It was the twinkle of blue light hidden beneath fallen leaves that caught his eye.
With a victorious “ha!”, Doru Gusa bounded over the forest floor, the late-season detritus crushing beneath his boots, and thrust his hands into the pile.  He pinched the base of the schroom’s steam and, his fingers trembling with anticipation, broke it loose.
Cupping the treasure into his hands, he lifted it out of its cage and held it up. The mushroom glinted in the darkness light starlight in the palm of his hand, radiating an etherial, almost unnatural azure glow.
“Pal! Pal!”
Daru’s voice fell dead among the ancient trees. Where had that silly ass gone off to? It was hard enough searching for the shrooms, let alone take care of careless idiots.
“Pal! Get over here!”
“Find one?” Pal’s voice called out from somewhere amid the trees..
“Yeah,” Daru held the tiny thing up, a tiny beacon in the darkness. Pal came running, his boots crunching in the brittle leaves.
“That’s it?” Pal said, eyes wide.
“That’s it.” Daru rotated the shroom in his hand.
“It ain’t much.”
Daru glanced at his handsome brother. Got all the looks but was as soft as a pat of mid-summer butter. Why must he always be so dense?
“What’d you expect? A fucking brick?”
“I mean, look at it. Searching in this damned wood for two hours and that’s what we get? It ain’t big enough for a rat.”
“Says you. But I says this thing will fetch us plenty of coin once we’ve powered it up. Those nobles back in town, bathing their feet in at the Bless’d Waters live for this stuff. Twilight Powder, Pal. Think about it. I’ve seen them rain down coin, all so they can cram it up their high-born noses. This, brother,” he held the mushroom between them, its gentle light spilling onto Pal’s face, “is our meal ticket. Find a few more of these, and we can ship out before the barges close. What do you say to spending the Long Winter in Baloslavei, eh? What kind of trouble can a couple of guys like us get into with a bit of coin?”
Pal grinned at whatever perverse thoughts raced through his mind.
“Yeah,” he said, reaching out a pair of fingers for the toadstool.
Daru snatched it away, wrapped his prize in a worn cheesecloth, and placed it lovingly at the bottom of his satchel. He could already feel the weight of a thousand marks heavy in his purse.
“Then keep searching. Found one here, so there’s got to be more around.”
The pair moved slow through the bed of fallen leaves, eyes peeled for any sign of twinkling blue. An hour later and no richer, Daru found his search he lead him downslope to a gentle stream. Fog had settled in, as it often did on late-season nights. Normally, he loved the sight of the fog in the distance, rolling over low-lying fields like a blanket of gray enveloping the land, but, right now, it was infuriating. How was he supposed to find the shrooms in this thick cloud?
“Pal? Pal! Where are you, you stupid bastard?”
Daru’s voice was swallowed up by the trees and dead leaves. He kicked the ground and groaned. It would be fitting if his brother had found a whole hive of the shrooms, only to have trod all over them.
“Should’ve come myself,” Daru muttered as he climbed up the slope. “More money for me.”
His breath steaming in the moist air, Daru came to the top of the hill. Neeai, the greatest of Eor’s four moons, was in the full in the southern sky, spilling a brilliant white light over the valley below that sparkled over stalks of barely ready to be harvested and played on the rivers flowing lazily through the valley on their way to the might Farant. Further afield, past the patchwork quilt of farmland, the lights of Modesti sparkled in the night where the towering hotel of the Bless’d Waters stood out like a torch.
Daru traced his eyes along the road leading out of the valley and down toward the river. A few more twilight milk shrooms and he would be on that road, heading out of this valley and off to great things. What those great things would be, Daru hadn’t a clue, but they would be there all the same. All he needed was the coin.
He turned his back on the valley.
Now, where was that idiot?
A rustle of leaves somewhere in the forest darkness.
“Pal?” Daru stared through the trees. “That you?”
No answer.
Getting late, Daru thought. Hearing things. Needed to find some more shrooms and get out of this wood. He was trespassing on the Burgomaster’s personal land, but it wasn’t fear of the dungeon that bothered Daru. The Hart Wood—known to the locals as the Wrath Wood—appeared in all of the scary stories Daru had heard in his youth. Stuff to scare kids was all, but still…there was something about the stillness of the forest at night that chilled his blood.
