Huld opened his eyes again, which had been drooping shut, looking out with one last surge of desperate hope.

A little way in front of him, also embedded in the mess of leaves and vines, was a green jewel, shining blighty with an ethereal glow.

Could he get to it?

With the last of his breath Huld stretched out through the tangle of vines and touched his mouth to the green-glowing emerald, kissing it.

Power surged through Huld, starting from his hand and spreading to every part of the rest of him. He became aware of it and at the same time he became aware of the plant in a new way. Somehow now he could feel all of its different vines and branches and leaves and tendrils in almost the same way that he could feel his own body. And not only that, but now he could feel the presence of the earth from which the Shrine was composed below him, underneath the plant’s ‘feet’. He could feel the whole construct of the shrine, all its different earthen floors and walls and corridors, its stone doors, and even, below all that, the soil of the earth of Farr itself. He did not know how to put it into words even in his own thoughts--all of a sudden he could just feel them like he could feel his own body.

And if he could feel them like his own body, he could move them like his own body.

He concentrated, and willed for the plant to release him.

Somewhere above him the plant monster roared again, a strained, enraged, peculiar noise. Huld wasn’t sure before how a plant could roar, but now with his new earth-sense her perceived that one of the many different kinds of plants of which the tangled monster was composed was able to trap and release air, and it that it was coordinatedly releasing a rush of pressurised air from a collection of vines in its ‘throat’ in order to make this roaring noise.

The plant was resisting his will, but Huld was affecting it.

The monk shut his eyes, drawing on a lifetime of meditation and attention-training, and used his new earth-sense to ‘feel’ for the vines and shoots that composed the monster’s arms. He felt their presence ineffably, but he also saw the two arms in his mind’s eye.

He concentrated, and, as if it was his own, made one of the monster’s arms rise, reach inside its own torso.

Huld felt familiar tendrils encircling himself, but this time they plucked him out of the seething mass in which he had become embedded. He felt air rush past him again as he willed the monster to pull him out of its body, and then opened his eyes with a jolt as he willed it to let him go and he thumped on his back onto the ground.

The Farrian sunshine blinded him for a moment, breaking his concentration, but then he was springing up onto his feet again, reaching out with his earth-sense towards the plant.

Around him, some of the foreigners were still swatting at it like irritating mosquitoes, but now Huld realised that it had taken others of them into itself.

“Heeeeeeelp!” came a muffled cry from within the body of the plant, from a body concealed by foliage. Engineer-girl.

“Get us out of here!” came another. Fireboy.

This was why the foreigners weren’t attacking it all-out any more, only defending themselves from it and taking cheap shots--they didn’t want to hurt their comrades.

“Master Huld,” the Manolian called to him from nearby. “You made it release you, somehow!” She saw much. Huld did not like that. “Can you make it release Ryn and Elrann, too?”

Huld set his jaw. “I will try,” he said.

Intuitively, he reached out his hands, much as he had seen fireboy and ponytail do to call their fire and wind, and felt with his earth-sense to take control of the plant’s arms again.

He got them, but the plant resisted him, pushing back against his control. It was like the monster had a consciousness, a will of its own. Or maybe it was the will of the Jewel? Was that possible?

Exhaustion sapped Huld’s limbs already--he was new to this power, and after that first initial flush of awakening to it, it was hard work to use it.

He gritted his teeth, a long grunt of exertion issuing from between them, and forced the monster’s two arms up and into itself, searching for the engineer-girl and fireboy, and plucked them from within it. They came out with gasps of relief as Huld made the monster plonk them down on the floor. It must have been strangling them to death too.

Huld dropped his arms at the same time as the two foreigners landed, releasing his mental hold on the monster. His triceps and forearms had filled with a bright, flaring pain from the effort he had just expended.

“How did you do that?” ponytail said next to him, his forehead scrunched up with incredulity.

“Inside the creature…” Huld conceded, panting. “I touched… the Emerald… I have earth-manipulation abilities now…”

The plant monster stepped towards them.

“Well do you think you could use them to deal with that thing?!” ponytail shouted.

A plant-fist flew through the air towards Huld.

