Welcome to the Atlas, friends.
Right, settle in. It is time to go back to the wonderful prompt challenge that was started by the ever talented Asteria Geisterblum.
The prompt reads:
Mushrooms are growing in a perfect circle under his kitchen table. Which wouldn’t be much of a problem, if he hadn’t stepped into the ring. When he wakes up, Leander finds himself somewhere he hasn’t been in a long time. And it turns out, the place was much nicer in his memory.
This week we’re going back to the pub, but not for a pint of the usual. I’ve always found nostalgia to be a bit of a tricky beast; it’s comforting, warm, and smells like home, but if you stare at it too long, it tends to trap you. In this chapter, Leander finds out that sometimes, the things that feel the most safe are actually the most dangerous. And for anyone who has ever felt like they’re putting on a performance just to get through the week... well, Leander’s right there with you. Mind your step on the floorboards.
Read Chapter 2 here ➡️
Chapter 3 | The Liberty Inn
Leander stared at the ceiling, his brow furrowed so deep it hurt. The coin flipped endlessly between his fingers in a well oiled motion, heads, tails, heads, tails, but he didn’t see it. The coin was unchanged, and had been for days. Clover had not responded. His furrowed forehead deepened as he pondered the reasons why. Has she been caught? Has she completed her mission, and any moment now guards of the city watch would be kicking down his door?
A sickening wet CRUNCH emanated from the kitchen.
Leander sat bolt upright like a meerkat. Something had crashed through into his non-magic house. His hand holding the coin gripped tightly as he stood up straight, silent, waiting for another noise to confirm his suspicions. Walking up to one of his mirrors, he peered through it and saw in its reflection, not the resplendent magically infused room behind him, but the drab murky room he used as his cover. It was empty, but something was definitely amiss. The bed was in its right place, the door to his house was still firmly shut, but in the middle of the room, a forest of larger than life black Mushrooms had grown in and through his kitchen table, causing it to collapse from the rot.
Stroking the edge of the mirror frame, he issued a silent command, and was consumed in the chrome of its reflection, appearing on the other side, in his non-magical house. The first thing he noticed was the immediate stench. An unexpected smell of burnt sugar and grave dust.
Again?
Walking around, Leander examined the table from all angles, it had been practically digested, covered in a thick black mould that was identical to the threads of the curse he had seen twice now…
The same black mould from the spider-spy I crushed last week.
He looked for the source, and saw in the middle a small bit of wood with dead leaves sticking out of it. The chopping board where the spider had been destroyed. His annoyance gripped in his chest as he realised he should have cleaned that up sooner and not left it to just fester in his kitchen. Around the last remaining bit of his old chopping board was a small ring of mushrooms that were glowing and pulsing slightly. They seemed to be pulsating with the rhythm of his own heart, deeply unnerving Leander. More unsettling by far was the small coin sitting perfectly in the middle of the ring, the same coin he had given to Clover.
His heart raced as he looked around the room for signs of tampering, checking shadows in case one leapt out at him. Leander snorted. A coin in a mushroom ring? It was so heavy-handed it felt like an insult. It was the kind of trap a novice set for a blind man, not a Master Thief. Cards players sometimes did this, laying out a line of attack so apparent that it was confusing. Are they bluffing? Do they know something you don’t?
Looking up at his wall where a drawing of his Nonna hung, he remembered who he was. Sighing, he went to his closet and pulled out his malachite cloak, and then stepped into the ring with the grim determination of a person walking into a fire, knowing that they were needed.
Yes nonna, I know, triggering the trap is often the only way to find the mark.
Picking up the coin, it felt cold in his hand, like it had been left outside in the winter. Goosebumps raised down Leander’s arms, both from the cold, and the sudden sensation that the world around him was melting. The walls of his kitchen slid like paint in the rain, and the floor under him seemed to sag like a wineskin. The sudden jerk caused him to stumble for a moment, and he grew slightly green in the cheeks as reality shifted about him. At the last moment before his cheeks pouted, the floor beneath grew firm again, and the smell of rot, burnt sugar, and grave dust was replaced by a very specific cacophony of aromas that wrenched him into nostalgia.
