The previous day, Tahi-shei had met Giggle. She'd been extremely helpful, showing him a wide variety of magic and explaining various things to him. Now, it was time to find a way to use that knowledge. Raw information was only so helpful, and he hadn't really gotten the chance to do a full meditation. He'd identified a place near the Spire, this time. He was lying on the ground with his side against a wall of more innocuous rock, though the Spire was still fairly close.

Now, he settled down and drew a deep breath in through his nose. The first thing he thought it useful to know was the detecting-of-fungus spell that Giggle had explained to him. Tahi-shei closed his eyes, and began in a similar place -- attempting to push out his consciousness and connect with the fungus's senses.

The taste of magic on his tongue seemed to grow. He was aware of-- light, moisture, community. That was generally where the spell was expected to stop; give him a taste of what he could not normally sense, and then dissipate. Instead, it continued to build. Rapidly.

Tahi wavered, trying to stop the spell prematurely and failing. He cringed as the stimulation bordered on too much, and then was overwhelming. He breathed in shallowly through his nose, trying to concentrate on not screaming around the painful, pounding migraine and toomuchnostopit pinging around inside his skull like a pinball. He couldn't draw the attention of the Golems -- that would have just been dangerous.

Eventually, of course, the sensation faded. And Slime Molds was Tahi-shei grateful for it. He breathed out sharply through his nose and laid his head on the cool stone, nausea still rolling through him. "Bet that's your fault," he muttered, eyeing the Spire suspiciously. Then again, this seemed to be a tumultuous spell -- of the handful of times he'd tried to cast it, he'd failed royally on... what, half of them? He sighed.

So maybe avoid that spell.

Instead, he gazed listlessly in front of him and tried to spawn some little mushrooms. They could be helpful for the rest of this little experiment, like they had been when first learning his sensing-spell. Thankfully, whitecaps sprung up happily in front of him, instead of being stubborn. "At least you're cooperating," he said gently, nosing at one of them carefully so as not to break the stem.

Tahi-shei closed his eyes again and straightened up his neck so he was no longer stretched out like he were about to take a nap. He steadied his breathing again, and let himself drift. Cleared his mind, and then.... the stream of consciousness began, rather easily. The first order of business in this was, what am I looking for?

The answer fungus came to him, but it wasn't right. He amended it. Power. Magic. Friends. Two of those three had been what had driven him to make his deal with the Collector, to sign his life away. The third had led him in, uh, much more dangerous directions -- he thought back to his two encounters with Alpha. That one needed... a gentler touch. Tahi-shei quietly reminded himself to check in on them again; he'd need a plan to avoid getting cleaved in two, but he wanted to make sure they were feeling better.

Gently guiding his thoughts back to the fungus, Tahi-shei returned to his previous train of thought. He was seeking... magic. Fungus had inherent magic, didn't it? How could one create it with magic if the fungus itself was not in some way magical? Surely, he could therefore seek the magic within the fungus and make himself aware of it that way. Right?

He hummed lowly, tasting the Spire's magic on his tongue. The magic of fungus... was subtle. Distant. A gray-green like mold and steady decay. He pushed out feelers of consciousness from himself, like mycelium stretching from the fungus -- show me. Like lights blinking on, nodes of fungus and the mycelium between them and the spores hanging in the air began to appear from behind his eyelids. The fungus in front of him, the fungus nearby, the fungus... everywhere. Embedded in the walls, connecting to a vast network, feeling and growing and feeding

and just like that, it stopped.

Tahi-shei opened his eyes and blinked. He wished that had lasted longer; it had been rather nice, being so connected. He stood up and stretched, looking down at the fungus he'd created. Giggle had been right -- that was quite the interesting spell. Now, though, came the more difficult ones -- and Tahi-shei figured that this next exercise would require a bit of mobility.

He looked around for a moment and then noticed a flash of color between some rocks. Tahi squinted and identified the little black beetles moving in the dark gap, little yellow specks across their sides. Death Crawlers, then -- good for this particular practice, he supposed.

