The Midnight Mercenaries, Prompt 1
The more Nahi worked with the healers the more setting up for injuries became ingrained in her, allowing her to work smoothly with the others. It was becoming a well rehearsed dance, one that involved many of them coming together so they could best prepare for something that one could never truly prepare for. You just never knew what the fighting would bring to them.
Her eyes snapped to the path cutting through the magic shield as the first injured came through. She moved with the others, helping guide them down, hands already reaching, already working. They looked skewered, torn through, and carried a thick, earthy smell, like mulch clinging to their skin. How was that even possible? What was in there?
More injured poured in, some on their own, others carried. Too many. Nahi’s gaze swept over them, her stomach tightening. Many weren’t fighters. They looked like civilians, an older man with blood soaking through his clothes, his steps unsteady as someone tried to keep him upright. Were they from the town?
She shifted from tending the wounded to preparing for them, laying out pads and blankets as quickly as she could. If this was only the first wave, they were going to need far more space.
It didn’t register at first when she saw the flowers sprouting from a woman’s hand. They’d been treating wounds from the plants all day. Around her, the injured spoke of the town breaking apart, of people still alive as the plants took them. It wasn’t until she saw the woman’s skin shift, something moving beneath it, that it clicked. Then more flowers burst through her arm, splitting flesh as they spread.
Nahi stumbled back. All around her, bodies twisted, changed. becoming more vegetation than human.One of the priests called on the Light, trying to drive them back. But the instant it touched one of the shambling forms, its mouth gaped open and stalks erupted faster, spilling outward.
“Stop using Light magic!”
Nahi didn’t know who shouted it, but she saw Nara already moving, sprinting for her weapons.metal flashed as she turned back into the fray, sword cut down one of the half-formed creatures before it could rise, then drove it back, keeping it away from the healers. As they tried to group to defend themselves.
The horror around her locked her in place. Nahi wasn’t one to panic easily, but this… This was worse than anything she’d faced before. A memory surged unbidden, people talking about the shambling dead that had ravaged Eversong not so long ago.
A scream cut through the haze. She turned. Roots lashed out from one of the creatures, coiling around a nearby victim and dragging them into an atrocious embrace. Her hand flew to her mouth as she stepped back, eyes glued to the horror.
Out of the corner of her vision, another slow-moving being crept through the fight toward one of the company’s druids, still focused on a man who wasn’t rising like the others. As her magic began to weave over him, it was siphoned away into the creature with a horrifying inhale. It swelled, twisting and stretching until it resembled a monstrous treeant. Branches clawed outward like a starving person desperate for a scrap of food.
A lightning strike sparked into a handful of the shamblers, catching them on fire, a gust of wind followed and the creatures were forced back around the center of the healers. Then more fire began popping up around them as arrows rained down on the beings, who began to trip and fall into things. A cot at Nahi’s side began to burn and she turned to see a face formed of petals in a bud that had yet to blossom moving in towards her.
Instinct overcame her, she screamed and ran…
The healer’s carefully arranged space? Obliterated. She had no clue where she was, so she bolted toward the closest gap in the tents. Debris and roots threatened to trip her at every step, but she darted through it, dodging gracefully like the lifelong dancer she was.
People came into focus. Kai was flinging ice at the leafy monsters but where was everyone else? She glanced back. The plant creature had not given up on chasing her. Not wanting it to grab her friend like the others were doing, she dove sideways, barely avoiding a tent that erupted into flame.
And then… her foot hit ice. She slipped, flailed like a new born chick out of an egg, and landed in what should have been a graceful roll, but instead, she ended up tangled in a mountain of green canvas, tumbling headfirst into a pile of… pillows? Soft, sure, but really?
Pulling at the canvas only made it worse. Trying to stand she slammed her knee into something unhelpfully solid and just tangled herself more when she fell and tried to crawl through the fabric that had caught on fire that was spreading behind her. She clawed herself free and stood just to receive a face full of water from someone trying to douse the tent.
Everywhere, the camp was burning. Somewhere, monsters were still vegetating. And here she was looking like a drowned rat standing in the middle of total chaos.
( @themercenaries @kaisinasunblade @themadamelioness )