Charlie looked at the red sclera eyeball, and it stared back at her.

"Do you think I should just give up and head back?" Charlie asked the eyeball suspended at eye level with a finger on her cheek.

The head-sized eyeball swiveled from side to side.

Charlie sighed.

"You're right, but this is getting boring, and both Evelynn and mister Johnson might be getting worried. I've spent way too long trying to find a head, but it's difficult with so many of you everywhere."

With a careless wave of an arm, Charlie gestured at the sea of vegetation surrounding her small hilltop.

Writhing and crawling. Mottled stalks and glistening eyeballs blanketed the ground as far as she could see. Only a handful of barren hilltops poked out of the mass. Like miniature islands weathering the roiling tides.

Tapping her foot on the ground, she glanced back at the eyeball which had tipped to the side—mimicking a head-tilt.

Charlie waited a second to see whether the eyeball would say anything else. When nothing was forthcoming, Charlie squinted at the sun. Yup, the fiery orb had visibly lowered in the sky. She had wasted quite a while trying to find even a single head, penetrating deep into eyeball stalk territory.

Craning her neck, Charlie could barely make out the thin road in the distance, miles away and partially obstructed by a wave of eyeball stalks dragging severed vegetation back into the valleys.

Huh. The site of the battle was miles distant, and on the way here Charlie saw that the eyeball stalks' method of transportation was fairly slow. Based on both the sun and the eyeball stalks' movement, Charlie knew she spent around an hour searching.

She could just call it quits, but now Charlie was kind of annoyed and wanted to find at least one head to justify her spent time.

"You know, I didn't expect the heads to be so well hidden. Even combing through the eyeball stalks..." Charlie remarked before pausing briefly.

"That name sounds so clumsy. I'm just going to call you eyestalks from now on, okay?"

Charlie asked, glancing towards the red sclera eyeball. It dipped a little, briefly pointing its pupil to the ground, indicating agreement.

Charlie beamed at the eyeball.

"Glad you agree! Now, for some reason combing the eyestalk valleys hasn't turned up anything. So, do you happen to know where the heads are hidden?"

Charlie asked only to receive a shake of the eyeball.

"Drats."

Sticking the tip of her tongue between her teeth, Charlie pondered for a few minutes before her eyes widened with excitement. A smile stretched across her face as she eagerly turned towards the eyeball.

"Maybe I should try following one of the stalks back to its source! What do you think?" Charlie asked the eyeball which started to frantically nod, bobbing up and down in the air.

Chuckling, Charlie waved a hand at the eyeball.

"Well, bye! Thanks for the help!"

The eyeball bobbed in a quick nod.

With a slight smile, Charlie directed the black tendrils holding the eyeball to release their grip, dropping the red sclera eyeball back into the eyestalk swarm where it was swiftly submerged.

It was fun talking to the eyeball, and Charlie found the experience pretty insightful. However, she should get back to work.

Looking down at the black tendrils trailing from underneath her robe and into the eyestalk swarm, Charlie beckoned them to stop combing and instead to follow a random vine.

The finger-width tendrils and branching threads slithered. Unearthly black peeked from underneath the omnipresent sea of vegetation. Shifting and consolidating. The disparate threads were intricately woven into the mass of stalks, carpeting several valleys in their search.

Now, they started to flow together. Countless threads melded together into a handful of tendrils, which immediately grabbed onto the nearest eyeballs.

Charlie tapped her foot as the tendrils wrapped around and snaked down the stalks to their source.

The seconds of waiting slowly stretched to minutes. Scratching her head, Charlie felt her tendrils continuing their search, twinning down their respective stalks for hundreds of meters. They should have found the heads already. Or at the very least the stalks should have an end to their absurd length... Right?

Quizzically peering at the pools of vegetation, Charlie contemplated grabbing another eyeball for conversation.

Clearly the search was going to take a while. Welp. Once again Charlie seemed to have messed up. She... will have to remember that plans sometimes could take longer than expected.

Flopping to the ground, Charlie decided to spend some time watching the beautiful clouds. Their fluffy shapes were so cute! Charlie could just imagine hugging and sinking into one of them, like the world's comfiest pillow. Since the clouds were floating, they must be so airy and soft. After all, not even pillows could float.

Before her musings got anywhere, Charlie's eyes went wide. She felt something! One of her tendrils found something!

Hastily scrambling to her feet, Charlie eagerly skipped towards the tendril that was several hills away. Standing on her tippy-toes, the hills and pools of writhing eyestalks still blocked her sight. But that didn't matter. After all, it was just a short walk away!

