Chapter Text
As soon as Alexander sinks his sword into the pod, it explodes, cracking open as parts of it go everywhere, one even hitting me square in the chest and sending me back, hitting a tree.
I wheeze, stumbling up to my feet as my vision becomes blurry. I struggle to catch my breath. I feel my stopwatch, which is usually cold as ice, start to heat up to a burning temperature, making my vision clear up faster as I grit my teeth in pain from it. It was warning me of a danger to come.
I look up at a large vine, the same as the ones all on the ground, and it comes crashing down. I roll away at the last second, and it falls directly where I was seconds ago.
“What the hell?!” I curse as I struggle to stand up. “Alexander? Are you ok?” I look around the area, my vision becoming clearer to see all the vines moving and writhing, suddenly a lot more alive than a plant should be.
I see Alexander held by his throat, suspended in the air. The vine has wrapped tight around his throat; not tight enough to cut oxygen flow but tight enough to hold him up. His hands are grabbing at the vine to try and pry it away, his feet kicking uselessly. His sword is somewhere down among all the churning sea of vines below him.
“Hunter! Get out of here, I can fight this bitch,” he growls, struggling more as his blue eyes start to shift into a dangerous golden yellow, the normally hidden markings covering his body starting to glow yellow and smoke.
“No. You'll destroy the whole forest.” I say. “I can do this.” I look at the vines around my feet, which are slowly curling up my ankles. “I’m not weak.”
I reach down to hold the scabbard that holds the borrowed sword with one hand, the other wrapping around the hilt of the blade. Alexander gasps as the vines tighten, his face slowly turning blue. In a split second, I lunge forward, in one swift movement pulling the sword from its sheath as I rush forward. I swing my sword, cutting down some of the vines that surged up in chorus with me lunging. The sliced parts turned to ash, and I continue forward, slicing and chopping at the vines as they attacked me.
The watch in my pocket continues to gradually heat up again, as I continue chopping at the vines. I know, if I stop, I’ll have a fate a lot worse than just asphyxiation.
“In the centre! Something came out of the weird pod thing when I stabbed it! Cut it apart and this should be solved!” Alexander yells with the last of his strength before fainting, face blue.
I turn to look at him, and that proves to be my fatal mistake. The vines lunge at my hand with my sword immediately, tying it to ground as my sword is flung out of the plant mass. “No!” I yell, struggling against the vines as they wrap around me.
Everything starts to turn to black as they form a horde around me, shackling me to it. They wrap around my whole body, leaving me almost unable to move. Then, as I start to give up hope, my pocket watch burns in my pocket. My eyes narrow. A plan forms in my head. I rip my hand out of the vines and shove it into my pocket, grabbing my watch even though it burns my hand, yanking it out. It opens on its own, and the face of the clock is glowing, the hands spinning.
I grin, a desperate but confident grin. “Fuck yes.” I focus my attention and power on the watch as I feel a sickening feeling, a feeling of weightlessness, and then I am right back where I was before I charged in. My sword in one hand, watch open in the other. “Try two.”
I click the watch closed, and time seems to start up again. I hear Alexander yell at me the same thing as before: “In the centre! Something came out of the weird pod thing when I stabbed it! Cut it apart and this should be solved!” This time I only nod in acknowledgement as I put my watch in my pocket. This time, I won’t fail.
Instead of immediately slicing the vines, I jump up this time, the vines rushing at me and missing. I launch off the vines, using them as a platform as I look down at the mess of plants. Then I realize what Alexander meant. In the centre. An orb, glowing. And holding that orb? A humanoid figure that looked like a girl, but her hair seemed to be what made up these vines. Her eyes, if you could call them that, were milky white flowers, her lower half seemed to be rooted to the ground.
I narrow my eyes as I land on a churning pile of vines, reminding me it wasn’t over yet. More vines came at me, and this time I sliced them apart, my sword moving a silver blur around me as I cut and sliced every vine that came near me.
I take a deep breath as I focus my powers yet again into the watch, this time for a different purpose. “Come to me, ancient spirits. Give me your knowledge and strength,” I chant, the shadows twining around me as I hear whispers in my ears, the hundreds of voices of the past in my ears. I exhale, and then launch forward, letting my actions be guided by the voices, as everything becomes a blur. I slash more vines, my strength now tenfold with the ghosts of past warriors helping me, making it quick work to get to the centre.
