The creak and rustle of the shrubs began to soften, slowing to a crawl. Liv looked up from her sketches to see that the sun had set, and the sleepy plants had come to rest in a tight circle around the largest of the flytraps. She hadn't the faintest idea what they were doing, but the shrubs had been dancing and… Singing maybe?... All week. Liv had been observing the shrubs closely, trying to learn as much as she could.
She had actually managed to learn a few words! Well, potential words at least. The problem with learning through pure observation was that it was difficult to be certain of what a word is describing. She knew the criks and shimmies that they all made when seemingly referring to the flytrap, but had no way to be sure if it was the world for the plant itself, some attribute of the thing, or just their way of saying ‘it’ or ‘that’ or even a name.
Knowing the shrubs would be still until sunrise, Liv stood and made her way westward. Passing her own shrub’s half-finished village, then the bayou, and into the dense, dark core-grove. Wriggling her ethereal form through a gap that never would have let her pass were she still solid, she crawled over to her latest cluster of mushrooms.
She’d been hard at work, wracking her brain for useful applications for the little fungi. So far her major achievement had been creating a way to input her daily expansions so that the system could track her SP total in hard numbers rather than just percentages. That had taken AGES but the results had allowed her to track percentage gain per second against an actual number. Liv had been super proud of that, right up until she realized that she regenerated less than 1% per tick, so the numbers she got were off.
To get an accurate number she had to create a tracking system that allowed for fractions of a percent. Since she couldn’t spend a fractional sp, much less time the connections that closely, she’d been forced to make an entirely new ‘room’ just to house the mess of fungal threads that could time how many ticks it took to gain 1% and then check THAT against the total. She’d eventually have to make an addition to compensate for when her regen exceeded 1% per second, but that was a tomorrow problem. Much as she loved the results, this stuff wasn’t her forte and it made her head hurt.
Still! Seeing her new display project real numbers and save her from having to do the math in her head was worth it. She grinned at her new display, beaming with pride.
Game window depicting updated graphics and numerical tracking. [https://i.imgur.io/UXuTnAM_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium]
There were other experiments to try, but honestly, she needed a break from- Liv paused, squinting at the window. The regen had just jumped upward. That shouldn’t be possible.
“Gods damn it…” she grumbled, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Another glitch.” With a sigh, she turned back towards the mush-room when the number jumped again. What was going on? Then the regen dropped back down! Looking over her connections, Liv watched as the numbers fluctuated, even though it seemed like everything was functioning perfectly. She checked the NOR gates in the calculator for errors, double checked the signal relay lines to make sure they hadn’t grown together again, but everything looked fine. What the heck was the problem here?
Then Liv had an awful thought. What if it wasn’t her mushrooms at all, but rather something to do with her plants? The shrubs!! Dashing westward yet again, Liv sprinted for the front-line barricades. Her panicked rush skidded to a halt when she found half the line missing.
“The fuck?” she mumbled under her breath. It was the border. The misty wall had somehow moved inward, rolling over the southernmost extent of the shrub’s defensive barricades. The dungeon specter blinked in surprise. She hadn’t even known that could happen. Was she shrinking? Planting her feet, she thrust out her hands and shoved the border back. The mist receded, revealing the barricades and their guards once more. However, after just a fraction of the ground she’d expected to gain with that shove, her knees began to wobble. A quick glance at her floating window gave her a shock. Her SP was draining fast. She was almost dry!
Liv staggered back, parched and panting. Then she watched as the mist ever so slowly closed inward again.
“Shit!” she cursed, scrambling to think of something. This was bad! Worse, it was an unknown variable. The guards turned to watch her as she paced frantically back and forth. She turned to scold them and tell them to watch out for the slugs, but it was then that she noticed the silence.
“Wait. Where are the slugs?” One of the guards shuffled forward a step and made an exaggerated shrug. “Have you seen any tonight?” The guard dropped their shoulders and shook their head back and forth, slowly. Liv had a bad feeling about that. Something had scared off the swarm and she was somehow losing ground.
