The wriggling tentacles of the monster grabbed at Cadoc, as if trying first to immobilize his arms. The monster let out a noise like the wailing of an inconsolable child. I tried to cover my ears. It didn’t help.

Cadoc had managed to slice at one of the incoming vines with his knife, but another caught his left hand. The vine he hit was merely deflected - I had imagined it would have been cut clean off. Instead, only a small incision on the surface, which bled shockingly-red blood. It retracted back to the monster, but along the floor of the clearing, a sea of vines rose towards him like the tide.

“Well, are you just going to stand there watching?” The cheerful voice came from between my ears. Which should have meant RENA, but it wasn’t. It was Tom’s voice.

“Fuck you, Tom,” I said to the phantom, rising to my feet.

“Wow,” Tom said, and I could hear his shit-eating grin. “Is that any way to greet a friend?”

I wanted to yell in his face, but I could only hear him, so I pointed a finger at the sky. “You left me here. What kind of friend does that make you, huh?”

“Sounds kind of like how you’re leaving your new friend right now.”

“He’s not my friend.”

Cadoc was struggling to free himself, but the vine grasping his left wrist was slowly reeling him in like a fishing line. “You struggle in vain, fiend!” he yelled. “Soon, your corpse will fertilize your brothers!”

But he is my only ally.

I began running, makeshift-torch in hand. I prepared my mana, focusing on the little threads connecting me to the nails in the shirt. I winced as I sensed a couple fall out, but most stayed put.

A different voice in my head shouted at me to stop. It was my mom’s voice. She told me this was too dangerous, that I didn’t owe Cadoc anything, that this was his idiot idea and that his death was simple Darwinism.

The other voice - Tom’s - told me to fight.

Tom’s voice won out, but not because it was inspiring or motivating or something. I sprinted towards the monster filled with rage.

A vine shot towards me, despite the fact that the monster must have been turned away. Does it have eyes all around? Or does it not even need eyes?

“I see you’re busy,” Tom’s voice had been saying. “We can talk later. For now, step to the left,” I didn’t react in time. The vine wrapped around my torso in an instant. I clawed at it with one hand, panicking, forgetting everything else. It tightened like a boa constrictor, and I thought I could hear my ribs creaking as the pressure mounted. But I wasn’t sure if I really heard it. I was “hearing” all kinds of things.

“Well, I tried to help,” Tom said.

“I tried to help him, too.” Another voice. One I hadn’t heard in person since childhood. Ryan’s. “He let his guard down again. You’d think he’d learn.”

“Shut up!” I screamed at the voices. “Shut up shut up shutupshutupshutup!”

I would have kept yelling, if my breath wasn’t being squeezed out of my lungs like one of those tubes of yogurt my mom bought me as a kid.

I still had the bat, my knuckles white against the handle. I lit the nails with a thought. The end of the bat whooshed into flames. I brought it down, struggling to keep from dropping it, touching it to the vines.

It burned. Slowly, but it burned. I watched as the “arm” of the vines caught, and the flames ate away at the plant matter.

The monster let out another yell, and suddenly I could breath again. The vine around my waist dropped to the floor, amputated and cauterized by the fire. It looked as if it was rotting already, turning brown before my eyes.

But I didn’t have time for that. I ran, keeping my torch in front of me, praying that the fire wouldn’t go out. If the wind picked up suddenly, I didn’t know if the alcohol and wood would hold out.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Cadoc was struggling, sawing away as the vine that held his left hand. It was as thick as his arm, and his knife seemed much too small for the job. The wave of vines was almost upon him, a surge of dark green serpents which twisted in every direction even as they advanced, like they weren’t limbs of a monster, but snakes caught in the middle, half-innocent creatures being used as a weapon whether they liked it or not.

Even in the heat of the battle, I couldn’t quiet my mind. Why can’t they all shoot out at him, like the others did? Why are they crawling across the ground, instead of flying through the air like javelins? Does the monster only have two or three good vines?

I was only a few yards away by this point, and my nerves were primed, ready to jump out of the way if the monster’s other “good vine” shot out at me.

“Right,” Tom said, before I even saw the suggestion of movement. Out of spite, I moved left.

The vine shot over my right shoulder. It whizzed by like a bullet. At this close of a range, I thought it might have impaled me.

“I knew you would do that,” Tom whispered in my ear.

“Fuck! You!” I screamed, closing the final gap with the monster. I held the torch out, and thought I could see the monster try to squirm away at the last second.

Then the torch connected. I had to stop myself from shoving it straight into the shifting vines, afraid that it would be snuffed out from the lack of oxygen.

Another scream broke out, this one more pitiful that the others. I smiled. Good. Burn, you piece of shit.

As if by reflex, all of the creature’s limbs - vines, whatever - retracted, as if the monster was trying to curl into a ball. Cadoc was released, and I reveled in the simple pleasure of watching the thing burn.

It had always been writhing, but now it’s writhing was erratic and disturbed. It flailed wildly, and surely would have knocked the torch from my hand if the creature wasn’t so panicked.

