The Life, Death, and Relife of the Mushroom Mage

Chapter 2

"Man, them nobles are really turning that forest up there upside down," the innkeeper said as she polished a mug clean. "You'd have thought some kinda monster was sent loose on the grounds with all the racket they've been makin'."

"Whatever's going on, they're right pissed about it," the woodsman said as the figure sat in the back of the room. "Asking about suspicious people, letting loose the hunting hounds, all of that."

"Think there was a theft?" the innkeeper asked, and the woodsman hummed.

"Maybe? They're looking for someone," he said, and the person finished their drink and pushed out of their chair for the door.

Mally went outside the inn and swung up onto the freshly purchased horse, leading it out into the street and clattering down the cobblestones. Darven was a bustling city, set on the confluence of two rivers, a port city. It was beautiful and boasted festivals and celebrations on an almost weekly basis. But, there were secrets in this city. The underground was relentless and violent, and if you wanted to get work here, you needed to be prepared to deal with the dons to approve it. The information guild here was booming, and it was a dangerous town to be in. The black market reigned supreme here, if you knew where to go, and it was...

Well.

It was exactly the place Mally didn't want to be.

Because Mally was the murderer of Georgina DeVille, of the DeVille Marchdom, the very people that presided over this city.

Mally was also Georgina DeVille.

It was a complicated situation, and Mally was not keen on explaining it. They had to get out of here.

The inn was at the far side of town, and on the opposite side of the city from where the estate sat, and people were checking identification cards at the bridge crossing over the Jung River. Mally pulled out the identification card they had so painstakingly prepared, and came to a stop at the front of the line.

"Identification, please," the guard said, and Mally passed down the card. "Mally Mack?"

"That's me," Mally replied and leaned on the horse they had just bought at the market. "What's the occasion? They weren't checking papers when I came in."

"That's none of your business," the guard sniffed, and Mally idly wondered when the news was going to hit that Georgina was dead.

"Fair," Mally replied and looked up at the sky.

"It says here you've been here for a week? And your occupation is adventurer, not guild affiliated?"

"I travel too much to be affiliated with a guild," Mally replied with a yawn. "Do you need anything else from me?"

"What were you in town for?" the guard asked suspiciously, and Mally shot him a grin.

"Gathering materials for my next job!"

"And what's that?"

"Confidential," Mally replied, and the guard eyed them with suspicion. Jeez, he really was hoping Mally was Georgina's murderer so he could go home, wasn't he?

"Alright," the guard said and handed the card back to Mally. Mally slipped it into their bag and waved at him.

"Have a good day!" they said cheerfully, and then they clopped across the long bridge. They were home free. Ah, it was a good day to be alive.

Mally had worked hard to make this body, growing it out of a mycelium and forming it from literal mushrooms. It had taken years to make, but it was finally ready. The process of transferring their soul into it had been even more time consuming. They had to track down ancient, forbidden texts, but it was lucky they were in Darven, where ancient and forbidden texts were the specialty of the locals. They were virtually indistinguishable from any other human, so long as they didn't bleed, because when they did bleed, it was a pale, whitish liquid, and they hadn't managed to figure out how to change that. There had been a lot of trial and error involved in making this body, but Mally had prevailed.