The mycelia were made of layers of spongy fungus knitted together into branching limbs and soft cores. They were nothing like anything Silas had seen before with their moist, red-and-green skin which was white-speckled and dotted with holes. They were bipedal and humanoid, similarly sized as Silas but lacking any distinct features that made them unique from one another. Although they had roughly shaped faces, he failed to find any functional eyes, ears, or noses on them since all their features instead appeared ornamental, only their mouths functional. In their hands, they wielded thin wooden bows which they used to fire spindly arrows on their foes.

While there were two score ratmen on one side, there were only four mycelia against them, although they were aided by creatures of other races. It was when Silas looked closer that he realised that these other races were actually living corpses: the ogres had critical cuts; the ratkin were missing limbs; the nymphs had carved out chests; and there was even an eviscerated human with a cleaved-open stomach. However, they all at least had intact heads with thick clusters of sickly yellow mushrooms bursting out of their openings. To say the least, it was a horrifying sight, and Silas could only guess that the corpses were being controlled by these clusters in their heads.

But since there were only twenty living corpses on their side, the mycelia were still outnumbered. However, this seemed not to matter as the corpses fought with frightening vehemence as if they were spiteful against the world which had allowed them to be born again. They surrounded their mycelic masters and protected them from the ratkin attacks, willingly losing limbs and rotting flesh over it. Usually at this point Silas would have intervened and aided the side he was more sympathetic to, but right now his feet rooted themselves to the ground as he looked at the ratkin with hatred and mycelia with revulsion. Bandit didn’t appear as affected by the sight, but the owl didn’t fly forward to harass the ratkin since it saw Silas was watching still.

Without warning, the protective circle around the mycelia split open and two corpses, one an ogre and the other a ratman, sprinted into the ratkin’s midst. Although Silas was unfamiliar with the mycelia, he recognised their tactic at once and immediately knew what was about to happen. Both of the corpses which had charged forward looked different from the others since their skin was mostly intact and positively bulging as if their dead flesh was dangerously swelling inside. And it was so as the ogre was the first to blow, its skin suddenly ripping and causing an explosion of murky flesh which splattered over the surrounding ratkin. Its flesh must have been highly caustic as it burnt the ratkin where they stood, bubbling down their bodies before they even had a chance to scream, tearing them all down into a puddle of fetid body parts. The ratman corpse shortly followed in a smaller explosion. The stench which travelled downwind was as foul as foul could get and threw Silas into a coughing fit.

Meanwhile, the ratkin’s order collapsed as they turned tail one by one, fleeing for their lives, allowing the living corpses to chase after them and the mycelia to take shots at them. It wasn’t but two minutes later that all the surviving ratkin had left the scene, only the mycelia and their undead thralls remaining.

Silas had moved somewhat upwind in search of his breath, when he turned and saw the fight had finished. He gulped, his throat burning with lingering sickness, and he considered making contact with the mycelia, only to realise half a second later that he truly didn’t want to ally with these fungal creatures. They were so alien and repulsive to him that he didn’t even want to attempt at diplomacy with them. All the same, just as he was about to order Bandit to leave with him, the mycelia and their thralls turned in his direction in a co-ordinated motion, all staring creepily right at him although he was dozens of metres away hidden behind cover.

He had no idea what they wanted with him, nor did he want to find out, so he immediately dashed away, followed by Bandit who flapped soundlessly beside him as he rushed through the undergrowth. He only stopped some minutes later when he became certain that they weren’t following him. Bracing his arms against a tree, he spat the sourness from his mouth until it felt as dry as a pavement under a summer sun. He breathed deeply through his nose in a form of meditation, while a sheen of sweat emerged over his face. Although he struggled to trust Kore’s judgement, the satyr having been an enemy leader and all, he found himself agreeing with him now in that the mycelia weren’t to be allied with. They simply lacked the hint of humanity that had been present in even the Order and shaerds; the mycelia were, in contrast, truly monstrous in both appearance and abilities.

All the same, the scene had been incredibly useful in giving him an idea of how the mycelia had resisted the ratkin for so long despite being located so close: they could literally raise the bodies of their enemies from the dead to fight for them again. He recalled that most of the corpses had been from races belonging to the Order of Tyr or from the ratkin themselves with only a single one from the humans, which made sense of why Kore had hated them. Regardless, it put Riverside in a bad spot as it meant they would have to wipe out both the mycelia and the ratkin to make the area safe, else the fungal creatures would just raise their foes once more.

This made Silas’s scouting duties all the more crucial as they would need all the information they could get on the two factions if they were to succeed. With this in mind, he started forging forwards once more with Bandit, every few hours ordering the owl to soar into the sky and check for structures protruding out of the canopy when he thought they were relatively safe. Despite this, they still failed to find the ratkin base, although they did come across far more combat sites, some old but many recent, nearly all of them littered with ratkin limbs and greasy tufts of hair, as well as troops of mushrooms across the ground and mould over nearby plants and limbs.

