Chương 12: Sickle Against Plant

Two vines tightly bound around her ankles, Alexandra reached for her sickle. She barely had the time to grab it before the vines started pulling. Augmented by Sickle Mastery, she leaned down and severed the one holding onto her right ankle. She wasn't able, however, to cut the other one before it displaced her leg, making her fall. Still, she was swift, and yanked her foot toward her chest, reached behind it with her blade, and pulled, cleaving the vine in two. Rushing to stand up, she scanned the area.

Everything was plants. The two appendages she just severed retreated back into the earth, leaving two gaping holes behind. Whatever it was, it wasn't over. Right as she thought that, another vine tore the ground open beneath her feet, and tried to grab onto her. She reacted in time to jump away, but the vine chased her. She turned around, clutching her sickle in both hands, and swung it at the vine.

The spine of her blade grazed against the vine without severing it, her skill instinctively informing her that it was bound to happen. Still, it was enough to repel the plant, if only for a second. She used that time to cast Inflict Weakness, unsure if it would work on a plant. If it did, her ambusher didn't show a reaction. She ducked to avoid the vine's whip, and rushed from the spot where it was jutting from the earth. Reaching the base of the vine, she wrapped her sickle around it and pulled, cutting it clean.

The vine collapsed behind her. Two more broke the surface immediately after, flanking her. She took the left one first, severing it clean, then spun to hook the right. It caught her wrist instead, not tight enough to hold, and she shook it loose and cut it. Another. Then another. She was breathing hard. The ground around her was pitted with holes, severed vine ends poking out of the dirt like the tentacles of a kraken. She counted eight. Nothing had changed. No reaction from whatever was beneath her.

No sign that any of it mattered. She stopped moving. The vines stopped too. Standing in the middle of the torn field, sickle raised, she waited. The orange blossoms were ten meters to her right, undisturbed. The bees were gone. The sweet smell was stronger than before, thick enough now that she could taste it at the back of her throat. She took a step toward the flowers. Three vines erupted simultaneously behind her. She cut two and took a glancing hit from the third across her forearm.

It left a red welt but didn't break the skin. She kept moving toward the flowers. The smell was getting worse. Or better, she couldn't tell the difference. Behind her, the remaining vine didn't attack. It slithered on the ground, like a predator ready to pounce. She noticed it first in her legs. A faint unsteadiness, like the ground was shifting slightly beneath each step. She planted her feet wider and kept moving. The sweet smell pressed against her like something physical. Her eyes were watering.

Stepping on a loose rock, she stumbled, and caught herself on one knee. The dirt was warm under her hand. She pushed back up. The orange blossoms were directly ahead, motionless in the still air. Up close, the clusters were denser than she'd realized, the individual flowers small and tightly packed, their petals almost translucent at the edges. Pretty. She reached out. Her fingers were almost on the nearest cluster when she stopped. She was reaching for it with her hand. Not her sickle. Her hand.

She stared at her own fingers for a moment. Right. She straightened up, switched her grip, and severed the cluster at its base with a single pull. The smell spiked violently, sweet turned acrid, and she clamped her mouth shut and held her breath. The ground exploded. Not the surface. Beneath her, something massive shifted, and the earth buckled upward in a wave that threw her sideways. She rolled, came up on one knee, and looked back. It was large. That was the first thing she registered.

A central mass the size of a cart, pushing up through the soil, shedding dirt and roots as it rose. Dark green, glistening, ribbed like a fist. Vines erupted from its base in every direction, a dozen at least, tearing channels through the flower field as they spread. Three came straight for her. She tried casting a second Inflict Weakness directly on the beast, and felt a strong resistance, her mana emptied and fizzled out, unable to complete the spell.

She moved right, let the first two cross in front of her, hooked the third and pulled it into the path of the second. They tangled. She cut through both while they were still caught up in each other. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. The third circled wide and came at her from behind. She felt it before she saw it, the displaced air, and spun in time to deflect with the spine of her blade and hook it on the follow-through.

Her head was still swimming in an orange colored haze. Was her curse even doing anything? The main body had finished rising. At its crown, clustered around the top like a collar, more orange blossoms. Smaller than the patch she'd severed, but the same. She could smell them all the way from where she stood, even through the acrid edge the first cut had left. She stopped engaging the vines. They kept coming. She deflected, retreated, cut only when she had to, keeping her eyes on the crown.

Two vines caught her across the shin and she stumbled again, went down on both knees, pushed back up. Her arms were heavy. A glance at the main body, she ran straight at it. A vine clipped her shoulder. Another caught her boot and she nearly went down again but pulled her foot free without stopping. She reached the base of the main body, planted her feet, and started cutting flowers.

