The Stone Heart's Lament
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There was somethingpulling on his leg. That was the first thing Rashari realised as he slowlyreturned to consciousness. He blinked open his eyes. The air rippled in frontof his face, warping and twisting in strange swirling patterns, like blobs ofoil swimming on the surface of a bowl of still water. Colours throbbed againsthis eyeballs, lurid and brilliant, driving spikes of pain into his brain. Hishead ached and his stomach roiled. He could just make out the shadowed hulks oftrees and the occasional spectral glow of a clump of toadstools in the inkydark distance. He was in a forest, then, or maybe a swamp. The air tasted offresh turned earth, mulch and decay. He tried to lift his head to get a bettergrasp of his surroundings (and in so doing realised that he was laying facefirst on the ground). It was then that he felt another tug on his leg. Risingup on his elbows he twisted around to glance down at his feet.

“Ahh!”

Scrambling to sit up hekicked out violently, at the...thing...thathad a hold of his foot. It was a vine, dark green and traced with purple-blackveins. The vine was wrapped around his ankle three times and it pulsed as itmoved, snaking higher up his calf. It was about as thick around as his wrist,and strong; it didn’t budge when he kicked at it with his free foot. The lengthof the vine snaked along the ground several feet before slinking down into adeep pit. That was not the worst of it though. Oh no. The worst part was theplant. The bloody gigantic plant risingup out of the same hole in the ground the vine disappeared into. It was thesize of a child and its bulbous head was mounted with vivid orange petals.Leathery purple leaves stretched out from its base and a host of sinuousvine-like tendrils writhed and bobbed around the giant flowered head, snake-like.Some of the waving tendrils had their own smaller flower heads. Slimmer vinescriss-crossed over the ground, rising from the pit to snare unlucky prey, muchin the way Rashari had been snared. Madame Chimera lay on the ground a few feetaway. One long serpentine vine was coiled around her waist, drawing her closerand closer to the pit. Her hair was snarled with fallen leaves and petals andher limbs flopped uselessly as she was dragged along.

Rashari surgedforward, acting without thinking. He lunged toward Madame Chimera, only to havehis foot whipped out from under him by the vine constricting around his ankle.He fell heavily, chin hitting the ground as he smacked down face first. Theimpact rattled his brain in the cage of his skull. He kicked at the vine,stamping down on the end of the vine with his free foot as he tried to pull histrapped foot out from the coils. The vine closed around his leg, squeezing, movingwith him as he struggled. He clawed at it with his fingers, almost recoiling atthe hot, rubbery texture of the vine’s flesh. Under his nails the vine’s outerskin flaked away leaving behind shallow runnels that filled up with sluggishred fluid. It stank like rotting blood and burned Rashari’s hands when ittouched his skin.

Above him a swayingtendril shuddered, whipping back and forth through the air. Its flowered headopened, petals peeling back, and a cloud of orange spores erupted in the air.Rashari threw up his arms, covering his face. The hideous reek of rotting meatand rancid blood hit him like a mallet between the eyes. He gagged, biting downon his coat sleeve. He could feel the orange spores landing on his clothes, hislegs, in his hair. They caught like burs and stung his scalp. Gods alone knewwhat they would do to him if he breathed them in. Instinctively he knew that hehad to avoid breathing any into his lungs. The vine wrapped around his ankleyanked him forward. He was dragged toward the edge of the pit, right under thebobbing flower heads waving and dancing above him. The smell wasoverwhelmingly, sickeningly, eye-wateringlyawful. So bad it was stunning, leaving him almost too dazed to fight.

His coat tailsbunched up around his ears, pieces of stone and broken twigs digging into hisspine he left shallow tracks in the soil as he clawed the ground. Another sharptug and his feet were dangling over the edge of the pit. He kicked and squirmedand flipped over onto his belly. He managed to wriggle a few inches away fromthe edge, and out of the clutches of whatever hideous thing waited at thebottom (because of course there was something even worse at the bottom; thatwas just how these things went). His hand closed around a stick, short andblunt, but solid in his hand. A second vine, as wide as his forearm, lanceddownward and snaked around his throat.

