Something… someone...? pulled at the rope that was tied to my waist. Alessi. My sister. She too could enjoy this perfect, lovely seed. She too could… no, should come here and attain… love and acceptance.
A signal? I had to do something about responding back to the rope pulls? It was hard to think. My mind swam in bliss, floating on a soft cloud of pure, absolute love for my new life partner, my wonderful, perfect Folding Seed.
Whatever the Folding Seed was doing was activating, tickling all of the right parts of my chimera brain that were responsible for happiness and infatuation. I loved the Seed like my grandfather, like my friends, like urbex, like a perfect partner that I've never had.
The rational part of my mind tried to claw itself back into control, but it was muffled, smothered in overwhelming feelings of joy and devotion.
I reached out to a pearlescent wall, caressing it with my gloved hand. What a beautiful, lovely thing you are… I can't have you destroyed, besmirched. More rope pulls came. The response? Yes. I remembered and pulled on the rope in the right pattern, confirming that I was fine.
Was I fine? I was. Nobody was hurting me here, in the absolute safety of my newfound home. I looked around the interior of my new charming partner, seeing what other wonders she could offer me.
There was an ossified corpse of a large bat-like creature slumped in a corner. A pulsating, pearlescent flesh-like root was sticking out of the bat's mouth. This was fine. I patted the corpse on its head. Rest in peace, past beloved, it's my turn now, my time to embrace and to meld with my one true love. There was something else that I had to do. Something that I had to consume… to complete my happiness.
I moved away from the bat corpse. My eyes circled the otherwise empty purplish-pink circular space and settled on a large closed bud.
The bud shuddered as I stepped towards it. It slowly came up from the ground and seductively opened its petals, revealing to me a basin filled with glowing, pearlescent fluid. Ah! My love was offering me a drink. I did feel very parched after a lifetime… no, two lifetimes of lonely suffering.
I inhaled heartily, trying to smell the lovely concoction presented to me. Nothing. Why couldn't I smell the tasty-looking juice? Right. My mask was in the way!
I tried to take it off, but there were too many belts and knots holding it in place. It would take forever to untie them all! Argh!
A knife? There was a knife in my hand. Of course! I could use it to cut off the belts!
There was only one problem… this knife was dangerous… too sharp to swing incautiously around myself. If I nicked my neck, it would accidentally carve a chunk of my soul. I wouldn't want to bleed my soul all over my new, perfect home. My soul belonged to her. All of it, from now and forever. I would not waste a single wisp.
Right! I could Still my body with the exception of my arms and carefully cut the belts off, directing my progress with my soul-threads.
I closed my eyes, stilled my lower body and felt the armor with my Soul-Branches, determining where the belts were…
Wait.
Why? What… what the hell was I doing? Why was I trying to take off my mask?! Oh. Oh oh. Jesus Christ!
The Folding Seed had been influencing me… somehow. No, not somehow. By observing it with my chimera eyes I had let the damn thing into my mind, letting it take control of my actions and my thoughts. The Seed forced me to love… it… her?!
God!
I choked and blanched, nearly throwing up in my mask as I realized how close I had come to becoming the Folding Seed’s next meal. Even with my eyes closed, I still felt… madly, unnaturally… attracted to the damn thing! Disgust and affection fought each other in my head, trying to guide my actions.
[Don’t look at the petals. Don't approach. Stand by,] I sent a Morse code signal through my Dominion Saplings to Alessi.
[Affirmative,] she replied, squeezing my soul fragments back thrice, once, thrice and once again.
I exhaled. Looking at the Seed’s petals and interiors directly to see if I could stand up to its allure with my mask was a really moronic idea. Whatever mental manipulation the pearlescent flesh projected had been far more powerful than my resolve. If it wasn’t for my filters and closing my eyes… I would absolutely undress myself, partake of the thing’s sap and let it grow a root right into my mouth with a happy smile on my face.
I shuddered.
“You messed with the wrong girl, Seed,” I hissed through my teeth, keeping my eyes closed. I squeezed the soul-cutting blade in my hand and dipped it into the offered basin.
“How about you enjoy the taste of your own medicine?” I growled out as I stabbed the nearest wall with the paralyzing-fluid coated knife.
The Folding Seed shuddered.
“You like that?” I pulled a small, beetle-shaped flask from my belt, filled it with the fluid from the basin and poured it into the knife-carved gash. “Have some more!”
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The Seed shuddered again, the floor sinking downwards. This had been a bit of a gamble on my part, but it seems that the Folding Seed wasn’t immune to its own paralyzing agent as long as it was poured directly into a deep cut.
I sheathed my soul-cutting knife and exhaled in relief. The pressure that I felt was being projected into my head faded completely. I opened one eye for an instant and glanced at the pearlescent wall. I felt nothing at all this time, zero attraction or happiness. From what I understood, the allure skill functioned like a constantly vibrating magical tuning fork. It took active magic to keep up, so the Seed’s mind-control was shut down when it had become completely paralyzed.
When I had disabled the Seed with its own poison, its mouth had been left half-open. The vile plant-monster was waiting for Alessi to come join me for all eternity within its innards. I stepped outside of the Seed, and slowly circled it, cutting off the excessive branches. I left three of its large root-feet intact as advised by my Master and walked back to Alessi.
“How did it go?” She asked me when I reached her.
“Almost got eaten,” I said. “Thankfully, Stilling most of my body and closing my eyes reduced the effect that the Seed had on me and I broke free of its control.”