He trudged back up the slope, deeper into the trees, his footfalls sounding like grinding chains in his ears.
“Pal! Where are you?”
There was a cry that froze Daru to the spot. It rose up out of the night to a high-pitched wail before it was cut off, the vibrations damped by the trees though the echoes rebounded in Daru’s mind.
What in all the hells was that?
Daru edged a toe forward, weary of making the smallest noise underfoot.
“…Pal?” His voice hoarse in his throat. “You okay?”
Rustling leaves off to his right, further upslope. Daru swallowed and looked up to Neeai for guidance, but she was hiding out of sight above the canopy. Instead, he reached into his satchel and pulled out his prized toadstool. Its pale blue light barely lit more than half a foot in front of him, but it was better than complete darkness.
Daru crept forward, one hand outstretched, feeling for the rough bark of nearby trees, and called for his brother. The idiot had simply become lost, Daru was sure. Slipped down the slope or something, probably making his way back to town right now. No doubt, Daru would find Pal at the Boar’s Nest, drinking and singing with that awful bandolier.
“The little shit,” Daru muttered. “Running off. Beat him blue next time I see him. Bet he didn’t find a single mush—”
Ahead, hidden at the base of a tree, a cluster of the azure lights danced amid the fallen leaves.
All thoughts of his brother lost, Daru rushed up the hill. He scattered away the leaves to reveal no less than fifteen twilight milk ‘schrooms.
By all the Gods…he was rich. More than rich. This find would make him the wealthiest person in the village, maybe even the valley. His wealth now rivaled that of the Burgomaster himself. With that kind of money, Daru could get anything he wanted. Women, status, night after night of hedonistic pleasure at the Bless’d Water, maybe even the title of Burgomaster one day.
He liked the idea, and rolled his imagined title along his tongue as he gingerly gathered mushrooms on the forest floor.
“Burgomaster Gusa,” he said with a mad grin. “Advisor to the King.”
He plucked the seventh toadstool and placed it alongside the others in the filthy cheesecloth, when he heard the noise. It was unlike any forest noise he had ever heard, day or night. A kind of tearing sound, like fabric being torn.
Daru pinched off another mushroom, his ear attuned to the noise, waiting for it to abate, but it did not. It kept on, that horrible ripping sound.
Cheesecloth open, the collecting of twilight milk radiating a brilliant blue in the darkness, Daru stood and turned in the direction of the noise.
“That…that you, Pal?”
Pal did not answer, but neither did the sound stop.
Dark licked his lips and took a step forward. He should leave. He got the mushrooms, more than he expected, what else was out there for him?
“Pal?”
With blue light spilling on the trees and forest floor before him, Dark strode forward, each step feeling heavier than the last as the ripping noise grew louder. There was a scent in the air, and not just the sharp smell of pine needles or the damp of decayed leaves. It was sharp and metallic and filled Daru’s mind with an inexplainable terror.
He was about to turn, head down the slope and back to Modesti, when he saw a shape, just beyond the toadstool’s circle of light, lying on the ground next to a tree. Daru swallowed and stepped forward. The smell was strong now, and Daru recognized it for what it was.
The blue light spilled on the ground and over the face of his brother who stared up at him with eyes as vacant as the empty night sky.
Or what was left of his face.
The flesh of his brother’s handsome features had been removed, as clearly as with a surgeon’s knife. Muscle and fibrous tissues speckled with dirt and leaves were all that was left. Daru let the light spill over the rest of Pal’s corpse and saw it was all gone. Every inch of skin had been torn away as if his brother had simply taken of a pair of trousers.
Daru turned, ready to flee, run out of these horrible woods. Take his prize, get his coin, and never return. Never come back to Modesti again. But his dream was stopped short when he found himself facing his brother.
Of course, it wasn’t his bother as the corpse lay on the ground at his feet would testify, but the thing that stood before Daru now, naked in the cold, was wearing the skin of Pal Gusa.
It was just like him in every facet expect one. In the depths of those eyes, glowed a ember of rage as red as flame.
“Vryköl.”
These were the stories, Daru thought as a shard and bitter cold pain pierced his belly. These were the stories he heard as a child. He was in one now, and it hurt. By all the Gods it hurt.
Daru screamed as the sharp cold tore through his insides.
The twilight mushrooms fell from his hand and onto the bed of leaves, the blood-stained cloth covering them as a funeral shroud.