“Didn’t see that coming,” Golgh said staring where the Displacer Beast vanished with the hairless and tongueless hag. “Well, now what?” he asked looking to Varghul and Benison.

The Adventurers looked about in the effervescent mushroom grove. Black all around them, endless deep black that seemed to thicken the longer they looked at it.

“What about up?” Varghul said pointing to the largest of the mushrooms that rose like a tower to the sky. Around its stem, shelf mushrooms, four times the size as their boots, spiraled up on the glowing stem. The smell of chicken was stronger than ever.

“Why do they smell like chicken?” Benison asked.

“They taste like it too,” Golgh said.  Varghul and Benison looked to the Dragonborn .  “It’s Laetiporus,” Golgh said. “Chicken Mushroom. It’s a genus of mushroom that smells and tastes like chicken.”

“How do you know?” Varghul said.

“I know,” Golgh said and began to collect the strands of silver he had cut from the hag’s head.

“Can we eat it? Varghul asked.

“Sure,” Golgh said keeping his back to the Human and Elf.  “You can eat all of the mushrooms here.”

Varghul opened his bags and fell to his knees to begin collecting the countless groves. “But most of them will kill you,” Golgh added.

Benison stopped with his hand on a cluster of shell looking ‘shrooms.  “Can you identify these,” he asked.

Golgh simply nodded.

“That’s ghost fungus,” Golgh said pointing to the white shell fungus Benison has his hand on. “That will kill you.” Benison snapped his hand away.

“Jack-o’-lantern,” Golgh said pointing to the green glowing mushroom where the hag had been gathering spores. “And honey fungus,” he said, nodding to a grove of umbrella shaped fungus nearly a foot tall. “The honey fungus is edible, but, if taken with alcohol, will make you puke.  Hard.”

Varghul was already gathering up specimens of the jack-o’lantern and shoving them into his bag.

“What are you doing?” Benison asked.

“Collecting ingredients to make poisonous arrows,” Varghul said carefully harvesting the grove.

“What about these?” Benison asked indicating the tallest of mushrooms that towered overhead.

“Amanita,” Golgh said. “Don’t touch it.”

* * *

After several minutes, their bags were bulging with honey and chicken mushrooms and a plethora of poisonous mushrooms were carefully bottled, bagged, or wrapped.

“Up then?” Benison said.

The Adventures peered up the stem of the tallest amanita encompassed with chicken mushroom stairs.

“Up then,” Varghul said and slid his foot onto the luminescent shelf. He bounced his foot, testing its strength and began climbing once he confirmed it would sustain his weight. Golgh and Benison followed, making their way around the shelves.

Up they climbed, their path lit by way of the mushroom stairs, winding their ascent around the mushroom until the ground glowed green far below. A clicking gave Varghul pause.

 

Back to Last Chapter The Eladrin Stones: Chapter 5

On to Next Chapter The Eladrin Stones: Chapter 7