Chapter 4

The team accompanied by Sam the surveyor trudged down the rocky slope that led to the outpost/hideout. As they walked, they passed a man wearing some sort of plastic backpack connected to a hose and nozzle, he used the nozzle to spray something all around him. He looked up as they approached.

“Hey Sammy,” he greeted them while spraying the ground.

“David.” She nodded back and they were past him, walking deeper into the Woods.

“What was that guy doing?” Jack asked Sam.

“Hm? Oh, he was spraying a scent neutralizer around. Obviously there’s a lot of nasty critters in this place and many of them can track you through scent from miles away. And we don’t exactly want something like that turning up at our front door, following someone home, do we eh? Hehe.” She smirked. “So we have someone go out everyday and spray a chemical scent neutralizer around a large area surrounding the base entrance, it's pretty effective. But try not to get any on your skin, it's mildly caustic.”

They continued walking through the Dire Woods, Sam pointed out various natural features and dangers along the way, making certain they were aware of the hazards that surrounded them. In the end it pretty much amounted to; don’t touch anything without gloves, if it moves, glows, makes noises or even looks moist then it’s probably thinking of a way to kill and eat you regardless of whether or not it has a brain or mouth.

Also, a general rule of thumb was that the smaller something was then most likely the more poisonous it is. So Sam warned them to just stay clear of anything smaller than their hands.

Even the trees couldn’t be trusted as there were numerous predatory species out there. Some trees had prehensile vines that stealthily wrapped around prey before suddenly dragging the unfortunate into an opening within the tree trunk where the prey would be crushed into paste. Another type of tree could leak a highly corrosive and toxic substance from its bark. It would leak the substance from its branches and let it drip down onto whatever was beneath at the time, if the prey succumbed then its body would quickly dissolve and ‘leak’ into the soil for the tree to use as nutrients.

The ground wasn’t exactly the best place to stand either, ironically. More than a few creatures liked to capture prey by blending into the ground through a chameleon like camouflage ability and to ambush their targets by catching them unawares.

The point Sam was trying to make was to never let down their guard and that the monstrous inhabitants of the Dire Woods were only part of the issue when it came to survival.

The site they were travelling to was only a couple of miles away, but the terrain made the hike brutal, even with their enhanced strength from cultivation, it also didn’t help that Sam took them on a long circuitous route to avoid danger spots. The forest floor was thick with undergrowth, giant roots rearing upwards out of the ground, zero flat ground and absolutely no path in sight. The lack of sunlight and perpetual gloomy twilight only added to the difficulty of the hike, the only light sources visible were the numerous luminescent flora growing everywhere. It seemed that all life within the Dire Woods, monstrous and otherwise, was adapted for the low level of light. It's likely that any non-cultivating human within the Woods wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

Eventually the team made it to their destination, they stood at the foot of a set of raised plateaus that jutted up from the ground for about twenty to thirty metres. Coming from above them, they could hear strange dissonant noises. It sounded like something or multiple somethings were sighing, or humming or singing quietly, though not in any language Jack could discern.

“Okay kids, this is it, the Lilies grow on top of those plateaus. Be careful though, various monsters and beasts are always getting attracted to them, plus once the Lilies know you’re here they’ll start mimicking you and repeating things they heard other humans say. They’ll even start making things up. It is highly disturbing. I’ll wait till you’re done.” Sam made a shooing motion with her hands. “Just to warn you as well, if you stay too long they may start to actively alert any nearby monsters,” she warned them as they turned away.

“How long is too long?” Meredith questioned. Sam answered her with a shrug before leaning against a nearby boulder.

With that the team approached the raised plateaus, with a steep rocky slope leading up to the first and lowest plateau, the top was about level with the canopy of some of the smaller trees surrounding them. They scrambled up it and then took in their first sight of their quarry. The plateau was small, only being ten or so metres across, atop it grew moss, grass and patches of white and black petalled flowers. Even though they knew these flowers actually produced sound, it was still strange to hear and see it first hand.

“Hello? Who’s there?”

“Help me!”

“Pass me that flask.”