He came face to facewith a lurid orange flower the size of his own head. It hung in the air infront of him, swaying with a viper’s grace. The middle of the flower was fullof protruding barbs, fat as a man’s thumb. The barbs glistened with a foulsmelling liquid, undoubtedly as poisonous as it was odorous. The flower’soffensively orange petals quivered; it almost seemed like it was watching him.The vine wrapped around his throat pulsed in time with his own franticheartbeat. The flower moved closer, its movements graceful and obscene. Thickglobules of stinking poison dripped from the twitching barbs in the centre. Thesmell made his eyes tear; the stench filling his senses like the vanguard of aninvading army. The flower’s petals flared like a cobra’s neck and the vine squeezeddown around his throat. He struck out with the stick. It was an awkward blowwithout much power, but the impact was solid.

The flower’s head wasknocked to the side. The spray of razor sharp barbs aimed at his face perforatedthe ground an inch to the right of his ear. Dropping the stick he wrapped hishands around the flower’s stem, just under the head. The flower whipped andwrithed like an actual snake. He grappled with it, keeping the head up and awayfrom his face as it spat out another wave of poison coated barbs. The vinecontracted around his throat even further (He thought his eyeballs might popright out of the sockets). Ugly black and yellow spots exploded his vision intoa million dancing fragments of light and shadow. His pulse thundered like awaterfall in his ears. Somehow he managed to get to his knees, the floweringvine still doing its level best to throttle him to death. He was losing thestrength in his hands, unable to keep his grip on the writhing flower. He onlyhad one weapon left, and only seconds before he asphyxiated. He opened hismouth wide, jerked his head forward, and bit into the vine’s pulsing flesh.

Hot, scalding liquidexploded like battery acid on his tongue, filling his mouth with indescribablefoulness. The vine sprang loose from his throat, but not before Rashari saw thepumping red hole his teeth had left. Horribly human-seeming blood gushed fromthe bite mark as the flowering vine recoiled, its head lashing back and forth,shedding blood and petals into the air. Rashari spat out the lump of plantflesh he’d bitten loose, gasping and choking as he collapsed onto his hands andknees on the ground. Blind he groped on the ground and seized up the stick he’ddropped. He brought the stick down on the vine still wrapped around his ankle.He struck it once, twice, thrice, not even caring if he broke his own ankle inthe process.

The entire plantreared, its many swaying tendrils moving in frenzy. Another wave of noxiousspores filled the air and a second flowered vine struck, arcing down throughthe air with terrifying speed. Rashari reacted on instinct and smashed thestick into the flower’s poisonous face. A half dozen broken barbs rained downon the ground around him. He seized one between his index and pointer fingers,so the pointed end protruded from his closed fist like a claw and drove thebarb into the vine around his ankle. He stabbed the vine again and again,leaving bloody, oozing canyons in the plant’s flesh.

“Two can play at thatgame,” He snarled finally kicking his leg free of the shredded vine. Hescrambled across the ground, reaching Madame Chimera’s side, using his body tocover hers as a wave of stinging spores and poison barbs erupted from theplant. He felt several of the barbs strike into his back, but none managed topenetrate the tough leather of his coat. He stabbed at the vine coiled aroundFantel with the barb he still held pinched between his fingers.

The plant rearedagain and struck at him with one of the primary tendrils. The force of the blowsent him rolling across the clearing in a disordered tangle of arms and legsuntil he hit a tree. The impact ignited starbursts behind his eyes. A vinewhipped up from the ground and snagged his foot once more. It yanked him acrossthe ground with enough force he thought his leg might pop loose of his hip. Theplant wasn’t done. He was whipped up off the ground and slammed back downagain. His head struck the hard earth and the world went black for preciousseconds. He opened his eyes and saw a wave of poison barbs coming straight forhis face. He threw up his arms, covering his head. Most of the barbs imbeddedin his sleeves but one struck home, impaling the soft flesh of his left handjust below the little finger. Rashari swore and wrenched it out of his skin.Blood welled up from the wound and spilled over the filaments of quick-silverrunning under his skin. Immediately his hand started to feel hot, a tinglingnumbness creeping in on the tail end of the initial shock. Gripping the barbbetween his fingers Rashari slashed his arm through the air warding off anothersnake-like vine. He rolled onto his stomach, digging his fingers into the soilas another bone jarring tug on his ankle hauled him closer to the pit edge.

“SMITH!” Hollering atthe top of his lungs Rashari kicked and clawed at the ground. He could feelmore of the creeping vines wrapping around his legs, lashing them together andclimbing higher and higher up his body. He couldn’t replace purchase. His legswere already over the edge. His fingernails tore through the mud, but there wasnothing he could do. The last thing he saw before he was pulled down into thepit was a flash of metallic gold as Smith dropped down from a nearby tree intothe clearing. Then he was over the edge, suspended for a terrifying secondbetween falling and floating, left dangling in the plant’s tentacle grip. Hesaw dark earth and the rough fringe of grass framing the top of the pit andbelow him...something so horrible it stopped his heart, froze his thoughts.