His eyes grew wide as the smell of seaweed soup filled his nose and rested on his tongue. Saliva immediately consumed his mouth and a deep resonant hunger responded, like a musician calling back to the song of flavour being danced upon his senses. Mingling in with this melody was the deeper bassier note of pipe tobacco. The kind of tobacco smell that was textured, it lingered in the air, but it also sank into the fabrics, and was swept up by the swishing of a thick sailors coat. Finally, the percussion came in, the particular tang of hops as they poured out of the taps. The dream of warmer climates delivered in liquid form to men of the sea who knew the cold like an old friend, but liked to dream.
When the walls of the world reasserted themselves, Leander did not need to open his eyes to know exactly where he was. This was home, his parents Inn by the sea. The Liberty.
As he nervously opened his eyes, unsure if this sensual onslaught could really be a messenger of truth. Light seeped in through his eyelashes, and the glow of multiple oil lamps swinging over an all too familiar bar greeted him. Leander’s stomach turned over. He gripped the doorframe, his knuckles white, as his eyes tried to reconcile the impossible geometry of the memory made real. His shoulders tightened in that way that felt like muscle ache from too much exercise.
The inn was full of patrons, and behind the bar was a man he didn’t recognize, a gentleman with jet black hair. It was amazing to see that even the selection of spirits lined up on the wooden shelves behind the unfamilair barman contained all the right drinks in all the right places. Things weren’t quite as they seemed; however, a tug at Leander’s heart pulled him momentarily groundwards, draining him immediately. At the same moment, the walls and surfaces seemed to thin and that sickly feeling of paints melting in the rain returned. A moment of translucency in the building revealed a patina of dark sandstone beneath that could not be anything to do with the Liberty. There was only one place in the world that had sandstone like that.
Picking his strength back up the floor, he stiffened, suddenly even more nervous as he considered the possibility that he could be in his old school, and not in his parents’ establishment at all. There again, the wood panelling behind the snugs flickered and melted revealing more stone. As the walls solidified back into warm mahogany, Leander’s knees buckled. A wave of exhaustion hit him, as if he’d just run a mile. The room wasn’t just surrounding him; it was feeding on him.
As the walls reasserted themselves by the snugs, he noticed someone familiar in the corner. It was Clover, sitting in one of the bays. The dark circles were gone from under her eyes. Her skin, where it had been pale and smudged with city grime, glowed with a rosy, well-fed warmth. The black haired bartender swept over to her and placed a foaming tankard of dark ale on her table. The liquid moved in a slightly odd way, but Clover was entranced, reaching for it and taking a huge swig.
Sensing the danger Leander started towards her, bustling through the crowd, but his course was suddenly halted in mid stride as a laugh rang out through the room. His mothers.
Standing in the middle of the pub, eyes closed, he was hit with a wave of perfection. The memory of the walls dripping and becoming translucent was pasted over by the specific creak of the floorboards, the smell of his mothers tomato and bread stew, the specific hum of the conversation, with the lilted sailor way of speaking pitched to exactly the right tone. The tension in his shoulders, held tight for years, vanished instantly. For a second, he forgot the war. He forgot the hiding. He just wanted to sit down. His whole body wanted to reach out and grab the entire room and never let go.
Opening his eyes, he saw them in the corner booth at the opposite end of the inn from Clover. They were alive and well again, not the grey dead things he remembered from… The memory clenched around his skull threatening to crush him.
The room invited him back with its symphony. Here they are, vibrant, laughing, whole. The room whispered that reality in his left ear and it slowly sank in. The mask slipped away and Leander felt a surge of pure childish longing, beginning to buy the lie. His feet moved, wanting to run to them, to hide behind his fathers apron like he used to as a boy, to be home.
His Nonna’s voice whispered in his other ear.
Look closer Leon.
He stopped midstride and peered closely at them for a minute or more. His mother’s laugh, it was identical each time, and the way his father polished the tankard. Swirl, tap, lift. Swirl, tap, lift. He didn’t look at the glass. He didn’t look at Leander. He was a needle stuck in a groove, wearing his father’s face... It was a carefully crafted loop, randomised to avoid detection, but a loop none the less. A pantomime. His stomach grew sick with revulsion that he was nearly pulled in by it. The room once again flickered, revealing Ellendor sandstone, and another wave of exhaustion hit him.
