He also felt any big leaf that crossed his path, if they had a different shape than the others. “Grands are healthy.” The Grand was a big stack of maple-shaped leaves with a stem one could wrap their whole hand around.
On top of those methods, Salixio tasted fruits to assess their health. “Trueberries are healthy.” Despite being called berries, the Trueberry was the size of his hand.
Avgi only watched, impressed by such a display. “You really keep in touch with this place, huh?”
Salixio looked back, sweetened by the compliment. “Yeah. Keeping an accurate account of how each plant species is doing will let us prevent any undesired threats from passing under our radar.”
“Oh, like when there was that Tunnelburm you told me about?”
He remembered the fight well. The surrounding forest was on fire. All around the sapphire blue Avgi was dancing flames, as his arms squeezed a third of the circumference around the body of a great snake-esque creature. Its scales were jagged, and vented heat with every hissing shriek from its drill-shaped face. From Avgi’s mouth, he spit a powerful jet of water, punching a hole into the squirming beast as it slammed into the charring wood all around.
Salixio watched Avgi fondly look back at such a memory, sighing with exasperation. “... I was able to figure that it was approaching, due to the prints I received from where we’re headed to next.”
Avgi snapped back to attention. “Is it the mushroom patch?”
Once more, Salixio was taken aback, in a good way. Avgi was full of surprises. “You know about it!?”
In reply, he casually shrugged it off and continued their walk. They were well over ten minutes through the hike by then, and had passed by several confusing swathes of brush.
With that in mind, the prince didn't buy Avgi's gesture of modesty whatsoever. Salixio was rightfully amazed, instead. "Have you seriously been getting this well-acquainted with my kingdom? Without even needing to be told!?”
Avgi's face turned away, continuing to humbly deflect with a slight fluster. "I'd never wanna be a squatter or burden to this place, y'know. Figured the best way to be helpful was to keep a little in touch with the land, myself…"
Salixio noticed the gesture at a glance. After seeing it, he pressed on, clearing his throat and adopting a more proper royal voice. "For what it’s worth, you’ve been a very hard-to-notice part of our ecosystem, so far. Thanks for respecting these woods, Hero."
The barrage of compliments, formal and informal, made Avgi fully turn his head away with embarrassed joy. "C'mon, you've already called me Avgi! Keep doing that!"
As they stepped through another great bush, they reached a clearing that met most of the light of the sun, as well as a multicolored mess of tints in the air.
What stood before Avgi and Salixio were mushrooms with stems one could wrap their whole arms around, and caps that provided full shade from the sky.
Instead of pollen filling the air, spores drifted all around, and to combat inhaling any, both Avgi and Salixio brought their hands up to their mouths. From their palms, blades of grass emerged and weaved around each other, eventually forming masks that covered their lower face.
The prince was first to move forwards, leaning against the great stalk of a lilac-colored cap that laid above. "Now then. You may know where the mushrooms are, but do you understand what a mushroom is?"
Avgi snapped his fingers and pointed at the cap. "Easy, I learned this at the academy! It's a kinda plant that eats dead stuff, right?"
Much to his dismay, he heard a stifled yet soft laugh under the prince’s mask. "Sorry, but you must've slept in class that day. Let me show you."
He knelt down to the foot of the huge lilac cap, bringing to attention smaller caps that could be plucked with ease. Salixio held one like a proper teacup, it effortlessly breaking from the ground as he brought it up to Avgi’s eye level. “These mushrooms emerging from the ground, and all fungus that grows from anything, are all products of mycelium.”
Meanwhile, Avgi had to overcome the urge to shut his eyes. Not because he wanted to sleep through a lecture as accused, but because spores were starting to land on them, making them irritated.
Salixio paused, waving his free hand in front of Avgi’s face to ward off the irritants. “Mycelium are a network of, you could call them veins, that root into the ground and stretch to each and every plant across the lands. They’re practically endless, and keep the ecosystem in order.”
