MYCELIUS SPOREBORN's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

By the next morning, the great fungus tree looked sick. Its glow had faded to a dull flicker. The soil near the trench felt thin and cold under Mycelius's feet. He knelt and pressed his palm to the bark. The tree pulsed weakly, like a tired heart. It fed the ground and the colony both, and it could not do both for long. Mycelius needed another tree. He had none. He stood and looked out past the colony. Dead dirt stretched in every direction, gray and cracked. One tree had made this small patch of black soil. But a single tree would starve his people. He remembered his old home, where many trees had shared one great web of roots. No tree stood alone there. That was the answer. He did not need to find another tree. He needed to grow one. Mycelius reached into his belt and drew out his spore pouch. He had planted from it once already. He did not know how much life was left inside. He loosened the string and looked. A thin layer of pale dust clung to the bottom. Enough for a handful, maybe less. He closed his hand around the pouch and made his choice. He walked to the weakened tree and traced a root to its far edge, where the black soil met the dead ground. There he dug a deep hole. He worked fast, his arms shaking. When the hole was ready, he tipped the pouch and let the last spores fall. Then he cut a thin sliver from a glowing root and laid it against the spores, so the young growth could drink from the old tree while it took hold. He packed the soil down and waited. Spores drifted from his shoulders. For a long moment nothing moved. The old tree's glow dimmed further, feeding this new mouth too. Mycelius held his breath. If the old tree died before the new one grew, he would lose both. Then a green thread of light rose through the dirt. A pale shoot pushed up, no taller than his hand. Small caps unfolded along its stem. Roots spread out beneath it, faint but bright. The shoot did not drink from the old tree now. It fed itself. Its own light crept back through the soil toward the trench. Mycelius laughed and dropped to his knees. He had made a second tree. In time it would grow tall, with a wide root network to feed the ground and the colony beside the first. His people would not starve on one tree alone. But the pouch in his hand was empty now. He turned it over and shook it. No dust fell. The spores from his homeland were spent. Every tree he grew from here on would have to come from these two. And two young trees could not fill a dead land fast enough for a whole colony to arrive. He needed to find more of these trees in the wild and gather there seeds.