They are lures Leon, remember this is a trap. Find the mark.
The trap was using his own magic against him, decorating the space with his own memories. The hollow puppets were wearing the faces of his dead family. The grief and the hope he had been feeling curdled in his stomach into a sick, hot horror.
FIND THE MARK!
Leander jumped to his Nonna’s command and walked carefully over to the bar, re-dressing himself as the loser, he tripped a little on a chair leg, made sure to bump into another patron splashing a bit of their drink on their shirt, and then slid into the tall bar stool, nearly toppling it over.
The Bartender gave him a smooth look, his face was clean and almost featureless, with an unusual amount of shadows in his dimples and lines. Pulling up a glass from the tap, he pushed a tankard across the mahogany bar towards Leander. It stopped perfectly. The liquid sloshed, but only one or twice before settling into the glass like a still pool. The glass on the counter didn’t make the right noise. The creak he remembered vividly from his childhood was missing. Looking into the drink, he sniffed it. The usual notes of porter were there, a dark coffee smell, dark chocolate, toast, and hops. But the smell had an underlying intoxicating quality. It was not a smell in the traditional sense, and yet it felt like one in the way his brain perceived it. Pure, liquid mana, with notes of the wind, of ancient words, and of limitless potential. Leander’s hand trembled. He wanted it. He wanted to possess it.
The Bartender leant in smoothly.
“Rough week, Leander? We heard about the market. Embarrassing. But in here? You’re not the village idiot. You’re the King. Drink up. You don’t have to pretend to be competent here.”
Leander stared at the drink.
“Finally, a place that appreciates my performance. Though usually, I have to… “ The words were out of his mouth before he had even thought them.
The oily, pearlescent liquid created a reflection in his widening pupils. The temptation was strong. Some tiny part of him was internally screaming to not take it. But his mind raced with what this much power could do. He could pour this magic into those hollow puppets of his parents and make them real. He could snap his fingers and turn Warlord Thibault’s estate into dust. He could end the war, end peoples suffering, he could end the hiding, the ‘Loser’ act. The urge to drink was a physical ache in his jaw as he thought about every injustice he had suffered. The small voice inside of him screamed as loudly as possible, its tone, the pitch of his Nonna.
Nothing is free but the cheese in the mousetrap. Weigh the gift.
He forced himself, with slow grinding intention, to look away from the drink and look at the ‘cost’. Clover. She was spiraling fast, sitting in her chair and laughing at nothing. She looked up at him with swimming eyes. She pushed her own glass towards him.
“Hey Loser! Look! It’s all free! We can stay forever!”
Her face crumpled into terror.
“Why won’t the door open? I checked the door. It’s a wall. Where is my coin, I… I sent it away…” Then back to giggling.
She was fracturing, her mind was like the room, sometimes there, sometimes not. Leander looked at the drink she had proffered, then at Clover. The black porter was just like the black fungus rot spreading tendril-like from her fingertips across the perfect table.
The rot! How had I not seen it before?
The deep intake of breath as he gasped in realisation caused the rot on the table to swim and slowly disappear as he inhaled more of those nostalgic smells.
The trap. Clover was already succumbing to it, and so was he. They had to move fast. Turning, he struggled with all his might to pull his hand away from the tankard that had been given to him. Saliva nearly dripped from his mouth as he looked at the glistening glass.
Nothing is free. Nothing is free…
With a last terrible yank he pulled his arm away fully, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“NOTHING IS FREE!”
Reaching hungrily into his pocket, the air thick to get through, like syrup, he grabbed Clover’s coin with his relinquished hand and held it aloft. The room stilled and silenced.
“We pay our way!” Leander snarled, his voice cracking with the strain of rejection. “Service is terrible here. Take the coin!”
He slammed the silver piece onto the bar. It didn’t ring with the bright chime of commerce; it hit with the dull, heavy thud of a stone dropped into mud.
