The sound of Eztli’s laughter was all that echo’ed through the currently and temporarily silent valley. Eztli then looked at Duuca, “You learn any scouting skills yet?” He had been eyeing the canopy and wasn’t really hopeful of his ability to navigate the trees as a bird. Soaring in an open sky is one thing, threading his way through a dense canopy that doesn’t even let much sunlight through seemed a little unlikely for a hawk with a solid 3-foot wingspan.

Duuca shook his head no

Underworld was still fundamentally a game, so while in real life it would take almost no skill to track 8 people who were slaughtering crazed apes and their progress through the forest, it probably would take a pair of eyes just to spot the bodies of the apes alone, no training needed. In underworld the signs of the battle will simply fade away with the bodies of the fallen foes; nor would any sign be visible on the forest floor after those bodies vanished apart from whatever loot was dropped. The only way you'd be able to see any signs of the prior battle would be to simply have the right scouting skills to see it. It was silly if you thought about it, but Underworld always had these weird “game” moments that could drag you out of the almost real-world aspects of it.

The silence of the valley seemed to be mocking them, so Eztli broke the silence, “We’ll have to look for the monster drops and track those back to the lake/pond then. Lets keep each other in close at all times, I’m not liking how quiet the valley got.” In reality the silence was strange after all the noises they’ve been hearing in the valley up to this point. It was like everything was holding it’s breath.

The party all spread out a bit poking around for monster drops in the piles of dying leaves and black soil of the bare valley floor. The silence was growing oppressive, Eztli found himself glancing at the other party members more often than he was paying attention to the bare forest floor, something just felt so off about the atmosphere, he heard some old alarm bells starting to ring in his head.

The last time he felt this way, he was a Captain, just 2 years before the end of the war, riding in an open roof jeep on the outskirts of the ruins of Atlanta. The war was obviously going to be lost. He knew it, his men knew it. The men at the top had to have known it. Heck, it had been nearly a decade since he was ordered to move forward to take territory. All he had been doing since the fall of Bogata was falling back in a running battle up from South and Central America, through Texas and into the southern states basically fighting a war of attrition, the West Coast had fallen almost without a shot fired once Texas was lost. He had chances to just quit fighting, his initial enlistment was for four years, Bogota fell in year 3, yet he hung on. He had chosen to stay in the war. He rubbed his left shoulder subconsciously, lost in the memory of that snipper bullet that nearly ended his life on the outskirts of Atlanta.

Snapping out of his daydream the sensation of alarm seemed to grow not fade, he felt an oppressive sensation and noticed he was basically holding his breath, forcing himself to breath much like the first time he used FBEVR he ended up gasping for breath as if he had been running a marathon. Glancing around quickly, he counted the heads of the party and came up with 6.

“Where is Musashi?” Eztli spoke up, regaining control of himself. Everyone paused and looked around. Eztli was already checking the party list, and noticed Musashi_XXX’s information was grey’ed out. The only cause for that would be if he was in an instanced dungeon or building.

Seeing the hints of confusion in most of the parties faces, Eztli spoke again, “Where was Musashi searching?”

Golden_Flower answered, “Not far from me, over this way in that undergrowth,” she started to make her way to her left, without any conversation needed, the rest of the party quickly formed up around Golden_Flower, as they made their way a few yards into the foliage, which was unusually thick and green considering the tight forest canopy. Eztli was frowing at the foliage trying to recall of he had seen it before or it just appeared here recently.

Sexy_Librarian suddenly spoke up, “Wait, something is wrong here, this is a Jungle, there really shouldn’t be any undergrowth like this, there isn’t enough light, the forest floor has been emptied of random foliage thus far.”

Eztli suddenly realized why he had been feeling something was wrong. His eyes widening at the path behind them where they were all searching earlier was now covered in these green vines. “Where did all this undergrowth come from? This was an open forest floor when we were fighting here. Look behind us, where we were fighting is now covered in this undergrowth.”

The undergrowth was dark green with spade like leaves sprouting from long above ground vines an appearance fairly similar to grape vines. As he was examining the soft vines, he noted that the undergrowth no longer soft, easily giving away for their feet and bodies, had became very wood like, with thorns sprouting from the vines, locking the party of 7 into location.

Duuca spoke up, “Crap, and we don’t have any fire-based magic, do we? If you have a sharp tool let’s start cutting before this gets worse.”

“Stop!” Eztli spoke quickly. “Don’t move, this is a spell, not real plant life. We need to find the caster. Fighting the plants will get us nowhere, and if this is the spell I think it is, it’s sort of like quicksand, the more you struggle the worse it gets.” Eztli was straining his mind trying to recall if he had seen something similar in the past. It was hard to tell since old Underworld definitely looked more cartoony, but he seemed to recall a shamanic spell in the Aztec region which was capable of creating vines like these.

Sexy_Librarian spoke up “How do you know this is a spell?”

“Were these plants here 5 minutes ago? I could buy these were real if they were there 5 minutes ago, but they just sort of appeared without making a noise.” Eztli spoke in voice a little above a whisper, watching the silent vines seem to notice his speaking and slowly start to twist around his feet.

