Book 7. Chapter 4: Don't be a stranger, Bob
The giant charcoal black territory before me stretched as far as the eye could see. I’m talking entire mountain ranges ahead of me, all burned down to a crisp. The map called it the Deadlands. A long containment of completely burnt down forest, ultimately nestled between two mountains. Bob can’t climb mountains too well given his airborne nature, and there also isn’t a lot of trees and life on such rocky territory.
Since I’d reached the safe zone, I could take a bit more time to relax and wind down before I traversed this and went on. I was mildly thirsty, but within the soul trance I was able to ignore most of my body’s cravings.
Also, I wanted to learn more about Bob. Kres would try to peck my eyes out if I told him I was able to talk to the infestation but didn’t spend enough time trying to discover some secrets.
I reached a hand down to the dead dust under my boots, taking a pinch and watching the ashes float away backwards, back into Bob’s domain. “The winds keep going this direction?”
Journey returned a message ping. There weren't enough spores to communicate with Bob. “Ah.” I said, shaking the rest of the ashes off my fingers. “Bad wireless signal here. Got it.”
I had to walk a bit into Bob’s territory to get both my question and answer. If I stood still for too long, there wouldn’t be enough spores in the air for Journey to properly communicate back. So I constantly had to seek deeper pockets of the deadly miasma, in order to talk to the miasma itself.
“They do.” Bob finally returned after a few minutes of walking into and out of the domain. “It is how the mites have constructed this biome. The Odin were wise in selecting this as their barrier. My unintentional egress in this direction is forever blocked due to the wind blowing my spores away. Animal hosts would be required to traverse this stretch of land.”
Under my bootfalls in the area here, nothing was growing. Or rather, I could see small sprouts that were looking rather sickly. Brown wilting leaves is not a good sign of anything. “I’m taking a wild guess here, but your influence isn’t healthy for new growth?”
“It is not.” Bob’s ethereal voice came back. “The resource drain is too harsh against the fragile life. Even with my attempts to produce as little spores as possible. As I spread into a biome, its life cycle is disrupted and doomed to eventual decay.”