The five foot tall and eleven foot long thing stalked closer and closer, its outline slowly colouring in as it came into view. It looked almost exactly like I’d imagined it did–a generic ‘animal-like’ body made out of plant flesh and tightly interlocking leaves and vines, but without any kind of visible head. The neck split right down the center, revealing a chasm of sticky-looking juices and bright pink-green flesh that reeked of sweet rot. Long teeth lined the edges of the split halves, and when the thing closed up again, they locked so tightly together that not a single drop of juice could leak out.

Analysis failed the instant I tried. So I turned to the next best thing; the woman who’d potentially made the thing.

{Are they hostile? Or did whoever that corpse was make the mistake of pissing one of them off?}

Acasiana looked around at all of us, then pointed to herself when she saw everyone looking at her. She started to say something, then laughed and shook her head.

{Right, right. I’m the expert here. Well, good news and bad news. The phytopredators aren’t hostile unless they sense violence, since we originally made them to be able to gather their own nutrients instead of having to be constantly watered and fertilized.} Acasiana said fondly. {Unless someone plucks all their fruit, in which case they go into nutrient scavenging mode and start attacking everything they see.}

Our friend, who was only thirty feet away now, definitely didn’t look like they were bringing us some berries to try out. I shifted my weapon into a shield and positioned myself in front of Jun, who aimed over my shoulder at the phytopredator.

{What do their fruit look like?}

{It differs from one to the next, but this one should have long, peel-covered fruits that coil into tight rope-like spirals.}

Definitely no fruit, then. {Jun, get ready to kill it. Unless you’ve got an objection, Acasiana?}

She shrugged. {I’ve got plenty of seeds for all the different ones somewhere in my inventory. Just don’t kill any ones who’ve got fruit on them.}

The thing noticed us surprisingly late. I slammed my shield on the ground and turned a stretch between us and the phytopredator into a swamp of petal-scales, trapping its strangely stumpy legs as it tried to charge us. It opened up wide and spewed out a thick spray of liquid that quickly eroded the petal-scales on my shield, but only caused minor damage when it splattered onto the shield itself.

Jun tapped the side of her gun with one hand. {Kill it?}

{Kill it.}

A spray of bullets exploded from her gun and shredded the monster into sinuous chunks. It made a noise somewhere between a pumpkin being smashed on the ground and an animalistic shriek of pain. But it didn’t die. For all the holes pumped into it, and all the pieces it was missing, the thing still managed to limp slowly through my petal-scales towards us.

{It’s one tough bastard.} I noted curiously and called my hydra back to me with a thought. {See if eating it gives you any ideas for making a new body, girl. Maybe you’ll get some upgrades before we go back to the floodforest.}

Rumbling confirmation slid through my petal-scales. My hydra burst free from them like a breaching whale, tore what was left of the phytopredator in two–one chunk for each mouth–and dragged the remains down into the petal-scales below.

{That takes care of that, we suppose.} Mortician said. They opened their interface and swiped over to their map. {Should we continue through the facility or leave once more and try our luck with the tunnels?}

Viri cleared her throat. {I sort of remember where everything was. If someone draws me a map, I should be able to remember the geography of the place and tell you where to go.}

{You need a map, you say?} Acasiana tapped her foot on the ground, and the debris below parted as a pillar of metal rose from the ground. She swiped her hand over it, and a holographic map of the facility blinked into view. {There you go. Most of the functions are offline along with the rest of the facility, but I can power this much with my armor.}

{Ooh, perfect. Gimme a second and I’ll find the right place.} Viri hopped off my shoulder and landed in the middle of the hologram. {Can you make it any bigger?}

Acasiana pinched her fingers in the middle of the hologram, which zoomed it out until the entire facility was visible on the pedestal.

{Perfect. Again.} Viri said. {Give me two minutes and I’ll have his location. All I need to do is find a room I recognize, like that big one next to the wall there, and–oh, wait. That’s the one. With the big reservoir in it.}

I looked down at the room Viri gestured at. It was quite a bit bigger than all the others, with a large inground-pool like indent in the middle of it. There were a few strange protrusions near each of the doors–like plates jutting out from the back of a stegosaurus–and thin wires connected each of the protrusions to two others. Forming a ring around the room that probably had a higher purpose.

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{What’s with the wires?} Jun asked before I could. {Is it some kind of security system?}

{They’re lights. That room was originally an aquatic terrarium for a good portion of our plants, and most of them don’t do well in direct light. I designed it so there’d be enough light to work in, but nowhere near enough to damage the plants.} Acasiana explained. {But it looks like they’re using it as a pool for corrupted healing waters.}

If Viri wasn’t lying, then yes. {Viri, do you remember what side of the room Scalovera’s box was in?}

She thought for a second, then nodded. {We got in through the wall, and his box was on the left from that. So… on the map, we’re looking right at it.}

Perfect. I lowered my arm for Viri to climb back up again, then motioned for everyone to get moving. We fell into formation without any further instructions, and Acasiana gave us directions through the creepy, underlit and overgrown facility that Scalovera had obviously been trying to venture deeper into.