Jumping off the edge of her hill, Charlie nearly swan-dived into the vegetation swarm. With a giggle, numerous finger-width tendrils to shoot out of her robe, suspending her in midair as the tendrils anchored themselves to the valley bottom and the nearby hills.

Charlie laughed. Rising and falling as the tendrils walked forward with an awkward gait, climbing the hills, then dropping into the valleys—she approached the position her tendril had scouted.

With a cheerful smile tugging on her lips, Charlie looked down at the valley potentially housing a head. Or more correctly the side of the valley.

Charlie cocked her head and felt along her tendril. Yes, it was one of the hills bracketing in the valley. Her tendril had snaked down the stalk, curving all over the place, and even doubling back a few times, but at the very end was that hill.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Oh well. No wonder she couldn't find any heads. They were embedded into the hills! Shaking her head ruefully, Charlie redirected her tendrils.

All the other tendrils snaking down their separate stalks were diverted. They slithered through the vegetation, pooling underneath her before flowing towards the single stalk that was nestled into the hill.

Soft loam was scooped out as the tendrils branched into threads that sank deep into the hill, breaking off pieces of dirt and stone as her feelers followed the stalk ever deeper. Boring into the earth. Scraping and widening. Charlie saw the eyestalks covering the hill bulge as her tendrils broke off progressively larger chunks of the hill.

She continued digging by following the first tendril entwined around the stalk until she felt resistance. Something hard and unyielding. A substance harder than stone, forming a pitted surface that her tendrils couldn't readily penetrate.

Charlie leaned forwards in anticipation as she gouged massive furrows into the hill, spraying a plume of dust into the air and pulling the earth apart like soft putty.

Shearing through the obstructing eyestalks, the view into the hillside was cleared. Waving away the thick dust and rustling eyestalks, Charlie peered at the newly created cave.

A normal dirt cave with something at the very end. The overhang cast the substance at the bottom of the cave into shadow, however Charlie could make out something brown and green.

Only a part of its surface peeked through the grime, revealing a pitted curve, mottled like mossy tree bark, but with the impression that it was far harder. The stalk Charlie had been tracing ended at the object's surface, while numerous other stalks lay severed by Charlie's excavation.

She had never seen one of the heads before, but she remembered the same hard, pitted surface. Charlie bobbed a little in midair—doing a weird approximation of a celebratory dance.

Finally! After spending ages searching, Charlie found a head!

Patting herself on the back with a tendril, Charlie grinned and nearly lowered herself into the hole. Nope. That was a terrible idea! She still needed to dig out the rest of head, and it would be horrible if she got her clothes dirty. Sucking up blood from her clothing was okay—dirt, not so much.

Her trailing tendrils shifted and dug into the earth. Gouging the cavern wall, the threads flowed around the head, severing its connection to the remaining stalks. Barely a few seconds had passed before Charlie started pulling the head out of the earth.

She glanced at the shifting eyestalks with a roll of her eyes. The vegetation swarm underneath her was no longer roiling lethargically but had suddenly increased its writhing. The extra rasping of rubbing stalks was annoying, so Charlie tuned out the noise and went back to lifting the head.

Dirt crumbled and cascaded from a spherical shape wrapped in a black film, diameter roughly the height of a human adult, and with such a tough surface that Charlie hadn't even scratched it when she dug it out of the ground.

Ignoring the background rustling, Charlie admired the large orb she held suspended in the air. All but a few of the tendrils were removed, revealing what looked like a large walnut.

Except this walnut had mottled patches of green against its brown shell.

And Charlie was pretty sure walnuts do not have random sections of their shell collapse inwards.

Well... several chunks of this large walnut suddenly folded inward, and Charlie stared into the abyss. Something dark and incomprehensible. A solid black void was all that the head contained.

And as Charlie stared into the abyss—the abyss stared back.

She chuckled nervously.

This couldn't be good. Right? As if answering her question, Charlie saw movement out of the corner of her eyes. Some movement was normal since she was in the middle of a sea of eyestalks—but now the vegetation was heaving.

All the vegetation was heaving.

Supported by her tendrils, Charlie looked around from her high vantage point and saw an endless expanse of green rising into the air.

The eyestalks were extending upwards and each was topped by a glistening eyeball. Rising in concentric circles centered around Charlie, the eyestalks were staggered like the benches of a coliseum, proving an unobstructed view to the center spectacle.

Except instead of people, it was colorful eyeballs.

Each of them staring unwaveringly at Charlie, who suddenly didn't find the eyeballs' bright colors very charming. Instead, the solid back pupils were proving mildly unnerving.

Charlie scratched her head and looked around with a sheepish smile.

