Char didn’t get a lot of sleep. She tossed and turned for most of the night, and when she did sleep she jolted awake at every sound. Lulu woke her from her fitful dozing a little after sunrise whining to be let out, and Char gave up on getting more sleep. Bleary eyed, she stumbled from the sleeper berth to the cab of the truck and peered around the warehouse lot. She couldn’t see much, her trailer and the warehouse itself blocked most of the area from view. What she could see looked deserted.
She’d slept in her clothes and shoes, worried that she might have to jump up and defend the truck from monsters during the night, so the only preparation she needed was calling her crowbar to her hand before she opened the door. Lulu jumped out before the door was fully open. Char paused on the first step to scan the area. Lulu wasn’t reacting to anything. The dog sniffed the nose of Char’s truck where it had smashed the Dire Opossum Matron against the dock, decided whatever lingering scents were there were no threat, and trotted off toward the grass. Char relaxed a little. Surely Lulu would sense any danger before she would, and the dog seemed unconcerned.
Still, she stayed on the step, torn between what she wanted to do, which was to climb back onto the truck and make a cup of coffee, and what she knew she should do, which was make a quick loop around the lot and make sure nothing was lurking. She really wanted a cup of coffee, but she jumped down the final distance to the ground with a sigh. Adulting sucks, she told herself with a mental eye-roll, Suck it up. That was her mantra when onerous responsibilities warred with selfish wants. It usually worked.
The forest had intruded farther into the lot overnight. Saplings were growing up through the fence in places, and vines were starting to twine up through it. It looked like months of growth had happened in a single night. Some of the plants Char was familiar with, but there were many she’d never seen before. She wasn’t an expert, but she was pretty sure there was nothing with purple leaves that was native to Illinois. She plucked one of the purple leaves from the vine and examined it more closely. It wasn’t the sort of purplish-green she’d seen on the leaves of some houseplants, but a true dark purple, like an eggplant. She tore the leaf and sniffed it. It had a more acrid scent than the usual chlorophyll smell of green things. She was startled by a text box appearing.
New Skill Learned
Identify Plants
Beginner
(prerequisite met: Alchemy, Herbalism)
The world is full of useful and deadly plants.
—————————————
Amethyst Strangle Vine
Habitat: unknown
Uses: unknown
“OK, that feels like cheating. How am I pulling information out of thin air? For that matter, how is any of this happening? How are you assholes in my head?” Building to a proper rant, she kicked the fence.
She learned then that the ‘strangle’ part of Strangle Vine should be taken literally as the purple-leaved foliage wrapped around her leg. Her building rage turned to fear as the vine pulled her off balance. She landed hard on her rear. The vine pulled at her, but she locked her knee with her foot against one of the fence poles. She wasn’t sure if the vine was strong enough to pull her through the rusty chain link, and she really didn’t want to find out.
She pulled against the vine, but couldn’t get enough leverage in the loose gravel to get her leg free. The vine continued to wrap its way up her leg. “Gah! Bright colors mean danger, dumb-ass. You know that!” She stopped her futile pulling and fumbled for her pocket knife. She didn’t think her crowbar or gun would help against this foe. It was only a three inch blade, and she’d always thought of it more as a tool than a weapon. She made a mental note to start thinking about everything as a potential weapon.
She got the knife out of her pocket, and thumbed it open, but before she could do more, the vine grabbed her other leg. She’d managed to kick a shallow divot into the gravel and had her heel dug in to pull against the vine, but now even that small amount of leverage was gone. The vine was slowly reeling her in toward the fence. She started cutting.
Too panicked to work methodically, she slashed at the vine, carving away chunks of it as fast as she could. Higher up, the prehensile vines were thin and highly mobile, twisting and curling like a pea vine in a time lapse film, but closer to the base they were as thick as three of her fingers together, and woody as a wisteria trunk. One of the tendrils burrowed under the fabric of her jeans, and she felt a stinging sensation begin to spread from where it touched her skin.
She heard Lulu’s claws scrabbling across the gravel toward her and yelled, “Lulu, stop. No girl. Don’t come any closer. Stop!” Lulu paused about a yard away and growled at the vine. “Stay back, Lu. This thing has some sort of venom.” Char hoped the dog would listen, she didn’t think she’d be able to cut both of them loose.
