“Now we’re talking!” Liv exclaimed as her trees slowly wove together into the second ‘room’ of her dungeon. “That’s some proper, old school ‘Tomb of Horrors’ era shit right there.”

Hands-on her hips, she grinned as she admired her recently added ‘map room’. It was the first real joint construction effort between her and her denizens. Liv had shaped the woven walls, leafy roof, and shrub-sized tunnels through the roots and trunks. Meanwhile, Scout and his rangers had laid out the floor plan. Pale sand had been smoothed over the bottom, and a carefully selected stockpile of materials had been gathered for certain types of markers and terrain. Now Liv had an ever-growing map of not just her territory, but the world beyond her misty borders!

Deciding that the Map Room was a huge success, she knelt to examine the north-western edge of the explored territory. There was a large body of water, about the size of her first island, to the west of her core grove. She’d happily claim it, but her real goal was to move in more of a northerly direction. Her attempts to communicate to those cultists had all failed, but when she allowed the woman to briefly ‘escape’, that was the direction she’d gone. She hoped that was the general direction of wherever they called home.

The map showed a second body of water to her North, leaving a pathway of steadily thinning trees between them. It was as good a place as any. Leaving the map room, the fiery punk made her way to the western edge. She took a broad stance, breathing deeply, and thrust out a palm to shove back the mist until she finally saw the first signs of sunlight and grasses. With a squeal of glee, she knelt and toyed with the familiar threads of the bladed plants until she was satisfied she’d correctly recreated her favorite tool for expansion. She rolled her neck, reveling in the loud crunching sound that emerged, and began to whistle a brisk, dramatic, almost imperial-sounding tune.

Stomping forward in a rigid march, she poured SP into that knotted node of grass threads and vigorously tromped into the unknown. She began to sing under her breath, humming between forgotten lines. The words were Russian, which she didn’t speak a lick of, but the tune made her feel undeniably badass. The sprouting blades of grass cut through the mist’s enemy lines like her own personal army as she pushed her borders further than ever before. She wished she could recall what the words actually meant. Something about Vodka and Soviet Bears…

Reaching an instrumental portion of the song in her mind, Liv closed her eyes and made conductor-like motions with her hands as she marched. Bobbing her head and spinning about as she moved, she tried to push the walls back as far as she possibly could before she ran out of energy. She still had a smidge left in the tank, so it was a rather unpleasant surprise when she slammed face-first into a hard barrier.

“OWW!” she said more out of instinct than pain, rubbing her nose. “The fuck?” This was new. The misty barrier was kind of stiff but pliable. This felt like walking into a sliding glass door.

She opened her eyes to glare at whatever had so rudely blocked her grassy invasion and blinked in confusion. The mist wasn’t in front of her nose. Instead she saw her grass spreading along the unnaturally sharp edge of an invisible convex wall. A pocket of daylight, like a transparent bubble in the endless fog. She saw structures of hide and bone, and others of woven plants. Only a few were taller than two feet high. A village? A really TINY village.

“What in Hel is going on?” She whispered, leaning back and forth to see if there were any signs of life. Now that she was listening, she could hear some kind of thrashing going on outside of her line of sight. Spending more of her dwindling reserves, she tried to circle around towards the far side of this strange place but stopped after only a few feet.

One of her shrubs tumbled through the mist on the far side of the miniature village, landing hard and rolling along the ground. The little plant-person stood back up and waved towards the mist, beckoning urgently. With a start, Liv realized it wasn’t one of hers. This was it! This must be where that first little shrub had come from!! She got ready to run back and fetch Bushwhacker when a much larger shape exploded out of the fog and into the village.

The brown theropod from the other day rampaged into the space, slamming head-first into some kind of guard tower and sending it toppling over. Several more shrubs clung to its flanks by any means possible and the feathers were dappled with black flecks of blood and tiny spear shafts. She wondered just how insane these little guys actually were, trying to take down that kind of apex predator, but when the ancient hunter pulled its head from the wreckage it became instantly apparent that the situation was not what it seemed.

The lengthy neck of the beast still had tatters of flesh at the end, with one dangling fragment of what looked like a jaw bone that swung wildly about. From the end of the neck, where a head ought to be, instead writhed a horrific mass of slick, mucus-coated, black tentacles. Snapping to one side, the long neck allowed those unnatural appendages to grasp one of the attacking shrubs and yank it off. Liv winced at the crackling noise as the corrupted dinosaur crushed the tiny plant into pulpy kindling.

