern from enemy incursions.’
My attention drifted away from Ket’s instructions and back to my Augmentary, distracted by all the possibilities. In my mind, I toyed with several variations. Ket had said it should be practical, so how about… a mush-bat? A combination of a mushroom and a bat, able to fly from soil patch to soil patch and put down roots wherever it liked. Or perhaps a moss-spider, camouflaged against the cavern’s green walls and just waiting to drop down onto anything that happened to wander in and threaten my diminutive denizens.
But I couldn’t quite bring myself to actually choose any of them. Mushroom-bats? Moss-spiders? What was I thinking? This would be my first ever creation. It should be something fierce; something special. Something impressive.
Basically, the opposite of a gnome.
I tuned out Ket’s blather about ‘practicality’ and ‘logic’ and looked again at my options. They were frustratingly limited – and worse, mundane.
I’ve had to make do with less, I reminded myself, thinking of Gneil the mushroom-whispering pariah. It’s not about what you’ve got; it’s what you choose to do with it.
Still, size mattered, and the largest of my available blueprints was by far the fox. I took a moment to admire its complex web of blue threads, millions of them. So much life beneath the surface; so many incredible connections beneath that sheath of muscle and skin and fur.
I selected the fox blueprint and considered my remaining choice. How about a cave spider? A spider-fox would be downright terrifying to an unsuspecting intruder, sure to deter anyone – or anything – that might happen to be heading our way with trouble in mind.
I hovered over the cave spider blueprint, almost certain of my decision. It didn’t quite fit with what Ket had been talking about, but it would (hopefully) provide a great line of defense in the event of an—
‘Attack!’ Ket cried.
‘What?’ The blueprints and silvery Augmentary symbols dissolved, my concentration shattered. I raised myself higher and stared around wildly. ‘Where?’
The last word was barely spoken when I spotted them: two-legged creatures, pouring from the lone tunnel entrance on the far side of the mushroom patch. Muscular, scaly and vaguely draconic, the monsters wore ragged loincloths and carried primitive spears, roughly-woven nets and curving blades.
‘Kobolds!’ hissed Ket, though I’d already recognized them.
Easily head and shoulders taller than my gnomes – whose village they were now heading toward – the kobolds swarmed across the Grotto, making strange barking noises as they came. Their reddish scales were dull, their narrow eyes black and wicked-looking, and the curved talons on their scaly feet looked sharp enough to easily eviscerate the soft, doughy flesh of my helpless gnomes.
But the kobolds weren’t attacking. Instead, when they reached the settlement, they began darting between the shabby tents, snatching up wandering gnomes and then immediately retreating with their prizes tucked underneath their red-scaled arms.
‘What’s going on, Ket? What do I do?’
To my dismay, the gnomes did not fight back, nor did they even attempt to run away. Some fell to their knees at the sight of the oncoming brutes, but most simply stood still and allowed themselves to be carried off. Not one of them made so much as a noise of protest. It was all happening so quickly.
‘There isn’t much we can do, Corey. Not right now, anyway.’ Ket sounded sad, as resigned to what was going on as the gnomes were to their own fate.
One of the kobolds, taller and burlier than the others, barked out a command. Immediately, the remaining kobolds – those who hadn’t already run away with their gnomish spoils – skulked back out of the settlement and toward the tunnel entrance whence they’d first appeared, some with gnomes slung over their shoulders, others without. They all yipped and growled like dogs as they barreled back across the cavern.
Their commander followed more slowly, staring around arrogantly as though daring any of the remaining gnomes to challenge it. For a moment its gaze seemed to linger on my gem, small and distant though it was, and I felt a flicker of fear. What if it could see me? What if it decided to take the purple shiny for itself?
Finally, though, the kobold commander let out one last bark and darted into the tunnel after its kin.
The faint yipping echoes from the tunnel faded, and for a time there was silence in the cavern. Gradually, the gnomes who’d fallen to the ground began to pick themselves up. They walked back to their tents in a daze, or returned to whatever they’d been doing before the kobolds arrived. At least a dozen of their fellows had just been taken. Their lethargic reactions seemed… wrong. How could they be so damned apathetic?
Ket sensed my incredulity. ‘As you can see, your denizens are accustomed to these sorts of raids,’ she said quietly. ‘Hence their low numbers and lack of morale.’
This wouldn’t do. This wouldn’t do at all. I hadn’t even had chance to convert them to the Church of Corey yet, and now a full fifth of the population was gone. There now looked to be barely eighty gnomes remaining in
the Grotto.
‘We have to make sure this doesn’t happen again,’ I said, trying to sound determined rather than unnerved.
‘I agree,’ said Ket. ‘Poor things.’
Poor me, I wanted to say, but a commotion in the mushroom patch caught my attention.
One of the kobolds – a straggler left behind by the main horde – had found Gneil and dragged him out from his hiding spot amongst the mushrooms. My disciple cowered before his captor, who kicked him hard in the ribs. Crocodilian jaws set into a smirk, the kobold easily hefted Gneil and slung him over its shoulder like a sack of flour.
I thought wildly of using Growth, of creating a forest of towering mushrooms that would fall in front of the kobold thug and stop it in its tracks. But there was no way I had enough mana to accomplish anything of the sort. Though I had three available globes now, the third – which had appeared the instant I reached tier three – was still empty, as was most of the second globe, despite the mana I’d regained from Granny and Gneil’s recent worship.
Damn those kobolds for interrupting it!
Down in the mushroom patch, the kobold carrying Gneil had just turned to face the tunnel when Granny lurched out from behind a mushroom. Arms outstretched, a shovel clutched in both hands, she dove toward the enemy’s legs with a hoarse cry.
The shovel connected with the back of the kobold’s left knee with a satisfying crunch. The kobold gave a bloodcurdling yowl and dropped to one knee, Gneil shifting dangerously on its shoulder.
‘Yes!’
Triumph flared inside me. But as Granny straightened up and moved in for another blow, the kobold twisted and grabbed her wrists with its free hand. Its claws sank in and blood welled over her skin, but she did not cry out, not even when the kobold got to its feet, lifting her off the ground by her pinned wrists. It bared knife-sharp teeth in Granny’s face, then with seemingly little effort, flung her at the nearest mushroom.
Granny flew through the air, limbs flailing. She smashed against the mushroom’s stalk and then crumpled to the ground where she lay, unmoving.