The effect was instantaneous and violent. The warm, golden light of the inn soured into a sickly, bruised purple. The comforting aroma of roasting tomatoes twisted sharply into the cloying scent of rotting flowers and stale grease. The illusion, starved of his acceptance, began to cannibalize itself.
The apparent wood panelling of the inn didn’t soak up the sound as they should have done, and instead they flickered again, unstable and shadowy, revealing the sandstone of Ellendor beneath. But this time something else happened. The sandstone walls flickered too. Clover groaned as the Ellendor walls strained at her spirit to reassert themselves. He too felt the same rush of energy escaping him as the pub tried to rebuild itself.
In the corner, the laughter died. A collective gasp sucked the air from the room. Leander watched in horror as the figures wearing his parents’ faces crumbled. They didn’t fade; they collapsed inward, their skin flaking away like wet ash to reveal the hollow, inky void beneath.
“Leon... cold...” the thing wearing his mother’s face wheezed. Her arm reached out, but the fingers were already dripping away like melting wax. She split and cracked like an old painting in a fire.
It didn’t matter that he knew it was a trick. It didn’t matter that he knew they were parasites. Leander let out a strangled noise, a sound caught somewhere between a sob and a retch. He took a step forward, not back. His hand reached out, desperate to catch the black sludge, to hold the shape of his mother together for just one more second.
“Mum, don’t—”
But then the “Father” moved. He wasn’t reaching for Leander anymore. He was clawing at the table, his jaw unhinging with a wet crack as he dragged his nails through the black liquid spilling from his own stomach. He lowered his face and began to lap it up, an ouroboros of rot feeding on itself.
The horror of it slammed into Leander like a bucket of ice water. The nostalgia evaporated, leaving only the bile in his throat. This wasn’t his father. This was a hunger wearing a mask.
Leander flinched, wiping the tears from his eyes with a furious, trembling hand. The grief didn’t leave, it just hardened into something cold and sharp.
His Nonna voice rested a hand on his shoulder. The rules of the house were based on a lie, and his Nonna was the master of understanding the lie. The lies were being broken and his insistence on paying had started the dissolution.
The parasites who were wearing the masks of his parents started to writhe in pain. The lie is what fed them, and now they were starting to go hungry. His resolve strengthened.
The bartender was also losing his slick form, his limbs expanded and tore, his body bulged outwards like the insides of a pie trying to break out from the pastry, underneath was a bloated oily mass of black inky goo. He frantically wiped the bar with his now too many limbs.
“No, no! A mistake! Look, the guests are unhappy! Have another! On the house! Please, eat, eat!” He shoved plates of food toward Leander, but the food was now revealing its true form. Gone was the delicious smell of roasted tomatoes, and in its place were piles of black, pulsing funghi and maggots masquerading as roast potatoes. The stench of raw mana was strong on all of them, and despite himself, Leander felt his stomach strain towards it. Revolted, he pulled back.
The shockwave of the payment didn’t stop at the bar. It rolled across the room like a physical ripple, distorting the perspective. It hit the snug where Clover sat, still giggling, her hand resting on the polished oak table.
“Look at the check, Clover!” Leander shouted, scrambling off the stool as the Bartender began to bulge and tear behind him. “Look at the bill!”
Her eyes lazily wandered up to Leander and she smiled unapologetically at him.
“Hello, I remember you, you are funny! Tell me a joke”
“THE BILL CLOVER, LOOK!”
“Thats not a very funny joke…” She started to reply, but then she blinked, her haze disturbed by the tremor. She looked down at her hand. The ripple passed through the table, and for a second, the ‘perfect’ reality failed to render. The varnish on the wood didn’t crack; it became glossy and started to slide sideways, oily and slick, separating from the surface like a cheap poster in the rain.
Underneath her fingertips, the warm oak vanished. She wasn’t touching wood. She was touching a cold, damp, greased stone.
She didn’t need Leander to explain the con. Her chaotic nature felt the orderliness of the lie disintegrate. She froze, her eyes widening as she felt the texture of the trap, smooth, slimy, and utterly fake.