“I’m stuck!”

“Anyone got any bandages?”

“Can someone come over here please?”

“God I’d kill for a tuna sandwich right now.”

“Sorry, my hand slipped.”

Multiple strange echoey, distorted voices emanated from the patches of flowers. They were mimicking human voices, as if the flowers somehow knew who and what was near.

“Huh, Sam was right. That is disturbing,” Jack commented.

“Hellooooo!” Nate called out to the flowers.

“Hello? Hi there! Hello? Good morning!”

“Hello? Hello? Howdy? Hello?”

“Nice to meet you! Hello? Hello? Hello?”

“Hello? Hello? Hello? Hola!”

Entire patches of flowers began answering him. A mass of discordant voices in different pitches and tones came at the team in a barrage of sound for a few moments before it petered out and reverted back to random comments and calls for help.

The group turned as one to give Nate some annoyed glares. He smiled sheepishly at them.

They lingered on the edge for a few more moments, captured in morbid fascination, however Jack could tell Noah was about to step forward and start issuing commands. He made his move before Noah.

“So Meredith, what do you want us to do?” he asked her just as Noah shifted slightly. Noah looked over to him and then to Meredith.

“Ah! Right, erm…we..us…I mean, me, Noah, Jack and Nate will harvest the Echo Lilies while Katie keeps watch,” Meredith stated. She gave a subtle glance at Noah, but he didn’t seem to have any problems with the plan and stepped forward.

“Right, you heard her. Let's get this done,” he called out. With that he moved to the nearest patch of flowers and began harvesting. Everyone moved to a different patch while Katie stood in the middle of the plateau.

She looked down at the ground and her eyes closed halfway. Even though it looked like she was half asleep and not keeping watch, she was in fact tapping into her element, wind, this let her sense the location of physical objects through the air. It was an excellent scouting ability and had placed her firmly in the sights of Cheryl, who as the leader of the surveyor corps wanted Katie to join up. However, Katie had decided to join team Meredith instead.

Jack moved over to a patch of Echo Lilies and pulled out his premium harvesting kit before kneeling down and getting to work. The actual flowers had large drooping petals that were pure white in colour with random inkblot streaks of black covering them. Harvesting them wasn’t particularly difficult or unpleasant if one could discount the rather sinister sounding whisperings and random remarks made by the patch of flowers.

However it was somewhat disconcerting when a flower he’d just plucked from the ground switched from parroting lewd remarks it had clearly overheard in the past to then calling out for help as he stuffed it in a bag. It didn’t get any better from there when he started finding numerous bones and skulls amongst the centre of the flower bed. It was strange, despite being told otherwise, the remains had not faded away but instead the flower roots had wrapped around the bones which were half submerged under the soil.

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Apart from needing to ignore the Echo Lilies strange mutterings and the occasional grisly find, the harvesting continued apace until Katie called out.

“Um, guys?” she nervously alerted them. At the same time, multiple Echo Lilies from the plateau they were on and flowers from other plateaus began letting out various different animal and monster cries.

Everyone stood up and looked around. And then…

‘Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!”

‘Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!”

‘Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!”

‘Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!”

‘Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!”

Every Echo Lily in the area unleashed horrifically loud inhuman screams, screeches, howls and roars. Jack winced and covered his ears for a moment before the Lilies stopped shrieking.

Multiple animalistic and monstrous screams answered them from the forest all around them. Jack dropped his bag and took out his spear, making sure to run a charge of lightning through his body. The sound of shaking bushes and snapping branches and twigs resounded all around them.

“Stand your ground! We’ll take them here, we have the high ground!” Noah called out. He hefted his large war hammer and bits of stone and rock began flowing up from the ground to cover the hammer head, enlarging it. As the group prepared for the fight, they heard loose stones being shifted and something scrambling up the slope to the plateau, everyone tensed and got their weapons ready. Then Sam the surveyor emerged over the top and frantically ran towards them.

“Did you bastards forget about me!?” She ran to the relative safety of the centre of the group. Truth be told Jack had forgotten all about her.

“Yep!” Nate cheerfully replied.

