The sun shone under a cloudless sky, illuminating the lush verdant landscape that seemed to go on for eternity. Within this forest of blooms were innumerable creatures of peculiar life, their existence deeply connected to the very land. Gympie Nettles was one such creature.

On this lovely afternoon, Gympie Nettles was away from his host minding his own sweet business. Bathing in the sun, playing in the streams, drifting away amongst the fragrances... such was life!

But alas, peace seemed to want nothing to do with the poor guy. A blaring alarm rang in its head, most commonly when his host was under attack, like right now.

“Oh, for the love of! If this is those dumb twigs trying to kill me again!” Gympie was rather displeased by this particular group of invaders. Relentless yet incompetent, they were the worst neighbours he could ask for.

He hurried back as fast as he could, the water itself carving a path for him. He prepared arrows, whips and balls of water ready to strike the blasted nuisances away, lest they had already set his body on fire.

But when he got back his host plant was still as green and healthy as ever with not a single sign of what could be causing it so much distress. He thoroughly inspected the surroundings and was stumped at the sight.

"Are you okay?" He screamed at his host that seemed to be screaming back in terror for some reason. Did the host have a bad dream? Gympie could not understand.

Then when he got near, he felt it-a terrible pull that stretched his soul and crushed his body, twisting his perceptions till everything was everywhere, and nowhere, at once.

He did not understand, his frantic struggles to escape yielded nothing. One moment he was panicking and the next, he was in a black abyss shoved into something along with his plant that was too small to fit both of them. If he wasn’t a dryad being forced to occupy the same space as his host plan wouldn’t end nearly as well. But as it was, he simply phased through his plant peering through the leaves at what lay beyond.

They were in some sort of clear container overlooking a wooden platform overlooking an endless abyss. Similar floating containers equally spaced across the wooden platform, inviting a sense of dread within him.

Even though he could see out perfectly fine the creatures in the other containers seemed foggy and unclear. One of them was much taller than him and only its blue torso half stuck out of some sort of writhing mass. Was that a dryad? What sort of plant was that mass it was sitting on?

He noticed the dryad in the other container seemed pale. Were they a birch dryad or the dryad of some sort of parasitic plant that didn’t get its own sunlight? That would explain why they were so pale but come to think of it he didn’t see any sign of a plant in there with them.

Who would be cruel enough to separate a dryad from their host?

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"How sad and cruel..." Gympie shook his head in pity. He could only hope that they just had a small host and were just unusually large, otherwise he couldn’t imagine the pain they must be feeling.

Speaking of, his host was anything but comfortable. The roots were laying on the flat bottom of the container and with no soil to anchor them the rest of their leafy heft is crushing down on their fragile roots. Not even to mention the lack of water, nutrients and sunlight in this place. Gympie tried to handle these issues, but his mana would not move to give them water and he could only manually try to relieve the weight on his host’s roots.

There was something in the middle of the stage, a creature that felt wrong. It surely isn’t a dryad? But it looks more like a dryad than the two in the tubes but something in his head knows that it isn’t one. It turns to look at him and he can tell that if he wasn’t in this tube just the weight of its attention alone would be enough to crush him.

“Hehehe! Looks like our final contestant has arrived, soon we can begin the game!” A creature, no The Curator said. Gympie stared at it in utter confusion.

How could a dryad appear so unbearably ugly? Still, out of kindness and pity he chose not to inquire.

“Oh, my dear fellow woodkeeper, where is this place? Are we still in the forest? What is your name?” Gympie tried to speak clearly yet could only muster a wordy whisper.

He didn’t know if The Curator had heard him, but he turned away and looked out into the inky black space they were in.

"Bold! How! Very! Bold!!!" The Curator clapped with glee and turned to one side and the mask they wore winked as they promised “This one is truly a catch no, my Dearest Deities?”

“May I introduce to you, drumroll please!-” a beating sound played from somewhere in the center stage emanating from thin air sounding reminiscent of a hundred twigs waging war against themselves “Gympie Nettles! This contestant here is a dryad hailing from the planet Nàtha where plants and fungi have dominated the planet with not a single animal in sight! Yucky creatures if I may add."

"Not to forget, it hails from an expansive archipelago where hundreds of tribes of small races vie for dominance in the hopes of bloody killing all others on their series of bloody islands! Real bloodthirsty folks there, well they would be if anything on that planet had blood.”

Sparks seemed to light up in The Curator's eyes with every mention of blood. Goosebumps.

“But despite being surrounded by all that violence sweet, poor, stupid Gympie here survived and thrived with minimum violence! Love and Peace!” The Curator twisted its legs and raised its hands making an unfamiliar sign.

Gympie somehow felt that he was being chided for not killing everything he came across, much like those little ankle biters that kept setting his host on fire.

“But! Be not fooled! A clandestine Karma scale and peaceful life did not impair this wondrous plant lover to non-violence! Don't believe me? Watch this!"

A 'lightshow' suddenly took up a part of the void and showed a phenomenal record of Gympie's bravery and valor.

Gympie watched as he ran in from the side chucking blobs of water while landing devastating blows on what seemed to be a very fierce twig.

The twig-like plant howled in pain as a handful of the small fluffy needles that covered his and his host's whole body got lodged in its face. The scene repeated itself again and again, sometimes he was there when the twigs came, and he prematurely chased them off sometimes he wasn’t and he had to nurse his host back to health afterwards.

During the whole time The Curator seemed to be cackling away. His hard-won victories in the battle that lasted half a decade serving as nothing but entertainment to it.

The Curator wiped away a tear shaped mark on its face before calming down. “Spectacular! Splendid! See! Dear old Dryad here latched to a gympie-gympie. All those hits to all those faces! Oh, the agony, the pain, the potential!"

Gympie felt as if he were laid bare before The Curator. He had never wanted to go home as much as he did now, as his instinct to keep his host safe kept silent.

Gympie couldn't bear to hear its following words, but the Curator kept on talking to the darkness beyond. It scared him, as he curled up deeply with his host, who seemed awfully quiet.

Gympie had a very bad feeling about it, as his wish to go back home seemed to be getting farther by the very second.

"Wondrous display of ability! Ingenious!" The Curator didn't stop bugging him either, as his senses started to dull. All Gympie wanted to do was sleep. And so, he did.

It was a peaceful sleep. The last peaceful sleep he would ever get.