“That was easy,” said Will, who hadn’t done anything.

“The first room is always easy,” Dio replied, in the same way someone might say “You need air to breathe,"

“The rooms become more challenging and complicated as you explore,” Glory said. “We shouldn’t dawdle.”

Dio picked up the grand piano by the edge and wedged it up, as if deciding how easy it would be to carry. “Check any drawers or cupboards for treasure. Gold, jewelry, even silverware. If it’s not nailed down, take it.”

Will grabbed War and Peace, then Neuromancer from the shelf. Glory tossed him a backpack, and Will stuffed the books in. He grabbed a number more books without obvious titles and added those for good measure.

“Does the score actually matter if we’re looking for someone?” Will asked.

“Not really,” said Dio, grabbing a fistful of gold coins from a hidden compartment on the piano. “But it might buy us time in a later room. Literally.”

“We’re being timed?” Will asked, looking around as if he would see a hidden camera on the ceiling.

“Not exactly,” Dio said. “But the difficulty doesn’t just increase based on rooms. The longer you take per room, the harder things get.”

Dio opened the door to the next room, and ushered everyone through. Just like the last door, it slammed automatically behind them.

“Can you get separated if someone won’t leave a room?” Will asked.

“No,” Dio said. “Or it’s not supposed to. If it detects a living person it won’t close.”

“I assume the same courtesy is not extended to a dead person?” Will asked.

Dio laughed grimly. “No, I suppose not.”

This room looked like a greenhouse, with each window to the outside world hopelessly obscured by bluish-purple foliage. Skullcrusher looked upon it with almost reverent awe, so transfixed that he failed to notice the roots beginning to tangle around his feet.

“I’ve got to get a sample of that orchid—” Skullcrusher began to say, before he was pulled halfway into the loamy soil by what could only be described as a number of pale, grasping hands emerging from the floor.

“Whoah, this is new!” Dio said, stomping on one of the exploring floor-hands. It recoiled in apparent pain, then three more erupted to strike back. They clawed uselessly at Dio’s stone-hard calves, then turned their attention to Virgil.

“Get them out of the ground!” Skullcrusher said as he was pulled under. “They’re not just hands, they’re—”

His words were cut off by his head disappearing under the dirt.

Glory vanished from space, and Will had the sudden sensation of something very big moving in a direction he couldn’t properly see.

Then, he was back, pulling Skullcrusher into the correct plane of existence. The gnoll spit out black loam, retching and snarling.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Below them, the dirt exploded out, the source of the arms apparently annoyed at having their prey stolen. Three brown, lumpy masses of pale limbs, lifeless eyes, and wicked jaws leapt from the ground, spraying dirt into Will’s eyes with uncanny accuracy.

“Potatoes!?” Will asked, trying to clear his vision. The creatures walked without differentiating arms from legs, like huge wobbling tumbleweeds.

One lurched above him, intent on simply smashing him down, while two others ganged up on Glory and Skullcrusher.

On pure instinct Will headbutted the monstrous tuber, jumping up and letting the momentum do the brunt of the work.

The potato went flying, landing far away and digging into the soil like a shark swimming through water.

Dio laughed, shapeshifted into something like a four-armed gorilla, and ripped a potato clean in half, tossing them to the ground.

Each half burrowed into the soil independently, then sprouted fourth again as a quickly-growing mini-potato.

“Fuck, I hate it when they do that,” Dio said. “Frankly pretty bullshit.”

The ragged lines where the potato had been split grew teeth and lashing tongues, and the two new potatoes lunged forth on wiry legs.

Skullcrusher threw a glass jar at one of them just before it attempted to bite Dio’s leg off. The jar shattered, dumping what looked like a ball of tangled roots onto the potato.

The roots unfurled, burrowing into the potato’s starchy flesh like carrion worms, and the potato looked dumbly forward, wobbling, before the parasitic plant grew out of it with a series of lovely, six-petaled flowers.

The parasitized potato turned on its former other half with shocking brutality, systemically ripping off limbs and chunks and then swallowing them whole to prevent reformation.

“Yes! Go, my minion!” Skullcrusher said, before another potato leapt towards him like an orca whale hunting a delicious baby seal.

“Save me, my minion!” Skullcrusher said weakly as the potato shook him around in its mouth.

The commandeered potato did not come to its master’s aid. Instead, Rex plunged a red-hot dagger into the potato’s skin, and sliced along it sideways, the creature hissing in pain and steaming.

It released Rex and crawled back to the dirt, trying to heal itself, but Virgil smashed it flat against a glass wall with a purple barrier shaped like a turtle’s shell.

The final potato, sensing it was outnumbered, meekly scampered away into a corner, where Glory disposed of it with a sword between two of its larger eyes. It instantly vanished in a flash of blinding light, leaving only a regular-sized, apparently-ordinary baked potato.

The potato allegedly controlled by Skullcrusher ate its former comrade along with a mouthful of dirt, then trotted over to the gnoll like a contented dog.

“I have to say that’s one of the weirder things I’ve fought lately,” said Will conversationally. He picked up a trowel with a head of sterling silver and stuffed it in his bag. “What do you think?”

“Eh,” said Dio.

“Not particularly,” agreed Virgil and Glory simultaneously.

Rex played a two-tone, flat note.

“Who’s a good boy, who’s a good boy?” asked Skullcrusher, not paying any attention to anything but his botanical abomination. “Yes you are!”

“Can we just… take it with us?” Will said, looking at the parasitized potato.

“I’m calling him Kevin,” Skullcrusher said.

Kevin looked pleadingly at Will.

“Fine, okay.”

“It won’t be for that long,” Skullcrusher said. “The parasite consumes its host from the inside. Kevin will be a withered husk within an hour or two.”

“Great. And you still named it?” Will asked.

“I want to cherish our limited time together,” Skullcrusher said. He grabbed another chunk of potato flesh from the final dead one, and tossed it towards Kevin.

Kevin caught it in the air and barked twice happily, either unaware or ambivalent to his inevitable demise.