For whatever reason, the creature wouldn’t back any further away from the fire. Maybe it’s like a deer in headlights, I thought. So full of fear that it can’t even choose between fight and flight. Or perhaps it is rooted to the ground, like a tree. It was impossible to tell what lay beneath its vines.

That is, until the vines were burnt away. I continued to watch, the smell of smoke and copper filling my nostrils, the sounds of cackling fire mixed with the intermittent screams of the dying beast.

There was something underneath the vines, after all. As the outer layers turned to ash, I saw what looked like a large root system, with thick, ginseng-like roots which tapered away into points. It was shaped vaguely like a man.

I took another step forward, now completely unafraid. As I did, I felt as my foot crunched through something on the ground. I looked down to see what I had stepped on.

The decaying remains of a human face looked back at me. It was little more than a skeleton, and my boot had broken through its ribcage.

Before I could think, the burning creature let out another, louder scream. I turned my attention back to it, and thought I saw another face, etched into the folds of the roots. It was the face of agony.

Then I was on the ground, tackled into the grass by Cadoc. The monster had finally decided to fight back, and Cadoc had pushed me out of the way at the last moment, barely dodging another green lance. The torch dropped from my hand in the scramble.

“Get up!” he yelled, pulling me to my feet again. I got to my feet, stealing a look back at the monster as I did.

It was massive. It seemed like an entirely different monster.

I saw a man made of roots, short and fat, with no hands, no feet, and no human features besides the general shape and the wrinkled suggestions of a scowling face.

From the top of the man - not just his head, as his head and shoulders were in line, like his head had retreated down into his chest - from the top of the man grew vines, the vines which had previously clothed him, but were now arrayed above him like a peacock with vipers instead of feathers. They reached easily three times his height, and still squirmed like they had wills of their own.

The man raised a root at us as I stared, as if he was pointing.

Then the vines descended.

“Run!” I yelled. I didn’t wait for Cadoc to respond. I ran.

We couldn’t run into the dungeon - there could have been hundreds of these monsters in there, for all we knew. And I didn’t think we could outrun the vines for long if we just made a break for it. Not to mention the probability of tripping and falling in the nearly-descended night.

The house. It was as good of a shelter as we were going to get. Either Cadoc had the same idea, or he was following me, because when I reached the door, he was right beside me.

“What’s the plan?” he said, breathlessly.

I turned to look at the monster again, while scolding myself about constantly taking time to look back. Some day your curiosity is going to get you killed, I thought.

A small sliver of the sun still remained, but it didn’t matter. The vines were blocking out the sun.

“Get in!” I yelled. That was as much of a plan as I had at that moment.

We both hurried inside, slamming the door shut behind us. I latched the door - a tiny latch, like what you would put on a gate in your backyard. It didn’t inspire confidence, but I reassured myself that the monster didn’t even have hands.

I took a breath. It seemed like I hadn’t been breathing for a long time. It felt good, until I coughed, the air musty and damp.

The torch. The thought hit me like - well, like that monster probably would have. I dropped the fucking torch.

I scanned the room quickly. This was likely to be only the briefest of respites. I didn’t know if the monster could walk, or if the vines could reach this far, but I couldn’t just cross my fingers. We needed a new plan. A new weapon.

Cadoc had seated himself in a wooden chair. I realized he was talking.

“It was a good start,” he said. “Nearly did it. If a bard had been watching, they’d sing songs about us.”

“We need a new plan,” I said. “I dropped the torch.”

“So you did. So you did.” Cadoc looked like his mind was elsewhere.

It took awhile for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The house was a one-room cabin. All the walls were wood, as was the crudely hewn table and the three chairs around it - one of which Cadoc was sitting on. There was a fireplace on the wall to the left, while the table was more to the right, below a window. There was no bed - only a pile of furs and blankets on the floor before the fireplace.

The fireplace was black with use, and a cooking pot hung there. I walked over, and saw that there was still soup inside, though it smelt foul and inedible.

Above the fireplace was a mantle, and on it was a single lantern. It was incredibly dim in the room - only the moonlight leaking in through the window provided any light. I took out a nail, stuck it into the oil in the lantern, and lit it. To my pleasant surprise, it worked. The lantern cast light over the room.

In the back, there was a cellar door, closed. Some sort of root cellar, I supposed. I hoped we wouldn’t need to retreat down there.

Everything else of note was on the walls, either on simple wooden shelves, or hung on hooks. Pots and pans, a little broom, old jars of what may have been food, an axe, herbs hung from the roof, and all kinds of junk. The only thing resembling a weapon was the axe. I took it off the wall, and handed it to Cadoc. “Here. You’ll do better with this than I will, I’m guessing.”

“I’d guess the same, friend. Besides, you have magic.” He said this with a grin, clearly poking fun at my magical ineptitude, as if we weren’t about to die from it.

I didn’t answer. Instead, I watched, frozen in fear, as a vine snaked its way through the window. And then another one.