Event | Ferocious Flora | Ensnaring

Ferdinand - AberrantKapro

315 Words

The trio of colourful raptors was venturing down through some suspicious, overgrown tunnels. They had followed the suspicious footprints that they had found on the surface and they led them to a waterfall. Cautiously, they had approached it, and to their surprise there was a cave opening behind, which seemed to be leading somewhere.
“I don’t know about you two, but I have a very bad feeling about this place.” Ferdinand snorted as he shook some slimy cave moss off of his orange foot. “This place reeks.”
The further in the darker it became, as it happened fast as not much light could penetrate through the waterfall in the first place, but around a corner a light source was slowly appearing. It didn’t feel right to keep going, but they did so regardless, only to be faced with a large opening, resembling an overgrown jungle with a whole bunch of dangerous looking plants that they had never seen before.
“I told you, I have a bad feeling about this..” he snarled as he reiterated his previous statement. “But it’s too late to go back now, isn’t it?”

Out of stupid curiosity, Ferdinand proceeded to poke one of the large vines with his crescent talon, and jumped back with a hiss as it started to slowly retract towards a large plant bulb. He instinctively stood in front of his partners to attempt to protect them in case something would lash out towards the trio. He was also more than ready to wrestle Phaeniss to the ground if he attempted to blindly go to attack. They had no idea what these plants were, or what they were capable of. For all they know, they could get tangled up in vines and perish.
“Stay cautious..” Ferdinand ordered his two partners as they slowly started to move again, the plant was dormant enough. At least for the time being.

Phaeniss - Dillyweed

686 Words

Phaeniss was looking at the waterfall with great scepticism. It was more about the fact that he did not want to get his feathers wet than it was any mysterious feeling it gave off. It would take ages to dry his feathers fully, especially the ones he couldn’t reach himself. However when his partners entered under the waterfall he too followed, not wanting to get left behind.

It was dark inside of the cave, which surprisingly enough was not a surprise to Phaeniss. The waterfall created a wall against the opening of the cave, trapping the humid air inside of the cave. It wasn’t warm. Rather it was a cold humid air that seemed almost stagnant as they moved through the cave. The walls were dripping as the air plastered water onto the moss growing on it. Phaeniss could feel with every step he took the amount of slimy moss filling up the space between his toes. He tried his best to ignore it. Everytime he shook the slimy moss packed tightly between his toes the space would quickly get packed again. It was simply easier to focus all his brain power on not focusing on the slimy moss invading his toe space instead. 

I don’t know about you two, but I have a very bad feeling about this place.

Phaeniss was concentrating so hard on not focusing on the slime between his feet that he actually understood what Ferdinand was talking about and didn’t need him to repeat any of it to understand it. He didn’t really agree with his partner though. As he looked around on the decreasing amount of things he could see as the light quickly died out he found the cave exciting. It wasn’t warm. But that didn’t matter much. The moist air wasn’t able to penetrate under the protective layer of his feathers and despite the fact that they had passed under the waterfall he hadn’t gotten wet down to his skin so he was still able to keep fairly warm.

They were quite suddenly met with a jungle of overgrown plants. The smell of deteriorating, moist and rotten plant matter was taking over the air and Phaeniss realised this was why the tunnel smelled the way it did when they first entered it, even if the smell was quite thicker around this part of the tunnel.

Phaeniss watched as Ferdinand poked one of the plants despite his previous statement of how uneasy the area made him feel. He too wanted to go up and poke around in these plants. Now Phaeniss rarely paid any attention to plants up on the surface, he was usually too busy paying attention to living creatures - they were more fun anyway, plants couldn’t run away. But even he could tell that these plants were nothing he had met before. And as Ferdinand touched the plants they suddenly moved. Pheaniss rushed forward as it drew its tentacle looking vine backwards but was quickly stopped by Ferdinand who had stopped both him and Kormal in a protective manner. If Phaeniss had the ability to know better he would have believed that Ferdinand cared for his safety.

Phaeniss let his crest build up like hackles on a dog as the vines triggered other vines to retract.
“What is it?” He hissed quietly. He wasn’t in attack mode like he usually was. He was rather for once in a curious mode. This was not less dangerous than his “attack first ask later”. His curiosity wasn’t fuelled by intelligence but instead stupid obliviousness. The biggest differences were that when he wanted to attack he used his teeth and when he was curious he used his claws. Although, in the end the opposite could still be true regardless. 

Phaeniss scoffed as Ferdinand warned them both to keep their eyes open and stay cautious.
“As if I am not keeping a track of my surroundings.”
He had to do his best to hide the fact that two minutes later he managed to trip over not only one vine but two in a row. At least he didn’t fall on his face. 

Kormal - Zhetan

435 Words

Kormal could count the times he had been stunned to silence on one hand. There wasn’t many things that could make him feel uneasy simply because he could not understand them, but this? The intense gaze was locked on the fibrous tendril as it wriggled away from under the orange raptors talons. As if it could not only feel their presence but also react to it, shy away from it. While he wanted to grin at the thought, even plants recognised their authority, the danger they imposed by just being there. But the reason he was seldom surprised was because of his intellect, because he often could think ahead, and accurately predict outcomes before they happened. And now something told him these plants had something to hide. Regular plants didn’t need the gift of movement. Plants that moved had their own motives, usually carnivorous ones.
 “They are surely up to something” he added to Ferdinants request, ignoring Phaeniss addition entirely. The yellow and green raptor would prove his own statement incorrect soon enough anyway.
“Only plants I’ve seen move are small insect eating ones” he thought aloud, looking around them at the vines, some seemingly trying to close in on them from above branches, inching closer, trying to be unseen. Wanting to trap them and carry them off, to where exactly? He nodded toward the creeping tendrils, meeting Ferdinands gaze.
“Don’t let any of them grab you-” he was interrupted by a thud, Phaeniss had failed to correct himself tripping over a vine. Kormal was going to snarl something at him, remind him about his own words about being aware about his surroundings, but stopped himself. He hadn’t just tripped over a stray root, he could see Phaeniss feet wrapped in a tendrils grip, and more vines crawling over the dirt to try to ensnare him. Kormal’s warning had come just a few moments too late.
“No you don’t” he growled at the attacking plants, his sickle claw cutting one of the approaching vines swiftly, leaving the task of getting Phaeniss free to their orange partner, as he himself kept new vines away from them. As soon as Phaeniss had thudded to the ground it was as if they had poked a hornets nest, and tendril wriggled towards them as snakes.
“Get him up we need to get going” the words slightly stifled as his teeth were closed around a vine as he ripped it down from a branch, severing it from whatever host plant it was attached to, if the whole jungle was like this they had a long day in front of them.

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