As I break through the surface, the plant creature looks at me with an expression that could mimic that of horror. “Surprise,” I say, my voice sounding like hundreds speaking at once.
The creature raises one hand, and a rush of vines launches at me. I jump back, but without realizing I jump straight into a wall of vines, which had built up to a shape that’s actually as thick and strong as an actual wall.
“...fuck” I say, before vines straight from that monster, the tips sharp as blades, skewer me. As my vision fades, my watch burns in my pocket, and with the last of my strength I pull it out and open it, and that same old sickening feeling of weightlessness and then darkness before I was right where I started again.
I click the watch shut. “Try three.” I say. I hear Alexander yell again, “In the centre! Something came out of the weird pod thing when I stabbed it! Cut it apart and this should be solved!” before fainting. This time I don’t even acknowledge it as I clutch my sword tightly and put the watch away. “This time I will win.”
I run forward, using what I’ve learned to bounce off the vines, getting high up. This time, I stay up, clinging to a branch of a tree, climbing along it to reach the middle of the vines without disturbing anything. I take a deep breath, this time channeling my power to move between the shadows as if they’re connected to me. I feel my body change, looking down at my skin to see it was clear, my bones visible through it. I then imagine myself moving through the shadows to appear beside that creature. And just like that, I'm There. The creature let out an ear piercing scream as, without a second thought, I slice straight through the orb it's guarding, and in an explosion of purple powder, all the plants wither and die, turning to ash, the same happening to the plant monster.
Alexander drops to the ground, looking dead, purplish black bruises covering his neck, his face ghostly white. “Oh wow you’re…uh dead.” I poke his cheek, but get no response.
I poke his cheek again. Still no response.
Again. Still, nothing.
“Oh, whatever. He’s probably fine.” I grab Alexander, grunting as I heave him over my shoulders. “Back home we go.” I tap my own watch that looks identical to Alexander’s watch, minus some stickers Alexander put on his. I hold my finger on the screen, before flicking it out. A portal appears, and I walk into it, Alexander over my shoulders.
As I get the same weightless feeling as my vision goes black once again, we arrive back in the same place as before, the summer camp looking area. I walk through the camp, only to see it in a mess, and deserted.
“Huh…that’s odd,” I note, and then continue walking onwards. It was still as lively and sunny out as before, so why wasn’t anyone here? The place wasn’t a mess, everything looked perfectly neat and organized.
Well, as organized as you’d ever get here. And that’s not saying much, it was still a complete mess as usual, but the kind of organized mess that’s easily understandable to those who can.
Alexander suddenly jerks upright, gasping, making me fall backwards on top of him making us both land on the dirt. “Ay!” I yell. “When you wake up, watch it!” He only snickers, jumping up and leaving me on the dusty ground. I stand up after him, dusting the dirt off.
“Was that really necessary?” I ask him, and he responds by laughing, “Oh, it wasn’t. I just wanted to!”
I sigh and turn away from him, starting to walk down the path. My golden haired ally quickly ran to walk beside me. “Hey, don’t you think it’s odd how no one is around?” I change the subject as we walk, and Alexander looks around.
“Huh…now that you mention it, it is!” Alexander looked puzzled as he replies to me, his eyes scanning the surrounding area. “Everyone is just..gone?”
“Let’s try going to the town, they could have answers there,” I reply. “Maybe everyone went there for some reason.”
Alexander nods. “Okay let’s go!” He quickly taps his watch, sending a portal in front of us. “We can’t exactly walk, since the whole floating island thing…so let’s go!” He jumps in, and I follow.
We exit the other side, and start walking again — taking a new path that was paved, unlike the dirt we walked on before. We headed towards the more bustling city-esque areas. As we walk for a few minutes, the surroundings turn into a city, a large (normally) bustling city, that was completely…empty.
Before either Alexander or I even get a chance to say anything, we get whisked away, right off our feet, by someone teleporting us.
We open our eyes, groaning and rubbing our heads, feeling woozy from the sudden change of space, only to notice where we were. A huge room, that looks like one of those study rooms from those magic movies, the ones with the huge bookshelves to the ceilings, a fireplace with a chair in front of it. But the most eye-catching part is the huge stained glass mural that makes up the entire east wall, which casts a rainbow light everywhere. And in the centre of the room, there’s a huge hourglass, with white and black sand, the top half filled with white sand, the bottom half filled with black; and as the sand moved from one side to the other, it changed.
There’s only one room close to this anywhere. Our boss’s room.