"Weird," Viktor said.

"Yup, weird," said István.

"I'd agree," Celistar said. "It's very weird."

They looked at me - as if expecting me to mention how weird it was.

"Pretty sure we're well past the point of being redundant," I said, before acquiescing: "But yes, it's weird."

There was a vast circle in the center of the jungle we'd been traipsing through. Just emptiness. Well, I say empty, but there was a layer of short grass. It was all a uniform height, which added to the unsettling nature of the clearing.

The sun hung low in the sky, so we'd decided to rest for the night. Problem was that no one had any great faith in wanting to rest in the weird clearing. We'd compromised by setting up camp on the edge.

That way, we could leave in a hurry if the need arose. Versus camping in the center.

The reason we were camping inside it at all was that it kept the plants at bay. It was an accession to the reality that none of us would be able to maintain our various methods of suppressing our auras while asleep.

That wasn't the only thing, though. The jungle was virtually devoid of animals. Despite knowing it would go after us the way it did, shouldn't there have been some normal animals that could exist there?

I had asked Celistar about it, and she seemed just as confused as I. She'd said that while all animals would emit some infinitesimal measure of Nebula just by existing, for most of them this should be very close to the background level, not enough to get the attention.

But even with that knowledge, that did not change that nothing moved through the jungle, save us.

Well, I mean, the plants moved. But unless I'd missed something, none of them were popping out of the ground, hiking up a root skirt, and just traipsing off to find a place away from all those other hussies who dared to hang out with that one oak tree.

Interrupting my internal plant romance novel was Viktor driving some stakes into the ground. Turns out we had a tent… who knew? In the city, we'd appropriated some dwellings, and even if the beds were square stone slabs, at least they were flat.

So yeah, tent. Made sense we wouldn't just go out without some sort of sleeping accommodations, in retrospect.

Note to self: don't plan any camping trips. Or anything else, really.

I'd wind up starving to death after I passed out from lack of sleep. I swear I'm not an idiot, just bad at considering all the aspects of everything. Like what food I'd need. Which definitely had idiot-adjacent vibes. Okay, then. I'm not a complete idiot.

Some parts are missing.

"You're going to want to see this."

Celistar had nudged me awake in the middle of the night, while she'd been on watch. Apparently, taking shifts on this sort of thing was the norm, but she'd volunteered to do the whole thing. That confused me at first until she explained that as a natural spirit, she didn't need to sleep.

"Ever?" I asked, although Viktor also seemed interested in her answer for whatever reason.

"Well, as a little one I used to sleep, but that was more to keep from driving my parents absolutely insane. I've never required it, no. That and I find the moonlight refreshing."

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"That makes sense," said Viktor. I was about to ask why he said it when the obvious hit me like one of his fists. Of course… the Moon Fairy likes moonlight. Derp. I felt as dense as the lizard she'd split with a beam of said moonlight.

"So what was it you wanted to show us?" I asked.

In response, she just pointed to the center of the clearing. There was a massive tendril poking its way up through the center, reaching into the sky.

I immediately cut my aura, leading the others to mimic the action. I didn't want the attention of a plant that size, no ma'am, not when one considered what a pain in the ankles the little ones were.

It grew rapidly while we sat, stilled and in silence. It seemed to reach a certain height before the growth transferred into an expansion, starting near the ground, and working its way up. The color, barely visible, shifted to a red.

Eventually, we were watching what was very obviously a gigantic flower of some sort, just waiting to bloom. I was only mostly sure it wouldn't take up the entire clearing when it bloomed. It seemed to explain partially the reason that the keep-out circle was there, but I couldn't help thinking there had to be more to it. There was no way the overly aggressive jungle wouldn't fill the space if given the chance.

Just as I thought that, the flower bloomed, splitting open at the top with a noise that I found quite disturbing. It sounded like ripping paper, but much… wetter, somehow. Like tearing a chunk of fresh meat in half.

The sides fell open, and the view did little to disabuse me of the thought. The interior of the flower appeared wet with blood and had small black spots covering its surface.

Moments later, a warm, putrid blast of wind carrying the foulest smell I'd ever had the misfortune of having jammed in my nose rolled over our little group, staggering us where we stood.

It was truly awful.

But the plant was not done with us, not in the slightest.

In the very center stood what I had first thought was some sort of flower part, but then it moved.

It wiggled around, struggling like Liam trying to get his shirt on the correct way.

There were more aural disasters heading our way as the thrashing grew more intense, before suddenly, it burst, revealing that there was a humanoid figure in there, heretofore in some sort of amniotic sac.

This plant made no sense.

A chilling feeling assaulted my senses, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I still had very little idea of what this was, but it was dangerous.

It stood like a large dog going up on its hind legs, kind of leaning forward. Long arms hung down, with two appendages splitting off from the arm where the wrist would be, creating essentially a split claw, ending in the sharp end of a thorn.

The torso, arms and legs, all blended into a neck in a way that gave my mind flashbacks of the roots of the dandelions I used to yank out of the cracks in the road by our house - thick at the top and tapering gradually in a long taproot, with smaller roots branching out to he sides here and there.

The head was a stunted, wrinkled version of the flower the creature had come out of, only it split a half dozen ways to reveal a cacophony of very sharp teeth studded on the insides of the 'petals' that made up its head.

There were no other facial features to speak of, and not really a neck. Just a root-stem of a body ending in a face even a mother would have a hard time loving.

The petals on the plant-monster trilled, and an unearthly sound sprang from it, a hiss that sounded like reeds rubbing together, or ropes rushing past each other. The sound defied description as I felt it susurrate against my senses.

Thus far, none of us had moved in the slightest. Celistar looked put off. It was just as clear István found this life form interesting as it was unsettling.

Viktor… had wordlessly fallen back asleep at some point.

A true shame, really, he'd probably have wanted to have punched this just to get a feel for the texture.

I noticed that the stand of trees ringing the clearing had recoiled when the awful smell had hit. I kind of doubted it was the smell that had them concerned - if a plant could be such - but something else. Or so I assumed; I was no botanist.

Not that a botanist would know what to do with a bunch of moving plants and a flower monster.

The odd amalgamation of plant and animal in question had turned its body away from us, which was reassuring, but it was pulling in something from the air, which was the opposite.

I looked more carefully, dialing my aura vision up a little, and then I could see that it was pulling Nebula out of the air somehow, draining it away from everything in the clearing.

That seemed suboptimal, if you asked me. But not nearly as much as when it moved its head straight up vertically, and then back over, its jointless appendages bending back to effectively 'reverse' its body configuration to be facing us in moments.

It'd have been a much neater trick if it unsettling creature that had performed it wasn't staring directly at me.

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