Dust (Part 3)

He didn't have much time to explain how it worked, but Tuatha was thrilled with the idea and soon bind it and put it on, quickly learning to use it, he looked like a walking tea bag and the sight almost made Nicola laugh in the midst of battle. Tuatha would never forgive him if he knew what Nicola was thinking at that moment.

"Think, Nicola! Think! How do you coerce a plant to do what you want? Hostages? No! Nonsense. With a collective mind, one is all and everyone is one. A slave ring? Even more stupid. How do you put one on one ring in a bunch of spores? They'd just have to cut that part off." He raised ideas after ideas.

'That's it! The collective mind is the key. The army must have infected some of the spores with some kind of slave agent. It would be enough to take control of the entire creature due to the consciousness that the spores share. If I'm right, the slave spores must be somewhere nearby. A place where they are protected from random damage but have enough resources to survive. If it had been a sealed container, in time they would have starved to death.' He started looking for all the places where these spores would be.

All that fog was clouding his senses, Nicola communicated with Tuatha and they decided to put the plan into action together, both began to spread short, weak pulses of black magic around them. Nicola looked like the very incarnation of darkness and Tuatha as an undead had assumed a coloration of black flames emitting pulses that broke the mist around them, making it possible to search for what they were looking for.

"I can't find anything from here" Tuatha yelled. "So if you're right about this theory, the corrupted spores must be somewhere deeper in that base."

'That would explain why the creature didn't attack as soon as the front door was opened. Chances are, if your conscience gets too far away from corruption, the mental link can be broken. He had to wait until we were in position and activated the alarms' Nicola thought.

Tuatha flew above the remaining blue buildings of the place, but kept away from the ceiling. The fungal creature had already proven to be able to manipulate the earth and the fight was already unfair as it was.

Huge waves of spores surrounded Nicola on all sides. They couldn't keep up with his speed, but they didn't have to. The creature slowly collected all its mass, sealing all possible exits with living walls made of spores mixed with earth.

Each of the walls was at least 4 meters thick and continued to expand every second. Their hardness was also increasing, making them able to resist most elemental attacks effortlessly. The joint attack of five of these creatures was nothing to be underestimated, if the two of them loose their attention for a few seconds they could be killed.

Nicola had noticed that the wisp had already faded, his energy reserve was depleting. It was time to get this over with. He activated his sin of gluttony by increasing the stamina in his body and this allowed him to cover more research area in a shorter amount of time.

The creatures have spent millennia trapped inside this military base, with nothing to do but eat, multiply and develop their skills. That layer of dust on the paths was actually his body.

"I found!" Tuatha said. "Same energy signature, but trapped below ground. In front of the third building on your left."

By the time Nicola got 150 meters near the container, the defense order took priority. The entire creature moved against him. But he had just landed at the spot Tuatha identified. He channeled his mana through the dagger of flame and darkness. This generated a beam made of flames imbued with darkness around him to act as his last stand.

He had learned to fuse elements from the teachings of the siblings, and since fire and darkness were second nature to him, they were the easiest to fuse. His own magic could not harm him, whereas it would incinerate the fungal creature as if it were paper thrown into fire.

The first wave of spores turned to ash on impact, but the second managed to penetrate the barrier and the third went deeper. Tons of spores fell on him relentlessly in all directions.