Our number advantage was worthless with everyone separated. None of us knew one another, so the teamwork was bound to be sloppy, but being together would be miles better than the current situation. Still, we fought the best we could to group up with a vine or two each that kept us busy. I was one of the lucky ones who only had to face off against one of the dozen arm sized vines that was being controlled by the knotted ball of roots that was a plant monster.I was scared out of my mind even thinking about the fact that I was facing off against it, but I had been tentatively making my way towards its main body without being injured.

I held my sword out in front of my body and shuffled my feet forward. I was planning on counter attacking while it was off guard. A drop of sweat fell onto my brow as I saw the vine shoot towards my head. I ducked out of fear and waved my sword arm blindly above me, hoping to somehow kill it. I ended up bludgeoning the root twice, but there wasn’t any intent behind it. My knees were too weak and there wasn’t enough power to do anything other than give me feedback on location above me. It shifted away from me and retracted its vine, aiming to shoot it forward again. This time I jumped to the side and ignored the extension of its body as I sprinted towards the its head.

Once I got in range I slowed down so that I could make a strike that would count. Being this close to it I could see its greenish colored teeth gnashing at me, and its bloodshot gazes following my every moment.. As for mobility and stability it had a vine coiled underneath along with grass looking appendages that writhed like insect legs. I decided I’d just have to slash and hope for the best. After all, there were so many mouths and eyes on this damn thing that I couldn’t decide where to hit it.

Though my strategy was planned out, my body was having trouble complying. I wanted to run away and kill this monster at the same time. My body kept jerking forward and backwards, grappling between fear and indecision. I knew my best option was to kill it before its vine came back to stop me, but I was so damn afraid. It was too much to expect me to gamble my life on a split second decision, especially while the plant was constantly writhing on those grass blade like appendages and flashing its teeth at me. A few stutter steps forward and I found the guts to chop at it like I had an axe instead of a sword.

The weapon lodged halfway into its bulb shaped body, and I slid the blade out of the front of its body to to swing again. The blonde haired boy fighting to the right of me had seen my situation and shouted some desperate encouragement.

“Go!”

I reared up fully as the plant screeched, we were both screaming at this point, but before I could start my momentum its little body jumped off its smaller vines and propelled itself into my gut. I was blown back a ridiculous amount with the breath blown out of me.

I was dazed for a bit, and when I got back up over half our group was dead. An older man was screaming while being picked apart just a few feet in front of me. There were fresh corpses littered around the room where the others had been fighting. I cursed under my breath and used my sword as a cane to help me lift myself up. I didn’t feel like anything was broken, but my head and body felt painfully numb from the impact.

Once I’d stood up the plant noticed me again. With less enemies to fight against, it could devote much more firepower to taking me out. My eyes widened in fear at the same time that the plant raised roughly a half dozen roots in my direction.

The sixish roots looked like hazed lines as reached out to me at scarily fast speeds. I couldn’t even focus on them they were going so fast. I planted my feet so I could somehow ricochet the first two off my sword, mainly done through instinct, and twisted my body out of the way of the third. I couldn’t move on the same level as this plant monstrosity, so each one of the thrusts was closer to killing me than the last.

Though I was losing ground on each attack, I surprised myself each time I stopped myself from being impaled. I’d come into the fight as an extremely unprepared village boy that was too scared to act deliberately, but somehow I was fumbling past all this _’s bloodthirsty attacks. If I had enough time to think I might’ve given myself some hope.

Fortunately, I did not have that luxury. If I did, what happened next would’ve crushed me mentally as well as physically. After turning from the third root, I bent forward at the waist to successfully dodge the fourth. The two that were left were headed straight for me, and I wasn’t in any position to dodge. I couldn’t afford to block either, moving around had caught me off-balance. I flexed my muscles hoping I could brace for it somehow, but a blazing pain tore through my rib cage and left hip as they tore through my body with almost no resistance. They paused before sliding out of my body, probably to help their other tentacles slaughter the rest of the humans like cattle.

I let out a deep breath that I had been holding and knew in my heart that I was dead. I slumped down rather ungracefully onto the side of my body that wasn’t punctured and watched as the last two people left struggled to survive. My mind was growing more and more distanced, but I was still lucid for the moment. I could see blonde headed boy that encouraged me was just as ferocious the beginning of the fight. He was slashing at roots to keep them at bay, weaving through multiple attacks and slicing his curved blade against roots with a vigor. He was too weak and outnumbered in arms to inflict anything more than shallow gashes, but I had a feeling he could have dealt with his own roots if not for my failure. I wonder he could’ve killed it with different teammates. He fought impressively, but it didn’t take long for him for the plant to hit him from a blind spot, whipping him across the room. I saw it as it occured, but it took my brain a few seconds to comprehend it. A bad sign.

I was feeling so faint. I could tell I was close to bleeding out. I spent the last of my energy to shift my gaze over to the last human-like silhouette in the shadows of my vision. My eyes turned just in time to see the hazy, broad shouldered man finish chanting a spell. A muted glowing ball fired out of the center of the man’s chest to anchor itself in the air. The mage formed his hands into a triangle right behind the ball and seemed to struggle to push it. Though his face scrunched up from strain, he pushed it forward.

“Blight!”

The little ball loped weightlessly and erratically through the air before slamming into the plant and causing its child sized body to shrivel into a tar colored lump over the span of a few seconds. I was squinting so hard now that I wasn’t sure if my eyes were open or closed. I heard footsteps run towards me and a warm feeling enveloped my body. I assumed it was the rush of death, and I embraced it. I’d gone into the dungeon expecting to die, but still felt bitter. Who would have thought I was so worthless?

My vison started reshaping itself, and I could hear mumbling. This was probably the afterlife, huh. I wonder if its like the stories my parent's told me growing up in the village. The mumbling grew louder and louder. My vision continued to clear until I could finally make out what was being said.

"Heal."