With the permission of sweet relief finally granted, he brought one hand up, shaking it free of dust and rubbing his eyes. “Wow…”
Salixio continued. “The mushrooms that we see are actually their methods of reproduction, organs that they grow in order to let off spores that spread to create more mycelium.”
Avgi brought his fist down, eyes clamped shut like bear traps. “So we're only looking at a little bit of what the mycelium really is."
“And overtime, they eventually get everywhere. Though, they've done that already.”
Snapping his fingers once more, Avgi “And most people won’t even know.” After a second of silence, his curiosity led in a predictable direction. “So, can I eat this?”
A sigh cut through the silence. “You probably know this already, but most species of fungus are really poisonous to animals. In fact, a lot of things out here could really taint any other Elemental who doesn't know better. That, and..."
“The pollen.”
Salixio gently nodded, but wasn't noticed. “Our air is difficult to breathe if one is not acclimated to Chloro Magic. Then again, I'm talking to someone who knows literally all types of Elemental Magic.” He held the cap out, tapping Avgi's chest. “So, that is to say… Yes, these are edible."
As Avgi took the lilac cap and opened his sore vision back up, he was moments away from pulling down his mask, only stopping at the last second.
The prince's left arm extended slightly, as if absentmindedly gesturing to join elbows. “Now then, I believe that’s all my inspections. Nothing of note. I will be returning home, if you’d like to accompany me.”
That notion was evaluated with a little more awareness by Avgi, surprised and hesitant. “Yeah… Say, do you have anything else to do, back in the city?”
“Not so. Why?”
The hesitation continued, a nervous proposition emerging. “I was actually meaning to ask you something." He decided to beat around the bush for only one more sentence, slowly ejecting his next question. "See, there's this ruin I discovered a week or so ago, and I was hoping you'd come along. We could make it a date…?"
This time, Salixio was flustered. "A date!?"
Avgi's hands raised slightly, backpedaling. "If you'd like to!"
Strangely, Salixio's finger reached his chin. He seemed to think about his answer, almost lamenting. Tilting one way before the other, he gazed into space from multiple angles.
Finally, the prince nodded, subtle yet serious. "Where is the dungeon?"
What makes an ancient dungeon in the Willow Kingdom so difficult to find isn't how well it is hidden. The extreme and winding environments of the kingdom do a wonderful job of hiding away any irregularities.
However, Avgi knew the exact set of excessively thick roots to climb over, and the correct bushes to crawl through, even when eleven possible paths presented themselves. Salixio followed behind, traversing with him all the way through an avenue yet unknown to the prince. Only when the sight of the destination filled his vision did he show true amazement.
What awaited them in a clearing of brush were one hulking slab of mossy stone, jammed in front of a doorway that it could only dream of being small enough to fit in. The tunnel leading out from the doorway rapidly curved underground, leaving the uneven stone brick labyrinth as mysterious as it needed to be.
Avgi stood wide before the structure that beckoned him. "Can only imagine others got in through digging, or breaking the wall."
Salixio curiously walked around the entrance, slowly scanning it over with keen focus, but not finding any opened entry points. "You suppose we're not the first explorers here?"
His hands formed fists, sticking to his sides haughtily. "Course! It's a feeling I've got. Smells like history."
The prince had climbed up to the top of the massive slab with an arm-produced vine, peering over it. "And you're not just snorting dust off the door?"
His question wasn't directly answered. In fact, Avgi hardly acknowledged it, immediately moving on and placing his hands on the slab's side, examining. "If you asked me… If I were someone overseeing a dungeon… I'd repair any wall damage in a snap. Stack bricks and glue 'em with moss."
“So if someone ever got in, we wouldn’t know from the walls alone.”
“Precisely! Now, let’s get this thing open.”
“You mean the wall?”
The question seemed completely unnecessary to the prince, and to Avgi. Those reasons were dissonant between the young men.
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