Zalia had a few thoughts about what exactly she would feed the giant plant. It definitely ate meat as showcased by its attempt to eat Boreal but that didn’t necessarily mean that it wouldn’t eat plant matter too. Zalia also knew that eating things that were a higher rank usually tended to.. not taste better but have an energy to it that was invigorating. She could feed it some of the grey creatures but those tasted horrible and she doubted it would enjoy such an offering.

Neither did she want to feed one of the undead to it for obvious reasons. So, the first thing she decided to try was one of her higher rank herbs.

“How do you think we can get close to it without it trying to eat us?” Zalia asked the others.

“You don’t have to get close to it, you could try placing something on one of its pads,” Delphi suggested.

“Hmm, that is an idea but how will it know if it came from us? We don’t even know it will attack us if we approach though, to be fair,” Zalia added.

“Try!” Boreal said mentally, sending an image of Zalia placing herbs onto a pad.

Boreal was getting much better at sending mental images that weren’t something she had seen before. Zalia had quite the little artist on her hands.

“Alright, I’ll try it,” Zalia conceded, thinking about what herbs she had.

Bronze rank was the highest rank of herb she currently had and out of those the Water Lily was most likely to be well received. Even when Zalia ate it she felt a nice refreshing wave pass through her body, presumably from the water element it contained.

They followed one of the vines out, thankfully not being near as far away as the first one they had encountered. Pulling a little bit of the Water Lily out of her stasis, Zalia quickly placed it on the pad and jumped back. The herb just sat there idly on top with absolutely no reaction from the pad.

“Maybe it doesn’t like to eat plants?” Zalia questioned.

Boreal picked up a big stick in her mouth and pressed it down hard on the pad. It immediately shut closed around the herb and stick, dragging them off into the forest at speed. Zalia glared after Boreal as the feline sprinted off into the forest after the retreating limb.

“Can’t take you anywhere,” Zalia muttered, following after.

They chased it through the woods until they arrived back at the building hosting the bulb of the large Trapvine. The vine limb coiled into the bulb's mouth at the top and the entire thing closed shut in a rotating motion.

They waited for a while, watching the bulb sit idle before it opened up once more, the vine slowly extending back out once more with its pad empty. As far as Zalia could tell, the plant had absolutely no reaction to what it ate.

“Hmm, what rank do you think it is?” Zalia asked.

Normally she could just say that it was Bronze since she had harvested a piece of it that rank but she knew from the Water Lily that different parts of a plant could have different ranks. There was no reason to assume this plant wasn’t the same.

“Silver, possibly Gold,” Delphi said.

“Are you saying that or do you know that?” Zalia asked.

“An assumption based on its size and the rank of its lesser parts,” Delphi explained.

“I suppose walking up to it would be a stupid thing to do,” Zalia said, entirely considering doing just that.

“Probably,” Delphi replied.

There was a moment of silence.

“You’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?” Delphi asked.

“Yeahhh,” Zalia said, stepping towards the building.

The ground sloped downwards towards the central structure forming an almost caldera shaped area remotely free from trees. Lining the slope were the many vines but Zalia just avoided those, stepping closer. As she moved towards it, she noticed that the shades were avoiding flying close to the bulb more so than they usually avoided the ground. It resulted in an appearance like a dome as they kept their distance.

“Hmm,” Zalia thought.

She didn’t really know what the shades were or if they were even tangible but she had seen one form from Juniper's death. To her that said the shades were either some sort of soul or they were the latent consciousness of the person, kept in existence by the corruption in this place. Maybe this Trapvine had somehow come to be in its current alive state, possibly even sapience or sentience since Delphi thought an agreement with it was possible, by eating the shades.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

She stopped moving towards the bulb as the beginnings of an idea began to form in her mind. It was possible that she could lead some of the shades towards the plant as an express delivery meal. She knew she would be able to do that, she just wanted to make sure she wasn’t completely off about the idea.

She turned around and shooed Boreal back towards the edge of the forest, following behind.

“Alright, new idea. We’re going to try to feed shades to it,” Zalia said quietly as she knelt down next to the others.

Three sets of eyes stared at her.

“Alright, well maybe I’m not sure if it actually eats them yet but look at the way the shades avoid it,” Zalia explained, pointing towards the sky.

Ro-ak, Boreal and Delphi turned to look into the sky simultaneously, one by one turning back to look at Zalia. Boreal looked unsurprised but a little disappointed and Ro looked entirely confused but Delphi looked contemplative.

