Broken Lands

The answer to Sophia’s question was fast. The woman opened her mouth as if she was about to speak, but no words came out of her mouth.

Instead, a long, leafless brown vine unrolled from where the woman’s tongue should have been. It extended all the way to her waist, where it wrapped around one of the lines extending from the knot at the woman’s waist.

That was enough for Sophia. She was ready for a fight and it was here. She launched a Force Blast from her hand and a mirror of it from the throwing knife that floated next to her. She didn’t bother to aim carefully; as far as she could tell, it didn’t matter all that much where the first few attacks hit. They’d cause miniscule damage below where they hit as they were blocked by the enemy’s shield, and the shield seemed to be damaged roughly the same amount no matter where it was hit.

It nagged at her for a moment that she’d used her hand; she was supposed to know better than that, to simply be able to manifest spells from an arbitrary point in her aura’s radius. Sophia pushed the feeling away; it was easier this way for now and she would practice when they weren’t in a fight.

The concern vanished when the pair of spells connected with the woman. One tore a hole in her shoulder, while the other hit her upper leg and removed a chunk of flesh. Neither injury was likely to be fatal on an ordinary person, but both were unexpected. Sophia really had expected them to damage her shield and that was it.

Inside the holes, Sophia could see something move, something that clearly didn’t below as part of a person. Somehow, the vines were animating her from the inside, even though they weren’t visible on the outside except as small ornaments. It was creepy and wrong in a way Sophia had never seen before.

The term “cutting” that Lillah used suddenly seemed to make a lot more sense. That wasn’t a person anymore; it was simply meat more or less animated by a plant. Somehow, the stories and even movies didn’t actually manage to capture the horror of seeing a person turned into a puppet.

The woman didn’t react to the injuries at all; it was like she was totally unhurt. She didn’t even stagger. Instead, the vines that had been wound around her waist seemed to lunge across the room towards the group.

Dav was only barely slower than Sophia in his reaction, but rather than place a thorn-throwing beacon, he decided to charge towards the woman. In a way, that was lucky, because the vines curved towards him instead of continuing towards the others. Two of them looped around his right arm and started to drag him in the direction he’d already been headed.

Somehow, Dav managed to keep his feet and even slow his pace, but he was now playing tug-of-war with the vines instead of slicing them. He tried, but with his sword arm bound he simply didn’t seem to be able to cut the vines that restrained him.

Sophia felt a sudden warmth and support from behind her. She could see a little better, tell where the vines were a little easier, and she was fairly certain that her spells would work just a little bit better. That had to be Moti’s spells, and they were a surprise. Any one of those effects would be useful; all three in a single spell was huge, especially if it applied to everyone.

An arrow sped past Sophia and impacted on the girl’s chest, more or less where her heart should be. It didn’t penetrate quite as far as either of Sophia’s spells, but even from across the room, Sophia could hear the crack as a rib broke from the impact.

Neither woman nor the vines reacted.

“Ignore the woman!” Rae Quinn shouted loudly as she turned and ducked behind Sophia. “She’s dead, everything is the corpsevine, we have to kill that to stop this! I’m trying to see if there’s something central we can kill, but for now just chop them up!”

That was not great news at all. The best person they had for chopping was Dav, and his sword was unusable for the moment. Rae and Moti weren’t good at directly damaging things and Amy had the same problem as Sophia would with her spells: she’d need to be very precise. It might well be worse for Amy.

Sophia grumbled to herself and did the only thing she could think to do. She threw another pair of Force Bolts, but this time she targeted the vines between Dav and the cutting. One of them snapped under the pair of impacts, but that didn’t immediately give Dav his freedom back. It did mean that Sophia could see well enough to tell that there were two more vines they’d have to remove before he’d be completely free.

Dav yanked on the vines wrapped around his arm as he pulled a knife from his side, the smaller (but still not small) one he’d bought for places where his sword was too large. It was obvious that he wasn’t left-handed as he nearly missed both of the remaining vines. The tip of the knife hit one of the taut vines and sheared most of the way through it, enough that another tug snapped what little was left.

The vine-filled cutting swayed forward, then back. Her motion was wrong, unsteady yet sturdy. At Dav’s second yank, she staggered forward. The movement revealed more vines, or more likely roots, wrapped around her legs under the skirt of her dress. They writhed as they trailed along the floor, deprived of the locations they’d been rooted.

The vines that extended from the cutting’s waist were joined by the false tongue in an attempt to batter Dav into submission. As she swayed, she pulled Dav back and forth and lashed out at him with all the vines that could reach him. None got through his shield, but it looked intensely unpleasant and Sophia was certain that it would make doing anything harder.

