I could only watch in horror as something burst from the vine wall. The scattered debris obscured it into a humanoid shadow, but even then its presence felt wrong. A sense of maliciousness emanated from the thing, one much stronger than the maw creature. I didn’t even need to flick on Aetherial Perception to feel it.

As the dust cloud faded, its inhuman nature showed itself. The creature looked to be made entirely out of ebony bark and twisted red vines. Thorns sprouted from every surface of the vines, oozing a blood-like ichor that was a deeper red than the vines. Snapped limbs branched out of the creature in every direction, the occasional tattered leaf hanging on for dear life.

Its face, a twisted amalgamation of tree and human, glared with blood-red eyes. It had no mouth- at least, not a visible one. And yet something was splattered all around its face right where a mouth would be. It twitched uncaringly as Hope shot it. Unlike normal bark, the plant creature's ‘skin’ didn’t splinter or break. A scratch traced along its cheek as the bullet deflected off, hitting the back wall.

I joined Hope, unloading onto the wood creature as it approached us with a steady gait. Each of our bullets was about as ineffective as the last. Our only saving grace was the thing’s incredibly slow movement speed. It’s like it was trying to drag an entire forest along with every step, slowing it down drastically.

Insight chilled my head and back as the creature lifted one of its arms. I ducked back behind a pillar just as massive thorns tore through the area like bullets, pounding into one of the support pillars with enough force to embed them deep into the bricks.

One of the thorns snagged my arm, instantly ripping through my jacket like paper. It tracked a jagged cut down the length of my forearm. I barely held back a scream, flicking on Cold-Blooded to help calm my nerves as I stared at the wound. Blood oozed up, blocking my view of its severity.

“You alright?” Hope called, glancing over at me.

“Ch-chek!” I wasted no time popping open my bag. I grabbed one of the loose bolts of cloth, tying it into a makeshift bandage around my arm. Cold-Blooded helped me calmly get over the constant stings of pain even as it forced a headache.

The creature’s face cracked as it split into a jagged mouth and screeched, sounding reminiscent of synthwood being ground into mulch. It was an uncanny noise, one I'd only heard on TV. It took a step forward, flinching slightly as one of Hope’s shots hit a thick clump of vines. It roared as the vines twisted and twirled all over its body ravenously twitching toward us.

Hope shouted to me as she ducked back behind the pillar, popping a new mag into her rifle. A hail of thorns tore around the sides of the pillar, one bouncing off of her chestplate. “Aim for the vines! They’re not as durable!”

A cool throb of pain arced up my injured arm as I grabbed my rifle, the world seeming to slow around me, and shot another burst toward the creature. My aim wasn’t good, splattering all around its bark face. One of the bullets caught a vine, rupturing it in a spray of ichor as the creature flinched again. Not that it mattered too much as the vine quickly grew back-

An explosion echoed down the tunnel into the cistern, causing me to freeze up in confusion for a moment. Right, the mine. The rock must’ve slipped off-

The creature raised its arm again, this time causing me to preemptively duck behind cover before Insight could warn me. I glanced over to Hope, seeing her do the same a moment behind me. Several high-pitched dinks echoed as a couple of thorns caught Hope’s silver bracers. They bounced off without any effect, not even leaving a scratch on the shiny metal.

I ducked back mostly behind cover, reloading my gun. The creature moved ever closer, closing in enough to swing its arm toward Hope. It’s still way too far to actually hit her, so why-

A red vine unfurled and flung out like a whip, whistling as it flew toward her face. Hope dropped her rifle, drawing a slightly glowing knife from her hip as she ducked underneath the vine. Just as it passed over her head, she struck like lightning, slicing through the menacing tendril. The creature screeched in pain as it missed another hail of thorns.

Using the pillar as cover, she sheathed the knife, kicked her rifle back up into her waiting hands, and ran for a spot further back in one smooth motion, dodging under another burst of thorns without even turning around.

I laid down several bursts into its side, hitting several vines that seemed to cluster around its back. Most of my mag went wide, as per usual, but one caught a cancerous-looking growth on its back, making the creature roar again.

I hid behind the pillar and hit the release catch for my rifle, dropping yet another empty mag as I reached for a reload. My hand only grasped air. I looked down, wincing as I saw only one mag left. I slid it into my rifle, though-

“Watch out!” Hope screamed.