“They’re a type of vine, right? Couldn’t they move here?” Sexy_Librarian whispered back to him, her face flushed with embarrassment as the vines started to wrap around her calves.

“Did you see them move here? What about behind us? They just were.” Eztli retorted. There was no longer any doubt the vines definitely were reacting to his speaking, as several more vines wrapped around his calves.

Sexy_Librarian nodded, accepting the explanation. The party as a whole was trying to see where the spellcaster was, looking around left or right. Eztli was getting aggravated by the situation, he didn’t really have a lot he could do with this type of attack. Maybe in another 200-300 levels he could crush this, he remembered using lightning from a special spirit magic tree to blow up similar style traps in the past, but what was happening now was simply outside his ability to counter.

“Hang on let’s see if I can find the caster.” Eztli wove the wand and transformed into the hawk, the vines that used to be wrapping around his calves leapt into action and reached out like lightning for his Hawk body and wings. Eztli leapt into the air with the perusing vines, feeling thorns tear into his wings the vines seemed desperate to keep him trapped. For a long moment, which seemed to stretch for an eternity as his hawk struggled into the air, he thought he was going to get entangled, however with a ripping sound, a few feathers fell from his wings and a small drop of blood or two, he slipped free from the vines and made his way up into a tree a dozen yards away from the group. That really had been too close. Eztli realized he might have been too hasty and nearly created a disaster for himself by transforming while in that patch of vines. Taking a deep breath to blow away the tension in his chest, he started to examine the surroundings closely from his perch in the tree. Unfortunately, the incredible eyesight of the Hawk didn’t shine any light on the source of the spell. Glancing at the distressed party, and feeling his frustration growing, he flew around the patch of vines looking for the source. Of course, that was easier said than done. The trees were densely packed and flying about under this canopy was stressful. Eventually after 5 minutes of dodging trees and trying to search for the caster, he alighted on a tree above the patch of vines, then transformed back to a human.

The party was now wincing, he could see the vines had started to wind their way up their legs and the thorns on the vines were pricking and scraping their skin.

Duuca called up to Eztli, “Do you think you can find a vine or rope or something? Maybe we can get out by going up?”

Eztli nodded, then took wing again after transforming back into the hawk, it wasn’t hard to find a tree with vines hanging off them. It took him a couple of chops with his Macuahuitl to separate the vine from the tree, he bundled it up and put it into his pack. Then transformed into a hawk and flew back to the tree next to the group, landing on a thick sturdy looking branch a dozen feet or so above the heads of the party members. He canceled the hawk transformation, secured the vine to the branch he was standing on, then looped it over a branch above his head before tossing the vine down toward the party bellow.

“Anyone have the climb skill?” Eztli asked as he watched Duuca catch the vine. They all shrugged, so Eztli sighed. “This game won’t let you climb a vine without it. Alright, change of plans, who has the highest strength?”

xXx_Painbringer_xXx raised his hand.

“Alright, Painbringer, grab the vine, tie it up under your arms, I’ll pull you up.”

xXx_Painbringer_xXx tied the vine up under his arms across his chest and loops his arms around the vine getting a good grip. “Ready”

Eztli grabbed the looped vine between the higher branch and it’s anchored position on the branch he was standing on, then took up the extra slack by wrapping the vine around his chest, and using his own weight as leverage started to pull xXx_Painbringer_xXx up basically walking down the tree. His own strength wasn’t sufficient to pull a grown man up a tree after all he hadn’t put any attribute points into strength, but his weight was about the same as xXx_Painbringer_xXx, by using leverage and his own weight he could manage to drag xXx_Painbringer_xXx up several feet. The problem was the vines twined around his legs weren’t letting go, and started to dig deep into his muscled legs. To Eztli’s dismay he saw more vines reaching out of the undergrowth to grasp at xXx_Painbringer_xXx. xXx_Painbringer_xXx face said all Eztli needed to know, it was twisted in pain tears forming on the corners of his eyes. He could see blood dripping down the dark vines and his legs were no longer visible under them. Eztli’s dismay was replaced with horror as the vines twined around xXx_Painbringer_xXx’s chest and sucked him back into the undergrowth, pulling Eztli up to the overhanging branch he was using as leverage, and nearly crushing his chest and pulling him over it and down into the patch of vines.

xXx_Painbringer_xXx’s name was grey’ed out from the player list on the party almost immediately after he was sucked under the vines in the undergrowth.

Eztli was forced to cut himself free of the vine, and watched helplessly as it vanished into the brush.

Eztli spoke into the silence. “Well now we know why I couldn’t find the spell caster. He’s underground, likely wherever Painbringer and Musashi is. We’ve got a decision to make. Neither is dead, both are underground. Anyone else get a reply to a tell from either?” The remaining 5 members shook their heads.

“Which means it’s a plot related instanced dungeon. Decision time, do we let the vines take us underground and enter the instance, or fight them with everything we got, and see if we can’t get free through force? We could be trapped in there till death or this could be a huge lucky chance for skills, items or quests. Who wants to take this ‘chance’?”

Spikieboi who had been quiet for a while spoke up, “I say let’s share their fate. If it’s good luck, lets all share it, and if it’s bad luck, lets share it.”

The vote was unanimous.