She was losing the battle against the winding, grasping tendrils. More and more of them were moving up her leg, entangling her faster than she could cut them away. She felt one slide between her jeans and her T-shirt, trying to wrap around her waist and spreading a line of stinging fire across her side and lower back. The leg braced against the fence wasn’t doing her any good now. The vine was pulling her sideways toward the fence. The places where she’d cut parts of it away oozed purple sap that burned and turned her skin red where it touched. There were too many tendrils. For each one she cut away, two more wrapped around her.
Searching desperately for some solution, her eyes fell on the trunk of the vine where it came out of the soil right up against the far side of the chain link. It was as thick as her forearm, but there was only the one trunk. She stopped struggling and let the vine pull her to the fence, only cutting away the vines that made it under her clothing until she was right up against the fence. Then she stopped worrying about the vines and went for the base of the plant.
Trying to cut it through the chain link was awkward. The knife was small enough to fit through the diamond-shaped openings, but there wasn’t much room to maneuver it. More and more of the vine was wrapping around her, tearing through the thin fabric of her shirt and injecting its caustic venom into her skin. The pain was getting intense, but she gritted her teeth and tried to ignore it, sawing at the trunk in short, awkward stabs.
“I. Refuse. To be beaten. By. Shrubbery!” She growled out the words between clenched teeth, punctuating each one with a thrust of the knife. She was making progress, but the deeper the knife cut into the trunk, the more desperately the vine attacked her, winding tighter and trying to tangle her arms and head. A quick glance at her heath bar showed it slowly ticking down. It was already down a quarter of the way. Char cut faster.
Lulu growled and barked at the vicious plant, but didn’t come into range of it. She prowled back and forth, occasionally stopping to bounce her front end at the vine in a challenge, but her person told her to stay back, so she would. Char thought she could hear the worry and frustration in Lulu’s barks, but she was very glad she was staying out of it.
The vines were around her wrist, now. The stinging venom made her fingers clumsy, and she had to struggle to keep her hold on the knife. The trunk was halfway severed. She pulled her head forward against the vines and managed to grab the one around her wrist in her teeth, pulling it away from her hand. Her tongue started to burn. Char screamed. The pain was worse than anything she’d ever experienced. Her whole body felt like it was on fire. She forced herself to keep cutting. She had to kill it. The only way to make the pain end was to kill the vine. Her world narrowed to the point where the knife met the woody trunk of the plant, the rest was white-hot pain. She cut.
In the agony and fear, she lost track of time. She just kept sawing until, eventually, finally, the trunk parted with a woody crack. The vine stopped its grasping, a few tendrils still curling and thrashing chaotically in its death throes. Char rolled away from the fence, taking a large part of the vine with her. Her breath came in great gasping sobs. The vine had stopped pulling, but it was still wrapped around her, and the pain still had her in its teeth.
Clamping down on her panic, Char started frantically pulling the limp vines away from her flesh. She sat up, shaking, and checked every inch of herself to make sure all of it was gone. Tears streaked down her face, and her teeth were clenched against the pain. Her skin was red and blistered in stripes, as if she’d been lashed with a lye-soaked whip. Lulu eased up to her, sniffing and whining. She gently licked Char’s chin.
“Shhh. It’s OK, Lu. I’m alive. You’re a good girl,” she said, pressing her forehead to the warm fuzz of Lulu’s head and patting the dog’s side. “Such a good girl. You did just right.”
You have killed
Amethyst Strangle Vine
Level 17
Experience gained
——————————
New Skill Learned
Pain Resistance
Beginner
You’re either a masochist, or have a will of iron.
You have learned to endure the greatest of pain
and keep fighting.
Char laughed. It had been gaining a new skill that had set off her rant in the first place. She ached all over. The new skill wasn’t helping much, she still felt like she’d been swimming with jellyfish. Still petting Lulu to comfort both of them, she pulled up her skills to see the changes. The list scrolled past. It was too much. Dismissing the screen, she opened the settings menu and fiddled with it, distracting herself from the pain and adrenaline crash by focusing on the changes she could make. It took her several minutes and navigating numerous sub-menus, but she eventually figured out how to tweak her skills list to only show the skills that had recently advanced.
Skills
Pain Resistance Beginner 1%
Identify Plants Beginner 2%
Survival (Wilderness) Apprentice 54%
Curious about the various skill rankings, and not ready to move yet, she focused on the word ‘Beginner’ and mentally asked for a help screen. A new window opened:
Skill Rankings
Beginner: You are taking your first fumbling steps with a new skill.
Novice: You know a few basics, but still have a long way to go.
Apprentice: You have a better handle on the basics and are beginning to hone your skill.
