*Day 23 - The Road South*
Spun-Duh found Moka eating his boots.
"Those are... those WERE my best boots!"
The moss-covered creature looked up, six tentacle-whiskers still wrapped around the leather, and made a sound like grinding millstones. Purring. The little bastard was purring while destroying his footwear.
"Fiutatore di Radici," Kaelen identified. "Root-Sniffer. How did it get here? They never leave Boleto."
"Followed the spores," Spun-Duh muttered, watching his boot dissolve. "Probably smelled my collection from five kingdoms away."
Moka released the boot, waddled over to Spun-Duh, and sneezed. The sneeze released spores that formed words in the air: "You. Smell. Interesting."
"It... talks?"
"No. Communicates through spore patterns. Very sophisticated. Worth about 50,000 gold in the right market." Spun-Duh knelt down. "You're looking for Tartufo del Silenzio, aren't you?"
Moka's whiskers pointed unanimously at Spun-Duh's pack.
"I don't have any—"
The creature walked straight to the pack, through the pack (somehow), and emerged with a small vial Spun-Duh had hidden in a secret pocket within a secret pocket.
"That's... how did you..."
Moka opened the vial, inhaled deeply, then did something impossible. She smiled. No mouth, but definitely smiled.
"Fine. FINE. We're partners now. But rules: No eating my equipment. No revealing my secret stashes. No judgment about my organizational system."
Moka sneezed again: "Your. System. Is. Chaos."
"It's ORGANIZED chaos. There's a difference."
### The Hunt
Three days later, Moka proved her worth.
"Stop," she communicated through spores while they traveled through corrupted lands.
"Why?" Ora asked.
Moka's whiskers pointed down. Spun-Duh immediately started digging. The others watched, confused, as he excavated a seemingly empty hole.
Then he gasped.
"Crystallized Voidcap! Growing in corruption-touched soil! This shouldn't exist! The theoretical implications—"
"We're being chased by fifty Ghul'rok," Kaelen reminded him.
"FIFTY-ONE," Spun-Duh corrected, still digging. "Moka says there's one underground. Very rude of him. Interrupting important mycological discovery."
The ground erupted. A Ghul'rok burst forth.
Moka jumped on its face.
The Ghul'rok screamed, clawing at the creature now tentacle-deep in its eye sockets. Moka was... eating its memories. Literally consuming the psychic residue.
"Good girl!" Spun-Duh cheered while carefully extracting the mushroom. "Eat the trauma! All the trauma!"
The Ghul'rok collapsed, mind empty.
Moka waddled back, significantly fatter, and burped a cloud of nightmares.
"Your pet is terrifying," Ora observed.
"Partner. Not pet. Partnership implies mutual benefit and respect." He scratched Moka between two whiskers. She purred like an avalanche. "She gets to eat interesting psychic flavors, I get to find impossible fungi. Perfect symbiosis."
### The Secret Language
That night, Ora watched Spun-Duh and Moka "conversing."
Moka would release spores. Spun-Duh would respond with his beard forming shapes. Moka would wiggle whiskers. Spun-Duh would tap rhythms on stone.
"What are you discussing?"
"The philosophical implications of fungi that exist in corrupted soil. She believes it proves that life adapts to any condition. I believe it proves that corruption might be reversible. We're having a scholarly debate."
"Your pet—"
"PARTNER—"
"Your partner has opinions on philosophy?"
"She's eaten the memories of sixteen thousand creatures. She has EVERYONE'S opinions on philosophy. Very confusing for her. Yesterday she spent three hours arguing with herself about the nature of consciousness."
Moka sneezed: "Still. Uncertain. If. I. Exist."
"Existential crisis?" Ora asked.
"Tuesday," Spun-Duh shrugged. "For both of us."
### The Truffle Hunt
Weeks later, Moka suddenly froze. Every whisker pointed in the same direction. She released spores that formed a single word: "TRUFFLE."
"Where?" Spun-Duh was already moving.
She led them to ruins of an old dwarven outpost. Down, down, down into darkness. The others followed, confused but curious.
In the deepest chamber, growing from the skull of an ancient dwarf king: a perfect Tartufo del Silenzio.
"Nobody move. Nobody breathe. Nobody THINK too loud."
Spun-Duh approached with ceremonial slowness. Moka stood guard, whiskers tasting air for any disturbance.
He harvested it in perfect silence.
Then held it.
Stared at it.
This truffle could sever him completely. End the phantom pain of his broken network connection. Give him true silence instead of static.
"You okay?" Kaelen whispered.
"23% okay. 77% considering eating this immediately. Would solve many problems. Create new ones. But solve the immediate ones."
Moka walked over, placed a whisker on his hand. Through spore-words: "Not. Alone. Have. Me."
Spun-Duh looked at the creature. This moss-covered, memory-eating, boot-destroying partner who understood him better than any dwarf ever had.
"You're right. Don't need silence. Have you to complain to."
He packed the truffle away. "For emergencies. Or trade. Or if you ever get boring."
Moka bit his ankle affectionately.
"OW! That's toxic!"
She sneezed: "Only. Slightly."
### The Bond
Later, Ora asked: "Why does she stay with you?"
Spun-Duh was feeding Moka metal shavings while she helped him catalog fungus samples.
"Same reason I stay with her. We're both something that shouldn't exist. I'm a dwarf severed from the network. She's a Fiutatore who left Boleto. We're mistakes that found each other."
"That's... actually beautiful."
"It's statistically improbable. But yes, also beautiful. In a moldy, traumatized, codependent way."
Moka sneezed one more message: "Love. You. Too. Stupid."
Spun-Duh pretended he had something in his eye. Definitely not tears. Dwarves don't cry over moss-covered root-sniffers who understand them perfectly.
Except when they do.
"Come on," he said gruffly. "Let's go find something impossible."
Moka's whiskers pointed forward, toward a thousand underground mysteries only they could sense.
Together, the broken dwarf and impossible creature went hunting for things that shouldn't exist.
It was perfect.
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*End Chapter 19.6*
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