So many useless cores littered the ground in pools of digestive juices. I barely noticed them at first, since all the plants gave off weak vital signs, but the more I looked the more I found. One in a cluster of vines, overgrown and embraced by crushing tendrils. A half-dozen in a perfect pile off to the right, with two more phytopredators patrolling the area around it. And far more scattered about here and there on the ground, seemingly abandoned by the monsters that killed them.

I bent down and picked one up. A quick check told me it was a whole lot weaker than mine, and when I consumed it, it didn’t give me anything at all. I frowned and swiped over to my notifications, expecting to see something about it being ‘decayed’ or already drained by one of the phytopredators.

Instead, I found a message informing me that the core was too weak to grant me anything, and that all the benefits had been forced to zero after the effects of my core were put in place. So Jun wouldn’t benefit from scavenging all of them. A strange choice from the system, but it was probably for the best. Otherwise Jun could just go kill a few thousand people and become the strongest thing in existence.

Now she had to kill a few thousand strong people instead.

{Careful around that corner. The ground’s all broken up.} Viri said, breaking me out of my thoughts and bringing me back to reality. {I saw two guys fall into the pit, then there were a bunch of screams and wet noises, and then a lot of chewing. So probably try to av–}

My hydra burst out of the pit, phytopredator between her jaws, and slammed it against the jagged metal that surrounded it. The thing’s back legs sheared clean off as it fought tooth and nail to try and get free, but my hydra ripped the thing clean in half and started going to town on its corpse as it slunk back into the hole.

{Or maybe not.} Viri squeaked. {Just… don’t fall in there with me on your shoulder, please. I don’t really know what’ll happen if I fall from super high when I’m this tiny. But I do know what’ll happen if one of those things uses me as a chew toy}

{You will grow bigger and blow them up from the inside?} Mortician asked.

{...That wasn’t what I was going for, but it’s a much better plan than ‘die pointlessly’!} Viri laughed, then chuckled, then slowly went silent. {...Please don’t let me die.}

{The only way you’re dying is if the rest of us are already dead.} I assured her.

That seemed to do the trick, as she brightened instantly and sat taller on my shoulder. My feet squelched against something wetter than anything else we’d trodden on up until this point, and Acasiana cleared her throat to get us to stop. We all turned and waited for her to speak.

{Can you see anything in there?} She asked me.

I frowned. {No, nothing. Why?}

{Because the next room is the one Viri pointed out.} Acasiana gestured at a door that was stuck shut with some rotting plant matter that oozed from the cracks and mechanisms. {If you can’t see anything, and we’re assuming they haven’t moved shop, then they have someone who can protect them from being seen by functions.}

{And if they can protect them from being seen, there’s a good chance they can protect Scalovera from other things too.} I finished with a frown. {Or they’ve got a device in there that hides all of them, in which case we might be walking into an ambush.}

{Exactly.} Acasiana agreed. {And I don’t have a plan in the slightest. That’s your job, but I’m here for any logistical questions you have.}

{Damn. Alright, then.} I jogged up to the wall and pressed my hand to it. I couldn’t feel any vibrations, which only really meant there wasn’t anything big going on. Hopefully it also meant there wasn’t a mass exodus of Scalovera and his people, but I wouldn’t put it past him to run with his tail between his legs at the slightest sign of danger.

From what little I knew about him, he was a coward. Hiding in a giant box only served to prove that point. That probably meant he wasn’t very powerful, or that he was powerful in the same way Okeria was–on the sidelines giving orders and providing long-range support. But we hadn’t seen any support in any of our collective fights, so that was off the table.

Maybe he was bringing more of Endra’s people in. He could have a core with a spatial function for mass teleportation, which would explain why she teamed up with him in the first place. Unfortunately for us, catching someone with a core like that was almost impossible. We’d have to hit fast, hard, and mercilessly.

{Okeria, can you get me all the information you have on Scalovera?}

{Comin’ right up. You’re all doin’ good?}

I looked over at the door and slowly nodded. {Good so far. If everything goes perfect, we might be done with Scalovera in a few minutes.}

Okeria didn’t say anything for a few seconds. {I know what you’re hopin’ for, but don’t get too set on it. He’s a slippery bastard, so much so that I ain’t got a lot of info on him. Haven’t even seen him use his core–all I’ve got is a name ta draw information from. Sorry it ain’t more.}

Anything was better than nothing. {Hit me.}

{His core’s called Scattering Strings. Good luck.}