I wasn’t listening. Instead, I was reading the two messages that had appeared while they argued on whether they should leave, 

*Awaken Tainted Spirits (Yes/No)*

*Move Famished Rootlets from Root Labyrinth to G3 (Yes/No)*

*Move ‘Thorns of Misfortune’ from G6 to G3 (Yes/No)*

*Activate Traps in G3 (Yes/No)*

I realized that was where we currently were when another message appeared

*G3; Corrupted Garden activated*

I started shouting but it was already too late as things began to change. Once the dungeon activated the garden the area became darker as if the sun had set, plants began to wilt, and I watched as hundreds of muddy lights began to light up. The lights were dim and small as if we were surrounded by a horde of fireflies. They appeared silently and seemed to be everywhere, in the trees, in the bushes and even in the grass we stood upon.

I managed to get out, "We're under at..." before beams began shooting out of the tiny creatures. I got a better look right before they shot because they glowed a bit brighter but there wasn’t much to see, just a small sphere of light. I was luckier than the other three. Between all my defensive abilities like ‘Steps of an angel’ and ‘Resilient’ I didn’t take much damage and what little I did take, quickly regenerated from the energy ‘Divine Body’ gave me. It still stung like hell though.

As for the others, I watched as the little lasers hit them without mercy. Most hit their armor to no effect. But wherever a beam hit flesh, the flesh would decay. They were only pimple sized areas at first but there were so many of them that patches of their flesh began to flake off revealing bright red muscles and yellowish cartilage hidden below. I saw them grimace and my aura began flickering like a strobe light. The flickers seemed to be timed with every beam that hit them, and I felt something growing inside of me. It was a sort of pressure that kept building. I didn’t have time to contemplate what it as I danced away from the beams shot all around me. Even so, as I saw more and more of their skin flaking away the pressure became unbearable. It wasn’t until the sprites stopped attacking and the teens attacked back that the pressure seemed to stabilize. They attacked as quickly as they could but with so many of these sprites did it really matter if they stomped a dozen to oblivion?

We got a slight reprieve as they dimmed, and the little lasers stopped. The muddy lights started to intensify, and I quickly cast ‘Minor Healing light’. The crystal inside me hummed briefly, the strange pressure I felt vanished and a huge flock of golden butterflies appeared around us. I had expected a couple dozen but there was at least a hundred of them fluttering around us. They filled the area and whenever they got close to a person they would pulse and some of their wounds would mend. It wasn’t the fastest way I could heal them but that was only the second reason I cast that spell. The first was cover. They acted as a buffer to the beam attack the little sprites did. More importantly because the butterflies weren’t really alive but made up of energy, the beams didn’t seem to do much to them. It allowed them to regroup and begin to kill them.

Well, they tried anyway. It wasn’t even that they were hard to kill. Far from it but none of these people had an area effect attack. I expanded my aura as far as I could manage. I watched the teens kill the ones closest to them and after I couldn’t push my aura out any further, finally began to cast. I concentrated and silently cast “Restrict”. I never really used this spell but, in my opinion, it was designed to kill mages by making it harder for them to cast. The spell was made to clog the energy flow inside a person’s body. I wasn’t sure if it would work on these sprites but when you got down to it, they were just sentient energy. If I could cut off their ability to gather their energy back, they wouldn’t be able to shoot us. Normally, it was either a single target or seven, if I used my aura tendrils. Instead, I forced my magic through my aura using ‘An Angel's Sorrow’. Doing so cost me four times the magical energy and exhausted me, but effected every enemy inside it.

I finished and the already dim lights, they gave off, blinked out of existence. As weakness washed over me, the corners of my mouth still curled up as notifications began sounding in my head. It had worked much better than I expected. 

With their deaths, I had time to look at the notifications. There was a bunch of ‘Gain 1XP’ notifications from the butterflies healing the party and killing the sprites but mixed within them were the notifications of the other groups movements. Before I could warn them of the other things coming, pale green "fingers" came out of the ground and grabbed onto our legs. They looked like tiny baby hands with grey-brown hairs growing out of them. The hairs moved on their own and tried to find gaps in my leather boots and leg armor, but my enchantments held and even the fine hairs couldn't get through the stitching. It seemed to only have average strength so when it failed to penetrate my armor, it let go, swiftly sunk into the ground and vanished as quickly as it appeared.

Startled from the sudden appearance, I felt my heart race as the adrenaline course through my body. I felt more awake and kept glancing at the others to see how they were doing as well as the ground. I gripped my mace and planned to play wack-a-mole if they appeared again. I saw the other group were all attacked. The guy with the sword had the easiest time and simply cut himself free by slicing off the thing’s hand. The girl did something and simply vanished. It was the teen with the staff that couldn’t break himself free. In the end, he dropped his staff and pulled the critter out of the ground. As it came free, I got a better look at the ‘Famished Rootlet’. It wasn’t very big and looked like somebody combined a root of parsley and a starving five-year-old child together.

It was mostly white but turned pale green around its “hands” and “feet”. The hairs that tried to penetrate my armor looked like the trichomes or root-hairs. As it came out of the ground, it twisted its lower half and wrapped its legs around the guy’s waist. They couldn’t wrap around him fully, but I saw the hairs stab into his cheap armor and start to slowly change color. The pale green hairs turned gray, then pale pink, as he struggled to pull it loose. The tiny, thin legs looked easy to break but the hairs kept it firmly attached no matter how hard he pulled at it.

