Chp.31: A bizarre ecosystem

"Well, that's a big boy"

Rhaegal nodded to Carlos's comment as he observed the creature that was walking ahead of them and that was even taller than him. It was a huge quadruped with a body similar to that of a hippopotamus and an extremely massive neck that ended in a tiny elongated head from which emerged three long horns that seemed covered in a golden patina. The belly was completely bare, while the back was covered by a very small gray hair studded with enormous stone-like osteoderms. He was at least five times as tall as a full man and nearly twice as tall as Rhaegal, Corgorin, and Serengal; in total, its height was around nine meters. It was moving very slowly and awkwardly and was using its large neck to reach for the tops of the giant mushrooms it was eating.

"Can you put that thing down?" Dyana whispered in Rhaegal's ear.

The dragon shrugged. "We'll try" and after that words he nullified the invisibility rune and made his appearance with a roar. Seeing him appear, the gigantic animal emitted a sound similar to a mix between a bellow and a trumpet and lowered its head showing its horns, clearly intending to charge, but immediately gave up as soon as Serengal too revealed herself roaring like her brother. Even though they were smaller than it, the two dragons were still clearly dangerous predators, and the animal was intelligent enough to understand that it wasn't worth fighting them; so it just backed away while it snorted, scratched the ground with its paws and tossed its head showing its horns well. From its point of view, it was strange that predators had shown up so easily, so it was likely that they were just defending their lair: if it just walked away, no one would get hurt.

Clearly that beast had never seen predators hunt in packs; as far as Rhaegal and the others could tell, there were virtually no predators sharing prey underground due to limited resources. Therefore, the huge animal didn't even think for a second that the two dragons were only distracting it. And when Corgorin appeared from behind it and grabbed its neck, it took it completely by surprise. Luckily for it, the dragoness discovered that the animal's skin was indeed very thick, so much so that it was partially able to resist her bite, and this allowed the beast to flail and jerk free; but that moment of distraction was enough for the other two dragons to bite it from several points, opening deep wounds in its neck. "Damn! This skin is hard as rock!" Rhaegal exclaimed; it was the first time in a long time that he had struggled to tear open the flesh of a prey.

"Wait! Expose one of the wounds!" Sarah screamed as a stone dagger formed in her hands and she covered it with a strange black liquid. The dragons understood her intent and moved the animal so that the largest wound, located just above the base of the neck, was clearly visible. Sarah threw the stone dagger and it lodged inside the wound, then she yelled: "Martha, Lisah, now!"

The twins complied and two balls of fire formed from their hands, which were then thrown straight at the stone dagger which was still protruding slightly from the wound and from which the black liquid was oozing. "Move over, quick!" they yelled at the dragons, which immediately let go of the huge animal and moved away. As soon as the two fireballs hit the dagger, it exploded with unheard-of fury inside the beast's neck, splitting it in two; the liquid that covered it was in fact a very flammable substance that a few days before they had discovered that it was produced by a strange fungus as a defense weapon, and that they had brought with them for eventualities like this.

The giant animal stood motionless for a moment, then fell to the ground with a crash. Blood flowed in rivers from the wound. "And this too is done!" Carlos said satisfied.

"Easy to say, for you! You didn't do anything!" Corgorin yelled at him.

The man swallowed, knowing he didn't want to answer. "Um... let's not waste time, let's examine this beast!" he exclaimed running towards the corpse. The rest of the group rolled their eyes in disappointment, but ignored it and got to work. Rhaegal, Corgorin, Serengal, Dyana and Atelas began to dismember the animal piece by piece, with great difficulty given the hardness of its skin, while Carlos, Sarah, Martha and Lisah began to examine all the pieces looking for traces of mana.

That was what they had been doing for two weeks now: exploring, discovering new lifeforms, and looking for anything that had the required amount of mana. In fact, before leaving, Haku had given them a letter from Isaac, who the dragon had involved in the story even if not too much, in which the mage illustrated both the minimum limit and the maximum limit of the amount of mana needed to counter the disease that was raging in the village. In that the formula that Maldor had found to calculate the magic had been of great use: with it, both Isaac and the four wizards of the group could correctly establish how much mana was needed and how much there was around. Thanks to this, the search had been much faster and easier than it would have been if they hadn't had the formula, even if they still had little success. Combining mathematics and magic had really been a winning move. Once they had found a non-harmful substance whose amount of mana didn't exceed both the minimum and maximum limits, then they would have finished their task: that substance, regardless of what it was, would only have to be mixed with certain ingredients so that it would act against the disease, a task that even an non-specialized potionist like Isaac could perform. Unfortunately, however, they still hadn't found what they were looking for: they had really tried everything, even the bodily fluids of the animals they found in the caves, but the amount of mana was always too much or too little, and the only two times they had found a substance that had the desired characteristics it had turned out to be harmful to the body of the newcomers. And so they had no choice but to continue searching and exploring that bizarre underground ecosystem.

