Never in his life did Lucas think he’d be able to find such joy in cutting down overgrown plants. In his mind, gardening had seemed a slow, monotonous task that required careful consideration. Even just 24 hours before, it had been mind-numbing enough that his conscious thoughts had drifted away to nothingness, allowing his body to operate on autopilot.

Now, it became almost a game as he sought more elaborate and absurd ways to wield his wooden stick. He twirled it like a baton, swung it like a sword, thrust it like a spear; all seemed to work just as well, his mind instinctively guiding his body to strike with the utmost efficiency.

The plant life melted away before his technique, and he was somehow getting even better as time went on. Every hour, more foliage fell before him. Each swing of his stick cleared a larger area.

On a whim, he started getting more acrobatic with it, adding spins and leaps and lunges into his repertoire of moves. At one point he even did a somersault that transitioned neatly into an absurdly fast overhead strike. As the day wore on, it felt like he was barely having to slow from a casual walking speed, such was his ability to clear a path.

Though that didn’t mean progress was, overall, swift. Even with his suddenly prodigious talent, there was simply so much overgrowth that even a dozen people of equal ability would have taken some considerable time to make a dent in it all.

And that was to say nothing of the increasingly rapid regrowth. At one point, the path actually closed behind him, cutting him off from the starting circle. It wasn’t too hard to chop his way back since he knew the circle was directly in the centre of the room and he could still see the ceiling, but it did admittedly send him into a bit of a panic for as long as it lasted.

Getting lost in overgrowth was not a fun experience, he learned.

After that bit of excitement, he spent some time in the centre circle considering his next move. He was fairly confident the plants weren’t going to be fast enough to overwhelm him if he was smart about it, but a battle of attrition was definitely not to his advantage. But what else could he do?

Lucas thought on the matter, sitting on his makeshift bed and watching the plants grow back before his very eyes. They were rejuvenating fast enough that he could see vines crawling along in real time, like one of those time lapses in a nature documentary, inch by mocking inch.

Worse, he thought, they weren’t just growing back, they were adapting. The route he’d initially cut through over the course of his first few days here was filling out much denser than it had been, branches thicker, thorns more numerous.

It was unnerving, to say the least. Witnessing bushes grow like a wound scabbing over discomforted him on a primal level. Plants were technically living things, yes, but not in the way people typically thought of as living. They weren’t intelligent. The verdant mass surrounding him took on a more sinister mien when he thought of it as one hostile being.

And he was beginning to believe that was precisely what it was. When he closed his eyes and focused on the sunlight-warm vitality that tickled at his strange new sense, he couldn’t help but notice how uniform it all was. There was extra heat in the parts that were growing back, trickling in from the greater whole like water flowing from a lake into a newly built canal.

It wasn’t quite uniform. There were little hints of variation in the life he could feel, but it was in the same way that there were mild differences between the vitality at different points in his own body.

Hell, he should’ve pegged all this vegetation as supernatural rather than unnatural in the first place. The sheer variety of plants growing in a place like this made no sense. Cacti, pine needles, and palm leaves didn’t strike him as the kind of plants that would typically grow in the same climate, let alone in a location with inconsistent sunlight, and there were far more species than that on offer.

At least the insects weren’t so diverse. He’d only seen flies and similar little midges thus far. Small mercies.

Lucas opened his eyes, inspecting the overgrowth. The part of the bush that had just finished growing back in was visibly thicker than its surroundings, and darker in colour. Around him, he could feel the flow of vitality moving in other directions, shoring up other points he couldn’t see with his eyes, no doubt.

He felt dread, for a moment, at the prospect of fighting against this thing forever. Whatever this was, whatever the fuck it wanted, he couldn’t let it keep reinforcing itself like this. At the moment, he could fell it faster than it could regrow, but that state of affairs wouldn’t necessarily last forever. There was no guarantee his skills would continue to increase at the same pace they had been. He could end up overwhelmed.