One, two, hook and pull, hook and pull, the acrid smell overwhelming now, her eyes streaming, her lungs burning from holding her breath, her skin itching for relief. The body was thrashing. Vines beat against the ground around her feet. One caught her across the back hard enough to knock the air out of her and she stumbled forward into the main body itself, one hand pressed against its slick surface to keep from falling.

That proximity didn't last long as another vine wrapped around her waist and threw her away — or was it the same? She landed several paces away from the monster, tumbling on the hard ground, with roots and thorns ripping into her skin. She grunted.

"What a freak." Plants weren't supposed to be this energetic. Could she even win against that thing? Her sickle was doing good work on the vines, but how was she supposed to damage the main body? Her thoughts circled back to Dark Bolt. It would certainly make things easier. Yet… Well… She liked having all her fingers attached, and it wasn't like she had to kill this plant monster. Ideally she'd find an opportunity to run away. For now, however, she had to dodge two other vines zooming in on her position.

She stepped aside, letting the first dig into the ground, while she jumped over the second which was trying to trip her over. Taking her chance, she severed the former. It didn't remove much length from it, but any advantage was good to take. She kept moving. The vines had a pattern. Not a smart one, but consistent enough that she could read the next attack from the way the ground shifted before it broke. She started using that, stepping off the tell rather than reacting to the vine itself.

It bought her half a second each time. Half a second was enough. Cut. Deflect. Cut. She wasn't winning. But she wasn't losing either, and the pile of severed vines at the edge of the battlefield was growing. Her arm was burning the shoulder down. She could run. The thought kept surfacing. She wasn't faster than the vines, but she was faster than the main body, probably She could break the perimeter, put distance between herself and the main body, and call it a draw.

She hooked a vine that was moving to flank her and redirected it into the path of a second. Old trick. Still worked. The thing was, goblins didn't fight back like this. Neither did a fence post. Every time she read a tell correctly, every time a hook landed clean under pressure, she could feel the difference between this and the training session in Lara's field. Her body was learning something it couldn't learn from sticks. The main body swayed.

A few of the remaining vines moved with less conviction than before, their arcs shorter, responses slower. She wasn't imagining it. She adjusted her grip and kept going. Amid the cloud of dust and pollen, and the incessant assault, she couldn't say how many vines were left. But as she cut them, the situation became clearer. Each time she trimmed the tip of a vine, the perimeter became smaller. Yet she kept advancing, putting herself back into danger, a smile slowly pulling at her lips. She went for the crown.

The orange blossoms were right there and the smell hit her like a wall as she closed the distance. Eyes watering, jaw clamped shut, she went in low and started cutting. The main body lurched with the first cut. A secretion ran down its surface from the severed stem, thin and pale, browning the grass where it touched. She stepped around it. Another flower severed. The body shuddered, a continuous vibration she could feel through her boots. More secretion, running in thin rivulets down the ribbed surface.

She caught some on her sleeve and felt the fabric stiffen immediately. Her vision was swimming. She blinked hard and kept her eyes on the next target, not the ground, not the secretion pooling around her feet, just her next strike. It wasn't flesh, though it looked like it. It was green, and through the sweet haze, smelled like chlorophyll. But she couldn't enjoy it, as the orange flowers coating the plant kept secreting a smell that permeated everything. It was everywhere now, inside her, coating her throat.

She took a step and her boot slipped in the liquid secretion and she went down on one knee, one hand landing in it. Her palm burned. She wiped it on the dirt and pushed back up. The body was still shuddering. Still standing. She kept cutting. She didn't notice at first. She was still cutting, moving on instinct, hook and pull, hook and pull, her arm burning as if it was on fire. It was only when she swung and found nothing left to cut that she stopped. The main body tilted.

It went slowly, the way a tree goes, leaning past the point of return before gravity finished the job. It hit the ground with a heavy, wet sound and stayed there, the remaining secretion seeping into the dirt around it. The last vine had gone still sometime in the last few minutes. She wasn't sure when. Alexandra stood and looked at it. Her sickle was still raised. She lowered it. Her legs went next, her knees finding the dirt and then the rest of her following.

She sat back on her heels and put her hands on her thighs and focused on breathing. Around her the field was torn apart, the earth dyed orange from all the secretion. The air still tasted sweet. It probably would for a while. She'd won. Tears in her eyes, caused just as much by the secretion as by emotions, she stood up, and started walking again. Putting some distance between her and this god forsaken plant was a good idea. Hopefully, the itch would pass.

Furthermore, she still had half a marathon to walk, if not more. She was almost limping, and every step sent a tremor through her body, flaring the pain in each bruise she'd earned today. Despite everything, she couldn't stop herself from grinning from ear to ear. She summoned her journal and tucked it beneath her arm, ready to check on her progress as soon as the tears stopped.