“That’s wild,” Locke says, tapping it with his blunt sword.
The plant comes alive, opening wide to reveal impossibly sharp teeth inside its flower. It snaps out at me and I fall backward just in time to avoid it, my heart beating loud in my ears at the close call. Locke to his credit, doesn’t panic, but he does take a step back when the plant tries to snap at him next, doing its best to rip its roots out of the ground in an attempt to get closer. I watch as it yanks hard and then seems to remember it doesn’t have any feet. It slowly folds back up, hiding its teeth away. Though it doesn’t have eyes, I can’t help but feel like its glaring at me.
“New rule,” Locke says. “Don’t touch the plants.”
“You don’t gotta tell me twice,” I grunt, getting back to my feet. The plant makes a noise as if to mock me. I don’t like that. How many of these things are killers?
We get the answer pretty quickly.
All of them. All of the plants are killers. And we’re surrounded by the bastards.
At first, I don’t see any other creatures besides the plants and I start to think the plants have eaten them all. So, it startles me when a small green creature appears on a branch in front of me.
My brows furrow. “You see that?”
Locke follows my gaze and frowns. “What . . . is it? You getting a description window?”
I shake my head. “Not yet. Cipher?”
“You must wait for the creature to perceive you for a description to pop up,” Cipher answers helpfully.
“I swear we’ve gotten descriptions on things that haven’t seen us,” I comment.
“Have you now?” Cipher says. “How very interesting.”
Which gives me no further understanding. Great.
“Alright. I’m going to let it perceive us,” Locke says. He holds his blunt sword out and shakes the trees. The green creature whips its head toward us, its large, tube-like neck inflating just a little bit at the interruption. It has four legs, each tipped with toes that have rounded tips on them. It holds onto the branch easily, moving around to peer closer at us. It has a long tail that extends behind it that opens up like a leaf. The creature is colorful, mostly a bright green with specks of red. The red climbs up its throat. If it didn’t move, I wouldn’t even know it was there.
The description window pops up.
PITCHER LIZARD
Small plant, unaligned
It must decide that we’re no threat because it settles back on the branch, lifts up its head, and opens its mouth. With eyes closed, the pitcher lizard sits on the branch so still, I forget what we’re watching for a second. Until a small insect comes buzzing by. It lazily buzzes through the air, dancing to and from, growing closer and closer to the pitcher lizard. The lizard doesn’t move, not even when the bug lands on its neck and starts to climb upwards. It reaches the mouth, trails along the edge, and then just barely dips inside. The Pitcher Lizard’s mouth clamps shut and it happily chomps on the bug.
“Did you see that?” I ask Locke. “It lured the bug in.”
Locke grimaces. “Let that be a fucking reminder for anything else in this zone. If that thing was big enough, it would eat us, too.”
From that moment on, it becomes easier to see that there are many creatures moving around us, blending into the foliage until they move the barest amount and we finally notice them. Pitcher lizards are everywhere, but we also see other strange creatures, too. Tiny frogs that leap away when we push through the underbrush, strange lizard-like creatures that move too fast to pop up a description window, insects that fly around and become food for the toothy plants.
“Look at that one!” I say, excited, to Locke as we give a wide berth to a particularly large snapping plant. “See it? Right there?”
A small bird comes fluttering through the trees to land on a branch in front of us. It’s tiny, smaller than my fist, and it’s almost completely green. It tilts its head at us and the description window pops open when I touch my implant.
SNAPTRAP
Tiny plant, unaligned
“It’s so little,” I coo, reaching out a finger toward its pointed beak. “Hi, little guy.”
“Don’t touch it,” Locke grumbles. “It’s little, but I bet it could take your finger off.”
“He’s curious,” I say, smiling at the Snaptrap. “Are you hungry? I can give you food.” The Snaptrap hops closer on the branch in answer. “I knew you would be.”
I open my inventory and scroll to the bottom . . . to find it empty. I know I shoved a whole bunch of food in there from AppleFrog’s, but now that I’m looking, it’s not there at all.