“Weapons up,” she ordered. “Something is wrong here.” The guards all stood up a bit straighter, fighting against the darkness-induced lethargy and trying to look for any threats. Liv stood still as a stone, not even breathing as she listened intently…
…
…
…
THERE! Her eyes snapped upwards and to the north as the unfamiliar noise reached her from beyond the veil. A chaotic, almost ungainly, flapping sound made dull by thick, humid air. It could be nothing, but with how much more slowly the plants moved at night Liv knew better than to take that risk. Putting her fingers to her lips, she whistled as loudly as she could. The metallic ringing from behind her was accompanied by tiny flecks of crimson light as the core flared.
The echo was still fading when she heard the first impact. Setting off at a sprint once again, she beelined towards the western village. She barely stopped herself before smashing face-first into the invisible wall surrounding it. The crash had come from the watchtower they had been slowly rebuilding. A blackbird had dove straight into it, decimating a part of a wall along with the bird itself. The flapping grew louder as the shrubs slowly emerged from their huts. In a gray blur, something much larger slammed down on one of the buildings like a cannonball. Liv barely had time to identify it as a Bog Trodder before the pulpy mass burst into countless slugs and the next unfortunate avian hit the ground.
The shrubs began diving for cover to avoid the increasingly devastating kamikaze attacks. In the distance, the deep creaks and thundering footfalls of Giermund barreled toward them, and she could hear the rustling of her forces not far behind.
“HERE!!” she screamed, waving her arms to get the mangrove’s attention. As soon as the massive creature spotted her, she formed a ‘roof’ over her head with her hands and then pointed at the village. Liv was flooded with relief as the mobile tree seemed to understand and changed course to guard the village with his canopy. That feeling was short-lived, however.
From behind her came snaps and crackles over disturbingly deep whines and chattering teeth. Something was hitting the front line, and it wasn’t slugs. As Giermund splayed out his roots and covered the village, Liv dashed back once again to the barricades.
“Come on! Come ON!” she pleaded, wishing the shrubs could move their little legs a little more quickly. This had definitely come at a bad time. Liv yelped in surprise as something burst out of the grass just ahead of her. The largest rat she had ever seen was bounding forward, heedless of the two shrubs furiously stabbing at its back with stone daggers while they clung to barbed spears to stay aboard. In its mouth, one of the guards hung limp and lifeless. The poor shrub had been bitten in half by the beast’s massive incisors.
Looking past the gruesome battle, Liv spotted what remained of the barricades. Rats the size of small dogs were mindlessly swarming the ramparts, frequently impaling themselves in the process. Their cumulative bulk and sharp teeth were bringing the simple constructs down one by one, and the flagging guards weren’t going to hold up much longer.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
With a jolt, the pieces came together in her mind. Ever since discovering the slugs, they had been successfully keeping the aimless infestation at bay. This was different. This wasn’t a bunch of brainless beasts wandering too close to the border. This was a coordinated attack.
She’d never been more grateful to hear the familiar whistles of her rangers as her remaining forces finally closed the gap. Scout leaped from the grass. Straddling the rat’s neck, he clawed viciously at its eyes while staying out of the reach of those teeth. After a moment of spinning wildly, the rodent opened its mouth wide enough that Liv could hear its jaw crack, and a slick tendril slithered out to grasp its attackers like a slimy black tongue.
Until now, even larger waves of the slugs or their infested hosts had been handled more like preventative maintenance than anything; taken down at range, with minimal risk or loss. Like redirecting a river before a storm could cause it to flood the town. What she saw now was utter chaos and devastation.
A rat pulled itself by its front paws, the rear ones dragging limply behind it. A leafy warrior reared back, atlatl in hand, about to launch a spear into the fray when some kind of waterfowl slammed down with enough force to crush the tiny plant and explode into countless writhing parasites. One of the newcomers ran up to the line, lifting what looked like an oversized chicken bone over his head in both hands. The beads and feathers strapped to it rattled as a wall of brambles reinforced the failing ramparts. A small gator burst out of the nearby shallow pool, tentacles wrapping around another unsuspecting shrub and yanking it into the water.
Every last erg of the enemy’s ground forces were trying to push past the front line and in the direction of the village. Giermund would have been a boon here, but someone had to keep that little village safe from aerial attacks. Feeling helpless, Liv put on a brave face. It wouldn’t do her side any good to see her fretting. So she planted her feet in the muck and tried to imagine herself as a fearless general.
“Form the line!!” the crimson-haired punk commanded, trying her best to sound confident and signaling with her hand to form up on her. When the chaos continued unabated she ground her teeth and dropped her voice downward before bellowing. “I SAID FALL BACK AND FORM A LINE!!”
