Hello, Everyone!
This is the second to last part of Mary’s Orange Seed trial. Here’s what happened so far: Mary had a dream sent by her Patron, left Bruno asleep in their camp and, with Aurum by her side, went to the secret cavern to plant a seed in a very specific place. They got in some traps, fought some creatures, Aurum almost died (again), and, finally, in the previous chapter , they reached the underground garden from Mary’s dream. A group of Myconids (walking humanoid mushroom-people) asked them to help bury their friend who got killed by a living tree and Mary agreed with the condition that she’d get to plant her seed on top of the grave.
Mary and Aurum came back to the laboratory and entered the room with the smell of rotten flesh. There was a desk there, and a person had sat on it. Then something, presumably the living tree, had almost decapitated him. Old blood was splattered on the far wall and the person was slumped forward, lying on the pages of a notebook.
Mary used a cloth to carefully raise his head and took the notebook. It was a diary. While Aurum was moving the body to the floor and covering it with a blanket, she flipped through the pages to learn what had been happening here.
The diary belonged to an elf named Sylvanas. The first pages were all about his life in Myth Adofhaer, then it moved to the cavern where he wrote about his experiments. His work was all about giving sentience to plants, making them better at defending themselves against pests. Mary laughed bitterly. He sure did well with the living tree that had killed him.
She put the diary in her bag where it joined the other books she’d taken from the laboratory. She was going to read it more thoroughly later. Then she opened all the drawers of the desk and found a bunch of parchments and ink bottles which she happily took as well. She was taught to respect other people’s property and never take what wasn't hers but these things here belonged to a dead person. And she could use the paper.
Aurum was gauging at her.
“Can I have something, too?” he asked, smiling weirdly.
“No,” Mary said quickly. Then she thought that might have been too harsh and continued: “I’ll… I’ll let you read the books when I’m done? Um. Is there anything interesting on the body?”
“Why? Do you want to take that too?”
Mary felt her face flush red.
“No, you can have them,” she said, pouting.
Aurum took a pouch full of crystal dust and a small key off of the elf’s neck and put them in his bag, keeping eye contact with Mary the whole time.
Mary felt really awkward. She wanted to check… something… anything else in the room right now, and so she quickly moved away from Aurum’s gaze.
There were some curious contraptions, probably for magical purposes that she couldn’t guess, as well as a bigger, more complex magical circle which grabbed her attention. It was a teleportation circle with two long sets of numbers etched on the sides. It was elaborate enough that it could probably move living creatures. Mary wouldn’t risk going through, though. She knew not to step in magical circles.
Mary helped Aurum carry Sylvanas’ body to the garden. They dug a shallow grave, lowered the elf in it and covered him with soil. Mary planted the orange seed on top of the dirt mound and watered it from the healing spring. The Myconids were there the whole time, solemnly waiting for the deed to be done. When the last bit of earth was put on top of the grave they sighed out a collective “Good day” and, one by one, bowed their heads. The bigger one, Mr. Fungus, spoke.
“Thank you for helping us. Good day.”
“It was no problem,” Mary said. “Thank you for letting us plant the seed.”
“Good bye,” Aurum said.
The Myconids looked at him in surprise.
“Good… bye!” they said, uncertainly.
Then they started repeating the words with more and more enthusiasm until the cavern was etching with what had obviously become their new favourite phrase. Mary and Aurum used the moment to go on their way. The last thing Mary did before they got out of the garden was to break some of the blue crystal off of the wall and put it into her bag with all the other stuff. It might come in handy at some point in the future.
Yaay! It is done! Mary's trial is finally finished! We have only one more part of this adventure because our heroes have another door to investigate. Then we'll see what has happened with poor Bruno. Do you think he's going to be ok?
Anyway, thank you for reading!
I really hope you liked Mary's trial!
Take care and be well!