The Forest is Moving

The tunnels that had been revealed through numerous acts of coercion and goodwill across the islands were not unlike tunnels that both Deerlegs and Embargo had encountered before.

The first time Deerlegs had walked this path (or a similar one, at least) had been on her adventure to Isla Pera. She had been so wary then. It had taken her hours to convince herself that she needed answers badly enough to journey into the depths of the earth and walk the long, unnatural path to the neighbouring island. She was still wary now, but at least she hadn’t hesitated quite as badly this time. Not with Embargo watching, when it felt like she had to prove that she wasn’t so afraid that she’d back down.

Still, there was the lingering feeling of wrongness that hung over her as they walked. This wasn’t like the caves that dotted the cliffs and crags that she and the other pachys of Highcliff called home. This cave, this tunnel, went deep into the earth and even beyond the island. It pierced through the ocean, crawled along the sea floor, and it was so dark down here. This was not a place that she, or any other creature of the land or sky, was meant to see. They were so far from the water’s surface that the only light they had to guide them on their path was that which Embargo was more familiar with. Manmade lights lined the ceiling and dotted the floor on either side of the walkway, guiding them along the path towards their ultimate goal. Some of the lights flickered dimly, some had gone out altogether.

Embargo carried his own light with them as they walked, his bioluminescent spots and quills reflecting off the curved, clear acrylic walls. Windows, though this was the first time he’d seen them used as a means to look outside rather than between two different rooms. The last tunnel he’d walked through was the same that had brought Deerlegs to Isla Pera, though he had walked it the opposite way as she guided him from Pera to her home. That tunnel wasn’t unlike this one, and both were familiar to him in the way that all manmade things were. He was at home with the flickering lights, the scents of metal and rubber, the texture of the metal grating beneath his feet. This had been his entire life, up until very recently.

Yet as familiar as it was, it put him on edge, too. Being surrounded by these things gave him no feeling of comfort. Being enclosed in this tight and narrow space, this dark and strangely quiet tunnel comprised of unnatural materials - it brought up only bad memories. Anticipation settled in Embargo’s chest, the feeling that they could be attacked at any moment, though the oviraptors had only been kind to them so far. He was quiet as they walked, but he was on guard, straining to hear every quiet creak or crack ahead and behind them. This was not unlike a hallway, which he knew was nothing but a deathtrap if the carnivore chasing you was faster than you were. He’d feel better when they were out in the open, or at least had more places to run to if they needed to.

Neither of them were sure exactly how long they walked. Without the sun, with only Embargo’s bioluminescence and the unnatural glow of fluorescent lights, there was no way to mark the passage of time.

What seemed like an eternal trek below the ocean, far from the sun’s warmth, ultimately came to a conclusion - but not one that either pachy was exactly expecting. Embargo believed that they’d be met by the same sort of static, concrete and steel structures that he had been surrounded by for most of his life. Deerlegs expected that they would come upon an incline that would take them to the surface of some new island, desolate and devoid of life since the oviraptors seemed so keen on planting seeds across Isla Kela and Pera.

What they were met with instead was… lush. Greenery unlike anything that either of them had ever seen. The coverage was more strange, more dense even than the jungles in the highlands of each island. It was more varied and more vibrant than the greenhouse plants of Zone B in the Alpha Lab. It was all just… more. A paradise, at first glance. They could hear the gentle burble of a stream running across the earth, and somewhere in the distance the rushing roar of a waterfall. It felt wrong for it to be so warm this far from the sun, yet it was. Warm, bright, humid. A breeze stirred through Deerleg’s feathers and rattled Embargo’s quills - but they were so far down beneath the ocean that it had to be artificial, right?

Plants crawled across the earth, sprawled across the ground right up to the foundations of the gateway which they now stood at. Some of them were familiar - trees, flowers, vines, and herbaceous plants that both of them vaguely recognised. The harder they looked, though, the more they realised that there were bright, and vibrant, and altogether alien plants nestled amongst the familiar.

