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Chip gave a cough, bringing his fist up to his mouth to muffle it as the sickly sweet stench of this forest filled his nostrils. The smell was nearly giving him a headache and making him want to get out of this place as soon as possible.
Squishy mushroom plants sprouted from the ground and grew nearly up to his mid-calf in certain places. They were brightly colored and bulbous which must’ve been the source of the smell. Either that or the overgrown flowers that they passed by on occasion.
But it was mostly mushrooms. A lot of mushrooms. They practically waded through an ocean of different-sized mushrooms as the sticky goo that dripped from their plump heads rubbed off on Chip’s legs.
Even the trees seemed to be mushrooms, tall and thick bumpy stems that had a yellowish-white discoloration. The underneath of the tops were segmented with ridges that spread from the center. And even though Chip has never really picked up a mushroom and looked at it from the other side, he was sure that it was a mushroom.
Bright colors surrounded them on almost every side as the mix of the sunlight spilling in through the tops of the mushrooms (was even the sun brighter here too?) reflected the countless over-saturated colors of the flora. What he could see of the grass even seemed brighter than normal, like someone had watered it extra good yesterday.
Every time they brushed against a mushroom or gods forbid they stepped on one, a cloud of some sort of multi-colored dust puffed in the air.
Chip’s headache throbbed, and irritability bubbled in his chest as he stared at the back of Gillion’s head. They had been walking for what seemed like hours, Chip was tired and sore and he figured that at least Jay felt the same.
Not to mention that in his excitement, Gillion has taken the lead of the group which under normal circumstances, Chip wouldn’t care about at all. But it was the fact that Gillion’s tail, that swished back and forth with a content gait as he walked, kept disrupting a wide arc of mushrooms and puffing up the colored fumes.
Chip coughed once more, a bitter and sharp taste filling his mouth as he inhaled a large bit of the cloud. He swept his hand in a short arc around his mouth and nose, trying to fan away the worst of the cloud.
He grumbled under his breath, spitting off to the side in an attempt to rid the disgusting taste.
“That’s disgusting,” Jay commented under her breath with a small scoff from just behind Chip.
“Shut up,” Chip growled back, not even bothering to turn around to look at her. He furrowed his eyebrows and clenched his jaw. His headache only seemed to get worse the longer they spent in this forest.
Suddenly, and without warning, Gillion stopped dead in his tracks, causing Chip to run into his back. Chip took a few steps backward and spluttered, grumbling under his breath. He was about to say something about Gillion stopping without warning but then Chip looked up to see that Gillion’s face was tilted towards the direction to their left.
The Triton’s ears twitched and flicked like he was trying to hear something as a serious expression contorted his face. His tail had stopped wagging and dropped to the fungus-covered ground. A clawed hand twitched in the direction of his sword.
Chip knew that look.
Without giving Gillion the time, Chip grabbed his arm in a grip that in hindsight might’ve been too tight. That got Gillion out of his stupor.
“There is something in that direction,” Gillion insisted, breaking his intense gaze in the distance to look over at Chip, “we must vanquish the evil.”
“No, Gill,” Chip said firmly, an unusual frustration bubbling up at the back of his throat, “we’re getting out of here.”
Gillion said nothing, his lip twitching into a small frown. He looked back at the distance, reaching towards his sword, fingers wrapping around the hilt. Chip gripped his arm tighter.
“Gillion, no,” Chip somehow manages to say even firmer, an uncharacteristic bite lacing his tone, “you always do this. You run off in some direction because you claim to smell evil. All it does is drag us along and get us hurt because you think you have some noble justice to fulfill. So, stop.”
Gillion’s eyes widened at the sudden outburst, a flush of blue spreading across his cheeks that Chip mistook as embarrassment. Chip felt a hand squeeze his shoulder. He looked over, a small part of his clouded mind thinking that maybe Jay would even agree with him.
“Chip, that’s enough,” Jay warned sharply and seemed like she was about to go on in Gillion’s defense when the Triton cut her off.
“And what do you know about duties?” Gillion asked, taking a step towards Chip with his teeth slightly bared, “what do you know about taking oaths and following them? What do you know about telling the truth and committing? All I’ve ever known you for is your lies, and your tricks.”
Gillion leaned his face close to Chip’s, his eyes burning with uncanny rage that Chip in the future would reflect on and realize that wasn’t normal for Gillion. But at the moment he didn’t care about that.
He didn’t even get the chance to shoot something back when Jay quickly yanked Chip back by the shoulder.
