🧪 Elowen – Poison Spore

Elowen Mycera never picked normal mushrooms. Where others saw dinner, she saw formulas. Where others saw Poison Spores, she saw choir stalls for chemistry.

Chapter I — The Lantern Grove

In a cavern lit by bioluminescent caps, spores pulsed like sleeping hearts. Elowen set down her kit—Pharmacy box, tinctures, and a coil of copper wire. With a whistle of Bioethics, she summoned her homunculus Filir, whose wings flicked impatiently.

When the first cluster lurched, she traced a quick ring of fire—Demonstration—and marked the leading cap with a glass vial of Acid Terror. The splash hissed; the spore staggered, leaking violet steam. Swarms closed in. She snapped her glove and called thorn sentries—Summon Flora—poppies that spat needles to slow the tide.

Chapter II — The Mycelium Court

From the depths rolled a carpet of caps—a matron spore, larger than a cart wheel, crowned in pale gills. It thumped the stone; a shock of spores rose like fog. Elowen coughed, tossed a sachet, and the fog burned away in a low halo—Demonstration again, controlled and tight.

Filir dove with Moonlight, slashing arcs that scattered drones. Elowen pointed and two Marine Spheres burbled into being, drifting like living bombs. “Not yet,” she whispered, circling. With a merchant’s old habit she braced and drove a heavy Mammonite strike into a lurching stalk, toppling it into the matron’s bulk.

Chapter III — The Breath Between

Elowen drew a circle with copper wire, clipped a vial to its node, and let Filir’s wing static hum along it. “I only need a sample,” she promised the dark. The matron trembled, and a low tone rippled through the cavern. The tone slid into her chest like a remembered lullaby.

Her hands paused. As a child she'd survived a winter fever thanks to a nameless potion—green, earthy, and warm. The tone was the bottle’s hum.

Finale — The Matron’s Pact

Elowen clicked her tongue—Filir banked, her Marine Spheres drifted wide, and she lobbed a harmless vial that burst in cool light. The matron stilled. She set down her knife and opened her Pharmacy kit instead, brewing a tiny draught with dew from the healer caps. A nearby drone, rot blotched along its gills, drank. The black softened and flaked away.

The cavern exhaled. Caps tilted toward her like listeners. Elowen dipped her quill and sketched the recipe in her field book: Mycel Remedy. The matron let her take a cluster, then sank back, crown dimming to rest.

On the way out, traps and burn pits left by smugglers smoldered cold. Elowen corked her new vial and smiled. “Not rare,” she told Filir. “Just misunderstood.” Outside, Payon’s wind carried a scent of wet earth and second chances.