Kahli felt her hearts beating fast as the ceiling to the room that previously contained the obelisk shook and cracked around her, leaving boulders tumbling and rubble building to the point that Kahli felt trapped. The deep, booming voice echoing from Theseosus knew where didn't help, either.
"Prepare to meet your... DOOM!"
Kahli sighed. Doom? Really? Hadn't she encountered just about enough doom in her life already? And now here she was in ruins, suddenly the obelisk had disappeared and she'd had some strange experience where she might've just seen Theseosus herself, pincers included, and now this... this thing that she couldn't even see wanted her to think of it as a source of her doom? Kahli was more than a little annoyed, and while she was nervous, she was also just so over it.
Meanwhile, Froufrou was kind of unsurprised at this development. From her perspective, only few things had taken place within the last five minutes or so - Kahli had entered the room, she'd seen the obelisk, and she'd lapsed into some sort of a strange trance that had seemed to arrest all her senses and cognition. Then, she'd stepped forward, slowly at first and then more rapidly, eventually to stand right there before the obelisk. Kahli had placed her left hand, her hand that was now made entirely of living wood, upon the obelisk and then stood there as all its light faded to nothingness and it shot down into the ground like it was spring loaded.
This discrepancy, where Kahli was more confused than anything, and where Froufrou was more than a bit annoyed, was a big drawback of the two sharing a system, but being unable to communicate directly with one another with anything other than gesture and squelches. Kahli might've had an epiphany about her experience if she knew what Froufrou knew, but it was virtually impossible for her to reach that point in the moment. Not that she had a real chance to mull all this over, anyways, because the room started expanding.
Yes, expanding.
It started with the floor. The stone ground shifted and rumbled and grumbled and soon Kahli found she was standing on ground that was much, much larger than the room had once been. Then the walls receded and when they completed they were pushed out so far she could scarcely see their termination without squinting at length. The crumbled up ceiling had all but tumbled away to reveal a ceiling many magnitudes higher, and clustered at the top of it seemed to be some sort of strange clump of ferns that looked as big as a building.
"By the pincers of Theseosus, what is going on?!" said Kahli as she summoned up a a big rock just in case.
A long, snaky vine unfurled from the clump at the top of the ceiling and quickly and slickly rolled down to the ground. It hit the floor with a wet, slinky thump. Then, a clump fell with a splat. And another clump, and another and another splat, splat, splatted off from the ceiling into growing and growing clusters that were slowly but surely congealing together into something towering, something enormous and something terrible indeed.
Froufrou squelched in disgust. She didn't know what this thing was, but it had a certain manner of moving, of twisting its vines around itself almost like veins in a tauman skeletal system, that made even Froufrou think it was quite disgusting to behold indeed.
When the thing finished putting itself together, as it were, it stood three taumans tall, and two taumans wide. It was a formidable foe, but not the worst thing Kahli had ever faced. However, there was a nonzero part of her that was genuinely concerned that if she made physical contact with this foe, that she might break out in a rash or something.
"What are you?" asked Kahli in disgust and apprehension at the looming figure.
"I AM SCH'LAOOOOOONG!" shouted the foe from a planty mouth, scattering acorns as leaves everywhere.
Kahli blinked a few times and brushed the plant detritus off her face and cleared her throat. "Alright, Sch'laong, well, can I just start by-"
"SCH'LAOOOOOOONG!" blurted the beast.
Kahli sighed and rolled her eyes, looking down into her bag at Froufrou briefly for some moral support.
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And, in an instant, as she looked at her [paired] companion, Kahli found herself in the dark endlessness of the void once again.
"Well, Froufrou, what do you think of this thing?" asked Kahli with a genuine interest. She was still, admittedly, a little confused as to how she'd gotten to this point - no doubt a side effect of being enthralled so deeply by the obelisk.
Froufrou squelched her detestations out, and they were quite stinky. What Kahli was not certain of, was whether they were all directed at the enemy they were preparing to do battle with, or if some of these squelches were actually meant for her, as in, tht Froufrou was mad at her. Some of the squleches certainly seemed to be.
"Froufrou, are you cross with me?" asked Kahli.
Froufrou did not respond. In fact, she stopped writhing the vast majority of her tendrils, save for a few choice tendrils that were essentially by mechanism of Froufrou being alive were always writhing.
