In the end, it’s not a hard decision and we detour over to where the creature is being attacked. As we move, I notice that River isn’t carrying any weapons, though our pursuing lizard-folk did. I send him a mental message.

Do you use weapons, or are your claws enough? I ask. Regret comes through the Bond to me.

I lost my spear in the rush. I pause and frown at him, encouraging him to explain further. The vines binding it to my back were snapped when it caught on a tree. I dared not pause to retrieve it, not with the Warriors so close. Well that sucks. A tendril of guilt pulling at my heart, I toss him mine. He snatches it out of the air with his clawed hand and pauses to make a few test moves. Adequate, he judges finally, though not as good as my forefathers’ weapon. Now I feel even more guilty – it was an heirloom? Then I remember that the reason for all of this was because they had kidnapped Lathani and attacked Kalanthia and my guilt disappears. The last traces of it vanish as I remember how Lathani had thought that her mother was dead.

Giving my spear to River leaves me with my bow, mace, and knife. Far better off than when I first landed in this world, admittedly, but I decide to make another spear as soon as I get the opportunity. If these trees attack at some point, I might take one of their stabbing roots as a trophy, I say to myself darkly. It’s at least half-bravado – I’m not at all sure that we could win against one of these trees, and we’re trapped in a whole forest of them. Against the plant holding the bird creature captive, however, I reckon that we’ll do fine.

Close enough to properly assess the situation, I see that the vines holding the creature come from some sort of bramble. It’s a thorny mess covered in tantalizingly-coloured fruit: I reckon I can see why the bird got too close. Who would have guessed that the plant would actually bite back? The thorny vines wrapped around the bird’s body are not very thick – perhaps about the width of my little finger – but they’re clearly pretty tough. They’re trying to drag the avian creature downwards – to some sort of mouth hidden beneath the rest of the brambles, I’d imagine.

The bird isn’t going down without a fight, though. It’s biting at the vines and seems to have the claws on the front joint of its wings hooked into a branch on the trees above. Even as I watch, however, one of the claws loses its grip, tearing through the bark on the branch to dangle uselessly in space. Kept away from the murderous vegetation only by a single wing-claw, its fate looks bleak.

That’s where we come in, of course. Seeing the opponent, I actually take a moment to swap out my mace for my axe – Lumberjack is my name; overgrown weeds, I am your bane. Or something like that. I take a moment to put the cubs down – it’s a hard decision as to which option is more dangerous: keeping them on me as I engage in battle, or separating them from the torch among these vine-strangler trees. Hopefully they’ll be OK – not so close to the fight that they’re within easy range of the thorny vines, but near enough that if the trees start trying to trap them, we can be there in a flash. That’s if they don’t go wandering, of course. Bastet tells them firmly to stay put; I hope they listen!

We dash into the fray. I express my intention through the Bond to go for the vines holding the bird. The others send an acknowledgment and veer off to play distraction. Bastet starts performing strafing runs, leaping in to make several lightning-fast cuts and then darting back out of range. She’s not particularly effective, her claws not proving much deterrent against a mobile bramble. However, she makes up for it by being a good distraction; her speed is such that she avoids almost all return attacks.

River is a bit more effective, sending the spear lancing through the thorny vines to pierce whatever is in the centre. At one point he seems to hit something important as the whole bush freezes for a moment and then shudders, returning to the attack with renewed frenzy afterwards. Past that point, the bush or creature or whatever it is seems to see him as the main threat and concentrates most attacks on him. Fortunately for him, his scales seem to be a pretty good natural armour and most attacks just glance straight off. I do spot a couple that seem to dig in, though. He doesn’t react, just continuing to attack with determination.

As I’d indicated to my companions, I go straight for the bird and the vines holding it. Using my axe and knife in both hands, I swing at the vines pulling it into the mass below. Each vine takes a single good swing of my axe, even when I manage to get it trapped against something hard. My knife isn’t any better, requiring far too long to saw through a single vine. After a few attempts, I tuck my knife back into its holster on my leg and just concentrate on using my axe. At first the bramble doesn’t take much notice of me, more focused on my companions. As I reach halfway through freeing the bird, though, that changes.

After that point, it starts sending attacks at me. My chitin armour does a decent job deflecting the vines aiming for me, but since it only covers my chest and back, there are far too many places on my body where my only protection is my already damaged clothes. The vines just rip straight through the thin fabric, leaving painful welts and scratches in their wake. As for my head, I just have to do my best to dodge those. The amount of blood I feel trickling down my skin attests to how many I let through unintentionally. Still, it’s only trickling blood, and while it’s painful, I’ve had much worse. I just throw out a Lay-on-hands and keep soldiering on.

As for Lathani, not having been part of the mental communication, she doesn’t even realise what we’re doing for a few moments. When she does, she tries to copy Bastet’s moves. Unfortunately, she’s clearly not quite used to her new size and strength, over- and under-estimating her own prowess at multiple critical moments. Her coat is swiftly gaining a red-tinge and I make the executive decision to bench her.

“Back off, Lathani,” I call over to her. She looks like she’s considering ignoring my orders and I fail to dodge a couple of attacking vines as I keep more than half an eye on her actions. Then, just as I can see her summoning determination to keep going despite what I said, I get through the final vine holding onto the bird. Distracted by four avenues of attack, one of which seemingly taking most of its attention, the mass of brambles has stopped sending new vines to wrap around the bird. It’s still pretty badly trussed up, but now it’s not being pulled into the centre of the mass any more. “Lathani, grab the bird and pull it out of range,” I yell at her.