I saw his health dwindling due to the skill ‘Vision of Diagnosis’ but because I hadn’t linked them up to my displays, I had to guess that the cause was from blood loss. I hastily cast ‘Smite’ on it and watched it wither and die. As it fell away, dozens of tumbleweeds rolled into the glen. Their branches looked dry and slightly shriveled except for their thorns that ran along them. They looked razor sharp and gleamed as if polished. I assumed these things were the ‘Thorns of Misfortune’ because of the sharp hooks that ran along their branches. They came into the glen fast, and I hastily split my aura apart. I wanted to give these people more protection because I doubted their shoddy armor would stop those thorns.

While my plan of using ‘Skin of the Plains Beast’ to give them better armor sounded fantastic in my head, I was too slow to actually prevent the things that resembled tumbleweed with thorns from getting to the girl who had appeared beside them. I was only halfway through the spiel when two of them rapidly rolled into her. She had appeared too close to the ‘Thorns of Misfortune’ for me to intercept them. They hit her and turned inside out. It was quick. One second, she was fine and the next she was being wrapped inside of them.

I watched as two ‘Thorns of Misfortune’ enveloped the girl and the last thing I saw was her shocked expression that was quickly replaced by anger. The thorns hooked into her flesh as they wrapped her tight. They ripped her clothes and flesh indiscriminately, but even as her blood ran down her ravaged skin her glare never left me. Why was her gaze aimed at me as if it was my fault? I didn’t have much time to help or think of why she glared at me because the other ten were already coming at the rest of us…

***

My name is Grell, an acolyte of the Shadow God. Bret, Nathan, and I were all that was left of our eight-person party and as a result, my friends were on edge. So, when a lady stepped out of the tree, we still all pulled our weapons and prepared to attack. We had become nervous. Mostly because animals and plants had been attacking us non-stop but also because I didn’t like being out in the open. It made me feel venerable and even though she stood there with her hands open, I knew she was dangerous. My instincts were always pretty good and at first, I could feel her generosity and care. It was as if she could shelter us, protect us from everything, but as Bret opened his mouth and yelled at her, her demeaner changed. I saw her green eyes turn black and I felt as if death was approaching. I knew Bret turned his nervousness into aggression but now was not the time to piss off potential help!

She looked at us with those pitch-black eyes and I heard a majestic man’s voice in my head whisper, “She is the herald. Wherever she goes death and destruction will follow.” I never heard that voice before. I had only heard it once before. It was a voice that held power even as it whispered such horrible words, and I clutched the tiny, unadorned box inside my hand and became more nervous because that voice belonged to the Shadow God. I tightened my grip on the box that held a sliver of my shadow I had offered to him. As long as it was close to me, I could call upon him for aid. My nervousness wasn’t because I feared death. As an assassin, I already knew that death could happen at any moment. I just didn’t want to die out in the open and annoy the God I chose to make me stronger.

It wasn’t that I was a true believer, but the Gods tended to be fickle and hold grudges. They could give you power, take it away, and if displeased, torture you in the afterlife to vent it. And while I only chose to worship for some extra power, I still did my best to have a “proper death”. Which for a ‘Shadow God’ servant is in the dark, not out in the open.

But when that lady looked at me, I could sense my demise was close at hand. It was her gaze. It was so piercing that I knew I wouldn’t have time to retreat. Then the lady seemed to get distracted, and the feeling of impending death passed. I held my breathe until she turned her head away. By the time she looked back, her eyes had returned to emerald green. I heard her say, “We're under attack!” How she knew, I couldn’t tell but before I could act something shot out of the ground and grabbed my leg. I looked down and saw pale hands had grabbed me. Tiny hairs came out at the tips of each finger and burrowed below my armor and into my skin. It itched. I pulled my dagger and with a quick prayer plunged it into the things arm. I slipped into my shadow and out of its grasp, but it took a toll. When I reappeared in the shade of a nearby tree my shadow wasn’t as dark. If I called too often and lost my shadow, I would lose my life and it was already faint from overuse. With all the attacks today, my shadow was already very dim, so I had to be careful.

I saw the fine hairs burrowing into the others’ armor and the brown hairs slowly began to darken. They weren’t idle though and like me had attacked the hands. Bret had the best results as he raised his sword and severed the pale hand that had held onto his leg. Nathan slammed his makeshift staff down onto its “wrist” but while it indented and bled a milky white blood, it didn’t let go. He slammed it over and over, but it held on, and its milky blood slowly turned pale pink. He finally let go of his staff and simply grabbed the hand and pulled. His arm bulged and slowly, a pale emaciated child was yanked out of the ground.

As Bret pulled it up, I got the first look at the monster. It looked like a plant monster we had fought on the way in but much, much bigger. The ones we fought were only about the size of our hands and weren’t very dangerous. This one bent, twisted, and wrapped its pale legs around his waist. It bent unnaturally and once it locked its legs around him, I could see his look of horror as it began to suck his life away. Maybe I was too involved in watching because I didn’t even see what got me. I just felt something bump into me and then the world went dark.

I felt thousands of barbs tearing away my skin as my God’s voice came once more, “Do you want to be saved? I can save you or leave you. The choice is yours. The price for my help is that girl’s life. CHOOSE!”