After rising in countless rows, the eyestalks started curving inward. They were forming a dome, slowly covering the blue sky and sunlight, casting a shadow as the eyeballs formed a staring ceiling.

That was not good. Most definitely not good. She didn't remember the eyestalks displaying such behavior back in the abyss. What was worse was that she had no clue what the eyestalks were trying to accomplish.

Defensively pulling in her tendrils, Charlie's gaze flickered around her surroundings as the patch of blue sky gradually shrank. Everywhere she looked were eyeballs staring back at her—from what used to be the valley bottom, along the ridges of the nearby hills, the towering wall of staggered eyestalks, and the forming ceiling.

The only thing different was the head.

It wasn't even pretending to be a walnut anymore. The mottled shell had fallen into pieces, only the fragments adhered to her tendrils still hung in the air while the rest was littered on the ground.

As for the abyssal darkness lurking within the shell...

It had vanished.

Charlie couldn't find the creepy substance anywhere in the dimming light. However, she could still feel an eldritch presence spread around her. It was the same feeling as when the head had opened—except it wasn't as concentrated and felt more spread out.

Disliking her situation and the faint shiver down her spine, Charlie shook off the shell fragments from her threads and gathered her tendrils around herself.

Selecting a random group of eyeballs, Charlie lashed out with her tendrils intending to rip a path out of this unnerving prison.

Thankfully, her tendrils shredded the eyestalks with ease, dicing the supporting stalks and sending a spray of vitreous fluids flying into the air.

Charlie didn't waste any time and immediately jumped towards the gash into the wall, only to find another set of eyeballs staring at her from underneath the remains of mashed plant matter. Jabbing into the wall of eyeballs, Charlie froze as she saw even more eyeballs staring back.

The situation was worse than she had imagine. She was trapped.

And the acrid scent of the ocular fluid was suffusing the air. Grimacing at the stench, Charlie used her tendrils to part the next layer of eyeballs to prevent them from bursting.

Unfortunately, the eyeballs ruptured instantly when they were moved aside. The usually viscous and oozing vitreous fluid turned into a fine mist and plumed around her.

Charlie slapped a hand to her mouth and nose—however even taking sparing breaths wasn't enough to fully fend off a wave of dizziness. Shaking her head to clear her momentarily wavy vision, Charlie watched aghast as the new layer of eyeballs pushed forward.

Within moments the progress she had made was erased. The gash was fully repaired with staring eyeballs reforming the wall she had tried tearing down. What was worse was that Charlie had to retract her tendrils from the hole, because the eyeballs were bursting whenever they so much as brushed up against a single thread.

Charlie clamped her mouth shut and screwed her eyes closed as she weathered another bout of nausea from the released vitreous fluids. Swaying on her tendril supports, Charlie swallowed the bile rising up her throat and couldn't help but bemoan her situation.

Of course she would have to deal with nausea again. As shown by her vomiting not ten minutes after entering this world, her human body was susceptible to dizziness. Sure, she could withstand this stomach upsetting disorientation better than most humans on account of her eldritch nature—but this flood of vitreous fluid was just too much.

Also, what was wrong with this world and its fixation on nausea?! Can't she go an entire week without throwing up?

Charlie tried not to breath too deeply as she tamped down her urge to vomit. When she no longer felt as dizzy and wasn't swaying in midair, Charlie opened her eyes only to be greeted with darkness.

Everywhere she looked was more of the same lightless void. A darkness so complete that there was no difference between keeping her eyes open or closed.

She was as blind as when she was back in the abyss. And this time Charlie couldn't even extend her tendrils to feel her surroundings. After all, she didn't want to brush up against any more eyeballs.

Carefully retracting her tendrils, Charlie lowered herself to the ground while removing her supports. She nearly flinched when her shoes touched a squishy eyeball, but curiously it didn't explode. Perhaps the eyeballs only detonate when they touch eldritch material?

Charlie tapped a finger on her chin as a small smile grew on her face. In that case, couldn't she retract all her tendrils and try pushing her way out of this prison using her bare hands?

Now with a plan, Charlie was once again filled with confidence.

As she was taking her first step on the squishy eyeball ground—Charlie heard a rip.

From high above her head, there was a tearing sound that grew ever louder. The shredding repeated, traveling down from the apex of the domed ceiling down towards the ground.

The rupturing was never-ending.

Like hundreds of waterskins being punctured.

Or thousands of eyeballs rupturing and spewing their vitreous fluids.

Charlie stared sightlessly into the all-consuming darkness. Deprived of sight and deprived of her ability to use her tendrils.

For once the smile had dropped from her face—and numb with horror, she felt a fine mist brush against her skin.