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This time, thank goodness, she perks up and trots quickly over, grabbing the bird’s back legs between her jaws and dragging it across the ground. I hope that it’s not suffocating or that Lathani’s rough approach isn’t going to do it more damage; I’ll have to worry about that later.

Do you know what this is, River? I send to him. Can we kill it? I ask because he went unerringly for the parts of the mobile bramble tangle that had the greatest effect.

I’ve seen it before. Not anywhere near this big, though. It has a vulnerable part within the brambles – a combined mouth and stomach. Damage that enough, we’ll win. Right. I think fast. Should we keep going, or should we just back off? It’s not a fight we have to continue. But I do have to earn Energy, and we’re already half-done with this battle – if we back off now, we lose the Energy we could have gained if we win.

I glance around at my companions. Lathani is the most visibly injured by far, but even for her it’s basically just scratches. Some deep scratches, for sure, but nothing that wouldn’t heal on its own. Even my own injuries are really just rips in my skin from where the thorny vines have dug in.

We’ll continue fighting, I tell my companions decisively. River, keep doing what you’re doing. Bastet, I’ll clear a path for us to the centre – you keep playing distraction. Accompanied by images of what I imagine us doing in the next few minutes, my Bound understand immediately and send back their agreement. Taking a moment to pull out my mace again from my Inventory, I start swinging at the bramble with both hands even as I shout out to Lathani.

“Guard the bird, make sure nothing eats it while we’re killing this thing,” I tell her, hoping that this time she’ll listen. “And keep an eye on the cubs,” I add on as an afterthought.

My mace isn’t the greatest of weapons against this particular foe – the reason I’d put it away in the first place. However, what it doesn’t have in terms of cutting ability, it has in crushing power, forcing the brambles to the side. Unfortunately, even when the brambles are crushed to the ground, they start moving again a moment later. That’s where my axe is by far superior – the bits that it cuts off, stay cut off. Still, the mace offers me some breathing room and ability to choose more carefully where to swing my axe.

Slowly and painfully, thanks to not being able to avoid all the brambles flailing wildly in the air, I make progress. As I get closer to the centre, the rate of attacks increases, the mobile bramble clearly considering me to be the greatest threat now. All I can do is grit my teeth, use the arm holding my mace to protect my face, and keep going with my axe. Thanks to the arm covering my face, I’m mostly blind, but it doesn’t take much skill to hit vines, what with the density so close to its core.

When I break through the final defenses, I actually stumble forward, the lack of resistance putting me off balance. Bastet leaps past me and starts savaging the ‘body’ of the bramble-creature. When I see her feet sizzling a little and she sends pain down the link, I realise that the surface on which we’re standing is actually acidic. Truly a mouth-stomach.

“Back up, Bastet,” I tell her urgently even as I quickly do the same, feeling the beginning burn of acid through the holes in my shoes. “It’s just going to hurt you.” She doesn’t argue, backing up all the way out of the reach of the vines, mincing like she’s been walking on hot coals. I wince both for her and for what I’m going to do.

Swinging my axe, I savage the mouth-stomach, practically ignoring the thorny vines it sends to tear at me. This thing is going to die now. I sense River at my back warding off some of the attacks by using his spear as a staff, but my main focus is on my actions. I just hope that I’ll still have an axe after this. The flint should be OK, but the pitch and the bark-fibre cord? Well, I’ve gone too far now to back out – I’ll have to repair any damage later.

After what feels like an age, the bramble-creature gives a final shudder, it’s vines flailing around one last time before they collapse to the ground, finally immobile. I’m breathing heavily, the effort taken to take this thing down much more than I’d expected.

I turn around to find River looking at me unreadably.

“What?” I ask him a little self-consciously.

You do not seem to feel pain, he remarks. I frown and he gestures to my head, then hesitatingly to everywhere else. I touch my head and look at my body, my frown deepening. What does he mean? I ask him the same question and he clarifies. You are bleeding. Significantly.

“Well, so are you,” I point out.

Not anywhere as near as much you, he returns. I shrug.

“Well, I don’t have natural armour like yours – only my crafted armour offered me any protection, really, and that doesn’t cover much of my body. Vines which hit anywhere else cut through my skin and made me bleed.”

Then this is normal for your kind? he asks, now sounding a little intrigued. I shrug again.

“I mean, it still hurts, don’t get me wrong, but…” Actually, shouldn’t it be hurting more than this? The patches of skin not covered by my armour look like I’ve been dragged through a bush of brambles – I wonder why. Lines of angry red cover my skin and I can feel an uncomfortable stickiness beneath my clothes. Still, my health bar has only decreased by a sliver, and there isn’t nearly as much pain as I might expect. Is this the effect of increased Constitution?

A question for later. For now, I just give another shrug to River and slap a Lay-on-hands on him to help heal his wounds. Striding over to Bastet and Lathani, I trigger an undirected Lay-on-hands to bring my health up closer to maximum and then apply one each to Bastet and Lathani. Lathani needs a second since her wounds were worse than either of my Bound’s, but she soon looks worse than she actually is. Clearly uncomfortable with the blood matting her fur, she starts grooming herself, aided by a motherly Bastet.

Now, to see how our rescuee is doing – hopefully the bird is still alive.