More of the shrubs moved to surround the abomination but to little avail. The dinosaur was just so much larger than them. The stumbling beast crushed another building as it stomped down on the structure in an attempt to get around their defensive line. A furious tail swipe sent another plant sailing off into the mist. Good gods, this wasn’t a foolhardy hunt gone wrong, this was the shrub version of a fucking Kaiju attack!

Placing her fingers into her mouth, Liv inhaled deeply and made the loudest, shrillest whistle she could muster. Even from here, she could hear the crystalline ringing of the core.

—

The earth shook violently, nearly sending Weavebriar tumbling once more to the ground. He scrambled in the dirt, throwing himself around a corner and pressing himself against the wall of the village nursery. A sickening crunch from the moist, slithering maw of the monster made his leaves want to wilt.

He slid to the edge, peeking around the corner of the building, and stared in horror at the mangled remains of a fellow leshy just a scant few strides away. A cold rush of dread froze him in his tracks as a cacophonous thunder rattled through his every leaf and limb. He turned away from the body to see the cloud of dust and debris that had been Willowhip’s home just moments before. By all the ancients, he hoped the children had gone to the nursery as they’d been told…

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

He returned to his hiding place, trying to think. He had to do something. The nursery was made of stronger stuff than anywhere else, but he doubted it would hold up to this mad horror. Weavebriar was no warrior, but perhaps he could buy the remaining combatants time. He looked down at his side, where his intricately carved bone cudgel lay in the dirt. With his second sight, he could see the grid-like spell matrix anchored to it, and the threads that wove a familiar magic held within.

Clenching his fists, he tried to still his trembling branches. He couldn’t fight this beast. He wasn’t a warrior. Grasping the bone cudgel he wove a thread from himself to the spell. No, he was a builder.

Whirling out from behind the building, Weavebriar dragged the knobby end of his cudgel in the dirt as he practically screamed the incantation, fueled in equal parts by terror and rage. The last dozen warriors of the village stood behind chief Rindguard, giving their all to herd the horror-marked abomination away from the nursery. At the last second, when he was finally in range, he heaved the bone forward in an uppercut, sending a spray of earth into the air as the woven spell flared to life.

Around the horror’s taloned feet, druidic magic erupted from the earth in the form of huge thorny vines. They twined around its legs, gouging jagged wounds into the bare skin and rooting the titanic creature to the ground. It grieved him to use a builder’s magic like this, but he had no choice. Their grove had been nearly forty strong that morning, and thanks to this giant they were only half that now.

With a gut-wrenching sound of snapping roots, the monster tore one foot free, lifting it to swipe at a nearby warrior. With a frustrated cry, Weavebriar swung his cudgel again, fresh vines snaring the foot into an awkward new position. The massive bulk of the beast swayed, off-kilter, causing those clinging to its flanks to dismount in anticipation. Too late, he saw that the awful thing’s balance was tipping towards him. In a panic, he dove, barely escaping the crushing blow as it collapsed.

Now! If he cast again now he could… The thread was severed. Looking down, he saw his hand was empty. Fear seized him as he looked towards the fallen beast, and saw only shards of the bone scattered beneath it. The writhing maw was turning now, blindly seeking him out as if it could taste him on the air.

This was it. This was how he died. He hoped the warriors could use this opening to strike a fatal blow, but he doubted it would come before those slimy tentacles got him…

A shrill whistling shook him from his mortal terror. The piercing warble even seemed to dominate the horror’s attention as it spread from a single point to an all-encompassing din that left his leaves shaking from the vibrations in the air. There behind the beast, a figure emerged from the tall grass to the south. A Leshy! A survivor? He couldn’t be sure at this distance. The figure barreled through the blades of grass whistle whirling overhead until it came in range.

Like an avatar of the heavens, this fearless warrior hurled itself through the air and launched a spear with a coiled rope of woven fiber, like lighting from a winter storm. The barbed spear dug into the back of the scythe-clawed horror’s neck. To Weavebriar’s amazement, the sky seemed to fill with countless spears, lacing ropes through the air like one of the great western spiders had woven a web across the whole village.

As the horror began to writhe and twist, fighting to free itself from the vines, Weavebriar momentarily forgot the danger he was in, so close to the monster’s maw. Roped spears peppered the beast, bristling between the feathers as the moist slapping of the black tentacles voiced a scream so high in pitch it was audible.