By making a mental note of these sites, Silas soon gained an idea of where the border of the mycelia began and where it clashed with ratkin borders. Needless to say, he and Bandit also chanced on many more live clashes, although they never stayed long enough to watch till the endings like their first time. Whilst the sight of the mycelia and their thralls continued to sicken him, there was one massive benefit to catching these fights as they finally gave him the confidence to attack the ratkin. After all, it was clear that the vermin leaders would hardly have the time or resources to launch a manhunt for him when they had far more urgent issues knocking on their door.

Fortunately, he and Bandit came upon suitable targets soon after his decision - a troop of five armoured ratmen patrolling through the forest. Bandit went first, swooping silently over them, and catching one unaware, hauling it up by its shoulders with its legs swinging. The owl’s claws dug into its flesh, and the ratman’s fellows rushed to nock their bows and save him. In their moment of distraction, however, came Silas, using his pistol to fire upon them rapidly. His aim wasn’t the best, but he still tagged three of them on their armour, stealing their attention with his gunfire.

Right then, Bandit flapped back over them and released its hostage. The ratman screamed as it plummeted forty metres to the ground, crashing into two of its fellows with a nasty crunch. With so much happening so quickly, the last two ratkin broke under the pressure and looked to run, but they only made a handful of steps before Bandit tore off the head of one, and Silas tripped up the other with the shaft of his spear. This was the last surviving one as Bandit got to silencing the others.

The ratman scrambled back on its hands, but Silas loomed over it, striking its legs and grounding it with a single stroke. He kept it alive, though, for the time.

“I’ve got some questions,” Silas said, glowering down.

“I… Aah…” the ratman said it between hasty breaths, its eyes betraying its fear as tears trickled down its hairy face.

“You’re going to decide now whether you want a painful death or a painless one. All up to you,” Silas informed it, slowly bringing his spear to rest on its navel, the spearpoint balancing on the ratman’s armour.

The ratman struggled to calm itself for speech, the pain from its cut legs holding a chokehold on its mind. However, it found its voice again when Bandit drifted down next to Silas, its ferocious claws red and wet. It stared down with electric eyes, eating away at the ratman’s willpower. “Kill me quickly, please. And by your spear, human, not by this beast.”

“Sure,” Silas replied, raising his spear somewhat. “But for that, you’ll have to answer some questions first. Let’s start with where your base is.”

The prospect of betraying its kin must have haunted the ratman as it gulped, but a brief hoot from Bandit was enough for it to remember its priorities. “Head straight from here for ten minutes, and you’ll find the burrow.”

Silas raised his eyebrows and clicked his tongue. No wonder Bandit hadn’t seen any structures from the sky; the ratkin had built their base underground. “How many ratmen do you have there?”

“Two thousand.”

He frowned at this, lowering his spear again until its point glinted above the ratman’s face. “Don’t lie to me. I can make your death very painful if—”

“I’m not lying,” the ratman shouted, interrupting, its chest heaving with fright. “Two thousand, that’s what we have, all we have.”

But that would mean Riverside already outnumbered the ratkin base. Silas hadn’t thought such a prospect possible with how threatening the ratkin had always been, and so hearing this was like seeing the frightening monster in the dark getting declawed and muzzled. “Are there any other ratkin bases in the area, then?”

“No. The closest is two weeks away on foot.” The ratman’s voice was weakening now, its eyelids growing heavier. Silas didn’t know whether his attacks had been too grievous or whether it was just the vermin’s fear doing it in, but either way he didn’t want it dead yet.

He chewed his lip in thought, then sighed and fetched a potion from his rucksack. He passed it to the ratman to drink, threatening it when it briefly hesitated. Once it was done, Silas knocked the ratman out with a swift strike to the head with the butt of his spear. What he had done could be considered a waste of his resources, but he felt this ratman was too loose with its mouth to simply let go off: who knew, perhaps the other ratkin were all tight-lipped and this was his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to extract as much information as he could.

Silas was about to tell Bandit to find a nearby cave or secluded spot where they could interrogate the ratman when suddenly a more ambitious and risky thought entered his mind: what if he carried it all the way back to Riverside and allowed Elise to ask directly exactly what she wanted? He was sure Rolf and Amara would also think of many other things that he would otherwise overlook, so this only made the idea all the more enticing.

Sighing once more, Silas turned to Bandit. “Keep low and try to find a secluded spot where we can momentarily keep him. I’m going to go see if he was speaking the truth, and whether it’s worth taking him back to Riverside.”