Suddenly, I felt a slight breeze touch the hairs on the back of my head. Instinctively, I ducked down the tiniest bit, which probably saved my life - what was meant to be a fatal slash for my neck instead hit the lower back of my head. A massive bat had used the opportunity to attack me from behind… but even though it was painful and bloody, it was not a killing stroke.

“Fuck!” I screamed and jumped toward the big mushroom for some protection. The spider used the momentary reprieve to get upright and promptly scuttled closer, angrily clicking its fangs.

Slowly, I backed away from the spider, holding my truncheon out to keep it at bay, all the while scanning the surrounding for the gargantuan bat. Which turned out to be all the distraction the spider needed – with a sudden burst of speed it lunged right at me. Desperately, and relying more on instinct than anything else, I swept my truncheon across and redirected the fangs toward the mushroom. The soft, fleshy stem of the mushroom offered little resistance, and the oversized teeth slid in most of the way.

Sensing an opportunity, I began to slam my truncheon at the base of the spider’s head, driving the fangs even deeper into the stem, feverishly hoping that the bat had flown away. Not that there was another choice, really – I needed to kill the spider or hurt it badly enough; otherwise, it would keep on coming after me.

Alas, I was out of luck. Sensing the opening, the bat slammed into me, shredding my back with its razor-sharp claws, while taking a bite out of my neck with its needle-like teeth.

I realized that this was probably it. Not that I would give up, Far from it. I would fight until my last breath. But there was no way I could combat both of these creatures at the same time under the current conditions.

Raging against the inevitable, I hammered my elbow into the bat, while slamming my truncheon into the partially cracked spot on the spider’s carapace. But my hits lacked the strength to inflict severe damage, due to the awkward angle I found myself in. Blood loss from the wounds inflicted by the bat did its part as well, and I could feel my legs and arms slowly turn lethargic and cold.

And then, out of the sudden, I felt weightless and stopped caring. So what if my back was shredded by a freaking bat or a spider the size of a dog was squirming in front of me to get its fangs out of the bloody giant mushroom? Death? Suffering? Oblivion? Those were all meaningless words, lost in the warm glow around me, and the comforting softness cradling me like a baby.

Wait. What the fuck? What was I even thinking?

Was I like… freaking high? It sure reminded me of that. Before I had become a quadriplegic, I had smoked the occasional joint, and it had given me a similar feeling. Only… I had been at a party, a place to relax and have a good time with friends and all that shit. Not like in the middle of a fight – especially one that I was about to lose.

But it was such a nice feeling… it reminded me of the summer days with Jolene, my first love. My parents had dragged me to the beach in South Carolina – beautiful, white sand, the water perfectly clear, and nothing to do. And I mean nothing. As a single child, I always had to find people to do stuff with, which usually meant that I had to form those temporary vacation friendships wherever we traveled to. But this time there was no one around, only retirees or people with small children… until Jolene showed up.

Slowly, I slid off the spider onto the ground, remembering how Jolene and I had found that spot in the dunes, protected from the wind, and hidden from sight.

It was blissful.

Her soft lips on my mouth, her warm thighs, slight goosebumps on her arms and legs, the pain in my neck…

Fuck!

With a jolt, I regained clarity. I was laying on the floor, face pressed into the abdomen of the spider. I jerked my face back, spitting in disgust. And then I noticed a beautiful cloud of dancing lights all around me.

Well, perhaps not dancing, it was more like falling lights. Drifting slowly through the air. Like little crystals, some with a bit of an orange tinge, others more of a purple color. I could also see the bat and the spider, prone bodies on the ground.

Just like when Jolene and I had fallen asleep that one time, the warmth of the summer sun and the… shit. What was going on? Why were there fucking crystals floating through the air? That didn’t even make any sense.

And then I realized that it was not crystals as I had first thought, but instead something more like spores, some glowing softly with amber, others with purple mana. And as I watched, I saw more spores dislodged from the cap of the mushroom, slowly drifting down toward the three of us. And it didn’t feel as if their drifting was random either…. It was as if they were sentient.

As I watched the spores floating down, my mind slowly became more sluggish again, and I felt myself relax. The spores gently touched down on the bodies of the spider and the bat, and I saw mushrooms grow out of them at an unbelievable pace, digging their roots right into the flesh, and I admired the beauty of their structure and the mama pulsing th-…

“Goddammit, Daniel. Focus!” I cursed in a slurred voice.

With a supreme amount of effort, I focused my attention back on the spores. And finally, I managed to move my body ever so slightly. I knew that I needed to get away from the mushroom, otherwise, sooner or later, I was going to get overwhelmed, not to mention the roots that were probably digging into my own flesh as I was laying there.

