Pierce got thrown to the center of the room. His body skittered for a few paces, then stopped. He slowly lifted his head to look at the monstrous visage before him—this creature of any nightmare. The Morel mushroom stared back, or at least it felt like it did. Unlike its brethren, it was utterly humanoid, except for its head and partially its torso, which remained related to its roots. It had holes throughout its body from what Pierce could see on the floor.

  The graying color of its mushroom flesh and the way it seemed to breathe sent a shiver down Pierce's spine, making him realize how alien this all was.

  “Hello, my name is Pierce. It’s great to meet you, uh, sir. Whatever it is, this has all been a great misunderstanding.”

  Silence met Pierce's statement as all of the mushrooms seemingly just looked on at him. Then the morel opened one of the slits in its head and spoke with a gravely earthy tone.

  “Hello, human. We will address the crimes you have committed against the whole. We are the Unified Head of my brethren.”

  “That's great, um, I’m sorry for what I’ve done, but the Child came after me. I was simply defending myself.” The overwhelming guilt was slowly growing in Pierce's chest. Why had he had to kill the child mushroom? He had gotten caught up, but maybe that wasn’t an excuse. He shook himself; it would attack him, and that was his only rational response to protect himself.

  The morel stood along with its brethren and raised a pale four-fingered hand.

  “We have decided.”

  Pierce blinked as if he hadn’t heard the discussion amongst the mushroom kin. He then remembered the voice in his head from earlier. They possessed some sort of ability relating to telepathy.

  “Given your crimes and their severity, as well as a chance of usefulness, you will be our slave for the remainder of your life. Serve the Unified head well.”

  A single stomp from every mushroom in the room echoed through the hall, and Pierce got dragged to his feet. He was dumbfounded.

  “Enslaved?” he yelled as the mushroom pushed him towards the big doors the mushrooms had led him through earlier. “ Your kind attacked me first; it was a reaction. What was I supposed to do?”

  The Morel said nothing, and Pierce felt hands at his back. As the doors closed, he was pushed into the hallway. The voice returned to Pierce’s mind as they turned down one of the many branching pathways.

  “A fate suiting one against the unified head.” The Mushroom said, a faint chuckle following the words.

  A spike of pain entered Pierce’s mind, but he forced himself to ignore it. He hardened his mind, and it felt like the words met resistance. He obtained spared that, at least. Stumbling along, he tried to figure out what to do, but nothing came. He was a slave to this hivemind, much more potent than him. He couldn’t fight his way out, and he didn’t have anything to escape from the freakish sprinting of these creatures.

  With each step, his mind sunk deeper into despair. He had no clue if he would get out of whatever was happening. He had been rash and stupid to think the mushrooms wouldn’t come looking for him after killing a child of their colony; a child. Pierce felt the bile rise in his throat. He had killed a child, and based on the interactions with the colony he had so far, it was a conscious being. The vomit escaped him before he could stop himself, and one of the captors in front of him gained a covering of the remnant blue mushrooms he had left in his stomach.

  The shitake whipped around and swung a hand across Pierce’s face, and with a crunch against his jaw, he sprawled against the wooded pathway. How did things get like this? The hands of the mushroom kin brought him to his feet and forced him back on his feet. Why him? Why was this all happening to him? For some reason, he guessed that all his bad luck had to be redeemed in this month. Like a giant fucked up lottery ticket. He felt the walls close in on his mind's eye as the light left the hallway with each step they took; they were deep beneath the earth now.

  Pierce’s hope left as he saw their destination. A lava lake greeted his vision as they rounded a bend in the path, almost blinding him, as they had been wandering in the dark for half an hour. How did the Mushrooms know where to go, he suddenly thought. Something to do with their telepathic ability? Maybe they are told by other mushrooms down here. Indications on how to turn and in which ways to go. He supposed it didn’t matter now, as a dark black staircase jutted out from rock further along the pathway.

  The lava lake’s massive scale made Lake Superior look like a splash pool. It occupied the bottom of an enormous cavern spanning further than Pierce could see. The pathway they had entered from was sticking from the wall, with one side open to the lava lake below. As the group descended, every sore muscle fiber ached. The wound on his upper arm seeped fresh blood from the rigorous treatment. He cursed everything that had gotten him to this point.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  That damn snake, as well as the fucking system. It could all go fuck itself. Pierce was no leader of the Human race. He was pitiful. His head felt underwater as Pierce’s thinking got replaced by self-deprecation and doubt.

  The staircase was as long as a football stadium’s field. It was a dangerous descent with no railings. He had a flash of humor as he thought of Grace trying to get down this stairway. She hated heights, and every camping trip Pierce had ever tried had ended in disaster. Yet another thing he couldn’t get right. But he supposed that didn’t matter now, given the stakes he was dealing with.

