Tenderlicious

Special Brownsville Report : Online Edition
By the all seeing EYE

Pas was still conscious, but barely.  He wasn't even aware of the rescue attempt by Fox and Arin, there was only the pain of his wounds.  He had never been in dire straits such as this.  He was a tough guy, and Urban Ranger for Ehlonna's sake!   Granted, his profession had rarely taken him outside of the city walls of Stret so there had been little need for an extensive knowledge of plant life.  But he had studied some of what a typical Forest or Plains ranger would need to know.  It was just that he didn't think it would be necessary for him to compile methods of escaping from the insides of creatures. “Think Pas! How hard can it be to escape from the belly of a frickin' plant!?”  he chided himself. Then an errant thought distracted him, “do plants even have bellies?”  Suddenly there was a lurching motion and he felt himself sliding.  He couldn't see but he had a good idea where he was going to end up if he didn't act quickly.
He reached down and pulled a dagger from his boot just as a viscous fluid washed over him increasing the speed of his slide and then he had a brief sensation of vertigo before he plopped into a foul smelling vat of bile.  He briefly considered trying to activate a light source before he realized there was no time.  Where he had been pierced by the creatures maw, this fluid had begun to creep into his wounds causing instant, debilitating agony.  It felt as if alcohol were being poured directly into the cuts caused by the razor sharp maw of the beast. In a panic Pas began to lash out with his dagger.  There no longer were any thoughts in his conscious mind that strayed from a single purpose-survival.  His dagger struck a soft, pulp like surface and plowed a channel through it.  “Must  get free. Must get... Pain. Pain!” his mind repeated in litany.
He had sunk to his chest in the bile by this point but could not feel any solid surface beneath his boots.  His exposed flesh felt as if it were on fire and just behind the rank odor of the bile he thought he could smell the stench of burning leather.  Then, as more of the viscous fluid doused him from above, his body went rigid.  He was no longer able to order his arm to strike.  He was no longer able to stretch his feet for something to stand upon.  He could only hear his heart thudding in his chest to the rhythm of his mind screaming “PAIN, BURNING PAIN!”  As his head slipped below the surface of the foul bile he had one, last errant thought.  “Tendriculous: bile is paralytic and highly acidic. Avoid at all costs!”
Nera leaped to the low wall with practiced ease despite her armor.  She unstrapped her sword while peering in through the transparent wall of the arboretum.  Inside she could see Fox expertly pull an arrow from the quiver on his back, nock it, and loose it all in the space of a second.  As Fox reached for another arrow she followed the flight path of the first arrow until she saw it lodge into the trunk of a flailing tree.  She grinned wryly exposing her feline canines.  “Figures” she thought, “couldn't just be a goblin or two, could it?”  Fox began maneuvering for a better angle which brought him closer to Nera's position but he still hadn't spotted her yet.  She scanned to see where the rest of the group was through what she could see of the room through the vegetation growing on the other side of the glass.  She caught a glimpse of Groth-Nasty's great axe arcing through the air on the other side of the large planter in the center and just to her left, on her side of the room, she caught sight of Arin.  She couldn't tell whether he was fighting wholeheartedly yet but was keenly aware of his issues after he had refused to fight when danger threatened on more than one occasion.  She still had not spotted Pas yet, which was not typical.  He had some skill at going undetected but more often than not he could not evade her heightened senses.  She reared back with her sword and gave a mighty roar as she brought it crashing down on the pane of glass separating her from the room.

A pungent, earthy aroma assaulted her and her nostrils flared as she stepped through the gap. The sounds of combat suddenly loomed large in her ears and her feral nature caused her breathing to quicken.   Despite being a healer, Nera relished combat.  She could almost feel her blood coursing through her veins!  She hadn't noticed that her noisy entrance had surprised Fox and caused him to whirl about, ready to loose a shaft into her.  She strode forward several steps intent on joining the fray when Arin turned to look at her.  His eyes grew wide and he struggled to quickly furl his whip. “What the hell is his problem?” she thought to herself.  Suddenly he snapped his whip out over her head.  Puzzled, she dodged to one side with no time to consider anything save that maybe he didn't recognize her in all the chaos.  His whip went taut and he jumped into a swinging charge that carried him past her, feet extended in front of him.  It looked as though he was trying to vault out of the break that she had just created.  “But why?” she frowned and then looked back to Fox. 
The look on Fox's face stopped her in her tracks.   It quickly turned from relief to a look of horror. She turned again to look behind her just in time to see Arin approach the apex of his swing and then miss his mark, crashing into an unbroken pane of glass without enough force to go through.  The impact shuddered the glass and knocked the air from Arin's lungs, whereby he promptly slid down the glass with a squeaking sound until he plummeted into a thicket of Briarvine.  Nera stifled her laugh at Arin's expense because she had grown attached to the young man in the short time she had known him.  She wouldn't even consider hurting his feelings or furthering his lack of confidence in his own abilities.  “But sometimes, he does screw up” she thought to herself laughing inwardly. Then she recoiled back as a cloud of roiling blackness catapulted through the opening and landed gracefully next to her.  Fox and Arin had noticed her, she never even had an inkling that she was in mortal danger.
The Black Assassin had just made a spectacular entrance and she was what had caused the look of horror on Fox's face.  Her presence had inspired Arin to bravely (and stupidly) attempt an acrobatic maneuver for which he had not yet developed the skill.   Nera felt like an idiot.  For all of her vaunted feline acuity, she had not even realized that she had led the assassin directly to her friends.  The assassin stood from a crouch and deftly drew a wicked looking dagger with each hand.  Deep in the dark recesses of the assassin's hood Nera saw a flash of fiercely grinning teeth.  The assassin twirled the daggers in a hypnotic dance in front of Nera's face.  The blades glistened in the torchlight and Nera realized that they were poisoned.  “Of course they would be” she whispered, “it would be too easy if they weren't.”

Fox couldn't believe how quickly the situation was going from bad to dire.  They were just supposed to be investigating a murder but soon they could all be adding their own corpses to the  scene of the crime.  “Nera?” Fox called nervously.  “We've got this Fox, help Groth” Nera replied without taking her eyes off  of the whirling blades.  “Where's Pas?” she asked as she began to circle her foe.  “Tenderlicious ate him” Fox retorted very matter-of-factly.   Arin had regained his composure by then and got back to his feet in time to take a position flanking the mysterious rogue woman with Nera.  Suddenly Nera stopped.  Arin eyed her from over the maneuvering assassin's shoulder and saw a look of confusion on her face.  Fox started to sprint off to help Groth when Nera spoke again, “Ah... Fox?”  Fox stopped short and turned to look back.  “It sounded like you just said that a plant....ATE....Pas.”  She hazarded a look over her shoulder and shook her head, grinning.  “I did, and it did” said Fox, and he hustled away.  “Well,” Nera said, addressing the assassin, “ after that, sister, we're gonna call you chopped liver!”  And then they both fell onto the killer in earnest.

It is a Plant eat Plant world!