Snaps and pops echoed up through his roots as the titan overpowered more and more of the vines, rolling onto its belly and trying to stand up. Weavebriar looked around, searching desperately for something he could do to help. He spotted the body from earlier. Rosebark… He drove grief from his mind and snatched her spear from her mangled hand and turned to face his probable doom.

That was when he got the first look at the new warrior. The crazed hero had pulled themselves up the rope and lodged their roots into the back of the horror’s neck! Staring up at the monster as it tried to heave up onto its feet, he saw the morning sunlight streaming through the warrior’s leaves, setting them ablaze with glorious fury. This was no survivor. Weavebriar was certain he had never laid eyes on this leshy before. He could never have forgiven himself if he had forgotten that face, for losing even a memory of such radiant beauty would surely be a crime against the ancients. Furious, blood-stained, and fearless in the face of destruction incarnate; she was perfection…

“PULL!!” she rustled with leaf and limb. Suddenly the lines went taut. From the edges of the village came an army! Ten! Twenty! No, FIFTY?! More warriors than his village had ever had. Each coiled their ropes in time, striding into the village before planting their roots in the soil and pulling back with all the strength they could muster.

The horror shuddered, straining now against not only the last vines but the countless harpoons. He was certain those ropes could never hold, but to his shock and awe, the beast strained and shook only to fall prone on its belly once again. The vision astride the titan pulled something long and stiff from where it hung at one hip. A shard of some kind of shiny, polished stone. With a primal ferocity that left him breathless, she began relentlessly stabbing the beast with her strange stone tool, punching hole after hole in its neck.

Inspired, Weavebriar hefted his borrowed spear and charged forward. He meant to jab the invader in the belly while he could reach it, but the horror gave one last shriek before his entire world turned black. He flailed in the sudden darkness, slipping and sliding on some foul liquid before he managed to wipe the ichor from his eyes.

Tatters of fetid flesh and tangled vines lay where the monster had been. Where once a titan had stood, now countless lesser horrors emerged. With a jolt, Weavebriar realized that the head of the thing hadn’t been tentacles after all. Slugs. The hollowed shell of the creature had been filled to the brim with a colony of slimy, black slugs.

They surged outward, wriggling in every direction while most of the assembled Leshies staggered blindly, taken off-guard by the turn of events. Many of the creatures were making for the edges of the village, but some of those who blindly wandered into the disoriented warriors latched onto them with a will. The noxious, chemical smell of stinging acids filled the air as the slugs burned their bark.

One was slithering towards the warrior nearest to him, who was struggling to free themselves from a scrap of the leather shell the slugs had ridden in. Resuming his charge, Weavebriar stabbed the spear into the gelatinous slug that was as large as he was. He half expected it to shrug off the blow and end him, but the thing shuddered and died. Each individual was apparently much less sturdy than the collective had been.

“Thank you.”

Weavebriar turned to see none other than the vision of glory herself, weapons in hand and covered in the blood of her enemies. He blinked, trying to regain his sense for a moment before nodding in return.

“Y-you’re welcome.” he stammered, fighting against the goo to get the rustling of his leaves to shape the words. As more slugs wriggled free of the heap, the warrior stepped past him and pressed her back to his.

“Who are you?” he asked over his shoulder, readying his spear for the next target.

“Bushwhacker,” the warrior rustled in response. Weavebriar was taken aback by the strange, abrasive name, but had no time for questions. Another slug was already coming for them…

—

Liv cheered from her place on the sidelines as her little shrubs mopped up most of the remaining slugs. Some slithered off into the mist, but most of them were littering the ground with a disgusting mush of slug bodies and dino meat as her forces destroyed what remained of the awful things. And Bushwhacker!! Holy crap! That little dude was an absolute BEAST! She was just glad he was on her side.

As the two bands of shrubs came together after the battle, her focus drifted back to the problem at hand. Her elation fell flat as she considered what she’d just seen. She couldn’t be entirely certain, but she was pretty sure that was the female theropod she’d encountered not so long ago. What the fuck had happened to it?

It looked as though the creature had been infested with some kind of parasite, but there was no way in hell THAT was natural. The slimy things just screamed ‘cultist bullshit’, but she didn’t want to jump to conclusions just yet. Something told her that this was going to be far from her last encounter with these nasty things. Thank the gods for her shrubs! If they could take down that freak of nature, she was sure they could handle anything this crazy place threw at them.