A day later, Nic was brought before Samuel de Vega again. This time, he was barely recognizable. The vines had crawled into his throat and scraped the soft inner lining with every breath. He felt weak, his body constricted from within.

And his left hand was covered by hideous burns.

“I hear you tried to make it through the fire.” De Vega said with clear amusement. “How’d that work out for you.”

“Pretty well, fucker.” Nic spat back.

“By now, you should have the sense to give up on escaping the hard way. Pay me what I’m owed, and you get to live…”

“I swear…” Nic shook his head. “It really is amazing how you’ll just talk to nobody.” Inkspur wasn’t here. Where was the little wyvern..?

There were only bad answers.

“Oh, the dragon?” Finally the idiot picked up on Nic’s problem as Nic just sighed in exasperation. “He took off as soon as he left his letter. Didn’t seem to trust me to keep my word…”

And who would? This guy bled the twin odors of cheap cologne and obvious backstabs. The kind of person who’d congratulate themselves for making twice as many enemies twice as quickly as they needed to.

“But the letter said enough. Your people will be allowed to collect you in two days. There will be no hand-off. They will come here and collect you directly from me…”

He gazed down at Nic.

“My main concern is you’ll die before then…”

Nic held out his shackled hands. Over the last day, the flowers tying his wrists together and stabbing into his flesh had multiplied. Now the bindings extended up to his elbows.

His meaning was clear.

Wanna untie me?

De Vega smirked. It seemed to be the natural position of his mouth, oozing across his face and tilting upwards to press a crescent shadow dimple into his right cheek. “No. No I don’t think so.”

He pushed a small bowl across the table. Inside was a charcoal-black pill. “Take this. It will slow the advance of the flowers. I spent a lot of money on it too…”

Nic held back from rolling his eyes, but only barely. Slipping the pill into his mouth he wedged it with his tongue into the small, dimpled space where his two serpentine teeth were retracted back into his skull.

When he fake-swallowed and opened his mouth, there was no trace. Score one for his bizarre crossbreed anatomy.

“Excellent. You can go…”

With that their audience ended, and Nic was once again trudged off towards his confinement.

---

On the way there, Nic spotted the birds. They were crowding over the rooftops, arriving in swarms, settling down to croak and caw. The guards saw it too. In an instant their captain drew her saber, her eyes sweeping over the eaves of the buildings. People on the street saw the drawn blade and shrank back from the scene.

On the crows hopped forward and shouted out. “Lord Winterhome! Lo-oord Wii-iinterho-ome!”

Instantly the entire flock was mimicking his words. The name Winterhome filled the city streets.

“Ii-iinskpur says, the huu-uumans, the huu-uumans tried to traa-aap him. He caa-aannot come himself, but he saa-aays, he says he’s foo-oound whaa-aat you see-eek.”

Nic grimaced. He expected as much, but the news had its silver lining.

The blonde woman glanced at him furiously. “Tell them to shut up. Now, or I take your head off.”

Her saber swung to his neck. Instantly the flock began to scream, breaking into the air and swarming in a vast circle of dark wings, their croaking shrieks of outraged deafening the guards.

“ENOUGH!” Nic shouted, and instantly silence returned.

It was an even more stunning sight, the circle of wings above, when it happened without a sound. Eerie shadows drifted across every upturned face.

“Now, listen to me. You can’t cause any more trouble or they’ll just kill me. But…” There was growing triumph in his voice. “I’m going to drop something. All you need to do is bring it to Inkspur. Tell him…” The woman was getting suspicious, and Nic rushed to get the words out as the blade’s tip pressed into his soft, slimy skin.

“Tell him to give what he found and what I gave him to our talkative, oozy friend. That’s all!”

On cue, the birds lifted into the sky, wings beating as they ascended upwards and were gone. Nic was left alone with his captors.

The saber slowly lowered.

The march towards the prison resumed, and while Nic stumbled once or twice, there were no more interruptions. Nobody noticed that, the second time he fell to the street, he left behind a small glob of living slime pressed into the ground.

Nobody except the crow who hopped along and picked it up.

And of course the fragment of ooze itself, which had spent all day listening to Nic’s plan over and over.

---

Nic returned to the prison to find a large escort of dryads awaiting him. For once, their leader spoke aloud, her green lips producing a strange and resonant voice like an entire hive of bees buzzing their wings.

“You will no longer be allowed in the outer garden. You have meddled with the fire, and shown disregard for your own life.” She frowned. “If you kill yourself, that is one thing, but you would also kill the child growing inside you.”

