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Etho was already on-edge after that battle against Gusion. He’d barely made it out with half a heart after already sacrificing a follower to come back. Maybe he really wasn’t meant for this whole vessel thing, maybe The One Who Waits had bad judgment. Apparently His judgment hadn’t been good with Ratau…
Either way, he sat on the steps to the pentagram and squinted at the new location scribbled onto his map. His followers were all asleep, the farmland was tended to, they had meals waiting for them when they woke up, so… he might as well check out the Spore Grotto. Those mushroom people were kinda cute, a lot cuter than the axolotls in the lighthouse and they made far less annoying noises.
He jumped into the circle and crawled out of the earth in a dimly lit clearing lined with birch trees and mushrooms. Two booths that reminded him of the ones at Pilgrim’s Passage were set up either side of a… He couldn’t tell if it was some sort of ancient skull, or an oversized carapice, and either way it made his skin crawl and his fur stand up. He guessed this was where that Mother Spore person lived…?
As he walked up the path, past a handful of mushroomos who were clustered together, whispering.
“Mother’s been angry, lately,” one of them mumbled.
“Is it because that cat salesman stole all her spores?” another one whispered.
Oh no. He hoped he wasn’t walking into something terrible.
He crossed the threshold into Mother Spore’s home and was immediately hit by how damp the air was. It was dark, and it smelled like mold and rotting fruit. He held back on the urge to cover his nose as his eyes adjusted. The back of the cave looked… lumpy? Like it had half-caved in.
“Oh, Little Fox! I’ve been expecting you!” Mother Spore chirped.
Etho sucked in a breath as his vision slowly cleared. Mother Spore was an ant. Not just any ant, of course not, she was a fucking queen ant. Slowly, her figure blinked into focus, and what he’d thought were boulders were actually her abdomen and thorax. She was hunched over the ground, her arms splayed out beside hers—she took up at least half of the room. She wore a faded purple cloak that looked more fitting for an ant half her size, and a purple-capped mushroom sprouted from between her eyes.
One arm beckoned him closer, and she grinned.
“Come on, I don’t bite.”
Etho shuffled closer, his tail between his legs. The closer he got, the more he saw little mushrooms had sprouted all over her. Between her joints, from her abdomen, she was covered in them.
She giggled, clicking her top two arms together. “Greetings, Little Fox. You can call me Mother Spore. I used to be a researcher of all things mushroom, but…” She sighed, gesturing to her swollen, fungus-ridden body. “Life called, and I’m quite immobile now.
“That doesn’t mean I’ve lost my passion, oh no no! I live my life for one goal, and one goal only: To spread spores.” Her beady eyes flashed purple, and Etho reflexively stumbled backwards a step.
“Say, you’re familiar with spreading word, right? I see that crown on your head.” She leaned closer, her movement jagged and lurching. It took all of Etho’s willpower to stand still as she tapped an arm against the Red Crown. “Do me a favor. Bring me mushrooms. I keep telling my followers to gather them for me, but they keep going missing. Bring me mushrooms, and I’ll show you how to take full advantage of them.”
She leaned back against the wall, almost melding with it, and Etho slowly backed up.
“Bye now, come back soon!”
He scrambled out of the cave and burst back into the clearing. He was never going back in there, he hoped Mother Spore rotted. He needed Holy Talisman fragments, but not that badly.
…Well, he didn’t have much use for the mycelium spores he was finding in Anura. Maybe he just got off on the wrong foot. The Red Crown declared that one of his followers had eaten grass and gotten sick, and he sighed. He quickly jumped into the circle and headed back to his cult.