  As they reached about halfway down the staircase, a jutting rock tower appeared in their vision. It was roughly hewn, with jagged edges and deep cut lines made from primitive tools. But that suited its look just fine, as the rock was set directly into the lava lake. It encouraged anyone to discard the thought of this being a tourist destination. Hours passed as they slowly descended. The only gauge for how long it had been was the timer on the prompt of when the system would transport him back.

  They finally reached the bottom, and Pierce was a sweating mess. Pierce's clothes were covered in it and soaked through. They approached a gate that stood as a seal to trap anything in or out. The gate sat at the bottom of the staircase. The one leading the party pressed a slight sigil that looked like a mix of an A and K, the twisting pattern reminding him of the Lambda Greek symbol with a line through the bottom half. The mushroom’s hand was sliced off at the wrist and sucked into the gate console, and the door slowly opened.

  The mushroom didn’t even wince as it lost its entire hand. It deemed it part of whatever this was and moved onward, with the red and white-spotted one prodding Pierce to move.

  Pierce was stunned at the mushroom's indifference at losing a literal limb, but he guessed there was something more to the process that he didn’t understand. The rough black stone gave Pierce chills as they passed through the gate. This was an evil lair that Sauron would be proud of. They entered a black hallway, and the temperature immediately spiked. The sweat on his body started to heat up and then evaporate, only to leave behind more sweat in its place.

  “What am I going to be doing here exactly?” The Mushrooms said nothing but just pushed him forward.

  “That good, huh?” The growing tension he felt was exposed in the quaver he spoke with.

  Each step made the air hotter and hotter until. Finally, the group stopped in front of a pair of doors. Feeling like he had run a triathlon, Pierce desperately hoped some respite was on the other side of these doors. The sweat on his face dripped into a great pool at his feet as another one of the mushrooms stepped forward and pushed a button on the wall.

  The cooling wind from this room almost knocked Pierce out from the drastic temperature change. He thanked every god he could think of as he hobbled through the doorway with the other two following behind him. The door hissed shut, and they stood before a desk hewn from the same black stone as everything else. A Mushroom with moss growing on almost every part of it stood up from behind the desk and stood there as they were having a telepathic discussion.

  Pierce didn’t like how they talked. Mainly because he couldn’t even read their body language, and he had no clue how the conversation could go. For example, Pierce would love to know if he would get treated well or with disdain and hatred. It seemed the conversation had ended as Pierce got pushed toward the desk, and the moss-covered mushroom pulled a writhing vine from a cabinet behind it.

  The vine wrapped around Pierce’s wrists and held there firmly intertwined. The Moss-covered one then led the way down a side corridor off of the room where the desk was. What were cells lined the hallway, and he saw only a few occupants. One was huddled in the back corner, away from the light passively emitted from the hallway ceiling. Another was up against his rock cage with his hands outstretched. He was short and stout, with a long beard that had braids running through it. He had a crazy look in his eyes, and he yowled like a wounded animal. Moving past the cell, they came to the second to last of fourteen total cells.

  Part of the rock was shaped like a door with hinges, and the moss-covered mushroom opened it. Pierce was then unceremoniously shoved inside. He fell as he was pushed over and hit the hard ground.

  “Enjoy.” The voice said in his mind with a cackle as the group returned from the cell hallway.

  Pierce didn’t bother to get up and just curled into a ball. His body racked with sobs as he lay there, but he didn’t have the energy. He just coughed and shuddered as his dry heaving wracked his body until the exhaustion drove him into unconsciousness.

  He awoke to clatter outside his cell. A pitch-black mushroom stood there, holding a wooden bowl and a set of keys. It leaned down and unlocked a grate at the bottom of the door. The food bowl was then kicked into Pierce's cell.

  “Eat it. Work soon.” Even among a nontalkative race, this was a new standard

  .

  His Head throbbed from the Telepathic message, but he focused on the bowl before him. The bowl contained grey matter that looked like brains of some sort. Against Piercee’s better judgment, he scooped a small handful of the slop. He then took an experimental taste and was pleased to find it was like eating mushy peas with hardly any flavor. He finished whatever it was and felt a minor release of one of the many knots his stomach had accumulated from his hunger.

  He lay back against the far wall of his cell and waited for whatever this work was. Pierce started doing push-ups but stopped as the wound on his arm that had healed back over as he was resting reopened. He lay back, and despair’s tendrils slowly closed around the edges of his vision. This was his life now, to be a slave to a race of telepathic mushrooms.

  His cage door rattled as it opened, and the pitch-black mushroom beckoned for him to follow. He slowly got to his feet and followed after the mushroom’s receding figure. The other prisoners followed along behind Pierce, all with a look of complete dejection. They went down one corridor and then another until they entered through a doorway that exploded with heat and light. Shielding his eyes, Pierce saw they were on a massive platform floating above the lava with Giant gems dotting the ceiling above.

  Scaffolding covered the walls, and various workers dotted along it.

  “Get to work, scum.” The Mushroom thrust a Pickaxe into Pierce’s hands.