He got his hands up again and willed for it to stop…

...only to be smacked in the chest and sent tumbling heels-over-head along the floor.

He almost went over the edge of the platform, but put his hand out and grabbed the lip of it just in time, thudding into the earth wall below with the side of his body as he dangled from the edge of it.

“Ouch,” said Huld. His arm strained almost beyond belief.

He took a deep breath, got his other hand onto the platform too, then grimaced as he pulled himself back up onto it, despite himself a gasp of pain spilling from his lips.

The battle had resumed again. The foreigners danced forwards and backwards, throwing hopeless strikes and avoiding the plant monster’s hands like their lives depended on it. Which, apparently, they did.

Ponytail turned and saw him standing at the edge of the platform.

“Baldy!” he called. “If you’ve got earth-powers now, can you sort this thing out for us or not?!”

“I am sorry,” Huld called back. He was apologising more than he would like to today, and to foreigners of all people. “I am not strong enough. I think I may have ‘run out of mana’, as the young man put it?”

“That’s right,” called the Manolian, jumping out of the way to avoid a grab, then running back to join him at the edge of the platform. “You only just got your powers,” she said when she reached him. “You would have had the surge when you first touched the jewel, but they are new to you, so your mana reserves won’t be very large yet. You can only increase them through training and practice. Have you got anything left?”

“No,” Huld said, aware of the pain in his arms. Though maybe there was a small something in there. “Or at least, not much,” he added.

“Grandfather,” the Manolian said to the old man, “can you give him some of your mana?”

“An excellent idea!” said the old man, his face lighting up. “I almost forgot! Though I must be careful not to entirely deplete my own reserves.”

While ponytail and engineer-girl kept the plant monster busy, the old man ran over to Huld and laid a hand on his shoulder. Normally Huld would have protested at this gross invasion of personal space and breaking of formality, especially by a foreigner, but he had already grown to accept some of their stranger ways.

“Esuna,” said the old man, and then “Cure.” Huld felt a lightness spread from his shoulder through the rest of his body, and the pain in his arms subsided.

“Thank you,” he said to the old man, bowing.

“Don’t mention it.” The old man grinned through his white beard. “Though I’m out of mana now.”

Huld wasted no time. He put his two hands forward, making gripping motions with each, and concentrated on the plant monster.

In the middle of pulling back for a strike at engineer-girl, the plant monster stopped in place, trembling against the force of Huld’s earth-manipulation. He felt it resisting him, like a magnetic force physically pushing against his outstretched hand, but he held it in place for now.

“Now!” Huld yelled desperately. “Attack it now while I can still hold it!”

“Come on, everyone!” the Manolian cried. “Now’s our chance!”

The foreigners all rushed the monster again, though this time without any flame projection from fireboy. Being the nearest, engineer-girl got to it first, lashing at it with her whip, which shot out like a silver snake. Then ponytail, Vish, fireboy, the Manolian, the old man, all with their swords, jumping at it and cutting, tearing sections of growth from it as Huld held it in place.

The pain returned to Huld’s arms, sharp like needles. He could feel the plant monster resisting his grip, pushing against him, intensifying the pain.

“We’re doing it!” ponytail yelled as he slashed off another chunk of plant mass. “We’ve got it this time!”

And then Huld lost control of the monster again.

The pain in his arms reached its highest pitch, and even though he still had his hands out and was concentrating on the monster, it broke his grip and immediately flung out a massive arm, sending the surprised foreigners flying in all directions like it was swatting away a collection of annoying ants.

As it stepped towards Huld, he found he didn’t have the strength or quickness to move out of the way.

Bright pain shone on his face and he spun through the air from the monster’s blow.

Huld found himself on his back on the platform again, blinking from the sting of the pain, looking up above him at the bright, hot, Farrian sun.

The bright, hot Farrian sun, brilliant in the clear blue sky, visible because the glow-worms had eaten away the stone walls at the top of this Shrine.

The bright, hot Farrian sun, brilliant in the clear blue sky, visible because the glow-worms had eaten away the stone walls at the top of this Shrine, which had fed the plant monster with light so that it grew from a tiny shoot in the ground to this roaring, tangled mass of regenerating vines and leaves.

Huld had an idea.