"Froufrou! Come on, it's just in the void. Please, tell me. Are you cross? Do you have a beef with me or something?"
Froufrou responded with a small, almost infinitesimal squelch. A squelch so subtle it could scarcely even be smelled - and truly, could a squelch of such minimal magnitued even be considered a true squelch at all? The jury was still out on that one, that much was for certain.
"Froufrou, you're hurting my feelings. That squelch barely stunk at all. Not that I like the stinkiness, but it's become old hat now, and honestly the lack of it is almost disturbing. Froufrou, I know we can't share a mind, and that you're effectively a mental mute - by that, of course, I mean that you can't thought speak - but I really wish you'd at least make the effort you usually do to squelch and writhe your tendrils at me. I really do feel that we get a lot out of that style of communication, and we're only going to get better as we spend more time [paired]! Still, you've got to cut me some slack. It can be pretty hit or miss."
Froufrou squelched out another subtle bout of stinkiness.
"Yes, yes, I get it. Really, I do. I wish I could've brought you to the place I went when the obelisk grasped me, Froufrou. I swear, I think I actually got to see Theseosus herself! ...Still, I feel bad about the whole thing. Thankfully, we've got a lot of scenarios to choose from." Kahli looked down at her big left foot. She didn't tell Froufrou in that moment that she was considering using her ability to twist timelines to create a version of a timeline wherein Froufrou wasn't mad at her, but she thought about it pretty hard as she looked down at her foot and saw the three glowing circles representing her different timelines choices. It was time to dig in, as it were, and figure out how to take down this planty foe, whatever it was.
[Now viewing scenario 1]
Kahli stood there, looking at the formidable plant beast Sch'laong as it bared its copious thorns and stinning nettles at her. She figured that, seeing as this beast was so adamant about pronouncing its own name, it might be a quite verbally inclined individual. Which of course opened it up to manipulation under Kahli's [Tale Teller] [skill].
"Look, can we just talk for a second, SCH'LAOOOONG?"
Sch'laong stood there, looking somewhat terrifying, but also somewhat interested in what Kahli had to say. "PRO-THEED!" it blurted with a fervor.
"Great, thanks," Kahli cleared her throat nervously. "So, uh, I don't know what exactly you're doing in here, or how long you've been here, but I'm sure you've noticed, Sch'laong, that you're no longer contained by that pesky obelisk."
"INDEEEEEEEEEED. Obelisk.... GOHONE!" spat the creature.
"So, well, who do you have to thank for that?" Kahli pointed to herself and mouthed 'me' as cleaerly as she could.
"HOW DAAAAHARE YOU GESTURE IN SUCH AN OBSCENE FASHION!" spat the clump of vicious, animated plants.
"What? What do you mean?" Kahli asked.
Of course, Froufrou knew. Froufrou knew all too well that plant elemental constructs like this had their own body language cues, and Kahli had come dangerously close to replicating those by mouthing the word 'me.' Anyone with even five minutes experience talking to elemental constructs would've known the same. Unfortunately, Kahli was still, in many ways, a bit of a novice despite her relative intellligence.
"YOU CALLED MY PLANT MOTHER, THE ENTITY I PROPAGATED FROM, A MALICIOUS FLAPPER OF A WHORE THAT SPENT HER DAYS CROSS POLLINATING AND HER NIGHTS BLOOMING WHERE THE SUN DOESN'T SHINE! HOW VERY DARE YOU!!"
"But-"
But Kahli couldn't say a word more, regardless of her confusion, the plant elemental construct shot fifty vines out of its form and wrapped them around Kahli. They quickly tightened around her limbs like a vice. Kahli was starting to lose consciousness, and Froufrou hopped form her purse in hopes to perform a rescue - however, as soon as Froufrou left her purse, the plant construct smacked her asunder with a huge leaf that dealt a critical amount of damage.
"Theseosus, don't let me die this wa-"
Before Kahli could finish her sentence, the plant elemental construct ripped her head clean off with the snap of a particularly brittle vine.
[You died]
[End scenario]
Kahli sighed. She looked at Froufrou.
"On to scenario two, huh?"
Froufrou did not respond, and that made Kahli feel quite sad. She'd been hoping for a squelch. Still, she needed to find a way to make it out of the present alive, so Kahli was all too happy to look down and load the next scenario.