The walls that reached out on either side of the gateway had a slight curve to them, not unlike the tunnel, which became more and more severe the higher they went. This wasn’t an island, or another underground facility. This was a dome. A massive, subaquatic enclosure which housed some of the strangest things that either pachy had ever seen - and they hadn’t even made it past the gateway yet.

And they weren’t going to make it past the gateway if neither of them moved.

Deerlegs stepped forwards first, leaving behind the metal grate to step down onto concrete stairs and then… grass. It felt real enough. And nothing bad immediately happened as soon as she left the relative safety and security of the tunnel, so that meant it was probably ok to continue on. Probably.

The plant life that they encountered became increasingly strange the further into the jungle they walked. What was at first just odd flora scattered throughout the fringes of the jungle rapidly began to claim more and more of the forest. Vibrantly coloured flowers which dripped sweet nectar that had hardened and crystallised on the ground beneath it, clouds of spores which drifted through the air like a dense fog when a breeze disturbed a different kind of flower. Some flowers - and even leaves and fungi - glowed just as brightly as Embargo did, perhaps even brighter.

If she were of a different mind, Deerlegs would’ve been fascinated by the fact that some of the plants even responded to touch. Some of them wilted in the blink of an eye if they were touched. Some made her growl under her breath. Her feather crests raised high in aggravated annoyance when a pod they walked near to exploded and pelted them with hard, pebble-sized seeds. They didn’t feel so bad against her feathers, but they left welts on Embargo’s scaled hide.

And these were just the less bothersome plants.

As they walked, cautiously delving into the thickening jungle growth, she had to remind herself what they were even doing here, why she was guiding Embargo into this tangle. Mostly it was curiosity, but… she also wanted to bring whatever knowledge and fearlessness the oviraptors had to the surface. The oviraptors brought seeds to the surface from this place and had managed to plant them all across the islands, in even the most inhospitable places. She wanted to be able to do that. She wanted to bring it to Highcliff.

As stubborn as they were to keep living there, the herd had always had trouble scrounging for food amongst the dry cliff faces that they called home, but they were struggling even more now. Recovering from the tremors that rocked the island and fires that burned away so much foliage was a long, slow, and… painful process. 

Embargo was helping in every way that he could, which Deerlegs appreciated. Highcliff wasn’t exactly his family, or his home. They were new to him just as he was to them. Yet still, he worked tirelessly to help as a sentry, a provider, a guardian, a keeper - whatever needed doing, he would do it, but even he couldn’t make seeds miraculously thrive where they had previously failed to even sprout.

The path through the jungle, which she hoped would lead them towards some sort of communal space like Highcliff was for her, was easy enough to follow at first. It was well-worn from the dozens of footsteps of all the other islanders that had also walked this path, either to meet the new faces, find their own answers, or seek retribution for… planting some seeds. What seemed like a miracle to her was apparently a criminal act to others, though she didn’t quite understand why.

She also didn’t understand how she had suddenly lost the well-worn path that she had been following. It was as though it had all but disappeared right in front of them, as they were walking on it, but that didn’t make sense. Maybe she’d gotten distracted, thinking about Highcliff, and hadn’t noticed that she’d started to lead them off the main path. Or maybe the path naturally fell away as islanders dispersed throughout the jungle, but that wouldn’t make much sense either. If everyone wanted answers from the oviraptors, and the oviraptors lived in and traversed through the jungle, wouldn’t it be better for them to travel along a set trail to their destination so they didn’t get lost?

Deerlegs had them pause before they got even more lost. She lifted her head, scenting the air and looking around to get their bearings. Even looking back, there didn’t seem to be anything familiar, which was unsettling unto itself. Embargo felt the same.

There was… no sense in turning back. If this whole space was an enclosed dome, they were sure to run into something or someone at some point.

Deerlegs was more focused as they walked on, silently berating herself for getting distracted in an unfamiliar territory in the first place. Just because the oviraptors they’d met so far had been friendly didn’t mean that they all would be. Besides that, if rumours were to be believed, there was something else that called this place home, and they were less friendly.