Her orders echoed over the battlefield, finally getting the attention of her forces, which all began to slowly retreat, covering each other as they moved into a loose, unpracticed formation. Those that were connected to her dragged the others who couldn’t hear her voice along with them. Slowly, the enemy’s momentum broke. The thorny briar had bottlenecked them enough to allow for her shrubs to regroup.
Near her feet, a familiar bush staggered up to her. Scout leaned heavily on his spear. His right arm looked like it had been ripped away, leaving nothing but debarked wood and splinters. The weary plant gave her a solemn nod, before turning to stumble into place beside his fellows. Liv almost broke, choking up as she watched him try to heft his spear in his remaining arm and fight unto the last.
“Idun, lady of the orchard,” she prayed, reaching down to touch her wounded soldier, uncertain if she could even heal a missing limb. “guide my hand, while I tend to this guardian of the grove.” She doubted whether the gods were even listening for the pleas of a dead woman, but she couldn't just do nothing. Closing her eyes and pushing her SP into the shrub, she tried to reweave the threads that lay in tatters at his shoulder, like painting the nervous system of a new arm. She imagined growth, unfurling leaves, and budding flowers, praying fervently that the splintered wood would sprout anew.
As the sounds of more rodents hitting the line of spears threatened to break her concentration, she scrunched up her face and tried to focus with all her might. She could feel something happening, she was close! Then Scout pulled away, breaking her focus. Looking at him, Liv was thrilled to see what looked like the beginnings of a new limb forming from the old stump, now covered safely in fresh bark. Then she noted the expression on Scout’s face. Glancing around, she found that not one of her shrubs was looking at her. All of those not currently fighting off infected fauna gazed somewhat upward, into the mists.
“What do you s-” her words were drowned out by a booming bass that swiftly spiraled upward into what she could only describe as something akin to a car alarm. The almost bird-like ululations were throaty and deep, but far from the most worrisome thing about what was happening. No, the observation that was truly scaring her was the sound of thick, heavy footfalls. This was going to be bad…
Against the war zone of foot-tall combatants, a monster the size of a buffalo looked like an insurmountable titan. Its horned and scaled, triangular head burst through the briars as the monster began to shred the living defensive wall. For a single, horrific moment, Liv was convinced that whatever was controlling the slugs had managed to find an honest to gods dragon.
The thing that ripped her barricade out by the roots trundled into her dungeon. Squat, flat, and low-slung, its powerful jawline came down to a wicked, pointed beak. Her mind went blank as she stared at this armored tank, bristling with sharp horns. The instinctual part of her lizard brain locked up, even though this beast couldn’t harm her ghostly form. Reality came crashing back down, quite literally, as the monster twisted and a huge boney club slammed into the ground beside her with enough force to send a spray of dirt and muck and offal flying into the air. The near miss was enough to give the beast a name.
Liv scrambled backward, eyes wide as she got back to her feet. Ankylosaurus. That was a fuck-mothering ANKYLOSAURUS!! Another blow unleashed a tsunami of earth, unlucky shrubs flailing as they tumbled through the air. The fallen barricade was slowly consumed by the mist, while the smaller entities it had held at bay now poured through in force. This wasn’t a fight they could win. Not here. Not now.
“RETREAT!!!” Liv screamed, pointing towards the core and waving frantically. “RETREEEEAT!!”
The line broke, the tiny shrubs fleeing for their lives. Liv prayed they could make it back to the core grove, where the dense mangroves would slow that monstrosity down and give her some options for contributing to this fight. Running next to one of Scout’s rangers, she pointed to the village.
“We have to warn them! Tell them to run to the core!!”
The shrub nodded, pulling out its whistle and making a mad dash northward. She heard the whistle begin a chirping bird-song and winced as it was cut abruptly short. All around her, the rodents were pouncing on the increasingly scattered plants as they fled. A thunderstorm was rolling up on their heels as the massive armored dinosaur lowered its head and began to charge.
The one-armed Scout bravely hauled another shrub onto its feet, hurling it out of the path of the beast. Harrier had another in a fireman’s carry and was barely keeping ahead of a huge rat while Sharpshooter tried to slow it down with spear after spear. Liv couldn’t let this happen. Not again. So many were already dead, she could not lose her children a second time.