A half-seen light that seemed more magical than real hit her from the side. Sophia had to assume the light was another ghost directed by Moti. There was no obvious effect, but if it was like Moti’s first spell there wouldn’t be. It would make the vines easier to deal with but clearly wasn’t enough to handle them on its own.

An arrow sheared through the last of the vines that extended from the cutting’s waist towards Dav. Unlike Sophia’s, Amy’s aim was clearly aimed at cutting away as much of the vine as possible, because the arrow hit right next to the cutting instead of near Dav. With the way the cutting was moving Dav all over while it stayed as steady as it could, that made all too much sense.

Dav stumbled to the left. His shoulder impacted with a cracking noise that sounded like he’d probably have a bruise but hopefully not a broken collar bone.

“There’s a knot of something in her head,” Rae called out. She wasn’t as loud this time and she sounded a lot less certain. “I think it might be what’s letting a plant fight like that?”

Sophia groaned to herself. If she’d known that when they started, she might have been able to take the monster out without it throwing Dav around. They’d learned a lot about corpsevines during this fight and it made Sophia wish she’d thought to ask more about them from Rensyn.

Regrets wouldn’t help win the fight. Sophia concentrated and sent out a third pair of Force Bolts. This time, she aimed at the cutting’s nose. She wasn’t sure where in the head to aim, so the middle of the head seemed like as good a place as any. The bolt from ehr hand hit squarely on target, but the one from her Animated Blade was off by enough that it seared into the cutting’s forehead instead.

The cutting no longer had a nose and the skin on the forehead where her second hit landed was also missing, but the cutting’s skull was chipped rather than penetrated. Sophia knew that would have badly harmed a human but it didn’t seem to do much to the cutting. She needed to penetrate better. At least there was a weak point now; that should help a lot.

Just as she was thinking that, one of Amy’s arrows hit the skull exactly where Sophia’s Force Bolt had weakened the bone. It barely slowed as it sliced into the cutting’s head.

The cutting froze for a moment, then turned away from Dav. It took a clumsy step forward, followed by another. Strangely, the tongue-vine hung limply even though the two remaining waist-vines reached forward and strained towards Amy.

Dav dove for the sword he’d dropped somewhere in the mad scramble to free his arm, then whipped around in a whirling strike that had all the power and precision of a haymaker. If he connected, he was going to badly damage the cutting, but it had all the time in the world to get out of the way of the highly telegraphed attack.

It didn’t even try.

Despite one more step forward from the cutting, Dav’s sword hit exactly where he’d aimed: the cutting’s neck. It sheared through the flesh and vines at the front, then caught on the spine and threw the cutting’s entire body backwards before the sheer force involved managed to separate the cutting’s head from her body. Almost immediately afterwards, Dav’s sword hit the wall and filled the storeroom with the loud clang of metal on stone.

“Did that do it?” Dav sounded almost out of breath, which couldn’t be true; he was in better shape than that. It had to be the adrenaline.

Sophia watched the body for a long moment. When it didn’t move, she relaxed a little. “I think so.”

“Mostly.” Rae Quinn’s answer was far from definite, but her tone of voice was finally confident. “It’s still alive, as much as something like that lives, but you cut off all of its vines, except for the tongue one, and that one doesn’t seem to work. I’m pretty sure you can actually kill it if you find whatever it is in the head that’s actually controlling everything.

“That might be our best evidence for the Registry,” Amy commented. Sophia wasn’t sure if that was an objection to destroying whatever it was or concurrence that they needed to find it. Both seemed possible.

“I don’t care what Lillah said about the cuttings not taking people over,” Dav said with a slight shudder. “That was a little too close for comfort. I’m all for cutting this thing into pieces until you say it’s really dead, whatever we need to tell the Registry. From what Rensyn said, reporting back that we fought a vine-monster in the body of a woman next to the West Conservatory is probably all we need.”

“We didn’t do very well,” Sophia agreed. “That could have gone a lot better. I think we were overconfident. I know I was. This wasn’t as easy to fight as the beavers.”

“Beavers?” Amy sounded interested. “You’ll have to tell that story later. What do we do now?”

“Bag the head and get out of here?” Rae suggested. “Or leave the head and take an arm or something. That might be safer.”

Dav looked a little green at the suggestion, though that was more a matter of expression than actual color change.

Sophia didn’t feel much better about it; it made sense, but she didn’t like it. “An arm, I think. Let’s make sure there are plant fibers visible; I’m pretty sure I saw some inside. Does anyone have a bag?”

She really, really didn’t want to use her backpack for this.