Tahi-shei focused on a particular set of spots. That would be the one he went after first, then -- he recalled Giggle, how she had manipulated the spores to her will. How she had made him... amenable. He focused on that -- on making spores, on pushing them into this creature, on making it... listen? No, not listen. But trust him, maybe. Make it unwilling to flee.

Spores began to rise from his pelt, and rushed for the little beetle. Embedding themselves under its carapace, clinging to its skin, infecting its mind. Once Tahi-shei figured the spell had had time to take effect, he pushed one of the rocks aside.

At the sudden light and apparent appearance of a predator, the beetles began to scatter. All except one of them, which continued to go about its business. For good measure, Tahi-shei pushed the rock gently against it with his nose, but it just moved a little bit away and touched it with its antennae and looked at the deer before returning to its eating. Tahi marveled at the little beetle -- his spell had been successful! It wasn't afraid of him anymore! He grinned. This was... exciting. But could he maintain it?

He observed the beetle for a few minutes, simply going about its business, until he felt the magic start to waver. Tahi-shei made a soft noise -- he wanted to see if he could maintain this! Unfortunately, he was unable to, and the cordyceps fungus wavered, withered, and died without his magic reaching out to make a connection with it. It didn't take longer than a few seconds in the aftermath for the beetle to realize he was no longer trustworthy and scurry off with the rest of its family.

Tahi-shei replaced the rock and settled down again. He hoped the beetle didn't regard the ordeal as unpleasant, if it were even intelligent enough to conceptualize such a thing; he certainly didn't want to scare the poor thing any more than he had to.

He wondered absently what he'd do next. Tahi-shei was excited, certainly (he'd never before managed to cast a spell without all the preamble), but he also wasn't ready to go home yet! Maybe he'd try that hallucination spell next... or maybe try something else he'd seen Giggle do?

He paused, and wondered. Perhaps he should try casting his sensing spell some more...? It seemed as though he wasn't very good at it; getting more experience with feeling around for the fungus's senses would probably make him less likely to fail so spectacularly.

The stag hummed lightly and looked the Spire over before slowly closing his eyes. He reached out with his senses again, wondering... what could be out there? Something interesting, he guessed. The fungus always seemed to have intriguing insights for him, and he wondered what else the fungus of Polaris had for him.

Thankfully, the spell cooperated. Sense began to fill him -- a decaying rabbit in some little crevice, the cold bite of the snow now in the northern parts, the vivid and glowing light of the Spire. Magic, tangible, able to be tasted and grown off of. New substrates were always accepted by the fungus; perhaps their adaptability was part of why Tahi-shei was so eager to learn more.

That, however, gave him an idea -- was there something else he could do with his detecting and feeling around? If he could tap into the fungus like that, and if he could make fungus, and if his new spell could allow him to make a mostly harmless fungus inside something, perhaps he could make a non-painful fungus inside someone that let him keep watch. He looked around for a new Lesser -- something else to experiment on, hopefully something that was a bit less lethal and a bit less shy.

That was about when a wallcrawler fell on his flank. Tahi turned to look at the sudden weight, watching the fat little centipede writhe around. He nudged it onto the ground and decided to make it his test subject -- Tahi drew in a deep breath, and concentrated on his new idea. On... pushing spores of something onto a creature so that he could watch them.

He tucked his hooves underneath him and closed his eyes. There was... something there, at the edges of his consciousness. Tahi reached out for that strand, grasping at it desperately. He was getting tired, so he wasn't sure if this would work too well -- honestly, he sort of needed to go rest, but... well, he wasn't going to leave without trying something else out! He opened his eyes again, warily, and found that barely-there bits of dust were floating through the air. They landed on the wallcrawler, and began to grow rapidly. Barely visible against the gaps in the armor were tiny spores rooting into its body and beginning to spread.

Tahi-shei winced. It was... deeply unsettling to be experiencing double. He nudged the wallcrawler and was aware that something had touched... him? No, not him, but it was hard to have another creature's sensory information in his own mind.

Thankfully though, the wallcrawler didn't seem concerned. It righted itself and began to crawl away -- meanwhile, Tahi-shei wondered how long this spell lasted.