There had to be something she could use out here! Spinning around in a desperate search, she saw nothing but the muck and grasses of the marsh and their doom trundling toward them like a freight train. She glanced at her ‘Character Sheet’ surprised to see her SP bar was completely full. She’d been too panicked to even notice the SP coming in from all the infected creatures.
The ground beneath her feet was starting to shake beneath the onslaught of the charging Dino's feet. Ground… GROUND!! Turning back mid-step, without bothering to slow down, her boots gouged deep grooves into the muck as she skidded to a halt. Teeth bared in the feral snarl of a mother bear whose cubs are being threatened, she pulled back a fist. The sounds of howling wind, creaking wood, and rushing water converged there, shaping the air itself into a single word.
“NO!” the Manglegrove roared, as fierce and wild as a summer hurricane. The jasper apparition punched her fist down into the muck, severing the countless threads that connected all life within the soil to herself. Hardier weeds wilted and fell, while countless blades of grass just disintegrated into a formless soup of base materials. As the unnatural patch expanded outward, dissolving all life native to the dungeon inside it, the fluids seeped into the muck. Rats bounded one or two paces more before beginning to struggle. Serpents and caimans got a bit further, but then they too began to sink.
The Ankylosaurus’ bulk seemed to work against it, dragging the heavy beast down into the mud almost immediately. Her SP bar flickered as the strain of loosening the soil warred with the small bursts of SP that came from each creature she managed to swallow up. She could feel each life snuff out as her quicksand flowed into their lungs. The armored giant sank down to the broadest point of its midsection, where it stopped and began to slowly move forward again. The Manglegrove glared balefully at it.
“SINK, DAMN YOU!” she demanded as her shrubs used the opportunity she was providing to reach the tree line. “SINK!!” Alas, the huge herbivore seemed to have been designed to survive the trials of the swamp. It struggled slowly forward, trumpeting and bellowing all the while. This close to the beast, she could see how its tongue was a familiar slimy black. Fury gave way to worry as her SP reserves ran dry, and that thing was still coming.
The air screamed, rent by something which flew with such force and velocity that The Manglegrove was sure it would have ruptured her eardrums if she’d still had them. As it was, she fell back onto her rear as a hunk of limestone the size of a Radio Flyer wagon slammed into the dinosaur, exploding into countless fragments.
Liv shook her head, blinking rapidly as the dust settled, and turned to look at the source of this miniature recreation of the Cretaceous extinction event. Giermund, draped in the carcasses of countless impaled birds, and carrying what looked like the entire population of the western village, knelt to allow Koosh to pull another boulder from the mud and place it in Giermund’s wooden claws.
The dinosaur bleated, a gaping wound on its back revealing nothing but a tangled mass of slithering black mucus, unable to move swiftly enough to get out of the way.
“YES! YEEEES!! DO IT, GIERMUND!!” Liv threw her fists up into the air, pinky and forefinger extended in the sign of ‘the horns’ as the second rock slammed down like the hammer of the gods, forcing the huge beast down into the mud, where both host and parasites alike could suffocate in the dark. Liv’s one-sided smirk was twisted into a pseudo-sneer as she flipped off the muddy pit with both hands.
She reveled in the victory for only a moment. The patch was only so big, and the smaller invaders would find their way around it eventually.
“Take them to the Core Grove!” she yelled, waving for Giermund to follow her lead. “GO! GO! GO!”
—
Dawn had eventually crested the horizon, after what felt like years of eternal night. The edges of the grove had been haphazardly woven together into a wall of root and branch, with Liv spending her energy as fast as she could make it just to fortify the tree line. With the light of the sun, her bedraggled soldiers and the terrified refugees of the western village had been bolstered. Spears lobbed from living battlements peppered any of the scattered enemies that wandered too close, while Giermund patrolled the newly-formed border.
They’d survived the night, but Liv couldn’t call it a victory. The village was a wreck, the barricades were decimated, so SO many plants had died… And as she stared out across the marsh, Liv could just barely make out the slow inward creep of the mist as it made its way eastward just a centimeter at a time. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be eaten alive.
“First blood goes to you,” Liv hissed at the unknown. Clenched tightly at her sides, The Manglegrove’s fists trembled with rage.