The giggling stopped. A look of pure, unadulterated offense crossed her face. She hadn’t been charmed; she had been tricked.
With a scream of frustration, Clover dug her fingernails into the sliding veneer. She didn’t cast a spell; she simply rejected the premise. She heaved upward, intending to flip the table.
But the furniture didn’t tumble as it should have. The surface tore.
Like wet cardboard, the ‘oak’ peeled back in her hands with a sickening, wet tearing sound. Beneath the veneer, there were no table legs, no carpentry. The structure was a hollow honeycomb filled with pulsing, black spider-eggs and the oily residue of the illusion.
The tear in reality rushed outward from Clover’s grip, shattering the rest of the room. The wallpaper peeled back in great, wet strips, revealing the unforgiving grey sandstone of Ellendor School. The Liberty Inn was dissolving. The bill had come due.
The bartender’s veneer of human-ness didn’t just strip away; it exploded.
In its place rose a towering, multi-limbed arachnid shape made of shadows and damp fungus. It didn’t roar; it shrieked, a sound like wind screaming through cracked glass that vibrated in Leander’s teeth. The intensity of its raw magic was head-spinning, a sublime, sickly pull that made the air feel like deep water.
Clover didn’t scream. She stared, her eyes glazing over, caught between disgust and awe. The addiction was singing to her.
“Clover, move!” Leander yelled.
He grabbed her wrist and hauled her toward the back door. The creature sensed the intent instantly. It didn’t walk; it flowed, a tidal wave of oily shadow crashing over the exit. Wood splintered into dust, revealing the hard, cold stone of the dungeon wall beneath.
They were trapped.
Clover hyperventilated, her knees buckling. “I can’t... Leander, it’s beautiful... I just want to let it consume me...”
“Not today!” Leander snarled, dragging her dead weight backward as a scythe of shadow slammed into the floor where they had just been standing.
The room was a kill box. The monster’s limbs thrashed wildly, coating the walls in black rot, closing off angles, herding them into the center to be eaten. Leander frantically scanned the chaos for a weapon, a shield, anything-
A massive limb lashed out at them but flinched mid-swing. It curled back violently, hissing as if burned, avoiding the cold, dead fireplace on the far wall.
Leander blinked, his thief’s eyes catching the detail amidst the panic. The rot covered everything, the bar, the floor, the ceiling, except the cast iron hearth which seemed to be present in both his Inn and Clovers Ellendor, an anchor running through them all.
The realization hit him harder than the smell of ozone.
“You’re too heavy, Lee,” his teachers used to scold him when his spells fizzled out. “Too much iron in the blood. You don’t cast magic; you ground it.”
It was the curse of his biology, a core of iron that made him a terrible conduit for casting, but a perfect anchor against the storm. And there, sitting in the wall, was the ultimate anchor.
The Host was a creature of shadow and ether. It couldn’t touch the ground.
“The Hearth!” Leander screamed, changing direction so fast he almost dislocated his own shoulder. “It’s afraid of the Iron!”
The floor was sticky with the addictive rotting sludge, slowing them down like tar. A shadow-limb swept toward Clover trying to drag her back into the rot. The way it rippled through the air was accentuated by the sound of desire, of yearning. If addiction had a song, this creature was a master musician. Leander kept his eyes focussed on the heart of iron and kept moving forward, unable to go much faster. The creature seemed to be nearing them, but was also becoming wary as they got closer. With a guttural wail it threw shadows and limbs towards them both.
Leander flailed wildly, managing to ‘accidentally’ throw off his Malachite cloak and cast it clumsily backwards, like a tangled mess over his shoulder towards the shadow-limbs. The cloak wrapped perfectly around the monster’s faceless core and it grappled with it. The cloak glowed briefly before being consumed by the rotting oily arms, buying them a few more seconds of freedom.
“Drat! That was vintage silk! I am so clumsy!” He said, winking at Clover. Clover blinked, the chaotic fog in her eyes clearing for a brief, lucid second. She let out a sharp, surprised laugh. “Are you ready to break things?”
“Abso-bloomin-lutely I am.”
