On his third day in this strange place, as daylight steadily faded away and the cavernous room transitioned to an orange-pink hue, Lucas started to notice something strange. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that, as time passed, it became increasingly difficult to dismiss the strange thing he’d noticed with logical-sounding explanations and excuses, until eventually he could no longer deny the reality before him at all.

The path he’d forged between the central circle and the wall was narrower than it had been yesterday—narrower than it had been this morning, even.

At first he’d dismissed it as merely the immense weight of the thickly-packed foliage naturally bearing down on his passage and filling in the gap. More excuses came after that; he was just imagining it, new plants were falling into place, hidden animals were moving things around, et cetera.

But closer inspection revealed particular branches he’d snapped were longer than they had been just hours ago. Flowers he remembered felling stood tall once more. Grasses and weeds he’d stomped underfoot were climbing back toward the sun like nothing had happened. Everywhere he looked, the overgrowth was reclaiming the space he’d painstakingly taken, regrowing itself.

And it was happening far too fast to be natural.

Burning with frustration, he had to waste another evening reasserting his dominance over the path, wishing with all his heart he knew the trick to how the central circle kept the plant life at bay.

That night when he lay down shivering beneath the eerie beams of moonlight, he wasted far too much time watching the dark, menacing silhouette of the stubborn vegetation, dearly hoping the sight of a vine reaching through the bush and testing at the borders of the circle was just a dream.

When he woke in the morning, the passage was definitely narrower again. Lucas didn’t want to waste the energy on flying into a berserk rage, though he dearly wanted to. Instead, he channelled his frustration into the day’s deforestation efforts. He wasn’t going to let a bush get the better of him. Magical or otherwise.

As the day went on and he engaged in battle against the absurdly thick overgrowth covering the exit he’d found, he was starting to wonder if the rapid plant growth wasn’t the only unnatural force in play.

The fact was, he was way, way too good at chopping down vegetation. Suspiciously so.

Now, it was entirely possible he’d simply discovered some latent talent in himself he never would’ve had any reason to encounter otherwise, but he found that unlikely. No matter how he looked at it, the arm-length, walking-cane-width, not-entirely-straight stick he’d been swiping away overgrown foliage with shouldn’t have been so effective, nor should it have lasted… what? Three days?

And that was saying nothing of the sheer skill he’d accumulated in that time. Sure, there was something to be said for trial and error and picking up on best practices through brute force, but at this point the stick felt like an extension of his arm, an extension of his very soul. With every swing, some kind of instinct kicked into gear, and he seemed to always strike in the best way to fell anything barring his path most effectively.

He might not have thought anything of it, dismissing it as him simply getting better at clearing a path as time wore on. Progress was slow—no matter how good he got, there was so much plant life it would have taken hours even if he was the god of deforestation—and the task itself was mind-numbing, so he’d settled into that kind of dissociative zen state that always came with doing repetitive, boring tasks.

Then, he snapped back to alertness as he was in the midst of swinging his stick hard at a solid branch tenfold thicker than it. Mild panic had thrummed through him. Lame as it was, he’d gotten attached to his little stick. It had seen him through hard times, short though those times may have been. He was loath to lose it.

Imagine his surprise when the stick whacked against a specific point on the branch. Picture his shock when cracks had radiated along the branch from the point of impact. Envision his utter bewilderment when the branch had snapped with a loathsome groan and crashed to the ground at Lucas’ feet, with his own trusty stick none the worse for wear.

At that point, he had to face the fact that his “technique” was bordering on the supernatural. It might not have even occurred to him to think of it that way, if it hadn’t been for the strange plant behaviour.

And, well, finding himself here in the first place. That was pretty supernatural, as things went. Couldn’t rule anything out.

Lucas stood there for a long moment, holding his stick out at arm’s length, pointing it up at the ceiling, inspecting it like it held the mysteries of the universe within. The thin bark had been stripped from it ages ago, hours of use paring it down to a pale, sandy-brown surface. He ran his fingers along it, testing every millimetre of its surface, but found nothing out of the ordinary. Smooth, almost polished, thought without any real sheen.

It was… It was just a stick. No different to a trillion others resting on the ground beneath a billion trees. Wood. Nothing more.

But the longer he held it and concentrated on it, the more he became aware of a feeling he couldn’t quite define. It was even stronger when he closed his eyes.

There was a fey feeling to the wood, a vitality that radiated from within. It was akin to the feeling of drinking hot soup on a freezing cold day, the way heat would spread pleasantly through one’s chest, but milder; distant and muted. There was a hair-thin thread of that kind of warmth running through the length of the stick, and it radiated through the wood and into Lucas’ tightly grasping hands.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

When he consciously tapped into that feeling, he gained an understanding of the wood, its strengths and weaknesses, on an instinctive level. It was like proprioception. A natural awareness.

And when he turned his attention back to the plants around him, he realised he could vaguely feel them, too. His impression of them was much weaker compared to the stick in his hand, like holding his hand a few feet above a mug of boiling water rather than grasping it, but it was there, and he realised he must have been unconsciously tapping into that feeling, identifying weak points.

