Tarragon

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Touch

-Mantis

The flower was rotting. Parasites and maggots crawled through it, tearing holes through the innocent rose. I looked down at the rest of the mountain. I saw Etchanaea's grand skeleton, covered in snow. Standing between two ribs was...

The assassin, brandishing their sword. Chills went down my spine, and I bolted. I was running again. I didn't want to fight them again, I knew they could kill me.

And so, I fled. I ran, making as much distance as I could from this mountain.

Maybe all of this is a mistake. Maybe I should just give up, and go home.

I looked back at the mountain. A figure burst through a cloud, and landed next to me. I fell to the ground trying to get out of the way, and looked up at the assassin. They raised their sword up, and I tried to form a shield. I couldn't, now.

I rolled out of the way, getting out of the way of the first attack. I scrambled to stand up, but as the assassin raised their blade again, I kicked them, full force. They swung their sword at me, and as they staggered backwards, I opened my mouth to breathe.

Their sword struck me just barely on the tongue. It wasn't huge, just a small nick.

How close was I to dying there? How close was it all to just stopping right there. Everyone would have died, and the world would have been ruled by the King.

But that isn't what happened.

-Net

I dropped in the air to avoid an eruption of fire from Defretsimant's mouth. I flew under him, and Dec caught up to me, flying on a huge tower of water, like a waterspout.

"We need to get him away from here! There's an unpopulated forest south of here! We can fight him there!" I shouted to Dec, as we emerged from behind Defretsimant.

Dec and I began luring the Titan away, but he wasn't moving- he was targeting the house.

Right. He's after... Fern, I guess. They're decoding the Energy, and the King doesn't like that.

(Writer's note: You gotta save me guys, motivation to write is NOT great right now. I wrote everything above in this chapter in a week. I might just be at a bad part for freedom, because everything is laid out with certain events in the outline, and I made the mistake of not putting much in each outline.)

I decided I had to capture the Titan's attention. I reached out to the plants growing around Mantis's home. I shot them up towards Defretsimant, and as trees grew like javelins, vines slithered up like snakes, and the grass just... grew, the Titan backed off from the house. It was shielded by the foliage now.

I grabbed a small rainbow seed from the bag hanging from my neck, and tossed it up into the air, before whipping it towards the Titan by spinning around, and whipping it with my tail. It hit the Titan between two scales, even better than expected. I commanded it to grow, and to spread.

It immediately got to work, eating away at the scales by releasing acids, and spreading its roots. This flower- a prismflower, is a rare carnivorous plant. It does not reproduce like most flowers, instead it continually produces seeds within a sac until the pressure is too much, and that sac bursts. It eats flesh in order to survive, and can be extraordinarily difficult to remove without fully amputating limbs.

And I had shot the seed right between two scales on the dragon's chest. The Titan recoiled in pain as the prismflower rooted itself into the tan dragon's body.

Dec froze a vaguely sword shaped bit of water into an actual sword of ice, and was running circles around the Titan, hitting it wherever he could.

"Ankhele, are you watching this?"