In reality, practically none of them disliked it; indeed, were it not for the fact that twenty thousand lives depended on their success, they probably wished they had never found the cure. The world beneath the desert had indeed turned out to be even more complex, magnificent and extraordinary than they had ever imagined. The deeper they went, the more the ecosystems differentiated and became more and more bizarre and interesting; the caves had grown in size and height thanks to the fact that more streams fed the gigantic column-fungi that supported the ceiling, and thanks to the greater space, real forests of mushrooms as tall as trees had been born, which with their bioluminescence illuminated the entire cave like the setting sun. In every cave that strange flora took on increasingly strange shapes, colors and dimensions: some had even become similar to carnivorous plants, while others could spit liquids and toxic substances to avoid being eaten. And of course where there was plenty of food, there was also an abundance of animals.

They had found so many creatures that it would have been too long to list them, but some of them had particularly caught their attention. One of the very first animals they had found was a mole-like rodent about six meters long and taller than an adult man, composed only of a large and massive body that moved using four small legs, and from its mouth sprouted four long fangs with which it hunted small prey, especially insects, which fed on the mushrooms that grew in the caves. Its favorite prey was a strange cricket covered with spines and the size of a human hand, with large red eyes specially created to see in the dark and which could make very high leaps to escape its predator. They had called that strange rodent 'yin-shu' ('hidden rodent' in the Elven language, due to the fact that it approached its prey stealthily using its fur to disguise itself) and the cricket 'bruch' (or 'impaler' in Elvish, as it used its spines to carry some mushrooms that it used as a food reserve).

However, fully terrestrial creatures like these were rare in the subterranean ecosystem: most of the animals the team found were semi-aquatic, probably so they could move between caves in case of food shortages. An example was what they called 'selamodir' ('mother of seals' in Elvish), a huge reddish-pink seal-like creature with a tuft of hair like brushwood or heather between its eyes, as big as a large cow, which fed on a few fish that swam in the various underground streams. But some animals assumed even more alien and bizarre forms: an example was what they had called 'orabou' ('sea cat' in Elven), a strange creature similar to a three meters long cat, which however was covered in blue and green scales and which had orange spines protruding from its back and which formed a sort of mane around its neck, and which had four webbed paws and instead of the long and flexible tail of a feline it had a sturdy tail ending in a fork similar to a that of the fish. This creature was the main predator of the selamodir, which it spotted using its flexible spines as if they were a cat's whiskers. It practically never came out of the water and when it did it simply beached itself on the shore, given that the position of its legs, although suitable for swimming, wasn't suitable for supporting its weight on land, therefore it remained there only for a few periods to rest and then resume its hunt. Another example of a rather bizarre semi-aquatic animal was what they called 'araganaqtla' ('horned serpent' in Elven), a serpent about seven meters long whose body was covered in red spines and whose tail ended in a barbed fork, and which had three small red horns on its head. Unlike the other creatures, however, it did not feed on fish or other animals, but was a herbivore (or 'fungivore', as Carlos called it): it swam in the underground waters to move from one cave to another and there it fed on the mushrooms that grew there. The spines and hooked tail served only as a means of defense, and the horns on the head were probably a method of attracting a partner or intimidating any opponents.

But of course, the strangest and most absurd forms were taken by fish. There weren't just rivers underground: entire caves were composed exclusively of huge lakes filled with the most bizarre creatures. An example was what they had called 'flidumodir' ('flat face' in Elven), a fish with a flat body and eyes shifted to one side only, which passed its sight flat on the seabed to jump out only when a prey passed by; it was about four meters long and on the side of its body not positioned above the seabed there were growths similar to algae which it used to attract the fish it ate. Or again the 'marool' ('many eyes' in Elven), an extremely bizarre fish composed of an infinite number of eyes to see in the dark and from whose body many filaments emerged that imitated algae or aquatic plants, whose tips could light up to make it even easier to attract prey.

In short, the underground ecosystem was really very complex and varied. Rhaegal and his party had visited the various caves one by one, and as already mentioned the deeper they went the bigger and more populated they became. And so they had arrived in the cave where they were at the moment: a gigantic place with a diameter of 50 kilometers and a ceiling at least sixty meters high. These dimensions were due to the fact that hundreds of streams bathed the cave, making it similar to a swamp and providing the column-fungi with all the nourishment needed to grow enormously. The cave resembled a huge forest of mushrooms: on average they reached ten meters in height, but some could reach thirty, and there were an infinity of all shapes and sizes. And of course, such an abundance of food meant large animals, like the one they'd just culled and were now examining. Unfortunately, however, this time too they had no luck. "It seems that no part of this beast has enough mana" Sarah said despondently after the creature was completely torn apart. They'd looked at everything from the liver down to even the brain fluids, but nothing matched what they were looking for.

Rhaegal sighed. It had been another fiasco. "I get it. We collect the parts of this animal and then we take a break. We rest for an hour and then we'll continue to explore"