Nic didn’t say anything. There was a risk the dryads would actually understand him.

After all, the only real way they could have arrived in a town like this was being drawn from a Spatial Bubble, like the crows or the toad-man. And all of the System’s appointed town custodians had the ability to understand languages.

For once he kept his mouth shut as they led him inside and barred the door. He wandered among the trees for a while, playing innocent, letting time take their attention elsewhere…

When nobody was looking he dug a finger into his mouth and pulled the pill out from its hiding place. It was a little spit-soaked and some of the outer coating had dissolved, but he was confident that it hadn’t done too much harm.

Most likely de Vega had been planning to poison him with some slow-acting toxin. Something that would only kill him after he’d payed the ransom and perhaps even been allowed to walk away.

It was clear these humans had lived in a soft, peaceful world before, if they thought these kinds of tactics were original or surprising.

Still… As he walked among the pine trees and soft soil...

Nic could feel the tension in his heart growing. His plan was in motion, but if he didn’t get the last thing he needed, everything else was pointless. His great escape would end and he’d be doomed to die as fertilizer for some dryad brat…

He shook his head until the thoughts left him behind.

No.

He was just doubting himself because his body was damaged. The weakness in his limbs was growing, and without his dominating strength to rely upon, Nic was beginning to feel acutely the subtle movements of the vines crawling within his skin. It was just stress, just anxiety…

He closed his eyes and breathed, slowly, making sure not to expand his lungs so much they brushed against the cage of tangling roots. Just slow, patient breath, pushing his tension out with each exhale until he opened his eyes again.

Now they were clear.

Now he was ready.

He found the insect twins lurking in the dark, playing their games of chance. Where they’d gotten the bones to carve the dice from Nic could only guess- maybe there were dozens of bodies buried in the gardens, if you dug deep enough.

Maybe it was a past prisoner who was rattling in their chitin-covered palms.

Nic smiled. “Hey…”

“Go away. Die faster. Eat shit.” They laughed. Insect devils had colorful, beetle-shell green masks instead of normal faces, with a spider’s mandibles in place of lips. When they laughed, those mandibles clawed at the air with their strange curved fangs, exposing the toothless pink gums behind.

Nic kept smiling as he took a step forward and, pretending to be interested in their game, reached for the dice.

Instantly a hand shot out to grab him.

Nic’s own arms were bound, and his body was weak. But he had one weapon, one hidden ace, that none of the others did. He still had a serpent’s poison fangs, concealed within his otherwise toothless mouth. And although his strength was failing, he had enough for one last play.

Nic dove forward and sank both fangs into the demon’s shoulder. It screamed in shock and pain, slamming a fist into his gut. He clung on. Its hard, pointed fingertips clawed at his skull, trying to rip him away. Its brother darted forward and seized his leg.

It was an absurd scene. Nic hung by his jaws for as long as he could, before being pulled away.

He was thrown to the ground. The uninjured brother stomped down into his gut, slammed a fist into his eye, beat and pummeled and kicked him until his entire body was a bruise, the blows raining down until Nic could barely see the sky through the greenhouse ceiling above.

But Nic was smiling, and every time he took a breath, he shouted…

“HELP! MURDER! HEY! MURDER!”

Until at once, green shoots tore out of the earth and expanded into thick, wooden vines. The bug-demon was pulled away and Nic was dragged down to the earth again, pinned there helplessly. He was grinning, grinning, grinning like a fool…

Because he’d won. Behind him, the body of the first bug-demon had ceased to twitch. Frothy spit poured out from its open mouth. His poison had done its work.

When one demon killed another, they claimed the loser’s Essence as their own. Nic had struggled and struggled to split one source of aura into two without losing his way.

Now, he didn’t have to struggle. He had two sources within him, one pure, one demonic.

A last gift from the dead brother.

A bare green foot landed in front of Nic. He looked up, unsurprised to see the dryad’s leader standing over him, her bark-rough lips pursed in a deep, deep scowl.

“You are too much trouble.” She declared. “We will forget de Vega’s plans for your ransom. You will be buried until the young one is ready to hatch…”

The earth opened up beneath him, and the vines pulled him down. Sharp, rough objects scratched against his skin, and he saw fragments of bone buried amidst the dirt. Fertilizer for the new generation of dryads.

But even as he was buried alive, Nic hadn’t stopped.

All this time he had suffered every possible indignity with a carefree smile. Because as much as they had struck him and abused him, he was going to pay them back tenfold.

As the earth closed around him Nic’s plan was going off without a single flaw.