Grim-faced, he rose to his feet and hefted his stick. Then he picked a spot to the side of his original path and started cutting, aiming vaguely for where he thought the exit he’d found would be.

From there, his days settled into a bit of a monotonous routine, despite the potentially deadly stakes. He’d wake up, feast on whatever berries he’d foraged throughout the previous day, dredge up what little water he could from a combination of condensation, dew, and water-storing cacti, trot away to go to the toilet an appropriate distance away from his campsite, then set to work.

Generally, he spent the entire day battering down flora. His fears of the overgrowth’s adaptability proved founded; every day it got denser, branches wider, thorns sharper.

There were moments where he’d look down and find vines coiling around his leg like a particularly slow snake. A venus fly trap would have had his hand if his life-sense hadn’t alerted him to the danger with a sudden spike of heat. Thorns seemed to lengthen at opportune moments, trying to catch him off guard and nick him, going for a death by a thousand cuts.

There was even a day where it tried to lure him into a trap, once again displaying a devilish cunning that was, while primitive, rather alarming.

The bushes had been thinner when he woke, much to his surprise, and he hadn’t trusted it, not with his senses telling him there was just as much vitality in the plants as ever. It had parted before him easier than it ever had, letting him get far into its midst before it struck at him with vines covered in superglue-strong sap. Luckily, he’d been ready, and beat them back.

But even if it was far more intelligent and deliberate than a fucking plant had any right to be, it still wasn’t human-level intelligent. It couldn’t seem to comprehend that he could spot its machinations a mile off, any plays it made lighting up in his sense like a burning beacon—hell, it didn’t even realise it could have just stopped growing berries and he would’ve been totally fucked, he already spent most of the day feeling weak and light-headed as it was—and all this practice was only honing his senses even further, refining them to pinpoint precision.

In other words, he was growing faster than the plants were.

After a week of this back and forth, his skill was reaching the point of absurdity. He was at a level where he was pushing his own vitality into his stick until it was shining like the sun in his magical plant sense, and it tore apart any plants in its path as easily as a lightsaber would a piece of cardboard.

He could practically run forward, swiping his stick ahead of himself without the slightest finesse, and he’d reach one of the far walls in a matter of minutes. The greenery was helpless against him.

His newfound martial superiority allowed him to explore the domed chamber much more thoroughly. It turned out there were three more similar archways leading out of the main chamber at the (presumably) cardinal directions, all filled with the same absurdly thick, dark bushes that, now that he thought about it, shouldn’t have been able to survive in such darkness, surely? More foul plant magic at work.

What brief glimpses he got of the chamber’s floor gave him the impression there was once a giant artwork painted onto the marble with impressive precision. The lines were a foot thick, dotted with elaborate mosaic patterns rather than being fully filled in.

Suddenly, with burning desire that surprised even him, he really wanted to see what it looked like with no fucking plants in the way. An unlikely prospect, but he went to bed each night dreaming of a clean, plant-free chamber.

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Ultimately the battle of attrition wore on him. It was easy to be confident when finding his way back to the circle of safety was a relatively easy matter, but venturing into the corridor beyond the exit, which was the obvious next step, was another kettle of fish. Getting lost in there was a far more plausible and frightening possibility.

But what else could he do? Slashing at the plants here forever, carving paths across the domed chamber over and over for all eternity, was not a viable strategy. He had to get out of this godforsaken place if he wanted to find answers to his myriad questions.

Making his way back to the circle after another day of battle, moonbeams shining in through the holes in the ceiling, Lucas resigned himself to the inevitable. Tomorrow, he would have to man up and head out of the domed chamber and into the overgrown corridor.

Anxiety kept him up much of the night, and when he finally fell asleep he dreamed of being strangled to death by countless vines that moved like snakes and held him as strong as steel chains, his stick breaking into a thousand splinters against their inviolable strength.