A growing feeling of apprehension hung over both pachys as they continued along what Deerlegs claimed was a trail, though they were more or less fighting their way through the foliage to go forwards. Some paths ended abruptly at the edge of a river, or a pile of stones which lead nowhere. Others were inaccessible simply because the undergrowth was too thick and loaded with thorns. Massive, horrible, hooked thorns which looked almost like teeth. Deerlegs could’ve sworn that she saw one of the thorny vines move, once. Likely a trick of the eye and the anxious mind, since she’d never seen a plant move on its own before.

But Embargo had seen it too. Not just a hallucination brought on by toxic spores or a hyperactive, paranoid imagination - the thorned vines moved. He’d seen something moving just out of view more than once, though he hadn’t been sure of exactly what he’d seen. The jungle here was so thick that the leaves blocked out most of the artificial light. Seeing the vine shift now, even almost imperceptibly, was more than enough to make him believe it was smart to leave this place behind.

“We should turn back,” he suggested quietly.

Deerlegs had come to the same conclusion. It was no use trying to climb over or push through the vines. Even her tough feet would be cut to ribbons on the thorns, and she doubted that Embargo’s hide could withstand those razor tips.

Begrudgingly, she redirected them towards where she was pretty sure they had come. Only pretty sure, because it felt a lot like the path had changed once more. Again, nothing looked familiar, and she couldn’t catch a clean scent trail over the potent scents of all the greenery and flowers around them.

With all the sensory noise, it wasn’t until Deerlegs heard a quiet crunch underfoot followed by a quiet, rapid grinding of woody material slithering against itself that she realised that she’d stepped on something she shouldn’t. She started to jump away, only to be shoved aside even faster when Embargo crashed into her. A massive, blood-red and fleshy pair of toothed leaves rushed towards where she had been standing.

Where Embargo was now standing instead.

Embargo’s head was tucked, the quills that ran along his back raised and bristling defensively. They stabbed into the meat of the leaves, sap slowly oozing down the keratin which kept it from closing entirely over him. Its teeth were long and wicked, and though the leaves hadn’t snapped shut, the plant’s teeth still managed to pierce his hide.

Deerlegs felt a lot of things in that moment as she stared at Embargo, suffering the strike that she had inadvertently caused. First and foremost annoyance - burying down the panic that picked at the fringes of her mind and threatened to make her thoughts foggy.

“Shells, Embargo, have you cracked your egg?!” She fought to keep her voice even. Embargo recognised the curses and exclamations as phrases used by the Highcliff pachys; she thought he’d lost his mind, stepping up for her as he had. He’d do it again.

Deerlegs bit and scratched at the fleshy leaves, which were a deep, mottled green on their back, and murmured rushed apologies whenever her actions made the plant’s teeth dig in deeper and scratch his hide even more.

Embargo didn’t have an answer for her. His nature, his instinct, was to protect. He had been raised to react quickly at the first sign of danger since the day he had hatched. Living in the Alpha Labs had drilled it into his head that he needed to use his skills to help keep others safe, for the good of the herd. Protecting Deerlegs had become part of that instinct. He’d had worse than a few scratches and shallow piercings before.

His silence apparently was enough to provoke her to continue. Or perhaps it was the anxiety she refused to acknowledge, or guilt that he’d gotten hurt instead of her. “My feathers could’ve protected me a lot better than your hide can!”

He didn’t doubt that. Deerlegs was incredible. Her feathers were thick and soft, and seemed to cushion her from many things that other pachys wouldn’t be able to walk away from without scratches or bruises.

The plant’s grip was relaxing as she continued to work at it. It was a relief, but blood began to bead around the loosened teeth. The fresh, bright red of fresh blood stood in sharp contrast to his dark scales. It made Deerlegs feel worse.

“I didn’t think,” he replied. He’d just acted. He knew that could be dangerous, and it was foolish when he knew that she could take care of herself. There was danger, she was in danger, and he’d reacted to try to keep her safe.

Mission accomplished. Her hide was intact. His was, unfortunately, not.

The plant released Embargo and retracted, slithering back across the ground and taking with it a couple broken quill tips that had embedded in its flesh. It left behind scratches, punctures, and several long and fine needles that made Embargo’s hide itch. Deerlegs gingerly took the ends in her mouth and helped him pull them out before he could scratch at them. It’d only serve to break them and further embed the tips into his hide.

