Anthony Deaver

Gen­eral Quer­cus looked out over the fields, sur­vey­ing the army that was now his. It was a task he didn’t want, but it had been his pre­dic­tion, a pre­dic­tion that had come true, that had made it happen.

Every year the armies of the Yard empire gath­ered up and choose sides. It had come, over the years, to be known as the Prun­ing. It had been com­ing ear­lier and ear­lier each year and this time Quer­cus and been ready. Ready to pro­tect and defend the Scythian strong­hold no mat­ter the cost.

In the dis­tance the yel­low flags of the Scythian army flut­tered, limp in the non-​​existent breeze. The day had turned hot, and early sea­son heat wave. It was hot enough to force the Gen­eral to turn up the sides of the com­mand tent while he gath­ered with the var­i­ous mil­i­tary lead­ers and advisors.

“Sir, you were about to explain your cur­rent strat­egy.” called out Viceroy Apium.

Quer­cus pulled him­self away from watch­ing the wiz­ards prac­tic­ing their magic, prepar­ing to defend the Scythian cap­i­tal from the yearly Prun­ing event.

“I’m send­ing a bat­tal­ion of troops to the west to the Hedge Moun­tains as well as east to the Gar­den For­est. The rest I am leav­ing here to pro­tect the city proper.”

“What of our rear flank?”

“We have an HOA in place with our neigh­bors there.” replied the General.

Viceroy Apium spoke up again, “I’d feel more com­fort­able with a Watch alliance. The HOA is merely an agree­ment not to attack, it doesn’t stip­u­late com­ing to our aid,”

“I agree with you Viceroy. How­ever ours is not to make pol­icy but to defend our nation for future saplings.”

“Sir!” exclaimed a sol­dier as he made his way to the tent while the oth­ers had been study­ing the map on the table.

“At ease Pri­vate Cera­sus. What do you have for me?”

“Sir, a report from Cap­tain Rud­beckia.”, The sol­dier says, pulling a sheaf of papers out of his back­pack, “He says he has encoun­tered the Fes­cue army just out­side the Gates of Fence.”

Every­one around the table looked up, mak­ing the Pri­vate very uncomfortable.

“Go on, does he say any­thing about esti­mated forces? What kind of hard­ware they have, anything?”

“Yes sir” replied the sol­dier, lick­ing his lips ner­vously, “He states there are a bat­tal­ion of Crab­Grass Tanks as well as Dan­de­lion and This­tle Aer­ial Assault ships. He also men­tions see­ing Clover trans­ports and a group of Rag­weed carriers”

“Very good, thank you pri­vate, “ replied Quer­cusl keep­ing the shock off his face, “You are dismissed.”

Gen­eral Quer­cus turned back to the map and began to again explain “I don’t expect….”. Turn­ing around he noticed that the sol­dier he had dis­missed was still there, still stand­ing at attention.

What is it soldier?

Well sir, it’s just…

“Spit it out son.”

“It’s just… there is chat­ter from the Squir­rels sir. They say they’ve seen Axes and Shears as well.”

Every­one around the table gasped as Quer­cus cov­ered his eyes with hind hand. “My god, they really are going to do it aren’t they. Well, we will give them a fight they will not for­get. This is a Prun­ing that will be sung about for ages to come.”

The other lead­ers gath­ered around the table began to cheer and applaud the Gen­eral who stepped back, and care­fully drew his sword, “For Scythia!”

“For Scythia!” came the rum­bling echo.-

Rud­beckia stood at at the foothills of the Hedge Moun­tains and looked out over what was left of Scythia. It had taken him nearly two grow­ing sea­sons to make his way home. Two sea­sons to think about what the Fes­cue Army had done to his homeland.

It hadn’t been enough to pre­pare him for what he found.

Scythia was gone.

Cut­tings and bro­ken Saplings lay every­where. The earth had reclaimed the places where the Crab­grass tanks and Drag­on­fly air­craft had come to the end of the lifes­pans. Mounds of dis­placed dirt were scat­tered every­where. Even the Gar­den For­est hadn’t be left unscathed. What once had been a beau­ti­ful, well cul­ti­vated place was now in shambles.

As he walked through his for­mer home­land he did see some hope. Small fam­i­lies had man­aged to stay together, or had come back together and began to put down new roots. He smiled to him­self, know­ing that some day Scythia would once again be a place to call home, even though it would never be any­thing like what it had once been.

And yet, through it all some­thing had been both­er­ing him. Some­thing that he has seen out of the cor­ner of his eye, glimpsed as he passed by a new hill or fallen Log.

Some­thing about it nagged at him, a sense that he knew what it was but he just couldn’t con­nect thing together. The sight of every­thing had a deeper impact on him that he had first thought.

As he came upon the old Palace and laid his eyes on the rot­ting corpse of the wooden palace it hit him. The white flashes, the dead and dying, the var­i­ous bits of upturned soil in seemly ran­dom places; the Mush­rooms has come.

He heard a scrap­ing sound behind him and turned to see a troop of Fungi com­ing up the trail he had just taken.

“Hello” said Rud­beckia as he approached the group, not know­ing what to expect.

