Chapter 18: Ash in the air
I retreated inward, folding my outer vines into a protective dome, leaving only my sensory roots buried just beneath the soil like antennae.
My breath, if it could still be called that slowed. The territory was listening.
The ash thickened.
The enemy? It drifted from the canopy, sifted between the air like slow-motion embers. Not a fire. Not yet.
But the heat in the soil told a different story. It was soaking into the ground. Spreading. Cooking the topsoil alive, terraforming the soil I called home.
An intrusion. No, an invasion.
'Just what type of enemy is this?!' Tension bubbled within me like coiled muscles, heightening my adrenaline levels.
My tendrils whispered across the forest floor, slipping through brush and roots, touching the corpses it left behind. A shriveled moss-patch, veins seared black. A withered pitcher plant, cracked like dried leather.
Everything in its path was dry. Dead. Like someone had dragged a sunbeam through the jungle.
And then...
DING!