 All in all, he wasn’t badly injured. When Deerlegs was satisfied that he was as well as he could be - feeling another twinge of guilt to see the blood beading up on the wounds that dotted his body - Deerlegs turned to guide them back. Not just back to the edge of the jungle, she was ready to go back to the gateway. Maybe not… back home, just yet, because that would be admitting defeat, but maybe she had to accept that they couldn’t do this alone. This place was too big, the undergrowth too tangled, the jungle too dangerous to navigate on their own.

Embargo followed quietly as he had been, listening and looking out for more hidden trouble. He wasn’t a stranger to looking for danger in dense vegetation, listening for odd sounds that were almost imperceptible amongst the jungle ambience. This was almost exactly like Zone B had been, which put him on edge almost as much as traveling through the tunnel did. Here, though, it just wasn’t other dinosaurs that they had to look out for here. It was the plants, and they were surrounded. Every leaf, every shadow, every flower was a potential enemy. He understood that even more, now that he had been poked full of little holes.

They didn’t get far - just a few steps - before Embargo started to feel strange. His heart was beating too quickly. It was normal to be afraid after running into something large and dangerous, but his heart should have calmed by now. His head was starting to ache as well.

The scratches and punctures had gone numb by now as well. It was a little more concerning when he realised that his mouth was also starting to go numb.

His vision was starting to blur. His ears rang, and everything started to sound muffled and distorted. His head didn’t just ache now, it pounded like the whole of Highcliff was running across his skull.

His feet felt heavy. Each step was more careless and haphazard than the last.

The ground started to tilt.

“Deerlegs,” he mumbled, his speech quiet and slurred.

He just managed to see her turn around when, trying to keep himself oriented with the tilting of the ground, he tripped over his own feet and landed heavily against the earth. He watched her blurry form come more into focus as she rushed towards him, saw her mouth move as she spoke with a look of urgency on her face, but he couldn’t hear what she said.

“Hey! Get up, come on, we have to keep going and get back to the tunnel-” Deerlegs’s voice was strained, insistent with an edge of panic.

Embargo stared dully back up at her, his pupils blown out and unfocused. It only served to heighten her alarm. She stood, looking around frantically for any sign of life that wasn’t these cursed plants.

“Hello?!” She barked a call. Her voice didn’t carry far, dampened by the surrounding foliage. Thorned vines, those horrible tendrils covered in hooked teeth, stirred. Deerlegs’s heart jumped to her throat. They needed to leave.

Deerlegs called again, raising her voice to a rarely-used bellow that traveled through the jungle: “Hello?!”

Still, she was met by frustrating silence. Deerlegs gave a huff, a forceful anxious sigh. Right. It was stupid to ask for help from the jungle, there wasn’t even anyone around to help anyway. She could get Embargo back to the gateway, run to the surface, find some… something to help him… 

The reality of her helplessness in this situation pissed her off as much as it scared her. She didn’t know enough about herbs to help him. She didn’t even know what was wrong with him, but she wasn’t going to let it stop her from acting. She crouched, trying to maneuver Embargo’s limp form in such a way that she could get him over her shoulder, or across her back, so she could drag him out of this place, only to hear-

“What in the Hell is all the yelling for?”

Deerlegs jerked her head up at the sound of the stranger’s voice to see an oviraptor, mottled with dark spots and vibrant orange stripes across his crest and along his hip. He was looking at her wearing an unimpressed expression, which turned into an unsubtle eyeroll when he saw Embargo laid out on the ground.

“This sort of thing is exactly why you topsiders should just let us do our business and stay out of it,” he sighed. “Or at least wait for someone to be able to walk with you so you can poke your noses around wherever it is you’re going.”

“Can you help or are you just going to stand there?” Deerlegs snapped, her feathers puffed and raised aggressively. If he was just going to stand there and make snide remarks, she’d rather he just left them alone.

Lockjaw rolled his eyes again. Between the less than kind welcome that he’d received from a couple giant carnivores and her huffy behaviour, topsiders were turning out to be so touchy. “Of course I can, I’m not just gonna leave you here. Help me get him up.”

