And the vines…Oh, the vines.
They weren’t like the pipes at all, in that there was only a finite amount of metal things Alric could summon, whereas my vines were growing and reproducing of their own volition, rapidly climbing over everything to reach the warlock.
Myvines? Why did that sound so right? It scratched a part of my brain I didn’t even know needed itching. Although, theycouldn’tbe my vines because I wasn’t magical. I was just a grocery store clerk who was in way over her head. And yet theyweremine in every sense of the word. They were feeding off me, but not draining me. No, if anything, they were adding to me.
The vines wrapped around me and righted me, and all the blood rushed away from my head. Once I was in a more stable position, the vines slithered to the coil of metal biting into my skin. I watched in awe as the vines wound themselves throughout the pipes and pried my limbs free.
Alric’s sharp shout of alarm drew my attention back to him.
He had a barrier around him, similar to the ones his brothers had used, but a literal torrent of foliage raised around his protective bubble, like piranhas descending on a carcass. It was beautiful, yet horrifying to watch.
“Ven?” Leo’s weak voice barely registered on the periphery of my senses.
I glanced over at him. The metal bindings had stopped pulling on his joints, but he was still suspended in the air.
That wouldn’t do.
Getting a handle on the energy surging within me felt a bit like trying to hold on to a wet bar of soap that had been soaked in oil, but somehow I managed to get enough of a grip on it to get a large bush to grow under him. Vines shot up from the floor and freed him the same way they had freed me. The vines carefully set Leo down on his new leafy bed.
“Enough!”
The plants had only just let go of Leo when another shockwave burst out of Alric. It was unlike any other I had experienced. It ripped me out of my comfortable arrangement and threw me back so violently that every cell in my body braced for an impact that was going tohurt like hell.My hands automatically cradled the back of my head, because my instincts were telling me the force I was traveling at wouldn’t be survivable if I collided with something hard or pointy.
Thankfully, no such fate awaited me. I collided with something that felt like a net, and it slowed my momentum until I came to a completely safe stop.
Glancing behind me, I saw a lattice of smaller vines had caught me. I was only a foot or so in front of jagged pieces of wood that had been ripped free from the wall. Yeah, that definitely would have hurt.
Not everyone was so lucky. The plants had tried to help several, but many others had been flung to the far corners of the room or even through the windows. Leo’s limp form lay across the doorway, one of his legs hooked up over a chair like he’d had a little too much to drink and was falling over. Thankfully, he wasn’t impaled on anything.
That shimmering rage inside me redoubled. Once again, he’d been hurt after I’d almost gotten him to safety.
The plants sensed that anger, or maybe they fed off it—I couldn’t tell. My brain was so awash with adrenaline, anger, fear,and everything else going on, that it was all a mishmash of input and sensation.
But what I did know was that I was somehow communicating with the foliage—the very much alive foliage. The plants suddenly grew faster, moved faster,werefaster.
The next thing I knew, all those thorny growths from before shot through the air straight at Alric. Magic burst from his hands, knocking away the thorns. He was so concentrated on everything coming at him, he forgot to think about things that could comefrombelow.
One moment he waved his hand and caused a volley of thorns to burst into flame, the next, there was an awful screech as the metal below him split in two, and a giant flower suddenly bloomed below him.
It was magnificent, all resplendent golds and corals with yellow dots, almost like a sunrise breaking through the twilight sky. Then it snapped shut like a Venus flytrap around Alric’s lower half.
He screamed in terror. “What is happening?”
I had no idea what I was doing, yet I unequivocally knew it wasmewho was making everything happen. I felt connected to every single plant around me, not in a solid, definable way like a limb, but that connection was there, nonetheless.
It was almost like a phone call, albeit a phone call with hundreds of different non-sentient entities that didn’t exactly speak English.
Huh, maybe not like a phone call at all.
But I didn’t waste too much more of my mental faculties worrying about the semantics. All the vines in the room surged toward Alric, grabbing his arms and binding them tightly to his side. The vines wrapped around his chest, squeezing so hard I could hear his ribs crack, and then finally, his neck.
His face turned red as he coughed and writhed, but he couldn’t free himself. All the magic stopped, and for a moment, it was calm.
Well, the room was calm. I certainly wasn’t.
There was still the fireworks of something unnamable within me as the vines wound around the rest of Alric’s body, tightening, and tightening, andtightening.
“A drya—” He panted before devolving into a coughing fit, spittle flying from his lips. “You’re not sup?—”
