Adventure of Mycelia 3

Cap town opens beneath the cavern roof, its shelves and bridges glowing with clustered fungi. Mycelia arrives just as Pumpkin steps from a high mushroom shelf.

Pumpkin, a slim adult woman with brown-toned skin and chin-length black hair, flails her newly unfurled bat wings. Their first beat lifts her awkwardly into open air.

Loose shelf-stones tumble after her. Mushroom folk scatter below, caps bobbing through the haze, while Pumpkin skids sideways through the cavern toward a jagged stone wall.

Her wings snap unevenly. One membrane catches the warm cavern draft, twisting her toward the wall; another shower of fragments clatters across the lower ledges.

Pumpkin is close enough for immediate help, but her next wingbeat will decide whether she finds a safe landing or crashes against the jagged rock.

Mycelia raises a hand beneath the spinning wings. Arcane light, pale as moonlit spores, threads through the cavern air and settles over Pumpkin like weightless feathers.

Pumpkin’s descent slows at once. Her uneven wings stop fighting the draft, and she drifts safely toward a broad shelf instead of the jagged wall.

She touches down in a soft scatter of dust, knees bending on impact. The spell catches the last falling stones too, guiding them harmlessly aside.

The gathered mushroom folk turn toward Mycelia with startled admiration. Behind Pumpkin, the landing shelf reveals a narrow stairway newly cleared by the drifting rubble.