He woke up with a start, slick with sweat, his heart thundering in his chest. The flora loomed larger than ever that morning, and he struggled to even eat his meagre breakfast of berries. There’d evidently been a spot of rain in the night, giving him some water, but it brought him no relief even though he was parched.

Dread suffused him as he set out for the day. Picking a direction, he shredded through the vegetation in his way and arrived at the wall far too quickly. He could feel the vitality around him buzzing to a crescendo, and he hoped he was imagining its anticipatory glow.

By the time he made it to the archway, his stomach was churning. The stick was trembling in his hand.

He told himself he was being stupid. There was no way the plants could overcome his crazy stick magic. The vitality flowing through his body was brighter than all the plants in the giant chamber combined. He was better than the plants. In every way. They were nothing. They couldn’t hurt him.

It was hard to make himself believe that when his nightmare played out behind his eyelids every time he blinked.

Lucas drew in a deep breath. Let it out. Inhale. Exhale. In, two three four. Out, two three four. He’d been trying to meditate every night in bed, to mixed results, and while he didn’t think he was anywhere near enlightenment and it did little for his nerves now, it had given him an easy way to tap into the vitality flowing through his body, and feel the plants around him. He’d improved with the sense in leaps and bounds.

Vitality pumped through his body like blood, and it warmed him, comforted him like an embrace. He could feel the same from the plants nearby, though nowhere near as clearly as his own body. He pushed at that sense, straining it, focusing with all he had on the flow moving through the plants. It stood to reason, he thought, that if the plant was one entity, if he tapped into its flow as he did his own body he’d be able to feel everywhere it was.

He stood there for a long time, trying desperately to feel the life around him like it was his own. His sense expanded, pinging further and further out, but ultimately it barely reached a dozen metres. Not good enough.

With his senses strained like this, the stick in his hand stood out all the starker.

Pushing the warmth into the stick was simplicity itself at this point, and it glowed brighter and brighter in his senses, and he’d kept pushing until it almost hurt to ‘look’ at. He could feel its vitality as clearly as if it was his own.

Was that the answer?

Following that thought, he reached out for the nearest branch, touching it with the tips of his fingers. It immediately seemed brighter in his senses, pulsing at the connection. He let the slightest bit of his vitality flow through that connection. A single spark.

The spark caught, kindled, and burst aflame, and vitality erupted in his senses, expanding for miles and miles around. He could see the complex web of connections in his mind’s eye, lashing all the plants in the area together under one mind, one will. It mapped out the surrounding area for him in an instant.

The domed chamber was just one room of an enormous castle complex. Hundreds of smaller buildings cowered in the shadow of the main keep in concentric circles, with the outer circle sitting twice as tall; a defensive wall, presumably. There were five high towers along the walls, sitting at equal positions around the dome at the centre of the complex. The building he was in was the largest, but there were plenty of other impressive structures. Keeps, mansions, ziggurats, towers, and more.

And all of it was filled with plants.

Heart sinking to his stomach, Lucas lashed out, stabbing forward into the mass of tangled branches. They shied away like they’d been burned, the vitality in the branches hopelessly outmatched by the power Lucas had poured into his stick. Lucas imagined them screeching in pain. A tunnel wide enough for a man to crawl through had been cleared by a single wanton thrust.

Success buoyed his confidence, and, feeling vindictive, he slowly drew his stick to the side, clearing out more. Then he slashed back the other way, too fast for the branches to retract on their own accord. Where his stick struck the branches, they withered and crumpled to splinters before falling away.

Lucas grinned maliciously.

What followed was a massacre of epic proportions. The branches here were nothing like the plant life that had been barring his path for the last week, boasting none of the adaptations and traps he’d come to expect, Lucas’ own vitality blocking the greater force from modifying its defences.

Now, it was just a bush that grew back quickly. It didn’t stand a chance against him. He felt silly for being so worried about it.

