Knowing that he would die if he wasn’t able to shock his senses and regain control over his body, Nick bit down hard on his tongue while driving the jagged edges of his fingernails deep into the flesh of his palms. Fortunately, he hadn’t stopped to trim them yet since leaving the dungeon.
Pain drew the blurred lens of his awareness back into focus, pulling two facts to the forefront of his mind as he wrestled the vines free from his legs and hurled them away as hard as he could. The first was that Nick was not standing beside a towering tree after all, but at the base of a gigantic mushroom. The same mushroom that he had seen in the distance on multiple occasions.
The second was that what his drug-addled senses had dismissed as white flowers were in fact the skeletal residents of a vast boneyard, blanketing the grove for as far as his eyes could see.
Nick stood amidst the decaying remains of hundreds of animals. The skeletons of komos, lemurs, and other creatures that he could not even begin to identify were lying all around him. All of them had shattered necks and ribs. A testament to the power of the vines’ vicelike grip.
As he struggled to regain full control over his body, the dire dynamics of his situation became clear. The berries are bait, creating a trail that leads prey deeper into the vines’ territory. Pollen makes the quarry lose awareness of their surroundings, and then the creepers come in for the kill. As he staggered away from the surging mass of tendrils, Nick realized that he was still missing a piece of the puzzle.
I was able to shake off the drug before the vines could subdue me, even after a second dose, and the beasts on the island are more resilient than I am. This setup has too great a chance of prey escaping before the drug wears off to have claimed so many victims. There must be another element that hasn’t come into play yet.
Then it hit him. The mushroom. Nick tried sizing up the towering fungus, looking over one shoulder as he ran. His suspicions were confirmed by the screaming blare of danger returned by the skill.
Kicking a pair of vines from his path, he charted a course to avoid the rest and continued running for his life. The vines surged to overtake him once more, weaving and lunging like constrictor serpents.
He spun, leapt, and dodged like mad, evading their grasp by the narrowest of margins. He was deathly afraid that he had realized the danger too late; that the creeper vines’ trap would close around him and catch Nick in its jaws.
That was when the great mushroom reacted to his imminent escape. A solid sheet of spores descended from its gills, falling from above to form a glimmering green curtain. Every instinct within Nick was screaming that the spores were another type of drug or poison, one that would disable him more thoroughly than the hunger-inducing pollen. But his survival instincts had finally awoken in response to the looming threat, and this time, Nick was ready.
He quickly scanned the ground ahead, then closed his eyes, pressed his lips together, and pinched his nostrils shut with one hand. Nick began running blind, relying on memory to carry him beyond the spores’ reach. A terrifying thirty seconds later, he risked a glance through squinted eyes, narrowly swerving around a pack of newly arrived creeper vines.
He had deduced that the spores’ range covered roughly the same area as the field of bones. Thus, he made sure that he was well past its perimeter before he drew in a great gasp of air. He felt an immediate surge of lethargy as traces of the spores were absorbed into his bloodstream, but it wasn’t enough to stop him.
Lurching unsteadily like he was blackout drunk, Nick staggered out of the grove without looking back. As he fled, he slowly regained full control over his body, and his shambling footfalls soon steadied. He kept on running until he was well past the spot where he had first sighted the ravenous creepers, then stopped to catch his breath.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
He was overcome with a sudden wave of weakness from straining his body to the limit, but Nick knew that he couldn’t stop here for long. He had to hole up somewhere that he could hide from the bonecruncher pack, as well as any stray komos wandering throughout the region. He could hear the crashing of waves in the distance and knew that the coast couldn’t be much further ahead.
He forced himself back onto his feet and into motion. Five minutes later, he stepped out of the canopy and into the sunlight, the endless expanse of the ocean spreading out before him.
It would take him days to fully integrate the lessons he had learned from his nearly fatal encounter. But by this point, one thing was abundantly clear. Nick really fucking hated mushrooms.
As the danger receded into the distance, the adrenaline flooding his nervous system drained away like a bucket with a hole in the bottom, allowing the other sensations of his body to return to the forefront of his mind. The first thing that Nick became aware of as he continued walking south along the shoreline was the intense pain radiating throughout his stomach. Fortunately, he didn’t feel poisoned, but his belly growled and burbled like an angry beast, churning with a viscous mixture of berries and indigestible matter.
It had only been twenty minutes, but Nick was already paying the price for eating so much dirt and random bits of plant. He wanted to force himself to vomit, but he couldn’t afford to lose the nutrients that would come up in the process. He had a few berries left that he barely remembered placing into his pockets while his mouth was full. But they wouldn’t last him more than half a day, and for now, they were the only source of sustenance Nick had.
He drank some water to settle his stomach as the obelisk came into view. It helped with the intense cramping, if not by much. he staggered across the sandbar and set his pack against the onyx pillar, groaning in discomfort as his guts fought to sort out the churning mess inside. The better part of an hour later, he felt an intense, insistent pressure building within his abdomen. An imminent urge to purge the nastiness clogging his bowels.
Nick had just enough time to dig a hole in the sand, pull down his pants, and squat before everything began working itself out, explosive diarrhea style.
The next three hours were highly unpleasant, and he firmly resolved never to think about them again. The random vines, rocks, and chunks of dirt that he had eaten were no more enjoyable going out than they had been going in.
The whole chain of events was disgusting and deeply embarrassing, not to mention terrifying, as Nick had nearly died. Again. But at least he had secured enough food to last him the rest of the day, and now he knew where he could pick more berries if he was willing to risk the ire of the creeper vines. Not that he would be venturing into that part of the forest again if he could help it.
Late in the afternoon, Nick finally felt good enough to walk a few miles. He needed to make it back to his temporary refuge while there was still enough light to see. He carefully made his way along the southern shoreline before angling north.
Fortunately, he arrived at the base of the great tree without further incident. With a weary sigh, Nick climbed into the branches and attached his harness, then spent the rest of the evening recovering from his ordeal. Bandit must have realized that something had happened, because the furry primate stopped by to check on him every few hours, a gesture that Nick found deeply touching.
For once, he decided to pass out without engaging in his nightly exercise session. He was tired and sore. He didn’t have any energy left in him after his run in with the drug-laden vines and carnivorous mushroom. He passed the time by reviewing and discarding various scenarios for dealing with the pack.
His latest encounter had made one thing abundantly clear. If Nick wanted to survive, he needed to clear a section of the forest for himself. Which meant that one way or another, he was going to have to face one of the island’s powerful predators sometime soon. At present, his only sensible course of action was to find a way to defeat the bonecrunchers, as the other dangers lurking in the woodlands were beyond his ability to subdue.
Although the crunchers were ridiculously powerful, he realized that he might have found a way to even the odds. But first, Nick needed to recuperate, familiarize himself with his new weapons, and refine his plan to the point where he had at least even odds of walking away from the endeavor.
He fell asleep not long after, strategies and machinations whirling through his mind like leaves dancing in the wind.