Amongst verdant leaves and lush grasses, the grumbling of a zombie could be heard. Despite the vibrant flowers dotting the landscape, and the pristine breeze that carried with it butterflies alongside the gentle rustling of trees - Sally was annoyed.

“This place is far too nice,” she said, stopping for the third time to look around. “I’m talking out loud in the hopes that either I’ll get ambushed or there’s some jerk out there actually listening. Like… you, Bernard?”

Her scowl aimed toward the bright blue sky went unanswered.

She had a sixth sense for these kinds of things. After walking through the hedges that looked as though they might be the start of a maze, it had just brought her into another field. In full spring bloom, just like the previous one. But she would have to fight something here despite the pleasantness.

It was only a matter of time.

Sally stepped over to a cluster of bright red flowers. Bringing down her knife, she cut one of the heads off and affixed in it in the side of her hair. Had to look nice for seeing Theo later once this was all done with. Would be a relief to get back home and enjoy some creature comforts. Like smooching.

Footsteps. The inevitable fight that she always knew was coming. She didn’t turn just yet, just closed her eyes. Relaxed and enjoyed the brief amount of peace now that she knew it had come down to this.

Could it have been anything else? The trial of Life was to keep on living. Simple.

She exhaled through her nose and turned. Three knights in moss-green plate armor. Gnarled brown in the gaps instead of skin, their faces just large blank sunflowers sticking out from beneath the helmets. Each held a sword engraved in bright, glowing runes.

“Neat. Is there some significance to the number three? Or are you just triplets? Labor market could only provide three plant-knights to beat me up?”

More silence was the only response. What she wouldn’t give for the Outsiders to be behind her to act as an audience. Even if it was just rolled eyes and groans - that was half the fun. That just drove her forward to win this, now that she knew they’d be able to be back together soon. Further adventures on different worlds would be the five of them once again.

[Skeleton Key] spun in her hand as she launched forward, the knights getting into defensive stances in response.

Oh, how she missed a good combat sequence.

Blade lashed out at the closest, the metal ringing out as she continued into a slide between the knight’s legs. Jammed the dagger into the back of their ankle as she stood back to her feet. Blocked the heavy swing of the second combatant and kicked out at their lowered arm, shifting their sword away from her.

Dove toward them and stabbed them in the arm, before the sunflower-face, rolling herself across their back to avoid the jab of the third knight.

She ducked the wide swing of the recovered first, only to get kicked by the third. Rolled backward up to her footing again, only barely able to block the follow-up. The force vibrated down her arm. Three swords versus one dagger wasn’t exactly fair. Still, she was only just getting warmed up.

Her defensive skill flared up as she ran toward the third knight, his next jab just bouncing off of her ineffectively. Dagger went forward into the sunflower’s face, tearing a gash through it. The knight dropped their sword to clutch at the odd liquid that started spraying from the wound.

“Hope you’re not actually real people that I’m imagining looking like monsters,” she said, baring her teeth as she deflected the attack of the next knight.

[Chain] struck the second knight, putting them on awkward footing. Her dagger flashed forward, catching the sun before burying into their chest through the plate armor. Spun away and caught a slash across her arm, biting through her flesh. The wound immediately burned, the glowing lights on the weapons clearly more than just theatrics.

“Holy life energy or something?” she asked, not expecting the knight to respond. Now just down to the single opponent with the other two collapsing, she backtracked slowly, waiting for an opening.

They probably wouldn’t be very tasty, even if they had brains. The skill choice had come up for the first, but she didn’t want to risk it. There was a chance that was part of the test… or maybe making zombies was part of the test?

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Bernard hadn’t been very clear.

Blades clashed again twice as the knight moved towards her, stepping forward with an unexpected flurry of the sword pommel that caught her in the face, breaking her nose.

She growled as warm blood ran down to her mouth. Grabbed onto the sword and pulled her weight into it briefly - just so that the knight would try to oppose her. She then immediately shifted her weight forward into them, hooking her foot just behind theirs.

The knight collapsed, and she landed on top of them - but she was much quicker to recover. [Skeleton Key] up and down, two stabs to their torso before the large flower. A couple more for breaking her nose.

With a sigh, she rolled from the figure and stood up to her feet. Nose was easy enough to correct, with her eyes closed she clicked it back into place. Blood wiped off on the back of her arm, and then she made sure the flower was still in her hair.

