Amy looked at her surroundings. Giant mushrooms expanded in every direction, infinitely. She closed her eyes. She always hated the concept of infinity or anything close to it, Ever since she met with mathematics it was her most disliked symbol. She chose her direction at random, since it didn't seem to matter anyways.
Sponge-like dirt beneath her feet squished with a soft and wet sounds with every step, lifting fine, grey spores into the air. Spores smelled bitter-y, a taste that made her want to puke. She pulled a cloth from her backpack and poured some water on it and tied it over her face, as a filter. She could still taste the smell even after the handmade filter.
This is my personal hell...
Curious orb flew out from the inside of her backpack, where it had been amidst the chaos. It flew in front of her as a scout. Yet only the sound was her barely audible steps squishing the soil. A few minutes later she saw a blue mushroom with white spots, it had a small curve and on its middle, which straighten out along its way to the cap.
She saw a very similar mushroom few steps ahead with the exact same curve and the same color. This time she made sure to memorize all of the imperfections, in a few minutes she saw another one and another one... was she going crazy? After minutes of walking, Amy stopped to look around.
Am I looping around?
She reached her hand out to a mushroom nearby, orb's mana flowed in the air by her hand, and compressed itself together. The mana turned into a orange slime of fire with a whoosh, rushing quickly out of her hand to the mushroom, to mark it. The orb's light slightly diminished. She turned her gaze to the little orb and sighed
I need to be careful about how I use the mana
She continued on her way, the mushrooms had very few variants. Red ones with white spots, blue ones with white spots and green ones with -you guessed it!- white spots. As if the planter forgot to mix the seeds. But the mushroom she marked never appeared, yet something else did...
Dozens of mushrooms in front of her were hollowed out like a rock-cut architecture. The cap of these mushrooms were carved out as well to resemble windows. She took a step toward the back of a mushroom. Along the way, her eyes were drawn to the lifeless chimneys, made from extra stems. She froze, straining her ears for any sign of life, but was met only by an oppressive silence.
She slowly walked to the city. Her eyes scanned every corner, she walked in the silent streets, the city wasn't much different from the forest; yet it made her feel safer, since every building wasn't exactly the same. At one of intersects she saw an obelisk made from the stems of a decapitated mushroom, the runes were carved directly to the stems. When she stood by the obelisk, she stared at the letters for a good minute, it didn't match any long-forgotten, ancient language she had spend years studying. It wasn't sharp and angular like the elf script nor it was curvy and spread out like the orc language.
She sighed, snatched the flying orb by her side and started to write down every rune she saw. The letters were curvy and compact. When she finished the north side of the obelisk, she checked other sides to see if there was any more left. All of the sides were carved out to the brim with this unknown script. After an hour she wrote all the sides of the mushroom. When she recorded the last letter, she released the orb to the air, letting it fly beside her.
"Let's get moving solving these runes can take years on a good day." She mumbled to the orb or to herself.
She turned her gaze from the obelisk to the streets, Her eyes moved from one end of the road to the other. Both of them looked very similar, only different thing was the color pattern. Then she remembered her professor's words:
If you got stuck between two choices choose the second one.
It didn't have any philosophical meaning, it was just to make choosing for her easier. She turned to street of her choosing and slowly began to walk on her way. But suddenly she felt a sharp, crawling sensation on her back, something was watching.