Periodically pulsing a drop of his vitality into the greater mass to keep up his sense of the overgrowth, he flourished his stick ahead of him like it was a performance, melting a path so fast that the bush started to shy away before he could even get to it, conceding ground before a foe it knew it couldn’t stop. He made great time.

The corridor itself held eight further archways of its own, leading to even more corridors heading toward giant adjoining wings and rooms flooded with plant life. Two of them led immediately onto stairs, and he prioritised clearing those out first once he reached them.

The stairs just led up to another corridor resting above the first one, also ringing the central chamber, the only source of light coming from thin slit windows that looked down on the great domed room, but that was fine. His goal was the nearest adjoining room.

His hopes that there would be useful stuff hidden away in there to pilfer were immediately dashed; the plants filled every square inch of space. It had been a long shot, but he’d banked on there being spots the plants couldn’t reach.

The next three rooms he tried told the same story.

He tried not to let himself be bothered by it, but he couldn’t help a bit more aggression leaking into his stick as he swatted at the brown plant that was rapidly becoming his least favourite.

There were countless rooms of various sizes, and as the day passed by he found all of them empty save for the dark bush that had come to fill them for who knew how long. His anger boiled over, lending more and more fury into his blows.

That was what almost killed him, in the end.

It was so humiliating, because it wasn’t like this was some grand ploy on the part of whatever fey intelligence flowed through all the plants; his vitality was seeing to that. It had been unable to adapt his attacks ever since he entered the corridor, just frantically growing back more thorny branches in his wake. The growth was fast, perhaps alarmingly so, the vitality flowing in as if in panic, but that wasn’t what caught him out either; his stick was still more than fast and strong enough to keep it at bay if he was careful.

In the dark, he was relying on his vitality sense to guide him, seeking out more plants that barred his path. They surrounded him, an endless sea of overgrowth for him to take out his anger on. But he kept ahead of the regrowth with sheer ferocity.

With his increasing anger at the plants and how they’d seemingly left behind nothing for him to use in this place, so too did the force of his swings increase. He was getting reckless, and he knew it, but his confidence had been growing throughout the day as the plants continuously had no answer to his new advance.

And then his stick clashed with a wall as he went for a too-wide swing, invisible to him in the dark. It hit with a resounding clack and crack, and went flying out of his hand. Lucas let out a yelp, as much from the shock as the sudden pain jarring up his arm.

He didn’t even have time to reach for it before the branches were upon him, striking like a nest of vipers Vitality surged like a tidal wave, overwhelming. The branches lit up as bright as his stick had ever been.

They surrounded him in seconds, coiling around his limbs even as he thrashed and screamed. In moments they hardened, then constricted. His heart hammered in his chest, and he wheezed as the pressure on his ribcage doubled and redoubled, like he was getting squeezed by a giant hand. The last breath left him, and his vision dimmed.

His vitality flickered like a candle flame and he had one final thought.

This can’t be how it ends. This can’t be how I die.

In a last act of desperation, he flared his vitality, drawing on all his anger and fear and using them as kindling. The pleasant heat inside him burned, his heart itself caught fire, and he pushed that scorching flame into the plants around him, fighting back against the ocean of vitality bearing down on him.

Before, he’d been content with a pulse to give him awareness of the overgrowth. Now, he did as he had with his stick, overwhelming the plants around him until his world was nothing but light, burning and burning.

The devilish will of the plants fought back, but his vitality was stronger, at least in this small area. His will threaded through the branches, and he screamed inside his mind: BACK!

A bubble of empty air appeared around him, and he fell to the floor, coughing and wheezing and sobbing. He stayed there for a long time, curled up on the ground and trembling like a leaf in the wind. His chest ached. His limbs were battered and bruised. His pyjamas had been shredded by thorns, and it was easier to list the areas of his skin that weren’t criss-crossed with cuts.

But he was alive.

More alive than he’d ever been, he thought, feeling his vitality flow through all the plants within three metres of him.