Forest Shroomy's Arc

Chapter 7 of 10

Forest Shroomy returned to the probe sites at first light. The fence held. The markers stood. But when she pressed her palm to the soil inside the perimeter, she felt something wrong beneath her fingers — a hollow shiver, like air moving where there should be packed earth. She knelt lower and pressed her ear to the ground. A faint draft whispered up through one of the puncture holes. Not a probe channel. Something larger. Something already there. She dug. The soil gave way faster than it should have. Within minutes her hands struck cut stone. She brushed the dirt aside and found an archway, framed in fitted blocks, sunk into the forest floor. Carved steps descended into the dark. The tunnel had been here long before the probes. The probes had only found it. Forest Shroomy lowered herself down three steps and stopped. A woven basket sat against the wall, heaped with mushrooms from her forest — caps she had counted, threads she had measured, species she knew by name. Beside it stood a lantern, still warm. Deeper down the stairway, light glowed faint and steady. She crept further until the passage opened into a wide chamber. Brick walls. An arched ceiling. A workshop built beneath her roots, with sorting tables and crates and tools laid out in neat rows. Someone had been harvesting her forest for a long time, and storing it here. She backed up the stairs without a sound. At the surface she covered the opening with brush and sat with her back against the fence, breathing slow. The probes were not the theft. The probes were the smallest part of it. Forest Shroomy looked toward the eastern grove and understood the fight had just grown much larger.