I Am A Carnivorous Plant

=Wowww, it looks like a buried fortress or something!=

“Careful, Miss Mellily, there should be trained guards with bows or magic stationed outside of the building.”

It had taken the better part of six hours for the two of them to reach the organization’s hideout. There was a moment near the end of their trek that Fendel had worried he might have led them the wrong way. He was fairly certain that his directions should have been correct, but with the urgentness of the situation combined with the fact that a literal monster was following closely behind him, Fendel was sure he wasn’t quite in his right mind. It was almost as if he’d found an oasis in a desert when he finally saw the building peeking out in the distance behind the treeline.

=Ooooh, bows huh? I’ve never had to deal with arrows before! Should I let one hit me and see how much damage it does? Ah, but it’d probably hurt, wouldn’t it?=

The plant-woman kept babbling on, just as she constantly had during almost the entirety of the trip. The only times that Fendel had been free of its incessant talking and questioning was during the few occasions when the monster had raced ahead to grab an egg out of a tree, or attacked some danger that they’d suddenly wandered towards. The practically unending monologue had mostly been seen as a minor annoyance by Fendel so far, but now that they’d made it to such a dangerous location, the monster’s casual and unserious nature was making him worried that he’d placed his dreams and wishes in the wrong creature’s hands.

Fendel’s doubts were proven wrong soon enough, however.

Like throwing a cat into a barrel of pigeons, the monster quickly descended upon the guards that watched the entrance. Limbs and heads flew away, as if a storm of a dozen blades had attacked them, and with the monster’s speed, there was no time for retaliation. Fendel doubted that things would have gone much differently even if they’d seen the plant-woman coming. Perhaps their deaths were less tragic precisely because they hadn’t seen their doom approaching.

Knowing that he was the reason that these guards had been killed in such a way put a knot inside of Fendel's abdomen that simply wouldn’t go away. He’d resolved himself to accept responsibility for this, and he knew it needed to be done to ensure not only the safety and freedom of himself and his own people, but even those future others that might have fallen into the organization's clutches. And yet, seeing the monster he’d set loose massacring on his orders felt just as heavy as if he’d done it with his own hands, justice be damned. He’d once been a warrior, and he’d taken his own share of lives before, but that was for survival, during the heat of the moment and in a rush of adrenaline; He’d never had to watch it happen so completely from a third person view. Fendel never would have imagined it to be the case, but watching others be killed with a sober and calm mind felt somehow worse to him.

But now it was too late. There was no telling the monster to stop and for him to give up. He’d already opened the box, already set the wheels in motion, and there was no turning back now. The only thing left for him to do was dutifully watch as the dark and righteous deed he requested was completed.

Still, watching the monster eat the bodies of those it had slain was truly stomach-turning.

Fendel did his best to avoid seeing too much of it, lest it haunt his dreams for the rest of his life.

After a small handful of time, the monster had finished consuming what it liked of the bodies and had seemingly gathered them into a pile to come back to later, so Fendel made his way to the building’s entrance, trying his hand at the door. Unsurprisingly it was locked and wouldn’t budge, and when he tried to search the pockets of the dismembered bodies, he was unable to find the key amongst their messy mass. He sent a resentful glance towards the monster, silently admonishing himself for not stopping it from eating before he’d had a chance to have a good search.

=Hmmm? Did you not find the key?=

“...No. I think you maybe might have eaten it.”

For a moment Fendel regretted speaking his mind to the monster. It had preferred when he was polite to it, and his words definitely sounded like laying blame. When the monster’s tentacles moved, Fendel flinched, sure that he would be the next to be killed and eaten. However, all the monster did was assume a thinking pose and rub at its stomach a few times, before suddenly striding towards the door. It whipped at the hinges with its tentacles in rapid succession, and with a loud clanging noise he could see bits of the metal that comprised the hinges flying away. Soon the door, with nothing left to keep it stuck in place, was easily pushed away by the monster’s tentacles, and collapsed with a loud bang on the ground.

