A monstrous plant.

Gilly smelled the thing that blocked their path before she saw it. She suddenly realized that she had been tasting the aroma on the back of her tongue for quite a while now. A musky and sweet smell, slightly nauseating, but at the same time appealing and intoxicating. The plant had huge leafs, almost as big as a person, and the stem was crowned by a strangely shaped flower, which looked a bit like a gigantic animal's jaw. But that was not what had made Ysdella scream. The monstrous plant was still a few feet away, but it seemed to have long roots or vines, stretching out far and wide from the stem, wriggling on the muddy ground. Yes - wriggling, Gilly thought. They seemed alive! And one of those vines had grabbed Ysdella's right foot, coiling around her ankle and her lower thigh with nasty looking barbs, squeezing through the leather trouser of the hunter's daughter.

Ysdella hacked at the vine furiously with her long knife, screaming, and Gilly watched in horror as a second vine crawled towards the blonde and then a third and a forth. Suddenly, the ground itself seemed to come alive!

She saw Katarina push forward, her spear stabbing into the ground and the vegetation, but in less than a few heartbeats, a vine coiled itself around the shaft, turning Katarina's attack into something that looked more like a tug of war between the vines and the girl - Katarina was clearly loosing ground and was being pulled closer by the strange plants.

You can't stab vines with a spear, Gilly thought with dread. She was also very much aware that she didn't even have a proper weapon. She could, of course, try to pull her friends out of their entanglements. Ysdella was desperately struggling against the grip of several vines now, which were crawling up both her legs, rendering her almost completely immobile. She had lost her long knife and her bow and was fighting the strange plant with her bare hands.

The vines hadn't attacked Gilly yet. Maybe they only reacted to movement. Maybe there was still a chance for her to run away. But she could not leave her friends to this, could she? And where would she run to? There was no place near that could offer help.

The strange smell wafted into Gilly's nostrils again. Sweet and musky. She saw how Ysdella's movements slowed down, how the vines had reached her friend's hips, how one of them even slowly reached for Ysdella's left arm. The blonde hunter needed help - urgently. But this seemed like a fight Gilly couldn't win.