Cordyceps Thirty-Six
Cordyceps Thirty-Six
The next weeks or so flowed by at a pace that was at once glacial, and yet too fast. I had three plans for the assassination, which I divided by the amount of risk they’d put me in. If everything went well, which it wouldn’t, then the first plan would be more than enough to accomplish everything. I’d be out of there without looking suspicious in the least, and my targets would be out of there in a trio of body bags.
I didn’t expect that plan to work, but I still had to prepare for it. The first part of that was stealing some alcohol. Specifically, high-proof alcohol which I filched from the nurse’s office. It was for disinfecting cuts, not for drinking, but it was more than good enough for me.
I needed to ensure that the poison I made was alcohol-soluble, and that it wouldn’t lose its potency in a drink.
If the poison broke apart, then I’d need to find a new vector for it. If it wasn’t soluble in alcohol, then I’d also need to find a new vector for it.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t just walk up to my targets with an angelic smile on my face and tell them to eat a handful of strange mushrooms. That kind of behaviour set off the wrong kind of alarm.
But first, I needed a mushroom that was potent enough to kill a fully grown man, one that may or may not have natural poison resistances.
It took some thinking before I remembered a kind of mushroom I’d gathered and grown a few samples of, but which I’d never bothered to combine with anything else.
[Magebane] Uncommon
A mushroom that requires elevated levels of ambient mana to grow. This mushroom’s spores are attracted to mana and will absorb the mana of anything touching or consuming them in order to fuel their eventual growth. The mushroom itself, if eaten, will disrupt the consumer’s magical channelling abilities for a time.
[Magebane] mushrooms were a pain to grow. Worse, they were just plain dangerous. The mushroom needed a constant infusion of magic during its entire growing phase. That was basically two to three days of me pushing my [Aura of Growth] at the mushroom just for it to grow at all.
Then I had to be careful. A single spore of it touching my skin was enough to start cutting into my mana regeneration. Not in a big way. It wasn’t even noticeable. Not unless I had a good dusting on me, in which case I might suddenly discover my regeneration cut in half.
The spore also stuck to anything magical. They didn’t feel sticky, so I supposed that the mechanism was itself magical in a way.
Dangerous little thing. I’d eaten a piece once and discovered that my mana regeneration was basically cut out for a couple of days. Worse, I couldn’t cast spells with the mana I had left. Any magical skill I used would come out... wrong. Twisted into unusability.
Which was why I was planning on using this very mushroom as the centrepiece of my plans. Could it counteract the effects of a ring of poison resistance? Maybe. I was actually counting on it being pretty good at it.
The thing that reminded me that I could use my [Magebane] mushrooms to begin with was something in geography class. Apparently, there had been other sites looked at for the settling of City Nineteen. The two dungeons here were a great reason to settle a city, but there were other places with dungeons within a fair distance of each other.
The problem was that some dungeons had stronger magic than others, and disruptive magic could interfere with enchantments, rendering them less useful or outright breaking them.
That sounded a lot like what [Magebane] did.
Still, [Magebane] on its own wasn’t lethal. Not unless someone needed their magic to live. And while running out of mana was a painful experience, it wouldn’t outright kill my targets. No, I needed something more lethal to add to this cocktail.
[Dead Man’s Agaric] Uncommon
A highly toxic mushroom. The spores cause the lungs of mammals who inhale them to inflame, and consumption of the mushroom’s meat causes internal haemorrhaging within two days of the time of consumption. Leads consumers to a heavy trance-like state where they will hallucinate vividly.
One of the mushrooms that I’d forgone in favour of my [Dead Man’s Cough]. The [Dead Man’s Agaric] didn’t have the spreading spore clouds. It released its spores at a much slower rate, and without the explosive burst. Plus, it was slower to kill.
But I didn’t mind that so much. If I poisoned my targets in the evening and they died in the morning, then that was a whole night’s separation between me and the target’s time of death. The hallucinogenic part was just a lovely cherry on top.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
So, my week was spent cultivating both mushrooms in secret, growing them quickly until they were mature enough to harvest, then combining the two.
The first batch was an abject failure, and I almost gave up then and there.
But I decided to give it another go. The [Magebane] portion of the new mushroom might have been the reason for the failure. Maybe I just hadn’t given the mushroom enough of what it wanted. Raw mana.
I stuffed the mycelium of the combined mushroom into a pocket and carried it around with me for a couple of days. It drained my mana all day long, which was fantastically annoying.
Still, the result was... probably worth it.
[Dead Mage Agaric] Rare
A powerful hallucinogenic mushroom that feeds on the consumer’s mana to create a web of mycelium within their body. Will continue to grow as it infects its victim until the victim expires or runs out of mana, after which it will break through their skin and spread fresh spores.
I wasn’t going to test this one on myself. In fact, I wanted nothing to do with it. But... well, it seemed too perfect not to use.
Also, the mushroom was just the cutest little guy. It had a broad hat, with purple striation and white warts all over it. The stem was fat and chubby, leading to a rim of ridges under the cap where the spores were stored. It was nice and squishy, too.
I cut the mushroom up into little chunks, then fitted those into a small bag. My tests showed that the mushroom’s effects weren’t diminished by alcohol, but it wasn’t breaking up in it either.
The targets would have to drink some small pieces mixed into their drinks. Maybe the bartender could pass it off as something else?
Well, I’d have to see.
As much as I wanted to keep on preparing things forever, that was impossible. Before I knew it, Milo’s birthday was only a couple of days away.
“I’ll be having it on Saturday,” Milo said one day at lunch. “Even though my actual birthday’s on Friday.”
“So that you can invite people?” I asked.
“Yeah, and because most people are off on Saturday. Dad said that his friends might want Sunday off, to sleep off the party,” Milo said.
“Do you think they’ll serve alcohol?” Andrew asked.
“Of course they will,” Montgomery said. “But not to you.”
“Hey, my dad lets me have some wine sometimes. And I’ve tried his bourbon. It tastes awful,” Andrew said.
“That’s because it’s a man’s drink, and you’ve got no hair on your chest,” Milo shot back.
There was jeering from across the table at that, and Milo looked particularly proud of himself. To be fair, he’d grown a little more confident over the last couple of days. I think my attempts to ingratiate myself and get to his party had been noticed, but it mostly meant that more people were trying to attend. Milo was basking in his sudden popularity. Even some of the Troll students had accosted him, asking for invites.
Sometimes, at night, I wrestled with the pre-emptive guilt.
Then I’d pop open a book in the library and see mention of some of the families of the Dragons in my year and the years above. They’d profited from famines and started wars to line their pockets with more wealth. The most innocent amongst them were those who’d merely profited from generations of accumulated, hoarded, wealth.
It was hard to feel bad for them in the abstract. It was only when I got to know them that it stung a little.
Not that it would stop me. I had a job to do.
And soon enough, the time came to do it. The last week was there before Milo’s birthday, and I’d secured a spot for myself as one of Milo’s friends.
A box arrived for me that same week, from my ‘uncle.’ It was filled with a random assortment of toys fresh off some assembly line. The Union likely had people on the line slip them away weeks before they were meant to be sold.
It was a decent enough gift to get me past the door and to provide some cover.
All my anxiety came to a head the Friday before Milo’s birthday. I snuck out that night and let Sir Nibbles out. If I couldn’t make it back to the school, then I’d at least want him to be free.
It was time to do my job.
***