No one had appeared from the inside during the previous scuffle, but Fendel was absolutely certain that the guards who were stationed inside should have heard the loud bang of the door. Even now, he could hear alarmed shouting coming from deep inside of the building. Still, the unworried monster only smiled and hummed, almost skipping as it made its way inside of the building, like a child heading towards a candy store.

~~~

The building was indeed quite large. The ground floor looked like it was mostly used for business, and even had a small courtyard in the middle of it with a few decorative trees growing. However, Fendel had experienced the doorway located off to the side that led down, down into the depth of the earth to the dungeon where they kept the poor souls they bought and captured until they had decided what to do with them. As they moved along, constantly skirmishing with the guards, Fendel's eyes searched left and right, doing his best to remember exactly where the dungeon doorway they needed was located.

He’d remembered the guards inside the building being even more well-armed than the others out front, and these ones should have already known that there was an intruder in the building from all the noise that the front door falling had made. And yet, all of that meant nothing before the nimble might of the monster. It didn’t take long before more than 20 guards fell at its feet, bloodied, broken, stabbed through, and disfigured, and all the while the plant woman’s neutral face never once changed. In between the men's screams Fendel could hear its voice humming, and occasionally he could even hear it giggle as if it were truly having fun. The small song it sang while gathering the bodies afterwards, even the ones that it had left at the entrance, and put them all in a pile in the courtyard, sounded so out of place for the gorey scene that he was being forced to witness.

=Theeere we are! Alright then, Fen, where do we go next?=

The cheery voice of the murderous plant-woman made Fendel want to grimace, but he dutifully led it towards the door that he'd finally managed to locate, and descended down into the large, cave-like dungeon. He’d steeled himself for the awful scenes from his memory that he was sure to witness once more as he made his way down the stairs, but he was unable to stop himself from feeling the heartbreak all over again once he saw it. People, human beings, both young and old, tied up and forced into cages like livestock. Pregnant women, sick children, and the dying elderly, all subjected to tormented existences. He could remember when he was younger, when he’d had to suffer through the exact same treatments. His wounds before he’d been captured might have been great at the time, but at least he’d been an able-bodied young man before he’d been taken away; He couldn’t imagine how much worse this sort of treatment could have been for the weak.

=Oh wow. It really sucks down here, huh?=

The monster tapped its foot against the hard packed rocky dirt on the ground a few times and waved one of its tentacles through the musky air, as if fanning it away. Fendel felt a similar urge, feeling the putrid smelling, damp and clammy air trying to stick against him. It was like they were standing in a decaying swamp made up of piled on despair and death. All that Fendel could do was nod in agreement to the monster’s words, too upset to give a proper reply. It was no wonder there wasn’t a single guard stationed down here to watch the prisoners; There wasn’t a single person who’d want to be in such a disgusting and depressing place for very long.

=Alright. I guess the first order of business is to set everybody free?=

The monster cheerfully clapped its tentacles together and began heading towards the nearest cage. The group of three behind the bars trembled and cried out, afraid of the odd monstrosity with the long, snake-like tendrils that was reaching out towards them. Fendel rushed forward to comfort them, desperately appealing to them so that they wouldn’t be more distressed than necessary. Even after the group had been released, they stayed huddled together in fear inside of the cage, unwilling to rush in the direction of the scary monster. Even when the plant-woman left to go take care of another cage, they still didn’t dare to move, keeping their eyes pinned towards the thing in fear.

That’s not to say that everyone who was released was so willing to stay so still.

There were those that tried to rush out of the dungeon as soon as they were freed. However, before they were able to get very far, the monster easily grabbed them and gently pulled them away from the stairs. For a moment Fendel tried to protest, putting his fear aside once more for the sake of the people, but before he could get many of the words out of his mouth, the monster pulled one of the people trapped in its tentacles closer, as if studying them, and spoke.

=Huh. You guys are really skinny and weak right now, aren’t you? This one’s even got some pretty bad wounds… You’ll never make it very far from here like that! Guess that means I’ll have to fix it.=

Its odd legs unraveled and drilled into the densely packed ground, causing the onlookers in the room to stiffen, and a moment later something began to grow. There, in the middle of the hallway a few feet away from the monster, three small shining saplings quickly sprouted and grew, growing at an alarming rate until only a few minutes later they became lovely little trees, just slightly shorter than the cave-like ceiling. Their branches hung low and heavy from the several small clusters of reddish-purple berries that grew from them. Fendel could practically hear the mouths of every captive in the room watering. It came as no surprise, knowing how the organization only fed them enough to keep them just barely alive.

=There you go, those grapes should be good enough to tide you guys over! If you end up eating through them all then tell me and I’ll grow you guys some more. And now~!=

Suddenly the monster pulled the man it had been inspecting even closer, causing him to cry out. The cord of bell-shaped flowers that decorated its head began to glow, and a small teardrop fell down onto the man. A moment later his screaming all but stopped, being replaced with him perplexedly yelling that his wounds had all disappeared. It took a moment, but Fendel eventually tore his eyes away from the miracle-like scene, and scanned the faces of the others inside of the room. Sure enough, perhaps they still looked suspicious and confused, but not a single one of them looked as scared as they had before. He was sure it would only be a matter of time before they latched onto the mystical monster for salvation, just as he had.