While Deerlegs wasn’t immediately fond of the oviraptor, she wasn’t about to not listen to his direction just because she didn’t like his attitude. If he could help Embargo, then she’d do just about whatever he asked.

A mix of guilt and frustration kept her feathers fluffed and the “fin” of feathers between her shoulders raised as she helped Lockjaw get Embargo up and supported between them - which ended up being more of her supporting Embargo when Lockjaw couldn’t.

“Heavy bastard,” he complained with a strained grunt.

He continued to speak when Deerlegs remained stubbornly, anxiously quiet. “You two couldn’t have possibly picked an even worse part of the dome to try to travel through. I’m guessing he walked into a slingshot, and you’re lucky that it didn’t start digesting him.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Deerlegs asked, glancing at Embargo again. His breathing was getting worse, slower and shallow.

“Oh, he’s paralyzed! The slingshot pumped him full of toxin so his body’s probably trying to freeze up so he doesn’t fight while it starts to eat him.” Deerlegs shot a look back at Lockjaw, eyes wide and wild. He didn’t have to sound so chipper about it, that sounded horrific - and worrying.

Lockjaw glanced at Deerlegs, then scoffed. “You don’t have to look so worried, he’ll be fine. I just wanted to get out of there so the creepers didn’t think we were a free meal. You lay around in there too long and the vines’ll catch you and drag you away.”

So the horror continued, then. What was this place? She’d never heard of plants that could do any of what he described, not from across the entirety of either island or even from Embargo about his experiences inside the facility the upwalkers left behind.

“Let’s get to wherever we’re going then,” Deerlegs mumbled, adjusting Embargo so his weight leaned more on her.

They didn’t have to go far, thankfully. Lockjaw brought them to a building that Deerlegs would have missed, not knowing that there were even buildings in the jungle. It was almost entirely obscured by the jungle, with moss, vines, grass, flowers, and other herbaceous plants clinging to the surface and trees growing out from around the foundation. They took advantage of every available surface that they could, reaching for the artificial light that made it bright as day even so far beneath the ocean.

“You know, I’m honestly surprised that you made it that far in. I would’ve thought that you would’ve at least run into one of the warriors before you reached that point.” Lockjaw wasted no time in continuing to chatter, leaving Embargo hanging off of Deerlegs as he moved about the inside of the building to look for something. She helped him to the floor, which was less “help” and more “make sure he doesn’t slip and fall again.” Worryingly, he didn’t have much use of his legs anymore.

“I’m not sure if it was brave or stupid of you,” he laughed. He rustled through some… drawers? Did they actually use the upwalker things here?

Deerlegs bristled. “Will you shut up and just help him?” she snapped.

“What does it look like I’m doing, having a meal?” he asked, tossing some leaves that she didn’t recognise into a pot. It could have been his food, honestly. He was kind of hungry.

He looked at Deerlegs, debating, then decided against it. There wasn’t any point in sending her out to get water. She likely didn’t know where to go, and she would only end up running into more trouble that he’d have to help with, and he wanted to get back to the surface so he could continue with his mission.

“Stay here,” he sighed, with a note of exasperation in his voice. “I’ll be right back.”

And with that, the oviraptor walked out the same way that they’d come in, and Embargo and Deerlegs were left alone.

Deerlegs wanted to sit down beside Embargo. She also didn’t want to let down her guard in case something else happened. After a few minutes of silence, she sighed and relaxed slightly, letting her raised shark fin of feathers between her shoulders lay smooth again.

“That was stupid,” she muttered. She wasn’t even sure that Embargo could hear her, but it made her feel better to say it. And worse. “This whole thing is stupid. The herd will recover. I shouldn’t have lead you down here. You shouldn’t have followed me down here. I’m perfectly capable of surviving on my own. My feathers would have protected me.”

But that made her feel bad to say, too, and her feather crests flicked flat. Embargo was trying to help. He had no way of knowing that the giant plant - the “slingshot” - would have poisoned him. She didn’t even know for certain that her feathers would have protected her; the plant’s teeth were long and sharp, and her feathers were better for cushioning blows than blocking teeth and claws.