“Enough you two, let’s keep going,” she heaved a sigh, her nails digging into Chip’s skin.
“Oh, and you think you’re so high and mighty?” Chip broke away from her grasp, turning to glare at Jay, “thinking you’re better than us because you used to be navy? Did you used to have a crew that you commanded and listened to your every call? You always try and act so stuck up and responsible all the time it’s annoying.”
“Well sorry that someone has to before you get yourself killed ,” Jay shot back, wrinkling her nose as she looked down at Chip.
“It’s not like you’re any good in a fight anyway,” Chip hissed, “so what are you gonna do to keep us from getting killed? Why do you even care? You’re navy.”
“I turned away from that life a long time ago,” Jay insisted, fumbling for her defense while the anger still was visible on her face.
“And yet you lied to us about being a spy,” Gillion brought up, his ears flaring out around his head as he almost seemed to stand up straighter, “you lied to us. And you shot me.”
“And you somehow can’t manage to do anything right on the surface, everything you do ends in some sort of failure that we have to pick up the pieces for. You have no idea what you’re doing and you always somehow manage to make things worse,” Jay clenched her hands into fists, tensing her shoulders, “I can see why your people banished you. You’re too much of a hassle than you’re worth, even for a supposed prophecy that you don’t even know you’re a part of.”
Gillion’s reaction was immediate, he took a step back like Jay’s words had physically hurt him. His ears pinned back against his skull and his shoulders trembled. Chip looked from Gillion to Jay, another spark of anger flickering in his chest.
“And you only used us for your revenge plot or whatever that was because you don’t know how to move on,” Chip spread his hands in a wide gesture, stepping on a mushroom as he got closer to Jay. Jay pressed her lips into a thin line, hunching her shoulders as she scrunched her expression. Her cheeks and neck had gotten spotted with red blotches the longer this argument went on.
“Like you wouldn’t do the same,” she hissed through gritted teeth, “and what is this whole group then? Just your excuse to run after Arlin and find them. What then? What happens when you find him, if you find him? You just gonna run off and leave us to fend for ourselves? You’re using us as much as I used you. You never learned how to move on just as much as I never did.”
“And like you wouldn’t run off back to your father the moment he gave that little command,” Chip’s heart pounded wildly in his chest and he made a small gesture with his hand like he was ringing a bell, taunting Jay.
Jay’s chest heaved with her pants, and Chip could see tears welling in the corners of her eyes.
“Maybe if you were a more competent captain you would’ve realized that one of your crew members was a spy,” Jay said, “you’re a worthless pirate.”
“You’re a worthless navy spy.”
Jay panted hard, her entire body shaking with how hard she was breathing. Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes and she hastily reached up to scrub them away.
And then Chip, in a cloud of not thinking right and blinded by his own anger, hissed towards Jay before turning around, “go cry to your father.”
He grabbed Gillion’s arm—who, until this moment, had been standing blankly and oddly quiet after Jay’s final comment to him—and began to drag the Triton in the direction that they had been going previously, making sure to keep one hand tightly around his arm. Gillion made no move to resist or break out of the grasp, his tail dragging limply behind him as he walked. Chip could hear the sounds of his chest rattling but besides that he was quiet.
Chip wasn’t much in the mood for conversation either, he didn’t want to think what would come out of his mouth if he tried to talk. Anger still caused his heart to pound wildly in his chest but the pang of guilt just started to curl its vice grip around his lungs.
He didn’t even turn back over his shoulder to see if Jay was following them.
She probably wasn’t.
After a few minutes of walking, Gillion pulled his arm away from Chip, curling his hands around his torso. The mushrooms below their feet were getting sparser and more spread out as they started to reach the edge of the forest. But Gillion’s stopping once again caused Chip to stop. He let out a slow breath, already feeling a tad frustrated.
“I’m…” Gillion opened and closed his mouth a few times as he tried to settle on what to say, his ears had not come unpinned the entire time they had been watching, “I’m going… going to go back and… and find Jay.”
“Whatever,” Chip exhaled sharply, “be my guest.”
Gillion nodded once, then another time for emphasis, and began to slowly back away from where they were standing. He spun around, his tail swishing a wide arch as he did so. The triton practically scrambled off in the direction that they had just come from, his shoulders hunched and his tail tucked close to his body.
Chip watched him leave for a few seconds before turning back to continue. He didn’t need to bother with waiting up for them, they’d find each other eventually. They knew where the ship was.