Chapter 53: The Burnt Forest
After all that, I decided to leave the mountains. Not out of cowardice. Out of caution. The winged creature was still prowling around, and I didn’t want to get killed a second time this year.
So I headed toward the west coast. Lysara by my side, the egg well protected. We descended the volcanic slopes, and soon, the scenery changed.
The black stone gave way to twisted woods. Despite the suffocating heat, forests still grew here. Trees with black bark, cracked trunks, twisted, their leaves singed at the edges as if burned by a giant’s breath.
A vegetation of survivors. Like us. But the reptilians were no longer there. Here, something else reigned.
The Barkcrawler.
I saw it for the first time hidden inside a hollow tree. Almost motionless. Then it moved.
A giant parasitic plant. A tentacular body, sprawling over several meters, covered with blackened bark, bone hooks, root-like nerves, and grainy pustules.
It insinuated itself everywhere. In dead trunks. In crevices. In the forest itself. And in terms of power... it easily matched a reptilian. But it wasn’t brute strength that made it dangerous. It was patience.
Lysara had been caught off guard the first time. The Barkcrawler had sprung from a dead tree, its bark tentacles striped with bone hooks snapping in the air like living whips. She had stumbled for a moment. Just one. But she had reacted with brutal calm.
A hammer blow. A crack of shattering bone. And the thing collapsed, split like a rotten trunk.
I watched her silently.