They crashed onto the stone flagstones of the hearth. The stones were freezing cold underfoot, even through their shoes. Leander gripped the iron poker. It was heavy, cold, and rusted. Real. The Monster shrieked, sensing the shift in authority. A massive, scything limb of shadow swept across the room at head-height, aiming to take Leander’s head off before he could reach the grate.
Duck, his instincts screamed. Drop and roll.
But a hero would duck. A Loser would collapse.
Leander didn’t brace himself. Instead, he went limp. He threw his weight backward, deliberately letting his boots slide out from under him on the oily stone.
To Clover, it looked like a catastrophic slip, a terrifying moment where her savior lost his footing in the face of death.
To Leander, it was a controlled descent. He dropped below the swinging limb, the wind of the attack ruffling his hair, and let gravity do the work. He turned the slip into a slide, skidding across the wet flagstones with the precision of a runner stealing a base.
He didn’t crash into the hearth; he arrived at it.
His knees hit the stone with a jarring thud, that part was real enough, but his hands were surgical. He jammed the iron poker into the dead logs, not to steady himself, but to complete the circuit.
“I meant to do that!” he yelped, his voice cracking perfectly into a panic-stricken squeak. He winked at Clover again, a micro-expression of the thief peering out from behind the mask. “Light it, Clover! Ignite the house!”
Clover grabbed the iron poker with both hands. Her manic, chaotic energy poured into the metal. It didn’t glow orange; it erupted with blinding, beautifully imperfect white-violet sparks.
Leander put his hand around hers. He felt the connection slam into place, not a graceful flow of mana, but a violent, jagged surge. He didn’t chant the words like a priest; he yelled them like a landlord evicting a squatter.
“The one who holds the iron, holds the house!”
He coughed as the surge of hot air filled his lungs, spitting the next words out with a desperate, terrified aggression that hid the ancient authority binding them.
“Sanctuary is claimed! The Guest-Right is revoked! GET OUT!”
A fire burst out of the grate, finding purchase in the burnt out logs. It blasted outward from the hearth like a shockwave, cleansing. The Inky Monster tried to scream, but the white fire hit it. The shadow boiled away instantly leaving a sickly tar like stain in the air. The walls of both the Inn and Ellendor cracked and shattered into light, erasing the lies and revealing an infinite horizon covered in fungus and rotting plants.
Leander gasped, waking up on his kitchen floor. The smell of burning fungi filled the air. The table was completely destroyed. The mushroom ring was scorched ash. The silver coin sat in the middle, glowing hot.
Sitting up, he looked at the devastation and groaned. The sickening taste of burnt mushrooms coated his mouth, but underneath it, the phantom flavor of seaweed soup still lingered, a hook caught in his gill.
“There goes the deposit,” he muttered, rubbing the soot from his face. “I really am the worst tenant in the village. First spiders, now arson.”
He reached for the coin. It vibrated against his fingertips. The text on the rim changed, etched by Clover’s chaotic hand.
Message: “The smell. It’s not gone. It’s calling me. It’s coming from the Old Cliffs. I’m going to the source.”
Leander went cold. The Old Cliffs. That was where the Liberty stood. Or what was left of it.
It wasn’t a coincidence. The trap hadn’t just been in his mind; it was a broadcast. Whatever they were doing there, it couldn’t be good.
Leander stood up, the Loser slouch vanishing from his spine. He didn’t check his reflection. He didn’t grab a disguise. He grabbed his keys.
“Not my house,” he whispered, a dangerous, jagged edge returning to his voice. “You don’t touch my house.”
I’m going to need a glass of wine after writing that ending. Leander is off to the Old Cliffs, and I’ve got a horrible feeling about what he’s going to find there.
Author’s Note: The concept of ‘Iron’ grounding magic, essentially making Leander a magically-disabled hero, was a nightmare to balance in the early drafts. I am going to have to be very careful that I keep this magic system unique, and don’t borrow too much from other authors.
The trap used Leander’s favourite smells (seaweed soup and pipe tobacco) to lure him in. If a magical trap was trying to catch you, what specific smell would it use to trick you into thinking you were safe?