I didn’t need to be told twice as instinct took over, propelling me away from my cover and to the opposite side of the room. Behind me, I heard a titanic crash and something heavy hitting the ground, though I didn’t turn to look as I raced for safety.

Insight once again sent phantom pains across my back and arms as I threw myself to the side, tearing open the wound on my arm again as I hit the brick floor. A dozen thorns flew past where I'd just stood as the creature let loose a menacing screech.

I ducked behind a toppled table, calmly ignoring the corpse slumped up against it, and looked back. The original pillar I hid behind was gone, replaced by free space and a pile of rubble as the wood creature roughly remodeled the place with a bull rush. The monster itself was half caught under a collapsed arch, though it didn’t look like it would stay that long as every tug of its legs shifted the mound of rubble.

Hope took the time to reposition, running and gunning with surprising accuracy as she nailed almost every single one of her shots in full auto. Damn impressive.

I didn't slack either. With sudden free time, I threw my bag over my shoulder and quickly rifled through it. I pulled free an old bottle, setting it on the ground as I summoned the canteen and shakily started to pour gas into it. With my other hand, I searched through my bag for a piece of old cloth, tearing it into strips with my boot. I lightly doused the strip with the canteen and stuffed the strip into the mouth of the bottle, tying it around the neck.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I managed to make one more Molotov before a splattering of rubble warned me of the wood creature’s escape. I tossed the canteen back into the shadows and slung my bag over my shoulders as I hefted my shoddily made Molotovs.

The creature’s attention shifted back to Hope at some point as it whipped towards her with its vines swinging wildly. Hope expertly dodged each strike, deflecting those that she couldn’t with her silver bracers without any issues. She even managed to cut the thorn-laden vines several times as I raced back into range to support, though it mattered little as the vines rapidly regenerated.

Its back faced me, fully exposing the bulbous growth of vines on its back. The red vines gathered there, burrowing down under the creature’s skin and then branching out all across its body. As soon as I was within throwing distance, I lit one of the Molotovs and tossed it at the creature’s back.

The Molotov shattered, sending flaming gasoline all over. I picked that moment to unload into the center mass of vines with my rifle, shooting for all I was worth as my bullets danced across its body.

The wood creature staggered, dropping down to a knee with a shriek as the fire charred and burned its way through the wooden defenses. The vines all over it went ballistic, smothering the flames much like the mawed creature did.

While it was dazed by the fire, Hope took the opportunity to approach it with her knife. Instead of backing off like a sane person, she proved herself to be a true member of the psychopathic Blue Crusade. She shoulder-checked the beast, knocking it to the ground as she rammed her knife into its eye socket. A fountain of red ichor sprayed up onto her mask.

The creature weakly threw its arm at her, which she promptly dodged. She followed up her attack by slamming her foot down onto the knife, wedging it deep into the head of the beast as she kicked off back away from it.

My rifle clicked empty again as Hope raised hers, unleashing focused hell nearly point blank. Each shot seemed to perfectly hit into its eye sockets, the bullets ringing as they hit their brethren. I threw the rifle over my shoulder and pulled at my last Molotov, throwing it at the beast's face.

As the flames entered its mouth and eyes, it let out one last, weak screech. The twitch and wiggling body of wood froze, going entirely still. The vines fell limply as the malice seemed to fade away. Hope quickly snagged her knife back as the flames started to burn away the creature properly.

I flicked on Aetherial Perception, my body going rigid. I saw the same dark green, nearly black shades of the Aether as I saw on the mawed creature. Unlike every other interaction with the Aether I’d seen so far, this one seemed to have a mind of its own. Two deep, abyssal eyes gazed through the branching darkness, passing over me like I wasn’t even there as they glared at Hope. The glare continued till the darkness faded under the constant ebbs of the Aether.

Hope sighed, slinging her rifle back over her shoulder as she took a deep, raspy breath through the mask. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.” I twitched, shaking my head and looking down at the brutalized face of the creature slowly burning away. She probably could’ve taken it by herself, to be honest. Hell, she practically did. As soon as a gap appeared in the creature’s defenses, she didn’t hesitate to put it down.

I followed her lead and shifted my equipment around, though I did keep my hand close to the Saber-19 just in case. “Now what?”