There was a slight pause as the lead fungi spoke, Rud­beckia remem­ber that the mush­rooms have a hive mind and that it took a sec­ond to process and respond to all the sen­sory information.

“Wel­come. We are Agaricus.”

“Pleased to met you Agar­i­cus, I… we are called Rud­beckia”, replied Rud­beckia as he remem­bered that because of the shar­ing of a mind the Fungi had no con­cept of per­sonal pronouns.

“You are here. Why?”, again the pause.

“I am from here. This is my home. I just returned.”

Rud­beckia heard a small snap off to his left and turned to look. He saw, hid­den among the debris and leave thin, stalk like Fungi. He recalled that they were called the Maras­mius, often referred to by peo­ple as assas­sins. They were well know for their stealth, which meant he was meant to hear the snap. Which also meant that for every one he saw there were prob­a­bly ten more he couldn’t. He decided he had to be very careful.

“Come. Cal­va­tia would like to speak with you.”

“Who is Calvatia?”

“Our cur­rent overseer.”

Rud­beckia fol­lowed, know­ing he had very lit­tle choice. By nature the Fungi tribes didn’t kill since they were typ­i­cally for­agers but would not hes­i­tate if they felt he was a threat. His best hope now was to con­vince them he was peace­ful and meant them no harm. If they knew he had been a com­man­der in the Scythian mil­i­tary there was no telling what they would do.

He low­ered his head and fol­low Agar­i­cus, know­ing the Maras­mius were watch­ing his every move.

He closed his eyes and made a fist, forc­ing him­self to stay calm, “For Scythia” he whis­pered to himself.

The days were get­ting notice­ably shorter, which was good because that meant win­ter was com­ing and they would be able to rest and recover from the season’s work. The Fungi weren’t fools, true they worked their cap­tives to the bone, but they knew that sick or injured work­ers did noth­ing. Just as they knew that pun­ish­ing those who were sick and injured didn’t help boost morale.

Sure they worked them hard dur­ing the Grow­ing sea­son and allowed them to rest and live nor­mally dur­ing the win­ter, let­ting nature weed out the weak from the strong.

Rud­beckia stood and stretched his aching back, occa­sion­ally flick­ing his hand to wave away what­ever it was that was buzzing around his face. He reflected on the four Grow­ing sea­sons he had spent as a guest of the Fungi. He wasn’t tech­ni­cally a pris­oner since he could leave any­time he wanted, but con­sid­er­ing this was his home and that he was out num­bered by some­thing like ten thou­sand to one, he had no choice but to stay and try to find a way to reclaim Scythia from the invaders. Oth­ers stayed for vary­ing rea­sons. Lack of hope and other options being among the most common.

Not that there was much left to reclaim. After all this time the land that he had known as a sapling had been changed by the influ­ence and activ­i­ties of the Fungi. No one actu­ally knew what the invaders were plan­ning or why they had cho­sen to stay. Nor­mally they would use up what­ever resources brought them ben­e­fit and move on, leav­ing the land essen­tially bar­ren and unable to sup­port all but the most stub­born of flora and fauna.

He waved again at the thing that had been buzzing around his head. It had been pes­ter­ing him for some time so he began track­ing it with his eyes, try­ing to antic­i­pate where it might land. As he tracked it he began to notice that some­thing about it was famil­iar. At first it was just a feel­ing in the back of his mind but the longer he watched it the more con­vinced he became that he knew what it was.

On a whim he extended his right hand out in front of him. After a few sec­onds the thing stopped buzzing around and hov­ered over his open palm. As he got a bet­ter look at it his eyes widened in shock. He did know what this was but had never expected to see another, much less one after all this time.

The crea­ture landed and turned to look at Rudbeckia.

“Impos­si­ble.” he whis­pered to himself.

He smiled as he real­ized that he was hold­ing in his palm a Hom­ing Gnat. He had bred and trained them when he was younger, grow­ing up on his grandfather’s farm. They were used by the mil­i­tary to deliver mes­sages between the front lines and the com­mand cen­ter, but he hadn’t seen one in almost six Grow­ing seasons.

With a shak­ing hand, he reached out to check the legs of the Gnat, know­ing there was lit­tle chance there would actu­ally be a note but hop­ing anyway.

He gasped when his fin­gers found the tiny metal cylin­der on the back legs. He care­fully held his enthu­si­asm in check, know­ing there was also a chance this par­tic­u­lar Gnat was car­ry­ing an old mes­sage that had never made it to him all those years ago. He care­fully removed the cylin­der and placed the Gnat on the table beside him, smil­ing as he did so. Regard­less of the mes­sage in the tube, assum­ing there actu­ally was one, the lit­tle crea­ture had done its job. It had brought him a lit­tle glim­mer of happiness.

He slowly removed the paper within and unrolled it care­fully. He read the mes­sage that had been writ­ten there:

Rb, The morn­ing of the first frost, be ready. -Q

He read it again three more times before he allowed him­self to con­sider the pos­si­bil­i­ties it presented.

Rud­beckia didn’t know what to make of the mes­sage. The note was both obvi­ously new and meant for him. Was it pos­si­ble that oth­ers had sur­vived he won­dered. He paced, try­ing to work out what it all meant.