What would happen if he approached it with intent?

Lucas opened his eyes, filled with determination and brimming with anticipation.

Shifting stance, he pointed his stick forwards like a rapier. Narrowing his eyes, he took aim at a particularly menacing tangle of thorny branches, picking out targets by feeling. Then he lashed out.

One strike. Two strikes. Three. Then more. All in quick succession, delivered with surgical precision.

Once he was done, he stepped back, resetting the stick into the position it had been before, pointing at the ceiling.

A section of bush taller than him slowly dislodged itself from the greater mass of foliage and flopped to the ground, joining the rest of the clippings he’d expertly shorn away over countless hours.

It took all the self-control he had not to squeal like a little kid who’d just opened a Christmas present he’d been looking forward to for months. He did a little dance on the spot, hopping from foot to foot and spinning around.

The looming verdure didn’t seem so intimidating anymore, he thought with a shark-like grin. It didn’t matter how fast it grew back. He’d just chop it all down all over again.

It was well and truly dark by the time Lucas cleared enough of the overgrowth to get a glimpse of the room beyond the formerly-hidden archway, and thus his glimpse didn’t yield much information at all. He could vaguely make out the outline of some kind of corridor that must have ringed the large domed room he’d woken in, at least part way.

It was hard to be sure, but he guessed it was about the width of a single lane on a highway. It was impossible to tell how tall it was; too dark to see the ceiling, and he could feel the solid mass of overgrowth in there that would make it hard to see anything even in daylight.

But none of that discouraged him. Clearing it out would be child’s play.

The path had once again narrowed when he made his way back to the central circle, and he relished the chance to put the plants in their place. He spent a half hour widening the path threefold, the task trivialised by his new super-gardening powers when he actually used them with directed intent.

Even in the dark, his ability to fell the foliage in his path was prodigious. Dauntless, he took some time to gather berries and other plant clippings that could prove useful for the night, following his plant sense like a radar. Sturdy sticks he could lash together to make a bed frame, vines he could weave and lattice into a crude mattress, leaves and moss for insulation and some small comfort, kindling for a fire, and so on.

His spirits were higher than they’d ever been since arriving here when he settled in that night. He popped berries in his mouth and chewed them with aplomb, lounging on his new bed and shooting mocking smiles at the soon-to-be-conquered foliage while his fire crackled merrily.

(Lighting the fire had been an arduous, painful process that turned out to be much harder than those primitive survival people on the internet made it look, but he got it in the end with his plant senses to assist him. It almost went very wrong when some of the moss caught aflame, but he’d at least had the foresight to clear a small area of anything flammable and the crisis was quickly dealt with.)

Sleep still wasn’t an easy or comfortable affair—even with the new comforts, such as they were, he still spent hours on his back, staring up at the glittering stars through one of the many holes in the domes ceiling, his arms wrapped around himself despite the cold, worries and fears running through his mind now that there was little else to occupy it in the moment, for surely even the most composed man would find himself suffering some anxiety under these circumstances; Where the hell was he? What the hell had happened to this place for it to become so rundown? How the hell had he found himself here? He hoped everyone wasn’t worrying about him too much, and that he’d be able to find his way back to them soon, and they’d understand why he’d been late to their lunch—but things were looking up.

The prospect of magic was too tantalising to be completely overcome by worldly concerns. Frankly, that worked to his detriment. The anxieties were bad enough on their own, but they were mixing together with his excitement, forming a cocktail that had him buzzing with energy, unable to settle. Ideas and questions spun through his mind, and they wouldn’t go away no matter how he tried to tell himself they could wait for tomorrow.

In the end, Lucas was forced to resort to drastic measures.

Closing his eyes, he focused on breathing deeply. He’d never tried meditation and had little knowledge of the techniques, but he had some vague idea of putting things out of his mind and trying to centre himself. A part of him wanted to sit up and cross his legs and adopt the classic pose, but he refrained.

On a whim, he picked up his stick from where it rested beside his bed and held it to his chest instead, remembering that mindless, zen-like state he’d fallen into in the course of his super-gardening. At times, his body must have moved for hours on autopilot while he watched on as if peeking over his own shoulder. He tried to think back to that feeling. That disconnect from his own body. That lack of thought. That distance from his feelings and worries.

His breathing evened out. His muscles loosened and relaxed. His thoughts faded away like he’d physically dropped them, letting all the anxiety and worry and nerves and other unpleasant emotions sink away, leaving only calm and warmth.

When next Lucas opened his eyes, the orange-pink light of morning was flooding into the enormous chamber, motes of dust dancing in angled sunbeams. Almost immediately, his heart tripped over a beat and went tumbling as he beheld his surroundings, a solid wall of green.

On second thoughts, it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to find the foliage had reset to its starting position, looming over him like nothing had happened in the last few days. The plant life was thrumming with energy, defiant. Almost pointed in its obstinacy. Like it was throwing down a gauntlet, challenging him.

After a quick breakfast of more sweet berries, Lucas hefted his stick like a deadly blade and dove back into the fray with a grin on his face.

There were so many things he wanted to try, he didn’t know where to start.

~~~