As the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in fiery streaks of orange and purple, the children headed toward the fields. The village lights were a warm, comforting glow behind them, a beacon of the people they were fighting for.
But the silence of the fields ahead was a cold, alien thing. It felt like walking into a trap, a place where the rules of the world they knew had been twisted into something unrecognizable. The mission seemed simple, but as they stepped into the vast, dark emptiness, they couldn't shake the feeling that they were walking into a story they only had half the pages of.
The moon was a sickle of bone in the dark sky, casting long, distorted shadows across the desolate fields. A cool wind, smelling of dirt and decay, rustled through the dead corn stalks.
Low's senses were on high alert, the low hum of her werebear curse a constant thrum beneath her skin. She sniffed the air, her sharp nose twitching. A faint, sweet-sour magical scent reached her.
"Over there," she whispered, pointing towards the center of the fields. "Faint magic. But it's not… dark. It's more like a tired echo."
Leonotis knelt, his hand hovering over the cracked, thirsty soil. He reached out with his plant magic, sending a gentle, pulsing energy down into the ground. But all he felt was emptiness.
It was the feeling of a thousand living things snuffed out. A deep, sorrowful ache that resonated in his very core. The pain was so intense it made his vision blur. This wasn't just a blight; it was a wound in the very soul of the land.
"It feels wrong," he said quietly, his voice heavy. "Like the plants were violently forced to give up their life."
Jacqueline, who had been muttering under her breath, suddenly pointed. "Look!"
In the distance, a group of small, glowing figures moved among the fields. They were no bigger than children, their bodies a soft, ethereal luminescence that pulsed with a gentle rhythm. They weren't tearing the plants out, as the elder had claimed. Instead, they were delicately touching the soil, some even attempting to re-sow seeds, their movements desperate and hurried.
"The Siyawesi," Low breathed.
The small beings froze at the sound of her voice. Their tiny, insect-like eyes went wide with terror, and then, as one, they darted away. Their glowing forms flickered before vanishing into the darkness. They weren't malicious; they were afraid.
Zombiel lifted a hand, wanting to help. A small flame, no bigger than a firefly, flickered into existence. He intended it to float and light their way. But instead, as if caught by an unseen current, the flame was pulled downward. It didn't fizzle out; it was consumed by the ground. The tiny orange light sank into the soil, swallowed whole by something unseen.
"Woah," he muttered, his eyes wide.
Jacqueline pulled a small vial of water from her belt. Holding it out, she whispered an incantation. A miniature rain cloud formed above her palm. But the water that fell was not pure. It was murky, foul-smelling—like rusted iron and poison.
When it struck the ground, it didn't soak in. Instead, it sizzled, turning black, leaving a smoking crater the size of a coin.
"This isn't a magical plague," she said, her voice trembling with horror. "Something is corrupting the magic itself."
They pressed on, guided by the remnants of the strange energy. Soon, they stumbled upon a grotesque patch of growth. Glowing purple mushrooms pushed up through the dry soil, pulsing with a sick, unholy light.
Leonotis gasped, a cold dread tightening his chest. He had seen these before. Once attached to the body of a fox he and Gethii had healed at his village shrine. Another time, clustered grotesquely on the back of the giant spider they had fought together.
"Don't touch them," Leonotis warned, his voice low and urgent. "I know what these are. They're parasites that drive creatures insane."
Jacqueline, who had been about to reach for one, jerked her hand back as though burned.
"Gethii called them berserk mushrooms," Leonotis continued, his eyes fixed on the pulsing fungi. "But he said these were different."
Jacqueline's eyes widened in shock. "It could be from a potent rot," she whispered. "But these… these are far worse than I imagined. They seem to be feeding on life energy. And they're spreading through magic itself."
Zombiel stared at the mushrooms, unease tightening his undead frame. He had faced many horrors in the graveyard. But this was different. This wasn't a monster to slay. It was something worse. A silent, insidious disease.
They followed the trail of fungi, the glowing clusters thickening as they walked. At last, they reached the source.
A vast, swirling sea of parasitic mushrooms spread out before them, clustered around a massive, smooth stone that jutted up from the middle of the field. The rock was unnatural, an intruder in the farmland. Upon its surface, a faint, shimmering field of magic pulsed.
"A magical ward," Low said, her instincts sharp as claws. "And a powerful one."
Jacqueline stepped closer, her eyes narrowing as she traced the barely visible runes etched into the stone's surface.
"It's a barrier spell," she murmured, her suspicion rising with every word. "It's not meant to keep something out. It's meant to hold something in."
She pointed to the soil around the mushrooms. At the edges of the infected area, a few green shoots struggled to push through. But the ward itself seemed to siphon away their fragile life force, feeding it into the mushrooms.
Her voice dropped to a whisper. "The ward isn't protecting the land. It's feeding the corruption."