Proficient: You are well versed in the skill.
Professional: You could do this for a living.
Expert: You know your craft well, and even professionals come to you for advice.
Master: You know almost all there is to know.
Grand Master: The pinnacle of your craft.
“Well, that’s clunky. Wonder why they didn’t go with the standard journeyman rank? It’s almost like whoever designed this missed some cultural cues. I wonder how much research the Aldevari actually did before they decided to screw with us.” That thought brought her simmering anger closer to the surface, but there was nothing to vent it on. She used it instead as fuel to get herself up and moving again.
She let go of Lulu and painfully pushed herself to her feet. Her skin felt raw. There was no one around to see, so she pulled off the ragged remains of her t-shirt. Even the slightest brush of the fabric against her blistered skin was agony. Walking around in a sports bra was preferable to the pain, and the shirt was ruined, anyway. Whatever the vine had been secreting had eaten right through the fabric. There were even holes and thin spots in the more rugged denim of her jeans.
“Ugh. I get the feeling this life isn’t going to be easy on my clothes, Lu. I need to find some armor,” Char said as she watched Lulu sniff at the dead vines. She walked over and crouched down to poke the vines with a finger.
Amethyst Strangler Vine
Level 17
Would you like to loot? Y/N
“Yes”
You have received:
Crafting Item: [Amethyst Strangler Vine (Common)]
18 copper credits
Char groaned. “Crafting items? Really? It’s not like I can’t just pick up the pieces…” Her words trailed off as the vine parts crumbled into dust. “Oh. Right.” She pulled the item from her inventory and found that it was a bundle of vine segments neatly tied with twine. “Packaged. That’s handy. I wonder what it’s good for.” She waited a few seconds to see if an informative text box would pop up, but nothing happened. With a sigh, she returned the bundle of vine to her inventory.
“OK, Lu. We’re here just long enough for me to heat up some coffee and enjoy it, then we’re off into the woods. Yep, just a stroll in the woods. We’ve got this.” She set off back to the truck, trying, and mostly failing, to stay optimistic.
A few minutes later, Lulu could hear her cursing from across the lot. “The damn truck batteries are dead! I just wanted one last hot coffee. Was that too much to ask?” She slammed the microwave door and stowed the jar of instant coffee in her inventory. She checked her phone, which had showed no signal the night before, and now wouldn’t come on at all. She pulled the flashlight from her inventory and tried it, discovering that it, too, was dead. Nothing she had that operated on batteries had any charge left. She stowed the phone in her clothes bag after pulling out a fresh t-shirt and put the bag back in her inventory. She still had some shred of hope that she might find some way to charge it, if not for calls, then for the music and e-books stored on it. And the pictures of Ty. She really didn’t want to lose those.
Climbing out of the truck, she called to Lulu, “OK, I admit it, I’m procrastinating. Let’s do this.” Together, the two set off for the gate and stepped into the woods. Not knowing what to expect, Char had her pistol in her right hand, and her crowbar in her left. Her pocket knife had been cleaned of the caustic sap and was clipped to her right pocket. Everything else was in her inventory.
Her skin was still red and tender, but the blisters had receded as her health bar ticked upward. The memory of the pain was still fresh, though, and it was making her jumpy. Every rustle and crunch had her searching for movement. Her father had taken her on many camping and hunting trips when she was young. She’d always loved the wilderness, but she’d never been attacked by a plant before. She took a deep breath and centered herself. After a few deep breaths her nerves settled a bit.
Calmer, she took a closer look at the trees and bushes just outside the gate. Lulu helped by sniffing every tree. Identify Plants made an info box pop up for each one, but the only useful information it provided was a name. There were oaks, maples, walnuts, poplars, ash trees, and various other varieties she recognized, but there were also a number of tree types she’d never heard of before. Bilan Nut trees, ironwood, sylvanbower, argent roundleaf, and several others. Thankfully, she didn’t see any more amethyst strangle vines.
“Well, not all of the plants have turned carnivorous. That’s a good start. Now, how do we hunt down a source of corruption with no clues, and no handy mini-map?” She sighed. “We can’t just wander aimlessly and hope we stumble across it.” As she considered her options, she opened her attributes window and added the last 8 free attribute points to perception.
Energy flushed through her, but much more gently this time than the last. There was no pain, just the hot-and-cold tingle of magic. Her senses sharpened, and new information flooded in from her surroundings. She discovered that she’d made a very basic mistake. While she’d been examining the trees around her, she’d never thought to look up.