“Goddamnit, typical hunters.”

“Here they come!” Katie warned. She let an arrow fly into something Jack couldn’t see.

Out of the surrounding woodland they emerged, the canopy of trees and surrounding shrubbery practically exploded as swarms of beasts charged out towards them. This situation felt uncomfortably familiar, he risked a glance at Nate who he saw was grinning like an absolute lunatic.

There was no more time for thought after that, the first beast crested the rise to the plateau swifty and charged them with a roar. It was some sort of tentacled horror, Katie shot it and it fell back off the plateau. Another replaced it, and then another and another. Nate raised his hand and unleashed a continuous gout of flame onto the charging swarm. Noah added his own attacks by swinging his hammer through the air, sharp slivers of stone shot forwards into the mass of monsters like flying shrapnel with each hammer swing.

Jack heard some scrabbling to the side and realised some monsters were making their way up another side of the plateau. He moved there and saw several beasts climbing up, it was steeper that side so the creatures were having more difficulty but they would soon reach the top. In response he reached into his core and began pulling out strands of lightning before throwing them into the mass of salivating jaws and snarling faces hungrily glaring up at him.

His ranged lightning attacks had gotten much stronger recently, if he wanted he could charge up a full strength lightning bolt but that sort of attack took time to pull off and drained him. Instead, he put as much energy as he could into his attacks at a moment's notice, he called that attack a ‘quick bolt’. When he first developed that attack it was only just strong enough to kill weaker monsters and stun or distract tougher opponents, but now, it was far more potent.

Jack threw handfuls of lightning bolts into the horde, watching with satisfaction as twitching monster corpses fell from the slope and landed on their fellows below. While he dealt with one side of the plateau, the others all fended off the monster swarm on other sides. Whilst they still held the high ground, the fight still seemed manageable, in fact many of the monsters swarming at the bottom of the plateau had begun to turn on each other as well as devouring those already slain by Jack and the others.

The base of the plateau was now nothing but a thrashing, seething mass of fangs and claws, multicoloured light and vapour began to seep out of the chaotic mass and flow upwards, surrounding the plateau like a hazy, oily curtain.

Jack continued to throw one bolt after another for almost an hour, his throwing arm began to ache from the shoulder to the tips of his fingers. His lightning core burned but felt frozen at the same time, flooding his chest with pain, his breath came in short sharp gasps. He’d never been forced to channel this much lightning from his core for this amount of time, the mass of monsters showed no signs of thinning out.

A hideous pig-like creature managed to claw its way up the steep slope and get its tusks in range for a swipe. Jack didn’t have time to duel with it so he simply dodged to one side before stabbing it in the flank with his spear and triggering the detonation effect.

Half the monster’s ribs and chest disappeared in a shower of gore and the monster fell to the ground amongst the Echo Lilies. The Lilies surrounding the creature all let out strange, oddly feminine sounding sighs of relief as the flowers closest to the corpse shifted and leaned towards it. The monster corpse was partially pulled under the ground as flower roots wrapped around it.

Jack took a ragged breath and turned back to his side of the plateau to carry on the defence. However, he heard a yell from behind him.

“Shield your eyes!!” He turned around in confusion and saw Sam open up her poncho to reveal numerous belts and bandoliers from which hung various canisters and bottles. She began grabbing things from her bandoliers and throwing them all around her over the heads of the hunters. A moment later terrific booms and flashes of light exploded out from the swarms of monsters surrounding them. The swarm reeled in confusion and anger, blinded and disorientated. But Sam wasn’t done yet, she snatched yet more canisters from her belts and bandoliers and threw them into the monster swarms, strange purple tinted smoke hissed out and quickly enveloped the monster swarms.

“Okay guys, follow me! Back the way we came! And don’t breathe any of that smoke in!” With that Sam made for the slope they’d originally ascended, with everyone following her she slid down the slope into the mass of monsters. She ran between the various assortment of creatures without paying them any mind except to shove them out of her way as she passed. The monsters couldn’t seem to see them or anything else, some crawling around blindly, others were lashing out blindly in rage, two or more here and there were locked in a death grip with one another.

