Fungi from Yuggoth

**Fungi from Yuggoth** is an episode of Venturian Battle.

## Synopsis

Robert Jacob and Robyn Jade, separated by a mountain, must fight off the Spawns of Shoggoth, as well as their zombified hosts, in order to escape from Awhyae. Will they be able to reunite? Or survive, for that matter?

## Plot

Continuing right off of the last episode, Robert Jacob runs back into the bus, and gets out a violin case. Emptying it, he reveals the case's contents to be a hunting rifle. Loading it up, Robert proceeds to fire at the Shoggoth Zombies, blowing holes through the Spawns of Shoggoth. However, he soon finds himself and his group outnumber, with him having to reload again, as more zombies approach from all directions.

At the top of the mountain, the bus driver gets back into his vehicle, before noticing that one of the other buses has crashed. While he is distracted, more Shoggoth Zombies attack, clawing at the windows. The passengers scream for the man to drive off, which he promptly does, slaughtering the zombies in front of him. One of the Shoggoth Zombies jumps onto the hood of the bus, causing the driver to freak out and almost drive off of the railing, before continuing his drive up, hoping to reach a far-away bridge to a refuge.

Robert Jacob tries to ward off the zombies, until he runs out of ammunition. At this point, he decides to lead everyone over to the nearby church, which he believes will be safe, seeing two people with flashlights running towards it. On the way over, however, many of the group are attacked by zombies, with Stealer, using his Energy Crossbow (which he retrieved from his luggage in the bus) to impale the attacking Shoggoth Zombies. Eventually, they enter the church, weary and fatigued.

Inside of the church, Robert Jacob's group finds the people with flashlight torn apart, with chunks of flesh and blood strewn across the floor. Stealer uses his Energy Crossbow to stab a few of the Shoggoth Zombies, which jump out from the dark. The ceiling collapses, however, with a whole family of Shoggoths crawling out. Stealer tries to shoot them down, running around like a maniac, before running out of energy bolts. Suddenly, the wall to their left is smashed by a truck, with the driver being Serpent.

The group gets on, with Serpent running over the Shoggoth Zombies while he drives. Serpent claims that he decided to disintegrate and reform inside of a nearby pickup truck, and that he is going to save them as well. However, the drive proves to be rather rough, as Serpent drives through a nearby house's fence. Using the GPS, he sets his destination to a stone-brick structure on a mountain, which is connected to another summit by a bridge.

Meanwhile, a tanker truck is attacked by Shoggoth Zombies, with the driver spinning out of control and driving through the railing. The vehicle is stuck, with the door getting opened by one of the Shoggoth Zombies, who attacks him, before eating the man alive. The bus with Robyn Jade on approaches, but stops upon finding the driver's bones, stained white with blood, thrown at them. As it turns out, more of the buses from before have had the same idea, with one of the drivers claiming that "[Serpent] was right after all", implying that he had told them all to meet up on the bridge.

Serpent's truck is attacked by more Shoggoth Zombies, which attempt to pry open the doors. Eventually, Serpent is able to see the driver's seat of the bus with Robyn Jade on it, and decides to disintegrate and reform inside of the bus. Serpent, opening his briefcase, pulls out a double-barreled shotgun, which he uses to shatter one of the windows. Threatening to shoot the driver, he tells the man to "floor it", which he promptly does. As they drive off of the bridge and onto the mountain road, Serpent shoots from the hole he made in the window at a fuel tank laying on top of the tanker truck, causing it to explode.

The bridge explodes, destroying half of the front bus and the entirety of the tanker truck, with the bridge collapsing. Robyn Jade is horrified at the sight, and scolds Serpent for killing half of the other bus. Serpent doesn't seem to mind, claiming that the Shoggoth Zombies would have been able to cross and reach the refuge had he not destroyed the bridge. Robyn continues to rebuke him, with Serpent ignoring her and getting back to playing a hero shooter on his laptop.

Robert, stranded in the passenger's seat of the pickup truck, finds himself surrounded by Shoggoth Zombies. Upon being asked, Robert tells Barnett Felix that his rifle is out of ammunition, and that they have no chance of reaching safety, noting how the bridge between the mountains has been destroyed. Barnett realizes that their only way out is to send a distress call. Using his cellphone, which is dying in battery, Barnett is able to call for help, trying his best to sound Venturian. The military believes him, and sends in a chopper to save them, telling them to meet him at "the church cemetery thing in Awhyae".

The zombies try to break open the windows, with Robert realizing that he still has a lot of gasoline left. He uses the remainder of it to run over the Spawns of Shoggoth and their zombies. However, the truck runs out of gas before daylight, with the group inside of the pickup truck finding themselves trapped. The zombies scratch at the windows, with one of them getting shattered. Seizing the moment, a Shoggoth Zombie tries to attack, before getting kicked in the face by Robert. Soon, a Venturian helicopter arrives, with special forces jumping out and gunning down all of the zombies, before bringing most of the Venturians onto the chopper safely.

In a post-credits scene, E.L. Vepture learns that Barnett Felix hasn't returned, and, using mind magic, finds him escorted by Venturian special forces. Vepture is intensely angered, which causes his dream to stop. Even more infuriated, E.L. Vepture decides to attack the military compound in Awhyae, sending in the Javelins, Void Striders, and other weapons of war.

## Allusions

* Fungi from Yuggoth: The episode's title is shared with the H.P. Lovecraft sonnets of the same name. This is due to the fact that the main antagonists of the episode are named the Spawns of **Shoggoth**, after the monster from Sonnet XX.
* At the Mountains of Madness: The Spawns of Shoggoth are made to resemble the monster of a similar name, which was previously mentioned in Sonnet XX.
* THE RiDE 7D: The episode plays out very similarly to the "Zombie" experience made by THE RiDE 7D.