A Jaded Life

Wandering into the primal forest that had taken over what should have been fields was a fascinating experience. Some of the plants were reasonably similar to those we had encountered in the forest near our home while others were, well, they were neither reasonable nor similar to anything I had ever seen.

The strangling vines that acted far too much like snakes for my comfort were one thing, the noxious grass that constantly emitted some sort of haemorrhaging poison, trying to get people to pass out and rapidly bleed out was another, as were the shrubs that shot nail-thick spikes at anything approaching too close. But all these were, for lack of a better word, just a magically enhanced version of things plants could already do. Needles and thorns were common floral defences, as was poison. Strangling vines had usually strangled trees but with magic in the mix they didn’t need to limit themself.

On the other hand, there were strange stalks, with the fairly appropriate name Stalking Stalks, that could launch grain-like corns the size of a football at people. If it was only that, it wouldn’t be too bad but the grains could extrude tendril-like legs and acted like a dangerous cross between crab and spider, only instead of trying to bite or claw you, the grains tried to burrow their tendrils into your body and, from what I had seen when one hit a deer, use your body to germinate. There were things that just shouldn’t be.

Similar to the Stalking Stalks were the Parasitic Pollen, I had yet to see their origin but the pollen themself were bouncing balls the size of my fist that, well, bounced through the forest, recoiling off anything they hit with substantial force. We found out why they were named as they were when cutting one apart and finding a lamprey-like creature inside, only to have the creature try to take a bite out of Lia, who happily tore it apart. We had yet to find out what these Pollen were looking for but the way they bounced and actively tried to strike people wasn’t comforting. To make matters worse, their bouncing was obviously beyond a mere physical effect as they could use the contact to push off, either by having the creature inside use some sort of magic to directly accelerate or maybe by changing the properties of the outer shell. Whichever way they did it, they could bounce with enough force to break bones or tear flesh, making me quite wary of their existence.

The third new annoyance in the wonderful murder forest was something somewhat reasonable, at least compared to the other dangers. Having a pitcher plant that could emit a semi-magical scent to lure prey into its pitcher wasn’t too insane, such plants had existed before the change. Granted, that the pitcher was large enough to engulf deer or people was new, but it wasn’t as insane as minion-spawning plants that tried to burrow into your flesh.

I doubted I’d be able to forget the sight of a tendrilled grain digging into the squirming carcass of a deer any time soon, especially while knowing that the deer was already dead. And despite being dead, it was still squirming, making me wonder if the Withering Fungus and the Stalking Stalk had some sort of common ancestor, with one turning things into puppets with a fungal hivemind, the other by way of parasitic grains. Not a pleasant thought and a part of me was tempted to start hunting the stalks down but that would mean a lot of time spent in the forest. Maybe leaving it to others would be the thing to do.

Studying the forest with Luna was both amusing and horrifying. The amusing part came as we were observing the essence of these obviously magical plants and trying to figure out how the different elements we could see within them interacted. What made things a little bit difficult was that some plants contained elements that neither Luna nor I could fully figure out, they weren’t part of the same mental paradigm I was using, but given that the same was true for Mind Magic, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Furthermore, even if we knew the elements involved, it didn’t mean we automatically knew how they combined. The Haemorrhaging Grass for example held Blood Magic, Life Magic and Death Magic, all mixing and combining, with a little bit of Mind Magic thrown in for good measure. Now, given that we could channel all these forces, we decided to try and see what would happen if we tried to replicate the grass, just to see if we could.

While I had expected the attempt to fail, especially on the first try, nothing could have prepared me for the mechanism with which it did. The plants somehow ripped the life from everything around it, similar to the way our first experiment had ended, but as it did, it also blasted us with a headache that, if I understood the effect correctly, tried to give us aneurysms and kill us that way. Luckily, we had been fairly cautious, greatly limiting the amount of power we actually gave the thing, so things ended with a light nosebleed and a small headache, but the result had been unexpected.

Maybe I should begin to expect that any attempt at Soul Magic that also involved opposed magical forces to end up with some sort of deadly abomination that tried to kill everything and everyone around it. Amusingly, that might fit well with the idea of Frankenstein’s Monster, an abomination of Life and Death Magic, brought back from the dead only to turn insane and kill its creator.

A fitting lesson, even if my recollection of the story was limited to second or even third-hand accounts. Still, a lesson worth learning and remembering, maybe doubly worth it, given that it came from a time before its worth had been as literal as it was now.

Another interesting experience came with our ever-continuing attempts to create more viable, magical plants. So far, we hadn’t managed anything really complex, a few spongy fungi, and some more grasses, but nothing ground-breaking. It netted me a point each in Blood, Ice, Darkness, Water, and Wind Magic while Lightning Magic got three, as it worked surprisingly well when creating new Life. Or maybe Lighting Magic got the extra points because it was only level four when we started, I had barely been using the skill.

Still, working on these fascinating new plants was great and while my lessons in the strange runic algebra of Lady Hecate were slow and incredibly frustrating, the few things I could currently understand made up for their difficulty.

But these were the interesting and fascinating experiences in the forest of deadly plants. the good parts. The bad parts were what sent shivers down my spine and made me want to soar into the sky and never get back to this green hell, unless it was with the forces of Death and Winter at my back, ready to throw everything into a never-ending Ice Age, so the horrors would be sealed under an eternal glacier.

To make matters worse, over half of the horrifying parts were direct results of either my own experiments, but at least I was responsible for those, or the experimentation of either of my two daughters. Lia was happily experimenting with Vampirism, trying to figure out how to create stable, and hopefully obedient, vampiric creatures. So far, she hadn’t been successful to the best of my knowledge but I had helped with the disposal of some of her subjects when they were unstable. I had no idea how she came to the idea that the world needed blood-sucking squirrels and I had a feeling I shouldn’t ask. But when the result turned into something between a flying squirrel and a bat, only with massive teeth, a screeching cackle and trapped in a murderous frenzy, I made her promise to never repeat the experiment.

Similarly horrifying were Luna’s attempts to control the plants in the forest or, even worse, use their seeds and her Life Magic to rapidly grow new ones while trying to control them. Sure, part of the horror with these attempts was watching my dearly beloved daughter try and touch a vine we knew to be fond of strangling everything it could grasp, only for the expected to occur but I could help with the way these experiments failed. Staying nearby and destroying the plants was well within my capacities and after the strangler incident, I made her use a freshly grown vine to channel her powers through in these attempts.

No, the bigger horror came with her success. While I loved my daughter, watching her try to cross the deadly poison of the Haemorrhaging Grass with the delivery mechanism of the Stalkng Seed wasn’t something I wanted to watch. Far too indiscriminate and uncontrollable, as Luna had yet to learn how to control her creatures outside of her immediate area. No, the world really didn’t need plants that seeded the world with the equivalent of tactical chemical weapons. Luckily, I managed to contain that particular experiment but it gave me a healthy respect for the mayhem my younger daughter could create. Alongside a dose of fear.