“Why did you keep your eyes open to begin with?” Alessi questioned my tactics.
“I wanted to make sure that the Folding Seed was irredeemably evil,” I replied.
“I could have told you that,” my sister shook her head. She was definitely judging me.
“Also, I was certain that my lenses would block out most of the allure,” I sighed. “They definitely need more work. Maybe I need to make the runes or the spaces between them a lot smaller. Or, if I make my lenses mirror-surfaces or something… it will dilute the effect? I’ll have to experiment with my own allure skill on you.”
“Right,” Alessi said. “Onto the next step?”
I nodded and dug into my bag, pulling out my magical anti-phantom latex paint. I opened the bag, reheated the mixture in a clay bowl on a small fire and went around the seed’s exterior, slowly covering it up. When I finished, I was almost completely out of crystallized paint. Alessi watched the process from afar, ready to pull me back if something went wrong. The Seed did not wake, so I went inside it, cut off the grotesque brain-stabbing root and removed the ossified bat creature.
Once I was done with the cleanup, I filled a few more empty flasks with the paralyzing agent and bound the inner flower very tightly with rope, looping it with self-tightening knots. I decided not to destroy the sap-producing basin. It was a handy renewable resource, pretty good at paralyzing creatures. I poured some more sap into the cut in the wall to make sure that the Seed wouldn't wake up and called Alessi inside it.
We spent the rest of the afternoon painting the interior of the seed with mud, bark and dry weeds from a nearby ravine. In this manner we had constructed a mud hut inside the seed, completely covering up the mind-controlling pearlescent flesh. As a secondary protection against the effect, we set up the glider-tent inside of the mud hut. Our mobile home was almost complete, the only thing remaining was to make it mobile.
I put my gloved hand atop the cut I had made. I had no regrets in taking over the Folding Seed now. This monster had confirmed its nature to me by trying to force a bond between us, so that it could slowly feed on my soul and body.
I uncurled a Dominion branch from my hand and thrust it into the Folding Seed’s paralyzed flesh. Its anatomy was utterly alien, nothing like that of a chimera or a human. It took me a while to figure out where its muscles sat and how they connected to each other forming strange, root-like limbs. The seed's body was quite freaky because it was indeed ten times bigger on the inside than on the outside. Its innate folding magic was really screwing with my perception of three-dimensional space.
Occasionally, I exchanged brief soul-messages with Alessi to confirm that I was fine and working hard on taking over the Seed. She didn’t waste time. While I was in Still trance, she reinforced the mud hut adding more thickness to the walls.
As Eunice had recommended I set five Dominion Saplings into the muscles that operated the large, flower-shaped maw and fifteen of them into the three legs. Once I was done, I awoke from the Still trance and let Alessi rest, while I watched the forest in case more Seeds decided to pay us a visit. The light slowly faded from the root-formed tunnel, the world turning dark. I sat in front of the entrance, keeping most of my body still. If the forest’s children tracked their prey at night via motion, we would not provide them with an easy target.
As night went by, I pondered about my nearest future and found myself at a loss. Yes, I could brave the Heart of this forest. Yes, I could try to attack it with Molotov cocktails. However, even getting there seemed extremely dangerous and reckless.
Thankfully, nothing horrid had come our way and nothing had invaded our tunnel during the night. When dawn lit up the forest once again, Alessi had woken up and joined me at the entrance. I felt better about my chances of defeating the forest, felt happy, at peace. Felt like not going anywhere, like resting here… forever.
Ah. These feelings weren’t natural. My Seed was awake, the paralysis had worn off.
“Uhm, I’m feeling a bit off,” Alessi said. “I think that the allure is getting through the mud and the tent.”
“Seems like it’s not just visual. I’m going to Still myself to try to deal with this bullshit,” I growled out. “If things go wrong, I’ll signal you via soul-messages.”
Alessi nodded to me. I paused my body and grabbed the wound made by my soul-cutting knife which we had left exposed. I dove into the soul of the Folding Seed via my Dominion threads. I had twenty Saplings inside of the plant-monster already. I injected another Dominion branch into the creature, trying to figure out where the feelings of bliss were being projected from. When I found the allure halo deep inside of the Seed’s soul I struck against it with five of my Dominion branches. As I wrapped them around the thing’s damned halo I felt happiness, pure love taking hold of me.
[Paralyze it!] I ordered Alessi. My sister was ready. She poured a bit of the sap into the wound as I floated in absolute happiness, unable to do anything about the love-projecting halo.
The Seed stilled and its halo ceased broadcasting bliss. I gradually, meticulously crushed the halo from within, broke and mangled it, slowly tearing it apart. Then, I pulled my Dominion branches back into myself and unstilled myself with a grim smile.
“So?” Alessi looked at me.
“The Seed’s allure is destroyed,” I said. “If it grows another one, we’ll take care of it the same way. Dominion branches don’t just take over the body, they can tear apart the soul. How long was I out?”
“Nearly two days,” she replied.
“Well… it’s definitely a very slow process to dismantle a specific skill, but it works as long as the monster’s paralyzed,” I pulled out a beetle-bottle of water and a piece of smoked steak from my backpack, feeling mighty hungry.
Alessi nodded with a relaxed smile.
“I think we should give our new acquisition a name. Can't just keep calling her a 'Folding Seed',” I patted the muddy floor, chewing ponderously. “Any suggestions?”