Embargo grew up in a place like this. Not exactly like this, but… something made by the upwalkers. He knew what to look out for, what sorts of things the upwalker buildings and objects could do. And it was good to have company; someone to help keep an eye out for trouble and talk to after a long day. If she’d been alone when the slingshot attacked her, and she had been poisoned instead, there wouldn’t have been anyone to call out for help. She could’ve been eaten by that thing. It was awful to think about a plant being capable of eating anything, actually.

“You better be okay,” she mumbled, more gently this time as she gazed down at Embargo’s still form.

Only for her hackles to raise again when Lockjaw returned, announcing his presence with an: “Ah, good! Right where I left you. At least you’re capable of following directions.”

Deerlegs wrinkled her muzzle at the jab, and the fresh scent of smashed leaves that came with him. Whatever sort of leaves Lockjaw had tossed into the bowl, he had mashed them into pieces and mixed them into a paste while he was gone.

“What is that?” she asked, suspicious.

“Lethal poison to finish your friend off,” Lockjaw replied dryly.

When Deerlegs looked like she was going to knock his teeth out, Lockjaw hurried to correct himself. “Holy shit, I was kidding. You topsiders really can’t take a joke. It’s just a mix that’ll counteract the toxin so he can actually breathe and walk again. We keep extra supplies here just in case something like this happens.”

“Although,” he crouched beside Embargo, carefully eyeing the sharp quills along his back and tail. Maybe it was a good thing that Embargo couldn’t move, he did not want to get poked by one of those. Not as bad as being hit by a euoplo club, he imagined, but still not something he wanted to experience. He liked not being full of holes.

Deerlegs watched silently, just as ready to crash into him as she was when he’d made the “joke” about poisoning Embargo. If he really did make Embargo worse, she’d… She wasn’t sure what she’d do. Kill him? She’d never killed someone before, and the thought made her ill. She’d do something, that much was for certain.

Lockjaw smeared some of the paste onto the wounds that he could reach, then nodded for Deerlegs to roll Embargo over. He wasn’t going to be able to do it, the pachy felt like he weighed a ton.

Carefully, Deerlegs shifted Embargo so that Lockjaw could do what he needed to. The pungent green paste at least helped to staunch the bleeding of the deeper punctures, even if it didn’t do what Lockjaw said it was supposed to.

Which, the longer she waited, it didn’t seem to be doing anything at all. Embargo sounded like he was breathing even more slowly, and he still wasn’t moving. Deerlegs shot a hard look at Lockjaw. “It’s not working.”

Lockjaw scoffed and set the bowl of paste on a countertop. “You topsiders have no patience at all, do you? He’s full of poison from a plant that thought he’d make a good meal, you think he’s just going to jump up and be better immediately?”

Deerlegs shifted her feet. Well, no, not exactly. Maybe. Embargo had gone down so fast, she hoped that he’d be able to get up just as quickly now that Lockjaw had done his thing.

Lockjaw gave an amused sigh and perched on… something like a long rock, but with a strange shape. It had a padded, vertical back and a soft, cushiony surface that reeked of mildew. “You’ll be stuck here for a while until the medicine does its thing, so you might as well get comfortable.”

“You’re going to stay here?” Deerlegs snorted.

Lockjaw shrugged. “Yeah, that was the plan. At least until I know he can actually walk again and you aren’t both eaten by carnivorous plants, anyway. I do have other things to do today and taking care of a couple of topsiders wasn’t part of that.”

The suspicion never left Deerlegs’s eyes as she glared at the oviraptor, but softened almost imperceptibly when she glanced at Embargo. Maybe he was starting to breathe a little easier.

Fine, if that was how things were going to be. She snorted and walked towards the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To keep watch,” was her curt reply. There was no way she was going to leave Embargo here. She was just going to stand guard in the doorway, and make sure that nothing else came up to the building. To be a sentry, as she was in Highcliff.

Lockjaw’s comment about the “creepers” - the vines with teeth that moved over the ground, she imagined - had not left her mind. As soon as Embargo could walk again, they would leave.