Eyes back to the slain knights, they had sunk into the ground and were decaying away. Crusting over and turning into mulch as if time was speeding up on their corpses. She had taken their Life, after all - making sure to capitalize that in her head.

Now the plan was to… she turned and narrowed her eyes out around at the surroundings. That wasn’t much of a trial, so the true test must be elsewhere. What a pain.

Oh.

She paused and pulled a face. There was now a house in the near distance. Part of the view of it was obscured by the garden, which could be described as overflowing. With sunflower-people. These ones weren’t as well armored, and either had no weapons or very rudimentary ones. Garden tools, perhaps.

Sally drummed her fingers on her side. Fighting through two dozen sunflowers to get to the mysterious house might be the right thing to do. Maybe she was failing this trial really badly. Then again, she usually failed upwards.

Stretching her head from side to side, she approached them slowly.

[Sally: Hey fangs, you in your trial?]

[Theo: Yeah, think I’m crushing it.]

[Sally: is that a hammer pun]

[Theo: Isn’t everything?]

[Theo: Race you to the end!]

That settled it - killing her way through the otherwise pleasant looking flower monsters was the way forward. Unless the weird pocket dimension she was in decided any different, it was clearly the path to take.

[Chain] agreed, dragging the first opponent her way as the others finally noticed her intention to attack.

The sunflower attempted to take advantage of the reposition by swinging a blunt mace around. Sally ducked it, placing her blade into their stomach as they collided, slashing through to their flank. Opponent dropped to their knees as she spun and stabbed into the back of their head.

Sure, what did she have to lose?

[Eat Brains.]

Tasted like… living.

Her eyes blazed bright crimson as she turned to grin at the approaching crowd. Sally picked the club up in her left hand and dug her boots into the ground. She had to get to the end before the bloodsucker finished whatever his trial was.

She burst forward as the throng of monsters met her. Blocked the swipe with her blunt weapon and slashed across a throat with her dagger. Ate whatever classed as brains. Felt even more alive. Hyper-focused.

Ducked down, sprung up, and twisted. She left an after-image as the [Skeleton Key] danced between several opponents. Another eaten brain and she felt on top of the world. Taller too. [Chain] brought one of the flower-people over and they couldn’t even react in time with how things had sped up. Quick two jabs to the face. Eaten brains.

Sally became a blur, drooling whatever classed as blood from the creatures, as her dagger cut sharp arcs through the air. Third arm picked up a rough spear and now she was thrice as effective. Chewed up some more sunflower brains. A jagged sword struck her back, but vines grew around the blade, holding it in place as she spun to retaliate.

Entangling roots shot from her outstretched hand, binding up two monsters. A third looked up at her and paused, their flat flower-face tilted back to look up at her face.

Vines gripped and snapped the wooden bones of her foes, lifting the limp bodies up in the air to drop into her wide maw. Whole monsters chewed up and swallowed into her mass of writhing roots and sprouting leaves. Delectable.

There were few remaining now. What had started as a rough melee against a larger force had become a banquet of pure existence. What personality the constructs seemed to have had been trying to get the last few to turn tail and escape.

But they could not.

They had been planted in place by extended vines. Sally’s large hand came down and plucked their heads off one by one like they were weeds, tossing the gathered treats into her hungry maw.

Probably the best snack she’d had since landing in this world… although the Player had been good. As the last of the sunflower monsters dropped over to the floor and started to disintegrate away, she considered that a pretty good outcome to the fight. All targets eliminated and barely any damage taken herself. None of her arms were cut, and the pulsing mass of roots that were now her legs were only wanting for one thing.

To get into that house.

There was probably more to the trial than just eating a few flowers, but she couldn’t wait to rub her expediency in the vampire’s face with her dozens of fingers.

Even better - the house had seemed to scale up to the exact size she needed to get through the door. The success of the fight had her feeling a little big-headed and full of herself, so it was nice for the terrain to accommodate that.

She pressed her wide face against the side window, looking in at what appeared to be a shaded kitchen. “Yes… ha ha, yes,” she hissed.

Vines wrapped around the door handle and swung the opening wide.

Sally slunk through, not into an actual house, but into a domed chamber. A large circle raised by almost a foot sat in the middle, inscribed with various runes and engraved shapes.

More important, however, was the abomination made of bones continually leaking blood from every surface standing at the opposite side of the chamber.

“Took your time,” their deep voice growled, echoing around the room.