Jack and the others followed Sam as best they could, shoving their way through the blinded monster horde. He had his helmet visor and gas mask down over his face and was glad of it, neither Meredith or Nate wore helmets and by their hacking coughs and streaming eyes it appeared whatever gas Sam had used was some sort of highly potent tear gas.

Eventually they made it through the monster swarms and into a clear part of the forest, they’d had to cut their way past a few monsters at the end which hadn’t been caught in the gas but they made it in the end.

They continued to run through the trees, blindly trusting Sam to lead them to safety. The noise of different monsters and beasts howling and roaring behind them faded and disappeared as they fled. Sam led them on a twisting winding route through the dense brush but eventually led them to a stop at the base of a giant tree with its massive roots rearing up out of the ground.

As soon as they stopped, everyone let out ragged gasps, stumbling to their knees. Jack leaned against a root and slid down to the ground, his right arm felt like it was on fire, with the pain feeling like it was radiating from the core in his chest. Random thin arcs of electricity travelled up and down his arm, the muscles twitched and spasmed uncontrollably. He took off his right bracer and gauntlets to rub and massage the arm, when the skin beneath was revealed under his combat wetsuit, he saw glowing blue lines forming a network carved into his arm.

“Well that's interesting,” he muttered to himself.

He looked up to see what the others thought about it but he could see they all had their own issues. Nate was on all fours, coughing uncontrollably, black smoke and smog billowed out of his mouth and nose with each cough, after a while some sort of black sludge made its way out of his mouth onto the ground. The others didn’t look much better, all of them were slumped in exhausted heaps on the ground, breathing heavily, shivering from the adrenaline leaving their bodies.

Meredith was the first to clamber to her feet, she began checking on everyone.

“Is everyone okay? Any injuries? Jack? Noah? Nate? Katie?” she called out, going over to everyone. Jack gave her a tired nod from where he was kneeling, he quickly rolled down the sleeve of his combat wetsuit and strapped his armour back on before she could take note of his arm, not wanting to make her concerned. Everybody else eventually made it back to their feet, Nate gave out one last hacking wet cough and spat something black and sticky onto the ground before getting up.

“That was fantastic,” he wheezed. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. From anybody else that would’ve sounded sarcastic but Nate clearly meant it.

“We nearly died you nutter,” Katie muttered to him, her voice also sounded weak and raspy.

Nate could only respond with a weak chuckle.

“What was that? Is harvesting Echo Lilies always that dangerous? Is every job like that here?” Meredith asked Sam.

“Er no, I’m not sure why that happened. Those things don’t always screech like that and even when they do, well I’ve never heard of a swarm like that being pulled in before. Call it bad luck I suppose.” Sam shrugged.

“Bad luck! Is that all? Seriously!?” Katie choked out incredulously. Sam shrugged again.

“Erm…who remembered to pick up their bags of harvested flowers?” Meredith hesitantly asked the team. Jack winced, he had absolutely forgotten his bag. From the guilty looks on Katie and Nate’s faces, they’d also forgotten.

All wasn't lost however as both Noah and Meredith held up their bags, the others sighed in relief.

“So…are we still going into the Woods today? Looking for a big surprise?” Jack asked with a smirk. Everyone simply looked at him in confusion.

“Wha?” Katie answered him with a suspicious squint.

“The bears, the Spined Ursa? Are we still doing that?” he asked again.

“Oh, well why didn’t you just say that? What was that before? Nevermind, so are we?” Katie turned to Meredith.

“I’m still good to go!” Nate interjected as Meredith opened her mouth to speak.

“Me too,” Jack echoed. His arm and core were still sore, but the pain was manageable and the muscle twitches had subsided.

Meredith looked to Noah and Katie, they both said they were okay to carry on. Noah seemed stoic about it, Katie looked less certain but seemed to mentally gather herself and push through whatever misgivings she was having.

“Okay then, we’ll carry on to the Spined Ursa location.” Meredith looked at Sam who sighed before nodding and set off walking into the Woods. Once again everyone followed her into the gloom.