As he walked back to his room he decided that what­ever it meant, he would be ready and began to pre­pare him­self for the pos­si­bil­ity that his time among the Fungi might soon be com­ing to an end. He con­tem­plated whether he should alert the other res­i­dents of his dorm to be ready to leave and decided that pre­sented too much risk since he him­self wasn’t really sure if any­thing would hap­pen. Finally he set­tled on the idea of inform­ing a few close friends he had made in his time here.

The frost came three days later.

Just before sun­rise he was stand­ing out­side the dorms watch­ing the sky when he heard the sig­nal. It was an old call that he had used dur­ing his time in the Scythian Army to alert his fel­low recruits to the arrival of an offi­cer. Care­fully he made his way toward the edge of the com­pound, watch­ing in the half-​​dark for any­one or any­thing to appear. He looked to his left and right to make sure those that had cho­sen to come with him had heard and followed.

After pass­ing into the tree line he encoun­tered sev­eral oth­ers all wear­ing what looked like a Scythian mil­i­tary uni­form. They qui­etly beck­oned him to fol­low as they began walk­ing away from the compound.

The extrac­tion from the Fungi con­trolled lands was rel­a­tively unevent­ful. They encoun­tered a patrol once but every­one sim­ply nod­ded and passed by with­out inci­dent. Mostly it reminded Rud­beckia of hikes he had taken through the Gar­den Forest.

After walk­ing in silence most of the day they even­tu­ally stepped in out of the over­growth and onto a wide expanse of open field. All around he saw tents and equip­ment in var­i­ous con­di­tions and states of repair.

Sev­eral pieces of equip­ment he rec­og­nized, oth­ers were com­pletely new to him. Among the vehi­cles he didn't rec­og­nize there were a few bear­ing the insignia of Scythia.

“How long have you been here?” Rud­beckia asked one of those that had guided him to the plains.

“Three sea­sons.”

“And the Fungi haven’t found you?”

“As you know, we are a good day’s walk from the Scythian bor­ders. Their patrols do not extend this far that often.”

“What about when they do?” Rud­beckia con­tin­ued ask­ing as they passed more tents. He could see the col­ored ban­ners and uni­forms of var­i­ous King­doms and Realms assem­bled on the field, from the pur­ple of the Irisian Army to the Green of the Win­ter­Hazel clans.

“The perime­ter is pro­tected with Kudzu and Mycota bombs.”

“I know Kudzu bombs, but I’ve never heard of Mycota. What are they?”

“They react to spores, so only the Fungi set them off. They release spores of their own that attach to any Fungi pass­ing near. They affect the ner­vous sys­tem, drive them insane. Our friends aren’t too keen on hav­ing them around.”

“Friends?”

“Every­thing will be explained to you. Please step inside," the sol­dier said hold­ing back the flap of a tent, "I believe an old acquain­tance is wait­ing to say hello.”

Rud­beckia looked at the sol­dier for moment, then stepped inside. He fig­ured with the Gnat mes­sage and the army sur­round­ing them that step­ping into a tent with­out know­ing who was inside was the least of his concerns.

“Cap­tain! So glad to see you!”

“Gen­eral Quer­cus? You’re alive?”

“Yes my boy. Sorry it took so long to get you out of there, it took a while to find you. We have given you up for dead.”

“No wor­ries. The Fungi didn’t mis­treat anyone.”

“Good, good. Now, I’m sorry to make this short and sweet but are you ready to help take Scythia back from the Fungi invaders?” asked the General.

“Yes sir I am.”, replied Rudbeckia.

“Excel­lent. I knew I could count on you son.” Quer­cus said, step­ping around the large table in the mid­dle of the tent and grasp­ing Rudbeckia’s hand, giv­ing it a firm shake.

”We have a lot to pre­pare for. We should get started.” came a voice from the shadows.

“Cap­tain, allow me to intro­duce to you our ally, Over­seer Amanita.”

Amanita stepped out of the shad­ows slowly and stopped at the edge of the table. He stood taller than either Rud­beckia or the Gen­eral and was dressed in deep red bat­tle armor speck­led with white. His wide brimmed hat matched the rest of his uni­form. Rud­beckia turned to look at the Gen­eral with doubt in his eyes.

“I know what you’re think­ing. You just spent sev­eral sea­sons as a guest of the Fungi, you aren’t inclined to have one as an ally. Well, trust me when I tell you that Over­seer Amanita is no hap­pier than you are, but we have a com­mon enemy. The group that took over Scythia is con­sid­ered by the rest of the Fungi to be rogues. They’ve killed sev­eral of their own kind and are wanted by the High Elders. Things are appar­ently not what they seem. Amanita says there is some­thing else going on but he isn’t com­pletely sure what it might be. Some­how the rene­gade Fungi have been able to mod­ify the genetic code of their Hive­mind. To what end no one knows.”

“Will you help us?” asked Amanita?

Rud­beckia paused for a moment and looked from Quer­cus to Amanita and back again, “I will,” he said com­ing to full atten­tion, “for Scythia!”