I pushed my will against the calming effect of the spores, imagining all the most violent and horrifying experiences of my life, in an effort to regain complete faculty over my limbs. Halfway, I noticed a blue box popping open, but with a snarl, I swiped it away.

Groaning I got on my knees and started crawling away. I knew that I needed to hurry - the spider had already small mushrooms all over its abdomen and head, and the bat had them sprouting right out of its face.

After what felt like a hundred yards, but was only three or four at best, I slumped to the ground. Time to get rid of those roots, before I’d become mushroom fertilizer…

Wincing from the pain, I reached with my hand to my neck and could feel a bunch of mushrooms growing there, each at a size of one to four inches. My hand was shaking a bit as I grabbed one of them and pulled hard. The pain was excruciating, and I slumped forward to the ground semi-conscious. Bile rose to my mouth, and I spat weakly.

Looking down at my hand, I was able to make out a two-inch mushroom with bloody, partially torn off roots. At least I assumed that the viscous liquid covering the roots was my blood – it was hard to make out with my Mana Vision. As I watched, the roots wiggled around, reaching toward the closest food source, which happened to be my hand. With a scream of revulsion, I tossed the tiny mushroom away from me as far as I could.

Cold, clammy sweat covered my whole body, and pulses of pain shot into my brain from my back and neck. Whenever the spikes of pain wracked my body, the muscles in my arms and legs spasmed, causing me to writhe on the ground, while groaning in pain.

In between the torturous pain, I attempted to come up with a different strategy, since it was obvious to me that I was never going to be able to tear out all of the mushrooms without dying in the process. For that matter, most likely, I wouldn’t even be able to get a good enough grip on the ones on my back to rip them out. I also had to consider the issue of what would happen with those roots remaining in my body. That couldn’t be good either. Would they keep on growing? Or rot in there? Either one would surely kill me in the long run.

But then again… I was already on a clock because of the leftover spiderlings in my arm.

Which reminded me of how I had dealt with them… perhaps the same was possible with the mushrooms?

After some struggle to even out my breathing, I activated Mana Vision and studied what was going on inside of my body. As before, the silver and black mana cycled through my body in a beautiful figure eight. But on my head, neck, and back, I could also see the mushrooms, or rather the amber mana of the root portions of the mushrooms, which were digging ever deeper into my body - most of the roots were already about the length of my hand, and inching their way closer to my heart.

Following the same strategy as with the spiderlings, I created a web of silver mana tightly around one of the roots. And then I pushed with all my might to squeeze the fuck out of the thing. And whereas the spiderlings had been tough nuts to crack, the roots felt almost impossible.

But screw ‘impossible.’

It was ‘do or die,’ and I refused to be mushroom fodder.

But no matter how hard I pressed down on the roots, I didn’t manage to kill them. In a bid of desperation, I added some black mana into the silver net, and immediately I noticed a change – I was not sure what the black mana did, but it somehow made the roots more susceptible to my pressure. At first, the only effect was that the roots felt more agitated, but within a couple of seconds, I noticed bulbous swellings develop alongside the root. Encouraged, I pushed even harder, and soon, the nodes started bursting and released soft glowing amber into the surrounding flesh.

“Hell yeah! Take that you darn shrooms!” I cackled madly, before turning my energy on the remaining roots.

A couple of hours later and at the end of my mental and physical strength, the last of the roots popped its amber load into me. Which sounds quite gross, in hindsight, almost like ejaculating, but at the time it was the best feeling ever.

I wanted nothing more than lay down and rest, but I was not done yet. The amber mana suffused a good part of my body and slowly moved toward the fulcrum of my mana cycle… as before, I was not sure what would happen if it reached it, but I was afraid that it would be nothing good. And if my past attempt was any indication, this was a unique opportunity to, perhaps, acquire an additional type of mana. Not a chance I was going to miss, especially because, based on my observation when Annie had healed me, amber mana seemed to be related to healing which would hugely increase my odds of making it out of this alive.

Using my Mana Vision, I focused on the interaction of the amber mana and the silver mana, and, as before, noticed that they spiraled around each other, but fraying at the edge. In contrast to earlier, the black mana was now also involved in this structure, forming a complicated-looking triple spiral shape.

Experimentally, I pushed the black mana toward the amber mana to try and fuse them or let them interact with each other, but it was as if I was trying to push like poles against each other – there was a strong force of repulsion that only got stronger when I exerted more effort. The moment I added silver mana into the mix, the three mana types easily arranged themselves into their beautiful spiral pattern and all I had to do was prod the silver and black mana to follow the amber mana whenever it deviated from the given path.

Soon after, the intertwined mana created an irresistible force that sucked the remaining mana into the enhanced cycle.