Two huge, bulbouseyes looked up at him from the bottom of the pit. They sat in a face that wasas wide as a plate, filling the entirety of the bottom of the pit. It lookedlike someone had stretched out a canvas of mottled, flaccid skin across thebottom of a well and painted upon that obscene canvas a parody of a human face.There was no nose, save for two quivering holes for nostrils above a massively distendedmouth. The lips were torn and bleeding and the tongue flicked up and out,probing the air. The mouth stretched into a hungry, slavering grin. Blunt teethstained brown with blood and spoiled flesh poked out from that grin at oddangles. Vines and tendrils rose from the face like unruly facial hair.

The face smiled up athim as if it recognised him, and its gelatinous eyes fixed him with a baleful,vengeful regard. Its green tinged tongue flicked out to wet its torn lips. Itdidn’t speak (thanks be for small mercies) but somehow he knew it was going toenjoy eating him. The reek of decaying meat and old blood rising from its mouthwas even worse than the smell above ground. A swarm of short, hair-like vines burstforth from its cheeks wrapping around his legs and arms and drawing him downtoward that smiling mouth. The longer vines released him. Rashari couldn’tmove, couldn’t even gather his thoughts to try and move. He was hypnotised bythe bright glow of those wet, glittering blue eyes and the slow, greedy motionsof the huge tongue. (Of all the horrible ways he might have imagined he woulddie – and he had suspected that he might die horribly given his life style –being eaten by a humanoid plant had never once made the list.)

No time to be ingested! Smith jumped andlanded on Rashari’s shoulder, skittered down his spine, and stabbed the ends ofhis eight sharp legs into the thickest of the tendrils wrapped around Rashari’swaist.

Rashari had time toyell before the creature released him and he fell straight toward that gapingmouth. He landed hard, bouncing off the rubbery skin of the giant face. Twistingto the side as the reaching tongue lashed out toward him.

Smith landed a momentlater, his sharp edged legs digging into the monster’s forehead, drawing smallwells of thick red blood. Rashari felt the undulation under his hands and feetas the monster’s jaws worked, shifting and distending to bite at him. Its giantnostrils flared, scenting him. He scrambled to his feet, the soles of his bootsscuffing over bouncy, stretchy flesh. He clutched at the pit wall at his back,searching for handholds, exposed roots, pieces of stone, anything he could use to help climb out of here. The monster lashedits tongue to the side, knocking his feet out from under him. He slipped, oneof his heels striking against a giant tooth. Under his feet the monster openedits mouth wide and he teetered.

Smith jumped from themonster’s forehead to land neatly on the softer flesh just above the flarednostrils. He pranced back and forth in a bizarre jig, stabbing the ends of hisfeet into the monster’s face. The monster rolled its jaws, massive facecontorting in pain. Rashari was able to use the movement to roll clear of itsmouth. He caught a fistful of the smaller vines rising up from its cheeks, andyanked on them, tearing them loose. They came free with a sickening suckingsound. The monster’s big saucer eyes swam with tears. Vines from above the pit dovetoward them. They pricked and poked at him, driving Rashari around the edge ofthe pit, while the monster’s mouth opened and closed, causing the flesh of itsface to ripple. At any moment Rashari thought he might slip, lose his footingand then, quite literally, lose his foot to the monster’s jaws. (The part ofhis brain that never quite lost a detached nonchalance toward near deathexperiences noted that this was, by far, the weirdest potentially fatalencounter he’d ever had.)

Smith was having alark. He leapt and twisted like a flea riding a dog’s back, his feet drivinginto the monster’s face again and again. Blood arced through the air. Rasharicaught one of the longer flowered vines as it lunged downward into the pit.Pivoting to the side just as the vine struck, he caught it in a modifiedbear-hug and grabbed the flower by its petals, forcing the head down until itwas hovering over the monster’s mouth. When the monster opened its jaws wide,tongue lunging upward, Rashari shoved the flower into its mouth just as thosejaws clamped down. The monster convulsed, jaws opening on a silent scream.Rashari seized Smith in mid-prance.

What – No! Rashari slammed Smith down, feet first, intoone of the monster’s huge quivering eyes.