“Look, if it notices us bringing a whole host of floating shade snacks towards it I’m sure it will be grateful. It was your idea to feed it Boreal!” Zalia explained defensively.

“How would we test your theory?” Delphi asked.

“By attracting a bunch of shades and running at the bulb,” Zalia said.

“That sounds like a distinctly bad idea even with your anti-death ability up,” Delphi said.

“It should only be a few more hours, you’re probably right and I should wait for that,” Zalia conceded.

She sat down and summoned her wings, maintaining the flow of Manifest into the ritual as long as she could whilst simultaneously concentrating on holding steady in a cross legged position as she floated with the wings. The exercise was a little mentally straining but that was the point, to train her ability to concentrate on her rituals as long as possible.

They spent a few hours waiting like that and Zalia only had to reset her ritual once in that time which she was proud of. Boreal on the other hand wasn’t playing around with Ro for once and was making ice sculptures for Delphi, which Delphi took pleasure in as a new and strange memory. Being used to mentally sending memories to others, they seemed to revel in the novelty of a more traditional method of communicating memories.

After that few hours, she felt her ability come off cooldown and she gently unfolded her legs to a standing position in a smooth movement.

“Alright, I’m ready,” Zalia announced.

Boreal looked up from where she had made an ice sculpture of a small kitchen, a tiny Boreal fleeing the scene with some food in her mouth as a chef chased her.

“I don’t remember that,” Zalia said, looking down at it.

“Imaginary,” Boreal said in Zalia’s mind.

Zalia narrowed her eyes at Boreal.

“So you didn’t steal food from the kitchens in Endelbyrn?” Zalia asked.

Boreal shuffled her feet.

“No?” Boreal blatantly lied.

“You’re a menace,” Zalia said.

Boreal looked at her with wide sad eyes.

“An admittedly cute menace,” Zalia added.

Boreal seemed to take that as forgiveness and went about jumping all over her sculpture, shattering some of the more fragile parts. Menace.

Zalia stretched a bit, rolling her stiff shoulder and looked up into the sky.

“Alright, let's get your attention shall I?” Zalia said quietly.

She decided the easiest way of getting their attention was to just shoot at them.

“Want me or Boreal to carry you?” Zalia asked Delphi.

“If you will be taking most of the attention I’d prefer to be carried by Boreal,” Delphi said.

“Fair enough,” Zalia said, lifting them up onto Boreal’s back.

Delphi sat between Boreal’s shoulder spikes, holding on to each with a hand like a tiny cowboy frog riding a cat. Ignoring the absurdly cute duo, Zalia looked up to the sky again and summoned her bow.

“Let’s do something stupid,” she muttered before shooting an arrow at the nearest shade.

The arrow flew straight through the shade but left a glowing line where it passed. Its cry of torment changed to one of pain and all the nearby shades began uttering angry sounds. Seeing they were definitely building up their darkness to make an attack, Zalia took off out of the forest edge towards the bulb.

The shades chased her for a while but slowed and eventually stopped as she approached the bulb. She shot a few more arrows towards them but despite the pain the glowing damage of her arrows dealt, they would not approach. Apparently, they had a stronger sense of self preservation than she had thought.

“Why do my plans never work?” Zalia asked as the others came back over to watch the stopped shades.

“Sometimes,” Boreal said, sending comforting emotions with it.

Zalia frustratedly considered her ritual options mentally. A mix of Manifest major and Bitterbalm minor could create a spiritual manifestation element she could potentially use. In her frustration, Zalia began that ritual, simultaneously starting a Zephyr major and Bitterbalm minor ritual too. She combined the two to form an Earth spiritual manifestation ritual that she mixed with a Bitterbalm major to turn it into a curse.

Throughout the ritual she didn't stop pushing Manifest into it and targeted the shades. Marking three with Hunter’s mark spread the curse to a few more as five shades were suddenly grappled by spiritual limbs made of earth that shot up from the ground and dragged them down. She mentally controlled the limbs to start pulling the shades towards the bulb but they fought back, hard.

The spiritual earthen limbs started to crack and crumble but it was too late, she had pulled them just close enough as the shades suddenly stopped struggling and compressed as if crushed into a giant hand. It seemed like the shades knew the exact distance they could safely stay from the bulb and she had pulled them over that line as they were dragged, breaking out of her summoned limbs and disappearing into the top of the bulb.

A humming vibration reverberated through the air that Zalia could almost describe as… grateful.