Hope looked around the cistern as she pulled out two pairs of black gloves, handing one set to me. “Spread out. Look for clues, I guess. Be careful though, no telling what kind of foul sorcery these fanatics have whipped up. I’ll check the bodies. CSI isn’t coming down here any time soon, so just look for now, then we’ll gather what we can and haul it back up to the surface.”

I nodded to her, heading for the table in the middle as she walked off towards the far side of the room. I carefully stepped over the two corpses, only checking them enough to confirm that, yes, they were completely dead. I did take the opportunity to snag one of their necklaces though. There’s a fairly high chance the necklaces were their key to getting through all the plant security. Better safe than sorry.

The central table was covered in circular drawings and written in some weird script I couldn’t read. Every letter, if that’s what the symbols were, was done in a style I was starting to expect from these fanatics; some looked like flowers, others looked like trees. Regardless, I couldn’t read them.

I shifted the stuff to the side, tossing my bag onto the table. I spent a few minutes as Hope meandered around to the various corpses carefully taking care of my arm. I wasn’t too worried about the wound since it would be gone by tomorrow, so I just slathered it in gauze and wrapped it up tightly without even bothering to cut off my coat's sleeve. Then I was off to look for clues, as Hope suggested.

I paused for a moment as I spotted a plant I recognized. While Hope was busy finger-printing a corpse, I pulled out the Mystical Agriculture book and flicked through it briefly to see if I could find out what the thing was.

A light flashed from the crystal on the back side of the book like an old-timey camera. Then, the book flipped through its pages without any input from me, stopping on one in particular: Lunar Bloom. I stared down, surprised at the auto-search function.

An idea sprang to mind as I headed over to the burning remnants of the wood creature, holding the book up like the last time. It flashed again, flipping to a page for the ‘Corrupted Dryad’. I looked through the page briefly before bookmarking it and tossing it back into my bag. I could read later when I wasn’t in the Underground.

I moved off to the room where this ‘Corrupted Dryad’ emerged from, entering through a proper doorway instead of the massive hole the Corrupted Dryad tore through the vine wall.

The room looked to be some kind of office, even having a desk and filing cabinets against the backside. Bullet holes riddled almost everything, most of them probably mine. All sorts of plants sat everywhere, of course, but there were also a fair amount of maps. I looked through most of them, memorizing the structures. They appeared to be from all over the city without any apparent similarities.

My mind froze as I caught sight of a large map buried underneath the rest of them. I wasted no time pushing everything to the side, my hands brushing past aged and yellowing paper as Eidetic Schematic worked in overdrive.

An ancient map of the old city’s underground facilities, back before they had been buried super far beneath the surface, sat in all its glory. I didn’t think these kinds of maps even existed, but before my very eyes was a massive map of the entire Underground. And it wasn’t just the old architecture either. There were dozens of new, smaller markings and denotations all over the map, mostly centered around Oldtown, Little Yukoto, and East End. The aged map had to have been at least a century old.

I memorized it, catching sight of hundreds of interesting places as an idea slowly started to form in my mind. I moved quickly, sabotaging the map with small rips here and there over certain locations, using a pen on the table to make incorrect passages, and tore off a massive chunk of it centered around ancient Little Yukoto, which I promptly burned to ash. Since I already had it locked into memory, there was no point leaving a perfectly good map for others to use, especially with the plan forming in my mind.

Excitement pounded through me as ideas meshed together, though I let them fade to the background of my mind as I set about looking for other clues. I could think deeply about this some other time.

I looked around several other areas, finding a plethora of magical relics and books on various topics of the Aether. There were, of course, a shit ton of books on various plants. There was even a room full of fertilizer off to the side. I didn't touch anything out of fear of a trap, though I was incredibly tempted to swipe a particularly shiny tree statue. It was so tempting... its just, magic traps were above my head. If it was a tech-based trap, I'd at least try for it... and the tree was big. Doubt Hope would let me walk off with that.

Almost everything was written in the weird plant glyph language, so I couldn’t understand most of it. I could mostly make sense of the maps and the drawings, but everything else? Right over my head.

Several recurring symbols did appear though. Two were the most common. There was a tree symbol that twisted itself into a knot. It was the same one as the necklaces. The other symbol was a massive circle with a weird script all inside of it. Three circles sat evenly spaced around it, each with its own script inside.

One thing was sure though as I walked around, this was a massive group we were going up against. A massive, well-armed, and highly set-up group.