“Huld!” fireboy called out to him, “Do...do you want some fire too?” His eyes were creased up with strain and his arms trembled where he held up his hands palm-out in a gesture which apparently meant he was able to keep the fire burning on his friends’ weapons.

“No thank you,” Huld said to him politely. “I am not so...keen on fire as you are.”

“But don’t you...don’t you need a way to fight it too?” the boy gasped. It seemed to be a great effort for him to speak while he was projecting so much fire at once.

“Your friends seem to be dealing with it well enough on their own…”

“Aaaarrrggghhhh!”

Ponytail suddenly landed on the floor between them having been knocked backwards through the air by one of the plant monster’s hands. He picked himself up and brushed himself down, wiping a bloody cut to his cheek with the back of his hand. He had lost one of his swords, but the one that he still held continued to burn with magical fire.

“Why did it have to be earth first?” he grumbled. “I hate earth…”

He ran back into the fray.

The boy’s friends were all slashing wildly at the plant monster, leaving trails of orange in the air where they drew their weapons across it. They were managing to hack off sections of the creature’s body, big green collections of vines and leaves falling to the ground together, and set it on fire again in different places. But the vines and leaves seemed still to be growing back, in spite of the flames, and in between swiping at them with its gigantic leafy fists and roaring, the monster was continuing in its strategy of tearing off the flaming parts of itself and chucking them at the foreigners, or off the top of the shrine entirely, for them to regrow.

Huld sighed.

“I suppose you could lend me some fire,” he said to fireboy, “if you really want to.”

He held out his wooden staff vertically and tilted the tip of it down, towards the boy.

“Fire,” spoke the boy, more weakly than before, and some more fire appeared and jumped from one of his hands to the top of Huld’s staff, setting the top of it alight. It burned yellow and hot.

Huld recoiled from it immediately, but managed to keep hold of it. I hate fire, he thought.

“Thank you,” he said, remembering his manners, and bowed slightly to fireboy.

“No...no problem…” breathed fireboy, evidently struggling. “You better get in there…”

Huld nodded, and ran towards the battle, holding the staff a good distance away from his body.

When he ran past ponytail, the skypirate glanced sideways at him and said “Baldy! So good of you to join us!”

Huld thought he should imitate the others, and he wanted to reassert where his allegiances lay and remind himself of his motivation for doing this, so as he bent his knees and jumped high in the air, a leap made possible by years of leg-strength training which clearly Vish had undergone too, he shouted “For Farr!”

It came off the tongue a bit awkwardly, but it made for a good enough battlecry.

He flew through the air and aimed an almighty thwack of his staff right at the creature’s ‘head’. The staff connected pleasingly, and Huld held it in place a bit longer, using its momentum and the creature’s own body to keep it in contact for a moment after the initial impact, hoping to set its head alight.

The head caught fire.

Huld kicked off the creature with both his feet and backflipped in the air, landing on the platform and twirling his staff around himself in an orange-trailed flourish before letting it come to rest at his side again.

“Nice-one, monk-man!” the engineer-girl called out to him.

Huld allowed himself a smile and a nod to her. He supposed that he was quite partial to praise, even from foreigners... Even from girls who looked and dressed a bit like boys…

The plant monster roared. Its head was on fire, but it tore at its own head and ripped it off, then threw it at Huld, who leapt again, over the top of it, somersaulted in the air, and came down upright.

The head regrew quickly.

That was unfortunate.

But the foreigners seemed to have the advantage now. Whether because they were spurred on by Huld’s daring attack, or because they didn’t want him to get all the ‘glory’ as they called it, he did not know, the foreigners charged in again, hacking, slashing, swiping, whipping at the plant, chopping more of it off and setting more parts of it alight.

Huld joined them, rushing in and swiping rapidly at its hands with his staff, deflecting them from bashing into the foreigners, trying to hold them up long enough to stop them tearing off the flaming parts of the monster before they could consume it completely and burn it up.

If they could all attack quickly enough together, and coordinate their attacks, maybe, just maybe, they could cut enough of it off and set enough of it on fire to prevent it from regrowing and destroy it completely.

“It’s working!” yelled ponytail. “It’s working! Keep going! Keep fighting!”

Whack. Slap. Punch. Kick. Swipe. Slash. Hack. Whip. Smack. Burn.

Almost all of the plant was on fire now and it didn’t seem to be able to regrow itself fast enough. It seemed to be shrinking, even as it roared a noise of frustration and tore more flaming parts off itself to chuck at the foreigners, who scrambled to get out of the way.

They were doing it. They were subduing the earth elemental, the guardian of the Shrine to Eto and the Earth Emerald. Huld wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that.

And then the fire on their weapons ran out.

It just stopped. The flames leaping from the foreigner’s swords and whip just fizzled out, leaving cold metal once again. Only Huld’s staff continued to burn with fire, presumably because it was made of wood and the boy had set it on fire in the more normal fashion.

The plant reached down and grabbed Huld’s staff. Huld was too stunned by surprise to react in time. The monster snatched the staff away from him with a rough twitch of its arm, then snapped it in two, and threw the discarded halves of it over its shoulders, behind him.

“What happened?” Huld said.

“I’m...I’m sorry!” fireboy called back weakly from somewhere behind them. “I don’t think I have any mana left! I used it all up! I’m exhausted!”

“Well poodoo,” said ponytail. “And just when we were starting to win as well…”

The monster roared at them, having torn another massive chunk of plant-mass off of itself and thrown it away, then regrown it quickly. There were far less flames burning on it already. And it had begun to grow in size again.

Its leafy fists flew through the air, aiming strikes at them all.

Now all the party could do was try to block them or uselessly cut bits of foliage off of them, which would then regrow.

Huld raised a defence to block a punch from the monster.

But this time, instead of punching him, the monster opened its green hand before it made impact with the monk, and instead reached out to grab him, enveloping him in a band of vines, which constricted around him immediately as he dropped his flaming staff.

Huld cried out in alarm and wriggled and pushed against the vines, but with no fire to blight them they held fast, and wrapped all the more tightly.

He called out with pain as the tendrils forced themselves tighter around his chest. All of a sudden there was a rush of air as the monster swung him somewhere with its hand, and then he was completely surrounded by green and brown vines and shoots.

Huld wriggled and writhed, tried to kick, punch, amidst the seething mass of plant. His vision was entirely obscured by leaves and vines and branches. Every which way he turned were only more leaves and vines and branches.

What had happened? Had the plant monster shoved him into itself? Into its own body?

He tried to call out again but found he had no breath. Vines still encircled him, still clamped down on his chest, and they were beginning to squeeeeeze the air out of him, squeeze the life out of him.

He wriggled and writhed all the more frantically, all the more desperately, but to no avail. He was trapped.

His energy began to wane. The corners of his vision started to blur. And then, as he started to lose the ability to move entirely, his vision started to turn black and fade.

He was passing out. He was going to suffocate. He was going to die.

Well, I wouldn’t mind winning this battle if it meant staying alive, he thought dimly.

The world went dark.

Then, just as the darkness overtook the entirety of his vision, something bright and green flared in it.